Guild Wars 2

It seems that every update we get punished for their mistakes. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal but now we are talking about limited content.

I wish the good stuff was more about the skill. Dedication is fine too but luck is just unfair.

I would love to have personal meters.

My explanations and opinions:

Progression

The biggest improvement is increased accessibility. With reduced run times and map selection, it’s much easier to play fractals casually. While accessibility doesn’t matter much for the veterans, it will help us in the long term because more people play the content, more likely they update it.

The map selection is a big improvement for the hardcore community. Record running got much easier which means we will probably have a fractal tournament at some point. Also making guides and practicing is easier.

The progression is bit questionable. You can progress by doing the same scale over and over. Unless they do a good job with instability balancing, some scales will be much easier than others. People will find these easy scales and repeat them over and over for progression, especially if there are any exploits. While levels 90+ will probably be really hard, some of them will be easier than the others.

The daily achievement system discourages doing same maps over and over but we will see whether this has any meaningful effect. I expect that there will be several easy scales which people can run for both progression and daily. One way to fix this is to track which scales you have completed so only completing new scales would increase your personal scale.

Difficulty

The biggest improvement is the increased instability difficulty. This forces people to adapt and think instead of repeating same tactics over and over. It’s also good that they reduced the progression grind (100 new runs / 4 = 25 old runs).

I think scaling toughness, precision and other stats is a mistake. Increased toughness only means that people have to grind/get ascended condition gear. Yes, the meta will change but it will be as exclusive as the berserker meta. The precision change means that enemies will randomly deal +50% damage, even more if the ferocity is touched. When enemies already deal a very high damage, the randomness decides whether you live or die when you get hit. Yes, this makes weakness better but it only reduces the probability.

Daily rewards

I don’t really like how these work. This basically means people will find the 3 easiest scales with different maps on 50+ and run them every day for the achievement. I think the daily achievement should force specific maps or scales.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Wethospu.6437:

Send me your assets. I give them protection and shelter.

You’re the proud owner of a 250 stack of chocolate chip cookies! Congrats!

Awesome!

I will hide them in my mouth, no one can catch them!

Pugs are pugs. I was doing F49 with some guild and we got Mossman. I was the only person who used any kind of consumables, meleed and didn’t get downed.

Once we got it done I immediately got kicked. I whispered one of them and he told me “you shouldnt melee whats not meleeable at this level”.

Teleport shot has 1.6 s animation. Of course it doesn’t really matter if Mai is covered with flashbangs.

Ok boys, girls and the rest, I will go test it out.

Nightmare: Works
Dredge: No effect
Krait: Works
Flame Legion: No effect

Kind of what was expected.

dlonie.6547:

rotten.9753:

Wethospu.6437:

I have enough challenge with opening my daily login rewards.

Then don’t open them. You can only hold 4 unopened chests at the same time, after that, content of your old chests is automatically put into your inventory.

^Truth.

The struggle is real. Every day, log in, log out. Don’t even bother clicking them anymore. There’d be more but I got bored and cleared them out a while back.

#HardcorePvAFK

Wow, that’s awful.

You just skip all the content in this game.

Even that issue would be solved by my rework idea (last time promotion as this closes soon).

I will list the main ideas:

• main difficulty from instabilities (and their combinations), less “artificial difficulty”
• additional stat scaling → infinite scaling while keeping expandability
• instabilities tied to maps → allows interesting instabilities, no rng
• one run consists of one map →map selection → less time required, no rng
• no rng → skill based content → allows higher difficulty
• each map has own progression → prevents instability skipping, multiple choices
• daily quests → encourages playing different maps every day

Not exactly like an Arah solo but getting first scepter was quite tricky.

Smith.1826:

Nayaru.4716:

Hmm maybe it’s just people who haven’t played GW1 who don’t like this.

I played GW1 and loved GW1. I don’t like the new trait acquisition process. Why? Well for starters, GW1 is not GW2, and traits aren’t equivalent to elites or skills. The “process” in GW1 wasn’t all that complicated: “That guy has something you want, kill him for it.”

