Guild Wars 2

If you are longing for a dedicated healer, I think the core issue in motivation is that you – like me – enjoy support-based classes.

This usually means you don’t actually at all require to play a healer, they are just the archetypical “support” char of the past 8 years since WoW removed the CCer, the Buffer and the Debuffer.

Anyhow, back to the point, this means that Guardian and Ranger might be for you.
Ranger with Axe/Warhorn and a Spirit-based setup with some +healing (like 20/0/0/30/20) with Healing Spring is extremely support-based, and Guardian can naturally be built for support.

But! Most classes actually can be, it just shows differently. For example a Mesmer using 30 Chaos and 20 Inspiration can be built around supplying lots of AE buffs via Signet of Inspiration and the Staff, while also providing solid healing and utility support from Feedback, Null Field, Mantra-PBAE-healing and Time Warp.
Coupled with a Focus offhand setup for some runspeed and projectile blocking it becomes a full-support Mesmer.

Yes, exactly what Krag posted there!

I wouldn’t even like if they all went for my current target (I can interrupt 3 people with F3 right now).

The point is, we’re already fairly mobile:

• Blink
• Temporal Curtain (traitable to be near 100% coverage, and remember it hits more people than just you, full-zerg-Swiftness is pretty powerful since people are much better at running through the curtain than repeatedly staying in range of a single person)
• Portal (this again is seriously underestimated, since we can trivialize many jumping puzzles and such).

Yes I know, you were looking for “raw” swiftness. Like Engineers, although they still have to keep hammering that kit-button.

Point is though, our mobility is not swiftness-based. I also think that we’d be way too strong if we also had perma-Swiftness in a simple trait-based version, and honestly… between perma-Swiftness and an interesting character, I prefer the latter.
Portal rocks. Swiftness is boring – everyone else has it already and gives it to me. Simple choice.

Nooo, don’t apologize for this.

The Clock Tower was awesome in it’s difficulty. It was exactly what I wanted from an (and the people complaining please read this with extra detail ) 100% optional, for-fluff activity in a seasonal event.

Thank you so much for the Clock Tower, really!
The only thing I’d change is maybe have the porting NPC warn people that this is known to be extremely difficult, and not for everyone.

Nappychappy.7046:

I wish this was P2P game. Sucks that everything revolves around the Cash shop, they wont change the way it works because money = gem = gold = commander. Where if it was p2p then it would be ‘x achievement’ + ‘this and that’ = commander.

So then it is pay to play?
(It’s very easy to get 100g without needing to buy gems, btw )

Same, should be tied to a WvW-based achievement. And a fairly big one at that.

Existent people get another title in return for having the book learned, ideally with some fancy prestige item, old-style rank markers for the shoulders or something.

The point is that we can’t understand how you can possibly use up 400 inventory slots.

I got ~120 between bank and character, and 50%+ of those are empty at all times. And that’s with being a chef and keeping 30 bank slots full of intermediate materials.

If you run Mass Invisibility, I’d still go for Lyssa. It’s 6-piece is hugely powerful on the short 90s CD of Mass Invisibility, especially since the stability avoids you being knocked away while Invis.

You have plenty chances to decide for one of two~three ways to continue, tbh.

Yeah.
I mean sure, for the class specific stats Willpower, Brawn, Ingenuity, Empathy, Cunning, Intelligence, Guile and Hunger I can understand why they were renamed (even though they no longer appear on items). That was just highly confusing if you didn’t know the class in question, although I would have solved it by displaying a small class icon in front of the name in the tooltip, and colour it class-based.

For the secondary stats Concentration, Expertise, Malice, Prowess and Compassion, I’d have left the lore names in, however. They are shared over all classes, and there’s no real reason to even split in the “Primary” and “Secondary” stats in the first place. Depending on spec, Prowess is more important to you than Malice for example, or Precision is rubbish while Concentration is important.

Ah well…

Actually, just adding the icons (including class icons for the class attributes) to the tooltip line might be a pretty big help. :o

Well, I know. I mean I get the point, it’s not thaaaat different for many specs, but ofc if you are trying to use both direct and indirect damage then using Precision together with Malice is just wasting damage potential in many (ofc not all) cases.

Ah well.

I think I can also confuse people with calling the stat “Malice”. :P
Curse you ANet for leaving some lore names for stats in (like Precision or Vitality), bu removing others (like Compassion or Malice or Guile)!

Winds.3087:

Carighan.6758:

Because ultimately we’d need the Phantasms to have their (direct) damage removed (and the Clones too, even indirect one), and be made into actual living hexes.

Like mage and disenchanter in their current state? :P

In a way, yes.
Stronger in actual utility, ofc.

