Showing Posts For Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Chrono trait line useless?

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Personally I find the ability to spam wells then boonshare quickness to be too valuable to pass up. The alacrity nerf does hurt, but that was only one of the things that I do as a chrono that I can’t as a regular mesmer.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

LordHelseth on post Mesmer nerfs

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I think the reason why there is no adjustment is because Anet believes that the mechanic is inherently OP, and thus a nerf with nothing else is substantiated.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

What have you done to TD meta?

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Supposedly, there was a bug that was causing the Gerent and events to scale up too much, making the event twice as hard as it should be. There is evidence for this, as Nuhoch Lane in particular was hit the hardest by having additional players.

After waves and waves of complaints about the event being too hard, the “bug” was fixed. Which is unfortunate, because I went out of my way to write a zany guide on how to do the thing, all for it to become nearly obsolete.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Loot bag opening guide?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Open the account bound stuff on a level 53 character. If you can sell it on the TP, then it has static rewards, and it doesn’t matter what character opens it.

At least last I checked.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Seller beware? Avoid the TP?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I suppose what is so gripping about this incident isn’t that it might happen to us one day, but that when it did happen the response was so backwards an nonsensical.

#1: Apparently, RMT is illegitimate funds that harm the game by existing. Now, unless I miss my guess, there’s only one source for gold to come from for RWTers to use: a sweatshop, where a bunch of people will grind the game for a awhile, pool their resources, and then sell it to players on the cheap. The thing is, this isn’t much different from a single player grinding their way to this much gold. I’m not a fan of RWTing, but I fail to see how the mere existence of the money is somehow wrong, and that anything bought with this money has to be terminated.

#2: The fact that the guy received a strike against his account for something that was completely out of his control. The only clue that he did nothing wrong was that the bought item was from 8 months ago. If he decided to sell the slivers a week ago, the strike might never have been removed. Anet would’ve remained convinced that the player was using some convoluted gold laundering scheme by… selling items the way you’re supposed to sell them.

#3: The fact that initially, the guy had the gold removed and wasn’t refunded the items. It’s an extended case of how schools will suspend students for getting punched: It doesn’t make a lick of sense, puts the power to cause harm into the hands of someone that the seller literally has no control over

#4: The fact that this had to be brought to attention publicly before something was done about it. Granted, the fact that this issue has been resolved helps things out, but this shouldn’t have made it to step 4 before something was done. Someone other than the customer should’ve looked at the whole thing and thought “Oh wow this doesn’t make sens” and done something about it.

This is a public case. What I’m concerned about is how often this kind of non-thought discipline happens that doesn’t get reported. How many players out there received strikes because someone decided to punch them?

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Alacrity from 66% to 33%.

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

To be fair, auto attacking is easier on the wrists. The idea of combat being based on how quickly you can hammer your keyboard isn’t a super appealing one.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Alacrity from 66% to 33%.

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I think that we’re (and the devs, too) being a bit too focused on DPS. The contribution of Alacrity to DPS is relatively minor, and can be seen more as a reduction in auto attack time as a portion of DPS rotations. The biggest benefit of alacrity is… everything else. All the utility.

*Heal skill recharges 40% faster, giving 40% more personal healing
*Block and evade skills recharge 40% faster, giving 40% more invulnerability.
*40% more reflect time for utility skills
*40% more condition cleanses
*40% more buffs
*40% cooldown on blinks, teleports, and movement skills
*40% more hard CC

Its not chronoburst that are OP in PVP. It’s chronobunkers.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Thief changes from livestream

in Thief

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Still waiting for more boon stealing here. But, the announced changes so far are good.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Mesmer hate on raids?

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

What are you talking about? Confusion was nerfed on April 30th, 2013. This means the period where mesmer wasn’t worthless in WvW groups lasted about 8 months in total.

I’m talking about the update which changed confusion damage to be a DoT with an on-active effect instead of constantly active effect. Before that change, confusion damage in all PVP modes was quite substantial. The false equivocation here is off the rails. Not having confusion damage doesn’t mean the mesmer was useless. In fact, nearly every “useful” class does not have good confusion damage.

If by “large” you mean “up to 5” and by “off of the walls” you mean “to the edge of the wall unless they were being stupid” …then sure.

Unless you constantly play on a tier 1 pop server, “5” is how many you’ve got. The focus pull itself was specifically nerfed to prevent the instant wall pulls. First, by giving it a 1 second ICD. Second, by making pull only to the curtain, instead of through it. Until then, it was a common occurrence to find yourself suddenly yanked off the edge of a tower with no warning.

Firstly, you could only do this with iZerkers. Secondly, I’m pretty sure this was nerfed even earlier than confusion was, due to it being a rather broken capability. So…maybe 4 months of that? Your case for mesmer being good really isn’t looking too strong currently.

4 months into the game, I hadn’t even played WvW, so it was long after that. Unless it was changed recently, so long as the edges of the tower/keep walls themselves don’t get in the way, a phantasm will spawn on the same level as the enemy player. It was the through-walls phantasm summoning that was removed.

Ah yes, the good old “but you can equip portal and press a single button on your bar, so you should be happy being a portalbot!” argument.

Except that the entirety of the post you’re debating is dedicated to showing that mesmers aren’t a portal bot. Just because you’ve diced up the most into single lines doesn’t change this fact. What also doesn’t change is the fact that portal is unique and useful. If you want to be difficult enough, you can describe every single class in the game as a “____bot”.

The same reason? Uhm…because we’ve been nerfed into the ground over and over and eles have been…(not) nerfed into the ground over and over?

You’re not even being reasonable here. You’re just being difficult.

Quickness to 5 people, and…Oh look! It’s the other age old argument of “but you can equip veil and press a single button, you should be happy with being a veilbot, stop complaining”.

I do wonder how many skills it takes before the class is suddenly valuable.
“Oh, I’m just brought into fractals because I have reflects. I’m a reflect bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into sPVP because I have illusion of life. I’m a rez bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into WvW because I have veil and portal. I’m a veil and portal bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into dungeons because I have time warp. I’m a time warp bot!”
“Oh, I’m just brought into zergs because null field strips boons. I’m a null field bot!”
“Oh, I’ll only be brought in to raids to strip boons. I’m a boon strip bot!”
“Oh, I have a bunch of features that are good at dueling. I’m a roaming bot!”
“Oh, I’m only brought into teams because I can spread quickness with Signet of Inspiration. I’m an Inspiration bot!”
“Oh, I’m only in this team because I can peel with moa morph. I’m a morph bot!”

Maybe it is just because I come from thief, who literally runs signets because they have nothing better to do, but Memsers have never been a class that just does one thing. The reason why people bring up time warp, portal, veil, illusion of life, Signet of Inspiration, and endless reflects is because these are the most potent things a mesmer does. This does not mean they are the only things a mesmer does.

I’m not entirely sure what this has to do with anything? Yeah, mesmer is a utility class….so what? Us being a utility class obviously hasn’t helped us be viable in PvP for most of the game. On top of that, you’ve obviously failed to consider the possibility that being brought for literally 1 utility at a time is basically just as bad as not being meta at all. The pre-HoT mesmer role as utility was “ok, go ahead and drop portal/veil, then you can afk and let the real classes accomplish things”. That’s not fun, at all.

I’ve tried to explain this simply. I’ll try again, and if you don’t understand it after this, then maybe you should consider why it is you feel so compelled to speak on matters you literally cannot understand.

The complaint that Mesmers have low personal DPS is short sighted and ignores the entirety of the game as a whole. It is by necessary design that mesmers have a low “practical” damage, as this is balanced out by their high and unique utilities. If mesmers didn’t have low practical damage, then every other class in the game would need utilities that are equally as potent as the mesmer in order to keep balance. The flip side to this is that, if you want the mesmer to have high personal DPS, then they would have to lose that much utility.

