Guild Wars 2

Alright, alright, nevermind. Back to topic.

Reading through it, I’d say overall there’s one big glaring issue with your ideas:

• They’re needlessly complicated.

In nearly all cases you staple additional elements onto a skill, which just hurts clarity of purpose. Ideally you don’t want skills doing a lot of things at the same time. That is to say, it’s “bad enough” that EM scales with the number of conditions, worst would be if it also happens to be a blast skill and cause a PBAE condition.

Everything and the kitchen sink…

Plus, I feel that you just overall want to make each legend slightly stronger at its theme, which is what I agree should happen, but I’d make it in such a way that it’s less changes + more useful for “hybrid” setups, meaning that even if I have full power gear I should be able to heal somewhat decently while in Ventari.

What I’d do is add passive modifiers to each legend:

• Shiro: 35% more direct damage done, attacks which would not crit already given your current precision will crit but with minimum Ferocity (meaning you cannot just stack power and ferocity then be in Shiro all day).
• Mallyx: Gain 300 condition damage and all your direct attacks have a chance to cause bleeding. Gain 10% condition duration and another 20% which does not stack with any other one you might have.
• Ventari: Your highest stat instead becomes your healing power if it is higher.
• Jallis: You gain 500 Toughness and Vitality, and cannot lose more than 20% of your health in 0,5 seconds, no matter how many targets attack you with whatever amount of attacks. However, your Power, Precision and Condition Damage is reduced by 40%, down to the minimum.
• Glint: Frankly I have no clue how to salvage this. I would remove it entirely and go back to the drawing board.

Now, these are massive buffs. Plus I’d remove the energy cost on weapons. But it gives a single, central point where to read up (the legend tooltip), and overall keeps complexity lower and as a result of applying to all skills in a legend makes each one more focused, narrower. Which is good, the 2-legends setup nature should be a centerpiece of the class.

In return, I back when I thought this up said to remove all minor traits from Revenant traitlines with no compensation, but hrm… not sure. Anyhow I’d trade out something among the traits for this, as traits generally work against the hybrid/roleswapper nature of the Revenant.

Gomes.5643:

While that concepts was kind of scratched in GW2, Nintendo has pushed it to the limit.

I wish they hadn’t given up on elemental weapons. It was such a unique, cool, concept for a MMORPG. But instead of making them powerful single-shot items, they’re just “yeah” now. They exist, but they’re mostly useless unless a fight specifically requires you to use one.

Odokuro.5049:

TL/DR: Let’s make GW2 into a Zelda Clone.

Honestly at this point making it into a WoW clone would be a massive improvement already. Nevermind taking the world building from Zelda, which is frankly fantastic.

messiah.1908:

thanks but if they dont know i hope they dont comment as it probably be qq, rubbish lol

Wow you have an attitude.

I guess we’re all way too rubbish for you then. But since you’re so kitten l33t, why would you need changes to the stances? They’re probably all OP as hell in your hands already. Right?

jonemirant.1653:

This statement is essentially the same as “there is a lot of money in the economy and the banks are flooded with cash, you just happen to be poor.”

Not in the least bit actually, quite the opposite in fact. The supply is outpacing demand, which means the regulated and equalized income we all have is more than players use up.

Yes you can ofc trade excess volume, but you also gain it just from logging in, and everyone does that. It’s not like with RL cash where the richest 1% have 80% or so of the money, hence they make most of the income due to owning the money to generate income with.

By itself, the system in fact ruins someone stockpiling, unless demand increases. Slowly there’s less and less value in stockpiled mystic coins, as all players gain exactly the same share of new coins.

It’s not that trenchcoats are “good”.

It’s that each armor class has an underlying “base model”, a mesh the textures are applied to. The textures can then in turn make parts of it see-through, but the “volume” and “shape” of the model is always that of a trenchcoat for medium armor (yes, probably even for the ones which look different! They just hide parts of the trenchcoat, the pieces are still there in see-through).

Hence, most armor is a trenchcoat, because given the base model it’s much easier to create.

As to why we only have one base model per armor class? Probably related to the now… 12-13 years old engine?

If there’s one thing very consistent about this engine, it’s a lack of consistency. :P

Something which never ceases to amaze me is how much players will argue that there ought to be some trivially available way to increase run speed.

But, no one ever seems to consider that if this is so universally required, why not just increase the base movement speed? I mean that avoids all the extra stuff.

Ragnarox.9601:

Why don’t legendary weapons have same ability?

