Guild Wars 2

GummiBear.2756:

Caeledh.5437:

The only potential problem could be players who already have the max number of slots. They might need to alter a few database tables to accommodate them.

Shouldn’t be too hard to change, just up the number of possible slots on any account by 1, and then give everyone a slot, should be fairly easy to do

It might not be that simple.

From what I’ve heard the current max is an ‘odd’ number, most likely the max number permitted by that database field type. So to increase the character slot max they’d need to change the field type.

Mechanically it’s not complicated to change a field type. But every time you go up a level to accommodate bigger numbers the size of every value in that field gets a bit bigger. That’s going to impact slightly on optimization and performance somewhere. But in an online game that’s slightly x every player, which can add up.

Would it be worth everyone suffering a performance hit just to accommodate that small minority of players? Possibly not. They might instead choose to refund the value of a character slot to players who buy HoT and already have the max number of characters.

I find it varies considerably by profession. I don’t see it as universally bad.

Mesmer I particularly dislike. Guardian is ok. Thieves are good (probably thanks to initiative meaning you can ignore uw skills you don’t like) and I like how engineer kits (apart from flamethrower of course) function essentially the same under water as they do above.

And ele is pretty good – possibly for having double the choices of other profs.

All the replies to the effect that revenants are not super powerful are right of course, but I look at that glorious image of Rytlock conjuring the ghostly dragon and can so see that going to some peoples’ heads.

Not mine though

When it comes to RP some people will take liberties. It’s just the way of things. If you cross paths with an individual who thinks he is a dragon in an Asura’s body, RP that he’s just insane. However you’d that. Hopefully politely.

Ardid.7203:

Clocksmith

I like it.

Scoobaniec.9561:

What makes ppl think that they wont be able to put racial skill in?

Because the best available info to hand is we won’t be able to select individual utilities. They’re set by legend. That may not be true but it’s what seems to be true and no dev has come along to say otherwise.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Im sure they will allow you to swap racial skills with the legend ones but lets be honest – you nerfing yourself at this point. Who in their mind would trade no cd decent ability for some useless junk?

If revenants do have racials I would expect them to use energy instead of cooldowns. And sometimes racials are more useful than your profession abilities. Depends on what you’re doing.

I’d bet heavily on getting a character slot with the expansion.

Their generosity – eg. not having a subscription AND not having a stinky pay-to-win cash shop – has played a significant role in ArenaNet’s success. Why would they start being stingy now?

The only potential problem could be players who already have the max number of slots. They might need to alter a few database tables to accommodate them.

Argon.1563:

1. No greatsword. They’re ugly, the animations are petty bad, and they’re generic, everybody and their mother can use a greatsword.

Cobalt was the first exotic I looted and perfect for my guardian. I love it. But I sort of agree. As a general rule greatswords are over-sized – some of them grossly – and I often feel like my character should be about to fall over the way they’re carrying it. I wouldn’t miss them on a revenant.

But I’m not hugely bothered by their weapon selection. I suppose I’d like a staff or at least one ‘caster’ type weapon.

I know racials are supposed to be useless but they’re not – because sometimes profession abilities are even more useless. I may have actually used my Sylvari racial elites more than profession ones for some of my characters – particularly my guardian. Tome of wrath isn’t dreadful but sometimes an extra pet is more useful.

Race-locked legends though? My immediate reaction was no, they’d never consider that. It would introduce a balance issue to race, which they otherwise don’t have to worry about.

However…. they could do it if each race had access to its own legend but the utilities were identical in effect and different only in name and visual effect.

For example, if there was a pet summon, humans could get a clockwork, asura a golem, sylvari a fern hound, norn a bear and charr a charr (from the legend’s warband). All pets could have identical stats.

The obvious downside though is it could make other professions jealous, because revenants would have more useful racials.

I think the other idea (suggested elsewhere) of a revenant spec which has a legend for each of the player races is a better idea. Nothing would be restricted by player race but you could choose to play your own race’s legend.

GummiBear.2756:

What you are describing yes is freedom when using skills in combat, but it is still very limited freedom in how to build your character, we already on current classes have certain weapons etc that are very very bad to the point of being useless, this will be an issue EVEN more on revenant since you might be lacking crucial “abbilites” for battle (like stun breaks or condition removal etc) if using certain weapons and/or legends, if they do now allow changing of the utilities

Build is the key word because it simply does not apply to revenants in the same way that you’re used to.

