Guild Wars 2

Lordrosicky.5813:

So you’re covering 2 professions every 2 weeks. Which means at least 2 months until any balance? Hilarious.

:(

Maybe anet could also say in the episode why they went in with this new balancing schedule, and if they think if it is working for them or not.

GW2 is a game that tried to do many innovative things at once, focusing more on quantity than quality, and once it was launched, there was not enough budget to improve all those new things in a timely manner.

I believe that, after 2 years, the mmo playerbase is already aware of what GW2 is, of what it could have been, and what it won’t be.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

This game needs a complete overhaul. The skill-floor of this game is pathetic on many aspects as perma dodging, spaming, AoE-clutter, instant casts/bad animations, AI and all the other stuff that leads to such randomness, like passive and hidden traits…

If A-Net keeps refusing that this game has not reached any stat near it’s full potential, than this game will become another E-sport forced fail.

I agree with this.

- Tone down the effectiveness of sigil of energy, and the availability of vigor. 5s of vigor (an extra dodge) should be precious, not trivial.
- Rework all instant-cast or fast-cast burst builds by giving delayed and longer animations respectively.
- Improve tab-targetting and how it interacts versus stealth and versus pets.
- Give to most aoes the lava font/ dragon tooth’s/ churning earth treatment: additional time and/ or movement costs.

These are probably the more “feasible” changes. Reworking the trait/ equipment system so characters are not overloaded with passive effects is not something I see happening, but you never know. Toning down the reliance on AI is probably too late. I can’t see them reworking entire professions so that rangers pets are optional, or so that mesmers clones dissipate after their initial illusionary trick, or any system to not encourage AI-stacking. This would need to go as far as removing traits that create incentives to stack AI utility skills, like an all-out minion master, or an all-out spirit ranger. There’s almost never a reason to “use a spirit here, use another spirit over there” nor “use this spirit first, then the other one”. Nope, it’s either use and stack them all, or don’t bother building for them. The only exception I can think of is that necro’s minion that can’t move.

Sometimes I wonder if the game wouldn’t benefit from even more restriction. Imagine if some utility skills worked like GW1’s stances/ glyphs/ weapon spells, where you were only allowed to have one at the same time. So youwould have to strategically pick which one would be better for each situation, instead of stacking them all.

Shadey.2180:

What you consider to be GW1 strong points might not be universal and the only way to ensure that what everyone considers a strong point would be to just release another expansion for gw1. That way you would have everything GW1 with addition of the expansion. hence a glorified expansion

Wrong. By your logic, GW2 is a glorified expansion of every single generic mmo out there, because it shares some mmo features. I’m not asking for the entirity of gw1 to come back, only some of its strongest features.

GW1 is an outdated game nowadays (the engine is many years old), and it is no longer supported, balanced or expanded by anet. An expansion wouldn’t be enough, but yes, if there was one, I would buy it and play that game again.

GW1 needs a sequel.

Zyrhan.3180:

If you want to cross-promote it for folks who like one but haven’t tried the other, why not add some mode-specific dailies? Or one-time achievements? Mashing them into the same queue is a terrible long-term idea for both modes.

That’s a good solution for the potential issue of playerbase splitting.

Add the following dailies each and every day:

• Play 1 conquest match.
• Play 1 stronghold match.

And then players who like both modes will play both each day.

Fashion Mage.3712:

This leak was posted sometime around 2013 btw, and that engi hammer auto-attack sounds pretty spot-on, so I find it hard to deny.

True, and it’s possible that many of the leaked skills were early prototypes and might have changed since then. Especially guardian’s longbow stances: I wonder if they’ll still exist, and if so, if they’ll still be weapon skills or part of the profession’s mechanic.

It’s poorly paced.

You can understand why a mid-season break needs to happen, but this is the second time season 2 is getting a break, and it comes right after two cliffhangers with only one episode left.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

I still believe ascended gear was implemented to troll all players.

Those who believed in the “we want everyone on the same gear level at 80” talk, for adding better gear that is hard to get.
Those who believed in horizontal progression, because there was hard to achieve vertical progression now.
Those who believed in vertical progression, because for all the grind involved the progression was pretty much worthless.
Those who like skins, because they were terrible.

Well played ANet!

Let me add a few more:
It adds an entire new gear upgrade slot (infusions) that is useless most of the time. Pointless complexity.
It even fails at having any interesting, flavorful or immersive naming schemes. Oh, so all zerker ascended armory/ weaponry are tributed to Zojja? So interesting.

Ascended gear is a disappointment from all angles.

• Mechanically cold and loreless.
• Convoluted crafting paths.
• Unsatisfying sense of progression for those expecting vertical power.
• Unsatisfying sense of horizontal progression because the skins are mediocre, fully equipping alts became a nightmare and the sense of discovery and immersion is almost none-existent.
• It goes against Anet’s ideals, yet it achieved nothing. It was a desperate, rushed attempt at retaining the playerbase. At its best, it’s a glorified money sink.

After Anet’s attention on the issue with how strong (some of the) auto-attacks are, and mentioning the possibility of toning them down for pvp (with a split for other modes), I think it would be wise to discuss them further. I want to talk about them within the context of pvp, but also within the context of pve. I understand that this forum is for pvp only, but we all know that it is also the “unofficial game balancing forum”, and any decisions to pvp affect the other modes greatly. Also, any nerf I might suggest in this thread is targetted at how “spammable” auto-attacks are, and do not take into consideration how they affect the entire profession’s balance.

