Guild Wars 2

fumbii.3582:

It was most likely marketing money, so now you will most likely see more gw2 ads.

Which this game could honestly use. For a AAA title this game has about as much advertising as a steam game.

Miellyn.6847:

They have 3 LS teams, a raid team and a fractals team. Rewards are most likely produced by a team that interact with all 3 areas.

There is also the sPvP team, and the WvW team. Then the balance team that does the class changes. I believe there is also a economy team (the guys that do the rewards and control crafting) Oh and the storywriters.

Also the “teams” things as far as I know only refers to the designers. The artists and programmers that actually produce the content are separate and probably jump around between projects. (assuming Anet works like most software companies)

Turrets where destroyed for the same reason that Spirit Weapons, Ranger Spirits, Elementals, etc where all made bad.

Anet had this idea pre-launch of giving every class npc summons. Post launch they quickly realized that npc gameplay was cancer, and quietly nerfed npc summons out of relevancy.

DeceiverX.8361:

I just see any response accepting power creep as one which will reduce the quality of the game.

What power creep? The power level has gone down in the two years since HoT. The last time any power creep occurred was in 2015. It’s now 2017.

The game moved on. Get with the picture. 2014 isn’t coming back.

jpnova.4572:

How viable is this build in PvP?
I came back the game to play Hammer Engi and GS Necro but neither seem very good in PvE.

Condi GS is the meta build for PvE necromancer.

Hammer Engi is a PvP thing

Ithilwen.1529:

I can’t honestly say I’m sorry to hear it. Hopefully, ANET will make decisions that are unaffected by eSports concerns or eSports players.

They never made any decisions based on eSports so idk.

Jski.6180:

Still a lot of nothing because the mind set behind diamond skin nerf was blow out of the window with the adding of resistances as a boon. A 100% reduction is not good for the game and to have one counter effect to a 100% reduction (boon strip) is not a real counter at all. At least the old diamond skin was an hp% effect that was easy to brake.

Things like this is what has plagued ele as a class a nerf to the class such as duration dmg or even effect only to have is simply added to other classes nearly at the same time. Ele is the jack of all trades class in balancing but it cant do every thing any more because all the other classes where effectively given the ele skills by other means. Its like Anet is trying to comply destroy the ele class for another class to be added or to simply get the game back to 8 classes.

Context is everything. No bunker class has resistance access. Moreover the resistence effect is weaker than Diamond Skin. Resistance grants immunity to the effects of condis, but not their application. Diamond Skin completely prevented the application of any condi.

Diamond Skin was OP because breaking the 90% threshold on a bunker tempest that has perma 40% prot, along with Auras and large amounts of healing was impossible for any condi build. Power builds struggled killing it as well, and the only way to get rid of a bunker tempest in a reasonable amount of time was to 3v1 it.

Astralporing.1957:

If it’s so easy to ignore, why people defend that exclusivity so strongly?

The appeal of raids is progression, and people like to have visible symbols of that progression. In other words distinctive prestige items that can be acquired by no other means.

Getting Legendary armor is like buy a Corvette in real life. You don’t buy the Corvette because it’s practical for you, you buy it because it’s rare, iconic, and only successful men have them.

Exclusivity and Distinctiveness are what gives the item value.

OriOri.8724:

I never said I have a problem fighting warriors, and I don’t. Because most of them are trash and are just being carried by the berserker line. The line is way too forgiving, just like all elite specs are.

Nothing about elite specs is forgiving when you are fighting other elite specs.

The only thing HoT did is move the bar towards more active class mechanics, compared to core where you spent half the time spamming autos while waiting for cds to come off.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/237256/gw287.jpg
If you’re gonna post made up dps numbers in screenshots then get logs or vids to prove it.
More Alacrity wouldn’t of made enough difference to make it seem any less kitten and the player actually spent some time on Necro before, this run was aimed at him specifically trying Nec in all wings and resulted in Nec being useless literally everywhere.

hold up

this run was aimed at him specifically trying Nec in all wings

So your saying a guy that is bringing a necro into a raid for the very first time isn’t doing stellar dps?

protip: Pretty much everyone does terrible dps the first time they take a class into a raid.