For most of the current professions, combat is extremely repetitive because you run a ‘build’ – certain equipment, weapons, utilities – and then execute pretty much the same rotation of abilities in the same order in every fight in large part to make the most of cooldowns.

Because revenant utilities and elites use energy instead of cooldowns, they’re not limited like other professions. For starters they have two healing / utilities / elite bars, one for each equipped legend. So that’s 6 utilities and 2 elites to choose from.

Going back to the point I made earlier, there aren’t really many that types of abilities. Damage, healing, conditions, condition-removers, buffs, crowd control. If another profession wants to specialise in say, condition-removal, generally (except for eg. necros) they need to slot several condition-removing utilities (because of cooldowns). A revenant only needs 1 – which they can use repeatedly (energy permitting).

Ok, you might not be able to choose individual utilities, but you only need 1 utility for whatever you want to focus on. So within the 6 (+ 2 elites) from the two legends you equip, you should be able to get the range of abilities you want.

Look at Jallis. He has a slow + taunt, aoe damage, aoe damage + weaken + stability, and a damage reducer for yourself and allies. He has everything except ally condition removal and ally healing and if those are important for your ‘build’ you’d simply equip a different legend.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I also think you are expecting far too much out of specializations. Keep in mind that specs aren’t new classes and only a small amount of the original class is likely to be lost in the spec so it still has to be able to play 80% like the original.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Specialization

“Specializations are a progression mechanic available to professions. Initially each profession will have one specialization, providing access to a new weapon, elite skill, healing skill, and a set of utility skills. Specializing keeps base profession skills and traits in addition to the new ones provided by that specialization, while offering new profession mechanics or changing existing ones.”

Same weapon skills, new healing, utilities and elite. Engineers are not 80% weapon skills. It’s the other way around. Specs also possibly have new profession mechanics.

There’s plenty of room there for a golemancer. It could be like ranger pets (replacing toolbelt skills), though we’d probably be assembling rather taming them. Or they could be like elementalist pet (i.e. utility skills).

Personally I think they should be available pre level 80. a) Why make players wait, really? There could be a lot of players who want to play but have no interest in the base prof. b) It’s potentially a significant barrier to sales. If a former player is interested by the specs but hasn’t levelled their characters to 80, they might just think it not worth the time / effort.

That said, if they are at level 80 I would bet on there being some kind of story and quest to go with it. The sole spec we know is druids and presently they don’t really exist in GW2. So there’s got to be some explanation for how we can suddenly become them.

Story is such a big part of the game’s appeal. Just having players visit a trainer to pick up their new spec would be a huge wasted opportunity.

Menaka.5092:

You don’t need to level up to “judge” any profession in GW2. Just finish the introductive tutorial (up to level 2) and jump in the pvp lobby. There you can tinker all the base traits, all the weapons and utility skills.

I strongly disagree. Some traits can significantly alter how a profession plays. Theorycrafting from the wiki can give you some idea but actually I’ve found actually playing with them with is necessary to get an accurate feel for a profession.

Used to be easier back when you could get at least one GM trait by level 40.

discosoc.6510:

I’m not a hardcore player, but looking to give the game another shot in preparation for the expansion (if I stick with it). One of the problems I’ve had with the game is not really identifying or “connecting” with any of the classes. I typically play heavy melee tank types, but GW2 doesn’t really have tanks and the “heavy melee” builds seem kind of boring.

I’ve had the same problem with GW2 since launch. There’s things I like and hate about all the professions and none are the ‘full package’ for me. So I’ve only ever played on and off.

But I came back and levelled my mesmer (and a few other profs) to 80 in preparation for the expansion. So I can try to answer some of your questions.

discosoc.6510:

So what’s the deal? What role is this class supposed to fill? I can’t do damage. I can’t solo anything for crap.

As with most classes, it really depends on your traits and equipment.

The shatter skills can be a major source of AOE damage. With a scepter you summon a clone every 3 hits. There’s a utility which summons 2 clones. There’s a trait which summons a clone when you dodge. Other traits boost shatter damage and crit chance. Invest in the final trait line and you drop the cooldown of shatter skills by 30%. With the right traits you can also reduce many phantasm cooldown times from 20 seconds down to 12.

The trick if you go that way is to quickly summon 3 clones and or phantasms at the beginning of a fight, shatter, summon more and shatter again if it isn’t already dead.

Otherwise what I tend to do is largely ignore clones (or just use them as disposable distractions), summon phantasms and use the F1 shatter as a finisher. Pop it when the mob’s health is low. Keep the other shatters up my sleeve for emergencies. You can also trait up to boost phantasm damage and rate of fire.

