Guild Wars 2

Everyone on the forums shouts from the mountaintops about an arena mode.

Me, I don’t think it’d be good for the game. Variables force you to take them into consideration when you build, so that everyone isn’t just playing stealth/evasion gank builds.

They’ve said on more than one occasion that they’re looking into other modes, including one that focuses on fighting with only light objectives, but it seems like they’d prefer NOT to have a purely deathmatch game mode.

If it were up to me:

• Fix sigil of paralyzation
• Change Unsuspecting Foe from 50% to 20% to better reflect its status as a 10pt trait
• Change healing signet to 300HP/sec base, but increase the scaling so that it reaches the same amount that it does now with 1500 healing power

That’s it. Warriors have a number of viable builds right now and are in a great spot. This just cleans up some of the crutches. Unsuspecting Foe builds are still viable. Even with base precision Unsuspecting + Signet of Rage fury will provide close to 50% critical rate. Players now have to make a bit more conscious of a choice if they want to crit their follow-ups reliably, or if they just want to be Casey up to bat.

Healing Signet is also in a great spot. Nerfing it from 400 to 300 makes it just slightly less of a no brainer for most builds, while increasing the scaling keeps its current effectiveness intact for those who have sacrificed stats for healing power.

Depends. If you’re built for condition the damage will sneak up on people who aren’t paying attention. If you land 5-2-F1-3 on a guy he’s going to melt if he doesn’t remove conditions.

If you’re not condition you’ll still have a useful tool for might-stacking (F1 → 3) and the immobilize on 5 is always useful.

Those are sweeping changes that can’t really be done to a game at this point without being labeled the NGE of Guild Wars.

Also, no thanks at giving the opportunity for more dodges. The number of dodges is right, more skills just need to be changed to be more like Dragon’s Tooth and 100b, where we can visually identify the biggest threat and act on it, while at the same time punishing poor usage of dodges by using those big skills when they have no way of evading.

We’re closer to that than the OP thinks, and such big changes aren’t necessary. Just needs to be some polishing work done on existing skills to help players identify them better.

It’s funny that you put the words “community improvement” in the thread title, because I think that’s precisely what needs to happen.

Look at where we are now, how negative we are as a community about things. Who would want to join us? Who would want to add stuff to this part of the game given the reactions to it?

To the players who don’t sPvP, they’re going to see a bunch of miserable people and not want a part of it. To the devs who are deciding where resources go, they’re going to see a bunch of people who will never be satisfied with anything, so why give them anything?

I’ve been turning over the idea in my head for a while that the one thing the community can do, regardless of what the state of the game is or what’s going on in development, is that the community could focus on what’s good and fun about this game, because it is good and it is fun.

The other improvements will come. Especially if the community grows rather than actively tries to scare everyone away from itself. We could be doing so much freakin’ more to promote the sPvP format than we are and I think that’s where we as a community should be focusing. That’s one of the big things “killing” sPvP: our own toxicity.

Warriors are okay because the collective complaints, as I just posted in another thread, are actually about a number of different warrior builds. Yeah, Unsuspecting Foe needs to be trimmed down to like 10-20% crit. We all know.

Other than that, the builds each have their weaknesses that can be exploited.

People are talking about three or four different builds of warriors in here.

The warriors that beat mesmers are bleeds/burning. This is an okay 1v1 build against most things too, but anything that can remove more than one condition at a time is going to cause you problems because chances are they’re going to remove your bleed stack.

The warriors that beat necros are heavy CC/anti-condition with big investment into defense points for stuff like cleansing ire and hammer trait to keep up on damage. Mesmers shouldn’t really have many problems either beating or escaping from these guys. If they switch to longbow, dodge. If you did not dodge an arrow with white circle effects around it, count to 3 and dodge again, they’ll likely fire it once weapon switch cooldown is up and they can combo it into earthshaker.

The warriors that people are raging about on forums are Unsuspecting Foe/Burst Mastery mace/greatsword warriors. Those guys should get eaten alive by mesmers and don’t really have anything more than eight seconds of survivability against condition builds. Same thing as back when frenzy/100b was the big thing. DON’T STAND IN 100B.

Doornails are probably more proficient at WvW than any of us, too!

This is so cool.

This is a bad idea because it encourages every team to give up if they don’t have the lead after 30 seconds.

I would also call this toxic, because then upset players who want to /resign will begin to fight with those on the team who are not resigning, and yeah.

The only form of this feature I would agree with is if it is available ONLY when there are fewer than five players on a team.

Glad to see I’m not the only one that likes the ascalonian catacombs. I’ve loved that place since the first time I explored it in GW1.