OriOri.8724:

Berserker is just way too forgiving with this.

Is it? Realistically warriors are punished in that they have to land hits in order to access their primary sustain mechanic.

The only other class outside of warrior that requires landing hits for sustain is necromancer.

It may be too forgiving compared to core warrior, but core warrior is enormously underpowered and rather clunky and dysfunctional in it’s gameplay.

OriOri.8724:

Adrenal health is fine imo but do you honestly think its balanced for a primal burst skill to count as T3 adrenaline skill?

Except Adrenal health caps at 3 stacks and requires 15 seconds to apply the healing.

A core warrior can actually match a berserker’s AH uptime as long as the core warrior does not miss 2 f1s in a row.

Greygus.3427:

Example, swtor, marader, could use defence stance to help soak damage and guard dps getting focused or guard healer thats getting focused. Downside toon deals less damage. Once defence stance not needed switch to an offensive stance deals more damage have it dot based or flash ( power) based but it be a single tgt dps stance. Now offence stance would deal more damage but have less survivability. There was a third but its been yrs sense i have played so dont remember specifics

First off stances in SW:TOR are completely unrelated to Gw2 stances in everything but name. SW:TOR stances (cell/cylinders for the tech classes) where essentially passives, with each spec of the class having a corresponding stance. (i.e Combat spec sentinels used Ataru stance)

Second off, “stance dancing” in SW:TOR was never intended. Specs where only designed to use their respective stance. DPS juggernauts swapping into Tanking stance in order to use the guard ability was a unintended behavior and was considered a borderline exploit in solo arenas. In later expansions Stances where removed as a ability and instead became spec locked passives in order to fix this issue.

I don’t see a need for SW:TOR styled stances in this game. Stances in SW:TOR are products of the locked nature of SW:TOR specs, and would not work with the open-ended nature of gw2 builds.

Carighan.6758:

• Drop cash, directly.

You really don’t want to deal with all the inflation that would cause.

The entire reason that this game doesn’t have sinks like paying for armor repair is because of the low amount of raw gold that killing stuff gives.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Nightrous.6732:

This whole issue of dps meters would be so much easier if they were built into the game. Yet none of the 3 MMO’s i have endgamed on have dps meters.

And yet they almost always have training dummies, often with a “localized DPS meter” sott of feature. That is odd.

Training dummies exist because players typically demand a way to test, that is consistent enough to be used as a standard measure. Training dummies provide a standard format that player’s across the entire community can use as a universal measurement.

As for non-training dummy dps meters, many mmos find it easier just to provide combat logging and let the players develop their own parsers, than to bother the actual devs with developing a meter.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

NeXeD.3042:

I used to use staff all the time on pvp necro, I’ve found myself going away from it the last year or so. Axe and dagger just seem much better options unless you take souk marks.

Exactly. The moment they butchered deathly chill in spvp staff become “utility” with no kill potential. After you burn through marks you go shroud, use utilities or just /dance before you can swap to 2nd weapon for real action.

And it’s not like marks are that good anyway. Without soul marks they’re garbage (guards block’em, everyone around guards tends to have aegis, guess from who?). They don’t make good traps as they’re visible from space. One evade is all you need to neutralize 4/5 necro’s staff skills if they pile them up close enough. There are way better methods of applying posion, bleeds, chills and fears then crippling yourself with this “utility” weapon.

That’s not why you use staff. You use staff because a ranged AoE fear is one of the best playmakers available to necro. You use staff because Putrid mark is the most reliable condi transfer available to us. You use staff because chilblains is excellent for kiting.

bluri.2653:

“Regardless of TZ, I notice that if the actual queue wait is ~2:30-3:00 or higher”

What do you say about 8min q pops? You think they are healthy for your mental stability?

Bro I used to do 45min-1 hour waits for team ranked matches back in SW:TOR.

I quit swtor 2 years ago and I still can’t get over how fast the queues are in this game.

vesica tempestas.1563:

The average age of a gamer is over 30 so they are perfectly capable of reading/watching you tube/critical thinking etc. most can take responsibility for their own tastes and actions and will buy a game because they have worked out whether they will enjoy it or not.

