Guild Wars 2

I’m against the idea of disabling skills in town. As a matter of fact, it is convenient being able to use skills in town. Portals, swiftness, blinks etc all make getting around places easier.

If your PC is having issues handling huge cluster of skill effects, then I can see you’ll have troubles in open world situations as well. All open world events like World bosses, WvW, Silverwastes consists of large collection of players spamming numerous skills and cluster the screen with particle effects. A minimal/disable special effects option would certainly be useful in these situations but could also hugely affect gameplay where you’re unable to see ground target that isn’t marked with AoE circles.

I can see the annoyance that some people might intentionally skill spam within your proximity but unless there’s like e.g. 5 ele using tornado at once, it shouldn’t be any worse than the open world fights where there’s 10x more people doing that all at once. Perhaps you could turn down some of your graphics setting to minimum, if it’s not already set.

Oh how I hate this. Even worse is when the enemy team goes lord first and your team thinks it’s a good idea to fight the people hitting the gates (and dying) rather than capture free points. In the same time it takes them to fight them off, could have already triple capped and ticked to 100+ points.

So that’s how that Necro had Lich form up almost every team fight during one of my matches a while back. Thought it was some cooldown reset hack, turns out to be even simpler exploit.

maddoctor.2738:

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature so you don’t leave PVP games in progress.

The match definitely ended though. I’ve got rewards, score was 500s for one team and players were leaving and still got ported back in.

I’ve experienced this. Seems to only started occurring very recently.

That shows nothing but a prolonged battle in which you failed to kill the guardian. Over time that’s the TOTAL amount of burning damage you took, should you prolong the fight longer, obviously the burning damage would even be higher.

Novuake.2691:

Akikaze.1307:

Novuake.2691:

When i LET him kill me. Same goes for turret Engi’s. KEK, you walked right into that one.

Lies. The Engi didn’t kill you, the turrets did.

No, since the AI in this game is terrible and the turrets exceedingly predictable. Shhh mate, your just making it worse on yourself.

Excuses, you’re full of them. Least know difference between you’re and your.

Novuake.2691:

When i LET him kill me. Same goes for turret Engi’s. KEK, you walked right into that one.

Lies. The Engi didn’t kill you, the turrets did.

Shiyo.3578:

How does stunbreak counter dps guardian burst? I can dodge every actual skill they use but if they hit me with a few auto-attacks I take 10k+ burn damage and end up dying purely from autos while they block/invul/heal EVERYTHING I do.

DPS guardian is sleeper overpowered.

They have to waste their survival skills for a full combo. If you get caught off guard and 50% HP, then they’ll kill you. However if you survived through it, the Medi Guardian would be susceptible to conditions, bursts and cc, causing them to burn through their virtues/heal/invul to survive.

Here are some of the skills they use for full burst initiation.
Focus 5 – 45sec cd (a block survival skill).
Judge’s intervention – 36sec cd (stunbreak and blink used, also a heal).
Smite conditions – 16sec cd (1 condi cleanse, also a heal).
DPS skill – GS 10sec, sword 15sec, or Hammer 5sec cd.
Sometimes even F3 Virtue (90sec cd) if their Aegis isn’t up for ‘unscathed contender’ trait.

If they expended those skills, they’re down 2 heals, and 2 blocks. Now you have a window opportunity to counter burst while they buy time through invul/heal for cooldowns and mostly only auto attacking you. Their passive burning is every 5 attacks and does around 500, and activated burning would do 2k at most considering Medi guards don’t have high condition damage.

If you have a mesmer, save Moa for Lich Form. If you have a necromancer, Plague form and spam the blind. Same cooldown durations, both serves as a direct counter.

Otherwise, strafing, line of sight, blinds, till it ends. Even if it means abandoning the node, losing the cap is better than getting team wiped by stacking as it pierces.

The only armour pieces that grant armour values inside Heart of the Mist are: Chest, Pants and Shoes. All the previous “pvp gears” are now skins deposited into your wardrobe. Gear stats from armour doesn’t take effect in the PvP zone. Stats is determined by amulets selected in the PvP build panel.

Tao.5096:

Those Turret engi QQthreads remind me of ol’ AION and it’s drama for years regarding Fear skills from Spiritmaster class.
No one cared that Sorcerer was one shotting everyone in pvp, no one cared that gladiator was knocking down everyone permanently even through “stability”. No one cared about Rangers 3shot KO anyone in pvp.
There was that one thing that everyone focused on, because other things were unimportant and normal.

