Guild Wars 2

Perhaps they should allow the choice for people to pick debuffs like in fractals (say, reduced stats for more magic find)

Unfortunately, the removal of LS1 means you can’t see how great the updated zones and the new mobs were. Lots of great new types of mobs on old maps, basically LS1 was like having these veteran maps you are talking about. Too bad it was temporary content

Fortunately LS2 is permanent content and you can visit Dry Top and Silverwastes for some more challenge. Probably best to go check there, although the rest of the game is rather easy. That’s to be expected though, when we first started playing this game nobody knew how to play because the combat was rather unique, and that includes the devs. It’s no secret that every single patch added more challenging mobs than originally available in the game.

I doubt they will ever add extra versions of the old maps because it will split the community. But once you get into Heart of Thorns and the LS3 zones you will find that the difficulty has increased somewhat making the open world more fun to play and not dying from boredom.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: That depends on how many of your characters have already finished world completion.

Your first character? Yes, absolutely. You get some achievement points and it gives you the opportunity to see all of Tyria in its beautiful glory. Plus, by simply spending a lot of time in each map you’ll start to recognize and remember where players tend to congregate, where big events happen, where you can reliably find specific types of materials, and other stuff like that.

Your next three or four characters? Depends on a number of factors, but first and foremost you should ask yourself whether the full world exploration experience was enjoyable enough for you simply by itself, not including the loot you may have gotten. If it was, then absolutely do world completion again on as many characters as you desire. Plus, those extra Black Lion Keys never hurt!

Your tenth character and on? Entirely up to you, but beyond a certain point you realize that the loot is simply not worth the time spent endlessly rolling tens of alts through Tyria. Yes, it’s a beautiful world. Yes, I enjoy mapping. But no, I don’t finish maps much anymore. I’ve still got I think 11 or 12 gifts of exploration in my bank and those will probably remain unused forever. I don’t need the loot, and I don’t mind running straight past renown hearts or POI’s anymore. Unless I’m in the mood

Having said that, I do still run almost all of my alts through Tyria to at the very least get all (or most) waypoints unlocked. That is something that will never stop being useful. And getting all of the waypoints on a map can be done in minutes sometimes, while fully completing a map usually takes me an hour or two.

Sorry for my long-winded responses. I have a tendency to be a bit too verbose sometimes. My apologies :S

But as Inculpatus said, just do what you have the most fun with, or whatever you feel like doing at any given moment. World completion is definitely a good place to start, that was the first thing I focused on when I reached level 80 with my first character. I really love to explore all the nooks and crannies of a map, though, and I’m a bit of a completionist. If you don’t find it that enjoyable, turn your attention elsewhere.

Anyway, welcome to the game. Now that you’re level 80, the real fun begins. And if you see me online sometime, by all means, feel free to shoot me a message if you have questions. Happy to help

Einlanzer.1627:

Certain things about the way this game is managed are unreal.

As a partial quote, I can completely agree. There seem to be several ways that we could ‘save’ builds that wouldn’t require much coding:

• Save just an image — we’d still have to manually recreate it; this would allow us to simplify the process.
• Save a link: if gw2skills.net can do it, why can’t ANet?
• Load just traits: even if this was only possible in a limited number of zones (cities, lobbies, GH, home instances), it would still be very useful.

A lot of times, things are actually a lot more trouble to code than the community thinks. However, other times, ANet seems to go out of its way to delay the practical in favor of attempting to implement the ideal.

Rashagar.8349:

Zero Day.2594:

Drakz.7051:

Because it is all about the Meta, if you are not playing meta for min/max stats you are not wanted in parties, hard to believe from the game that wanted us to play how we wanted.

…

It’s not really the game that imposes the meta on players…
It’s the players imposing the meta on players.

If you get into, say “hardcore” raiding, then one would expect from other hardcore players to be on top of the ball on builds and such… But it’s your choice to push your self that far to hang with the “hardcore”…

The others that you meet in pugs and demand that you play meta, are somewhat understandable too. By running the meta, the thought is that it will take less effort and time to overcome a task, so pugs tend to favor that religiously – even if the players aren’t performing well enough to bring out the “meta-ness” in w/e meta build their running, and could perform better on a non-meta build. But it’s the belief that the task will be easier to over with a meta build that defies their reasoning – and beliefs are hard to change.

gets kind of teary eyed
very carefully replaces the intended reply with a simple…

+1

Nothing to add except for appreciation of eloquence.