If your pets are dieing too quickly, there’s a trait which boosts their health 20% and a signet passive which boosts it by 50%. I often use it – especially when fighting vets or champs.

Oddly enough I found the staff to be very good for solo’ing. I was using swords and the greatsword (more suited for aoe) and not enjoying it. Scepter is ok but I don’t love it. Then I switched to staff and the fun started.

I know most of the staff abilities are aoe oriented but it has the only clone which does actual damage (condition rather than direct). That means you can instantly pop 3 damage dealing pets (1 with alternate weapon then switch to staff for 2 more). Then I keep chaos armour and storm in reserve for emergencies or unexpected adds. The only thing you have to be careful with is accidentally jumping backwards into other mobs with the staff clone summon.

PvE zerg is a challenge for mesmers. Summon clones / phantasms on vets and champs and shatter quickly – aoe will probably hit trash mobs. Greatsword has a bunch of aoe abilities and there’s a trait to give an extra bounce to number 2. It can be hard getting its auto-attack to hit multiple targets though. Try to select a mob on the far side of a crowd it’s often dead before can hit it.

Mantra of pain is an aoe and can be fired pretty regularly. You can put it on auto instead of the default 1 ability from the weapon set. It may not be the most efficient way to do damage but you’ll at least get some kill credits (xp, loot etc.).

Personally I’m not sure how value adding this would be.

Presently there are a lot of pets which you never see, because they’re … well not pointless but not optimal. And there’s a small handful of pets you see everywhere.

More would be nice but also possibly pointless if they’re not all equally useful.

muckshifter.9731:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_pet_locations

You know there’s two lists on that page? Below the ‘most accessible’ is a more comprehensive list.

I recently levelled my ranger to 80 and browsing through that list I see lots of locations where I spotted juvies. Some of those entries may be out of date but definitely not all.

After I tame a juvie I know it disappears from the game for me. Does it disappear for all players? If so maybe you’ve been unlucky and checked a few locations too soon after someone else just tamed there.

VodCom.6924:

Caeledh.5437:

I’ll make this point again.

As said in previous POI livestreams, NONE OF THIS IS OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED.

That’s a bit rude dearie.

I didn’t say anything that was unconfirmed. Utilities don’t have cooldowns. There’s only one with a 5 second cooldown which is freakishly short by utility standards. They use a shared energy resource.

All of this is confirmed. Taken from in-game screenshots.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_revenant_skills

The only thing that’s unclear is whether Revenants have any choice in the specific utilities they can equip for each legend or if each legend only has 1 healing, 3 utilities and 1 elite total.

Nothing I said hinges on that. The point I was making that even if there is no choice in legend utilities revenants still easily have the most flexibility and freedom of any profession when it comes to utilities.

So all this complaining about revenants being too restricted and such is completely bonkers.

Nike.2631:

The “need to lose” stuff comes from a very simple cause: the specializations NEED to not be more powerful than the base class and that includes the power of choice.

Then engineers would need to lose a few kits and have cooldowns applied to them and warriors need to lose about half a dozen weapons and elementalists… I wouldn’t even know where to start. Otherwise by your standards there is massive power imbalance between classes.

Seriously, specs getting one extra weapon wouldn’t be a big deal. Would anyone really not play the base profession JUST because it has one less weapon set to choose from? You can only equip so many at a time anyway. It’s a non-issue.

People would play the base profession regardless if that happened to suit their current mood, preferences, needs etc.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Caeledh.5437:

Personally I don’t see anything yet which is ‘alarming’ in the revenant traits. The only thing which ‘alarms’ me is the statement made in the mmorpg.com article which said ArenaNet weren’t creating legend-based trait lines because they wanted to force players to legend swap as often as possible rather than focus on one. But here we have two revealed legend-based trait lines. Mmm.

Do we? I see one trait that actually goes with a Legend. They may have similar themes and synergy, but in no way do you have to equip Jallis to get use out of their Toughness line, nor do you have to have traits in the Toughness line to make use of Jallis.

To clarify, I didn’t mean trait lines with traits which only affected a single legend. That would be … odd for this game. I said legend-based, not legend-restricted.

Corruption is clearly based on Mallyx and retribution on Jalis. If you were keen on being as tanky and conditiony as possible you’d probably trait up both lines. I was not expecting that based on the mmorpg.com article.

