Guild Wars 2

I was so happy when this event gave a choice between landing points. Finally, I thought, they are going to split the zerg up!

Then about 5 minutes later the zergs connected with each other and formed megazerg and proceeded to wipe out every living thing on the island in seconds

Anyway, obviously I agree. The zerg made the event really boring because stuff would just spawn, then instantly get splattered.

Blacksarevok.8104:

Condition damage = PVP
Direct damage = PVE

This seems to be how the devs are intending it.

If anything condition damage is worse for PvP for two reasons:

1. Everyone is constantly spamming condition removal.

2. Burst damage is king, you’re over there trying to stack bleeds meanwhile warrior is literally one-shotting people with killshot from 1400 range or thief is exploiting culling to backstab/pistolwhip people to death in 2 – 3 seconds before they can even be targeted.

At least in PvE mobs don’t (usually) cleanse and during dungeons they have enough HP to let you stack up before they die.

It’s called content gating.

See, if they let you do anything right from the start, some people would finish everything in week and complain. They can’t have that.

So what they do, is they “gate” the content behind gear checks (agony) it’s realistically impossible to finish the later parts without specific items (agony resist gear). This forces you to run (grind) the early content over and over to “gear up” so that you can do the later dungeon where the rewards you really want are.

I haven’t quit yet (I want to at least “finish” the game by getting one char to 80 and finishing personal story).

But yeah, admitting ascended was a mistake and patching the stats down to exotic level would make me quite happy. At this point, I won’t even complain about them keeping agony content gating since I could just ignore ascended gear if the stats were the same.

Let people grind to get to dungeon level 500 and +73912 agony resist if it makes them happy, just don’t hide all the best items down there.

Edit:

Space Cow.2431:

Rhyse.8176:

Basically, admit the mistake, apologize, and move on.

It will NEVER happen. I have never seen a gaming company do it, and they never will. Investors see it as a sign of weakness or so I’ve been told.

I’d sure love to see it, though. It would be a huge boon to ANet’s PR.

SoE flat out admitting NGE was a really stupid idea, and a huge mistake they never should have made (direct quote: [Smedley] A: [S]ure. Stupid decisions. Complete and utter fail and I am very sorry).. Of course, by that point it was too late to matter one way or the other, but they did admit it.

LadenSwallow.1468:

Before everyone goes:

https://en.support.guildwars2.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9053/kw/refund

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/6118/notanidlethreat.png

It’s highly unlikely you will actually get a refund. Good luck though, if we could hit them where it counts (the wallet) maybe they’d actually have to listen to us.

phanmc.6759:

I would have more sympathy for them if they had communicated with the user base rather than try to sneak it in with a pretty big content patch. They knew this was going to be a highly flammable issue yet they chose to hide behind a couple of PR spins. To date, there has been extremely little details on what their new plan is (unless you’re german).

Can’t take the heat from your user base? Then expect them to be even more riled up.

They have absolutely no reason to communicate with the user base. Acknowledging there is a problem would be bad PR, this way they can pretend everything is fine. After all, only a small percent of users even read the forum in the first place.

They are going to bunker down and wait for it to blow over and then pretend this was the plan all along – and the saddest part is it will probably work. Some people will quit, but who cares? they already have your money and unless you spend a lot in the gem store (let’s be honest, you might, but most players spend little or nothing) then you quitting is probably a good thing for them due to reduced server load.

I agree MF is a terrible mechanic, and it never should have been added. I doubt it’s going to go away anytime soon though.

The worst part about MF in dungeons is that it does not affect chest drops, only mob kills, and most people don’t kill very many mobs in dungeons (just run past everything). So not only are you screwing your team, you are screwing your team for almost no reward. If you’re doing speedruns, you might not even get a whole extra item (on average) per run!

I don’t mind people who eat nomnom bars, because it’s your money for your consumable and most people don’t use any consumables anyway. But at least put some real armor on please.

The rewards for the tokens are not that great though.

