Guild Wars 2

DreamyAbaddon.3265:

You guys are either Trolls or completely ignorant…

The link I provided is an Announcement of World Tournament 2014.
There seems to be Prize money for the winning Team.

This means that GW2 is finally E-Sport now… Unless I’m mistaken prove me wrong otherwise cause how I see it, E-Sport is when players win prize money in PvP tournaments as a team and people come to watch or participate.

Also GW2’s PvP takes lots of skills and strategy so it’s appropriate for E-sport genre.
This is why I support it becoming E-Sport… We need games with combat like this.

Because you seem to be honest with your post, let me give a serious answer.

First, the bolded part is a problem right there. Not many people watch the streams because thre’s not much fun in doing it. This is for several reasons:

A lesser one is that the conquest game mode does not makes for many great plays. It revolves around bunkering points instead of pushing tactics. The audience greatly prefers more offensive-driven games. The scoring system has a passive feel to it. Turnbacks take a slow time and are unexciting. Generally, they come of too late. And frequently enough, tight matches are decided by whichever team is the luckiest by scoring that 1 extra point first. Which can be very accidental.

But a bigger reason is that GW2’s game design disregards visual or tactical clarity. Between the huge amount of particle effects, invisible procs, pets, skill spamming and lack of telegraphed attacks, you can’t understand anything of what is happening on the screen, even as a player, much less as a viewer. Traits sacrifice clarity and skillful playing for the sake of customisation, to make up for the very restricting skill system. Pets passive AI is mathematically too impactful and too frequent, and traits incentivate builds to bring as many pets as possible. The lack of skill weight, generally as a direct consequence of no resource/ energy system, makes skill spamming highly effective, which in turn overloads the UI with condition and boon icons, and the screen with particle effects. Traits also contribute to UI overload. No energy also leads anet’s devs to place more emphasis on skill cooldowns, which in turn demands more skill quantity to the combat system (else, you’d be auto-attacking all the time when waiting for the cooldowns to go off). On top of this, most weapon sets lack any build-up and momentum or decisive telegraphed attacks. There are many situations where skills within a weapon are all “equally useful” and equally fast, with no build-up or climax. Bad for the stream viewer, bad for competitive counter-playing tactics.

In addition to that, GW2’s pvp infrastructure is poor – no, it barely exists. There’s no incentive for competitive growth. Hotjoin is a failure at teaching players good pvp habbits or giving them a stress-free environment for casual play/ learning experience/ non-competitive matches. Solo and team queues have crude systems for fair matchmaking. Leaderboards are broken, hard to measure and relegated to outside of the game. The reward system feels a bit crude and incomplete.

For GW2 to be “esports”, it needs more game mode diversity, it needs an effective match infrastructure, and it needs core gameplay concepts to be reshaped for the sake of more active playing, counter-playing, tactical clarity and UI/ visual clarity.

TRAIT SYSTEM vs PROFESSION SUB-TYPES
I’m putting one against the other, because I believe they would fight each other for the same or similar goals. They can definitely (and mostly likely would) co-exist in some way or another.

First, balance and design issues:

• The trait system is way too passive
  In a game that is highly criticized for too much passive spam, Anet has expressed their wishes to go towards the opposite direction. But they will always be crippled as long as they depend on a system that is of passive nature in an attempt to try to design a more active combat playstyle. To put it bluntly, the trait system offers restricting design space for more active playing when compared to, say, the skill system itself. It is therefore healthier to the game to make skills more important and traits less important. But here lies new problems:
• The trait system is both way too important, and too risky to expand upon
  14 passive effects. 75 total passive effects for each profession. And the only way to expand the trait system is to add even more passive stuff. That’s crazy. It’s a total, passive effects overload. How can Anet ever fix the passive problem with such a system? Meanwhile, the skill system is fairly underwhelming in comparison. While traits have all this ornate system with tiers, trait lines, minors and majors, what does the skill system have?
• The skill system is underwhelming and hard to expand upon
  Yes, you can always add more skills into the game, but the system itself will always be the same, rather generic, get skills points from anywhere and unlock skills from a UI. Three empty utility slots to fill do not add much customization, I think, for being too few, and for players simply picking those slots for the most useful utilities (which do not necessarily mean the most unbalanced utilities). Most utilities have high cool downs and are very situational too. There are no flavored quests that offer you skills, nor is there any skill hunting. Elites are generally unexciting.

How to fix that?

• Why not fuse the trait and the skill systems into one?
  Make it so that the highly ornamented trait system, with its trees, tiers and majors/ minors, is used not only to unlock and customize passive effects, but active skill effects as well! Why not?
• This would remove dependence from too many passive effects
  Instead of 14 passive effects, what about, say, 7 passive effects and 7 skill slots unlocked? This would give more freedom for Anet to create more active effects without being crippled or restricted by the (no-longer) passive nature of the system. Even more so if, in addition to active and passive effects, there would exist combo effects, like FFVII’s blue materia that could be attached to active skills and give them new functionalities. This would also allow the system to be:
• Easier to expand
  Also because skills would be categorized within each trait tree, it would be easier to balance skills against each other, and thus easier to create more and more of them. Likewise, it would be easier to create active effects, putting less pressure on the balancing/ skill team from creating way too many passive effects, which the game is already flooded by.
• It would make skill-building more exciting
  Having to invest on trees to unlock skills would lead to more thoughtful build-crafting, than simply picking any utility you want from three slots. Also, what’s more exciting, investing 20 points in fire magic for a passive proc off cleansing fire, or investing 20 points in fire magic to unlock the utility cleansing fire, which would require manual input and thus more game play interactivity and skill ceiling?
• It would thus ease the balancing problem
  Was the old Mist Form too strong? Instead of stripping enjoyable functionalities out of it (being able to heal while in mist), Anet could simply move Mist Form to a higher tier, and make it require 20 points in Water Magic instead of 10, or even 30. This way, not every build would be able to use it, yet the skill would remain as fun as it was.
• It would give a new point to elite skills
  This, in turn, would not be called elite but grandmaster skills.
• It would create a greater sense of progression
  Skills in higher tiers would be inherently stronger than skills in lower tiers.
• The sense of progression would last longer
  Players would not simply get all their skills in the first few hours of the game and then get bored.
• It would be simpler to understand, easier to teach new players and more elegant
  Instead of two distinct systems, there would only exist one.

(Part1)

Fast leveling is not about Anet thinking that the early game isn’t fun, it’s about Anet fully accepting that leveling, in GW2, is nothing more than a form of tutorial, and expanding on it.

In this sense, the NPE is clearly superior than the old experience, because it accepts, with full honesty, what leveling is and has always been in GW2.

There ARE problems that come to (a greater) light from this, like for example, the underwhelming sense of character progression, but those problems always existed since launch. Underdeveloped horizontal progression, easily obtainable vertical progression (+ gear grinding since ascended) and lack of customisation outside of traits. Gaining 1 trait point per level was nothing but an illusion, but now that the illusion is stripped off, the problem is clearer.

To be honest, from the very little that I’ve played out of the NPE, the early game is more addicting. More addicting in the sense of instant gratification and clearer (unlocking) progression. What were before, to the new user, obscure and overwhelming options all spread through the UI to be ignored, are now layered, “exciting” level unlocks. It was a smart thing to do by Anet, because it introduces them better to the new user while giving a stronger sense of progression.

