You don’t like Bifrost’s autoattack change but you don’t own Bifrost? Great! Now you can pick up ANY OTHER STAFF! Considering Bifrost is one of the hardest legendaries to go for, you should be thanking Anet for saving you a LOT of blood, sweat and tears.
Personally, I feel it’s an ill fit for every class that can use it. I’d rather have a staff that swapped elemental effects along with my ele.
RNG should be serendipity. For instance, if you’re collecting dungeon tokens for dungeon armor and happen to get a piece of that armor as a drop, that’s awesome. If that never happens, it’s still okay because you still have an alternative that will take a set amount of effort.
Serious problems arise when RNG is the ONLY way to get certain items. People get frustrated when they can’t quantify how much effort it will take to get something they want. This is made worse when others whom aren’t trying as hard get lucky. Case in point, I wanted Jade dragon weapons so I spent way too many hours collecting thousands of coffers but never got a ticket. On the other hand, there was a person in my guild that didn’t even collect half as many coffers but got 7 tickets.
A better example is legendary weapons. They have been marketed as the ultimate test for hardcore players but, in reality, they are literally impossible to get unless you are lucky. One of the items needed for them is 77 clovers. They are account-bound so the only way to get them is by using a recipe that has a 18% to 33% chance of producing clovers. Though unlikely, it is possible for a player to never be able to get 77 clovers no matter how many times they use this recipe. Regardless of how low the chances are, this possibility SHOULD NOT EXIST!
The worst of all is, no matter how much the community as a whole has complained about this, Anet refuses to fix the issue or explain why they continue to use a system that is clearly detrimental to their playerbase.
Gah, I really don’t see the problem with people using 2/2/2 combinations of runes, and I really don’t see why Anet would have a problem with this.
Also, I would probably just wait and see what happens in the end, then look at your options and go from there.
Anet does a lot of headscratchers for the sake of balance. Personally I loved the idea of 2/2/2 sets as it shows depth in the system and ingenuity on the behalf of the players. Instead of trying to make it less viable, it would have been better to create a new rune set that did the same but offer better stat combos.
I feel confusion should be changed mechanically. It would be better if it was like blind but caused the next attack to automatically be interrupted. That way, having a lot of short duration applications would make sense and it would annoy the hell out of an opponent. The only downside is that proper countermeasures would have to be fixed so that it would be balanced. It should on trigger on attacks, not heals or buffs.
I agree with the others stating that skill #3 is the only problem. Since it is a “skillshot,” I would prefer for it to, convert 3 boons into daze (prehaps 1 sec default and then .5 for every boon afterwards) and have a blast finisher. That would give it a lot more usage in pve while, with #5, making it the go-to weapon for interrupt builds.
I also agree that scarlet needed minions. The fact that she could amass such a vast army is already dubious. Doing so without help just seems ridiculous.
I’m all for moving it to Southsun. They can keep calling it Lions Arch for all I care but I want this drastic change to stay a drastic change.
Regardless of what happens, we need to impeach the captain’s council. Every last one of them! Zhaitan has had his way with the city because of their ignorance, they still deal with the Consortium even though they brought on the Karka and now Scarlet is gleefully renovating at everyone’s expense because these idiots ignored stupidly obvious warnings. It’s time we get in some new blood.
I would rather see more weapons usable underwater as well as utilities but, for that to work, underwater combat would have to be overhauled and upgraded. It would also be nice to see entire zones underwater.
It seems pretty clear the entire system was designed around incentivizing players to branch out and pursue a variety of activities. Or, if you prefer, to bar people from advancing who only do one or two of the three categories.
I doubt they’re going to overturn a system just because its working.
They might if we can convince them that it’s not working. The fact that players have an abundance of one type and refuse to go after another, even though we know how to get it, is proof of that. It shows that they way they designed the system is not the way we want to play. An extra NPC can easily change that.
Yeah, but it’s not like this is an isolated incident. Anet habitually fails to do the most basic bug and quality testing of any content they release. This is something that happens every single release, every 2 weeks. Maybe the time for going soft on them was a year ago, but they’ve long passed that point.
Perhaps I didn’t make my point clear. I mean we should be and less snarky but more critical.