Granted that Spiritmaster’s fear did break the game’s balance and only recently toned down. Fear in AION is a 8-10second lockdown, a low cooldown AoE Moa without dodges /escapes. It cannot be avoided by getting out of range or through “stability”.
Rangers were powerful but they always get negligible balances and only recently resurfaced as viable. And only penguins who hurdle together die to Gladiator’s AoEs.
Sorcerers were ridiculous powerful and were often the 2nd go to “pls nerf” complaints. Glacial Shard builds is comparable to a GW2 Power Ranger, 1 trick pony.

As for GW2, there is a contradiction in the game’s battle elements. It promotes active gameplay like dodges, aoe circles, utilizing combo fields. On the other hand, there is also unusual high element of passive AI assisted things like Pets, Turrets, Spirit weapons, Thief clones, Minions and Phantasms.

Generally you want to target the player first in PvP, minions/phantasms often die to cleave without trying but having to prioritise the Turret AI as higher threat than the Engi throws people off.

Novuake.2691:

What I find funny is that bunker guards are a lot harder to kill, yet no complaints? Hmmmm….

When was the last time a bunker guardian killed you (without his team assisting)?

Yes, there are some people that struggle to find a decent way to counter Engi. I agree that we don’t need to hold their hands through every single attempt at fighting the builds. However I don’t think that’s the issue.

For its area denial effectiveness, there is a rather limited approach to fighting the class. Killing the Turret is also situational on your builds. When you direct your attention to try taking out the Rocket Turret from range first, it’s the right approach but also an approach that costs time. That’s where effectiveness comes in, an Engineer could leave their turrets on point and run off chasing the white rabbit, you come to decap and have to spend 4seconds killing and 4seconds decapping. That is 8 seconds compared to any other situation already decapped 4seconds into the cap. Total 8points gained by Engi by doing nothing.

If the turrets didn’t activate while the Engineer was outside its proximity, then its passive effectiveness is countered. Minions follow Necromancers around, Pets follow Rangers around, Clones/Phantasm stop/vanish if Mesmer overrides/loses target/too far away, there’s a trend.

What troubles me deeply is that how easy they’re to play. I’ve mentioned this before in another thread. I have a friend who made a Engi, without prior knowledge of what the skills does at all, simply copying the build online. He has only previously played Thief so not even familiar with Bunker playstyles. Yet he has managed to solo secure a node vsing multiple enemies. Considering it was his day1 on the class and against pugs, both players are bad, yet my friend on his Engi won on multiple encounters.

Who needs to L2P in that situation? The ones who are semi familiar with the class went unprepared against the Engi or the Engi who have yet to learn the class. If the answer is both, then it should had been an even matchup, not one sided.

Apparently having a civil discussion about Turret Engineers is not allowed. All we get is the usual “L2P” responses from the Engi players. Sometimes I wonder how the GW2 community was voted the nicest? It feels the same as any other mmorpg.

Just a reminder to people that with balances, it doesn’t always have to be negatives. Toning down one aspect could lead to another aspect to be boosted to compensate. We’re not even dwelling onto the power level. Simply trying to make the build more interactive than reactive, isn’t that the point of the game?

Rezzet.3614:

its not engineer fault you play berserker and die due to not having defenses or clearing out said turrets

By your logic,
Power builds: Too squishy to take out the Turrets due to lack of defenses.
Condition builds: Unable to damage the turrets at all.
Support/Bunker builds: Too low damage to take out the turrets quickly.

Edit: More power to the Cele meta, they can do all of the above =o

Wolfey.3407:

What do you have in mind for tuning them down Kuzuryu?

mbh.8301:

What if the turrets didn`t attack if the engi wasn`t within a certain radius?

As mentioned in another thread.

Look at DotA2 and how they handle summons. All summons are player controlled, they’re only as useful as the player. That’s the proper way to move away from dependency on AI to fight for you……..Engi’s Turrets should only attack if Engi is in close proximity.

The build is designed to bunker anyways, so they should be always close to the turrets.

ronpierce.2760:

Also, AI can be great for a game. Ai builds are among the most unique, and not just “the best burst build with affective clutch defenses”. Look at AI builds in other games like a Engineers in TF2 and so on. They have a unique way to play and diversify the battle field. They typically fall under the “area denial” category. It’s a perfectly valid gameplay style to have pets and focus on control to allow them to be effective and many see the appeal. Because you can’t doesn’t mean everyone else has to suffer.

