Guild Wars 2

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Ayrilana.1396:

If you go by one having a connected zone, it’s a 50/50 so you can’t lean one way or the other as to which is an oddity. Your claim that Lake Doric is an oddity is no different than a claim that Bitterfrost is an oddity.

Except by being the first map directly connected, it set an expectation and the basis. Plus, it isn’t the first zone added – with the exception of Southsun Cove (which was released prior to story journal), all added zones had been physically connected until the Season 3 zones. With exception of Lake Doric, every zone is capable of being reached by the entire account – either immediately or after one character has gained access to the zone (or in Verdant Brink’s case, once HoT is owned access is granted).

Ultimately, it’s a moot point in the end. It’d be nice if ArenaNet formed some sort of consistency, but it’s three different teams so apparently consistency remains one of the things ArenaNet has troubles with.

Yes, the new areas mark a step away from accessibility for everyone. So did the expansion and so will very likely the next expansion.

The main reason is for arenanet pushing HoT. I doubt they will step back from this stance. The vanilla game is over. Any benefits coming to vanilla non HoT owning players will be at best side effects of overall world changes.

The Living World Season 3 requires HoT no matter if unlocked or not.

This is nothing new. Every MMO on the market works off of the latest expansion and developes the game futher from there.

TCs question (which he even answered himself) was though if there is access to the new story areas without having to go through the story multiple times.

Raven.1524:

I was wondering, shouldn’t the portal for places like Lake Doric be accessible for everyone who cleared the story at least once with a character instead of having to go through the story every time?
I mean, the story is great, but still…. It might be quite handy.
I know there are scrolls to transport you there but am I the only one that finds that kinda weird?

Arenanets solution to the problem of denying access to non-elegible accounts and not forcing multiple story encounters was teleport scrolls.

Loving SAB myself (and having grinded the King Toad and Storm Wizard skins this time around) I can fully understand why it is time limited.

I get the sentiment people have with wanting it all year round, but I honestly believe if arenanet were to add this, the SAB hype and glory would die off. The event has meaning because it is timegated and so different from the rest of the game. The best thing they could do is actually finish it with world 3 and 4 and finish the story told.

Djinn.9245:

I don’t know what your answer is supposed to do with my post. No Elite Seal Team is going to take a disabled person into a high-risk combat situation. Period.

If the disabled person were controlling a high powered war machine or super modern drone, please explain to me why they wouldn’t be taken along. You are comparing apples to oranges. Taimis usefulness was never reliant on her phisical prowes. As a matter of fact, I’m quite sure most modern drone operators are not as physically fit as Seal Team members.

Djinn.9245:

Now add to that she’s a 17 year old who is still in school (i.e. isn’t a child super genius already on a think tank) telling the Commander of the Pact what to do. If she was really that smart, why didn’t her government scout her ala Good Will Hunting?

Actually she is a child genius on a think tank. She got her research stolen away from her, is a driving force behind the excavation and research of Rata Novus and has to handle different interests of different parties while still trying to achieve her goals. It’s all there, you just refuse to see it.

Djinn.9245:

And we don’t need an artificial situation to introduce someone who needs our aid – the entire planet already needs our aid.

Yes, unfortunately “the whole planet” is a hard character to care about without smaller more personal characters to whom we have made connections with. You are again throwing things together which belong seperated. A well designed crisis on a planetary scale provides a narrative setting, the characters in it provide meaning.

Djinn.9245:

Not only is this situation with Taimi not believable, I laugh at the silliness every time she is involved in the story.

You dislike her, fine that is perfectly okay. Others enjoy her character and accept the character for what it is. I haven’t seen any arguments so far which support vast disbelief in her writing.

Djinn.9245:

Cyninja.2954:

Djinn.9245:

I’m really sick and tired of people taking the complaints regarding one of the toughest story boss fights (that’s why there are these threads and why they nerfed it) and going to the opposite extreme “why does everyone want it to be a faceroll?” Who, in any of these threads, said that their solution to the fact that they find it too difficult is for Anet to make it a faceroll? Can no one who says this type of thing imagine that there is an entire scale of difficulty between the two extremes? I laugh every time I see one of those comments.

Toughest story boss fights means little when every other boss fight was “stand there and half afk press 1”.

For everyone? How do you know that?

Cyninja.2954:

When people finished the Zhaitan fight most were rightfully disapointed with how patheticly easy it is, there was absolutely 0 sense of immersion or accomplishment.

What people? Zhaitan also initially had threads like this…

Due to way different reasons. The requirement for a party was the main one.

The actual Zhaitan fight was literally stand there and press 2 on a turret and doable solo since people finished vanilla Arah story solo.

Please do tell which story boss fights are challenging besides Season 2 Episode 8, HoT Mordremoth and now Cadeceus? All of which were key moments and fights.

Djinn.9245:

Silmar Alech.4305:

What? Taimi is our sunshine. If not for the dragons, for her alone I would walk through whatever she sends me.

She might be your sunshine, but she’s not mine lol.

Silmar Alech.4305:

She (and Canach) are the best developed and believable current story NPCs.

You find it believable that a young asura who hasn’t finished school yet is allowed (by her people AND the Commander of the Pact) to join a team in the field battling dragon minions? Nevermind the danger to herself, why would anyone choose her over any number of more proven “geniuses”?

No, this isn’t “believable” – this is an artificial situation created by Anet in order to get this “cute” character into the story for the “awe, so cute” factor. Whether I think Taimi’s character is cute or not, nothing about the story treatments that include her are “believable”.

Taimi is 17 so it’s not like she is an infant. This is reflected nicely in her character as I had mentioned earlier. Her not finishing school has nothing to do with it, who knows what it actually means to finish school as an asura.

Yes it is an artificial situation with a disabled and young character who is ment to require the player characters aid. We can’t have all those war heroes constantly messing up asking for help, sometimes it actually has to be someone were it makes sense they would be in need.

Djinn.9245:

I’m really sick and tired of people taking the complaints regarding one of the toughest story boss fights (that’s why there are these threads and why they nerfed it) and going to the opposite extreme “why does everyone want it to be a faceroll?” Who, in any of these threads, said that their solution to the fact that they find it too difficult is for Anet to make it a faceroll? Can no one who says this type of thing imagine that there is an entire scale of difficulty between the two extremes? I laugh every time I see one of those comments.

