Guild Wars 2

I didn’t rage quit, but beating it the first time did give me a headache that lasted for 3 days.

The worst part was, I couldn’t find a group that didn’t demand the title. Nobody did teaching runs or pug runs, it was always “Title, show loot, specific classes”. In order to do the fractal, I had to form my own group. And more importantly, I had to figure out how to beat each of the bosses new attacks on my own.

The hard part was getting people to cooperate. My team quickly filled with your standard newbie; full of hope but empty on skill and poor listening skills. We died to the first doom against Artsariiv about 4 times in a row, all because nobody on the team would listen when I said “Kill the anomaly that spawns in the center of the room before you do anything else”. It was like this for… basically every mechanic of every boss. Die to the mechanic, come up with a strategy, die 4 more times to that same mechanic because paying attention to chat is for other people.

Astralporing.1957:

The “it’s easy once it becomes easy” argument?
Right…

You’d be amazed. Most of the difficulty comes from learning the mechanics. For example, the Viirastra fight at scale 100 isn’t that difficult to do. It is just really hard to learn:

1. You must DPS down the elite/silver adds and drag the ones that split to the boss for cleave.
2. You must quickly head to the dome when you get a skull on your head.
3. You must catch the marble when it hits the ground using the special action key. At least two players on the marble in case one of them gets doomed.
4. Use the special action key to avoid her phase starting attack.
5. Don’t stand in the brightly colored telegraphed attack areas.
6. Jump the wave.

None of these steps are particularly difficult. If you get a skull, you head to the center and wait. If the marble is thrown, you stand in the brightly lit telegraphed landing spots. When she switches sides, she’ll spawn some adds, so kill them. However, since the game doesn’t tell you all of this, a newb group is going to run face first into a brick wall. Over and over again, directly proportional to how drunk the most lit player on your team is.

As far as the new fractal goes, I don’t mind it. I find it interesting that Viirastra is the hardest fight in normal mode, but otherwise it is a pretty fun romp. The bosses are challenging, and the low gravity is fun, the story is alright. Though it does feel a little stripped down as far as structure goes. You don’t traverse the fractal insomuch as hop from one boss to the next.

My biggest problem is challenge mode. Specifically Arkk. There is a limit to the amount of visual clutter my brain can handle. Towards the end, I have to watch for his orb attack, his telegraphs, that stupid eye attack, the gigantic laser shooting from the sides, the anomaly, the green circle, the placement of my teammates, which platforms are going to fall, where the current damage patches are, where the float ring currently is, and the recharge of all my skills plus the special action key. This is… a lot to handle, and for the final 20% of the fight is mostly my entire team flailing as we try not to get killed by the room full of OHKO attacks.

The biggest issue is, the doomed and anomaly mechanic become a really big liability when platforms start vanishing. Either directly or indirectly this is what kills us, because we cannot reliably kill the Anomaly when the platform underneath of it vanishes. Or when the gigantic beam attack engulfs it. Or when it spawns in the center of a bunch of damage patches. It’s on a “timer” but when Arkk goes into full tantrum mode it might as well be random, because there is no way you can consistently remember when it is going to spawn among the unending hell coming your way.

I’ve only beaten it twice, but among all my attempts, I’ve never had a teammate who thought it was anything other than a crapshoot. Beating the final encounter on CM isn’t about skill, insomuch as it is hoping that the game cooperates and gives you reasonable anomaly spawns. It is more luck than anything else.

Just did it. I encountered no formal bugs. However, I have seen the anomaly spawn on a platform right before the platform vanishes, and sadly this event leads to roughly half the team wipes I’ve experienced.

I’ve been running some personal DPS tests for power ele, and the nerfs to air and fire overload have really cut the DPS down. Testing Dagger/Warhorn, Dagger/Focus, Scepter/Warhorn, after the initial burst from Ice bow and Glyph of Storms hits 30k DPS, the Tempest seems to even out at around 27k DPS for the long haul. That… is not much at all. I can do that much damage camping bombs on my scrapper.

Fire Staff still has good DPS, though, at around 33k on large targets. But, there is an issue: That is all fire staff does. It has poor support skills, poor CC, very little defense, and you never want to be locked out of fire.

The thing about Ele DPS is that it was only “overpowered” in a laboratory. Using Air Overload essentially paralyzed ele for 5 seconds, and in higher end content that could spell death. It takes a lot going right to complete Air Overload, and one required dodge or weapon skill would hamstring our DPS. If the enemy happened to step out of the lightning or fire circle, our DPS takes a hit again. In practice, ele DPS wasn’t that good at all.

The tradeoff for this inconsistent damage is utility. Focus gave you invulnerability, cleanses, projectile destruction, and decent CC. Warhorn gave you great CC and blind fields, while also being higher damage than focus. Off-hand dagger we don’t really talk about in PVE, but Fire Grab was an excellent swap skill. This “tradeoff” is gone, now. The Tempest now does distinctly average DPS, which in practice is inconsistent.

I can’t speak for condi DPS, since I don’t have an ascended condi set for my tempest.

Unless I’m doing it wrong, I’m only getting about 25k DPS, unrealistic buffs and no food, stationary target. Mobile target, 27k DPS. With the recent food nerf, I have a hard time seeing us break 30k with condi.

Full ascended viper, berserker runes, smoldering + geomancy sigils, using the previous meta condi build pre-patch (Devastation 1, 3, 1, Invocation 2, 1, 1, Corruption 3, 2, 1).

jief.2509:

Is there a power build that would work in high lvl fractals that doesn’t involve camping the bomb kit? I’m new to engi and I just can’t stand that the main attack animation I see is squatting down and placing a big bomb lol.

I’ve done a few more tests, and the advantage that bomb kit has over hammer (for scrapper) has dwindled severely.

Going with every buff (no food) and every condition, camping hammer averages around 26k, whether you use Rocket Charge or not. Camping Bomb kit and only switching to hammer for thunderclap does about 27.5k damage. While this is better, it isn’t that much better. Vanilla engi camping the bomb kit does around 28-29k.

It is unfortunate, but peak engi performance was nerfed this patch.

stone cold.8609:

Hammer DPS may be better than GS now. Of course, someone with better math skills should verify…

I happen to have a commander tag, so I did some tests on the golems.

Added boons: max might and fury.
Bane Signet equipped.

Hammer build: Zeal 2, 3, 3. Honor 3, 3, 2. Dragonhunter 1, 2, 3.
Using Mighty Blow, 8,168 DPS
Just using Auto: 8,334

GS Build: Zeal 2, 2, 3. Radiance 1, 3, 2. Dragonhunter 1, 2, 3.
9,071 DPS

Nope. Looks like Greatsword still does more damage. This was only using weapon skills, too. Greatsword’s ability to burst with Spear of Justice and Retribution + Symbol of Wrath means that all of the traps hit a lot harder. Also, alacrity really benefits the Greatsword.

Sword/Torch build: Zeal 2, 3, 3. Radiance 2, 2, 1. Dragonhunter 1, 2, 3.
9,738 DPS.

Sword/X build: Radiance 2, 2, 1
8,319 DPS

Mace/X build: Radiance 2, 2, 1
6,032 DPS

Scepter/X build: Radiance 1, 2, 1
8,724 DPS

I’m pretty sure the PVE meta tactics are untouched. Camp scepter/torch, swap to greatsword for massive burst, then go back to scepter/torch.

I did a few tests in PVE, mostly for the scrapper. Explosives/Firearms/Scrapper.

The first thing that I noticed is that camping bomb kit has lost quite a bit of power. Originally, in a no-might scenario the bomb kit + hammer combo had roughly equal damage to pure hammer, but after the update pure hammer had higher damage than swapping between hammer and bomb kit. The only consistently added buff that I tested on was fury. In a maximum might scenario, hammer dps and mixed bomb kit + hammer dps were equalized.

On the one hand, this is more convenient for me, since I found constantly swapping between bomb kit for damage and hammer for utility to be annoying, particularly because it made shock shield a much less reliable block. On the other hand, this doesn’t really represent a buff to hammer insomuch as it represents a nerf to bombs.

I also did a bunch of tests to compare the various traits and their damage output. Both with no might and maximum might. Always under fury. The results were the following:

Glass Cannon vs. Blasting Zone: Glass cannon is the superior trait and any level of might, but the difference between the two grows substantially as you gain more might. For reference, a power scrapper has around 2657 attack at base, and 5% of this is the equivalent to 132.9 bonus power. At maximum might this is 3407 power and 170.4 additional power. It beats out blasting zone, so long as you can maintain Glass Cannon for 90%-70% of the time. However, if you constantly find yourself beaten down or you’re not running a power build, Blasting Zone will beat out glass cannon.

Vanilla Engi is slightly different, sitting at 127.9 effective power at base, but this still demonstrates the superiority of Glass Cannon.

Aim Assisted Rocket vs. Big Boomer: Rocket is the superior trait at any level of might or fury. The damage bonus from boomer simply isn’t much, only about 9% crit damage (changing 220% to 229%). The vitality exists, but 1.3k health isn’t really a significant bonus.

