Guild Wars 2

Thaddeus.4891:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gshZGEsx3I

Post 26th Reaper about 19-20k dps at Gorseval.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA126dULIr0

Post 26th Daredevil about 18-19k dps at Sabetha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCWCcsL4Yac

Pre 26th Burnzerker about 22-23k dps at Gorseval.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9x9I6yuiHo

Pre 26th Tempest Staff about 19k dps at Sabetha (Tempest wasn’t nerf with the 26th so it’s probably about the same now)

I’m not saying these are absolute numbers. There is variable in there, but the fact is

- Current Reaper and Daredevil DPS is pretty much in line with Tempest and really not far from Herald. They are not OP, they are just currently on the TOP of the dps chart.

- Burnzerker was OP because it was a bit too high compare to every other profession. That’s not the case of Reaper and Daredevil.

- Reaper is actually in a really good place beceause to achieve this kind of dps, you need 2 Reaper that bounce each other Epidemic. It also need a healer to keep his jagged horror alive. It’s good, but it need help to achieve his highest dps. Otherwise it drop a couple place in term of dps.

- The only problem i personnally, see is Daredevil. Thief on general doesn’t have much support like other profession. They have some, but they are useless in raid. So imo, they SHOULD be one of the best DPS profession in the game. The problem is that they should have reached that dps (at least partially) by increasing the dps of the Backstab. That way, Thief would a high dps profession, but for that you would need to be able to backstab on a regular basis, which can be hard in current Raid.

Now guys. If you still want to argue that Reaper and Daredevil are OP, bring us some evidence because so far it seem that they are pretty much in line in term of DPS with other profession. Engineer and Tempest have that kind of dps for a long time. But I would be happy to get proven wrong.

I guess that Reaper could reach higher dps than that with like an high amount of jagged horror, but that would take a lot of time to reach that point and you probably would need either a freaking good team that doesn’t put pressure on the Healer so the can heal the minions or sacrificing more dps on the team to have enough heal for the minons. But anyway, bring evidence that Reaper or Daredevil can reach something like 22-25k dps and we’ll talk.

First off, great to have someone actually numbers or at least someone trying to work off of numbers. (not happy with how you basically “shaved” off some dps from thief and necro and “added” some dps to tempest, as though people wouldn’t notice). Going by the video you linked:

Repear at Gore: 19-24k depending on if they are moving, on adds, evading ground aoe

Burnzerker at Gore: aside from the bugged dps meter, corrects itsself at about 19-23k dps

DD at Sabatha: quite accurate 19-20k, it’s auto attack only so can’t really go wrong there

Tempest at Sabatha: peak 19-20k dps, if you watch the entire fight, the tempest is much closer to 15-17k and this is before alacrity got nerfed.

Second, please stick to one fight. Sabatha and Goreseval get way different damage numbers from different classes. Even with those videos you linked, they clearly show how far above other classes Thief and Necro are at the moment.

Third, look at the rotation in the DD video, it’s in the description, here let me quote it:

1111111111111111111111111111111111111117­1111111111111111111111111111111111111111­1111111111111111111111111111111111111111­1111111111111211111512

Fourth, tempest did not perse get a nerf, but alacrity did. So if we go by simply adjusting for less damage from weaker alacrity it won’t remain “probably the same”. But this gets complicated since going by our tempests, they did get buffed so total damage might be higher.

Final comment, raids are currently stacking repears and tempests (your linked video of reaper has 3 of them in the raid). That should have peoples red flags go up.

Again, go through my posts and notice what I (I don’t care about other, I can only speak for myself) am saying. Necro and thief will get nerfed along the road. Both due to different reasons, but it will happen. You can keep arguing and throwing up smokescreens, but it’s highly unlikely that arenanet is going to keep thiefs at this dps when they just now nerfed revenant because of this (hence why I’m advocating for changes which keep the dps similar but not quite as braindead). Both classes are seeing heavy discrimination from spvp aswell.

Any type of change based on:

- events
- awesome visuals (like some cool cynematic)
- story
- dynamic changes to the instance

will not work. Why? Because there is only so many times you can run any type of content until you get tired of it.

See that awsome, fresh, fantastic, suprising, better than anything you have ever seen cinematic/event/storyrevelation? Wasn’t it the best thing you’ve seen the last 5 years in gaming? Now go watch it 100 more times.

The only way to make fractals interesting and increase their longevity is:

- improve the direct and indirect gameplay involved

For starters remove the “pick any fractal you want” and replace it with a selection of different fractal options daily, or make it a mix of both. For example players get to complete one of the following dailies:

- any 3 fractals of choice -> weakest reward
- random daily mix of 3 short length fractals -> weak reward
- random daily mix of 3 short-medium length fractals -> okay reward
- random daily mix of 3 short-long length fractals -> higehst reward

This essentially prevents players from rerunning braindead content and burning out on 1-2 fractals. It also allows for player input on how much time they want to spend that day on fractals. This specific example also adds a small lottery element for the higher difficulties, you might get lucky and get a string of short fractals.

Only changes along these lines or inline with this train of thought will actually work.

Coulter.2315:

Do the mission solo then.

This.

Lendruil.9061:

Cyninja.2954:

bladex.9502:

Cyninja.2954:

IronKenn.6094:

Cyninja.2954:

IronKenn.6094:

Seems like someone is upset when their Chronomancer and Burnzerker got nerfed.

So replacing 2 overpower classes with 2 new overpowered classes is okay?

Don’t kid yourself. Next rotation necro and thief will be put back in line.

Giving feedback can be done in a bit more appropriate manner, I do not doubt it will be done nor did I deny the possibility that there will be balances implemented.

I absolutely agree, TC certainly did not produce literary gold but he did provide video feedback and mentioned the current problem.

Then again you did not critisize his lack of quality feedback (or engage his point in anyway) but instead simply went with assuming he is a fotm player who is angry about a nerf. TCs comparison between condizerker, aa daredevil and condireaper was more than valid though.

bladex.9502:

I’m sorry, but why exactly should thief be nerfed?
The thief in the video is doing about as much dps as the average staff ele, where an elementalist has access to a lot of utility outside of dps, and thief only has dps.
I do agree however that Anet did a horrible job on balancing thief dps over their skills, since its literally best to just spam 1 and ignore all other skills, which imo is bad, and I would like to see the damage spread out over other weapon skills like they did with revenant

You answerd your own question especially in light of arenanet changing revenant especially so they move away from just auto attack spam. Especially since thief aa spam is even worse then revenants. At least revs cycled through legends and utilities. Having 3 passive utility slots and never using a single weapon skill is just about the most auto attack brain dead spam there is in this game (right behind afking pet taging stuff on ranger I guess).

