Guild Wars 2

Almost 6 months into the game and we’re still having NPCs bug out and ruining the run? OMG…

Arah Path 4 was one of these paths I told myself I’d never repeat after beating it once.

Good Luck.

Erasculio.2914:

Dee Jay.2460:

Forum feedback does something that is equally important because it expresses how people FEEL while playing the game. And that is every bit as important as any metric or stat.

How a small and biased minority feels. Not how most players feel.

Small and biased maybe but nonetheless somewhat representative. Generally speaking people only post on the forums if they have some sort of agenda, ergo they want something changed or added.

While that typically doesn’t include the majority of casual players it doesn’t mean every issue forum posters QQ about should be ignored because they are a vocal minority.

Instead forum feedback should be used to highlight issues and imbalances. The designers should then look at metrics and data and try and confirm the initial feedback. If it is legitimate then you can move on from there. If the data doesn’t confirm the QQ then maybe the problem lies elsewhere.

Yes, some posts reek of entitlement and shallow point of views but even the least articulate post says something about how someone feels about the game and shouldn’t just be scoffed at.

I always cry a little inside when I see my Smoke Screen next to a Guardian’s Wall of Reflection.

Not only does Wall of Reflection reflect projectiles rather than absorbing them it also lasts a lot longer and has a similar cooldown.

All I can really recommend at that level is:

1. Run with a ranged weapon until you know the dungeons.

2. Get gear with a little Vitality

3. Dodge

Porky.5021:

Dee Jay.2460:

But the downed state and the easy nature of revives makes this the most downright frustrating experience in any video game I’ve played in the last decade. I’ve litterally attacked groups of 3 by myself and downed the same player 3 times. But they just keep on reviving.

So you’re unhappy you can’t win 1v3 and rather than adjusting to the game the way it is, you keep playing the game the way you wish it was.

Interesting. To each his own.

The thing is I could….but revives make it nigh impossible. As long as their team-mates react at all they can revive their team-mate faster than any finisher could ever be.

My problem really isn’t with the downed state per say…but with how quickly people can revive each other.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

The real mesmer will strafe/dodge/use skills. That’s how you see him.

that plus he might have buffs or boons.

He’s also more durable than his clones.

Vapor Form because it makes you immortal as long as you stay near a gate in WvW.

Metrics are fine, but they can only answer a specific type of question. (like progression difficulty, farming behavior etc.)

Forum feedback does something that is equally important because it expresses how people FEEL while playing the game. And that is every bit as important as any metric or stat.

Feelings are hugely important and simply cannot be measured my metrics or statistics.

Creeper.9360:

I’d rather see them concentrate more on the open world rather than have more instances.

But you can’t have openly accessible encounters in the open world that are also challenging. If they are supposed to be beatable by random PuGs then the encounters simply can’t be all that complex or demanding.

They also tend to be fail-safe like the Dragon encounters.

The reason why people kitten so much about possible raid content is because they can’t discuss it without also thinking of gear-treadmills, item progression, raiding guilds, raid schedules, progression, dedication, theorycrafting, DPS meters and performance evaluations.

But they can’t see past the fact that many of those raid associations were/are specific to WoW/Rift and don’t have to be the same in Guild Wars 2.

I for one think raids would work great in this game if they ironed out some of the mechanics.

Actually Sword + Pistol is probably the best weapon-set for leveling.

But if you’re set on P/P or P/D then one is a Crit-set while the other is a Condition Damage/Attrition set.

P/P will kill things faster which is probably the most important factor when leveling.

When playing a Critical Strikes build it’s all about balancing your stats to a point where you feel you’ve reached an acceptable level of survivability.

Typically you will be messing around with:
“Soldiers”, “Valkyries”, “Berserkers” and “Knights” gear as those offer the best stat-combinations for Thieves.

Generally speaking your most important stat is Power, since that’s what all your other damage is based on.

Precision and Critical Damage is a balancing act with no clear-cut rules. Just remember to always get Crit-Damage in your Orbs since that’s the most effective source.

Vitality and Toughness boost your survivability with Vitality being the better stat by far. However a little Toughness goes a long way so don’t underestimate it. The rule of thumb is to aim for a 10:1 ratio of HP to armor.

Well you really need to have 30 trait point in Critical Strikes before it become good. Then again, the same could be said for any trait tree.

I’m not sure what weapon set you were using before but Sword + Pistol is generally the best choice for leveling and offers many of the same benefits as Death Blossom spam (evades and multi-target damage). I’d recommend you give it a try.

