Guild Wars 2

Farming was never hard in GW2. The thing that might have been hard is finding something to do you enjoy without having to justify your ingame experience via a numeric gold value.

Instead of asking if farming is hard you should be asking what people enjoy and try stuff out for yourself. Farming gold has always been a means to an ende in GW2, never THE defining endgoal though (unless you enjoy becoming a pixel millionaire which ofcorse is fine too).

That being said, here are some goals people enjoy working for:

- legendaries
- fashion wars
- wvw
- spvp
- dungeon/fractal speedclears (this sorta died down a bit)
- achievement hunters

Astralporing.1957:

Harper.4173:

Astralporing.1957:

Walhalla.5473:

Raids are succeeding where Dungeons failed hard

Considering that dungeons likely were far more popular than raids will ever be, that’s a mighty claim.

People DID dungeons. That doesn’t mean they enjoyed them.

Because everyone that’s running raids is so obviously enjoying them [/sarcasm]

Actually, the common opinion from people who run raids is that the fights are fun, challenging and a full success.

The major complaints come from people who do not raid interestingly enough.

59 was indeed challenging but not undoable. Things to bring along:

- dodge – exploding enemies are half as dangerous if people dodge.

- use space provided – chest seal is not that hard when you know that you don’t have to stand in the middle of the plattform. Stay on the side where you arrive, pull enemies to your group, have 1 person with hammer run in and smack seal then retreat, cover with reflects if needed

- stack with care – exploding enemies make the usual stacking more difficult and usage of line of sight of enemies becomes more important without the entire party stacking on 1 spot

- seals only regenerate when wiped or enemies are left to channel. proceed slowly, let the team regenerate if need be, don’t get wiped

Personal opinion here:

New Class
I doubt we will be seeing new classes any time soon. With 9 classes and elite specialisations essentially mixing things up as much as they do I don’t think there is room for more. That being said, I do expect future elite specialisations to mix gameplay up for existing classes just like the ones introduced with HoT did.

New Weapons
Maybe, but very unlikely. Design wise it would make more sense to stick to existing weapons and keep shuffling them in the elite specialisation mechanic. Major reason I don’t believe this will happen is:

- balance issues. It’s already a headache to balance the existing 19 weapons against each other (16 if we omit uw weapons)
- the amount of skins that would have to be reworked even at minimum level would take a while. Might as well spend that time on developing new interesting skins for existing weapons
- not really needed. As is there is a healthy mix of 1hand, 2hand and offhand weapons in game some of which are already underused

New Race
This could happen. Would still take quite a bit of work if animations are to be as unique as char and asura. I’d guess arenanet would go with something similar to humanoid only because adaptation of existing armor design would otherwise take very long. Also a good way to introduce some new early game content if desired in form of new racial story missions.

The only reason any of these ideas might make it into the game is as a future expansion draw. Players have come to expect new classes, races, mechanics, etc. with expansions. Otherwise I just don’t think arenanet would bother with other stuff being more important.

Astralporing.1957:

Cyninja.2954:

Astralporing.1957:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Apparently a lot of people raid in WoW now with the lfg thing whatever…

Yes, and it has been one of the most destructive additions to that games creative and fun developement in recent years.

Suure, which is why the expact that introduced it ended up to be the most succesful one.

And not even 2 years down the line the quality of the content deteriorated so much that even passionate players were complaining. Everyone who wasn’t complaining then certainly was by the time pandaland hit.

But that wasn’t due to LFR, was it.
It’s not like since WotLK Blizz didn’t make a lot of other, much more dubious changes.

True and I would never say it was only do to LFR. LFR has it’s share of blame for stale content developement though.

Swagger.1459:

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Professions and combat are the main core game elements, and almost everything is designed around these professions and how combat unfolds… These areas are greater than your content drought…

True, but you have failed to show how the current system is so bad or underdeveloped that it needs fixing. All that has happened so far in this thread is a couple of people have voiced their subjective opinion on this matter.

All in all, the complaints about the new trait system have died down after a period of accustomisation.

Also the argument here is for a revamp and change of the current system. This has nothing to do with balance. That is a sepperate issue entirely unless you show how the current system has such big flaws that balance would not be possible.

are you implying there haven’t been any other suggestions to improve traits on these forums? Are you implying that traits are not part of the balance equation?

Swagger.1459:

You are silly if you think the devs can’t work on multiple things…

Anything the developers do costs ressources. In this case mostly human ressources. While some things might take less extra time, every bit of extra work will ultimately require something else to be put on hold. Especially if you are working on something as complex as a complete combat revamp.

Who is kidding himself in this case I wonder?

are you saying Anet is not capable of improving professions over time and working on other content? are your expectations of Anet really that low?

Swagger.1459:

Edit- spend some time on the profession, pvp and wvw forums and you’ll see the complaints that far outweigh this content drought.

Please show me a time when the pvp/wvw forums were not full of complaints. It’s in the nature of the game mode and it’s competative nature that people will blame others or balance instead of their own mistakes.

That being said, please do go read the wvw forums. The main issue there will be content drought (which has been a topic for over 1.5 years now or even longer) and not class balance. Especially since the new HoT maps failed and the old borderlands had to be reintroduced.

are you saying that there hasn’t been feedback on professions in the sections I mentioned?

Swagger.1459:

Edit 2- and your content is coming on the 26th. Your content xpac is being worked on by 100 devs. Your raid content is being worked on… You may not value profession improvements, but there are players who do, so don’t think this team is not capable of fulfilling important requests like these too…

You still haven’t shown that a revamp would improve the situation nor have you shown that the current system is flawed.

I brought 2 suggestions… Reorganize and combine similar traits and open up the trait system which would mean greater build flexibility, or reorganize and combine traits more sensibly into categories to create more defined builds. Those hardly needed an essay of explanation.

To argue that “look your content is coming” so people should stop demanding content or focus on content just shows your inexperience with MMO titles. Content developement is a constant process. As such ressource allocation is vital (read MO last post about how much work goes into Season 3) and when faced between a working trait and skill system versus game content, I doubt a majority of players will select the former as priority currently or in the near future.

It’s helpful if you read the full conversation between another poster and put things into better context before you reply.

Your rethoric question format while fun provides no arguments(especially when it doesn’t even address the point made). Until you actually provide some arguments there is no reason to continue this discussion.

As far as the answers to your rethoric questions:

Swagger.1459:

are you saying Anet is not capable of improving professions over time and working on other content? are your expectations of Anet really that low?

No, that is not what I said.

Swagger.1459:

are you saying Anet is not capable of improving professions over time and working on other content? are your expectations of Anet really that low?

No, still not what I said.

Swagger.1459:

are you saying that there hasn’t been feedback on professions in the sections I mentioned?

Nope, again not what I said. People can actually read what you write on these forums. Lacking reading comprehension will stop you in your tracks.

Swagger.1459:

I brought 2 suggestions… Reorganize and combine similar traits and open up the trait system which would mean greater build flexibility, or reorganize and combine traits more sensibly into categories to create more defined builds. Those hardly needed an essay of explanation.

You provided a subjective unedjucated opinion of what you believe would work. Not what I asked for.

Swagger.1459:

It’s helpful if you read the full conversation between another poster and put things into better context before you reply.

Oh I did and going by his reply and your re-reply I’m not sure I need context.

It’s helpful if you were to follow the conversation more closely if you want to respond…

You…

“To argue that “look your content is coming” so people should stop demanding content or focus on content just shows your inexperience with MMO titles.”

