Guild Wars 2

Dante.1508:

There is no End Game….

Spoon boy.8932: Do not try and play the end game. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.

Neo.0001: What truth?

Spoon boy.8932: There is no end game.

Neo.0001: There is no end game?

Spoon boy.8932: Then you’ll see, that it is not the end game that plays, it is only yourself.

Asur— Oh…

Silly bookahs have no appreciation for true genius.

Twice during the DE “Kick the Nightmare Court out of Quandry Scratch” in Mount Maelstrom I was downed (due to the respawn rate being more than I could handle solo). Both times, I managed to kill a Nightmare Court Spider, and did not rally, leading to my death.

The second time, I had managed to kill all Nightmare Court Courtiers nearby first and the spider was the last opponent left. Again I did not rally and the nearby thornpod objective finished me off before I could get back up with my #4 skill. If the spiders are some kind of summon-like sub-creatures of the Courtiers, and therefore by some cryptic logic not “ralliable”, then they should have despawned like normal summons or pets when I killed their masters.

Pariah.8506:

Vayne.8563:

Adine.2184:

Vayne.8563:

I’m pretty angry at Anet right now, and I think I should stop posting tbh.

be angry at yourself not them .

For what? Making a mistake anyone could make?

I was in business for a long time. If a long term customer who spent a lot of money with me bought a software program he couldn’t use and tried to return it right away, I’d give him his money back…even if it was his mistake.

Why? Because kitten ing off loyal customers isn’t smart business. No matter who’s mistake it is.

I don’t think you realise just how expendable you are.

There’s a difference between the actual dispensable nature of a customer and the way a good business treats one. Yes, individuals are replaceable and insignificant. But you treat them like that, and there will be ripples.

Y’all pushed me to do it. My female human mesmer isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But I now also have… Mandrixx the Magnificent, male asura mesmer extraordinare! Master of being level 2 and yet looking so good.

I’m pretty close to having a full stable of eight 80s, and leveling a new mesmer won’t exactly be a chore. Welcome to the family and the edge of the bell curve, Mandrixx.

Holy baby cat, that blows. I’m sorry.

Indeed, that is a common thing we’re taught in UI design. As people become familiar with an interface, they stop looking at it. “Are you sure,” becomes little more than a finger workout when everything asks you that in the same boilerplate box. Tiers of urgency are important. Transferring and guesting are clearly not matters of similar urgency, and users need to be jolted out of that haze of familiarity when they enter gem-spending territory.

If you’re having fun, then keep playing because you’re having fun.
If you’re not having fun, why play a video game that isn’t fun anymore?

RNG on pinnacle loot is a lousy system. We, as a community, have made that unwaveringly clear to ArenaNet. Whether they’re listening, who knows. But ultimately, it comes down to having fun. There shouldn’t be any other reason to play or not play a video game.

<intensionally-silly-strawman>
I’ve logged hundreds of hours into Mega Man 2. Still no precursor. Capcom still isn’t responding to my emails.
</intensionally-silly-strawman>

The PvE game already grossly over-favors berserker glass-cannons over anything else. No need to add the DPS kitten race to the overworld too.

If you want people to stop farming the same champs over and over, stop giving them good loot over and over. If there’s diminishing returns on doing the same champion, people won’t keep doing it. If there’s not a central place repeatedly giving out loot, a zerg can’t form around it.

Dahkeus.8243:

I don’t see GW2 coming out for PS4. If GW2 ever made it onto Steam, however, it could make it onto the future Steam console.

I’m all for that. Simply because that would mandate a Linux port. A Linux port would be shweet.

A lot of the GW2 community kind of reminds me of that one kid at Chuck E. Cheese’s.

See, when you go to Chuck E. Cheese’s, you eat pizza and you play games (or I guess you could spend your whole day in the urine-soaked ball pit). Some games give out tickets. Those tickets can be exchanged for little gifts. To complete the experience, it’s nice to at least go home with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pencil topper.