That’s the problem with AI in GW2. Players become dependable on the AI to play, thus having a harder time to expand on individual skill. There are simply too many AI builds/variant in this game. Guardian/Necromancer/Engineers/Ranger/Mesmer, that’s like 5/8 classes, and 4/5 of those can be viable builds. This doesn’t promote new player to expand beyond the horizons, it is actually making them lazier knowing those builds can obtain easy victory.

Look at DotA2 and how they handle summons. All summons are player controlled, they’re only as useful as the player. That’s the proper way to move away from dependency on AI to fight for you. This can difficult to be transferred over to GW2 but not impossible with a revamp on the AI coding. Ranger’s pet could default to passive until F1 is pressed and would retreat once Ranger is certain distance away. Engi’s Turrets should also follow this aspect to only attack if Engi is in close proximity. Slight changes like this would encourage interaction than click and watch.

Aeolus.3615:

I still find gw2 craft the worst crafting of all mmo’s ive played.

The crafting discovery process is quite ambiguous/bad but generally better than most mmorpgs. Least in GW2 you can’t fail a craft and end up farming all the materials again.

I have to agree with OP on the ugly armour skins. It shouldn’t be compared to the likes of WoW, since that’s another topic. From a stand alone perspective, GW2 may have a large variety of armour skins BUT majority of them is designed upon repeated themes.

For female characters, these are all I see when trying to find a good look.
Light: Filled with Bikini + Skirt, lack of “elegant/casual” designs.
Medium: Trench coats everywhere, and those hideous pants/jeans.
Heavy: Chainmail + Battle skirt

Here’s some matching in terms of play style similarities aligning with AION:
Thief – Assassin:

• In both games, they’re the main stealth class.
• Have the fastest auto attack chain with daggers(?).
• Fast paced in gameplay, often moving around blinking in for kill and moving out.

Necromancer – Spiritmaster:

• One word to describe them both, “fear”.
• Necro can be built to be condition heavy, similar to SM’s main source of damage were DoTs.
• Both can have some form of summons/minions.
• Both games give the class a weak form of life leeching skills…

Ranger – Ranger

• Self explanatory. Pew pew.

Guardian – Templar:

• Can be spec to deal burst damage with semi lengthy cooldown for its full combo.
• Can be spec to provide party support and essentially a “tanker/bunker”.
• (Some seem to misunderstand when people mention the word ‘tanker’ as gw2 emphasis more on holding positions than absorbing damage).

Warrior – Gladiator:

• Between both games, they’re actually not similar for gameplay.
• Glads would be AoE burst heavy but Warrior is mainly single target spikes or conditions.
• Though they share a common ground where it is easy to learn as a starting out class.

The remaining other 3 generally doesn’t match AION. Though I don’t play LoL, I can match them to similar heros in DOTA.
Elementalist -> Invoker. A lot of keybind pushing to utilize a range of different spells.
Mesmer -> An illusion based carry. Summons clones to confuse enemy and burst damage.
Engineer -> Techies/Clockwerk/Tinker all in one.

You could still have an unique weapon for the individual profession, Warhorn for example can only be used by 3/8, making it 1/8 wouldn’t make much difference for the weapon as gear acquisition (trades/economy) is a minor issue. AION for example have Polearms unique to Gladiators and Cannons unique to Gunslingers, yet the demand for the weapon is still relatively popular because of the class’ popularity.

The difference is that in GW2, the skills are bound to the weapons and not the class/profession. You can’t swap to a different weapon set and expect to keep the same skills. In most other MMORPGs, you get specific skills based on your class, irrelevant of what weapon you equip. Only limit is that certain skills need certain weapons to function, eg a Shield block would need a Shield.

However GW2 locks the skills to weapon you use, that’s when the problem arises. There’s going to be either a bloat of additional weapons that’s potentially unused or it’ll help with the current narrow build diversity. Either way, you’re already locked out of specific weapon types the moment you created a character, adding unique weapon types might even promote that lesser played profession.

I don’t mind A-net’s approach to adding new professions/weapons. Giving existing ingame weapons alone is enough to create new playstyle as it’s essentially giving every class new skills. (If only we knew what each specialistion are, more fuel for the hype train please.)