Anet knows this. When combined with the fact that, in low to mid end PVP the mesmer is a frustrating enemy to fight, you have the reason why it is that Mesmers have always been balanced on the “underpowered” side of things: because with the slightest of changes, the mesmer could go out of control. Very fast. It just so happens that, while Anet is hesitant to nerf eles because the slightest changes make them obsolete, Anet is hesitant to buff mesmers because the slightest changes would make them OP. They’ve made that mistake recently, and we ended up with the Chronobunker meta, which has be heralded as the most boring meta ever.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Mesmer hate on raids?

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

You may want to re-check that long memory of yours. Elementalists were underpowered for ~1 year at the beginning of the game in PvP, and since that point have been top meta picks without any interruptions. Elementalists have been top meta picks in PvE for the entire existence of the game. The only time they weren’t top meta picks in PvE was at the very beginning when nobody had any clue what they were doing.

So I checked, and I remember two periods when Ele’s fell out of favor after the initial year. First was with the initial introduction of boon hate, which many ele players felt was the death of their class. Many sources of boon hate were nerfed, which lead to the resurgence of the ele. Second, after that, was the necromancer domination period, with the introduction of dhuumfire alongside of several other bug fixes which lead to a condi heavy era. This period also came with several nerfs to the elementalist, which lead to them being low power and easy pickings, causing them to immediately fall out of favor in the PVP circuit. This was remedied with other classes getting nerfed, and ele’s getting access to Diamond Skin.

Those were the biggest periods. The elementalist itself tends to walk a fine line, since by being the squishiest class, the distance between too much sustain and and not enough is a razor’s edge.

I agree that it’s foolish to think that the devs are maliciously attempting to ruin mesmer. However, it’s equally foolish to deny the facts that mesmer has been the most consistently nerfed and underpowered class in the entire game. Mesmer was completely non-existent in the PvP meta for 2.5 years, has never been useful in a WvW group past portal+veil since glamours and confusion were nerfed, and have been the lowest realistic dps in the game in PvE for the entire game, only brought for gimmicky tricks like portal.

While other classes moan about getting nerfed, most of the time they come out alright anyway. When mesmer gets nerfed, we vanish from the meta for a year until anet realizes they just steamrolled an entire class with their mistake.

Ranger might like to have a word with you. Otherwise, you are simplifying the memser’s roles way too much: the period for which confusion was “not nerfed” is the majority of time. In WvW the mesmer used to be capable of yanking large numbers of players off of the walls with focus pulls, and summon phantasms on top of the walls to harass players. I’ve seen a dozen keeps fall to portal and invisible tactics, making mesmer potentially the single most influential class in the entirety of WvW. Mesmers maintained a strong dueling presence with IP builds, being the bane of any roaming class until more stealth hate was added just to deal with them.g

Mesmers have been on the low end of sPVP for the same reason why ele’s have been on the high end. Due to the illusion mechanic, as well as all of the unique tricks that a mesmer has, the class can act as a force multiplier. Stealthing an entire zerg and giving quickness to 10 people is not an insignificant skill by any means. If the mesmer didn’t have situational personal damage, then what class could possibly compete with time warp, illusion of life, phantasmal defender, portal, alacrity, etc?

It comes with the territory. The best utility class has to have low damage, or else another class will be obsolete. Mesmers can have situational damage and still be useful. Something like the ranger or thief can’t.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Mesmer hate on raids?

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Everyone’s too emotionally charged for the one sentence thing to work, so I’m going to break it down into bigger bits.

They have never made a single change in this game that would move elementalist out of being stackworthy. At some point, you may have to admit that this isn’t really their goal, and they’re just making up kitten to rationalize bad or biased decisions.

Icebow nerf, FGS nerf, Fire Dagger 3 nerf, upcomming cele amulet removal. I have a longer memory, so I remember periods in time where elementalists weren’t popular, both in PVE and PVP.

Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to stupidity. Your claim doesn’t make sense: If the devs didn’t care to try to get other classes to see more play, then they wouldn’t buff them at all. I’ve seen this story before: every single profession forum is convinced that the devs have it out for their profession, and are all trying to support another supposed favorite profession. It happens every single time a class gets nerfed. And since every single class forum says that their profession is hated by the devs in preference for another… then what is this mythical favorite profession? They’ve all received buffs at some point in time, so how do you tell which one it is?

If that’s the goal, why have content that requires more than 9 people?
There’s 9 classes, something is going to get stacked.

Ofc, the reality of the situation is, that ANet’s actual goal is to appease its very loud fanbase.

“balance” isn’t the goal.

If it were, they have had a slew of opportunities to fix everything.

“failing” doesn’t describe the problem.

“not trying” does.

There’s so much to unpack here I’m not sure where to begin. I’ll start it in list form:

#1: The devs balance primarily around 5 vs 5 PVP content. As there are 9 professions in the game, the idea that the devs directly want some profession to be stacked is nonsense. Especially since, after a recent 4 ele + thief PvP tournament victory, Anet made a rule that outright prevents severe stacking.

#2:The loudest fanbase is the one that complains the most. Therefore, when a class becomes underpowered, they become the “loudest”, as they have the most complaints.

#3: The problem with “fixing everything” is that nobody knows how to do it. For three reasons. First is that, no one is sure exactly when something is “fixed”. Exactly what proportion of the game should be defensive vs. offensive, point control vs. map mechanics, duels vs. group, or the dynamic nature of the map is all subjective. Second, the community itself is an unpredictable force, so what is balanced and unbalanced can be skewed by the flow of player preferences. Third, there is a massive amount of factors that go into each class, and making sure that there always exists some combination of skills and traits that can reliably beat all the others is so difficult that nobody can figure it out. The devs aren’t wizards who can magick up an answer out of nowhere.

#4: The point of having class balance in a PVE scenario is for flexibility. While the devs don’t want you to stack all of 1 or two professions, they also don’t want the game to be so anti-stacking that you have to have 1 of everything. That creates a similar kind of pressure that class superiority does.

#5: The original “group content” in the game, aside from overworld 100 man events, was 5 man dungeon groups. Larger raid content was added by popular demand 3 years later, and as such is more or less just imposing the conventions of other games onto GW2 more than any conscious class balancing decision.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)

Mesmer hate on raids?

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.

If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.

And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.

Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…

Which is clearly why berserker is getting some buffs while doing ~40% more damage than any other dps class in the game.

Just because they fail at it doesn’t change the goal.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Mesmer hate on raids?

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Well I hate the nerf but here´s some explanation of what he meant.

If they reduced the alacrity time instead of its power you could simply baypass this nerf by adding more mesmers spreadint alacrity in sync. This way this nerf would only change raid composition (okay guys we need more mesmers) rather than actually reducing the power of the alacrity strategy itself.

And this is clearly an issue because it’s only unacceptable to stack mesmers, everyone else is ok.

Um, no. The whole reason why they do balance passes is to make it unacceptable to stack any class…

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Isn't PvE supposed to be easy?

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Nope. PVE isn’t supposed to be easy. At least not as faceroll as PVE became in legacy content.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Heh... Dungeons...

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Definitely me. I’m not much of a raid guy, as much as I am a dungeon guy. Small teams, long paths, multiple challenges to tackle at my leisure.

