Guild Wars 2

Rising Dusk.2408:

These things aren’t broken or OP in my opinion, they’re expected high-cost, cooldown-limited, team-protecting skills.

I wouldn’t mind the existence of such skills (but then in more than a single class), reminds me a bit of the good old combo Divine Shield + whatever the damage transfer suicide skill from WotLK was called. However, distortion share is neither high-cost nor is it really cooldown-limited.

Well, technically one guy bypasses the mechanic, four ignore it.

I agree with Sublimatio, the avengers were a pointless mechanic anyway. There were just three ways to die to an avenger:

1. be a mesmer
2. be asleep
3. get stomped by someone else’s avenger

And now please wake up and realise that the vast majority of the playerbase won’t “git gud” in the way you demand.

For PvE, longbow is a crap weapon due to abysmal damage. The holy trinity of GW2 PvE is damage, damage and damage, so you should adjust your gear accordingly. http://qtfy.eu/build/guardian is quite good guidance for that purpose.

Draco.9480:

just dps, kill and move on. why waste potential dps???

That works for a few percent of the T4 fractal player base. For the average pug, a halfway competent healer is super valuable.

Right, less boon spam wouldn’t be bad either. But I don’t believe that will happen across the board, so for the time being I adapt my ideas to the current situation.

Jockum.1385:

You missed the point. I was speaking about “succeeding”.
To summarize some of the stuff I wrote in this thread:
It is very painfull to fail at a boss. Most PUGs with 10 random builds would enter the first boss (VG) and fail hard. Then they decide the content is too difficult and stay away from raids.

So it’s all about instant gratification for trivial tasks. To quote some infamous words: SO SAD!

Make stuff a rapid succession of smaller hits and aegis is no longer a “i can negate all the dmg”. Damage reduction is fine, too, but then it should probably be protection. I’m strictly against adding a kittenload of unique effects to the game that will just screw up balance, especially when it’s added to only a single class.

zealex.9410:

Which is?

Spreading buffs more evenly.

I assume there’s quite some space for those stat combos in the new expansion. At least I hope so, because going directly to five-stat sets would probably be a bad idea. Some combination of berserker stats with concentration would probably be most interesting for me, especially if (big if …) they go in the right direction with class balance.

From a practical point of view: the total demolition of buff monopolies. Every group-relevant buff should be available to at least two different classes.

Jockum.1385:

You can start fractals on a low level and slowly improve step by step – by “succeeding”. Low level fractals were easier than most dungeons btw. You can’t do the same in raids, there is no raid level which you can climb up step by step.

I can easily pick up 4 other random people without knowing anything about them (PUGs) and we can do a dungeon or fractal. Maybe not always, but most of the times. It takes more time, might be slow and painfull – but it works. For raids you have to be way more picky.

You are wrong, plain and simple. Many (or most?) people obviously improve more or less slowly, step by step, in raids. Nail down the mechanics of the boss’s first phase, then the next phase and finally kill it. Repeat at next boss. That’s the essence of MMO raiding, not facerolling through easymodes that could be done by an untrained monkey. By the way, the current raids are anything but hard – if that’s too hard for someone, it’s quite telling about the respective player.

I can’t think of many places in the fractals where one person failing mechanics causes the group to fail. Subject 6 is a mob that comes to mind (probably because I just had an incredibly bad group in there), but not many more. Watching videos is a good way to get a basic grasp of the mechanics, and I’d also strongly recommend doing a bit of research into your class’ raid/fractal builds. There are too many people around who have no clue about their class and do abysmal damage.

With regard to class choice, at least for fractals just play what you like. Having the right player is much, much more important than having the “right” class.

It’s a question of personal preferences. I’m very much in favour of streamlining stuff, so I don’t like yet another special defensive effect. Without invuln, we already have three kinds of damage-negating effects: evade, block over a period of time and aegis as a single block. Likewise, we already have a damage-reducing effect, protection. I don’t see what the devs couldn’t do when focusing on those effects instead of creating another one. Besides, my suggestion would be a good opportunity to re-balance aegis, which is in a pretty bad spot overall.

There would be a million reasonable ways to change distort. Personally, I’d prefer if distortion sharing would be changed to aegis sharing. Invulnerable effects like distort should be reduced to the absolute minimum, i.e. few select skills like Renewed Focus, mesmer F4 or the engi elixir.

I agree. While I wouldn’t think of distort as encounter-breaking (since they can be designed with this effect in mind), it’s definitely balance-breaking.

Sometimes I feel like pugs perfectly embody Prof. Carlo Cipolla’s Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. I’m just not sure whether they might violate the second law …

Although it has some situations that are something between unfair and annoying, story content in this game already is super easy. You can’t build an entire game for the lowest common denominator, i.e. least skilled player. Additionally, this is a bloody MMO, not a single player RPG.