I do like the idea of a map with lava but it would drive players insane to get feared into it.

This is visually only. Not design, not game mode. What would you like to see in terms of map environments?

For me:
Super Adventure Box
Echovald Forest
Ascalon Catacombs

NevirSayDie.6235:

Fair enough, which is why they’re buffing support skills. But if you’re complaining that you have to sacrifice too much to provide meaningful support, you’ve already switched sides on the “self-sufficient” argument. If you don’t want to have to sacrifice self-sufficiency to give support, don’t complain about self-sufficient builds.

Well currently most control builds can do some damage or support, and many damage builds can do some control or support. Those are still self-sufficient. In order to have enough support to be called a support build, most professions lose the ability to do anything else.

When support becomes strong enough that you can run a few key skills while not sacrificing all ability to damage or control, we’ll be in a good spot.

As for complaining about self-sufficiency, I’m not doing that. I’m just saying it’d be nice to see more teams running builds that may not be self-sufficient, relying on the support of teammates to cover weaknesses. That’s not really a dev thing, that’s a player thing.

Well, the thing they were pushing at the time was damage-support-control, right? Damage and control we get a lot of. Support not so much.

I’m not saying there should be dedicated healers or a dedicated healing class. But it’d be nice to be able to work some support into a typical build and not feel like so much has to be sacrificed in order to do it.

I don’t think anyone ever said this game is built around teams. They got rid of the class design that forced team-oriented gameplay when they decided not to do the trinity. So yeah, everyone’s built is going to be self-sustaining to an extent. I believe another part of that design is that they didn’t want people minmaxing stats (i.e. full burst).

And like, you can make the argument that defensive builds are minmaxing but it doesn’t really hold since just about every defensive build has at least SOME source of an offensive stat. Like afaik you can’t build healing/vitality/toughness.

I’d love to see more team-oriented gameplay really, but I don’t think it’s going to happen much outside of highly coordinated havoc groups in WvW and competitive PvP teams. I guess we’ll see how their buffs to support go over the next few months.

Terror is not the only way to have atmosphere. Ascalon in particular with environment, visual design, music, conveys a great sense of regret and loss to me.

And I dunno, there’s some creepy places in GW2. Not really whole zones, but parts of them certainly. Couple of creepy wooded areas out there, to be sure.

The problem with what you’re describing is that I can also describe it in a word: empty. Yes, emptiness can add atmosphere sometimes when done intentionally, but other times empty is just empty.

I just posted on another forum that I thought extreme defensive builds/bunkers is going to be the new meta once this transition ends. We’re starting to move towards a more balanced state not even counting the proposed Oct. 15 changes.

After the Unsuspecting Foe nerf (we can all see it coming, right? it’s definitely coming) bunkers should be able to defend against the FotM stun warriors quite handily, and it’ll kind of settle there, where conditions counter bunkers counter warriors counter conditions.

Stun warrior isn’t the new meta. Stun warrior is the counter to the old necro/ranger condition meta, which starts a transition into whatever the new meta is going to be.

I’m thinking bunkers/extreme defensive builds is the new meta. Not like, just part of a team, but the defining aspect of them. A CC warrior isn’t really going to pop a proper bunker, and with less conditions floating around guardians, engineers, and elementalists should settle right back in. Also, seeing more bunker warriors in PvP too. Became one myself, moved from condition to bunker.

I wouldn’t mind a shout that was nothing but a 1 second AE daze (and can be traited to heal of course), but adding any amount of daze to the other shouts is so stupidly overpowered.

Hell, even an AE daze might be overpowered depending if perplexity would get applied to everyone interrupted (unsure if it would or just hit 1 and go on cooldown).

The stats are built around PvP first; I’ll give you some examples.

The primary method of damage mitigation in PvE is not getting hit. That means dodging, or if you have access to them, blocks. Toughness will not save you from a big windup move, vitality will not save you from a big windup move. No heal is big enough to save you from those either, so healing power isn’t so great. Due to damage conditions being limited to 25 stacks condition damage doesn’t make a huge difference in PvE, especially against objects that can’t take conditions or be critted. Most CC, bosses are immune to. The non-CC conditions are still severly limited in duration against bosses.

So right there, that’s toughness, vitality, condition damage, condition duration, precision, crit damage, healing power, and many forms of crowd control, all of limited PvE use. Those stats, then, are used for PvP primarily, and all of them with the possible exception of vitality make a big impact in PvP fights.

Not even touching the rest of your post there. You can’t possibly know most of those things except the state in which the game was launched. No point addressing speculation.

Not enough players to split them between a test environment and a live one.

S: -Warrior, -Necro

Necros may be moving down because people are figuring out how warriors counter them. Warriors may be moving down because people are figuring out how mesmers counter them.