But there’s always that one kid who knows the trick. He knows that skee-ball pays out way more tickets than anything else, if you’re good at it. And he’s good at it. So that’s all he plays for 6 hours straight, with only a quick break for pizza. By the end, he’s probably sick of skee-ball. But the tickets! He’s going home with pencil toppers of all four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

There’s a lot more to do in the game when you’re not chasing the tickets.

Oh, ick. If you’re buying the boosters with gold-to-gem, that raises the bar quite a bit. At a rate of 100 gems for 7.75 gold, that’s 8.5 gold for a 110 gem booster. That means you’d have to be able to make 25.5 gold in a normal harvesting hour just for the booster to pay for itself.

I’ll offer a more fair comparison. The gather boosters can be bought in bulk for 110 gems each. That’s 6.15 gold (assuming 100 gems for 5.59 gold, GW2Spidy’s current figure) or a break even need of ~18.5 gold per gather-hour.

How much of an epic pay-off? I’d be curious to see actual numbers. How much gold can you make pure-gathering in an hour? For 150 gems, you can get about 8.5 gold right now. That means you’d need to be able to make about 25 gold in a normal hour of gather-grinding before that +33% would come out equal.

I haven’t been pure-gathering, but I have been hanging out in T2 to T4 areas the last week and picking up every node along my way, and it’s not paying anywhere close to that. I’d like to hear what more experienced gather-hoarders are pulling.

The ability to pay for gold has always been an option in the game. If someone wants to use a gathering booster and spend an hour gathering instead, I’m not sure how that’s really different.

Dawdler.8521:

Morrigan.2809:

Anet has said several times that they will not port to PS4 or any other console for that matter.
The most obvious reason being their frequent game updates.
They will instead focus on PC, which gives them the freedom to ship a new built whenever they need to

While I have little doubt we’ll never see a PS4 version of GW2, I dont see the logic of your reasoning. An MMO is always online. You cant play without updating. Why would frequent updates be an issue on PS4?

It’s not so much a matter of hardware as pure ugly bureaucracy. The update problem is that console manufacturers exercise an iron grip on anything that passes through their services. Everything must go through stringent code review, leading to sizable delays and costs to the developer/publisher for every update. That’s why console versions generally get fewer and much later updates than PC versions. ArenaNet often responds to major bugs in hours, not weeks, which just would not be possible with the degree of bureaucracy bogging down those architectures. While Sony undoubtedly alleviates much of that red tape for their own suite of MMOs, I doubt they’d do the same for ArenaNet.

Most of the single-minded roles of GW1 don’t exist in GW2, which is really where the full lockdown shined. You could pinpoint a vital role in the enemy team’s combo and turn it off. Full lockdown in GW2’s self-sufficient profession design wouldn’t have quite the same strategic value. Instead, people would just call it stun-lock and rage about it on the forums.

Still, mesmer’s have some decent denial available to them within the context of GW2 mechanics, and the thread skcamow linked is a good start. Sadly, many builds don’t really fly in PvE yet (a matter we’ve managed to bring to the attention of the developers and they are currently taking under consideration) but they can be fun in PvP and especially WvW .

warriorjrd.8695:

I think some of the people replying need to re-read the original post. It said that this is a grandmaster trait. Grand master traits are supposed to define builds and be powerful. Right now one of our GM traits gives our pet 120 ish health regen, yeah because that’s really “grandmaster”. This would work well with a beastmaster build seeing as pets are borderline useless anyway.

I also think people need to understand the abbreviation “OP”, it stands for “over powered” not strong. Some people say things that are simply strong and very useful are “OP” and that’s kittened.

The rough damage increase expected from a damage-boosting grandmaster trait is ~10%. This is found in traits like +20% damage to targets below 50% health found on Thief and Necromancer. Warriors have things like Berserker’s Power, which gives between 0% and 15% damage based on their current adrenaline level. The examples that go beyond this are few and far between, and are generally have niche uses like the engineer’s third grenade.