But I do agree there are some flaws with the system. Based on my short experience:

• Weapon skill unlocks is weird. Way too restricting at the start of the game, way too overwhelming when the new user gets a new weapon and suddenly he has the entire skillset unlocked. It needs a middleground somewhere here. Perhaps one solution, is to reward to the new user one weapon for each type very early in the game. This adds more skills to experiment with,when you have access to few, but also softens the moment where you get a weapon type for the first type and have most of it unlocked already.
• The first story instance should start earlier, I agree. Perhaps at level 5. This would add more options to a new player, so they could start the game and jump (almost) right into the story if they wish too.
• Dumbing down the game does NOT makes the game more interesting. Some of my favourite details, when I started playing GW2, were those that made the world feel more interactive when completing hearts. In addition to, there are players who love (slightly) challenging content right on the beginning, because losing gives them motivation to get better, and enhances the psychological feeling of leveling up and becoming stronger.

I love streamlining. But I hate when developers think that streamlining = dumbing down. Games do NOT need to be boring and shallow, to appeal to the masses. There are many good examples out there that prove my point.

Personal question: Will a balance overview thread be posted in the forums?

“Critical damage changes” <- Intriguing.

I absolutely feel that slight metagame tweaks, like the ones announced for the next balancing patch, should be “decoupled” from any massive feature patch, and instead come at their own, and as soon as possible. The game only has to win by having a better meta as soon as possible.

The only reason why (HB) Warrior is so strong, is because of the AI. Hundred Blades and other oftheir burst skills was meant to be easily dodged/ blocked, something that pve enemies can’t do. A Warrior is not even a top tier profession in pvp.

And yes, AoE is a problem. For events, AoE builds are much better at farming than other builds, regardless of the players’ skill level, which is unfair. For pvp, AoE spamming is very stronger against a coordinated team trying to rez their ally and against players defending points, weakening both strategies and making the format slightly more 2-dimensional. In WvW, there’s nothing to say: it’s an AoE fest by nature.

Maybe some of you never thought of this before, while you have been abusing AoE in this game, but just because you got used to it, does not means it was meant this way. That being said, I hope they nerf AoE VERY carefully. I want them to nerf AoE, but noone surely wants them to nerf entire builds, weapon sets or even entire professions because of that.

It’s a problem with the game as a whole. There’s usually too much focus on quantity over quality (see: those generic LW updates that add a few generic “kill 10 rats” quests and only very little more), and a lack of attempts to expanding or improve existing systems.

Take a look at guild missions. That system can be expanded in so many ways. Tequatl could be attached to it, for example. They could be used to make some places more alive. They could be expanded for a more player-generating type of content. All this would be true to the word “Living World”, wouldn’kitten They could feature extremely hard end-game content. They could be expanded in such a way as to keep whole guilds consistently alive. And you know what’s more important? Guilds actually want that kind of stuff.

But nothing. They designed and coded an entire new system, and then just left it to die. Is it currently being worked on? Was it completely abandoned? Anet has been completely silent.

This can apply to many other situations.

They’ve added so many races to GW1’s Eye of the North, and made so many awesome racial towns, and now we’re in a situation where most of those towns are empty, and where most of the armor skins for non-human races are lazy due to the lack of resources or something.

They’ve made this massive world with awesome art and music, but hey, all maps play the same, with the same generic systems and enemies. And when they finally add something unique and very fun (Bazaar), they remove it to focus on new stuff again.

This goes as far as game balance. Why so many different profession’s mechanics? Wouldn’t the game be at a better state if all professions shared one or two well-crafted mechanics, instead of eight different and unpolished mechanics? Initiative is spammable due to the lack of cooldowns, Shattering is not fine-tuned for some pve/ wvw environments, Pets are stuck with bad AI, etc, etc, and Anet can’t fix all of it because it’s just too much. Again, quantity over quality. If there was an universal system across all professions, like if all of them had a burst system, or all of them had an attunement system, Anet could simply improve all professions through a single system. Besides, it would make them all similarly difficult/ easy to play, instead of the current situation where some are much harder (elementalists and engineers, for example), while others are mind-numbing simple (rangers where the AI play for themselves in pvp, warriors with no complexity behind a burst system that they don’t even want to use in pve because of traits).

Quantity over quality is a general trend in GW2, and is especially worse because Anet doesn’t even have the resources to fix in time all of their countless systems, currencies, etc.

Hey, I think the holy trinity is outdated too.

But let’s not pretend it would make GW2 worse or dumb it down. GW2 has the worse “trinity” in every single mmorpg ever created: Single Trinity. Dps/ Dps/ Dps. It can’t get worse than that, folks!

If Lord of the Rings was written so that only the highest dps characters could speed run to Mordor, then the hobbits and Gandalf would be an hidrance.

It sucks when only DPS builds are worth anything. It sucks when you have to use a DPS role for a party to accept you in one-hit-kill-defensive-stats-are-pointless-dodging-is-all-you-need endgame content.

I want to emphasize what others have said about a few ele’s skills.

Ride the Lightning

This skill currently feels like a monster contrained by iron bars. I think players feel that constraint in the skin. The conditional cooldown is clunky, and if it was meant to be used offensively more so than defensively, it is doing the opposite. For all intents and purposes, RTL is now a 40s escape skill. Players don’t want to use it offensively, because it checks if the skill successfully hits or not. Any block, miss or evade will put it at 40s cooldown. This should definitely be fixed, but I would probably go further, and also suggest a 15/ 30s cooldown. Why? From a d/d’s point of view, 15s was perfect for a leap skill. Anet could also consider a 900 range RTL with a global 20s cooldown. It’ll be easier to counter when fighting professions with 900-1200 ranged skills.

Also, please, and this is really important, but never – ever, have this skill auto-target, even when the option is ON. I like using auto-targetting, but this pretty much comes at the cost of almost never being able to use RTL as an escape skill. As it is, that option nerfs this skill.

Lava Font

Needs the Geyser treatment. This skill depends on Blasting Staff to be useful.

That being said, I love the 1s delay in damage, and I think all combo fields should be like that.

Auto-Attacks

Improving ele’s auto-attacks across the board would fix several issues with this profession, like the high skill floor (new players would have an easier time learning this profession), the lack of sustain damage, and more importantly, it would give players the option to hold within their attunements a little bit longer, toning down the over-reliance on arcana’s 60% attunement recharge rate. All should be on the level of Lightning Whip.