A: +Guardian, =Ranger, =Thief, +Engineer

Engineer just barely clings to this tier, but with upcoming changes as well as a shifting meta, they may emerge in a strong position. That said, the relative difficulty of playing them effectively will prevent them from ever being on the same level of say, pre-nerf spirit ranger. Warriors stomping the condition builds also helps guardians re-establish themselves.

B: +Mesmer, Elementalist

Elementalist is hard to figure out, and I get the feeling I’m not the only one. The barriers prohibiting players from reaching full potential will have to be broken to really see where they are, a la engineer as of next month. I don’t think condition builds will fall out of favor enough for them to shine as bunkers, but it may strengthen their position some.

Mesmer is looking to have a prominent spot when the new meta settles, not so much as the centerpiece of the meta, but rather a strong counterpart to it. Wild card here.

C: N/A

As you can see, you’re going to be met with a lot of bitterness and sarcasm here.

I like solo queue. Not really knocking hotjoin, but solo queue is a good and quick avenue into actual matches. There are improvements that can be made in the matchmaking but I play solo queue every day.

I like the locker and build options available. Ideal world, more stat combinations would be available, but I like that everyone has the same access to the same things. A good start without even adding new stat combinations to vendors would be to split the amulet into the 6 trinket pieces so that we can fit a jewel into each of them. Adjusting the stats to compensate for the extra jewels, of course.

Lastly, I like Skyhammer. Some disagree, but mostly I think they just get mad that they got knocked off, which is largely under their control anyway. I didn’t like it at first because I had no idea why I was being knocked off and killed, but as I’m learning I’m recognizing which professions can do what and adjusting. Everything about that map is fun. The super jumps are fun. Multiple vertical levels are fun. The Skyhammer cannon is fun. Hopefully see more maps with daring mechanics.

I lol’d at the picture

Shaman.2034:

This won’t end well…

…then lol’d again at this.

Stealth is a bad mechanic. The best way to make an interesting and viable thief is to focus on mobility and utility, and remove stealth from the game (for everyone and not just thief).

Yeah I know, it’s too late to do that now because it’s so built-in. But really, it would’ve been best to just not have stealth. It’s an outdated mechanic used as a poor substitute for mobility.

Psybunny.8906:

Also hammer/lbow warrior, engy, guard, necro are pretty much the only viable professions in that map. Everything else is subpar.

I can’t agree to this. The builds with heavy position manipulation have the biggest advantage on the skyhammer platform, in much the same way there are certain builds that would have an advantage running an orb in spirit watch.

However, other places on the map where there’s a lot of room and multiple vertical levels, those favor a lot of ranged emphasis or mobility builds. There’s tons and tons of ways to shake a pursuer on skyhammer, and people who use them right have a great advantage over builds that are limited in mobility or range.

I love how these threads always try to make themselves be about big important sounding things for the game and everyone playing it.

Then when you read the thread it becomes clear the guy got whomped by a thief and he’s upset. If that’s what this is about, say so rofl.

I don’t have any tickets either, but I agree that it should be a quaggan or at the least another race with a quaggan backpack.

I wouldn’t call them boring. They’re actually not boring enough. In GW1, many elites were just superior versions of regular skills, not the ridiculous transformations or whatever that we have.

I’d like to see a return to that, really.

I hated it when I first played it, but as I played it more I came to appreciate it more. I’d say it’s my favorite map right now.

What don’t you like about it? Getting knocked off?

The transparency is appreciated. Thanks.

The “deathmatch” mode needs to have objectives. What objectives? Dunno. But it needs to have them.

All a deathmatch mode would do is send five times as many people to these forums to complain about class balance because of the people running mobile/stealth 1v1 builds.

I imagine some massive percentage of the people who want raiding added would be tremendously disappointed with any such implementation in GW2. A raid is fun the first time you beat it. Not the ten times you tried to beat it before that, and not the fifty times you fought it AFK to farm it after.

GW2 just doesn’t have the capacity to give the rewards to make WoW-style raiding viable, because WoW style raiding is about doing something not-fun and time consuming for rewards, rather than doing something fun because it’s fun.

That said, GW2 does seem to be moving towards EQ-style raiding with bosses in the persistent world (rather than instanced), minus the drama of who can steal whose kill.

And no I don’t believe any of you for a second who claim to truly enjoy WoW-style raiding. Have enough experience to know how much fun people weren’t having. You enjoyed rewards, not raiding.

I would recommend playing the solo/team arenas as your primary format. Hotjoin servers you can like, mess around in, but it’s not really the best environment.

