Guild Wars 2

And simply do the balance right as it was supposed to be. Increase energy cost instead of slapping cd on everything. 5sec not a big deal huh? Nobody thought that it is also affected by chill, interrupts and still goes on cd if it fail to teleport? And that cast animation..whats the point of it with slapped cd on it? Can we also get it as ground targeted ability now?

Also. I demand nerf to infiltrators arrow in a form of 5cd. That thing is far more broken than our teleport with casttime which require a target

You could always wait until they release the new PvP leagues. Then you and your buddies could premade vs people absolutely new to the game and feel good about yourselves until you hit the high MMR bracket again and get destroyed.

It’s not really the damage, but CC. I’m fine with them doing a lot of burst damage, but invisible wall with Elite trap and CC on every trap due to adept trait and CC on Longbow and CC on Hammer if they run this. Combination of all these mean that you’re pretty much sitting duck and take that damage you’d avoid.

This I fully all agree with. I was thinking monkey form staff would be pretty epic and appropriate.
Drunken staff maybe? Hm.
I guess my point is that there are some great forms in gungfu which employ staff and have some of the same whirls.
I would like to see some more martial feeling in the new physical skills and staff, yes. Though Vault feels great!

: Crane staff

: Monkey staff

: Drunken staff

There are easily found videos of both gungfu and taichi forms for Mantis, Tiger, Seven Star sets which might help smooth out animations

Make it a 10% reward track bonus that will stack with other modifiers when you click on the [change status] ready button before the time runs out. If you don’t click it, you lose out on the bonus.

Please make this happen.

Devata.6589:

Interesting read. With the NPE Anet did try to hold people because they noticed many did leave even before getting to 80, but in order to do that they made it even more easy. When you read this, the problem might have been that is was already too easy.

Personally I think a mix of traditional quest (with fun interesting rewards and a little lore around them you learn about in the quest) and events would also have been better instead of purely the events, and no PoI. Now leveling for a new player soon becomes running from PoI, to Waypoint, to hearth to hero thingy. If then the encounters that you have in-between are also easy and the rewards are functional but not very interesting then it’s not strange many people might get bored before getting to lvl 80.

I remember leveling my first character was a lot of fun with all the new players running around, but the alts weren’t that much fun so I do understand the problems he runs into. Let’s hope HoT will add the challenge many people are looking for.

they kinda messed it up by putting the personal story in 10 level blocks, especially having the first story start at level 10. The personal story was kind of the thing that gives you a purpose and guides you through the game, (until you no longer care, at which point you know what you want to do in game and have your own goals)
They really dropped the ball on that in the NPE imo, it was one of the most detrimental changes.
They actually start the game with a straight up level grind, with no other obvious purpose. Who thought that was a good idea?

phys.7689:

looks like Most major info is out now.
Is hot a good price to value?

lets run down the information objectively;

• 1) 4 new PVE maps
  • some have 3 levels, some dont
• 2) 8 new specializations
  • specialisations represent a new traitline/skills/utilities/weapon they offer a new playstyle for each class
• 3) one new class, the revenant, and 1 specialization for it
• 4) new items
  • 2 new armor sets
  • 5 new weapon sets
  • 3 new legendary weapons
  • 60 new skins/minis etc
• 5)New progression: Masteries
  • gain experience to unlock Area specific abilities and buffs/debuffs
• 6) Guild halls
  • large gathering places for your guild to gather
  • can set up battles
  • can invite others
  • add decorations, 175 decorations will exist
• 7) living story continues
  • the next season in the ongoing story of GW2.
• 8)Raids
  • 3 raid wings released over the course of first month or so
  • 1st raid wing has 3 bosses

my editorial opinion?
the content is a bit light for a full 50 dollar purchase.
looks to have a value of around 25-40 dollars to me.

If you consider it as a subscription price until next expansion, it may be a good deal, but we dont really have any strong suggestions of what that entails within the scope of heart of thorns.
could be a ton of content people want or it could be mostly the living story.

is ir worth it for me?
im unsure, i may get it, but it doesnt feel like the right price.

Im not excited about the price in comparison to content, but i may purchase it warily, A sort of, ok, ill give it a shot, but if i dont like what i see, I’m done.
I may just chill, and keep my game core, playing it whenever the mood strikes me.

