Guild Wars 2

We would need to change several key skills if we want to prevent content from being a joke.

1# Stealth. Dungeons are a joke when parties can just skip content. Smoke fields should be changed into giving vigor on blasts, and portals should be limited to only teleport 1 player inside instanced content and raids. This would remove the requirement of one thief per dungeon group (specific dungeons).

2# Reflects. Bosses are a joke when every attack can just be skipped by a single skill. The fastest DPS ever recorded in game and has been described as a exploit has been caused by reflecting lupi’s attack in Arah, and reflecting negates completely many boss mechanics in the game. Reflect should be changed to only negate the next 3 attacks. This would remove the requirement of one guardian per party.

3# Banners. Instanced content are designed around 5 players and are a joke when two utilities and a single trait contributes the same DPS as if there were and additional player in the party, while also locking the meta to direct damage. Those should be nerfed by 50% to encourage a different meta and remove the requirement of one warrior per party.

4# Zerker Meta. Parties that only invest in damage over everything else make content a joke. Dungeons should inflict different kind challenge, some which require a minimum amount of healing prayer to survive. Some bosses should be immune to direct damage, or do a undodgeable attacks which require toughness to survive.

If we did that and then balanced each class based on their ability to cause damage under the time frames 5s, 10s, 30s, and 1m, we should be able to create content where content can remain challenging and each profession be equally good at dealing with it.

Blade shards are the cheapest way to get ascended pieces for alts and this useful even if you unlocked the skins.

Every problem listed here is either a bug, which in that case should be fixed, or it is a design fault, in which it should also be fixed by changing the design.

If a players enjoyment on WvW depend on large zergs sneaking around and being taking objective stealthy, then that that is bad game design since a spy account previously costed about the price of a pizza and now cost the time/gold of 60 levels.

Instead of limiting what free accounts can do, maybe they should start fixing the issues in WvW which allows players to troll.

Put a cap on how much supply a single player can take from a objective so a single player can’t waste it all.

Put a debuff on players who die in a golem which prevent them from entering new ones.

Fix the bugs which has sit on their bug tracker for years which allow people to glitch into places. Put in safeguards to detect people who speed hacks, wall hacks, or some other form of hacks.

People who want to mini-max their party composition for dungeons want profession that are masters at party damage increase, party reflect, party stealth party stability, and pure DPS.

Rangers are sadly not master of any of that so people who want to organize fast runs tend to looks elsewhere. If that is something that worries you I would recommend leveling up several professions so you always has a profession that any specific party need.

The thing to remember about party composition is that there are party wide buffs and single player dps. Party buffs generally give more DPS but you can’t stack the same buff twice.

This is why 1 PS warrior, 1 Guardian and 1 Thief is used even if each individual profession don’t do as much DPS as a ele, because the party buffs from those 3 professions are extremely useful. PS warrior adds about 1 extra party member (25%) worth of damage by 2 banners and 1 trait. The guardian has party blocks, party reflect and stability which are key utilities to make the run smooth and mistake free. The Thief is only second to ele for DPS and brings party stealth while also ripping defiance at a great rate.

The fastest way to nerf the zerker meta is to nerf warrior banners and powerful allies trait. If those were to be made personal rather than party wide, eles would indirectly be replaced by professions which dps is not depended on party wide zerker buffs. A 33% nerf to zerker meta would also push towards a new condi meta.

Khristophoros.7194:

The eles start the party at 25 might with blasts and warriors don’t do that so they’re not very relevant for the ice bow burst. The banners are relevant but even without banners ice bow is ridiculous.

If you believe that, try do a fractal 50 without a warrior and bring 3 eles. I remember someone doing the calculation what banners did, and it came down to about 33% of the party total damage output.

A party with a warrior and 2 eles will clear pve faster, have higher initial dps for the first 10s, and higher sustained dps after that than a party with 3 eles. What makes ele dps good is the party modifiers that other classes brings and if you want evidence for that, just take a look at speed runs, party search for dungeons, or just the average fractal 50 party. 1 warrior is required, while multiple eles is optional. If ice bow was the be-all and end-all for dps, then all the speed records should be 5 eles. They are not.

If you remove that PS warrior from you party, you will see a very noticeable drop in DPS regardless if you have 2 or 3 eles with icebows. The damage is just not there if you don’t combine it with damage multipliers from might, banners and traits that warriors has.

PvE and dungeons specific has a few core roles which need to be filled in order to do content fast. You need at minimum one warrior for DPS modifiers. One guardian for reflects and stability. One thief for stealth and skipping content. One OR Two eles for base DPS and fill out the party.