If I had to guess, it’s because the same person who hacked in the rune thing on armor doesn’t want to go through ~25 other items and do the same manual hack/fix to make them work.

Because knowing very little about this engine but being here for 4,5 years, I suspect this was done via a custom piece of assembler code which overwrites part of the server’s memory specific times. That’d be the level of hack I’m imagining here :P

Actually the KING games thing was about the use “XYZ Saga”, IIRC. And they got away with it. Which is just baffling.

Well, they were always said to be 300-350 people. And a common criticism is how slow development is.

Now that have 50-100 more, and you think it’ll make a ginormous difference all of a sudden? :P

For all we know, they hired a standing cleaning crew of 50 people because the others order that much pizza and never clean up their desks. As in: We know nothing about what the number means. :P

Hrm, with Stealth in particular I wish it had more use in PvE.

For Mass Invisiblity, I’d use this version for PvE only:

• Maximum number of targets: 50
• Duration: 15 seconds
• Radius: 900, centered on the Mesmer
• Cast time: 15 seconds, channeled, stealth lasts while targets stay in the radius and the mesmer keeps channeling.

This way it can be viably used to “hide” from enemies.

Ardid.7203:

Communication is key for every project, bussiness and endeavor in our world. In this case, to communicate doesn’t mean to obey or to blindly accept anything the players ask, but simply to let them know what is the plan, and to actually hear what they have to say about it, an then keep the best of the feedback.

One really good thing Blizzard did in this regard was have Ghostcrawler (for a long time) as a person who openly told players when their criticism was heard and discarded for being ludicrous.

It helps. Yes it’s the devs telling you “Nope!”, but at least you know they know about something, even if they disagree.

Well since in many games this’d be ticking checkboxes on a tool the devs use, it can’t be that simple here.

My guess?

Have to write Assembler-code which patches a running binary on the server, in-memory. No one has the source-code to the server any more, but they know how to run/stop it, so they have lots of the servers and you kill them one by one as you debug your code.

There is also classes like the Tempest or the Daredevil.

ANet develops by accretion. This means that instead of going back and fixing up existent systems, they’ll add a new one in the hopes that eventually it replaces the old one because players stop interacting with the old.

This is also how the new mini-zones coming with the LS work: Instead of being temporary, they’re permanent but quickly make themselves irrelevant so they can be left in without requiring much future work.

serow.6524:

They could start by giving each legend a F2 skill.

Or giving Herald a unique mechanic which isn’t as boring and lame as Facet of Nature.

Ithilwen.1529:

I don’t see it that way. If “do or suggest the right thing” means a suggestion to unilaterally downgrade Mesmer, then no I don’t wish to do it.

The suggestion being made is to have a major nerf in the “faith” of getting reworks on other skills. Further, the “hope” is that all the other classes would receive similar downgrades and reworks.

When balancing classes in a class-based game, you need to first consider theme and intent. From that, you derive your design. Then, once you have the design, you use that to do the implementation, and then you balance it.

This is strictly in that order. That is to say, if for whatever reason you modify the implementation, you have to re-consider all of the balance because the underlying foundation changed. It can even be you don’t have to do anything, but you have to consider it.

This also has a secondary implication: If you are conflicted between a change to say… design and balance, you have to choose design first. Because doing it the other way around means your change to balance is negated down the line (or well, again, might be, it’s quite likely).

In this case, a fair few people – me included – are lamenting a problem with design. You are then considering a problem with balance. Balance is however invalid in this regard as by saying we want to change the underlying design, we’ve already implied that a change to balance has to happen, it derives indirectly from design via the implementation.

Ithilwen.1529:

History tells me that ANET would simply cripple CS and not give anything in return. I’ve already dealt with years of being bottom tier after the huge glamour nerf.

No, I don’t want to see that again.

Let me ask you then: At what point does the ineptitude of the developer team you seem to be certain about tell you that you really ought to play something else?

Because it sounds to me like you really don’t see how this could ever improve, and then why invest time into a conceptually dead game?

Or in other words: Either I believe the devs are invested into fixing the game, in which case CS affecting elites is one of the worst balance design decisions among all classes, or I believe there’s no hope for balance improvements anyhow, in which case I’d just stop playing flat out because why bother.

Xillllix.3485:

I’m pretty sure that they have been milking GW2 for a while and have a large part of their team making assets for the next project. There is no way a team that large would come out with a small expansion pack like HoT.