A permanent second pet would offer extra damage many times in excess of 10% and hardly limits the build. It’s major drawback, the pets dying, is something every ranger already has to deal with. It just multiplies that concern, and by proxy, multiplies the design problems and AI bugs that usually lead to it.

If we want a second pet mechanic, an elite skill would be a much more solid approach. The extra damage can be mitigated by controlling the uptime and cooldown to balance it with other elite skills. As a bonus, we wouldn’t have to worry about that second pet’s health. It was going to despawn after X seconds anyways, and won’t put our pet-swap on cooldown if it fades early.

I’m down. I used to rep a lot, but the silence pushed me back to hanging out in my local guild. I need my nonsensical gold text. If Sunday will have that, then I’m there.

My first reaction is that this would be insanely overpowered.

But then I remembered that they’re ranger pets.

So, that would be insanely overpowered against things that you could probably already beat anyways. And still no help against somewhat difficult things.

Basically, a lot like Master’s Bond.

The exact quote from Jon Peters, to dispel confusion.

From: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/page/26

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.

I’ve washed my hands of that battle. I still disagree with it with a fiery passion, but it’s not worth the fuss. Not when they’ve made up their minds and not over a profession with so many other major bugs and design issues that it still feels like it hasn’t left the beta. Afterall, I can choose not to use the sword. I can’t choose to keep my pet from being inadvertently kited by basic movement. I can’t stop him from running off in random directions just because I told him to disengage out of a red circle (that he’ll still get hit by from all that spazzing out).

A lack of basic control is just how rangers do.

I feel like the trait system is more restrictive to the developers than the players.

As it is designed, it works. You have 5 lines, each with certain specializations. By putting the truly significant traits at higher tiers, you limit how many of them you can take and what you have to give up to get them. By having a single line specialize in a certain area, you put a cap on the amount of synergy you can carve out of the system. If all of the signet traits are in one line, you’re limited to 3 of them, which means you pick how you want to specialize in signets, not simply that you specialize in signets.

But, the rigid structure has kept the developers from fully realizing its capabilities. Each line must have exactly 12 major traits and 3 minor traits. When you have too many or not enough ideas for that line, you get junk traits and traits that wander off into other lines. There’s a lot of filler traits that no one will ever use, just to meet that quota. The tiered system also means that you must have 6 adept traits, 4 master traits and 2 grandmaster traits. Often, traits end up outside of their appropriate tier, just because it had to make room for another to move.

The system’s moving parts just don’t hinge and shift on the same axes that the developers need them to and so you end up with changes made just to appease those arbitrary demands. It definitely doesn’t need to be made anymore complex until some of these inhibiting design choices are trimmed away and made more open and transparent.

(edit) Random improvement thoughts:

• Do away with the 12 trait restriction. If you have more support traits for warriors, let the Tactics line blossom and have more than 12. Put them in the tiers they belong in, numbers be kitten ed. I’m still going to be restricted to 3 of them.
• For traits that are more “filler”, make them line-agnostic. Have a pool of traits I can plug into any tree. None of the Tactics adept tier traits appeals to me? That’s where I’ll plug my 50% falling damage trait. It doesn’t need to be in the Strength tree. Though, if you wanted to get real fancy, it could have a different impact effect based on the tree I socket it into.

Black illusions?
Mesmers, we have a member of the Toxic Alliance in our midst. Ready the purple butterflies.

Though the stairs are an example done to its extreme, there is definitely something up with the fall damage. Connecting with something that doesn’t slow you as you fall seems to compound the damage. It’s possible to die on a rather short fall if you connect with enough things. Realistic? Possibly, but looks silly in practice.

It also seems exacerbated by an odd way the game handles friction on steep slopes. If you jump against something, the surface seems to actually accelerates your decent rather than slowing it. It’s as if the slope is forcing you back down. It reminds me vaguely of skiing in Tribes, but with violent-splattery-death aftereffects.

We have pretty much zero information on this. From what we’ve gathered, they’ve not even begun work on such an endeavour, nor should they. We have weapon sets in the game now that aren’t up to snuff yet. In the case of mesmer, they’ve already expressed a displeasure in our scepter. We also have several traits that are not worth taking and some that are still outright broken.