Also, from a programmer’s perspective, bugs are rarely isolated incidents. While I do agree that Anet needs better testing phases, I also know from experience that fixing one bug is likely to cause six more. That’s the nature of the beast.
I’m sure. It never has, and it doesn’t now.
I can’t say anything about “never has” as that nerf is a very vivid memory. I know for sure as I went to the exact same Ascalon Fighter that I used it on before. I am relieved to see that all the phantasms I tested came out against opponents that were blocking. I’m glad to be wrong about this issue.
The problem is our illusions sit in this weird limbo between abilities and pets. They can’t be treated fully like one or the other. If we are truly to accept this nerf then they should revert the “block” one. Let the summon come out and knock themselves silly against a shield.
Block has no effect on phantasm casts.
Are you sure? Granted I’ve been out of the loop for months but last time I used the zerker on a blocking npc, the “blocked” prompt appeared and my skill went on full cooldown. Since then I have been reading every patch update and have yet to see this change reverted.
Wait, I’m confused… we’re supposed to wait until the game is unplayable and broken before we speak up?
My nonsense-o-meter just pegged.
Your statement’s ludicrous level of hyperbole is bad enough but Nonsense-o-meter? I’m just going to sigh heavily and move on.
There is an extreme difference between, “Hey Anet, this is broken,” even for the 15th time and… well… this thread. Truth be told, I’m likely going soft on them, for this particular issue at least, because I’ve been in this situation. I once spent 6 hours looking for one misplaced period within few hundred lines of code spread across several modules that caused my program to have 17 bugs yet still run. What really took so long is I didn’t even have the luxury of knowing that it was a period messing everything up.
Now imagine that same scenario but with the offending issue being among millions of lines spread across the hundreds of modules needed for this game to run. Now imagine that fixing it in one section causes a bug 17 other sections. A wise man once told me that programming is 10% coding and 90% debugging. I would usually follow this with, “truer words were never spoken,” but I feel he was being way too generous on coding’s behalf.
But even if we take out the normal stress that comes with the job, we’re still faced with quite a dilemma. If you were in charge quality control and this is how your clientele reacted, would you be motivated to fix bugs?
In this case, I’m more disappointed in you guys than Arenanet. Yes, they let a bug slip but it’s no where near game-crashing. From the amount of whine going on in this thread, you’d swear that it is.
The problem is our illusions sit in this weird limbo between abilities and pets. They can’t be treated fully like one or the other. If we are truly to accept this nerf then they should revert the “block” one. Let the summon come out and knock themselves silly against a shield.
decent job with the new armor..the rest?
in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath
Posted by: Crossplay.2067
I disagree. They are finally putting more story pieces in the game. You just have to look for them. There’s flavor text on the new backpiece that deepens the link between Scarlet and Caithe. Hobo-tron has a new job as a healer and there’s a possibly a conspiracy that the Seraph are using him for. For the first time I’ve spotted Dougal Keane, the protagonist of the second novel, in the game. There’s a guy whom stayed behind in Lions Arch’s lighthouse to ward away incoming ships. Evon’s being a general kitten but also forced into the Lionguard on Kiel’s orders. There are loads of little side stories like this floating around. While they’re no where near Bioware’s level of expertise, they are a definite improvement over that last few updates. I doubt I’ll stay long but it was enough to bring me back to the game.
I will give them mad props for one thing. For the first time since she was introduced, Scarlet actually felt threatening. In the opening cutscene, she looked down at the city and didn’t say a word or show much emotion. That gave me the impression of someone that’s cold and calculating, which her personality should have reflected from the very beginning. In that one moment, she actually felt like a villain.
As a programmer, I can assure you that anytime something isn’t up on schedule, there’s a bunch of techs running rampant all over the office, tossing random expletives while trying to fix the problem. This is sometimes made worse by middle-management whom don’t even know what binary means but insist that the process can be sped up just by hovering over everyone and barking orders.
Just be patient.
I feel for you. I don’t get the elitist attitude either. Just spending a few minutes to teach a new player how to run a dungeon will significantly increase the chances of beating that dungeon. It’ll also mean that’s one more person in the pug circuit that knows what they’re doing. One that can potentially teach others too, as soon as they get good at it.