That’s a really good point. Could be they started work on something like a Guild Wars 3 at the point or soon after HoT began, yeah.

Blaze.4692:

yeah a thief can move 1200 range but it can’t shoot 1200 range. I’m referring to skills that do damage.

No you didn’t. Read your original post. But independent of that, isn’t Scorpion Wire 1200 range?

Well about the festivals: I love SAB. Absolutely love it. Wish we’d get more worlds.

Only… when it was back now, I totally didn’t play it. Think I’ve spent all of 30 minutes in there. Why? Because I know the current worlds, and there’s nothing different than before. At the very least (no new worlds, alright, annoying as that is) I’d have expected a new set of achievements pertaining to the HoT and LS3 in some way, or combining some of it into SAB.

But there’s… nothing. Though to be fair that’s something I’m saying a lot about GW2 recently and I’m playing it very little as a result. The game is stale. Not on a content level even, I dislike the new maps because of how throwaway they feel (so rote they’re boring before you even entered a new one), but on a game level.

Ofc there’s little hype. What would be there to hype? A new gemstore outfit? There’s no massive class-reworks to bring old players back with, no underlying combat reworks, no base change to how WvW works including ripping out the entire game mode, nothing exciting.

Do you have a link to the build?

And the worst about the Desert Borderland is that it had the right ideas. Somewhere at the core, there’s some good fixes in there. Including the complicated walkways, because that effectively increases the map size and we got told further actual maps isn’t possible due to the engine.

Just that the implementation was botched, and now that it’s here it is the usual mix of hotfixes instead of actual reworks. But why I really do not know, maybe they’re just that short on manpower.

Lahemic.6097:

It’s still in its infancy, and is seeking to mature, but if it goes neglected, it’ll get moody.

This is the big problem of GW2 nowadays.

It plays and feels like a game freshly released. Lots of potential, tons of remaining issues, lots of work to do but can grow into something amazing quickly if issues are fixed in huge sweeps.

Only… this is 4,5 years after release. All of these things should have been fixed 2-3 years ago

[quote=6556741;Adry.7512:]

In either case, just don’t support the gambling. Means either we get sensibly sold weapon skins in the future as the current monetization model fails to generate enough money, or the whole thing folds and NCsoft can find a better business model for GW3.

Both are preferable, tbh.

Ithilwen.1529:

Ori, you have suggested major nerfs to Mesmer both here and on the PvP forum. In particular, making CS not affect elites.

I wish you’d consider more carefully. In my opinion, Mesmer is on the low end of acceptable for pvp as it is. Asking for nerfs , especially major ones, at this point is really counter productive.

That you feel underpowered in XYZ isn’t really a sensible reason to not want to improve a bad design situation.

In other words, CS on elites is flat out terrible, and should have never made it into the game to begin with. Now that it is, it should be removed as soon as humanly possible. Yes, we are already rather weak in many aspects, but that’s hardly a good reason to support a house of cards made from bad design. Fix bad designs even if they cause a further loss of power.

OriOri.8724:

I’m fine with no hype from Anet. I’m not quite as ok with hearing absolutely nothing. I just want a general roadmap. I want to know what direction this game is headed in.

Yeah, agreed. Teaser videos are pretty terrible (super-low information density, too).

But a written 2-3 year roadmap with rough quarterly deadlines for each step, that’d be kitten nice.

The new zones feel terrible as a result of that, yeah. Sure, nice, we are getting what people clamored a lot for especially in the first year, “Make new zones instead of re-cycling existing ones for living story”.

And yes, ofc, yay more landmass.

But while I can go back into the zones, they feel so purpose-designed, they feel immediately outdated once I’m done with the LS and got the maybe 3-4 items I want from the vendor. Their design just doesn’t feel like a natural part of the game world. It was ok when it was a single such zone, but now it also adds that it’s just… “rote”. Happens every time.

And I can’t begin to imagine how much dev time these zones must be eating up.

Yeah true, I just assumed it actually just casts a normal Winds at 3 targets nearby, as if I did that with the #1 skill. But you’re right, it’s probably a new effect which happens to share the effect and graphics, but otherwise has to be treated differently.

Fun stuff. Ah well, here’s to hoping they’ll fix it, already reported it with a screenshot and all. We need WP to make a video about this, it’d be fixed in hours.

For the iWarlock it’s even more weird, because that genuinely shoots an already existing attack. Which is affected, right? As in, Winds of Chaos turns to rainbows?