That’s not how reality works. In reality people tend to impulse buy particularly when it comes to (relatively) cheap entertainment things like videogames.

This is why companies like EA dump tens of millions of dollars into developing CGI trailers and fancy graphics engines, because they have proven that hype sells better than features.

IndigoSundown.5419:

The main focus of GW2 is the cosmetic endgame.

No it’s not. Some people might obsess over cosmetics just like people do in literally every rpg ever, but that is not the core focus of the game.

The core focus of the game has always been the unique combat system, dynamic events, and horizontal progression.

OriOri.8724:

That’s 2 of 9. The others are almost always undeniably better than core specs, which is a huge problem still. Saying that druid and scrapper are in a better spot is a weak argument against not nerfing elite specs to be in line with core specs

The problem however is for some classes the elites are “mandatory” because of the elite fixing massive design flaws that the core class had. Flaws that could not be fixed any other way.

Necro is a good example of this. Core necro was for basically the entire history of gw2 a walking balance problem. Necro was perpetually struggling with viability, and the reason for that was how dysfunctional core shroud was along with general lack of synergy among skills.
Reaper for necro is a lynchpin that pulls all the otherwise unsynergistic traits together and turns the class into something that is actually competitive, and engaging to play.

Justine.6351:

Lolwhat?

People cleansing /= trailblazer staff reaper hard to play

Staff necro has a dps output that is somewhere between staff guardian and shortbow thief. Nobody dies to a staff necro. Staff is a pure utility weapon with no killing power.

OriOri.8724:

That’s the core problem with having elite specs be better than core specs. They are so ridiculously good that to pick something over them will either require massive nerfs to the elite spec (which are warranted), or the other option will have to be even more overpowered.

That’s the core problem with literally everything.

Given any two specs one of them will invariably be better for a given task.

So warriors have received the follow changes according to the notes:

Warrior:
•Warriors can now triple-wield weapons by slotting a third weapon into their helmet slot.
•Phalanx Strength now applies Fury, Regeneration, Protection, Aegis, Resistance, Vigor, Swiftness, Quickness, Alacrity, Spotter, Stealth, Super Speed, and Fire Attunement in addition to Might.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-1-2017/first#post6542907

Now I want to draw attention to the last effect applied by the new Phalanx Strength. Fire Attunement. Fire Attunement seems relatively minor compared to the other things on the list, but the patch notes also included this change:

Elementalist:
•Fire Attunement now sets the caster on fire until water attunement is cast.

Assuming the PS version of fire attunement is the same as the ele version of the attunement, this would mean that PS would be setting the entire group on fire, however the patch notes do not include any way for a warrior to apply Water Attunement which means that PS is actually a danger to the group (depending on how much burning Fire Attunement applies)

I feel like this is a gross oversight, and wonder if this is really intended by Anet.

TalleFjanten.7159:

And why would anyone take this game pvp serious when theres no soloq

why would anyone take solo queue seriously?

???

Vayne.8563:

The more the game “encourages” people into content that they don’t enjoy, the more chance that people will be dissatisfied with the game. Only a certain number of people are going to keep banging away at stuff they don’t like to get the shiny.

And if you don’t encourage people into content then they never find the content they enjoy.

People have inertia. People do not try new things for the sake of trying new things. If you don’t give people a reward for trying something, then they won’t try it. People would just solo quest until they burn out.

When started playing my first mmorpg, I had zero intention of doing raids, and had zero intention of doing PvP. The entire concept of group content freaked me out. However I ended up getting dragged kicking and screaming through both PvP and raids, and discovered that I liked both of those more than mindless quest grinding.

The idea of equal rewards doesn’t work because such a system provides no motivation.

Justine.6351:

Crinn.7864:

What Justine is saying is that he doesn’t want deathly chill to proc off shroud 5>4, or Chilling Darkness. That’s what he is asking for.