I hope Lion’s Arch remains a ruined city. I know many of you guys love it. I love it too. However, for the living story to actually feel like a living story, things HAVE TO change! We need to lose something that’s going to pull at our heartstrings and our lovely pirate plaza is the best suited for the chopping block. Rebuilding should be out of the question because that would just return things to normal. At best, it should be moved. I personally vote for taking over Southsun Cove. It’s nearby, screams “Treasure Island,” and really isn’t used for much. I can’t think of a better pirate paradise.
My three things are active defense, faster but weaker aoes and in-combat weapon swapping at the cost of attunements.
Blades, people like you still amaze me. We are unorthodox and as proof, we use greatswords as max ranged weapons. You have to stop thinking conventionally. Where you see a shortbow, I see a Klingon battl’th. When you wonder what’s the point of a main hand focus, I see Syndra from League of Legends. When you think of cards as just projectile weapons, I see them being gathered into a shield.
You have to open your mind to the possibilities. Think like a mesmer!
I’ve already thought that scenario out. The fact that they could be dodged easily is why I insist on having a “fake out” ability. It can scare an opponent into dodging needlessly and it can also be used to reposition melee phantasms to where they can do the most damage. Those whom still want to shatter after the fake out can use Signet of Illusions to recharge all of their shatter skills and try again almost instantly.
The use of a signet means the full fakeout strategy can’t be used twice in a row. A good opponent will have a backup plan and another point-blank “blink” will alert them that another shatter is coming with a full second to respond to it. It’s still a balanced scenario but it allows mesmers to use mindgames like we are suppose to.
Nerfing isn’t lazy. In fact, I would say it’s a necessity for when something is so out of control that almost all counterplay for it is ineffective.
A good example is the Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy. Before it was nerfed, for about two seconds, mesmers were invulnerable while doing good damage and it had a short cooldown. There was no counterplay to that other than getting out of the way because it couldn’t be interrupted. It could even avoid environmental hazards like the steam jets in the Southsun jumping puzzle. The skill was godly. Even as a mesmer main, I agreed that it needed to be nerfed.
The problem Arenanet has, however, is that they are so afraid of powercreep that they more often than not overnerf things. Making Blurred Frenzy vulnerable to retaliation, confusion and other on-hit procs was a great change as it made mesmers more cautious about using it. Then they nerfed the cooldown as well, which I can’t see promoting anything positive for or against mesmers. Thankfully it was a small cooldown nerf but its impact is felt vastly. Since I can’t use it to avoid many environmental hazards anymore, I don’t even try. Against guardians, whom would have benefited the most from me proccing retaliation with it, it’s too big a risk. I just use other skills.
Maybe it’s just my mentality or the stigmata that comes with nerfs but, in the end, they didn’t get me to use caution when using the skill. They got me to stop using it altogether except in pve and even then, it’s against enemies that I know can’t counter it.
I’m of a different mindset. I’m okay with warriors being simple to play. Every online game should have a class that is easy. What I’m against is how much power is behind “easy”.
If I had to give the class an overarching theme, I say make it all about timing. Encourage warriors to use adrenaline skills when it’s feasible, not just because it’s full. For instance, if a Kill Shot could guarantee a crit if used on a stunned opponent but would do half damage and stun an opponent otherwise.
Some blocks have the issue of only blocking one damage ping. They aren’t very effective against any multi-hit attacks.
Doppleganger – Summons a phantasm that has all of the mesmer’s stats and mimics all of the mesmer’s actions for 8 to 10 seconds.
The most obvious use of this would be to double dps but it could also be used to dump double the supply into a siege weapon or revive twice as fast.
I think they should blink to surround the target when commanded to shatter but, once they get there, they have a one second charge up animation before they go boom simultaneously. This gives the person being attacked a chance to block or dodge while also giving mesmers a more reliable aoe.
I would also like the added function to press the same shatter again to have it cancel so the illusions can resume attacking. This would allow mesmers to focus misbehaving illusions. Of course, it would have to come with a penalty to keep it from being abused. I think putting all shatters on a 15 second cooldown afterwards would be enough.
