Guild Wars 2

Rule of thumb: Better to have a lot more than a lot less.

People not getting anything will get discouraged, frustrated, ticked off, and possibly quit..
People getting too much have a lot more options at their disposal

Look at D3 as an example, give the players basically nothing in loot and look how many people left.

Case and point, if anything buff loot across the board, because not everybody plays everyday, all hours of the day. I’m venturing that most of the player base falls into this category. These players will have a lot more incentive to play the game if they can pick up a guaranteed 1-3 rares a day with the possibility of an exotic.

They will not have an incentive to play or even make their way to the map itself for a world event if it costs more to way point there than what would be returned in gear.

I don’t really run dungeons either. I tried FoTM once and got turned off by it; it just isn’t my thing. I don’t touch them anymore, I prefer to do open world events.

It wouldn’t surprise me if there is an even split down the middle for people who either love them or hate them, and arena net could easily tackle this:

People are probably either doing dungeons because they actually like them or enjoy grouping for the challenge; then there are others who just want to get the rewards and get the hell out.

Fine, they could implement a sliding difficult scale; 1 being ridiculously easy and the highest number being harder than what we have now. No new rewards are given for the higher level of play.

What this does:

- Those who like the challenge and want to clear everything, fine you get your wish, don’t concern yourself with the other group that only want’s their rewards
- Those who want to get their gear and get out ASAP, fine you get your wish too, don’t concern yourself with the group that want’s the challenging play

Done, everybody worries about their own game play and only theirs.

While I love this idea, I don’t think it’s going to fly. It’d certainly save a lot of headaches while traiting.

I do believe though that the LB’s auto-attack should cause vulnerability and the “3” skill should be turned into something else like a sniper shot, or an extreme piercing shot.

Nozdrum.2894:

As I am on the quest to farm sunrise I feel this the most frustrating part ( besides getting my precursor ), but still this just increases the value of sunrise – so I dont mind it that much.

But what I hate most is people demanding to be everything the way the want it be.
For example

and should NOT require months if not years worth of farming

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

This game is NOT supposed to be about grind

Who are you to decide what this is game about and what shall be or shall not be? Did you spent years developing this game?

If you come to the conlcusion that farming sparks is not a good way to get em then think about something else. Go farm fractals, go farm crucible, go farm skritts for bags, go farm money to buy it from the tp.
If you think the price is too high then you don’t value them as high as others do, that is all there is.
Maybe you should overthink your plan on getting a legendary if you can’t handle these kinds of problems.

If Im not mistaken, I thought Arenanet made it clear that they were trying to get away from the whole annoyance of grinding. I’ve heard this multiple times.. if it is true, this really isn’t the way to do it.

I’ve wanted this for a bit. I think it makes more sense to have a sniper type shot than one that causes vulnerability.

In a perfect world (to me), auto attack would stack vulnerability while the #3 shot would be a sniper shot.

Here is a problem:

Every time you have to call your pet to avoid any type of heavy damage, you lose dps. Every time you have to swap your pet to avoid heavy damage, you lose dps again.

No other class suffers this. There really isn’t a counter to it, unless the pets are made more durable to take these heavy strikes, without having to trait heavily into BM. You trait heavily into BM, your own dps suffers. It’s a catch 22…

How does one counter this at the moment? I really don’t think it’s possible.

I’d like to see the #1 attack stack vulnerability with each hit and the #3 strike be turned into some kind of sniping shot that can be done from long range.

lchan.2169:

Durzlla.6295:

lchan.2169:

its a amazing how bad some ranger players are. 5 sec and you have a dead pet?…lol…I can single handedly hold a mob of ten off in cursed shore.

How many points do you have in BM? I can do the same, but i have 30 points in BM which makes my pet a force to be reckoned with, 0 points in BM is a different story because then he’s made of paper.

i actually have 0 points for BM. My traits are 10/30/20/10/0. I use traps and i hold an axe/torch. Both my pets are bear so they last longer.

My bear can also hold 10+ mobs on the Cursed Shore, but that’s not what were talking about here.. that isn’t the issue. The OP is talking about WvW, sPvP, and dungeons.

My bear can’t last more than 5s on any champion using AoE in the vicinity, and I run 10 points in BM, so your 0 points will fair no better.

IMO, the pets should only account for like 10%, maybe 20% max for dps, but have at least 100-150% more durability than they do, because they do not dodge/roll, or have any evasive skills.

