I imagine the issue with auras in PvP/HotM is because your armor is entirely cosmetic, so its stats, including upgrades, infusions and visual effects, are suppressed as to not interfere with the PvP loadout.
After the 3300th ranger with a bearbow pointlessly knocking back a target, you stop being so cordial.
Ironically, the thing in the OP’s original quest that he mentions rangers “not doing” was probably not using Point Blank Shot on the healing crystals. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been trying to whittle down the break bar on one of them while a longbow ranger stands beside me autoattacking (or, even better, switching to staff to use that auto) and making no attempt to use PBS for one of the things it’s actually good for.
My personal opinion? Viper conditionmancers are meta for raids, and I’ve found my reaper to be the most fun to explore HoT maps with due to high survivability and just general awesomeness. So…go necro?
Jumping Pads didn’t work at Teq or in Lion’s Arch for mine.
Might reduce chance at gold level for some….
Why would it reduce someone’s chance at gold? Unless you’re downed in the water and waiting for a rez, or feel obligated to go out to the western battery, there’s nothing preventing you from making it to one of the closer defenses in time to earn gold.
I am endlessly amused by the frog gangs in HoT, even when they’re killing me. It could only be better if they said something like “welcome to the jungle!” as the one I forgot about downed me from stealth.
I love gliding, and I think the maps are beautiful. Gliding through Tarir for the first time the other night brought an actual tear to my eye.
I have a lot of fun doing Dragon’s Stand when I can get into a map for it. If they upped the rewards to match the time/effort commitment, it would probably replace SW in my heart.
I adore the elite specs, especially Reaper and Druid. I also think the elite collections are fairly well balanced, considering the reward, and most aren’t as horribly grindy as a lot of the other collections HoT introduced. Unless you want to collect them all. In which case, you probably disagree.
Yeah, I don’t know why anyone thinks the only purpose of the new maps was to make legendaries. As other people have stated, there are numerous collections tied to Magus Falls maps, as well as achievements, story events, elite spec leveling, and meta events.
That being said, I’m hopeful that the update will help with the map issue (both getting people on the same map in the first place and perhaps making it so that the events can be successful even on maps that don’t have the luxury of a million tags). For all the kitten they get, and even with how frustrating they are to navigate, the maps had a ton of attention put into them and I’d hate for the news about legendaries to render them obsolete. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t incentivize them further via upping rewards all around, perhaps nerfing SW in the process for blah blah ~the economy~ reasons.
Seriously, just do what was suggested. The issue is entirely in the fact that organized maps burn Teq down too quickly for the pools to trigger, so simply avoiding them is the way to go.
To expand on Randulf’s explanation, a feathered, or winged, foot is also specifically associated with Mercury, the patron god of thieves in the Roman pantheon.
If the bug was deliberate, I’m glad. I wouldn’t mind more idle animations, but the stretch was so ridiculous and male gazey.
I’ve had more victories than failures, and as mentioned above, the failures were all 100% due to nobody bothering to explain any of the mechanics. The most recent was a map I was in for 35 minutes before the pre-events, and we had a commander who didn’t actually say anything and a bunch of apathetic players.
On the other hand, one night I slipped into a map during pres and some random was explaining Shatterer’s breakbar, timing, and what specific CC skills to use on the healing crystals and we got the meta achievement with no problem- it was as easy as old Shatterer and a ton more fun. So educating yourself and sharing the information definitely works, even on a WBT zerg who hasn’t been given food and banners in exchange for their active involvement.
Self imposed challenges =/= difficult content. If you think it’s that simple you’re kind of narrow minded.
That said, catering to what their players feel they need isn’t bad in and of itself. I just hope it’s not some slippery slope that ends with free twilights for everyone.
This will never end with free Twilights for everyone, and anyone who thinks that is being overdramatic/paranoid. Legendaries are a huge gold sink, and Anet makes money off of those. They will never simply hand them out for free. Heck, their response to people complaining about how frustrating it is to have to depend on RNG to get a precursor was to make a recipe that costs almost as much as buying a precursor to begin with.
