Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

But there is a difference between Guild Wars 2 and other MMOs. I’ve had guildies take even a six month break, come back and start running dungeons with us again within minutes of logging back in.

This is almost impossible in most traditional MMOs, since the gear you’d need to do a specific raid would be required and the player wouldn’t have been around to get it.

I have a friend who quit Rift for that reason. For personal reasons he couldn’t play when the expansion came out, and when he got back, his guild had moved on. No one wanted to do the old content with him (a multiplayer raid he needed to do to get gear), he hated leveling alone and when he eventually got the gear, he was still behind, because his guildies had already moved to the next raid.

Believe me, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have nearly the problems most MMOs have on this count.

In fact, there’s relatively little you can’t do that you were doing when you left six months ago. The only thing that comes to mind in Guild Wars 2 is high level fractals, an tbh, if you don’t have tons of time to log in, you probably won’t be doing them anyway….and if you want do, you can do dailies for a couple of months and be caught up with relatively little time input.

I do agree that equipment based power creep is a big problem with aging MMOs, and that GW2 does not have this problem. However, I don’t think the OP is talking about equipment based power creep, but rather the way the game feels now. It feels different than it used to.

I’ve gone through this many times myself in many different games. In GW2 I went though a strange play cycle where I sPVPed nonstop for the first month, then went into PVE and exploration, then into dungeons, and then I stopped playing the game for several months due to real life reasons. Came back 3 months later, and everything felt different. PVP meta had changed a lot, dungeon runs were now skipped most of the dungeon, places that were once full were now empty… although all of the game components were there, it didn’t feel like the same game.

It wasn’t somehow a worse game. What immediately followed was Molten Facility, which was my favorite thing in the game ever, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t disappointed with some of the changes, however trivial many of them were.

I have been in runs where the host would up and quit the dungeon, booting everyone out. If the trolls are dedicated enough, they will sacrifice their own reward just to make you mad.

It’s bad design on Anets part.

I’m not really bored with dungeons, but I also don’t run them to nearly the extent that other people do. A rule of thumb, though, is that everything that doesn’t change gets boring after awhile. When running HotW to get a full set of armor and weapon skins, I had to run HotW path 1 so many times that I actually started to tune out during the runs. I had to keep myself interested for in the dungeon by constantly trying new builds, changing classes, and adapting new tactics. Running the dungeon the same way over and over again 30 times, finding someone who would run it the exact same way each time and not get bored would be difficult. However I digress:

The OP reminds me of an extremely popular thread on another MMO (active, so I won’t say the name) called “there be dragons” or something along those lines. It was years ago. The thread used dragons as a metaphor for the unknown, which was the driving experience for exploration. The game had become formulaic and bland, and there was no true surprise or wonder about the game anymore. This was true, of course. Something interesting one of the developers mentioned in that thread is that, in large part, the a lot of the lost wonder came from the fact that players would default to guides and walkthroughs whenever new content was released (which was 3 times a month or so), and in this fact they weren’t “exploring” anymore. Eventually, they released an area with elaborate randomly generated dungeons, and that is my favorite part of that game.

Looking back, my favorite dungeon runs were within the first two months after launch. Everyone did them blind, and were inexperienced in the game. So, each battle felt like a mountain to climb, and we’d spend time in voice chat just trying to figure out how to beat things. That anticipation of not knowing how to play your class well, and not knowing what was around the next corner… what I wouldn’t give to get that feeling again.

Now, it’s all so routine that voice chat is unnecessary in dungeons.

There is a much better way to fix the monotony. I loved the randomly generated dungeons from that other game, and I would love to see them here. What anet should do is throw in a whole lot more randomly generated content. The enemies shouldn’t always be in the same place, and they shouldn’t always be the same enemies. There should be dynamic events that are truly random and meaningfully impact the dungeon. The troll in AC explorable is a start, but there should be ten times more of that. And no, I don’t mean “giant bag of HP”, but the randomness of it all.

Every update, people get lag spikes out of nowhere for a variety of different reasons. Best place to take this is the tech support forum, which can probably help a whole lot more than the sPVP forum.

I used to, but now my auto attack key sticks a little, so I have to keep auto on. I just have to learn where the escape button is.

I don’t see too much of a problem with the trait system, either. It does feel a bit limiting at times, only getting 7 major traits total, but being limiting isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I haven’t managed to bring myself to do it once. Maybe if I get super bored with the game I’ll do it, but for now it feels like a carrot on a stick.

I think the OP is part of quit a big club. This isn’t something that is limited to just GW2, either. Countless times, someone will leave a game for awhile, whether it be months or years, then come back to find that things have changed in a manner they don’t like. When that bit of nostalgia bug bites, they wander into the old diner they are familiar with, and after so long it is no longer that same diner anymore.

There’s not much one can do about it. You can voice your displeasure over the matter, but no one can make the game fun for someone else. The game is going to change: friends will leave, new people will join, the player base will shift demographics, markets will go out of whack… it is the nature of the living world. For better, or for worse.

I remember the debate over the turrets awhile ago. The outcome of that was timers on the turrets.

I always love threads like this, because then I get to hear new music. The audience so far is a lot more diverse than I expected.