Short answer: Someday, but not soon. The game just isn’t ready for more than idle discussion about that kind of mechanical expansion yet.

Yup, mucho thanks. ArenaNet can now have more of my money.

Now I just have to wait for the original tools to come back. The seasonal look of the current set doesn’t really appeal to me. I’m also starting to worry that the set might not get an axe.

Indeed they are.

My first mesmer was a charr female, but the mesmer’s lack of a speed buff makes large characters like charr and norn feel ponderous. When I decided to reroll her as a descendant of my GW1 mesmer, that necessitated human. Now I have my three “angels” (a Krytan mesmer, Canthan guardian and Elonan [now that’s a rarely played race] elementalist) and am officially done with humans. If I could go back and change it, I’d have rolled Asuran. The world needs more mini-clones.

We got a brief census chart during beta, but I haven’t heard of anything accurate since. Human was, far and away, the most popular race, exceeding some by more than double. I’d be cool if we could get more up to date and fleshed out stats.

I’ve been ranting about this since launch, when it wasn’t a problem. It boggles me why they divided players between worlds for PvE content. It was pretty obvious this would happen. Players always gravitate to certain content, leaving the rest sparse.

Now take a game like Champions Online. That basically is a dead game. Yet, anywhere I go, I’m going to run into people. It dynamically creates and destroys map instances based on demand. (Heck, even GW1 did this for towns.) I can also choose my instance, so I can go to heavily or lightly populated instances to meet my taste. As a side-effect of such a design, you can easily tell what instance your party and guild members are in and just go there. Such a feature would make things like organized Teq events a lot less headache compared to the “join party, hop instance, unjoin” fudge we have to use to cheat the system now. And wouldn’t it be nice to be able to go to a Queensdale that isn’t running a train?

Pretty much the whole instance and population control system is in need of a review.

I’ll be sticking with the Zenith staff for my mesmer. I feel it goes better with my gaudy crystal-hologram wings. But my guardian is definitely getting one of these. It makes me think of the energy wings paragons used to get when they chanted in GW1.

If I had a legendary, I’d have a hard time not using it. Even if it was a greatsword, which seems to be everywhere I look.

That said, I rarely use my greatsword. At any given time, I have two swords, a focus, a staff and a greatsword. My default loadout is sword/sword and staff. The focus comes out for some group affairs and reflect-spam. The greatsword only comes out for lazy tag-spam.

Those all occupy the same weapon slot. My staff never leaves. It has become too ingrained into my playstyle. Every build I make starts with 20 in Chaos for Master of Manipulation and Chaotic Dampening. In a panic situation, I need that one weapon that I’m comfortable with and know will be always there. The same goes with Blink. In a pinch, I know I can rely on the fact that that one thumb button will always be Blink and I don’t have to think about it.

Xaylin.1860:

Clockwork Bard.3105:

Shatterers have a Vigor on Shatter available to them. It’s in a frustrating tree to incorporate into a shatter build (inspiration seems to want to be capable of a support shatter build, and I’d love to play as one, but it’s a hard sell), so it might need to be moved, but it’s there.

Errr… that’s exactly what I said?

So it is. And I read it, I promise! One should not post pre-caffeine.

Xaylin.1860:

Clockwork Bard.3105:

Atra Culpa.5012:

Personally (and I know I’ll get a lot of shtick for it) would pair it with Critical infusion and change it’s functionality for it to give you vigor when your clones/phantasms crit.

You might get shtick, but it’s not a horrible idea to add some extra functionality to it. Critical Infusion is under fire. It, along with the Guardian’s vigor on crit, are getting their vigor nerfed. It just hasn’t been announced how.

Another thought is to drop the vigor entirely and take the RNG out of the equation, making it a passive buff. Something like: “Increase endurance regeneration for each active illusion. Increase movement speed by 25% when no illusions are active.” I’d have said increase the endurance regen at 25%/33%/50%, but since ranger’s 5 point endurance regen is getting nerfed, something like 10% per illusion is probably more realistic now.

