Guild Wars 2

I don’t speak German, but just look at the skillbar and the numbers.

This is what anet thinks of its playerbase’s intelligence? That we can’t handle having 5 skills at once before level 10? That 3 utilities by level 20 is just too complicated so they have to push it back to level 35? That an elite skill is just “too much to figure out” at 30 so they push it back to level 40?

I have never (AND THE ROCK MEANS NEVER!) met a person who has quit playing an MMO because of getting too many skills at once. I have on the other hand, played with a lot of people, who have quit MMO’s because they walled off too many core features to higher level gates. “Just keep playing, it gets better later I promise!” hardly ever works. You gate CONTENT behind levels and gear, you don’t gate core features and their skillbar behind high levels and gear.

I can’t believe I was thinking about leveling up a new character under this system as of yesterday since my keyfarming slot won’t be viable anymore. Forget that, I’m glad all my current characters are at least level 30.. as it is I’m just hoping current level 30 characters are grandfathered in to having 3 utility slots and an elite slot available.

it really is insulting to your fans intelligence Arenanet.

This is already a fairly simplified skillbar, I can understand putting weapon swapping behind a few levels (7 originally, now it’s higher) since that’s a relatively new mechanic for MMO’s, but keep those level gates rather low. These are core functions of the game. I know that if I’d started playing this game and was forced to have nothing but autoattacks and 1 other skill for several levels, I don’t think I’d continue playing, I’d be contacting support about a refund.

Thing about the loot.. anet at first made it seem like a great thing that you wouldn’t be competing with other party members over loot that drops from a boss.. no cases of 40 people and only 3 pieces of loot to share. Everyone gets their own loot.

Unfortunately. Most of it is junk. There might be a valuable or desirable piece of loot on that boss. But it has a 1 in 250 chance or so of dropping.

So instead of 40 people trying to figure out who gets one of 3 pieces of loot, 100+ people doing Tequatl might find that 1, maybe 2 people got something that wasn’t junk from Tequatl.

That’s a worse chance at decent loot.

This does impact Eles in WvW somewhat, as Meteornado is how you would clear walls of defenders when attacking a tower. People don’t really die to 6-8k ticks of meteor that is normal even from a glass ele, they die to 12k+ ticks done by meteornado, and PVT eles that are more common to the zerg will not be able to shake defenders on the walls at all, as people just ignore 2k ticks from meteors.

So you will really pretty much only be valuable for CC and water fields, instead of also having a damage role.

meteornado also was useful on world bosses, it’s still viable on world bosses to not use your elite at all, as it was, tornado was just a damage boost, but as of now, PVE (except solo PVE where summon glyphs are actually viable, in any group content summon glyphs die almost instantly because they can’t dodge boss aoes and get one shot) you might as well not even have an elite skill slotted. Maybe depending on race you might use a racial skill like artillery barrage, I don’t know.

Were the elite skills being used in ways unintended by the devs? Sure, but that should point out to the devs that the skills themselves were terrible if they were only used for their bugs.

I’m sure the developers think that fiery greatsword is a great skill for eles to use, but the fact is, without pinning a mob against a wall and abusing fiery whirl and fiery rush, you do less damage than your normal weapon sets.

The fact that people are now looking at fiery greatsword just for mobility? That should be ringing alarm bells in Anet’s heads that the core functionality of the skill is leaving something to be desired for an ELITE skill.

The fact that people pretty much only used tornado for boosting meteor damage should also be raising red flags for arenanet. it may have some small niche uses for pushing people out of a cap point or off a wvw tower lord’s room, but it’s certainly not worthy of an ELITE skill, not with a 2 and a half minute cooldown.

In its planned state in september, FGS should be just a normal utility skill, and conjure flame axe should basically be removed from the game, maybe replacing one of FGS’s skills (maybe eruption) with one of conjure flame axe’s skills (the throw with the blast finisher maybe), and we should get an entirely different elite skill to replace it.

Tornado just needs to be tore up from the floor up, redone, maybe make it not a transformation, that’d go a long way to fixing the flawed design of the skill. Cause where Tornado will be after the patch hits? It’ll be a “kill me” sign, a suicide pact, because they’re removing the stat boosts which leaves the squishiest class in the game in a big easy to target form, that can have its stability stripped, and it can be chilled, crippled, and immobilized, and its’ only benefit is weak periodic damage and knockback.

Lostwingman.5034:

IIRC they didn’t change the minimum you could make the attunement recharge just the maximum it sat at at default. So the recharge at 6 now is the same as it used to be at 30. The difference is where it is at down the line.

Okay so if it was 9s (not sure why I remember 8.5 for some reason, maybe a boon or something) then every 5 (equivalent to 1 point now) points was exactly 1s off the recharge time, now it’s every 2 points (equivalent to 10 then) is 1s off the recharge time.

It’s not as big of a deal anymore. Being specced 2 in arcane now is like being specced 20 in arcane before as far as recharge goes.

Fuzzion.2504:

scerevisiae.1972:

Devildoc.6721:

4+ water and 4+ arcane are not at all mandatory

mandatory if you want to be good i meant. you can run 1/1/1/1/1 if you like, doesn’t disprove the point.

You are right about water @ 4. Arcana would say its 6 not 4.

Moreover given our boon duration nerfs from gear it has to be made up under arcana tree.