Here’s how I would buff them:
Dragon’s Claw: Hard to say, it’s a worse version of LW. Maybe should deal more damage than LW if the target gets hit by the 3 fire beams.
Vapor Blade: Fix the obstructing terrain bug, increase vulnerability to 8s-12s, and have it add 2 stacks. This would make it an interesting set-up skill. The duration needs to last long enough, so that an elementalist has enough time to switch to other attunements and make their rotations with the full benefit from vulnerability. Because doing so already comes at the cost of many precious seconds, I also recomment 2 stacks per hit. Or maybe just a faster animation.
Impale: First, this skill should have 600 range. It just feels more natural this way. Second, bleeding should be buffed somehow, maybe to 12s, so that condi-eles can maintain bleeding a bit easier.
Flame Strike: Slightly lower casting time. I believe there’s a bug with the casting bar, which fills faster than the actual duration. I’ve self-interrupted this skill so many times due to this. Also, more direct damage, because that’s what scepter needs.
Ice Shards: This skills wants to be the “Lightning Whip” of this weapon. Considering that arc lightning is great to proc critical effects, and the other two auto-attacks revolved around conditions, all this skill needs is a plain damage buff. It should literally deal as much damage as LW. Yes, yes, it is ranged, but it’s also single-target.
Stone Shards: Bleeding 6s->8s. This skill is slow, but that’s a fine drawback. perhaps a bit more direct damage as well, but I think it’s bleeding that should get buffed.
Fireball: I think this skill is almost fine, considering its 1200 ranged and aoe. But I would make a slight change: slightly bigger radius, doesn’t needs to be much. Fire attunement is the aoe attunement, right? Increase the radius, and make air the specialized single-target attunement.
Chain Lightning/ Lightning Surge: I’m going with a few posters here. Make the number #2 skill the staff’s auto-attack, remove its cooldown, and make it single-target. A hard-hitting auto-attack that can blind is pretty cool, and I think the casting time makes it balanced. Put a cooldown on chain lightning, and strengthen it with some vulnerability, faster animation or higher damage. Alternatively, make the first hit from CL hit twice as hard, the two following beams deal only half the damage. Both of those skills are currently a bit underwhelming, and they are the perfect opportunity to add to staff some extra single-target power.
Water Blast: Even though it is to get buffed, it was still one of the worst auto-attacks in a profession with weak auto-attacks. As posters have been saying here, please, add a reliable radius width. 180+ IMO.
Stoning: The weakness is cool, but slightly more damage please. Doesn’t needs to be much, but staff needs a bit more sustain across all non-fire skills, eruption is tricky, and other skills barely deal damage. Shockwave could get 3 stacks of bleeding too, though.

Please, consider making conjure-swap instant like weapon/ kit swapping. I know that, unlike engineers, elementalists have a high skill pool naturally, and so I understand that conjures have so many restrictions. But this takes the fun out of them. I think that if they gave a sense of permanency, players would like them a lot more. Take out the duration, take out the charges, but keep the 60s cooldown.

Here’s how it could possibly work:
1. Instant-swapping, and an environmental version is automatically placed at your feet for allies to pick.
2. No charges, no durations, but the utility skill still has a 60s cooldown.
3. Here’s the big thing. The 60s cooldown could either apply after the conjure weapon is cast, or if you think conjures need a more rigid restriction, then only after the conjure weapon is swapped out.

For example, I would cast frost bow. For as much time as I would wish to, I would keep it in my hands. However, once I would need any of my other 20 skills, especially if I need the survival or if the bow’s skills are under cooldown, I would swap it out, and be unable to use it for 60s.

There you have it: similar to kits, but with a cooldown restriction to make up for the profession’s higher skill pool. This makes conjures a lot funnier and less stressful than as they are now, with one minute duration and 15-25 charges. The environmental version for allies to pick could still have a limited duration, though.

Also, because of the way conjure shield works, I can’t see it ever being viable otherwise, unless it gets a serious rework. Conjure Shield would be the perfect swap-to conjure for whenever you are in danger, but that would require instant-casting and maybe even stun-breaking (important for all-conjure builds). Using its defensive skills after getting bursted down is usually ineffective.

You don’t need to tie an effect to a button to make it active. How active an effect is depends on active it demands the player to be. Effect = Button is a simple, effective way to do it, but not the only one.

In the case of Diamond Skin, it’s true that there is no button associated with it. But it needs to be maintained, and it can be counter-played. Anyone can nullify its effect, and the elementalist must work to get its effect back. This creates some sort of dancing between gaining and losing the effect, which is determined by the skill of the two combatants. This make the trait highly interactive and playable.

In comparison, passive traits like Dhuumfire are the opposite. They proc at pretty much anything that hits. They can’t be countered. They don’t require special or unique playing to be activated. They don’t depend on the player skill. They’re mindless and unhealthy to the game.

I would go as far as argue that skills like Enduring Pain are more passive than traits like Diamond Skin. Why? 1) Because the active maintenance required to make use of the Diamond Skin’s effect is far more demanding than simply prssing a single button. 2) Because once Endure Pain is activated, the opponent can’t do anything but wait until the effect ends, while the opportunity to counter-play Diamond skin is always there.

Let’s put it in simpler means and with different words: Diamond Skin is only a passive trait if no one attacks the elementalist.

shinjin.3924:

while gw2 keep losing players.

GW2 is losing players because there is nothing new to do (and, well, because of anet’s screw ups too), and not everyone cares about legendaries. From that point of view, this is good news, because it should (SHOULD) translate to more content more often.

eleshazar.6902:

I’m not talking about a world boss event. I’m talking about if my guild wants to do a run through orr without any weapons or armor on just for the heck of it (we have definitely done this one in the past)! We can no longer do this together. They can’t fix the fact that this new system will be splitting us up. Half will end up in a map with some other people that were already there, and then when that queues the other half will be somewhere else. If the system wasn’t constantly adding people in (like a homeworld) then this wouldn’t happen except in very rare cases.

There already exist solutions set in place to help with that problem (like being able to join a party member’s map at will). We also don’t know yet how many versions of the same map will exist at any time, nor if the new technology will only create new versions if the old ones are completely full. In fact, it’s heavily implied by anet’s careful wording that maps don’t need to be full, only “confortable”, for new versions of the same map to be created, which implies that it might not be that hard for full guilds to join together.

I think we should first wait and see how effective the system is, before claiming it won’t work.

Cosmetic rules of this game:
1. Trenchcoats are medium armor,
2. Medium armor are trenchcoats.
3. Elegance and majesty all go to female light armor,
4. Stylish male light armor is nowhere to be found.

That being said, the medium armor does looks awesome, and us male spellcasters are lucky enough to have a decent (read: not completely bland nor filled with ugly details) armor set coming in the near future. It’s not the best thing ever for us, but it’s not offensive either. And the mantle is nice.

Another gorgeous female light armor set.

Do people seriously believe that disliking GW2 makes you a spoiled kid? There has been plenty of constructive, well-written feedback that points to GW2’s faults.

(Too long, had to double-post)

Not only that, but GW1’s features synergize with each other. The party-driven content, the building system, the story-driven content or the pvp content, they all support each other. The story is fluid because henchmen/ heroes allow you to never depend on players to progress; the henchmen/ heroes work because they allow the game to be fully party-driven even to solo players; the party-driven ideas were acchieved because the game was fully party-driven even to solo players; the skill system worked because, in addition to being fun, was designed to support party-driven content, which the whole game revolves around; and the pvp was deep because building and team synergy were deep.

In comparison, GW2’s ideas and mechanics clash with each other. The game wants to have a large diversity of builds, but it punishes players for them due to several mechanics (defiance, condition capping, easyness of dps builds to complete every content) or due to large amounts of grind (because attributes are linked to the equipment). GW2 wants to tell a story, but it punishes players who want a fluid story progression, by gating it behind levels. GW2 wants party-driven content in some instances (dungeons), but it punishes players who use party-driven builds when those players are NOT doing dungeons. GW2 wants skill over grinding, but punishes skillful content with bad rewards, and rewards mindless content to keep the casual players, the gamblers, the farmers and the online shop going on.

This is what happens when a game wants something as impossible as being everything at the same time. A game – or any product or piece of work, for that matter, must have a focus, and it must be unified towards the goals it wants to accomplish. Every single component should be designed to synergy with each other. In GW2, this does not happens. New mechanics and new content are many times designed independent of each other, and sometimes they clash with each other, and contradict with each other.