VodCom.6924:

And for those who doubt CD is an issue in PvE, I shall remind them that when you create a game with 15 different stats sets, it’s a bit of a shame if only 1 sees the light of the day. Having 2 diferent optimal stat sets (say berserker and sinister) would be much better for everyone (more choices and more replayability).

Exactly.

Brother Grimm.5176:

The “horrific” state of CD in this game is WAY over-hyped and exaggerated by those players that want their CD builds to be as valued as Zerker builds in ALL modes of the game. I don’t recall where Anet ever announced this was a goal they were pursuing (or should pursue).

I don’t recall Anet ever announcing they’d created more than a dozen stat sets for equipment but deliberately designed the game to make most of them useless.

It’s clearly unintended and qualifies as a problem. If nothing else it is a stain on their reputation as good game designers – which for the most part they are.

I’ll make this point again.

Revenants already have THE most freedom and flexibility when it comes to utilities. Not only do they have double the number thanks to being able to equip two legend stances, but they use a shared energy resource rather than cooldown timers.

That means you can employ utilities or not based on whether they’re actually useful in combat (assuming you have the energy) rather than making the most of cooldowns.

Take guardian for example. If they want condition cleansing on utilities they need to trait for it up to GM in a particular line and equip multiple shouts, on 20 second plus cooldowns. So at most they can pop off 3 cleanses in a 20 second period with utilities.

A revenant could with a single utility cleanse do the same simply by not wasting energy on anything else if lots of cleanses are required. That’s three for the price of one, in a profession which gets double the number of utilities!

Damage, CC, cleanses, buffs, heals. That’s what utilities do. Energy fuels them all. No cooldowns. Replication is redundant.

I’ve literally just a couple of hours ago made my first warrior so I don’t know a lot about them. But with other professions I know that seemingly useless traits can become useful if you match them with particular other traits and stats.

Eg. you want all the toughness boosts replaced with protection. Well toughness stacks in strength and protection only in duration so if you already have protection from another source they’d become useless. Plus it’s possible these traits are intended for players with low toughness (who would benefit most) like the 99.9% of the population who wears full berserker.

My point is traits might not be any use to you with your particular play style and gear but could still be useful to others.

What we don’t know – but would be interesting – are the statistics which ArenaNet would have. They’d record what traits players have equipped and would know which ones see little to no use.

lordkrall.7241:

You seem to imply that the HoT announcement was due to ESOs B2P announcement.

The announcement, no. Obviously not. HoT was always going to be announced.

The timing, yes. All signs point to that.

lordkrall.7241:

Which makes no sense whatsoever, seeing as the HoT announcement was quite clearly planned over a week before the ESO announcement, even if it didn’t happen until a few days after.

That’s completely illogical. It doesn’t follow at all that the HoT announcement date was set in stone the moment they revealed it to a smaller subset of players. They couldn’t have sat on it indefinitely but they didn’t need to pin down a public announcement date. Just like they haven’t pinned down a launch date.

It’s also not like it was a nice round number, is it? 11 days between selective and public reveal. Not a week. Not 10 days. It was 11 days.

Lily.1935:

Artificer.

This to me sounds the best.

Of the ones I’ve seen suggested, I’d agree.

Other than the hammer the only thing we know about them is the little clockwork helicopter drones which are, from a technological perspective, more delicate and intricate than anything engineers have. Artificer speaks to that delicacy and intricacy.

Edit – oh yes already a crafting profession. Mmm.

There’s no actual need for the new specs to lose any weapons. The fact that the devs didn’t explictly say they would makes me think they won’t. Not guaranteed but that’s what I’m inclined to think at this point.

The really interesting thing there is players getting defiance. That could make PvE encounters generally so much more interesting. And of course PvP too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Nike.2631:

That actually pretty bad alphabetical scatter in your name space. They may even rename some before launch because of that.

As long as we still get the dragon. What we’ve seen of that one is terribly cool and I’ve a friend who would be bitterly disappointed if she didn’t get to play them. Especially if I was in any way responsible for their disappearance.

Honestly, I never made the triple D connection until I saw them listed as Dwarf and Demon stance in the wiki. I’d been thinking of them as Jalis and Mallyx.

Maybe they could use Iron, Unyielding and Draconic instead?

Kal Spiro.9745:

Sharing technology and using technology others make available is not exactly the same thing. The Asura are very secretive of their tech and don’t readily share it with outsiders. Scarlet being a very solo exception.