Because all difficulty is relative. Toughest story boss fights means little when every other boss fight was “stand there and half afk press 1”. When people finished the Zhaitan fight most were rightfully disapointed with how patheticly easy it is, there was absolutely 0 sense of immersion or accomplishment.

There is almost 0 difficult or engaging story boss fights. Now you could argue that story in general should be easy, which is a valid complaint. I’d simply argue that I feel different on that matter when key story characters die (because bar any wierd story twists, they only get to die once).

In this case, if one analyses the fight and actually tries to figure out how hard it should be to an average gamer, it comes up fine.

Is it as easy as most open world content? No.

Is it as difficult as most dungeons? Slighty more difficult.

Is it as difficult as most fractals? No.

Is it on a difficulty scale as most raid content? Absolutely no.

It compares to some of the easier Queens Gauntlet fights, just that there is a lot more confusing stuff happening.

tl;dr: The fight is easy enough if one actually takes the time to understand it and doesn’t just run in braindead half afk. Making it simpler would not do one of the main villain besides dragon justice.

Sartharina.3542:

I have three problems with Taimi:
1. Her voice is shrill and obnoxious to listen to, regardless of content.

So every single child voice is obnoxious to listen to? This opinion is highly subjective.

Sartharina.3542:

2. She’s a complete idiot that ‘sounds smart’ – to anyone someone with an elementary school vocabulary. And middle-manager smug. This is a problem all Asura really have, though.

So she is writen in character? Also I know quite a few people who are exactly the same. Come to think of it, this could describe a majority of the adult population.

Sartharina.3542:

3. She goes off on tangents and rants of no significance, subjecting us to complaint 1 for far longer than necessary.

Yup, still something widely spread in the adult population. Especially the teen to adult population (though in all fairness to teens, this extends to all ages).

IMO she is a believable character, and that’s what counts no matter if you like her or not.

Arnox.5128:

You know, I was gonna answer everyone’s concerns and points but there’s so much salt, sarcasm, and “LOL OP is dum” responses in here that I lost all ability to care. Nevermind.

drunkenpilot.9837:

It does, in a way. Log on, and open your contact list in-game, then click the online status dropdown box next to your name and set yourself to Invisible.

Then go play the game as you normally would. Players will not be able to whisper or chat with you and you won’t see guild messages appear in guild chat. Don’t party up with anyone and ignore any other players you may encounter. There you go; single player GW2.

Seriously though, why redesign the game from the ground up when you can already play the vast majority of the game alone? If it’s strictly due to a lack of a solid internet connection in your area, then I apologize—I know that struggle all too well, as I’m sure many of us do. If so, then you have my sympathies, friend.

This is indeed one way of doing things but it unfortunately still doesn’t answer some problems that a full offline mode would. While I do have a decent enough internet connection to play online, other people do not as you have mentioned, so that is also a problem.

-

I apologize to everyone who replied like an actual adult.

No you wouldn’t have. The main reason people reacted the way they did is most were probably amazed at the idea (and lack of understanding what this actually incorporates on your side).

The game is designed from the ground up as a MMO game which essentially means most of the AI is server side, many of the more important mechanics are handled server side as well (say gliding for exmaple until they made it client side with server side checks).

Having an essentially private server setup for people would vastly increase the ability of people to hack and reverse engineer the game, not to mention they would effectively be degrading their own MMO world and reducing server population even further giving sway to even more “is this game dying” arguments.

Simple adult answer to your question: No GW2 should not have an offline mode because the effort to implent is to high, the design of most of the game is for a MMO, the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits.

Going to requote this:

Healix.5819:

It’s actually a very simple fight, but it’s meant to be distracting.

When the boss is shielded, the room is spammed with circles, but they do little damage and can be entirely avoided by simply standing in-between the rings or in the center. Shortly after the boss is shielded, the adds will spawn and you’ll know exactly when because the walls will stop spinning. You simply wait for the door to open, kill them while they’re walking into the room, then break the shield to continue.

Once you break the shield, the counter magic spam will begin. If you’re not fast enough, you can simply bind it to a key that won’t interfere, like F#, and spam it. Since he’ll focus his attacks on the NPCs, you can simply stand at this back while only having to dodge after his teleport, just in case he immediately opens with an attack. The small room doesn’t even matter, because there’s very little movement and the actual fight can be done entirely in the center.

Because it summs up the fight perfectly. The entire fight is ment to be a distraction on your senses. The wierd stairs which teleport you back and forth, the flashy circles, the bright colors getting thrown at you. You’re fighting a mesmer, gather your senses and focus on whats important.

Most of the attacks are not lethal, it’s important to focus on the 1-2 that are. The fight does require a higher than normal amount of movement and positioning than previous fights in the story but that can be attributed to the fact that you are killing off a major character. Do we really want this to be a “keep pressing 1 and afk” situation?

Subjective opinions remains subjective opinions.

With story and character elements you’ll never be able to get everyone happy. The best they might be ablt to do is offer a mute option for story voices in general, I doubt unique character mute options are on the table.

That being said, I love most of the new crew (and old crew but that might have been because I read the books pre GW2 release). If there is any character which I might call slightly anoying at times, it’s Logan and his “my queen and country first” attitude earlier during the story. Yet while it did anoy me, I could understand his motivations.

As far as Taimi goes, absolutely love her. She reminds me in some aspects a lot of some people I know.

Vitality has nearly no use in raids. Bosses have differerent types of skills:

- instant kill/down mechanics (vitality is useless, toughness is useless)
- percentage damage (vitality is a detriment, toughness is neutral)
- normal damage (vitality is a slight benefit, toughness is a benefit)
- tanking mechanics (vitality is useless, toughness is required)

As of right now and since raids are designed with minimalistic tank builds in mind, all it takes is varying amounts of toughness on some fights. Vitality will actually be a detriment since the buffer in hit points it provides needs to get healed back and there is enough mechanics which bosses use to make this a problem.