Indigo…

“Please, no more systems reworks. The game needs the devs to focus on a sustainable release cadence of new content. They’ve already reinvented major aspects of the game’s systems multiple times. Sometimes, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Me…

“Edit 2- and your content is coming on the 26th. Your content xpac is being worked on by 100 devs. Your raid content is being worked on… You may not value profession improvements, but there are players who do, so don’t think this team is not capable of fulfilling important requests like these too…”

If you are fully paying attention to the discussion you will not find anywhere that I say “people should stop demanding content or focus on content”… In fact, Indigo is the one who doesn’t want any other area developed. You also happened to miss me saying that the devs are capable of working on multiple areas…

Either like or dislike the actual suggestions, but let’s not turn this thread into 3rd party discussions.

Assuming no developers are sitting idle around the current human ressources at arenanet are occupied with working on “stuff”.

Saying they can work on more “stuff” or different “stuff” parallel does not solve the actual problem of them being completely planed out. Thus asking for developers to work on different “stuff” and arguing that this is possible because a person can be assigned different tasks is non-sense. That is unless you advocate they move some of their attention away from work they are currently doing. I’m not sure why this is such a hard concept to understand.

Yes, new pve content (which is desperately needed) is coming on the 26th, and has been in the works for who knows how many months. Moving along this line forward, any ressources removed from content creation now will create less content in the future. People opposing a trait revamp due to conflict with content creation are arguing future content quantity and/or quality would suffer. This is magnified by the fact that there is still no proper argument that the current system is so flawed or bad that it requires such a step.

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Professions and combat are the main core game elements, and almost everything is designed around these professions and how combat unfolds… These areas are greater than your content drought…

True, but you have failed to show how the current system is so bad or underdeveloped that it needs fixing. All that has happened so far in this thread is a couple of people have voiced their subjective opinion on this matter.

All in all, the complaints about the new trait system have died down after a period of accustomisation.

Also the argument here is for a revamp and change of the current system. This has nothing to do with balance. That is a sepperate issue entirely unless you show how the current system has such big flaws that balance would not be possible.

are you implying there haven’t been any other suggestions to improve traits on these forums? Are you implying that traits are not part of the balance equation?

Swagger.1459:

You are silly if you think the devs can’t work on multiple things…

Anything the developers do costs ressources. In this case mostly human ressources. While some things might take less extra time, every bit of extra work will ultimately require something else to be put on hold. Especially if you are working on something as complex as a complete combat revamp.

Who is kidding himself in this case I wonder?

are you saying Anet is not capable of improving professions over time and working on other content? are your expectations of Anet really that low?

Swagger.1459:

Edit- spend some time on the profession, pvp and wvw forums and you’ll see the complaints that far outweigh this content drought.

Please show me a time when the pvp/wvw forums were not full of complaints. It’s in the nature of the game mode and it’s competative nature that people will blame others or balance instead of their own mistakes.

That being said, please do go read the wvw forums. The main issue there will be content drought (which has been a topic for over 1.5 years now or even longer) and not class balance. Especially since the new HoT maps failed and the old borderlands had to be reintroduced.

are you saying that there hasn’t been feedback on professions in the sections I mentioned?

Swagger.1459:

Edit 2- and your content is coming on the 26th. Your content xpac is being worked on by 100 devs. Your raid content is being worked on… You may not value profession improvements, but there are players who do, so don’t think this team is not capable of fulfilling important requests like these too…

You still haven’t shown that a revamp would improve the situation nor have you shown that the current system is flawed.

I brought 2 suggestions… Reorganize and combine similar traits and open up the trait system which would mean greater build flexibility, or reorganize and combine traits more sensibly into categories to create more defined builds. Those hardly needed an essay of explanation.

To argue that “look your content is coming” so people should stop demanding content or focus on content just shows your inexperience with MMO titles. Content developement is a constant process. As such ressource allocation is vital (read MO last post about how much work goes into Season 3) and when faced between a working trait and skill system versus game content, I doubt a majority of players will select the former as priority currently or in the near future.

It’s helpful if you read the full conversation between another poster and put things into better context before you reply.

Your rethoric question format while fun provides no arguments(especially when it doesn’t even address the point made). Until you actually provide some arguments there is no reason to continue this discussion.

As far as the answers to your rethoric questions:

Swagger.1459:

are you saying Anet is not capable of improving professions over time and working on other content? are your expectations of Anet really that low?

No, that is not what I said.

Swagger.1459:

are you saying Anet is not capable of improving professions over time and working on other content? are your expectations of Anet really that low?

No, still not what I said.

Swagger.1459:

are you saying that there hasn’t been feedback on professions in the sections I mentioned?

Nope, again not what I said. People can actually read what you write on these forums. Lacking reading comprehension will stop you in your tracks.

Swagger.1459:

I brought 2 suggestions… Reorganize and combine similar traits and open up the trait system which would mean greater build flexibility, or reorganize and combine traits more sensibly into categories to create more defined builds. Those hardly needed an essay of explanation.

You provided a subjective unedjucated opinion of what you believe would work. Not what I asked for.

Swagger.1459:

It’s helpful if you read the full conversation between another poster and put things into better context before you reply.

Oh I did and going by his reply and your re-reply I’m not sure I need context.

Astralporing.1957:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Apparently a lot of people raid in WoW now with the lfg thing whatever…

Yes, and it has been one of the most destructive additions to that games creative and fun developement in recent years.

Suure, which is why the expact that introduced it ended up to be the most succesful one.

And not even 2 years down the line the quality of the content deteriorated so much that even passionate players were complaining. Everyone who wasn’t complaining then certainly was by the time pandaland hit.

WotLK was the most successful xpac because it fell right in the sweet spot between BC bit to tough and grindy but still interesting/challenging and Cataclysm super-duper easy mode where everything is just there to kitten out purple items so people can hoard pixels.

If you want to look at what effect the LFR tool had you need to look at following expansions and content, not the content where it barely was introduced. Going forward every single expansion has been worse and worse (granted the game is what 100 years old now?).

Swagger.1459:

Professions and combat are the main core game elements, and almost everything is designed around these professions and how combat unfolds… These areas are greater than your content drought…

True, but you have failed to show how the current system is so bad or underdeveloped that it needs fixing. All that has happened so far in this thread is a couple of people have voiced their subjective opinion on this matter.

All in all, the complaints about the new trait system have died down after a period of accustomisation.

Also the argument here is for a revamp and change of the current system. This has nothing to do with balance. That is a sepperate issue entirely unless you show how the current system has such big flaws that balance would not be possible.

Swagger.1459:

You are silly if you think the devs can’t work on multiple things…

Anything the developers do costs ressources. In this case mostly human ressources. While some things might take less extra time, every bit of extra work will ultimately require something else to be put on hold. Especially if you are working on something as complex as a complete combat revamp.

Who is kidding himself in this case I wonder?

Swagger.1459:

Edit- spend some time on the profession, pvp and wvw forums and you’ll see the complaints that far outweigh this content drought.

Please show me a time when the pvp/wvw forums were not full of complaints. It’s in the nature of the game mode and it’s competative nature that people will blame others or balance instead of their own mistakes.

That being said, please do go read the wvw forums. The main issue there will be content drought (which has been a topic for over 1.5 years now or even longer) and not class balance. Especially since the new HoT maps failed and the old borderlands had to be reintroduced.

