Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure about player housing. If it’s actual areas in the game then it becomes a limited resource, the prices skyrocket, and then unless you’re an auction house baron or you came soon enough you will most certainly not find a house for your character. And then what do you do with players that quit while they hold such a limited resource?

On the flipside, if everyone get their own instance then nobody is going to come visit your house unless they are specifically looking for you so that’s basically the same as a guild hall.

A class campaign on the other hand is something I would really like though. In fact that should be how you unlock your elite specialization. To fight the dragon your character goes on a journey with the best of the best in his or her profession to train and become stronger. Doesn’t have to be as big as in Legion, just make it big enough to give some flavor to the elite specialization.

The game had a much better diversity of player characters at launch, and by some pre-launch census humans wouldn’t even be the favored race. People were excited about sylvaris when it was revealed that they glow at night and they were pretty popular. As per usual, people willing to play “tough” classes were all about charrs, norns and human males. As a human female warrior I almost never saw another one like me at launch, the human females players at the time were almost all playing “soft” classes like mages and thieves. Norns of either gender were strangely the least popular race, which surprised me, only good at making warriors and rangers.

Thing is, this game makes a big deal about rewarding with bragging right cosmetics instead of power creep, and it just happens that all those skins are (seemingly at least) much more carefully crafted and elaborate on female humans, norns and sylvaris than on their male counterparts, and charrs and asuras of both genders get the short end of the stick. The only exception I can think of is the Phalanx set, but that’s only because the female version is a completely different set and the male version happens to look better and would probably still look at least as good on females if they could use it. That pushes players that wouldn’t normally play a female character to do it in this game.

This problem is really unique to GW2, other MMOs (at least those that don’t oversexualize females…) get much closer gender equality in their player character population.

I think more and more that weapons should be separated from their elite specialization. Just thinking about my berserker, I don’t even use the torch, just the new F2.

Also, dagger would be borderline fitting for a warrior’s elite spec to be completely based on, but it’s still OK. (In the middle ages warriors did carry little daggers in battles to finish off armored enemies.) In 2 expansions though when we get wand or pistol because that’s what’s left to give us, I don’t want the whole elite specialization to be based on them.

Separating the new weapons from the elite spec allows the devs to create new elite specs that can be optimized for all warrior weapons, including the iconic ones like the shield and the 2h sword, while still adding some extra weapon options to the class.

Not gonna comment on the leak’s details, but I wouldn’t mind an elite specialization that contrasts with the berserkers’ themes. Something that invokes the discipline of a warrior rather than it’s wrath, like “Knight” or “Champion.” I like the former since we could get a summon war pony elite skill.

Will be mostly PvE-oriented since I don’t do any PvP activities at all.

• A profession campaign. To fight the dragon (two dragons??) your character must train with the legends of their profession. That campaign unlocks your elite specialization in PvE.

• That one might sound petty, but can we get a story that does NOT put Sylvaris at the center of the picture this time? The vanilla game glorified them all the time, and the first expansion was all about them. I would like to see some story being written to explore the humans being on extinction (seriously, my human’s personal story has not mentioned once that the human race was in danger…) and then let’s see if charrs are eager to help humans. Let’s talk a bit about norn culture, let’s put them in a situation that challenges their way of life. Let’s make something happen that teaches asuras a lession of humility… or not. Just explore other races than just sylvaris this time around.

• Armor skin variations. Since making armors is apparently very costly for the company due to all the race/gender combinations, allow us to craft different variations of existing armor sets, like changing the texture on cloth, the specularity on metal, etc. Give us an option to toggle on and off part of the armor. (Don’t like “skirts” on heavy armor? Craft a variation that does not have one.) Female characters should also have the option to use the non-revealing version of an armor. (I don’t really care personally but that’s been a recurring request since launch.)

• A new “hero” system where you can slot story characters as party members in instances. Similar to GW1 but only in instances because I don’t want to see 36 clones of Ritlock on a boss zerg. So if you want to do a dungeon but you’re only 3 players you can slot, say Taimi and Logan. Then you must gear, train and level these characters, which would give you a point to train leatherworker on a warrior or armorsmith on an ele other than just gold.

• A completely revamped equipment system. Stats like Power and Precision are boring and are best left to WoW clones. I’d like a system where each slot has a choice of very powerful and game-changing effects that you can put on your gear, and your build is basically which combination of these effects you put on your character. A bit like Diablo 3’s legendaries, but without D3’s ridiculous stat inflation. (That one’s probably way too game-changing and more for a GW3, but I’m leaving it there anyway.)

I chuckle a bit when I read threads with people surprised about the bad balance. Forgive my cynicism but when has this company ever excelled at balance? Guild Wars 1 was not very well balanced either, and Guild Wars 2’s balance has been terrible for the full ~3.5 years it has been on the market. It was starting to get to a good spot (still not balanced, but getting there) in the months before Heart of Thorns released, but then the expansion hit and threw balance 3 years back. It will probably take years to get it back to where it was left.