My thoughts on the current situation:

CONCLUSION: The damage of auto-attacks should generally be toned down across all formats. PvE, WvW, PvP. Such a change shouldn’t be split between PvE and PvP, possible exceptions aside. It should be universal and affect Guild Wars 2 as a whole.

But then, it creates a new problem. The possibility of them not being worth the time spent using them, unless everything else is under cooldown. It would make the main bar consist of 4 skills, and a “left-over” that has no purpose but to be used when no other skill is available. Not very interesting. Spending time using auto-attacks instead of any other skills should still be a viable, strategical choice, and not simply a “better-than-nothing filler”.

arrownin.3128:

DiogoSilva.7089:

In the section where you claimed this event does not makes sense, you explained in a clear and simple way why this event makes sense (or better, why the old one doesn’t anymore).

I guess I meant, how did this holiday which was tradition for hundreds of years, become interpreted into asuras giving out toys?

Because a random Asura genius decided to revolutionize what this holiday meant for Tyria? :P

Let’s wait first to see the backstory and personality behind him. Am I the only one who truly thinks that the Asura has an evil smile in his artwork?

Jasher.6580:

Wolf.5816:

Now I have never played SW:TOR but Adding in more features to let players feel more engaged or involved in each game would be fantastic.

These all could simply add mild bonuses to your PvP ranks, titles or perhaps even your Reward tracks, making unlocking these features more involving to those who play effectively.

Bonus Features for example:

-Revenge: gain a bonus for killing the player who previously killed you.
-Double Kill: gain a slight bonus for killing two players in X seconds.
-Triple Kill: gain a bonus for killing three players in X seconds.
-Massacre: gain a large bonus for killing more than three opponents in X seconds.
-Immortal: gain a bonus at the end of the match for never dying.
-Slippery: gain a bonus once your health gets below 5% and live.
-Head Hunter: gain a bonus for killing every member of the enemy team.
-Justice: gain a bonus for Killing an enemy that recently killed one of your allies.
-Vigilant:gain a bonus every X minutes for standing on a captured point.
-Persistence: gain a bonus for dying X times in X minutes.
-Pharmacist: gain a bonus for curing X conditions off allies.
-Medic: gain a bonus for healing X total health amongst your allies.
-Professional: gain a bonus for interrupting an enemies Heal Skill.

Some fun statistics to see per game would be:

-Total time spent incapacitated: total accumulated time you were unable to control your character.
-Favorite Boon: the boon that had the most upkeep on your character.
-Favorite Kill: What effect/skill from a source you control dealt the most damage.
-Favorite Death: What effect/skill more frequently caused your death.
-Supporter: Number of allies effected by boons from your source.
-Most grateful: The ally that gained the most health from a source that your control.
-Masters Reflex: Number of successful dodges.
-Toxicity: Number of healing prevented through poison from your source.

This. Is. Genius.

Yeah, I think it could create a lot of goals/ incentives for players to try their best.

A few months ago, anet announced that they would add more means to counter boons, aka, “boon-hate”.

The community exploded and cried that the end of the world was coming. People raged how bad of a thing that was, and claimed that using boons would suddenly be a bad thing.

When that update came out, warrior’s boon hate was meh, and thieves’ boon hate was necessary to counter guardian’s bunkers. That was it. It did not ruin the game. The world did not get destroyed.

Now, this new Torment condition is coming, and once again, people are crying for the apocalypse, and how this condition is going to break this game.

To be honest, and that also depends on the actual numbers, but immobilize and KD seem to be stronger anti-movement effects than this Torment. How is torment going to destroy this game’s combat, for punishing movement, if there are other effects that completely nullify movement? Immobilize and KD make you eat entire, HUGE bursts if you do not have a stun breaker. The new torment will give you a choice between moving or not – you can decide to avoid a burst, or if there’s none, decide not to move and take less damage.

I’m not sure how strong it’s going to be, but it seems healthy to the game to exist a new anti-movement condition that has a different tactical purpose than the other anti-movement effects. It adds more depth and more diversity to combat.

Absurdo.8309:

I do appreciate your thoughtful posts.

Still, if raiding is in the minority, then lorehounds, who are not satisfied with a completed raid instance, and who cannot beat the raid, must be even smaller.

Story modes for lore have no replay value. It’s a one and done. Seems like an incredible waste, especially when most of the lore can be gathered through a completed instance.

I see it more like the personal story or the living story chapters.

It’s a one time deal (unless you replay it with different characters), but it would attract the story-driven crowd (and not merely the most dedicated lorehounds, which I agree that they should be a minority – I’m talking instead about your average player that does GW2’s story instances but doesn’t exactly cares about going to the LFG asking for cleared instances) AND give those people something to do while they wait for season 3. In addition to that, it could be a gateway to make people more familiar with the raid mechanics and get them to try the harder version without getting intimidated by the idea.

Killing two birds with one stone.

EDIT:

And this isn’t just “likes raids” small. This is a group that meets all of the following criteria:

- Dedicated enough to be interested in lore.
- Can’t beat the raid.
- Is not satisfied with a finished instance
- Is not satisfied with just fighting the boss

It seems like a very minor segment of the population with very demanding requirements. I think everything you already want is in regular mode raids — story mode is not necessary.

