Guild Wars 2

I have a different opinion than most people here. I feel that the glass cannon concept has its place but it shouldn’t be as dominant in pve as it is. I also feel that simply changing the AI can easily fix this while making fights far more engaging.

Let’s take Turmaine from Caudecus’s Manor for example. Right off the bat, cut his health down by a third. Because he spends almost half the time being invulnerable, he has way too much. Also, I feel shorter, skill-intensive fights are better than longer wars of attrition.

Second, take away defiance and instead, give him an ability to clear any condition a second after it is applied except for weakness. Then program him to target the last person that used a control skill on him. Allow him to auto-attack as often as a players can and, if he can’t hit his target within 5 to 7 seconds of running after them, he switches to pistols, stands still and attacks from range. While ranging, he will actively dodge any attack meant to stun him as long as he isn’t afflicted by weakness. Any player that tries to get into melee range will instantly be targeted, hit with Headshot and then Unload. If 5 of his auto-attack shots are reflected, he switches back to daggers and chases his target again. While this is going on, he will still spawn aoe poison pools under everyone outside of melee range.

When he enters spectral form, he still loses the ability to attack with weapons but gains swiftness and a large, point-blank aoe aura. This aura pulses a small bits of damage as quickly as Frost’s auto-attacks and inflicts cripple to everyone it hits. He still can’t be hurt by physical attacks but no longer cleanses conditions, except for weakness, which he becomes immune to. In fact, during this phase, non-damaging conditions like vulnerability and cripple will have their durations doubled while damage-oriented ones and retaliation will do twice as much.

One interrupt will stop his pulses for 2 seconds. Five interrupts within 3 to 5 seconds will knock him out of spectral form and leave him stunned for several seconds. Once he recovers, he’ll start using weapons again while spawning poison pools under anyone outside of melee range.

The idea is to allow one person to gain aggro and tank his attacks while others focus on burning him down or allow glass cannons to kite him by swapping aggro between them. During his spectral phase, tanking will no longer be as viable but condi builds are given a moment to shine while a single mesmer or a well-organized team can bring him out of it and burst him down quickly. It also makes for a more thrilling fight as the bosses is given a few simple but powerful reactions to keep players on their toes and can be approached in a few different ways than what’s presently available.

Graphics cards don’t matter because the game is programmed to use the CPU more than the graphics card. It’s a complaint that’s been made ever since the beta stages.

The one problem with this is money. Buying one permanent tool for each character gives more money to Anet. Having all characters only needing one of each between them is a considerable loss of profit. I too would love to have every toon share permanent gathering tools but it’s just not a logical move for the company to make.

If it was 25% normally with a skill to boost it to 33% for 20 to 30 seconds (I need the speed boost BEFORE the sandstorm comes, not after) and it worked on ALL kites, I would get these. I would actually buy gems and get them off the trading post. You’re this close to making money off of me, Anet.

DaMunky.6302:

Silky sand is supposed to be annoying and largely useless, guys. It’s a flavor item. When you’re in Dry Top, everywhere you go and everything you do causes sand to get into your bags, and every so often you have to stop and clean the sand out.

It’s a little bit annoying, but it’s totally appropriate to something you would have to do while running around in a desert tundra, and very infrequently you find something good in the sand as a bonus.

This would be an awesome idea IF they had an NPC in Prosperity talk about it. Something like,

NPC1: UGH! I hate this place! Sand gets EVERYWHERE! I’m constantly cleaning it out of my bags!"
NPC2: Yeah, me too. However I occasionally find valuable stuff so it’s not a total loss.

I’m sure that would spark a few lightbulbs in players’ heads.

I agree that the group needs more conflict amongst themselves. They don’t have to be full-on dysfunctional but isn’t it about time Brahm got into an argument with Rox over being over-protective?

I, as well as others, have described it as the plot of a Saturday morning cartoon. Villains are evil for the sake of being evil and good guys are often kitteny in the face of danger. I found it annoying in season 1 but understandable as I thought they were aiming for a general audience. Then Kas and Marjie happened and I’m left… confused. You have to aim for PG to get away with that so I don’t understand why the plot elements aren’t more mature.