There is a difference between changing something and nerfing something.
Thief DPS is fine, and shouldn’t be nerfed, instead they should take some damage from the autoattack and spread it out over the other available skills.
The OP just shouts how overpowered thief is and that it should be nerfed, that isn’t trying to give feedback, that’s just a way of forcing your opinion upon other people

Also I feel this shouldn’t be compared to condi warrior, since condi warrior got “nerfed” because of a skill that “wasn’t working as anet intended”, and its still a perfectly viable build even after the scorched earth change.

But if we’re really gonna QQ about things being overpowered because they are simple to play, shouldn’t staff ele be nerfed because it can easily reach 20k+ dps by spamming the same 3 skills? or warrior stacking 25 might by spamming the same 2 skills? or healer tempest because it can outheal pretty much any form of damage that isn’t 1-shot-lethal by just spamming auras?
By that logic every class that doesn’t require you to play the 3rd symphony of Beethoven on your keyboard to achieve high dps is OP and should be nerfed.

Maybe the problem isn’t classes being OP, but its the content being too easy?
:o
:o
:o

There is a huge difference between playing Beethoven and literally pressing no skill whatsoever.

I’m not arguing about nerfing thief dps, I’m arguing that the way it’s implemented is wrong. If not using your skills provides a higher dps than using them, balance is far off.

Personally I could care less. I just find it funny how some people keep running around asking for balance essentially until their class of choice wins the balance lottery, then change their tune and pretend like everything is fine. Here is my hint to any player who enjoys necro (repear) and thief (daredevil) for the classes they are:

- come up with some viable solutions to balance the classes because if you leave things the way they are, arenanet will balance them for you and you seriously do not want that to happen.

- alternatively pretend like everything is fine and argue with people over how balanced your class is. Don’t come whining though after the nerfbat hits

I don’t really know what your problem is, the current balancing in pve is the best balancing we ever had since hot came out. Now if only guardian had some uses then it would be really good.
Every class except guardian has some viable build that it can play for the raid.

I agree, however, that only buffing the raw dps numbers is kind of a boring solution and they should rather focus on the classes individual abilities of supporting the party in both offensive and defensive ways.

Sure, if we consider that:

- HoT reshuffled every class and required fixing and redesign of quite a few skills
- we completely omit spvp and wvw from the equation
- we are fine with guardians being shuned from raids, mesmer being glorified alacrity/quickness bots, rangers being taken along as healbots only, thief not needing any of their weapon skills or utility skills in pve, revenant being boonbots with half their legends being trash (and still no racial skills or proper underwater design), warrior’s being banner bots, necros being in the spot burnzerkers were pre balance change

The “balance” is certainly better than at HoT launch (woho, we’ve had progress in the last 6 months) but it certainly is nothing to go nuts happy about. Biggest complaint is coming from the glaring amount of unfixed issues that have gone unchanged/unfixed.

The only class I sort of agree with is engineer and the damage they pull with conditions (considering you actually have to play Beethoven on this class) and the spvp crowd will come in rushing that scrapper is op. Considering I never play Engineer and it’s my least favorite class ingame, that says a lot.

bladex.9502:

Cyninja.2954:

IronKenn.6094:

Cyninja.2954:

IronKenn.6094:

Seems like someone is upset when their Chronomancer and Burnzerker got nerfed.

So replacing 2 overpower classes with 2 new overpowered classes is okay?

Don’t kid yourself. Next rotation necro and thief will be put back in line.

Giving feedback can be done in a bit more appropriate manner, I do not doubt it will be done nor did I deny the possibility that there will be balances implemented.

I absolutely agree, TC certainly did not produce literary gold but he did provide video feedback and mentioned the current problem.

Then again you did not critisize his lack of quality feedback (or engage his point in anyway) but instead simply went with assuming he is a fotm player who is angry about a nerf. TCs comparison between condizerker, aa daredevil and condireaper was more than valid though.

bladex.9502:

I’m sorry, but why exactly should thief be nerfed?
The thief in the video is doing about as much dps as the average staff ele, where an elementalist has access to a lot of utility outside of dps, and thief only has dps.
I do agree however that Anet did a horrible job on balancing thief dps over their skills, since its literally best to just spam 1 and ignore all other skills, which imo is bad, and I would like to see the damage spread out over other weapon skills like they did with revenant

You answerd your own question especially in light of arenanet changing revenant especially so they move away from just auto attack spam. Especially since thief aa spam is even worse then revenants. At least revs cycled through legends and utilities. Having 3 passive utility slots and never using a single weapon skill is just about the most auto attack brain dead spam there is in this game (right behind afking pet taging stuff on ranger I guess).

There is a difference between changing something and nerfing something.
Thief DPS is fine, and shouldn’t be nerfed, instead they should take some damage from the autoattack and spread it out over the other available skills.
The OP just shouts how overpowered thief is and that it should be nerfed, that isn’t trying to give feedback, that’s just a way of forcing your opinion upon other people

Also I feel this shouldn’t be compared to condi warrior, since condi warrior got “nerfed” because of a skill that “wasn’t working as anet intended”, and its still a perfectly viable build even after the scorched earth change.

But if we’re really gonna QQ about things being overpowered because they are simple to play, shouldn’t staff ele be nerfed because it can easily reach 20k+ dps by spamming the same 3 skills? or warrior stacking 25 might by spamming the same 2 skills? or healer tempest because it can outheal pretty much any form of damage that isn’t 1-shot-lethal by just spamming auras?
By that logic every class that doesn’t require you to play the 3rd symphony of Beethoven on your keyboard to achieve high dps is OP and should be nerfed.

Maybe the problem isn’t classes being OP, but its the content being too easy?
:o
:o
:o

There is a huge difference between playing Beethoven and literally pressing no skill whatsoever.

I’m not arguing about nerfing thief dps, I’m arguing that the way it’s implemented is wrong. If not using your skills provides a higher dps than using them, balance is far off.

Personally I could care less. I just find it funny how some people keep running around asking for balance essentially until their class of choice wins the balance lottery, then change their tune and pretend like everything is fine. Here is my hint to any player who enjoys necro (repear) and thief (daredevil) for the classes they are:

- come up with some viable solutions to balance the classes because if you leave things the way they are, arenanet will balance them for you and you seriously do not want that to happen.

- alternatively pretend like everything is fine and argue with people over how balanced your class is. Don’t come whining though after the nerfbat hits

IronKenn.6094:

Cyninja.2954:

IronKenn.6094:

Seems like someone is upset when their Chronomancer and Burnzerker got nerfed.

So replacing 2 overpower classes with 2 new overpowered classes is okay?

Don’t kid yourself. Next rotation necro and thief will be put back in line.

Giving feedback can be done in a bit more appropriate manner, I do not doubt it will be done nor did I deny the possibility that there will be balances implemented.

I absolutely agree, TC certainly did not produce literary gold but he did provide video feedback and mentioned the current problem.