We shouldn’t have to constantly swap, that gets annoying (yes I play other classes because I get sick of losing half my dps half the time). When you swap, you lose a portion of dps each time. The quickness doesn’t always account for more dps, when there is still obstruction issues with bows.

I think it’d be better if we could just stow them and gain a portion of their stats. Some instances pets would be great due to the fact they can divert enemies, but we really need solid reason to use them other than being forced too.

I just don’t understand how say a warrior has a Signet of Might, but the Ranger doesn’t have a Signet that adds to precision, or even a signet that adds to the pets power? We have the Signet of Stone for toughness, but pets were not meant to tank and fall too quickly. At later levels, the enemies completely ignore your pets anyway, so to me the Signet of Stone seems completely pointless.

Then like you pointed out Clovis.. Signet of the Hunt… how effective exactly is 62 health/s when the enemy is B-lining towards you? What good is the 125 health/s on your pet that an enemy refuses to attack?

In Lieu of the Ranger’s trait lines and how some skills don’t seem to mesh well with the actual traits, and the overall reliance on keeping the pet alive, I think these things would work well to balance things out.

If we want to play a build that has a lot of reliance on a pet, then obviously the trait line we’d spec into would be mainly BeastMastery. If we want to have far less focus on our pet for overall damage, then we spec else where. With this, I think the certain signets should be sitting under certain trait lines, while other signets should be added to other trait lines.

BeastMastery – Here is where I’d expect to see our following signets

- Signet of Tougnness & Signet of the hunt both of which benefit the pet far more than the ranger.
- Signet that adds a % of your stats to your pets overall stats

Marksmanship

- An ability like “snipe” which can be used from afar (much like a marksman)

Skirmishing

- A signet that adds to overall precision that when popped adds to critical hit chance
- A signet that adds to attack speed, that when popped grants the QZ ability (effectively removing the current QZ ability but replaced by this signet

Wilderness Survival (hard for me to comment on this as im not a trap user)

- Perhaps a signet that increases the radius of the traps that when popped increases the duration of all effects on afflicted users for a certain period of time

The way it is now, it’s no secret the trait lines are slightly messed up, and places far too much reliance on the pet and keeping them alive. Like somebody else pointed out in another thread, the pet is in fact the Ranger’s weakness.

For those that want to fully utilize the pet, putting 30 points into beast mastery, to me, should make your pet considerably tougher than it is now, and possibly deal more damage than you do, and be a pesky little prick.

E Kay.9236:

ophidic.1279:

I would say that EVERYONE is entitled to complete a holiday event. It’s not supposed to be a challenge, it’s supposed to be something fun and easy, and it should take no more than 20 minutes AND you should be guaranteed some cheap holiday items, liquor, food, socks/sweaters/hats whatever, but NOT EXOTIC ARMOR as per the Clock Tower.

If Anet is making every holiday about jumping and dungeons, I’m gonna be pretty annoyed.

Sorry to be so bold, but what I find annoying is that feeling of entitlement. If they make it so everyone can complete it, they would have to dumb it down to a level that most player will find it a joke… and players will complain with reason. What is needed is mix of hard and easy events… and ANet nailed it with Wintersday as the Tixx dungeon is a walk in the park, the guitar bell hero is just plain fun with a bit of challenge, and the jumping puzzle requires skill without being aggravating.

And since I have yet to actually do it (almost made it last time), let me log in and try that one again! See you in Tyria!

Or they can just at a difficulty setting to it so everybody can enjoy it instead of some either getting frustrated with it and other finding too easy.

I personally love this jumping puzzle, but at the same time timed jumping puzzles aren’t my thing.

If they are going to add in a timed puzzle, then there should be a difficulty setting attached to it so people don’t feel rushed while doing it.

Keep the rewards and achievements the same so those people don’t feel compelled to tackle the hard setting.

As a few have mentioned, having difficulty settings for the puzzle: Easy, Med, Hard

The rewards don’t change, nor do the achievements, so people don’t feel pressure having to tackle the highest setting. It’s there mainly for the hardcore jumpers, that like that style.

Ursan.7846:

Braxxus.2904:

This is actually a very very very valid point. If the ranger class is balanced around the idea of 100% pet up-time so significantly then the ranger class needs pets that are capable of 100% pet up-time. Any time you press f3 or your pet dies to a single aoe (lol @ pets being alive in WvW fights for instance) you’re basically pressing a button that is “Reduce your damage by 50% for an indefinate amount of time”.

