Yep. If the video had a slight bit more action and less waiting between skills and it was named like Sentinel or Vanguard of whatever, it would have been much better received. Technically speaking, it’s what most guardians have asked for. And frankly, I love it. The name though is god-awful…
I agree that if the spec was named differently, people would have been reacting differently as well.
A generic name like “dragonhunter” coupled with ranger-esque theme seems completely unrelated with each other, and gives an unfocused feel to it.
Reworked active virtues = new skill mechanics. (Not “new” as “alacrity new”, but that was to be expected, considering that mesmers only get an off-hand weapon).
Disliking traps because they’re not well balanced at the moment is pitiful. That’s like saying all Signets are overpowered because of Healing Signet, or that all signets are useless because of other examples.
Anything can happen at this point. It seems like people are criticizing the entire elite spec simply because they can’t handle its creative guardian/ ranger combo.
That’s what bothers me: It’s NOT creative. It’s not new. It’s plastering something we already have from another class onto this one. I mean I get that maybe it’d be hard to match something as unique as the chronomancer, but this just makes me feel like they didn’t even attempt to do so.
I don’t understand this.
Chronomancer is using Necromancer’s wells. Are they anything alike? No.
Dragonhunter has a shield arrow that absorbs arrows, winged leaps, revenant’s absorb wall, condition damage, support effects and no pets. This is completely unlike the longbow ranger. Yes, the teaser showed a barrage-like skill, and we know they’ll get traps, but it is unknown at this point of their actual effects.
Dragonhunter is quite a creative spec so far, imo, except its mediocre name. I mean, we’re talking about a leaping angel that shoots shield arrows. That’s not a ranger. That’s at chronomancer-level of awesome.
I think the teaser and the spec’s name are giving it a worse impression than what it deservers.
They’re slightly changing how traps work for rangers, so we don’t know if they’ll be stronger or not. Guardians have pulls, and HoT will come with a taunt mechanic. What Guardian’s traps do is a mystery at this point.
To say that our angelic-leaping support-ish dragonhunter is a clone of a ranger, or that it’ll immediately suck, means nothing at all. We barely know anything.
Anything can happen at this point. It seems like people are criticizing the entire elite spec simply because they can’t handle its creative guardian/ ranger combo.
Guardian’s virtues have been criticized for being a boring and bland mechanic (no matter how effective they may be). Dragonhunter’s virtues are a clear improvement on that.
I agree that the name is weird. But we’ll have to see what their traps will do first.
Unpredictable and lovely. If necros are mad at the chronomancer, rangers will get mad at dragonhunters.
Symbolic Avenger and Writ of Persistence seem to overlap a bit too much. Both of them pretty much read “let’s buff hammer’s/ mace’s symbols”.
But I think WoP is fine where it is. Not (only) because of the healing, but because the radius increase and the longer duration is not only an offensive buff but a defensive/ utility buff too (well, it depends on which symbol it affects).
Fall Damage traits should have an additional, broader functionality. Because they are roaming/ exploration traits, Anet could give them something like +X movement speed, super speed procs, cripple/ immobilize/ chill cleansing procs, etc.
When Anet decided to fuse guardian’s downed health trait with another one that cleansed conditions, they said it was the kind of effect that no one would want to spec for specifically, but that it would be interesting to ahve when combined with another trait.
The same logic should apply to fall damage traits, even if they’re already situationally picked, and perhaps even to revive traits.
Ascended gear destroys horizontal (stat) progression.
Not many care about it now, because zerker is the only stat set you need. But the day other stat sets become equally desired, and content becomes better for it, ascended gear will become the number one complain.
I agree it should allow us to swap stats. Or, perhaps, have ascended stats for each equipment type to be unlockable in a wardrobe.
Well since we already have 2x skills than the other classes, the class itself requires more resource by design. If they add a new F skill, i highly believe it ll be new attunment.
The fact that eles require more resources is probably the best reason for why it won’t happen. I’ll be highly surprised if Anet is crazy enough to expand every single skill set just for the sake of this elite spec, and further expand every single skill set for every single elite spec to come in the future.
Eles will probably get something much simpler.
SW farming is something that I’ve been doing for a while, so I see portals as a bonus.
However, I would definitely like more if the chances to obtain a portal were more realistic.
Won’t the shield be good for tagging enemies in pve farming? I’m not sure if the moving wall deals damage, though, but we’ve only seen one single skill yet. We have no idea what is chronomancer’s phantasm.
Anyways, anet is designing “hard pve content” and elite specs focused roles are intended to be useful there. If this “hard pve content” ends up being challenging enough, and rewarding enough, I’m sure most people will no longer use dungeons broken content to demonstrate what pve is or what is not.