Benjamin.7893:

SobeSoul.6910:

kodesh.2851:

it’s not my style but that doesn’t mean it should be removed…

Learn and adapt. Turret engis have their weaknesses like anything else. If they leave turrets at other points they are gimping themselves quite a bit in whatever pt they are actually fighting at.

They should be removed. Just not for the reason stated. AI builds lead to bad and lazy players. Anet really shouldn’t be encouraging that by leaving those builds in game with them being so viable.

Not really they just do in this game, Meepo and Brood for example are probably some of the more difficult heroes.

All AI (pets, minions, turrets, etc) need to be micro managed, with illusions perhaps being an exception. They don’t want to do this for the casual players, but even for those it should feel like an achievement if they master it. And even if they don’t it’s not like you need to master anything to succeed in pve, which a part from top fractals (AI isn’t used here anyways) is easy.

Off topic: Broodmother isn’t exactly a hard hero, just dont feed spiderlings. If want micro intensive, along with Meepo, Chen or Brewmaster would be a better example.

It isn’t random, it is preset. Mesmer/Necro PvP daily appear only during the first 2 weeks of the monthly reset. All other times, it rotates between the other classes. Whoever set up the daily certainly forgot to add Mesmer/Necros into the rotations for the latter portion of the month. Guardian and Engineers appear to be the most common daily appearing least twice a week.

Warrior is quite a popular class and certainly doesn’t appear as often if it uses player pool for the daily.

Unranked 500 – 200s
Time: Past 7 games, around 1:00pm to 2:25pm GMT+11
Reason: I was bad, teammate was bad, people DC, people AFK on top of nodes.

It’s not whether the build is overpowered. The proper question is how rewarding the build is compared to the skill/effort needed. All professions in the game are OP in their own rights, and furthermore, all of which have a counter to that certain build spec.

It is inappropriate to say that Turret Engi cannot be countered. The effort needed to counter them is the bigger problem. From the replies thus far, the consensus is to:
*Burst down the Engi in 2vs1
*Destroy their damage turret
*Leave the Engi alone while you contest other points

Lets put these strategy into gameplay scenarios then. Looking at those counters, it raises other issues.
*Outnumbering the Engi on a node means you’re cutting player resource from other fights on the map. Potentially losing those caps and time wasted. Every second spent fighting the Engi when he/she is on node is a point gained by enemy.
*Only certain skills/weapons can take out the turrets. Compared to other “summons” in the game, turrets are immune to condi/crit. The top 2 roamers, Thieves and Mesmers, will have trouble trying to decap even a free node with just Turrets on it. Outranging the Turret also means time spent than otherwise decapping, potentially enabling enemy to rotate to hold the cap.
*Leaving the Engi alone is possibly the best choice. However you have to ensure that your team is focused on securing the other 2 nodes and actually win those caps. 1 Engi on Far, while one teammate is randomly at home, and 4vs4 contesting mid means you gain nothing in number advantage (Quite normal in solo queue games where teammates isn’t always on same page).

5th Feb Game Ended ~8:50pm GMT+11
Ranked: 3 Rangers stacked on enemy teams across 2 consecutive matches.
It was NOT ranger pvp daily. (The daily was Engi/Guardian).

Aidan Savage.2078:

Akikaze.1307:

I would assume the problem lies to the racial locking of specific features to that character. This would include your bounded racial elite/utility skills, home instance, culture armour and personal story. These things will inevitably bug the transition when shifting a character from one race to another. To avoid such incidents would mean the resetting of armour remodels, soulbound armour, entire personal story progression, and/or geodata location bounds.

Other games may allow the transition between races simply because they have less of racial bound features. Changing appearance is usually the easiest part of the race change transition.

-Racial skills would simply be ‘forgotten’ in the process
-Home instance has no bearing on race (a norn can use a sylvari home district, etc)
-Unequip armor as a requirement for item/service use
-Personal story is not an issue if item/service is restricted to use only if no PS completion, or not currently in a race specific chapter of the personal story (final PS mission for example)

It’s more an issue of the processes behind it.

The process behind it could sometimes be as simple as a command to set the character’s race.

In AION, there were 2 enemy race factions of Asmodians and Elyos, with a command you could go changing between them. It was only if you had game master access, not a service for the game due to population balance issues.

However that’s when the problem occurs, you would get double stacked quests for both races (could happen to personal story), your character’s appearance might be slightly off (appearance settings default to the other race’s equivalent which might not exist) and actually obtain the racial locked skills for both races.