Crafting tools – cheaper to just buy tools from vendors. Weapon skins are all very cheap unless you want the exotic version (forgot to check if the exotic skin is different from the cheap-o skin)

Unless there is another merchant somewhere I didn’t see, or they are adding more stuff, I can’t see it having a huge impact.

Condition damage is already highly inferior to power damage and you want to make 90% of the endgame immune to it?

notsureifserious.jpg

Reclusiarh.2674:

What part of this new patch is difficult to understand? for some people like me, grinding for legendaries is not an option and having full exotics gear is getting closer as a goal, so the ascendant tier is the new legendary tier for casual players.
I estimate I will need at least a year if not more to be just partially geared in ascendant gear.
But since I intend to continue to play even longer, I have no problem with this.

In a year the bar will have moved and you will have to start grinding divine tier gear with agony mk.2 resist, or actually by the time a year has passed we will probably be on to super-divine tier with agony mk.3 resist.

The content locusts they are now catering to will NEVER be happy with just this, they will play 18 hours a day and gobble it all up in a month and whine for more.

Well I agree for PvP/WvW eng. rifle is probably better overall because of the range, and because axe #2 is channeled which makes it very easy to dodge and thus negate 90% of the damage, and also because everyone spams condition removal so you can never stack any vulnerability with #1 either.

lvl 46 necromancer with 930 power – axe autoattack 224

lvl 66 engineer with 1193 power – rifle autoattack 248

On top of that, the engineer power tree is pretty terrible for using the rifle, while the necromancer power tree has both the axe trait AND the focus trait (focus is best pair for axe IMO) together.

Oh yeah axe trait is +15% damage AND 20% reduced cooldowns in one. Engineer has to pay 2 trait slots (in the condition damage tree) for 10% damage and 20% cooldowns.

So yeah. You’re not the first person I’ve heard say engineer rifle autoattack is great but I don’t understand that… it’s pretty bad.

What’s wrong with #1?

The raw damage is not amazing, but it’s not terrible either – compare it to an actually terrible autoattack like engineer rifle 1. It also adds 2 stacks of vulnerability (5s) every 3/4ths of a second, so it’s sustaining ~ 8% – 10% extra damage for your whole group (less since you stop to use other skills, but more if you spec into spite for increased condition duration).

skill 2 is great, skill 3 is respectable (damage not amazing, but AoE cripple and potentially a very long duration retaliation).

So far after the #2 buff, I’m actually reasonably happy with axe.

Edit: I guess I should be clear this is for PvE. I can see why people might not like it as well for PvP

GW1 had a max cap of 20 on release, and has a cap of 20 today.

GW1 max stats are exactly the same today as they were on release (afaik, I have not played GW1 in a while)

You don’t need vertical progression to have a long lasting game, unless you’re shortsightedly trying to steal a slice of that WoW pie.

Something you didn’t mention is that Elixer S is still actually NOT affected by fast acting elixers. The tooptip is, but the actual cooldown is not,

Edit: incendiary powder was not nerfed, it already had a 3 second internal cooldown since beta, it’s just a tooltip correction

Ivanov.8914:

And just a fair question, what would you nerf in the warrior class as it is?
Something that won’t make all players shelve the class for indefinite amount of time?

I wouldn’t nerf warriors.

I’d STOP BUFFING THEM then take a look at the non-power classes in the game (you know, everything that’s not warrior, GU, Thief, and mesmer) and maybe use my magic buff powder on them instead.

At this point, they aren’t even bothering to thinly disguise the favoritism.

Human if you care about cosmetics

Asura if you never want to be tempted to grind a legendary or armor skins.

After crlawr island, everyone’s personal story ends and you join Trahaern’s personal story.

In Trahaern’s personal story he rescued everyone and saved the day and you’re just some guy he lets hang around with him because he feels bad for you.

Citizens – coming soon, the newest and most unique resort destination in all of Tyria! Brought to you by the Consortium!

According to the kotaku interview, nothing else has changed

Sky.9347:

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/chart?symbol=036570.KS

Satisfying.

For the uninitiated: see the little uptick up too Nov. 7, that’s a result of “new content and balance patches coming!” – see the drop after it, that’s because “and a brand new tier of gear!”.