To be fair, things are a bit better than season 1 but not enough for my taste. I want the Inquest to have an understandable reason for harrassing the Zephrites. I want to see some arguing between Rox and Braham. I want dialogue choices that allow me to affect the moods of those around me. Most of all, I want elder dragons that can talk (at least through their minions) and tell me why they do what they do.

I don’t want to fight people because they’re generically labeled as evil. I want to fight them because their views and/or goals make sense but are in conflict with my values and/or responsibilities.

Nilkemia.8507:

They look neat, but don’t fit with any of my characters’ aesthetics/themes. If anything, I’d probably go for the butterfly axe.

Still, it’s nice to have a weapon set not locked behind RNG gambling chest nonsense.

They are. You just open different RNG chests. I would also like to add that these are worse because fossils are neither tradable nor sellable. From what I’ve heard, the weapons created from them are accountbound too. If you finally get one and it’s not one that you want, you’re only two options are to destroy it or bank it and hope that you can do something with it later.

I rolled my eyes when the locket was first mentioned. I don’t see how it picturing the current ruler makes it powerful. I could create a program for my smartphone that always displays the latest president but that wouldn’t make it more powerful than my desktop.

The moment Taimi explained what Omadd’s machine was, I thought, “For the love of all Six and a bag of grits! Someone tie this half-pint heifer AND her golem down before she does something stupid!” And then I’m forced to watch the entire party turn their back to an Asuran kid with an unhealthy interest in Scarlet and the machine that drove her mad.

I’m surprised none of you heard me swearing at my monitor…

And they call us “bookah”…

Taking on the boss in the last mission was fun! I was actually using Into the Void, Phantasmal Wave and Mind Stab for more than just pretty effects! My only gripe is one that was mentioned earlier. Harder mobs need better loot otherwise I’m just going to avoid them in the future as they’re not worth the time it takes to kill them.

Tossing in my two copper. I agree that Belinda died way too early. The moment I saw her body in the vines, I thought, “Ugh… so Anet’s pulling this crap again…” It didn’t work in the latter end of the personal story and it sure as hell isn’t going to work now. It was also blatantly obvious she was going to die because Marjory said she wanted to spend more time with her. The writers really need to stop showing their hand in this fashion. If you absolutely must do a quick kill, don’t telegraph it. That way the shock of how fast it happens also pulls at the player’s heartstrings. NPCs also need to die in a way that makes it obvious they can’t be revived by in-game rules. In this particular instance, it could have been the vines wrapping around Belinda’s body and, while she’s struggling to get out and follow seraph are desperately hacking away to get her free, the vine quickly contorts with a wet, crunch that’s followed by Belinda going completely limp. A few seconds of silence spent capturing the shock on various faces and you would have at least some emotional impact.

However, as things are now, I do have one glimmer of hope. A necromancer just watched her sister die and adamantly insisted on being alone when taking the body home. Toss in how Marjory’s story really got started with the death of a little boy and there are some dark, juicy developments that could come from this. Sadly I’m fairly certain anet won’t go that route. They totally ignored the potential of Jennah and Anise being split personalities of the same person during the Queen’s Jubilee, even though the mesmer forum practically handfeed them discrepancies in the game and novels that would fit the framework perfectly.

I’m not mad that the fixed a minor iLeap bug. I’m mad that they fixed a minor iLeap bug BEFORE fixing the major, well-documented, constantly complained about, in-game since the beta weekend iLeap bug that keeps the skill from working about 50% of the time. That makes no sense!

Yeah, it does look like you’re staring up that poor girl’s skirt but my only lament is that this problem is more likely to get fixed than more pressing matters.

SkiTz.4590:

eh, technically you are specializing in air/water if you spec 6 into water.. you will have a load of healing/cleansing options. same goes for air

That’s not specializing. To truly specialize I should be able to do something such as weapon swap in battle at the cost of fire and earth attunements. A proper elementalist should be able to choose to stick to as little as one element and feasibly excel at everything that element offers.

I say defiance is bad in design simply because it hard-counters too much. Let’s say you’re fighting the Claw of Jormag. Since you know CCs aren’t going to work on him most of the time, are you going to wait until that time comes, try to coordinate everyone around you to make it happen or will you just stick to damage because damage always works? That’s why world events are spam fest.