Anyway, I don’t have myself a set song or rotation that I play through. Usually I just search for compilations of touhou remixes, epic orchestral, or I’ll pop in an album of a band that I like, want to hear, or am just tasking a risk on and see where the moo takes me…

Except for one. During Frost and Flames, while listening to a music compilation, I happened across one song that fit the mood of the final boss of the Molten Facility so well that I made a temporary playlist and just burned that one song on repeat every time I fought those bosses. Every day, sometimes for hours at a time. Yes, aspergers is fun like that. The song was this:

And I just loved it. The beat has impact, the mechanical and industrial tone of the song fit the dungeon so well. The orchestral tone of the song has emotional weight, and is oppressive while slightly desperate sounding. When watching those two bosses intro movie, and subsequent fight, it was like the song and the moment were a match made in heaven. Now, whenever I hear this song, I immediately think of the Molten Facility, and the first time I fought those guys.

Not only casuals, but largely to casuals. The thing about hardcore gamers is that they are usually really good at the game, and learn it really fast. When appealing to hardcore players, you have to constantly push the envelope in difficulty and in hardware into extremes, because otherwise hardcore players complete the content very quickly and get bored again.

I think this is one of the big reasons why Anet balances around and pimps out PVP so much. In a PVP setting, the hardcore gamers are constantly fighting against hardcore gamers, so the other player is the insurmountable challenge that the hardcore have to overcome. This provides a lot of relatively cheap but valuable entertainment to the hardcore player, while the casual player can go into PVE and pick mushrooms then dance in Lions Arch.

Whether they’ve managed to accomplish that, however, is up for debate.

EDIT: forgot to mention a whole lot of stuff.

Another problem with appealing to the hardcore base is that it alienates the majority of the gamers. When coming up with updates, developers often have to gauge the appeal of prospective new content to their audience. What the hardcore gamers find boring, the majority of the population finds entertaining and satisfactory. It isn’t so much that the devs don’t want to appeal to hardcore players as it is that doing so isn’t always the best move from a game design perspective.

I have been a bit worried about more and more ascended gear being released myself. Although ascended only has, like, 7% or 6% higher stats total, this is for each individual stat. So they have 7% more power, 7% more toughness, 7% more precision all at the same time. Overall the effect is much bigger than anticipated, and we’ll see a further jump with ascended armor…

If ascended armor works that way as well. Something I heard mentioned once is that each item in the game, by design limitations, only has one equipment slot on it. Ascended items have only infusions, which are +5 of a stat; a rather low number. It could be that ascended items will be equivalent to an exotic + matching orb + 4% or something, while exotic equipment gets free reign in customization with runes and orbs themselves. So if true, that is good news.

More good news, though: I run around in WvW with full exotics and don’t have much of a problem. Most of what determines a fight in WvW is skill and builds, and not necessarily one player having higher stats than the other. Things like proper positioning and prediction have a much larger outcome on the battle than what the current ascended gear gives. I’ve never been able look into a crowd and just pick out who has ascended gear and who doesn’t, so the gain or loss of advantage isn’t obvious to the casual observer.

I support this idea. Although it might be better in suggestions…

Regardless I frequently have problems using skills in combat a lot due to this. I use a grenadier engineer, a staff necromancer, and a shortbow thief quite often, I can’t count how many times barrage will end up at my feet because my cursor happened to overlap with the gigantic name plate that some enemies have.

People are entitled to their beliefs, and are allowed to share them.

Daecollo.9578:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I have seen that type of balance method before. Back in City of Heroes, there was always a “cottage rule” that the devs should never take anything away from the game, and only add to the game.

It is a fine philosophy, but it does have problems. People have already talked about power creep, but there’s another one hiding in its shadow: The fear of power creep.

The biggest anxiety when balancing a game with the “take nothing” philosophy is that there is always the ever-present fear that they’ll ruin everything. If they overbuff the class, then that causes a big problem because then they have to use similar but incomparable buffs on other classes to bring those in line. They also have to do this with alternate builds and utilities to bring those up to par. Then they have to deal with the implications it has in PVE, where enemies objectively become easier and easier to fight. So they buff enemies, but this is more or less just a global nerf to all classes in PVE that takes an extremely convoluted and roundabout path to do so.

The end result being the devs lightly tapping class balance with a 50 foot pole for fear that doing anything more would ruin everything. They’ll make skills and content that is purposefully underpowered, and then hesitate strongly to bring it into power. This can lead to skills and classes getting stuck in a perpetual rut.

The way that anet does balance now is “fine” in the sense that they are trying to sustain a hard average that classes should stick toward. This, again, is a fine philosophy, were it not for the fact that it irritates the community to no end, and the flexibility can easily lead to overbuffing or overnerfing. You end up with players losing their favorite tactics, and things they never want to use getting buffed up, so it is a net loss on their part. Even though freely nerfing and buffing lets the devs reign in the beast they created, fact is the players want its fluffy wuffyness.

If you figure out the ultimate method for balancing classes while maintaining incomparable diversity, let us know. Please.

Then they should add new things to SPVP (A new server created JUST to test new things, like hotjoin) for example first, then see how it is. Then judge if it has power creep value. Then once it is set in stone add it and never remove it.

They should do that for every type of balancing, really. Hardest part is, the true nature of the beast isn’t known until its released fully into the wild.

Haven’t played the mesmer in sPVP in awhile, but while playing a a condi engineer and condi necro, Arcane Thievery has messed me up quite a few times. I plan to use it on my own mesmer.

Although it isn’t the best cleanse, the selling point of Arcane Thievery is that it is highly offensive: both inflicting mass conditions on your opponent as well as removing their boons. Getting 15 bleeds and a 10 second burn thrown back in their face can spell death if they are unprepared for it.

