Guild Wars 2

I’ve been wanting a damage buff for the Impact Strike chain for awhile. I haven’t calculated the current version, though.

I have found a use for it: the skill is a pretty fast stun, so I carry it with Pulmonary Impact to get a hit against certain mobs. I’d still like a damage buff to make the whole chain to actually be worth of its spot, though.

If I did my math right, the most recent iteration has an auto attack that is 13.8% stronger than sword auto without vulnerability, weakening charge is basically heartseeker in an AoE at any health level, and vault is a more mobile and easier-to-control weakening charge.

As far as my build goes, for legacy PVP it is Deadly Arts (Mug, Revealed Training, Executioner), Critical Strikes (Side Strike, Practiced Tolerance, no Quarter), and Daredevil (Havoc Mastery, Pulmonary Impact, Bounding Dodger). For Heart of Thorns I instead use Panic Strike, Invigorating Precision, and Escapists Absolution. Sometimes I will also swap out to Brawler’s Tenacity and Unhindered Combatant for exploration.

As for the one who came up with the build, hard to say. I played a part, spoj played a part, I think Bawb played a part, too.

It was part of the theory crafting that we were going through. On a shroud focused reaper (spite/soul reaping/reaper), the reaper is capable of stacking 25 vulnerability and 25 might by himself. This leads to a bit of an issue regarding the grandmaster trait in soul reaping. Decimate Defenses makes Deathly Perception obsolete. Foot in the grave, while being a very nice utility on its own, isn’t always necessary. The end choice was Dhuumfire.

At maximum might, a zerker reaper hits for about 248 per tick. Last time I did any calculations, a reaper’s onslaught boosted auto attack had about the same DPS as the greatsword auto attack… before factoring in Burning. I’ll do a quick check…

I just did a quick check. With onsalught, I’m getting a total attack chain time of 2.075. Round up or down as you see fit. With no gear equipped, this comes to a raw tooltip DPS of (235 + 235 + 469) about 438. The sword auto attack does 469 raw tooltip DPS (391 + 469 + 547 over 3 seconds), and the dagger does 473 raw tooltip DPS.

I call it “raw” because it doesn’t include anything else. No might/vuln/chill/life force generation. Just the basic numbers. From this, you can see that sword auto attack is roughly the same as the dagger auto attack, while also being about 7% higher than the Reaper Shroud auto attack. Now, we can acquire a few things from this. In particular, how much effective power you’ll need for Sword Auto to do more damage than Shroud Auto:

Each Shroud Auto chain stacks 3 × 3 / 2 stack of burning, coming to about 4.5 stacks sustained. This is 1,115 additional DPS. We can find the point where the 7.077% ,difference in direct damage between sword auto and shroud auto is equivalent to 1,115 DPS. First, we take the tooltip difference between greatsword auto and dagger auto (31), then divide 1,115 by it (to get 36). This is the scalar multiple that needs to be applied to direct damage. Direct damage scales linearly with power, so at 2000 power you’ll be doing twice the tooltip damage (in our case, 62 extra damage). So, since 1,115 is 36 times larger than 31, we will need 36,000 effective power.

Effective power here is your power after taking into account all multipliers. Sigils, rune bonuses, might, crit damage, vulnerability, group buffs, etc. To put it into scale, I’m not sure the necromancer can get higher than 20k effective power. Heck, I just did a quick calculation on my zerker necro, and without group buffs I’m maxing out at 14,178 effective power. Special note here, vulnerability affects the burn damage as well, so you can disregard it in the “how much power will I need” calculation for this particular case.

This means that, with reapers onslaught and dhuumfire, Shroud Auto Attack has higher DPS than the Greatsword and Dagger Auto Attacks. Now, is this the best DPS rotation? Good question. I never compared anything other than auto attacks. If there is a rotation that I don’t know about that does more damage, but neither involves nor can’t be improved upon by Reaper Dhuumfire, let me know. If I’ve made a mistake in my calculations, let me know.