I make the exact same point again. I’ll even use one of the same examples.

Asura waypoints and gates are EVERYWHERE and EVERYONE uses them. That doesn’t mean ANYONE other than the Asura know precisely how they work or that the Asura wouldn’t implement safeguards – most likely explosive and / or corrosive – to protect their knowledge.

Creating a bunch of golems and other assorted control devices and giving them out to engineers of all races does not require sharing any knowledge of how to replicate the technology or leaving any room for other races to reverse engineer them.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Golems are a Racial asura skill, they won’t be a specialization.

OMG worst argument ever.

Plant magic is a Sylvari racial skill. Plant magic will never be a specialization.

…. except for Druids.

lordkrall.7241:

Caeledh.5437:

IMO ArenaNet announced HoT when they did to draw attention away from ESO. Until now GW2 has been THE premier B2P MMO and the payment model has been a big part of its success. Now ESO’s moving to the same one.

HoT was officially announced on 24 January after people being invited via an in-game add on 13 January, ESO “B2P” was announced on 21 January which is more than a week after ArenaNet told us about the announcement.

Question – do you follow ESO at all? I appreciate based on those few dates it may seem my theory is backwards but the truth is it isn’t. Here’s all the facts.

The first clear indication of ESO going B2P was when they removed the six-month subscription option in December last year. The second was when they recalled unsold boxes from retailers in mid January. Both occurred prior to HoT’s official announcement or any public hint of it.

Granted, Zenimax didn’t officially announce the payment model change until after a very small number of people had already been told about HoT, but the ArenaNet execs would have to be every kind of stupid not to know ESO was soon going B2P.

And sure enough, HoT was publicly announced a mere 3 days after ESO officially announced going B2P. That’s perfect timing if you want to distract attention away from a competitor – which ESO will soon be.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not criticising them. That’s the nature of business and there’s nothing immoral about it. Purely from unselfish perspective of informing potential customers, it’s good to get the message out there that “this is what’s coming to our game” so they can make informed decisions.

The timing could just be a coincidence. Those happen. But given the multi-million dollar nature of this business so do strategic PR decisions and I’d bet this is one.

I was just looking at the revenant entry in the wiki and noticed something peculiar. Legendary Dwarf Stance. Legendary Demon Stance. And it seems likely one of the unannounced will be Legendary Dragon Stance.

That’s a lot of D’s lining up there.

Are the mists alphabetized by race and Rytlock landed in the D’s? Does Rytlock have a D-fetish?

If the pattern holds true…. that leaves us with Dredge and Destroyer as the remaining intelligent D-races. Though I don’t think we should disregard all of the animal races. Dolphins are generally regarded to be highly intelligent and at least in some respects to have more sophisticated brains than humans.

So it’s conceivable there could, amongst the dolphins, be individuals who were legendary in their watery lifetimes and now dwell in the mists. The possibilities for legendary dolphin utilities are mind-boggling.

Maybe revenants don’t get aquatic weapons. Maybe they get aquatic legends. Drake could also work. Oh dear I’m beginning to take this seriously…

Mabel Pines.3150:

Snaff…
/length of 15

That would be cool. I’d love to have a bunch of Asura tech type tricks. And it could really make sense from a story perspective.

Tevesh.1265:

Heck, anet repeatedly screwed pve/wvw players with balance, like when they introduced celestila runes ‘for fun’ and they turned out to be quite good on some classes for wvw, yet they are not removing the two months time gate to get a set of them which makes no sense.

Please pardon my ignorance if I’ve missed something. I’ve googled and couldn’t find celestial runes. There are a few which add to all stats but they seem not to be player or account bound and easily purchased from the marketplace.

So I think you mean celestial equipment and the time gate refers to the 1 charged quartz crystal per day thing?

I agree it sucks a bit. I’ve only been an on and off player so have a stash of about 90 so far. I won’t even consider wasting them on exotic gear. Saving them for ascended.

It does make some sense though – just not from your perspective. One of ArenaNet’s challenges is keeping players logging in daily. This is one of their weapons in that kitten nal.

Unfair, sure (ele and guardian are two of my faves), annoying, definitely. But not completely irrational.

Uuni.3561:

As far as I know traits are supposed to let the players create more playstyles and/or further define their builds.

IMO that’s the cover story. In effect the way traits, weapons and utilities all ‘synergize’ the trait system is a convoluted way of implementing a limited number of optimal specialisations (not the HoT kind) for each profession.