Elementalist boards

• Our profession sucks! All other 7 professions were buffed and ours wasn’t. Reroll!

Any of the other profession boards

• Our profession sucks! All other 7 professions were buffed and ours wasn’t. Reroll!

In an attempt to avoid power creep, I’ll have suggest some nerfs in compensation for my proposed buffs.

What the staff is

• A support weapon;
  Should remain as it is.
• Specialized at AoE;
  Should remain as it is.
• Slow casting skills;
  That is a good thing to balance its offensive power versus the amount of support and AoE effects available, however, the same disadvantage should not apply to defensive skills, or at least not to as many as it currently does, for it is making it nigh impossible to survive in solo. I don’t think a staff ele should be specialized at solo surviving, neither, but it should certainly be at a better state than it currently is.
• The functionality behind some skills is ineffective;
  Will need to be improved upon.
• Most of the damage comes from the fire attunement;
  Not that bad of a idea, but it makes the playstyle awfully boring in PvE. I’m going to take a look into the air attunement, and spread its damage a little bit more between both.
• Ineffective air attunement, and auto-attacks in general;
  Auto-attacks are a well-known problem with the elementalist class.

Faster or more effective self survival
Should offer a relevant boost at surviving, without making the weapon way too strong at this. Some babysitting should still be required.

• Water Blast (auto-attack) – This skill should self-heal in addition to the healing blast radius.
  The healing radius is unreliable, and sometimes party support must come at the cost of own healing. And yes, both effects are meant to stack when applied to self. Keep in mind that this is still a slow auto-attack – an elementalist shouldn’t still be able to depend on this to survive against focused damage.
• Stoning (auto-attack) – 1 extra second of weakness.
  Although weakness is a very strong condition to be put on an auto-attack, the elementalist needs to maintain it with very slow and underwhelming damage. By giving 1 extra second, and thus making weakness last slightly longer when stacked after 2-3 auto-attacks, the staff elementalist will get a precious 2-3 extra seconds to pull off another combo sequence before being bursted to death. Not too strong, I hope?

Making air attunement more effective, in adittion to enhancing self survival

• Gust and Shockwave – Increase the line width.
  This will make those skills a bit more reliable to hit, which is crucial for self survival, and also a support boost to your party. The increase shouldn’t be too high, so that players can still move out of it.

Further improvements in air attunement

• Chain Lightning – Make the first hit deal 50% more damage, and the following two hits 25% less. Have them pierce.
  This will make this skill stronger versus single targets, which is what air attunement usually specializes at. Piercing damage inbetween hits would also lead to some fun, chaotic damage values in a crowded battlefield, with everyone in the middle getting splash damage if they don’t avoid the slow-moving, piercing lightning waves.
• Lightning Surge – Make it unblockable.
  This will add more depth to this skill. Timed right, it can bypass a guardian’s shelter or any other profession’s block, making it a more reliable “head shot” sniping skill. The high casting time will still demand skillful use from the elementalist to acchieve this.
• Give it a 5 second cooldown.
  This would make it more appealing to Fresh Air builds using staff.

Tweaks, and slight nerfs to compensate – no one likes it, but it needs to be done

• Lava Font – Increase radius from 120 to 180. Increase the cooldown from 6 to 8 seconds.
  Currently, this skill depends too much on Blasting Staff to be useful. An increased radius is needed. Blasting Staff would still be a worth trait picking up, but staff players would no longer feel “forced” to it. However, so that players switch attunements more often, instead of spending all their time spamming 1 and 2 in PvE for maximum damage input, and so that this already useful skill doesn’t becomes too strong with the radius buff neither, I suggest the CD increase.
• Tornado – Have it double power instead of tripling it. Have it double toughness instead of doing nothing to it.
  This change will not only make the Tornado + Meteor Shower combo weaker, but it’ll also make Tornado a more worthwhile elite by itself, due to the higher survivability. Double win.

Further trait support

• Fresh Fire
  DPS staff builds would greatly benefit from lower fire attunement cooldowns.

Self Priority is very important because entire builds can and are usually made around their own combo fields. Water Staff Elementalists, for example.

Time Based should be a second factor too, so that organized teams can coordenate their combo fields well. Meanwhile, as long as a Self Priority system exists, pugs shouldn’t screw you this way.

Another good thing about Self Priority, is that you have control over it. You can choose to delay your own combo fields if you wish to take advantage of your party’s fields.

They’re also both easy to understand, I think.

EDIT
Also, party’s combo fields should have higher priority than other allied combo fields.

I disagree with some players about the runes. I think the new restriction to runes works. It works, because instead of players mixing three runes for the absolutely best boon duration set, it’ll make them want to specialize on specific boon runes instead. The restriction to runes actually increases rune diversity. It also works because there are so many runes to choose from. And finally, with the best effects now being put towards the end of the set, there’s really no reason anymore to make us click on each rune 6 times, when we can just click on it once.

The removal of jewels, however, creates a new problem: it degradades the potential viability of hybrid builds. But there’s another solution to that problem, that won’t require anet to revert back the new amulet system: add more hybrid amulets. Because only two of them exist.

Why are hybrid amulets so necessary? Why did jewels added build diversity? Because they PREVENT EXCESS. That’s why.

For example, an offensive elementalist can’t exist with additional vitality and toughness points. Those points can be gained through earth and water magic lines, but if the player invests too much on them, they won’t have the offensive points required. So what must the player do? Relying on runes’ stats only fixes one stat, and even then, it might be a bad idea if the lack of an offensive rune were to undermine their build greatly. So what else can they do? They need a bit of toughness, a bit of vitality, a bit of healing power, from equipment’s stats. And light investments on water/ earth traitlines, coupled with jewels, allowed this.

Let me give a few examples:

• Berserker Amulet (light vitality investment) + valkyrie/ soldier jewel and 10 earth (light toughness and vitality/ healing investment) + the old divinity runes, would allow them to give the base survival they depend on, while still specialize them in power.
• Alternatively, Valkyrie Amulet + Berserker Jewel and 10-20 Water + the old divinity runes, would give them light toughness, light vitality and decent healing power, while still allowing them to specialize in power.

But those two examples become more complex when taken into account that valkyrie amulet offers critical damage but not precision. A zerker jewel, divinity runes, 20 points in air and sources of fury could offset that disadvantage. Fortunately, the new sigil of accuracy now offers +7% critical chance instead of 5, and I assume the divinity’s runes overall stats are going to be buffed, so this one might still work.

When jewels are taken into account, it’s easier to prevent excess. What I mean by excess, here, is that jewels make it easier to give to builds just enough stats to keep the builds viable, and then all the remaining stats to what the build specializes at. Now, with the removal of jewels, to several builds, there will exist an excess of vitality, or an excess of toughness, etc, that will buff some stats more-than-enough, at the cost of very important stats that, in their abscence, can potentially ruin those builds.

So we need more «half-hybrid/ half-specialized» amulets. PvP will only offer exactly ONE amulet like that: valkyrie. We need more. “One” is too low of a number!

Something more like this: (major) offensive stat (minor) defensive stat 1, (very minor) defensive stat 2 and something else, or vice-versa, with a major defensive stat instead.

These kind of amulets will allow builds to just have enough of specific stats they require to be viable, while still specialize at what they want, in order to be… viable!

Anet acknowledges that there are currently too many currencies in the game, so they probably have plans to remove most of them. I agree with this, HOWEVER, there should exist a global game-wide currency that rewards players for their merit.