What you’re missing (and what OP is missing) is that Anet is striving for a sweet spot that will keep players playing. Yeah, free legendaries would be nice, but legendaries aren’t necessary to most players’ continued enjoyment of the game. However, most players like being able to play the game with their full class, and they like having flexibility in how they approach content. A lot them also dislike dying all the time, and having to navigate huge confusing maps that seem barren just to end up at a HC that they can’t access, or do themselves, or even with a buddy. Those are things that roadblock player progress, and players who feel like they’re not able to progress at all are less likely to come back.
So, by adjusting some of the content down a bit (it’s still far from a cakewalk), Anet is ensuring that more players are satisfied rather than continuing to cater to a narrow audience of hardcore players who are only happy when they’re either forever on the edge of death, or able to lord their ability to mindlessly parrot each other’s talking points (“You can’t just press 1 squawk zerkers won’t do.”) over players who would rather just play the game and have some fun.
I have never wanted a GW2 thing more than I want Nightfury, but there is literally no way I will ever be able to afford pull it all together. Congrats, though. It looks amazing.
They’ve already nixed the idea due to how they designed the armors in each armor class to function differently (most notably, how the long/skirty bits function on light/heavy armors vs. medium). I suppose they could do what they do with the preview function, where you’re locked into all of one weight, but that wouldn’t be the same as what most people want, which is to mix armor across weights.
I think the issue is that gold wasn’t necessarily the “carrot” they wanted to dangle. Or, rather, they wanted to make it so other avenues would seem more profitable, specifically those avenues that require interaction with the market for profit rather than dropping gold straight into the players’ pockets. I suppose they could make up for it with better loot, which is why the Silverwastes remains a good source of income, especially if you’re savvy about what you salvage vs. what you sell on the trading post (and for how much).
I definitely got XP and loot for helping someone with a HC I had already unlocked. I was actually confused at first, because I’m used to Hero Points being their own reward.
snipped for spoilers
The expansion has only been out for three days. Do you mind not spoilering the story for everyone who hasn’t already finished it?
He did hide it in a spoiler tag ! Resist the curiosity !
He edited the tag in after I’d already seen it. Personally, I’m not opposed to spoilers, but it’s only fair to others who are to make sure they’re tagged.
I can foresee a few things happening with these tags.
1. Trolls will troll, and they will be rendered pointless once trolling is associated with them rather than mentoring.
2. The skritt factor will wear off quickly, either because everyone will have one (so no ~prestige~ factor), or because people will expect them to actually mentor, and they’ll get sick of being pestered/flamed for being terrible.
3. Eventually, only the people who actually want to mentor will mentor, or those who want to lead a train/zerg in the absence of anyone with a commander tag.
Commander tags will always take precedent over mentor tags to those that know better, leaving starter maps and the aforementioned zergs the only place where mentor tags will be an issue (either for good or for bad). I do agree that Commanders should get a special tag in chat.
Ultimately, however, I do think the mentor badge should have been the final reward in that mastery line, and not the first one. That way, it’s less accessible for early flaunting purposes, and requires more grinding/sacrifice for those who want to use it to troll. Personally, I think it could be an overall beneficial thing for the community, and allow players who want to fill a specific niche (answering questions, helping other players who call out on the map, one-off kind of stuff) to do so without stepping all over commanders (who tend to focus more on organizing coordinated events).
Does your progress on the Mastery bar count for/towards Tyria and HOT masteries simul’? Implying that both have a separate Mastery bar.
They are separate- you can only choose HoT masteries to level in HoT maps, and Tyrian masteries to level in Tyria. Every mastery has its own mastery bar, too, so you have to go in and make sure you’re leveling the one you want to be (and to trade them out if you’ve filled one but don’t have the Mastery Points to unlock it, yet).