There are two things that bugs me if Thief’s specialisation were to become Snipers (aka getting a Rifle).

Firstly, it’ll sound weird as a logical progression. Assassin -> Sniper would be a closer match but GW2 utilizes the profession (bleh, class) as “Thief”, which would fit the transition more towards “Rogue/Pirate/Corsair”. I know Ranger -> Druid isn’t perfect match either but least Rangers relate to their animal taming and kindling with spirits.

Secondly, I’m getting shivers down my back at the thought that I could possibly be sniped by a Thief with their 1 skill from hide, at 1200 range, dealing backstab-like damage (to imitate a headshot).

I would assume the problem lies to the racial locking of specific features to that character. This would include your bounded racial elite/utility skills, home instance, culture armour and personal story. These things will inevitably bug the transition when shifting a character from one race to another. To avoid such incidents would mean the resetting of armour remodels, soulbound armour, entire personal story progression, and/or geodata location bounds.

Other games may allow the transition between races simply because they have less of racial bound features. Changing appearance is usually the easiest part of the race change transition.

Kaybosh.5183:

Ranger, remove the second r !

But if we remove the first R! It’ll describe most of the forum threads about the class. =o

Actually, the Backstab costing initative is a very good balance idea, comparing it to the consistency of other Thief skills. A missed Cloak and Dagger still cost initiative, a missed Flanking Strike would cost initiative and not proc Larcenous Strike. Why would a missed Backstab not have any downside consequence? It’s a safety net till you get it right.

It might be unfair comparing Thief to other professions but all the other skills go into cooldown if it gets evaded/obstructed/outranged and still consuming the usage cost, eg Warrior’s Adrenaline or Mesmer’s clones.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Yes.

:)

When? Soon™ :(

Fhaeris.9237:

Regarding PvE
top tier: guardian, warrior, ele
mid tier: thief, ranger, engie
scum tier: mesmer, necro

More dungeon orientated? I don’t see many Engi in open PvE. Also I have easier time on mesmer than thief, less worry about getting 2 shotted by 2 stray Modrem wolves.

Serval.6458:

Akikaze.1307:

You don’t lose 3 stacks of might from Sigil of Battle (unless you use another Sigil due to the nerf). You lose 1 stack of might, since the change will be 3x -> 2×. Due to that, you’ll lose 45 power/condi stat (105 vs 60) per weapon swap.

Losing 3 stacks of might comes from the 9s cooldown of the sigil with its 20s base duration, most people using it would be running Strength (or Hoelbrak) runes to increase might duration by about 50%. This would let you max out at 9 stacks from 3 swaps before your stacks started to wear off, three swaps will now/soon only give 6 stacks.

Ah, thanks for pointing the duration out, forgot about that.

Kagamiku.9731:

The class can’t really hit 25might stacks on their own, even with pre-nerf sigil of battle, so you have to factor in the three might stacks lost from sigil of battle into the equation.

If pre-nerf, sigil could reach 20+ stacks with sigil of battle, and post nerf they can only reach 17+ stacks, then it’s effectively a 35 × 3 = 105 power/cond loss. Though for some reason I was thinking one stack of might = 25 power, not 35, so my math was wrong there. Explains how I originally got 200 overall power/cond damage nerf and not 175.

20×5 + 35×3 = 205.

This is the end result if you’re soloing someone, it’s still easy to hit max stacks when you’re with a party, but sigil of battle nerf is a large hit to warrior might stacking in a solo environment.

You don’t lose 3 stacks of might from Sigil of Battle (unless you use another Sigil due to the nerf). You lose 1 stack of might, since the change will be 3x -> 2×. Due to that, you’ll lose 45 power/condi stat (105 vs 60) per weapon swap.

If pre-patch you get X stacks, then post-patch, you can still get X stacks, just harder to actually get to X. For example, under current conditions to get to +210 would need 6 stacks of might or 2 sigil proc. Post update, to get to +210 would need 7 stacks of might or 4 (rounded up from 3.5) sigil proc.

However you’re right, in solo situations, it’ll be harder to get might stacks and more group orientated. Whereas now, you’ll get it just by weapon swapping, which in my opinion was a bit too easy.