I can’t find any game mode where you would take Big Boomer. Power builds will take rocket, condi builds would take short fuse.

Orbital Command vs. Shrapnel: In low might situations, Orbital Command is better. In high might situations, Shrapnel is better with the bomb kit. It is fairly self explanatory: If you have the might to back it up, the bleed is worthwhile. If you don’t, then it isn’t.

Mine Trail vs. Shrapnel. This is where things get a bit more… unusual. For this test I added an additional condition: vigor, dodge when possible. You can debate the practicality of it all later. But, at maximum might and fury, Mine Trail and Shrapnel is roughly equal. At low might, Mine Trail beats Shrapnel. If you dodge at any less than maximum frequency under vigor, Shrapnel or Orbital Command beat Mine Trail, depending on might status.

For Vanilla Engi, Mine Trail is better than Shrapnel, at any might situation, at point blank range.

The grandmaster traits are hard to compare, largely because they are all vastly different in nature. The pure DPS analysis ignores quite a few things. The pros that Orbital Command is an unblockable AoE attack that triggers at range and is a blast finisher aren’t things one can simply dismiss. I can’t dismiss that alacrity helps it, either. Orbital command is really consistent and easy to use, but in ideal conditions it is the weakest option, inferior to Shrapnel in PVE if you have the might. Mine Trail is theoretically the strongest option, but it is also highly impractical and obtuse to use, requiring you to dodge through immobile opponents to get maximum damage. Mine Trail is also excellent in PVP, both for invulnerable damage and area control.

The scales of damage between these are not far. Under a full might + fury scenario, the numbers I’m getting for DPS are 9,190 for OC, 9,599 for Shrapnel, 9,554 for Mine Trail. We’re talking about differences of around 4% in damage total. At max might, pure hammer does 9,101 DPS with OC, 9,498 with Mine Trail.

For a newbie with a sub-par group, I would recommend Blasting Zone, Aim Assisted Rocket, Orbital Command with the weapon of your choice. For an experienced player with a good group, I would recommend Glass Cannon, Aim Assisted Rocket, Shrapnel while focusing on bombs and grenades. Only take Mine Trail in situations where you know you’ll reliably use it (I.E. against Ensolyss where you’ll dodge through a lot of his attacks and he’s always in your face).

For vanilla engi I get about 10,179 with Mine Trail, 9,572 with Shrapnel.

GWMO I know how to play the chronomancer. I’ve taken it to fractal 100 many times in the past. That’s not the problem. The issue is, the dedicated boonsharing build feels terrible to play and it is the only way to play the chrono now without, as you put it, “leeching”.

Prior to these updates there was no rotation. Off cooldown you would just use time warp + continuum split, and follow that up by pressing 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 on the keyboard in that order, with 9 being SoI. Continuum split ends, then you press those exact numbers again in a line. Suddenly everyone in the team has permanent quickness and alacrity, and you can go off using skills as you see fit. I could open with a series of phantasms of my choice, save tides of time for bar breaking if I wanted to, and the whole thing had a lot of leeway. If I missed using timewarp at the same time as casting continuum split, nobody lost out; I would just use it a second later. If I happened to be stunned in the middle of the burst, I would come right back. I could run damage based runes + sigils with damage based traits and damage based phantasms, and everything would work out just fine. Sure it was just doing 17k damage or so, but relatively that is far more than the 11k that the boon build does. That number really shows when you’re by yourself or your teammates are special snowflakes wafting in the breeze. It was also excellent for adds, because mind wrack and phantasmal berserker hit in an AoE and did enough damage to down basic enemies in a single burst.

Now, you must open with shield 5 into shield 4 into WoA into SoI, and if at any point something goes wrong, the entire setup fails and you might as well /gg. The build is now wholly reliant on having SoI go off precisely when you have quickness after weapon swap, because it itself is the primary source of quickness but it only works if you already have quickness. Previously, if a well or a skill was missed, everything else would continue to fire off with no problems. But now? If something happens to tides of time or WoA, the build loses momentum. I’m stuck waiting for 20-30 seconds for everything to come off cooldown before I can try again. If I forgot to weapon swap in the middle of combat, I don’t have enough boon duration and SoI fizzles because of it. Of course, in the midst of battle I lose track of the hidden Illusory Inspiration cooldown and I keep finding myself on the wrong weapon, so I have to swap out and then swap back, wasting another 10 seconds.

I could buy an entire commander’s set to ease up on the strictness of the skill usage, but there’s no way I’m spending 700+ gold on another armor set for a build that I fundamentally hate playing.

This is the same problem I’m having. Back before I left, quickness sharing was easy and fun, and I could do it while still having some semblance of personal damage. Playing power chrono was the best thing in the world. A few updates to the signet and quickness stacking later, now playing power chrono is the worst thing in the world. I went ahead and bought the leadership runes and the sigil and the boon duration food, tried it out, and found it to be utterly pathetic:

Before I had a “chrono burst” where I could summon a bunch of phantasms, drop a few wells, maybe illusion spam and shatter for AoE damage. The sustained DPS was low, but in the short term I could explode. Short term was all I needed. With the new build, I found it nearly impossible to navigate tangled depths, because all of my equipment was dedicated to helping out other people.

In groups, it was still pretty bad. The reason is simple: I don’t have a premade set of friends who are good at the game to adventure with. I get random pugs most of the time, and even if I dedicate myself to spreading alacrity and quickness, all I get is more point-blank shot spam. If even that, since they’re somehow extremely frail yet extremely feeble, I’ll be rezzing and dealing with players out of range.

The boon sharing chrono build is good… if you’re surrounded by max spec’d competent players. Otherwise, any advantage gain from alacrity and quickness to a group is less than swapping to Ele or Thief and simply doing higher personal damage. The rotation is a complicated mess where I have to keep track of several hidden cooldowns to maximize boon duration and signet usage, and if I mess up once performance drops off a cliff. The build is not fun to play and is generally terrible.

The worst part about all this is, this is the mandatory way to play mesmer. There are no other “viable” specs. Even in full personal DPS builds, the damage is laughable compared to other classes. We wouldn’t have such a problem if a personal DPS build had damage on par, but we don’t even get that option. It’s either quickness spam or go home, so I took the latter option and don’t play mesmer anymore.

Seriously, Anet, would it really be so bad if the sword and greatsword auto attacks did meaningful damage?

Seera.5916:

I’ll say it again, if a player’s fun would be affected so much that they would stop playing the game due to dying too much with glass cannon gear, they should start in more defensive gear. And only when they feel comfortable should they move towards glass cannon gear. They should of course not join groups who require meta builds.

They’re not going to die more often in glass cannon gear. That’s sort of the whole point. The effective power per health product between gear prefixes isn’t that big. You can beat most overworld enemies by walking up and auto-attacking with no dodging, even in full glass. Even in heart of thorns, as an elementalist. You don’t do better just because you have more health and armor.

AliamRationem.5172:

That’s a bit misleading. It assumes that with the berserker set your health never reaches 0 at any point during the fight. Certainly that assumption favors choosing berserker gear over marauder. But if it does reach 0, then your damage output is also 0 and the defensive set is a far better choice.

No it doesn’t. The relationship between enemy survival time and enemy damage upkeep is linear. In a straight up brawl, if you would have died doing double damage at base HP then you also would have died doing normal damage at double HP. You’ll still die but it’ll just take longer to fail. Likewise, the existence of a debate doesn’t prove your point. It just means people are ideologically driven enough to take a stance and refuse to listen.

I’ll say it again: this isn’t an issue of skill. The question is if a player will still beat most enemies by default if they’re in glass cannon gear. Unless something has radically changed in the last 8 months the answer is yes they can. Playstyle is influenced more by which class you pick than which gear you use, since HP tiers affect durability more than prefixes if you factor in the tradeoff between damage and durability.

I’m surprised this debate is still around. Anyway, yes newbies should use glass cannon gear. Berserker, Assassin, Viper, Sinister, etc. if more have been added.

Whether or not a newbie should use glass cannon gear isn’t a question of skill, insomuch as it is a question of efficiency. GW2 was designed PVP first, with close ratios between player stats and gear prefixes. The different stat loadouts you use are all meant to both survive other player’s attacks, and also threaten other players with your attacks. Going full glass or full tank usually means you’re doing twice the damage or talking half the damage of the other. An enemy who dies faster does less damage overall, so a good offense translates into a good defense.

This translates to PVE as well. Nearly every gear prefix was designed to be wholly self-sufficient, so with the exceptions of Nomad and Minstrel you’ll never build yourself into impotence simply by choosing the wrong gear. The enemies only do 2k per attack, if even that much, so you’ll rarely find yourself in insta-gib territory or overwhelmed by damage. But, with all that said, glass cannon gear still has a set of distinct advantages that other sets don’t give.