EDIT: Side Note: gravedigger might need a buff. I just timed it, and I am getting 2.5 second total activation times. This puts it at exactly as much damage as auto attacking. This was only a quick check, though.

Wow, what crawled up your butt and overloaded?

Honestly I just like the feel of it. Overload Air + Glyph of Storms into fire for Lava font + Meteor shower feels like the end of the world.

So far I’ve raised it up to 6/10. I haven’t done much, though.

+The events are challenging
-But require groups and people all over the map to complete
+The enemies are interesting and challenging
-But they are everywhere and makes their uniqueness moot.
+The maps are pretty and once you unlock gliding you have a lot of exploration
-On Foot the maps are linear and confusing
+The music is great
+The details are pretty
0No comment on story
0No comment on achievements

I didn’t mind the difficulty (non-hero point) of Verdant Brink and Auric Basin. But Tangled Depths brought out a rage in me. This was all explored with a zerker thief and a zerker rev.

First, in Tangled Depths the mob density is ridiculous. In the other places there was at least some breathing room, but here around every corner it is +5 mobs. Second, the place is a gigantic labyrinth. It is full of long winding corridors that make up a 4-tiered maze, making navigating toward any goal and utter hell. Third, the map is incredibly cramped, to the point of being claustrophobic. I don’t feel like I’m exploring or discovering new places, as much as I am just perpetually lost. Combine all these three things, you get the feeling of confusion, frustration, and oppression.

If there were a map where I would like the enemy density toned down, it is there. I’m already lost and confused. I don’t want to be under attack literally all the time.

I spent 20 hours grinding out a daredevil literally right before the update, and I’m still happy about the update.

You must not be doing it right.

I’m going to consider this my birthday gift. It isn’t exactly what I asked for, but I’ll still take it.

I’m surprised people are doing this. Through the generic course of getting key points on the map for my Revenant and going through basic events and story, I’ve already received enough Tyrian mastery points that I’m just throwing them into places where I don’t need them.

I’m also a bit surprised that people aren’t running multiple dungeons. I mean, if you’re going to grind experience in dungeons, you might as well grind tokens and gold, too.

Nike.2631:

MrH.2591:

Yeah I was being generous I guess, they really didn’t think this through at all.

Really. You think the folks whose livelihoods depend on the game and have been working towards this release for about two years now didn’t think about it?

They have different MOTIVES than you, and different goals, but there’s no question who in this conversation hasn’t “thought about it”.

Normally I agree with what you say, but in this instance… nope.

I tried to logic things out a bit ago, and the best conclusion I can come up with is that Anet didn’t fully think it through. Arenanent is a company of ideals first and foremost, and how unsubstantial their ideals are has smashed against the cold wall of reality countless times. I don’t want to recount through the entire history of GW2, but there are plenty of examples where Anets ideals has crumbled.

Through the wretched course of becoming an adult, I learned two very important lessons:

#1: People screw up their livelihoods all the time. In fact, I’d argue that it is the default setting.
#2: Never trust other people to know things for you. Chances are, they don’t, even if it is their livelihood.

Now that I’ve spent 20 hours grinding out my first elite spec, this makes me wonder quite a bit about something: future content.

Currently, most of the hero points spawn a champion + adds, many of which are not the same pushovers they once were. This is fine, assuming that there are other players who are around to help you. But even by yourself, you’ll encounter champions with waves of adds.

Problem is, most of the HoT maps I play are already nearly a ghost town. Send out the call for help, and you’ll get 1 or 2 people in the space of 10 minutes if you’re lucky. After discovering this fact, I had to resolve to burn through all the specialization points before the maps became too dead to function.

It is also annoying how much of the map specific features are dependent on ill-timed global events. Especially when they lock away hero points behind them. Heck, the only reason why I was able to do an e-spec in 20 hours is because someone else made a guide on how to do it, and I got lucky and had a somewhat coordinated hero-point train running map at one point.