Then again you did not critisize his lack of quality feedback (or engage his point in anyway) but instead simply went with assuming he is a fotm player who is angry about a nerf. TCs comparison between condizerker, aa daredevil and condireaper was more than valid though.

bladex.9502:

I’m sorry, but why exactly should thief be nerfed?
The thief in the video is doing about as much dps as the average staff ele, where an elementalist has access to a lot of utility outside of dps, and thief only has dps.
I do agree however that Anet did a horrible job on balancing thief dps over their skills, since its literally best to just spam 1 and ignore all other skills, which imo is bad, and I would like to see the damage spread out over other weapon skills like they did with revenant

You answerd your own question especially in light of arenanet changing revenant especially so they move away from just auto attack spam. Especially since thief aa spam is even worse then revenants. At least revs cycled through legends and utilities. Having 3 passive utility slots and never using a single weapon skill is just about the most auto attack brain dead spam there is in this game (right behind afking pet taging stuff on ranger I guess).

VaLee.5102:

Been in Queensdale last night. Ran around for about 20mins. Saw 3 players.
A year ago around the same time I would’ve seen around 20-30 players.
Might’ve been a new map, might have not.

Red herring. The fact that Queensdale maps are emptier has a lot less to do with HoT than with the change (which was pre HoT) of removing the Chmapions from that map thus removing the champ trains. Try again.

On topic (just going to run down some points which should make people think, to lazy to go through all of this in yet another doom and gloom thread. Wish people would finally leave if they are unhappy with the game or take that long overdue break):

- GW2 endgame content was state for a very long time pre HoT. The only reason disguising this was the pre HoT hype which started over 6 months before HoT released. I remember clearly how a LOT of people were basically just tagging along and farming as much as they could in preperation of HoT.

- HoT expansion isself spiked player activity hard. Many players came back to try out the game, the f2p move shortly earlier got a lot of player attention, it seems reasonable to expect a good portion of these players to not stick with the game due to whatever reasons

- HoT itsself is grindy. A lot of players (myself included) spent hundreds of hours on HoT content so far. We are basically in the same state of the game we were pre HoT without the hype and attention steal from an upcimming expansion. Game burnout will occure, especially with the younger generation of players attentionspan. Who can blame players though, the MMO genere is suffering in general and there are a lot of good tripple A and indie titles around that are just fun.

- WvW is worse off. No denying this. Reason in my opinion is a mixture of neglect, new map design (partly due to people hating change, partly due to convoluted design) and a huge post HoT player drain towards the PvE game which WvW has not recovered from (and might not in the current state as far as we know).

- spvp I don’t want to comment to much on. Seems it’s arenanets current baby and I’ve not spvped enough lately to give a ra…… Let’s just say it does not agree with everyone and balance is all over the place.

- megaservers were ingame pre HoT. They work very well in old Tyria PvE content. Their huge flaws come to shine in the HoT participation mechanic. The big mishmash of servers also hurts WvW since even less of a server bond is created and community events are near non existant. This is not a HoT only problem (implementation was earlier), but HoT content suffers more I believe.

Anyone running around screeming HoT is to blame for all of these factors is simply taking a very complex problem and generalising it.

IronKenn.6094:

Seems like someone is upset when their Chronomancer and Burnzerker got nerfed.

So replacing 2 overpower classes with 2 new overpowered classes is okay?

Don’t kid yourself. Next rotation necro and thief will be put back in line.

Tspatula.9086:

Cyninja.2954:

- pre HoT the possible chests from difficulties 31-40 and 41-50 would end up with a higher total chance of getting a chest for that day (while taking substantially longer than fractals now)

Don’t you really mean similar amount of time? The data is from daily chests which require 3 fractals so marginally faster… And given the mistlock instabilities are a limited set of, what I understand to be, the least fun of the lot from pre-HoT, looks like the overall effort turns out to be the same.. but that’s just an opinion from a newb like myself. I’m too green to understand anything about this very complex game….

Pre HoT fastest fractal set:
- Swamp (first fractal could be chosen) -> Ascalon -> Grawl -> Molten Boss Duo

Estimated time for completion with a very decent group (talking organised, not puged) about 35 minutes. Estimated time with a decent pug about 45 – 50 minutes.

Pre HoT longest fractal set:
- Swamp -> Cliffside -> Dredge -> Mai Trin

Estimated time for completion with a very decent group (talking organised, not puged) about 45 – 50 minutes. Estimated time with a decent pug about 60 – 90 minutes (with close to 2 hours with a terrible pug).

Fractal set post HoT:
- Swamp -> Swamp -> Swamp
- Swamp -> Swamp -> Molten Boss
- Swamp -> Swamp -> Jade Maw

Estimated time for completion with a very decent group (talking organised, not puged) about 15 – 25 minutes. Estimated time with a decent pug about 25- 35 minutes.

The amount of fractals required post HoT is less (3 instead of 4), the fractals you get to do is freely choseable post HoT (not so pre HoT), difficult fractals can be completely omited post HoT (not so pre). The powercreep from elite specialisations makes things even easier.

I said fractals post HoT take less time, I meant it.

Now please stop embarrassing yourself infront of people who have played this content for over 3 years. I’m not even going to comment on the entire LFG thing. I’ll let others educate you on how viable certain classes and item stats where pre HoT.

Read here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2t21at/complete_bioluminescence_collection_guide_the/

Shoulder
- Episode 5, repeatable on different characters.
- 1000 crests & 1 gold.
- Rare drop from champions in SW.

Gloves
- Episode 6, one time only and PvP SW reward track, one time only.
- 1000 crests & 1 gold.
- Rare drop from ‘lost bandit chests’ and ‘greater nightmare pod’.

Boots
- After completing ’ambassador’s aid’ achievement, 1000 crests & 1 gold.
- Rare drop from ‘lost bandit chests’.

Leggings
- Episode 7, repeatable on different characters.
- 1000 crests & 1 gold.

Helm
- Episode 8, repeatable on different characters.
- 1000 crests & 1 gold.

Chest
- First kill of ‘mordrem vinewrath’.
- Rare(ish) drop from chest after killing the ‘mordrem vinewrath’ (Drop rates vary greatly but looks to be ~20%).

If you want the complete set for the bioluminescense achievement (or just in general) I would advise the following:

- get as many of the pieces from repeated story missions as possible
- the 1,000 crests % 1 gold require you to “unlock” the item first (means get it once at least as far as I remember)
- you’ll get the chest pieces long before completing the body parts for the bioluminescense achieve, otherwise just run VW
- hold off on getting the boots and glovse until they are literally the last items you need. You never know if you might get lucky from a bandit chest.

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

1 person dies – and waypoints out – boss scales for 9 people.
The dead person comes back and resumes the fight – boss scales for 10 people again.