Swagger.1459:

Edit 2- and your content is coming on the 26th. Your content xpac is being worked on by 100 devs. Your raid content is being worked on… You may not value profession improvements, but there are players who do, so don’t think this team is not capable of fulfilling important requests like these too…

You still haven’t shown that a revamp would improve the situation nor have you shown that the current system is flawed.

To argue that “look your content is coming” so people should stop demanding content or focus on content just shows your inexperience with MMO titles. Content developement is a constant process. As such ressource allocation is vital (read MO last post about how much work goes into Season 3) and when faced between a working trait and skill system versus game content, I doubt a majority of players will select the former as priority currently or in the near future.

To answer the question:

Yes, it is a design decision to not give engineers weapon swap. This has primarily to do with balance and can be seen with elementalists as well (though eles have multiple attunements).

In general it has to do with balance as far as availability of skills, complexity of class and utility is concerned. Engineers and elementalists both have multiple ways of gaining access to different weapons skills (attunements for eles, weapon kits for engies for example). Giving them two weapon sets available in battle might create unbalance in previously mentioned areas (and/or make the classes to hard to balance).

Absolutely agree with TC.

5-man raids would be beefed up versions of pre HoT dungeon elitism, just on steroids.

It’s amasing how fast people forget how much complaining was going on about lack of gear diversity and the zerker meta.

At best there would be maybe 2 meta groups that work, similar to fractals at the moment (which are faceroll easy content so this might not even be a realistic assumption) but that’s a best case scenario.

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Never had any issues in City of Heroes with their difficultly settings for instanced content…

CoH went the way of the Dodo, not sure following a failed MMO is the way to go.

Swagger.1459:

Rift added difficulty settings to their recent raid to get more involved…

Rift also adds regular expansions which make all that shiny loot and rewards absolutely worthless after a set amount of time.

Swagger.1459:

Apparently a lot of people raid in WoW now with the lfg thing whatever…

Yes, and it has been one of the most destructive additions to that games creative and fun developement in recent years. Not to mention it helps keep the threadmill going which pumps in higher and higher power creep every 2 months with new items.

Swagger.1459:

Options are always good for the playerbase as a whole, so we need to cut out the elitist attitudes here because it’s bad for the community.

Agreed, though none of the examples you gave are simply copy pasteable to GW2. All the games you mentioned have a very different type of itemisation, endgame and expansion policy to say the least.

And you’re failing to see the point in my post.

Your point being to get more people involved in raids by offering alternative difficulty levels as have the other games you mentioned.

ok good

To which I replied that easier access does not a better game make

no you didn’t

and/or that itemisation (aka reward structure) of those other games does not work as it does in GW2 which would require to basically make rewards for lower difficulties worthless.

reward systems has nothing to do with difficulty settings, so let’s not get that twisted up in the point.

Was that what I missed?

EDIT:

Swagger.1459:

Edit- So Anet is incapable of adding mob difficulty scaling?

Anet can’t add a boon buff (see aerodrome dps test spot) or debuff feature?

Anet can’t allow players to adjust timers?

Anet can add a story or extreme mode?

Sure they could, but why should they is the question?

“none of the examples you gave are simply copy pasteable to GW2.”… Confused because now you’re saying they could…

Not implementable from a reward, itemisation and powercreep perspective.

Adding multiple difficulties is not about only tweaking numbers (that is actually the easiest part) but how this gets incorporated properly into the game structure as a whole.

Let’s not be silly, they are implementable…

Yes they could, but not in the same way the games you mentioned do or did. In those games equipment deterioration is an integral part of the balance process. This is not existant in GW2.

I said your examples do not work for GW2 and no matter how much you tear appart the original statement, this remains true.

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

To which I replied that easier access does not a better game make

no you didn’t

Read here:

Cyninja.2954:

Yes, and it has been one of the most destructive additions to that games creative and fun developement in recent years. Not to mention it helps keep the threadmill going which pumps in higher and higher power creep every 2 months with new items.

Moving on:

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

and/or that itemisation (aka reward structure) of those other games does not work as it does in GW2 which would require to basically make rewards for lower difficulties worthless.

reward systems has nothing to do with difficulty settings, so let’s not get that twisted up in the point.

Sure it does especially when people are asking for easier access to rewards by reduction of difficulty. Don’t pretend this is not an issue. You are sidestepping the argument by pretending reward structure is not an issue when it clearly is.

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Sure they could, but why should they is the question?

“none of the examples you gave are simply copy pasteable to GW2.”… Confused because now you’re saying they could…

Not implementable from a reward, itemisation and powercreep perspective.

Adding multiple difficulties is not about only tweaking numbers (that is actually the easiest part) but how this gets incorporated properly into the game structure as a whole.

Swagger.1459:

Cyninja.2954:

Swagger.1459:

Never had any issues in City of Heroes with their difficultly settings for instanced content…

CoH went the way of the Dodo, not sure following a failed MMO is the way to go.

Swagger.1459:

Rift added difficulty settings to their recent raid to get more involved…

Rift also adds regular expansions which make all that shiny loot and rewards absolutely worthless after a set amount of time.

Swagger.1459:

Apparently a lot of people raid in WoW now with the lfg thing whatever…

Yes, and it has been one of the most destructive additions to that games creative and fun developement in recent years. Not to mention it helps keep the threadmill going which pumps in higher and higher power creep every 2 months with new items.

Swagger.1459:

Options are always good for the playerbase as a whole, so we need to cut out the elitist attitudes here because it’s bad for the community.

Agreed, though none of the examples you gave are simply copy pasteable to GW2. All the games you mentioned have a very different type of itemisation, endgame and expansion policy to say the least.

And you’re failing to see the point in my post.

Your point being to get more people involved in raids by offering alternative difficulty levels as have the other games you mentioned.

To which I replied that easier access does not a better game make and/or that itemisation (aka reward structure) of those other games does not work as it does in GW2 which would require to basically make rewards for lower difficulties worthless.

Was that what I missed?

EDIT:

Swagger.1459:

Edit- So Anet is incapable of adding mob difficulty scaling?

Anet can’t add a boon buff (see aerodrome dps test spot) or debuff feature?

Anet can’t allow players to adjust timers?

Anet can add a story or extreme mode?

Sure they could, but why should they is the question?

Blaeys.3102:

Harper.4173:

Blaeys.3102:

Almost no one on these forums is advocating removing hardcore content or saying that it shouldn’t be in the game. In fact, most go out of their way to say the opposite.

The argument is that, just because a game mode includes hardmode content doesn’t mean it can’t also offer a more casual experience – and that, in fact, by offering that experience alongside hardcore content, you will encourage more people to try it out, give devs a reason to continue making that content and give the truly casual players something fun to do as well.

I’m tired of people saying that anyone who criticizes the current raid model is immediately anti-hard content. It simply isn’t true.

To the topic at hand, the reason people are focusing on the 5 vs 10 player part of WP’s video is because that is a fairly new perspective that hasn’t been discussed – at great length – on these forums, whereas the rest of his points have (a lot).

I’ve seen countless criticisms to raids that go along the line of: “This is the casual MMO for non-hardcore people – where no hard content should exist – casual/bad players should be able to get everything and do everything because that’s what we think Anet wanted when they made GW2”.

They then back this up with “dungeons are easy” except they weren’t at the start and became easy because Anet dropped the ball in their implementation. Once people figured out how to do them they became easy.