If deathly chill was changed to what Justine wants there would be very few things it could proc off of. Spinal Shivers (focus), Chillbians (staff), Executioners Scythe (shroud), Spectral Grasp (utility), “Suffer!” (utility), and “Chilled to the Bone!” (elite) Also GS #1 and #5 but no condi builds outside of raids will use a GS.

Of course your typical condi build won’t have half of those, which means Justine’s suggestion would render deathly chill more or less pointless and condi builds would actually be better off running blighters or onslaught.

The only change that Deathly Chill needs is for WvW to work like it does in sPvP. Necros are underpowered in all modes except WvW.

actually I would make it work off necro/reaper traits too like blind and fear chilling. But I would also cap those to necro/reaper as well.

The problem is the runaway effect with building builds that all flow into bleed with no hard cap. Frost Aura, Chilling Sigils, Corrupted Stability/Fury/Resistance and Chill Bolts are probably the biggest offenders of this.

Except there is a hardcap. There is a known amount of finishers available to necro, and the amount of chill fields available is deterministic as well. The shroud 5>4 combo is intended, and was clearly designed that way. The amount of times that a necro is going to get a projectile or whirl finisher off of somebody’s else’s ice field is so few as to be irrelevant.

Like I know you hate necro because of WvW, but objectively WvW should be using the sPvP version of the trait anyways, and besides WvW balance is a joke anyways because of PvE food/gear/runes.

For solo PvE, running blood, soul reaping, and death magic still isn’t advisable. You end up taking way more damage simply because of how long it will take you to kill anything. Condi Necro already takes awhile to kill mobs because of it’s ramp time, gutting it’s dps in the process is just making the player’s life more difficult than it needs to be.
Soul reaping in general isn’t good for core necro because of how crappy core shroud is.

And seriously, sigil of bursting is absolutely terrible. It’s tooltip is a trap for those ignorant of how it actually functions.

What Justine is saying is that he doesn’t want deathly chill to proc off shroud 5>4, or Chilling Darkness. That’s what he is asking for.

If deathly chill was changed to what Justine wants there would be very few things it could proc off of. Spinal Shivers (focus), Chillbians (staff), Executioners Scythe (shroud), Spectral Grasp (utility), “Suffer!” (utility), and “Chilled to the Bone!” (elite) Also GS #1 and #5 but no condi builds outside of raids will use a GS.

Of course your typical condi build won’t have half of those, which means Justine’s suggestion would render deathly chill more or less pointless and condi builds would actually be better off running blighters or onslaught.

The only change that Deathly Chill needs is for WvW to work like it does in sPvP. Necros are underpowered in all modes except WvW.

Zinthos.5893:

It’s not because of some insane cult fandom.

Don’t underestimate the edgelords.

Sigil of Bursting is worthless, it only scales off of your base condi damage not the condi damage from gear. Malice and Agony would serve your build better.

Also I’m not sure what content you are applying this too. In solo PvE taking a offensive traitline of some sort would net better results because of survivability by kill it faster. In PvP you’d lose every fight running such a build.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

No I am not happy

They did nerf it because someone posted footage of using the build to solo a raid boss not because the community posted 1000 vids of it over and over again on youtube in action in WvW.

geeegee Anet. I guess if we want something nerfed next time all we got to do is solo a raid boss with it right?

How are people figuring that is was because of the boss kill vs any other of a zillion posts.

Given the glacial rate at which Anet makes changes it was probably something that had been thinking about for months.

Fay.2357:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t get this thread … obviously the purpose of regen wasn’t to maintain your health at the levels it was prior to whatever nerfs. That’s why it was changed. I don’t see how it’s restricting you in any way in PVE. This isn’t a ‘face tank’ game, so the fact that it can’t heal through one basic hit makes lots of sense.

Regen wasn’t even nerfed. This guy is complaining about the engineer specific health regeneration buffs that are linked to having swiftness/superspeed/etc.

Is he? He mentioned the Ele healing signet, so I doubt he is talking about engis.

@OP regen is intended to augment your other healing and defensive measures, not be the end-all be-all of self-sustain.

morrolan.9608:

Thats understandable, why couldn’t they have written that. The patch notes are nonsensical.