In the first feature patch they changed how attunement cooldowns work. Speccing heavy into arcane does less than it used to as far as cooldown reduction. I’m 2 in arcane, I don’t really miss being 6 (well 30) in arcane much.

Cooldown for swapping back to an attunement you just switched from at 6 arcane is 9 seconds. at 4 arcane it’s 10 seconds, at 2 arcane it’s 11 seconds, 0 arcane, 12 seconds which is base.

It used to be more dramatic. 15s base, about 8-9 (I think I remember 8.5) seconds at 30 points in arcane, every 5 points was about a full second of reduced recharge. Has about half the potency now. Not nearly so vital.

The Great Al.2546:

Devildoc.6721:

The Great Al.2546:

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

No, please, just stop, just stop right now. It’s a MISERABLE idea. Hearts are terrible, having them be repeatable to unlock the vendor again is just an awful idea.

I reiterate

This is the absolute WORST idea I have EVER read on these forums or seen in chat, or on any other forums or boards, it’s TERRIBLE.

Hearts are by far the worst content in the game.

They were only added for World of Warcraft zombies who are used to quests and quest hubs. Just stop. Hearts are a compromise, a tutorial, not a fundamental part of the Guild Wars 2 formula. I for one am glad by Orr they are gone and in Southsun and Drytop they’re gone. I wish they could have removed them from all zones over level 25, because they are miserable to do. When I go through doing world completion I do all the exploration and skill challenges first usually, and end up postponing doing hearts for another time because they’re so awfully boring. If anything remove hearts from some zones, don’t make them repeatable.

The steps to complete a heart aren’t much different or less interesting than the escort events, or events where you stand in a red circle, etc. If the rewards are equivalent then how is it such an awful idea to expand the things that you can do in a zone after completion?

What makes events is the fact that everyone in the area is doing them TOGETHER. Hearts everyone is doing their own personal progress, fighting over water buckets and worm holes and all other crap. Keep the competition to PVP, don’t give us more reasons to hate our neighbors, if you want to squabble over quest objectives with the guy next to you there are dozens of other games that do that.

BCWardens.8679:

+1 on Hard/Heroic Mode.

Reset Hearts – if you choose to – make all mobs on each map level 80-84, with more vets and elites – better loot.

Hard mode would be great, resetting hearts no. By that point we don’t need another tutorial on where to find events, we could just do them.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

the DE system and WvW are by far the best aspects of GW2, I say do it. They capture this essence of working together with all the players around you to accomplish a goal, you might not even know the ally next to you but you’re working together in “jolly cooperation”

In fact hearts take away from this feel as people are competing over things to click on to advance their heart progress, they get in arguments, call each other names, etc. It’s a bad system that frankly should be discontinued as soon as possible in the world. Don’t make any more, that’s for sure. Events lack that competition as you have no “personal progress” on the event and as long as you’re helping out, you’re going to get credit, it’s all cooperative, it’s all helping each other out, ressing that downed guy you don’t even know or killing the mob near him so he can rally, people throwing down healing fields and CC. DE’s and WvW do this very well, in fact they are the reason that I continue to play at all. It’s certainly not living story, but because no other game makes you feel like you’re playing WITH all the people around you so well. Everything still has nodes to fight over and kill stealing and quest objective stealing. People of your same faction on your server aren’t allies they’re an explicit oriface of people’s bodies who steal things from under you. GW2 everyone’s truly on the same side.

I’m going to make this really plain and simple and clear for all the ex-WoW zombies out there.

The “dead world” aspect only applies to mid level zones. It’s a side effect of having a level based system and zones with discrete level ranges. It happens in every MMO, and the same braindead zombies keep asking for more level cap increases, which doesn’t EXPAND content it replaces it, as now the old high level zones that people ran around in become ghost towns like the other mid level zones.

There are a lot of people running around in Orr, Southsun, Dry Top, and Frostgorge, at all times, doing events, farming mats, killing champions. Because that’s going to give level appropriate mats and rewards.

if you raise the level cap to 100, all those zones will be dead.

Making hearts repeatable won’t change that fundamental rule, that mid level zones are dead.

The Great Al.2546:

If hearts had better rewards the second/third/fourth time around, I don’t see why this would be a problem. Better yet, each time you get map completion on a zone, the zone resets and you get better rewards for each heart and event you do afterwards.

No, please, just stop, just stop right now. It’s a MISERABLE idea. Hearts are terrible, having them be repeatable to unlock the vendor again is just an awful idea.

I reiterate

This is the absolute WORST idea I have EVER read on these forums or seen in chat, or on any other forums or boards, it’s TERRIBLE.

Hearts are by far the worst content in the game.

They were only added for World of Warcraft zombies who are used to quests and quest hubs. Just stop. Hearts are a compromise, a tutorial, not a fundamental part of the Guild Wars 2 formula. I for one am glad by Orr they are gone and in Southsun and Drytop they’re gone. I wish they could have removed them from all zones over level 25, because they are miserable to do. When I go through doing world completion I do all the exploration and skill challenges first usually, and end up postponing doing hearts for another time because they’re so awfully boring. If anything remove hearts from some zones, don’t make them repeatable.

Arghore.8340:

tl;dr, Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

---

The combination of Hearts and Dynamic events was one of the things I looked most forward to when GW2 was announced, to me it was one of the big selling points and a step away from the traditional ‘pick-up quests -> do quests -> turn in -> rince -> repeat’.