I figured out what the buff did after a few games of that map, but only in this thread did I learn about the 8:30 spawn time.

Newer players just don’t know this stuff, whether or not the OP was trolling.

It’s definitely too harsh of a change. I suspect they want to introduce something new that uses karma, but they don’t want everyone to have so much karma banked that they can get it right away.

Maybe we’ll see ascended pieces at 1mil karma each.

Because that’s not impossible to get at less than 25% of the previous intake or anything.

obastable.5231:

if you hate it that much go pick fluff out of your bellybutton or something.

I’m just saying, but if you autorun between fights you can find time to pick at your belly button AND fight. Efficiency!

I just want toughness/armor to matter more than protection/evades/blocks.

I still have the least trouble with warrior, and I assume most of them are running healing signets nowadays.

They’re still super easy to take down (blocks and evades are far more powerful mitigation tools than regen), hammer and greatsword warriors are still easily telegraphed, dunno.

That said, I think healing power is not useful enough on warriors. I would like to see healing signet’s regen start lower (say, 300 down from 400) but scale to the same amount it’s at now with 1500 healing power. This allows the regen-stacking builds to stay around, provided they gear for it.

Just for the record, your concern about WvW is unfounded. You’ll win or lose a fight due to any number of other variables before ascended gear becomes the difference. I’m too cheap to bother with consumable buffs in WvW half the time, those alone make a bigger difference in stats than an ascended weapon and I do just fine in WvW.

It’s a convenient excuse to have when you lose a fight, sure, but you would’ve lost the same fights before the patch. Relax.

I would just caution you guys to not be overwhelmingly negative. Find and point out good things along with the bad because there are just as many good things, and it reflects poorly on everyone from the players to the developers to the publisher if the entire show is negative.

Negative opinions expressed so publicly can also be toxic because everyone here will parrot what you guys say there. It also potentially puts people off who don’t often participate in GW2’s PvP.

I know, there are a lot of things that can be better, just don’t get too negative.

I’d like to see this build that counters spirit rangers, and also this “right build” that is one of the best classes right now.

I’m not doubting they exist, but if we’re going to talk about them in here, I wanna see what we’re talking about.

It’s definitely a joke title. It’s by far the first one you get by doing solo queue only. I wear it ironically, because I got it by losing a ton of games.

I wouldn’t necessarily say a person wearing this title is bad (because it’s pretty cool sounding and I think a lot of people wear it based on that alone), but the title itself means zilch. It’s easily gotten in a week of casual play.

Thank you muchly for explaining. +1’d.

Like most of it was stuff I know, but not really put together in a way that makes sense in game, so your explanation really did that well. Again, thanks.

Heals aren’t that strong, imo. What’s making it appear that healing is the problem, is that so much damage is mitigated by built-in evades/blocks/protection that what little damage does go through is easily healed.

Change protection to 1% reduced damage per stack that stacks intensity, with moves giving protection providing 5 stacks.
Change all “You block attacks for X seconds” moves to either one attack only or one second.
Remove the built-in evade (but not the movement element) from skills. If necessary, have those moves provide vigor instead.

I’m not saying this’ll create a balanced game right away (indeed, this would require a lot of skills to be reexamined), but it’ll in the long term put the game in a better position.

Excalibur.9748:

Just curious but have you beat Liadri?

Yes I have. Why do you ask?

It would be a nice customization touch to be able to choose that sort of thing, though this thread is just begging to be moved to the graveyard that is the suggestion forum.

It happens often enough that I’m not willing to say this is about profession balance. There’s a level of mobility in the game that I’m having trouble keeping up with, so that’s what I’m trying to focus on right now.

Fastest leveling is the insta-20 with the item and craft to 80.

Outside of that, the amount of time you’re going to save is so small that you might as well try different builds and weapons to see if anything particularly stands out to you. Have fun with it.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Longbow + dual mace – No mobility whatsoever? Partial check – At least you have range. Could be worse.

20 points in power for Distracting strikes / Waste of 20 points in a useless trait? Check.

No Unsuspecting Foe or Burst Mastery, 2 of the 3 most important traits on a mace build? Double check.

Signet warrior without Signet Mastery, instead taking the useless waste of a trait Destruction of the Empowered? Check.

For Great Justice outside of PvE? Check.

You get an E, for effort. But it needs work. You’re carrying a lot of deadweight that’s costing you important things.

Instead of tearing the guy down, can you explain for those of us that aren’t as well-versed as you are with the mechanics why each of the things on your checklist is bad, what could be done to improve them, and finally a build that does not result in sarcastic checklist replies?

I’m serious, btw. It’s so hard trying to find information anywhere. If you have some, please provide it. Trying to learn all I can.