That’s false, and I’d like to shill my thread again. I’d like to point out the results of when Rangers without pets. Their DPS in an optimal situation (every attack flanking with Crossfire) is superior to that of a Warrior’s rifle, even without a pet.

I think the idea of the Ranger is that they can reach their peak performance through 1 good positioning and 2. alive pets. Do pets being dead hurt? Yea, you lose a portion of your DPS and essentially a 4th utility skill. But by no means do pets consist 50% of your damage.

Unless I’m using longbow with rapid fire, at any given time, my pet is pumping out 40-50% of the dps.

At any given time, my pet is hitting for about 1000-2500 (sometimes more) per hit which is roughly what my longbow does. Even when critting, the shortbow does not do the same amount of damage while flanking. The only real use I find for the shortbow is its far more versatile (which is why i have it equipped more).

On single standing still targets, out comes the long bow, and the pet will deal nearly similar damage. So in effect, taking the pet away (for me) cuts my dps in half.

Im noticing the same thing.

I realize that pets were supposed to be have a better time hitting moving targets. I stood and watched as my pet chased around a target that somebody else was kiting. Neither the melee or ranged pets hit the target.

-They die far far far too quickly (unless you give them the right bonuses which in turn takes away from your own damage
-They don’t respond fast enough to commands (why do I have to hit F3 a dozen times to call the pet back before it actually comes back
-They arbitrarily run past several targets to attack a target far away without commanding them to do so. I can maybe understand them going after something close by, by running by 5 targets and hitting one far away.. no

To me anyway, it seems the only real use of the pets at the moment is to swap them constantly for bonuses and that doesn’t seem right.

Pre-cursors should be more reasonable to obtain, not easier.

Maybe have the option to craft them. For instance, the trainer sells the recipe for say 500K karma. You have the recipe lets say for the dreamer. Now it costs 100 of those ancient logs, 100 of the hardened leather or whatever the T6 mat is. The insignia itself would say bet 100-150 of whatever T6 mats are.

Yes it would be expensive to craft, or even a while to farm, but at least you could farm it and make it. It wouldn’t be easy, but at least it’s reasonable.

Ever since fractals came into play, I’d say about 90% of the chatter in towns is looking for groups for fractals. The amount of people you’d see out in the world is greatly diminished.

What ArenaNet should do is make world events/dynamic chains longer and their rewards, just as profitable as the dungeons. Or at least yield rewards needed for other things which are not going to be obtained in dungeons.

Give players a reason to farm anything other than fractals, because right now, that is the way to go. Either by getting specific mats, or getting others and selling them only to buy others you need. Either way its better.

Dynamic events or Dynamic event chains I should say, should be expanded and yield the same rewards as dungeons, so to give players options.

Are people content always farming fractals? Probably not. Are people always content on farming dynamic events? probably not?

Would it be nice if they both offered similar rewards for both? For sure, because at least people would have a change in scenery now.

House cat. One that attacks like one. Jumps at the mob, latches on and starts scratching the hell out of it with it’s back feet lol. It also goes for the eyes.. so the house cat can inflict bleeding and blindness lol.

I find it very easy to farm in groups and loot nearly every corpse. Their AoE combined with piercing arrows (linear AoE) lol, and the enemy group’s tendency to run at you in a straight line, it’s very easy to dish out a ton of damage.

The result.. bags are full in less than 20 min of farming

Or have a system where as long as your carrying the appropriate tools, the appropriate tool is used for the task.

Say I’m carrying 1 of each tool and I come across a mithril node, well the charge is consumed on the mithril pick. Sure it requires you to carry 1 of everything, but then again, you won’t be wasting charges.

Well the non-crafters could just craft then. No big deal. If they don’t want the buff or bonus, don’t craft. If they want it, then craft, simple as that.

I like the idea

I think it’d be a good idea to have longer chain events that would inevitably get harder as you go along and lead to much better rewards in the end, via a chest.

Instead of just nerfing the spawn time events like plinx as some sort of anti-farming measure why not just add additional events to the chain?

Like for instance, take plinx which I think has about 5-6 events currently. How about increasing it to say 15-20 events that get progressively harder. The enemies that spawn get progressively tougher and require more coordination and strategy as opposed to who can dump the quickest AoE first (like we have now)? Have these events take you across the whole map, or perhaps into neighboring maps.

The rewards get progressively better as mobs get tougher; the chance for better items increases, and more gold drops. Then at the end of the event great challenge occurs and a chest spawns. Then depending on where you joined in the event and how much you participated, would dictate the type of items the chest spawned.