We all (well most of us at least) know that the Hearts were added due to people not entirely comprehending the DE’s. We have been ‘conditioned’ so much by the traditional way of questing that ‘things just happening’ was such a turn in our gaming experience that it was hard to grasp. The thing with ‘conditioning’ is, that it is very hard to just turn it around, sure you may be able to use hearts to steer every character to level up enough that they make it to level 80. But what about after that…

This is something that I noticed about my own behaviour, I somehow still do not ‘go out’ to do DE’s … for some reason they do not offer some sort of ‘hey go here’ kind of thing, like quests with !-NPCs used to do. And seeing I’ve come to understand that if I myself think or do something, that it is not unlikely that there are others with the same thought or behaviour…

This lead to think about what could entice me to actually ‘DO’ go out into the world, and what I liked when i first started. Well these were the hearts, as I ventured into the game I moved towards hearts, and while doing so I ran into events. After a couple of hearts (and knowing somewhat how they worked) I tended to also hang around the hearts after completion just to see if something would start off of it. This made the ‘living world’ feel rather easy to pick up on, and it felt rather natural…

Yet, after I completed all the hearts, hmm well, it just felt that there was little incentive to go back out and hunt DE’s. It may be weird, but that is how conditioning works, it cultivates a certain behaviour that is very hard to break, you may be able to coach into some sort of other behaviour, but if you remove the incentive trigger, it’s very likely you lapse back into your previous behaviour. The hearts basically functioned like the well known ‘quest hubs’ we know from more traditional games, and once they were done, it just felt like ‘I was done’…

So this made me realise that in order to revitalize the game, the trigger for going out should be reset. Which means: Make the hearts reset every month, visually put a green outline on them to signal ‘map completion’, but empty the centre to indicate the heart can be redone. Then add X heart events to the Monthly completion list, and add Y hearts to dailies.

I think this will cause a lot of players to venture out into the world do hearts, and consequently run into events, and by doing so revitalizing the game world, and improve the gaming experience.

what do you think? do you miss incentive to just go out into the world to do events? do you think this could solve part of it? any other thoughts?

This is possibly the worst idea I’ve ever read. Sorry but it’s just bad. People aren’t going to come back and do the worst content in the entire game (hearts) for a silver or two every month. As it is you ONLY do hearts for world completion.

As it is I wish hearts had never been added. They’re MIND NUMBINGLY BORING. God I hate doing them for map/world completion as it is.

You know, the thing is, GW1 gifts were exciting to get because there was a whole economy around minipets, people bought unopened gifts, and there were very valuable minipets out there.

Now minipets are mainly bought through the gemstore, which wasn’t the greatest decision out there because they had to do other things for birthday gifts instead.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Devildoc.6721:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Devildoc.6721:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

narwhalsbend.7059:

Dragons were a ploy in the writing anyway. I want the writers that worked on GW1.

Funnily enough, many of the writers are the same for both games. =)

Unfortunately the main writer for GW2 did NOT work on GW1. Making all sorts of mistakes on how GW1 lore is treated, etc.

Really!

Bobby Stein is the Guild Wars 2 Lead Writer. Before joining ArenaNet in 2005 he wrote preview and strategy pieces for Xbox.com and Nintendo Power, crewed on television shows like 48 Hours, and spent a few years on a Wall St. trading floor. When he’s not busy obsessing over dialogue scripts or voice-over files he spends his time growing an epic moustache. He is also not Mel Tormé.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bobby_Stein

Bobby Stein, Writing Team Lead, graduated from Rutgers University in 1996 with a degree in film. Before coming to ArenaNet, he wrote preview and strategy content for Xbox.com and Microsoft Game Studios as well as Nintendo Power magazine and Nintendo Official Player’s Guides.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bobby_Stein

I’m talking about Angel McCoy, who’s the lead behind living story if I’m not mistaken.

Well, Angel McCoy’s title is Narrative Designer. I’m not sure she is the Lead, considering Bobby has that title. Also, she has been with ArenaNet since 2007, thus possibly writing for Eye of the North, Guild Wars: Beyond, Guild Wars Bonus Mission Pack, etc. I suppose we would need her to corroborate that particular fact. =)

no, she didn’t though, she wrote some guidebook for GW1 lore/atlas that was never published or used.

Bobby Stein I don’t think is actually writing the living story he’s the writing team leader as far as I know he’s more the guy in charge, delegating assignments to other people, rather than writing stuff himself.

scerevisiae.1972:

Devildoc.6721:

4+ water and 4+ arcane are not at all mandatory

mandatory if you want to be good i meant. you can run 1/1/1/1/1 if you like, doesn’t disprove the point.

depends on game mode, and I’d argue that you have to be better than “good” to rely less on passive defenses from increased health from speccing higher into water.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

ipan.4356:

2 years is a long time for an MMO not to release anything.

I think you are mistaken. We have released content and features in the last two years on a fairly regular basis. Just because the content and/or features were things that you personally did not particularly care for doesn’t mean we didn’t release anything.

Please don’t trivialize the efforts of our design and development staff down to “nothing” because you didn’t like it. It’s fine to comment that you didn’t care for what was released, but don’t pretend like we’ve done nothing here for the past two years.