Even though magic find gets you better drops, in berserker gear you kill things a whole lot faster, so you get a lot more drops to compensate.

Fordel.3208:

Well that’s just simply a case of One in the Hand vs. Two in the Bush.

If they are so hard to play that almost no one can use them effectively, then they are in fact, ineffective and the ranking is not wrong.

You can’t defend keeps with ‘potential’

Skill ceiling is a debate in its own. You could say that the fault is with the players not learning how to play the engineer, rather than the engineer’s design.

I have seen that type of balance method before. Back in City of Heroes, there was always a “cottage rule” that the devs should never take anything away from the game, and only add to the game.

It is a fine philosophy, but it does have problems. People have already talked about power creep, but there’s another one hiding in its shadow: The fear of power creep.

The biggest anxiety when balancing a game with the “take nothing” philosophy is that there is always the ever-present fear that they’ll ruin everything. If they overbuff the class, then that causes a big problem because then they have to use similar but incomparable buffs on other classes to bring those in line. They also have to do this with alternate builds and utilities to bring those up to par. Then they have to deal with the implications it has in PVE, where enemies objectively become easier and easier to fight. So they buff enemies, but this is more or less just a global nerf to all classes in PVE that takes an extremely convoluted and roundabout path to do so.

The end result being the devs lightly tapping class balance with a 50 foot pole for fear that doing anything more would ruin everything. They’ll make skills and content that is purposefully underpowered, and then hesitate strongly to bring it into power. This can lead to skills and classes getting stuck in a perpetual rut.

The way that anet does balance now is “fine” in the sense that they are trying to sustain a hard average that classes should stick toward. This, again, is a fine philosophy, were it not for the fact that it irritates the community to no end, and the flexibility can easily lead to overbuffing or overnerfing. You end up with players losing their favorite tactics, and things they never want to use getting buffed up, so it is a net loss on their part. Even though freely nerfing and buffing lets the devs reign in the beast they created, fact is the players want its fluffy wuffyness.

If you figure out the ultimate method for balancing classes while maintaining incomparable diversity, let us know. Please.

iFocus.3781:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

There’s a bit more to it. In multiplayer games, the players themselves are part of the content of the game. It is important to have a strong, vibrant community in game, both to play with and to play against. The player that sticks around for the game and isn’t mean spirited is adding to the quality of game, making it more appealing to the public at large and making buying the game a more attractive investment. Players who don’t buy a thing from the gem shop are contributing to the profits of the game indirectly in this manner, both with new sales and with making the game enjoyable enough for players to want to spend gems in it.

You don’t pay for gems, do you?

Sure, everyone contributes in some manner. But, you lurking about isn’t going to pay for Anet’s employees unless you actively recruit friends to join.

I have played this game since BW3, and frankly I find large parts of the community antisocial and alienating – especially the elite community – who just happens to be the one’s complaining about having to pay for things.

I have paid for gems. Please, for the love of all that is fuzzy and feline in nature, pay attention to what is said, and not whom is saying it. Anyway, being an active member in the game itself is enough to to encourage other people to buy the game, since the larger the player base of an MMO, the more attractive it is to perspective customers. I’m surprised no one has brought it up yet, but I find this to be a fairly relevant video:

particularly at 2:20 and on, where they talk about the free to play nature of multiplayer games.

Another function of the gem store, an one that isn’t often talked about, is the function as a money sink. Though there are a lot of complaints about the gem store, many from principle, a big secondary complaint is that a lot of players can’t afford to buy gems with their in-game money. What goes unsaid is that there are a lot of players that can. I’ve seen players in the game who have hundreds upon hundreds of gold, sometimes thousands of gold. To these players, the horror story of 10g = 100 gems isn’t even worth leering at. They’re capable of blowing gems on khaki shorts on a whim, and when they do this they’re ultimately taking gold out of the economy.

As of late, I’ve fallen into this category. Now I don’t have hundreds of gold but I do have a lot more gold than I do expenses. Considering my lack of real world funds, this is an extremely fair system to me as a whole, and also to anyone else who lacks real world money. Like kids.

Now, the flipside to this is that the gemstore does have the option to let someone who is real world rich become insanely rich in the game just by spending money. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, because although they drive up inflation to a certain extent, they putting money directly into NCsoft’s pocket, thereby making the game profitable. Though the gemstore does have a lot of complaints, I’ve found it to be a meaningful tool to the game, both to those who want to support the game directly with money, and those who want to support the game by being good people to play with.

As for the community, the one in GW2 actually isn’t that bad. I’ve seen a lot worse elsewhere. Although there is a general downward trend I’ve been noticing as of late.

Something like this happens every patch, and it affects different people for different reasons. Best area to take this is probably the tech support section of the forums.

If you aren’t farming for a legendary, my advice is to not focus on earning money. The way the game is made, nearly everything gives out coin rewards or stuff that can be sold for coins, so just walking around doing whatever you want in the game can be quite rewarding. The efficacy of farms is diminishing while regular gameplay becomes more and more rewarding.

This would mean that speedy kits would no longer work with Invigorating Speed, which is one of the main combat advantages of speedy kits.

I don’t mind the idea of having it so you’re immune to CC for a few seconds after you get hit by CC, however there is something to be said tactically about chaining stuns. The problem in the game itself is simple: there are way more stuns than there are ways to effectively deal with stuns. Before making a new game rule, I’d much rather experiment with doubling access to stability. Increased access to stability might balance the CC spam that we see, acting as a much stronger preventive measure instead of simply reacting to stuns like most stun breaks do.