Joxer.6024:

Only thing that would be nice is the actual progression, as in W1 is entry and in order to do W2 you need to have cleared 1, and so on.

I tend to disagree. With vertical gear progression, that might make sense (though it would probably be redundant), but not in GW2. There’s no reason to lock wings in a certain order.

With regard to difficulty, in my experience most raid bosses/instances go into farm mode shortly after you’ve first cleared them. It’s just a difference whether it takes good raiders two days or two months to kill a boss for the first time. GW2 feels (I’ve come too late to the party for real progress) too close to the two days, so no surprise it’s getting stale.

He’s talking about the real chrono runes, i.e. leadership.

I don’t think there’s any reason to buy HoT right away. Just play the core game for a while, then you can decide whether you want to go on.

I honestly have no idea how it is possible for a guardian to deal less damage than a greatsword mesmer, unless you play full nomad staff guard.

With regard to the supportive role of a character, I’d recommend a mesmer for PvE. Right now, they’re the kings of relevant support (quickness, alacrity, various useful forms of CC, projectile counters) and no other class comes close to that versatility. To use all the potential, you’ll have to follow a rotation that’s rather complex.

However, mesmers pay for those capabilities by being uniquely bad at damage. The illusion mechanics are a severe restriction in almost all cases and your own attacks cannot compensate for that, so leveling or doing other stuff solo in PvE is a pain. At least it was when I leveled my mesmer and much later played her through the HoT story, but since the mechanics are still the same, there’s likely no difference.

So if you want to be good on your own, I’ll recommend the guardian. With a proper build, it packs quite a punch while survivability still is rather good compared to, say, an elementalist. It lacks the mesmer’s offensive support but brings more defensive one, has slightly weaker CC options and isn’t as good at countering projectiles, but the support skills you have will still be helpful in many situations. It’s mostly raids where guardian support becomes rather irrelevant.

RabbitUp.8294:

I honestly hope they rework mace into a self-defensive weapon next xpac.

That would be a) awesome and b) a rather trivial task. Changing #3 into a continuous block for ~2 seconds would have a big impact.

thrag.9740:

Already in the game. Escort,trio,MO.

Actually, I’d add almost all bosses to that list :P

Yes, they’re a rare drop from the gobbler packages. Had a few of them in the past.

Fluffball.8307:

What’s the point in playing any game? If it’s fun, do it. If it’s not, stop. You’re thinking way too much.

Absolutely true. Even if one is really attached to a game, there’s a point where one has to realise that stopping is a better option than permanently getting angry at something the devs do (though I can’t understand what exactly the OP is angry about – all of the things he complains about have been there for a long, long time).

Since this is apparently a PvE question, the solution is simple:
http://qtfy.eu/build/guardian

I wouldn’t care a lot about finding an “optimal” class with regard to the current meta, since all classes are viable and (parts of) the meta change regularly. Rather try to find a proper guild/group, that will likely be more useful in the end.

The sad thing is, while GW2 raid encounters in general are pretty easy (yes, that includes stuff like Matthias), a big part of the raid community has ridiculous expectations with regard to classes and experience. Expectations which most of those people probably won’t fulfill themselves, but who cares …

I did HoT hero challenges something like two months ago on my warr and had exactly zero problems finding a few guys for each of the champ HPs. If using LFG or asking in map chat is viewed as too difficult, than that’s a confession of failure for the community.

1. Auric Basin – by far the best of the HoT maps, without the kitten elements TD has.
2. Cursed Shore – optically not that impressive, but the gameplay and flow of the map are great.
3. Malchor’s Leap – similar to CS.
4. Divinity’s Reach – beautiful and one of the best MMO cities I’ve seen so far. I remember when I first went there during the beta weekends. I was absolutely impressed, especially because I had to compare it to WoW’s Stormwind and DR was just so much better in every aspect.
5. Gendarran Fields – dunno why exactly, but I just like it.

Dadnir.5038:

I’d bet that they thought toughness when you answered armor…
The correct answer was 0 toughness since 1000 is your base armor value.

Erm no, 1000 is base toughness. Base armor is somewhere >2000 with ascended gear.

I guess he rather refers to the virtues reset that happens only once the cast is finished.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Adding Might increases damage in every situation where you aren’t capped.

And there are enough situations where you can expect to be capped. I’d prefer buffs to torch to be universal at least for any kind of PvE and sPvP, since those are the modes where it is used. If #5 got reasonable dps, self-cleanse and on top of all the little might stuff, I won’t mind. The first two things are most important. But I’d hate to see some nearly useless might added at the expense of dps or cleanse capabilities.

