Guild Wars 2

Misguided.5139:

Nabrok.9023:

Could this skill be adjusted so that it doesn’t root, or at least change Soothing Bastion trait so that it does something else?

Unwilling root is not good.

Then don’t choose the trait. It’s a very good trait, IMO, and I wouldn’t want it changed.

I tried it out in WvW the other day.

It interrupted me mid-stomp, which then allowed the enemy to stomp a nearby ally that I was trying to rally, which then rallied my target.

It’s going back on the shelf. Forever.

Labjax.2465:

Black Box.9312:

Crafting items and materials should never be timegated. Period. End of story.

It does occur to me that it would be nice if timegated materials could build up. As in, every day you log in gives you a “charge” for the time-gated material. If you make one of the material each day, then you won’t notice the difference. If you log in, but don’t make the material, then it gets saved for another day.

To avoid it undermining itself entirely, it would only work for recipes that you have unlocked and it would have to have a cap on how high it could stack. Something like 10-30.

The general idea would be that if you are active, but for some reason don’t have time to track down the materials and craft every day, you can play catch up later.

I would be okay with this, I suppose. Might not be ideal, but it’s certainly much better than the mess we have currently.

Ranatoa.4869:

Black Box.9312:

Coulter.2315:

Black Box.9312:

Crafting items and materials should never be timegated. Period. End of story.

Yes they should as it gives control over the supply and allows “time” to be given a value. Not for everything but it makes sense to have this mechanic.

Remember crafting had no real way to make money before they added these time gated things into the game, they are a useful part of the economy and give a reward for leveling crafting.

Not sure why you’d be so dismissive of these benefits.

Because there should never be a pure hard cap on progress. If you want crafting materials to have value, then decrease their drop rates or make them more difficult to acquire. Many of these materials are also account bound, which means that they instead have no impact on the economy.

Players should never be punished for trying to make the most of their time. Timegating enforces the idea of logging in every day for weeks to do something that could normally be done in a few minutes’ time. It needs to go.

While it’s true the first part of all the time gated crafting materials are account, the refined end product is not. E.g. the Lump of Mithrillium is account bound but the Deldrimor Steel that it is refined into is not. So they do very much impact the economy. In fact, as mentioned above, they are nearly the only way one can make any money by crafting. Nearly every MMO has time gated crafting (I’m sure there are some that don’t) it’s a common practice that does not punish players, it adds value to higher level crafting professions.

I’m sorry, but I simply don’t agree one bit. Punishing players that want to craft for themselves is exactly what it does, and there are plenty of better ways to make crafting more profitable. Or, better yet, harvesting the raw materials yourself is an excellent way to make gold. The removal of timegating would definitely help increase demand for them, too.

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

no need boon duration… but strenght have increased might duration… OFC u need boon duration XD

It helps for the energy management. If u can get 35 sec of fury when ur fury facet is on cd for 40 sec is more worth than juste 20 sec of fury for 40 sec cd.

and more might duration —> more migh stacks accumulated…. so yeah boon duration is a GREAT stat for revenant.

Except rune of strength and rune of hoelbrak both provide excellent might duration bonuses while also boosting your DPS far more than any general boon duration rune set.

Exxcalibur.6203:

Not a fan. The ground targeting and indirect damage of the hammer is not engaging for me, and the sword attack doesn’t really feel like im hitting anything with force. Back to the warrior…

Each to their own.

Are we playing with the same sword? Because I’ve been seeing 6k autos pretty consistently, and that’s not even counting the bonus damage from the rift created by the third hit of the chain. It’s miles ahead of Warrior’s sword DPS.

But anyway, I’m also loving Herald. I retired my Guardian and put his name (Black Box) on my Revenant, and I haven’t looked back since. I think my favorite part is just not having to worry about silly things like being slow and having melee projectiles reflected in my face.

Swagger.1459:

Black Box.9312:

Swagger.1459:

Black Box.9312:

Swagger.1459:

FLiP.7680:

Swagger.1459:

Akumu.7238:

Except every skill on the hammer is clearly designed for heavy ranged damage.. Giving it a leap would only hurt the weapon, not help it.