My suggestion to Arenanet would be that, if you can’t nail balance, at least let the characters be imbalanced in ways that respect their class fantasy and the player’s initial expectations of what it should be good for. It’s mind-boggling and ridiculous how you allow your 3 light armor classes to have more survivability than than your warrior class, but wait the warrior’s the best at group buffing (Phalanx Strength). Wait, what? I mean, ideally all classes should be good at everything, but if it can’t be balanced, at least who’s good at what should go hand in hand with the player’s expectations of the class.

To their defense, I’ll say that GW2 seems a bit harder to balance than WoW because it’s combat is more active, although as someone who follows both companies, I hate to say it but I really think that if Blizzard made this game, it would have had better balance on day one and they would have hot fixed the remaining blatant balance flaws in the days following release. But it’s Arenanet that made the game, and balance is something they struggle a lot with. I also don’t believe they have that hotfixing technology to do live balance tweaks.

I’ll echo the general opinion that they should at least have a PTR (public test realm) if they’re going to make so few balance updates. It will help them nail balance much better in an environment where they can tweak the numbers and the skills as much without risking releasing something awfully broken on the public realms.

But yeah, sucks to be a warrior these days.

The Brew of the Month thing looks like they literally looked at WoW and did the same thing, which is surprising given how Arenanet loves to answer “Black” when Blizzard says “White.”

In WoW, after getting my achievements, the Brew of the Month thing became more of a mail spam than something cool.

I recommend adding fun little activities to do once in a while to “keep your subscription”, otherwise it’s just something you do once and reap the rewards forever.

I really wish my warrior could pop a good old Lion Heart against Revenants and Dragonhunters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yiv6WD5gQc

I tried the elite spec for the first time tonight. I love the style and theme of the berserker but I’m just not impressed by how it does in combat.

As a tanky (PVT) PvE warrior I thought the bottom trait line, that was said to focus on the “unstoppable” aspect of berserker, would work for my playstyle but I find that I’m far better off with my old build if I want to play tanky. Wild Blow is good for depleting break bars extra fast but not worth taking over the other lines.

In the end berserker felt very one-dimensional and I took it off. I’m not interested in condi playstyle and it doesn’t seem to be good at anything else. It seems that none of the new skills or the new primal bursts do anything for your sustain, helps you support better, or makes you deal more damage. I remember the devs saying they designed the trait line to have something for all play styles but it doesn’t seem to be good enough at any of those purposes except condi.

I’ll let those with more experience than me propose how to buff things but as far as my playstyle goes the bottom trait line (the tanky ones) need to be a lot better.

Berserker is 10/10 on style, 1/10 on usefulness.
Then you have Dragonhunter that is 1/10 on style, 10/10 on usefulness.
Reaper is 10/10 on style, 10/10 on usefulness.
Daredevil and Tempest are 1/10 on style, 2/10 on usefulness.

Right now, GTX 970 should be plenty good enough for Guild Wars 2 because it is still CPU bound, so there’s no point to get a 980 if it’s just for Guild Wars 2.

However, if there’s any chance you may play future games, you may want to wait to see if nVidia can make better DirectX12 drivers before taking a decision. Last news is that AMD’s cards are much better than nVidia with DirectX12, but nVidia seems to have the better engineers these days so it may just be a matter of time before they get things right.

Also:

• Mace block should work like Revenant sword block. (Continuous block, hit the skill again after a block to counter)
• Defiant Stance should be instant and absorb conditions damage. (I’m pretty sure it used to absorb condition damage…) Do whatever you want with the fixed heal to make it balanced.
• Just throw Thick Skin away and replace it with something else. My suggestion would be something to foil the explosion of unblockable attacks, ie: getting endure pain + stability + condi immunity during blocking animation. Shield Stance used to be dependable, now it’s a joke.

When I play the game I usually get a standard ping (around 70 to 90), but then suddenly, and especially in Verdant Brink, my ping will spike and get anywhere between 600 and 5,000. Needless to say, this make the game completely unplayable when you have to watch enemy tells and dodge/block them. I get lag spikes in other zones too but it’s not as bad. Anyone else is having that issue?

About my system, it’s running Windows 10 Professional. I’m situated in Eastern Canada. Windows language settings is French-Canadian but I’m playing on US server with the game set in English.

The game says it’s fully downloaded so the lag does not appear to be related to mass downloading.

I tested with another MMO (World of Warcraft) and it runs just fine with no lag spikes at all, so I believe my computer and its settings are fine and that the issue is Guild Wars 2 related.

I can also say that I have been experiencing this long before Heart of Thorns, but it has always been tolerable until now so I didn’t bother.

Warriors are in a pretty bad spot right now, with a dysfunctional elite specialization and a base class that didn’t keep up with the power creep.

Revenants probably out-DPS, out-support AND out-tank Warriors right now. (And they’re probably not the only one.)

You probably want to ask this after after the next balance pass, which, I believe, is due to come out before the next PvP tournaments or something.

Well 5 days after expansion and they are already nerfing most other classes but didn’t touch berserker or tempest. Seems they agree with the OP: the problem is the power creep from most other elites, not the “underpowered” elites.

400 hero points was fine, it’s the fact that that most of the hero challenges are group content that sucked about unlocking elite specializations.