The idea is quite simple. Maintain Black Powder while auto-attacking or simply spam Pistol Whip.

Trust me, 95% of people who DC in Fractals don’t do so on purpose.

I never was affected by it until I was. In fact it happened twice in succession, always close to the end. At that point I vowed I wouldn’t set my foot in Fractals again until they fixed the DC issue.

Blame ANet, not the players for kittening this up so bad.

With how easy it is to revive in this game, it will never be considered a competitive e-sport.

With the boring Conquest + Bunker dynamic, it will never be fun to watch.

Honestly, even after extensive WvW I never really had a problem with AoE. Sure damage can be on the high-end but it isn’t near anywhere as broken as the…

…rapid revives.

If you want to fix one thing, then fix the bloody revives.

SniffyCube.6107:

They probably do, and there was a vid of like fiveish guys taking out a zerg earlier wich was 10-15+. Can be done. Has been done.

It’s another facet that makes this game interesting. Tip, stability helps if you’re trying to finish someone so they can’t knock you off revives. Haste causes you to finish people faster.

I too post in threads without reading the OP.

Waffler.1257:

Dee Jay.2460:

Every time I’ve played WoW over the past few weeks I end up frustrated and cursing the game to hell because of one…single…“feature”.

The “o” key is no where near the “v” key.

Freudian typo, it’s a thing.

I’m not sure how long I can take this anymore.

Every time I’ve played WvW over the past few weeks I end up frustrated and cursing the game to hell because of one…single…“feature”.

I play WvW to kill people. I don’t care much for Zergs or rewards. Instead I pick good fights and hope for an interesting combat.

But the downed state and the easy nature of revives makes this the most downright frustrating experience in any video game I’ve played in the last decade. I’ve litterally attacked groups of 3 by myself and downed the same player 3 times. But they just keep on reviving.

It’s so incredibly detrimental to anything resembling skillful play if all it takes is 2 sek. to revive a downed player. Without stability, stealth or Quickness you don’t even need to try and finish someone.

I simply cannot express in words how utterly kittened up this revive/resurrection system is. There is no way this is acceptable in PvP in any form and it will be the prime reason I leave this game behind should good alternatives arise where you can actually kill people in PvP.

I challenge any developer of this game to roam solo or in a small team and not end up wanting to pull out their hair.

Seriously, this is so kittened up.

I’d love to play PvP without downed-state. It might actually be fun.

I’d live playing WvW without downed-state even more though.

Yes
No
Yes

Everyone should be playing the game, rather than some health-bars or threat-meter.

There is quite a lot of Platinum in the Eternal Battleground and all level 50-70 regions.

They did nerf the combo…but only for sPvP.

Seriously…this issue has been talked to death. They’ve had multiple chances to nerf it but haven’t done it outside of the previously mentioned Cloak and Dagger sPvP nerf in November.

Well there are numerous sources for armor sets. The most common ones are:

1. Buying Exotics off the Trade Post – Expensive but certainly the easiest way to get items if you know exactly what you want.

2. Buying Exotic gear for Karma at the Temple vendors in Orr – There are roughly half a dozen temples spread throughout Orr, each with a Vendor selling an Exotic armor set for 42000 Karma a piece. Since Karma is easy to come by it might be a good place to start. However the Karma sets all have very mixed stats so it’s not good for optimizing.

3. Farming explorable Dungeons for Tokens – This is by far the most popular route to go as Dungeons are fairly quick and easy (there are exceptions). At least Ascalonian Catacombs and Citadel of Flame are constantly being farmed. You have to farm them quite a lot if you want a complete set but at least you end up with a lot of extra money and a decent skin.

4. If you like WvW you can farm a set here too – But it takes comparatively long and you only get to by a “Soldier” set.

I’d recommend you first settle on what kind of build/playstyle you want to focus on and then pick a stat combination that supplements it well.

Then you find which Dungeons set offers your preferred stats and start farming it on a daily basis. With enough tokens you can start buying your items one by one.

A good place to get an overview of sets is gw2armor.com and wiki.gw2.com

joe.9815:

I mean come on…
why is it the least used class in wvw
why is it the least used class in dungeons
why can’t you speed run with it?
why does no one get a necro?
Because the dps is bad because condition damage is so nerf
What do you guys think

What I think?

1. Engineer
2. Engineer
3. You mean like Spectral Walk?
4. What?
5. Ok, I admit Condition Damage sucks. But that’s not a Necro specific problem.

I also think that considering how Necros are one of the strongest duel classes in game that they do not in fact, need buffs.