Uuni.3561:

-Why are passive procs a bad thing?-
You get rewarded for doing nothing. It doesn’t really matter how the proc activates as long as you have no control over when it goes off. Getting rewarded or punishing your opponent with no thought should not be part of any well designed game, it’s just abhorrently bad game design. It’s 100% no fun to fight against and it’s not really that fun to use either as often you don’t even see them go off.

You choose to equip the trait or not so you absolutely have some control over when it goes off.

Uuni.3561:

Instead of rewarding you with a taunt on a good play, you get rewarded for getting hit by a CC. Your opponent can’t see this one coming and will get punished for trying to attack you.

Everything about your post makes it seem like you’re not actually using these traits yourself. It makes it seem like you hate being subjected to them by other players who use them against you, to good effect.

Uuni.3561:

How to make a trait like this (passive proc) interesting? Instead of making it proc off of a random chance or a passive trigger, make it a situational trigger.

example:

• “Eye for an eye – when you are hit by a disable while you have stability, taunt that foe for a short duration "

I don’t see any improvement here. In fact I think this is a massive step backwards in a whole other direction.

One blind alley some game designers go up – I think Funcom made this mistake with AoC and TSW – is creating these kinds of convoluted conditional interactions between abilities which creates gameplay where you often feel like you have to take two steps sideways to take one step forward. It’s not most people’s idea of fun.

GW2 has a bit of this in the mesmer but IMO it fits the profession’s theme so I don’t think that’s a problem. I just sometimes need a lie down after playing my mesmer.

Personally I don’t see anything yet which is ‘alarming’ in the revenant traits. The only thing which ‘alarms’ me is the statement made in the mmorpg.com article which said ArenaNet weren’t creating legend-based trait lines because they wanted to force players to legend swap as often as possible rather than focus on one. But here we have two revealed legend-based trait lines. Mmm.

psizone.8437:

Honestly, I think Jalis will be as support oriented as we’ll get considering he has party wide damage reductions and stability on a short cooldown (if you watch your energy levels anyway)

ArenaNet themselves use the term ‘support’ to mean a certain thing – a focus on buffing and healing. I’m sure every legend will have a trick or two to help their allies but it seems like one will be more specialised in that.

Jalis, in their own words, they’ve described as tanky. So I doubt he’s the support the legend. Though since revenant utilities all draw from the same energy pool rather than being on cooldowns I’m sure a support-minded player could ignore all of his damage utilies and just use his damage reduction one.

Also take a look at his trait line. Sure one of the stats it improves is healing but notice how all of the traits are self-oriented. Not a single one (directly) helps allies. It’s lots of self-heals ,s elf-protection buffs and a few taunts, i.e. incredibly tanky.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retribution_

Who do I think it will be? There’s so many dead ‘legends’ that we can only really take wild stabs in the dark as to who the support one will be.

I think Ventari would be cool and I’d love to have some plant-themed abilities – but maybe non-Sylvari would prefer to see someone else?

Kal Spiro.9745:

Would not make sense for anything but an Asura, so no.

That’s merely a minor hurdle – not an insurmountable problem. Exercise your imagination. ArenaNet write the story. They have the creative license to make something like this work.

The five player races already share technology. Let’s just highlight two examples.

The existing engineer profession seems to be based on charr and maybe human tech. That’s including Asura engineers. IMO what doesn’t make sense is Asura engineers not employing cough unquestionably superior Asura tech. But that’s a whole different barrel of kittens.

And there’s the Asura gates and waypoints. EVERYONE uses Asura tech.

From a story point of view I think it would actually make a lot of sense for a new engineer spec to focus on Asura technology. In the interests of winning the war the Asura decide to share more of their toys. Not a big stretch of the imagination, eh?

That said, based on the teensy, tiny bit of info we have – a hammer wielding engineer with little flying clockwork looking drones – I don’t think it’s likely for their first specialization. But I think it would be very cool for a later one.

Since we can apply whatever skin we want to weapons I think this is a total non-issue.

IMO the existing legendaries are amongst the ugliest and silliest looking weapons in the game. If I ever got lucky enough to loot a precursor and then do all the work to legendize it, I would go into my home alone and equip it so I could see it once, then apply a skin before equipping it in public.

Thankfully there’s no shortage of other weapon skins I do like.

Tman.6349:

Conditions are fine except in two areas of the game. In fact, they excellent in the others. The problem areas are zerg events where you have a ton of other allies and/or a timer which makes me wonder why you’d be running ‘damage over time’, when the sheer numbers makes attrition completely silly and nothing more than a roleplay.