The wording makes me think that the patch notes where basically them copy pasting their internal changelog.

Someone was probably in a hurry.

Rednik.3809:

Then how we got 0 dungeons, 2 fractals and 4 raid wings?

Because we got 4 HoT maps, 4 Living World maps, and 3 PvP maps?

Emm, what? Difficulty modes serves for widening raid audience and keeping mid and high-end raiding community saturated with fresh blood. Otherwise old model with different difficulty of encounters during a single raid would be enough.

That’s not how raid modes in traditional mmorpgs work though. In a traditional design, the easiest mode of raid is designed to be equivalent of the hardest mode of the previous raid, the idea being to create one continuous progression track from the easiest mode of the first raid to the hardest mode of the last raid, with expansion level-cap raises being the time for resetting the progression.

Gw2 took a different approach of each boss being more difficult than the previous, thus creating continuous progression through the bosses.

Rednik.3809:

In that case, calling something like that “side activity” will be a lie. Side activities are not receiving attention and development time more than all other instanced PvE content put together for 3 previous years.

Raids aren’t receiving more development time than anything.

Where is different difficulty modes for Xera and Matthias? Where is hardmode Escort? “Easy and difficult encounters” raid model is outdated, dead and dropped for years already in any decent raiding MMO.

You don’t understand why other rpgs use “modes.” The entire concept of variable difficulty encounters was created for vertical progression mmos in order to keep a raid relevant after it’s original difficulty got power creeped out of relevance. Since GW2 does not use vertical progression there is no need for variable difficulty encounters.

Wolfric.9380:

people will stack professions with swaping if its a benefit so …

But stacking isn’t a benefit so they won’t.

wwDefuser.2056:

well i also dont understand this… the german translation is even worse.
I red it like:

If there are stacked classes in your team each player gets less rating for a win and loses more rating for a loss ???? how does this makes sense since stacking is mostly a disadvantage for your team

They count the number of stacked classes from minute 1 to 2 … so the first 2 minutes of the game = the time where u can reroll.

What they may meant is:

1. stacking classes in a team reduce Rating variation.
2. class stacking is gonna reduced but it’s still possible when there are not enough players available
3. stacked classes are count within 2 minutes at the start of a match

“Scoring” in this context is completely unrelated to your rating. It’s a internal metric for comparing potential matchups.

What it seems to be doing is putting increased matchmaker priority on having 5 unique classes, and only expanding to 4 unique classes after 2 minutes.

Yeah I’m really confused too. It sounds like it’s trying to reduce profession stacks? The wording doesn’t really work without context.

I assume it’s related to these parameters in the matchmaker:

Scoring/Profession/@max
Target maximum number of professions that should exist on a team.

Scoring/Profession/unique Score added or removed for each unique profession, under Scoring/Profession/max, the potential roster would add to the team.

Scoring/Profession/common Score added or removed for each duplicate profession, at or above Scoring/Profession/max, the potential roster would add to the team.

Scoring/Profession/@matching
Score added or removed each professions that the other team has more of. This promotes profession balance.

note: “Scoring” is not talking about your MMR rating, it’s a internal metric that the MM uses for determining which matchups are best.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

Rednik.3809:

If not, then claim on “deserves best rewards” is wrong. Side activity cannot have best rewards in game and still be called such.

Rhetoric. Quality of rewards has nothing to do with whether a activity is a “side” activity or not. Quality of rewards is almost always related to how big a accomplishment getting the reward is. Killing 150 raid bosses is a pretty big accomplishment.

- There already are different difficulties in raids

Normal and hard, and on very few encounters.
[/quote]
No the fights themselves are different difficulties. Xera and Matthias are extremely difficult. Escort however is about as difficult as a dungeon.

No, both members of a duo get penalized if one of the duo DC. This is to prevent exploits.

AngryBear.8741:

I understand when you duo you can use fake DC to save your partner’s rating, but if I am in solo q, why did I get punished for DC if I got back, even had few top stats and my team won?