A thread about game balance has never made me this hungry before.
If Aegis is given to shield skills (with traits or not), I can see shield becoming very lovely with this trait.
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089
Just award 5 Hero points for every trait and skill you currently have, no matter how acquired.
The problem with this solution, is that you’ll then be able to do all skill challenges on top of your extra hero points, and end up with more points than any other players.
Keep in mind those numbers are likely to change, especially the +20% damage while on symbols.
It seems to me that the GM traits for justice and resolve are weaker than their master traits. I can see why they it did this way: to choose between further improving them, or stacking them with courage’s trait. However, courage’s GM trait is so good by itself, it’ll be a no brainer to pick over the other two. The only exception might be for predictable/ safe PvE scenarios.
I think resolve’s master trait should be swapped with its GM counterpart, and thus make players choose between extra cleansing and extra anti-cc. That seems a far more compelling decision to make, even if some players might not enjoy the “nerf”. Meanwhile, virtue of justice’s burn effect would be free to be picked, but I think that’s fine. Are you against this idea?
And Permeating Wrath should enhance the active effect in some way as well.
Combine Kindled Zeal with Radiant Retaliation. Condition users will want a second “condition” for damage, so both need each other, and that way there’ll be no need to have RR compete with stronger burning, which is just silly. Condi-guardians will need as much help as possible to be viable, so their few condi traits shouldn’t stand against each other, at least not in this specific case.
I could see, however, RR to be a retaliation-version of Amplified Wrath. +33% retaliation damage, and a ret proc on being hit or something. This way, condi-guardians would have to choose between stronger burning, or stronger retaliation, but at the very least, both of them would have access to the improved kindled zeal, and thus, both of them would have access to the old RR effect where ret gets scaled by condi. damage.
tl;dr
Kindled Zeal: gains Radiant Retaliation’s current effect, where retal scales with condi damage.
Radiant Retaliation (revamped): Retaliation damage is increased by 33% + situational retal proc.
Hero Points & old characters: breach of trust
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089
Because the bulk of SPs will come from levels, the importance of skill challenges has been downplayed, so alt characters won’t need to do something crazy like 100% world completion to get the full legacy set. This softens the problem, and might have been the best solution they have found.
Because the fall damage trait fits in well in zeal, perhaps it could be switched with zeal’s wrathful spirit? Zeal already has Fiery Wrath as an appealing pick-up for every offensive situation, so it getting a niche trait would be fine. This swap would allow honor’s adept tier to have a broader trait, and it would also synergy with pure of heart. Seems like a good and simple solution to me.
Wrathful Spirit > go to Honor.
Fall Damage trait > go to Zeal.
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)
On what would the blast finished proc? VoJ passive? A blast finisher on every 3rd-5th attack?
AoE VoJ is a pretty build defining trait. It just needs to play nicely with our ranged options.
Oh, I thought it procced on the active effect.
Valor spec will work really fine for the new PvE areas like Silverwastes. With a medidation build and Shelter, you’ll have even more cleansing, even more sustain, more damage, more fury, and shelter is godlike at giving you 5-10+ stacks of might when you use it against thrashers/ griffs. But the biggest flaw with the new valor? Its master traits. They’re all defensive or niche (shield). Strength in Numbers is cool with the new Retributive Armor, but we’re talking about meditation builds here. It’s kind of restricting. What is there for them to pick?
Honor’s adept major traits are laughable. The mace one is cool, but specific to that weapon. What else do we have? A rez trait, and a fall damage trait. That’s almost parody-level: you basically won’t want to touch this line if you’re not using mace, unless the other options justify it. Anet should seriously swap one of the last two adept traits with another one from another line.
Empowering Might needs to have its cooldown scrapped, and higher duration. After that, it’ll be sweet with Writ of Persistance, the mace trait, and with zeal, in a mace+hammer build. It’s pretty much the best you’ll get out of honor in current pve, but only if anet buffs it.
Retaliation traits are, generally, weak. I like the one that offers +10% damage modifier, and I’m fine with the improved minor in virtues, but anet should take a look at every other one, ESPECIALLY radiant retaliation. Also, what about a +33% retaliate damage trait? It fits thematically with the guardian. Perhaps that trait could be added into zeal’s Retribution, have it moved to grandmaster tier so that power builds can have anything outside of burn and signets, and then radiant retaliation moved down a tier so condition users can actually combine it with amplified wrath (or even with my suggested version of retribution). Best of both worlds. EDIT: Nevermind, radiant retaliation will then have to compete (and lose to) radiant fire.