Uhh thats because Wow has never been dumb enough to give everything away for free. I mean seriously. I paid money for this game at release, and I never regretted doing that till today. I did think the free core game with pre-order was a little irritating, but whatever. I don’t care about the F2P. What I care about is that I have to pay the same $50 to get the upgrades for HoT that someone else pays when they never bought the game to start. Yeah WoW has battle chests, but guess what. They pay for the game. I think none of us would have an issue with it if either we paid an upgrade fee, or if the new players were paying some core price, even 20 bucks. But to have a situation where I have to pay $120 for GW2+HoT simply because I have supported GW2 from day one is Bs. And they walk in, never having given a cent to Anet and they get the same thing for $50. If they add in the LS content they pay about $75. I still paid out $120 for the base game and the expansion. I, for the first time, regret doing that.

Ayrilana.1396:

This issue doesn’t matter anymore since the entire core game is free to play.

Not retroactively.
So yes, veterans will have paid for the core game + the expansion, whereas new players will only pay for the expansion. Veterans paid for all the development during those 3 years by buying the core game + buying gems. But somehow, only new players get a preferential treatment.

Galen Grey.4709:

Thing is I think people are not looking at this from Anet shoes. What they’re asking from us pales in comparison to what we asked of them. Did you stop and think what giving away that free character slot means to Arenanet ? I bet they lost 100s of 1000s if not millions because of that!

think about it for a second.
How many people needed a character slot and though okey I have to pay $10 extra for sure. For $15 more I can get all the nifty stuff in the deluxe version. okey lets go for it. But now that they get the character slot for free? nahh I dont need the character slot and $25 for the rest of the stuff its too much… $25 lost there.

Obviously there are the people who intended to buy the $10 character slot but now they no longer have to etc..

It adds up quickly. To loose $1M it only takes 40k people who decided since now they get a free character slot they no longer need to go with the deluxe version.

That has repercussions even for us. Anet have one of the largest if not the largest MMO development team in the industry. They have to justify that with a strong performance. If They are loosing millions to make us happy is it really that big of a deal they’re asking us to buy up to 1 day early? Doing that we give them some ammunication.

Hey NCSoft bosses, yeah well we didnt a bit worst then what had projected (due to loosing revenue from slots / deluxe version) but hey look at the numbers.. Pre-Purchasing exceeded expectation So while we didnt hit the numbers we at least confirmed we have a loyal following who are likely to buy our next expansion etc..

Is that really an unfair thing to ask in return for millions?

being in business means coming up with workable products, the reason they offered char slots, was because the money they looked like they were going to lose, was not equalling the money in the initial situation.
heres the real deal.
If they make a very good product, they will make enough money to be a front runner in the company. GW2 sold like 3 million copies in the first month. Some good products struggle due to poor marketing, bad luck, or just people being unaware. GW2 is not one of those. They have hit 3 million users, if not closer 4-5 million by now. If the product is good they will make more than enough money.

If you look at anets earnings, sales, business model, and products, you realize charachter slots with a 50 dollar purchase are extremely profitable.

keep in mind they had a highly successful release, and that cost 60 dollars and had 5 charachter slots. It also was a bigger product, had 5 years of development to recoup, and tons of new tech. This is an expansion, a fairly small one, using pre existing engine, resources, and development (one of the main advantages of expansions) 50 dollars giving players one slot (which has no development cost, inventory cost, distribution cost, man power cost) is not some sort of holding the company for ransom.

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I guess ArenaNet wasn’t ‘nice’ to begin with, as the core game came with 8 Professions and only 5 Character slots; something I remember from Guild Wars, as well.

Still, everyone has their own idea of what they are entitled to.

Good luck.

but you could chose any of those proffesions. If you have full char slots now, you cant choose revenant.

basically you didnt buy any of the boxes without the ability to access any job that was added in that game.

Unless you want to access more then 4 professions in Prophecies you mean? If you wanted to try them all what then? No other option then deleting one or forking $20. Here at least you have other less drastic options like if you’re going to buy anyway why not buy a day early?

and for this expansion, you dont even have that option if your char is full.