#1: GC is faster. Faster means quicker healing, quicker rewards, a greater volume of things done per fixed time, and thus it is more profitable.
#2: Likewise, GC gear is more convenient if you have limited play time.
#3: Things are on time limits. Dynamic events and map wide meta events have a literal clock ticking down.
#4: GC has better peak performance. Assuming terrible play most of the sets balance out. But assuming perfect play, GC enables you to accomplish feats that other sets literally cannot do.
#5: Traits, utilities, and tactics make up the bulk of your defenses. If you find yourself dying too fast, it is really easy to change to a more defense trait setup, utility setup, weapon, and strategy. Owning multiple gear prefixes, however, is expensive and cumbersome to deal with.
#6: New players tend to hang back and kite mobs while using ranged weapons, to which defensive stats matter very little. If they’re going to bearbow, they might as well be the best bearbow possible.
#7: You fully heal after the encounter is over, so there is no long-term concerns. A win is a win, so it doesn’t matter how wide a margin your win is.
#8: There are enemies in the game who are so frail that you can obliterate them before they can counter-attack.
#9: Death is cheap. Even if you fail, until the late game it is a mild inconvenience at best.

With all that said, you can make a solid case for Maurader gear. It only does slightly less DPS than Berserkers/Assassins, but that additional 5.8k HP actually means a lot on the low and mid HP tiers. Overall, Maurader is an extremely efficient set in its distribution, and also it has 300 more points total. The big problem is whether or not players will accept you into their team. Though maurader is sufficient for raids, it might not be enough for the raid group.

Out of a strange sense of irony, I actually received an invisible shoes drop a few weeks ago. But… I’m not sure when exactly I got it. The shoe box was simply in my inventory at one point.

I noticed it in my inventory immediately after killing the invisible vinetooth that wanders around Auric Basin. So, there’s a chance that it also drops from those invisible vinetooth events as well.

Theoretically, the first set of elite specs are supposed to be just the tip of the iceberg. New elite specs would continue to be released, which would be on-par with the other elite specs.

Whether that will actually happen is anyone’s guess. The likelyhood of a game wide elite spec nerf is pretty low, though, since the cool new elite specs are part of what sells HoT. The problem is that, if you buff the core specs, you also buff the elite specs, so you can’t just go around buffing everything and expect the two to be equal.

Right now, I’m wondering how it is you managed to get map completion on all maps with all the pre-requisite masteries and all of the collections within 5 hours of stumbling into the jungle.

The stuff that is “walled” is supposed to represent post-maximum level character progression. Much like how you couldn’t realistically play the high level maps without getting that level first, you aren’t supposed to complete the maps without getting the masteries. The vast majority of the map can be accessed with a few points in gliding and jumping mushroom, with only a few smaller bits inaccessible with the later masteries.

The hero points also provide incentives for repetition. They give out daily rewards for completion, which is why you’ll frequently see squads of players go from map to map cycling through the hero points.

Dante.1508:

People actually enjoy these mechanics :/

Death is cheap in this game. You just try again immediately with little to no consequences for failure.

I really like this boss. He’s best fought with a small team that realizes you can’t hit his smokescales in their fields.

But, on the rare occasion where you’ll get a gigantic zerg fighting him, it is hilarious to watch everyone die over and over again. I type in /say chat that you have to stun/daze/knockback/cc the boss when he teleports, and that you need nuhoch stealth detection to see him, and yet there they go, ants rushing to fight the boot that stomps them.

Something that is interesting is that, if I trade my gems now, I will get more gold than it cost to buy them previously. Yay me I guess.

Otherwise, no I don’t think this is an issue. Higher gem prices means a few things (higher demand for gem items, more gold incoming, less people trading gems for gold), but none of them actually indicate a problem with the market. If anything, it will just reach a new equilibrium later.

Personally I use a greatsword + longbow dragonhunter for PVE. It can get through most things fairly well, so I don’t feel like I’m somehow kitten by the weapon choices.

Unless you’re going for speedruns and raids, a condi revenant is fine, too. It might be a bit hard to comprehend, but most of the community is actually pretty bad at making builds. If you go with a full power condi rev, you’ll probably do better than most of the other players out there. The big limit to condi rev is that it requires the enemy to be moving to do maximum damage, so you’ll get a wide range of effectiveness depending on the enemy itself.

As far as necromancers go, there’s only one build that is really minion heavy. Their playstyle is more of a brawler or a brute, due to their high HP.

Generally, no, I don’t have a race-class pairing of any sort. Though lorewise I wonder about it, since it is hard to imagine a warrior asura being of any use, or a charr bring themselves to become a mesmer. And there’s got to be a divide in the sexes as well, since the chances that a woman will become a big burly guardian is probably less likely than becoming one of the light armor classes.

Side note: as a reoccurring joke in the game, my human male mesmer will proclaim that the reason why he learned to become a mesmer was because the illusionist magic college was filled full of hot ladies. This is based on an event in real life, wherein one of the visiting college students to our middle school was trying to inspire/advertise his program to us. He was in education, and while he lead with the generic slew of platitudes that the education program sells (sense of fulfillment, getting to work with the community, respect from your peers, yadda yadda), he did offer one strange tidbit: his chosen career path was a “total babefest”. One of his selling point for choosing a career in education is that there were hot women everywhere.

Regardless, take note of the demographics in this game: female mesmers (usually human) are everywhere, wherein male mesmers are extremely sparse. When doing triple trouble with a guild, it was more common than not that, among the entire 150 man event, I was the only male mesmer.

The best stats, or the gear prefix that offers the highest possible performance, is glass cannon gear. Viper, Sinister, Assassin, Berserker. Going lightly into defensive stats usually means very little, because the big attacks from enemies to enough damage that getting 700 points of toughness doesn’t mean much.

But, if you absolutely must have some defensive stats, there is a passable set. Marauder gear only does about 10% less damage than berserker, but the vitality it gives can help the low HP classes survive an extra hit or two.

Preferably though, you’d just switch to more defensive tactics, utilities, and traits. Because changing those is free.

I’d like to elaborate a bit. There’s a difference between smart movement and nonsense movement.

If you’ve ever watched woodenpotatoes’ videos, you’d notice that whenever he fights enemies he is constantly jigging and jukeing in place. This annoys me, because this is the wrong way to fight enemies. It is nonsense movement that accomplishes little to nothing.

Smart movements are movements that accomplish things.

#1: Approach an enemy so you can attack them with melee. It is safest to attack most enemies from behind, as their attacks are cone effects that face forward. If an enemy abruptly turns to you, it is about to punch you.

#2: Walk out of the way of large telegraphs. You don’t necessarily need to dodge, as many moves are slow enough that a light jog will get you to safety. A mild strafe or running through the enemy model is usually enough to guarantee safety.

#3: Juking is a technique, but it is only useful in select situations. Against certain ranged enemies with slow moving projectiles, wiggling back and forth in place will cause their arrows to miss. This works because the arrows fire to your projected path will be when they hit, and not to where you currently are. You can use this technique intelligently, such as against a siege devourer. When you see the animation for a big ranged attack, walk in one direction until it fires, then quickly snap back. The attack will now fly safely by you.

#4: Don’t stand in fire. This references damage patches that many enemies lay out. If you see a patch coming your way, get out of the way.

#5: Try to avoid drawing aggro. The enemies in hot are designed to be decently challenging in small groups. In large groups, they are much more deadly. It is beneficial to avoid biting off more than you can chew. If necessary, open with ranged attacks to get an enemy’s attention, then when it comes close you clobber it with a sword.

#6: Kiting is a thing. Some enemies will destroy you in melee, so to avoid being wrecked, be sure to run in circles. Not small circles: you have to be largely moving away from a melee attack to avoid a melee attack.

Seamus is hard, until he whips out the shotgun. Then, you can solo him fairly easy. Here’s how:

#1: Don’t fight him in the room full of turrets. Try and pull him outside. Or, if this is the path that he starts outside already… you’re good to go.

#2: Fight him until he whips out his shotgun. This is the hardest part, but reflects can really help here.

#3: Once he has the shotgun, just run around in circles. Run closely around him, meleeing him the whole time. The time it takes for him to fire his shotgun is long enough that, if you’re circling close around him in melee range, he’ll miss. Over and over again. Repeat until he’s defeated.

This part is actually harder for groups. Firstly, because Seamus will often be targeting one player, and the large cone of his attack will catch other players in the crossfire. Second, Seamus will randomly change targets, which may catch you off-guard.

#4: if you aren’t in the proper position, be sure to dodge if you think you’re going to get hit. But once you start circling him it isn’t too bad.

#5: Stability and stun-breaks help, too. But if you are doing the “circle closely around him” strategy right, you shouldn’t need one, except for maybe the first shotgun attack if he catches you off-guard.

Excuse me while I put on my “Captain Explains Things” codpiece and recount history for a bit.

The original trait system we had was quite free form. Given 70 points, we were allowed to invest any number of points into any line, and once we had sufficient points we could grab any trait along that line. This would also give us status bonuses depending which lines we invested in. This system… was scrapped. Largely because Anet found in testing that free-form trait choice lead to the ability to make some seriously overpowered builds. Having no better way to deal with the horrible build inequality that would arise from the situation, the “adept-master-grandmaster” tiering system was made. This provide at least some form of exclusion along the traits.