For example I could see the Duelist as a specialist combo-field sniper. Give him 100% trigger chance again, but he does no damage on his own. Maybe actually extend the barrage. In other words what he does is give X projectile finishers, that’s it. But balance X the right way, and that’s actually fairly powerful, because:

Losing the damage from the Phantasms means the damage of the other abilities goes up.

I am very happy with current WvW, except for two things:

1. Bots/Hackers. These really ruin many of the match-ups, with one realm floating over walls or having no chance because 100 of their slots are taken up by bots. I know you’re working on this ANet, just to voice in and say this is a really really major issue. :$
2. Orbs/Outmanned are counterintuitive. The winning realm has the orbs, and starts winning more clearly as a result. Outmanned gives you no better fighting chance (which the Orbs do!) just better rewards (which would imply you can already kill the enemy, but that’s the thing, you’re too few). Switch them, make outmanned provide 5%-25% more HP depending on how badly outmanned the realm is, make Orbs provide MF/GF bonuses.

Other than that, very happy. My replies to some of the common criticisms:

1. There is plenty incentive to play PvP already. For one, you’re playing PvP and knocking over other players. That’s sort-of the primary motivation for any form of PvP, anything else is artificially added to make people not motivated for PvP be motivated for it. Even then, that being said, there’s Badges (for Invaders / Siege / Legendary) and Achievements.
2. Too easy to overwhelm, I agree, but I think this’ll be very very difficult to work on without making it much worse. WvW needs to be slower, but not to the point where you can’t “snipe” a tower or so. Difficult to hit the right spot, right now it’s too fast but not even by much.
3. I feel like the walking distance is alright. It is a good kind of death penalty, plus it makes material possessions (waypoints!) incredibly powerful.

Because ultimately we’d need the Phantasms to have their (direct) damage removed (and the Clones too, even indirect one), and be made into actual living hexes.

I was again thinking – after watching TB’s final Mailbox yesterday – just how much depth and immersion was lost in RPGs when voice overs became the norm. There’s so few chat options (if any), so short and so simple lines, all because fully voiced dialogue is – understandably – horrendously pricey.

I played Planescape Torment again recently, and honestly – let my brain fill in the details again. Pretty please? I can take unvoiced text, I can read! And I thought this is still the norm among gamers!

:(

Classes are different! Surprise!

Out of curiosity, on a scale from 1 to 10, how much enjoyment do you get out of the digital /wrist-ing?

I mean, yes, classes have issues. Surprise. But is it really necessary to work every single criticism or complaint as if the world is coming to an end and all this was done to personally hurt the person posting? Can’t we just, you know, “just” complain?

The Mage would be so awesome if he could apply Retaliation to a lot of people at once. Alas, nope.

Not had a chance to properly test that yet, no. We’d need a testing session where a Necro spreads debuffs to 40+ targets or so.

I was going for the matching look with my GF’s ranger. She with Sunrise, me with Twilight.

Thing is, for WvW you want to at least have 10 Chaos and 10 Inspiration. The thing is, you want -50% falling damage, and Feedback Bubble on rezzing. They’re so insanely powerful in WvW, I’d never try it without them.

I find the criticism about the legendary Scepter odd. Meteorologicus, right?
It seems to have far greater detail than other Legendaries, when looking at it.

I remember this xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1080/large/

The brain is amazing at filling in information. And yes, our classcolour is non-existent (in a way ^-^).

Spatial Surge does reduced close damage due to getting into range for Mirror and Knockback. Especially the former means that since damage increases a fair amount from being close, to not make GS a premier close-combat weapon, they gave the #1 damage dropoff the closer you are.

I would argue that in order to balance Clones (as a concept, versus other mechanics), one of two things need to happen. Either they need an extra function on the Scepter and Spear clones (extremely unlikely to be fully balanced), or Clones simply need to lose all damage and extended effects.

In other words, they should no longer apply DoTs or debuffs or anything special at all. They shouldn’t cleave, either. And Sharper Images would just need to scale with your personal DPS and crit chance, normalized over a time slice, instead of depend on the attack speed of the clone.

Because, then clones become a completely different thing as they no longer factor into the damage balance of the weapon they originate from, making each weapon depending on them much less susceptible to AE fire.

As Embolism said, this is a just a remnant from Beta.

I think returning to the concept of Defensive AE weapon with the staff is a good idea.
It was a much better concept to begin with. And now that the GS offers AE, there’s little reason to try push the Staff into an all-rounder weapon.

I was thinking, the idea of each weapon having their own “style” is all cool, and I definitely support it, but I wouldn’t really promote it for Scepter/Sword specifically.

Why?
Because these select “attack range”.

The Scepter, being ranged, should lack the cleave-mechanic of the Sword, and probably it’s root.
In turn the Sword, while superior since it hits 3 targets on many attacks, should lack the range (duh?).