But mainly, I don’t like this change because it kills a large amount of freedom one had in PvE. I used to be able to progress my character through any manner I chose. Now I have to follow a handful of guidelines, and a lot of the content now feels “required”. Of course I don’t consider that an improvement: being required to complete certain content is way less horizontal than choosing any content.

Yeah people seem to forget this.

In GW1 you could have a decent build even without any elite skill. Try same in GW2 without any trait.

Similarly in GW1 you needed only to unlock a couple of elites to play properly (and everything could be done solo with henchies/heroes). In GW2 you need to unlock at least 7 things, even more if you want to change a build.

Here’s my oath: http://youtu.be/rIFen1IyTg8
Hopefully I win a second account!

It would be a disaster to make enemies more intelligent than an average player.

Pleas stop posting “speed runs” on lfg-site if you think “speed” means auto-attacking bosses from safe-spots, dying at lupicus, just generally dying all the time, failing multiple times with corrupted light, just generally failing, waiting for one person or just generally waiting for something.
Arah P3 taking 40-60 mins is not a speed-run.

Heyh! Want to help http://gw2dungeons.net + wiki and win up to 1000g?

With the new first person camera I think it would be a great time to add images for dungeons and fractal enemies. On top of updating my site I’m also planning to update the wiki.

However getting these images, editing then, uploading them and so on is a lot of work so I decided to make this lottery instead. So here is how this will work:

• Lottery happens at end of April
• The winner gets 500 g, 5 sub-winners get 100 g each
• You get one ticket for each (serious) dungeon/fractal related image
• You get an additional ticket for each image which I choose to use on my site
• Gif animations get two extra tickets
• To increase your chances, focus on less popular enemies!
• Images can be about enemies, their animations, their attack effects or just general dungeon/fractal situations (I’m not very strict)
• At end of April all imaginary tickets get pooled up and I randomly choose winners and then contact them on forums for account information

You can check for example http://dulfy.net/2013/11/27/gw2-thaumanova-reactor-fractal-guide/ or http://the-unknowns.eu/index.php/Thread/24-Fractal-Guide to get a better idea what I’m looking for.

• You should use png/jpg and gif/gifv/webm formats
• Edit your images, at least remove unnecessary areas with Paint
• UI can be on or off (which one you think is better)
• Any image hosting is fine (for example )
• You can also upload them directly to wiki!
• Send links to your images in this topic

Hopefully at the end of April we have most enemies, attacks and situations covered up!

Note: If you have ever planned to donate gold, now is a really good time (Wethospu.6437). I have less than 100g so all prize money will come from gems. If for some reason I receive too many donations I will add additional prices.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. Also thanks in advance for everyone helping!

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

—

Hopefully you read my post about rework as it pretty much addressed everything on your post. I will kind of repeat my post below. Also I’m bit surprised seeing a post like yours. I didn’t expect you guys to consider any kind of rework as you had one while ago.

First of all, I think instabilities are a really good idea (good form of difficulty) but they don’t fit current implementation very well. It’s really tough job to balance instabilities, especially when difficulty may change a lot with different maps. That’s why I would separate progression for each map and tie instabilities with maps. Then have 3-5 instabilities for each map. Each instability should have like 3 different strengths resulting in 9-15 levels. Then you could also mix and match resulting in 64-1024 levels. This probably wouldn’t really help with testing but would allow focusing on more interesting combinations.

Personally I really dislike boring instabilities. “Annoying” ones are actually good because they are meaningful. But I’m not sure how you can make builds without breaking builds. Because that means that you would add a weakness to enemies which would actually make it easier than without the instability.

I think current scaling isn’t very exciting because scaling is so weak. Scale 28 or 29? Barely any difference. Also current implementation has lots of scales until players reach more interesting instabilities. That’s why in my idea the main focus for levels are instabilities and then there’s additional stat scaling with big steps (25%-50% each scale) which allows infinite scaling (while still allowing adding more instabilities).