Personally I don’t mind the grind. I mind the fact that basically it is just buying the precursors in a convoluted way.

I expected to use alternate currencies karma,, tokens, or achievement bars of some kind (kill so many grawl, etc). Then you could eliminate RNG and market forces. You could make a set exchange: so much time = precursor.

Seabreeze.8437:

Substance E.4852:

The point of the system is to give you an alternative to farming gold to get the precursor. You aren’t supposed to just buy all the items off the TP.

Way to miss the purpose entirely.

And as far as the cost goes, HoT just launched. Everyone is trying out the new system causing the price of things to go up with demand which is why precursor prices are falling because less people are just buying a completed one.

The point of the changes was to give an option of bypassing the trading post and RNG entirely. Anyone who thought this would be easy or a short method was kidding themselves.

Good point, despite the condescending tone of your post. Players are expected to gather most of the materials themselves throughout their adventures, not just buy everything from the TP. If you’re gonna do that, then you might as well just buy the legendary itself.

Or, just sell all the stuff you gather yourself, and then buy the precursor for cheaper off of the TP.

#liquidity

But is that a problem, though? Generally a problem is an injustice or a detriment, or a source of trouble of some kind. A wrong to be righted. If a player does map completion + extra to get 200+ hero points (note, current map completion is 189), and this player can unlock their elite specializations immediately… who is wronged? If a player has little to no hero points, and is given the option to either unlock the elite specialization with legacy points or HoT content… how are they wronged if given this choice?

The elite-spec problem is an issue that Anet have invented for themselves. To demonstrate this, lets give a counter-example. The Revenant, the new class, is available immediately. What was to stop Anet from deciding that the Revenant was some kind of end-game reward like E-specs, and make it locked behind a series of story steps and mastery tiers? They could just as easily say “It is a problem that players will play the Revenant without unlocking it first”, even though not a single person is wronged for having Revs for free.

Personally I am distracting myself with the revenant until Anet either changes their mind or admits they’ll refuse to change their mind.

Just doing key map exploration points. All daily rich ore nodes, all world bosses, marching through personal story for keys, going to do the achievements for season 2. I do this particularly because my rev is a sylvari, and sylvari are necessary for certain achievements.

I would call the decision arbitrary in the sense that it is wholly their ideal. From what I’ve seen, Anet is driven by ideal and fantasy first and foremost. The actual logistics behind their decisions aren’t well thought out. Chances are, elite specs are the same way: they pictured it in their head as this cheery super-cool thing where really dedicated players show off their cool moves and all the newbs look on in awe. And in this fantasy they missed the reality: inexplicable gates that make players angry, and a refusal to go with alternatives which are clearly superior.

Aenesthesia.1697:

I dont think the elite spec grind can be considered a grind at all. Grinding involves repeating the same task many times and you dont have that here. Also, its expected that the players complete the content thats being thrown at them, which naturally leads to people leveling their elite.

The problem?

Many rush the content skipping parts, and then complain about lack of content. I imagine the new cost of the elites is anet making sure peopleactually play the content before complaining of the lack of it?

This is a problem that is wholly manufactured by Anet. If we didn’t have elite specializations inexplicably behind the gate of “everything”, then people wouldn’t be compelled to rush through content they might like to get to what they actually want to do.

It is, indeed, grind. You need to do events in these areas over and over again, to get experience to use mastery points. You have to do story steps over and over again to get mastery points. You need the experience and mastery points to get more story steps and mastery points. Continue the cycle for awhile, and then you can finally get the elite specialization. That is a lot of things that many players don’t want to be forced in to.

If we get the elite specs early, we do HoT content at our leisure. When it isn’t forced on us, then HoT isn’t grind. It is content. Everybody wins. Or, more importantly, nobody loses. When given the choice, nobody loses.

Lord Kuru.3685:

You’re looking at it the wrong way. To understand their decisions you have to put yourself in their place. If you’re Anet, you’re not analyzing which system is better for the player. You’re analyzing which system is better for you.