However, all was not well. We still had to deal with difficult trait balancing, even more so since physical stats were still tied to the trait system. After awhile, Anet noticed an anomaly among player trends. There was a large portion (I can’t remember the exact number, so lets just say significant enough) of players who, quite frankly, couldn’t build themselves right. One of the most popular builds in the game was the 14/14/14/14/14 build, where players would distribute their trait points evenly across all lines. Back then, the system was designed so you would specialize into different lines, and it gave you a new trait choice for every 5 points. So players would instinctively distribute their points in the literally worst possible way.

After a horrible NPE update and a couple of attempts to lock traits behind achievements, the system before was scrapped almost entirely, and now we have the new specialization system. While the freeform point allocation could work well for players who liked to theorycraft or listen to theorycrafters, the system was too idiot-prone to function. The current system we have now was designed specifically to minimize the chances that a player is going to build themselves into ineffectiveness.

As much as I’d like to see the build system become more diverse, the dreaded 14 × 6 build problem still exists. Any complicated system proposed would have to either accommodate for the fact that players will use it incorrectly, or have to convince Anet that it is O.K. for players to build themselves horribly.

They’ve already told you when: “Indefinitely”. That means there is no definitive time for which legendary weapons will be returning.

Well, you’re trying to work out the logic of something that is all about feelings. Those two generally don’t go hand in hand.

Anyway, unless I am mistaken, the Total Makeover Kit is lore approved. You can magically and instantly change your entire character’s physical existence, sans the actual race of your character (though is that a lore limitation or just a mechanic limitation?). It is a wonder how anyone can be trans in Tyria when you aren’t tied to the physical body you were born in, in any sense. Maybe Sya is too poor to afford the gems.

Mesmers are illusionists and hypnotists, so Sya’s form is actually an illusion. There isn’t a physical morph there. Also, last I checked, syvlari are technically aesexual, so their physical bodies are of about as much consequence as their hair color (or leaf color… something like that). Though this wouldn’t prevent a sylvari from eventually adopting the notion that lets them feel like they were born in the wrong body later in life. The total makeover kit still exists in that regard, too.

So as far as I can tell, Sya is in the game not for any sort of in-game purpose, but to win points on a socio-political scoreboard in real life.

See ya next week everybody!

^^ I definitely think that the “grind to 80” mindset is a bit of an issue. I go over this in a bit more detail elsewhere but a big problem with Anets tutorial system (or lack of one) is that if the player has any experience or even a vague notion of what other MMOs do, then they have nearly a dozen reasons to turn off their brain.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

HOW OTHER MMOS RUIN IT or THE ENDLESS EXCUSE BRIGADE

A lot of people now know that the new traitwork has made alt leveling a painful, unrewarding slog for the first 80 levels or so. Especially in the pre-30 era. Anet has explained why they did this. Their idea is that, players were too busy being distracted by traits, so if we don’t give players traits, they’ll spend that whole time learning how to pull off epic combos with their skills. AKA: selective pressure is boredom.

Now, this doesn’t work in part because of human nature’s tendency to take the path of least resistance, but this is compounded by the expectations that…
<.<
>.>
… other MMOs have instilled upon the gaming community. I’m talking, of course, about things such as the following:

#1: A 3 skill repetition that takes up the entirety of someone’s action chain.
#2: 80% of the game is end game, and leveling is just a time tax to get to the fun part.
#3: Classes will naturally level themselves out to fulfill their hard role (part of the 14/14/14/14/14/14 issue)
#4: All non DPS dedicated specs being a boring trudge through the muddy terrain that is conventional leveling.
#5: Terrible random number generators that range from 0 to maximum damage (in the hundreds).
#6: Endless gear tiers that trivialize content while simultaneously making things too hard to go forward.
#7: Cheaters…
#8: You’re supposed to face tank unavoidable deeps while other people support you.
#9: Maximum damage is achievable at distances, since melee fighting is reserved for other classes.

This is important, because if people come to GW2 with the experience or expectations of other MMOs in mind, then they will have over half a dozen legitimate excuses to shut their mind down, and just signet warrior through the entire leveling experience. Remember: the inspiration for players to learn in this game is boredom, so if they have any mindset other than “I should use this terrible time to learn everything about the class, including research other classes and how all the game mechanics work on different websites”, then they aren’t going to get anything out of it.

You’d be amazed how many people can play GW2 while simultaneously watching the bachelorette. They’ll grind themselves to level 80, and of course there isn’t anything in the overworld to discourage being a signet warrior, so they’ll never change. In order for a player to realize that active defense is king, you’ll have to fight against every single one of these preconceived notions about MMOs. Otherwise, players will learn nothing.

If I were to go with “best” that didn’t include “easiest”, then I’d go with tempest. For a few reasons.

#1: Maximum damage. Except for the enemies that are made specifically to be tanky, most of the enemies in HoT are pretty glass. You can kill an entire swarm of mordrem guard with a single air overload. Which is good, because the events will throw out a sizeable number of enemies at you, even while solo. Against the bigger enemies, you’ll still have a massive damage output, via ice bow and meteor storm.

#2: Maximum AoE. You may have noticed this, but these enemies don’t clump together like the mobs in overworld tyria do. They’re a bit smarter than that. And so, you need to do a large amount of damage in a wide area to successfully defend an objective. The tempest has wide arcs, persisting damage fields, and excellent range, which allows them to fight in a very large area effective.

#3: Maximum Range. Staff tempest can fight at nearly full power at 1200 distance, which allows you to hang back and do a lot of damage if you’re in danger. It also means you can take down some enemies before they actually reach you.

#4: Utility. The wide array of skills means that, for nearly any circumstance, you’ll have what you need. Reflects, blind fields, bar breaking, blocks, whatever it is you’ve got it.

You just have to be careful. A flopper from nowhere can down you pretty fast.

I don’t imagine it would be a problem. At the end of the day, you still have to gather all of the keys to open all those chests.

I care very little about Seera’s mental barriers. I’m more annoyed than any sort of concern. Seera is confused about a very simple fact: It doesn’t matter why you don’t know what to do. There’s limitless ways to not know something. The particular mental state and personal circumstances that has lead someone to not acquire the knowledge to beat something is irrelevant. It is all corrected the same way: you provide information to those who don’t have it.

The people who actively hold themselves back are also not the type of people who would go around complaining that the game is too hard. No, the people who come forward and say “I died 10 times to the exact same pair of enemies” are the ones who are actively trying but still don’t get it.

The problem isn’t about people not always giving the best of their performance. The problem is not giving satisfactory performance. You should aim to pass the threshold of “competent” in whatever you’re doing in life. You should be competent enough to manage your finances, personal hygiene, work ethics, human interaction, personal safety, etc. If you’re the type of person that can’t look at your credit card statement because you constantly spend yourself into unmanageable dept, then it isn’t “O.K.” that you are like that.

Seera.5916:

But that doesn’t change the fact that the video doesn’t tell you that. If you haven’t picked it up by now, I’m very literal. Symbolism in English classes was the death of me.

And I don’t disagree that most of the time, your guess is correct with regards to the reason. It’s an hypothesis you arrived at based at past knowledge and what you see. And I’ve got no problems with hypotheses.

The video does tell me that. It would tell me exactly how they are messing up, and then I can give highly directed and specific notes. When I say “special exemption”, that means you must be physically or mentally incapable of performing that action. Not just stubborn or uncaring. For someone to be physically or mentally incapable of improving their play while also at the same time being physically or mentally capable to make a video about it while demanding an explanation, it would be nigh impossible.

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So essentially, the problem you have is a set of personal failings that get in the way of normal function. A short temper and poor self motivation is something you should work on, not something everyone else should work around. Likewise, I don’t care what your personal health is. As I write this, I have a fire in my belly and full body nerve pain, spurred from a vicious food intolerance and restaurant servers who lie about the ingredients in their meal. Everybody’s got problems, everyone is miserable for some reason, and the world works because we don’t let our ailments bind us and our shortcomings define us.

Learning to play shouldn’t be frustrating or a grind. Part of the fun of playing a game is learning to play the game. You should like getting better, getting smarter, and out-witting the puzzles set before you. If you absolutely dread having to figure out the extremely basic tactics needed to fight an enemy, then this is a mental barrier imposed by you alone. It is utterly baffling how you can purposefully choose one of the hardest classes to play in the game, but can’t choose to use one of the dozen tactics the class provides that would allow you to get through HoT.

And like I said, a glass cannon build is what everyone should go for when they start the game. The glass cannon is not the deep end. The pool is almost completely uniform in depth.

You seemed to have missed the line in a previous post where I said I wasn’t asking ANet to make the game easier for me because I know my problem is a personal L2P issue.

I thought about this for awhile, and something keeps bugging me. This conversation between us started because you insist that I can’t help people by watching them play, because somehow the mistakes people make can’t be fixed even if I see them. And yet, you keep insisting on the own uniqueness of your condition. But that would mean that my method would work, if you are the extra special case.