Something that I wish more people recognized a long time ago when I posted walls on this topic; the existence of the “berserker (gear type) meta” is entirely player-made and in terms of run consistency, sub-optimal. It just came down to people demanding efficiency for gold gains or people who were dumb and senselessly copied the hardcore scene. Nothing’s going to change that demand for raw efficiency, ever, as even the concept of the trinity and roles are just an exacerbated and design-enforced meta-optimization done on the developer-side of things.

The only thing to offset this is to frequently update and change the existing PvE content and provide alternatives for other builds to potentially save time (tank thief in the old Thaumanova fractal crossing the fume chamber to skip a boss, for example).

Otherwise you’ll just end up in an infinite cycle of emergent optimizations, which, let’s face it, are very easy to achieve in this game to the blatant trait-power disparity and the half-dead-snail-crawl-pacing of the profession changes.

As for the optimization in PvP, and lack of viability, well, there’s going to be similar optimization for the top-end, but the meta is set in stone just because the game as it stands is horribly balanced and most elites are just abysmally-designed, major power creep.

Just wait til Bubbles is out and the current elite specs will be mostly useless unless Bubbles turns out to be beached like a whale xD

The game has a lot more build variety than people think. The vast majority of the game depends on player skill, not build, allowing a lot of players the opportunity to choose what they want to play.

“Viable” and “meta” are no longer useful terms for having a discussion about builds. Ask 20 MMOers about the meaning and we’d get 48 different (combined) definitions.

As others have said, there will always be one build for every situation that is “most popular” for various reasons: people like efficient, we like high damage numbers, we like using builds that someone else has spent time theory crafting. This is especially true in GW2 where there are a huge number “what if” situations that can affect how strong a build is.

That’s why Viper Necro is so popular in PUG fractals: that build gets the job done regardless of player skill, team comp, etc. And that’s why a lot of builds aren’t considered for newbie or many PUG raids: people want previously-vetted team comps to ensure a minimum chance of success.

DGraves.3720:

For that matter the word “Optimal” is also garbage because in this game being “optimal” to a build path is based on your stats so “optimal” X is not “optimal for the class” it’s just optimal for X. It depends on your end-goal.

Yup, that is what optimal means. You’re optimal for completing a certian task. You’re the most effecient at performing said task. Other taskes? Well, those are other taskes, that you may or may not be optimal for (but we don’t care).

DGraves.3720:

WoW, the comparison, actually has a single state of optimization. You can be viable in 3 (count them, 3!) different ways and playstyles. . . After you follow a very distinct path to that. GW2 suffers from analysis paralysis instead; there are so many combinations and options that work and are “viable” that it’s overwhelming and no one explores.

Well, 3 viable ones shown on the Noxxic DPS charts. That’s not to say that there aren’t 50 others that are capable of completing w/e task you’re looking to complete (at this point it’s being top on the DPS chart). Hell, even more than 50, who knows how many – like you said, it’s overwhelming and no one explores.

Out of those three only one is the best of the three, the most optimal for being top on the DPS charts. Most of the time there’s only one. Conceptually, there can be many – but – they have to produce the same DPS and be equally as easy. If, say there were two builds that produced equal DPS but one had a more complex rotation than the other, the complexity of it would push it out of being optimal since it is not the easiest possible way to produce that DPS. Like a rotation containing 3 skills versus one that contains 4 skills, the first would be more optimal than the second even if they both produce the same DPS.

DGraves.3720:

It’s basically an exercise in failing to find the sweetspot.

Yeah kind of. The terms, I’m thinking of them more of sub/super-sets of each other. The human aspect, being able to do those rotations perfectly, makes it wonky, and yeah find what best works for you… Again going back to the WoW mage example, there was a 7k difference in DPS, well that 7k can be gained or lost through how well the player executes the rotation.