The increase in loot is also done in anticipation for the release of level 500 crafting disciplines and the ability to craft ascended gear, both which will be quite expensive. Anet is indirectly giving us the mats needed ahead of time.

The thing with the inflation is that gold also becomes easier to get as well. Although gems are more expensive than ever, I have more gold than ever.

AphoticEssance.7592:

I see that a lot of people are putting engineers last on their list. Most people must not be aware that besides AoE damage, Group Blinds, and CC, Engineers also have Water fields….

The med turret is probably one of the engi’s best tools. To bad it sounds like people do not use it or unaware of it’s true power . :/

Engi also have light fields and condi removal(fumigate anybody?)

I am also a bit surprised that everyone ranks engineers so low as well. I think I’ve figured it out though.

When evaluating classes that I myself haven’t played, the way I do this is by field presence. Basically, I gauge how often it is I notice the class, and how often it is I notice the class doing something great, and that makes up my rankings. I get the feeling everyone else does this, too. After all, if you never see a class doing something good, then you won’t say that the class is any good.

I ranked engineers high because I play an engineer sometimes, and despite their skill ceiling I’ve found the engineer to be great in WvW. Largely because they do everything, and they do a large number of things at the same time. I find myself useful in every circumstance. I can 1 vs. 1, I can run with a small group, I can solo camps and yaks, I can attack towers and keeps, I can defend towers and keeps, I can fight at both close range and a distance, I can lay down the hurt in a zerg, I have plenty of finishers AND fields, and I can cleric and heal. The only reason why I main the necro in WvW is because the engineer is much more difficult to play well, and sadly my personal skill and hardware are lacking there. Because of all that, the engineer is always a good class to have around.

But one thing I also noticed is that I can never find another engineer in WvW. I see every other class all the time, but the engineer is a rarity. I’ll be in groups of 30+, and not see a single engineer among those ranks (SoR native here). The engineer isn’t ever doing something fantastic because the engineer isn’t ever around to do it. People can’t notice what isn’t there, so the engineer gets ranked low. I’m not sure if this is a reinforcing circle, where no one plays engineers because no one else plays engineer.

They also might have the ranger problem in that their skill ceiling makes them difficult to use. I’m a good necromancer, but only a mediocre engineer. Even comparing my performance to itself, one would think that necros were much better in WvW, despite the fact that I’ve found things to the contrary.

There are a couple of other tactics than burning down the boss, although that one is preferred since it avoids the fight the most.

The cheesiest is to have speedy, highly evasive classes with good condition cleanse kite around the boss in circles while attacking him. The ranged attacks are slow and the recluses are slower, so if you can run fast enough, you’ll be able to kite them endlessly. Doing this, you can solo the boss.

Another tactic is to sit near the entrance of the room, attacking at 1200+ range with a few players while the rest fend off the spiders that continue to spawn and attack. The initial wave of spiders can be problematic here, but after you have cleaned out the hordes in front the spiders actually spawn slow enough that you can easily kill the ones that try to attack you. The hard part is just getting to that point.

I use the shortbow on my thief whenever I can’t melee something. Or if I need to move quickly or escape. Or if I want to spam a blast finisher. Or if I want to tag mobs that are far away.

So… I use the shortbow a lot. I vary my melee setup a lot, but for ranged attacks it is always the shortbow.

There are 3 ways that a necro can really burst bleeds onto someone, and they aren’t build specific.

#1: Condition transferring. If a necro gets a bunch of bleeds, then can shove them onto an opponent via Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm, and Plague signet. Most condi builds have at least 2 out of the 3.

#2: Epidemic. If a neco stacks bleeds on something nearby, they can use epidemic to put all of those bleeds onto everything nearby. With all of the necro’s AoE bleeds, this can mean that a player can hit the cap in moments.

#3: They can blow all of their cooldowns and get lucky with procs. Mark of Blood into Grasping Dead + Enfeebling Blood, follow up with Weakening shroud + dark path, then summarize with Blood is Power or a condition transfer of some sort. When you put all of those together, getting 20 stacks can be really fast.

But my guess is condition transfers. It would help to know what class and build you yourself were playing.

I second this. When an asuran tries to bash my head in with a mace, he better be jumping up like mario to hit me in the head.

I think there’s a term for it… narrative disconnect or something, in which the narrative of the game and the gameplay of the game have contrary natures to themselves, I.E. a game that constantly preaches peace but consists of mowing down hordes of enemy soldiers.

It’s a hard trap to avoid, since often time story elements and gameplay elements are designed independent of each other.

tetrodoxin.2134:

I think it’s pretty funny to hear people saying 3s of confusion would be completely useless, while almost all the Mesmer confusion only lasts for 3-4 seconds.

“Master of Misdirection”, hell yeah.

Yeah, that is one of the biggest criticisms of mesmer confusion and condition mesmers as a whole. Their confusion isn’t mean to be a form of damage but some kind of short duration attack deterrent.

mini.6018:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I have been wondering why the runes didn’t have an internal cooldown. Something like 15 seconds or so. The reasoning for this is quite simple: the proc on the x6 bonus is superior to every confusion skill in the game.

Every. Single. One. Let me give some examples:

Confusing Images: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Pry Bar: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Concussion Bomb: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 18 second recharge.
Pain Inverter: 3 stacks for 5 seconds, 30 second recharge.
Sonic Shriek: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 25 second recharge.
Cry of Frustration with Illusionary Retribution: 6 stacks for 3 seconds. 30 second recharge.