With the iDuelist, as OriOri said it might be because that attack didn’t exist in the game yet, and I suspect they’ll have to manually code each attack’s implementation of the legendary effects. But with iWarlock, how can that possible not work out of the box? O.o

Erm… Fay? I didn’t write about it not affecting the phantasm…

I am on about the new projectile which is shot on casting the skill. I was pretty certain it’d be affected, being an entirely normal projectile created by a weapon skill. As in, every other projectile on any class.

Amaimon.7823:

oh yes, lets put in lots of resources and money into a jumping puzzle that will be inaccessible 49 out of 52 weeks a year, instead of making a jumping puzzle for a map that will be open all 52 weeks a years. You wanna try that again?

No, why? I don’t see the connection between what I said and what you said? Yeah both cost time to make, but one is a USP useful for advertising the game, the other is a throwaway zone all but forgotten and reduced to one rather empty instance 2 weeks later.

(see, I can do that too :P )

Vayne.8563:

So it’s not just a matter of play time. That is there’s more to this game that differentiates it from other games, besides just it being casual.

Of course, but personal like/dislike isn’t something you can quantify for someone else. Hence that’s hardly a useful recommendation to the OP. For every person liking GW2 more than FF14 personally, there is probably someone for which it is the other way around.

Yes it’s a huge factor of which game you can get into, but it’s not useful to base advise on it.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Agreed so far. Was to post it myself – Reve is in dire need of hard hitting ranged dps weapon (since hammer dps isn’t high, and it’s generally a defense/control weapon).

Why would I use a melee weapon if I can hit hard from range? I know the historical answer of single-target-vs-multi-hit, but that no longer applies to most ranged attacks, they all multi-hit.

And GW2 lacks a proper balance to it’s underlying combat system, so there’s no inherent upside to being in melee range (compare early WoW: ranged had to stand still to DPS, melees could move out of AE effects but had to stack to the target and hence be in cleave range).

Cobrakon.3108:

PLz oh PLZ let there be another jumping puzzle.

There wasn’t a new world in SAB either, which was the chance to add a new jumping puzzle to the game.

Honestly, as someone who still plays nearly every day (if often only briefly), probably not.

That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its charms. It’s a very casual-friendly experience, so there are few alternatives if (like me) you’re strictly limited in gameplay time. But recently comparing FF14 and WoW, while there are plenty things GW2 does better than those, the relative amount of dev-attention needed in GW2 feels much much higher.

Or in other words, for being 4,5 years old, this game feels like it freshly released. “Has lots of potential” would be the subtitle I’d assign to it. Which is mighty fine, plus the game has good elements, but for a game this old is just a weird “achievement” to accomplish. The live-team development is all over the place, being so consistently inconsistent it has taken on a meme character, and also having absolutely baffling design decisions standing from release (like the amount of loot spammed at you).

Overall it is a good game, but as it is aging, I’d say skip.
Unless you absolutely have to play a MMO, and you’re limited on time so it needs to be one which is super-casual-friendly. Then GW2 is the right choice, yes.

And I don’t know why I expected any different, but of course the new projectile when casting Phantasmal Duelist isn’t affected.

Because why would anything ever be consistent? Ugh I’m way too annoyed right now, wish I had sold the completed weapon.

If anyone from ANet is reading this, can we at least get a fix for this any time… soon? Because it’s been a fairly long time now since that projectile was added, so um.. I seriously didn’t expect this to still be an issue, if it ever were. Plenty weeks to apply a fix since the change.

Honestly as with many class balance issues (not just with Mesmer), much comes down to a lack of class design.

That is to say, there’s no consistent theme, and even if there were, it’s not translated into skills / traits / weapons.

Nothing “fits”. It feels as if during development the developers back then (probably different ones than the current team) just threw hundreds upon hundreds of skills and traits at each class and then waited to see which “stuck”. If there’s a bug, remove the skill. If there’s a big balance issue, remove the skill. And so on.

So what remained was a hodgepodge of abilities which don’t really create a consistent class theme. Mesmers are purple and have pink butterflies, yes, but they’re not trickster, they’re not illusionists and they’re not debuffers nor disablers. Any of which could easily become the Mesmer’s overarching purpose, if the class were designed around a consistent theme.

However, 4,5 years in, it’s difficult to say “Just go back to the drawing board with the class”. I mean that’s what should happen, but you’d kitten thousands of people off, as 75%+ of skills, traits and so on would probably no longer exist.