You ever need to reposition with a movement skill?

Do you wvw?

What’s the movement skill on Warrior’s LB/Rifle? Or Guardian’s Staff/Scepter?

Hammer #3 was never supposed to be a gap closer:

…feels way more physical to fit the style of the hamer. We don’t wanna just have another “throwing the hammer”, so we’re like, what’s a cool way to do this?

https://youtu.be/MfYvmHyqumA?t=790

I don’t care what it was supposed to be, things can change.

I’m not talking about any other profession here or their weapons. I’m talking about the Revenant and hammer.

And just like how you don’t care about what it’s supposed to be, the rest of us don’t care if you want a gap closer on a ranged weapon. We like the skill how it is, and would rather have it be left alone. If you want a gap closer, then use one of the options that are already available to you.

You guys and your gap closers… My primary concern was gap makers… Sigh

Don’t pick fights you can’t win and you won’t have to run away from them.

This game is more than just pve pew pew sorry.

Good one. Good thing you know exactly what parts of this game I play.

Oh wait… You don’t. Have a nice day.

Burtnik.5218:

Bugs bugs everywhere. I noticed that sometimes my reveal fails on engi actually, will check out some stuff you mentioned.

As for stability – just like any dodge its supposed to take effect when you finish it. You dont see ranger proccing protection during dodge, but right as it finish and that apply to all classes. I know it sux but that how it is.

To be fair, that Ranger trait did originally proc at the beginning of the dodge, and people had to remind Anet of how silly that was. Hopefully Roy is still looking in here and will take notice of this.

Coulter.2315:

Black Box.9312:

Crafting items and materials should never be timegated. Period. End of story.

Yes they should as it gives control over the supply and allows “time” to be given a value. Not for everything but it makes sense to have this mechanic.

Remember crafting had no real way to make money before they added these time gated things into the game, they are a useful part of the economy and give a reward for leveling crafting.

Not sure why you’d be so dismissive of these benefits.

Because there should never be a pure hard cap on progress. If you want crafting materials to have value, then decrease their drop rates or make them more difficult to acquire. Many of these materials are also account bound, which means that they instead have no impact on the economy.

Players should never be punished for trying to make the most of their time. Timegating enforces the idea of logging in every day for weeks to do something that could normally be done in a few minutes’ time. It needs to go.

Crafting items and materials should never be timegated. Period. End of story.

Swagger.1459:

Black Box.9312:

Swagger.1459:

FLiP.7680:

Swagger.1459:

Akumu.7238:

Except every skill on the hammer is clearly designed for heavy ranged damage.. Giving it a leap would only hurt the weapon, not help it.

You ever need to reposition with a movement skill?

Do you wvw?

What’s the movement skill on Warrior’s LB/Rifle? Or Guardian’s Staff/Scepter?

Hammer #3 was never supposed to be a gap closer:

…feels way more physical to fit the style of the hamer. We don’t wanna just have another “throwing the hammer”, so we’re like, what’s a cool way to do this?

https://youtu.be/MfYvmHyqumA?t=790

I don’t care what it was supposed to be, things can change.

I’m not talking about any other profession here or their weapons. I’m talking about the Revenant and hammer.

And just like how you don’t care about what it’s supposed to be, the rest of us don’t care if you want a gap closer on a ranged weapon. We like the skill how it is, and would rather have it be left alone. If you want a gap closer, then use one of the options that are already available to you.

You guys and your gap closers… My primary concern was gap makers… Sigh

Don’t pick fights you can’t win and you won’t have to run away from them.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Garimeth.8725:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Misguided.5139:

Agreed, but keep in mind one reason your first statement is true is that Guardian base health is ludicrously low. I’ve never understood why that is.

Because they have a very easy time refilling that health pool.

True, but it doesn’t matter how easy it is to refill it when most attacks your trying to dodge insta down you anyway. Damage avoidance is always better than mitigation or healing. Aegis is good, evades are better imo.

Which Guardians also have in spades. Avoidance is better than healing, but healing is still very necessary.