I actually hope we don’t. Living Story is supposed be about breaking the status quo. Having Lion’s Arch destroyed permanently or even relocated would certainly do that.
Where the new hub should have been...
in Battle for Lion’s Arch - Aftermath
Posted by: Crossplay.2067
One person mentioned Southsun Cove and I have to agree. It’s close, has “pirate paradise” written all over it, already has several wrecked ships that can be retooled into buildings like Lion’s Arch is and even has its own jumping puzzles. The only problem is the karka. I personally would love to see a living story patch where players decide to exterminate, relocate or domesticate them.
Sorry but I have to be objective. As much as I love mesmers, I feel rangers and and elementalists need more help than we do. To paraphrase what I stated there, I won’t even touch rangers because of the horrible pet AI. As for elementalists, I want to be Zuko or Katara, but I have to do the avatar dance to be viable and I hate that.
In my list, mesmers are 3rd and even then, I only place us above engineers because I main a mesmer.
1. Ranger – I won’t even touch the class because it’s heavily reliant on an AI pet and we all know how horrible the AI is.
2. Elementalist – Two major problems exists. First is survivability. Either more health, faster but weaker AoEs or enough defensive skills/traits to get eles near the evasive level of Mesmers. Second, create a way for elementalists to weaponswap in-combat at the cost of switching attunements. I can’t repeat that enough! It would fix a lot of attunement issues, open up at least 4 more builds and make eles far more flexible in combat! Players would actually take traits like Flame Barrier, Sunspot, Internal Fire, One with Fire and Pyromancer’s Puissance if they had access to 10 fire skills instead of 5. There’s just so much win in that proposal that I can’t understand why you guys haven’t done it already!
3. Mesmers – Way too many nerfs and broken skills. Almost immediately after you guys said you were going to open up more build potential, you nerf confusion until it was nearly useless and practically killed the Glamour build overnight. Timewarp never got a buff to counterbalance its huge nerf even though most similar skills have. Relentless cries about how awful the Phantasmal Mage is have gone unanswered. There’s still no profession-related way to sustain swiftness out of combat. Don’t even get me started on Portal. And then there’s Colin’s comments about Mesmers during the last podcast which showed us that he doesn’t even understand some of the core mechanics. In general though, I feel you guys are taking away the Mesmer’s “mind games” potential in an effort to make the game more newbie-friendly. That’s the wrong way to go about it. This is an advance class that has plenty of countermeasures. Anyone not willing to learn any profession countermeasures, not just the mesmer’s, has no place in a competitive setting.
In regards to all future balancing, I can’t express one simple point enough. Stop balancing all game modes around pvp! If anything, they should be balanced around WvW because it’s the best mix of pvp and pve environments.
It’s not as unfair as you think. Try farming Charged Lodestones from the CoE. At least you know you’ll get what you need in 9 runs. I’m lucky if I get one lodestone out of 9 runs.
In my opinion, that list isn’t long enough to support having the skill. Also, the first situation is niche at best and the second is the very thing I was questioning earlier. Why would you want to pull an enemy that downed you even closer? At most, you buy yourself 1.5 seconds and that’s if you interrupt an execution. It should be a stun or a point-blank aoe knockback.
Instead of changing invisible executes, it would be better to change downed skills so you’ll always be able to do something, regardless of the situation. There’s one for engineers in particular that i just can’t wrap my head around. Why would anyone downed want to pull the enemy that downed them closer? Anything strong enough to down you is going to kill you and you sure as hell don’t want to pull any other adversary closer in such a bad situation. In fact, has that skill ever saved anyone?
I think mine is close to $500 with the only things I regret buying are 10 black lion keys. If they would just sell things directly instead of putting them in ridiculously low rng chests, I would have bought a lot more.
I like the weapons and would have gladly bought most, if not all of them with real money too, if they weren’t in RNG chest. In fact, I wonder what idiot keeps buying keys. There has to be at least one with way too much disposable income for anet to keep doing this!
1. I wish I could say that the constructive and thought-provoking threads helped but, from what I’ve seen, the fastest way to get the devs to act is to enough players to whine about it. I suspect illusion targeting will be fixed when the devs break something relative to it and the players set the forums on fire.