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snipped for spoilers
The expansion has only been out for three days. Do you mind not spoilering the story for everyone who hasn’t already finished it?
GW2 playability has been fundamentally altered with HoT – there is no arguing that fact. To suggest the issue is that casual players “Get Better” is bullkitten. They changed the game, didn’t tell us, and took our money.
No, they told us. You may not agree with it, but many of us watching the updates knew the changes that were coming our way.
That being said, using one’s own skill level to cry about people crying is rather silly.
When did they tell us that our Elites could only be unlocked by grouping with others? When did they tell us that event scaling for bog-standard events would be ridiculous- three knockdown-happy vets and an elite + a handful of regular mobs simultaneously spawning for two players on a (very short) timer?
I’ve been mostly fine on the maps themselves, and have even been able to handle challenges above my paygrade. But Anet was far from transparent regarding not only access to content, but also how demanding the content would be to players who don’t play GW2 for a Dark Souls-esque challenge or open-world events that play more like raids than anything in the pre-existing levels.
I think a lot of people who are so desperate to invalidate the feelings of those who aren’t happy with how HoT turned are completely missing the larger message. This discontent isn’t just one thing that we can pinpoint and fix ourselves. It’s more than just the new mechanics, or the mob density, or the grind, or the wonky map, or the fact that it can be incredibly difficult to find other people to be successful enough to actually make progress. It’s a slurry of all of those things, depending on taste, and a few intangibles as well.
I mean, congratulations to everyone who thinks everything is awesome (well, those who aren’t being snide jackholes). Chances are you’re going to get a lot more specific-to-your-preferences cool things down the road, because that’s the direction Anet seems to be heading.
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There are some (maybe all?) tied to achievements- you should be able to open up your Achievements tab and see the red mastery symbol next to those that have qualifying achievements under them.
I had someone abandon me after I rezzed them during a group event, just as I was being downed by a modrem sniper that appeared out of nowhere!
That being said, while I try to help everyone I can (especially now that I have a ton of Halloween consumables that turn us colors when I rez), these maps are terrible for it. A lot of champs have hard to track AOE attacks, some with lingering damage fields, and even regular mobs can just show up and swarm you, or knock you off your kitten , making you vulnerable to an inevitable attack from its buddies. I don’t blame people for being hesitant to rez in HoT, especially when they’re alone.
And that’s precisely it; the entirety of the release was misleading and none of this info was conveyed in the past to allow for feedback before release.
To be honest I feel that the GW2 player base has been misled into pre-ordering an expansion completely different from the several tests carried out before release.
Does not seem an honest approach to ANet costumers…
Just stop.
It’s true though- they deliberately withheld giving us any idea how much it would cost to complete our Elites. They never gave us any indication that some of the Hero Challenges would be gated behind group content/dynamic events, or that story progress would require gaining literally millions of XP in the new zones. It’s inconsistent with the base game in a way that has been an unpleasant surprise to a lot of players.
No, actually, I’ve never HAD to have people doing the exact same thing I’m doing in order to complete hero challenges before. For 3 years, I’ve been doing these fine on my own.
This. I love GW2, and have been flying solo since it was released. Due to a number of reasons, grouping is a huge problem for me. Mainly, I have things in RL that require me to log off at the drop of a hat. Not a big deal on my own, but deeply unfair for any players that might be depending on me.
I purchased HOT expecting the maps to be challenging, but more along the lines of Silverwastes or Dry Top. I thought raids were the elite group content, and that there would remain a clear demarcation between Dynamic Events that required a lot of people and stuff like Hero Challenges that do not. It’s a bait and switch on Anet’s part to change the way maps and map exploration works so fundamentally, especially since doing Hero Challenges are the only way for my characters to reach their full potential.
Yes when you make a legendary you will get the precursor skin, I also believe even if you do buy a legendary off the trading post you will get the relevant skins that you need to make that legendary. Eg. You buy Twilight off the TP and you will also unlock the Dusk skin as well as Twilight.