Notice a trend? Highest is 5 stacks for 5 seconds, at a 15 second recharge.

The rune set gives 5 stacks for 10 seconds, no recharge. The only limit to this is whatever access you have to interrupts, and many classes can stack a whole lot of interrupts. This rune set gives confusion twice as potent as every other confusion skill in the game, and it does this as freely as your ingenuity permits.

There is nothing about it that doesn’t scream “overpowered”. Those runes are awesome, and I want to have them on nearly every condition set I own. The only thing stopping me is the fact that I am almost certain that they’ll be nerfed in the future. If they aren’t nerfed, then the entirety of 1 vs. 1 combat becomes dictated by a rune set from strictly temporary content.

Looks to me that you have limited knowldge about the game .

Warrior master trait in strenght -Distracting Strikes – applies 4 stacks of confusion for 8 seconds. .

Also why you say no recharge ? It’s not like cc’s don’t have cooldowns and someone can just endlesly spam them.And most cc’s have a lot longer cooldowns then the skills you posted .Thief as an exception but he would waste all his initiative and wouldn’t kill anyone on just confusion( and even worse ,get killed himself )

Rune only aplies 5 stacks so you basicly need to interrupt 5 times to get to 25 stack .Gl having 5 ccs equiped(and all of them interrupt an oponet’s action too).War can get 9 because of the trait,but since it sits in power makes any condition build kinda useless.Also the warriors weapons that have ccs are pure power based so either you go condi build with no bleeds/burns at all(gl with that),or you go power wich will make the damage of confusion unoticeable making the runes subpar.

They are nice runes for some lolz,but OP? not even close.Try fighting against a decent player.

Ah, I forgot one. Though to be fair, distract strikes isn’t a skill. Also to be fair, the x6 bonus is still superior to distracting strikes. So… interesting bit of trivia there.

By the way, a lot of people can endlessly spam CC. You’ve most likely met many of them: warriors, thieves, engineers, and mesmers are all capable of sustaining a large amount of CC, so much so that they’ll just spam it whenever. Of course, you’re deflecting here: you’re distracting from the fact that the rune set is superior to every other confusion skill in the game.

EDIT: I guess I’ll address this in itself since this seems to show up a lot: Arguments over skill are all wrong.

Why are they all wrong? It is simple: if you say that you are so skilled that these runes can’t beat you, then that means you just haven’t met the man who is so much more skilled than you that they just interrupt everything you do. No matter how leet someone thinks they are, there is always someone who is better, and can use the tactic the former thinks they are immune to. This is also distracting from the point: Saying you are skilled actually has no bearing on whether something is too powerful or not, since all that is just posturing. Of course no one can beat the best player in the world, so because nothing can beat him is nothing overpowered? I think not.

The thing with axe is that, even akittens most bursty, it only just matches the dagger’s damage output. The uses of the axe are best left to disengaging, life force generation, kiting and abusing the spell nature of the attack to bypass reflects. There are some fringe benefits like using retaliation, though.

IMO axe is the one that needs to cleave. Then the decreased damage will actually be meaningful.

I posted this in another thread, so I’ll repeat it here:

I have been wondering why the runes didn’t have an internal cooldown. Something like 15 seconds or so. The reasoning for this is quite simple: the proc on the x6 bonus is superior to every confusion skill in the game.

Every. Single. One. Let me give some examples:

Confusing Images: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Pry Bar: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Concussion Bomb: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 18 second recharge.
Pain Inverter: 3 stacks for 5 seconds, 30 second recharge.
Sonic Shriek: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 25 second recharge.
Cry of Frustration with Illusionary Retribution: 6 stacks for 3 seconds. 30 second recharge.

Notice a trend? Highest is 5 stacks for 5 seconds, at a 15 second recharge.

The rune set gives 5 stacks for 10 seconds, no recharge. The only limit to this is whatever access you have to interrupts, and many classes can stack a whole lot of interrupts. This rune set gives confusion twice as potent as every other confusion skill in the game, and it does this as freely as your ingenuity permits.

There is nothing about it that doesn’t scream “overpowered”. Those runes are awesome, and I want to have them on nearly every condition set I own. The only thing stopping me is the fact that I am almost certain that they’ll be nerfed in the future. If they aren’t nerfed, then the entirety of 1 vs. 1 combat becomes dictated by a rune set from strictly temporary content.

I have been wondering why the runes didn’t have an internal cooldown. Something like 15 seconds or so. The reasoning for this is quite simple: the proc on the x6 bonus is superior to every confusion skill in the game.

Every. Single. One. Let me give some examples:

Confusing Images: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Pry Bar: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 15 second recharge.
Concussion Bomb: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 18 second recharge.
Pain Inverter: 3 stacks for 5 seconds, 30 second recharge.
Sonic Shriek: 5 stacks for 5 seconds. 25 second recharge.
Cry of Frustration with Illusionary Retribution: 6 stacks for 3 seconds. 30 second recharge.

Notice a trend? Highest is 5 stacks for 5 seconds, at a 15 second recharge.

The rune set gives 5 stacks for 10 seconds, no recharge. The only limit to this is whatever access you have to interrupts, and many classes can stack a whole lot of interrupts. This rune set gives confusion twice as potent as every other confusion skill in the game, and it does this as freely as your ingenuity permits.

There is nothing about it that doesn’t scream “overpowered”. Those runes are awesome, and I want to have them on nearly every condition set I own. The only thing stopping me is the fact that I am almost certain that they’ll be nerfed in the future. If they aren’t nerfed, then the entirety of 1 vs. 1 combat becomes dictated by a rune set from strictly temporary content.