But, if 5 people die and WP out, they’ve done enough damage already that the boss dies quickly with the 5 remaining. THAT is the exploit. I’ve seen it happen more than once.

Go read up on how scaling works. That example is just reeking of wrong.

rcs.4120:

The idea that the ascended drop rate is the same as before HoT seems crazy to me. That or there is a bug that only effects some people. I don’t have a nice spreadsheet like above (started one after seeing that) but for myself, I used to get 1-2 chests per week doing a daily 49/50. (single fractal) Since the Patch, I’ve gotten maybe 2 (1 was from a recommended daily 19). Speaking with others they have had similar experiences. Though I have heard that some people are getting good/similar drops. Many others are getting garbage. That and doing higher level fractals (>=90) doesn’t seem to improve your chances by much if at all. Definitely not worth the increase in time. I’m curious how the spreadsheet was generated. I’m assuming it is across multiple people based on the numbers. I will say that for the first week post patch the numbers seemed decent but since then it has been barren. Either way, keeping detailed track of the chests now so that it is more precise. Maybe my RNG is in a lull.

Regarding the armor sets. I’m glad I’m not a new player having to craft from scratch.

It’s you. More precisely it’s your selective memory.

There is no way you consistantly got 1-2 ascended drops pre HoT from fractals per week. Not unless you were lucky for x amount of years straight.

Drop rate research has sufficient data now that we can draw comparisons. It comes down to:

- pre HoT the possible chests from difficulties 31-40 and 41-50 would end up with a higher total chance of getting a chest for that day (while taking substantially longer than fractals now)

- post HoT you have 1 decent chance at ascended in your master chest from difficulty 51-100 (which is similar to the 41-50 pre HoT) though as mentioned fractals take a fraction of the time. Not to mention the powercreep that came with HoT has made fractals even more a pushover than before.

Tspatula.9086:

Well, thank you for making all kinds of assumptions about me and what I have done. Currently, I have been running my necro pretty much full zerk. I have weapons, trinkets and a couple ascended armor pieces that are also zerk. My AR currently is 90. I’ve run a few fractals over 50 and I’ll like to start running more. The real truth is that I have been doing some research/reading and it seemed to imply that Zerk wasn’t gonna work over fractal lvl 75, so that appeared to put me in a conundrum of zerk being ok for almost everything else but fractals over 75, which I guess aren’t worth running for the most part, or I am getting that idea.

The “truth” is that you basically have no idea about fractals (you mention yourself that you are just starting 51+), have been reading around on who knows were picking up subjective opinions and have about as much agony resistance as someone who has full trinkets with weapons and 0 ascended armor.

If you dislike zerker (which is fine ever since they changed the toughness on fractal 50+ enemies) then make a condiset and be done with it. Condi works fine on any and all pve content (except objects). There problem solved.

Not in the mood to go through any of your other nonsense since other posters have already taken appart the stuff that is bogus.

GiftUngiven.7854:

Hello, as the title says, what do you think about it? I wasted 650 gold gearing up condi warr, i dont wanna waste more money in something that will eventually get nerfed. Your thoughts?

Cheers

Don’t go for fotm classes and builds.

I have a fully geared (99.4% condi duration) full ascended condi warrior. I made him fully aware that arenanet are going to addresse the issues (and am happy they are looking at that 0.5 seconds global limitation). Why? For the luls and because I could (that and I could always use a condi set on my rev for when they fix condi rev or maybe never). Were I restricted to not wanting to have to worry about my class/gear getting shafted with the next balance patch – I would not have taken the most complained about class at that point in time.

If your aim is to not get screwed by balance patches, here is a general guideline of things you want to watchout for:

A.) this is a MMO, balance (no matter how good or bad implemented) will rotate viability of classes and builds

B.) if you have to ask if something will get nerfed, it probably will

C.) while ascended is way more expensive than exotic gear, it allows for change of stats (weapons and armor) and is account bound. Doesn’t seem like a lot, but once you’ve made that 5th full set of exotic equipment chasing the next “uber build” costs add up. (so no, that gear on your warrior is not “wasted”)

D.) Fotm (flavor of the month) builds and classes are a thing. Only because arenanet went very soft on this subject with zerker gear in the first 3 years doesn’t mean they are doing so now.

E.) if going for your first set of full ascended, it makes sense to go by armor type. Pick the armor class where you enjoy the most classes of. That way, if say warrior gets changed, you are left with guardian or revenant who might make good use of the gear.

tl;dr: chasing the white rabbit will lead you down kitten which you get to plaster with gold

maddoctor.2738:

Ashen.2907:

Harper.4173:

Daddicus.6128:

Palador.2170:

But it DOESN’T work, and that’s why it’s not an exploit.

The vast majority of posters here disagree with you. They’re the ones who say “when fully dead, waypoint out and run back”. And, they claim to have all kinds of data to support that argument.

I don’t agree with them, but this thread is to determine whether, if it DOES work, SHOULD it work?

NOTE: There are people who won’t rez dead people because of this effect. So, there’s a very real effect in-game, regardless of whether it is true or not.

Well that’s because a dead player near a boss scales up that boss – but doesn’t deal any damage.
It makes sense that regardless of your gear – if you’re dead you should be able to wp out and come back.
Unless of course you want to punish people who are low skill and die (regardless of gear) by not allowing them the chance to come back and take credit or participate any further once they’re dead.

This is as much an exploit as gliding off a ledge when some mobs are pursuing you.

Yes – there are people that won’t res you – because they shouldn’t have to.
If you died – you died because you didn’t do everything right to survive. Either you took too much glass gear that you can’t handle – or didn’t pay attention – or something else but that’s on you.
And the price you pay for your mistake is having to WP out and run back.
People can res you if they feel like it – but they are by no means obligated to do so.

When forum posters complained about players lying dead rather than waypointing Anet commented that their dynamic scaling paid attention to active participation, not just proximity to the encounter. Supposedly, dead and/or AFK characters do not continue to affect encounter scaling.

Wasn’t there a timer for that? Like dead players don’t affect scaling until some time passes since they died

Exactly.

Here some info to clear things up:

- scaling is near instant (we are talking 1-2 seconds delay at most) for players entering or leaving the area of an event. This has been tested in the past so unless arenanet made changes to this, it should still work that way. Ways to enter/leave event areas:
→ walk into/outof event range
→ waypoint out of event range
→ any other form of accessing/leaving the event area which puts your character phisically in range of the event

As far as contribution goes, any of the following will count towards the playercount for determening event scaling:
→ active players (the entire time)
→ downed players (the entire time)
→ dead players (for a signinificant amount of time, I think it was something along the lines of 30 seconds)

These things do NOT count towards event scaling:
→ players not in range
→ players who have been flaged afk
→ players who have been dead for a significant amount of time

While the story is a nice sentiment. I’m pretty sure that the story for LS3 has been complete and done for some time now.