In my opinion, GW2 only needs three currencies (excluding gems):
- The normal currency for the in-game market (gold);
- A time-gated currency (larels);
- A “merit-gated” currency (?);

Currently, glory, badges of honor, dungeon tokens, fractal relics and the likes are all currencies earned by “merit” and dedication, and can’t simply be brought with real-money, etc.

The game as a whole needs something like that, and so does pvp. I’d say that all the badges/ tokens/ glory/ etc should be fused into a single merit-driven currency to be used for general purposes, and the merchanics for that specific currency would have to be unlocked. For example, you would be able to buy pvp stuff with Merit from anywhere in the game, but those merchanics would only sell you anything depending on your rank/ acchievements/ ladder/ something. Likewise, the merit gotten in pvp could allow you to buy dungeon gear in Lion’s Arch, but those merchants would only sell you anything if had completed the acchievements for those specific dungeons in the first place.

Seems fair? This is certainly something that needs to be thought by Anet as a whole, and not just the pvp team. However, there NEEDS to exist a merit-driven currency, IMO.

EDIT (And to be honest, laurels is a better name for a merit-driven currency than a time-gated one)

Do some of you understand why people enjoy narrative game design? Why there are people out there who buy games for the story? They could very well stick to books and movies only (but they don’t).

Gameplay allows for very immersive storytelling in an unique way. It allows you to experience the story right within it, interacting with the world, with the characters/ NPCs and having to deal yourself with the dangers of adventure.

If your most intelligent suggestions are to “go to youtube”, “ask for a instance with gameplay cleared” or “ask Anet for a mode where all bosses have 1 health”, then you are clearly missing the point. You could very well tell them to ignore GW2’s story, ignore storytelling in videogames, stick to books and movies and play GW2 only for its “intended gameplay”.

I personally am not a hardcore raider. I can’t see myself ever raiding. However, the story that they are presenting in raids is really interesting, touching on subjects that players (especially from GW1) have been asking for years.

Yes, I definitely want a “story mode” for raids. Ideally, by having it work like Arah’s story mode: tuned for solo playing that scales if you invite someone else. Let us enjoy the raid’s storytelling at our own pace, do some of its explorable achievements (those that can already be done through “cleared instances”), a simple final reward at the end of it, and call it a day. And, who knows, maybe that would also be a good way to have more players jump into actual raiding.

Testudo.4620:

I appreciate your willingness to be the bad guy in this situation. I’d much rather have new living world content than more HoT legendaries that I’ll never be able to afford. Shrugs, I guess I don’t see the big deal that’s making everyone angry.

It’s easy to understand why people are mad now, but hopefully, it will make everyone happier with the game in the future.

The problem with GW2’s world, in my opinion, is the lack of consistency. DR is presented as a LoTR-style of fantasy, and then we have charr’s steampunk, and then we have asura’s cyberbunk(?), etc. But what makes it truly unbelievable, is the sharp contrast between those zones. It’s hard to believe that they are all from the same game, in the same world.

If we want to look at a “more consistent version of Tyria”, we can look at Final fantasy XII’s Ivalice. It has its own asuras (moogles), it has its own mix of cyberpunk and steampunk with medieval fantasy, but everything feels well integrated. You see the “outdated” technology in abandoned placed and prisons while the “updated” technology is taking over. You see moogle’s tech all over the world, but the technology for architecture is also mostly consistent, with very few exceptions.

When you teleport from Rabanastre to Archades, you can tell that Archades is more advanced, but they still feel like they’re from the same world. When you leave any of them and visit abandoned steampunk ruins, it still feels within the same world.

But when you teleport from Divinity’s Reach to the asura’s town, and then to charr’s deathstar, it feels like you’re going to a completely new game, with a new world.

I wasted what, 400 gold or more in my ascended staff? And it wasn’t worth it. The skin is cool, but nothing special. The money sink was hilarious. And I don’t even use a staff much – the only reason I crafted it, was because I rather waste gold on a two-handed weapon than both a MH and an OF.

I was kinda hyped for it in the first day, and banged all my money for it there, until I realized how absolutely soulless and ridiculous ascended weaponry was. I ultimately decided to not let my investment go to waste and finish it, but I’ll probably won’t touch crafting for as anscended it any soon, if ever. If I could go back to time, I would have told myself to save that money.

And now I’m left with 4 gold, and the game wants me to get not one, but five pieces of ugly skins for the sake of more stats? What a wonderful game GW2 turned out to be.

Hello, everyone.

Elementalists have 20 weapon skills. As exciting as that may sound, it’s harder to balance 20 weapon skills and make sure each of them is good, when compared to the typical 5 from other professions. This leads to elementalists having several underwhelming skills even within their best weapon choices, and their scepter’s skillset is such an example. I’ve created this thread to suggest proposals to address that.

Detected problems

• Weak auto-attacks.
• Some uneffective skills.

Sensible design considerations for Scepter

• Prevent auto-attacking spam.
  Combat is boring when spamming auto-attacks is the best strategy for any given encounter. They shouldn’t be the main damage source.
• Prevent power creep.
  If scepter is already one of the options for elementalists, something has to give for new buffs.
• Streamlining without dumbing down.
  Gameplay lasts longer when it’s harder to master. Buffs should ideally add more synergy between skills whenever possible, and not directly make the respective skills easier to use.
• Changes are made with both PvE and PvP in mind, and attempt to fix the problems without radical mechanical changes.

DESIGN/ BALANCE PROPOSALS

Fire Magic

• Flamestrike
  This is the most misplaced skill in the scepter line. It’s a slow burning AA in a burst-oriented set. It doesn’t fits, so what should happen?
  Proposal: 2.25 channeling casting time. Ticks every 0.75 seconds, for a total of 3 ticks. Each tick to be worth 1 second burning, the current damage value, and 1 stack of might for 6 seconds.
  Why? My proposal would have a casting time about 1.5x of the original version, for 1.5x the burning too. The damage, however, would tick three times instead of one, for the benefit of the power/ precision/ critical stats that this weapon set demands for. But because the damage value is already low, and the casting time high, self might-stacking was added, complementing the might-stacking subtheme of this weapon set.
• Dragon’s Tooth
  Fine in PvE, but can’t connect in PvP against non-downed opponents.
  Proposal: 3/4 casting time instead of 1 second.
  Why? The delayed damage mechanic of this skill can already be hard-countered by movement, and that’s why makes it so interesting. The 1 second casting time, however, feels like an unnecessary second restriction, and thus my proposed decrease.
  Is that enough in PvP? No, but the problem is no longer with this skill. We don’t want to dumb it down, right? Instead, we’ll look to create some synergy with something else, that would help to connect it. I’ll address this with my Shatterstone suggestion.
• Phoenix
  Very strong as it is. Because we want to avoid power creep, we’ll tone it down a little bit.
  Proposal: Damage decreased by ~10%.
  Additional proposal: Remove vigor from this skill. Make it so that it removes 1 condition from each ally it passes through.
  Why this second suggestion? Anet is looking for improving party support strategies across the game. This suggestion is directed towards that.

Water Magic
Scepter is a burst weapon, and one of its ice attack adds vulnerability to set up a burst. Let’s improve that strategy, shall we?