Casiell.9081:

Any info on when and what the next weapon will be? Or at least will my mesmer like it?

I can guarantee these things:

• We won’t get a second warning.
• Whether it happens this Tuesday or in August, some people will be annoyed about it (and some of those will rant about it here).
• Six months after the change, someone will necro one of the original threads and someone else will start a new thread about the unfairness of it (perhaps both in the same week).

Therefore, I recommend that if you are at all interested in either legendary, you finish Tier 3 ASAP. Don’t wait, don’t put off for tomorrow or next week. Or, resign yourself to a certain amount of frustration.

To be clear: I have no problem with ANet’s plans to adjust the recipes to be consistent. I just hope they (and we) are ready for the reactions (reasonable or otherwise) to the change.

There’s a lot of builds…you can prioritize on individual damage or group damage. Well, 2… but you can go power or condi. etc.

I’m playing this because it’s fun.

The limitation is not due to the game, it’s due to people being so cuckoo about following the meta. I mean in raid, for example, a healing druid can be half condi and half heals, but according to the meta, this is not good. But if you’re a good player and ure not killing bosses to make a world record or something, it gets the job done the same way.

Honestly, I haven’t found this to be as big an issue as people make it out to be. As others have said, the “meta” is enforced by players upon players. In reality, many builds are viable. Unless everyone is sufficiently able to produce the optimal rotations while simultaneously handling the fight mechanics, the meta typically isn’t meta at all.

So, unless you’re raiding, doing tier 4 fractals with a dedicated group, or ranked PvP, the meta is simply not required. You can use it if you like, but only uptight idiots would give you crap about your build in content that simply isn’t that difficult to begin with. It’d be like someone demanding a fire mage in WoW switch to frost for a 5-man normal mode dungeon. It’s completely ridiculous.

Zohane.7208:

ThomasC.1056:

That’s a really simple counting task.

Just imagine a set of each and every possible builds :

• Now, just keep the “what works” subset (i.e. remove absurd things like DPS skills with condis stats).
• Now, keep the “What’s useful” subsubset ; because, unfortunately, in open PvE, you mostly need DPS…
• Now, check whether the builds in that subsubset are roughly as effective as each other, or one of those shines so bright in effectiveness that any other seems useless. This subsubsubset is now called “Meta”
• Now, in that subsubsubset, look for builds that also belong to the build set labeled “What I like to play”.

At this moment, are you left with that many options ?

If you feel the need to run the meta builds then you’re usually not left with many choices – technically meta is the best build for a given class/role so you should only be left with one build in that case. This is always true.

If, however, you’re not concerned with meta and are prepared for things to take a little longer, there’s a huge number of viable builds. Will they be good enough for everything? No of course not; for highest levels of play you will need meta but for anything else, your favourite build plus skill should be enough to let you proceed and hopefully have an enjoyable experience.

That may be true, but it’s too optimistic.
Of course, the meta set is a subset of viable. Issue is, with the current setup of both skills and game modes, there’s such an overwhelming gap between meta and viable that it gets frustrating. To be honest, I made all my characters with builds that I enjoy, but are sub-optimal because I truly don’t want to play something that doesn’t fit with my playstyle. Yet, in WvW or in other game modes, I truly feel like “Meh… I’m taking all the hard way when it’s actually that easy”.

Anyway, maybe meta is a world that shouldn’t be used that easy. For example, I consider that lots of classes have one potent pure damage build, and one potent condi build, so there’s not just one meta.

So, if I ask my question with a better wording, I’d ask : “Within the [i]”what works"[/i] subset, how many builds are there that both belong to the “What I like” set, and aren’t totally shadowed by optimal builds ?"

@StandtheWall, Outnumbered acts as an effect, not a buff. It has two main purposes, to indicate when you are the smallest force on a map, and to give a small incentive to play on that map. Using this to give a buff of any kind to a group would be very unfair.

I like the idea of having people turning into monkies if staying on siege too long lol

Stand The Wall.6987:

Fay.2357:

Stand The Wall.6987:

If said servers could handle the lowered caps?

How would you nay sayers nay my say for yay?