The difference between dungeons (and fractals) and raids is this – yes dungeons were hard, but they were hard for the right reasons. They did not include mechanics specifically designed to completely discourage particular playstyles, builds and stat selections (some of which players enjoyed using since the start of the game).

Not sure where you are getting this. Dungeons when they were added discouraged any type of playstyle that was not run in and die, respawn and run in and die again.

That is until arenanet implemented the fix for waypoints not to work while in combat.

People went in with full soldiers the first 6 months just to be able to survive and learn the mechanics.

So no, dungeons did not allow for every playstyle at launch simply because people died left and right.

Stop looking at content with 3.5 years of experience and powercreep. Dungeons at launch were harder than raids are now if you add in the amount of groups that disbanded or required over 1.5 hours to clear some paths.

Blaeys.3102:

Raids have some amazing mechanics, but the inclusion of enrage timers (even very forgiving enrage timers) creates artificial barriers to entry that don’t need to be there – and, more importantly, punishes people who choose to play differently than the accepted meta.

Early on, Anet focused on the right kind of mechanics to create difficulty – and those still exist in raids. But, by adding the artificial unnecessary barriers such as enrage timers, they tell those players that were enjoying those builds/playstyles for years that “you are playing the game wrong,” which I do not agree with and do not like.

And for the record, because I know I will get flack for the above, I think there is a way they could keep timers in the fights without completely limiting playstyles – just do not use them as definitive barriers to entry. Implement a gold/silver/bronze reward system that allocates reward based on kill speed.

Disagree. If the enrage timers are an issue for you, you’re trying to cheese the content. You said it yourself, they are generous enough. Your deduction is faulty.

Swagger.1459:

Never had any issues in City of Heroes with their difficultly settings for instanced content…

CoH went the way of the Dodo, not sure following a failed MMO is the way to go.

Swagger.1459:

Rift added difficulty settings to their recent raid to get more involved…

Rift also adds regular expansions which make all that shiny loot and rewards absolutely worthless after a set amount of time.

Swagger.1459:

Apparently a lot of people raid in WoW now with the lfg thing whatever…

Yes, and it has been one of the most destructive additions to that games creative and fun developement in recent years. Not to mention it helps keep the threadmill going which pumps in higher and higher power creep every 2 months with new items.

Swagger.1459:

Options are always good for the playerbase as a whole, so we need to cut out the elitist attitudes here because it’s bad for the community.

Agreed, though none of the examples you gave are simply copy pasteable to GW2. All the games you mentioned have a very different type of itemisation, endgame and expansion policy to say the least.

Scipio.3204:

Cyninja.2954:

Also as WP nicely put it, the Guild Wars franchise has always had challenging content and unique rewards gated behind it. Why start now breaking a winning formula?

I wouldn’t say gating rewards behind content is a franchise thing, more like a GW2 thing. You could get tormented weapons without stepping foot inside DoA etc

Not going to go through all the rewards in GW1 that were gated (cough obi armor cough) or required you to pay others to get you through content since there were enough. Paying others for loot/skins/rewards is also possible in GW2 last I checked.

The item you are likely looking for is:

Poly-luminescent Undulating Refractor (Orange) – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Poly-luminescent_Undulating_Refractor_%28Orange%29

There are some such items ingame. The most common ones are the Poly Refractors.

Harper.4173:

Blaeys.3102:

Almost no one on these forums is advocating removing hardcore content or saying that it shouldn’t be in the game. In fact, most go out of their way to say the opposite.

The argument is that, just because a game mode includes hardmode content doesn’t mean it can’t also offer a more casual experience – and that, in fact, by offering that experience alongside hardcore content, you will encourage more people to try it out, give devs a reason to continue making that content and give the truly casual players something fun to do as well.

I’m tired of people saying that anyone who criticizes the current raid model is immediately anti-hard content. It simply isn’t true.

To the topic at hand, the reason people are focusing on the 5 vs 10 player part of WP’s video is because that is a fairly new perspective that hasn’t been discussed – at great length – on these forums, whereas the rest of his points have (a lot).

I’ve seen countless criticisms to raids that go along the line of: “This is the casual MMO for non-hardcore people – where no hard content should exist – casual/bad players should be able to get everything and do everything because that’s what we think Anet wanted when they made GW2”.

They then back this up with “dungeons are easy” except they weren’t at the start and became easy because Anet dropped the ball in their implementation. Once people figured out how to do them they became easy.

This.

Also as WP nicely put it, the Guild Wars franchise has always had challenging content and unique rewards gated behind it. Why start now breaking a winning formula?

Which brings us to the next point which WP also discussed: The actual difficulty and requirements of said challenging content (aka raids) gets highly exagerated by the anti-raid crowd.

If dedicated groups can clear content in green gear (that’s aproximately 30% less stats than ascended – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item) or manage to clear the content with half the people it’s balanced for, the content can’t be that murderous hard to begin with.

WP basically putting nicely what many veteran players have been saying for months.

Entire thread, and people aren’t even in agreement of if the current meta is balanced or not.

It will indeed be interesting what Arenanet does with the next patch. Suffice to say, one crowd will be displeased. It’s never a win for the devs I guess…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Erom.6238:

It is better to farm gold or craft dusk since crafting dusk is quite expensive as well! the achievements required for dusk might also be difficult since it requires fractals which i have no experience on.

There’s no question that the costs of the two methods differ, but that difference varies depending on the market (and even changes hourly) and it’s often small enough that you’d more than make up the difference in terms of time saved to farm gold.

If cost is your primary reason for choosing the method, then never use the collection method. No matter how much you save, it’s more work and that amount of effort tends to annoy those looking to save.

If “making your own” is important, then always choose the collection method. It feels a lot more like something that you are accomplishing, rather than something that you are just “acquiring.”

tl;dr

• Choose the TP method if you are in a hurry or mostly concerned with cost.
• Choose the Collection method if you are looking forward to the journey, aka the scavenger hunt.

This.

The time and effort spent in crafting a precursor will always come way more expensive, even if you craft say Dusk and sell it with a 200g profit on the TP. 200g is aproximately 5-10 hours of farming and guaranteed where the collections can take way longer, and that’s a best case scenario.

Then again, if you have fun doing the collections, go for it.

Kadin.2356:

Cyninja.2954:

Kadin.2356:

I think I was very clear in my statement that WvW and PvP were vastly different environments. There are, however, correlations between broken mechanics in each game mode, being able to compress all of condition damages’ offensive power into a single stat leaves enough room where no sacrifices have to be made for survivability. Power builds have to make a choice between the two while condi builds can have their cake, and eat it too as it were.

My point was that they acknowledged this problem in PvP by taking that stat choice option away, but a more permanent fix is still required. I’ve seen many good suggestions already in other threads such as allowing condi’s to crit, then rebalancing damage such that condi builds will need to incorporate precision and furosity putting them more on equal terms with power builds.

At the end of the day, with no changes being made, WvW will devolve into nothing but condi cancer wars.

Yes, solo and small group roaming condition builds might outperform power builds (not might, pretty sure most do). Large scale that is a very different picture though. Conditions get cleansed a lot faster in wvw thanks to blasting of fields all the time. There is a reason why condition duration is a lot less valuable in wvw zerg fights than it is in pve for example (by the way, this is the 2nd damage stat for condis which you ignored in your comparison).