What I would really like to see, though, is a randomly generated dungeon. Originally Anet attempted this with fractals, but it made them too hard to approach. I’d like to see a dungeon that makes a simple but randomly generated path from a series of different room types, with different bosses and enemies and different environments/puzzles.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Scrapper Build for PvE?

in Engineer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I’ve been trying to figure out how to do a PVE power scrapper, too. Condi is fairly easy, but getting a power build is hard. The biggest issue I have at the moment is that I don’t feel like I’m doing well. Currently, I have a few things I’m switching between.

The base build is this.

-Elixir Gun is there for acid bomb, stun break, and the occasional condi cleanse/heal
-Bulwark Gyro is there for the reflect and for additional defense
-Elixir B is there for swiftness and fury. This is the “spare slot” currently, as I swap it out the most.
-Mortar is there to provide a ranged offense. The blind field and the toolbelt also help out, too.

The utilities… are odd. I am constantly torn between what to use. Other options are

#1: The bomb kit. The auto attack does more damage than hammer auto, but the hammer has such good defense and utility. The bomb kit has a blind and fire field, but I already have a good blind field and I find myself not needing the fire field.
#2: The Grenade kit provides a good ranged offense, and it makes for a decent option if I want to use the supply crate. It doesn’t provide as much utility, though, as any non-ranged rotation is basically 2-4-swap.
#3: The flamethrower can be used to self stack might with a clever combination of traitss. Otherwise, just use 2-5-swap.
#4: The elixirs are there as I need them. The default is Elixir B, and everything but C makes an appearance from time to time.

I’m finding the turrets, gyros, and gadgets to be nearly useless. It seems like, for the first time, I actually have spare utility slots. I’ve considered swapping to an outright might-stacking build and just going with flamethrower/bomb kit + several turrets for blast finishers.

The traits are similarly divided.

Firearms: This one is first because it is fairly straightforward. With fury, High Calibur, and Hematic Focus, I achieve 87% crit rate. No scope and modified ammunition are fairly simple as well. This line doesn’t change much, except when I feel like running Juggernaut.

Explosives: The first two entries don’t change much, but the last one changes every time I swap utilities.

Scrapper: this line, I’m not even sure what to go with. Currently I’m going with independently functioning traits: The protection on heal doesn’t depend on anything, and neither does vuln/weak on daze and the damage boost. But… there’s other combos to go with. Shocking Speed and Rapid Regeneration is the more defensive build, and Mass Momentum can add additional damage even in zergs.

The main thing that bothers me is the lag. I don’t mean high ping or connection drops. I mean the delay between a series of actions and their payoffs. One of the reasons why I stopped using the bomb kit is that, with constant kit switching that horrendous delay on fuses kept sucking away precious seconds. Sometimes it takes so long to lay down a combo that the enemies have moved out of its radius before the first hit begins.

I haven’t played engi for a long time. I’m used to the other classes getting almost immediate payoffs for their actions. I’m not sure if it is just me, or if I am doing something horrendously wrong.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Shared Inventory Slot Feedback [merged]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Wouldn’t it be 9, or the full armor plus at least two weapons? Or 15, for the trinkets, too?

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Shared Inventory Slot Feedback [merged]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

As much as it is unfortunate that some people have bought multiple items, there’s a good chance that there will be no refund.

#1: There wasn’t any sort of misrepresented transaction or wrongdoing here. Everyone who bought everything still has their items, and got exactly what they traded for. If someone has multiples of an item, then a shared slot wouldn’t be necessary.

#2: What would be the exact parameters for a refund? Would it be one item per shared slot? Would you be able to just toss any gem store item you want for an immediate refund? What items would be considered refundable? Because there was no wrongdoing, there isn’t any solid standard for what would need to be refunded, so what constitutes a just refund is up to whatever any individual players feels at that point in time.

#3: The shared slot isn’t exactly a needed purchase, nor were multiples of a lot of gemstore items. I have several items that could go into a shared slot, but all the shared slot does is save me a few seconds while I bank it and swap toons. After the initial purchase, either duplicate items or a shared slot are for convenience only.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Ling for a Thong/GString look for fem Necro

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I’m still fighting to get swimsuits. Those, you can already see on NPCs. We don’t have them yet because

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

First Look at Balance Changes

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I’m not too concerned. I’m not… much of anything, really.

The blog post was fluff. It was a gigantic tray of compliment sandwiches, complete with no-calorie content substitute.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Chat that makes me sigh and facepalm

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I had about an hour ago in Silverwastes.

Me: “Legend at indigo”
Guy1: " where?"
Me: “… at indigo”
Guy2: “rofl”

I guess he wanted to know specifically where. I told him north side after that.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

What would you like to see in next expansion?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I came here to say swimsuits, but I realized that no, I don’t want them in the next expansion. I’d like them way earlier than that.

So… I would like to see a randomly generated dungeon.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

We need balance patch ._.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

I don’t know. I think the primary reason PvE-exclusive players never set foot into PvP is because they just do not like PvP. I know several people in my guild and on my Friends list who, despite being excellent PvE players, absolutely refuse to do PvP.

In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s more efficient to farm certain rewards via reward tracks (and that certain rewards can’t be obtained anywhere else), I wouldn’t be in PvP either. I actually do not like it all that much, and if ANet ever made it easier/faster to get what I wanted via PvE one day, it’s “Goodbye PvP!” that very second.

I was active in CoH right up until it was shut down. And in the months prior to then, I actually made a thread on the forums, asking people what it is about PVP and why they didn’t do it. This started a chain of events that led to the devs themselves trying to encourage more PVP in the game, such as having massive events where they played giant monsters in PVP zones, and then players would run up to kill them.

In that thread, there were several responses. Now, because all of that data has been eaten by the throes of time, I can only estimate how frequent each response was. But if I were to rank them, it would be in this order:

#1: Does not like PVP community, or was turned off of PVP in other games by other PVP communities.
#2: PVP combat system was hard to get in to and wasn’t like the PVE game.
#3: Does not like PVP in general, or the nature of active competition.
#4: Because no one else was PVPing, they decided not to try and PVP.
#5: They did PVP in the past, but weren’t currently in the mood to PVP.
#6: Emotionally incapable of handling failure or defeat.

These responses are quite general, and apply to most online games, actually.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

"Dead" Weapons, Traits and Util?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I imagine the lack of talk is mostly from the lack of usage. Balance between classes is a big thing. But within-class balance really isn’t. At that level, it is more about the sum of parts, rather than specific parts. For example, the post-June Guardian removed every meaningful benefit to using the Sword over the Mace. But this wasn’t a big deal, because “Guardians” themselves didn’t lose out because of this fact.

Second,when it comes to class balance, what is overpowered is far more important than what is underpowered. It is more about balancing what is used, rather than fixing what isn’t.

Personally, I’m all for fixing dead traits. The June update, in attempts to streamline the traits, actually introduced a lot of the most random and useless crap in an attempt to be novel. Some things are just tacked on, others poorly thought out. There are so many examples, it is hard to decide where to start.

As an example, take Elementalists Fire Specialization. Going down the line:

Adept Tier: Conjurer is never used. Fire Auras are sub-par and involve getting smacked around to be of any use. Random application of Fire Auras to allies is also nigh unpredictable and contributes very little to anything ever. Conjures are bad, and extra charges don’t make Conjures good.

Master Tier: One with Fire is terrible. The problem with buffing fire auras are that fire auras are bad. You’d end up having to run bad tactics and traits to make use of the fire aura, when you’d rather do something better.

Power Overwhelming is also bad. It seems like it would be good at first, but when compared Pyromancer’s Training, the extra damage doesn’t compare to the reduced recharge in fire skills. Condi or Power Build, you’re going with Pyromancer’s Training.

Another example: Thief Acrobatics. I actually made an entire thread dedicated to talking about just this trait line.