The only benefit vitality has is, it does not mess with tanking mechanics which theoretically means it could provide health point buffers for some of the low health point classes against regular attacks (at the expense of damage since we are most likely talking dps raid spots). This is usually not needed in the current raid meta and can be managed by practice and better team support and/or positioning.

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

- the current split of active players between pvp, wvw and pve are very shifted towards pve.

This is irrelevant

Not if you are a business which has limited ressources and has to split ressources in a way to accomodate the most amount of players. You saying something is irrelevant to you, does not make it so nor does it change economic reality.

I am a software developer my self. The resources required to overhaul the pvp system are irrelevant to a company the size of Anet. We are talking 2 programmers tops. 1 for the gear system, one for the environment/maps. Hell 1 person alone can pull it off.

I don’t know what kind of hobby software developer you are, but to even suggest this… simply No.

What you are talking about is the pure coding side (which also would be vastly more complex in a system as big as GW2 but let’s keep that aside). The pure balance aspects, bug testing, actual concept stage, etc. is vastly more complex and would take way more staff. We are not talking some hobby priject with 1-2k lines of code.

You have no idea what you are talking about. PvP needs 2 kinds of overhaul.
1- Overall slow down of fights. Through a better gear system.
2- Different Modes.

2- Involves new maps, map creation tools are among the first things that are developed along with the game engine, its how their artists actually use it. So the cost of this overhaul is pretty much on the game mode testing. Given they can simply push the maps as unranked games for player testing and feed back, the cost of this “overhaul” is pretty negligible.

1- Involves creating a new UI and new Items, not modifying the underlying systems. And as a professional on the matter, I am going to come straight out and say that if implementing a new UI requires editing in excess of 5k lines of code, which as you said, is toy software, then their problems go well beyond the pvp game mode.

A balance team is already in place, they are only required to play the same game with different stats.

This is all perfectly implementable with a team of 1 or 2 developers/programmers. It the political decisions and internal approval procedures that are the issue, NOT the technical/economic aspect of it.

We are talking a multi million dollar company hiring 2 interns still in or straight out of college to do 90% of the job and once it is tested and green lit the only thing left is polishing (prettier forms, nicer looking maps).

Yup you are correct. I am absolutely sure everyone who has experience in software developement will agree with you.

Some people…

Honestly, reading your post I think you should start with getting an overview of how the game is setup and what classes in the raid meta bring what to the table.

Reading comments like: 2hand warrior dude, 25 thing damage buff, etc. does not fill me with a lot of convidence you even understand endgame meta. Elementalist was never the only contender for damage spots even before they got nerfed and other classes buffed.

That being said, tanking is no where near the same here at it is in WoW (I should know, I tanked in WoW too and also during Legion) and it’s also not required for every boss due to mechanical differences. If you want to run with pug groups, read up on what current desired meta builds are and figure out what you might enjoy, then try to get 2 classes for flexibility raid ready.

Arc dps and bgdm are the 2 main damage meters run and while I would recommend you get used to at least one of both for practicing your rotation on golems, make sure to at least read up on raid bosses. Nothing get’s you kicked faster than standing somewhere with no clue getting the raid wiped.

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

- the current split of active players between pvp, wvw and pve are very shifted towards pve.

This is irrelevant

Not if you are a business which has limited ressources and has to split ressources in a way to accomodate the most amount of players. You saying something is irrelevant to you, does not make it so nor does it change economic reality.

I am a software developer my self. The resources required to overhaul the pvp system are irrelevant to a company the size of Anet. We are talking 2 programmers tops. 1 for the gear system, one for the environment/maps. Hell 1 person alone can pull it off.

I don’t know what kind of hobby software developer you are, but to even suggest this… simply No.

What you are talking about is the pure coding side (which also would be vastly more complex in a system as big as GW2 but let’s keep that aside). The pure balance aspects, bug testing, actual concept stage, etc. is vastly more complex and would take way more staff. We are not talking some hobby priject with 1-2k lines of code.

shadowcaster.3789:

the current HP system in gw2 that requires players to join “HP trains” in order to gain Hero Points

Faulty assumption. Hero point trains are something that developed to make hero point aquisition more streamlined and/or easier, that does not equal required though.

shadowcaster.3789:

Hero Points seems broken and unchallenging.

Who said hero points need to be challenging? I’ve always been under the impression they were ment as added immersion and fun mini games, just like the original ones in vanilla tyria.

shadowcaster.3789:

i have a suggestion that is meant to keep the feeling of the game being an mmo as well as making the hero points challenging

The game is a MMO though, why would you actively want to damage it’s very core aspect?

Sorry but somehow I simply can’t understand this suggestion. It’sdownright damaging to the very nature of the game.

ArchonWing.9480:

Cyninja.2954:

Story is subjective. You like it or not (or gravitate towards one of those sides). An actual legitimate complaint. Me personally, I loved LW3 so far.

I meant the story being required to enter the zone,

1,000 unbound magic per teleport scroll, literally 2/3 of a Winterberry Farm which takes 10 minutes total.

I did mention that futher up though. No reason to waste teleport to a friend, though those work too.

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

Spvp had it’s glory moments and the best the game could pull was 5k twitch viewers with massive promotions ingame and out side of game.

This 5k viewers is not success by any standard.

Notice the sarcasm I used.

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

- MMOs make bad competative games. Even the goliath WoW pulls insignificant pvp numbers compared to the total playerbase

This is false, WoW went as far as to charge to participate on its tournaments.

Yes and when you have a playerbase of 12 million, having 200-300k interested in entering your tournament will do something like that. Doesn’t change that going by numbers of viewers it’s tiny.

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

- the current split of active players between pvp, wvw and pve are very shifted towards pve.

This is irrelevant

Not if you are a business which has limited ressources and has to split ressources in a way to accomodate the most amount of players. You saying something is irrelevant to you, does not make it so nor does it change economic reality.

Apolo.5942:

Cyninja.2954:

- the last time spvp was put at the center of developement and focus the pve side of the game suffered and with it the game overall

This never happened, pvp was never the focus of development.