Will this be retroactive, I wonder, or just for those legendaries forged from here on out…
there’s no right in someone saying GET THIS GEAR
but if someone appreciates that specific item or wants it solely for the Transmute they could ask where you got that item. and most people shouldnt go around telling others what items to get, people should normally ask you hey man what do i need to do for that item, but how are they suppose to know what item it is if the person is just rude or AFK?
you want to know what item it is, go look, the speech is optional you don’t have to tell someone that their item sucks or is a blessing from the gods. thats all on the player.
and if you know what item it is you could even go online and look where it drops and not even have to talk to the other person
Yeah, sometimes it can be frustrating to see a piece of gear that you want on someone who can’t/won’t respond, but it’s hardly the worst thing in the world. If you want it badly enough, the Wardrobe and /wiki can get you the name and how to get it with a few minutes’ effort.
Ultimately the rampant abuse of the system would greatly outweigh the benefits that you’re proposing, especially considering that there’s already a non-invasive workaround. for your non-problem.
People are gonna complain about everything. Personally, I think the event/chest train solution is fairly elegant. You can’t do the chest train without doing events, and I’ve only ever seen the debate over whether the map is for one or the other get contentious once- and that was mainly because the chest train people didn’t want to wait for the reset while the labyrinth folk wanted everyone to stay and get it to Tier III.
I also appreciate the separation because it keeps people more focused on the actual events on an event map. We already have enough people who do the minimum and then AFK while other players pick up their slack. If we went to a system where you could only get chests at the end of events or during a reset period like Drytop, then you’d have even more people parking their characters on the wall and waiting for their opportunity to jump in and snag chests.
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At first I was I was really excited about seeing the first new legendaries, I still am excited about the axe and pistol to a certain extent. The staff, however, lost its points in my eyes when I found out it was something that had been datamined from the game years ago… I was expecting all of the legendaries to be brand new and made from scratch, not something that was made years ago and now decided to be slapped into the game together with the expansion with some minor tweaks to it or as it was.
Eh, I’m being a bit too nitpicky but the new legendaries were one of the reasons I’m getting HoT, so it struck to me as Anet taking the easy way out on one of the legendaries by using some old skin that was gathering dust godknowswhere.
This is one of the pettiest things I’ve ever read on this forum, and that’s an achievement.
It’s your own fault for looking at datamined stuff- a lot of things were probably mocked up early in development and have been waiting to be implemented for years, for whatever reason. That staff has just as much work and care (probably more, given how harried Anet has been this past year) put into it as anything made “from scratch” since. I seriously don’t understand how you can consider something old or “dusty” when it’s actual months from ever getting into a player’s hands.
In other news, I’m looking forward to unveiling my The Birds themed ranger at some point in the next couple of years- Nevermore, Falconer’s Coat, dual pet birds, raven mini/mail carriers, a full set of Mad King runes, and Hunter’s Call spam for days…
Oh, dear. I’m genuinely worried that a mod might read this thread and actually sprain something rolling their eyes at how fragile some people are.
I’ve been having issues stomping, too. I also watched someone stomp me from several feet away from where I saw my body- there’s no way he would have been able to if there wasn’t something funky going on. My guess is that it has something to do with the lag and disconnects that have been plaguing PvP recently- it’s the only place I have any issues with ping or connection strength.
They’ve indicated before that they can’t just “flip a switch” and turn old events on- they’d have to take time from HoT to make things work again. I’m incredibly bummed that it’s unlikely we’ll get a Halloween event given HoT’s release date, but them’s the shakes.
It is pretty ridiculous the way they broke it. It looked really good and now it flares out randomly for no reason.
It flares out to accommodate different character builds. Instead of making the mesh conform to the body types without clipping, they made it “one size fits all hips/butts/thighs”. A lazy fix. If I didn’t love how it looks on my Asura, I would definitely return it.