Some of these problems can be solved via logic (I.E. Power Overwhelming). But for problems that can’t be solved via logic, any trait that basically no one uses should receive at least a generalized buff every balance patch.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Two part question, Stacking and skipping

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

If you are going to call ignorance, you might want to start with sweeping your own floor first. That aside, I was giving two quite specific examples of how game mechanics support concepts such as stacking or skipping. However, judging by the rest of your post, there might be the need to first clarify what exactly can be considered as stacking or skipping. As far as stacking goes, I’m referring to standing on top of each others in order to maximize the effects of cleave as well as boon distribution. As far as skipping goes, I’m talking about bypassing a series of mobs through means of stealth/swiftness in order to get to the next “gate” that the dungeon path requires to be completed (skipping a gate itself is obviously neither intended or has it been in question).

As for the rest of your post, I don’t consider the oversimplification helpful to a discussion: Cluster of “trash-mobs” (begs the question why the community even named them as such) are not necessarily diverse, on the contrary, in several dungeons they are just a bunch of the same enemy types with the same basic behaviour. Thematic placement is completely irrelevant for dungeon completion, it’s just a visual thing really. But most importantly, the main reward component comes from the completion of the dungeon aka the final reward, neither implying nor suggesting that you have to complete EVERY non-gated step of the dungeon in order to qualify.

In short, there are certain “gates” in dungeons, often resulting in a (small) chest reward. Then there is the main reward component obtained by completing the dungeon. However, the tiny reward-pieces spread across “trash-mobs” are hardly relevant in this picture and there are no indications that Anet mandatory wanted you to defeat every single one of those (lack of gates). If you bother to actually do your research on this kind of content, you will come to realize that it’s these later parts that are being skipped.

I find myself having to explain this every time: The “Argument from Ignorance” is a fallacy in which someone uses the lack of information to assert a claim. This generally takes the form of “X is true, prove me wrong”, but also takes the form of “How you do you know that X isn’t true?”. I.E., how do I know that Burger King and Enron aren’t related? In your particular example, you’re asserting that skipping is intentional because the OP doesn’t have concrete, irrefutable proof that it isn’t intentional. This is troll logic at its core, because you can sustain your point by being utterly indignant and defiant instead or rational and reasonable. To break it down:

That aside, I was giving two quite specific examples of how game mechanics support concepts such as stacking or skipping

No, you are manipulating the mechanics hoping that whomever you’re talking to is misinformed. GW2 was designed PVP first, and as such Stealth and Swiftness were made for aggro management and active evasion. They’re meant to be used in-combat, not to avoid combat.

(skipping a gate itself is obviously neither intended or has it been in question).

You’re distracting from the point. The issue is the profound use of gates after the initial dungeon launch. Hrouda himself said the only reason why he didn’t stop skipping is because he couldn’t come up with an elegant enough solution. Of course, he was fired, then Anet tried gates, and after everyone hated gates Anet stopped trying.

Cluster of “trash-mobs” (begs the question why the community even named them as such) are not necessarily diverse,

You’re trying to use an exception to disprove an obvious general trend. It doesn’t work like that.

Thematic placement is completely irrelevant for dungeon completion, it’s just a visual thing really.

Its not. Encounters and combat are part of the theme. Otherwise it’d just be a movie.

But most importantly, the main reward component comes from the completion of the dungeon aka the final reward, neither implying nor suggesting that you have to complete EVERY non-gated step of the dungeon in order to qualify.

Here you’re either lying out misinformed. Dungeon rewards were originally spread more evenly throughout the dungeon. It was intended that you would do everything, because the rewards were everywhere. The “end completion” award was made when it was discovered that all players would do is farm the first boss over and over again. To fix the problem of people not actually playing any of the dungeon at all, the end-focused rewards were added.

This is also contradicted by the heavy use of gates in later dungeons. If they devs were happy with players running past everything and still “qualifying” for a full reward, then they wouldn’t have made it impossible to run past everything in future updates.

However, the tiny reward-pieces spread across “trash-mobs” are hardly relevant in this picture…

Except they are. Loot, placement, and experience are facts. They do not go away because you aren’t satisfied with how much they give.

and there are no indications that Anet mandatory wanted you to defeat every single one of those (lack of gates)

Except everything in the dungeon wants you to defeat those enemies. Dungeon skipping is the equivalent to picking up a book, only reading the first line of every page, then saying “There’s no indications that the author mandatory wanted you to read every single word on those (lack of pages)”. It is so backward, alien, and self motivated licentious thinking that of course Anet didn’t prepare for it. Silly devs thought players would actually play the game, and spent a tremendous amount of effort at launch to make rewards homogenized throughout all PVE content. It is an interesting if not depressing history of how this was changed throughout time:

First: Dungeon rewards were end-loaded so players wouldn’t just grind the first boss.
Second: Dungeon rewards were set up daily and diminishing returns were put in place so players would run something other than CoF P1.
Third: Dungeon rewards were re-balanced to encourage players to run longer dungeons instead of the same short few.
Fourth: Champ Boxes were added to make killing champions more worthwhile, as players were just skipping them.
Fifth: World bosses received large daily rewards because players were just skipping them.
Sixth: Events were altered to give no experience and loot until completion, because players were purposefully failing events to grind them.
Seventh: Map wide currencies and progress were added to encourage players to do events for greater goal, instead of just grinding the few same easy events and champs.

The history of rewards in this game all reflect on a single fact: They aren’t happy with how we are playing their game.

The entire case for skipping is based solely on the exploitation of negative space. It isn’t about making a point, but cultivating an immunity to rebuttal. So long as you can be difficult enough to stave away all the common sense, you win. You have no point.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

We need balance patch ._.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I’m fine with more frequent but less precise balance patches, myself. Here’s why:

#1: There’s a drastic drop off in returns after a short while. It’s something that a lot of artists will tell you. I’m going to paraphrase Trey Parker and Matt Stone on why it is they make each episode of South Park in a week: “You can spend several months on an episode, getting the timing exactly perfect for that one or two jokes, but if you keeping working at getting it perfect, you’ll never get it done. You’re spending a lot of time to make that episode maybe 10% better. It is better to get that episode out there and not worry about it being perfect”. Balance patches are similar: you can see the problems that need fixing within a month or two. Spending 6 months between balance passes only makes it 10% better.

#2: Feedback is important. The thing with ideas is that they have inertia, and just because the devs have been sitting on a thought for 6 months doesn’t make it smarter. I’d rather the devs throw out their 90% quickly, so they can see what happens and get feedback on how things have changed. Then, when they do the next balance patch, they can take that into consideration and make adjustments again. A faster balance patch may be a bit worse, but it is worse for substantially less time.

#3: Long inaction clearly isn’t working. They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again, but expect different results.

#4: Changing up the game regularly will encourage players to come back regularly. A balance pass every 2-3 months means that when something is bad, a player can just take a break for a bit. A balance patch every 6 months creates a feeling of hopelessness, knowing that you’ll have to live with a problem for an extended period of time. Faster updates means higher retention.

I’d rather Anet gets it wrong fast and improves themselves, rather than taking forever to get it wrong anyway and taking forever to improve themselves.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Two part question, Stacking and skipping

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

How do you judge what has been intended and what not? Various classes have stealth-mechanics, various melee-weapons cleave – concepts such as skipping and stacking are logical consequences in order to make use of these game mechanics.