Just some food for thought, if you work really hard, (on, seriously your filters need work) something going the direction you’ve chosen for the game to go, and your customers are considering it “nothing”, maybe you’re going the wrong direction.

Maybe when interviewers are asking about things like GvG, Precursor crafting, and new dungeons your guys shouldn’t blow them off and say your focus is living story.

Remember, by this time, GW1 had had 2 full campaigns with an expansion on the way in about 6 months.

The original Arenanet vision for GW1 was frequent new CAMPAIGNS, standalone, and then in 2007 you changed direction and decided a new game was in order, and GW1 wouldn’t be getting its frequent campaigns, okay fine, we were on board for that, new game, legacy players would be rewarded in the new game, etc.

But I’ll tell you those players had the expectations that GW2 would have a similar content structure to GW1, with frequent campaign releases.

Here we’re 2 years out and we’re just now getting a new permanent landscape zone, our first since southsun, which came out just a few months after launch.

We’re still on the same continent.

Still have the same classes, races, weapons

Still have the same dungeons except a modified path of Twilight Arbor.

Still have all precursors sourced from RNG drops or mystic forge.

Took a year and a half to get a second game mode in PVP

Still no GVG

tigirius.9014:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

tigirius.9014:

Campaigns and here’s why. Shorter development times, quicker content and feature updates, infusion of new cash to bring even more content.

BUT as in all things, before they can even start on that they seriously need to fix all of the glaring problems this game has had in open world PVE.

A Campaign is a stand-alone game with its own starter areas, own economy, own maps, etc. Why would that involve shorter development times, quicker content and feature updates, etc?

That’s actually not how I define a campaign. I Legacy of Romulus was a campaign for STO, it wasn’t large enough to be an expansion, but with the infusion of cash it required, many of the problems of the game were cured in the process and the game was immensely improved.

Just as Tyranny of Dragons is a campaign for NWO, it’s just big enough to be fun last a few months until the next campaign, it can happen in 3 month intervals 4 times a year or 4 month intervals 3 times a year.

BTW both are still about 3-5 times bigger and more impactful than LS1 or LS2 in this title.

We’re defining campaign by how it was done in Guild Wars.

Your personal definition is meaningless in this context.

A campaign is an entirely different story, with an entirely different questline/missions, set in a new continent with new zones, with the ability to level a new character from scratch in the new continent, or take an existing character over and go through the missions, and it was also possible to not even buy the prior campaign but just buy the new campaign if you wished, they were standalone.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Devildoc.6721:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

narwhalsbend.7059:

Dragons were a ploy in the writing anyway. I want the writers that worked on GW1.

Funnily enough, many of the writers are the same for both games. =)

Unfortunately the main writer for GW2 did NOT work on GW1. Making all sorts of mistakes on how GW1 lore is treated, etc.

Really!

Bobby Stein is the Guild Wars 2 Lead Writer. Before joining ArenaNet in 2005 he wrote preview and strategy pieces for Xbox.com and Nintendo Power, crewed on television shows like 48 Hours, and spent a few years on a Wall St. trading floor. When he’s not busy obsessing over dialogue scripts or voice-over files he spends his time growing an epic moustache. He is also not Mel Tormé.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bobby_Stein

Bobby Stein, Writing Team Lead, graduated from Rutgers University in 1996 with a degree in film. Before coming to ArenaNet, he wrote preview and strategy content for Xbox.com and Microsoft Game Studios as well as Nintendo Power magazine and Nintendo Official Player’s Guides.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Bobby_Stein

I’m talking about Angel McCoy, who’s the lead behind living story if I’m not mistaken.

4+ water and 4+ arcane are not at all mandatory

I run 2 water, 2 arcane.

I’m 6/4/0/2/2 persisting flames

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

narwhalsbend.7059:

Dragons were a ploy in the writing anyway. I want the writers that worked on GW1.

Funnily enough, many of the writers are the same for both games. =)

Unfortunately the main writer for GW2 did NOT work on GW1. Making all sorts of mistakes on how GW1 lore is treated, etc.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

Would you prefer a Campaign over an Expansion?

To start let me explain the two, slightly different terms in GuildWars franchise. Expansion is an add-on to the current Story-arc. If we look in the future we can see Expansions via Living Story. What this means is that they’re actively expanding Tyria (continent) by focusing the fights on battling different Elder Dragons.

But so far we haven’t heard about any Dragons awaken in Cantha and Elona. Bubbles is only mentioned as the one who cut the naval path between Tyria and Cantha, while Kralkatorrik is resident at the Tyrian part of the Crystal Desert.

With this in mind, would you prefer a Campaign, that sets up new plots and twists in Cantha and Elona prior to putting Elder Dragons back to sleep?
Would you be ok with a new threat that would be introduced with a new Campaign and still join Tyrians battle the Dragons?

I was just thinking about this yesterday, when we were discussing the concept of a potential expansion, and what I’d really rather have, is an entirely new campaign, where it’s possible to level up a new character of say Canthan heritage with Canthan face options, Tengu as a new race, maybe a new profession (the return of ritualists maybe), in new zones. I’d prefer that over a level cap raise.

GW1 did it right, campaigns blew expansions of other MMO’s out of the water.