I’m not sure if the problem is arrow carts as much as it is other siege. In WvW I used to run around with an inventory full of superior blueprints of every kind. I stopped doing that, mostly because half of the siege is pointless. I mean, take a look at them:

Flame Ram: This is an exception, since it is cheap and does what it needs to do well, but doesn’t do much otherwise.

Ballista: Requires a line of sight to be used, an is obstructed by everything. It is anti-siege, but way too short ranged to be used, not damaging enough against other players to be meaningful, and the limited placement means that anyone on the ballista is instantly focus bait. Arguably the worst offensive siege in the game.

Catapults: Don’t cause nearly enough damage, too short ranged to be used effectively without fear of being bowled over, extremely hard to maneuver and aim, and are largely a minor nuisance to enemy players.

Trebuchet: What catapults strive to be. They are good because they are basically a catapult, except that they have the range and damage to actually matter.

Siege golem: very useful, but requires a lot of resources and cooperation to use, requiring two portal mesmers to be of any practical use on the battlefield. Because of this, you can’t have a lone “siege golem”, making it largely a zerg tactic.

Burning Oil: a complete waste of space. It is on the forefront of the gate, so anyone who approaches will just focus the oil pot until it is destroyed before putting flame rams up. It requires odd camera angles to work, is completely useless against anything but rams and the players manning them. Operating burning oil just puts up a big sign that says “I’m immobile and fixed within range. Focus me!”

Cannons: Suffers the exact same problem that burning oil does, in that thy are readily focused down and whomever mans them is a dead man. But at least they have enough range and ease of use to harass zergs who aren’t dumb enough to destroy the cannons first. Too bad zergs aren’t that dumb.

Mortar: Basically defensive trebuchets, except thy don’t have the convenience of being out of the line of fire, instead being on fixed positions that can be hit by AoE.

So, to tally up the list:

Useful Siege:
Arrow Cart
Trebuchet
Siege Golem
Flame Ram

Useless Siege:
Ballista
Cannon
Burning Oil
Catapult

Questionable: Mortar.

I’m not sure if the problem is that Arrow Carts are too strong, or if everything else is just too weak.

My ideal meta is slower. DPS be wicked quick, yo!

But one other thing: I’d like the ideal meta to be incomprehensible. There wouldn’t be some kind of dominant tactic: it would be a hodgepodge of classes and builds, with every team stranger than the next. When you have no idea what the meta is, is when the meta is ideal.

I am an engineer, and I want a hammer.

I wouldn’t mind a difficulty increase, if it was done right.

By “done right” I mean things like

#1: Giving enemies a quick recharging “auto attack” that does light damage instead of slow big attacks that everyone dodges.
#2: Giving enemies attack chains and multi hitting channels instead of single attacks.
#3: Giving enemies more AoEs related skills that are both damaging and defense.
#4: Giving enemies more conditions instead of just direct damage, including debuffing conditions.
#5: Giving enemies more boons and boon manipulation.

Essentially, making enemies in PVE more like in PVP. Then, enemies themselves become a lot more engaging, and require more diversity in classes and builds. The model dungeon, IMO, is the Molten Facility, which had a lot of these things. There, things like pulls and boon corruption and condition cleansing were important.

Molten facility also did hard boss fights right. Compare the final boss there to Liadri: I fought Liadri many times, and just gave up. I hated the Liadri fight because it was loaded full of fake difficulty. First time I went to molten facility, my n00bish group and me must have taken 2 hours just fighting the final boss over and over again, slowly learning and figuring out what was going on and what worked.

I lost countless times, but I didn’t get discouraged. Mostly because, when I lost, it was actually my fault. The fight was fun and engaging, and the difficulty was real. Instead of thinking “this is BS” and leaving, I thought “Keep knocking me down. It only makes me more determined”.

As of right now, most teams can just run past a lot of the content, effectively neutralizing large portions of the dungeon while making them a whole lot easier*. If they want a dungeon to be hard, then the enemies should be such a threat that you cannot just run past them.

NOTE: failure to skip isn’t difficulty. It is tedium.

So I read the backstory and… I’m not that interested. Most of what she does is about as interesting as a job resume, and probably would’ve been more succinctly written out as one. The whole story with why she went insane seems to be “Yeah, she was hooked up to this device that metaphysicked her brain something fierce, and she emerged from it all ‘you can’t tell me what to do narbs!’ and then started the gnarliest random teenage rebellion tantrum”, and it doesn’t garner sympathy or distaste or even interest. It is like her form of rebellion against the dream state is to out nightmare the nightmare court.

Other than with illusionary persona, I never use F3. With IP it is pretty good, since it makes for a nice stun when you need it.

Balance in GW2 can ultimately be defined as such:

The viability of any reasonably made build on any class when juxtaposed to every other build of equal rationality is such that the weighted average advantage of all of the compositions over each other are equal to each other.

Was that so hard? Wait.. you want it simpler? Fine. Let me explain in more depth:

If I make a build that isn’t a joke build or stupidly made (haha power necro with shamen amulet lawlz), then this build would, on average, not be inferior to other builds on other classes. This does not mean that I can beat everything, or that I don’t have an advantage over everything else. No, there are going to be classes and builds who have a clear advantage over me. However, the number of classes and builds that do have an advantage over me should be equal to the classes and builds that I have an advantage over. Likewise, the “advantage” I have, from 60/40 odds to 80/20 odds, should be roughly equal to the odds against me from other builds, coming to a nice 50/50 on average.