Storyboard and general direction of the story usually come quite realy in the design process. The implementation and fulfillment of the idea is what normaly takes time (aka the programing).

1. Bring a friend.
2. Have that friend be a mesmer.
3. ???
4. Profit.

That’s the best advice anyone can give you as far as that diving achievement goes. It’s a big pita, so make sure you can get as many tries in as possible (watch youtube for how to jump, it helps).

Daddicus.6128:

polarbear.2497:

I won’t treat you like an idiot, but I will agree with the people who say this is clearly not an exploit. It’s playing as the game was designed – it’s been this way since the beginning, and if it was not acceptable to the developers, something would have been done by now to prevent the behavior (such as preventing waypointing to nearby waypoints, for example).

Thank you.

But, they did. See my post above on the most recent balance update (giving credit for reviving people), plus another person’s post on ANet’s fix in dungeons (which prevents waypointing in combat).

So arenanet designed open world events in a different manner than instanced content with fewer players.

Here’s the thing. If they wanted to limit waypointing in open world encoutners, they could. It would be easy to:

- reduce the amount of waypoints or make available waypoints contested
- disallow waypointing while other players nearby are still in combat
- remove contribution from players who waypoint

Now it becomes kind of obvious that these changes would make the game more tedious and a lot less fun in open world scenarios. I guess that is why arenanet hasn’t gone this route.

Instanced content serves a different purpose and thus gets treated differently. The fix to dungeon waypointing was way way way back shortly after release of the game. Also arenanet have stuck to the theme of not allowing infight ressurecting in instanced content for over 3 years (while being fine with it in open world content). I doubt this has been an oversight.

Also what about the people who play in full glasscanon builds and gear and who do not die at all, during any world boss fight? I dare say quite a few people are perfectly able to play this way and hafve no problems.

tl;dr: open world and instanced content are two different beasts which get treated and balanced differently in many respects, which includes waypointing.

Some of these design decisions reach back to the very launch of the game and have been implemented in a similar fashion for over 3-3.5 years now thus we can assume that they are intended.

RoseofGilead.8907:

The game time is on February 1st already (reset was a few hours ago). So, that’s why the February brew is out now. And, as far as I know, you can’t get past brews if you missed the time period in which it was distributed. :\

You can, 11 months from now.

Essentially it’s a system which encourages you do login at least 1nce per month for 12 months straight.

Raizen.7981:

Pandabro.8743:

Biggest issue here is the huge cost on Condi gear. If it wasn’t such a huge commitment to gear a class for condi we’d have a lot less issues when balance patches drop and one build gets nerfed “into the ground”.

zerker costs twice as much as condi

talking from a pro perpsective of course. Talking infusions, where you need around 2300 t6 mats for a full set, you can’t really claim condi is so hard to get, when condi items go for 6 silver each, while zerk go 26/49 silver each.

Source: got 10 versatile and 4 normal malign infusions just waiting…something. I hope we will be able to break then down someday

He is talking about the basic gear refering to exotic and ascended costs.

You are talking about over the top infusions which very few people use since the cost-benefit factor is scewed very far against them. 2-3k gold for 90 more power is not something most players will be willing to spend on their wvw gear especially when they are having a hard time getting the basic ascended first.

Mandalore.8906:

Cyninja.2954:

While I get the sentiment for why you’d be asking for this, I doubt this will get added or would go well.

The moment arenanet add elite specs for gems, people will total the cost and freakout about how much more expensive it is to get them via gems compared to buying HoT.

Example:
1 Elite spec costs 800 gems.
Total cost for all 9 elite specs would be 7200 gems = 90 $(EURO or w/e)

That is without any HoT content getting unlocked. People would run up the walls and freakout over such price gouging (not even going to do the math with 2k gems, that’s absurd). No one will go:“Oh cool I can now get the one spec I want for insane amounts of gems.”

The reaction would be more along the lines of:“You are so greedy. You suck. Wah wah wah.” (and rightfully so).

Well, the people who would want all the elite speccs could simply buy the freaking expansion.

Oh I agree. My point is, that’s not how human psychology works.

vana.5467:

You’re the only one comparing the two.
The fact that the tech was already in the game strongly suggests that it was taken directly from static field and that the functionality is fully intentional (as opposed to a new piece of code which might have unforeseen bugs).
That was my point, which you probably would have realized if you didn’t get so emotional about the issue.

You do know why that 0.5 was added to static field though right? Here’s a hint, it hasn’t anything to do with the damage (hint, stun, hint).

It was a lazy fix for that, and it’s an even lazier fix now.

insanemaniac.2456:

which is worse… hitting something twice for 10k and 12k, or having a global immunity to the damage from that skill after being hit by it?

it’s not ok as it is, because it pits teammates against each other and will potentially cause arguments between people who are supposed to be cooperating… but even that flaw is less egregious than a double crit hit.

I agree, the skill needed fixing. Not some seriously questionable work around. Check my posting history. I was advocating for CoR changes ever since the first week of the HoT launch so I’m not suddenly discovering the fact that CoR needs addressing. I’m just appalled by how arenanet went about doing it.

briggah.7910:

A half second of immunity isn’t much but it does help a tiny bit against multiple 2 spamming revs… it actually effects pve more than it does the wvw’ers. So revs are going to start arguing with each other because 1 can spam 2 faster than the other? Maybe learn to use other skills besides 2.. hehe

Half a second of immunity is enough to soak the damage of 3, 4, 5 or even 30 revenants attacking a target out of position. If you don’t see a problem with straight up immunities in a wvw enviroment you have no idea and/or no experience with realm versus realm games.

No one (at least not me) is saying CoR doesn’t need a rework. The current rework is an inefficient lazy fix which should scare any decent wvw player no matter if playing a revenant or not. It shows that arenanet are unwilling to address skill issues and instead revert to very questionable “quickfixes”. If that does not scare you about future balance changes to any class I’m not sure what will.

vana.5467:

Cyninja.2954:

Everyone who thinks the current state of CoR is okay, is delusional (this change also affects beserker longbow F1).
As is, all the damage from every class currently summs up, except for these 2 attacks. That is a gross nerf since it involves a completely new mechanic which so far was nefver part of the game design.
Sure, maybe arenanet are intending to roll this change out to other attacks and this is just a testballoon, then this would be fine. But ask yourself, how would you feel if suddenly your most powerful ranged skills were mutually exlusive with other wvw players?

Static field works the same way. It’s not a new mechanic.

Good point. My bad. Let’s compare more 40 second aoe field skills with the most seldom combo field (lightning) to a ranged non combomechnic attack skill. Remeber how combo fields allow for interaction from players? Yeah even if the damage component of static field is caped, the combo field still has tremendous use.

Great, so they had that mechnic already in place for combo fields because people stand in them. Doesn’t excuse implementing this on a ranged attack skill which essentially now is useless with more than 2 revenants in no matter how big a zerg.