As a former Guardian main, I’ve learned that evades are much, much more effective at damage avoidance than aegis. The only inherent advantage that aegis has is that it can be applied pre-emptively. Other than that, it fails against any multi-hit or unblockable attack, whereas evasion frames can avoid almost any source of damage for the duration of the evasion.

Shoe.5821:

characterizing this as rng is way too reductive; there’s no way the dice rolls on the harvesting/kill objectives are even close to comparable to the sheer luck involved in looting or mysticforging a precursor.

the old system was purely a lottery. the new system you can build your way steadily towards a precursor and make definite progress. Bifrost isn’t the only collection with a bugged boss atm (ULGOOOOOOTH!).

The old system was never purely a lottery. There has always been a steady enough market that you’ll have a 100% chance of being able to secure it from the TP with a decent enough buy order price, or even just outright buying it as listed.

The crafting system may involve RNG that is more in your favor than receiving a drop, but it’s hardly an effective system when in many cases people are still more willing to farm up the gold outright instead of going out of their way to do random activities that still involve RNG and still end up having to pay most of the gold anyway.

Swagger.1459:

FLiP.7680:

Swagger.1459:

Akumu.7238:

Except every skill on the hammer is clearly designed for heavy ranged damage.. Giving it a leap would only hurt the weapon, not help it.

You ever need to reposition with a movement skill?

Do you wvw?

What’s the movement skill on Warrior’s LB/Rifle? Or Guardian’s Staff/Scepter?

Hammer #3 was never supposed to be a gap closer:

…feels way more physical to fit the style of the hamer. We don’t wanna just have another “throwing the hammer”, so we’re like, what’s a cool way to do this?

https://youtu.be/MfYvmHyqumA?t=790

I don’t care what it was supposed to be, things can change.

I’m not talking about any other profession here or their weapons. I’m talking about the Revenant and hammer.

And just like how you don’t care about what it’s supposed to be, the rest of us don’t care if you want a gap closer on a ranged weapon. We like the skill how it is, and would rather have it be left alone. If you want a gap closer, then use one of the options that are already available to you.

I think the Chosen has you beat. Anyone who wants to get started will have to level up to 300 scribe just to make the account bound material needed to craft the very first item needed to begin the collection.

I can open and close gaps with Shiro just fine. I like the way Phase Smash is set up right now because I can lay down an AoE chill to slow people down while still maintaining the range that I might need against a heavily offensive melee spec.

Naustis.8510:

Using any other sword ability except 1 is a dps loss

Sword 3 on a single target and Axe 4 are actually a DPS increase as long as you don’t currently have Impossible Odds active, I believe.

The shadowleapers hit for an insane amount of damage when coming out of stealth. I don’t mind this too much; it’s annoying, but as long as you pay attention you can definitely avoid it. What I really, really, REALLY don’t like is the passive chance that ranged attacks will automatically miss them. There is absolutely no reason for this. Please get rid of it.

Titan Cronus.9216:

Just because nearly no-one uses them doesn’t change the fact that Racial Skills are a game mechanic.

You may not like them, I sure don’t particularly like them but EVERY character belongs to a specific RACE. A profession or character without access to Racial Skills is incomplete.

Racial skills aren’t available to anyone in sPvP. Are you going to whine about that, too?

I really don’t understand why you’re having such a huge issue with this, OP. This is exactly as it’s been advertised from the very beginning; you had plenty of time to decide that the class was not suited for your interests.

If I had to guess it would probably be somewhere around 5s, but to be honest Rune of the Herald is ironically a pretty bad choice for a Herald build anyway due to the way protection counteracts Infuse Light.

Wryscher.1432:

Glints Facets sometimes wont stay on. It seems different then the deactivation bug that happens sometime. But who knows.

I have had it happen twice now, i am standing still. Nothing is going on. 50 energy. Turn on a facet. It might stay one for a second at most turns itself right back off again. It isnt triggered doesnt go cooldown. Just turns off. It wasnt one specifc facet because once i noticed it, i tried them all. The only way i could find to clear the problem was to swap legends and then swap back. Pretty simple fix. Still annoying.