TehPwnerer.7215:

Guess you can’t please everyone. Character slots were on sale and obviously they want you to buy more and make more characters. I have about 20 of these scrolls from last year, as any character I had was already past level 20 by the time I hit the first year birthday.

I’m surprised the birthday vendor is even in the game though considering she offers nothing.

Well I’m going to say what has to be said here.

Why would you keep making more and more characters. Any more than say 8 (one of each class) is kind of a waste. Maybe you might have 1 or so duplicate of a particular class for whatever reason (I had one particular reason, maybe someone else has another reason) but in general, people make about 1 per class. You can change builds at any time so you don’t need multiple characters of the same class to do different builds, the only real possible difference is characters of the same class but different race if for whatever reason (like I had) you couldn’t stand a certain race/class combo but since you can’t racechange you’re stuck with either deleting or making a duplicate. That is literally it.

That said no matter what you do you’re going to get more level 20 scrolls than you will ever be able to use. Even if you made your first 5 characters at launch and then never played them, waiting a year to get the level 20 scrolls. Now you have 5 level 20 scrolls and use them, 2nd birthday comes around 5 more level 20 scrolls, you make 5 more characters and level them to 20, now when those 5 characters turn 1, and 2, they’ll spawn 10 more level 20 scrolls, which you can’t use. Buy 10 more character slots, go ahead, level them all up to 20, now you have 20 character slots, which is a lot of duplicates, in fact it’s more than 2 of every class. Those 10 characters will spawn 20 level 20 scrolls over the next 2 years, you make 20 more character slots for a total of 40 characters (who would have time to play them?) and level them to 20. In 2 more years, you’ll spawn another 40 level 20 scrolls. You buy the last 24 character slots to max out your account. You still have excess scrolls and those last 24 character slots will spawn even more level 20 scrolls.

If you only got level 20 scrolls on your first birthday it’s theoretically possible though highly unlikely you’ll be able to use them all, most likely people will use a couple of them and the rest go to waste.

Receiving more level 20 scrolls on your second birthday just generates waste and you’d never not even theoretically be able to use them all, it’s impossible.

Yeah I’m not complaining about the birthday boosters, those are always nice, or the 5 skillpoint scrolls, or the birthday blaster, those are fine. I’m just saying, level 20 scrolls seem poorly thought out considering you should have enough from your first year birthday to get your entire account to level 20 and still have extras, that and not letting them stack. I mean I don’t want to throw them away just in case anet changes them somehow, but as of right now, they’re useless.

biofrog.1568:

I’ve never key farmed, but if you have excess scrolls you will never use then why not give yourselves a few very easy speed-runs with an instant level 20 character completing personal story to level 10? :-)

Well the problem with that, is actually the way downscaling works. If you normally keyfarm on a level 1 character with level 1 gear set aside for keyfarming.. if you boost up to level 20, you’re a level 20 character with level 1 gear. You end up doing a lot less damage than a level 5 using level 1 gear.

Ayrilana.1396:

They have various level scrolls in the game now. Whether they’re available, who knows.

The 2 year birthday scrolls are also level 20. as if you couldn’t level your entire account’s sub level 20 characters on year 1 birthday scrolls.

Blazinflames.8415:

Devildoc.6721:

Ulion.5476:

Alot of ways to get vulnerability so you can passively stack it in some groups. I am curious how much damage fiery rushes leap will do now that it is 140% more damage. It could be the hardest hitting ele skill now and it has a 10s cd. Thinking it may be in the 6-10k crit damage range.

considering it hits for about 3.5-4k now, I’d say 6k is a reasonable estimate, but not 10k.

You do realise that if it does 3.5-4k now it will be doing 140% more damage after the patch and not just 40% more? It actualy will be doing more damage then churning earth making it our strongest attack and the second most powerfull attack in the entire game (after killshot) on a short cooldown and even without a channel. Imagine this in the hands of a ranger who can buff it with another 75% and the 25 vulnerability stacks from the new lightning storm.

The numbers I saw being dealt in the video wasn’t anywhere close. I’m going to say 6k still.

BlackBeard.2873:

Tornado will be boss with the new lightning rod. Every 3s has a knockback (one proc) and using the rock-throw skill will proc another diable (another proc). It will be pretty yolo, but lots of damage!

it’ll still do less damage than meteor shower. Not worth the risk.

Ulion.5476:

Alot of ways to get vulnerability so you can passively stack it in some groups. I am curious how much damage fiery rushes leap will do now that it is 140% more damage. It could be the hardest hitting ele skill now and it has a 10s cd. Thinking it may be in the 6-10k crit damage range.

considering it hits for about 3.5-4k now, I’d say 6k is a reasonable estimate, but not 10k.

Dirame.8521:

Mbelch.9028:

One thing I did miss was the Glyph of elemental storm seems to be overpowered now.

• This glyph which creates a storm in a location can stack 25 stacks of vulnerability now for each hit on a target that stands inside it.
• Each different storm gets a different condition, water just seems the most overpowered.

Yeah, think nuking some zergs from above with staff with all the + % dmg traits taken.

And then get destroyed by retal? Also Conjure Weapons already do 2 of the 4 things that the Glyph of Storms does.

Devildoc.6721:

2 out of 3 elites neutered. FGS might still be worthwhile for whirl and firestorm., and for the fact that the other 2 elites are really bad, Glyph is only useful for soloing and spawning a tank, Tornado was only useful for upping meteor damage.