Beyond that I’d make the weapons identical, so that the choice of style is in the offhand (I’d use Focus = Support, Torch = Confusion/Stealth, the “trickster” weapon, Sword = Defence, Pistol = Offence).

And for the 2Hers, I’d put GS as a single-target long range sniper weapon, and staff as the Support one. In a way they’d be extrema of Scepter/Pistol → Greatsword and Either/Focus → Staff, for me.

Alas, that’d be a ton of rework.

Short term I’d give the Scepter clones a unique on-death / on-shatter effect.
As a clone-factory the weapon cannot work because it’s clones are so dull they only support a single build (on clone-death, on-shatter or shatter builds in general run better with Clone-on-Dodge due to more control and more burst).

So what can be done?

Ether Clone
Shoots a final bolt at the target, creating a Clone which attacks the target.
Ether Clones are highly unstable, and when destroyed or shattered will cause random conditions on nearby enemies.

Basically a built-in clone of the Trait, although probably with reduced duration since you can get 3 of it up quickly.

Oh boohoo, why do it for the challenge if you can do it for the loot, aye.

Yeah what Easymode said, basically. The conclusion is not that we are broken, but that PvE DE scaling is when it comes to Zerg combat.

Why would you fix the symptom (us having troubles tagging outside of a specific build) instead of the illness (lack of HP scaling on DE mobs)?

prodigy.1023:

Except you end up in a random place facing random direction.

I’ve played the last few days pretty much morning to night (week off \o/), and it does this:

1. Keeps facing
2. Teleports you away from the currently selected target.

It has the following special situations:

• If there is a wall behind you, it still keeps your facing and sends you flush against the wall. I wish it would actually face me in another direction, that’d be far more useful, sadly it doesn’t.
• If there is a ledge behind you, 9 out of 10 times it will teleport you up the ledge, assuming there’s a runnable path up the ledge in “close” proximity (can’t say for certain, I’d estimate model-loading distance?).

And that’s it. Generally speaking it keeps direction while sending you away from the target. It can actually be used to speedboost while running that way, target a mob, run past it, press #2, instant blink!

Well, then quit and play another class.
At this point I think you made your point that you ’re angry, so what do you expect us to do? Beyond telling you that Scepter works fine for plenty of us?
(Btw, calling the block useless does paint you as a thoughtless whiner. :P )

Since money is shared, what does it matter whether you farm the cash on your Ele or Mesmer?

No it’s always away from your target now, barring the odd terrain bug.
Before it could actually teleport you closer to your target (assuming the target was behind you).

What I mind is how marginalized our healing ability us. Some professions like say, Rangers, get an area heal baseline.

We only get one as a trait, a deep (20pt) trait at that, and even then only on Phantasms. Sure we all use them, but the spec is focused around heavy Phantasm usage, and that makes you want to go max-phantasm spec.

In other words, our support is pretty weirdly one-sided.
Sure we have AE Vigor on Shatter, but I wouldn’t really put that up there with PBAE Regen fields on Phantasms. If we had heal-on-shatter as AE, at least…

ManCaptain.3154:

No kidding. The mesmer is really really bad in pve. People that say that illusionary berserker and chaos storm is large aoe damage are in denial. Playing a mesmer in pve is a great way to be broke all the time.

Considering plenty of us are doing mighty fine, maybe that’s just you? :P

To expand on what was said about Feedback, it is a skill so powerful after you did WvW once you’ll never ever want to remove it from your hotbar again.

It absolutely decimates WvW Zergs. Not only do they cause absurd damage to themselves (especially in tight spots like on a bridge), but they apply massive stacks on confusion in the process, too.

(Yes, I do believe we’re being held back by how powerful a handful of our skills are – balanced in total, but it’s lopsided towards skills like Feedback, Time Warp and Decoy.)

Well the tooltip has always said Teleport away from your target.

It was kinda bugged before. :P

That being said, I’m not sure which I prefer. I like that the new one always puts distance between me and the target instantly.
OTOH I like that I can use the old one to teleport around inside a combo field.

Or just use a different weapon. It’s not like we got only two weapon types, Engineer-style.

For PvE you want 5x Traveller + 1x Pirate, granting you +35% Magic Find (on top of some defensive stats).

If you’re very buff-heavy, you might instead go for 5x Pirate + 1x Traveller, same 35% Magic Find, but +10% Might duration (this can be really powerful if you’re using, say, Staff + GS).

In any case, 35% MF is too much to opt for a combat rune, really.
If you’re heading out to WvW, then it gets tricky. The Undead-rune is difficult to optimize for (as there is no Power/Toughness/Malice gear), Lyssa is rarely useful since you’ll use Time Warp in WvW, and Krait while really powerful is not something many players like.
Just go through the list and check what appeals to you, here. If you want to retain some Magic Find, 6x Traveller is an extremely good option, +25% MF and +5% Runspeed.