250 points looks kind of lowish to me. I like the idea of elite specialization is part of character progression and I don’t have a problem if it takes me 1 month to fully unlock it. As long as there’s enough time to unlock the full elite specialization (while playing reasonably) before the first raid opens I don’t have a problem.

Well, I don’t know about PvP, but on the PvE side it is 100% dedicated to endgame if you’re not interested in Revenant. (They don’t interest me either.)

Well, if you pre-purchased you’d have a free character slot. Now that we’re past launch though, I don’t think you really have a reason to purchase it until level 80. (Again, PvE speaking.)

Personally I pre-purchased only for the character slot because I refuse to start the Heart of Thorns campaign before finishing story mode season 2. (I didn’t even unlock my elite spec yet.)

Redenaz.8631:

Huh.

I think players (mostly humans) will look ridiculous barefoot, but this is something I’ve seen people ask for, so props for giving it to them, I suppose!

(Whenever it’s actually available, of course.)

Did you just call my good Queen Jennah ridiculous!? The nerves!

As a human, I shall explore the jungle barefoot once I get there!

Honestly, as much as I’d love to see more games on my Linux machine, if it’s going to be a Cider port like the Mac version I’d rather play on my Windows 10 gaming PC.

Nice suggestions, but we all know that Scarlet is the next legend.

Warriors pay a heavy price to go Berserker because a lot of their builds have must-have traits along 3 specializations. I expect the majority of them to drop the spec once the novelty has faded, although as someone who likes to play a very tanky type of warrior I may pick up the spec for mine to get Dead of Alive and either the stability or the AoE taunt.

Dragonhunter probably won’t see a lot of play, I don’t even expect it to have any novelty factor at all. Personally it just seems very, very boring. More importantly, I don’t know about others but I see Guardian as the “paladin” archetype of this game, so giving them an elite spec that fights at long range and uses traps is not exactly what I’m looking for in a Guardian.

Given how ridiculously o/p Herald are, I think every Revenant will use it at launch, then it will get meganerfed into a support-based specialization (instead of the support+tank+DPS all rolled in one that it is right now) and then revenants focused on damage will drop it, maybe the tank ones too if Jalis is properly buffed into an actual tank legend.

I don’t know much about Elementalists, but I don’t think Tempest will see much at first. (Even WP doesn’t like the elite specialization!) That said, I don’t think Revenants and Druids will be the only 2 viable dedicated healers for long. I think water elementalists (and guardians) will soon be asking for viability as dedicated healers because they are built to be strong support classes so it’s kind of disappointing if they can’t go dedicated support. Since Tempests are supposed to be melee support, maybe the spec could be salvaged into a spec that can match Druids and Revenants healing when they sit in water?

Right now, Reaper seems like a straight up upgrade to Necromancer so I think they will go Reaper in an even greater percentage that the Revenants that will go Herald. I just don’t see any advantage to stay vanilla Necromancer on my character.

I’ve had zero interest in playing a Thief since day one and now I have zero interest in playing a Daredevil either so I dunno, but I suppose the Thieves that are interested in survival (maybe to tank a boss?) will pick it up for evasion tanking, assuming this is viable for a Thief. Again, I seriously don’t care about Thieves so I’m probably just talking through my hat when I talk about them.

SrebX.6498:

Phobos.3197:

Herald gets stability on dodge, a 1200 range no cooldown teleport that also makes attacks unblockable, a defiant stance that includes applied and incoming condition damage that can be used when stunned, a staff skill that blocks and blinds on short cd, a shield skill that blocks all attacks and heals on low cd, a shield skill granting protection, a stealth reveal, an on demand blind, more boons than ele, short cooldown long duration elite stuns, a knockback skill that hits harder than hundred blades, a relatively short cooldown high damage sword skill that evades and tracks players through portals requiring them to dodge twice to avoid damage but still siphons life if they block or endure pain, on demand quickness, permanent swiftness…

And I’m tired of writing.

There’s a big difference in the top tier elite specs vs. the low tiers. This was just Herald. Similar paragraphs can be written about Chrono, Reaper, Scrapper, Druid.

Adapt or die I guess. I’ll be playing a different class.

This has to be the whinniest post I’ve seen on the Internet in a while now. You’re completely ignoring energy management rooting, mobility and tons of other aspects these skills you’ve mentioned have.

I’m not saying you guys aren’t right, I think that Berserker is uninspired, but for god’s sake don’t compare skills like a 5 year old crying for his GI Joe

I think the complaint is more that Revenants get improved versions of every other class’ unique perks.

For example, Defiant Stance used to be a completely unique effect only available for warriors. It was not the best healing skill ever, but it has a completely unique effect with some fun and niche uses here and there and was very rewarding when it worked. Herald not only gets something that was once unique to warriors in Defiant Stance, but it’s an improved version.

Shield Stance used to be one of the best block in the game, it was even showcased in the warrior preview videos before launch so I figure it’s supposed to be a warrior signature skill. Revenant now has a Shield Stance that heals with a shorter cooldown. Yeah, it roots so perhaps PvP players will still prefer Shield Stance, but in general I think Herald shield block is better than warriors.

And it’s not just warrior vs revenants. Herald shield 4 is an improved version of some Guardians shield. In fact, when you think about it, herald shield looks like they took the best guardian shield skill and the best warrior skill and then improved them.