And in this case, they realize they haven’t created enough new content. So they need to artificially stretch it out as much as possible in order to give the illusion of more content than there actually is.

This sounds correct at first glance, but the more I think about it the more it doesn’t make sense.

#1: What is good for me is a happy customer with a happy reception. Higher praises means more sales and more retention. The give-then-take-away that happened with elite specs does more than just generate rants on the forums.

#2: The gating of elite specializations only adds more “grind” in one way. In order to get the masteries you have to scour over the new HoT maps and do the stories, which also will put you next to all of the hero points that you would need for those elite specializations. Once you’ve obtained the sufficient mastery ranks, then you pretty much have your elite specialization already.

The extra grind comes from having to take alts through the map. Since masteries are account bound, this only adds a relatively small amount of time for each alt. So depending on how alt heavy you are, putting the elite specs behind masteries adds anywhere from “no extra time at all” to “insurmountable amounts of time” (given that some players have upwards of 18+ characters). The alt grind might be moot, though, because you already have access to at least one elite specialization of your choosing, so the absolute gate of when you receive an elite spec adds little to no time.

This is what is so infuriating about this change. It doesn’t make sense. Someone has shown me an awesome new toy, then taken it away just because they felt like it, and have refused to give a sufficient reason as to why. Everybody gets hurt for seemingly no benefit.

Yes, it is another anti-grind elite specialization thread. You have been warned, so any misgivings from beyond this point are on your head. Like, on the forehead. Below the hairline. Where everyone can see it. In public, in front of both your girl/boyfriend and your father.

There is something that has been bothering me a bit: I can’t figure out who loses. When looking at how the elite specs were handled, when their required hero point amount was changed from 175 in betas to 400 at launch, I have to think “there’s some reason why they changed this. This is to the benefit of someone who lost out on the previous system”. But… who is this person? Who is the one who is better for having to grind through all the content to get the elite spec? Who is the person that loses when elite specs cost 175 points, and what do they lose?

I’m going to do a pseudo cost-benefit analysis on the impacts of both decisions. I call it pseudo mostly because I’m just using it as a framework for how I structure my logic, as I don’t have the numbers. With all that said, lets begin:

Option A: Having the elite specs cost 400 points.
+People who want the exclusivity of grind will be happy, particularly because other players don’t get to use the e-spec.
-Players who play WvW now have to grind WvW endlessly to get their e-specs in their chosen game mode. This is compounded by alts.
-Players who want to run legacy content and aren’t interested in HoT but still want the elite specs now have to put unimaginable grind in content they don’t want to play.
-Players who wanted to run HoT with the new specs now have to run HoT without the new specs to the point where the entire map becomes repetitious and bland.
-Players who grinded out hero points on legacy content feel ripped off due to getting an incomplete and unusable spec.
-Players looking to buy HoT for the elite specs are discouraged from doing so.
-Players feel pressured into grinding HoT content.
0Players who don’t like or don’t care about e-specs aren’t affected in any way.
0Players who didn’t buy HoT aren’t affect in any way.

Overall, the system is oppressive and restricting to anyone who doesn’t crave rewards gated behind long grinds. HoT maps are now wall which restricts play for a large number of players, and as such every required step is another brick on top. Only a small subset of players are happy.

Option B: Having the elite specs cost 175 points.
+Players who WvW either have to grind half as long, or don’ t have to grind at all if they have the PVE hero points.
+Players who want to run legacy content with e-specs now have the option to do so, exclusively through legacy content.
+Players don’t feel pressured into doing HoT content, and thus can do it at their leisure. This makes it much more fun.
+Players who want to run HoT in their elite specs now get the option to do so.
+Hero points on legacy content are now not completely outmoded
+Players who still want to get Hero Points in HoT can do so.
+HoT maps are no longer a repetitious and bland grind, as they are now played exclusively for players who want to enjoy the new content in them.
+People looking to buy HoT for the elite specs are encouraged to do so.
+More alt friendly.
+Still plenty of grind for masteries.
-Players who deeply desire exclusion via grind will not be as happy.
0Players who already have grinded some for the elite specs will feel a bit ripped off now that their HoT grinding was unnecessary. This is a mixed bag, because many of these players will also be happy that they received 225 free hero points.
0Players who don’t like or don’t care about e-specs aren’t affected in any way.
0Players who didn’t buy HoT aren’t affect in any way.