Remove any one of the specific roles and PvE content slows down. There have been many times where I or a party member switched from ele because the party lacked a warrior or thief or guardian, and each time we do so mid dungeon/fractal run it is imminently noticeable.

Lets speculate about what skills and trait produce the most damage in a PvE group.

So warrior has this trait called phalanx strength and banners, producing somewhere around 20-50% of a groups damage. That sounds completely over powered, except that they do so only in conjunction with other players skills and ability. This result in party composition where a single warrior often is the best strategy.

Thieves have the highest single target dps, and is frequently used for that purpose in some specific dungeons. They also provide party stealth which allows a lot of PvE content to be skipped, providing a infinitive amount of dps in those contexts. All of that is offset by limited AoE dps, thus you rarely see more than a single thieve in a party.

Guardians brings reflects which negates aspects of the game, allowing groups to survive or skip content which otherwise would create a challenge. The biggest dps ever recorded has been done with reflecting and has been describe by some as an exploit. You normally only bring a single guardian to a group for the purpose of this utility.

Ele brings a lot of base AoE dps, were lava font and pure damage increase traits are the primary sources. Ice bow 4 and metorshower contributes to that damage and the combination is what makes PvE eles a great source for base damage. As such, when you got the necessary amount of the above professions, you can fill the rest of the party with ele’s and beat more or less any content.

Mesmers used to be useful in dungeons, but anet patched out uses of portals which then created the thieve skip meta. Rangers has never really found a niche, and engineers can work as a cross between ele and thieves. Condi necro do not get any synergy with warriors, and power necro don’t do enough damage compared to ele.

So in the grand scale of things, where does ice bow 4# come into this? Would nerfing ice bow 4# allow for different party compositions, different uses of other professions in PvE, or prevent exploits and skips?

There is exist two kind of game companies, where one is the industry leaders where customers put a lot of faith in and are treated with high quality in return. The other type of companies are the underdogs who shower the customer with quantity in order out value and out compete the industry leaders.

Anet do not produce the later, so the unspoken agreement is that the few content we do get should have high quality. When that doesn’t get delivered, people feel betrayed.

Anet doubled the HP, and then doubled the damage each person do. If that is not quality game balancing, I don’t know what is.

Looking from the outside, what they did was fix so condi worked and crit worked while keeping the difficult level about the same as before. If they had just done that in a single patch it would had looked great.

If you want easier but with a significant lower drop rate, wvw rank up chests do at times drop weapon and armor chests. I do not know the numbers but I would suspect once every 250-1000 ranks or so. Edge of the mist farming is a rather reliable way to get a ranks fast.

fractal 50, exotic dragon chest, teq chest and triple trouble chest.

Diovid.9506:

So you’re saying they can’t do small scale tests with external testers anymore in the future? Because the moment HoT pre-purchasers are able to get in a test ceases to be small scale.

Marketing and sale design require careful design in order to not confuse consumers or making them feel like they are being tricked. Instead of promising “all future beta tests” they could have phrased it as “a exclusive pre-order test”. It would result in the same thing, but rather than leaving preorders with a feeling of betrayal they would feel happy about the exclusivity of their purchase.

Now they painted themselves into a corner and they got to figure out how to fix what they broke. Maybe their PR department can figure something out, but if they do nothing, the result is an other disappointment for consumers who thought they bought something and now finds out that anet is using a technicality to take it back.

Im sure no harm can possible happen if consumers feel tricked by this, or that by using a technicality of “stress test” rather than “beta test”, everyone will feel that its perfectly fair and exactly what they expected when they purchased the pre-order.

Everyone is free of course to point out that its the consumers own fault for not realizing that anet can just call a test by any other name and instantly the purchased access is void and null. Doing that will not at all make them more bitter and more resentful towards anet and the community.

I see a few people that state that we don’t have all the facts yet so any conclusion about content is wrong.

I thus propose a deal. For every single person that did a uninformed purchase of the pre-order, an other person will be allowed here to make a uninformed decision to not purchase the game at all . Both will then have done the same amount of rational thinking regarding this.

Everyone else can then wait and see what the final game will be before doing a informed decision if the asking price is fair for the amount of content that HoT has.

It might sound strange, but I rather want to be convinced that the expansion is worth $50. It sound as more content, more advanced game play and new mechanics would be fun, and the idea of a expansion sounds great. However, I don’t want to spend money on simply the idea, so could we please see some second of game plays in new fractals, world bosses, raid, dungeons and story? Not asking for complete layouts or numbers, just some videos showing us how fun this expansion actually will be playing.