2. You can try using Into the Void right after you run over your Temporal Curtain. This will get rid of it and, last I checked (and I admit, I haven’t played in months,) pulls don’t put you into combat directly. If they do now, you can still use the same trick but do it after the enemy runs over the curtain. This is likely to interrupt any attack you needed to dodge and pull them away from you. However, you have to keep in mind that there is a one-second cooldown between when Temporal Curtain is placed and when Into the Void can be used. This was due to players whining.
3. How long did it take them to fix the Berzerker? I’d use that as a measuring stick.
4. That should be standard, not a trait. Illusion cooldowns should always be reset when there are no illusions present. Of course, if this comes at the risk of breaking something else, I’d rather things stay as they are.
5. I’d rather they not persist. Pet AI is horrible. Just ask any minionmancer or every ranger. At least we get to blow our pets up when they’re naughty.
6. That was “fixed” a long time ago. Now blinds, blocks and line-of-sight can mess with our summoning. What irks me is that this created situations in WvW where enemies could hit me but I couldn’t hit them, even with auto-attacks. I bet they still haven’t fixed that.
I’ve seen quite a few in early game areas but sometimes I’m usually the only one I see in late game areas. It’s not an easy class for many to wrap their head around and it’s a pain to level. It’s also a late bloomer. While leveling my warrior, I was about to do things at level 9 that my mesmer couldn’t dream of at 39. Now that both are level 80, my warrior sits by a node for daily collection while I solo champions on my mesmer for fun.
On a personal note, I found warriors to be boring. So much of their damage and abilities are direct that the class feels simple. That’s not a bad thing but I prefer something that always has me thinking. The mesmer does that for me.
I’ve played every class to 80 except Rangers (because I refuse to be tied to an AI that isn’t intelligent) and I don’t find elementalists to be fun. Sure, the potential is there but the designers obviously want me to be the Aang when I prefer to be Zuko. For all their say about playing the way we want to play, they still refuse to let us specialize in one or two elements. As to why I main a mesmer, I like messing with people, especially allies.
I’m scratching my head about the results too. I can’t remember the position of engineers but I do recall elementalist and mesmers being the least class played so why are they amongst the most fun? I can’t go by my own opinions because I like playing guardians almost as much as I like playing mesmers.
RNG should ONLY be used for serendipity. Take dungeon runes for instance. Their droprates are low, especially the superior versions but no one complains about this. Why? Because they is an alternative to way to buy those runes and this way can be measured. If one person happens to get a drop while the other he plays with has to buy the full set with tokens, there is no problem.
When RNG becomes the ONLY way to gain something, it creates problems. It is completely possible for a hardcore player to kill every world boss every day on three different servers for the next 5 years, dump all the gold you made off of them into buying rares for the mystic forge and never get a precursor. It is also possible for someone to play casually today decide to give two metabosses some love taps just because he happened to be close enough to the events and get 2 precursors. The first person would be furious and feel like they have wasted their time, effort and energy. That first person’s scenario is also more likely to happen than the second person.
I hope that, one day, the naysayers will come to understand that people aren’t whining for an easy way to get a precursor. They’re whining because they want a GUARANTEED way to get a precursor and there isn’t one. No, the trading post doesn’t count because it is also susceptible to the problem with rng-only drops. It’s possible for no precursors to drop for days and for all the ones on the trading post to be sold out. No amount of gold saved up is going to make a desired precursor appear so even the richest player will have to wait until it drops for someone and that someone is willing to sell it. This has already happened on several occasions and WILL happen again in the future!
Another problem I have with naysayers is that they think implementing a way to make a precursor will make legendaries easy. At most, it can be argued that a precursor is 1/4 of the necessary materials required. Even if you get one, you STILL have to get the other 3 gifts. Good luck getting world completion if your server is up against the tier 1s and don’t even get me started on clovers! At the very least, a precursor will require the same effort needed to make an ascended weapon. If someone told me to choose between gambling on the mystic forge for a chance of getting one or making it with the ascended formula, I would go ascended every time!
