Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Honestly there’s a very simple reason I voted Kiel, and it has nothing to do with who I liked more:
The amount of crazy “Omg omg omg Abaddon, GW1 iz liek best garme ev0r, vote Evon nubbs, kitten Kiel”-posts on the forums kitten ed me off.GW1 wasn’t the rose-tinted version you now remember. Abaddon was a weak lore element. In fact, humans are – as always – a rather boring race in this MMO, and it’s predecessor suffered from being locked into them.
I didn’t dislike Evon.
I dislike you, the slobbering GW1 fanboi!
What do you mean GW1 wasn’t the rose tinted vision I now “remember”? I still play GW1 from time to time and still enjoy it.
Frankly GW1 had better storytelling and writing than GW2. No Angel McCoy.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
We waited 4 months for this and what we got is sadly underwhelming. This is the fractal and the story which the developers had claimed to be at par with the Fall of Abaddon?
I just can’t see how this fractal is interesting in any level. The story is bad, once again we get more boring badly written Trahearne 2.0 aka Scarlet and no dragons. The whole level design isn’t compelling or amazing at all.
What makes it even worse is that we were told this fractal was worth it and that it would surprise. This is sad and a lost opportunity for us to see more about the dragons and be surprised in a positive way by Anet.
This is a let down, as soon as I finished the story fractal I turned off the PC and I don’t know when I’ll feel compelled to try it again, it is just a materialization of the bad parts of the LS all condensed in one update, without even mentioning the re-skinned cultural armor.
:(
I tried to warn you that dragons would not be involved at all, at most a mention in the dialogue as “dragon minions” or “dragon energy”, and that it would be an Inquest focused fractal, but Kiel supporters had their heads in the sand.
And you think that Abaddon fall wouldnt be caused by Scarlet, huh?
Lets face the fact here, Abaddon fractal would be the same as Reactor when Anet would be done whit it.
Abbadon’s fall was over 1300 years ago.
Sylvari did not exist.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
We waited 4 months for this and what we got is sadly underwhelming. This is the fractal and the story which the developers had claimed to be at par with the Fall of Abaddon?
I just can’t see how this fractal is interesting in any level. The story is bad, once again we get more boring badly written Trahearne 2.0 aka Scarlet and no dragons. The whole level design isn’t compelling or amazing at all.
What makes it even worse is that we were told this fractal was worth it and that it would surprise. This is sad and a lost opportunity for us to see more about the dragons and be surprised in a positive way by Anet.
This is a let down, as soon as I finished the story fractal I turned off the PC and I don’t know when I’ll feel compelled to try it again, it is just a materialization of the bad parts of the LS all condensed in one update, without even mentioning the re-skinned cultural armor.
:(
I tried to warn you that dragons would not be involved at all, at most a mention in the dialogue as “dragon minions” or “dragon energy”, and that it would be an Inquest focused fractal, but Kiel supporters had their heads in the sand.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
So this basically means 95% of PuGs will break up when they get the dredge fractal. Super
Anet needs to learn that if people are exploiting their mechanics, they’re probably not fun mechanics and that should be addressed.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I… I don’t know what to say…
::rubs nose bridge::
I finally agree with the Evon people. We should have voted for Abaddon.
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But of course Scarlet would have been responsible for that too.No, no. Thank YOU for voting for Kiel. If it wasn’t for you folks, Scarlet would’ve ruined Abbadon fractal. This is not sarcasm.
If they forced Scarlet on us in that one it’d be torches and pitchforks.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I hope there aren’t level cap raises. Level cap raises bring more problems than solutions.
They have to make level 85 greens have higher stats than level 80 ascendeds, and they have to make people’s power seemingly balloon in massive inflation of stats to make people feel like they’re “progressing”.
World of Warcraft has people running around with several hundred thousand HP doing 50,000 dps. The inflation is sickening.
SWTOR had a 5 level increase and people’s health and damage literally doubled.
Leveling serves just as a function as an extended tutorial. Once you’ve reached cap, there is no need for further tutorial.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
At least with the Abaddon fractal there wouldn’t be Scarlet.
Don’t bet on it
If they managed to put Scarlet in the fall of Abaddon and imply that she was the reason for Abaddon’s defiance, it’d be a reason to quit GW2 permanently.
Dear writing team: The best thing you could do is get her killed off and retconned out of the Thaumanova fractal, she’s not a good villain and all and if you really want to make it up to people, hand her creator a pink slip. The fact that even if she does die in the next living story she’s permanently in fractals is a mistake.
We thought Guild Wars 2 was going to be about Elder Dragons, not Mary Sue Sylvari, and so far we’ve had a Gary Stu AND Mary Sue Sylvari dominating the story of GW2.
We get it, you’re proud of your little plant elf race, but honestly I’m getting sick of them.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
It’s like Anet’s own version of Jennifer Brandes Hepler, the writer who helped ruin the Dragon Age franchise.
I’ll leave you all to fill in the blanks on the similarities.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I this what is called a win-win situation?