Wishing the servers could handle that load won’t make it so. The reality is that they can’t, so there’s no point in making threads complaining about the cap. The cap is first and foremost due to hardware limitations. Unless you’re hiding some new netcode and server stacks under your pillow, that’s not likely to change any time soon.

true enough. if it were possible, do you think it would be good for the game, if not, do you think it would be good for any rvr type game?

I think zergs would start stacking retal and you’d instakill yourself after the 2nd meteor dropped.

Lord of Rings.5371:

Stand The Wall.6987:

What inspired me to buy this game in the first place was seeing 5 elementalists fend off an entire zerg of about 10 times their size. Right now that is unimaginable, but believe me it happened. Why was this awesome? Precisely because it was chaotic, and CHAOS IS FUN.

Agree, totally.

Capping AoE at 3 or 5 makes sense for PvP. But for WvW, hitting 5 out 40 in a Zerg is like scratching the surface, not even sure if AoE did any damages. This basically creates the current situation where population over powers skills.

This could be easily changed by increasing AoE caps in WvW and balancing them separetlly from PvP.

What? no it does’t. AoEs could easily be completely uncapped in PvP and it wouldn’t matter because there would never be more than 5 people total to take damage from it. The caps only make sense for WvW.

As for raising the caps, I woudn’t be 100% opposed to implementing this into the outnumbered buff somehow. Give smaller groups a realistic change at not just being steamrolled by zergs. But other than that no kittening way. Its already easy enough for a zerg to eliminate a smaller group, and this would just make it even easier. OP talks about how 5 elementalists were able to stop a zerg. Impressive yes, but removing the cap also would work against those smaller groups, as now the larger group, which has access to a lot more AoE fields, can hit all of the people in the smaller field with all of their AoE fields.

My second youtube video with clips from the past month roaming with my new server and guild. Feedback is welcome, thanks for watching.

To clarify my position, even though I think it’s a bit foolish for someone to expect a refund from items they’ve owned for such a long period of time, I actually have zero objections to alternate uses for items, like Aerinndis and JustTrogdor have suggested.

If there were a mini salvage-o-matic you could get from MFing one of these with some other things or a new GH decoration requiring it, gem store sales would probably increase because of that change, even if only by a small amount. I just don’t think Anet should be held “accountable” (pun fully intended, wink nudge) because some people regret purchases they made a year ago.

+1 to alternate uses! Because why not?

I don’t feel that being able to recycle items such as the salvage-o-matic is really compensation just because I chose to buy multiples for the uber convenience. I just like the idea that stuff that may no longer be as relevant can be re-purposed or salvaged.

I imagine that maybe somewhere there is this huge virtual landfill full of stuff we can no longer use, lol. It just seems wasteful to have to chuck stuff into the landfill… Actually it would be fun to be able to go through it and look for stuff folk threw out by accident…

I’m actually leaning towards “attribute combinations”, with “combinations” working as a shorter version of it, but I still want to hear more opinions!

I’m a bit frustrated with the stylings of most medium armor. Soooo many kitten trenchcoats!
I wanted something more feminine so I created this look using:
Chest: Prowler Coat
Legs: Nightshade Leggings
Boots: Duelist Boots

The chest piece really works as a dress. Love it!
The leggings only work because I dyed them to look like her sylvari bark. Doesn’t pass close inspection but at first glance it does look like those are her legs.
The clunky shoes are horrible. Would love a medium foot piece that isn’t a boot and looks more feminine.

What do you guys do for a feminine look on females?

Dude! That’s not the new king. That’s the new street sweeper.

Permanently merging servers wouldn’t work because (1) complete dissolution of whatever server identity remains. It would be very unpopular (2) Temporary linkings allow ANet to control the population of a server and adjust it every couple months, preventing any one server from being stuck in the same tier for too long and helping weaken bandwagons.

Secondly, ‘every other week’? Dude, what? Relinkings are every 2 months, not 2 weeks.

And thirdly, that’s the whole point. Servers are linked in order to provide every server in a tier with even coverage.

Still, did you even read up on anything before coming to post here? We’ve been through this before.