I, like many others with bad luck, am not afraid of working hard. I’m afraid of working hard and getting nothing for it.
I’m currently trying to think of a skill that has received more nerfs than Portal.
I can tell my norn friend is under a lot of stress. He actually stopped drinking!
I prefer for it to be stationary. It was a great shield, good for setting up combos and, if I needed it for damage, I could immobilize the target before summoning it. Now its nearly useless. Only ranged pets should be allowed to chase because they can’t be as easily kited.
I’d be okay with the change if Deceptive Evasion made an existing clone shatter harmlessly to spawn another BUT that needs to come with some serious boosts to our condition damage. Considering how flimsy they are, clones should have a reason to be feared. Death traits shouldn’t tickle, they should torture.
^
Third viable solution.
One that everyone and there momma have stated ever since the initial nerf. I’m an amateur programmer and I could have fixed this easily so it boggles my mind why professionals haven’t done so already.
Boils down to a lack of a PvP/PvE split OP
I see it a different way. I can’t remember who said it first but someone already pointed out that enemy AI needs a drastic overhaul. Right now, just about every single enemy just “attacks” players. They need to be programmed to kill players.
If a player is kiting, there should be enemies that can figure this out and use either cc to lock the player down or only long ranged attacks. Some should have deadly long ranged attacks and try to kite melee players.
Groups of enemies should be programmed to work together too. One could heal while another constantly uses cc on the player that outputs the highest damage and a third keeps pushing melee fighters away from the others.
Bosses and champions should have less skill rotations and more reaction skills. They should be focusing on countering team tactics as a whole. For instance, if everyone jumps into melee, the boss could trigger an aura that causes damage over time for everyone within melee range. To counter this, players will have to switch to ranged attacks or use some form of cc to stun the boss and put the skill on cooldown.
Speaking of using cc on bosses, Defiant needs to go altogether and I would prefer to see it replaced with City of heroes Mag system. For those whom don’t know, in CoH, stuns had a magnitude and all bosses had a natural resistance so, in order to stun a boss, you had to stack stuns high enough to overcome their resistance. That made sense and encouraged teamwork. It boggles my mind why this game didn’t use that system.
At level 25, a few select enemies should be focusing on condition damage and by 80, 33% of the enemies should use condition damage and their major focus. This would encourage pve players to at least have one condition clear at all times.
This nerf hurts me harder than any before it. The very core of my build is throwing up two phantasms and hiding behind a clone. If the enemy decided to ignore all my illusions and focus on me, I would dodge right before an enemy hits me so they destroy the clone and trigger all the on-death ailments. This was done for defense as well as a mindgame to make my opponent feel that no method of attack is safe. Now that tool is being taken away from me and, for the life of me, I can’t understand why. Though I highly disagree with the glamour nerf, I understood the thought process behind it. I feel Blurred Frenzy was over-nerfed but I do agree that it needed one. What you guys did to iWarden was just wrong but I can see what you were trying to do. This, on the other hand, makes no sense whatsoever. What is so overpowered about dodging-rolling to destroy a clone and replace with another that it has to be nerfed? What’s even worse is why does this take priority over fixing problems that have plagued the class since beta?
While I agree that zerker gear should be dethroned, it should not be at the expense of what it is. It’s entire purpose is high risk/high reward and that is where is should always shine. However, there are ways to make other sets shine just as brightly but in a different light.
Let’s say a person with full Cleric gear can bring a downed player back to their feet in 4 seconds while giving them 3/4s of their maximum health. This ability would be nearly useless dungeon speedrunners as anyone reviving a teammate means 2 people aren’t contributing to dps. On the other hand, its a boon to a more balanced team as it would prevent a wipe. In the end, the balanced team’s run will be slower but more guaranteed to succeed while not affecting the speedrunners at all.
To sweeten the deal, traits could be altered to make reviving better. For instance, the Mesmer trait, Medic’s Feedback, could be changed to Emergency Medical Phantasm. It would create a phantasm to aid in reviving, thus cutting the mesmer’s revive time in half. Once the player is up, it would shatter harmlessly, however, the mesmer could choose to shatter it while reviving, like using Diversion to stop a stomp.
(edited by Crossplay.2067)