Thre is a bug caused by map exploration. When you uncover a new section of the map (in central Tyria at least, I haven’t tested it for Maguuma), your facets get turned off. Luckily it’s very easy to turn them back on before the boons expire once you know what’s causing it, but it’s still a QoL fix I’d like to see nonetheless.

As for if it’s happening while you’re standing still, I’m not really sure.

Kirk.3086:

Again dps?
No other build except dps?=)
Give me playable build without dps.
Or i can write such post about how can thief play with weapons skills without ult and elit=)
Or some easy question – any playable build without shiro and herald…

Builds without DPS are very limited in value. Outside of a bunker in conquest, there’s very little use for one.

There’s really no reason for it to be there outside of combat, or at least make it disappear when your weapon is stowed.

I’m honestly just peeved at the fact that the very first step toward Flameseeker Prophecies is gated behind an account bound crafting material that I’m told requires 300 scribe to make. Thanks Anet.

I like the idea behind this adventure, but I strongly disagree with the decision to randomize the targets after the first 20 or so. This requires you to basically get lucky enough to consistently get targets close to your current location to save time.

Could be worse. My journey to make the Chosen got stopped dead in its tracks at step 1 when I was informed that I need account bound materials only acquired through crafting with a scribe level of 300+ in order to make the very first item of the collection.

So I guess to add to the discussion, yeah, I’m pretty disappointed in how they implemented precursor crafting as well.

I think it would be fair to add more options of condi cleanse to Revenant.

It would be highly unlikely to mesh well with a Shiro/Glint build though.

I’m a fan of giving people choices. But I’m also a fan of making builds have tradeoffs. I disagree with the idea of all Revenant builds being inherently weak against conditions. However, Shiro/Glint is really just fine the way it is, and needs to have at least one exploitable weakness.

There’s a bug that currently prevents the linking of any sort of item or map point through chat filters of guilds that aren’t currently rep’ed. Anything placed into chat via either ctrl+click or shift+click goes through to the chat filter of your currently represented guild instead.

Example: I am currently representing G3. A member of G5 asks for someone to link a weapon skin. I have the weapon skin in my inventory, so I switch over to G5 chat and attempt to ping it with shift+click. Even though it says I’m in G5 chat, when I hit enter the ping goes through to G3 chat. G3 gets confused by random ping. G5 guildie still needs a link. Problems ensue.

It’s really more QoL than anything, but hopefully it should be a rather simple fix.

Gaaroth.2567:

what baffles me the most is that thieves can reliably STEAL form us 3s of slow while we can dish said condi out only on downed AA.
I mean, SERIOUSLY? We need to get way more access to it, and a great idea to improve mallyx would be to give some to his utils

Welcome to the mind of every (former) Guardian player ever, where Thieves steal a 3s daze from a class with zero dazes in its entire skillset.

Walkure.9056:

Burtnik.5218

-Skill 3 miss on uneven terrain. Pressing wep swap cancels the animation
-Skill 5 when interupted let it be by ourself or enemy goes on full cd and consumes energy before the skill take effect.

The cancellation part and interupt are intended. The cancel on weapon swap was requested by the community. The interrupt works like this: you are already performing the skill (you can see the hammer is about to drop) therefore it will send it on full cooldown just like overloading an attunement (any channeled ability)

The rule is that a skill goes on full cooldown only if some sort of effect has triggered. When you are channeling an overload on Tempest, the effect persists throughout the entirety of the channeling.

In this case, it is different. The skill should not be going on full cooldown, because there is no effect until the end of the channel.

I solo’d the champion troll in Tangled Depths. Nobody was available to help out, so I just kinda went and took matters into my own hands. Most of the other ones I’ve done have had at least a pug available nearby though.

Yeah. I think it’s neat that the legends talk to you… But “talk” is a term that’s being used pretty loosely in this situation. I’d much prefer actual dialogue.

While I do agree with your main point, I think that the reaction to these “nerfs” is a little overboard. The Phase Traversal cooldown was kind of necessary, and the Revenant is still very much a strong class right now even with these issues still needing to be sorted out.

Oh gosh, please don’t make it glow. There’s a reason why I never advanced past the beta capacitor.