A story mode for raids should be marketed by Anet like part of a living world chapter or anything related to that. It should appeal to everyone that enjoys completing story instances in this game.

If that wouldn’t appeal to enough players, then the concept of living story wouldn’t either.

Also, I doubt that your average non-raider is aware that raids are telling a story potentially relevant to their interests. If more people knew what it was about, then there would probably be more people demanding it, don’t you think?

Feothyr.6072:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Optional or not, if you want them, you must farm for them.

Exactly, if I want them and only then!

The difference here is that I do not need these skins. In most games you are more or less forced to get better gear, because otherwhise you won’t be able to play new content – either because your character isn’t good enough for new encounters or because other players, who already got the new equip, refuse to play with you.

GW2 still has 80 levels. It still has different gear tiers. It still has different tiers of food. And I’m not saying GW2 should have more tiers. I’m not saying that this game should be about forced grinding. I’m just saying that, what already exists – what is already there is not as exciting as it could have been.

Also, vertical progression is awesome. Just because that, in most MMORPGs, it sucks and is a massive grindfest, it does not means that the concept itself is bad. Just look at every single-player rpg out there: it is driven by vertical progression, and no one is complaining about that.

People don’t hate vertical progression. They hate grind-driven vertical progression.

Donari.5237:

That said, without going into all the foundation details of what makes it worth having a guild hall I’d guess QoL might include:

I think what Jon Peters is asking is, what QoL changes would a guild hall offer to GW2 as a whole, and not what QoL changes are needed for itself (which, as you said, it’s impossible to determine without thinking of how it would work in the first place).

Halls would enhance the guild community and social experience, expand content and rewards, and improve world immersion/ roleplaying, I think.

Galen Grey.4709:

You just spaming 1 because that what you choose to do not because thats the only option.

If he is “just spamming 1”, and manages to beat as much content as you (not sure if he does or not), then the fault is not the player but the system. Strategy, skill and tactics shouldn’t be “an option”, or else it means they’ll never be needed in favor of easier playing.

I can also make a “healer” build. I can also make a “control” build. But guess what, most of them are pointless, because of the systems in place.

That’s why the person you quoted said that the idea to remove the trinity was good, but the execution was not. In games with the trinity, each of the three roles are needed. Certainly, a game does not need the holy trinity (take a look at GW1, which did not have traditional tanks, and had a lot more than three roles), but if the systems allow any role to beat content, then the majority of people will simply pick the fastest (and easiest) route.

GW2’s combat should require its own trinity. It should require control builds, it should require support builds. It should require condition damage, etc. When you have systems like defiance that destroy control builds, when you have poor party support tools (mechanically) and those are optional because everyone can be self-sustainable, when you have condition caps and all this, then the game degenerates into a berserker zerg rush. All those contribute to making GW2’s a shallow game. Being self-sustainable doesn’t comes at the cost of anything (why?), while sustaining others directly (with support) or indirectly (with control) comes at huge costs to efficiency. This is poor design.

Again, the removal of the trinity was a good idea, but the execution was not.

To be honest, I, too, would like an optional email item sent to all existing characters, to reset all my acquired traits so I can experience this progression system without having to create new characters.

I much prefer to re-explore the world of Tyria while searching for 50+ traits, than only to search for 5 new ones.

I agree. Less clunky menu navigation/ mouse clicking, deeper pre-match build-making.

Not sure if it has been said already, but:

One of the things I like the most, in theory, is the mistlock instabilities.

However, they only start being available from level 30, and I’m still at 10 and don’t feel like “grinding” 20 runs for the sake of them.

Is there any possibility for mistlocks to be added at lower levels?

The solution? The best I’ve seen from this community, is to keep auto-attacks strong, but through utility and not through damage. “Utility” here can mean many things, including the idea of auto-attacks fueling the power of other skills. Because the remaining options are under a cooldown, you would want to use them at the best possible time, instead of wasting their cooldowns. Auto-attacks could be used to set up/ build up “the best possible time” to use them.

How would that work? I’ll take inspiration from two popular builds from GW1’s elementalist.

How can we adapt this to GW2’s skill system, where energy does not exist? Simple. Boons and conditions. Those are the “investment”. Let’s create a few examples:

Examples that already exist in the game:

All those examples are a “first step” for auto-attacks that fuel the remaining skills, or add utility. But in most of those cases, those attacks still revolve around damage first, and utility second. It should be reversed. Maybe the gs’s auto-attack should have weaker damage but stronger might. Maybe mind slash should have stronger vulnerability, but vapor blade definitely should. Maybe conjure axe’s auto-attack should see its damage nerfed and its possible might addition become even stronger. Although being a conjure with charges makes it a different case. Etc.

That’s pretty much what I wanted to say, I think.

Peter Buch.8071:

Full post

1. Considering no one used Longbow before, it might be worthwhile picking it now.

2. Necromancers have seen one of their key traits increase a tier, which means they’ll have to respec one of their top builds. Meanwhile, they have seen a massive drop in survivability due to DS changes. If a Necromancer before could switch to DS while having only 5% life force to “prevent” a 6k critical hit, they’ll now eat most of its damage. DS can no longer be used as a pseudo Mistform as often as it did.