This is an argument from ignorance. “You don’t know, therefore I am right”. It really doesn’t work like that. All that aside, intention is much easier to read than you’d expect. If you actually pay attention to how enemies in dungeons are placed, you can tell that they’re meant to be a series of engaged encounters. Dungeons have a progressing system where you will face new, different mechanics behind the enemies at each step. Mob groups are diverse and have a series of quirks that each have different weaknesses. Mobs are placed thematically, put in spots where you can see the imposing forms of bosses, are scripted to run around corners to ambush, etc. The enemies give experience and have loot tables which give rewards for killing them. Also, take into account that very single dungeon made after launch has a series of gates that exists specifically to prevent skipping. The intention is pretty clear: the devs didn’t design the appearance, test the difficulty, balance the rewards, organize enemy groups by type and dungeon progression, and script various behaviors for players to skip them all.


With that licentiousness aside, I’ll answer the OP’s question: The answer is yes. In fact, the developers agree with you. However, we run in to the problem of practicality. Dungeons were on a lifeline before the reward nerf, and anyone who wasn’t already on board with the skip/stack tactic was driven away. Any reformations to the dungeons would be a costly and time consuming endeavor that would be for the sake of players who’ve already left, and against the only players who are still there. Dungeons were abandoned largely because the ROI on them is poor.

Stacking is a bit of a different beast than skipping. The thing with stacking is that it is a product of how the combat system was designed. If you get 5 people together to melee one enemy, you’re going to be standing on top of each other. While the dungeons were clearly designed to be played, they were also designed with the intent that any group is going to consist of 5 random people randomly running around spamming random skills at range. It is an oversight that a coherent combat strategy ends up being a messy presentation. But, visual clutter and poor aesthetic aside, there isn’t anything wrong with stacking.

You can tell from Silverwastes onward that the developers are also trying to discourage stacking, mostly by having enemies that refuse to play by the rules of how legacy content was designed. A lot of their skills include a large amount of movement, as well as high damage patches plenty of CC. There are also some less than effective measure that the devs have taken, particularly in 90s+ fractals. Seriously, the guy who came up with the social awkwardness instability should be forced to pug 94 cliffside for a week straight to see how bad an idea it was.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

We need balance patch ._.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

It was separated in Guild Wars. People played both without any problems. Also, a lot of the player base already in this game tend to prefer playing one game mode over others. Of course there are some folks that play all, and there are some folks that play two out of three. I’m not suggesting to separate every single skill. Only suggesting that there are always certain skills that need to have different (but similar) uses.

This is debatable. The thing with City of Heroes was that it wasn’t always split. That came down to the most infamous update in CoH history: Issue 6. When this split happened, the PVP community that existed hated it and left, and the PVE community remained forever reluctant to set foot into PVP, due to how different everything was. The end result was that, without a dedicated PVP community driving the game, its popularity severely plummeted.

Because of this, I wonder exactly how “fine” players were with it in GW1. If there isn’t a lot of exchange between the two camps, then you wouldn’t get much feedback with what problems players have transitioning. If everything was “fine”, then why is it the same developers are spending so much time and effort trying to do just the opposite in this game?

PVP is important, because it draws a rather large crowd, and is more entertaining than regular ole PVE. The transition between the two game modes needs to be as seamless as possible. Having different skill sets between the game modes will add friction that doesn’t need to exist.

GW2 shouldn’t 3 entirely different modes of play. The whole point of having same balancing is to make sure that doesn’t happen. GW2 has one mode of play, but 3 different primary objectives. Its all the same movements, the same skills, the same mechanics. The only change is the goal.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

We need balance patch ._.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Please separate sPvP, PvE, WvW skills.
Thank you.

I’m very hesitant to support something like that, because it is part of what killed City of Heroes.

It was a very big problem, in that skills in PVP didn’t work the same as in PVE, which created a jarring disconnect between the two game modes. Instead of having to learn a new game from scratch, most players opted out of doing PVP.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Thinking of going viper

in Elementalist

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I don’t mean excluding all sigils and runes. I mean building to 100% without food bonuses.

I’m playing with the numbers now, and ATM it is pretty easy. A tempest with burning precision, balthazar runes, and a full viper set hits 103.5% burning duration by itself. Swapping out the off-hand for sinister gets you 99.8% duration for burning, which I’m going to call “close enough”. I’m not done yet, though. I’ve got to compare the damage of three different sets:

100% burn duration no food build.
100% burn duration super veggie build.
100% burn duration, toxic crystal + koi cake build.

And see how much damage is lost along the way.


EDIT: Alright, I’ve got the numbers. First build

376 burn, 413 burn w/ power overwhelming
At max might and corruption, 531 burn, 413 burn w/ power overwhelming.

Second build

400 burn, 435 burn w/ power overwhelming
At max might/corruption: 555 burn, 600 burn w/ power overwhelming.

Third Build

415 burn, 449 w/ power overwhelming.
At max might/corrpution: 570 burn, 614 w/ power overwhelming.

Generally I go for the recharge skills myself. When compared to the last build, the first build does 90% of the damage at base, and 93% of the damage at max circumstances.

The second build does 96% of the the damage at base, and 97% of the damage at max circumstances.

So really, it comes down to this: you can spend 9.4 silver per hour, or to do 3-4% more damage you can spend 1.5 gold per hour. 9.4 silver per hour is something nearly anyone can afford, so if you’re going budget, shell out for the super pizzas and take the second build. The difference is substantial enough to warrant it. But, if you’ve got money to blow and want to brag that you’re at the maximum, then go for the third build.

Or roughly, anyway. These builds aren’t the end-all beat all. They’re just something I’ve thrown together.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)

Thinking of going viper

in Elementalist

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Personally, I avoid using the Toxic Focusing Crystal. Not because it isn’t optimum, but because it is so dang expensive. Take whatever you’re doing and shave off 1.1g per hour, and you’ve got the maintenance cost of the crystals. Put Koi Cakes on top of that, and it is 1.5 gold per hour.

I haven’t done much math on this subject, because “optimization” generally implies limitless funds. The food expense is a quality judgement more than anything. But I do wonder how much damage is lost by swapping out to viper sets until you have 100% without food bonuses. Or another option, 82% and using super veggie pizzas, which are an extremely affordable 2.8 silver.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Suck at Love (Banned)

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Real Money Trading. Also called RWT, for Real World Trading.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Suck at Love (Banned)

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

It is hilarious and sad that this isn’t the first I’ve seen of stuff like this.

In another MMO I played awhile ago, RMT was extremely popular, and also extremely illegal. On a daily basis, someone would go to the official forums and make the following very specific complaint:

“I was banned unfairly! Someone random person I’ve never met ran up to me, gave me a bunch of gold, and said ‘your order has been filled’, and because of that I was banned for RMTing!”

You’d be surprised how shameless people can be. A conscience isn’t something everybody has. It is something you choose to have.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Why ESL is boring?

in PvP

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I attribute it to being that GW2 just isn’t a good game to make an E-sport out of. I do ech Tyger’s concerns over the thing as a whole, but GW2 has a few additional problems, in that it is hard to watch and it is hard to measure progress.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

CS broken - only lasts 1.5s now ...

in Mesmer

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I assumed I was hosing something up and hitting the wrong button… lol

Same here. I decided to try my chrono at fractals, and noticed I was blowing it royally. I thought I was screwing up, until I went to test this against a static enemy, and have come to find that I am not to blame.

I can’t believe this. it’s like they don’t even test there stuff.

There is decent chance that this change is intended, but wasn’t meant to go through right this second. Don’t be surprised if there’s a message in 6 hours calling this a feature. Be ticked off, but not surprised.

EDIT: Just saw the bug forums. Never have I been more glad to have been wrong. This is definitely a bug.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)

Sinister vs. Viper

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I think this thread wins the award for being my most pervasive thread. Months later and people are still trying to tear me down.

It really depend on class/ build and the food you’re using.