AVM.5746:

Black Box.9312:

I think this is related to the poison resistance mastery. It’s the 4th one in the Itzel line, I think? Try leveling that and then coming back to it.

….Are you kittening serious? I have to grind a mastery to swallow this poison bacon for 10 hero points?! Who’s idea was this!?

… You do realize that this is the entire design philosophy behind the jungle zones, right? We’ve been told from the beginning that masteries would be required for some areas.

I think this is related to the poison resistance mastery. It’s the 4th one in the Itzel line, I think? Try leveling that and then coming back to it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Eponet.4829:

The difficulty isn’t too high. The fact that by the time you get it, you’ve already gone through more than half the maps is the issue. If they were all put in the first area, there would at least be three maps to experience at our own pace and explore for the sake of exploring instead of because we’re forced to in order to get the class mechanics (Which were designed to fill holes in the base classes) to function fully.

I feel that’s very valuable feedback. Thanks for that insight.

I’m definitely in this camp, too. I’ve switched over to a Revenant main, so I haven’t had a chance to collect any hero points from central Tyria. So that’s 40 hero challenges that I need just to be able to play a full Herald build. This is a huge detriment to players that wanted to get a feel for how the Herald plays before taking it into a raid or WvW, because there’s no opportunity to get any real experience with it until all of the new overworld content is pretty much done.

Sure, it doesn’t take that much to unlock it and start, but one of the selling points of HoT was that it would have content that is more difficult. And nobody wants to do more difficult content with a less complete build. It’s not so much about the fact that we have to work for it as it is that the only real option is to work through almost all of the content before even getting the chance to actually test it out.

Osu.6307:

Hilarious. Nobody would be QQing if they were actually leveling another 10 levels while they did the new pve content like in EVERY OTHER mmo. At least Anet’s way lets us keep our gear.

I would rather do that and have to farm new gear than have the current situation. That way I’d at least be able to just level up by playing the game normally.

Gonna be quite a hefty grind for Herald. I guess I don’t need any of the other ones THAT badly…

The new guild panel is nice. I love being able to switch between guild chats without having to represent each particular guild.

But what I don’t like is when my 2 primary reps are in the G4 and G5 slots. Especially when my G3 slot is empty. Shouldn’t there be a way to sort out the listing so that I can place them in the order that I choose? It’s not something that’s gamebreaking, obviously, but it would be a nice little addition that would really make a lot more sense IMO.

ananda.5946:

They didn’t raise the level cap, so this is the way they’re having you level up with all characters. Just pretend the level cap was raised, but all of your gear will still be fine.

I would rather have had the level cap raised. That way I could at least unlock my elite spec just through normal gameplay.

Seera.5916:

Black Box.9312:

Seera.5916:

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

Random.4691:

Seriously the lack of red post, not that I should be surprised, it’s like that child that was caught doing something they shouldn’t so they just hide because that makes everything better. I guess they really didn’t learn from their FAQ scandal.

Given that the vast majority of the complaints in this thread are by a small handful of people and that most of it was posted during Anet’s downtime, this really shouldn’t be a surprise.
People are trying to be very loud about their complaints, but so far the actual number of people complaining really isn’t that high.

That and we’re within 2 days of launch. The devs may not have time for posting on the forums that much or the permission to interrupt the devs that know the answers to the questions we have about this.

They have people who are working for them for the literal purpose of relaying messages to and from the community and dev teams. This is not a valid excuse.

Yes, but the dev teams may be too busy to answer questions given how close we are to launch. So the messengers have told to only interrupt if it’s important and they may not view giving explanation for the choice as important enough to warrant an interruption.

Well, I’d say that this is kind of important, judging by the degree of the current backlash over it.

Seera.5916:

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

Random.4691:

Seriously the lack of red post, not that I should be surprised, it’s like that child that was caught doing something they shouldn’t so they just hide because that makes everything better. I guess they really didn’t learn from their FAQ scandal.

Given that the vast majority of the complaints in this thread are by a small handful of people and that most of it was posted during Anet’s downtime, this really shouldn’t be a surprise.
People are trying to be very loud about their complaints, but so far the actual number of people complaining really isn’t that high.