Overall, nearly every player ends up better off. More convenience, less oppression, more options, more fun, more attractive prospect to buyers. There is only one type of person who will miss out: those who are personally disturbed that someone out there is having fun without grinding specific content for it.

So yes, we gotta make sure that people who want others to grind are satisfied. Everybody else? Forget them! It is all about the grinders who demand other people grind! We know that is a pleasant crowd to appeal to. They just can’t be happy with raids, masteries, and gold. Its gotta be other people that grind. I mean, how is a game supposed to function if you don’t make everyone grind the exact same stuff? The only reason why they have this opinion in the first place is because Anet changed their minds at the last second, but who says we can’t appeal to an incredibly selfish desire that Anet themselves have manufactured?

Seriously though. It should be very clear what the superior option is. It is obvious that the devs wanted the elite specs to cost 400 points, because they wanted it to be another thing that you had to very slowly work for. But why do they want it to be that way? Who loses if that isn’t the case? This isn’t an economic problem, it is an entertainment one. Who gets wronged? Who is at such a loss from a 175 point system that they will refuse to buy HoT or quit HoT? Is there a dev somewhere who’s wife is held hostage, and the ransom is requiring 400 hero points or else she eats a bullet? Is giving everybody what they want in a more open and convenient way a sin? Are elite specs really supposed to be a thing that is divided among the haves and have nots? Is there some hidden economic stat somewhere that says that unless you requiring doing literally everything currently in HoT to get the elite specs, that stocks will go into the toilet?

I’m going to reiterate my suggestion: Make elite specs cost 175-200 points. Make the hero points in HoT worth 5 instead of 10. Because then, nobody loses.

Paralux.6714:

Dude, it’s been ONE day. :P

Its called extrapolation. It involves math, but one day you’ll understand. Hopefully.

Oxidia.8103:

Or orrrrr, here is a fun idea. Play for fun not grind. Masterys are going to happen eventually.

I can’t have fun because fun is gated behind the masteries.

On the zerker thing: You probably don’t need to re-gear. You need to re-think tactics. The enemies in HoT are built specifically to make face-tanking in zerker gear ineffective, so instead of just a pure DPS strat you should go with some self-preservation strats. Non-DPS utilities, non-DPS traits, etc.

Tactics, traits, and utilities play a much bigger portion than gear. Everything else I kind of agree with, though.

I’ve still got a rage headache, so right now a 4/10.

kiwiburner.2186:

That is really disappointing. I will NEVER roll a sylvari.

The meta achievement is totally bogus, but if you have a problem with the aesthetics of a syvlari, you could roll a heavy armor class and give them full 100% coverage the whole time.

Sounds like they hired Paul Christoforo for consulting for HoT.

The whole journey thing is a load of crap. If I want a cake, the fun isn’t in making the cake. It is in eating the cake.

I’m finding the map frustrating. Maybe it would be more fun if I didn’t have to grind to get around the map to grind to get the e-specs.

Basically the map is a gigantic multi-tiered labyrinth that gets cut off half the time and requires teamwork to get anywhere. I don’t understand the meta events, I don’t understand rally points, I don’t get the supply mechanic. All I know is that I go to escort NPCs, and then they just up and give up after awhile because “the point is lost”.

Yeah, this game is a big chore atm. I wanted to use e-specs first and foremost. Masteries, new maps, raids, exploration, story, that was all the jungle gym to which I would play on.