Will anyone use tornado after the change? Ever? I really can’t see myself doing it. Maybe on the way to defending or capping a Lord’s room it can push people out so it isn’t challenged. But that’s it.

It could possibly be used for shooting out bursts of lightning because those hit for a good amount of damage. Add sigil of air, fire and the new and improved Lightning Rod and you’ve got yourself a nice little nukage form.

You can do so much more damage not using tornado though, tornado lightning bolts do at tops 4k or so, and that’s once every 3s. Lava font can do more than that and it pulses every 1s and doesn’t make you defenseless while you’re using it.

only time I ever used earth signet prior to this was in GvG zerg skirmishes where the tactic was to target the enemy elementalist and spam them with immobilizes and they drop like a stone.

since I’m not a condition person… probably still going to be the only time I ever might use it.

Xillllix.3485:

I came to the conclusion over a year ago, when they nerfed mist form and the ele traits that they have no clue how to balance the classes. This is the hardest class to play and all we get are tons of nerfs and a few useless buffs.

Moa form: Death Sentence for the targeted
Tornado: useless in 99% of the situation

Oh, but it’s “AoE”. Like that makes a useless skill more useful.

You should have come to that conclusion years ago when the SAME ANET EMPLOYEE “balanced” a skill by just taking it completely out of play. That same guy is now lead developer.

nearlight.3064:

Devildoc.6721:

Solo.9027:

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

The fury/swiftness from zephyr’s boon was halved a while back.

As to the changes, i’m glad ascended gear is account bound is all I can say. I will probably finally make a mesmer with this years birthday gift.

Mesmer is my second main, so I am actually 100% happy with the changes they’re getting. Still don’t see myself going a scepter condition build but I do think it’ll be an excellent option.

Excellent option? If you just want to master a build in a less than a day and faceroll most things you come across, then yeah its an excellent option. I’m disgusted by people jumping on the bandwagon of the most cancerous and forgiving of mistakes spec in the game. Even condition ranger with its new mightstacking will take more of a pulse to win than that build.

Why don’t people see the fluidity and complexity of challenging builds as desireable anymore?

I just said I wasn’t going for a scepter build, I love sword/focus and sword/sword and sword/pistol too much to go conditions.

I just said it’d be a viable build compared to before.

Also I did forget about mimic, not really sure if I really “like” that change, I didn’t really use mimic before because it was such a niche skill, but the new mimic… I don’t know.. why would I use it over arcane thievery?

Solo.9027:

Mbelch.9028:

-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.

The fury/swiftness from zephyr’s boon was halved a while back.

As to the changes, i’m glad ascended gear is account bound is all I can say. I will probably finally make a mesmer with this years birthday gift.

Mesmer is my second main, so I am actually 100% happy with the changes they’re getting. Still don’t see myself going a scepter condition build but I do think it’ll be an excellent option.

Mbelch.9028:

LightningBlaze.4913:

Glyph of storm does not stack 25 vul per hit. On zerg, gvg, pve and in spvp, this utility will be very useful.

I agree with nearlight. the continuous buff to low risk high reward builds is absurd. There will definitely be a lot of forum rage against the torment stacking mesmer meta coming lol. Also, look out for more bunker eles with that water element elite and a signet bunker condition ele. Yet once again scepter and focus are left in the dark unless all the buffs were not covered on the ready up episodes. In short bunker and condition builds are still meta.

@Celestina – I also agree with you. In terms of pve and wvw zerging to take away something that worked so well most be heartbreaking for players that find it hard to adapt to changes.

Yeah it definitely doesn’t stack to 25 per hit it hits 2 stacks per hit. I hope what I wrote didn’t come off that way.

I’m also not sure if you are in line or not with the torment rage, but I’m a member of the torment rage group.

I can’t believe they want more condis on auto attacks. It is ridiculous to me. And torment was the worst addition to the game in my opinion.

Lightning storm will be excellent against large targets like world bosses though, it WILL stack 25 vuln on those.

I do wonder if those conditions will apply to the conjured weapons versions.

Belorn.2659:

Comparing static field with an aoe skill that hits 5 targets once every second makes me wonder if that person ever used either skill.

If it worked as a static field that moves, it would be a great skill. Unlimited targets, unblockable, constant hitting on edge, static fields radius which is about twice that of tornado.

Sure, make me that skill and I consider using it.

Yeah the key thing about static field is it stops people in their tracks, where all the other damaging aoes are going off, knocking them OUT of those aoes, is not really helping.

Static, frozen ground, unsteady ground positioned right, and a pro targeted shockwave that ends up running through multiple people and rooting them is much more valuable than tornado, because it slows them down or immobilizes them so they get hit by all the big bombs and the hammer train.

Celestina.2894:

Devildoc.6721:

The problem with you guys justifying the changes is that you completely ignore that the elite is now not useful for any real purpose, the only purpose being launching off a cliff, which is so niche you will probably never slot it, maybe after a hard won fight in a Lord’s room you might think “hind sight I should have used tornado to push everyone out of the circle so we could cap easier”

But it’ll all be hindsight. Because almost every time you’ll have FGS slotted as an escape weapon instead

Oh I’ll agree with tornado being useless now (the fact that it was only good for a bug that needed to be fix is a problem) , I just am tired of people kittening and crying like ele is dead now.