So why did this whole thing play out? What is the problem you have with the idea that watching someone play could let someone else give better advice and help that person?

I said just the video wouldn’t tell you the reason why. You’d have to talk with them to figure out the reason why. You can probably give a good educated guess as to what the issue is based on the video, but you can’t know for sure until you talk to the player. That’s all I meant by the video comment.

And I said I wouldn’t be helped by a video. No where did I mean for that to mean no one could. My problems can’t be helped by watching a video on how to play. My problems will be solved when I can get my mindset right. And unfortunately, no one can just tell me to do it and it will magically happen. Unfortunately, this little problem can only be solved by me.

Here’s the thing: Unless you’re of some special exemption, the reason why it is someone plays badly is because they simply lack the knowledge on how to play well.

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So essentially, the problem you have is a set of personal failings that get in the way of normal function. A short temper and poor self motivation is something you should work on, not something everyone else should work around. Likewise, I don’t care what your personal health is. As I write this, I have a fire in my belly and full body nerve pain, spurred from a vicious food intolerance and restaurant servers who lie about the ingredients in their meal. Everybody’s got problems, everyone is miserable for some reason, and the world works because we don’t let our ailments bind us and our shortcomings define us.

Learning to play shouldn’t be frustrating or a grind. Part of the fun of playing a game is learning to play the game. You should like getting better, getting smarter, and out-witting the puzzles set before you. If you absolutely dread having to figure out the extremely basic tactics needed to fight an enemy, then this is a mental barrier imposed by you alone. It is utterly baffling how you can purposefully choose one of the hardest classes to play in the game, but can’t choose to use one of the dozen tactics the class provides that would allow you to get through HoT.

And like I said, a glass cannon build is what everyone should go for when they start the game. The glass cannon is not the deep end. The pool is almost completely uniform in depth.

You seemed to have missed the line in a previous post where I said I wasn’t asking ANet to make the game easier for me because I know my problem is a personal L2P issue.

I thought about this for awhile, and something keeps bugging me. This conversation between us started because you insist that I can’t help people by watching them play, because somehow the mistakes people make can’t be fixed even if I see them. And yet, you keep insisting on the own uniqueness of your condition. But that would mean that my method would work, if you are the extra special case.

So why did this whole thing play out? What is the problem you have with the idea that watching someone play could let someone else give better advice and help that person?

clone wars.9568:

no food? bad skins? dont even have all invent bags? I’ll call this another PS fake SS what it is, FAKE…

FYI if you really wanted to prove it all you need to do now is post your account API code so people can check https://gw2efficiency.com/account/bank

Thats the only way to prove 100% this is not another photoshop (that I’ve seen 100s of by now)..

That’s what I was thinking. I did some quick math, and this person could afford 336,194 gems with that much gold. That is enough gems to buy literally everything in the market several times over.

I made a thread about it once. It was an avant-garde half poem titled “The World For Me”, talking about my frustrations with getting on the correct Drytop Maps. It wasn’t that well received.

Yes, this kind of thing happens on occasion. Chance are, the world you were in previously became “full”, so when you zoned it it put you into a new shard. There’s not much you can do about it, other than try to taxi in LFG, and zone in over and over again to try and get a good map.

Harper.4173:

Sure they exist – but are they the core of WvW? I would say no.
Are they the majority? Again I would say no.
Are they the focus of WvW? Most likely not – since things have always been balanced around BIG groups and not small skirmish groups of 1-2-3-4-5 people.
So when I say WvW – I mean the majority of WvW – the core aspect of WvW. Go to the WvW forums – see what people do there.
Go in WvW – see what people do there – the vast majority will scout or zerg. Not everyone does – but most do – and that’s what defines the gametype.

Other than general imposing if your own playstyle, I’ll have to correct you on a few things here. First, WvW is basically never balanced around big groups. At all. Aside from the stability and wall changes, I can’t actually think of a single change that was done specifically to balance big group combat in WvW. This is because, by and large, balancing big group combat in WvW is silly. Once you get 30 vs. 30 going, it’s a numbers game, not a matter of class composition.

WvW was never meant to be as popular as it is. Anet’s systems couldn’t even handle the mass zerg. Likewise, the idea that everyone wants WvW to be big group vs. big group is false. There have been constant threads and suggestions throughout the entirety of GW2’s life about how to break up the zerg. Most of them bad, but those ideas wouldn’t keep popping up if all the players wanted to blob together.

Harper.4173:

First of all buffs are not meaningless – I’m pretty sure they matter quite a bit. Ascended gear also matters.

I’m sorry, but raising the stats of the players by 15% does not drastically change the field of play. It just makes the numbers bigger.

Harper.4173:

When was that exactly? And what server was it on?

Multiple servers. I can’t remember the first server, but eventually I transferred to Sanctum of Rall, saw both the rise and fall of that server, then transferred to dragonbrand. It was after the first tournament (when blackgate was 2 vs. 1 the entire fight) that I simply got bored of WvW. Regardless, “bad” doesn’t suddenly mean “doesn’t count”.

I do take my experience because that’s what I’ve done and seen in WvW. And I’ve only played on servers that actually take WvW seriously.

Well, you know what they say: no true scotsman would do such a thing.

Harper.4173:

True – but the way I see it the evidence sure makes my side of the argument more realistic.

The whole point of my posts is that no, “the way you see it” is not correct, or even “more realistic”.

The fact that we’re not part of the balance team means we’ll never know – still you’re looking at it through what’s possible and not actually seeing what I’ve said is more than possible it’s actually plausible and probable.

What you’re saying is not plausible or probable, though. It is a general feeling of certainty fueled solely by the lack of contrary evidence, not any sort of extrapolation or prediction.

Harper.4173:

And they certainly don’t have a track record of breaking things and letting them rot? Or promising and not delivering. Does it seem unlikely that they would take long fixing something? Did they seem to you to be a “hop to it and fix it” kind of company?

Far more so than you are implying. The thing with dungeons, and event farms, and bugs is that these issues were often extremely complicated issues. Dungeons were abandoned due to a lack of ROI on development time, bugs are prioritized by importance which causes some of the minor bugs to go by the wayside for long periods of time, fractal leaderboards were a dumb idea, legendary weapons apparently take forever to develop, etc. and so on..

But those problems, they end up fixed in weeks, not one year + one month. The stability change is a simple variable adjustment on the cooldown between consecutive stats, which while having great impact in the game is something that can be fixed in an afternoon. Therefore, since it wasn’t fixed in weeks or months or even within a year, the change was probably intended.

Harper.4173:

Sure – of course – by that logic them releasing HoT in the poor state it was in is clear evidence they didn’t want to sell it. Right?

Well, if they could fix the problems with HoT in an afternoon, then yes it would be.

Harper.4173:

I’m sorry – where do you use it exactly? Where is stability useful in FOTM?

Cliffiside, Thaumanova Reactor, heck even Aetherblade I use stability. It is surprisingly useful for stopping the hammer stun, avoiding random pulls from portals, or dealing with the pulls from the golems.

Harper.4173:

That aside – what enemies have stability? Where is stability on enemies a problem? When was it ever? The only problem was the defiant on bosses. That’s been changed to a break bar.

Enemies don’t have stability precisely because it is a problem. You can shave down stacks of defiance, but you have to strip stability. Thus, stability didn’t get used. However, now that stability can be muscled through, it is an option for future design choices.

Harper.4173:

You ignore the fact that if you stop balancing around PvP you can stop balancing once you reach a balanced state. It’s pretty simple really.
If you obtain good PvE balance once – provided you no longer change balance for PvP ( because of split) you don’t need to rebalance PvE over and over and over again. It stays how you left it. Get what I’m saying?

That is false. Firstly because you’re never going to achieve a perfect PVE balance state, either. Secondly, the PVE environment itself is dynamic, changing via various updates, so the balance of the classes in PVE are always subject to change. Third, there’s still going to be metas that focus heavily on certain content, and/or emphasize classes for reasons that are not actually true, so you’ll never actually know when PVE is in a balanced state.

Harper.4173:

3 teams would require more manpower than one? HOW?
Let me explain this simply: 9 man team – split it into 3 teams of 3 men – you now have the manpower of 9 people into 3 teams. Same manpower – three times the groups.

The workload doesn’t decrease just because there’s fewer people working on it. If it takes a 9 man team to make balance changes every 3 months, then for the same quality of work it would take a 3 man team 9 months.

I suppose the biggest problem I had with TD first wasn’t TD. I ran through the place first back before the elite specializations were changed to require fewer hero points. Getting 400 points was grueling, and the elite specs were 80% of the reason why I bought the expansion in the first place. So, to get the points, I had to go to tangled depths with very few mastery points and bee-line my way to where all the hero points were.

Problem is, the guide I was using assumed that you had all the waypoints unlocked already, so there was absolutely zero explanation how to get basically anywhere. Given the tightly packed zerg rush of difficult monsters in winding narrow labyrinths, trying to rush to find the starting point to rush to the next hero point was like pulling teeth. My first experience with TD wasn’t “fun new zone to explore” but “exceptionally difficult obstacle between me and what I actually want to do”.