But now that e-specs are gated behind everything, it is no longer a jungle gym. It is a gigantic wall: a hassle. Instead of getting to use new toys in new areas, you have to burn the entirety of the new area over and over again just to get new toys.

The new difficulty, maps, enemies, and events are only fun if you don’t_have_ to do it.

I don’t have a main. But, to give my current list:
194
175
175
175
175
26

You can see the point where I received the news.

Meh. I saw the show for Blade and Soul, and it was alright. But the thing with GW2 is that I currently don’t like the story or the characters very much, so watching it become an anime would basically be like sitting through living world. Again.

PopeUrban.2578:

Oh for the love of…

Not everything in the world is about flippin’ anime.

Why do anime superfans insist everything be converted/compared to/related to it?

You know, I find disproportionate responses to be the sign of underlying issues.

Look, we all know wizards don’t wear pants. Just accept it and move on.

Right now I’m rushing through Living World season 2 to have it done on at least one character.

I’ve found most of LS season 2 to be fair. One part did irk me, though, which was the fight with the dragon on top of the pale tree. The problem I had was the actual attack range was outside of the red circles/areas for many of the attacks, so I would be standing in a spot that was displayed as safe, only to take a load of damage.

It has been my general experience that the type of people who play mean and cheat aren’t the type of people who would abruptly stop just because the devs asked them to.

Shampanix.3928:

Seriously?…

Some of you behave like a little, spoiled child when mommy shows you bag of candies and says “go clean your room first to earn it” and you’re like “kitten no, mummy, gimme that noaw!” and then you go cry cus mommy won’t give it to you insta.

A more apt analogy would be that mommy implied we’d get a bag of candies for cleaning our room, so some of us went and cleaned our room for weeks. Only for mommy to say “the room never mattered. clean the garage”.

Small point about #3: don’t expect other people to know more than you, or know better than you. What Anet does isn’t some form of mysticism. It is regular ole decision making that we the players have. All the analytics in the world won’t compensate for bad decision making. Chances are, any person in any position is equally as incompetent as you or I would be in that position.

That said, the whole thing reeks of bad intentional design. We’ve learned recently that hero points on the base map were designed to be obsolete, and Anet is making the same mistake they made 5 months ago when they wanted us to have 70 or so hero points to unlock our regular specs after leveling.

I find the whole sequence of events interesting. Originally to unlock all of a classes abilities under the new system, a bunch of hero points were going to be required. It was… 75 I think? Maybe 80. I can’t remember. Anyway, after players complained that to get all their options they needed to on every one of their alts they would have to play for weeks to get all those points, it was changed. That way, no hero points were needed to unlock anything. Just unlock sooner.

This, of course, was amidst the whispers of elite specializations. Or after they were announced. Dates aren’t my thing. Anyway, the conclusion that I (and many others) came to is that the hero points in the map would be needed to unlock the elite specializations. Because, as of now, they serve no purpose other than busywork. Before the introduction of spirit shards, skill points were a currency that could be traded, so the skill points on the map still had a function.

What we learned a few days ago is that not only are the current hero points just busywork, but they were useless by design. It wasn’t an accident. The original value was 175 skill points for the elite spec. The devs decided that, on top of raids and masteries and guild halls and fractals and future additional content, a player needed more in-game progression, and made it so you had to get it on the new map. So they intentionally made it necessary, and then made a workaround for WvW (a workaround that shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place) to deal with the problems it created. In essence, they changed it so players wouldn’t have to get a bunch of hero points to get stuff on their alts, then made the exact same mistake they just corrected 5 months ago.

Why did they change it so e-specs are something you had to work for only after HoT went live? Good question. How are they going to handle future elite specs when the entirety of map completion only buys 1.5 of them? Another good question. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that, in a year after HoT we get another expansion pack where the new map awards 100 hero points per achievement, and the new elite spec costs 4000.

There’s got to be an optional sink for luck essences. That, or make it so essence of luck stop dropping once you reach 300%.