Now if burning always gave him and his walls a special type of weakness that doubled the damage they received, what do you think players will do? That’s how bosses should be handled.

Lucente.5071:

I personally like that the set is no longer available. It feels like my character has some exclusivity to it and makes my Thief very recognizable. Especially in WvW i get tells all the time and people run when they see me coming. Granted im only using the shoulders, chest, boots and gloves with aviators and rascal pants. But i love that sense of uniqueness.

Exclusion, by definition, is no something you should want in an mmo. Rarity is one thing as being seen with such an item shows the passion and drive behind getting it. But something you can no longer get? That’s just a reason not to play the game. Build up enough of those and it’ll kill any mmo.

Instead of doing that, they should create separate instances for these world bosses, much like the ones for personal story, that can be activated at the player’s leisure. That would solve so many headaches.

OP, I have the same problem that you do. Sometimes I don’t want to be the damage dealer. Sometimes it just feels more gratifying to be the one that keeps the rest of the team fighting. Recently I saw a FFXIV video of a white mage that kept an Ifrit run going by dodging most of his attacks and spamming heals for 5 minutes so she could build up a level 3 limit break to revive her entire team. I miss moments having moments like that.

Also, for my elementalist, I pictured her specializing in air for single target crit damage and water for heals and condition cleanses. Unfortunately I can’t play her that way because ALL elementalists are expected to dance between all 4 elements. It boggles my mind that a class designed to do a little of everything can’t choose to specialize in just a few things. That’s like having computer programmers that are forced to use COBOL, C++, Visual Basic and Java when they only want to use C++.

The keys alone are more cost efficient than buying them normally but even that is stuff based on RNG. Who keeps buying these keys anyway? There are more cost-effective ways of getting black lion tickets.

Electro.4173:

A nice deal for those who enjoy the gambling chests. Not for me though.

I have the same outlook on it. If they want me to buy keys, they need to do certain things. First, the sheer amount of black lion chests on the TP needs to drop below 1,000 and their rarity needs to go up. Preferably, it should get to the point where a chest is worth 60 to 100 gold. One way of doing so would be flushing 250 of them and a few various other items (bloodstone dust immediately comes to mind) in the mystic forge for a guaranteed black lion ticket scrap.

Once this is accomplished, that recipe is dropped and every chest would guarantee a black lion ticket scrap as well as at least one highly sought after item. Personally, I would write an algorithm that would make whatever crafting material that has the highest TP gold value the second item. That way, prices would balance themselves out somewhat and chests will always be desired but their gold value will eventually be less than the exchange value of one black lion key.

The other two item slots can be for whatever fluff they feel like sticking in the chest but there would need to be a way to turn them into something useful BY PLAYER STANDARDS! I can’t stress that enough. I have loads of boosters that just take up space because I have more patience than any desire to use them but nothing else to use them for.

Eventually this would equal out the chances of getting a black lion ticket at random with failing 10 times in a row but still having enough scraps to make a full ticket.

I don’t even understand what you’re upset about. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen someone with a Jade weapon and this includes them being more readily available. If you want to feel like a special snowflake, you should encourage Anet to allow us to craft our own weapons based on the skins and particle effects available instead of worrying about this. In my opinion, reskinning them to be a different color would be lazy. That effort would be better spent coming up with completely different skins.

I read Edge of Destiny after I started playing the game. All the characters are a LOT better in the novels… up to the point where Queen Jenna is introduced. That’s pretty much when they became the characters you see in the game.

Kalavier.1097:

Game mechanics and balance answer much of the “Why can’t my mesmer do that!?!?!” complaints.

Proper game design would limit NPCs to the same mechanics as players and then build storylines, quests, dungeons and other confrontations around those limitations.

Giants aren’t hard to kill though. Even the champion one in the harathi hinterlands is more a lesson in patience than skill. I’ve soloed him on a warrior, guardian and a mesmer. The risen veteran versions are slightly harder with a lot less health so I use them as tests for builds.

Kalavier.1097:

Erm….

Tequatl measures:
body width – 22m
wingspan – 188 m
height (when on 4 legs from ground to the top) – 35 m
length (head to tail) – 113 m

Zhaitan:
wingspan – 500 m
height – a bit unmeasureable, since he has no legs and each hand is different
lenght – 506 m

Their wings are pretty decent :P.