No, Ele as a class is still good, it’s just our elites that are bad now.

actually though.. when I first played Ele in beta and at launch, my thoughts were: “Ele is a great versatile class, a bit too squishy and doesn’t deal enough damage vs a warrior to really offset it, but it is more fun than warrior, but man, do the elites suck”

I used glyph of elements because well, the other elites seemed not worthwhile. Tornado usually ended up getting you downed, and FGS was only useful for escapes, you could do more damage by using your regular weapons and utilities than you could with FGS, and I thought what Ele needed was a big damage nuke.

Then a guildmate told me that Tornado gave you a ridiculous amount of power, and to use meteor, then Tornado, there was one big damage nuke.

Then another guildmate told me to untarget a boss against a wall and fiery rush straight into it, there was another big damage nuke, so for a time, The general lacking of the skills was masked by the fact that they had “unintended” quirks that made them useful.

Now those are being removed and I’m again left with the opinion that Ele is a strong versatile class, that is perhaps a little underwhelming in damage compared to how squishy it is compared to warrior, that has garbage elites.

So now that those “unintended uses” are going to be gone, maybe the underlying underwhelming functionality of the skills needs to be looked at.

FGS does less damage than fire attunement on a staff, with the exception of fiery whirl against a wall and fiery rush against a wall, all 5 skills, even firestorm, underperform compared to fireball, lava font, and meteor shower if you’re not doing it against a wall.

Tornado, even worse.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

Believe it or not, PvE is not the only game mode. This got a bit stronger as a skill in PvP and WvW. Bonus: no more exploitative stupidly large hits. I mean, it’s a static field that moves! That means if allies in WvW leap through it, they daze people! Tons of vuln will go out with this skill too. Overall, I like this change. Fair and interesting.

Uh, in WvW, using Tornado is a huge risk. You become the biggest target on the field, and you’re the squishiest class in the game. Generally if I use Tornado in a zerg fight, I’m anticipating that I will be downed, so I will only use it in a Lord’s room in a tower, where I have a chance of doing some good knocking people off the tower, possibly killing them to rally.

Also in a zerg fight, it’s not good to launch people uncontrollably all over the place, you’re knocking them out of necro and ele aoes and out of the hammer train, while doing very paltry damage in return.

DeceiverX.8361:

Devildoc.6721:

Wyrden.4713:

Devildoc.6721:

Know what’s funny? Even with the nerf FGS is the best Elite. Firestorm and whirl are still good, and Rush and whirl will make it good as an escape tool in wvw.

Either way it’s by far better than Tornado, and Glyph of Elementals (unless you’re soloing, then Glyph is okay)

the glyph gets a nice buff tho, the elemental will have a 6 k heal on demand

In group content your elemental gets absolutely demolished, so no, not all that useful.

It can’t dodge, and scaled bosses/dungeon bosses do really high damage that pretty much is dodge or die.

Welcome to being a ranger, except that’s your class mechanic and they plan on doing nothing about fixing it :\

I feel for you there, I really do, that’s the #1 reason I don’t play ranger.

Mesmer involves a lot of NPC’s as well too but at least phantasms are on fairly short cooldowns.

The problem with you guys justifying the changes is that you completely ignore that the elite is now not useful for any real purpose, the only purpose being launching off a cliff, which is so niche you will probably never slot it, maybe after a hard won fight in a Lord’s room you might think “hind sight I should have used tornado to push everyone out of the circle so we could cap easier”

But it’ll all be hindsight. Because almost every time you’ll have FGS slotted as an escape weapon instead

Mbelch.9028:

Xillllix.3485:

They can’t balance the elementalist at all and as usual they just break it more:

“Hey were gonna make meteors have a big fat huge red circles so that now everyone will jump out of it before the first meteor hit the ground after 3 seconds. "
- “Yay thank you”

“We’re also gonna make your 2 most useful traits cost 2 more points each for the sake of build diversity.”
- “Yay thank you”, we replied again

“We’re also going to nerf your mobility with daggers by 50%.”
- “amazing”, we said (/sarcasm)

“Oh and you cant no longer heal conditions in mist form or do anything beside run away”
- “Right….” (and we thought, wtf is that balance team doing?)

“Oh and remember that tornado useless skill that you’ve been using to bump up your damage because your so squishy you have to puts all your points in defence?”
- “yeah…” (gosh please don’t do that again)

“Well, we prefer when it was totally useless”
(player base gone for good) No more replies

This is heavily over-exaggerated. I feel like ele is in a great spot (minus celestial/strength runes) and it is only becoming more well rounded.

-Meteornado was OP.
-Mistform heal was OP with no counter play.
-I don’t know how our mobility was cut by 50%, the max speed buff is +33% and eles aren’t moving -17% slower than other classes currently, so I call BS.
-The trait motions were definitely a heavy handed nerf which I disagreed with.
-All aoe gets circles. This was a necessary balance change. Deal with it.

The problem with meteornado being removed from play is that it makes the elite entirely useless. Meteornado was the only reason people used Tornado at all. Yeah you can launch people, but you’re not doing very much damage during that time so you’re kind of wasting that cc.

New meta build coming through!

Wyrden.4713:

Devildoc.6721:

Know what’s funny? Even with the nerf FGS is the best Elite. Firestorm and whirl are still good, and Rush and whirl will make it good as an escape tool in wvw.