Not in my book. I doubt that after the amount of whining during and after the election, ANet will put anything up for public vote ever again. Which is a shame, in my opinion. The ability to help shape where the story goes was… a promising and exciting direction for the living story to take.
Polarizing the community and making people playing a game together angry at each other is not a good thing.
You want to create a cohesive, cooperative community in a game like this, people should at least be cohesive on their servers, let the rivalries be between server communities in WvW or perhaps guilds in GvG eventually. Competitive rivalries can be fun, but not political rivalries, not when future content is on the line.
This has been done in other games (and even TV series) and people didn’t feel polarized or at least acted a lot less poopy about it. Why it would work there and not in the GW2 community, I don’t know.
Because in this case they presented 2 possible content updates and told us one would get made the other would get scrapped.
Even in real politics the consequences of the election aren’t PERMANENT. A law put in place by one congress can be repealed later.
Here the consequence is permanent.
You will NEVER see the other option. It will remain as nothing but a wiki page and a few references in lore and GW1 dialogue.
You will NEVER see the crystal sea.
You will NEVER see the actual Gods while they still walked on Tyria.
It’s gone, and it’ll never happen.
Grats on more Scarlet.
At least with the Abaddon fractal there wouldn’t be Scarlet.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Hey guess what guys!
HUGE SHOCKER!
Scarlet is behind the reactor, not dragons, just like I predicted.
Good lord is this bad.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I this what is called a win-win situation?
Not in my book. I doubt that after the amount of whining during and after the election, ANet will put anything up for public vote ever again. Which is a shame, in my opinion. The ability to help shape where the story goes was… a promising and exciting direction for the living story to take.
Polarizing the community and making people playing a game together angry at each other is not a good thing.
You want to create a cohesive, cooperative community in a game like this, people should at least be cohesive on their servers, let the rivalries be between server communities in WvW or perhaps guilds in GvG eventually. Competitive rivalries can be fun, but not political rivalries, not when future content is on the line.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I mostly voted against RNG boxes, not for Thaumanova let alone against Abaddon.
I get that’s what you get when you ask for a vote for :
- some lore / story driven plot,
- an epic-sounding /not so epic new fractal,
- a poll of opinion on RNG boxes,
all in the same bulletin !Your vote “against the RNG boxes” doesn’t count you know, YOU may see Evon Gnashblade as a symbol of the BLTC and RNG boxes, but Arenanet does not. Evon Gnashblade is a fictional character, the person behind the BLTC has been doing RNG microtransactions for many years in Maplestory. Arenanet hired her because she’s very good at knowing what people will fork over real money for, and they’ve determined that people are addicted to gambling and will continue to buy RNG boxes for the chance at a skin despite the odds and despite spending hundreds of dollars on RNG boxes and getting nothing they want over and over again they still do it.
For every 10 people who refuse to buy even $5 in RNG boxes for something they want, there’s one person who spends $500 trying to get it, that’s a net profit in Anet’s eyes so they will continue to do it.
Your vote against a fictional character is laughably insignificant and does nothing but make people facepalm over your wasted votes.
You want to vote against RNG? Never buy gamble boxes, and SHAME people who do buy RNG boxes. If you see someone complaining about spending $40 on RNG boxes and not getting the skin, point out how much of an idiot they are for gambling away and just encouraging more RNG boxes.
RNG boxes in the cash shop will continue until there isn’t a market for them.
If you’re thinking “hold on, those idiots gambling are supporting Anet with their purchases, I shouldn’t shame them and discourage them from supporting Anet!” No, you should shame them for buying RNG boxes, you should encourage people supporting anet by buying things that are sold straight up in the gem shop like costumes, armors, infinite gathering tools, finishers, etc.
If you want to discourage RNG, you have to encourage monetization another way.
Well by that logic then Evon isn’t responsible for the Abaddon fractal as he isn’t the one designing it. All votes for that fractal don’t count.
The same can be made about Kiel as well.
Entirely different.
Voting against Gnashblade to vote against the concept of RNG boxes is stupid, as they are not actually tied together. It’s an abstraction to connect them together at all, more or less RNG boxes was not a part of either candidate’s “promises”
The fractals however, were directly connected to the candidates. A vote for Gnashblade was a vote for the Abbadon fractal. A vote for Kiel was a vote for the Inquest fractal.
If Gnashblade’s “promises” had been “If I’m voted for I’ll bring in more RNG boxes to the BLTC!” and Kiel’s promises had been “if I’m voted for, I’ll eliminate RNG boxes from the BLTC!” then maybe you’d have a point.
That’s like voting Obama to vote against having nuclear weapons. Neither candidate has promised to get rid of our stockpiles and both candidates will support having a sufficient Nuclear deterrent for national security. A vote for either candidate does not affect us having nuclear weapons at all.
Vote for the platform presented, not some abstracted idea you think each candidate represents
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I mostly voted against RNG boxes, not for Thaumanova let alone against Abaddon.
I get that’s what you get when you ask for a vote for :
- some lore / story driven plot,
- an epic-sounding /not so epic new fractal,
- a poll of opinion on RNG boxes,
all in the same bulletin !