3. You mean, like the buffs we have gotten to staff last patch, and some to focus and utilities? The buffs we have gotten to traits, like fire’s 30 and air’s 30? Certainly, most of them weren’t enough, but we are getting buffed.

4. We now have more stun breaks (and better access to stability), so we’re no longer as stuck to cantrips as we were before. Staff’s and Scepter’s damage were buffed in the big patch, and only nerfed to a single trait to a very defensive build, which makes sense. And fresh air builds have decent healing.

5. You don’t seem to be aware of how strong fresh air builds are. How do you “dodge” them? Their air burst sequence is instant. How do you dodge a sequence of four or more 0 casting time skills? Outside of the two arcanes, your air burst recharges every 5 seconds. Outside of your air burst, you still have the entire fire line to cast, and a bit of earth, until you go back to air again, this time stacked all over with might. If you get targetted, you’ll have plenty of swiftness to run away, perma vigor, earth attunement to get protection, water attunement to heal back a good portion of your entire HP, and passive healing that will give you back a good amount of HP while you’re “spamming” your skills. And yes, you can hit pretty hard even bunker builds. More so than that, this build has great party support. 3 aoe healing spells, 3 ways to remove conditions from allies, regen and protection spreading, might-stacking, etc.

6. I’m not sure of how a “pro” I am. Elementalists appear in most (all?) of the top pvp teams, especially with the two variations of valkyrie burst builds (fresh air or the old one with 20 points in water), so I would like to know why you think they’re mediocre. This build is very strong and might be toned down someday, IMO. I’m not sure how good their bunker builds still are, but they used to be top meta before as well.

For PvE, every class that is not a warrior, a guardian or a mesmer sucks. Nothing comes close to warriors in pve unless they can offer something unique, like Mesmers, or have enough party defense to not make the dps warriors fall down in harder content, like the guardian. This is a problem with pve’s simplistic design, where dps rushing, berserker gear and dodging are king above everything else.

It’s the same thing with Ranger and Engineer. They do play or resemble jack-of-all-trades, master of none, with no purpose in pve while being quite strong in pvp.

This situation won’t change for as long as pve’s challenging content remains as shallow and simplistic as it is now.

The best solution is the simplest one: add a character slot to the standard edition as well for all players that have already purchased the core game.

This would solve two of the biggest problems with the current situation:

• Players who won’t get what they paid for (revenant) because they have no character slots left;
• Veteran players who will get less for their money than new players;

It won’t solve the price issue, but I’m fine with that.

rfdarko.4639:

But for 5 man content I think defiance works well.

I completely disagree with that. Just because in theory it “rewards organization”, it does not means that in practice it leads to good gameplay. Because it does not. Defiance is boring and mostly an uninteractive mechanic most of the time, even in the very few exceptions that you make use of it.

I think that any system that would replace defiance should give freedom of playing and tactical choice to the players, but with consequences and with defiance itself triggering at times as a means of keeping the challenge there. For this reason, I (partially) disagree with anthony’s idea of a cc window: although it’s interesting by itself, and should certainly exist in some fights (like the moa’s fight in Dry Top), it’s also a very restricting mechanic to be applied to the game as a whole.

Here’s how I would rework the defiant system:

PART 1
(Assuming that higher stacks = more danger)
Each time you CC a boss, it gains 3 stacks of X. If you successfully interrupt a boss with your CC, it only gains 2 stacks of X instead.

• This is meant to reward well-timed CCs;
• This allows players to choice if they wish to use a CC or not, and when they want to use it or not;

PART 2
The higher the stacks of X, the stronger the boss becomes (probably statistically) and the harder they become to interrupt (faster animations).

• This gives consequences to cc spamming and serves to make the battle more climatic and dangerous as they go on.

PART 3 – THE CLIMAX
When the boss has Y stacks of X, he gains Defiance for Z seconds, and then their stacks of X are reset to 0.

• If players spam CC too much, the boss will get an absurd amount of stats and become uninterruptible early OR more often in a fight. At this point, bosses become highly dangerous. This is the climax, the last trial that puts to test the player’s skill to survive a fight.
• At this point of battle, control builds become useless until the stacks are resetted, and emphasis is given at the existence of support builds! Blocks, evades, aegis, healing and the like will become of extreme importance here, because CC is temporarely locked.

CONCLUSION
A system that allows players to play how they want, by incentivating player’s skill (successful interrupts are less severe than mindless CC) and tactical decisions (weaker skills should not be interrupted so that the stacks don’t grow as fast), and incentivates both control and support builds instead of the current DPS-only meta: control builds to keep the bosses’ skills in check; support builds to sustain the party when the boss becomes a stacked nightmare.

Team Arenas won’t have skyhammer or spirit watch, though. Outside of that, once anet adds templates, that should streamline build swapping.

Gating the main mechanic behind GM traits is not a flaw. It’s customisation.

The advantage of trying to master an underpowered profession, is that once they get a buff, you’ll feel like a god.

If you really like the elementalist, keep learning how to play it best. They have some pretty strong tricks and combos that make PvE much easier, even if those combos require more effort and are less rewarding than spamming a few skills from other professions.

I would love cross-elemental synergies, but I’d prefer more subtle ones, instead of “if weakened: burn”.