Those ideas heavily benfit Phantasm builds but won’t work with anything else. That might be okay in the case of shatter builds which could go for Vigorous Revelation but there are other builds which need Vigor a lot more. Phantasm Mesmers usually are already quite good at not being hit because they can keep a distance.

Shatterers have a Vigor on Shatter available to them. It’s in a frustrating tree to incorporate into a shatter build (inspiration seems to want to be capable of a support shatter build, and I’d love to play as one, but it’s a hard sell), so it might need to be moved, but it’s there.

Atra Culpa.5012:

Personally (and I know I’ll get a lot of shtick for it) would pair it with Critical infusion and change it’s functionality for it to give you vigor when your clones/phantasms crit.

You might get shtick, but it’s not a horrible idea to add some extra functionality to it. Critical Infusion is under fire. It, along with the Guardian’s vigor on crit, are getting their vigor nerfed. It just hasn’t been announced how.

Another thought is to drop the vigor entirely and take the RNG out of the equation, making it a passive buff. Something like: “Increase endurance regeneration for each active illusion. Increase movement speed by 25% when no illusions are active.” I’d have said increase the endurance regen at 25%/33%/50%, but since ranger’s 5 point endurance regen is getting nerfed, something like 10% per illusion is probably more realistic now.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I would love for you to point out where in this thread has discussions of exploits.

Means of repeatedly farming rewards without doing the content. It’s not the main topic of discussion, but has come up repeatedly. I like my account staying active, so that’s as deep as I’m going on the matter. I just thought I’d mention it for people’s benefit. Folks used to get banned for less.

I seem to recall that sharing and discussing game exploits over the forum are against the terms of service. Repeatedly and systematically bypassing content for the reward is clearly an exploit.

~The More You Know~

Simply type something like “steampunk leather coats” in Google image search and poof. Ideas for days.

Just about any of that Edwardian/Victorian inspired fantasy wear fits snuggly into the Guild Wars 2 aesthetic. It’s not all Aether Pirate “fell in a vat of leather, glue and gears” styles. Rangers might want something a little more traditional fantasy, but they complementary style elements and aren’t mutually exclusive. And as can clearly be seen, it’s even possible to have a longer coat without going full, shin-tickling trench.

Indeed, the process for this is screenshot, report and block.

There isn’t anything wrong with champ farming. (Well, okay there is, but it’s a problem with a root far deeper than any of this.) I do it on occasion for the social interaction, which is good 80% of the time.

But when you go farming you have to realize that you’re making order out of chaos and chaos can come back at any moment. You can’t dominate a zone, nor should you be able to.

As such, you can’t have half a plan. If a commander’s reaction to an unexpected twist is to cast blame and get hostile, then you’ve got a bad commander and the zerg should rightfully fall apart.

• The commander needs to communicate, so everyone knows what’s going on.
• They need to be friendly (or at least not act like a dolyak’s backside), so people will actually want to listen to them and do things with them.
• They need to be ready for change. If the zerg doesn’t get clear instructions about what to do in these situations, it’ll snowball. They’ll splinter off and even more things will go down out of order.

So if you’re not in the zerg, do your thing and ignore/report the abuse. But if you are in the zerg and this is going on, get a new commander or find a new zerg, because the problems are going to happen a lot more often.

Taldren.7523:

The second thing I hate the most is that Malicious Sorcery is in Inspiration instead of in Illusion where it belongs.

The answer to that seems to be (bold added for emphasis): [Edit: the attribution won’t work for some reason, but the quote is from Jon Peters in the Dec 10 preview thread.]

Scepter is still missing something but we don’t want to overload the autoattack as we think that promotes more mindless play and are trying to move away from builds that focus so much on the “1” skill. I feel like that scepter should be the tricksy defender that can stop enemies from attacking and defend allies, but maybe it’s single target nature is keeping that from working.

There seems to be some disparity between what the design team sees and what the player base sees when looking at the scepter.