I would like to optimize my PvE gear and have decided that it would be good to replace some of my “Soldier” items with “Valkyrie” stats.

The problem is that I’m a little strapped for cash and also don’t like the visuals of most crafted sets. I’ve browsed around looking for sources of such a Valkyrie set (Power/Critical Damage/Vitality) but to no avail. It seems like it’s not offered by any vendor afaik.

Is there a way to attain a “Valkyrie” set outside of crafting/buying one?

Hmm, would you rather have 3 explosions dealing 1000-1500 damage + 3 bleed each or a big explosion dealing 4000-6000 damage, adding 1 bleed while also being a blast finisher?

Easy choice really…

It has happened to me as well.

It’s just one of those random bugs. It’s annoying because taking Stormmist is quite a big deal.

You get about 1700 Karma for taking it iirc.

Matt Witter.6982:

There are a few different knobs we can turn in regards to AoE some of the bigger ones being:
Radius of the AoE
Frequency of the AoE Damage
Damage of the AoE
Max Targets of the AoE

Currently, some players causing the AoE are able to do more damage to one person while also controlling a portion of the field, compared to a player with single target damage.
In our balance discussions we always look at what these changes could do to PvE as well as PvP. Any changes we make will undergo a lot of testing, both internal and by our trusted alpha team. It is important to understand that we are not doing a blanket nerf to all AE’s or a dramatic adjustment of the damage AoE’s can do. There may be some cases where players can build for AoE damage, but are just not viable or other cases where AoE is clearly the dominate way to build, and as such the other builds get left on the side lines. Its these classes/builds that we are concerned about.

Thanks for the response but I’d like to point out another knob.

Strong AoE was just half of the issue I pointed out. The other was the relative ease of rezzing/reviving, even when under attack or in combat. This is another knob that could use adjusting.

If it wasn’t so easy to constantly resurrect/revive players then AoE would be less important and could deal with a nerf.

Just putting that out there.

Let me get this straight in case I missed some points.

1. Bleeds are limited to 25 stacks (with a single Condition focused player easily being able to maintain 15-20 stacks)

2. Bleeds don’t deal damage to objects or Siege weapons.

3. Conditions can be cleansed by numerous abilities and traits.

4. Conditions aren’t affected by %-based damage increases or Vulnerability .

5. Condition Damage builds generally deal significantly less damage than Power builds.

6. Very limited choice of weapons and abilities.

Someone tell me why Condition Damage is supposed to be a viable alternative?

I’m inclined to agree….to an extent.

Abilities when designed, need to fall within certain power parameters. If a Hero in LoL could suddenly deal 1000% damage, that would seem unreasonable. But a 200-300% increase can work, depending on cooldowns and telegraphing of said ability.

The fact that Haste, the 4 second Quickness accessible to the Thief, has an added down-side shows that it already falls outside of your typical power parameter.

Compare it with Assassin’s Singet for example which only provides a 15% damage increase for the next 5 attacks demonstrates the issue quite well.

Quickness is 100% DPS increase and as such much stronger than any other DPS cooldown you’d typically find. The fact that the developers added down-sides shows they understood this, but I don’t think it’s balanced.

After being the victim of a Frenzy + Hundred Blades or Haste + Pistol Whip you simply do not have the luxury to capitalize on the down-sides of these effects. The pressure they put you under is too immense forcing you do play defensively.

I think a 50% speed increase would be far more acceptable for Quickness. They could have it last a little longer and curb some of the down-sides accordingly but overall I think this would maintain it as a balanced ability without making it dangerously overpowered.

I think the Chill effect is actually ok in itself. But the abundance of Condition Removal Elementalists have is not.

If they couldn’t actually remove the Chill so easily it would severely cripple them.

My only problem with the Guardian Daze is the range. I’m constantly missing it when someone moves. A little extra range…maybe 300, would really help a lot.

The Dreamer,

because Rainbows

Sure, 5 good players can beat any content you through at them. And Fractals aren’t hard per say.

But if you’re going to take any random player, why not pick the one that offers by far the best group support and utility? Guardians are just incredibly valuable to any group it almost doesn’t matter how well they play.

Skill is an element you can’t really control or measure when Pugging. A profession is something you can influence so going with what’s best just make sense if you’re goal is to minimize risk.

In yesterday’s interview a developer implied they were considering making the Mesmer portal mechanic accessible to other professions as well because the ability was so powerful that it was considered mandatory in many situations.

I wonder if Thieves might be candidates for receiving such a portal-like ability.