Then again, going by your earlier comments, you are not out for balance but simply for braindead lazy fixes.

Everyone who thinks the current state of CoR is okay, is delusional (this change also affects beserker longbow F1).

As is, all the damage from every class currently summs up, except for these 2 attacks. That is a gross nerf since it involves a completely new mechanic which so far was nefver part of the game design.

Sure, maybe arenanet are intending to roll this change out to other attacks and this is just a testballoon, then this would be fine. But ask yourself, how would you feel if suddenly your most powerful ranged skills were mutually exlusive with other wvw players?

Enjoy it while it lasts is all I can say to all the fotm thief players (while feeling quite sad about actual thief players).

We all know how this is going to end:

- arenanet take a look at thief → thief becomes unplayable for the next 2 years.

All the while every serious thief player who enjoys his class and has been providing valuable feedback will be left to dry.

Master Cats Man.9037:

“Also your estimate of precursor crafting vs the TP is way off. Read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/42s4ot/new_legendaries_and_precursors_total_crafting/”

Who in their right mind would buy a precursor at sell price?
Even so, the majority are still cheaper to buy from the TP.

All the people who make the price stay fixed and not drop. Was this a serious question?

We get it, you are heavily biased and do not enjoy the precursor collections. Your question as to why they exist was answered.

No no no, how can this be?

BnS was supposed to kill WoW, erh I mean GW2. Or wait, is it BDO now? I keep losing track of which soon to release MMO is supposed to save all humanity and give everyone endless joy and hapiness.

In all seriousness though, it’s nice to see people who have evolved past the stage of:“But the next one, that will be the one I’m sure of it.”

You did the right thing TC. You gave the game a shot to see if you’d enjoy it. You noticed that every MMO comes with its ups and downs.Turns out you didn’t enjoy BnS (and if you had, that would have been fine too).

The precursor collections add flavor and a non-mystic forge non-rng method for people to work towards aquiring their percursor. Nothing more, nothing less.

It’s also a step to integrate them into the games lore by having players be actively involved with differents parts of the game instead of just going “poof” you now own a precursor.

Master Cats Man.9037:

tldr; precursor collections for base game legendaries add no new content to the game and cost more to complete than buying from the trading post.
So why would any player be it casual, hardcore, veteran, or newbie want grind one out?

Sure they do. They add tons of collections for people who enjoy this kind of content. Obviously you do not, so you are free to use any of the other methods available in aquiring your precursor.

Also your estimate of precursor crafting vs the TP is way off. Read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/42s4ot/new_legendaries_and_precursors_total_crafting/

maddoctor.2738:

The daily cap is nothing compared to the achievements you cannot obtain anymore. Like historical achievements and retired achievements that you will never ever get no matter how long you play. I’d rather they introduce those back first before they increase the daily cap, or not do either.

This.

The daily cap is fine. It’s again scewed in favor of the launch players since getting double daylies (yes, there were ways of getting two daylies worth of AP. Not sure if this was fixed) and monthly AP was way faster than what players can get now.

Peronally I would love for them to add some type of optional monthly which gives 50-100 AP. Maybe rotate it between game modes to encourage play.

I doubt they’ll reintroduce the old Living Story events, and I’m fine with that too. Though I’m not sure how new players feel about that. Would love for some of the content to get reintroduced as instanced content simply for people to be able to replay it for the story.

Astralporing.1957:

Cyninja.2954:

Astralporing.1957:

Maybe it’s a huge decrease in cost, but even now that cost is simply too great. Flax, dust, resonating slivers and pigments requirements for guildhall do need to be addressed. Either by reducing requirements, or by increasing supply.

Says who?

Maybe arenanet like where the costs are at the moment.

Well, they have admitted that both leveling up scribe and making decorations are too costly now, and they are planning to address it, so i guess they at least partially agree with me already.

So arenanet deciding that a crafting proffession that requires a couple of hundred to thousands of gold due to bazillion of very expensive ingredients and a workbench that is not openly available (with insane requirements) is now proof that 1 ingredient is overpriced.

Cool story bro.

I’ll just leave this here:

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
- Elie Wiesel

That being said, as long as people are willing to argue, complain, suggest or in any other shape way or form interact with the community and developer, you have nothing to worry about.

Do arenanet get it right all the time? No, absolutely no.

Do people complain over stuff? Sure, because they are involved. People who do not complain are enjoying the game (or have left).

Once people stop complaining, that is when you need to start worrying.

So as long as the official forums don’t go silent and arenanet start implementing massive shady ways of boosting their player numbers, I wouldn’t worry to much about how healthy the game is.

On topic:

• How does this game make money?
• Is it primarily through the cash shop?
• Is it through the initial sales?
• A bit of both?

Arenanets business model is a mixture of both. That’s how the vanilla game was able to be run for over 3 years before adding an expansion.

My personal guess is that the majority of steady income is generated via the gem store. The one time expenses incured via the original game and HoT are more to cover big chunks of game developement that went into both steps (release of vanilla and release of the expansion. )

While I get the sentiment for why you’d be asking for this, I doubt this will get added or would go well.

The moment arenanet add elite specs for gems, people will total the cost and freakout about how much more expensive it is to get them via gems compared to buying HoT.

Example:
1 Elite spec costs 800 gems.
Total cost for all 9 elite specs would be 7200 gems = 90 $(EURO or w/e)

That is without any HoT content getting unlocked. People would run up the walls and freakout over such price gouging (not even going to do the math with 2k gems, that’s absurd). No one will go:“Oh cool I can now get the one spec I want for insane amounts of gems.”

The reaction would be more along the lines of:“You are so greedy. You suck. Wah wah wah.” (and rightfully so).

I think you are a bit off with the numbers required for TT.

25-30 per wurm are more than sufficient if people are organised (you won’t kill this one without organisation and 30% afk leechers). Not sure where you got 50. Sure if you want to overscale one of the wurms bring 50 people. As is the only wurm that definately requires 20+ people is amber due to the spear mechanic and having an extra condi group. So there, 30 people to be safe for that one.

GW2community is running TT 3-6 times per day and the success rate is probably somewhere around 80-90% if not higher. That is 3 times per day for the english crowd and 3 times per day for the german crowd.

Tequatle and Karka Queen are farm. Not sure what that has to do with the only semi interesting and challenging world boss.

Your taxi example is also way off. Most TT runs have a problem of barely getting enough people. Taxi and getting a spot is one of the least problems.

Khorthall.1682:

I think since we’ve reached Heart of Thorns, this boss should be just ‘slightly’ reduced to be more doable for people who put in their time waiting and hoping.

So since all of the HoT world events are farm and basically freeloot, arenanet are now supposed to go back and nerf the only challenging world boss in the game (which is on farm anyway)? You have a very wierd logic.