Many people wont buy a day early, beacuse many people may not even be aware of the game. Many others dont believe in giving people money for something before it is given to them.
Regardless in terms of the actual value of the game, and what players should be given in the base box, prepurchase bonus solves nothing.

lets fast forward to the day after release. Someone wants to buy the game. He says, its crappy that i have to delete my charachter or pay 10 bucks before i can even try out revenant. Do you tell him his complaints and worry is groundless, because he should go back in time and buy it 2 days ago?

They shut a lot of people up, by offering charachter slot as a prepurchase bonus (the people were complaining about the base game not the prepurchase bonus) but that doesnt actually solve the problem.

Its like if someone is selling a car with no seat, people complain, and he says everyone who buys this car before it comes out on the 5th gets a free seat.

he has not solved the problem at all. People who prepurchase may no longer care/make a big deal about it, but the problem they had with the product still exists. The product they are offering has not improved, merely their prepurchase bonus. Everyone who buys after the 5th still has a problem.

Basically they are giving veterans a much worse product unless they buy ahead of time. AND keep in mind their return system (from what we ve seen in the past) basically means you have to delete your account.
If someone buys the game the day after it comes out, realizes they have to delete one of their charachters and wants their money back, they likely have to delete their whole account. This is a purchase you really should make with all the information, and even reviews, because its lilkely that you will not be able to refund just the expansion, and yet they are strongly encouraging players to leap before they look.

Prepurchase bonuses should be extra uneeded things, not things basic to experiencing the content of the game.

Bojoo.7819:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Staff-holding-animation/first#post5429119

Monkey king animation, it’s already in game and its perfect.

Exactly —> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGZmauye5Is

The monkey animation is awesome!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Staff-holding-animation/first#post5429119

Monkey king animation, it’s already in game and its perfect.

It isn’t just on staff. Many of the new animations are seriously lacking. I am generally happy with the functionality of most everything they have presented so far, but several animations are laughably poor.

The Tempest had such potential in terms of thematic possibilities and while I do have some concerns about the mechanics, the animations of these skills is a total face plant.

The thief staff 5 could have done an interesting VAULT as the skill is named, but they chose to have the character do a superman leap.

Thief staff 3 doesn’t make any sense from a physical point of view (you are immediately leaping away in an opposite direction as you strike your foe, there is no follow through, thus this strike would be exceedingly ineffective from a realism standpoint).

The fist flurry could have been an interesting martial arts combo, instead they just alternate left-right punches.

Bound has you do a backflip when travelling forwards… how does this make sense??

I realize that this is beta, and I don’t want to be overly critical — i love this game — I just want more polish on these abilities. It is the little things that make great games. The functionality seems perfectly fine to me in 99% of the instances of new content. It seems fun. It just doesn’t LOOK fun. Skill animations are your presentation for the vast majority of content in an MMO and it is a shame that sub-par work has slipped into an otherwise AAA title.

maddoctor.2738:

Silicato.4603:

I agree that numbers of maps is not equal to quality or entertainment of the expansion.

However i personally love exploring. And if i have 4 maps, there is no doubt that i will explore less that if i had 10.

4 maps are lacking on exploration entertainment, i will devoure that quick. Even the areas of the map blocked by masteries.
But lets wait, the 25% of the central lair of verdant brink (what we could test on BWE1) is really good imo, so maybe 4 maps is enough, time will tell.

I just preferred 10 rather than 4, thought.

From how I understand it HoT maps will be great for explorers because you won’t be able to explore the map on your first try. You have to move on, gather more mastery points, then come back later to explore parts you couldn’t reach before. Also, what does the number of maps has to do with how good it will be to explore? Size of maps, multiple layers, mastery requirements and others are what is important for exploring the new maps, their number isn’t.

part of the limitations of map design is unique resources. Essentially loading times, ram etc, which is why having one huge map with no loading screens usually involves some hidden loading areas.
basically the variation per map is limited.

then you have the fact that some types of level design require space to achieve their goal.

also based on what has been said in this thread, it doesnt sound like all the maps will be 3 zones, and some of the upper and lower areas have a fraction of the explorable area.

fact is that while 3 dense 3 level zones can have more content than 9 barren zones. 9 realized ones can have more content than 3 dense zones as well. And variation wise, 9 zones can mechanically have greater variation than 3 dense zones can have due to loading assets.