Here are the Pros:
+Suits their theme with various Shadowsteps. A group-Shadowstep doesn’t seem unimaginable.
+Thieves tend to be weak on group support. Some more group utility would be well appreciated.
+Traps could potentially be reworked into a Portal mechanic (similar to the one we already have)

The Cons are:
-Portals combined with Stealth may cause some serious balance issues.
-Thieves are very unpopular amongst the general community.
-Other professions like Rangers or Engineers maybe in more dire need of such a buff.

Portals are the Heroism/Bloodlust of Guild Wars 2.

I can see Thieves being given such a portal

Mug could have its damage reduced, agreed.

But leave Backstab alone.

Heartseeker needs to be more expensive and less efficient. Leap finisher, auto-targeting, 450 range and lots of damage for 3 Initiative is just too good.

Like bosses, trash mobs feel like they are balanced for groups having much, much higher DPS.

I agree that killing them should be a little faster.

Just like lots of HP doesn’t make things harder, less HP doesn’t necessarily make things significantly easier.

Burnout.5603:

Because you’re playing a video game, not Risk.

Pretty much,

most video-games are essentially about hand eye-coordination. And why would you expect anything else?

It’s like complaining about movies being a visual medium.

The Shadow Arts tree is actually very popular and quite powerful, especially in PvP.

Acrobatics with all its extra dodges and HP seems to be a bit more popular in PvE.

But Shadow Arts has some very potent low-tier traits making 10 points always worth it. Those 10 points alone give you the choice between Condition Removal in Stealth, Initiative on Stealth or Blind on Stealth, all of which are really good.

Going deeper tends to be something for specific attrition builds.

The fact that you are comparing a level 80 exotic crafted item worth multiple Gold with food that gives you a 30 minute buff is pretty…./facepalm.

And saying “just buy it” is a pretty lame excuse. I leveled cooking specifically so I didn’y have to.

I don’t mind Food trays being complicated to make or even something a little more long-lasting. But for food that is giving you a 30 minute buff I think some of these recipes are missing the point.

aaron.7850:

Dedalus.3065:

Didn’t we already get ctf in wintersday? Did anyone actually enjoy that?

yes we did, your point is?

The problem with the Wintersday map was that there was a single flag in the center of the map. The first team to reach it had an instant upper hand and it just got easier from there.

CTF is better when you have to steal the Flag from the enemy’s base and bring it to your own.

A few things on this matter.

1. Despite popular opinion, Thieves aren’t the biggest balance issue in tournament games. Yes, one-shots aren’t fun to play against but there are larger imbalances at stake. The Thief also has to pay a large price for his damage.

2. Thief “instant-gibs” have been on ANets radar for a while now. They’ve had quite a few chances to nerf it but haven’t really thus far. Maybe their numbers show that people are learning to deal with it.

3. Most players in WvW don’t actually play an “all out one-shot” build. Instead many opt for at least a few points in Shadow Arts.

Yep, really frakking annoying.

Why would a “/cheer” override all other animations?

I just hope they apply the “no resurrections in combat” model to WvW as well.

Everyone wants overseas players because battles may be fought at day, but the game is won at night.

During the live stream today ANet announced they will be reviewing a lot of the AoE damage skills as they are considered too powerful.

That in itself is fine. However AoE was one of the few effective ways to deny enemies revives during Zerg vs. Zerg clashes in WvW. Without any additional changes it will be very hard to stop people from reviving people constantly, which is already a big issue in WvW combat.

Are there any additional measures being taken to limit the abundance/relative ease of reviving/resurrections especially in WvW?

Considering that PvE won’t allow resurrections in combat any more maybe that rule should be applied to WvW as well?

More specifically how does it work against bosses with Defiant.

As a Thief frequent Blinds are one of the few utilities I bring to the group. But somehow I haven’t really figured out the exact details of when Blind works and when it doesn’t.

Stuns and all CC really are generally short duration so DRs aren’t really necessary.

What is problematic however is that certain Weapons like Hammers for example will give someone 2-3 abilities to stun somebody. Add some appropriate utility skills and some professions can stunlock you to death without a stun-breaker.

Not fun.

You really need to use a Cooking guide to level Cooking. With the amount of ingredients and intermediate ingredients “experimenting” won’t get you anywhere.

There are two elements that make Pistol/Dagger Thieves significantly stronger in WvW than they actually are.

1. Culling
2. Food – The Food alone can add up to 40% Condition Duration. That makes a HUGE difference to the DPS they deal.

I see what you mean but I’ve never had a huge problem with it. I just end up throwing away many of my stolen items once I sense my Steal might be up again.