Your vote “against the RNG boxes” doesn’t count you know, YOU may see Evon Gnashblade as a symbol of the BLTC and RNG boxes, but Arenanet does not. Evon Gnashblade is a fictional character, the person behind the BLTC has been doing RNG microtransactions for many years in Maplestory. Arenanet hired her because she’s very good at knowing what people will fork over real money for, and they’ve determined that people are addicted to gambling and will continue to buy RNG boxes for the chance at a skin despite the odds and despite spending hundreds of dollars on RNG boxes and getting nothing they want over and over again they still do it.
For every 10 people who refuse to buy even $5 in RNG boxes for something they want, there’s one person who spends $500 trying to get it, that’s a net profit in Anet’s eyes so they will continue to do it.
Your vote against a fictional character is laughably insignificant and does nothing but make people facepalm over your wasted votes.
You want to vote against RNG? Never buy gamble boxes, and SHAME people who do buy RNG boxes. If you see someone complaining about spending $40 on RNG boxes and not getting the skin, point out how much of an idiot they are for gambling away and just encouraging more RNG boxes.
RNG boxes in the cash shop will continue until there isn’t a market for them.
If you’re thinking “hold on, those idiots gambling are supporting Anet with their purchases, I shouldn’t shame them and discourage them from supporting Anet!” No, you should shame them for buying RNG boxes, you should encourage people supporting anet by buying things that are sold straight up in the gem shop like costumes, armors, infinite gathering tools, finishers, etc.
If you want to discourage RNG, you have to encourage monetization another way.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Why not implement both fractals? More content for everyone, everyone wins.
Because Anet decided that the fractal represented by the winning candidate gets made, and the fractal represented by the losing candidate gets scrapped and will never see the light of day to make the vote “mean something”.
Personally, it was a stupid campaign that polarized the community and made it hostile. I hope Arenanet takes home an important lesson on what NOT to do with their community. Making people do things just to spite other players, making players angry at each other, what does it accomplish that is in any way shape or form positive at all?
Nothing.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I don’t know about you, but I voted for the Waypoint cost reduction. Hooray!
which is already expired and makes no difference in the long run, hooray!
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I don’t care about WPs or Keys.
Abaddon has/had a better story. Period.So the Fall of Abaddon is a better story than a story we haven’t even seen yet? Glad you can read the future then. Tell me what else you know about in that crystal ball of yours.
Again, anyone with any critical thinking skill could tell you the story of Thaumanova reactor.
1. Inquest sabateurs
2. Some McGuffin plot device “Chaos Magic”
3. Reactor goes Chernobyl
4. Scarlet is revealed to be the mastermindThat’s really all there is to it.
GW2 NEEDS some more connections to GW1. The devs need to stop trying to make GW2 have absolutely nothing to do with its own lore history.
Yet that is all speculation, not facts. While the Fall of Abaddon is all facts, cause it is old lore that we already know about.
I get that you’re nostalgic and want GW2 to give you GW1 stuff. But you have to remember that GW2 is a new game set 250 years in the future of GW1 after the defeat of the Great Destroyer. This is a new time period. Why should we relive the past for no reason, instead of focusing on current issues now? GW2 needs to make it’s own lore now, instead of living in the past and dwelling on old lore.
We already know the facts about Thaumanova as well, you’re just hiding your head in the sand about it.
But we don’t know the facts. Your “opinions” and “speculation” is not facts. It is your own ideas as to what has happened. There is no solid evidence about Thaumanova yet. Thus the whole reason for finding out the mystery behind it.
I was right in that Thaumanova was going to be played as Inquest Saboteurs or stopping Inquest Saboteurs.
I’m betting I’ll be right on it being tied with Scarlet too.
Whatever McGuffin chaos magic/energy they pull out of their posteriors to explain the how literally does not matter. We already know it’s going to be a McGuffin.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
(edited by Devildoc.6721)
I don’t care about WPs or Keys.
Abaddon has/had a better story. Period.So the Fall of Abaddon is a better story than a story we haven’t even seen yet? Glad you can read the future then. Tell me what else you know about in that crystal ball of yours.
Again, anyone with any critical thinking skill could tell you the story of Thaumanova reactor.
1. Inquest sabateurs
2. Some McGuffin plot device “Chaos Magic”
3. Reactor goes Chernobyl
4. Scarlet is revealed to be the mastermindThat’s really all there is to it.
GW2 NEEDS some more connections to GW1. The devs need to stop trying to make GW2 have absolutely nothing to do with its own lore history.
Yet that is all speculation, not facts. While the Fall of Abaddon is all facts, cause it is old lore that we already know about.
I get that you’re nostalgic and want GW2 to give you GW1 stuff. But you have to remember that GW2 is a new game set 250 years in the future of GW1 after the defeat of the Great Destroyer. This is a new time period. Why should we relive the past for no reason, instead of focusing on current issues now? GW2 needs to make it’s own lore now, instead of living in the past and dwelling on old lore.
We already know the facts about Thaumanova as well, you’re just hiding your head in the sand about it.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I don’t care about WPs or Keys.