• Ice Shards
  This AA seems to have no purpose.
  Proposal: Add 1 stack of vulnerability for 6 seconds per hit.
  Why? To set up for future bursts.
• Shatterstone
  This skill is underwhelming. Because vulnerability was already added to the AA, let’s take this into a new direction.
  Proposal: Each 0.75 seconds applies torment for 1-2 seconds. On shattering, applies 2 seconds of chill.
  Why? To punish or to cripple movement… to set up future bursts with Dragon’s Tooth, of course!

Air Magic
This attunement is generally fine. But I would consider a detail:

• Blinding Flash
  Proposal: Reduce blind duration to 4-5 seconds, from 6.
  Why? To promote timing over spam. Shouldn’t affect good players.

Earth Magic

• Stone Shards
  It’s a strong bleeding attack in a burst weapon… but the projectile finishers give it a nice niche.
• Hurl (from Rock Barrier)
  Proposal: Make each hurling rock slower.
  Why? This skills has so much potential to be like staff’s Eruption: a finisher to use before, and not only after, combo fields. Unfortunately, it’s currently too fast for that, thus the suggestion.
• Dust Devil
  Blind skill under a casting time is generally unneffective…unless…
  Proposal: Have it more slower, tick more than once, and have it apply 3 seconds of blind for every tick.
  Why? Ticking several times leads to more direct damage, and applying blind several times can disable multiple-hit attacks for its duration. Would make it further stand out from the more precise and anti-burst Blinding Flash.

You’re quite right. There’s more teamplay with voice chat, but it involves a player in one corner of the map providing valuable information to a player in the other corner of the map. It’s something that does not exist and will never exist in pug teams. Outside of this, you can coordenate some bursts with voice chat or call target, or have a pre-prepared tactics for rezzing, and in some more specific cases, ask someone over voice chat to stand beside you to get healed, but otherwise party support is a bit under developed ad self-sufficiency and map design goes to much toward solo play. Pug teams especially have little or nothing to play in team.

Anet took an interesting and satisfying model (seen in echoes of the past), and downgraded it into massive farming and RNG (for tangled paths).

That’s GW2, the greatest mmo ever, for you. Didn’t change in the past, probably never will. After all, developers must “test” out different models to see how the community reacts, and “adjust accordingly”. Tyria is an experimental lab. And when a patch is fun and satisfying, it must be immediately downgraded under the hopes that players will still eat it up. Perhaps the previous patch was too good, and Anet doesn’t want that level of satisfaction for their playerbase.

The problem with adding critical resistance, is that it’ll make zerker gear worthless, for the frustration of all players who have invested for zerker ascended gear, while the real design problems will remain unfixed. So players will simply mitigate to the best dps gear that doesn’t relies on criticals: power + condition damage + X.

Adastra.9821:

Jon, please give this post a good read.

Another interesting thing about my argument, is that I could use Jon’s post to justify the health swap suggestion instead of using his post to counter it. Let me explain:

Jon wants each profession to have fixed values and tools built around them, in order to define them (aka, to make them stand out from each other).

My post tries to explain how I feel that mesmer’s stat-neutral active defenses are more fitting (mechanically, not flavorfully) to the squishier elementalist, while the elementalist’s stat-biased active defenses are more fitting to the sturdier mesmer.

Now, here’s the big question: what would need to be done to fix the elementalist’s unviable base survival, in a way that would retain the profession’s uniqueness? And most of the answers can I think of, are followed with a problem that contradicts it.

1. Improve our existing active defenses?

• That’s a solution for staff’s very slow survival skills, and a few others. But how would that fix d/d builds, for example, which have currently some of our best defensive options, yet are still ineffective at surviving without strong trait/ stat support? A staff build’s survival is nearly non-existent, to the point that even heavily specced defensive builds still having a hard time justifying it. Making some of its defenses better will merely make staff builds at a base level of survival similar to the other already existing sets. Which we know it’s not enough. Still, something that definitely needs to be tweaked.

2. Add more stat-neutral defenses?

• But how, without making the elementalist too similar to the mesmer? Which stat-neutral active defenses can the elementalist have, that the mesmer doesn’t already? The only one I can think of, is mobility. Which Anet doesn’t wants us to excell at, as they have shown by toning down RTL. Still, if One with Air is a bit further buffed, that one has potential for an unique elementalist-flavored escape mechanism, but a single adept-tier trait won’t save the entire profession’s survival. Anet has two contradicting problems here: they can’t make the ele too close to other professions (mesmer), and they don’t want the profession to have better mobility than the thief.

3. Diversify the range of stat-biased active defenses?

• So, auras, healing skills, and a few others of our defensive mechanics rely too much on boons, healing power and defensive stats. They can’t be buffed any further (fire aura excluded), or else bunker eles will be too strong. But at their current situation, they are not strong enough to sustain a glass cannon elementalist neither. So another solution is to look for more active defenses that rely on different stats. Elementalists can be given more Weaknesses and Cripples (condition duration), Torment and Confusion (condition duration/ damage) and Retaliation (boon duration, yes, but also power). This way, elementalists can invest in other stats and still have enough defenses. But this leads to the same conflicting problems as the suggestion above: it makes eles too similar to already existing professions. Mostly to necromancer, but also to mesmer and, to a lesser extent, guardian. The only thing I can see improved out of this, is more access to chill, and perhaps receiving the torment condition. It would be worth considering, but again, not enough.

4. Make all traits offer strong defensive options?

• Here’s the problem right here: it wouldn’t make traitlines distinct enough from each other. “Oh, so, I’m going to spec in water for defense… wait, no, I’ll spec in fire instead, for defense!” Not very exciting, is it? And I’d take a guess that Jon wants trait lines to be as distinct from each other as professions. Making all of them with heavy defensive mechanics is just a big no to that, so unless Anet wants all our glass cannon builds to revolve around 3-second burst-or-die killshots, our base survival must be improved from somewhere else.

5. Would swapping mesmer’s and elementalist’s health make each of those classes less defined?

• Not really. Not, because there’s only a single profession with light armor and low health, and a single profession with light armor and mid health, in this game. Swapping them out would retain their uniqueness. We currently have a mid-health scholar profession with strong, neutral active defenses, and a low-health scholar profession with strong-if-specced-defensively-or-else-mediocre active defenses. Because elementalist’s active defenses are less reliable than the mesmer, they could get the higher health of the two to compensate, and both professions would still retain their uniqueness, as there would still exist a single schoalr profession with mid health, and a single one with low health.

Stealth is an annoying mechanic to play against due to the lack of counters and the clunky lose of targetting, but otherwise, this was an interesting change.

I’m not a fractals player, yet I agree with this.

I understand why Anet is doing this reset, but they should not disrespect their dedicated fractals fanbase. If the reset needs to be done, high-leveled fractal players should be compensated.

Something simple, like gold per each fractals level lost, would go a long way.

Keep in mind that elite specs are meant to feel like a new experience. They’re almost like entire new professions, but within already existing professions.

A guardian might be a holy knight, but for their elite spec, they’ll be a holy hunter instead.

Malchior.5732:

tl;dr Either Zerker is meta, or something else will take its place. Going against this is pointless.

Or, you know, they could always design combat to require roles.

The zerker meta exists because any party setup is meant to be viable, and when any party setup is meant to be viable, players simply pick the fastest one and stick with it.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Acrisor.8097:

In my personal opinion GW2 will never ever be an eSport because it has very big concept balance flaws that require extreme game modifications. These can not be done with balance patches, but with a large redesign to make all professions equal and unique at the same time. For these modifications to e created, they require important resources (such as time and money) that Anet developers simply do not have.