Vayne.8563:

IIvIIozzie.9250:

Torolan.5816:

stuff

You fail to understand your opposition’s argument. Southsun wasn’t a fail because the content was too hard, it was a fail because the content was buggy, laggy, boring and unrewarding. While no longer buggy and laggy as it used to be, Anet put no QoL into the zone, they left it to rot. Raising the HP on enemy mobs to make it more “difficult” is just lazy on the part of the developers. They claim to have challenging content in the expansion, we’ll see. If their recent updates are any indication for what’s in store many players will be disappointed, myself included.

In my opinion, people didn’t start complaining about the content delivery system until Anet was pestered into making an expansion from the stuff they were working on for the Living World. Anet had to change gears and hold the content that would have been delivered more regularly for content that will have to come in an expansion. The most common complaint I heard about content from LS Season 1 was that it was coming too fast.

You guys have a really short memory apparently.

the balance in delivery is all wrong.
expansion is not supposed to be opposed to version updates its supposed to be in conjunction.

heres how most handle it well

new content monthly
major content trimonthly
expansion every 1-2 years (totally new plotlines, major character additions, new proffesions, new areas to explore)

anet is like 2 week pace stop for a month 2 week pace stop for 2 months, 2 week pace stop for 3 months 2 week pace stop for 8 months
expansion made from living story bits.

their release, pacing and work flow isnt a good pattern for a service

I want my Rev to hold his staff like the “Endless Monkey King Tonic” does! It just looks like he’s about to crack one off on someone’s head!

Abjured is a team playing to win. I think one of the biggest things about them was they were comfortable modifying builds to suit their opponents. We saw Chaith move from a Glass build to a tanky Soldiers build and there were also appearances of D/F ele as opposed to D/D.

Comp wise, oRNG was always at a disadvantage. Warrior is weak right now, and double Guardian is not ideal. Burn guardian in particular is weak vs Elementalist, Necro, and Thief. I have no idea why the casters were going on about it being a strong point for oRNG because it could kill Chaith. It’s a 1v1 build that was weak vs 4 members of the other team in 1v1. We even saw it lose 1v1 to Zan’s soldier Engineer earlier. ROM felt like he was constantly on the run for his life and was rarely a strong positive for his team. His build seemed a bit too ham, especially vs a hybrid sustain comp like the Abjured. oRNG had a comp well suited to play vs the EU meta but it seems like they put no thought at all into modifying it versus a completely different playstyle like Abjured’s.

Temple being a map also increased Abjured’s chances by a LOT. People saying that Abjured is carried by double Ele are absolutely correct: without the absurd amount of sustain, dps and support that an ele brings, their comp starts to fall apart. Since their inception they have been based around using Ele to create a 3 point push strat where they have good chances in all 1v1s and winning 2v2 matchups by pairing an ele with a necro or engineer. Yes, we saw them try playing a team fighting comp with DPS guardian and power necro for a few months, but we also never saw this comp vs WTS tier teams.

In the end, did Abjured deserve to win? I’d say so. Yes, double elementalist is extremely strong, but they also bring a necromancer and an engineer running unique builds, both of which are considered less meta than say, shatter mesmer. Toker was clearly the best thief in the tournament. I felt like their victory was also partially due to their willingness to adapt, and the enemy’s complete unwillingness to change comps or playstyles, and that’s also part of the game.

Now that abjured has secured their win can we fix cele ele?

I sincerely hope that the outfit is properly fixed soon. I paid for a slim-looking GW1 monk outfit, not a matronly outfit that suddenly gives all of my characters thunder thighs and eats the top of my legs… Yes, it originally had some minor clipping issues on my characters, but it didn’t bother me as much as the new look does. Currently I really wish I hadn’t bought the outfit, and I’ll be very hesitant to buy any others in the future.

varas.5621:

Hi Arken, thanks for making the video. I think shatter mes and burn guard both have issues, but the beginning of the video is mostly “target golem balancing” involving unrealistic scenarios. I know most people probably won’t watch the entire video, but I’d advise everyone to at least watch the duels starting ~41:20, as they give a better picture of how the classes actually stand.