Powerbuilds do sacrifice damage for survivability. Then again direct damage can’t be mitigated or removed by cleansing. If you’d pit 2 equal sized groups of experienced wvw players against each other, if group direct damage keeps cleansing, group condition damage will get overrun.

I do agree in that I find the disparity between condition damage with one stat and direct damage a bit in favor of condition damage. It’s no where as bad though as you paint it out to be, especially in the wvw enviroment.

I think, historically, you are correct but lately there has been a dramatic shift towards conditions even at larger scales. I’m hearing a lot more “oh don’t fight those guys they are mostly condi” in commander chat and it saddens me.

Edit: As far as condition duration goes what if it was coupled with a damage modifier? Then it would have a reason to exist even in heavy condi clearing environments?

Condition duration itsself is already a damage modifier. It allows you to stack more condition stacks (since your skill will be up again while the original stack remains) or at minimum have your applied condition do damage for a longer period of time.

I’m not sure how they’ll want to fix conditions without making them more similar to direct damage. Maybe something will come along with the pve/pvp skill split. It’s one of thoes things which are hard to balance for 3 different game modes.

Ulion.5476:

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/legendaries

Remember legendaries are a long term goal. A lot of players find it difficult to save up the gold to buy a precursor. Precursor craft enables you slowly make progress instead of always wasting your gold on random things. Atm its 100g cheaper to buy it.

Am I reading those numbers incorrect?

Isn’t Dusk at the moment cheaper to craft versus buying it straight off the TP?

Dawn is indeed cheaper to buy straight off the TP though.

Kadin.2356:

I think I was very clear in my statement that WvW and PvP were vastly different environments. There are, however, correlations between broken mechanics in each game mode, being able to compress all of condition damages’ offensive power into a single stat leaves enough room where no sacrifices have to be made for survivability. Power builds have to make a choice between the two while condi builds can have their cake, and eat it too as it were.

My point was that they acknowledged this problem in PvP by taking that stat choice option away, but a more permanent fix is still required. I’ve seen many good suggestions already in other threads such as allowing condi’s to crit, then rebalancing damage such that condi builds will need to incorporate precision and furosity putting them more on equal terms with power builds.

At the end of the day, with no changes being made, WvW will devolve into nothing but condi cancer wars.

Yes, solo and small group roaming condition builds might outperform power builds (not might, pretty sure most do). Large scale that is a very different picture though. Conditions get cleansed a lot faster in wvw thanks to blasting of fields all the time. There is a reason why condition duration is a lot less valuable in wvw zerg fights than it is in pve for example (by the way, this is the 2nd damage stat for condis which you ignored in your comparison).

Powerbuilds do sacrifice damage for survivability. Then again direct damage can’t be mitigated or removed by cleansing. If you’d pit 2 equal sized groups of experienced wvw players against each other, if group direct damage keeps cleansing, group condition damage will get overrun.

I do agree in that I find the disparity between condition damage with one stat and direct damage a bit in favor of condition damage. It’s no where as bad though as you paint it out to be, especially in the wvw enviroment.

While I’m not a big fan of the lockouts of the LFG system, I do kind of undertand them.

Having run quite a lot of fractals during each iteration of the system I can with full confidence say this:

- fractals at lower levels are in general way worse than at high levels. Even though the difficulty increases, the inexperience of players at lower levels makes some runs painful

- players look for shortcuts all the time be it by joining fractal groups with lower than minimum AR or rerunning the simplest fractals possible

- running fractals 76+ you can almost immediately spot players who got “carried”. This becomes especially evident when running non-ideal comps where each reflect, aegis, heal is valuable.

As is right now, the lockout basically force people to fight themselves through arguably the toughest fractals (based on a mix of difficulty and inexperience) with suboptimal players learning the mechanics until they can join the next tier of difficulty (as well as gear up during the process). It’s far from perfect, but I’d rather have it this way then have a bigger chuck of inexperienced players join high rank fractal groups in hopes of getting carried (which is possible but quite a bit harder without direct access to the LFG).

Giving everyone access to high rank fractals would just let elitism get out of hand. Players would demand even more AP, linking of gear, etc. just to preotect themselves of inexperienced players (something I personally find stupid but can understand).

My take on this would be something like this:

- make 1-2 story mode dungeons with cinematics that cover the story or better yet, make them part of the living story

- introduce some form replayability of GW1 events. After watching woodenpotatoes video on how wing 2 of the raid connects to the original white mantle storyline from GW1 I just feel bad for all the players who missed out on those amazing stories. Yes I know, it’s been done before (Caverns of time in WoW, etc.) but how awesome would it be to get to reexperience some of the iconic GW1 moments in GW2. It would also allow for a lot of lore to get retold for players who missed GW1 (and yes, I am going to blantly link to his video cause it’s fricking awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu7hHuidcpM)

- rewards I would love to have arenanet add some alternative method to aquiring legendary armor. I’m just not sure how to keep it exclusive enough without the raid difficulty.

Interesting idea, though personally I wouldn’t put this up as a top priority item.

Pros:
- it makes crafting more flexible (I wouldn’t go beyond 3 days though meaning you could at max create 3 of an item after 3 days)
- it would increase supply of ascended crafting materials

Cons:
- increased supply of ascended crafting materials would reduce the gold earned for crafters per item
- volatility of the market for t1-6 materials would increase also overall price might increase due to more demand
- might negatively impact player activity since less loging on can lead to less player retention (assuming recurring logins help retention)

I have to sorta side a bit with the “if you can’t space 5 minutes per day” crowd. It’s not that big of a deal even if tedious. That being said, if the “roll over” stacks are not to high, it should be okay.

Nope. Was removed in a patch a while back. Enjoy!

EDIT; more specific, you don’t need ANY wvw completion. Same goes for Dry Top, Silverwastes and Southsun Cove, not needed. Those zones do provide level 80 map completion rewards though so feel free to complete them too if desired.

World completion requires completing all the following maps:

All six cities.
The 25 explorable zones, except Southsun Cove and zones in the Maguuma Wastes
The Chantry of Secrets.

The following areas do not count towards world completion:

Dungeons.
Hall of Monuments.
Edge of the Mists and Obsidian Sanctum.
Heart of the Mists and any Structured PvP areas.
Explorable zones that were added after the release of the game, such as Southsun Cove, and the zones in the Maguuma Wastes.
All maps in the Heart of Maguuma region, added with the Heart of Thorns expansion.
Claw Island, as it is a story instance only.

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

Danikat.8537:

coso.9173:

I’d personally love a “Bio” section in the character screen, for RP purposes, when you inspect another player you could look at it too. I always like to give my characters some story behind, it helps me flesh them out. Specially because playing MMOs is one of the way I have to create future characters for my comics.
I don’t care if it is an add on or the main game allows it though.

This is one thing I really miss from Ultima Online.

For anyone who got as far as the word ‘inspect’ and thought of WoW’s system it’s not like that at all. The one in UO allowed you to see an image of the character with no info on stats and a ‘biography’ page which was free text.

Some people would use it to talk about what they like to do in the game and what they’d be interested in grouping up for, or an advert for their guild. Others would make up an actual biography for their character and write it out in first person.

I know a lot of people (myself included) like to come up with extra backstory and personalities for their characters, even if they don’t actually role-play, so this could be a great way to share that.

(Of course there would also have to be an option to report people who abused the free text field to write something inappropriate, but that could easily be added to the existing tool.)