However, GW2 is an awsome game for fun and wasting some time with entertainment after a hard day at work. Professions may not be equal, but they sure are fun to play; either if you like malee, bunking, ranging or whatever gamestyle suits you.

To many players, myself included, the “extreme” modifications, that you claim are needed, simply aren’t needed at all. The amount of effort it would take to actually make this game VERY good is minimal. The quality releases in PvE show that they’re able to get things done and create new content at the same time (albeit catered to a more casual audience than PvP should be).

What happens with PvP, however, are things like skyhammer, hambows, dhuumfire and all other related disasters. Of many problems that this game’s PvP has faced, however, the main issue is that the lack of attention towards balance chokes out interest and makes the playerbase flimsy. Once you start factoring in that balance patches take upwards of MONTHS to actually see some sort of change to problems that plague players on a DAILY basis, it’s easy to understand why people will play this game and quickly lose interest once they see that its mechanics are such bullkitten.

All in all, it’s still possible that Anet gets their heads out of their kitten and fixes the dumb things we see every day as a playerbase. Only then will we see esports, cuz people will actually have fun

Was the old Dhummfire a balance problem, or a design problem? You could adjust its numbers to keep it “balanced”, but its passive nature, lack of skill required and lack of counterplay were the real deal.

In this way, I understand Acrisor’s point of view. The biggest problem with this game “isn’t” balance (= wasn’t: there was a time where we DID get balance patches every two weeks or a month, and their shaving philosophy wasn’t that bad at that pace), but the several core issues in design that do not promote skillful playing and counterplaying as much as they could.

You can have an underpowered skill/ trait in this game, see it get a slight buff to make it viable, and suddenly a new unfun build is created because, chances are, said skill/ trait is very passive/ ai-driven/ mindless/ poorly-telegraphed/ etc.

I’m not sure if GW2 needs a “huge revamp”, though, but it would gain a lot by having some core concepts reshaped. Here’s a few out of my mind that really bother me (outside of the lack of counterplay in some areas, as I mentioned above):

• Resourceless skills. When a game is about using as many skills as fast as possible for most of the situations (yes, you should still try to maximize their effects; and yes, there are some ways to counter skill spam), then the combat system is unable to give to the player enough time to read everything that is happening on the screen. And that is a bigger problem because:
• Way too many things happen at once. The UI is always loaded with tiny boon and condition icons, flying everywhere and at every time. Then there’s all the many passive traits from runes, sigils, traits and even some skills overloading the UI, which makes it a mess when you must pay so much attention to what is happening aounrd your character and when a few seconds can determine you kill or death. But this is also a bigger problem because:
• Poor gameplay clarity. The particle effects and AI pets are abudant, the telegraphs and the “skill tells” are not enough, asuras are hard to read in the big mess, coupled with the UI infodump, and the lack of incentives to hold your skills. In turn, this creates an even bigger problem (again):
• Spectators/ Observers/ Viewers can’t understand anything that is happening on the screen, and number of viewers in pvp streams never gets too high.
• The unecessary number of cleave and aoe skills further make this problem worse, as it leads to many accidental/random consequences. Accidental clone deaths, accidental rallies, accidental deaths, accidental kills.

Zefiris.8297:

““I’m a veteran player, therefore I should get the expansion for free””

Well, that’s exactly the point of the vocal minority.

“I’m a veteran player, therefore I should get the character slot for free”

Pure entitlement.

It’s just not the case, regardless of your reddit circlejerk.

Yes, because paying $50 for the expansion and expecting to be able to play with the revenant is “entitlement”.

People don’t want a character slot for the sake of “give us free rewards!”. They want a character slot because they want to play what they paid for.

Having more options does not means requiring more skill, sometimes it’s the opposite. For example, in this case, it adds complexity to build making, because you must now make more choices, instead of having a very clunky third weapon swap to all your needs.

Ashen.2907:

Players who enjoy playing dungeons will have either lower income or will have to play content they do not enjoy as much in order to maintain their existing level of income.

Meanwhile, players who enjoy pvp, who enjoy wvw or who enjoy simple map exploration are not as well rewarded, which will get improved upon, while dungeons are giving too much and are going to be nerfed.

• It could learn a bit from FFVII’s Materia System
  Where you could equip both active and passive effects within the same UI, and even better, where there was a third type of effect, where you could combine to active skills to enhance them further. Kind of like how the trait system was originally envisioned before launch. If 20 points in water unlock Mist Form, the 25 point-slot could be used for an effect that would directly enhance Mist Form’s functionality. And so could the minors for 35, and 45, and 55, because it would be much easier for Anet to expand the trait trees vertically this way, by simply slightly enhancing existing skills.

Finally, how would a sub-type profession system enhance all of this?

• It would cover the whole system with an extra layer of flavor
  The current trait system is too abstract. Players like flavor, and it is good for world immersion too.
• Flavor wouldn’t come at the cost of efficiency
  Players can currently pick flavored options within their traits, but are those the most efficient options? More often than not, efficiency and flavor clash with each other, even when flavored traits are strong enough, if they simply do not fit within the same build. But with a sub-type profession system, flavor would be defined before any option was made, and so the player could simply pick the best traits without sacrificing flavor.
• It would be easier to expand
  Anet could simple add more subtypes through the game’s life, and depending on the execution, that wouldn’t need to compromise balance much, because:
• It could further ease the balancing of the game
  Skills and traits could be further categorized by each subtype. Each subtype could have, for example, its own trait tree, even if a small version of it (for example, with only 3 lines instead of 5, with only 40 or 50 points to spend instead of 70), and several of its passive or active effects could be shared with other trait trees from other subtypes within the same profession, even if at different tiers. Mist Form could be a 20 trait-investment for a glass cannon elementalist sub type, because they would need it more, and a 30 trait-investment for a battle mage subtype, because the higher natural defense of a battle mage could make the skill too strong. Or vice-versa, if easier access to defense in trait tiers is what defines the battle mage over the other options.
• It doesn’t needs to come at the cost of customisation
  Some players are fearing this system because they believe it would give less freedom to build crafting than the trait system. But if both systems were to co-exist, would it really? Imagine that each profession would have, say, between 3 and 12 subtypes, and each subtype would have its own (smaller) version of the trait system. That would be offer a lot of customisation. And if many skills and traits overlap between different subtypes, and if skills were fused into the trait system, Anet wouldn’t need to design a ridiculous amount of new effects to make this work.

I think many of us can agree that Tybalt is one of the most well written characters in this game.

Not overly serious, but serious when he must be so. Natural, spontaneous dialogue with a nice attention to detail (from the writers). No perfect personality, with a healthy amount of strong points and weak points. And a proper character arch that takes them all into account. When everything’s over, I felt like he was my buddy, something that no other character made me feel yet.

My main problem with most of the characters in this game is that, although there’s a lot of effort by the writers to follow certain archetypes and to appeal to several audiences, they are not given by the writers the proper attention to further flesh them out of those templates.

Going back to Tybalt Leftpaw, he is everything the starting human NPC characters wanted to be, at once, and even more. The light, humorous dialogue of Lord Farren, humble and spontaneous like commoner Petra, with weaknesses and problematic pasts like Quinn. More attention to detail than all of them, and most of all, truly a buddy, like all of them tried to be but failed at, because the other three did not have enough personal interaction with the player’s avatar, nor even enough depth to stretch that interaction without making it repetitive, and were discarded by the plot the moment they were not needed.

