Should just remove aqua breathers and let us use our helmets underwater. Can continue to display a breather graphic on the character if ‘necessary’. Currently there is really no support for aqua breathers in the game and they are just annoying (and probably confusing to some regarding armor rune bonuses).
There is an illusion of balance because everyone has access to the same gear, and all the essential skill types (damage, heal, stun break, condition removal, resurrect). But no it isnt really that good.
Regarding what you have seen, people love to exploit the most powerful builds of the time. And the game really does not encourage variety. Since all professions can do essentially everything, it is simple to just take the most powerful profession at the moment. Some still provide specialty functions which make them desirable in a team, as you have likely seen, but the variety does not go far. (Gw1 in contrast offered endless possibilities to those who could think)
It is still a solid game to stick with, but I think your friends may have oversold it.
Seems like it will be a good move to get people out of CoF p1 and into the other dungeons again. From there, Arenanet can perhaps address ‘skipping’ if it is creating a negative experience.
But how many innocent animals were harmed/sent to their deaths? I congratulate you on your accomplishment, but I bet it has already been done illegally by the roaming armies of bot rangers from last year. Yours sounds like a legitimate effort though, so congrats
And yea survivor title might be cool here, but keep in mind this game is much less solo than gw1 (disregarding npc hero/hench). People who are trying not to die arent always fun to play with in mmos, as they may avoid risking their life to help other players in a reasonable scenario, and may ‘pull the plug’ if close to death. I am not at all accusing you of this, but I think some of the expected MMO cooperation is possibly sacrificed by adding survivor title.
I agree with your conclusion that air is the ‘filler’ attunement for staff, and that abilities 1-3 specifically are not wonderful. Gust is ok but it takes alot of practice and is still not nearly as good as almost any other cc control ability.
Lightning surge I think needs changing the most, either its functionality, its recharge, cast speed etc. The recharge on lightning surge is noticeably longer than the #2 for water, fire, earth attunements, which makes air staff play feel more awkward.
Regarding the autoattack…it is up-to-par with the other staff aa’s. But in general, I think the staff ele probably derives a very small % of its damage output from its autoattacking, in comparison with other professions/weaponsets (even more true in pvp against active targets). Therefore the staff auto attacks in general might need to be considered for reworking.
Any safeguards in place to prevent sync joining? This was a problem in many Gw1 formats and, to be honest, I do not think the population of people joining this will be any larger than when syncing was exploited in Gw1.
(p.s. Still want new formats/etc., the pvp is still very shallow compared to gw1)
Here is what I think. Abaddon escaped and no one noticed, he still lives, but has taken the form of.. drum roll…. EVON GNASHBLADE!
So if you want to see the world burn and then have fun stopping it VOTE EVON
Sounds like the absolute best direction this game could take…really if any of the characters turned out to be a manifestation/servant of Abaddon. Ah, one can dream.
It is probably a bit late to make meaningful changes, but it would have been much better and less ‘farmy’ if rank/glory points were only given for victory (and consecutive victories, if we could fit that in like gw1). Give less freedom to choose teams in hotjoin (people have more freedom to stack teams since that abomination known as spectator mode appeared). This might lead to slower progression, so rewards numbers could be tweaked.
The problem is that there is just no emphasis on winning in hotjoin, and tournaments are really boring/unappealing for alot of people (like me) who dont want to play same map for days at a time and fight premades.
Ranking up in gw1 took skill because real victories and consecutive victories were needed (ofc many ‘cheesed’ and exploited to get rank). Here it is just like balthazar faction farm or kurzick/luxon farm…sad.
As mentioned, all the emphasis has (unfortunately) been on Lion’s Arch. Divinity’s Reach is somewhat populated, probably because we are humans and because Queensdale is one of the most popular zones in the game.
Some good points mentioned for the OP, as well as bringing up the flaws of the system. Some of the problems I see are that there is no focus on consecutive wins (or winning at all) as in Gw1 RA/TA/HA/Codex. In those formats, players would rank up faster if they won consecutively. Furthermore, it is unfortunate that spectator mode has now allowed players to choose teams, often stacking teams with better players/friends to make the match less fair and less fun for many of those involved.
If you do want to rank up fast, play something you enjoy and get good with it, I have seen every profession get top scores.
Elementalist and Guardian for me, ever since beta (and the profession reveals years before that). I have always preferred the aesthetic and theme of these two professions, as well as the ability to play supportively with them (which is how I have preferred playing MMOs for years now). I also have an 80 engineer, as engineer somewhat fits my playstyle, but the theme and aesthetic I do not like at all so I rarely play it.
I like the ranger theme too, but do not like how it plays now.
Join solo. Or keep looking for team mates in your server, in hotjoins, or in the solo queue. ‘Paid’ tournaments and free tournaments are the same now, you do not need to pay for them.
Yeah I would like to hear more from Mike O, and the whole staff for that matter. It is so easy to make a quick, honest post on the forums and it does alot to keep customers happy (as communication does in any business/area of life).
I suppose they have nothing good to say though? And they generally do not seem to be working on what the forums are demanding (or it is far off) so they dont bother? Surely we do not expect them to read every post, but it would be nice if they would stay current and pop in with some general communication.
^when watching that, keep in mind Kormir= Trahearne/Kiel. Ok not as bad as Trahearne, and Kiel we arent totally sure yet. But yes good thread, Abaddon is the most important character, besides me of course.
I don’t think you will be ‘grouped’ in a ‘pool’, rather I think the tool will serve as a way of posting Lfg/Glf ads under a number of categories on a much larger basis than currently (ie all of NA, or just all of your server…but I think it will reach the whole region). Additionally, I do not expect the tool to be limited to dungeons. Hoping it will be like gw2lfg.com but much more polished and effective for the game.