Dedicated healing is something that were given to druids. Even the old classes that were supposed to be healing specialists, like elementalists and guardians, won’t be able to compete. But wait, guess who else has healing? Yup, revenants got it.

Revenants have a solid step in every aspect of the game: damage, conditions, healing, tanking, buffing, you name it. While some classes may be better than revenant in specific aspects (I believe druid healing > revenant healing) there doesn’t seem to be a single class that is competitive in every aspect of the game other than revenant. And that, I think, it going to be a problem.

The dungeons reward too much for the effort they take. With the glitching, skipping and the berserker meta they take barely more effort than zerging the temples in Orr so why should they reward so much?

As we get much better designed content that may actually take effort and has a place for all kinds of players, they can either make that content reward more than dungeons, or they can nerf dungeons and make new content take its place. Looks like they picked the second option, most likely because the first option would risk causing inflation in the economy, but either way, dungeons won’t be the favored way to get rewards anymore, outside of their exclusive gear.

There is a third option, which would be to revamp the dungeons with mechanics that don’t look like they were designed on a napkin, but they would essentially be working on old content instead of fresh new content if they did that.

I agree that dungeons, as a concept, are more interesting than fractals though. The story/explore mode was a great idea. Hopefully, they revamp dungeons later as a free patch and then bump the rewards back up, but I wouldn’t count on it.

It’s not a programming bug, it’s a game design issue. You can’t let level scaling affect a skill whose effectiveness is already based on level. They probably didn’t think of that.

The easiest solution would be to just let some traits apply their effect after level scaling, and then give that property to all skills that use level.

But the scaling system has always been broken and it just doesn’t scale well, so I’d like them to eventually replace it. Since they use a base stat → derived stat model, where the derived stat is the one that really matters in combat (ie: toughness → defense, power → damage multiplier, vitality → health, etc.) I think that letting the base stats grow unhindered but then applying an asymptotic diminishing return formula on the derived stat would work best.

I think a lot of classes are going to be viable tanks. Daredevils and scrappers may be able to do the job too.

The difficult question is whether we will fall in a meta that heavily favors a class as the tank.

If that happens, my money’s on heralds or berserkers.

So far, Arenanet has been pretty conservative with taunts. It’s been on revenants, warriors, ranger pets, and I think that’s it. You’d think you’d see it on guardians (because they’re tanky) and on thieves (before it fits thematically) but nope.

ODB.6891:

This is wrong in so many ways. Their design succeeded, but they made the mistake of allowing gear stat combinations in PvE that were superfluous. They left clerics, nomad, cavalier, rampager, etc gear sets available for PvE players to choose from, when there was not a need for them. There should have been a single gear set for PvE. That way players would not have chosen safety net gear to begin with and would not be looking at the need to handhold these players now to make them feel wanted or needed. They did not want to just correct this mistake after the fact by removing the unnecessary gear stat combinations from PvE, so now they are trying to find ways to force relevance of those stat combinations now. Had they not made this mistake to begin with, they could have balanced encounters properly around this base level of stats. They would not be trying to find ways to make players in zerk gear die without the assistance of dedicated healers. They would not be fighting with the condi cap and struggling with balancing condi versus melee damage as much. They would not be struggling with tuning bosses and mobs to hit hard enough to kill players in full nomad…at the expense of everyone else.

You call me wrong in “so many ways” then you proceed with a suggestion to officially kill other players’ favored playstyle in order to preserve your own.

The solution to Arenanet’s problems is to promote build diversity, not to discourage it. God forbid some people like to play something that’s not fully glass-cannon, and they have the right to ask for viability in group content. “Play your way” works in both directions.

ODB.6891:

They did succeed in implementing their trinity of damage/support/control, but players stuck in the traditional trinity mind set still cannot adapt to a new paradigm. The new paradigm did not have those three elements as separate players….it is for each player to do all three of those things at once. We still have so many players struggling to understand that they are supposed to being doing damage, using support abilities and traits, and using control abilities and traits ….all at the same time. ANET seems to have given up on educating these players and decided to revert back to dedicated roles so these players will stop complaining. Hence we have our two new dedicated healers…ventari and druid.

How did they succeed with their vision when the vast majority of their players did not accept it after 3 years? How long do you want them to give the players to adapt before scrapping the idea? 10 years?

ODB.6891:

It is a matter of opinion and personal preference as to whether ANET’s damage/support/control was an improvement over the traditional trinity’s tank/healer/dps. I don’t think one is an improvement over the other…they are just alternatives. I personally enjoyed the alternative, but it looks like that alternative is about to end because ANET could not stick to their vision.

Personal opinions are what they are, but here’s a fact: in 3 years there hasn’t been a single competitor that has copied GW2’s party mechanics. Dynamic events, or some lesser form of them, have been copied by nearly every other MMOs since then. WvW has inspired a lot of new PvP modes in 3 years. A gear and level normalization in PvP has been implemented by a lot of other MMOs. Cosmetics rewards are becoming more popular in MMOs as well… But in 3 years, no one has been willing to copy GW2’s party mechanics. That’s a pretty good sign that the classic trinity of tank/DPS/healer is still viewed as superior.