Info dump on ascended gear + forum riot happened on the 12/13th.

NCsoft stock price fell off a cliff on the 8th.

So yeah, you can’t blame it on this, as much as I wish you could.

I gave Anet a chance.

They used it to keep certain power classes on top, meanwhile ignoring the other half of the classes who are plagued with bugs, broken skills, poor traits, and general underpoweredness.

Then, instead of fixing that, they added a gear treadmill to the game despite claiming grinding gear for power was not something that was ever going to be in the game.

Why should I give them another chance?

Latest patch, it’s so everyone can participate in the event when it happens.

I don’t know if it’s going back to normal after cursed shore event or not.

Bank size increase and extra bag slots cost gems (which cost RL money).

Don’t expect this to happen any time soon, if anything it’s just going to get worse.

No sigils or stats (or upgrades) on kits this patch… but legendaries DID get upgraded to ascended stats.

Surprise!

Edit: apparently legendary weapons being upgraded is a bug, let’s see how quickly they go about fixing it.

Handful of very minor fixes/tooltip corrections, some nerfs, and nothing else.

But hey, at least Elixer X no longer has a double cast time, because that was the main complaint and the one thing making it completely useless right?

Brilliant job anet. :|

Hunterdan.4921:

You don’t have to grind to access the content. As in, I don’t need to grind to get to max level so I can play an entirely different game. You do need to work for rewards. What else would you expect? Them to just give stuff away?

I expect them to make a game that’s fun enough to play without dangling a carrot in front of my face to get me to do it.

It’s supposed to be fun, not work.

I believe it’s just a flat multiplier.

so let’s say a monster has a 5% chance to drop a green item. With 100% magic find, the monster has a 10% chance. With 200% magic find, it’s a 15% chance.

Chests are NOT affected by magic find, and it’s decided for monster when you kill it not when you loot it (they didn’t want people to have to switch armor before opening the chest or looting a corpse).

If it’s worth it or not is a matter of opinion, I guess.

lordkrall.7241:

Can you play any dungeon at all in the game without leveling or getting more than starter gear?

(No, you can’t)

Doesn’t that mean every single dungeon since release has been “gated”?

For what it’s worth, I would have preferred the game had no levels, or that leveling to top level was more or less a tutorial thing that took like 5 – 10 hours. But regardless, leveling is something people have accepted and expect and for now is required in a game like this (maybe GW3 can have no levels….)

That said, I’d wager you COULD complete any dungeon with a full group of competent players wearing vendor whites at the minimum required level for the dungeon. (full disclosure: I’ve never run Arah)

Would it be harder then facerolling it with a bunch of exotic geared 80s? Yes, of course it would. Would it be worth the time? Maybe, maybe not. But it would be possible – there’s no gearcheck content wall saying you must grind x hours to get items a, b, and c to pass this point.

It’s just simple supply and demand, the people playing the market aren’t causing the problem they are just making it more obvious.

Supply of T6 mats is much lower then demand, so the price rises.

Meanwhile, gold keeps pouring into the economy significantly faster then it’s destroyed, so we have rampant inflation, which causes the price to rise even faster.

With nobody playing the market, the same exact thing would happen eventually.

If anet considers it a problem, they either need to increase T6 mat drops or somehow siphon more gold out of the economy (or both).

The deepest layers have better rewards, so yeah… while technically the same dungeon I’d consider that gated yes.

If the deepest layers were just harder and it was only skill that decided how far you go, that would be fine, but no – they require a gear grind to be able to succeed, which is pretty much the definition of content gating

Wreckdum.8367:

Did you ever stop to think that maybe just maybe this is going to be the only rarity change? They haven’t compromised on their consistent power levels for each rarity of gear. They are just adding an additional level of rarity to support infusions…

For all these die hard fans that are saying agony is going to ruin the game experience because it is a gear wall… It was in GW1! So were infusions. Oh no! Arena Net actually made the game a proper sequel. Let’s all go delete our accounts now and form a picket line.