It is annoying, stunbreaks should be disabled while effected by ‘launch’ so that players do not waste their stunbreak (stunbreaks which grant stability should remain enabled). Or let us stunbreak normally during launch…
May as well make all profs have the same base hp value, like that one game with proven pvp. What was it called…oh yeah, Guild Wars 1. (Yes Dervish and maybe another prof had a few more hp, before history nerds call me out on it)
Open world dueling please, i want to have goofy fights in strange places throughout the world. Yes we have custom arenas, but they are not convenient or fun. Yes the dueling culture is annoying to some (myself often included) but you should be able to disable dueling in your options. Like it or not, dueling is a standard in mmorpgs and it creates a certain community/gives people something to talk about.
The status of world boss farms, endgame farm areas, and LA/queensdale activity really do not convince me as bring a good metric for the health of world activity. These are just the last refuge of a bored/declining world.
I have been playing mostly pvp recently and am ‘very’ close to bear rank. But i am looking for new games because i just dont like the way this one has been going. I do have an open mind to play every part of the game (pve pvp wvw etc) but i dont think any are in the condition they should be by now. (im up to about 6500 achievements and 1-2 days grind to bear, so i admit that i have played alot).
Regarding rewards, there is a small chance for pvpers to profit from dyes. I have some 130-140k glory saved up and honestly i think i would profit far more by farming pve than using hours to spend all that glory to make random dyes. So yea you could say the reward system is broken.
Player activity is less than ideal anywhere. Bad priorities in development have not helped to address this problem, rather it has only distracted the populace with minigames for a few days at a time.
I think the skills are more fun to use than any other MMO I have played. Many of them serve multiple purposes, and require more than a simple button-push to effectively use.
The thing that worries me though is the overall GW2 combat/profession design. I fear that we will not be able to see many new skills introduced, at least not the amount that we had in GW1 or other games. The great amount of skills (and ability to cross-profession) was one of the strongest features in GW1 that is really lacking for player skills here.
You’re right about the retal stacking, but I think that is probably a bug/unintended. The trait says “3 seconds of retaliation” for using a heal, yet healing breeze gives ~20+ seconds. Besides that ‘exploit’ I still don’t see the value of the healing breeze skill
Lower self heal than signet, same cooldown (higher because no trait), and no secondary benefit. And we all know shelter is great to prevent damage and to synergize with blocking traits.
Unless this leads to new ‘real’ zone very soon, I will be very disappointed. That is, Crystal Desert or otherwise, not a mini-zone of Southsun quality.
(Or Anet could get back to seriously improving the existing game world and giving reason to go there, as more than half the zones have barely been played, while the others have been done to exhaustion.)
Healing breeze needs something added to it, or needs the recharge/etc. modified. I do not recall ever seeing a serious player using healing breeze. Can anyone say otherwise? Or provide reason why healing breeze is as good as shelter and signet?
Air #2 needs one of, or a combination of the following: A change in function, increase in damage, reduce casting time, reduce recharge time.
The greatest change would be to reduce the recharge time, but then the function may need to change so that spammable blind would not be imbalanced. But consider that lava font (fire 2), ice spike (water 2), and eruption (earth 2) are all on shorter cooldown, thus making staff play in those attunements much more fun and fluid.
Gust still needs an adjustment so it is slightly easier to ‘hit’ the target. I cannot count how many times I have seen the gust projectile actually touch my target, only to produce no effect. I have played 1200-1500 staff ele pvp games, have leveled 2 eles to 80, and I still have difficulty with reliably landing gust (though it seems to aim most accurately if the ele character stops moving before casting).
The tool in game is restricted to your current zone only, and other ridiculous limitations include not being able to use it while in a group (cannot use to advertise LF more…etc).
As previously stated, we need a different tool to facilitate group forming for world pve, wvw, spvp, etc. Yes gw2lfg is serving dungeon runners well enough…but it is too narrow, and lacks convenience/wide reach of being in game.
Curious why 4v4 is rarely mentioned? The GW1 arena was 4v4, and was around long before WoW’s arenas. But yes, if balanced for the format. I am not confident that Anet is capable of such a feat.
Yea the LFG tool will have the most impact of any addition that has thus far been made to the game. But their priorities are…questionable. The tool will be best implemented if it also includes methods to advertise for open world pve/wvw groups and not just dungeons. If Anet actually cares about the “Living World”, this is what they needed months ago.
Spectral wall needs a red warning outline like every other hostile area spell. Besides that, I think it wont be OP at all once necros get their nerf. The extra fears are just too much to deal with right now in addition to everything else necros are dishing out.
I like focus too (D/F especially…S/F feels the weakest and slowest of the ele weps). If I had to pick one skill to get buffed/altered though it would be the fire shield. It is really weak and has long cooldown. The flame wall is meh too but at least the wall duration/cooldown is not too bad. Besides that, I really don’t understand why people keep complaining about comet. I think comet is great, and it is also the elementalist’s fastest recharging interrupt ability. Yea freezing gust is underwhelming, but it is a ranged chill…maybe the chill duration could be boosted a sec or 2, or have some additional effect.
Agreed, you do need to put alot of thought into all of your moves when using staff (though Ive played 1000-1500+ matches with staff so its mostly reflexes for me now…). Remember, none of your attacks are really guaranteed to hit. All of the projectiles are pretty slow, and the aoe can often be avoided. So the staff ele needs to have good field vision and good timing.
But it is alot of fun and rewarding to play (especially if you like having a supportive/hybrid style).