That’s actually quite a nifty idea. Let’s players be creative and provide useful information if desired without being to toxic (ideally).

coso.9173:

No, others getting it easier doesn’t remove the feeling of satisfaction, it is not retroactive, I know what I had to endure to get it. I know I earned it my way, the hard way. others getting it easier don’t take away that from me at all. I don’t get that line of thinking.
There are thousands of things that are made easier with time, in GW2, in games, in life. ALL the time. If I got upset each time it happened, I would go crazy.

While I understand the sentiment, unfortunately that is not how human psychology works. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effort_justification)

So while you personally might not be affected by this, or might not notice how this affects you which is more likely, a great amount of individuals would.

One could argue that the amount of negatively affected players (the ones who oppose the change) would be smaller than the amount of positively affected players (the ones who agree with the change) might be equal and the crowd who doesn’t care is big enough as to not make a big dent satisfaction wise.

The one thing that in any case would suffer is Arenanets credibility. It’s a lose-lose for them in this case.

coso.9173:

I don’t want the skins. They’re n ot my cup of tea to be honest. and I barely have enough time to play GW2 to start another game now.
I’m just curious why people even care. It’s not the first time a gaming company backtracks on something they said before.

So your expectations are low enough that you don’t care any more if a company backtracks on their word, great. That is still no proper argument or justification why it should be okay in the first place.

I could see an argument made IF the rewards were unobtainable, but even then it would cause serious trust/respect issues especially from a loyal crowd of players. As is, the rewards still are available and even in the same way as before.

OriOri.8724:

We have no idea when we will get the changes, so don’t wait on fractals indefinitely if you want to play them. And honestly I doubt the new system will accommodate the 5/5 infusions anyway.

This.

If you are serious about starting fractals, start away. No matter what change arenanet implements, and whenever that might be, it will always be beneficial to have started gathering agony resistance.

Here is one setup that someone decided on going with:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3q5d0e/how_i_built_my_150_agony_resistance/ (requires a total of 8 +10 agony resistance upgrades)

It’s the second cheapest setup there is with 3x+10 + 2x+11 ( a total of 7 + 10 agony resistance upgrades needed) being the cheapest one for maximum of 150 ar. Some people go with 5x+10 leaving them 2 ar short caping at 148.

When starting off your main limitation will be available fractal relics at lower levels. Remember that you can convert pristine fractal relics into 15 normal relics. You might need to do that quite a bit initially to get your base +5 infusions on all ascended pieces. Then later upgrade those +5 infusions to +7.

Your biggest upgrade will come from getting your rings upgraded asap and sloting in the upgradable agony resistance (again, you need 52 total anyway so you might aswell buy them as soon as your rings and backpiece have the slot).

All ascended items have 1 slot for simply agony resist infusions (which are +5 ar for 75 fractal relics and upgraded +7 for a total of 150 fractal relics per infusion).

Rings and backpiece can be upgraded (rings 2 times, backpiece 1nce) to hold agony resist infusion which can be upgraded beyond +20 (since it’s exponential crafting expect prices to double per step so realistically no one goes beyond +15 if at all).

Golden fractal weapons have indeed very low drop rates and golden relics as well.

Anything sub master level fractals (tier 4, 76-100) has near nonexistant golden fractal weapon droprates. If at all, to lazy to look up the fractal drop research page.

Normal fractal weapon skins can be bought from the vendor for 20 pristine fractal tokens after completing fractal 50 (Mai trin) once. They do still drop but have low drop rates ever since the wardrobe change. Their availability is up though thanks to the option of just buying them (at 19 weapons per 20 tokens you are looking at 380 pristine tokens total for all the skins, or about 30 days of tier 4 fractal dailies which provide 12 pristine relics per day).

Ubi.4136:

Actually, I know they said it can’t be done due to “no way to remove previous XP gains”, personal story choices, etc…I doubt this is true. Here is why:

My thief is Asuran, and was on the final step of the personal story, Victory or Death. Sadly, as I have 8 other toons, I never made it around to doing the last step in the story line. 3 years go by and I get a mail from Soothsayer Jacinda telling me she can help me with my issues. I was bored and had no idea what it would do, but I talked to her, accepted the choice and it reset my personal story to the beginning or Chapter 7. (sigh) Every step I did after, replaying chapter 7, gave me the rewards/XP as if I had never done them before.

Fun part: my personal story still showed every step that was later in the story I had previously done. Even more amusing, was that the story Jacinda put me on, was not the chain I had done before. It ignored every choice from character creation all the way through my personal story and put me on the story they wanted me on with Jacinda’s reset.

I submitted an email before starting it up again and Anet basically told me they couldn’t reset my story to Victory or Death and I had to replay the rest of the story, which is what I’ve been doing.

When I hit chapter 8, all of my chapter 8 story completed log items vanished. I am now getting all of the game mails from my original story/steps (I chose) and the ones from the story Jacinda put me on (what they chose) every time I do the next step. They are forcing me to do their path, not mine.

TLDR:
I went from Victory or Death (last story quest) to Forming the Pact (start of Act 3) by talking to Soothsayer Jacinda. It changed/ignored every step I chose, both in character creation and personal story choices, and has set me on a completely different story line I didn’t choose. I didn’t lose anything, other than progress, and am getting new XP/rewards as if I never did the story on that toon.

My take: Race changes are possible, I just don’t think they want to spend time making it happen.

The personal story and especially the later missions saw multiple revamps and changes as far as order and how they appear. This might cause problems or interesting bugs with characters created during the original run that complete the living story later. My second guardian for example is missing all steps past 7 in his story journal.

That being said, Arenanet never said it’s impossible to implement race-change, only that the amount of work and effort required to properly implement this feature is to high.

That and they probably figured they’d rather have people buying new character slots and making more characters than just race changing.

LughLongArm.5460:

4 years early access and getting all free is not enough of a bonus?

No it’s not, because it never was early access bonus. It was a reward for loyalty and doing a lot of stuff in GW1.

You can’t ask for something to get made widely available and then devalue the rewards by calling them early access.

Bellatrixa.3546:

tl;dr go and earn the items yourself instead of thinking that everything can be instantly obtained with a credit card.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Ice.5162:

I hate to necro a post but I had a related question: Why is Tarir better than Silverwastes? Sure you can get a ton of loot trough multiloot, but what about the downtime in between that? In Silverwastes you get about 40 bags per 20 minutes average, but also, Silverwastes bags contain T6, and extra coin upon opening. The only advantage I saw Tarir have is tons of rares for ectos…

It’s not one or the other.

You do Tarir when it’s available, then go back to SW once the downtime starts.

Loot/time wise Tarir multi loot beats out any other farm at the moment.

MadVisions.4529:

1 why are you not watching pvp on twitch?

Honest answer? It’s boring to watch.

I’ve watched SC, SC2, LoL, HotS, WoW Dota and CS:Go(which I don’t even play). All of those games were more fun to watch than GW2.

Main reasons I believe are:

A.) simplicity to follow. CS:Go you can pick up within 5 minutes of watching. Sure you won’t get the details as for each position, but you get the general drift.

LoL, HotS and Dota have way less complex classes or amount of skills to follow. Also the top down view gives a better overview of what is actually happening. The entire pre fight pick and ban phase also adds a strategic layer which allows for interesting banter

B.) rooting for a team The GW2 pvp community is tiny. Other games have crossgame teams which you can root for if you want to. You a fan of Teamliquid’s SC2 team? They are playing CS:Go right now, have a watch.