If Jon Peter’s statement about the scepter is fitting, then its place is definitely in Inspiration. That’s the “support” tree, after all. But as the weapon stands, I don’t feel it’s accurate. It offers nothing to the team and is extremely straight-forward. Slog through slow and easily avoided #1 for clones (and nothing else), very good single-block with torment on #2, burst damage/confuse on #3.

Torment and confusion are both soft control. I suppose that’s what they’re leaning towards by stating that it defends allies from attack. In PvE, where Inspiration’s phantasm luv is king, that’s definitely not the case. The AI does not respond to these conditions in the slightest. There’s no reason they should. They’re already optimized to slog through it with their bloated health bars and slow avoidance-or-death attacks. If you want to control the AI, you have to do it with hard effects and make that decision for them. Or, as the current meta stands, just use the CC called DPS.

In PvP, you might get the desired effect, but there’s almost nothing else in Inspiration to support that kind of support/control. It’s healing, condition removal, and phantasm buffs. The focus reflects fit the theme, but both share the Master slot. Glamours can fit the bill, but not directly due to any of the Inspiration traits. We go into Dom and Illusions for those traits.

Or maybe they just needed a build that could sell their backlog of Apothecary gear.

Alissah.9281:

IMO, Interupt traits should work even if you just apply a control effect, and don’t interupt, but to a lesser extent.

Yes, yes, so much yes!

While lockdown will probably never be a completely desirable spec for PvE, this would toss them a bone so that they’re at least not obligated to respec at the doorway between WvW and PvE and give you something to show for those stacks of Defiant you’re stuck chipping away.

Hell, the idea could extend to all professions in the latter case. Grant all CC effect abilities (since we’re the only ones with the traits) some added effect if they consume a Defiant stack.

Me Games Ma.8426:

I didn’t say that I want this. I said that I could understand it if Anet did this change.

<.< But… the walls have eyes… >_> Trust no one!

But yeah, it really is that good.

Me Games Ma.8426:

All the time I use this trait instead of Chaotic Dampening I fear that it’ll be moved to grandmaster tier because it’s really strong. If I were Anet I’d move it to 30 Points for balance but I still hope they wont.

No, my Weapons of Mass Diversion build! (20/0/20/0/30; fundamentally, Profano’s Hangover Shatter + boon share) It’d be a sad day if I lost my F3 Bomb.

TooBz.3065:

Clockwork Bard.3105:

With Duelist Discipline fighting a 5 point war with Phantasmal Haste, I’d probably side with that. They fixed that 100% finisher bug, right?

Yes, but of course duelist discipline can always be replaced by blade training, which may be more useful overall (more blurred frenzy is always good). Maybe with Sw/Sw, Sw/F instead of Sw/P. Sw/F.

Of course if you go with Phanstasmal Haste is bleed on crit still worth it? or can those 5 points go to better use?

I feel like if your two phantasms of choice are iWarden and iDuelist then Sharper Images is always going to have a modest appeal. I personally try to avoid it when I’m not putting any emphasis into conditions until we know more about condition purging past the stack cap. I don’t want to be responsible for killing some condition build’s damage. But in general, I always got the gist from these forums that even with the bleed cap and zerker gear, it supposedly contributes a meaningful amount of damage.

The scepter clone’s short comings is a point acknowledged by Jon Peters in the December 10th update discussions. The scepter’s advantage is the fastest weapon clone generation, but the general uselessness of those clones continues to push people away from them.

They’re okay for clone-death builds, since the clones are spawned adjacent to the target, upping their likelihood of death. Swords are still more appealing since they give chase.

I think it was hoping to appeal to shatters. One problem with that is, from my experience, the average shatter player is… for lack of a better word, twitchy. They’re constantly pressing buttons. Their skill bars tend to look like a clock shop. Deceptive Evasion fits well into that frantic playstyle. Sitting through a 4 second auto-chain does not.

With Duelist Discipline fighting a 5 point war with Phantasmal Haste, I’d probably side with that. They fixed that 100% finisher bug, right?