For condition Berserker, you only need 27% condition duration to hit 100% burning duration with food. (Assuming you’re using sigil of malice and sigil of smoldering)
Any extra point in the condition duration would be a waste.
If you use the expensive stuff like toxic toning crystal, the requirement would be even lower.

Again, you’re excluding the traits synergy. I did my own min-max and find out exactly how many pieces I need to hit 100% burning duration while maximizing my condition damage

Each class’s requirement would be different. Requirement for cond necro and engi is an entire different story too!

I’m not excluding anything. I’m not going into the specifics for every single class and build. That would take forever and wouldn’t accomplish anything, as it would give players a million ways to nitpick. Instead, I just showed that, so long as you gain condition duration, Viper’s is better than Sinister. That fact holds true no matter what class you’re playing, or what build you use. As much as I like buzz words, “trait synergy” here doesn’t describe anything meaningful to the topic.

As far as build specifics go, that really depends. It sounds like you’ve just come up some generalized idea and are arguing my post without actually checking anything. For all we know, smoldering + malice in sinister is worse than bursting + corruption with Viper.

Guess someone really is kinda over-reacted, thinking people are all trying to tear you down or something by discussing different situations and different opinion.

All I do is providing some real life experience about a specific spec that may not need too many viper sets to begin with. Even the top raid groups know that going full Viper is never the smartest idea in raid, proven by their time record and gear choice.
Anything that exceed that threshhold diminishes the value of Viper gears. The purpose of my previous post is to prove that you may not need as many Viper gears to achieve the best result, depending on class and spec, and going full Viper may not necessary be the best idea either.

And no, by choosing full viper, you waste alot of stats, giving up straight 20% or 10% worth of stat for an inferior 6% trade-off. Corruption is also very situational, and may not be useful/ optimal in many situations where you may go down often or not enough mobs to begin with.

Last note, don’t be offended just because someone is trying to discussing/ debating a point with you and suddenly you go all aggressive. To me, your attitude is like: “I’m right! You’re wrong! You’re annoying, so shut-up now!”, somewhat childish attitude.

The thing is, the whole " don’t go over 100%" thing, as well as choosing having specific builds that won’t need full viper, that’s already in the first post of this thread. It is elaborated on several times in several permutations throughout the thread. So, whenever someone brings up a point of contention that I have already discussed… in the very first post of the thread… and adds nothing on top of that fact, then I have suspect illegitimate thoughts. It happens all the time:

Me: “Run viper. Here’s a bunch of math showing why. Exceptions include mono-condi builds already at the cap…”
Poster: “Ah hah! You are wrong, because if you have a mono condi build already at the cap…”

And this only happens in two circumstances. Either someone was so eager to disagree or be contrary that they didn’t bother to read everything, or they aren’t good at reading and thus didn’t obtain/retain the information. Now I can understand if someone makes a mistake, but when you bring up a 23 day old topic just to accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, well, you aren’t going to garner any respect.

Your personal transgressions aside, you’re forgetting stat synergy: Condition damage and condition duration multiply each other. So, by going for Viper + Bursting, you aren’t getting 6%. You are getting 6% x increase in condi duration for overall damage. The strongest set isn’t which side has the biggest piece (I.E. Sigil of Smoldering), but which set has the highest overall product. The thing with the viper set is that, since it gives expertise and condition damage, it has an overall higher sum.

To demonstrate this, I’m going to take the values in the first post, and make a “scaled condi damage” stat. This is the actual damage your condition would do, multiplied by the duration. Viper has a scaled burn damage of 417, as compared to Sinister’s 331. With a sigil of smoldering, Sinister’s scaled damage is 397, which is still less than Viper’s by itself. If you give Sinister both Malice and smoldering, its scaled burn damage goes up to 430. But, if you also give Viper the sigil of bursting, its base burn damage goes to 312, and its scaled burn damage goes up to 432. Now this is all at base, and the more might you add, the better Viper becomes, because the difference between their damage is a static number. You can also conclude here that Viper + Bursting is greater than Sinister + Smoldering + Malice. The best part is, Viper still has an open sigil space.

As it happens, I have already done some work on this. At the request of another player, I was asked to evaluate the effectiveness of a burn guardian when comparing either full sinister + smoldering, or viper/sinister mix + other runes. Much like above, the conclusion I came to is that, if you are a mono condi user, it is best to swap out duration boosting sigils with other ones, and hybrid with Viper until you reach reach 100% duration.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Why I think HoT failed

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I’m not sure it is a failure at all. HoT added a lot of things that are pretty decent.

#1: Harder enemies. I’ve been wanting that for awhile.
#2: Elaborate maps and more involved maps. Always a good thing.
#3: A metroid style of progression where you gain the ability to explore new areas.
#4: The elite specializations are awesome (if a bit power-creepy), and I like playing as most of them.
#5: A large series of collections and achievements for completionists.
#6: Some pretty cool looking skins.
#7: Events that are actually fun to do.

So, I like the xpac, and from what I’ve heard it has sold really well, so I wonder what your standard of failure is.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Sinister vs. Viper

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I think this thread wins the award for being my most pervasive thread. Months later and people are still trying to tear me down.

It really depend on class/ build and the food you’re using.

For condition Berserker, you only need 27% condition duration to hit 100% burning duration with food. (Assuming you’re using sigil of malice and sigil of smoldering)
Any extra point in the condition duration would be a waste.
If you use the expensive stuff like toxic toning crystal, the requirement would be even lower.

Again, you’re excluding the traits synergy. I did my own min-max and find out exactly how many pieces I need to hit 100% burning duration while maximizing my condition damage

Each class’s requirement would be different. Requirement for cond necro and engi is an entire different story too!

I’m not excluding anything. I’m not going into the specifics for every single class and build. That would take forever and wouldn’t accomplish anything, as it would give players a million ways to nitpick. Instead, I just showed that, so long as you gain condition duration, Viper’s is better than Sinister. That fact holds true no matter what class you’re playing, or what build you use. As much as I like buzz words, “trait synergy” here doesn’t describe anything meaningful to the topic.

As far as build specifics go, that really depends. It sounds like you’ve just come up some generalized idea and are arguing my post without actually checking anything. For all we know, smoldering + malice in sinister is worse than bursting + corruption with Viper.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Most efficient and easiest PVE class?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

It’s a hard question to answer, because there isn’t a “hard” class to compare it with. If you know the game, the difficulties of the classes range from easy, very easy, and faceroll. And at that point, even though a class may be easier, it isn’t necessarily stronger. For example, while a necro is arguably the most faceroll class, it doesn’t have the performance of an elementalist.

So really, there’s two tiers: who is easiest, and who is best. Going by best first, and this is my very quickly written and debatable list on the matter:

#1: Mesmer
#2: Engineer
#3: Elementalist
#4: Herald
#5: Warrior
#6: Guardian
#7: Thief
#8: Necromancer
#9: Ranger

But going by how easy the class is…

#1: Necro
#2: Ranger
#3: Warrior
#4: Thief
#5: Herald
#6: Guardian
#7: Mesmer
#8: Elementalist
#9: Engineer

Ele’s have one of the simplest DPS rotations in the game and yet you placed them directly under Engi’s for difficulty….

You can sit in fire with 3 buttons and have near-max dps. Not a very difficult class to play unless you were just trying to say they cannot facetank very well.

The thing with ele’s is that, in PVE scenarios, they’re quite squishy. On HoT maps, my ele has the highest death count out of any of my other toons. Even with arcane shield and glyph of storms, I find myself going down much more often on my ele than any other class I play.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Most efficient and easiest PVE class?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

It’s a hard question to answer, because there isn’t a “hard” class to compare it with. If you know the game, the difficulties of the classes range from easy, very easy, and faceroll. And at that point, even though a class may be easier, it isn’t necessarily stronger. For example, while a necro is arguably the most faceroll class, it doesn’t have the performance of an elementalist.