C.) map variety/objectives It’s conquest conquest conquest. Even CS:Go alternates the teams between offensive and defensive.

MadVisions.4529:

2 how could ANet improve viewer experience?

Hard to say. As others mentioned, MMO pvp has never been big. Even WoW arena had a tiny playerbase compared to the overall playerbase.

The most they can do is work on the actual game mode. Adding maps that are easy to follow with alternating objectives for example. GvG in GW1 worked on exactly this basis.

Class wise the lacking trinty hurts. It makes the game very tough to follow for non GW2 players, and even tough to follow for non pvp players.

When watching a pvp stream always ask youself this:

- how would someone who has never seen/heard/played this game perceive what he sees?
- is what you are seeing interesting to said person?
- would nachos or popcorn work well while watching this pvp event?

MadVisions.4529:

3 What is the most imprtant thing you look for in a pvp srtream?

Entertainment.

Esports work on a very similar principle as regular sport. Even more so in certain respects since here you can try to emulate what you see (build wise, setup, etc.). Try doing something a trained NBA player does(insert sport of your choice), good luck on that.

You watch sports to be entertained be it by:

- rooting for your favorite team, country, player, etc.
- the atmosphere, less so on TV but go watch some ice hockey live and tell me it was boring.
- seeing humans in peak athletic condition work wonders
- you like placing bets

Some of these things can get copied to esports, others can’t.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

I have never seen such a horribly designed frustration fest. Every stage of the fractal results in multiple full wipes, with the Thaumnova anomaly resulting in 10s of them. And this was at difficulty scale 11. Took OVER HALF AN OUR JUST TO BEAT THE ANOMALY, and that win was mostly by attrition and luck with the disappearing platforms.

If you thought 11 was hard, wait until you get to 97. That being said, it’s one of those fractals where you need to know how thigns work. Can’t rush stuff down and expect to win like Urban Battleground or Uncategorized.

cptaylor.2670:

I do wish the cannon room was a bit easier. Those cannons fire way too fast. Unless you know the safe spots and your way around it takes a long time trying to figure it out. Other than that it’s fine.

Knowing the safe spots is part of the learning process.

There are enough guides out there on all fractals, Ayrilana linked to some fo them.

The fractal does require a tad more knowledge than other fractals, especially with the different mechanics.

As far as the boss, the only point I’d criticise is the bright glowing light coming from the reactor makes it sometimes hard to see the platforms. Other than that, simply keep your distance to other players and don’t run wildly around. Keep an inner and outer ring for running and try not to cut off other players. Having alternative movement skills available (blink, infitrator arrow, etc.) helps if emergency repositioning is required.

Rhyse.8179:

Honest answer? When GW2 no longer has active-counterplay, burst-avoidance based combat.

So never.

This.

As long as the main damage reduction in pve comes from non stats, there will never be a reason to build for something besides maximum damage.

So until then you will see: berserker, assassins, viper, sinister and other primary damage stat setups dominate.

None of the suggestions you offered would change this TC since you are not actually addressing the problem/reason, only the symptoms.

Quite easy(tier 1): recommended gear: exotic
Dungeons for tokens and gold
Fractals up to level 19 -> good way to get some pristine fractal relics from dailies and maybe a ring or two

Easy(tier 1 -> 2): recommended gear: exotic + ascended trinkets
Fractals 20 – 40 -> requires agony resistance and getting the required amount on your gear unless you have lots of guild commendations and laurels leftover will take a couple of days

Normal(tier 2): recommended gear: exotic + ascended trinkets
Fractals 41 – 50 -> the end of tier 2, enemies getting boons on hit means the fractals will take a while

Hard(tier 3): recommended gear: exotic + ascended weapons, trinkets
Fractals 51-60 -> exploding enemies will give movement challenged individuals a hard time.
Fractals 61-75 -> less anoying than 51-60 but enemies now slowly start to ramp up. Proper positioning and use of class skills becomes required. The increasing agony resistance requirement means you’ll start needing ascended weapons and full trinket setups

Very Hard(tier 4): recommended gear: full ascended
Fractals 75+ – requires proper use of class skills for offense aswell as defense. The high agony resistance makes ascended armor a necessity. The upside is that most people know how to play their class (most not all mind you. It becomes very easy to spot who was carried to this level). Most enemies will 1-3 shot you, especially past level 90. Boss fights with pugs can take up to 10-15 minutes, especially when 3 of 5 members die in thaumanova…

That being said, i’ve had smoother runs in tier 4 fractals with experienced people than in tier 2 fractals with kitten people who have no clue how to position or play their class.

Raids: recommended gear: exotic + ascended weapons, trinkets
Putting this past tier 4 fractals since it requires more coordination and raid bosses have more viaried attacks than fractal bosses.

Final Note: all difficulty is subjective. If you have a group of 5 people who know what they are doing you can steamroll through tier 4 fractals in no time. If you have 1 – 2 people who slack off, some situations can get messy.

My favorite fractal to showcase this is volcanic. Super easy boss fight if you have a decent mesmer and/or guardian (revenant who knows how to use ventari, etc.) and a group knowing what to prioritise and how to position. Hell on earth for those who enjoy running head first into walls.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Is there any one selling raid spots, I figure it would give me a chance at ascended drops and give me an opportunity to learn the fight; what’s the going rate?

Not judging on if you want to buy or not. Personally I haven’t (and wouldn’t) but hey, if someone wants to spend their gold that way and arenanet aren’t against it.

That being said:

- buying a raid spot for ascended drops is wasted gold unless you get lucky. At best you’ll get some mini and some shards, maybe 1 ascended. Crafting ascended will come cheaper even at current prices

- buying a raid spot to learn the fights will do you just as little good. The entire premise of guilds selling raid spots is that you won’t be needed. Thus even if you do not mess up, you’ll never know if you were effective or useful

- buying a raid spot for the achievements is one way of getting some of them. Others have done so before and I’m sure more will do that in the future. That being said, be prepared to have to pay for multiple runs of wing 1 for all the achieves of the envoy armor (if that is your goal). wing 2 and 3 are more forgiving and require less runs unless you get very unlucky

- buying a raid spot for the LI will help you get taken along in pug raids, and will get you kicked out just as fast 5 minutes into any fight once the raid leader sees your performance

Ropechef.6192:

There is only 1 class that uses primarily auto attacks,

This.

Unless you are getting carried HARD by your raid group, 8 out of 9 classes won’t be running auto attack only (maybe 7 out of 9 if you count revenant as autoattack class as well, which they shouldn’t be).

Osu.6307:

eduardo.1436:

yeah…..but it would’ve been nice to at least get 3 rings like I always do, I think this is my worst RNG ever XD

You WANT rings? Why?

Of corse he does.

Then again, this is a mere braging post in disguise from TC.

Azoqu.8917:

No, Mesmers exist nowadays for alacrity and quickness and since I highly doubt any other classes will be given the same amount of output as Mesmers of those two things, you can safely consider your spot in groups safe.

What you doubt or believe, and what might happen are two very different things. It is very likely that come next elite specialisation some other class gets alacrity. Same as how quite a few classes were granted access to quickness.

Azoqu.8917:

Unlike Warriors who are starting to be seen as pointless slowly because Mesmers can give alacrity, quickness, and 25 MIGHT all in the same build. And before you bring up empowered allies (I think that’s its name) and banners, I’d much rather ditch super low DPS that brings banners for a class that does way more.