For example, cross-elemental strategies that would make Churning Earth more effective. We have utility (lightning flash) for that, but what else? Shocking Aura, from MH air daggers, is cool. It interrupts whoever hits you, I believe, although the range is unfairly tiny. With Earthquake, the cripple from Churning Earth’s channeling, and S.Aura, I think the opponent is only left with dodging away, unless their range is far enough, I suppose, to bypass the aura’s stun.

But what else do we have? Frost Aura is within the same set, but does nothing. In fact, by itself, it’s already highly conditional, it’ a poor 2s chill skill that requires you to get hit, mostly useless for pve where you don’t want to get hit and enemies are slow to attack, and rather mediocre to great for pvp when enemies attack too fast, but even then, it’s not like you’re going to let yourself eat away a Hundred Blades so the warrior can be chilled out for a good amount. Chilling Aura is a long-term investment, more fitting of a necromancer than an elementalist. And for Churning Earth, it just won’t do no matter what. We have also Blinding Flash from Scepter, for an instant single-target blind. Still, it would be interesting if we could get some extra interaction with C.Earth, maybe more utility skills that indirectly help it out, or traits. Stability for auras, in addition to protection?

I’ll be honest. Mallyx was very unique, but it didn’t feel as fun to play with as I was originally expecting. Making it simpler and more straightforward is, IMO, a good decision. HOWEVER, I agree that it lost a bit too much of its flavor. I would personally like to see more spreading and corrupting, even if not done in the same way than before.

Pulsating Pestilence needs an added trigger, I think. It should only trigger at 3+ conditions on you, or else it’s going to be randomly wasted.

Devastation’s switch is very interesting, but I wonder, aren’t Ferocious Strikes and the sword trait almost fighting for the same spot now? They are pretty much slightly different variations of + damage, except one is broader while the other only affects swords. Seems uninspired to me. In my opinion, the ferocity trait on dual wielding should be kept, and Vicious Lacerations changed to something different.

I still have my doubts on Shared Empowerment usefulness, but glad to see a buff.

The recharges are a good thing. Revenant is not a thief, it was meant to have CDs + energy costs since the beginning. And that’s what’s happening.

I also have a few questions:
Is sword’s AA animation still being worked on?
Does shield’s 5 skill still have that drawback?

Josh Davis.6015:

So, here’s a question (purely for discussion):

If you had to choose one, would you prefer RANKED Solo Arena, or UNRANKED Team Arena? I’d imagine unranked team arena would still allow you to queue up by yourself or with 1-4 friends much like the rated version does now.

Thoughts?

I believe this choice might be biased towards one side over the other.

Competitive team arena players would want an unranked team queue to experiment builds. Non-competitive players would want an unranked queue to substitute hotjoin, and if that meant to remove solo queue, so be it. And competitive solo players would lose their will to pvp if you took that out of them. That’s a 2-1 in favor of unranked team.

Ultimately, an unranked team arena is not competing with solo arena’s space, but with hotjoin instead. In fact, we can pretty much say that an unranked team queue would be a “better version of hotjoin” in almost all aspects. And so it’s hotjoin that would need to be replaced, and not solo arenas, which fill a much different purpose.

I think Anet should embrace the idea that solo arena is, for a portion of the playerbase, the pvp’s endgame. Despite the flaws behind a solo leaderboard, despite the fact that in anet’s view, only team arena should be the pvp’s endgame, despite that an unranked team arena is a very important step to bridge players to team arena/ competitive play, and thus for anet to acchieve their dream goals, players will still desire a competitive solo arena, or any variation (say, solo/ duo) as long as solo queueing would not be an obstacle to reach the top.

I would say that an unranked team queue is a “Quality of Life” change, much needed to improve this game’s state of pvp, as it would prepare players better than hotjoins. It should therefore substitute hotjoin.

Meanwhile, the removal of solo arena would leave a hole in the game, where part of the competitive playerbase (those who don’t, can’t or do not desire to have a team) would be left unsatisfied and stop pvping.

I can understand that something needs to be replaced, that there shouldn’t exist too many arenas. But it’s hotjoins that should be targetted, imo. And by hotjoin, I’m not talking about custom arena servers, of course, just the official anet’s servers.

Current structure:
1. Hotjoin + Custom servers;
2. Solo + Team queues.

My proposal:
1. Unranked queues (the default option);
2. Competitive queues (be it as it is now, or replaced by a League or Tournament systems) – One option for solo (or solo/ duo), another for team;
3. Custom servers.

But if I had to choose, solo arena. I like being competitive, but I don’t have the time nor the will to dedicate myself to a team.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Most sigils will still have their same internal cooldown(all on swaps will). So technically it’s not double efficiency for warriors however, it depends how you look at it I suppose.

Actually, that’s not the issue (unless I misunderstood). There will exist a trick that might lead to player’s “abuse”. Take a look at this:

Normal Situation

• Unnamed Class has 4 on-swap sigils (2 on each weapon).
• Unnamed Class can swap weapons each 9 seconds.
• 2 sigils will trigger every 9 seconds.

Elementalist/ Engineer Situation

• They’ll have 2 on-swap sigils (only one weapon set).
• On-swap sigils have a 9 second cooldown.
• The 2 sigils will trigger every 9 seconds.