It’s not just a rarity change – they showed a screenshot, and the new item has better stats then a current exotic – including the gem. The infusion slot is a freebie on an already better item.

Second, agony is GW1 was COMPLETELY different. It was a short little story thing you did which infused all your armor in one go. It’s not comparable at all, really the only thing that’s the same is the name.

I was under the impression this patch coming up tomorrow was upgrading legendary items as well. Re-reading, it’s more vague then I originally thought, and it seems like it’s leaning to upgrading them later rather then now.

So I guess we will see what happens then, and hopefully you are right and it won’t be an issue.

Irrodesia.3907:

We have the ability to let them know we don’t want it to go in that direction. With the new content The Lost Shores, we can draw the line.

Too bad they already have your money.

Someone said something in a different thread which kind of made me think (I apologize to whoever it was, I don’t remember your name):

“If they lose 50,000 existing customers but gain 10,000 new WoW players, it’s a win for them because the 50,000 lost customers already payed.”

Yeah, it’s a short term gain (because of potential gem and expansion sales) but on the other hand they have the potential to gain a LOT of WoW players (of course every game that tried to clone wow has failed, but anet wouldn’t be the first to ignore that in search of a slice of that WoW pie)

The cynic in me now believes the timing of adding gated content/gear treadmill exactly at the time they add a trial for friends is absolutely no coincidence, but rather a shortsighted grab for WoW’s fanbase.

Yes, there are ascended weapons – legendary weapons are all being upgraded to ascended level stats.

Thus, engineer kits must be upgraded too, otherwise we are indirectly nerfed (also – if ascended weapons end up getting agony resist, we are doubly screwed)

Haltus Kain.4578:

2) If the bullet is propelled out of one end of the gun with a great amount of force; the gun itself will be propelled in the opposite direction with equal force [Physics lecture snipped]

Because of the conservation of momentum, which is governed by both mass and velocity, a very small projectile propelled at a very high speed would have virtually no recoil and yet still deliver significant kinetic energy (damage) to the target, without any alteration to physics.

Therefore, it’s possible that engineers are shooting projectiles composed of just a few atoms at a significant fraction of c – which would also explain why we never need to reload since a single magazine could hold many millions of rounds of ammo.

Though you’re correct that it would still probably be smarter to actually, you know, aim the kitten thing.

Ploppy.2917:

- Warriors are supposed to be a high-DPS, high survivability class. Engineers are supposed to be a high flexibility class with more than two or three strengths.

Too bad the current game design really only favors survivability and DPS. Support and control are basically not powerful enough, and not needed anyway. Raw DPS with just enough survivability to not die is all anyone ever needs to build (or bunker build with max survivability at the expense of everything else I guess)

So engineer can be flexable but who cares, when you admit right there he can’t bend in either of the two ways that would make him actually useful.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

Heh, one auto-attacking ranger = 8-13 stacks of bleed.

So, 30 players with bleeds, 2 hit the cap.

But, they can’t remove the cap, otherwise enemies would go down faster than they already do.

This is not true, or rather it is true but it’s not a bad thing. If anything, power scales better and at higher levels power damage is greater then condition damage (which is the other half of the reason condition spec is not so great), so why should condition damage be nerfed even further with an arbitrary cap?

Why should 10 power specs be able to kill a monster 10 times as fast as a single guy, but 10 condition spec can only kill a monster maybe twice as fast? it’s stupid and unbalanced for absolutely no reason.

On top of that they should really, really considering giving everyone a separate burn/poison stack too – my engineer can already stack infinite burn all on his own, rendering every single other burn from every single other class in the game completely redundant.

Honestly this is one thing about GW2 I really, truly can’t understand. WoW had the same problem with warlocks on release (none of the warlock DoTs stacked with other warlocks) and it was crippling for the class for a few months… only in GW2 it’s MUCH worse because everyone shares the same conditions.

Unless it’s some technical issue it just feels like they hate condition spec and don’t want it to be worthwhile.

Cleopatra.4068:

game developers DO generate a significant amount of revenue off of the sale of the botting accounts (and from banning then banning these accounts, thus forcing the gold farmers to purchase new ones in a constant cycle).