I suspect many players have the same experience I do. When they first get to TD, they aren’t looking for an end-game level map to explore and fight through. They’re there for the mastery and hero points. When taken on its own the map is alright (albeit convoluted, since as I said before there is no reason to go down most of the corridors), but nobody takes the map on its own.

So essentially, the problem you have is a set of personal failings that get in the way of normal function. A short temper and poor self motivation is something you should work on, not something everyone else should work around. Likewise, I don’t care what your personal health is. As I write this, I have a fire in my belly and full body nerve pain, spurred from a vicious food intolerance and restaurant servers who lie about the ingredients in their meal. Everybody’s got problems, everyone is miserable for some reason, and the world works because we don’t let our ailments bind us and our shortcomings define us.

Learning to play shouldn’t be frustrating or a grind. Part of the fun of playing a game is learning to play the game. You should like getting better, getting smarter, and out-witting the puzzles set before you. If you absolutely dread having to figure out the extremely basic tactics needed to fight an enemy, then this is a mental barrier imposed by you alone. It is utterly baffling how you can purposefully choose one of the hardest classes to play in the game, but can’t choose to use one of the dozen tactics the class provides that would allow you to get through HoT.

And like I said, a glass cannon build is what everyone should go for when they start the game. The glass cannon is not the deep end. The pool is almost completely uniform in depth.

Sartharina.3542:

Healix.5819:

If you’re skipping adventures, note that your first gold through each one is a major chunk of experience and they can be completed daily for ~100k each.

… if you find yourself having to use the words “Repeated Daily”… THAT’S A kittenING GRIND!

Not really. A grind is when you have to do a task unceasingly. Something you do daily is, at worst, a “chore”.

Seera.5916:

I’m very skilled in listening. However, you’ve forgotten that there are 3 major types of learners: visual, auditory, and hands on. Some people are great in one and horrible in another. I’m great with hands on. Really good with visual. Horrible with auditory.

Not forgotten:

Keep the video open in another window while you try out skills on a golem in the mists.

Seera.5916:

Seeing those keybinds is useful to me though, if done split screen with the actual game. I’m highly hands on learning, with visual coming in second. So if I see that he’s moved his skills around, it may give me an idea on how to adjust mine to see if that makes things easier. I’ll see the how he does what I see on the screen so that I have a better chance of being able to actually do it in game and cement what I’ve seen. I’ll see when he does skill 4 immediately after skill 3 or if waits a second. There are too many skills for me to memorize which look is which skill and which have what cast time and what the cast looks like so seeing the keyboard for me is ok, he’s using Skill X in this situation and he’s got it mapped to this button for quicker hitting of it.

You don’t need to memorize skills at all. If they don’t outright tell you which skills they press in which order, you can see which skill they are using on the hotbar. It blinks then goes on cooldown whenever they use that skill. There’s a reason why it is that nobody goes into keybinds: people playing GW2 learned to play on the PC from different kinds of games, which each have their own keybind style. Once a person has a “setup” that they learn from a game, they import that setup over to GW2. Then there’s the variety of different hardware you can be using, with different keyboard layouts and mouses with skills bound to the buttons on the side. In the end, a guide on how to setup and bind keys doesn’t get made because all it does is result in a bunch of players complaining that those keybinds didn’t feel right or make them champions.

Here’s the thing that perplexes me: you claim to be a kinesthetic learner, but your demeanor contradicts this. I’m a kinesthetic learner, too, and I share a trait with every other kinesthetic learner I’ve personally met: we take initiative. A “hands-on” person puts their hands on things. We fiddle, stretch, take apart and put back together to get a good grasp of something. That’s how we interact with the world. We like to mess around with things. This is what is contradictory: I’ve never met a hands on person who refuses to put their hands on something. Quite frankly, I’m not sure you’re actually a kinesthetic learner, but are just using that as an excuse for poor listening skills. The information is still there, being presented in multiple formats. A kinesthetic learner doesn’t arbitrarily dump information because it doesn’t suit their preferred learning style. They just convert that information to their preserved learning style.

Seera.5916:

And yes, some builds are worse for other players. A newer player isn’t necessarily going to be successful in a glass cannon build. They may be better off in a more defensive build. Once they learn the game better, the glass cannon build may become just as good as the defensive build for them, if not better.

No, they’re really not. Something I recommend to every player, even new ones starting out, is to go full glass cannon in PVE. The reason is quite simple: it is better, period. In GW2, glass cannons are not “better if you have the skills”. Due to the close ratios of damage an durability in this game, going full glass doesn’t kitten your character’s performance. The game was balanced around PVP, so a glass cannon character has roughly an equal product of effective HP x DPS as a character with defensive stats, and neither build choice is designed to be impotent in some way. Because of this, there’s little reason to not go whole hog on offensive stats.

And by going with a meta build (or something close to it), this maximizes the possible performance of the player by using the most efficient combination of utilities, skills, and traits. The interactions of utilities and traits isn’t some free-form “nothing affects anything else” system. They work off of each other, multiply each other, and culminate into a final product. This is why going for full offense works so well: those tiny 5% and 10% increases multiply each other, making each one better overall.

Healix.5819:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

Try playing as a keyboard turning clicker – WASD to move (no strafing) and only clicking skills, including dodge to be fair. Only use 1 hand at a time (keyboard/mouse) and delay all your actions by a second to simulate a slow reaction time. Limit yourself to random rare gear, clear your traits, choose whichever profession you play the least and base your weapon/skill choices on whatever looks the coolest. You’re now almost at the level of the average MMO player, which is why nearly all MMOs are below easy.

I already am. But seriously, I mouse my skills and imported the old control scheme from city of heroes, so I use the keyboard primarily to turn. I imagine watching me play would be actually frustrating to someone who’s good at the game, because to change my camera I end up having to anchor myself in place for a few moments. I learned to play this game on a track pad. Granted, it was a Mac trackpad, which is the Cadillac of the trackpad world, but still.

Seera.5916:

That tells you the what they did that caused them to fail. You don’t see the reason.

It could be because the player has a disability or they could have poor internet connection in general. You just assume that any mistakes are due to lack of knowledge. Not the kittenumption to make, but the video itself doesn’t tell you that.

What they did is a direct consequence of why they did it. Cause and effect share a necessary relationship. People, being people, generally do people things, so it isn’t too hard to figure out.

If the guy playing the game has Parkinson’s disease, he’s going to mention it. I’ve seen plenty of discussions on game difficulty will someone will bring up a disability of some sort that would prevent them from getting better. But, I also see plenty of posts that proclaim the game impossible with absolutely no explanation as to why.

The problem is, you’re trying to take a very specific and rare theoretical case, and use it to abandon common sense. It is fairly easy to see the set of paradigms governing a person’s actions in the game, and once those paradigms are shifted, the world opens up to them. If some specially misshapen snowflake should come my way, I’ll take that into consideration.

Seera.5916:

Watching does nothing for me. The only way it would be remotely useful for me is if they did a dual with the game and the keyboard/mouse. Seeing the effects on the screen or the keyboard/mouse by itself will not tell me how to better play. And how one person plays is the worst for someone else. Because people have different reaction times and internet connection speeds. I’m very very hands on learning. I have to actually DO it to learn it.

That’s the thing, that’s what I do and I still die. So it’s obviously not as easy as that. Please find me and link me a build that literally says do whatever skills you want for the rotation. All of the ones I’ve seen, dictate which skill when and when to switch attunement/weapon.

There is an oft under-emphasized point of education, but nonetheless it is an important one: listening is a skill.

Yes, it is a skill. It is a shame that most people are expected to just know how to listen, and it is also a shame that people expect to just zone out at stimuli and learn things. If you intend to learn, you can’t just have knowledge drizzled all over you and expect to consume any of it.

Take an active participation in your listening. When watching a tutorial, slow the video down so you can see which skills are activated at what time. Look at the build screen to see what equipment they are using. If you’ve lost the train of thought, go back in the video and watch that part again to see what is happening. Make a mental checklist of what they are doing. Keep the video open in another window while you try out skills on a golem in the mists.

That said, there’s a strange irony in what you’ve said here. To see someone’s hands or keyboard while playing is actually nearly useless information, since keybinds can be individualized. But, there’s also a reason why it is that the build videos go over specific rotations: the builds, skills, and techniques are chosen to have the maximum combination of DPS and group support. Because of this, there is no “this build is worse for other people”.

Likewise, on pretty much any build video I’ve seen, and on nearly every metabattle page, appropriateness and discretion are encouraged. They come with a variety of weapon/utility changes for different circumstances. The rotations and skills chosen are a best case scenario. You’re still expected to dodge when a big attack is coming your way.

Dante.1508:

Sartharina.3542:

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think the idea they were trying to go for with HoT maps was a “Metroidvania”-style progression with the masteries. The first time through the maps, you’re supposed to take your time and see what they have to offer, with a few things locked behind higher-level masteries to allow for re-exploration, and other upgrades making the maps easier to navigate to reduce the tedium of backtracking through the massive maps, once you’ve already explored the new details.