Warrior’s Broken Setup

• Warriors will be able to swap faster, like Elementalists and Engineers, however, they’ll have two weapon sets instead of one.
• Warriors switch to Weaponset A, triggering 2 sigils and putting them under a 9s CD.
• Warriors switch to Weaponset B 5 seconds after, triggering the remaining 2 sigils.
• Warriors switch back to Weaponset A 5 seconds after. By this time, the two first sigils are fully recharged, and will trigger again. And so on.
• Conclusion: 4 on-swap sigil warriors with a 5 second weapon swap will trigger sigils every 5 seconds, unlike any other profession. This gives them almost “twice” the sigil power.

At first, I thought this was one of the greatest QoL additions ever.

Then, as I misunderstood, I thought you would have to pay 700 gems for 5 slots, for a total of 25 after math for 2800 gems. A bit too costly, but still worth it.

But it turns out that 700 gems = 1 slot.

1 slot.

Hahahahaha.

Why, Anet?

I think free tourneys should be single rounds like paids. Leave the multiple round thing to a weekly/ monthly tournament system. It just makes the most sense with the matchmaking system, I think. Hope the devs have it as a plan B.

Actually, it would be interesting if there was a 2v2 or a 3v3 team deathmatch mode in the Rated Matches menu, with the possibility of spectators and a special system that makes it cycle through players (winners stay, losers go to the end of the line). Or alternatively, just add those options to Custom Arena.

This not only adds a fun, casual mode with simpler steps, but it also creates incentive for players to spectate (because they’re forced to do so while they wait) and thus to gain some popularity by being good.

1v1 would suck, unless some skills were banned, so that’s fine for Custom Arena only. 4v4 and more would be a mess. I’ve already experimented with 2v2 and 3v3, and both are interestin enough in different ways. In 3v3, you feel within a bigger team, and usually there’s no bunker that can that can hold pressure from 3 sources (and the chances to get a 3-team bunker is low, and when that happens, it’s not that effective). In 2v2, it can be possible to troll with bunkers, or alternatively, it might become too easy to burst and kill, so I consider 2v2 the least interesting of the two, but outside of those specific situations, it’s a simpler and cleaner team deathmatch mode (you only have to worry with two opponents; you only have to consider a single ally), and it’s the closer you can get from a 1v1 situation, especially when each player happens to be within a situation where they’re dueling a single opponent.

Obtena.7952:

If successful completion of the content and having fun with people you team with isn’t enough of an incentive to do the content, then you need to evaluate why you even play MMO’s in the first place, especially GW2.

GW2, yes. MMOs in general, no way.

The entire RPG genre’s gameplay is built around a reward-driven structure. RPGs are all about progression. Stats, items, collectibles, skills, levels, etc. This genre exists EXACTLY to attract the kind of players that enjoy a reward-driven structure.

It makes absolutely no sense for people to come and demand other to evaluate the RPG genre for not having the strong points of a RPG.

That’s like criticizing readers of horror novels that dislike a particular book because it had underwhelming horror elements in it. You can’t simply say “if you can’t enjoy a book simply because it’s fun, then you need to evaluate why you buy horror books”, which their reply will simply be “dude, I bought a horror book because I wanted a horror experience, and the book failed at that”. As simple as that.

The concept may seem alie too, but yes, rewards also contribute to how fun gameplay can be, and yes, there are players who enjoy reward-driven gameplay more, and yes, there are gaming genres that exist specifically for those kind of people: the RPG genre, which GW2 happens to be as well.

But even assuming the concept of a rewardless RPG that would be wonderfully fun, GW2 wouldn’t be it. We’re talking about a game with little to no difficulty in the open world. We’re talking about a game where most skills are useless, clumsy or balanced for pvp, which makes them feel underwhelming and unsatisfying to use in PvE. We’re talking about a game that still has repetitive grinds just as much as any other MMO, just with cosmetics instead of more powerful items. We’re talking about a game that forces you to go into jumping puzzles to complete map achievements, and then had a kitten bad game engine that puts invisible barriers and invisible ground everywhere you jump into.

I can go on, but GW2 isn’t exactly the champion of “fun” games. It has a lot of flaws in combat and exploration, and, for that reason, rewards are a wonderful tool the developers have (and need) to keep players interesting in the game.

GW2 had wonderful front-loaded sales, and then Anet went completely silent about their game’s popularity state after that, outside of developers admitting the game was bad at keeping players interesting and NCSoft expressing disappointment about HoT’s sales. Meanwhile, a game like FFXIV had a disastrous launch, it was rebuilt, and now it has surpassed GW2.

If GW2 was this “oh so wonderfully fun game, who needs rewards when this game is fun, fun, fun?”, it would likely have been at a better state. But it isn’t.

I like the idea that warriors can resist to movement-impairing CC (flavorful with their “sturdy bodies”), but I dislike the idea that warriors can Ride the Lightning with their greatsword.

Would be nice to see their GS leaps range be decreased to 900 and Rush requiring a target (alongside being bug fixed, so it’s actually useful in combat). What do people think of that?

ronpierce.2760:

Yep. If the video had a slight bit more action and less waiting between skills and it was named like Sentinel or Vanguard of whatever, it would have been much better received. Technically speaking, it’s what most guardians have asked for. And frankly, I love it. The name though is god-awful…

I agree that if the spec was named differently, people would have been reacting differently as well.

A generic name like “dragonhunter” coupled with ranger-esque theme seems completely unrelated with each other, and gives an unfocused feel to it.

People usually chat in mmos to help each other, or to share their favourite experiences. From that, new bounds are usually created, and people make new friends.