So really, there’s two tiers: who is easiest, and who is best. Going by best first, and this is my very quickly written and debatable list on the matter:

#1: Mesmer
#2: Engineer
#3: Elementalist
#4: Herald
#5: Warrior
#6: Guardian
#7: Thief
#8: Necromancer
#9: Ranger

But going by how easy the class is…

#1: Necro
#2: Ranger
#3: Warrior
#4: Thief
#5: Herald
#6: Guardian
#7: Mesmer
#8: Elementalist
#9: Engineer

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

In am so over all the cc in HoT

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Well, the problem is that “fun” is a quality judgement. it is wholly personal, and thus it can’t really be fixed for you. If you don’t find something fun, try changing your mindset. Often times, approaching something with the wrong mindset will leave you having a bad time where you could’ve had a good one. Likewise “Point of View” is a fallback to assert something without solid evidence or even sound reasoning. The whole reason why people are arguing with you is because of your “Point of View” doesn’t make sense, and simply calling it your view is no justification whatsoever.

A)Its called positioning, situational awareness, and having the proper skills that would let you survive and withdraw from such a situation. If you charge into a gigantic whirling vegetable death machine over and over again in spite of lacking the kind of invulnerability skills that would let you do this, then that’s kind of your fault. Maybe you’re not having fun because you’re not doing it right?

B) The thing with most maps is that they have plenty to do that doesn’t revolve around zerging a meta. Adventures give daily rewards, hero points give daily rewards, there’s plenty to gather, there’s chests littered about the maps that give currency specific rewards, and if you spend the currency on keys then there are map specific loot boxes to grab. It is very possible to solo push events in TD, VB, and AB, and while not all events can be completed by yourself, the lion’s share can.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

New player thoughts

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

It is a good thing that HoT maps are harder than core Tyria. Right now, core Tyria is way too easy. There’s a good chance I could beat most enemies using my nose to play the game. Excuse me while I whip out my old fogy and talk about the past.

The game that you know as core Tyria today is not how it has always been. There was a time when it was much harder (at launch) than it is now, and a time where it was harder than that (beta). Old Cursed Shore was nightmare, with Risen Krait chain-ulling you half way down the map, aggroing the zerg rush of enemis that occupied that space. Everything in general was all around tougher.

Now, this is where you’ll learn partly of my treachery, but partly of the dark truth that is user metrics. I suggest a long time ago that the game was too hard in a specific way, in that the absolute lack of tutorials for things meant that most players had to fight with wikis and numbers in order to actually be good. Apparently this reflected… some kind of survey Anet did. Might’ve been focus groups, or user metrics. But regardless, they ascertained that there was, indeed, a pretty big drop off at the beginning of the game, that people couldn’t build themselves properly, and that the opening to the game wasn’t “user friendly”.

Now, while my idea is to have more tutorials in the game to demonstrate things, as to eventually make the game harder, Anet took it a different way. Combining the “we want to find our skills like in GW1” suggestion and the idea to increase player retention, they decided to make it so instead of getting most stuff by level 30, all of your utilities and traits were going to be spread out along a much larger area, and that everything would be given to you painfully slow. The game was simplified greatly, and likewise enemy encounters were designed assuming you had little more than auto attacks and under-level gear.

With repeated changes to the trait system, leveling, and stat distributions, the game kept getting easier and easier. Add in a bit of power creep and theorycrafters “breaking” the system to come up with optimal builds, and suddenly you melt face by just auto attacking. This has left core Tyria in a neutered state, where dungeons barely pose a challenge and the overworld is surmountable by all but the most incompetent of individuals.

The thing with HoT maps is that, they take advantage of much more of the combat system than core Tyria does. I imagine that it must be quite the shock moving from faceroll to facemelting content, but it is better this way. These are enemies you have to actually play against. Enemies you have to chase, to disengage, to disable, enemies who aren’t completely destroyed by a blind field. The dodge key is suddenly important. These enemies actually encourage you to take advantage of the intricacies of the GW2 combat system. Enemies in HoT are how GW2 enemies should’ve been designed, and not the “smoke field to win” enemies we get in the rest of the game.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

In am so over all the cc in HoT

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

There’s a part of me that is considering writing a guide for HoT. Not just for a map event, but HoT in general. It would be titled: How to survive in a H.O.T. climate, and the first section would be: Crap Happens, and how to handle loss. Then I would go over each enemy, what to watch out for, and how to beat them.

What is holding me back from writing such a guide is the fact that I’m not sure anyone would really benefit from it. The type of person who would go to the forums and complain for… is it months now? Yeah, the the type of person who would go to the forums and complain that the maps are too hard for months because they apparently always get jumped by a bazillion impossible enemies… they aren’t the kind of person who can be helped by a text guide on the web. They fight learning. In order to teach them anything you’d basically have to grind up books into a fine paste and hide it in their ketchup.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Ley-Energy Matter Converter and map currency

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Good question. It is ill thought-out, and should be a 2:1 conversion.

I suspect they made it like this because they’re terrified of there being an exploit of some kind.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Please fix the rare veggie pizza exploit!

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493


The condi food is weird. While it does give technically more stats than any other food, it is also the only food where its primary “stat” will vanish once a certain cap is reached. I mean, sure, the other effects of food diminishes as you stack on more and more buffs, but it never outright stops.

Precision also vanishes.

Question: Does the extra precision help against up-leveled enemeis? I vaguely remember a discussion thread about it back then, but I can’t remember if increased precision had an effect against the crit rate reduction from being underleveled.

He’s using poor language in order to grab peoples attention for a maybe valid point of discussion.

The mere fact that TC has to create such a smokefield just to get people interested in his complaint/idea should be indication enough of how much attention this point might have gotten otherwise.

My memory is a bit longer, so I remember the nature of condi food being discussed multiple times in the past. Particularly when it was at +40% duration, and the difference between having it and not was far more substantial. The issue is one that hasn’t really gone away, just reduced a bit over time. I’ve been wondering for quite awhile why it is that Anet hasn’t fully embraced the expertise system, and converted food buffs and other sources to static additions. What we have now is kind of a messy patchwork.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Please fix the rare veggie pizza exploit!

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

He’s using poor language to convey a valid point of discussion.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Instanced content done right...

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

So I heard the words “City of Heroes” get mentioned a few times. I’m actually surprised that it wasn’t my videos that were linked, so I did guide videos for their raid content. Avid CoH refugee here.

The thing is that the way CoH worked and the way GW2 works are… very different. GW2 is all about action and dynamics, whereas CoH was about statistical fortitude, individuality, and varied roles. There was a big thing here: City of Heroes wasn’t hard by default. Yes, there was a difficulty slider you could crank up to the maximum to get ridiculous difficulty, but by its default the game wasn’t too hard.

Now, if you want to talk about the profession system, I can. I have an in-depth knowledge of the whole thing, and the customization in CoH is, dare I say, a few orders of magnitude higher than GW2. Let me explain:

City of Heroes had two sides, each with 7 classes. The classes were hero side: tanker, scrapper, controller, defender, blaster, peacebringer (epic), warshade (epic). Villain side had: stalker, dominator, mastermind, brute, corruptor, arachnos solider (epic), arachnos widow (epic). 14 total. The epic classes are closer to what you know of in GW2, in the sense that their builds are highly constricted. You’re basically playing a specialized enemy at that point, but even then you could squeeze out a few builds form their sets.