If the issue is just with spidy not correctly reflecting the actually price, then that answer to my question is simple. It lists a historical gold-gem price of 20g, and gem-gold of 10g, which a 15% tax could not possible explain (thus this thread). If spidy is broken, then whatever conclusion one might want to draw from it is incorrect.

Looking in game, current prices say a buy price of 17.5g and sell price of 12.5g. That is indeed 15% on both sides, and reflect a “true” price of 15g (rounded). It also shows a total of 30% added tax on the price the seller is willing to sell his gems for.

I always thought that the tax was a flat one, around 25%. Looking at spidy however, and it looks like it is now days it is around 50%.

What has changed, and wasn’t this supposed to be market based, supply and demand?

Doing 2 SW runs, you get around a silk stack worth of salvages. If prices goes up, more people will farm and prices goes down again.

Fights in fast dungeons will likely stay zerker, while fights in fractal and other places where bosses has a significant health pool could see a full condi meta.

But then someone will likely find a exploitable tactic that works everywhere for a bit when the new classes, skills and items are released.

I decided to gather 100 exotic Dragon Chest and see what the drop rate was. Got 4 acended chests including the hord, a stack of ectos, 12 exotics and 2 stacks of 200 luck.

I guess someone should do 1000 chests and see if the drop rate holds.

The problem with the cannon phase for Mai Trin is that it boring and tedious. After a short while you start to adminer the color of the wall, or that stack of tax decleration which suddenly looks more interesting… and whoops, you died.

It sound quite easy to make the cannon phase fun. They could use the cannon fire as a method to damage mai trin by freindly fire. Or why not use those ships in the background and allow a player to run over there and destory them like the treb in pvp, thus creating a 4 vs 1 situation. It doesn’t need to be so boring that boredom is the biggest threat of the fight.

Wryscher.1432:

The good thing about it is now you dont have to Ktrain! Just hang out in the tower and win the ‘defend’ event over and over!

Just idling somewhere won’t give you rewards, nor killing NPC’s. The active work needed to trigger reward is not a very lucrative farm.

I would like to see a server merge between EU and NA. More players, more 24/7 coverage, and a major change to t3/t2.

You are a few updates behind. Earth do not cause knock back, and Water do not give chill. Earth gives 3s protection and 5s cripple, and water does a heal and remove a condition, and is extremly unreliable since it first need to catch up with a foe. Earth do not have that requirement, and is simply a minor effect with 18s cd.

Some of the race elite skills can be quite acceptable for ele. Sylvari has a decent mist form substitute, Humans can do a aoe chill/poison, char has a weak version of meteor shower, and you are out of luck if your race is norn/assura. In those cases, bring Glyph of Elementals. In larger zergs, earth elemental actually helps in a tiny way since it will soak up aoe damage, and air elemental brings a stun for those <10 player fights. FGS is an alternative if you just want a speed skill (as mentioned by Crius).

Personally, I would go with Sylvari since a mist form skill which also permits the use of some utility skills is a nice get-out-of-jail card when everything is on CD.

Swords. We can’t atm use them nor can we conjure a sword. Torches could also be possible, but it sound silly for a ele.

Since week 50 last year, two servers, IoJ and NSP, seems to be locked into state in which no escape seems possible. At what point is one allowed to start complain?

For current WvW play, racial elites of humans/Sylvari is better than any of the Elementalist own elite skills, and thanks to being racial, have not been hit when elementalists skills got nerfed.

To make the class elite skills better than the racial elite skills, they need to make those skill work with the Elementalist game play rather being overpowered in extreme narrow situation, then nerfed, which just leave a mediocre skill that does nothing.

Take Glyph of Elementals, and give them a aura that damages nearby foes. Elementalists are not minion masters, and minions never complemented gameplay that Elementalists has in any weapon set. By making the minion a moveable signet of storm, then it could complement the area of denial aspect in a interesting way, given that it is has enough health to survive.

Conjure Fiery Greatsword currently lacks a purpose beyond being a escape skill. Ice bow does the AoE job better, has the best stun skill in game, and even spreads some conditions. FGS need a role, which could be single target damage if it had boosted auto attacks, added Vulnerability to skill 2, and changed skill 5 to single target nuke. Then they could nerf the mobility of 3 and 4 by smaller range or higher CD.