1. Zerker can be used to force a dodge or be forced to take 5k+ damage.

2. While this isn’t always going to happen, if you are doing your job as a roamer to +1 fights, it isn’t too hard to get a interrupt proc before you go in with mirror blade. Besides, even if I don’t get a power block proc, confounding will still stun them for the entire mirror blade burst.

3. My mirror blade bursts are basically instant. By the time you can react to the stun you have already taken the full burst.

4/5: 100% agree

6. Fair enough. I would probably take decoy away for portal, but the build I was using was my pre patch build that I always used.

7. I wouldn’t say they are pretty risky in the opener because you have blurred frenzy/prestige to fall back on. If you don’t have those, then yes, it is all or nothing.

8. I am still testing if mara or zerk is better. Will just require more time with each, although I believe mara is slightly better.

9. Izerker doesn’t really give away a burst, although I should have mixed it up more like I usually do instead of always opening with it . I could use izerker and then just burst out of stealth 4-5 seconds later. That’s the beautiful thing about having an instant stun; I can burst whenever I want. I do think both bursts are too high though.

10. I hate instant cast bursts. Agree.

Glad you enjoyed the video btw!

If you’re talking about power shatter with the power block trait:

1)Trait changes actually didn’t affect shatter damage much; however, the amulet changes certainly did (this system definitely needs a rework. Amulet+ chosen gem seems like a better idea than the status quo). What changed is that, like other classes, mesmer now has access to tools that were previously unattainable in a shatter build, like confounding suggestions.

2) You are probably going to kill him using burning, unless he is using the cleansing mantra and/or specs into the inspiration tree. If he’s using the cleansing mantra, he’s giving up either mantra of distraction, blink or decoy. The loss of the distraction mantra reduces his ability to interrupt you at range and stun you with confounding suggestions. The loss of any of the other two drastically lowers his survivability. Most mesmers atm don’t run the cleansing mantra, so make sure your burning skills hit. Burning is pretty ridiculous atm anyway; a few stacks should kill him quickly if he can’t cleanse it. For the mesmer burst to really hurt, he has to be in melee range, and that’s where your PBAOE condi spam comes in handy.

3) The key to surviving is avoiding the shatter. Three ways the mesmer can set this up (4 if he’s using sword).
a) Blink +mirror blade. If he has blink off cd and you see him start the mirror blade animation from range, either dodge or just walk forward with swiftness at the last second before he blinks (needs some practice and luck on where the mesmer actually blinked to).

b) Confounding suggestions stun+ mind wrack. Honestly pretty hard to avoid, if he has mantra of distraction. All about reflexes here; either teleport away or make sure you get protection when this hits. You need to survive the 2 charges of the distraction mantra and punish the mesmer when he tries to recharge it.

c) Stealth+ mirror blade. Yea yea, stealth in gw2 is pretty screwed up. When he stealths, try to run around in an unpredictable manner, doing frequent direction changes, preferably while running around something that allows you to get out of los. Or you can judge the distance he has to run to you and dodge at the last moment.

d) Sword 3+ leap. Obvious animation. Dodge/kill the clone. Note that the clone leaps twice, so you may want to wait till the second leap to dodge.

His interrupts hurt, though power block damage has been nerfed already (so much for waiting for the scene to settle a bit). Watch out when you are casting channeled skills in particular. Don’t use ether feast against a mesmer if you are doing so.

Hope this helped.

Ithilwen.1529:

Burst isn’t over the top. It’s similar to that of other classes. The other classes simply aren’t used to a Mesmer actually being able to survive and land the burst.

Again, that’s a skill issue the other classes need to deal with. They need to learn some defensive skills.

Do you main a mesmer?

Your out of your mind if you think your keeping this ridiculous daze stun lock shatter stealth spec you got going on right now.

Burst is over the top for the new fresh air s/d s/f meta. Burst is over the top for mesmer.

The damage is too high. Ele fire line is too strong with perma blinds. Obsidian flesh is way too strong. I would make it either immune to condis or direct damage but not both. To have a weapon skill better than endure pain is pretty ridiculous.

Mesmers have too high damage and too high survivability. Something needs to give.

To me, the other 6 classes seem reasonable.