Have a couple of these events in each map to keep players of all levels interested, and have them run regularly each day.

One thing I wish they’d do is offer about 2-3 extended chain DE’s per map, in all maps.

Like for instance, take plinx, right now it offers what about 5 or 6 events in a row? I’d like to see it offer say 15-20 in a row that would carry everyone around the map. Add in a couple more chains like that, and I think it’d be more enticing to people. Do this for every map. Then as an added bonus, at the end of the quest chain a chest appears. Then depending on how much you participated in the chain determines likely-hood of good items spawning.

Im not really convinced grouping makes a difference in getting better loot.

Last night I ran with a party (using about 130mf) and I walked out with 2 rares in 2 hours time. I was lucky though and salvaged 6 ectos from those 2.

The night before however, I ran solo as all parties were full and I walked away with 25 rares in 2 hours time. When I don’t party up with anyone, I usually acquire anywhere from 15-25 rares within 2 hours.

RNG is RNG but to me, that type of difference is just to vast.

What do people think about having actual forums dedicated to specific servers?

That way people can post big events that are currently up or even plan for some big cathedral events.

Might even be useful to find people to group together in dungeons with or just find a couple of farming buddies in whatever map your in?

Or perhaps leave the respawn time as, and just add additional “quest chains” on current quests that take players all throughout the map!

How many quests does plinx have now currently like 5 or 6? How about increasing it to say 10-15 or 15-20 that take the group throughout the map. Then have 2 or 3 of these types of quests per map.

I think as somebody mentioned.. do not rely on your pet. To me they are there for bonus damage and that’s it, they are fairly useless at holding any aggro. It doesn’t matter if I send the pet in to attack first or not.. the mobs always run to me.

With that being said, I start with the LB, nail them with skill 3, then proceed with rapid fire. This takes them down to about 20% health, combine that with the knock back, they are usually dead before they reach me. If they are not dead by this point, i swap to SB, cripple them and kite till they are dead.

If I’m running around by myself, the only trap I use is the elite skill root trap (for when I encounter large mobs), root them and AoE them down. If I’m in groups, I replace the root trap with whatever that stability fury elite skill is. I have really no problem with soloing any mobs in the game (except champions of course lol)

I only have a ranger though so far so I’m unfamiliar with exactly how much better a warrior is, but I will be rolling a warrior next.

The changes I’d like to see for the Ranger are:

- The obstructed problem addressed (happens far to often despite nothing in the way)
- Rangers theoretically should be doing more overall damage with bows than every other class, whether it be doing more damage per hit or just over attack speed increase
- Less damage reliance on pets, and pets given more survivability with a little bit better aggro control

I think it’s kind of funny actually…

I hide behind a wall around the corner and send my pet after the risen.. and the risen runs straight for me around the corner lol.

I know the pets were not meant to fully tank or control all the aggro, but I mean, they should at least be able to somewhat.

It’s nice that Rangers can use the Great Sword. I’m thinking of having one on hand just for this purpose; however, to me rangers are meant to be ranged and avoid damage as best they can. So if they are constantly trying to run away to avoid damage, their pet never catches the risen at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.. I can usually melt any risen before they reach me, but just the idea that once the pet hits the risen and runs straight for you is a bit asinine to me.

I’d think just simply giving some rangers pets more usefulness in having on of their abilities detect stealth every few seconds or so.

Like any of the hound pets, seems fitting that one of their abilities should be able to detect stealth. Possibly even the felines as well. Have it be like an aura around them thats “x” yards. If a stealthed class is in the vicinity, it lights up or flashes.

Doesn’t pigeon hole the ranger, they can still focus on dealing damage while their pets periodically detect stealth. It would make sense to have a ranger in each “group” out in the field for this very purpose.

I was just thinking how funny it’d look if per say your feline reacted a certain way if there was a stealthed character in the area…. Like it’s tail went upright and started swishing around. Then the feline started making funny noises lol.

To me it’s invaluable. It’s easy (for me anyway) to line enemies and hit multiple ones at once, even when there is a pile of people attacking. I consider it my 2nd AoE.

I only have ranger and I do find I have to navigate to the perfect spot and then continue moving as other people move to even get hits in.

I wasn’t aware that other classes didn’t have this issue, or at least it wasn’t that bad.. if so.. come on.. you can’t have a class handicapped like that while others don’t have the same problem

In some points I agree with the OP, and I agree with some points with others. I do think that nobody should be able to farm 120-150g per week, that is just excessive.. regardless if your playing 16+ hrs a day. I also agree that farming can’t be limited or hindered in anyway because eventually people will just get discouraged, lose interest, and leave.