For a smaller fix, I would exchange skill groups slowly. Start with Clone/Phantasm utility skills, they become “Illusions”, and this also adds an elite:

• Illusion of Health, heal-skill which heals to full and causes massive regeneration, healing another 200% of health over the next 6 seconds. At the end, suffer an uncurable DoT which deals 95% of health in damage over 6 seconds and also prevents healing over its duration.
• Illusion of Life, as now but rebalanced to be actually useful (but this is a global issue with all rezz skills).
• Illusion of Power, grants 25 Might and Swiftness which cannot be cleared to yourself or a friendly target, but at the end incurs Weakness and Cripple which cannot be cured.
• Illusion of Futility, PvE-only Elite skill. If equipped and you get downed, you are instantly rallied and the enemy which downed you is dealt massive damage. After rallying, any further attack suffered within the next 4 seconds will down you immediately.
• Illusion of Betrayal, PvP-only elite skill. Target enemy loses the ability to tell friend from foe and will seemingly be able to attack their own allies. However from their allies’ perspective while they are attacked, no effect is produces (all damage and debuffs are ignored). As part of this, target enemy cannot be helped by their allies (they see them as hostile, too – with the same limitations as above).

My idea would be based on the hybrid class design – which I do think could be realized with minimal dev time needed by adding very strong modifiers to just being in a specific presence, so that a substantial amount of a Revenant’s power actually comes from the presence they currently have enabled.

Extending from that, we already have power damage (Shiro), condition damage (Mallyx), healing (Ventari), sustain/tanking (Jallis) and buffer (Glint). Now the next elite spec is mutually exclusive with Glint, this means we can do something which would clash if I could combine it with Glint, but needs to work as a hybrid setup together with the others.

The logical conclusion would be a debuffer. Other than Jallis, the other 3 presences are “output” rules, they want to produce the most of a given number, be it damage or healing. Having another non-output spec would work fine.

<insert_some_gw1_name_here> (doesn’t really matter, this is gameplay centric)

Passive bonuses:

• Non-damaging conditions last 75% longer if applied by you. This bonus does not stack with other sources of condition duration.
• Non-damaging conditions last 25% longer if applied by you.
• All your weapon abilities apply <insert_lore_fitting_debuff_name_here>, an effect which makes it very difficult for them to clear non-damaging conditions.
• Vulnerability applied by you can stack higher than the normal limit, your help can put an enemy to 30 stacks of vulnerability, but only you can apply the final 5 stacks or help keep them up.

<debuff_effect>
Whenever a condition removal effect would remove a non-damaging condition from you, it will instead remove this effect.
Duration: 2 seconds.
Cannot stack.
Reapplication resets duration instead of stacking.

Skills:

• Heal skill which consumes magic from the targeted enemy, healing for more for each boon or condition on them, then consumes all non-damaging conditions on them to again heal for more. This intentionally makes you rather frail in much of PvE, yes.
• An AE which applied 5 stacks of vulnerability but at a moderate~high energy cost (see the special stacking ability).
• A chain-sequence skill which is used like Mesmer Portal with the same range. Only in this case the “entrance” sucks in non-damaging conditions from allies while the exit applies them to enemies around it. It affects up to 5 allies and enemies each tick, but less if you place them very close together (down to 1).
• A skill which turns damaging conditions you applied into non-damaging ones.
• The elite is a very wide-area (I’d say 1000) radius upkeep aura which causes up to 10 enemies to not tick down their remaining duration on non-damaging conditions. Cost should probably be 3 or 4.

Well yes, but gameplay-wise Retreat makes sense as a defensive shout, seeing the buffs it gives.

Ofc it can also be used for offense, but in that case you’re just shouting at the enemy that they better retreat, because incoming!

I have to say I dislike the idea of hyper-specialization (having to pick, say, condi DPS in your skills, your legend, your trait, your stats, your sigils and your runes – why even have 6 areas of choice if they have to be aligned anyhow?).

I’d rather have Mallyx itself come with significant modifiers, so that even in a non-condi setup I could swap to it to temporarily become “not bad” at conditions, and in a condi-centric setup, swap to say, Shiro, to become not bad at direct damage while I’m in the presence.

Something like:

Mallyx – Legendary Demon Stance
Invoke the power of Mallyx, gaining access to powerful condition-related abilities. While you channel Mallyx through you, your conditions last longer, are stronger and your weapon skills have a chance to bleed your foes.
Condition duration improved: 25%
Condition damage increased: 300 (maybe more, not sure)
Chance to apply Bleeding: 25% (applies to all hits, but scales down with procchance on multi-hits and AE attacks)

In essence, this would be something all these legends have, some form of massively enhancing their primary area of expertise. So that you can (sort-of) be a “hybrid”.