Now, these classes, formally called “Archetypes” basically gave you your base stats, the nature of the class, and an innate power or two. The specifics of the class came down to power selection. You would select a primary power set, which did your base function in many different ways, then a secondary power set which did your secondary function a number of ways. Then you’d pick an ancillary power set, which provided a toolbox for you to use. Alongside of that were several power pools you could pick from that gave general augmented powers for all classes to use. And form here, you could customize the appearance and colors of these powers. You could also get a series of temp powers or weapons, as well as raid specific powers to use.

Your head might be spinning now. But let me give an example. The scrapper was a melee DPS class. Primary function was high melee damage, secondary function was taking hits and self defense. There were 18 primary power sets, 11 secondary power sets, 8 ancillary power sets (optional), and 9 power pools of which you could get 3 from them. So, going by just the primary 3, you could build yourself with 1,584 different combinations. For the scrapper archetype alone.

It gets better. Once you have your powers, you can select which ones you get as you level up. City of Heroes didn’t have an “auto attack”. The entire game was more skill and spell based, and you picked these spells from a set list as you leveled. So, even if you have the same archetype with the same power list, you may have chosen different powers in those lists, so you could end up different.

It gets better. To customize your character, while leveling you also received several “slots”. These “slots” can be assigned to powers to give you further customization. Up to 6 slots could be given to each power, and in each of these slots you could put enhancements. This was the City of Heroes equivalent of equipment. These enhancements could augment nearly every aspect of a power imaginable (power, accuracy, endurance cost, recharge, range, potency of various statistics including healing, defense, resistance, endurance modification, CC duration, CC magnitude, movment speed, tc). So, once you have your powers, you had your enhancement slots to place around and augment these powers, and you could augment them in various ways. The game was balanced around something called “single origin” enhancements, which just do their one thing. The optional equipment was “invention origin”, which were crafted, and were better than single origin. The higher tier of invention origin enhancements came in sets, which gave effects depending on how many of a set you slotted, giving you global buffs to your character. This meant that, should you put in the legwork, you could spec yourself out in ways that made you a demi-god among mortals. With the difficulty slider, you could crank the numbers up quite high, to the point where you’re the equivalent of 8 people 4 levels higher than you.

In the end, after you had picked your power set from 1,584 options, you had nigh incalculable ways to build that specific option you picked, for your archetype alone. Not every archetype had as many powers to choose from, but you basically had a thousand options for 10 different classes, and then limitless ways to build from there. Given the also “several orders of magnitude” more robust character customization system, any character you made was unique. In how they played, how they were built, and how they looked, the character you made was unique. You really felt attached to that toon, because it was yours and yours alone.

Going out of the specifics and talking more about generalities, one of the interesting features about CoH’s system was that buffs were king. There were countless ways to buff yourselves and teammates, and these ways were frequently exclusive with each other. For example, for durability, you could have your damage resistance increased (the amount of reduction you take from a hit), your defense increased (the chance you’ll be hit), receive a hit-point barrier that would absorb attacks (static damage reduction), and also various debuffs to enemy accuracy and power. If you get all of this in one place, you’ll end up with some nigh unkillable players (until you crank the difficulty, that is).

While there were “damage classes”, there wasn’t a class that was so kitten as to not do damage. Instead, the classes had different techniques they could use to handle any situation, and when built up properly the boundaries that would limit one or the other would disappear. You weren’t restrained, is what I am saying. Also, the game was balanced more around you being ambushed by multiple enemies than fighting extremely tough enemies, so fights felt like you were throwing goons and chumps around, more than you and 8 people slowly plinked away at a big monster.

GW2, by comparison, doesn’t have that. Yes, GW2 doesn’t restrain the classes and lets everyone “do damage”, but classes lack the uniqueness that CoH archetypes had. By comparison, everything feels samey and zergy. Worst part is, other MMOs are worse than GW2 at this, so they feel even more stale.

GW2’s character customization spends all its time on the face, only to have your face completely covered by equipment and so far away no one can ever appreciate the work you’ve done to it. Even though I’ve tried making unique looking characters, I just end up looking like “elementalist number 2301” in a faceless zerg of players, playing the same as any of the other 2300 eles before me, and being “ele” has little distinction.


I suppose that is one of the things that bothers me a bit about finding another MMO. City of Heroes was my MMO, in that I loved most things about it. Yes, overworld events and the landscapes needed a major overhaul, and more focus on PVP was needed. But, I loved my toons. I designed them, gave them backstories, lived out their stories, and I had no idea how good the system was until I tried other MMOs and found myself with an identity crises. I like how they looked, I like how they felt, I liked how they played different, and I like that everyone I played with was also as unique as I was. The community was stellar, too.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Please fix the rare veggie pizza exploit!

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

This isn’t an exploit, and ANet has already balanced it how they want to. It won’t and shouldn’t change.

I wouldn’t elevate Anet balancing that much.

The condi food is weird. While it does give technically more stats than any other food, it is also the only food where its primary “stat” will vanish once a certain cap is reached. I mean, sure, the other effects of food diminishes as you stack on more and more buffs, but it never outright stops.

I suppose my biggest issue is that, currently, PVE condi are kind of balanced around the assumption that you’ve got this food. I can run around no problem without consumables on power builds, but on condi builds it means so much more. While there is nothing technically wrong with balancing around consumables, the fact is I hate that it is so unfair to different build styles that one has optional consumables and the other nearly necessary.

If condi builds were brought up a bit, and the condi food was balanced, I wouldn’t mind it too much. I just have to figure out how to do that without breaking PVP.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

What is your new daily routine?

in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Currently I’m crafting ascended weapons for every power spec on every toon. I’m nearly half way there, actually. So, my daily grind is:

#1: I turn on a TV or second monitor and watch something. Currently I’m watching a subbed anime. It’s pretty terrible and simplistic, so I don’t have trouble keeping up.
#2: Log in with every character and go to the two flax fields in VB and TD, opening the chests in TD to get crystals.
#3: Gather Elder Wood from Malchiors leap, via that tight cluster of trees west of the entrance. If there’s more clusters, please let me know, as they are sweet bank. I do this on a regular basis.
#4: Do daily crafting of ascended materials. I usually hoard them, as buying ascended stuff gets expensive fast.
#5: I do the fractal dailies. So far I’ve only obtained ascended rings and armor, but its good money and I nearly have a second fractal toon.
#6: Depending on what I’m in the mood for after that, I hop on to one of my toons and either do regular gathering rounds with a watchwork pick, or I do events in AB to get Auric Dust. Or if I am feeling up to it, I do the personal story of the two toons I haven’t finished it on yet.
#7: If my guild is doing Triple Trouble, I may join them on occasion. Though to be honest I find myself rarely doing it lately.

The auric dust is a big thing. I find myself doing TD and VB a lot more than AB, even though AB is arguably the simplest. That fulgurite can make some sweet bank at times. Either way, once I have my next toon kitted out with ascended weapons (its a thief, and I still have to make x1 pistol, x2 dagger, x1 shortbow, x1 sword, total cost about 750 gold), I’ll finally do HoT story and complete my specialization collections.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.

Gold Limit annoying, please increase

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Blood Red Arachnid.2493

Maybe I read it differently, but I think that 98.228% of the mails that were higher than 500G were RMT. So, that would mean that the legit traders were 11.772% of the 0.175%, amounting to 0.0206% of players. Or, one in every 5000 players.

Generosity is a virtue. Recognize that patience, too, is a virtue. Although I am highly suspicious that the OP isn’t actually generous, but is in reality a RMT who is brazen enough try and get the limit removed publicly.

I don’t have opinions. I only have facts I can’t adequately prove.