One drawback for non-random map would be lack of “gambling”. Apparently that gets some people excited. I personally think it adds nothing because once you know the maps there isn’t really any surprises. Your system is quite close to my idea so it sounds good for me! I personally see current implementation quite grindy because lots of scales feel same (especially when most of the stuff is quite easy).

They need to rework entire system in all dungeons. With either a lot more waypoints or hybrid system with waypoints/checkpoints.

It is a huge mystery which stats to focus on for big damage. My vote goes for Healing Power.

Stop mixing opinion with sense.

This is somehow perfectly fine but whenever I try to use your arguments on anything else people call me troll. I understand that you didn’t lose anything and that’s why you think this is fine. But that doesn’t make it universal.

I personally think that exclusivity of stuff should stay relatively same over time. I understand that festivals are meant to be time-limited and I don’t mind that but:

1) All festival items should be available next year.

2) Effort needed to spend during the festival should be low.

I’m not saying that items should be easy to get, just that you should be able to work on them at your own pace.

Yeah, they should buff Feedback so that Lupicus goes straight to 0%.

In my opinion improving existing content is much better idea than adding completely new content. Most importantly a new dungeon (or even a path) requires lots of resources because they have to design terrain, dialogue and encounters from scratch (including models for everything).

If same effort was applied to existing dungeons, we could have fixes and improvements for several paths / dungeons. From a living story perspective, corruption of Mordremoth could spread to existing dungeons and give enemies additional attacks / mechanics. If you want to keep dungeons accessible for casuals, add “casual mode” with -50% health, -50% damage and party size scaling.

Either way, a real effort has to be applied. Spending on average 1 hour per week on dungeons doesn’t really cut it. I’m pretty sure dungeon forum can give some very good pointers what to do but we (or some of us) really need to know that something is going to happen.

28 pages of fractal CDI and I don’t think there has been any indication of adding hard content from the developer. Also interestingly he seems to spend a great effort to try make me look evil/stupid.

To be honest, I kind of expect the next fractal patch turn them to a magical casual wonderland.

Oh no, I dared to post about attribute caps on reddit. As expected, half of the people have no idea what I’m talking but think they do know better.

Combat Healer.

Burst recovery also became a pretty worthless stat.

100 or 250 pristines might make sense if the skin had any prestige.

That’s the problem with RNG skins. Hard to get but don’t really mean a thing.

I fully support the predefined fractal maps because of the advantages it gives. Most importantly having map specific instabilities and fine tuning the difficulty. Unfortunately neither exists. But it’s a good start.

Based on my data, Archdiviner did 7682-8663 damage with his swing prepatch on scale 1 and 18644-21024 damage on scale 50. If he now does 4k on scale 59, something is seriously wrong. Also hopefully they remove that toughness scaling to balance direct and condition damage (haven’t tested how severe it is).

I think dailies should be predefined to encourage doing different scales. Daily reward should be bigger when you need to do harder fractals.

Also why dungeons weren’t recycled to fractal instances? Pick/combine some best fights for a decent encounter.

Illegal vedio bro.

I want my money back.

Wiki isn’t very reliable source.

The real formula is -33% + scale * 2.136%

One AR reduces damage by 1.2%-units.

Cross region
Mentor name: http://gw2dungeons.com
Active dungeons: Every dungeon and fractal.
Availability: 24 / 7, excluding potential downtimes.
Contact: Use your favorite web browser.
Communication: Not supported. Whining and complaints are ignored.
Message: Mentoring provided “as is” with no express or implied warranty for accuracy or accessibility. The utmost has been done to ensure that the material and calculations are accurate. However, errors may occur. No responsibility or liability is accepted for any incorrect material. Use me at your own risk.

You did something wrong, it should have taken at least 2 hours (or so I have heard).
Good job!