Also, it’s common knowledge norn muscles and bones are not even close to the same as humans. :P

I’ll give you norns as I know so little about them but a 500-meter wingspan would not support a 506-meter body unless elder dragons are extremely light for their size. Considering how much energy is being pulled out of Primordius to power the Asura gates, I find it highly unlikely.

The personal story allows you to get 4 pieces of it. I know one of the pieces you can’t get are the shoulders because that’s the piece I was looking for.

Sadly I can’t find a good image anywhere but mesmers can spawn an Illusionary Rogue when in downed state. I would imagine that it has a phantom dagger as it uses the thief’s Heartseeker attack.

I can tell you what the problem is. You’re thinking mechanics instead of meta. Talk to a pro fighter and you’ll notice that they’ll mention abstract concepts like OTG, crossups, block stun and happy birthday more than basic skills.

The answer is to play the class and your main until you get so good at both that you stop thinking about “how” to pull off combos and start thinking about “when” to do them. Once you have the muscle memory down, it literally becomes a battle of wits.

Sorry Mad Queen but I have to agree with the others on this one. Before I can even discuss the physics to make a river of sand plausible, I’m stuck on the very existence of elder dragons. They are literally too big and too heavy for their bones to support them, never mind getting airborn with such small wings. Speaking of bones, Norns and Charr either have theirs made out of steel or they are at least 3 times as dense as humans. Otherwise there’s no way they could support their own weight. And then there’s Sylvari. Plants don’t have muscles so how the hell do they even move?! And don’t even get me started on Asura! While they are anatomically plausible, do you know how much energy it would take just to power ONE gate?! Here’s a hint. To pass a single atom through a wormhole (which they basically are) you would need enough energy to make Jupiter! And they have them EVERYWHERE! And if we actually followed physics, when one explodes, there should be a dust cloud where the solar system that contained the planet Tyria and several nearby stars used to be! And if draining the energy from just one dragon to power all of them only made it sleep a few more decades, there’s no hope of defeating it. There would be enough energy in it for just its roar to compress the air around it into a blackhole and a super massive one at that!

As you can see, quicksand is the least of my issues!

As much as I agree that their relationship is cringe-worthy, I have to say that it is good writing. Before you put out torches and pitchforks, hear me out.

Relationships go through stages. The number of these can vary depending on whom you ask but everyone has a common consensus that the first is always “puppy love”. During the first 4 to 6 weeks, people whom just start a relationship will act as if it is the best thing that ever happened to the universe! This is also referred to as the “addiction stage” and with good reason. It’s at this time that the brain releases dopamine, which does things that are far too complicated to really get into here. The tl;dr version is that it makes you feel REALLY good and want to do more of what you’re presently doing. Falling in love, drugs, video games, music… and… let’s call the next one “reproduction,” all can cause this chemical to flood the brain. Of course the body has countermeasures to this so you can’t just do the same thing over and over again to get the same effect. You either have to go with something new but related or bigger and better. If you don’t, your interest will just fizzle out.

At this point, relationships move on to the second phase where one or both people in the relationship try to gain some sense of “self” again and this is where most relationships fall apart. The reasons are varied but not important because Marjory and Kasmeer clearly haven’t gotten this far yet. For them it’s only been about a month since we literally staked our claim in Scarlet’s cleavage and their relationship isn’t much older than that. Their sweet nothings and pet names are fewer than before though, as well as small signs of growing tension from considering the other more than themselves. Their relationship is following the predicted course.

Now many of you guys state that how lovey-dovey these two have been is something straight out of a teenaged girl’s fanfic. Yeah, it is. And that is how it should be. Again, the explanation is tl;dr worthy so here’s the short answer. They are thinking more emotionally than logically as new couples tend to do. Teenagers do this as well during puberty because the body naturally processes more thoughts through the parts of the brain that deal with emotions than logic at that time. Scientists don’t know why and my best guess is that the logic part is being “renovated” so the natural shift to the emotional side is basically a temporary detour until things are ready. Regardless of the reason, you can see that they are acting like teenagers because they are thinking like teenagers, which is completely normal, given their situation.

So yeah, these two are acting normally. Feel free to gag about it because that’s a normal reaction too.