Edit: Minor division error…

Kagamiku.9731:

tboneking.2531:

Quick question: wheres that 75 coming from? Max stacks of might is 25, and if you take 5 power away from each stack that leaves you with 125 total… right?

because of sigil of battle nerf, you lose three stacks of might = 75might. realistically, warrior is usually going to make it to 20stacks of might, not 25. So the real number is probably closer to 5×20 + 75 = 175

That calculation still looks wrong. The Sigil of battle is there to stack might, not part of the calculation for power lost.

Current might bonus: 20 Might = 20×35 = +700
Sigil of Battle (3 might stacks) = 3×35 = +105
Weapons swaps needed: x6.66*

Post balance bonus: 20 Might = 20×30 = +600
Sigil of Battle (2 might stacks) = 2×30 = +60
Weapon swaps needed: x10

Difference @20 stacks: 700-600 = 100 power/condi lost

So it’s a rather big nerf to Sigil of Battle since players can’t be as reliant on the Sigil to stack might. However if a class can still effectively stack might through blast finishers or buffs, they ain’t losing as much.

Ohoni.6057:

Likewise, if you see an opposing player trying to cap a node, don’t get onto it as well, that just slows down the capping process for everyone.

In summary, let your opponent freely win the match. Lets not forget that one of the PvP daily is you have to win on a certain class, that won’t happen when you don’t contest captures. All for the sake of some achievement points.

Aidan Savage.2078:

The reason there’s no way to actively change the map you’re on (stop referring to them as channels, this aint gw1) because the game dynamically creates and collapses them. Everyone moves off it? It gets collapsed to reclaim server resources.

I have never played GW1. I refer them as channels because that is a term to describe what they are in mmorpg. Maps are the location you play in, ie Queensdale. Zones are collection of such particular maps, ie Kryta. Channels are different instances of said map. And server is a character bound instance location.

That’s the problem with the map dynamics, people move off it or how the game allocates you. It isn’t as obvious for World Bosses since they just flux up and down whenever the boss spawns. As bosses spawn roughly the same time across maps, you’ll get maps like 100% – 80% – 40% all fighting the same thing, only separated by minute delays.

However for static maps with dynamic events like Silverwastes/Orr, it feels off that the map was full one minute and empty the next. Maps like that end up as instances of 10% – 12% – 10% – 50% – 80% – 80%, separated by wider gaps. You’ll end up with multiple instances of dead maps, that doesn’t collapse because the system recognizes it as sufficient player base. Having a choice for map switch doesn’t mean the system can’t collapse the map resources. It might even save more resource when players move off the map entirely without waiting to kick them out.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not really sure all the options available. I just click the middle one on the top, enter a match or something. I think the custom ones take some sort of currency that I don’t have. Again though, I have no interest in causing any trouble, the whole point of these suggestions is to minimize trouble, but so long as ANet requires 3 dailies for completion, and only offers 4 PvE ones, and many of those are overly specific and in many cases well out of the way, PvP is currently the fastest option for picking up the spare so we can get back to Silverwastes. As soon as they fix that we can all stop doing sPvP again, but until then it’s all about making it take as little time and hassle as possible. Just because they give you the ability to attack other players doesn’t mean you have to abuse it.

“Oh let me finish my daily, please don’t fight me while 4-5 people try to take a home node”. With mentality like that, that is why sPvP is horrible experience for most people trying to have fun. The sPvP/WvW dailies is actually designed that you get the achievement done by just playing. It is not suppose to be a thing you “aim” for when stepping into a match. I have to agree the PvE daily is poorly thought out, but it doesn’t mean you’re forced to hop into a PvP match with the intention of not PvPing.

I’ve read comments from people going on about the introduction of megaservers made the PvE experience a better place. However I find it a bit odd in comparison to other mmorpgs that we cannot manually change map channels through an UI option. Most other mmorpg that utilize multiple channels provide users with a menu switch option. Instead players in GW2 have to rely on “taxi” to get people to join your server channel through the LFG system.

Why does the system sometimes shift players to the empty map instead of automatically filling the semi-full maps? I’ve had experiences where teleporting to the Silverwastes, the game would put me into a channel with only 10 people, most of which were afking, and 2% completion. When I looked up LFG, there was zones that’s moderately filled activity with 30%/50% completion. If the other channels were actually full, then it cannot be helped but they weren’t.

Even better the volunteer map switch would sometimes appear after joining a map recently. I’ve had an odd occurrence where the volunteer switch port you to a lesser filled channel than the previous.