So I’m trying to formalize how the patching mechanic exactly works. While there is some information already about it, most of it is pretty much useless. At least I have trouble fully understanding how it works.

1) Some enemies get an order to “Move to target” or “Move to location” when a player gets to a certain location.

• The first or the second player becomes the target (exact mechanic unknown).

• Enemies can only get an order once (unless they respawn).

• Orders break when enemy aggroes.

• If you waypoint, move too far or to unreachable location, order may break or enemies may teleport. Based on enemies/distance (exact mechanic unknown).

2) When an order ends, the enemy gets parked to its current location.

• Enemies stay there and will reset there when deaggroed.

• After a while (how long?), enemies return to their initial location.

• What happens if enemies get aggroed during their return?

Bonus:

List of enemies which can be pathed?

• Special tricks?

So dungeons aren’t part of the world but WvW (=mists) somehow is?

I want game to be convenient. Is it common sense to ask about every little bit when I could just simply check it out by myself? Not to mention possibility to lie, etc.

So I’m an elitist when I care about people I’m playing with. But you aren’t, when you are telling how everyone should play/behave?
Personally I find it extremely selfish that every player should be ready to carry you, if you just want to stay bad/use “creative” build.

Hello, I was doing this event and then I just die all the time. Those big balls get me all the time. People tell me to dodge but I don’t think I have unlocked that yet. How is this fair for level 70 people? Please help!

I don’t think there should be multiple ways to get the same thing. That always leads one being favored unless they are carefully balanced which requires lots of participation from developers.

What I’m saying that current instability system doesn’t work because people can just choose the path of least resistance and skip them. Similar gambit system wouldn’t also work because people would just pick the best gambits.

Personally I think we need fractals 3.0 with active community involvement during development. We have here lots of experienced players who can point out any problems before any development even begins. At least for me it was pretty obvious that instabilities wouldn’t work as planned.

I have few times mentioned my idea and can expand it if needed but here is a summary:

• Create separate progression for every map (split up RNG paths)
• Connect different instabilities directly to specific maps
• Intensify / add effects further you progress
• At end of progression open up a new scale with numerically stronger enemies
• Add daily which requires doing specific level (= path & progression combination)
• Give a fractal weapon / tonic / etc. at end of progression
• Add fractal weapon sets with different colors for higher scales

This would:

• Shorten minimum time needed to progress
• Allow playing / practicing any maps
• Remove RNG from progression
• Allow more interesting and meaningful instabilities
• Allow near infinite progression while keeping it expandable
• Give lots “meaningful” of content with different instability combinations

Skeletons actually spawn on people (who don’t block or evade summoning attack). So when you stack they spawn at the same place which allows you to easily kill them with area damage. Killing them means that Lich can’t consume them. If you kill them fast they won’t be able to use Retaliation, Protection and Regeneration which is a huge asset (Retaliation does lots of damage).

Melee naturally allows you to cleave and you do higher damage which helps with the damage race. Also stacking helps with buffs!

Bosses are boring because they are so easy you don’t have to care about their mechanics.

MachineManXX.9746:

So a question to those of you who are asking for a gear change (celestial not withstanding). What exactly are you going to change into? If Zerker gear was highest DPS before, and as I understand it, it will still be highest DPS, what specifically do you want to change into?

This is a serious question. I’m having a hard time understanding the reasoning behind this request.

Some people crafted Ascended Assassin gear for ultimate min-max. After the patch Berserker will probably be the best in all cases.

I will tell you a secret. The decision is actually made by Anet developers, not some random Asura.

I don’t think there are any big changes after level 10. Just stronger/more enemies and Agony.