Arcaedus.7290:

I think it would be interesting to have certain siege equipment have “mobility skills” attached such as giving flame rams a short burst of mobility similar to engi’s slick shoes or giving arrowcarts the ability to be wheeled 300 units in any direction on a long cd to avoid an aoe, or to move too a better position. Skills like this would have fairly long cooldowns so while you technically COULD move the siege over long distances, it wouldn’t be very viable. Siege shouldn’t be moveable cross-map, this is the entire point of siege golems.

I can see this primarily being used by trolls to push every ac in a keep to the edge of a wall for easy destruction.

I think it would be interesting to have certain siege equipment have “mobility skills” attached such as giving flame rams a short burst of mobility similar to engi’s slick shoes or giving arrowcarts the ability to be wheeled 300 units in any direction on a long cd to avoid an aoe, or to move too a better position. Skills like this would have fairly long cooldowns so while you technically COULD move the siege over long distances, it wouldn’t be very viable. Siege shouldn’t be moveable cross-map, this is the entire point of siege golems.

2 things ruin GW2 and WvW and are completely the fault of the balance team:

1- Over-cheesiness : Skill matters less than the cheesy build you are running. Having an unique build is a disadvantage instead of an advantage, even if you are an amazing player that can master your own build.

Causes: Power creeps, Condi creep, Boon creep, CC creep, terrible skill balance in regards to recharge time, casting time and armor type. Even heavy classes now do more damage than light classes. Why have a light class cast a meteor shower that barely does anything anymore unless enemies stand still when a heavy class can do 20k+ damage on a 3 second cooldown without such an horrendous casting time?

Abandoning the idea of having no trinity system was also a disaster.

2- Blob wins over skill: It doesn’t matter if you are the best player in the world, a group of 20 elites can no longer beat a group of 40 pugs pressing 1 repeatedly.

Causes: Balance changes and everything included in point number one.

There are without doubt far more self-declared PvE players playing GW2 than any other kind but at this stage of the life of the game posters on the WvW forum heavily favor WvW as a form of direct PvP even though that’s very clearly not what it was ever designed to be.

What’s more, as is plain from almost all the changes ever made to the mode since launch, there has never been any intention to move the mode in that direction. Almost everything that’s been added pushes in the opposite direction, from the increasing power of siege and the added importance of structures to the creation of EOTM itself.

As has been pointed out on another thread, if a Server is winning heavily and WvW can be played primarily as PvE (Ktraining NPCs and structures and rolling over any opposition at no risk) then almost every server will find it has map queues. Similarly, when we had Tournaments and there were rewards that PvE players coveted, large numbers of PvE players arrived to play WvW.

Those players don’t post on this forum much if at all. Almost certainly don’t even read it. They do, some of them, vote in the polls though, which is why the results of those polls so often go the opposite way posters here would expect and prefer.

On that basis I’d guess most respondents here will veer strongly towards WvW as PvP. Between the two extremes you posit I’d put the pointer very, very slightly back towards PvP from where it is now. The current balance suits me except that i did prefer it when we had to work to upgrade our structures ourselves. I’d drop the auto upgrades but i’d also bring back Siegerazer and upgrade him a bit.

Wherever you pitch it, though, almost no-one will admit to enjoying it. People here go on about how great it was three or four years ago but there were precious few saying that at the time. Everyone was complaining as bitterly as they are now :P

Persnally I prefer the pvp option, however I think when a server gets the outmanned buff the NPCs should kind of take over until the outmanned buff goes away. The pvp option wouldn’t be great because of the 24/7 match and population wouldn’t be enough. Basically like when a server gets the buff, Siegerazor or whatever takes to the field with like 10-15 other NPCs and starts taking objectives. Of course the NPCs would need rework to be able to put up a decent fight

If this actually gets adopted, then I demand space lasers and hoverboards! I mean, if we’re already blowing up wvw, why the hell not?

And, no, the current rifle/pistol skins and the magic carpet aren’t nearly close enough. In fact, throw in a time travelling Delorian while you’re at it, please.

shiri.4257:

Fix the lag first. helps when the rams actually can hit the gate.

Only way for Anet to adress that is reduce the number ofplaeyrs in WVW… while they keep increase server load with more aoe/cleaves/condis ticks.