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)
Empowering Might has a lovely functionality, but it is simply too weak. The cooldown hurts it in the situations we would love to use it the most (multi-hitting skills), and the duration is too low. I would go for 10s with cooldown, or 8s without it.
The trait that makes retaliation scale off condition damage is a no-trait. No one will use it at its current state. It shouldn’t compete with 33% burning either, because both fulfill the exact same role. They should synergy with each other instead. The best thing Anet can do here, is to combine it with the one in the tier bellow that gives them condition damage, and design a new GM trait in its place.
I definitely hope for that change, but I would also enjoy an additional buff to it. Perhaps make it a blast finisher? And/ or add some direct damage to it?
Considering that it’s a “free” trait now, I’m actually fine with it as it is now. Promotes better teamplaying. Players will now want to maximize their healing ripple and other effects by using them nearby allies, because that trait pretty much says that’s what they should do it. Before, it was hard to your average player to sacrifice one self-beneficial effect for that, but now that it comes for free, I’m perfectly fine with it.
I think the biggest problem with the changes to elemental attunement, is that whatever remains in the master line is just not very interesting. Elemental Contigency is kind of a weird trait, that treats eles as if they had a high health pool. Why would an ele want to get hit to gain fury?
I’d rather have a nerfed version of elemental attunement on master tier, than having the two EA traits compete against each other. For example, Anet could simply reduce the protection duration from EA to 2 seconds, and it would probably be enough to justify it at master tier. Meanwhile, Elemental Contigency just needs a new
functionality.
The first two arcane magic tiers are very restricting. If you have no precision, and if you decide to not focus on arcane skills, there’s nothing for you to choose in the adept tier. The revive and fall damage traits are greatly restricting the trait line. And Arcane Energy and Renewing Stamina synergy very well with each other, so it’s a shame that they exist in the same tier.
I suggest the following to Anet: swap final shielding with arcane energy.
- Adept:
- Final Shielding (<- good on every build)
- Renewing Stamina
- Master
- Arcane Energy (<- synergy with both traits above)
- Nerfed version of EA or Elemental Contigency reworked to not be tank-exclusive
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)
So? That doesn’t change much. You’ll need fresh air, so cd reduction doesn’t matter that much.
Erm, plenty of precision?
*Ferocity.
“Free” CD reduction is always nice, considering the amount of time you’ll spend in air attunement. It gives more utility to fresh air builds.
It doesn’t because you want your fresh air to proc anyway and it will, so air won’t be affected by cooldown reduction in 95% of cases. I would rather take all the traits we used to have over 2 sec lesser cooldown on attunements. And you have to go in Arcana for that, seeing as the Master traits are horrible, you might not even want to.
Fresh air used to have in master tier the trait that did +10% damage while in air. That effect got replaced with a ferocity buff, and then fused with the -20% cooldown reduction one. Unless you’re going for glyphs or tempest defense + lightning rod, that will be the trait you’ll pick.
I had some issue’s with the kill and revive traits from radiance and valor still, needs changing to be honest.
The kill trait from radiance (the one that refreshes justice, right?) is a very iconic and loved effect in PvE. I don’t think they would change it so easily.
So? That doesn’t change much. You’ll need fresh air, so cd reduction doesn’t matter that much.
Erm, plenty of precision?
*Ferocity.
“Free” CD reduction is always nice, considering the amount of time you’ll spend in air attunement. It gives more utility to fresh air builds.
I think Anet should take a second look at arcana’s major traits for adept and master. They are very restricting. With one revive trait, and one with fall damage trait, we’re left with arcane skill traits, one broad trait that requires critical hits, and one tanky trait in the tier above. That’s really bad synergy.
First, Renewing Stamina should be in a different tier than Arcane Energy, because they synergy with each other. Second, elemental contigency needs a tanky trait in a lower tier to be more useful. For that, I suggest to swap Arcane Energy with Final Shielding.
Is really no one concerned about Bolt to the heart being moved to GM? That’s a major hit for fresh air eles, especially when it still triggers at 33% hp.
Hard to say, Fresh Air builds will probably get -20% air cooldown reduction now, and plenty of extra precision.
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)
Most of retaliation traits are still underwhelming, with the exception of the buffed minor in virtues. I think Anet should take a look at them, or take a look at retal’s power in pve.
Spirit Weapons will have the 50% longer duration by default, and three of their traits fused into one. If sword and shield were also usable in pve, they’ll only be stronger now.
Condi guards will probably be buffed if burning stacks in intensity. Think of how much burn spam you can make with your virtue of justice while you farm events. :P
no, feline grace gives vigour now which is 120% and another trait that makes it 140%.
I believe feline grace’s trait description was already updated to take into account the other one. But I might be wrong.