For sPvP, if you’re using MI then consider Lyssa. Given the 90s CD on MI, it’s very very powerful. It can also be great for WvW if you run MI and use Mirror as your WvW heal of choice.

prodigy.1023:

a) Handicaps you at short range. You have to kite and when you can’t kite (risen thralls, etc.) you need to perma-cripple your target.
b) Punishes you for having Sword MH in your second weapon set. Of course you can use Blink to get range fast but Blink is on a long c/d. With a Staff you can switch to melee and back whenever you prefer. With GS it’s not so simple.

See, smarter people would say that your weaponsets actually perfectly complement each other.
One works from range, the other from melee. You can switch to Sword+Focus/+Sword when in melee, and use Greatsword when you’re at range.

(edit)
Phase Retreat is completely predictable.

If you focus your spec on defensive attributes and more Distortion you can become a major PITA to kill, yes.

Downside is ofc, you do very little damage. Very little actually.

Since we’d only use Quip in the offhand, and Clones (still …) don’t show the offhand, I’d say “No”.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Maybe because there’s a 10sec cooldown before swapping? In thos 10sec you have enough time to destroy a phantasm, replace by a clone and overwrite that clone by another one… Wand’s skill 1 should only spawn clones when there’s >2 illusions up or at least overwrite clones only.

Why?
The Scepter is clearly a clone-spam weapon. It also provides no Phantasm, in other words there is no reason you’d want to use it in a Phantasm-build compared to the much more useful (due to Blurred Frenzy) sword.

NatashaK.9418:

I absolutely despise the jumping puzzles. I have do idea why they’re in an MMO to begin with, let an important part of the game.

Probably for the same reason “Combat” (as a concept) is.

Because people (on average) enjoy them a lot.

I am surprised at what amount of players apparently think this is “core” halloween content, and hence they “must have” the skins.

Have you even stopped a brief moment to consider the implications of a low-chance drop before you spent money on chests?
TF2 does the same thing with the keys, and surprisingly people managed to work it out there (a FPS!) that just buying the keys rampantly isn’t going to guarantee you jack all, much less a hat or multiple of them. That’s the whole point of a chance-based drop.

The reasoning you should use is this:

1. Can I use boosters?
2. Do I have some gold or euros spare?
3. Hrm, might as well open a few chests then.

And then you might actually get super super jackpot lucky and end up with a permanent bank access item or a halloween costume or whatever.
If you buy the chests for them, you are ignoring what the chests actually reward (which is Boosters, the tonics are mostly filler).

It’s not the dev’s fault you apparently can’t read.
It’s not “pay 2 win”. Unless that skin comes with a 50000 range instakill AE for WvW.
It’s not crappy design either. Check TF2’s rampant success with chests for another example of how we players like the gambling aspect behind it.

And, while we’re at it:
Apparently it works. You (assuming you, the one reading, bought plenty keys to open the chests) spent a ton of money on chests, even fully knowing (or simply ignoring despite being trivially able to know) that there is factually no chance of getting a skin from the chests.

Bobobejumbo.4951:

I’m glad they attempted to rectify the situation. But they failed. I’m no stranger to “packs”, hell I played Perfect World and spent over $10,000 there over a few years. ANet needs to take lessons from more experienced cash shop models. I won’t be spending any more money on ANet unless some drastic changes occur.

If you spend 10k on cash shop, I think you got bigger problems than whether that shop features chests (a successful model, whether you like it or not, you’re not the only player any more, back when I played EQ we were 250k players peak and that was considered a smashing success, nowadays SW:ToR’s 1 million players was utter failure) or not.

GS is hardly a speciality to phone home about, it shouldn’t be so indirect (more so since GS trait is in Domination, not Dueling).

So to sum it up, our Clones which have no secondary function:

• Scepter
• Greatsword

Our clones which have extremely marginal secondary functions:

• Spear

As far as adding something to Scepter clones goes.. how about, you know, if they summoned clones? And I don’t mean clones under my control which I shatter. I mean extra clones bound to them (and no, those in turn do not summon more clones :P ), which just disappear if the Clone is shattered away.

That way in theory you could have 12 Clones out with Scepter. Sure you can only shatter 3, but imagine the amount of confusion you could cause.

Scepter feels much more comfortable now.
The loss of attack speed from being at range is no longer as punishing.

No what we’re saying is that it’s just flat-out not ok if you can attack without LoS.

It’s horribly easy enough to take fortifications as is. If WvW needs anything it’s stability, so that upgrading keeps / towers is worth more even if you can’t constantly have 400 defenders manning every metre of the wall.