1. Tangled Depths (for obvious reasons)
2. Draconis Mons (same)
3. Southsun Cove (that map is just boring)
4. Bitterfrost Frontier (those blasted long-range artillery ice elementals …)
5. Straits of Devastation (always hated it)

Draco.9480:

subject 6 is about dps and interrupting him while he blocks which warr with might signet is needed or jsut take 2 necros to epidemic to kill all adds.

It may be for static groups and the likes, but not for the average T4 pug. There you can be happy if they don’t pop his shield and switch to the adds quickly enough.

Three seconds of might is something that you might as well not have. Torch is our dps offhand, so more dps (ideally via shorter cast time) and reliable (self) condition cleanse should be enough to benefit all game modes.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Because some love pitchblack night doesnt mean everyone does.

This. Night could indeed be a bit darker than it currently is, but not much. Pitchblack or anything in that direction is an absolute no-go, because it ruins gameplay for many while satisfying the RP or whatever wishes of a few.

Amaimon.7823:

Fighting the giant jellyfish with challenging mechanics

That would suck. Nothing more, nothing less. Underwater stuff is so imbalanced that this fractal should always be excluded from any kind of rework. It’s not worth the effort.

With regard to the other fractals, I’m less opposed but still don’t really like the idea. Apart from all the development time that could be spent on new fractals, I’ve got a feeling that challenge modes for every fractal might have some unintended side effects on the community.

Permafrost.2695:

Wow. Our off-hand weapons are stellar. All of the skills are great as is. If you want to buff them, I’m not going to argue. To say they are currently bad boggles my mind.

Ray of judgement is an ESSENTIAL condi clear in the condi met in sPvP. Cleansing flame is the same for WvW. And shield of judgement is a huge source of DPS in shattered aegis builds.

While I don’t think guardians (and some of their stuff) are as bad as a bunch of people always cry, those offhand skills certainly aren’t “stellar”. ROJ is annoyingly slow and uncontrollable, cleansing flames is a joke (and I’ve never seen someone desperate enough to use it in PvD) and shield of judgement is in general pretty meh, though not as bad as CF.

I definitely wouldn’t mind if we got the proposed changes.

Panda.1967:

Funny how many of the people claiming to love meters and/or claiming they dont add to exclusions, have actually posted reasons why they have added to exclusions and reduced build versatility.

[…]

This is an amazing wall of nonsense, almost worthy of the gargantuan nuclear-powered tangerine death pastry. I’ve been pugging T4 fractals on an almost daily basis for the last 10 months and I haven’t seen a dps-based kick (or just rage-rant) once. I repeat, not even once. So where exactly are all those ominous exclusions supposed to happen?

What for? I have the impression that it’s little more than an average mixture of platitudes, nonsense and stuff that’s obvious to anyone capable of halfway clear thinking – at a truly epic length that’s in no way connected to the content.

Fashion Mage.3712:

CptAurellian.9537:

Ragnarox.9601:

Spirit weapons are dead, pls dont touch them cause you will get Pharaoh’s curse if you open their tomb.

Agreed. In addition to the curse, I’d really like to see development time spent on more useful skills than blue junk weapons.

Translation: I want to buff skills that are already fine and leave underpowered skills in the dust. #powercreep

kitten. As if signets, shouts and consecrations didn’t contain big problems. Fixing them should always be a priority over fixing stupid AI skills that would require a total rework to become remotely useful.

Ragnarox.9601:

Spirit weapons are dead, pls dont touch them cause you will get Pharaoh’s curse if you open their tomb.

Agreed. In addition to the curse, I’d really like to see development time spent on more useful skills than blue junk weapons.

And yet, most of the players doing insane dps would also be able to do the mechanics properly, while people struggling at dps will usually also struggle at mechanics.

That list looks great.

That’s the natural consequence of introducing a minimal amount of challenge. Raids can be beaten with pretty much any build (as the never ending stream of joke kill videos proves), but they require a minimum level (not really high, if I look at most bosses) of player skill. That’s a good thing.

Feanor.2358:

Angelweave.1856:

With the introduction of dps meter’s it is apparent that player versatility is narrowing, i.e. if you see a thief running dual pistols you immediately know they bring little to the table whatever game mode they are playing (pve/wvw/pvp).

I disagree. You can judge a bad build by just knowing the game. I would guess most of the people running dps meters already are familiar enough with it to make said judgement.

This. This thread has been flawed from the beginning because the basic assumption is simply wrong. Anyone who cared knew to tell apart strong and useless weapon types long before dps meters. It’s not as if you didn’t notice whether a weapon has good damage or not by simply playing your class.

That’s still a thing? Good I always refused to use that stupid meter.