1) If a member of the a duo DC both of them lose rating.
2) DC punishment is purely based on how long you DC, there is no consideration for outcome.
3) You got your necro daily because the daily only checks win condition. Dishonor doesn’t give a crap about win/lose and only cares about whether you left or not.

The reason it is implemented like this is because teams sometimes (but rarely) win 4v5s, but rewarding the 5th guy that DC and did nothing would be folly in such a case.

Can we be realistic guys, Flesh Golem is better in actual content because of it’s breakbar ability.

Take Root is more of a parsing golem gimmick than something that is practical in actual content.

Random aside:
Honestly benchmarks ought be done on the 10mil HP golem not the 4mil HP golem. The 4mil HP golem is too easy to gimmick. Such as being able to add several hundred DPS by just clipping your rotation at 5%.

Although I do agree that the transform elites (plague lich) are bad and need either replacements or buffs.

Ramoth.9064:

PvP players don’t need ascended items. They’d probably like it more if you let them unlock skins like you do in DotA more frequently than you can do it now

The problem is that very few players exclusively sPvP. Many of us do WvW, many of us raid, or do fractals.

Very few players play a single game mode to the exclusion of all others.

Why would I boycott this season? I’ve enjoyed this season more than any others. The matchmaker works as well as it has any other season. All the rating exploits from previous seasons have been fixed. Class Diversity is better than it has ever been post-HoT.
Rewards are literally the only issue with this season.

Also I’ve been getting some really good fights.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

When there are 400+ rating differences between players in a match at primetime and top 250 is the whole platinum division, then it surely looks healthy …

The entire plat division is in top 250 because the rating threshholds are really messed up.

Glicko2’s mean is 1200 and the curve is distributed in such a way as to put almost everyone sub 1600. Arenanet really screwed up with the divisions since literally every division except bronze is above the mean.

@OP please remember that you are on the forums, and the gw2 forums work the same as the WoW forums do – predictions of doom 24/7 ever since the game launched.

Rod.3087:

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Rod.3087:

So I’m a WoW vet and me and some friends want to go to try a new mmo with super competitive PvP […]

PvP is pretty dead, no real competition at all. Many PvP’ers including most top tier players left the game. There are no official tournaments anymore, just ranked PvP with terrible matchmaking due to low population. .

“Pretty dead” as in overall or just at top bracket of pvp its 2 to 3 teams queuing into each other back to back?

It’s “Pretty Dead” as defined by melodramatic forum community that has been insisting that PvP is dead for the last 4 years.

Ingame it’s perfectly healthy and a lot better than that crap from WoW.

Lahmia.2193:

I’m not arguing that it was designed for condi. I’m saying it was designed for both power and condi. The original point I was countering was that Reaper was designed with power in mind, which clearly isn’t true (just as Berserker seemed very condition focused but yet it compliments power perfectly too).

No it wasn’t. Reaper is a good power spec without needing other traitlines or utilities. However to make Reaper a decent condi traitline you have to invest heavily into condi traits from other lines

Plastazote.7914:

My problem is that I do think shroud (second life bar aspect) is related to the ability to fill roles.

In PvE yes, shroud has nothing to do with filling roles because in PvE survivability is irrelevant because everything can be done with 2 dodge charges. However we can be made desirable in PvE without removing our HP bar too.

(Edit) Maybe I should change the topic name to “Trade second life bar for ability to fill roles?”

We shouldn’t trade anything for anything. We are a underpowered class in everything but WvW and should be given straight buffs. Not have our one saving grace gutted so that we can fill roles that other classes would still do better.

Evilek.5690:

Necromancer dont need DPS boost, he have best dps in many raids wings right now.

No we don’t. Necromancer has subpar dps and will continue to have subpar dps as long as field control doesn’t exist.

However our raid failings have nothing to do with the presence or absence of a second HP bar.

It’s not a scaling system at all. All players in sPvP have a standardized gear allotment in the form of selectable amulets.

The reason you are dying so fast is likely because you having the default amulet equipped which is berserker amulet which happens to be the squishiest amulet in the game.

Make sure you have some tankier selected like Paladins if you are first starting out.