This argument rests on the idea that there’s only limited time available for testing/finetuning, while profession balancing/finetuning is an ungoing thing.
It’s quite possible they’re more confident about the last two specs, considering how they featured in the initial trailer. Regardless, previous experience shows us that all professions and specs will see more finetuning based on feedback leading up to, and after release.
Seeing how another BWE was just announced, it seems that a large part motivating the OP to write this post is their desire to play their Elite spec in the upcoming BWE.
It doesn’t matter how confident they are in the specs given how horribly some of the past changes in both classes have missed their marks. The players who have been playing the classes extensively in the game and against other players are the ones who need to be confident in the specs, and we can’t be that until we get to do those things. And if things aren’t working, we get the smallest window possible to get our feedback in, playtest the changes, and hopefully fine tune everything the way Chronomancer, Reaper, DH, Tempest and Revenant are getting changed and fine tuned. Staggering the reveals like this leaves certain classes at a disadvantage, and it sucks if you play those classes and it sucks even more that it’s the classes that tend to be more broken/get less attention in general.
Also, nice of you to cast aspersions on the OP. Of course they want to play their Elite specs- it’s the only way to ensure that they aren’t total kitten by the time HoT comes out. Before this announcement, we had no idea when the next BWE would be and who would be included/excluded, so anticipating this scenario would have required an uncle who works at Anet or precognition.
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I had the same thing happen to me a few hours ago. Usually if I DC, it’s on my end and it takes a few minutes to get logged back in. This time I was prompted to send Anet a report and I was able to get in before the match was finished.
The reason why players are upset about this is because Engineer and Ranger will get less feedback overall for their Elite specs before HoT goes live, and that coupled with Anet’s historically sluggish and sometimes nonsensical fixes and “balancing” passes means that whatever bugs/imbalances don’t get fixed before HoT will probably persist for quite a while. Broken classes attract fewer players (and Engineer is, I think, already the least played class) and lowers the class priority even further.
I understand that Forge and Druid are probably not finished yet, but that’s not the players’ fault- Anet allowed them to lag behind the development of the other classes and that’s going to be detrimental to them in the long run. In the unlikely event that either of them is grossly overpowered, it will be detrimental to everyone else, too.
They haven’t done anything about Howler’s broken night effects, so I doubt they’ll care about it being further broken by the new warhorn sounds.
Extra bags and bank expansions are a QoL thing, not a necessity. New players can either earn the gold and wait for the exchange rates to settle, or, as Agemnon said, spend RL dollars like many of us have.
More like:
Thief revealed!
Beta weekend!
Major updates to all revealed classes!
Engineer revealed!
Break!
Beta weekend!
Major updates to all revealed classes!
Ranger revealed!
Release!
6 month break!
Minor bug fixes!
6 months break!
balance update!
Stuff like this keeps me up at night.
Clearly what Anet should have done was make a Bootleg Dye Pack that allows players to choose from a selection of dyes that are identical to the ones we can already get, but that are packaged in plain brown bottles and have misspelled or poorly translated names. That way the gift has value to veteran players who want to level-up their Pretty Princess skill while others can feel superior in the knowledge that they have the ~real thing~, purchased with their own sweat and blood the way King Prestige demands.
Personally I think it would be a nightmare to make thief rifle balanced for PvP without making it shortbow 2.0 or a slightly watered-down version of warrior rifle, to offset the advantage stealth would give.
As of HoT, warriors don’t have access to shortbow, staff, scepter, focus, daggers or pistols (both of which come in main-hand/off-hand varieties). That leaves room for Anet to do eight new specs for warrior without repeating a weapon. I’m optimistic, but I sincerely doubt it will come to that. I can see off-hand dagger, off-hand pistol, shortbow and maybe melee staff before they switch to a new combat mechanic (like unarmed) or move on to GW3.