There’s another dubious effect that may be related. I don’t think these mobs count towards achievements. One night I spent an hour in dry top doing all kinds of events and, at the end, my daily Maguuma Killer was at 0%.

I think feel there is a misconception here. Stories have a flow that has to be respected. They all can’t start off with grandscale bang and those that do have will have the laborious job of trying to top the beginning’s wow-factor later on during the story’s climax. If they can’t manage that, the story falls flat.

Personally, I’d rather had a slow start than a slow end.

There’s also her insane recharge time. She was clearly opening portals in expanses shorter than 72 seconds.

As for Marjory’s bridge, all you had to do was show fossils of a large creature jutting out of the wall and I would have bought in to her creativity wholesale.

The fact that people keep asking for mounts is proof that the waypoint system and speed boosts aren’t enough to satisfy. Personally, I find the broom and drill that’s sold in the gem store insulting. That’s like giving a starving man a peppermint and expecting it to keep him alive.

Actually there is at least one test server that is open to more than Anet’s staff. I wouldn’t call it “public” because it seems to be extremely limited about gets to use it. I too feel like they should broaden the scope to get more feedback but I grow weary of saying such. In my opinion, Anet doesn’t listen until the majority of the community is screaming in their ear. Only then do they contemplate making a change.

Greatsword with Strength and Earth sigils
Sword/Focus with Strength and Torment sigils

Knights Gear with Strength Runes (I playfully call it my Might-Knight build)

4/4/0/0/6 with Empowered Illusions, Greatsword Training, Blade Training, Deceptive
Evasion, Compounding Power, Illusionary Elasticity and Illusionary Persona

Ether Feast, Blink, Feedback, Nullfield and Timewarp

I suppose you could call it a Phantasm/Shatter build but the idea is to be well-rounded offensively and defensively. I chose Knights over Berzerkers because I don’t find it fun to go “all-in” on every engage, have a tendency to try crazy things that should kill me and I’m a bit of a hipster. Strength runes are ridiculously expensive but, with Mirror Blade and Illusionary Elasticity, allow me to stack might faster and more consistently than an ele when soloing. The Strength sigils are obvious but Earth is a holdover from my last build and Torment was to prop up my aoe damage a little. I’m debating switch Earth with Air and Torment with Fire. As for Illusionsary Persona, it’s just to make sure that I’m always able to shatter. I use Mind Wrack to end fights or when I know my phantasms are about to be cleaved down. I have used Diversion on bosses when I noticed defiance is down and could use some breathing room. It also helps with the interrupt daily. Every now and then I use Distortion to literally avoid all kinds of problems.

Happyfool.8951:

I like this idea, little known fact, you sometimes get random spawns related to your personal story.

I once had a zombie Tibalt attack me out of no where. Saddest moment in my GW2 life.

I had a similar situation where mercenaries appeared out of nowhere and told me that Minister Caduceus wanted to “thank me” for helping his daughter join the Order of Whispers. It was one of the most awesome moments I’ve ever had! Too bad it only happened once.

I think he (or she) wants to use more than 2 weapon sets. While 2 is fine in combat, sometimes even I would like to switch to a 3rd or even a 4th set out-of-combat instead of opening my bag, finding it and double-clicking to equip it. This is particularly annoying to do on my guardian whenever the situation requires that I equip a scepter. Sure, it only saves a few seconds but I’m annoyed in those few seconds. This feature would alleviate that and I’m willing to pay money for it, just like I did for the gemstore gathering tools.

Seabreeze.8437:

THANK YOU! That’s exactly how I feel! He was actually pretty cool, until… that happened. Seriously, the first words he muttered when she appeared was, “she’s… _beautiful,” then started acting like a love-sick moron all the time. After that, it was “my queen” this and “I’m yours forever” that. It didn’t help that Jennah basically paraded him around saying, “check it fools, this guys my b****, come at me!” I basically lost all respect for him the minute he when full tool like that. I don’t blame Rytlock for wanting to gut him where he stands.

Funny thing is, when I read that line from Logan, my first thought was, “I’ve got jungle fever, she’s got jungle fever, We’ve got jungle fever, we’re in love!”