At least:
Champion Shaman: uses Chunning Earth
Old Tom: need to use secondary consoles
Harpy Hunter: uses AoE with Launch
Uncategorized: more Harpy Hunters
Cliffside: Way to first Seal is different
Underground Facility: more Dredge from clown car

Patch info here (official info underscored):
Dungeons
* Ascalonian Catacombs:
– Players can no longer fall through the map when standing above graveling burrows when they appear in the Ascalon Catacombs dungeon.
- The Lovers can now be knocked back consistently.
– Ghosteater does more damage (?)
* Honor of the Waves:
– Andal the Thug’s skill that buffs Oolon and Poroo now matches the visual effects.
* The Ruined City of Arah:
– Warden Illyra now looks correct when she carries a Risen chicken.
– “Ship” is no longer available at end of path 2.
– Lantern and ledge fixed on Crusher & Hunter on path 3 (or I just don’t know how to use them).
– Abominations got a new attack (same charge as in CoE).
– Lupicus is now completely immune to Crippled.
* Citadel of Flame
– One of the safe areas blocked in Acolyte-part (path 1).
* Crucible of Eternity
– Can no longer use shortcut in path 1 (golems won’t activate).
– Bjarl works better (path 1).

Fractals
* Swampland:
- Mossman no longer becomes unresponsive in combat.
– Mossman no longer uses Gouge from Stealth.
– Mossman summons only one Wolf when Stealthing.
* Cliffside:
- Players can no longer exploit the final boss by keeping him stunned in an emote loop. (still possible)
– At final seal players get unavoidable stun which locks all skills when seal is hit.
* Underground Facility:
– Normal dredge at Rabsovich (Champion) now reset if you try to pull them out of room.
– Planting a bomb now breaks Stealth.
– Different dredge spawn/leash behavior (?)
* Snowblind:
– Safe-spot removed at Shaman Lornarr Dragonseeker.
– Safe-spot removed at ice-wall.
– Ice Elementals aggro more easily (?).
– Elemental Source attacks more frequently (?).
* Solid Ocean:
– Harder to jump up on ledge behind second Tentacle.

“Search and Rescue” skill:
- No longer revives defeated allies.

Discuss!

You can enter fractals alone and nothing forces you to use your dodge. Sounds like an intended way to play this game.

What you probably meant that it doesn’t give any reward which ironically is the very point of this topic.

They simply mean that it gives poor return for investment.

Fafnir.5124:

Currently there is no death penalty armor repair was only one but they removed it. Waypoint costs are cost to travel not rez you don’t see increased cost if you are dead. Death effects has large impact on game play. If you can repeat until you win i think it takes away from the prestige of wining honestly. If you think a few silver is something to fear when people are making 100s of g a week i think you are really getting your priorities wrong.

How about a death in a dungeon should comprise of 20% of the final reward of the dungeon.

So if I’m in a dungeon full damage melee while rest of the group stay at max range with PVT and I happen to get downed once and nobody moves an inch to get me up, I’m the bad player who should get lower reward?

spoj.9672:

Most people cant even dodge grubs. They probably wouldnt have dps gear either.

It would be really stupid for anet to change a boss which has been considered challenging and well designed for the last 2 years.

I honestly wouldn’t call Lupicus well designed, perhaps just designed. Plenty of bugs, inconsistencies and trivial attacks.

For example

- Prevent instant reset at doors and Lupicus walking out of arena
- Prevent players getting out of combat inside the arena

Phase 1:
- Should attack more frequently (kick and infection) to increase pressure
- Infection should be an area attack with poison gas effect
- Locusts shouldn’t spawn behind wall
- Locust spawns should be normalized
- Roar should cause frontal infection cone
- Double effect of Empowered
- Remove or rework phase grub

Phase 2:
- Add missing circles to frenzied blasts
- Fix bug with dash making Lupicus disappear
- Make sweep more faster and frequent to increase pressure
- Stop using bolt on close targets
- Remove safe zone (no melee hits or bolts)
- Remove reflect instagib: Damage cap/reduction or make projectiles appear higher

Phase 3:
- Remove walling
- Stop using bolt on close targets

AoE changes are same for everyone else. What makes you think your Elementalist is the special snowflake?

Anyways I would like to remind everyone that their philosophy is to do small changes and let the meta evolve. If they say massive they probably just mean lots of changes.