It is actually really hard to do with a bunch of incomparables.

More on topic, I agree with the OP almost fully on this one. The whole “giving loot boxes to champions” thing was a bad idea. It is an award that is disproportionate to other sources of income in the game, and it rewards the wrong kind of behavior.

What they should’ve done is just make it so all champions are events, and the event gives the reward. The event should give the same reward, regardless of how many champions there were inside of it, so none of this “indefinitely farm embers” stuff that goes on. If the event has champions or is a group event, you get the reward regardless of how many champions you fought in it.

Erasculio.2914:

projectcedric.6951:

However noble it sounds, it is against human nature to driven to do something without an end goal or simply “for the experience of it”.

False.

Why do people go to the movies? It’s not because they are paid for it. It’s because they will enjoy the experience of seeing the movie. Why do people listen to music? They don’t receive a physical reward for listening to 500 tracks. They do it because they enjoy the experience of listening to music.

You are mistaken when you think the experience itself cannot be the goal. Playing a game to have fun, as opposed to playing a game to reach a reward within said game, is actually the rule, not the exception, as long as you are not talking about MMORPGs. I think MMOs (and its clones) are the only games in which people are so willing to go through experiences they don’t enjoy just to get a reward. In old RPGs, those rewards were not the goal, just auxilliary to the experience.

Many people have commented on this, however I do feel there is something else to bring up that no one else really has. I mentioned this once before and it bear some additional thought. You really have to posit a question when looking at the whole farming issue:

Why do people play MMOs?

There are many things that you can have in an MMO: awe inspiring landscapes, exploration, a sense of wonder, competition, challenge, enthralling stories of tragedy and humor, interactive and engaging gameplay, etc. The problem with this is the fact that you can get all of these things elsewhere, from TV to books to other non-MMO videogames. So, you have to truly ask what is it that draws people to an MMO, when everything the MMO advertises is available elsewhere?

That is when you get into what I call the “escapist” demographic. Unlike other forms of entertainment, games provide a sense of personal accomplishment. You beat the bad guys, save the princess, you go home a hero. You perform an activity, and get a direct reward or gratification for this activity. It is much like a job in the sense that you perform a task, and get rewarded with money for performing the task. Only instead of getting money, in videogames you get emotional validation and recognition, even in a manner as tiny as the level up jingle.

MMOs provide something that is different from other games: displayable status. Sure you can play chess until the image of the board is burned into your retinas permanently, but when you sit down at the board you’re on the same plane as everyone else. This is not so in MMOs. In the MMO, there are many factors for inequality that show up time and again:

Level
Server Rank
Skill Rank
Leaderboard placement
Gear
Wealth
Achievement points

All of these things linger in the back of your character, defining you as a player on the whole. Whenever a person goes to play an MMO, these are the factors that ultimately stand out and make a player want to play an MMO as opposed to another game. In the MMO, you can save the princess, but instead of getting end credits you get a shiny flowing cape that proves to everyone else that you saved the princess, and people without this cape have not saved the princess.

It is here that you get farmers and grinders. I’m not talking about someone who “has farmed”, but someone who grinds constantly in the games. The people who farm in the game do so for a very simple reason: they want money, levels, shinies, achievement points, rank, accolades, status, and power. It is achievable, displayable, and directly impacts how strong they are compared to others. It is bragging rights, a sense of superiority over other players, both inconsequential and influential to gameplay.

A sense of superiority. This, is why so many people flock to MMOs. When life beats you down and you feel like a nameless cog in an unending clock of indifference, the MMO provides a means in which you can be powerful, but specifically “more powerful than other people”. Farming is the shortest path to this power. Put in unending hours, doing the same boring content over and over again, and you become more powerful than other people. Measurably. The cycle reinforces: farming begets more farming, since that is more people you want to be ahead of. You look at people who are so far ahead of you, and you yourself want to be there. Whether you are inspired, jealous, or do it merely out of spite for these guys, you yourself start farming too. Suddenly, you’ve clocked 1000 hours in to the game, and 900 of them have been a test of patience.

I call this “escapist” largely because it is done in lieu of real world accomplishment.

I have the full tormenting runes on my necromancer’s condition build. I would never put them on anyone else.

The reason is quite simple, actually. The rune set gives a 45% increase to the duration of torment alone, which easily allows for a 100% duration increase with food and traits. This is a really good buff if you already have torment. This is the biggest reason why you would want to use those runes in the first place is if you have a character with torment, and you’d like to expand on their torment to be much longer, and also giving much more torment when you heal. Otherwise, it is a 6 rune investment to inflict the equivalent of 3 bleeds every 20 seconds, and that isn’t too stellar in itself. I mean, engineers dole that out every 4 seconds.

The whole “AoE torment on heal” thing is only so good in itself. The biggest risk in this is that, due to the extremely close proximity required for torment, that healing as an offensive maneuver will require you to belly up for bursts and interrupts in order to effectively use. You’re using your mobility and evasion for the majority of your defense, so bellying up like that will allow whomever you are fighting to whip out stuns then bash your brains in.