See if you can wrap your head around this.

The game has abilities, traits, equipment and upgrades which all support a focus on conditions. And it works for solo or group PvE. It is therefore reasonable for some players to be equipped and traited accordingly.

It’s not their fault the game design has this rather significant flaw. And it is that. Let’s not pretend otherwise. The game has a sophisticated crafting system with a lot of variety in the stats you can apply to gear….. rendered largely meaningless in large part because of this problem.

ArenaNet could remove everything except zerker gear from the game tomorrow and a large proportion of the playerbase wouldn’t care.

Tman.6349:

The other is dungeons where people want to clear things quickly and question you motives as a ‘team player’ who makes the conscious choice that they’d like to kill things slowly. Use conditions where they’re effective and use power where it is effective/needed. OK. Now that we’ve got past the psychological inistantce of PHIW and using the wrong builds for the wrong content, we can agree that conditions are fine.

That’s terribly myopic and I’m quite certain not what ArenaNet intended. Condition damage can be perfectly effective in dungeons. Different kinds of conditions stack and dish out their damage at the same time as your also doing direct damage.

The minor hurdle is coordination. It’s precisely because condition damage can be so brutal that most stack in duration and not intensity. So it’s just a matter of players talking to each other and making sure they’re not all focused on eg. burning damage, before getting started.

And while there are a lot of impatient zerktards who would literally rather murder their own rather grandmother than gasp waste time talking to other players, they’re not the entire player population.

Makes me feel sorry for those poor necros and mesmers.

Obviously they’re too far from release to give us an ETA. And that’s wise. So many MMOs have given release dates too early and when they don’t materialise on time there’s various downsides.

IMO ArenaNet announced HoT when they did to draw attention away from ESO. Until now GW2 has been THE premier B2P MMO and the payment model has been a big part of its success. Now ESO’s moving to the same one.

I’d have to say it’s worked a little on me. I’ll probably still give ESO another look once the sub goes but I also came back to GW2 and finished levelling a few professions to 80 which I otherwise would not have done. And some of the new stuff in HoT is shiny enough that I’m strongly considering just sticking with GW2.

Interesting idea and I don’t hate it. But it would be a mammoth task.

Armours were designed from the ground up to be dyed. Every piece is broken into 4 sections for the dyes. Weapons would need the same treatment.

warbignime.4610:

I do not care about weapon dyes too much, nor I think devs are working on it. If you check your wardrobe, you should notice that some skins are purely same model, but different colors. Implement weapon dyes destroy the purpose of those skins.

True but what’s also true is stuff changes.

Hypothetically speaking if the developers were to do this they could just compensate players. Take the market value in gold for the skins which become obsolete at the time of announcing this feature and pay it to affected players. Or some other comparable compensation. You get the idea.

Mar.4839:

Caeledh.5437:

Why would you expect them to do that? Existing professions haven’t had any new weapons given to them. Except of course via….. the upcoming specialisations. Which is where I’d expect to see revs getting new legends.

Specializations are supposed to change the class mechanic or offer a new one (says here on the GW2 Wiki) so if Revenant’s mechanic is channeling legends already then the new specialization should be something different.

Reading comprehension failure there.

What the wiki says is new specialisations will offer new profession mechanics or alter existing ones. Go watch the promo trailer again. Rangers have animal pets, yes? Looks like the druid does too.

There’s no reason to believe the revenant spec won’t have something to do with legends. Quite the opposite. Based on the single certain example we have, specialisations are thematically linked to the base profession. Rangers are into nature. In a different way so are druids. Same focus, different approach.

So the revenant spec could channel legends in a different manner. It could be something simple like flipping the base design – one equipped legend at a time but two weapon sets. That could be something about devoting more focus to a single legend.

Or it could be something more exotic like…. giving us paired legendary opposites and introducing a balance mechanic to energy. When your bar is full for one legend it’s empty for the other.

There are many ways like this that new specializations could maintain their focus on legends. And there isn’t much else known about the mists that offers an obvious alternative for a new revenant spec.

Not that I’ve anything against all the races getting a legend but I don’t think there’s enough room in the current scheme.

We’ve seen two already, reasonably can’t expect to see more than about 4 or 5 based on what they’ve said, and at least one of the remaining is likely to be a dragon based on screenshots. That only leaves room for 2 more.