That and we’re within 2 days of launch. The devs may not have time for posting on the forums that much or the permission to interrupt the devs that know the answers to the questions we have about this.

They have people who are working for them for the literal purpose of relaying messages to and from the community and dev teams. This is not a valid excuse.

PopeUrban.2578:

Black Box.9312:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Your question doesn’t make any sense. You need the hero points to use the knew specialization, NOT to do any content within the new zones.

A gear treadmill is designed specifically to be able to complete content, only.

PopeUrban.2578:

Because elite specs are optional you do not need to unlock the current elite spec to gain the ability to unlock the next one, or the one after that, and so on.

And further, the elite specs themselves are not purely vertical progression. They are optional horizontal progression. They add options at the expense of taking core weapons trait lines, and utilities. They’re not simply raw buffs that pile on top of the three core specs you’d already have on your character.

You won’t have four specs in the next release, and five after that, creating a system of perpetual upward advancement where you have to do A to be powerful enough to access B.

In stead, you have to do core to unlock core, and from there you choose to persue an elite spec, or stick with a core build. Going forward you choose which elite spec you want to persue, and as the system expands you have an ever broadening range of options for how to actually unlock those specs, since unlike masteries, hero points are not regional, but global systems.

Congratulations, you’ve now returned full circle to the point about how elite specs are optional, not a part of the actual content, and therefore do not add value by being gated because it is irrespective of the content in question.

I rest my case.

Optional does not mean they are not part of the content, or not an advancement system.

it means they are exactly what they were designed to be.

A horizontal progression system

It’s not natural progression. You have to grind up 400 hero points, which is still 40 hero challenges even if you do it all in the jungle. It doesn’t matter if it’s optional, because it still acts as incentive to ignore parts of the game in favor of others. As much as I hate to say it, I honestly would much rather have had Anet just raise the level cap so that I could gather more XP for my elite spec just by taking advantage of whatever content I’d happen to stumble upon.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Your question doesn’t make any sense. You need the hero points to use the knew specialization, NOT to do any content within the new zones.

A gear treadmill is designed specifically to be able to complete content, only.

PopeUrban.2578:

Because elite specs are optional you do not need to unlock the current elite spec to gain the ability to unlock the next one, or the one after that, and so on.

And further, the elite specs themselves are not purely vertical progression. They are optional horizontal progression. They add options at the expense of taking core weapons trait lines, and utilities. They’re not simply raw buffs that pile on top of the three core specs you’d already have on your character.

You won’t have four specs in the next release, and five after that, creating a system of perpetual upward advancement where you have to do A to be powerful enough to access B.

In stead, you have to do core to unlock core, and from there you choose to persue an elite spec, or stick with a core build. Going forward you choose which elite spec you want to persue, and as the system expands you have an ever broadening range of options for how to actually unlock those specs, since unlike masteries, hero points are not regional, but global systems.

Congratulations, you’ve now returned full circle to the point about how elite specs are optional, not a part of the actual content, and therefore do not add value by being gated because it is irrespective of the content in question.

I rest my case.

PopeUrban.2578:

Black Box.9312:

PopeUrban.2578:

They have been posting this stuff in blogs for months dude.

They’re not devaluing existing content. They’re setting a precedent for elite specs as relevant to content

An elite spec cost 400 hero points. This is a hard number we know now. This is an inherant part of that system. HoT challenges grant 10 because they wanted to ensure people could actually play nothing but HoT to gain them.

Of course it isn’t designed to allow you to entirely skip progression in new maps. That would be ridiculous. People would literally be saying “why would I waste my time doing hero challenges that don’t give me anything?” and the thread would be just as long and angst ridden as this one.

In stead they built a system in which mastering all of the optional core points means you can skip half of the new ones. Moving forward, you’ll likely see that system continue. You will never have enough hero points to instantly unlock an elite spec, but you’ll always have options in terms of how much of the content you want to do.

Like core world completion because it’s easy and there are more zones? Fantastic! That means you can skip half of the HoT challenges.

Don’t like the first elite spec? FANTASTIC save your ero points for the next one.