Vayne.8563:

They’ll get to it, at some point, perhaps in an expansion in the future.

Hrrrrrm… dunno. Thought the same about class-design, overall issues with too many variable elements of balance, green/blue spam, engine issues and WvW overall design.

All of which are still around, and few are being worked on at all. Even class balance is only done in smallest increments 1-3 times a year.

I mean I get that they’re busy, but their priorities seem to be much more on the theme park and more accretion of new ideas than honing existent elements of the game. But in the case of very underlying ones like the classes themselves or WvW or the inventory, that just hurts. Feels as if core aspects of the game are being abandoned because there’s just no money in working on it.

Things don’t need to be permanent to feel like sensible and important elements of a MMORPG. That they were limited in time was part of what actually sold them as an actual, ongoing story. That’s a huge part of the atmosphere and impact already lost, now it’s just the usual amusement park full of attractions I can visit at my own pace, each so forgettable I can’t even remember the name the moment I exit.

The “there are still players in the map”-argument is also a bit flakey in regards to how the server architecture works. 10 players still being in the map is enough to make it “work”, simply because there’ll only be a single instance. Which is a big plus for GW2, as it means nearly-abandoned zones still function. As evident in this case I suppose. :P

However, the point is that there’s just no impact or weight to the new zones. If they weren’t permanent, they’d feel no different to me. They’re clearly theme park set pieces, designed to host and augment the current part of the living story, and that’s their purpose. And that’s all they do. They give you some additional vectors for rewards ofc, but nothing you would rely upon, same with the stat combinations (which, as a whole, aren’t a good element of the game to begin with).

The problem then is the time spent on these maps. Imagine how many zone modifications could be done with the same amount of artist/dev hours compared to creating a new zone from scratch. And those map modifications could very well be permanent, changing the face of Tyria. And moving the game world as a whole forward.

You had me until “more underwater combat”, which is obviously never going to happen.

I suspect the one person who knew how underwater combat works in the engine got fired near the end of LS1, and then they also found out that now they no longer have someone in the team to rip out UW-combat entirely. So um… just let it sit and hope players forget about it?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m not seeing a content drought. New content may not be coming out at a rate you want but it’s been a steady release of new maps, story lines, events, achievements and items to get.

Honestly with how thin and quickly forgotten the new throwaway zones are, there is quite a drought. Yeah they’re coming out at a steady (if still slow) pace and omg omg omg new zones, but frankly the zone-modifying events in LS1 felt more “meaty” than the entire new zones we’re getting here.

Bonus points if the bloodstone-warped hide rates are updated every X hours according to availability and demand on the TP.

Feanor.2358:

Mainly, it would be a poor story. It would be predictable and because of that – boring. “It worked for a while” doesn’t mean “it will work forever”. I’m confident ANet writers are aware of that. Just look from a storytelling perspective.

Um… okay?

But neither the base game nor the first expansion show anything to suggest such a desire or even change in direction. While for a MMO (a very very low standard to match) the story is decent, it’s still “just” a MMO-story, works as a frame of reference but nothing else, but then also doesn’t have to do anything else either.

And from all we can say so far, it’s Jormag and Primordeus next, possibly one at a time but given the advanced age of GW2 I suspect both at once. I know they wanted to increase the cadence of xpacks so it might be separate, coming a year apart or so, but even Blizzard with all their cash and manpower couldn’t deliver on that “faster xpacks”-promise, so I remain extremely doubtful.
And yet everything points to those two dragons, now that the train is in full motion (it was hinted at as the overarching story MO in the base game and confirmed in HoT, beat the elder dragons as the major pivotal story steps). Which also works well for ANet, we know where the end will be so they get a chance to “back out” of GW2 development in favor of GW3 or something comparable. Always handy to have that. If not they can switch to some other ominous threat.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Sure, if toughness makes it so that i can’t get an 8K crit through 1.7K toughness we can talk about this.

Agreed. Overall TTL is the problem, not conditions in particular.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

New raid, jam-packed with lore that raiders wish they could skip and lore nerds are salty about being unable to get to!

Heh. Not to be overly bitter but if it’s like the current 4 raidwings, then I think I’m fine not getting all those 4 sentences of totally disconnected non-fitting lore.