Abaddon has/had a better story. Period.So the Fall of Abaddon is a better story than a story we haven’t even seen yet? Glad you can read the future then. Tell me what else you know about in that crystal ball of yours.
Again, anyone with any critical thinking skill could tell you the story of Thaumanova reactor.
1. Inquest sabateurs
2. Some McGuffin plot device “Chaos Magic”
3. Reactor goes Chernobyl
4. Scarlet is revealed to be the mastermind
That’s really all there is to it.
GW2 NEEDS some more connections to GW1. The devs need to stop trying to make GW2 have absolutely nothing to do with its own lore history.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
So people who voted for Kiel based on the Fractals offered got exactly what they expected and voted for.
What’s the problem with that?
actually Kiel voters were claiming they expected it to do with Dragons, not Inquest.
BTW, I’m predicting the last boss of the Thaumanova Fractal will be Scarlet or Scarlet will be involved.
I hope I’m wrong but I just smell the stink of it, considering the other 2 fractals also have to do with Scarlet.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I don’t see what the problem is here.
We have always known exactly what the Abaddon fractal would be about, because it is already written in the lore. You can go read about it and know what is going to happen. It’s old news. We can’t change the past, we can just experience it.
No one had any facts about what the Thaumanova Reactor was going to be about, just speculation. No one knew what it would be until the content released and people played it (or watched the early livestream). It was unknown, and new. Something we haven’t seen before.
So what exactly are you “right” about? And what exactly is the problem here?
Yes, we did know, because if you talked to NPC’s outside and inside Thaumanova, they flat out told you it was Inquest.
If you thought it was a mystery, you didn’t explore enough.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
So, back during the cutthroat politics update, a lot of people claimed that the Abaddon fractal was “something we already knew” and that the Thaumanova Reactor was a “mystery” and we didn’t know what caused it.
Well surprise surprise, just as people who actually had critical thinking skills already told you it was Inquest, and that the Thaumanova reactor experiments were a predecessor to the Infinity Coil/CoE dungeon… they were right.
Guess what the Thaumanova Reactor fractal is according to the livestream?
You play as Inquest Saboteurs.
Just like you play the Charr in the searing fractal.
Sometimes I hate being right.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
The change to arcana is lovely, and it’ll open up a lot of new possibilities, but I worry about some issues that might cripple those possibilities. Here’s a few comments:
3.1. Elementalists rely too much on Elemental Attunement or Renewing Stamina to survive. Although it might be worth trying the scepter’s higher endurance trait now that it is at adept, I think the earth traitline should have a… worthy substitute for elemental attunement’s protection. Maybe it could have a stun breaker trait? Rock Solid could get it, but I fear it could make it too strong. Maybe as a grandmaster trait, and moving Written in Stone down a tier.
The changes we’ve done to Ele are actually going to drastically increase the amount of build diversity. The arcane recharge change really does add the flow the Elementalist needed when not spending points in Arcane. This will now allow players to stray away from spending points in the Arcane line. Ele’s will now experience faster attunement swapping as well because they will be down to 1.5s globals when they have zero points spent in Arcane and 1.2s globals with 30 points.
This makes:
13 second recharge on 0 points Arcane
12 second recharge with 10 points Arcane
11 second recharge with 20 points Arcane
10 second recharge with 30 points ArcaneDagger ele’s will now have new specs through Tempest Defense, Elemental Shielding, and Shared Auras much more appealing, as well as being able to go up the Fire and Earth trees.
Scepter ele’s will be able to play some forms of condition builds, burst builds with more sustain, and even bunker builds.
Staff ele’s will now be able to get blasting staff from tier one and now be capable of going for a trait such as Diamond Skin, or even Fresh air or high up in the Fire line.
Here are some examples of specs I’ve been messing around with:
0/30/10/30/0 (Tempest Defense, Elemental Shielding, Shared Auras with Cantrips and Dagger/Dagger)
0/0/30/10/30 (Diamond Skin bunker build)
0/30/30/0/10 (Tempest Defense, Diamond Skin, Double Arcane with recharge burst spec)
20/20/0/10/20 (Dps staff build based around sustain from Burning Fire)
0/10/0/30/30 (Generic D/D Arcane build)
0/20/0/20/30 (Generic S/D Burst build)
0/30/0/20/20 (Fresh air build)
Many more..We thank everyone for their feedback. We are keeping a VERY CLOSE eye on this thread and we will constantly be chatting internally until this release drops for potential things to change.
One of the problems with ele is that they are a very squishy class, like thief, relying on active defenses instead of sponging damage. to that end, vigor is pretty much required to survive as an ele. You’ve moved most of the sources eles can get vigor to master tier traits.
Renewing vigor for instance, is the exact same effect that mesmers and guardians get, but they get it as a 5 point minor trait, while ele had it bad as it was forcing them to use a major trait to get it, now it’s a 20 point major trait. Soothing disruption, another source of vigor, 20 point major trait.
You say you’re trying to take away the need to spec deep in arcana and water for eles but you’re actually reinforcing the need to spec deep in those lines if eles want to have the necessary endurance to dodge. Yeah, you can get some more endurance regen if you get pigeonholed into running scepter, but as it is, scepter already has a source of vigor with phoenix. What about the other weapon sets? Dagger and Staff don’t have vigor and need traits to supply it, and now they’re deeper in water and arcane to get.