Alternatively, if there was a channel selection option, choosing between 1 to X, then players can shift through channels themselves. I understand that this may hinder some player’s experience with others actively trying to hop across map channels that’s near completion to just get the end reward. But that’s exactly what LFG Taxi into maps does anyways.

It just feels like, sometimes finding an active channel is more RNG than loots.

Just like those players who jumped the bandwagon for Platinum and constantly shout “no CC at blue” without reading the boss’ buff icon that it has Defiance and cannot CC’d to begin with. Though that is one boss you shouldn’t use AoE to prevent popping the poison bubbles, which heals the boss.

xDudisx.5914:

They are effective. Necro boon removal and converting boons into conditions is actually too strong.

Classes like guardian and ele have low hp and ele has low armor. They need to have someway to protect themselves, stacking boons and healing. A necro has a much higher hp base and DS.

I think there are too many boon removal/converting/stealing options actually.

-Corrupt boon
-Path of Corruption
-Spinal shivers
-Sigil of nullification
-Null field
-Shattered concentration
-Arcane thievery
-Mind spike
-Mind stab
-Phantasmal Disenchanter
-Throw mine
-Mine field
-Grim Specter
-Larcenous Strike
-Well of corruption
-Searing flames
-Bountiful theft
-Necromatic corruption
-Chill of death

Many from that list is rather conditional in removal. Larcenous Strike for example needs Flanking Strike to land. The AoE boon removals need enemies to stay for longer than 1 pulse tick. Not to mention the cooldowns (though that’s fine for balance reasons).

Just as there are numerous boon removal skills, there are equally if not more boon generating skills. The boon generation outweighs the worry about boon stripping. For example: An elementalist had its vigor, might and regeneration stripped. He/she could simply swap attunement to regain the might, get crit-hitted for regen kicks and land a crit hit for vigor. All the stripped boons can be recovered as soon as they were removed in midst of combat.

Yasha.5963:

Why did he need to use tombs crafting to get to level 80? He could have just jumped straight into pvp at level 2.

He did pvp at lv2 for a match, in fact I encouraged him to do it. Just he wants to make it feel complete after that, considering he liked medium geared class, having already made a Ranger and Thief.

Edit: Not to mention the free skill points.

A friend of mine found Turret Engineer to be very annoying so he decided to make one to test them out and see how to counter/beat them. He simply used Tomes/Crafting from lv2 to lv80. He copied a build online, obviously very new to the class and hopped into queue with me for a few matches to try the class. He didn’t even know what half the skills did but managed to bunker home pretty effectively in 2vs2, 2vs1 or 1vs1 situations. That just shows how low the skill floor it is for that build. Obviously there are always counters to every build but when a player with no prior knowledge on the class goes straight into battle and manage to come out on top, shows something is clearly wrong.

I think the problem with boon removal in this game is that the cooldown for generating boons recharge faster than the cooldowns for boon stripping. Many boon strip skills ranges from 10sec (1-2 boons removed) to 40sec (3+ boons removed) cooldown. While generating boons and stacking might can occur as fast as 1second, like through dodges, weapon swapping, combo fields and buffs. Therefore expending a long cooldown to boon strip doesn’t feel as effective. Turning boons into conditions isn’t all that spectacular either considering the mass amounts of condi-cleanses on those boon-stacking classes.

Least the rangers were spread out between 2 teams. Still better than my encounter.

The Bell Choir for the meta achievement isn’t really that hard. It was more time consuming than difficult. You can be horrible at it but it’ll still count towards the achievement provided you hit some notes. I was often in the bottom 50% for score. Despite that I had the meta achievement finished within 2days.

The Wintersday daily is optional if you want more achievement points/gifts and isn’t needed for the festival meta achievement anyways.

Why not just make it function like Thief’s Steal skill? I found it weird that Mesmers are supposed to deceive by mimicking other classes (ie Phantasms) but Thief’s skill does it better. The skill could be changed back to absorbing projectiles but depending on the projectile (weapon type) absorbed you’ll get certain skills.

Eg Absorbing Bow projectiles, you’ll get a multi-hit damage skill.
Absorbing Staff projectiles, you’ll get an arcane magic skill.
Absorbing Rifle projectiles, you’ll get a single hit damage skill.
Absorbing Scepter projectiles, you’ll get a condition skill.

That way when you absorb from monsters in PvE, you’ll only get a limited pool of skill type stored and less likely to be abused.