They stuck to their vision for 3 years and it has turned their group PvE into a wasteland. It’s time to try something else. Tank/DPS/healer or something else, it doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not the status quo.

ODB.6891:

Instead they are letting the unwashed masses cries overwhelm them into reverting back to WoW.

Feel free to blame WoW and its players for every GW2 design decision you dislike, but the fact is that WoW has a healthy and challenging group PvE experience while this game does not, and for 3 years, players have been asking Arenanet to do something about it.

ODB.6891:

The real problem here, is that ANET is not just making these dedicated healers useful, they are making them mandatory to success in raids. This violates their entire phiw policy. Success in a raid will apparently require these healers….you will have to bring one…whether you want to or not…if you plan on completing the content.

Have you done the content to say they’re mandatory? Unless I missed something, all they said was that they were killing the 10x berserker groups, and good riddance because that’s just stupid.

And even if a healer is required, if there isn’t a single person in your group that is willing to put a few group heals on their bar to help the group progress then I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe you need to stop hiring cowboys in your guild. The only problem that could happen is if revenant and druid are the only viable healer classes, because the ranger class does not typically attract very “healy” players, and the Ventari stance looks very boring. (That tablet…) If elementalists, guardians, engineers, and maybe shout warriors are viable group healers then it shouldn’t be a problem to have 1 or 2 players heal.

Also, welcome to DPS/Control/Support, where healing is a form of support, and tanking is a form of control. If you can’t find a healer then maybe other forms of support will work. We don’t know yet.

ODB.6891:

As far as the OP’s statement goes….“we” said we didn’t want the trinity by our original purchase of GW2….as that was one of the cornerstones of the game…clearly documented by the three roles being listed as damage, support, and control….not damage, tanking, healing. Just because some people couldn’t be bothered to read the game description, or because ANET is back peddling on the product they sold us, does not make that any less of a valid issue.

At launch, I think everyone was open-minded and willing to give a shot to this new type of party mechanics, but you have to be blind to not see how hard it failed. DPS/Control/Support never happened, the reality was DPS/DPS/DPS. That design led the competitive PvE to a dead-end, and a very shallow one at that.

I respect companies that innovate, but something’s only innovation when it’s at least as good as what was there before, and GW2’s party mechanics clearly didn’t improve on the classic trinity of tank/DPS/healer.

I respect Arenanet if they have the guts to throw that design away and replace it with something that is perhaps less innovative but a lot more fun, compelling, strategic and inclusive for the majority of its player base.

That said, I think they’re just trying to make a place for players who like healers and tanks. I don’t think they’re forcing those roles on us. I think they’re just trying to make them playable and useful in groups. ie: You can go without a tank or a healer, but if you use those roles, they won’t be a waste of a group spot.

Test.8734:

Paulash.5814:

My only response to this is that many players have level 80 Rangers on their account.

How many players who currently have a level 80 ranger on their account have created that character to play as a dedicated healer?

Zero.

What makes you think that people who made a character to NOT play as a dedicated healer will be willing to just turn around and play as a dedicated healer?

If anything, the situation will likely become worse than it’s right now for rangers. Instead of being not very sought but being begrudgingly accepted in groups (unlike necromancers, who are simply not accepted), rangers will only be accepted if they agree to use a healing build, and will be kicked otherwise.

Yeah. This is a huge problem I’m foreseeing.

The population that wants to play healers has probably settled on Guardian or Elementalist, not Ranger. If Arenanet wanted to allow dedicated healers to exist (as they seem to be doing) they should have focused on making Guardian and Elementalist very potent healers before giving top heals to a class that nobody ever rolled to heal.

The same goes with tanks. Let Warrior and Guardian tanks be a thing before Engineers, Thieves or Necromancer, since that’s where you’ll find the players who are most likely to want that kind of role.

In the mean time, Revenant are the new guys in a GW2 that allows tanks and healers so they get the choice to be excellent tanks and excellent healers.

This is going to be a problem.

Eponet.4829:

Tanks also need some kind of enrage mechanic that causes them to become more powerful if they’re ignored, buffs that make everyone else unkillable, or a ton of CC that makes them have a reason to be fought first.

The traditional “You’re a tank, your job isn’t damage, it’s surviving” thing is awful in that it creates a dynamic where every enemy ends up seeming idiotic for actively targetting the /lowest/ priority target that also takes the longest time to kill, every single time.

A tank should focus on survival and control first, but there isn’t a rule that says that a tank character can’t do damage. In fact, tanks in WoW do more damage relative to pure DPS than a Nomad character does vs a Berserker in Guild Wars 2.

In PvP, tanks could just hold points and that would be enough to get them focused on. Giving them a lot of CC would make them annoying when kept alive so that would also get other players to attack them. Not to mention that Taunt works on players in this game.

In PvE, the AI will do whatever it wants. We’ll have to see what happens. If Arenanet decides that a boss is not tankable, it will have a chaotic AI that attack random people or that snaps aggro onto berserkers, and the only thing you’ll be able to do to save them is taunt. If they decide that a boss is tankable, they could just do something like making the boss snap on the last character that used taunted, or that gets angry when you block them.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

As you can see by the fact that I created this post that there are those of us that do not find Tanking to be boring at all.