The thing is, what’s there to help in GW2, outside of linking to map chat an event’s waypoint? What experience is there to share? The game is usually easy, and even when it is not, it lacks teamplay depth. The more epic events are completed by auto-attacked in zergs. You don’t see people coordinating in chat, becuase there’s no coordenation needed. You don’t see people forming parties in chat, except for farming trait-zergs, and only because it’s easier to tag champions while in a party. You don’t see anyone asking for guiding or for a partner while exploring, because everything can be done solo, and because everything is guided with icons placed on your map and mini-map.

There’s no adventure to be done together, except if you happen to have a guildie nearby you by chance. There’s no reason to care about players you see, because they’ll be playing their game solo, just like yourself, and because they’ll be warping back from place to place everytime they feel like going to a wp, just like you. There’s almost never an opportunity to stick with somebody, unless it was conscious decision with an already known friend or a guild member. Player characters you see in the world are just part of the scenario.

This is one of the key pillars of a MMORPG, and something that GW2 lacks at.

Use fresh air in pve if you’re planning to use a burst build focused around the air element. Bolt to the Heart and Air Training for your other air traits, go at least 10 points in arcana for the minor and the Elemental Attunement trait, and pick sigil of fire and at least two instant damage utility skills (arcane blast, arcane wave, lightning flash).

You’ll get plenty of swiftness and fury for getting back to air quickly. Start in any attunement you want, switch to air while in battle to activate air’s 15th minor trait, use your 123 skill sequence while under the 2s fury and your arcanes alongside it, switch to another attunement, switch back to air, activation the trait and 123 again.

That’s a strong and quick ranged burst. Played akittens best, you can probably start at earth with Hurl (switch to air before Hurl’s animation finishes), do the air sequence, and by the time you switch to fire, you can get your ring of fire and phoenix affected by fury, and follow you fire grab and dragon’s tooth to air attunement to renew your fury and for the air’s trait (for the +10% damage while in air). That’s strong.

An extra 10 points in arcana works well for the minor 15th and either for renewing stamina (dodging is king for surviving in hard pve content) or for arcane mastery (especially if you go triple arcane – more access to arcane shield, and you burst more often). Remaining 20 points is up to you, you can max arcana for EA (I don’t think the grandmaster arcane trait is worth it), or go 20 water for both minors, for Vital Striking (+10% damage while you have high HP – you’ll use and finish you burst before most enemies even hit you) and for whatever else you want or need from water.

Berserker gear is not as useful as it might sound. Sigil of Fire can’t crit, the arcane skills are auto-crits, and you’ll have all the fury you need forr extra critical chance, so valkyrie gear is much better than berserker’s. Valkyrie offers the same amount of critical damage and power than berserker does, it lacks precision which you shouldn’t need (make sure your off-hand weapon is using sigil of accuracy – and you’ll consistently get near 50% critical chance without food), and it loses vitality for the much more useful (to elementalists) healing power + toughness combo.

If your build relies on setting up fields to deal more damage in PvE, but you don’t exactly care about the combo finish effects within them, it might be a drawback.

Like for example, a guardian will cast their symbols in PvE to keep their DPS in check, but they’ll still wish to activate blast finishers within fire fields over light fields, because at the current state of PvE, might is more significant than retaliation by a lot.

Of course, in this example, and I assume in many others, the player can built around it. For example, the symbol guardian can always put a fire field above their symbol with their utility skills. It’s also something that can becomes less of an issue with balancing or design changes for PvE, should retaliation-stacking become a viable strategy someday.

EDIT
Besides, there can always exist traits that make your combo finishers get affected by all stacked combo fields at once.

Although I think eles (and mesmers) needed the past nerfs, and they’ll probably need some more in the future after this meta is over, it’s ironic how we would need the old overpowered elementalists to face the current meta. Triple stunbreaking, no cooldown on condition removal, 15s ride the lightning, ether renewal on mist form, etc, could make us stand against necromancers and the stun warriors.

So much drama.

GW2 will be unplayable.

The end of the world.

Iason Evan.3806:

If ArenaNet wanted to do right by the veteran community that has spent countless hours earning progression via earning skill point scrolls and myriad other forms of progression they would give us a way to convert skill point scrolls to hero points.

This goes against their intention, because they want skill points to be limtied by a finite number, with the sole purpose of unlocking skills/ specs and nothing else. If players were able to transform skill scrolls into hero points, then they would be left with leftover HPs with no use after all skills/ specs were unlocked.

The thing is, I don’t have faith this system will be any better than the Trait system debacle. And why should I? They want to limit progression and arbitrarily gate content. It’s disheartening to see a game I adore go the way of cookie cutter MMO mechanics in the form of playing how they want me to play as opposed to how this game was when it came out and allowing me to play the way I want.

The previous trait system changes were a good idea in practice, but poor at execution. For it to have worked, anet would need a higher budget to implement it in a satisfying manner, which they hadn’t. So, what we have gotten was a very generic and broad “trait X unlocked after doing Y”, with no clear UI information/ guiding and with no unique boss or explorable scenario to give flavor to it, etc. GW1 was much better in this regard because it was designed around skill capture in mind from the ground up. In contrast, the new spec system does not demand such a high budget, resources and time to implement correctly, because it is simpler to unlock, simpler to understand and has better UI support. It is, in this regard, much closer to the original system, but improved upon.