This was changed after beta weekend one I believe if my memory serves me right. Norn used to be way bigger in GW2 but were reduced in size due to balance purposes.

Still quite big compared to the other races though:

http://i.imgur.com/kIo9z.jpg

Astralporing.1957:

Maybe it’s a huge decrease in cost, but even now that cost is simply too great. Flax, dust, resonating slivers and pigments requirements for guildhall do need to be addressed. Either by reducing requirements, or by increasing supply.

Says who?

Maybe arenanet like where the costs are at the moment. Maybe having everything available for 20 copper is not what makes a balanced economy…

dominik.9721:

RedDeadFred.1256:

Best:
Scrapper
Reaper

Good:
Druid
Dragon Hunter
Daredevil
Rev (tentative about this because it belongs here when sword 2 doesn’t bug out).

Okay:
Chrono
Tempest

Bad:
Base classes

Somehow worse than its core spec:
Berserker

the first accurate list in this thread, tbh

Aside from thief being the new auto attack revenant now since they way overbuffed thief aa, this list seems quite accurate (I’d probably put Thief in Tier1, then aagain there are so many terribad thiefs around I get why people occasionally beat one).

On topic, TC has:

- no clue what balance means going by his original list
- has no clue what pay2win means by his comments throught the thread.

Good troll, would read again. 8/10

I doubt you’ll get much sympathy.

Vials of Linseed Oil were at over 10g a piece at HoT launch (and Flax was at 15-20s a piece).

So Vials being now at 80s a piece is a huge decrease in cost.

Well let’s go down the list:

- gliding → awesome.
- Shatterer → haven’t actually tried him yet but general census is that it’s well made and fun
- Lunar Festival → I’m burned out after Wintersday, so having a lighter event is fine I feel.

Now to the meat of it all: the quarterly balance patches.

Honestly, if this is the quality of balance patches we can expect on a quartely basis, good luck. I’m just going to requote myself from a different thread and most of the other posters have already gone into details or mentioned some of the things wrong.

Cyninja.2954:

Personally, I don’t mind them spending time fleshing out the esports side of the game. In general it is always good to have new players moving towards the game.

That being said let’s clear some things up:

WvW is NOT esports.
Spvp is partly esports, but certainly not with this terrible design of a league system.
Pve is no esports (this one is kind of obvious to most, but spvp and wvw get mixed up a lot).

Now where do things go wrong?

Once the entire game gets balanced around 1 of these aspects. We’ve seen this in the past with pve and arenanet balancing the game around this game mode. The spvp crowd, no matter how big or small, was up in arms, rightfully so, and we are now almost 3.5 years into a game where 3 years of this time was spent on mostly only pve.

The last few months post HoT (and slightly before) have been heavily focused balance wise towards the spvp segment while the trying to grow the pve game (content and mechanics wise). We’ve gotten:

- raids
- fractal redesigns
- harder open world maps
- new skins and pve movement skills
- masteries

It does not take a genious to notice that balancing and focusing on spvp instead of pve, while expanding the core game might be a bad idea. Get the new stuff fixed first, then move on to other projects. Cue the people who say: but there are multiple developer teams working on different parts of the game. True, but what they’ve done so far is mediocre at best, and terrible at worst.

At least they’ve started trying to improve their communication on the official forums. Baby steps I guess.

People might notice that I have completely omited WvW from my argumentation. Well for me to talk about WvW, there would have to be WvW to talk about. The neglect that game content has seen (yay new maps, which were more a design orgy than actually play tested) is very sad.

Here would be my 3 main advices:

- The marketing department is NEVER right. Marketing is a tool to be used which when used properly will greatly enhance the strengths of your product. Once you let them run the show though, you lose.

- have 1 person half the numbers the balance team throws out there. Literally do the same things as before, then at the very end, have 1 person go through ALL the numeric changes (no matter if good or bad) and cut them in half. This excessive over the top balancing back and forth (while done in most MMOs) is really hurting a game with 3 game modes.

- other games have had to deal with similar problems (matchmaking and Elo, pvp rankings, pve rewards, wvw, etc.). Stop trying to reinvent the wheel (new league system for example). Go and take a look how others have solved the problem, then addapt that approach to GW2.

Oh and if possible, tell the design team to finally decide on what they want revenant to be. The class is half done and requires some serious fixes (and I mean fixes and not bandaid workarounds) to many of its core aspects (underwater combat, legend viability, auto attack or skill based design, racial skills). To which we can now add futher bugs and desastrous flaws (see sword 2 going for junk targets or straight up missing, see CoE immunity on other players).

My main gripe isn’t with the quality per se, but the fact that this will stay this way for an entire quarter. If you decide on big balance patches without balancing inbetween, make sure they are worth their salt.

Deaths Sensei.5317:

pretty certain this is only meant to fix the CoR doubl-hitting people standing on the max range of it hitting. Multiple sources of people will still hit the person, just can’t double-hit yourself.

Well the test linked futher up in the thread suggests otherwise.

As of right now, no 2 or more revenants can hit a target with CoE within 0.5 seconds of each other.

EDIT:
I’ll actually link directly to the youtube video with the proof since it was linked in the reddit thread and just mentioned in the thread mentioned further up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMNo6pl0-3Q&feature=youtu.be

Arenanet fixes.

0.5 steps forward, 3 steps back.

midnight tea.3681:

Deleting a level 80 char in this game is not anywhere near as bold as it used to be deleting level 50-60 char in vanilla Everquest or World of Warcraft.

One scroll + a bunch of tomes + a quick shopping trip = you’re back

Don’t even need ascended gear, just slap on a bunch of orange 80’s and you’re golden for a long while. Unless you were a doofus and deleted some valuable account bound stuff in the process, but if you did that you have no one to blame but yourself.

tl;dr — deleting your max level character is not a statement in this game.

Sure isn’t, but you do lose out on all that time your character had towards the next birthday gift. Longterm, it has an even more sever effect reward wise.

YaYa.5879:

Which section? Warr, Berzerker, general?

- Berserker

Scorched Earth: Enemies are now able to be struck by this skill only once every 0.5 seconds.

- Chronomancer

Alacrity: The effects of this buff have been reduced from 66% recharge reduction to 33% recharge reduction.

For the future, maybe you might want to understand how your class actually works instead of just copypasting what everyone else tells you to build/run off of metabattle.

Behellagh.1468:

Senario.2038:

It just is absurd that they can claim that “it is working” when there is no real way to determine if it really is working to bring in new players. You don’t exactly have players signing up because they were watching GW2 PvP very often and I’m sure the number of viewers on stream supports that.

Except that ANet can track every player in the game. If a player starts and plays PvP and later buys HoT if they were P4F, that counts toward success. If players returned to participate in the leagues, that’s a success because players just playing is MMO content for PvP.