As a main tank who has raided WoW since Wrath of the Lich King, I think he’s kind of right that just standing there and taking hits it boring. If Arenanet makes tanking a thing, I don’t want to just stand there while a druid heals me.

Tanking is at its best when you are actively mitigating attacks with defensive cooldowns, strategies, and synergizing with your healers’ cooldown. You have to know what is best to save a cooldown for, what’s OK to let pass.

If done right, tanking in GW2 could actually be a step up from WoW tanking because blocks, dodges, invulns and endure pain are 100% damage mitigation, so having that Shield Stance just in time for a big dragon’s breath and taking a grand total of 0 damage feels infinitely more rewarding as a tank player than in other MMOs, where a strong cooldown gives you maybe 40% damage reduction and you still take a ton of damage.

In fact, I’d like a system where if you have a good tank you don’t even need a healer, and vice versa. Or you could just have a bunch of players that are not fully glass cannon to pass aggro when they have used up all their cooldown.

That said, if tanking ever becomes a thing in this game, I want to tank on my warrior or maybe my guardian, with a huge shield. Making engineers or necros the tank classes would be a stupid idea. Don’t get me wrong, ideally all classes should be viable for all roles, but if you have to get tanking right, at least get it right on the classes that has the “tank minded” playerbase first…

I must say that I had totally forgotten that the revenant shield locks them on the ground when blocking. I agree this is a big deal. Those tooltips still need more work.

I still feel that our block’s cooldown is way too long though. 20 seconds seems to be the norm for long block skills now.

Great discussion though.

The lastest patch notes preview for BWE3 looks like it’s going to make revenant shield 5 block for 4 seconds instead of the old endure pain+break bar, and it also reduces its cooldown to 20 seconds, while keeping the self heal.

Shield Stance on the other hand blocks for 3 seconds and that’s that, and it’s on 30 second cooldown. In other words, it’s objectively inferior in every way, despite having a longer cooldown.

Now, I know beta is beta and balance is still up, but if the devs are comfortable with that version of Rev shield 5 being in the next BWE, doesn’t that illustrate how excessively high the warrior’s shield cooldowns are for what the skills do?

Curious what do other warriors think of that. I almost never make balance posts but as a warrior who really likes warrior shield I find that revenant shield buff striking.

Astralporing.1957:

Bearhugger.4326:

It’s confirmed in the blog post that there will be rewards exclusive to raids. And frankly, that’s what it takes, otherwise people will run raids until they win for the challenge, and then they’ll have nothing to do. It takes a little carrot to make them keep playing after they beat the encounters. There are a lot of examples in other MMO with raids becoming ghosttowns after people beat them once due to no reward. The Ruby Sanctum raid in WoW is one such case.

That only means people weren’t there for the raid, but just for the rewards. To keep those that are actually interested in the content playing, all that is really needed is a right quantity of the rewards. No exclusivity should be necessary. If it is, that means raids are pulling in people that would have been equally happy (or happier) with acquiring those rewards from other sources.

What gets raiders raiding is the challenge and the exclusive rewards. You can argue that social is important too, but it’s orthogonal to raiding. (Social guilds don’t necessarily raid.)

If you beat the challenge and you have all encounters solidly on farm status, what’s left is the rewards. And if there’s no rewards? Raiders abandon the content. It’s as simple as that.

That’s what happens with unrewarding raid instances like Ruby Sanctum in WoW, and that’s what going to happen to GW2’s raids if they change their mind on legendary rewards. (Not that I think they’ll change their minds on the exclusivity of rewards because that’s how GW1 worked and that’s how GW2 was advertised to be before launch.)

Seera.5916:

Ohoni and others who do not favor exclusive rewards:

Would it hugely bother you if in say 6 months to a year, they come up with an equivalently difficult and time consuming process in another type of game play and awarded legendary armor pieces that were of a different skin?

Personally, it would bother me.

If Arenanet gave away the Heritage armor sets for free just because it’s 3 years later, I would be upset. That skin is there to show that I have done a bunch of stuff in Guild Wars 1. That game is still running, so go play Eye of the North if you want it.

Same thing for raider rewards. Prestige skins are there to represent their exploits in the game’s world, so if you want the items, do what they did.

What I would be okay with would be if they made a slightly modified version of the skin and made that one easier to obtain. So you can still tell who did the raid and who didn’t.

I think a few players got used to having access to all the skins due to Guild Wars 2’s failure to provide players with enough prestige skins, but the game was clearly advertised as rewarding with such skins, just like Guild Wars 1 did.

I think they realized their failure to have enough prestige skins by 2014 when they put those those new PvP and LS armor sets, and with Heart of Thorns’ legendary armors it looks like they’re finally getting on with the program. I expect the 2 new armor sets announced on the website to be prestige skins rewarding specific feats.

It’s confirmed in the blog post that there will be rewards exclusive to raids. And frankly, that’s what it takes, otherwise people will run raids until they win for the challenge, and then they’ll have nothing to do. It takes a little carrot to make them keep playing after they beat the encounters. There are a lot of examples in other MMO with raids becoming ghosttowns after people beat them once due to no reward. The Ruby Sanctum raid in WoW is one such case.