I also feel that’s when the story went downhill. Logan and Jennah exchanging love letters? There are Asura gates everyehere! The dude could have got up in the middle of the night, literally jumped through a hoop and snuck into her room whenever her felt like it! That face time would have made it more convincing when Jennah decided to choose him as her champion. I’m even sure Anise would have allowed them some time alone as it would have improved Jennah’s mood and Logan is so whipped, he spanks himself!

I don’t buy the boosters either. In the years that I’ve been playing, the only ones I really used were karma and that was when they affected consumable karma items. Now that we can’t do that, they just collect dust in my bank storage. I wish there was another use for them. Personally I would like to convert them into T6 mats on an 1 to 1 ratio. If nothing else, that would boost the value of black lion chests.

I’m also waiting for Marjory’s Dagger. I don’t know how I missed it the first time as I bought Kasmeer’s staff.

I agree! Soulbound has annoyed me to no end! I have things that I can’t stack because they are soulbound. I have to be careful about what I create for which character because stuff gets soulbound. I’ve picked up some awesome exotics and skins before that I would have loved to use on other toons but had to vendor them because they were soulbound on acquire! The absolute worst is when i place a soulbound item in storage and forget which character it’s bound to.

If it HAS to be bound, let it be accountbound!

Tanith.5264:

And let’s not even get started on the projectiles favored by mesmers…I file the whole thing under “suspension of disbelief”.

I wouldn’t say it’s impossible once you realize that Mesmers clearly have telekinetic abilities. That would explain how they can levitate a greatsword between their hands while shooting energy beams from it and how simply slashing the air in front of enemies can push them back.

Malganis.7468:

Its the same type of mechanics as longbows and shortbows that never run out of arrows.

Actually, if you watch the animations very closely, you’ll notice that every arrow fired has a “knotch” animation afterwards, as if the player has a quiver on their back that they draw from. Even rapid fire attacks have this animation. I have to give props to the animators because, while it is extremely fast, it’s still very fluid.

The Revenant.4970:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Why can’t people see that criticism and feedback is necessary for a game’s development?
Why can’t people differentiate between criticism and whining?
Why are you complaining about complaining?

I criticise the game because I care.

99% of the criticism is terrible bullkitten. Frankly, wading through all of that isn’t worth it to fish out the measly 1%.

No, you don’t know better than ANET developers. Sorry!

I also have to agree that you’re wrong. Anet just decided that reflection traits shouldn’t reflect certain projectiles and did not inform the players of such a change. Basically they have made it so traiting skills, which is supposed to make them more useful, has actually and objectively made them less useful. Worst of all, this change was not in the patch notes and even after it was discovered by players, to my knowledge, the company has said nothing about it.

So yes, we can know better than the devs. They are human, after all.

I rock two mesmers. My main uses greatsword, sword/focus. I would like to try offhand sword or pistol on her but, because the focus is the only class access to speed that mesmers have, I’m married to it. Runes aren’t an option as I’m using Runes of Strength. After paying over 13g for each one, I’m not swapping them any time soon.

My other mesmer works staff, sword/focus. She is purely for support and, while I tried using a scepter on her because my build allowed traiting for it, it didn’t feel right. Sadly, sword was the only other main hand option.

One of these days, I might breakdown and make a third mesmer. I really want to try an interrupt build along with every block and counter skill we have, just to see how much it will kitten people off.

Spike pit part isn’t a bug, sadly. Anet decided to “update” so you actually have to fight the breeder. Personally I felt the traps were more engaging. It was a way to defeat the boss without even using a single attack, plus it required the team to have a bit of coordination or else it could easily fail. Best of all, it was a refreshing change from the rest of the “stack and attack” tactics.

Apparently the devs don’t like diversity.

I normally say “I think” in these situations as to express my opinion clearing being my opinion. Today is not the case. I know this situation should be handled differently. If a boss can kill themselves with reflected attacks then they are either shooting too many projectiles or the projectiles are doing too much damage. Reflects aren’t the problem and nerfing them will only enforce the zerker “kill it quick” meta instead of encouraging counter-play.

It’s way past time I’ve gotten out of CRIT

IGN: Shinticre, Psympathy (yes, I have 2 mesmers)
Server: Kaineng
Playstyle: PvE Dungeons, champion soloing and the occasional metaboss zerg
Role: Scholar
Time: Evenings and weekends