In regards to the scepter, I’ve been pondering.

On one hand, we don’t want to entice #1 smashing. That’s mindless play. I’m all for this and have been an advocate for removing a lot of the incidental junk from a lot of #1 skills across the board. On the other hand, our clones are mindless. If they’re not applying conditions, then they offer very little prior to shatters and trait bonuses.

The question then becomes: how can we make clone auto-attacks integrate into intelligent play?

I feel like it’s possible, and the scepter would be a good start. For example, what if Ether Bolt applied something like stacks of Ether Potential? What would Ether Potential do? Nothing. But, each shatter could consume all stacks of Ether Potential to provide an extra bonus. Maybe if stacked Mind Wrack converts EP stacks to Vulnerability or bonus damage while Cry of Frustration produces Torment, just as very lazy examples. It could stack on either the enemy, like Impale, or maybe on self, like the “stack to 25” sigils. Both produce interesting possibilities.

Essentially, the goal is to make those “mindless” stacks something that has to be exploited with at least some thought.

Dahkeus.8243:

JonPeters.5630:

Main-hand sword
I just want to clarify for good that main hand sword is currently working as intended. All movement skills cannot be interrupted by dodging and this is currently intentional. It has a very specific play style, and I would like it to remain. I understand that rangers want a one handed melee option that is more mobile, but that will have to wait, as I know there are a mix of players who also like how this weapon plays and I do not want to take away one of the more unique playstyles that we have and replace it with something that is fairly common.

Well…that’s very disappointing, but at least we have an answer on it.

Aye. I feel like that and the discussion about the greatsword and timing are kind of contradictory sentiments. I also still feel it’s at odds with their PvE design philosophy of dodge-or-die. But if the design team feels strongly that it really works as it is, then I’m willing to finally drop the issue going forward and just not use it.

• increased base init regen
• improved Assassin’s Reward
• nerfed thief’s major survivability methods

Oh god. Some mastermind up in ArenaNet is secretly trying to groom P/P bunkers as the new meta. The horror! (tin foil hat)

Wow, I’m impressed at how many people embrace the shatter/phantasm hybrid. I know the mixed focus is supposedly suboptimal, but it does feel good to play.

A year later, I’m still in a messy mixed state with my builds. I find I favor a lot of support-on-shatter traits, so I should probably explore that. I’m a "mess"mer. Let’s call that “Open World: Mixed” for now.

I’ve not seen the skill in action, so this is all going to be speculation based on the stats we have on the wiki.

I don’t think warriors are alone in the “not going to switch” camp. You’re not going to see rangers switch. Healing Spring cures for more, adds regen, cures any condition and produces a water field. While the radius is smaller, it’s visible and people know to run to it for a free cleanse.

If a thief wants a cleanse heal, it’s going to be a hard sell over Hide in Shadows (heals a lot more + strips bleeds, poisons and burns + stealth and regen) and Withdraw (strips mobility conditions, evades, similar healing power at half the cooldown). Necromancers have one of the best personal cleanse heals with Consume Conditions, which eats them all. Warriors have Mending (any 3 conditions). Guardians have multiple sources of passive cleansing. Ether Renewal cures up to 8 conditions off of Elementalists at half the cooldown. Engineer healing turrets can AoE cleanse any 2 conditons every 15 seconds.

Really, mesmer seems like the only profession that this would even appeal towards, since we’re just notoriously bad at dealing with conditions.

I admit it would suck a little to be a scepter mesmer and run into a train of enemies all spraying each other with antitoxin. But I just don’t see people going out of their way to set that up. Not when we live in a world where necromancers exist. The mesmer scepter is too niche of a threat to plan your whole group defense around it.

It’s healing is bad. It’s conditions are limited. It’s cooldown is long. It’s just not very appealing.

MH Shield?
…
I can only think of this:

On second thought, I want to take two wheels.
What? Why?
So I can dual-wield shields! That’s, like, double the armor class!

MH Whip + OH Chair = Lion Phantasm

You know you’d play it.