Tornado is a interesting skill that is sadly unuseable at current state. I would like to see it pull rather than launch, with higher health/armor. It would then fit the role of tank and CC, useable when such role is needed, and give interesting counter-play since the tornado is a huge visible target on the battlefield.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/8902

Did everyone suddenly want to become a Kodan, or did someone figure a use for this particular tonic?

Did a few of the first mission in the living story part 5, and noticed that a glory booster was suddenly one of the new items in my bags. I never bought one or got it as a drop back when it was an actually working item, so it seemed odd.

It is also classified as a crafting material.

http://www.recompile.se/~belorn/GW/gw316.png

I am not sure if people have simply missed it, but shiny candy wrappers do drop as a random rare loot (or from the tot bags, not sure).

I know this is reported as a old bug. The last jump won’t trigger success if you got some latency. Duffy reported it, and some people (like me) can do like 20+ of different variations of the last jump and still not get a successful result.

Is there any trick one can apply to counter for the latency issue? jump early, jump late, jump exactly as the lightning hit? Since getting to the last spot is the easy part, it would be interesting to hear others methods and try if any works.

It would be kind of neat if the white swords was made into a placeable trap, triggered when a enemy moves over it. An alarm trap that defenders can plant in cata spots and similar places.

NRNG and 2.5 solve different problems and I see no reason why both can’t be used.

NRNG follows the game design model that games are intended to be fun, and true randomness will always result in some people having their experienced ruined from bad luck. Using NRNG to adjust for this helps those people, while the general perception of RNG still remains. Famous practitioners of NRNG is computerized slot matchines which do it in order to garantie that the payout is as stated on the machine for a given time frame, and the game series Civilization uses it for the reason given above.

2.5 solves the problem of RNG and collections. The closer to completion a player get in a given collection, the lower the chanse will be to get one of the missing items. Fractal is suffering significant from this, where players who is missing 2-3 skins have very small reward incentive to continue playing. The chance that they will get a drop that they can use is so insignificant small, it can go several months or year/s for even the smallest progress.

Good analyze Lord Kuru. It might have simply been a perfect storm of circumstances, but I hope anet do take a look at it and see if there is something they can use to trigger it more times in the future.

Looking a bit outside the servers involved, and only looking at the score, it do look like the intended way a tournament should look like. Three sides going all out until the very last hour.

I could very much see a future where tournaments was tailored for this goal. Ignore ranks, population or coverage. Make interesting tournament matches where no one can predict who would win, and that is more interesting that “who is the best server”.

NSP vs SBI vs DR

Its Wednesday, and the difference is less than 3k between first and third. Had good fights all week and there been very little of one-sided encounters. Compared to last tournament or just regular matchups, its nice to have a match where everyone is likely going to try to win until the last hour.

Celestial gear is 2/3 of the damage you get from zerker armor. Full celestial lose 618 power, 276 precision and ferocity, and gain 469 in vitality, armor, condition damage and armor.

The additonal condition damage is not going increase the damage from your armor set by 50%. The extra health can be nice, the extra healing is helpful, but 1/3 of total damage is a major loss. In PvE end content, zerker is superior armor to celestial.

In PvP and WvW, the trade looks different. Full zerker dies to fast, and full defensive do not bring enough to the table . Celestial is the middle ground, and is why some people picks it.

To paraphrase psizone comment with minute changes:

I’m here to complain about one skill that does something no other class can do and frankly, it shouldn’t be able to do. I have no problem with portal skill making the mesmer move around the map, it’s the “getting inside keeps” part that I believe is broken. There are other issues with other classes, and other people can set up posts to complain about them, they’re not what this post is about.

I like it.

It hopefully combats the high gem price, and it make the game more honest about the pay-to-win qualities of the game.

Looks to be on of those “off by one zero” bugs that qualify for a hotfix.

Im refering to the field “Funds:” in the pickup.

Was that a UI bug or did I really loose money from picking up my items?

As developers you should feel enough secure and proud in your work, that given the chose, people will choose to use the new improve interface over the old one.

Please, allow people to optional use the old interface.

Once unlocked, seems to be a exotic version of a spike.

Ele elites vs Necro elites: You tell me, which profession has the worst elite skill?

Flesh golem vs Elemental: Necro skill wins hands down. better utility, better dps, better duration, better health.

Plague vs tornado: A tie, or a slightly preference to ele thanks to utility on bridges. Neither is liked by the community.

Lich vs fgs: lich form wins hands down in 1v1. fgs brings running utility, and ability to hunt down a single panicking target.

No more bannering the lord.

No more stun-bug when building siege.

No more indefinitely dead scouts or people waiting to get ressed near portal.

All pretty good stuff tbh.