This is not true.

Bot accounts are overwhelmingly either hijacked accounts, or accounts purchased with stolen credit card information.

The number of accounts used for botting/gold farming which were legitimately purchased and thus anet makes money off is basically zero.

xtorma.1283:

Who would believe them after this?

^^this

They said no treadmill, no gated content. 3 months later – we have loot treadmill and gated content.

They have lost quite a bit of credibility.

Valtameri.2075:

You do realize that agony is only in the most deepest levels of new dungeon, not anywhere else. Impact to the overall PvE experience will be minimal.

You do realize, per the blog post, this is only the beginning and they will be adding more and more gear treadmill/content gating right?

Jezath.7395:

Look… Everyone is totall;y out of control with there defiance of these ascended items.. The items are pretty much the same as exotics, its just insterad of having to upgrade them, the upgrade is already in them.. The infusion as far as i understand it is only effective in the new dungeon being released.. So I really donyt see what the problem is… Everyone was moaning about the grind for legendarys so they put something inbetween exotic and legendary. Now people are moaning about that, c’mon guys you cant have it both ways :S

New tier between exotic and legendary with slightly better stats = fine (though legendary previously had the same stats as exotic but whatever)

New tier between exotic and legendary that has a REQUIRED stat that gates content and forces you to grind it, along with the suggestion that this is just the start of content gating and forced item progression = not fine.

It’s pretty much the exact opposite of what they promised GW2 was going to be about.

No, I hate the new ascended items

It took them two months to change GW2 from a casual friendly low-grind (unless you wanted a purely cosmetic legendary) game into yet another generic WoW-clone gear progression grind. I thought you were better then this anet, but I guess I’m wrong.

Valhallen is absolutely correct – they will toss out a string of new dungeons each requiring more and more agony resistance then once players have fully grinded all that out they will add Agony Mk.2 and you get to start over.

To the players saying “just don’t play that dungeon” well, very high probability that most or all new content will use the new system so that’s only an option if you don’t care about ever getting new content.

I’m incredibly unhappy about this news.

mehhem.1987:

I use the Elixir Gun so I’m hoping it has something to do with the miss rate of Fumigate.

Fumigate works exactly like flamethrower does – it aims where you are pointing the screen, NOT where the graphic looks like it’s hitting. Point the screen at the enemies and you won’t miss, even if your engineer is shooting empty space.

I’m not really sure if it’s a bug or a feature – on one hand it’s stupid that you are shooting a different place from the graphic, on the other hand it makes it easy to sweep over groups of enemies.

Animus.6073:

The entire two previous paragraphs can be ignored due to the downed state. Those are all mechanics which every person who fights him should know, and should prepare for. I have yet to run a group through AC where nobody goes down at least once on that fight. Not one single group. However, I have also never had a group fail on AC either. That is a serious problem. If you don’t need to learn to succeed, you will never learn.

In essence, this is why so many people, excuse me for being blunt, suck so badly at dungeons. It really is a problem that needs to be further addressed.

No, the problem is not that people don’t care and it’s not the downed state either (if anything, the respawn -> run back mechanic letting you zerg it is more to blame then downed state).

The problem is at any given time, from my perspective, the boss is covered by some combination of explosions, turrets, poison gas clouds, flying glowing weapons, 12 foot tall charr warriors, pet dinosaurs, fireballs, meteors, zombies, or people spinning in circles throwing flaming crap everywhere.

Meanwhile my attention is focused not only on the boss but on trying to revive any downed members, trying to aim my ground target stuff, trying to maneuver into position to use my short range AoE support skills (while everyone else is running around like fools away from me), or just plain running away from some add because even the trash mobs kill you in 2 – 3 hits.

Does the boss telegraph his scorpion wire move? probably, but I honestly don’t know because I can never see him clearly through all the spam, and even if he does I can’t spend 100% of the time looking at him alone because I need to pay attention to other stuff too.

(of course the real answer is nobody actually kills that boss anyway because he’s easily skippable and only drops garbage)