Your only other source of vigor outside of those traitlines is in air, to get 100% faster regen (same effect as vigor) while channeling. Staff has 1 single channeling skill, meteor shower, and then you can use ether renewal. Each of those skills is only 3s of endurance regen, it takes 5s at vigor’s regen rate to regen enough endurance for one dodge.
Please give that some consideration.
edit: seems as I read through the entire thread rather than just the edited OP, renewing stamina is staying adept, and potentially cleansing wave as well. Those were my major concerns with the ele changes.
I think if those 2 traits stay adept it’ll promote build diversity while still addressing core needs of the class.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
(edited by Devildoc.6721)
What the heck was tank warrior build nerfed for? Do you really want everything to be DPS in this game?
Yes.
They don’t want tanks
They want completely shallow one dimensional gameplay.
Dodge and DPS.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I have some serious concerns with the movement of both Elemental Attunement AND Renewing Stamina to Master Tier.
Right now you basically have to use both of those traits, as obviously being able to dispense boons on attunement swap is highly useful, and vigor on crit is not just useful, it’s pretty much absolutely necessary with the way you have designed the game to be “dodge everything or get one shot”. in the past I have shared concerns of why Mesmers and Guardians get the exact same trait as a minor 5 point trait while Elementalists have it as a 10 point major trait. now you’re going to make it a 20 point major trait. Yeah whatever you can run scepter instead, but that is severely limiting to weapon choices wouldn’t you agree?
You’re talking about avoiding a power creep, currently, I like to spec arcane V, VI, and XI (evasive arcana) in PVE and V, VIII, XI in wvw. Now I suppose my WvW spec is still okay because blasting staff is moving downward, but for PVE purposes I basically lose my dodge heal, with nothing gained back for it. I have to go 30 points in still in order to get my boons on attunement and vigor, and I guess I put on blasting staff even though I don’t really need it for pve. I just lose out on a heal.
Please make one or the other master tier but not both.
Same thing goes for Water Attunement I (Aquamancer’s Alacrity) and Water V (Cleansing Wave).. eles who base themselves on a lot of support use both of those traits and water XI (cleansing water) especially in WvW to have water fields on demand and be condition removal powerhouses.
The moving up a tier doesn’t prevent power creep, it also flat out nerfs support elementalists. We get nothing good in return. Fall damage trait and regen on a few skills is hardly a fair trade. BTW, if you want people to use signet of water, consider making it an aoe condition cleanse instead of just a single target chill skill and people might consider it.
Same thing goes for Water Attunement I (Aquamancer’s Alacrity) and Water V (Cleansing Wave).. eles who base themselves on a lot of support use both of those traits and water XI (cleansing water) especially in WvW to have water fields on demand and be condition removal powerhouses.
The moving up a tier doesn’t prevent power creep, it also flat out nerfs support elementalists. We get nothing good in return. Fall damage trait and regen on a few skills is hardly a fair trade. BTW, if you want people to use signet of water, consider making it an aoe condition cleanse instead of just a single target chill skill and people might consider it.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Elementalist:
- Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.
- Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
- Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
- Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
- Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
- Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
- Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
- Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
- Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
- Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
- Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
- Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
- Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.
- Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
- Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
- Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
- Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
- Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
- Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
- Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.
The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.
- The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
- Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.
I have some serious concerns with the movement of both Elemental Attunement AND Renewing Stamina to Master Tier.
Right now you basically have to use both of those traits, as obviously being able to dispense boons on attunement swap is highly useful, and vigor on crit is not just useful, it’s pretty much absolutely necessary with the way you have designed the game to be “dodge everything or get one shot”. in the past I have shared concerns of why Mesmers and Guardians get the exact same trait as a minor 5 point trait while Elementalists have it as a 10 point major trait. now you’re going to make it a 20 point major trait. Yeah whatever you can run scepter instead, but that is severely limiting to weapon choices wouldn’t you agree?
You’re talking about avoiding a power creep, currently, I like to spec arcane V, VI, and XI (evasive arcana) in PVE and V, VIII, XI in wvw. Now I suppose my WvW spec is still okay because blasting staff is moving downward, but for PVE purposes I basically lose my dodge heal, with nothing gained back for it. I have to go 30 points in still in order to get my boons on attunement and vigor, and I guess I put on blasting staff even though I don’t really need it for pve. I just lose out on a heal.
Please make one or the other master tier but not both.
Same thing goes for Water Attunement I (Aquamancer’s Alacrity) and Water V (Cleansing Wave).. eles who base themselves on a lot of support use both of those traits and water XI (cleansing water) especially in WvW to have water fields on demand and be condition removal powerhouses.
The moving up a tier doesn’t prevent power creep, it also flat out nerfs support elementalists. We get nothing good in return. Fall damage trait and regen on a few skills is hardly a fair trade. BTW, if you want people to use signet of water, consider making it an aoe condition cleanse instead of just a single target chill skill and people might consider it.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
(edited by Devildoc.6721)
so no addressing on spell particle effect clutter at all?