There’s a lot of fun to be had in opening and learning maps, and truly exploring them and how they fit together (instead of just “Go here to hit Point A”)

You know that makes sense after doing HoT but the thing to remember is this is an MMO which had its direction planned for in Core, changing the whole game into a Metroid type experience is jarring to be polite.

As a customer i personally hate Metroid and all the clones it made, i just dislike those style of games and i’m not interested in playing them..

Which probably explains why i hate Heart of Thorns with a passion.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

For me personally as a Daredevil the frog things are almost unbeatable, they are teleporting, unhittable and do incredible damage solo, in a pack i am dead.. i may as well stand still and let them kill me because even if i attempt to fight them the end is the same.

I tried to pass two on a vine in VB and was killed 10 times in a row didn’t even drop one of them in the 10 tries, that to me is broken mechanics and i move on, its no longer fun after 10 frustrating tries so i logout, i did not go back since.

Say what ever you like “l2p” “git gud” if you cannot pass something in 10 goes no amount of “git gud” will help.

So you fought the same enemy ten times, but didn’t try to use stealth to simply run past them, or smokescreen to block their projectiles, or dagger storm to reflect the projectiles back to kill them, or basilisk venom to disable an burst one of them down, or double dodges/vault their arrow volley to close in and kill them, or scorpion to pull separate and kill them?

Harper.4173:

I don’t know what WvW you’ve been playing but almost all WvW that’s even remotely serious is zerg vs zerg. I’m sorry – ZvZ is the reason people go to WvW. It’s the reason the fights are server-wide. Everything about WvW revolves around this concept.

It’s really not. Someone already commented on this though. Unless the server merge changed the environment drastically (which would be contradictory to when the stability changes actually occurred), there will still be solo roamers, havoc teams, and small groups of friends who run around to do things. The fact that the encounters are PVP is a more important factor than all the similarities between PVE and PVP combined. When a balance change is made in PVP, it has a mirrored effect in WvW, but little effect in PVE.

Harper.4173:

I also have to contradict you on the “small skirmishes and fights play out the same way” – no they do not.
First of all you can have a million buffs on you, food, and better gear than your opponent. Say we ignore that – say it’s equal – 90% of skirmishes in WvW end up with someone running away and the fight doesn’t even end.

Those are pretty meaningless. Miniscule stat advantages aside, back when I played WvW the opposite was true: 90% of skirmishes ended with someone dead. Whether it was by superior chase skills, or better burst, or getting bogged down with conditions, or the fight becomes a 2 vs. 1, in the end somebody was lying on the ground.

I get the very distinct feeling that you’re taking the experience on your server, with your preferred mode of play, with your builds, and imposing them upon the entirety of the WvW population.

Harper.4173:

What?
IF the changes had been split then WvW wouldn’t have received them – ergo better gameplay.

That’s the thing: there’s no proof of this. You need evidence to say that, if balance modes were split, that the WvW and PVE teams wouldn’t have also agreed upon stability changes. Given that there’s several reasons to put these changes into every game mode, as well as the characteristic “lack of foresight” on many design decisions, there exists the very real possibility that splitting the balance teams wouldn’t produced the same result. Maybe Anet thinks the hammer meta is cancer, too.

Harper.4173:

IF you mean I can’t prove they wouldn’t have made the same change across all game types regardless of split then I say to you : The very fact that they changed stability again to fix it in WvW proves that they didn’t intend to hit WvW the way they did with the initial change.

That doesn’t prove it at all. They very well could’ve intended to hit WvW, but only deemed it a problem after a sufficient “settling” period, or after receiving enough complaints about the change. They could’ve done it to split up ZvZ combat, but after everyone refused to change tactics Anet gave in and made ZvZ better.

Lets look at the timing of things. April 23rd , 2016 is when there was the “for WvW” stability change. Though this change isn’t exclusive to every mode, because in Anets own words: “While this change is primarily targeted toward WvW, it does also carry a positive note for the PvP and PvE game types as well. We’ll continue to monitor the effectiveness of this and address it where appropriate.”. The update that changed stability from a consistent boon to a stacking an removing boon occurred on March 16, 2015. Literally a whole year plus a whole month earlier. If the stability changes really had some type of unintended effect on WvW, then Anet sure did drag their feet to fix this unintended effect.

No, it is obvious: they meant for the change for all game modes, and it was only after a year of complaints that they changed their mind. And so, there is no evidence that split balance would have avoided this.

Harper.4173:

Also – you do realize your PVE examples are jokes right? Where exactly do you use stability in PvE?
Do you use it in the open world?
Do you use it in dungeons?
Do you use it in Raids?

Where exactly is stability useful in PvE? Where exactly is it needed? Where did it need to be balanced?

I use it in fractals. But you’re missing the point: the biggest problem with stability in PVE were the enemies. Stability was an inflexible boon to give to enemies, because it was all or nothing. You either had an enemy completely immune to hard CC, or you didn’t. Unless you were one of the few classes that had a good boon strip available, you were entirely subject to enemy stability. With the change, this meant that stability as a design option for enemies is now wide open. Every class can fight against and overpower stability, instead of a select few with a select few skills.

Harper.4173:

You continue to miss the point – just because this patch didn’t hit PvE or WvW too hard doesn’t mean split balancing should not exist. I gave you reasons too:
Past patches that resulted in a stale WvW meta for months – all for the sake of PvP.

Having separate balance teams also means longer lasting balance in one mode – because once it’s fairly balanced you don’t have to come back and fix it very often – since the changes you make to the other modes do not affect it.

Oh no, I never missed the point. I also never forgot the problems that arise from splitting balance, either. Throughout years of updates, the “convenience” point still stands.

The “longer lasting balance” thing is utterly false. Anet balances almost exclusively in PVP, and in the entirety of the game’s run not once has PVP been balanced. Adding more teams to other parts of the game would just make it so each game mode has its own unique frequent iterations of problems. The balance teams wouldn’t be smaller either: the entire balance team is dedicated almost solely to PVP, so additional mode focuses would require additional people.

Seera.5916:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Honestly, I just wonder how people fail.

It is a legitimate question. I see topics/posts with this content all the time:

“This stuff is too hard! I watched a video guide on what to do, but it didn’t work! I watched a build video, but it didn’t work! I got a group together and we still couldn’t do it! Nerf the content!”

And yet, each one of those things is a great asset to me. The biggest disadvantage to these threads is that, I don’t actually get to see the person who makes the claim play. I can’t critique them, and give them specific advice on how to help them deal with problems. I am expected to accept the notion that this player has reached some type of personal skill ceiling of which there will never be any improvement, and thus the game needs to cave to their demands.

And yet here I am, walking through hot in 8 out of 9 different classes, all in full glass cannon gear, and I’m not having a problem on any of them. I’m not exactly a “skilled player” either. In skill I’m rather average. I don’t encounter the problems that other people have. So, to give meaningful advice, I have to actually see the problem that someone is having.

If HoT is too hard, provide some type of evidence. A video of some kind, showing HoT being too hard.. That way, we can actually see the specific problems.

The problem is a video won’t show the why of the failure.

Some of us are just not that good at the game. I look at builds and the rotations just go right over my head. Loud whooshing sound and all. I can’t get movement and combat at the same time down, so there goes kiting if I’m alone. So I have to remain pretty stationary. That’s pretty deadly in HoT. It’s also pretty deadly in Cursed Shore sometimes.

I could very likely L2P may way out of my issues. But the frustration that it would cause would remove all of the fun from the game for me, so I don’t. I haven’t really played much in HoT maps so I can’t really say if they are too hard. My frustration level required for me to rage quit is not that high.

I disagree wholeheartedly. To actually see someone play the game would give a great insight into why someone fails. The best way to see what my students were having difficulty with was to have them work out a few problems as I watched, and then I could spot the mental mistakes that they were making. With videogames, it is not that different. The mental barriers are plainly visible.

This isn’t a Lupi solo, where you need to take a long series of flawless actions to succeed. You don’t need to be that good at the game. For the vast majority of enemies, there’s a simple one or two step trick that you need to follow that lets you beat them. Most of the time it boils down to the exact same thing: when the enemy does a super big and dangerous attack, step out of the way.

Kentaine.4692:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Kentaine.4692:

Here is the problem with balancing though. I have never seen a game balance well. They always go for the nerf bat and forget when you nerf something, something else needs to be increased. Take the Mesmer for example. Nerf their support abilities, but that better mean they get an increase to their DPS too. Ah, but this is how it works for PvE… GW2 balances around PvP. I’d love it if my Mesmer did more base damage after its support got nerfed, but since that would make them OP in PvP it isn’t going to happen. Hence why a split from PvP and PvE skills should happen.

Your perspective is confusing here. The whole point of nerfing something is that it is performing better than the other classes, and so it needs a reduction overall. If you nerf one thing, but then boost another to compensate, then you’re still stuck with the same class being overpowered.