Sure it was, shortly before HoT was released and the new trait lines came out. The entire focus was on making spvp work. Arenanet even came out saying that their marketing department was in favor of catoring to the pvp crowd to get more players to play.

Took about 3-6 months, near 0 pvp activity and a lot of pve moaning for them to implement split skills and rework class balance around the raids they designed.

abullenfla.9632:

Cyninja.2954:

So essentially what you are saying is:

- both trait lines allow for maximum quickness/alacrity
- both have their unique benefits (domination provides more distortion and shorter signet cds) while (chaos provides group protection and more damage reduction)

How exactly does this make one trait line superb and the other trash?

My issue was with calling chaos useless, which it is most certainly not for a minstrel mesmer. It’s merely a matter of playstyle and preference.

Chaos only offers self protection and damage reduction that isn’t needed for any encounter not even deimos and domination offers more group protection with reduced signet cd if you get some protection from somewhere else like Herald runes while also offering more quickness.

Except that Chaotic Persistance allows for easier synergy with other runes like your formentioned Herald runes, Illusionary membrane gives even more self protection which makes it easier to share (basically guaranteeing having it when boon sharing). Domination has a harder time to make this work since it almost relies on leadership runes or has a harder rotation due to sigil of concentration. So no, even with reduced signet cooldown, Domination does not better share protection except on nice golem warrior builds.

That’s not counting Bountiful Disillusionment boons provided for all those shatters.

The literally ONLY thing Domination has running for it is 1 extra group distortion which is very powerful, but only useful against sporadic situational planed skipping or negating of boss attacks. It does not help against continued pressure situations.

We can keep debating all day long. I run both builds and have 2 different mesmers running different builds. If you have a raid setup with good enough people to run pure near perfect meta raid builds, great for you. Me, I’ve noticed both Minstrel mesmer with Chaos (or Domination) or Utility mesmer with Domination have their fair uses in different raid groups.

Saying Chaos is useless is shortsighted and shows lack of imagination and/or adaptability to actual ingame situations.

Ballads.2509:

As i see it its Water or Transference. While the math leads you to transference, water has the advantage of being effective while not using your heal skills. The real issues with running minstrel chrono comes from the fact even with pulsing damage auras, you dont need that much healing if your not failing mechanic checks. Now, in order for druids to be effective they must Heal players. So by taking the healing role you hurt your raid in medium and low pressure situations. In a high pressure encounter or in a situation where healing is needed to make up for failed mechanics, i like water over transference. Mantra and trait heal usually cap players off and the bump from water can be nice in between the recast.

This.

When running with an organised group you bring your utility Mesmer and run the encounter as per standard meta build metrics.

The part where minstrel comes in is when running stuff with randoms on some of the harder encounters like Matthias where even after x amount of months people will still f—- up some of the mechanics. You effectively swap some damage for more group support to make up for other peoples mistakes. Sure in an ideal world one could just put this up as: get good. In a more realistic world though, you have to carry some people occasionally to speed things up.

ArchonWing.9480:

Quote tree broken so…

Well, I have a number of friends that have gone inactive due to lack of content so I was figyring s3 would give us something to do. And one doesn’t have Hot yet. I do nit know if it is good timing to tell them to buy hot if another expansion looms around the corner. And then all this spending.

The old dilema of “is it worth to spend 25 dollars on a product you might be spending 1, 5, 100 or more hours on”. Always amazes me how such people manage to do anything else like watch a movie or go for a date.

To repeat what people love to say in this case:
The true cost for any MMO comes from the time you spend on/in it. Those 25 bucks are like not even a drop in the bucket.

ArchonWing.9480:

Now, I guess the gold I guess isn’t too bad. But given recent discussion, I am not sure about others. But the actual story has also been an issue but fortunately teleport to fruend is a thing for those that unlocked it.

Story is subjective. You like it or not (or gravitate towards one of those sides). An actual legitimate complaint. Me personally, I loved LW3 so far.

ArchonWing.9480:

Quote tree broken so…

As for the mastery points one would need all 131 which I think is a bit difficult. And here is the thing. Right now when my xp fills, I get a spirit shard but should there be more masteries then I may lose that ability unless I get to work again.

Again, you don’t need 131 for the base materies (only 112). Once you start going for the raid mastery, you unlock a ton more from raids. Same for Ancient Magics which come with way more mastery points from Living World 3 than required to unlock the track.

If they add more masteries, they will add more mastery points. That’s how they handled the last 5 situations where this happened (raids, each living story part). Not sure why they would change going about this now, so moot point.

NeXeD.3042:

Cyninja.2954:

NeXeD.3042:

The one to Rule.2593:

Annnnd nex is still missing the point entirely. This isn’t about pro players at all. It’s about the focus of Anet’s balancing team only being on one game mode. The game can still have it’s pro players, but pvp should never have set the standard for every other game mode.

its been split for some time. So i fail to see how that matters… are you on the PvP forums to complain about PvE balance? Because if you are not then you are saying you dont like the PvP balance but also claim they balance the rest of the game with PvP … so i fail to see how balancing the game for PvE would help PvP balance…..

Just admit it nothing good comes from the pro players quitting or ESL ending. You can keep trying to spin it this way and that but losing a competitive player base is not a good thing. The TONS OF MONIES that was spent on ESL that is no longer being spent on ESL will not go fix some other problem … if anything now ANET is going to spend more money to do a kittentier job now that they dont have stable competitive experienced players that are performing at a high level to base their balance decisions on anymore.

If the choice has to boil down to chosing between the competative player base and the player versus enviroment playerbase as far as money and revenue is concerned, you really do not want to be barking up that tree. Spvp would be kicked out of this game yesterday.

Yes you have been missing the point. No one is saying that the spvp balance should be kicked out the window, but the fact remains that during the periods of time where balance focus was on spvp with changes spilling over into pve, the game as a whole suffered. As far as balance is concerned, they should be aiming at hardcore pve players with some slight ease of use adjustment for all classes.

The majority of the playerbase is pve focused. That’s not wishful thinking, it’s a plain fact. With arenanet focusing on providing a better and more consistent casual pve experience they managed to improve on the hardcore experience that HoT was and bring some balance to classes as far as endgame pve content goes.