Myself, I have no problem farming as we speak, but I’m attributing that largely to being part of a large guild that regularly runs the cursed shores for 2hrs at a time. All over the map we go to different events, and I easily make 3-5g in those 2 hours.

I don’t have to WP there unnecessarily, all I do is check the guild roster to see if there is a bunch of them online in the cursed shores.. then I know there is a run going on, then I WP over. If not, i just run other maps for completion.

Those that are finding it difficult to find groups in these areas, I do feel your pain as I was in that boat all of about 2 weeks ago. If you don’t have a group to go with regularly, farming I can see would be very discouraging.

What I would like to see (as another poster mentioned), making the events say a little less profitable, but making far more events profitable enough that players will travel around. Even though plinx is semi-profitable, I can only run that so many times. I’d really like it if there were many more we could jump in that ran regularly.

I’ve noticed both the loot quality dropped and frequency have drastically been reduced which prompted me to go looking on the forums to see if I was doing something wrong or whatever.

I wondered honestly how I could go from throwing on a MF set (with a boost) for over 130% MF and finding a dozen rares in an hours time of doing constant chain events to: Finding 75% less drops over all, no rares, very little greens, as well as, champions and veterans not dropping anything even despite doing over 10% damage to them.

Glad it’s not something I was doing, there had to have been some sort of stealth nerf across the board or an un-intended change.

I 100% agree with the OP.

I’m finding myself logging on, and travelling to the 3 areas of Orr (which I find costs too much in itself), only to see that all 3 maps are empty and rarely and get a dynamic event in anywhere.

It’s difficult to grind karma; the gear set I want happens to be in the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance, but Malchor’s leap is almost always empty. The cursed shore’s plinx runs go on occasionally but only seem to last 20 min then everybody dispurses. I only hit 80 about 2 weeks ago so I’m not even sure what the old plinx runs were like.

I do remember when I first hit 80 and threw on some MF gear and obviously got lucky enough to run a chain event in Malchor’s leap; I walked away with a dozen rares. Since then.. nothing.

Can anyone really give me an indication on where somebody would farm for karma and gold now?

Anet really needs to take a page out of Blizzard’s book and learn from their mistakes. Nerfing things into the ground and stealth nerfing across the board is going to drive people away.

I may be going off on a limb here as I’m still getting my bearings with Gw2 and how things are working. This may be something that’s already present and I just havn’t actually found it yet.

What I would like to see is on the server screen, either link or tooltip showing some additional info about the server, as to help players decide which one to go on (depending on what their goals might be).

Currently I’m lvl 80 (yes I’m still learning things lol), but I’m more focused on doing dynamic events for karma and what not. It always seems whenever I log on my server (ET), that the maps are nearly always empty and these dynamic events rarely have enough people to plow through them. I havn’t attempted WvW yet either but will be once I complete a couple of sets.

These are the types of things I’d like to see either from a link or tooltip:

- How many dynamic events are completed daily/weekly/monthly
- How many dungeons are completed daily/weekly/monthly on each server
- What % breakdown of players levels on each server. IE:

a) Levels 1-10 – 18%
b) Levels 11-20 – 12%
c) Levels 71-80 – 28% etc..

I understand that they will probably never release the actual number of players on each server, but it would be nice to see what % of level ranges is active on the server.

With all these, whether you are leveling up, focusing on WvW, dungeon runner, or a dynamic event guru or whatever your flavor of the week is on whichever character your playing.. it’d be nice to be able to pick a server that more suits your goals.

I agree with this. I didn’t really notice a problem until I hit the Lost shores where I tend to find the group events going on. Sometimes even after 10 group events in a row, I have barely any loot, despite how much Dps i’m doing.

Case and point, our group ran across a veteran, well I came across it first, I drained about 1/4 of it’s health before the group caught up and finished it off, and I got nothing. Same thing, about 10 min later, I got about 25% of it’s health down, and again nothing.

I am a ranger who unloads the AoE whenever it’s necessary. I use the piercing arrows trait as to strike multiple targets if they are so gracious to line themselves up for me lol. I carry a shortbow as well when the situation calls for it.

Somebody mentioned about a smaller chest spawning after each wave is encountered, or perhaps a larger chest after each event that guarantees to spawn a minimum number of items.