Tell that to everyone that have the original Halloween skins… That they aren’t prestigious… they will laugh themselves into tears…
I had/have some of the original Halloween skins and I could give less than half a kitten about them. The only items from that event that I felt were hard-earned were the boots dropped in the Clocktower, and they can be replicated by anyone with a couple of gold to spare. For me, the memory of making it to the end of the jp, and the fun I had throughout the rest of the event, is far greater than the pixel rewards.
So, basically, your assertion is wrong.
I would rather have the enemy being kittens than have someone berating everyone else in team chat. The former comes with the territory, but the latter tends to ruin whatever amount of team cohesion you can form with other yoloqueuers, and it’s even more of a distraction if people start responding. I also tend to assume that they will eventually rage quit (and they seem to about 75% of the time), so it’s demoralizing in that regard, too.
I will admit that I am a sensitive person in general, but I think it’s ridiculous to tell people to toughen up if they don’t want to deal with rampant negativity in chat, or in PvP. Games are supposed to be a fun outlet, and if you’re the type of person who doesn’t like getting called names/harassed while having fun, it doesn’t mean you’re weak or fragile. It just means your idea of a good time doesn’t have room for negativity and trolling.
Wow, really? If I’m running plague signet, I take conditions from my allies, am I really able to even know where those conditions came from? Is there a way to even know this, let alone be able to track it in combat? I’m pretty new to pvp and been playing signet necro — is this having a big impact on my teams?
The bug isn’t an issue with plague signet, since that would count as your teammate’s conditions (although enemies could rally off of your teammate’s death, if that were to occur). The issue is with condition transfers that were placed on you by enemies other than the enemy you target for transfer (or, I’m guessing, the enemy who triggers Putrid Mark).
Yeah, the idea of regression upon losing is troublesome, if only because matchmaking is so spectacularly terrible at the moment. Unless they split queues for solo and teams, and better consider team comp when grouping pugs, everyone will have to team up* at a certain point in order to stay competitive and progress.
Also, if matchmaking is still balanced towards keeping players as close to a 50/50 win-lose ration as possible, wouldn’t that make advancement a painful slog? At the very least, I hope it’s balanced so that winning progresses you further forward than losing will set you back.
*I know that there’s a contingent of “it’s team PvP so QQ more, newb” who will no doubt be all over complaints of this nature, but as it stands not everyone has the same access to the time and tools necessary to team up and be competitive against, say, those who are in pvp guilds that are able to focus a lot of time, energy, and resources into coordinating their teams.
Rangers are so OP, with their 1 second dazes, especially those delivered by a stealthy rainbow-kittenting unicorn. Anet should replace both SB and LB with actual nerf bows with 400 range auto attacks slotted for every weapon skill. That should bring Rangers down to OP’s level.
A consumables bar would take up 1/6th of that space- even with a large screen and a small GUI, being able to see more of the game is a good thing, yes? Plus, a bar could be completely disabled during combat which would make it more practical than the inventory, which is easy to accidentally “grab” in combat.
I have been holding out for Marjory’s Dagger and Kasmeer’s Staff since I started up the game again in April- both skins are awesome on their own, and the effects are a nice bonus. My fingers are crossed that they will be back for the anniversary sale, and that they won’t be a flash sale that happens while I’m asleep or some nonsense.
Any credibility you might have had was blown immediately by implying that Spotter is a terrible trait. Although, using Necro traits (and Necro shroud traits, at that) to justify complaints about burst is kind of hilarious.
There is a discussion to be had about traits and traitlines and build diversity, but they’re better to have in the actual profession forums where the majority of the people are familiar with the class and can craft focused arguments for why specific things need to be changed/updated/tweaked. Just throwing out a list like this, with all the weird personal biases and poor reading comprehension (your example of a “redundant” trait is actually an example of two traits that compliment each other- the latter gives you more opportunity to proc the former) does nothing to move the actual conversation forward.