Although there is their specialisation. 5 legends, 5 player races. Perhaps the revenant spec could do it. And I do like the idea of Ventari for the Sylvari.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Revenants have the fewest skills per bar…

IMO there’s too much focus on quantity.

You can execute ONE ability at a time. Elementalists and fully kitted engineers can keep their gazillion abilities. There’s damage, CC and healing. All eles and engs get is a 1001 variations on those.

Revenants may have fewer utilities to choose from but they have unparalleled control over them and that’s priceless.

They are not forced into the exact same rotation of abilities every single fight. If it makes sense to do so they can ignore some altogether and focus on others. That’s where their variety comes into play. For the PvP nuts that means regardless of your fewer abilities no other player can truly predict what you’ll do with them.

I much prefer this to most of the existing profession designs.

I know not everyone will agree but my favourite is the Sylvari racial t3.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Warden_Axe.jpg

Invictus.1503:

I saw that too and can’t help but agree that the theory has merit. I really hope that isn’t the case though, because that would leave very little room for expansion later for adding any other legends.

Why would you expect them to do that? Existing professions haven’t had any new weapons given to them. Except of course via….. the upcoming specialisations. Which is where I’d expect to see revs getting new legends.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

We kinda had the confirmation that we will have 4 legends: since 2 trait lines are each for Mallyx and Jalis, the 3rd one being for the profession, it is easy to assume that the next two trait lines will be used for 2 more legends.

That makes perfect sense given existing professions but I wonder what this is supposed to mean then? Or if this is just mmorpg.com not know their kitten from their elbow.

“The team also tried to add passive perks to each Legend, but it just didn’t work and could tend to bog people down into using just one legend. They want the Revenant to focus on switching during combat, as that’s where the feel the most interesting strategies and tactics come from.”

Torsailr.8456:

From what they said the utility skills are locked to the legend and there will be enough legends to match with your playing style.

There aren’t going to be a lot. I wouldn’t expect many more than four. And because of the energy mechanics the by design optimal play style is jumping back and forth between two as frequently as possible.

I’m sorry I can’t point you to the specific quote but they have said that some abilities in existing professions – not just the new specs – are going to be reworked to take advantage of the new tech.

Relax

BrunoBRS.5178:

it doesn’t exactly see a lot of play for that purpose in PvP either, since the window is so small. plus, guards in PvP are usually either on mace or scepter, if they’re not using 2h weapons.

Not too surprising if I think about it. I almost never use the sword in PvE either. It’s ok with a torch but everything else is just a little bit better.

I made the PvP assumption because at least I can see it being theoretically useful there v eg. ranger / thief / whoever else channelled projectile attacks.

BrunoBRS.5178:

VocalThought.9835:

The “Professional Trait Line” will be for recharge time between legends, I assume.

yeah, i think that would be the most balanced class mechanic they could tie to the trait line. energy generation (or starting energy on swap) are both too strong to be influenced by trait points, though i expect plenty of traits that affect those (not just “generate an extra 3 energy per second”, but stuff like “upkeep skills consume 2 less energy per second” )

They’re not different.

5 base regen per second. 50% bar refill on swap. Assuming the standard 10 second cooldown on swapping legends (as per weapons) then by swapping legends as often as possible after burning through all of your energy, you double your energy regen rate.

A trait line which reduces legend swap cooldown also effectively boosts energy regen rate. Not that I think it was a bad idea. Just saying this is a false distinction.

Ariete.6509:

What I understood was that there three states: channelling legend A, channelling legend B (whatever both may be) AND a state when you’re not channeling neither and thus using the utilities/elite/heal you had picked.

Still my conjecture nonetheless

No that’s definitely wrong. Have a read of the polygon and mmorpg.com articles.

phys.7689:

at least try to come up with something fairly simple that will achieve the same effect.

I thought I did and posted it but it seems to have either gone unnoticed or been considered so dreadful as not bear commenting upon.

Make dungeons like the current dailies. Rather than each dungeon path being it’s own daily with it’s own reward, have the game randomly select a few dungeon paths each day and provide a bigger reward for properly completing those (eg. killing all mobs).

The reward / time for full completion could be perfectly equivalent to the current scheme.

If the game also disabled skipping cutscenes for the selected dailies that would fix the problem of newer players never being able to watch them (without aggravating the speedsters).

Everyone could still earn rewards at the same rate. Speed runs would still be possible but there’d be much, much less incentive to do them. You wouldn’t be (speed) running the same dungeons every day so it might feel less repetitive. Newer players should have an all round better experience.