Making a comparison between the value of core content and HoT in terms of character progression is simply flawed thinking. Core content is intentionally unchanged, it is intentionally easier, and it is intentionally paced for leveling first and world completion as a secondary goal. HoT, and all content going forward is specifically built, progression wise, around the elite spec system.

Core specs aren’t considered optional. They’re considered “mastering your core class”

Elite specs, however, are optional and exclusive to one another

If you’re mad about devaluing old content, why aren’t you mad that taking an elite spec makes you drop a trait line? Why aren’t you mad every time they release another stat set for gear? Will you be mad when the next elite spec releases and you have to choose between them?

Having ten point challenges do nothing to devalue old content. You need to be 80 to get in to the jungle. If you’re 80, you have your core specs completed. now you can choose to do a lot of simple challenges, a lesser number of harder ones, or a mixture between the two. The entire system is designed so that the core content retains value by making sure all those extra hero point actually do something for you character besides being traded to miyani.

A HoT hero challenge is worth 10 points. A base-game hero challenge is worth 1 point. For anyone who hasn’t already completed the existing challenges, they serve absolutely no purpose. Why waste your time doing things for 1 point, when you can just go to the jungle and do things for 10 points? “Devaluing” doesn’t get any more black and white than that.

Again, because those points never existed primarily for progression purposes in the first place

Again

Core hero challenges are explicitly designed as optional objectives,supplemental to leveling

HoT hero challenges are explicitly designed as required objectives, to completely replace skill gains through leveling with skill gains through challenge completion

They have two different values for exactly this reason.

They’re not devalued, they were already of less value in the first place

Please explain, given your above argument, how exactly this is different from a gear treadmill dungeon series that requires a set of gear from one dungeon in order to complete the next, and is purely sequenced from a “first” dungeon to a “last” dungeon.

PopeUrban.2578:

They have been posting this stuff in blogs for months dude.

They’re not devaluing existing content. They’re setting a precedent for elite specs as relevant to content

An elite spec cost 400 hero points. This is a hard number we know now. This is an inherant part of that system. HoT challenges grant 10 because they wanted to ensure people could actually play nothing but HoT to gain them.

Of course it isn’t designed to allow you to entirely skip progression in new maps. That would be ridiculous. People would literally be saying “why would I waste my time doing hero challenges that don’t give me anything?” and the thread would be just as long and angst ridden as this one.

In stead they built a system in which mastering all of the optional core points means you can skip half of the new ones. Moving forward, you’ll likely see that system continue. You will never have enough hero points to instantly unlock an elite spec, but you’ll always have options in terms of how much of the content you want to do.

Like core world completion because it’s easy and there are more zones? Fantastic! That means you can skip half of the HoT challenges.

Don’t like the first elite spec? FANTASTIC save your ero points for the next one.

Making a comparison between the value of core content and HoT in terms of character progression is simply flawed thinking. Core content is intentionally unchanged, it is intentionally easier, and it is intentionally paced for leveling first and world completion as a secondary goal. HoT, and all content going forward is specifically built, progression wise, around the elite spec system.

Core specs aren’t considered optional. They’re considered “mastering your core class”

Elite specs, however, are optional and exclusive to one another

If you’re mad about devaluing old content, why aren’t you mad that taking an elite spec makes you drop a trait line? Why aren’t you mad every time they release another stat set for gear? Will you be mad when the next elite spec releases and you have to choose between them?

Having ten point challenges do nothing to devalue old content. You need to be 80 to get in to the jungle. If you’re 80, you have your core specs completed. now you can choose to do a lot of simple challenges, a lesser number of harder ones, or a mixture between the two. The entire system is designed so that the core content retains value by making sure all those extra hero point actually do something for you character besides being traded to miyani.

A HoT hero challenge is worth 10 points. A base-game hero challenge is worth 1 point. For anyone who hasn’t already completed the existing challenges, they serve absolutely no purpose. Why waste your time doing things for 1 point, when you can just go to the jungle and do things for 10 points? “Devaluing” doesn’t get any more black and white than that.