When the major reason for the decline in spvp activity is the reduction of rewards, it should really make you reevaluate how improtant that game mode is to the game as a whole.

Ok so again… so essentially what we have here is people complaining about pve Balance on the PvP forums is that correct?

I’m not missing your point… I understand what is being said…. it’s just not a real point IMO.

Effectively confusion created by a mod moving the thread from general to the pvp forum without making a small note.

Yes, there is no reason to disscuss pve balance in the pvp forum.

NeXeD.3042:

The one to Rule.2593:

Annnnd nex is still missing the point entirely. This isn’t about pro players at all. It’s about the focus of Anet’s balancing team only being on one game mode. The game can still have it’s pro players, but pvp should never have set the standard for every other game mode.

its been split for some time. So i fail to see how that matters… are you on the PvP forums to complain about PvE balance? Because if you are not then you are saying you dont like the PvP balance but also claim they balance the rest of the game with PvP … so i fail to see how balancing the game for PvE would help PvP balance…..

Just admit it nothing good comes from the pro players quitting or ESL ending. You can keep trying to spin it this way and that but losing a competitive player base is not a good thing. The TONS OF MONIES that was spent on ESL that is no longer being spent on ESL will not go fix some other problem … if anything now ANET is going to spend more money to do a kittentier job now that they dont have stable competitive experienced players that are performing at a high level to base their balance decisions on anymore.

If the choice has to boil down to chosing between the competative player base and the player versus enviroment playerbase as far as money and revenue is concerned, you really do not want to be barking up that tree. Spvp would be kicked out of this game yesterday.

Yes you have been missing the point. No one is saying that the spvp balance should be kicked out the window, but the fact remains that during the periods of time where balance focus was on spvp with changes spilling over into pve, the game as a whole suffered. As far as balance is concerned, they should be aiming at hardcore pve players with some slight ease of use adjustment for all classes.

The majority of the playerbase is pve focused. That’s not wishful thinking, it’s a plain fact. With arenanet focusing on providing a better and more consistent casual pve experience they managed to improve on the hardcore experience that HoT was and bring some balance to classes as far as endgame pve content goes.

When the major reason for the decline in spvp activity is the reduction of rewards, it should really make you reevaluate how improtant that game mode is to the game as a whole.

There is more than enough mastery points to cap out mastery levels way before starting living story 3. (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery_point_unlocks)

131 HoT mastery points are available without stepping in any raid or LW3 of which only 112 are needed (if not maxing raid mastery and Ancient Magics).

Does LW3 make it easier to get the HoT masteries and allow for skipping of some of the harder or longer mastery achievements? Sure, that’s called convenience and arenanet charges for that.

abullenfla.9632:

Cyninja.2954:

Xyonon.3987:

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Not sure if serious, you did realise he was asking for his minstrel set right? Aka he will be tanking.

Please explain to me now how chaos is not a good trait line when tanking. I’m sure those 1k more damage which Domination might provide will be of so much use over the protection uptime from chaos for example…

even if you are going tank minstrel chrono your job is still to grant quickness and alacrity to the group and even if it is possible to grant perma quickness with 2 mesmers and shield 5 effecting 10 players the Domination traitline with reduced signet cooldowns or illusions with the reduced continuum split cooldown and more alacrity output make your life easier. Also the Distortion on signets in the Domination traitline is extremely usefull. While the Chaos traitline offers more protection aswell as a 9% Damage Decrease its just overkill and you should survive everything even without it in minstrel gear

So essentially what you are saying is:

- both trait lines allow for maximum quickness/alacrity
- both have their unique benefits (domination provides more distortion and shorter signet cds) while (chaos provides group protection and more damage reduction)

How exactly does this make one trait line superb and the other trash?

My issue was with calling chaos useless, which it is most certainly not for a minstrel mesmer. It’s merely a matter of playstyle and preference.

The teleport scrolls allow access without playing the story.

Cheap solution:
- buy a teleport scroll
- teleport to new map with character who doesn’t have access
- drop scroll back in the bank since you now have waypoints
- repeat for as many characters are required

Expensive solution:
- buy shared inventory slot
- buy teleport scroll and place in shared inventory slot
- …
- profit

The gating is very likely to incentivise the purchase of said Living Story episodes and/or the purchase of shared inventory slots.

Doubtful when generation 2 isn’t even complete yet.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Cyninja.2954:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Cyninja.2954:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Something to keep in mind, if we get this stat:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seeker's_Amulet
(commanders – toughness, + ferocity)
Then seekers + scholar with be statistically superior to zerk+leadership.

and with an xpac on the horizon, I’d be willing to bet that it will come with new stats ( for PvE) such as seekers. Honestly there are several of the PvP amulets I’d like available, and this is one of them.

Maybe, but not necessarily. Leadership runes for utility spot mesmer are only mandatory since without them hitting the boon duration cap is quite hard (unlike minstrel for example, which you are essentially comparing this set to). Yet even minstrel tank mesmers are required to take boon duration in either rune or doublon form. Using sholar runes might be to much a hit in boon duration loss.

To lazy to do the exact math, hence why I said, maybe. The fact that you have an alternative to leadership is interesting though.

lose 30% from leadership, gain 42% from concentration ( 633 from a full set).
633/15 = 42%. Same concentration as on a full commander set. Granted, min-max would dictate taking commander legs on a zerk build, but that isn’t 12% worth of concentration.

Compare zerk leadership with full commander + scholar on gw2skills.net. Just remember to reduce toughness by 633, and raise fero by 633.

Edit, found the mistake.

Still with 633 concentration you are not addressing how you plan to get to 100% boon duration. What you are conveniantely leaving out is:

Current builds running commanders have boon duration runes in place, use exotic trinkets for doublon slots, use concentration sigils for boon duration on weapon swap, use boon duration buff food, or any combination of the above.

Let’s assume 42% boon duration base, with Sharpening Stones (+10%) and 20% boon duration food, and Sigil of Concentration (33%) is literally the only way to run Scholar runes. You now have effectively 72-100% boon duration depending on how well you manage with Sigil of concentration in your rotation.