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I think our UI right now is playable, but would be much better if we can customize them, and I mean everything like in GW1. That was one of the benefit as a player that I miss when I played GW1, everything can be customized in terms of UI.
Back to the OP’s concern, I agree as well its really hard to see a skill setting off or a red zone in your screen with all of these huge effects going on, specially when youre trying to kill a champion. Horrible. Picture 20+ people in Queensdale farming and zerging champs, now picture their skills going off. (When an Ele drop conjure weapons its barely noticeable to other players. Boar F2 skills. )
Ranger interrupting a skill is not even a matter of skill to me unlike GW1 ranger interrupt, in here its a matter of luck when players are on your target its really impossible to see your enemy. I think this should be fix, I love the skill effects of this game I understand your concern in terms of graphics and particles. But at the same time it is messy, and if you want people to understand the game keeping it simple is the way.
Interrupting is REALLY a matter of luck because you have to be lucky enough for all the players to use their stuns/dazes to strip defiant down and then lucky enough that no other player decides to use a stun when the boss is not using a skill.
It’s possible in a dungeon where it can only stack to 5 but the reality is nobody bothers to do it, because it’s easier to just dodge.
We talk about soft trinity here of support, dps, and control.. but lets face it, control is thrown right out the window because of defiant.and dodge. Support is thrown right out the window by low ROI in healing power, and the fact that people cannot get hit at all without dying , again, relying on dodge. Also the fact that both control and support are done just as effectively in berserker gear as in gear with healing power or any other gear, means that the entire flawed system places too much importance on one role, damage.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I’d prefer not to have cast bars added to the game for one big reason. As it is we can’t usually see the bosses head/shoulders unless we’re waaaaay back at edge of range. If we had to watch a cast bar we’d need to turn our camera nearly straight up to see it, then we’d miss the fields our friends are dropping, or mobs coming up behind, or animations to signal a big attack.
Just let us be able to see the boss through all the Las Vegas light shows and I’ll be happy.
Enemy cast bars would be located under the boss’s health bar, like in GW1, so as long as you’re targeting them, you’d be able to see them.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
[snip]…
Well-written analyses; of which I agree with most of it. My concern, though, is over the suggestion of adding cast bars for the bosses. I’d rather see them address the ridiculous particle effect overkill so we can actually see the bosses rather than add cast bars. In combat which you’ve described as “watered-down” (and which I agree with), the addition of cast bars will make it even more watered down.
Now, if they fail to address the epilepsy-inducing light show, then, yes, I’d agree cast bars would be the only solution; as there’s no other way to see the boss’ visual cues through the particle effects. I just feel that’s the wrong solution to the right problem.
We have options to control the number of player models that render on the screen and with how much detail they render. Apply the same concept to the particle effects and problem solved.
What’s more is it’s a win-win for everyone. For those who don’t mind the particle effects as they currently exist, they can set their sliders, toggles, drop down menus, or what-have-you to their highest density. For those who want to tone them down, they will have the option to do so. For the devs – though it’s not identical cut-and-paste code – the programming they added recently that allows players to control the number of models rendered and their level of detail can serve as a template for how to design the particle effect sliders.
I don’t think there’s any way to completely solve the particle effect problem, unless you don’t want to see ANY particle effects, but some, like fields, are useful, and of course you need to be able to see the boss’s aoes and whatnot.
There is no other game on the market I can think of where they expect you to dodge actively based on an animation alone, especially none that result in you getting instantly killed if you fail to dodge. That’s the combination where I feel this is a problem. If not dodging resulted in you getting hit, but surviving it, okay, fine. But getting hit by world bosses that have a hundred people fighting it, generally results in instant death.
To me I find it amazing that a game like world of warcraft doesn’t even have an active dodge function, and yet they give you enemy cast bars, and even chat window notifications (which are used by addons to make an even more obvious notification in the center of the screen in bold text), and the bosses can be interrupted with kick, counterspell, etc… and yet..
Here bosses are immune to interrupts essentially (since defiant stacks so high it’s impossible to rely on bringng it down, in instances it’s still more trouble than it’s worth to break down the stacks to interrupt, you just dodge instead), you either dodge or get one shot, AND you have to rely on animation cues only.
That’s just a really bad combination.
I don’t think it’s possible to make the game work based on animation cues only, I think there will always be enough clutter to make seeing cues difficult at best.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
One of the projects we’re working on in preparing the game to release in new regions is trying to make the game easier to learn. While a lot of that work is in the area of better tutorials, better level up messaging guides, and unique tutorials for specific mechanics we’re also evaluating UI complexity (and system complexity) to try and make information easier to see/consume.
Cleaning up the existing UI systems to make them less cluttered, more-stream lined, and better unified is part of this project and absolutely something you’ll see in the west as well, likely around or possibly even before we release the game in our next major world region.
And to get ahead of the next question: No, we have no solid dates! We’re still in beta in China and are testing and developing all of these new systems to make the game is easier to learn. We haven’t announced timelines for development any other major regions other than being in Beta in China at this time.