Now, time to convince the devs to put exclusive rewards for other areas of the game. High-end PvP needs more exclusive things too. Smaller things could also have distinct and exclusive rewards, like jumping puzzles.

I’m 100% percent fine with having to work a bit for my elite specialization. I don’t want to purchase the expansion and immediately get the specialization. Getting a desired skillset is half the fun! People in sPvP should unlock it on day one as usual, but in PvE I want to work a bit on this. My preference would be to get an epic quest for the specialization, but that’s probably too much to ask so skill points will do.

I like build locking. It makes the trait choices harder and more interesting.

Hey devs, could you indulge Ultimate edition buyers with a 72 hours extended period for the anniversary sales? There are nice things on the store that I’d like to buy, and I figured out that I may as well buy the Ultimate edition because it’ll be roughly the same price.

But then I saw this thread. There’s no way I’m not going to risk 100$ if I’m not sure I’ll get the gems in time to buy what I want to get.

If it’s too complicated to add extra sale time for specific players (UE owners) just add 3 days to the sale. You’ll make everyone happy and you may get more UE sales from the people like me who are holding back because of this issue.

It’s just virtual items, I don’t see why those absolutely have to leave the store on Sept 1st.

I don’t think they will need agony resist, although I could see Arenanet adding some sort of gating with their raid mastery in order to entice player to start with the easiest raid and do them in order.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Kurr.4179:

Finally, “toxic raider culture”? REALLY?! I have no words for that one besides laughing…

That’s understandable. The crowd over at League of Legends probably thinks they are polite and helpful, too.

Speaking about toxic behavior, speaking nonsense about another group of player you know nothing of is part of it…

Anyone who has raided (and I mean actual raiding, not WoW LFR) would tell you that you’re out of your mind. The vast majority of raid leaders will not tolerate toxic behavior in their raid and will immediately kick any toxic player out of their raids. Not only that but the greatest source of conflict in PvE tend to be about loot and DPS meters, which Guild Wars 2 has none of.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Games that give you everything for no effort have no lifespan. GW2 succeeds at making people want to keep chasing skins, titles, achievements and victory in many different game modes at once. If they took that away, they would be left with a lifeless game.

Well, you know that GW2, despite having no raids, did nothing but grow in the three years of its existence, yes? Games tend to die when no new content is being added, not because one particular niche group (raiders don’t seem to like it when you point out that they are minority, but truth sometimes hurts I guess) doesn’t have their interests represented. And I’d even be careful with the word “die” for almost no MMO ever really dies. Even Everquest is still running. GW2 made it to be second most successful MMO after WoW – without catering to raiders. And is this really so surprising, for there are a LOT of so-called ‘casual’ players around that don’t really like them, or even have to deal with the fallout of their presence (such as the obvious rift between raiders and non-raiders as evident by this thread and countless others like it). Guess what MMO really attracted non-raiders? Well, how about the only one not having raids? Shame it’s a thing of the past now.

Of course this game keeps growing if you go by the total number of boxes sold. The only way it wouldn’t be would be if the number of people getting banned would be bigger than the number of new players.

Right now there are 3 MMOs ahead of GW2 on Twitch so your claim that it is solidly #2 after WoW and well ahead of other MMOs is doubtful, to put it politely. With proper implementation of raiding I could absolutely see it being #2, if not #1 because there’s nothing to do in WoW…

I’ll be honest. I expect their first raids to have some serious problems. I expect massive complains about overpowered classes, overused builds, cheap strategies allowing to “cheat” an encounter, and so on.

But over the time I’m confident they will refine and it will eventually be good.

LS1 wasn’t very good originally, but they found a much better design for LS2. I expect nothing different for their raids.

That can be fixed with masteries. Imagine something like this.

Raid mastery: Aura of Dispersion.

When you are in a raid instance, your outgoing buffs now affect up to {(RaidSize / 5 – 1) * 100}% additional targets. In addition, whenever you receive a buff from another player in a raid instance, you automatically share that buff with your pets.

Ohoni.6057:

Comparisons are valid when they’re valid. They aren’t when they aren’t. You can’t compare WoW to anything that isn’t WoW, and you can’t compare FF14 to anything that isn’t based on a popular license. If FF14 is not crushing GW2 then that means GW2 is far and away better on its own merits. Wildstar is a valid comparison because it’s a unique IP MMO that has very similar gameplay to GW2’s, and yet focused on hardcore raiders, got all of them they could possibly expect, and it turns out that still wasn’t enough to keep a game running.

What? Is WoW is some sort of divine game that no mere mortal can create a product that can compete with? I have an active WoW sub and my entire guild only logs in to raid, myself included. Furthermore, the current expansion was terrible, there won’t be any more content until the next expansion which is due for mid 2016, and the game is bleeding subs at an alarming rate.

If Arenanet wants to charm the disappointed WoW players with raid content, there hasn’t been a better time to do so, and I’m pretty happy to see them try it because I think GW2 has been better than WoW in everything except group PvE.

In fact I think the picture would have been quite different if the game had compelling PvE content on day one.