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

Lol. My partner and I will be entering the expansion together at launch.
She is entering first on a character where she doesn’t even plan to play the elite spec… And I on one I am not in a hurry to unlock.
So yeah. We will be doing all of the things we come across. Perhaps don’t assume every player is you.

That’s kittening fantastic. You know what’s even more kittening fantastic though? The fact that you and everyone else could do this very same thing even if elite specs were available to people immediately.

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

That same argument could be made for any system where you have to play to unlock parts at a time. Like the entire levelling up process. And the same counter arguments are just as valid here.

Remember the part where I explained why this is not the same as leveling up from 1 to 80? No? You didn’t read that? Okay, I’ll put it here so that it’s easier for you:

Black Box.9312:

Because my characters are already at level 80, which is still the maximum level, and I would kinda rather not have the efforts that I made completing the overworld challenges for the base game go almost entirely to waste. It would be one thing if unlocking the elite spec was simply a natural progression that happened just through playing the game, but instead we have to specifically rush through hero challenges in the jungle to get what we want. This makes it absolutely nothing like what players go through by simply leveling their character from 1 to 80.

This is the exact reason why people were in such outcry when Anet made their original proposal that hero challenges would be required to max out a character, which they then changed because hey, maybe it actually makes more sense to not do that.

Lucifers Heaven.2167:

Random.4691:

Once again, just because Anet slapped the word Elite onto it doesn’t make it Elite. They themselves have stated multiple times that it is not meant to over shadow the core specs it is simply an optional addition.

They have, however, also stated that the elite spec system is a part of their horizontal progression mechanics set moving forward. One of the primary goals of which is to give people something to work towards over time.
I’m not saying it’s set up as well as it could be, but I think expecting it to take a while to master the spec is pretty reasonable.

Mastering a build comes by playing with it, not by unlocking it. You don’t magically acquire the skills to excel with a new character in a fighting game just by unlocking him. You have to fight with him, learn how his moves and combos work, and figure out what works best in a given situation.

Nobody is going to master an elite spec as soon as they have access to all of the skills and traits. It makes no difference whether this point is reached instantaneously, or with a grind through specific content that some people might not be so inclined to do. Either way, they’re going to have to put time and effort into playing THE WHOLE THING in order to become skilled with THE WHOLE THING.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Black Box.9312:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Agemnon.4608:

Farming, time, and effort aren’t the problem, ludicrous amounts of it are.

I see this phrase popping up over and over. Could someone define for me very specifically what constitutes ludicrous? Cause I’ve been reading the same things you have and I have not seen anything that I could define as ludicrous. Some of this will take a fair amount of time, which is GOOD, because more time spent unlocking things means more time with the content, and not burning through it all in a week and then wondering why there isn’t more to do.

Even with that, I’m pretty certain some people will accomplish 100% Elites on day one. They may not accomplish anything else, but they’ll have that.

The only people this seems to hurt are the people with way too many characters, of which they need all to have elites, for some reason. I’ve got 13 characters, about, one doesn’t exist yet, but will in a couple days. Of those, though, I only plan on getting elites for 4, one of which can definitely wait until much later to go through the process.

If for some reason I absolutely needed all 13 characters to be elites, that would be a problem, but that would still only be a problem for me for having such an unruly number of characters. It’s not ANet’s fault nor problem. If it takes x amount of time to get the thing, then it should absolutely take x times the number of characters you want to up to elites in order to do that. That’s completely reasonable.

Gating elite specs does not add value to the content. The new content was going to be present either way, and the people who wanted to do it were going to do it regardless. The only thing this has accomplished is that players now feel pressured to complete the content faster without getting to play through it with the elite spec that they want in the first place.

This does not add time and value to content that was going to be played regardless.

That “pressure” is an illusion invented by yourself, not by what ANet did.

It’s absolutely not an illusion. Nobody will be doing any sort of group content that doesn’t involve the hero challenges, because why would they? The reward that they want isn’t there. It may not be directly caused by the decision to gate elite specs, but the beauty of cause and effect is that it does not have to be direct. There’s no denying that the pressure wouldn’t still be there if the elite specs weren’t gated.