Which does not invalidate Senario’s point.

The point being:

- a stream with maximum of 2-3k viewers will not be bringing in hundreds of thousands of players

The move to free to play did because a lot of people tried the game out.

Where do most people try the game out first if they want to check out the mechanics? In pvp since you have all your skills unlocked.

Thus to the untrained marketing eye:

“Oh look, so many f2p players play pvp.” -> pvp must be the main draw.

At the same time, the pvp part of the game has the absolute lowest income longterm as was pointed out by others earlier in this thread. The gem store is mainly a pve/wvw thing. The same gem store sales they’ve been shoving down the communities throught more and more aggressively since HoT.

Must be fun being thief and necro now.

Don’t worry, there will be another balance patch where arenanet overnerf thief and necro and buff one of the other random classes.

Why? Because they are that incompetent.

Trice.4598:

Cyninja.2954:

Trice.4598:

Sword DPS is about the same on a single target, our boon stacking has not change, neither did our CC. The only, only difference now, you’ll be using sword 2 off cooldown. I hate it as well, but people are still going to bring Heralds.

Tell me how well that works with your energy management when you are spamming sword 2 now.

No matter how you put it, it’s a damage nerf.

Spamming 2 off cooldown mean you loose 2 second off your jalis hammer or malyx elite, but gain much more damage from using it twice, and you now get more damage while in Glint. But most people are probably still just spamming auto attack like they were before the patch.

That is unless you actually have to use crowdcontrol or any type of weapon skills.

Also this is best case scenarios in which you have 0 lag at -5 degen or low lag at -4 degen or else your Facet of Nature will go on cd for 3 seconds (which is a raid dps loss).

Not accounting for the sword 2 skill bugging out or going for seekers at VG or adds at Gore/Sabatha.

Not sure I’m buying the feelgood charms.

midnight tea.3681:

I do want to say that solo PvE, I’ve not had any problems with my Rev personally. […]

When refering to pve people usually mean raids and/or fractals. It should be obvious that any other pve content in this game is faceroll.

Sourde Noire.5286:

I’m just tired of having my fun in PvE ruined because something is too strong / useful in PvP or WvW.
It’s kind of funny, really. Content updates are mostly for PvE and balancing is usually centered around PvP/WvW. Which frustrates both sides.

This.

It’s not even about the nerfs. It’s the fact that the class has seen no type of improvements or fixes. It can’t be about pure damage too since necro and thief got absurd buffs (especially necro) so the only logical conclusion is spite.

Trice.4598:

Sword DPS is about the same on a single target, our boon stacking has not change, neither did our CC. The only, only difference now, you’ll be using sword 2 off cooldown. I hate it as well, but people are still going to bring Heralds.

Tell me how well that works with your energy management when you are spamming sword 2 now.

No matter how you put it, it’s a damage nerf.

Xaivier.9756:

I think that it is fantastic that Condition damage now has a more prominent role in the game after being so useless for so long, my only qualm with the whole situation is gating the trinkets behind such long winded and time consuming achievements. They way to get sinister trinkets is to complete the mastery achievements for LWS2, which is you don’t have you gotta buy, thus locking it behind a pay wall for some people, and if you do have it you have to bash your head against a wall over and over on some achievements that seem to hold an odd amount of luck to them. The Best examples of these repetitive and seemingly chance based achievements would be Shrubsplosion and Rock Dodger from episode 8- Point of no return, the only episode i own. There are not markers for where the explosions from the plants occur, they seem to explode easily if you’re just a tad close and the rocks that spawn under ground have almost zero visibility on a screen cluttered with flowers that go bang, and dragon that puts orange circles everywhere and glowing particle effects from the divine torch. I can appreciate that most of the difficulty I am having is down to me being bad, but now with such a strong shift to condi damage surely implementing an alternative method of obtaining these trinkets, even if they become very expensive laurel items or cost like 5000 bandit crests, would be beneficial to the community. Not being able to raid as a condition player because i cant afford to buy LWS2 is just grinding my patients down slowly.

This has been covered and I doubt it will get changed.

Arenanet were nice enough to give the LS2 unlocks out for free to players who were active when they got released (I missed some myself and had to buy them later). Deal with it. 200 gems is around 36 gold. Otherwise get out your $$$.

As far as the actual achievements, if you are unwilling to figure them out yourself, read a guide.

Just the 2 example you gave:

- the flowers do explode once you get close. They also explode (without harming you) if you pass inbetween them by walking over the roots connecting 2 flowers. Something you would and could have picked up on.

- Rock Dodger is one of the hardest achievements if done properly. Simply because it involves quite a bit of luck, especially in the last phase where rocks are not absoultely inline with the markers. Then again, you could suicide pre fight, have a friend finish the instance, and get the achievement.

I doubt 800 gems worth of content is locking you out of raids (essentially 144 gold). If you are that stripped on cash, I highly doubt you’ll be running decent sigil/runes with good gear.

Here’s an idea: farm Silverwastes for those 2k Banditcrests you need for the first 2 items. Use the gold you make in that time to unlock Season 2 chapters 5-8.

Even better, farm some more Silverwastes and complete the Bioluminescence achievement. You’ll end up with a lot more gold for decent sigils/runes and a free ascended armor piece of your choice.

Except now that you have your ascended done, changing the stats on it costs a fraction of the original cost.

The gear itsself is tradeable, so you have a 3/9 = 1/3 shot at at least 1 class being viable (ascended is account bound).

Expecting no changes in any MMO is wishful thinking. Expecting reasonable changes might be too in case of arenanet, but that is a different story.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Given that the “special skins from living world events” were continuously back to back and always temporary, I’d honestly rather have the masteries that, while only obtainable in a small amount of area of the game (that will grow over time as new maps are added), is actually permanent.

But in all honesty, I would not do farming if I prefer – and since I can go after masteries at my own pace, I don’t have to farm them; I would have to farm for the skins, since they’d be temporary as a true “living world” would be.

I prefer their current set up – Season 2 styled living world that fills in gaps of otherwise no-content between expansions. It just needs to be more content in future expansions than what we got in the rushed-feeling HoT.

This.

Living world season 1 was fun, if you were around for it (and not taking a break due to burnout, haven’t started playing gw2, real life commitments, etc.). For everyone else it was a huge waste of developer ressources.

Instanced story content, while not as grand, has the benefit of being available to the playerbase long time after the event was introduced.

My guess is, the big world changing stuff will be left to expansions. The minor filler story details will remain isntanced story content. That’s what I would prefer anyway and also makes the most sense from a developer/ressource point of view.

Remembers wyvern in VB the first few days after HoT launched → breakbar never got below 60-70%.

Most wyvern fights now → breakbar completed or at least down to 10-20%.

I’d say, give it a week or 2 and see if people addapt or if it is an actual problem.