And no, this isn’t a “rich player problem”. This is your problem. You will reach 300% magic find one day. Most players just aren’t there yet, but we are all marching down toward that inevitable cliff of inconvenience that useless luck essence carves out of the mountains.

I came here just to post this and now I will go.

The one to Rule.2593:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Random.4691:

It’s starting to sound as if they are selling an incomplete product.

You need to do X to get your Elite specs eventually, sorry Guild hall arenas will take X time to get, Raids won’t be released until X date.

So wtf exactly is it we paid for ? The ability to eventually play content ?

This is exactly right. One of the big things that nobody brings up about expansion packs is that after release, all new content requires the expansion pack. Even content that isn’t explicitely listed as part of the expansion pack. You have to pay if you want to play all the new stuff.

Did you really expect any less?

Nope. Not my first rodeo. I bought the x-pac as soon as it was announced because of this kind of nonsense.

Random.4691:

It’s starting to sound as if they are selling an incomplete product.

You need to do X to get your Elite specs eventually, sorry Guild hall arenas will take X time to get, Raids won’t be released until X date.

So wtf exactly is it we paid for ? The ability to eventually play content ?

This is exactly right. One of the big things that nobody brings up about expansion packs is that after release, all new content requires the expansion pack. Even content that isn’t explicitely listed as part of the expansion pack. You have to pay if you want to play all the new stuff.

DeceiverX.8361:

DiogoSilva.7089:

A good videogame should be about the journey, not only about the destination.

It should be about the journey. A journey I planned on having trying something new instead of smashing my face into effectively the same content as the same character I’ve been playing for the past three years. I bought the expansion ONLY for the elite specializations. Literally, that is the ONLY reason I bought it. No other. I could care less about new maps, new skins, new story, new encounters… nothing. Just something new to actually experience the game in a different way.

Liewec.2896:

why are you in such a hurry to run out of content? XD
for once i’m happy that theres progression!

I’m not is the thing. Unlike people who rush to finish completion and collections, I’ve not even uncovered half of the map three years in and 2000 hours in of WvW on my main character alone. I’m not bored, and there’s still plenty of content in the vanilla game to do. I like to go at my own pace, not at a pace dictated to me by anyone else. To play the game in a fun and meaningful way, however, I have to play in a way dictated to me by another entity, and strictly speaking, I don’t find that fun, and it exhausts content much, much faster than I’d like to.

PopeUrban made a post a few pages back about this game being the most alt-friendly in history or somesuch claim… I’m sorry but I completely disagree. While I came from a ruthless, open-PK Korean “mob grind” game, players could take the level requirements off of any armor, and there was no such thing on armor and weapons as account or soul binding; you could take a literal endgame piece of gear, take out the level requirements down to starter levels and stats, equip all of it on a fresh noob, and go from the starter town right to the equivalent of level 60+ content, gaining full EXP per kill. In the starter levels, going to a high level zone would actually give like 5-6 levels per kill. Experienced players could max an alt with no instant-level effects in under a day given the budget to do so, which came with experience.

The amount of nonsense time-gating apparent for this system is completely absurd and ruins the entire purpose of the expansion for me; to play more of GW2 and explore new systems and ways of playing without feeling the need to be on a treadmill to do so first.

Couldn’t agree more. The simplest way to explain it is like this:

HoT Story = New book
New Maps = New play area
Masteries = New playpen
Legendaries = Decorations
Precursor Crafting = Busywork
New Specs = New Toys

I want new toys. I don’t want to have to read a book, drive to a new play area and climb a mountain of monkey bars just to get my new toys.

Just got the news, and I am legit angry right now. To sum it up, to unlock the elite specializations, AKA the main reason I bought HoT in the first place, I have to

-Go through the new maps to get hero points
——-Which are then gated behind mastery points
—————With mastery points gated behind mastery points
———————-Which are locked behind story and events, AKA the "I’ll get to it later because I want to have fun with the e-spec.
—————————-Which is designed in such a scale specifically to trivialize the entirety of map completion and legacy hero points, and do nothing else.