I stand by my assessment, it is a nice sidegrade for opening up other rune possibilities, not sure Scholar is the best pick though, especially on still the worst dps in the game.

Except you don’t need 100% boon duration to perma quickness.
And you just explained a way of getting 100% boon duration.

No you don’t true, but then again you also don’t need damage maximisation on the WEAKEST damage dealer in your raid group.

Put on some Herald runes and provide protection freeing up one of the other classes which is actually decent at doing damage to do just that (elementalists for example).

Stick to leadership runes for easy condition cleanse and freeing up trinkets to be ascended instead of exotic (as in current meta) or any variation thereof or drop the sigil of concentration in favor of a simpler rotation to make room for error.

It’s a sidegrade on a not even yet implemented stat combination.

I’m not really sure what I just read, between the complaints, over exagerations, poor english, quoting random posters from another thread and literally so jumpy train of thought that one might land on the moon…

What?

Xyonon.3987:

Honestly: Drop Chaos for an actually good trait line and use Concentration. :|

Not sure if serious, you did realise he was asking for his minstrel set right? Aka he will be tanking.

Please explain to me now how chaos is not a good trait line when tanking. I’m sure those 1k more damage which Domination might provide will be of so much use over the protection uptime from chaos for example…

Alduina.9523:

I seem to have the worse luck in the world. I could never find the Leaf of Kudzu by normal means. Meanwhile, I hear of people who get it almost immediately and they already built 1 or 2 more.

Nope:

Crafted once per account after completing the Kudzu III: Leaf of Kudzu collection.

- https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leaf_of_Kudzu

Whomever is telling you they have crafted multiple leafs on one account is yanking your chain.

All precursors have been crafted by now so bar any new bugs introduced within the last patches it is highly unlikely the achievement chains are broken. My guess is you are just unlucky.

With that being said, good luck.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Or even more simply, “if you have to ask how much it costs to outfit your toon, choose a different build.”

So much this!

The entire breakdown was good but this is what it boils down to. There is nothing worse than spending potentially hundreds of gold on a “perfect” set only to realise you can’t stand the gameplay (or worse, you are not good enough at fullfilling that role).

Spvp had it’s glory moments and the best the game could pull was 5k twitch viewers with massive promotions ingame and out side of game.

Simple fact of the situtaion as of right now is:

- MMOs make bad competative games. Even the goliath WoW pulls insignificant pvp numbers compared to the total playerbase

- the current split of active players between pvp, wvw and pve are very shifted towards pve. Even with basically free ascended gear last season this barely went up, and it only did because of loot and nto the actual game mode.

- the last time spvp was put at the center of developement and focus the pve side of the game suffered and with it the game overall

Now that being said, I personally would love to see the spvp crowd get some more fluff as long as it does not distract from the required pve attention.

On the same note, I think arenanet would be way better served to show wvw a lot more attention since that is a niche they could carve out more for this game (unlike competing in the competative games segment). The wvw crowd has been the most neglected out of all the 3 segments.

Those are my observations/opinions wich clearly are subjective.

HenryChinaski.4732:

Cyninja.2954:

The meta event chest (the one you have to manually loot on the little bonus island with the merchant) has a guaranteed drop for a random unlocked machined collection. In order to be elegible though you have to have the collection unlocked before hand, meaning you must have entered the map (or final fight, not sure) with the collection unlocked.

I am pretty sure not, worked that way for my fist collections but i think there was a patch, after that i get the other weapons random from the pods on the map (And for some i really opened a lot of them)

Now it could be I got very lucky true. I’ve finished the collection a while back (the machined, not only the one weapon) and I literally got every single time I completed the meta event another part unless I had no collection unlocked when entering the map.

Unlocking the collection at the end island merchant and then interacting with the end reward chest does not count as having the collection unlocked for the boss kill.

I must have gotten half to 2/3 of the unlocks via the end reward chest, 1/3 from opening pods. Which is exactly why I mentioned that opening pods can take 50+ pods until you get lucky.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Cyninja.2954:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Something to keep in mind, if we get this stat:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seeker's_Amulet
(commanders – toughness, + ferocity)
Then seekers + scholar with be statistically superior to zerk+leadership.

and with an xpac on the horizon, I’d be willing to bet that it will come with new stats ( for PvE) such as seekers. Honestly there are several of the PvP amulets I’d like available, and this is one of them.

Maybe, but not necessarily. Leadership runes for utility spot mesmer are only mandatory since without them hitting the boon duration cap is quite hard (unlike minstrel for example, which you are essentially comparing this set to). Yet even minstrel tank mesmers are required to take boon duration in either rune or doublon form. Using sholar runes might be to much a hit in boon duration loss.

To lazy to do the exact math, hence why I said, maybe. The fact that you have an alternative to leadership is interesting though.

lose 30% from leadership, gain 42% from concentration ( 633 from a full set).
633/15 = 42%. Same concentration as on a full commander set. Granted, min-max would dictate taking commander legs on a zerk build, but that isn’t 12% worth of concentration.

Compare zerk leadership with full commander + scholar on gw2skills.net. Just remember to reduce toughness by 633, and raise fero by 633.

Edit, found the mistake.

Still with 633 concentration you are not addressing how you plan to get to 100% boon duration. What you are conveniantely leaving out is:

Current builds running commanders have boon duration runes in place, use exotic trinkets for doublon slots, use concentration sigils for boon duration on weapon swap, use boon duration buff food, or any combination of the above.

Let’s assume 42% boon duration base, with Sharpening Stones (+10%) and 20% boon duration food, and Sigil of Concentration (33%) is literally the only way to run Scholar runes. You now have effectively 72-100% boon duration depending on how well you manage with Sigil of concentration in your rotation.

I stand by my assessment, it is a nice sidegrade for opening up other rune possibilities, not sure Scholar is the best pick though, especially on still the worst dps in the game.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Something to keep in mind, if we get this stat:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Seeker's_Amulet
(commanders – toughness, + ferocity)
Then seekers + scholar with be statistically superior to zerk+leadership.

and with an xpac on the horizon, I’d be willing to bet that it will come with new stats ( for PvE) such as seekers. Honestly there are several of the PvP amulets I’d like available, and this is one of them.