When I had that key option about Quinn, I kinda couldn’t care at all. But how I would love to have such a choice for my charr buddy!

Are people seriously defending the current pace of balance in GW2? Seriously?

Just take a look at the balance pace of the competition out there, especially from games that have been far more successful at acchieving esports, where players can expect balance patches every two weeks or a month.

Even GW2 used to be like this, in its first year.

I assume that the skill and balance team is incredibly busy with creating and balancing new weapons for existing professions, and who knows what else, and maybe even, hopefully, reshaping some of the core concepts of GW2’s combat in order to make esports and pvp more appealing (and possible), but because this is Anet we are talking about, we’ll never know until things are announced… in one year or two.

The problem with the “play how you want” philosophy is that, even if all stats and playstyles were equally viable, players would still pick the fastest route and get much richer than other players.

For that reason, in addition to making all stats and playstyles equally balanced, team content should always demand the three GW2’s core roles (control, damage, support) in order to finish said content, and those roles should demand different stat combinations. Would it be slightly more restrictive this way? Yes, but it would be for the best of the game, it would greatly increase build diversity, and it would reward thoughtful party setups.

Keep in mind that if such a thing happened, it would still be far from having the problems of the old mmo holy trinity. The holy trinity is more rigid (heal and tank instead of the broader support and control playstyling), and mmos with holy trinity usually have more specialized classes. GW2 would still be a game with a soft trinity, with every playstyle having the potential to fulfill all three roles at once, even if not equally.

So far, Anet’s work on elite specs was the highlight of GW2’s entire profession balance/ design process over the game since launch. With each developer working on 2-3 specs and giving their full attention to its deeper problems and interacting with the playerbase about it, they were able to hit the right spots quite more often and underline (and, whenever possible, fix) the core issues identified for each prof.

In contrast, January’s balancing patch was a downgrade and a back-to-the-past situation. Generic, vague, underwhelming, scattered, unfocused.

Pre-HoT Anet showed many signs of evolution and improvement on their profession design and balance process. They were pretty much at the level of Riot/ League of Legends. January’s patch was a downgrade. It seems like the much superior development approach that Anet adopted for elite specs was scrapped, and we’re back to old-Anet, old-balancing-style, old-disappointment.

I’ll post again my suggestion to Anet’s balancing team: reestructure your team and development method so that it takes into account the method that you used during the development of elite specs. Have each dev specialize on 2-3 classes and have them talk with the playerbase in the profession boards.

Remember what you did with Guardian’s shield? Skills were retooled, new technology was used, and the whole thing feels much nicer to play with now. This is what you, Anet, need to do with every other existing weapon set and trait set. Not just number tweaks on cooldowns, timers or damage values. Do you know why Ele’s Scepter is still broken? Because it has no tools to aid Dragon Tooth, because the auto-attacks are generally bad, because water #2 has no purpose and because offensive eles have no meaningful active defenses that are not reliant on defensive stats to work. And what have you done? A smaller activation time here, a 10% buff there… Do you know what this feels like? Shooting in the dark and hoping that it’ll hit the right spot.

What has happened to Anet’s pre-Hot moment of brilliance? Was it temporary?

At least there’s plenty of good heavy armor models.

Look at how awesome female light armor is. Then look at how bad male light armor is. This is a cosmetic-driven game where I, as a male spellcaster, can’t find any motivation to search for and earn light armor skins.

I’ve only played this fight after the nerf, so I don’t know how terrible it must have been before.

But boy, is it bad. It’s not about the challenge, but uneffective game design. The player is literally being spammed with 2 or 3 AoE circles, a special skill button prop and boss projectiles every single second, all of them which have visibility issues.

When you turn the camera to the boss, you can not see the ground, and you’ll die.
When you are busy avoiding the aoe circles, you may not see the special skill proc, or you may not use it in time, and you’ll die.
When you focus your attention to the small skill prop icon, chances are, an AoE ground skill will catch you instead, and you’ll die.
Sometimes you can’t even use the special skill because your character us at the middle of another animation, and then you’ll die.
And even when you successfully manage to avoid all circles and use your the special skill, the boss will throw a random projectile at you, and you’ll die.
You can extend your survival by blindinly dodging all the invisible damage, but once you’re left with no endurance and no block skills, you’ll die.
And no matter how successfully you pull off your plays, you’ll have to repeat that feat 5 seconds after, or you’ll die.

It was possibly one of the worst – if not the worst – encounter I’ve ever played in GW2.

Were there even any mechanics to learn? Because the battle does not give you time (nor visibility) to learn them. I know that it gradually gets more difficult (with the added NPCs over time), but that means little when the base mechanics are a pure mess. Sometimes it’s even impossible to avoid the circles because there are so many of them that you’ll only have half a second window to position yourself at a tiny safe spot, fight the camera, use a special skill AND avoid a projectile. It’s absurd.

Look, Anet, I like your intention of making this encounter hard. It’s fitting for an important story boss to be challenging, as it makes players respect him more as a villain. But this battle is challenging in the worst possible playable way: it’s incomprehensible.

This fight does not merely needs a nerf. It needs a redesign. The room must be bigger, because the mechanics are at odds with the camera. The main mechanics must be more gradual (and more visible), or else the player will not know why things are happening, making him unable to learn them and improve his playstyle. And the boss shouldn’t spam three or four things at the player at once, and so often, because that’s just pure chaos. it literally degenerates the fight into a “waste all your defensive CDs to damage him before you die”.

eleshazar.6902:

If my whole guild can’t get into a map and keeps getting split because you can’t shove out randoms… gg.

Like how it already happens in the current system?

EDIT: At least as the path of some slight compromise can you leave cities alone so that we still have one place where I server community isn’t destroyed?

I’ve been playing GW2 since beta, and so far, this concept of “Server community” has been nothing but a myth. What server community? Where is it? I’ve never seen such a thing in almost two years of playing this game, and the only people I occasionally meet often are guild members and friends… which is not always easy to do because of the existence of servers in the first place.

And the whole RP issue can be fixed by Anet dedicated an server to RP for each region. Which I hope they do.

If I’m not wrong, those aren’t all the april changes we’ll get, but simply some tweaks to prepare players in advance for what they should do or not do until then.

GW2 is designed to be played solo, so your argument against heroes for the sake of community is moot. If anything, heroes would only improve the game, because it would increase the build diversity of your builds. For example, a solo player has no reason to use party support builds. A solo + ai player can use them. Culling, however, would definitely be a problem, but those features could always be restricted to instanced story-missions (which were scrapped for… guess what, solo instances) and dungeons.

It’s true that GW1 had serious balancing issues, but many of them can be mechanically solved without destroying the fun of build customization. I understand the lack of multi-classing, and the more categorized skills in this game (weapon skills, utilities, etc), but GW2 went further than that, it made character building under a money sink mechanic, and has punished build diversity and teamplay building with condition capping, defiance and lack of team strategy.

It’s ironic, isn’t it. GW2 is the MMO, but GW1 is the game that has the deeper team synergy mechanics and building, and better community infrastructure.

GW1 also has the best pvp so far, and everyone in the pvp forums is begging anet to bring back gw1’s game modes back into the game.

EDIT: It also has a better UI. :P

Takoyakii.2146:

How an “optional” jumping puzzle killing the game?

By not being optional.

GW2’s leap skills are quite strong and easily available. Removing counterplay from them is not a good idea, unless anet also gets to nerf their CD/ functionality/ range individually.