So I need to do the story and the events to get the mastery points that allow me to get the other mastery points which allow me to get the hero points which will allow me to get the e-specs, with the entire system built solely with the intention to make all of the hero points you could’ve earned prior to this time useless.

No, this is unacceptable. You know what should’ve happened? The new e-spec should cost 200 points, and each hero point in Maguma should be worth 5. There. That way, if you bothered to do map completion or at least bothered to get all of the challenges, you can get the E-spec, but if you didn’t you can just do HoT content to get those hero points. That way, everyone wins. With the current system, everyone loses.

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Tabootrinket.2631:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The funny part about all that is, I’ve ran the numbers a few times, and the staff is the highest damaging weapon thieves will have. It has the highest base auto attack, the highest DPS attack, the highest per-initiative damage, the highest AoE damage, and the highest modifiers attached to traits. All at the same time.

So when players say that the staff is low damaging or underpowered and it clearly isn’t… then I have to throw out their feedback as not being objective.

Numbers are bound to change for balance, and they will. Mechanism is another story.
So what will happen when those numbers get toned down ? The weapon gets forgotten.

I don’t buy it. The idea that staff is inadequate because in the future the staff may be nerfed just doesn’t make sense. You’re have to remember, the staff isn’t just max deeps. It is max deeps in every category: per initiative, on auto, at base, overall, and against multiple targets. For the staff to fall out of use, it would have to see every single category hit.

Here’s the thing, a single weapon isn’t supposed to supplant every other weapons (as you suggest the staff does). And each weapon is supposed to add a different “playstyle” compared to the others.
The staff as it is, doesn’t really provide what the others don’t. And that’s the main problem.
So as it is, the numbers in the staff weapon will either make it superior or inferior to other weapons which shouldn’t be the case. You should choose the staff (as you choose other weapons) because it provides another kind of tools, not because it makes the others obsolete.

The staff provides large AoE damage, a feature that isn’t present on any other thief weapon. Also massive weapon stacking and the ability to innately cure immobility.

AoE damage exists on shortbow. Sword permits to cure conditions. With shortbows we can also port away… we don’t really lack tools to cure immobility.

Not nearly to the degree that staff has it. Heck, the shortbow does less AoE damage than the sword.

The point is, AoE already exists and won’t by itself give the staff a unique identity.

And that point is completely wrong. AoE as the staff gives it does not exist.

Right now I’m hoping for a zealot’s re-release.

One of the biggest turn-offs for the druid is the fact that I have to make a new gear set to use them effectively. If Zealot’s doesn’t get a re-release, I’m not sure I’ll touch the spec.

I’m glad “Rise” might actually be a PVE thing now.

Fay.2357:

Ross Biddle.2367:

For general mob spawn

• They target Phants anyway, and in overwhelming numbers this wont be good for the mobs. In crowded scenarios, friendlies will kill the mobs, ending the phants life -_-u

For Big Bosses

• Don’t these guys hit for a billion damage quite frequently? So like, one hit at -95% damage reduction is still going to be nine hundred and fifty million damage. I don’t know if a phant can survive that much dps -_-u

Where these damage reduction effects would really prove worthy? WvW, PvP. But yeah, cool, at least its a step in the right direction for PvE.

Some bearbow math:

5% damage taken = 20x increase in ehp.

Phantasm PvE hp is 5800. 20x that is 116,000.

Bosses hit hard, they don’t hit THAT hard.

I came here to say this, but someone beat me to it.

Now I’m not sure whether the best tactic is to shatter + well chrono or phantasm + well chrono.

And people say HoT doesn’t have anything good…

Both are terrific ideas.

You can probably science it out. The thing is, the stats of all the enemies are a function of their level, so there isn’t any one correct armor value for any one enemy. It is like this with HP, too.

You’ll probably have to feel out which ones have significantly higher/lower armor values.