Maybe, but not necessarily. Leadership runes for utility spot mesmer are only mandatory since without them hitting the boon duration cap is quite hard (unlike minstrel for example, which you are essentially comparing this set to). Yet even minstrel tank mesmers are required to take boon duration in either rune or doublon form. Using sholar runes might be to much a hit in boon duration loss.

To lazy to do the exact math, hence why I said, maybe. The fact that you have an alternative to leadership is interesting though.

The meta event chest (the one you have to manually loot on the little bonus island with the merchant) has a guaranteed drop for a random unlocked machined collection. In order to be elegible though you have to have the collection unlocked before hand, meaning you must have entered the map (or final fight, not sure) with the collection unlocked.

If this did not happen for you then you are indeed suffering from a bug and should contact customer support. The drop rate from pods is close to about 30-50 pods per collection drop (again only if collections are unlocked) so not getting one from pods during a run is normal. I’ve had 1-2 complete DS runs where I only unlocked collection items from the final chest and not from pods while opening 50+ pods.

I think the ship has sailed on new classes the moment they introduced the elite specialisation system. The mere fact that each new class means it’s a multiplicative increase in balance, design, etc. effort makes the simple thought of new classes getting added ridiculous.

New race, maybe, though even that would be a HUGE amount of work in retroactively fitting armor skins for said race.

Personally I was hoping for a tad more elite specialisations, not just 1 new one inbetween expansions per class, but I understand the effort and balance nightmare that goes into creating them.

1.) Write down an up to 9 digit number (hell let’s make it 10 digits for the really wealthy)
2.) Farm away, play together, etc.
3.) …
4.) profit

ElvisMcRanft.8569:

There’s also Necro I could go for, but I already had 2 in my history, but I always ended up finishing the elite and then deleting it after a while.

While not wanting to tell you how to manage your character slots, do consider that birthday gifts are character age dependant, not account age.

That being said, currently your best bet as far as useful class builds are:

- Healing Druid
- Scepter/Warhorn Tempest

I do have to agree with:

Coconut.7082:

Best advice to you would be to stop trying to pick a class because of some cosmetic skin you made, instead pick something useful or something you would enjoy playing.

I’d even go as far and say funfactor comes as top priority.

While possible I do think there are enough farms which come close (and surpass) level 10 fractals as far as gold/hour goes. Even if not, the requirement to run level 40 fractal is so low especially now with the new maps making ascended trinkets even easier to get.

Personally I think you are just risking burning out on fractal content for low returns. Might as well wait a couple of days and run the 40 farm.

Otherwise, hey if it works for you, go for it.

What OriOri said.

Basically to solo dungeons you have to use every advantage at your disposal. This means knowing the dungeon in and out, knowing your class in and out, buff foods and consumables and the different specs required for different parts (especially parts which you skip).

If you expect to pick 1 build and run through every dungeon without problems, prepare to be disapointed. Otherwise I guess watching some solo run videos on youtube and mimicking what those players did might be a good place to start. I’m pretty sure by now just about every dungeon has been soloed by every class, fractals too.

Redfeather.6401:

Just so people know…

My second post was because for the past few years I have taken breaks, and during the breaks come back to the forums and made suggestions. The responses were always 1. GW2 does it already, 2. GW2 doesn’t need it. 3. GW2 would need to be completely overhaualed to change. Always the same outcome to my topics, but I honestly forget that over time and need to be reminded.

So in one response to my topic I was quickly reminded that the game just isn’t going to change, and I am looking for change. It’s all good everyone. good luck and have fun!

Well it’s good that you realised this yourself. The question one would have to answer I guess is, why should GW2 change? It has a niche of its own. Making GW2 more WoW, BDO, Archage, etc. like would just make it compete with the respective game in their category.

Better be unique and improve on your concept and design than copy someone else. This goes double for game mechanics which make MMOs seem similar. It’s imo one of the major reasons all those WoW clones failed a couple of years back. Why go for 2nd best when you can play the original.

GrManosXD.3807:

1) Not enough advertising … i havent ever seen an ad for GW2 , do u think that without advertising we can invite more people ? The answer to this is NO .. ANet should start advertising more this game , for example they can create more ads , they can tell youtubers to advertise they game (for example MmoBomb ) or they can advertisw their game on Steam (I dont know if thats easy )

Advertising works both ways, if you over advertise people might get bored or turned off. The best advertising for digital products usually is word of mouth meaning providing a good product should come first. That being said, I’m sure there will be some increased advertising once expansion 2 draws near.

GrManosXD.3807:

2) In PvE , They can add more bosses , and new places , just to make people to explore with plessure .. Also they can , lets say , “rework” the RNG and the Loot Table

Every single Living World episode in season 3 has been adding a new map at a rate of aproximately every 2-3 months. The thing about “boss” battles is, if they are to easy they get boring, if to hard people start complaining (see HoT meta events).

Not sure what you mean with reworking the rng, it’s working fine as is.

GrManosXD.3807:

3)In PvP , as u can see MMORPGs are not that competitive , so for GW2 to be , they should improve their maps , Rank System , and more in order to make it unique

Arenanet tried focusing on pvp pre LW season 3. It didn’t mesh well with the majority of the playersbase. My guess/hope is they will add more maps and game modes with expansion 2, but I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up as a pvp player.

GrManosXD.3807:

4) In WvW , they should add something like Bosses , more maps , more features , more loot maybe …

Bosses, no. More maps, yes but designed for wvw and group/zerg engagement optimisation, not those HoT fiascos. More features, sure. WvW could use more of everything, question is, will it get it?

Short answer: yes they are cheaper.

Longer answer: the gem-gold exchange is based on supply and demand (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Currency_exchange) of the participating playerbase. Obviously the price for gems will increase when more people are buying gems in a short amount of time. Thus the exchange turns less favorable for people exchanging gems for gold.

The increased requirement for gold is thus a direct result of the secondary exchange.

This can be circumvented as others have mentioned by stocking up on a supply of gems when conversion prices are more favorable.