Warrior’s haven’t been there for might in a long time. Warrior banners still are unique to their class. The exact same thing we are talking about here. If another class were to be given banners I’d expect warriors to be up in arms about it (and rightfully so).

Azoqu.8917:

Oh and my Guardian wants his aegis back. All sources of aegis are either Guardian, random chance or a condition conversion of Burning (only damaging conditions Guardians have, gasp) to aegis. So I want you to give me my well, that is clearly Guardian and that they would kill for, back to me.

Ah you’ve fainly adapted your mantra of aegis being guardian only to “it’s guardian only non random chance”.

Trust me though, quite a few mesmers would love for Well of Precognition to get changed back to its original design. To bad this skill was nerfed so hard in the first place. Design wise it made sense to change immunity to aegis since mesmer was able to provide aegis before already.

Azoqu.8917:

Plus, portal is something that should never have been a class specific skill anyhow. It has to much utilitarian purposes to be limited to only one class and not for all players. How I would love to not have to wait on all the bad Mesmer jumpers during guild puzzles to get to the end.

Yes, how dare those other bad players not immediately let you skip content. Best would be to just have an npc at the start of the jumping puzzle have you teleport you to the end, right next to the reward chest. Better yet, let’s have him directly give you loot and skip this entire part of the pve game.

You are correct though. Portal always has been problematic. Maybe a complete removal would be best for the game.

Xyonon.3987:

25k, 250k, 42k DpS!? Holy poop you guys are horrible at math! O.o xD

Ok, here we go:

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Duelist’s Discipline: 1,617 damage à 50% * 8 = 6,468
Sharper Images: 1,323 damage à 49.76% * 8 = 5,268
Phantasmal Duelist direct damage: 928 à 69.76% crit chance à 50% bonus damage = 1,252

(6,468 + 5,267 + 1,252) * 3 / 6.6s = 5,903 DpS without might and / or vulnerability.

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DpS stands for “Damage per Second”, and is a completly different thing from burst damage or just “Damage”.

If you’d be able to set up 3 Phantasmal Duelists immediately, they would unload all their bullets and deal 38,961 damage, however since they have (traited with phantasmal haste) a 6.6s cooldown on this, their damage per second will be only 1/6th of this.

After 2 min you’d still have the same DpS, but you’d have dealt 708,381 damage in total.

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Condi Chronos are a thing in veeery specific areas, like high level fractals, soloing hero points or under specific circumstances even an, or even, the optimal pick in raids.

I suggest you this build tough:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhEQNAr6ensIC9fiNoBWoBUrhlcjC9HWiZoMAStWreVr1bF-TxhHQB5S9nMqEkc6FAwJBYXK/o1DAAE7PQKAFVWB-e

Depending on the situation and allies, the heal and utility skills may be better more supporty than solo dps.

Greez!

Looks correct. Hence my note that I was simply using someone elses numbers (at 8 in the morning).

Second mistake by TC was assuing the number shown by the builder was dps instead of total damage done.

Numbers are a lot more realistic with mesmer peak dps being around 24k in raids.

Quarktastic.1027:

As someone who has recently created a mesmer, I find this thread very informative.

Thoughts on power vs condi for open world/dungeons?

Mesmer damage in general is subpar in pve. It’s a pure utility support class.

That being said, open world you want to tag as much and fast as possible so I’d probably say go with power.

Dungeons you are likely looking at what people above mentioned, meaning Sword/x combos. That’s power again.

Not saying condition mesmer doesn’t work, just that others do it better in pve.

NashEquilSeek.2801:

3. Based on the info in the build editor, the bleed duration from Duelist’s Discipline and Sharper Image are 11 and 9.25 seconds respectively. Let’s assume a hypothetical situation where you can always maintain 3 iDuelists. Since iDuelists attack every 6 seconds, does this mean the bleed stack is going to steadily increase over time? According to my simple spreadsheet “simulation”, starting from 0 bleed stack and all phantasms attack simultaneously at time = 0, the bleed stack after 2 minutes is 108 (sharper) + 66 (duelist) = 249606 DPS. The calculation also shows that the total damage accrued is over 15 millions.

I believe I’m missing something as the damage is just outrageous, even if I only achieve 20% of the stack. Furthermore, my experience so far indicates I can achieve at most about 40-50 bleed stack. Thoughts? Thanks guys.

Yes you are. You are forgetting the bleed decay in your assumption. Eventually the bleed stacks applied will decay as fast as they are being reaplied. Having a longer duration than reaplication only means that you get spillover into your next rotation. After that you get a higher decay as well and/or decay catches up to application.

Rotation 1:
12 bleeds from SI (9.25s) + 6 bleeds from DD (11s)= 18 bleed stacks

- no decay

Rotation 2:
12 bleeds from SI (9.25s – 6s = 3.25s) + 6 bleeds from DD (11s – 6s = 5s) +12 bleeds from SI (9.25s) + 6 bleeds from DD (11s) = 36 bleed stacks the first 3.25 seconds, 24 bleed stacks the next 2 seconds, 18 bleed stacks the last 1 second

- decay of bleeds from first rotation fully completed

Rotation 3:
12 bleeds from SI (9.25s – 6s = 3.25s) + 6 bleeds from DD (11s – 6s = 5s) +12 bleeds from SI (9.25s) + 6 bleeds from DD (11s) = 36 bleed stacks the first 3 seconds, 24 bleed stacks the next 2 seconds, 18 bleed stacks the last 1 second

- decay of bleeds from second rotation fully completed

Final rotation:
12 bleeds from SI (3.25s) + 6 bleeds from DD (5s)

- decay of all bleeds 1 rotation after stop of application.

Using your numbers this would mean you get a cap bleed damage per rotation of:

(12 × 1323 + 6 × 1617 = 25578 DPS) + (12(3.25/6) × 1323 (8599.5) + 6(5/6) × 1617 (8085)= 16,684.5 DPS) = 42,262.5 DPS

That is assuming your numbers are correct. To lazy to pull actual numbers atm.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Cyninja.2954:

Mace and Axe both would require some well designed lore reasons as to why mesmer use them.

“To kill good”

~History in a nutshell.

True, that would work I guess ^^

Mainhand Pistol would be my favorit pick style and weapon choice wise.

First off 1-hand to offset our limited 1-hand choices. Sword is nice, but most builds don’t work to well with Sword/X and Scepter/X. It’s one or the other which leaves melee mesmer 2 skills short cooldown wise. An omniuseful mainhand could leviate this problem for both condi and power builds.

Pistol because dual wielding pistols would look very sweet but it does seem the most logical choice given all the available mainhand weapons. Dagger comes second, Mace and Axe both would require some well designed lore reasons as to why mesmer use them.

Curunen.8729:

For a moment I came in here and thought this was a real patch…

kitten , don’t scare me like that! :o

bearshaman.3421:

Me too, I was seriously about to flip my computer desk…

The sad part about this is, with mesmer nerfs you never know.

Some of them where so hilarious that you couldn’t tell the fake from the real patch notes. :/

Carighan.6758:

But PvP is such a mess that it really ought not to figure into any discussion other than whether to make it a separate game and try again, hopefully better this time.

Pssst, the 2-3k twitch viewers during tournament finals might hear you.

All jokes aside, I do hope they get some fixes in for the spvp crowd. Let’s hope those are actual useful spvp fixes and not stuff that the devs come up thank to the new pve crowd in that game mode.