I don’t think the original poster was talking about UI clutter.
Look, it’s pretty simple Colin,
You guys have streamlined combat in this game essentially to autoattack and dodge/block/go invuln/evade.
What I mean by that is people have done the math, done the parsing, and determined that the best dps rotations in the game are really pretty much just letting your autoattack chain go, with a few exceptions.
Then thanks to invulnerability on dodge, the terrible way interrupts are implemented, making it essentially too much trouble to bother interrupting attacks when you can just dodge them, and the fragileness of characters REQUIRING dodging just about every single attack, has trained your playerbase into a mode of playing the game where they just wear berserker gear, focus on maximizing dps, and avoid every attack that comes their way. The fact that a lot of newer content bosses utilize unreflectable projectiles to stop people from using one of the only interesting mechanics left in your combat… projectile reflection only reinforces this mode of playing. You guys have essentially “streamlined” as you call it, “watered down” as I call it, combat into dodge and dps. It is one dimensional and about as deep as an oil puddle on pavement.
NOW, about that clutter we’re talking about….
You’ve designed a game where you have this one dimensional combat or dps and dodge, dodging based on visual animation cues, since you don’t have enemy cast bars. The boss attacks are strong enough when there’s a lot of players that every single hit, instantly downs, so you MUST dodge EVERYTHING, or you die. The problem with this system is you have dozens to hundreds of players attacking this one target, obscuring it in spell particle effects, making it near impossible to see the visual cues.
So this is what you’ve managed to do to your player base. You have trained them through experience, to expect to just stand at range or risk melee, , dps, and then get one shot by an attack they couldn’t see coming, and then waypoint back and run all the way back, until the boss is dead. You’ve created graveyard zergs. Now in dungeons this isn’t as much of an issue for 2 reasons, one you can’t graveyard zerg, and 2, there’s only 5 players so the particle effects aren’t as big of an issue.
The astounding fact of all this, is that you are well aware that particle effects are an issue in the gameplay, and have tried to remedy it not only by trying to “cull” particle effects but more commonly you try and make the bosses bigger (Aetherblade captains anyone? They’re like 3 times the size of anyone else), but that doesn’t cut it when the particle effects scale to the model size!
Why are you so afraid to add enemy cast bars? They were in GW1 and were a great help, I especially enjoyed them when I played interrupt based mesmers and rangers. Enemy cast bars would instantly solve this charlie foxtrot of particle effects problem by giving players another cue to work with, it might also make interrupting more viable, that is, if you found a way to make defiant not completely prohibitive towards interrupt playstyles.
So, I hope you can address this post, most notably the fact that enemy cast bars would improve quality of life for a lot of people and solve a lot of the issues with particle effect clutter, but also in the long term scheme of things, depth of the combat system needs to be addressed someday, this playstyle of dodge and dps really needs something else.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
You’ll see some people in a few days, for a new release people always just do that. But you’ll never see as many.
Also once they update the other bosses to be just as hard as tequatl, tequatl will be back on people’s to do list. Right now people are saying jormag and shatterer are much easier so they’ll do that. Really what anet should have done is if they were going to do this update, they should’ve done all the bosses at the same time.
That’d absolutely kill the game.
People obviously see it as too much effort for the reward rendered.
It’s raid style content that is better suited for a guild, rather than a serverwide PuG.
Developers need to tune content around the audience they have not the audience they WISH they had.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
(edited by Devildoc.6721)
For future references, keep content requiring this much strategy and effort instanced for guilds as raids. It’s literally 2 days after “boss week” ended and tequatl encounters are EMPTY. It went from never being able to get in on your own server to do the encounter, to nobody even bothering to do the encounter at all, in under a week.
This is truly a remarkable achievement for any game developer.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Seems like since the event ended servers aren’t doing Tequatl anymore, though I’ll have to check later in the day but not only was there not an overflow when I checked this morning, there was nobody there at all and Teq hadn’t even taken damage, on Tarnished Coast.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
longer is the reason I don’t continue to do world 2 every day. I did enough achievements to get my title and I continue to run world 1 for chances at tradeable skins, that’s it. If world 2 zones were as short as world 1 zones I’d run them too.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
helping each other out. Yes this is a timed event and we know that you are doing everything to win. However, taking the time to type insults to those that have died and are waiting for help, shows that you must not be under to much of a time constraint.
How about a little pre-battle discussion to help people understand the situation when the dragon starts up? Like ‘hey if you get downed don’t expect help’…much nicer than what I’ve seen in the game.
Anyway…I’ll try this event each time and hope for some better responses from those ‘in the know’..if not I’ll leave and go do something else. As will others, until you have no choice but to stop playing yourself….
tldr; This is supposed to be a team oriented event…start playing like team members.
If you’re laying dead on the ground, not just downed, but dead on the ground, and aren’t waypointing, you deserve every insult hurled your way and then some.
Sorry but it’s the truth. All you are doing is scaling up the event without helping. Reviving someone who is DEAD while in combat takes a really long time and very often gets more people killed not to mention lost DPS from not only you, but your ressers.