Here is a link to MightyTeapots build video and build editor:

- MightyTeapots build video

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8dn0nBFohlfC+fCMrhlej6cE6gWreUb1X1MAOtMC-TByGQB8TZGBVaksZOA4kAQunAofod7PsJlg0T9HSB43UL-e – build editor

I made some slight alterations to his recommended gear myself because honestly I didn’t feel like spending hundreds of gold on exotic trinkets. I had an exotic account bound mawdrey backpiece leftover. After exchanging the exotic trinkets for ascended the net loss per item in boon duration is -3% (higher ascended stats make up for 1% boon duration per piece).

Exchanging 3 exotic pieces for ascended ment I thus had to compensate for 9% boon duration loss on other gear. I covered 4% by switching out one of my weapon sigils with a platinum doublon.

This leaves me at 94% boon duration with rice balls and Bountiful sharpening stones with maximum 21% bonus from Chaotic Persistance.

If I switch to chocolate Omnomberry creams as food the provided healing drops futher but boon duration jumps to 114% with Chaotic Persistance leaving more room for error with boons and best of all, the ability to leave out sharpening stones.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAse8dn0nBFohlfC+fCMrhlejyMAOtM6cE6gWreUb1XF-TxxGQBA4kAsJlg0T9HCq8rd7PksnACC50PQKA/maB-e

The build works for me even if not ideal and I like the fact that I can trade the gear over to my main mesmer if I ever wanted to run her as tank.

Side note, the resilient wvw infusion was just me going overboard and is absolutely not needed. The build the way I run it is not to hard on the group healing to pose a problem for druids but to weak to run as group heal on its own.

Daddicus.6128:

Cyninja.2954:

No it’s not YOUR problem, it’s literally every players problem and while you and others might be willing to pay, others might not. Stop looking at things through only your perspective.

How is it your problem because I am disorganized and like it that way?

It’s not and I never said it was.

What I said which holds true is that adding additional bag space allows for arenanet to ignore the issue forcing or at least increasing the pressure on people to buy additional bag space. THAT is the issue. You intentionally or unintentionally misunderstanding this point is not my problem. It’s merely proof that there is a downside to adding bag space instead of solving the issue via another way. You know in response to:

Daddicus.6128:

Guys, there’s no downside to creating more bank slots, bigger bags, and more inventory bag slots.

This is not about developement cost, which truly is negligable, but about how the problem gets solved. It directly affects QoL of the playerbase and accessibility of the game.

I could care less about people hoarding, I do care about getting spammed shut with bind on pickup story items and additional ressources which do not go into the material storage for example.

Going to skip all the drama and answer TCs question directly:

1.) Short answer: yes.

2.) Longer answer: GW2 has an very extensive free unlimited trial account which includes the entire vanilla part of the game with minor restrictions as far as gameplay go (https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/230165307-Account-types-Free-Core-HoT). If you are unsure, just create a free trial account and start playing. If you don’t find the game fun, don’t get it. If you find it fun, get it. Simple and saves you all the drama people like to kick up on the forums.

Side note, many posters here will have many hundreds or thousands of hours on their account no matter if they are pro or con, you figure out what that means.

Ithilwen.1529:

What keeps interrupt from working in “modern” Tyria is the extreme timing required. The GW1 builds had no such constraint.

Comments?

This summs up the difference between GW1 and GW2 in a nutshell. GW1 actually had casted skills, GW2 is focused on instant casts and very short duration casts to synergise with it’s mobility aspect. Combat is fundamentaly designed differently in both games. Confusion was supposed to take the place of interupts in GW2.

Providing short or instant duration interupts only partly addresses this problem. What we are missing is (which was part of GW1) are preloaded interupts (next spell cast is interupted condition for example).

Also I’m not so sure how well intertupts would work in a 5v5 enviroment. In 8v8 it had a place to shutdown key members to prevent some rotations. With only 5 players and our current heavy condition focus, not sure that would work. Interupts would either have to be very powerful making them borderline overpowered, or they would be to lackluster.

Daddicus.6128:

• There are no cost increases that are not balanced off by revenue increases. As I said, the stopping point is when the price of adding slots is larger than the revenue gained by selling those slots.

Cost to players, not arenanet. Big difference.

Daddicus.6128:

• Of what value is ANet controlling our micro-management? You are advocating that ANet manage our stuff (by restricting how much stuff they offer). That costs far more than just creating slots.

Exactly, and the easy solution is to just add bag space instead of arenanet adding other solutions for currencies (and other inventory hoging items). One solution is a temporary bandaid fix, the other actually solves the crowding problem.

Daddicus.6128:

• Hoarding is not a problem. So, it does not need to be solved. Furthermore, it has no impact on non-hoarders.

Going by this thread it obviously is. You saying it is not does not make it so.

Daddicus.6128:

Cyninja.2954:

More bag space comes at a higher cost to get said bag space.

But, that’s MY problem, not yours. And, I choose to pay money to ANet so that I don’t have to spend my time in game doing something I abhor: organizing.

I could have saved a bunch of in-game gold by only using 18-slot bags vs. 20 (which are five times as expensive). But, I made a choice to pay the extra for those slots. (I would have paid real-world money to do it if I could have, but I thought the exchange rate was too high.)

I DID pay real-world money for bank slots and inventory bag slots. And, I’ll continue to do so as long as they’re available. I have and will also add character slots for storage.

It’s definitely not a “problem”.

No it’s not YOUR problem, it’s literally every players problem and while you and others might be willing to pay, others might not. Stop looking at things through only your perspective.

FYI, I have

- all bank slots
- full bag slots on 6-7 characters
- 18 characters
- 10 shared inventory slots
- all nodes for my home instance

Yet I would not run around demanding things from arenanet which would detrimentaly affect players who are not willing to spend as much money on the game.

Daddicus.6128:

I once did a study comparing the same issue for computer disk space. The conclusion was that it is far more expensive to manage space than it is to simply buy more. The payoff time for purchasing additional storage is measured in weeks.

Apples to oranges much? You are literally leaving out the most important aspect, arenanet not having to design for lower inventory space in your example. That would be covered by having to buy more diskspace 30-40% earlier than usual (going by your example) and that is the exact price increase people are arguing against.