Either way it’s by far better than Tornado, and Glyph of Elementals (unless you’re soloing, then Glyph is okay)

the glyph gets a nice buff tho, the elemental will have a 6 k heal on demand

In group content your elemental gets absolutely demolished, so no, not all that useful.

It can’t dodge, and scaled bosses/dungeon bosses do really high damage that pretty much is dodge or die.

Know what’s funny? Even with the nerf FGS is the best Elite. Firestorm and whirl are still good, and Rush and whirl will make it good as an escape tool in wvw.

Either way it’s by far better than Tornado, and Glyph of Elementals (unless you’re soloing, then Glyph is okay)

You can camp fire if you use staff, with Fire XI and VII you make lava font have 100% uptime, and it’s a high damage fire field, so if you’re just doing damage, camping fire is fine. If you need to use control or heals though, you still need to switch.

2 out of 3 elites neutered. FGS might still be worthwhile for whirl and firestorm., and for the fact that the other 2 elites are really bad, Glyph is only useful for soloing and spawning a tank, Tornado was only useful for upping meteor damage.

Will anyone use tornado after the change? Ever? I really can’t see myself doing it. Maybe on the way to defending or capping a Lord’s room it can push people out so it isn’t challenged. But that’s it.

My bad, it’s been 6 years according to http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon_%28PvP%29

almost exactly 6 years.

This skill was modified in the August 21st, 2008 update to effectively remove it from PvP. In a Developer update, ArenaNet stated, “We recognize that the changes to this skill will essentially remove it from play. In the future, we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of this skill that would be viable but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.”

It has never received changes that make it a viable skill, ever. They just removed the skill from play and called it good.

The only reasons to use Tornado as it is currently are:

#1: To boost power on a meteor shower you just finished casting to get 5 digit numbers
#2: To throw players off a small platform on top of towers, garrisons, and cliffs in WvW or PVP

Reason #1 is going away entirely

Leaving only reason #2, which is a VERY specific niche.

Most people will not opt to use the elite skill at all now.

It makes you into a large target (yes, you have stability but you are still the class with the least armor naturally and lowest health naturally), that cannot use heals or utility skills(meaning it gets worn down quickly and doesn’t have things like arcane shield and lightning flash to protect it), and is easy to chill or cripple to render into a sitting duck, and its damage is periodic, and it has no real skills to use, just ways to alter what kind of damage is done periodically. You can do WAY more damage not using this skill and doing damage faster than once every 3s as well.

Unless there’s a cliff that a player can go splat off of, what’s the point of Tornado now? It has 0 point in PVE since you can’t shove mobs off cliffs.

Funny that the guy who balanced “Smiter’s Boon” is the main guy balancing skills in GW2.

How long has that been sir? 7 years now of effectively removing a skill from play?

Ascimator.6735:

Why do people think they are entitled to have a legendary? All I see is “anet gibe precursors NOW omg they r greedy and want us to pay!!1”.

It’s not that really, it’s that it’s really not fun or rewarding that the only source of precursors is currently RNG.

Yes you may save up an exorbitant amount of money to pay someone else for getting lucky with RNG, but that precursor still came from blind luck.

Now that we have ascended crafting and we’re doing these Living Story backpieces, those are more fun to work towards. Building the other components of a legendary is grindy and a long term goal, but fun, you have to do a little bit of every type of content that GW2 offers (with the exceptions of SPVP/TPVP, and Fractals). You have to do dungeons, WvW, world boss events, max out crafting, explore the world, and do some mystic forging and gain a lot of skillpoints through playing a lot. That’s what we want out of legendaries, something that involves playing all aspects of GW2. Though maybe I’d understand not having SPVP/TPVP involved, if you want to keep it competitive instead of flooding it with rabbits all trying for their legendary components.

But fractals should be a part of any precursor building system, since that’s not part of the current legendaries, fractals and components like the new mawdry backpiece.. where you get pieces and then have to upgrade them by going to a place in the world, like, the end of a jumping puzzle, in a mini dungeon, or at a world event That I do like.

biggs.4702:

Devildoc.6721:

There needs to be a special circle of the underworld dedicated to the dev who decided it’d be a SWELL idea to micromanage scruffy between follow and defend modes. It was obnoxious and janky to switch him mid combat with enemies that dropped half your health in a single hit, which good luck dodging while you have the dialogue box opened up blocking half your screen.

Couldn’t we have had it make sense like every other NPC helper throughout the entire game.. where it defends you when you enter combat on its own?

Don’t bother with defend mode. Since when EVER has an NPC in this game shown any real intelligence or capability in this regard? As soon as I saw that option I was like “NOPE. Fight ’em all myself, thanks.”

The point isn’t the instance itself, the point is they throw this mechanic at you and didn’t do a very good job of it. That’s what I’m criticizing, and that’s what I think could have been done a hell of a lot better.

Khisanth.2948:

Devildoc.6721:

AntiSaneity.3628:

How is this even something to complain about? Less than a second to switch him between modes, done. Sohrd.

It’s a janky interface to do while in combat. You basically say “screw having the NPC that’s supposed to help you actually help, I’ll just kill them myself”

So basically the same as every other NPC “helper” in the game.

The other NPC helpers automatically defend if you’re in combat. Hell, Kasmeer spams time warp pretty much.