Don’t ever expect people to res a dead person in the middle of a world boss. Ever.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
It’s the fact that you cannot crit or the fact that it need the support of the 6 turrets?
Cause right now, if the 6 peoples on the turret are afk or whatever and don’t remove the scale, he will become invincible and even if you crit it won’t matter…If the Turret part was just better made I think it would be fine. I post some solution here
Even with the 6 turrets keeping the scales down the damage done on him is pinpricks
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
If a server with 140 people on voip can BARELY whittle his health down before the time limit runs out, there is something wrong. That means this fight will only be possible on a few servers, and only as long as large WvW guilds are interested in doing this for the achievements, after that, this fight will be ignored.
enabling Tequatl to be crit would make the fight better, either that, or lower health. It just looks silly to see 50+ people wailing on him and not even make a scratch on him until 5 minutes have passed.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
C….Cou….Could it be that we finally get to have a Sylvari LS?! Though she seems to be slightly human :/
We’ve had too many sylvari in LS as it is. Trahearne, Canach, Scarlet
We have had 2 Charr (Evon Gnashblade and Rox), 1 Norn (Brahm), and more humans than you can swing a sword at.
We need some Asura LS characters. We’ve had some tiny supporting roles but we need an Asura main character in LS for once.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
The unfun part is that he’s just a massive hp sponge and takes very little damage because he cannot be crit.
Just make it so players can crit on him and leave everything else the same.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I got my ban lifted, but I didn’t get rewarded in any way.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Mesmers and Rangers are just unwelcome in this fight apparently.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
On the bright side I guess we learned not to try out what we know to be an exploit.
What if you don’t know it was an exploit.
How I saw it was someone posting “preview this (code), screenshot results”
Every other time anyone has posted that it’s been like, a preview code for the scelerite weapons before they were released, or nunchucks, or the school outfit, you know, harmless stuff letting you preview gear.
Does that deserve a 2 week ban?
no you dont get it. this code crashed you as soon as it was posted into chat. nothing to click on.
Yeah, I saw it in a forum, and I copied and pasted it so that I could click on it and preview, and it crashed me. then the thread erupted everyone saying they got crashed. I bug reported it.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
On the bright side I guess we learned not to try out what we know to be an exploit.
What if you don’t know it was an exploit.
How I saw it was someone posting “preview this (code), screenshot results”
Every other time anyone has posted that it’s been like, a preview code for the scelerite weapons before they were released, or nunchucks, or the school outfit, you know, harmless stuff letting you preview gear.
Does that deserve a 2 week ban?
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Oh wow.
I did it a couple of times for proof on the forums and to see if it worked, hope I won’t get in trouble now.Then again, half of NSP and sPVP right now are spamming this code.. It’d be a lot to ban a whole server.
I hope for perma bans for everyone “trying” this out.
What if they didn’t know what it did, using it once unknowing that it crashes people shouldn’t get permabans. Now if they use it more than once, at most twice, they know dang well what they’re doing and should be banned.
But once? How are you supposed to know? All I knew was it was a chat code, and I thought it was for a new gemstore item or one of Tequatl’s skins or something.
how do you tell the difference between people doing it on purpose and people doing it on accident? anyone can claim innocence.
Using it once and then filing a bug report vs using it multiple times seems like a good indication that they weren’t being malicious. A 2 week ban for one use without knowing what it was is uncalled for.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Oh wow.
I did it a couple of times for proof on the forums and to see if it worked, hope I won’t get in trouble now.Then again, half of NSP and sPVP right now are spamming this code.. It’d be a lot to ban a whole server.
I hope for perma bans for everyone “trying” this out.
What if they didn’t know what it did, using it once unknowing that it crashes people shouldn’t get permabans. Now if they use it more than once, at most twice, they know dang well what they’re doing and should be banned.
But once? How are you supposed to know? All I knew was it was a chat code, and I thought it was for a new gemstore item or one of Tequatl’s skins or something.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
I feel guilty for trying it not knowing what it was (thinking it was just a new gemshop item to preview), sorry if I disconnected anyone, I reported the bug including the code and sent a whisper to an anet dev I know to make sure it gets attention fast.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Haha, now you’re starting to think like a ranger. ;D
Believe us, we feel your pain.
(actually, Malevo, the dps reduction is closer to 40%)
In Diablo 3, nobody used any of the pets, they made the pets immune to certain aoe attacks/damaging floors, and now they’re viable parts of builds.
Anet either needs to make pets/minions/phantasms immune to certain aoes and ground effects, or they need to make them have the ai to dodge.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
Longer levels. Worse rewards.
This and the account bound rewards chests. I still run zone 1, but not zone 2 because of how long the levels are.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
There are many things to do on this fight. You can use your shattering build to protect the people that are using the turrets, for example.
and not get enough damage tagged on tequatl to get credit.
I guess what I want is for phantasms/illusions, pets, and minions to be immune to the aoe and ground aoe effects that bosses do because they won’t dodge and die quickly. Even with their health buff they have less hp than someone in full zerkers.
Zapp – 80 Asura Afromancer
(edited by Devildoc.6721)