Also “play how I want” can be a good or a bad philosophy in game design. It’s important that there’s enough content diversity for different players, but that should not come at the cost of unique and thematically-fitting reward systems. If all rewards are generic, then we get to deal with the much bigger problem in GW2: how unrewarding it feels like. With the new change, hero challenges will give you hero points, and outside of levels, nothing else will. And that’s as it should be, because that’s the entire point of hero/ skill challenges in the first place. If a player can simply get all skills unlocked with consumables, then skill/ hero challenges will no longer feel rewarding.

You are taking away tons of progression and only allowing me to turn it into a currency for the Mystic Forge?

Actually, progression is not changing with this update. You either use skill points to unlock skills or to buy mystic forge materials. After the patch, skill points for skills will be called hero points, and skill points for the mystic forge will be called spirit shards. It’s kind of the same thing, really, but with a clearer division between both.

On a final note, you’ll still be able to use tomes and writes of experience for your revenant, so you should save those.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Ondriam.9862:

Agreed. I would even pay a one-time (or yearly, or whatever) fee in gems to have a pass to a restricted area with a bank and a TP. Just stop making me load 2-3 maps every time i have to do something.

Do you think this would cause any uproar in the community if we did a change like this, and if it did can you think of a better way to implement it?

For something that is so simple, and easily available at every town and wvw, I just see no logical reason to have to pay gems to get a bank in the mists. I can’t even see it being a good model to get people to buy gems, I mean, it’s not like the mists are populated enough to warrant a very basic feature available everywhere to be gated by the shop.

But if we’re talking about something of a greater scope than the pvp mists, should anet be planning an housing/ guild housing system someday, several features could be gated by gems there, like banking and easy access to pvp stuff.

1, because it looks really fun to play with and brings some interesting ideas (party-wide stun breaks) while further developing other mechanics (auras). The massive AoE also seems a lot of fun for general pve while farming or doing events, as it does not forces you to stick to a single attument (fire staff) nor is it way restricted by range (d/d). The animations are also one of the best so far.

colesy.8490:

Celestial is a complete waste of time, and divinity runes are pretty much junk.

Celestial is mediocre, but Divinity Runes are excellent.

Regardless, any of them fit an Elementalist very well. I suppose they work great on Guardians too.

ErazorZ.5209:

Anyone stating gw2 is one of the best PvP games out there doesnt really know what PvP in its essence means. Gw2 is one of a kind. Thats where it shines. But currently its becomming more and more Moba like. Wich is REALLY bad.

If balance was at the level of League of Legends’ balance, it would be lovely. Riot actually puts effort into updating old champions, consistently communicates with their playerbase about what they do and why they do it and gives top priority to healthy pvp mechanics.

Anet buffs skills regardless of how healthy they are to the game. They buff pets for the sake of build diversity. They buff instant-cast skills indescriminately. They buff low counterplay skills just as much as they buff any other skill. They rarely attempt to mechanically retool said skills to be healthier. Their consideration for an healthy pvp environment is tehre for half the changes they make, but it isn’t there for the other half.

The changes done to elementalist’s scepter this last patch are just more of the same as we came to expect since launch. Random number tweaks in the hopes that it will hit the right spot. The main issues with the weapon (DT has no CC support so it can hit, AAs too weak, no meaningful active defenses) remain ignored, but hey, they buffed an instant-cast skill’s damage and an instant-cast trait’s damage!

I’ve just finished both instances, and I’ve got to say that the difficulty is perfect as it is for storyline content. It’s challenging in the sense that demands you to play decently well, but acessible to any player and without breaking the storytelling flow.

I like challenging content to not make content a snoore fest, but there are many different degrees of challenge, and for storylling, this one is perfect: not too easy to be boring, not too hard to be hardcore.

Of course, I wouldn’t mind if the finale’s content increased a little bit in difficulty, expecially if it ends up with a big boss or something (which it’ll probably will, as it’s typical of gaming), but I’m satisfied as it is.

Making all AoE have a delay, like Dragon’s Tooth and Lava Font, would greatly improve GW2’s pvp without having much of an impact in pve at all. (Yes, more changes would be needed, but that’s not my point).

Making dodges less spammable, by toning down vigor and sigil of energy, would greatly improve GW2’s pvp (and interact nicely with the aoe change above) AND be a good step in the right direction to improve the horrible pve zerk-and-dodge meta.

Making less passive traits and more active damage-control-support trinity enhancing traits would improve class skill requirement and teamplay depth across ALL formats of the game.

GW2’s pvp can be improved without coming at the cost of pve – quite the opposite, actually. It’s all up to Anet and how they chose to design and balance their game.

It’s overpowered akittens current state, but it would be nice if a toned down version existed across all formats of the game.

Oni Link.4621:

PS: If you are not using a VoIP program for team queue then you are playing in a soloqueue-like environment. So what is the point of playing team queue? The biggest advantage is the higher communication between members.

Team Queue is currently the only rated queue that allows you to play with friends. Also, in addition to this, there are foreign players who might shy away from speaking and trying to understand english speakers in VOIP, but enjoy a good organized team match nonetheless.

For those reasons, I’d say team queue should offer as many features to compensate for the lack of VOIP as solo queue does. And for those who use VOIP: nothing will change for them, so outside of UI cluterring, why complain? :P