Here’s what I mean. Numbers are not real, merely an illustration of why pure nerf with no buff doesn’t work:

Balanced around 5 man theoretical DPS

Pre nerf:
4 DPS do 8K DPS with mesmer boon (6K without boon)
1 Mesmer does 333.3 DPS with boon (250 without boon)
Total: 8.333K DPS

5 DPS do 7.5K without the mesmer

Post nerf: Mesmer Boon nerfed by 50%
4 DPS do 7K DPS with Mesmer boon (6K without boon)
1 Mesmer does 291.7 DPS with boon (250 without boon)
Total: 7.291K DPS (why did we bring that mesmer again? Oh right, for the BOONS!)

5 DPS do 7.5 K without the mesmer.

Pre nerf the Mesmer was much more desireable in group content, post nerf they would make do but would prefer someone else. Thus, to keep it balanced and less over powering to have a mesmer on your team the mesmer’s base DPS should be raised to 500 to keep the 4 DPS 1 Mesmer team in line with the 5 DPS team. Not only does it balance the teams but it also then makes it easier for the Mesmer to solo. Upping the Mesmer’s output to 500 would put the total at 7.583K DPS (more than just pure DPS but not so much more to be considered ‘over powered’ because the team will also have to worry about Mesmer’s ability to stay alive to provide the constant boons).

If done that way it would not make raiding PvEers so annoyed, and would actually make the casual PvEer a lot happier to play their mesmer because it kills things quicker which means less chance of being killed. However this was not done because of one simple fact. Upping Mesmer damage would also up how much damage all Mesmers do (not just the one helping out in the raid) and would be OP in PvP because they do too much base damage alone now. Instead now the raiding mesmer AND the casual mesmer take a hit to their DPS and usefulness while the PvPer stays the same, more or less. Thus, splitting PvP from WvW and/or PvE would be beneficial because this could be done to make the Mesmer more viable in a grouped raid setting instead AND keep them where they are in PvP instead of just less desirable in all game modes.

That would mean that buffing other skills is necessary only if the OP class gets overnerfed. That in itself doesn’t mean that nerfs require counterbalance. It means that nerfs require precision.

Zenith.7301:

That’s the thing, that trait simply wasn’t OP in PvE and if you are nerfing Persistence of Memory because of Alacrity and Quickness uptimes, you are nerfing the WRONG thing.

That’s just getting lost in the details. If you have a problem with a specific change, that doesn’t suddenly change balance ideology.

Kentaine.4692:

I don’t see why you’re against PvP/PvE split in GW2 then. PvP builds work great in PvE (I have even changed my PvE builds because I liked how they worked in PvP) due to the casual atmosphere of it, not the other way round as my PvE builds (which work great in PvE) can attest, so I don’t see that being an issue and the immersion is already a non-issue.

Basically that means a learning curve, but I don’t really see that being all too steep. Fundamentally the skills will act the same just with different numbers associated with them. On the other hand, if you aren’t referring to general PvE, well raids and ‘harder’ content already require or would prefer special skill sets which probably are already going to differ from your PvP builds anyway. The help provided to new players won’t change either, I’ve seen dozens of ‘new’ PvPers directed to wikis/videos on current metas. If learning the Meta is the steep curve, then that will be just as steep in a new PvP/PvE split balancing world.

Well, that’s the thing. If PVE is a casual outlet, then there’s no need to split its skills. That’s why I say this entire thread is overreacting horribly: There isn’t some necessary benchmark that is now missed because persisting memory got a reduction. You’re not suddenly losing against enemies that you were once winning against. The desire to split the skills is born to deal with what are mild inconveniences at worst.

Having separate balance teams means two things. First, less updates because Anet has to devote resources to them (remember, this is the same company that can’t make legendary weapons), and second a continually growing schism between game modes. It’ll start out as only mildly different, but as the game continually updates, the divide between PVP and PVE will continue to grow.

Harper.4173:

PvP and WvW aren’t completely different game types? Really?

One is a 5 v 5 STRUCTURED environment where all stats are equalized and players play for dominance over 3 standard objectives that are located in a small map for about 15 minutes.

The other is an X v X server-wide fight that has no stat equality – where each server can field any number of people at any time one one of the 4 maps available. The servers fight over numerous objectives over the course of a week.

They couldn’t be any more different. The only similarity is that you use the same characters are PvP and that you fight other human opponents.

Tactics, timings, strategies are completely different.

That aside – I fail to understand how you missed my point. If WvW balance was separate from PvP the whole “pirate ship” stale meta wouldn’t have been a thing because the stability change would have been exclusive to PvP.

Unless you run in zerg vs zerg it’s pretty similar, really. Small skirmishes and duels play out in the same way. Besides, there’s no proof that the stability changes still wouldn’t have hit WvW and PVE, even if they were split. It’s easy to come up with a reasoning for it: An outlet for additional PVE combat design, less reliance on boon stripping, the option to scale individual skills so you can have different intensities and durations of stability, etc. What you are championing as proof of the need of skill splits is at best a “what if” scenario.

Harper.4173:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I think you guys are horribly overreacting. I read the patch notes myself, and immediately though “From a PVE perspective, this doesn’t mean a darn thing for me”. The tweaks are minor and in the grand scheme mean little to nothing for any of the classes that were changed.

I say this every time this topic comes up: skill splits are what caused City of Heroes to fall. The change in how everything worked from PVE to PVP meant that it was a massive learning barrier that most players couldn’t be bothered with. “Why try to learn the entire game all over again just so I could fight some guys”? The answer was they didn’t, so the PVP community perished and the PVE community could barely keep the game afloat.

Seamless transition between modes is a good thing that should be strived for.

It’s not about this patch in particular – at least not for me.
It’s about the general way things are done in this game.
Look at the stability change that happened a while ago where stability was changed from a duration boon to a boon that has stacks. That change impacted WvW in a major way and ruined the fun of fights in WvW for months to come. Only recently did Anet do something to address it – further underlining that yes there was a problem that their own balance created.

And why was stability changed? Because of PvP -a completely different game type than WvW.

This sort of thing should not happen in the future!

PVP and WvW aren’t completely different game types. But regardless, splitting skills wouldn’t suddenly solve a competency issue Anet has. It just provides another outlet where things can go wrong.

Zenith.7301:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Kentaine.4692:

Here is the problem with balancing though. I have never seen a game balance well. They always go for the nerf bat and forget when you nerf something, something else needs to be increased. Take the Mesmer for example. Nerf their support abilities, but that better mean they get an increase to their DPS too. Ah, but this is how it works for PvE… GW2 balances around PvP. I’d love it if my Mesmer did more base damage after its support got nerfed, but since that would make them OP in PvP it isn’t going to happen. Hence why a split from PvP and PvE skills should happen.

Your perspective is confusing here. The whole point of nerfing something is that it is performing better than the other classes, and so it needs a reduction overall. If you nerf one thing, but then boost another to compensate, then you’re still stuck with the same class being overpowered.

Not really. Look at Druid for a prime example.

Were druids overpowered in raids? Not remotely, they can still be replaced by a Tempest if you desire.

Were smokescales really the breaking factor of what made a druid strong in raids? Not remotely.

If anything, pets SUCK in PvE. Ranger pets don’t benefit from food/pots or sigil/rune bonuses, they don’t scale their crit damage or condition damage/duration rating to the same high levels of the ranger, and most of those pets can’t even hit moving targets.

It’s part of the reason why power ranger DPS has been completely unviable, because a % of the damage they’re designed around doesn’t scale with the 5% stat difference of ascended, it does not share boons with the ranger without a trait, it does not benefit from consumables or equipment bonuses, and most of those pets do terrible DPS.

The best pets, the smokescale/cats, are the least garbage of the bunch and they STILL don’t place power ranger within the DPS range of the other classes. Let’s not even talk moas or bears, whose autoattacks hit for less than a burning tick from a power elementalist.

So why have ranger pets kept being nerfed constantly? PvP.

They actually had to give Druids Grace of the Land so groups would bother taking them instead of adding another Tempest.

In that way, CORE mesmer and CORE mesmer traits don’t need nerfing. Alacrity just needs to be shaved, and mesmer DPS needs to be brought UP.

But mesmer DPS will never be buffed because they refuse to split PvE/PvP.

In all of that, you haven’t explained why it is that the concept of “nerfs are for things that are OP and aren’t meant to be compensated for” is wrong somehow. Besides, I’ve seen mesmer DPS get buffed several times in the past.

Kentaine.4692:

Here is the problem with balancing though. I have never seen a game balance well. They always go for the nerf bat and forget when you nerf something, something else needs to be increased. Take the Mesmer for example. Nerf their support abilities, but that better mean they get an increase to their DPS too. Ah, but this is how it works for PvE… GW2 balances around PvP. I’d love it if my Mesmer did more base damage after its support got nerfed, but since that would make them OP in PvP it isn’t going to happen. Hence why a split from PvP and PvE skills should happen.

Your perspective is confusing here. The whole point of nerfing something is that it is performing better than the other classes, and so it needs a reduction overall. If you nerf one thing, but then boost another to compensate, then you’re still stuck with the same class being overpowered.