There are so many other things you could run that would be better than x6 tormenting. For example, you could run x3 Afflicted + x3 krait to get good condition damage and 30% bleed duration, and bleeds are a whole lot more important to a condi ranger’s damage. You can hybrid with x4 mad king runes and x2 krait/centaur runes for 40% bleed duration, 10% additional condi duration, and additional power alongside of that. You can use Runes of the Undead to get an additional 100 or so condition damage with rabid sets for the highest flat malice bonus of any build. You can use Balthazar, for haste at low health, longer burn duration, and an AoE burn when you heal. You can use Divinity to increase everything. You can use Earth for a protection proc and a magnetic shield proc. You can use just about anything that will contribute more than Tormenting.

The reason why I say that these runes only work on a necromancer is because every other class that gets torment benefits much more from the other new rune set, Perplexity. Mesmers already have a ton of confusion and have interrupts, thieves have limitless interrupts with an off-hand pistol, and warriors are stun locking people into oblivion now, and already have confusion in that same manner. Necros are the only class that has AoE torment regardless of build or skill choices, has low enough mobility that they aren’t bellying up when using a heal to inflict torment, and also has epidemic to spread that unique condition around more.

Its so hard to just pick one. But I’ve narrowed it down to two, and both are from City of Heroes:

#1: The character and outfit design options (or the equivalent for a sword and sorcery RPG)

#2: The immense skill selection system.

I guess #1 won’t work as well in a sword + sorcery RPG, since superheroes have much more freedom in their style choices. Of course, I’d still like something like that. In City of Heroes I grew quite attached to the 10 characters I made, and each one was unique and cool looking. So much so that you could spot them from a mile off and go “oh yeah, that’s Bill. Hey Bill! Over here!”. So many other games I’ve played, this one included, the characters just sort of fade into the background as Guardian #28501. They have a dye system and an armor system, but ultimately you feel like a sum of armor parts associated with your class. In GW2 it comes down to this:

Heavy armor: big hulking pieces of metal with various dents in them for design.
Medium armor: more trenchcoats than every flasher in the world combined.
Light armor: skimpy outfits that raise the ESRB rating of the game single handed.

And it really shouldn’t. Then it is about classes and archetypes instead of individuality.

From an operational point of view, #2 is something that nearly any game should strive to make. Ultimately it again comes down to individuality, but since most people probably don’t know how City of Heroes skill system worked, I’ll explain it in order:

Step 1: Pick a class. 14 archtypes to choose from, 4 with dedicated power sets, 10 that let you picked your own.

Step 2: Pick primary power set in character creation. This was a list of 8 to 14 or so different skill sets that would give you a pool of 9 collaborating skills to choose from. The sets were sometimes shared along classes who did the same things (I.E. archetypes with ranged offense would sometimes share the same power sets), sometimes they were unique to the class.

Step 3: Pick your secondary power set in character creation. This is another list of 8 to 14 different skill sets that gave 9 skills that worked together. Again, some of these sets were shared while other sets were unique to a class, and these sets were sometimes mixed and matched with the primary power sets of other classes.

Step 4: Pick your global power pools while leveling up and playing the game. These were abilities that any class can pick up, not having any special distinction between whatever class you chose. These often included movement powers, too. There were, again, 14 of them (and more kept being added), and you can choose various skills from up to 5 different pools at once.

Step 5: Pick your ancillary or patron power pool at later levels. These were class specific pools to choose from. Ancillary power pools were 5 sets of 5 skills that you could pick from, patron pools were unlocked via story content and were 4 sets of 5 skills to choose from.

Each skill or “power” you picked had upgrade slots, and as you leveled you could choose to increase the number of slots in whatever skills you want from 1 to 6. In these slots you could customize how the power worked with enhancements. They would increase damage, increase accuracy, increase range, reduce endurance cost, reduce recharge time, reduce interrupt time, increase healing, increase resistance mod, increase endurance mod, increase defense mod, etc. There were also special enhancement sets that would give global bonuses for slotting multiples of those sets, and those sets were well rounded in themselves.

At the end, when you finally reached level 50, there were incarnate powers, which were extremely potent “nuke the room” type abilities that were available to every class, regardless of class type. Some were global buffs, others were procs, some were summons, some were defense, some were team buffs, etc. These made up the late game raid grind. There were 5 slots unlocked, and each slot had at least 8 different skills to choose form, which each had different customization trees to go down for those powers.

You couldn’t take them all. You only received, like, 20 skill slots you could pick for powers, and many powers were gated behind earlier ones in their tier.

With each individual power customizable in color, brightness, or even chosen animation style, the end result when combined with #1 was someone all to your own. When you made Bill, if you had even a shred of creativity, Bill was completely unique and there was no other character like him. From the strengths he had, the weaknesses he had, the way he played, and the way he felt, Bill was all yours, and people would recognize you for him. Whether you made him as a joke, you made him to be serious, you made him to roleplay, or you made him for teaming reasons, it was yours.

I miss that so much in GW2.

In sPVP, I’ve found that turrets work well of the grenades. Something like 30/10/30/0/0 or 30/20/20/0/0. Using grenade, rocket turret, and net turret.

The net turret and the rocket turret provide a large amount of control and supplementary burn. When immobilized, knocked down, or stunned, the opponent can’t avoid your grenades. So you follow up with more barrages, chills, blinds, all of that while they run about trying to avoid all of the ambient control flying around.

In sPVP, this is a very effective tactic in 1 vs. 1 engagements. Problem is… I’m not sure it will work so well in WvW. Biggest issue is that enemies can just disengage from the area, then re-engage you in a different location while the turrets are on cooldown.

Personally I just use the tool kit alongside of the grenade kit whenever I’m roaming, then swap that out for another elixir once I’m in a group or at my location.