I think they would also have to give Valve 30% of the profits from gem store purchases. (I know that for a big publisher the 30% can probably be negociated but you get the point.)

Yeah, in the long term, I think that flexible raid sizes is a must. It’s not fun for a raid leader to have to ask himself who will be sitting for the night. Besides, the game already has boss scaling in events.

That said, it’s very difficult to balance raid scaling, and we don’t want players the find a raid size N that optimizes the difficulty otherwise the game might as well be fixed size, so it’s very important that they get scaling right if they put it.

Since it’s going to be Anet’s first raids I expect there to be hiccups and some problems, so I’d like them to start with fixed 10 players raids, and once the team feels good enough with raid design, introduce scaling retroactively.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Laraley.7695:

This is exactly why the game is so casual and has one of the worst pve content I’ve ever seen.

Yes, GW2 is (well…was) fairly casual, indeed. It was the one MMO for people like me. There are 20 MMOs out there that cater to elitists and people who want to brag with exclusive gear. Seriously, why is this sort of people even playing this game and then trying to shape it into something it was at least at launch not meant to be? I don’t get that.

Better question. Why should Arenanet keep their game exclusively casual when they can have content for both the casual and the hardcore raiders? I’m sorry but WoW and SW:ToR have both crowds, so why can’t Guild Wars 2? It’s not like they’re taking away the world content or the living world to create raids. It’s going to be the same Guild Wars 2, only with some extras for the more dedicated players.

Well I hope that the majority of the work to get the armor pieces are related to raiding, because I would like the armor skins to feel strongly related to a specific raid and force players to do that raid more than once.

That said, I think it’s fine if the raid armor pieces require to do other parts of the game. Getting a legendary should be a journey, and they should force you out of your element and do things you wouldn’t normally do. I’d deny access to the legendary armors to people who don’t want to raid, but I’d also deny access to legendaries to those who just want to stay in there comfort zone.

Kimyrielle.3826:

That the definition of bragging. "Hey, look at how AWESOME I am I am a RAIDER!!!’ Bragging is a low thing to do. If people would simply want to be proud of what they did, they’d take a screenie of them standing on the dead boss and print it, to hang in on their wall as a memory of their accomplishment. But no, that’s not enough for the raiding crowd. They need to shove it into other people’s faces. In the danger of my repeating myself, but…that’s petty.

Yes. Bragging is the whole point. It’s the ENTIRE point. Even though I won’t raid myself and my character will look like a scrub, I EMBRACE the fact that the best players will get to show off.

You have a social game, it’s going to have hard content, and people that went through the trouble of doing the hardest content deserve to show off that cool armor.

MMO working as intended.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Bearhugger.4326:

Kimyrielle.3826:

Testudo.4620:

people that complain about not wanting to play hard content for exclusive gear just remind me of soccer moms asking to see the manager

“Live and let live” is a concept that’s apparently alien to some people. I don’t care what items you have and where you got it from. Why do you care what I have and what I had to do to get it? It’s just…petty. One person loves to raid to get their legendary. That’s ok. The next person rather kills 10,000 karka. That’s also ok. Both takes time and effort. But the average raider apparently can’t be happy unless they can shove their “Elite Status” in other people’s faces. It’s the only reason why raiders would ever need exclusive gear for, after all. Can’t probably brag with a legendary if scrubs like me can get one for killing 10,000 karka, after all. As I said…petty.

Nobody cares if Arenanet decides to add legendary armors that don’t require raiding. (As long as it still takes a lot of work to do.) They can reward with legendaries whatever feat they consider worthy of a legendary. What we want is the raid skins to be exclusive to raids, ie: can’t get that same skin without raiding.

As I said…petty. There is no good reason why you would care about what stuff I have.

There’s a very good reason people care actually. This is a social game and skins are supposed to be trophies, and with raiding the devs are finally making that come true. Can’t do the content? You don’t get the rare skins. This is an MMO and that genre has to reward its best players with things you can’t have, and since you can’t get better and better stats then the game rewards with cosmetic.

You can keep calling this petty but that’s just an MMO working as intended. If you want to use whatever skin you like without any limitation you should play Saints Row 3 instead.

That said, I’m sure there will be cool skins in the gem store if you want something for nothing.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Testudo.4620:

people that complain about not wanting to play hard content for exclusive gear just remind me of soccer moms asking to see the manager

“Live and let live” is a concept that’s apparently alien to some people. I don’t care what items you have and where you got it from. Why do you care what I have and what I had to do to get it? It’s just…petty. One person loves to raid to get their legendary. That’s ok. The next person rather kills 10,000 karka. That’s also ok. Both takes time and effort. But the average raider apparently can’t be happy unless they can shove their “Elite Status” in other people’s faces. It’s the only reason why raiders would ever need exclusive gear for, after all. Can’t probably brag with a legendary if scrubs like me can get one for killing 10,000 karka, after all. As I said…petty.

Nobody cares if Arenanet decides to add legendary armors that don’t require raiding. (As long as it still takes a lot of work to do.) They can reward with legendaries whatever feat they consider worthy of a legendary. What we want is the raid skins to be exclusive to raids, ie: can’t get that same skin without raiding.