I missed the ele part of the stream. Tell me: they did not change the fire/air/earth adept minors?
I remember about a year ago they stated that these traits need a rework.
Only fire’s. It now gives fire aura.
EDIT: I don’t remember if earth’s toughness boost was 120 or 180 in the stream.
Pretty much all weapon specific traits were buffed. A 20% cooldown reduction was given to all of them, if I’m not wrong.
problem is bolt to the heart is 33% thresh and executioner is 50%. makes no sense to me.
also vigour is 120% endurance regeneration down from 150% so i think fresh air builds will switch arcana out now going for 6 in air 6 in water and 6 in earth to get the lost protection back.
Vigor’s 120% endurance regeneration comes from a thief’s trait that upped its effectiveness from 100% to 120%.
I think air’s first and third minor traits are (have always been) a bit underwhelming. They shouldn’t leave them at their actual state, especially for the first one.
The revive trait in arcana is unexciting. It should be fused to another one, and have that slot be replaced by something more effective.
You guys realise that since specialisations make you go fully in each trait line then the rank of the trait does not matter anymore? When you spec into air you get access to all traits at once, regardless of master or grand master rank, and if you don’t spec into air then you are completely denied access to these traits. Ranks are cosmetic now.
I was thinking about that, but they’ll probably want to maintain the sense of progression with tiers.
Guardian changes were definitely stronger than Elementalist’s.
You probably didn’t pay much attention. The new DPS traits shown were so OP, that Jon Peters had to comment that their numbers would probably be toned down.
I mean, 20% damage increase on enemies standing on symbols. Think about it. That’s absolutely god tier in PvE.
Bolt to the Heart will need a buff to justify being a GM trait.
If anything, I feel it’s failed.
Try map completion on a new toon. You will be forced to go to a few scouts just to reveal several hearts that were previously always visible like the rest.
Ask players about the GLORIOUS level-up tutorial on Combo-fields.
Go ahead, ask 10 players what a Dark field and a Whirl finisher will do.
I’ll be surprised if some don’t say “Whats a Dark field?”
In order to “learn how to dodge” a player has to go around a specific section of the map, which can be completely missed.They aren’t real tutorials. It’s clunky to both new and old players.
It doesn’t streamline how to play the game any smoother or better. I’ve bought the game for a few of my friends and watched the NPE fail and create lazy and terrible players from its design.
Traits weren’t as ridiculous as 100% Map completion of FGS for an ADEPT trait either.
It was “successful” in the way that people had no choice but to deal with it regardless of how terrible it is. Why do you think the NPE is the running joke?
To be clear, I was only talking about the leveling up menu when I said it was kind of elegant. In my opinion, that feature worked (mostly) fine. It made leveling slightly more rewarding (traits aside), and presented each main feature in a clearer way. When I made my girlfriend play the game, she also quite enjoyed the new level up menu, especially when it rewarded her with new items and skins. So that’s at least one example of a newbie enjoying that single feature.
Other than that, I generally agree with you. Trait acquisition, vista/ SP locking, lack of tutorial information, complete removal of difficulty, event/ heart content stripping, etc could have been handled way better.
Elegant design, is it? I can think of very few finer examples of ‘elegant design’ than the currently implemented trait system and the NPE. Ascended gear comes to mind. The fractal reset. The way guild missions were implemented. Non-seasonal temporary content. Outfits. How many times have dailies been elegantly designed now?
But the currently implemented trait system is anything but elegant. Obtaining traits right now is obscure, based on random events, and force the player to play unnaturally. It can’t be used as an example against “elegant design”, because it isn’t one. Meanwhile, the system it was based on, GW1’s elite skill hunting, was more elegant and, in turn, more appealing. In fact, it was GW1’s elite skill hunting that made the playerbase wish for something similar to it in GW2, and thus the reason why Anet ultimately made trait unlocking as it is right now. But GW2’s version failed because it lacked the appeal, the clarity, the simplicity and the immersion of GW1’s.
Likewise, ascended gear was anything but elegant. Its crafting recipes are a confusing mess. The “unique” type has made players waste laurels. Infusions are an unnecessary new upgrade slot that clutters the description text of all gear, without adding anything worth to it. A more elegant solution to it would have been to simply add ascended version of runes/ sigils into the game and call it a day.
I could go on, but my point should be clear by now. Many design decisions made by Anet have been mediocre since launch, but they have little to do with “elegant design”.
NPE is an interesting case. In GW2, much like in GW1, leveling is part of the tutorial experience. NPE fully embraced that idea and built on it, with rewards, a gradual sense of progression and tutorials linked to leveling. It was elegant and, for the most part, actually quite successful. The annoyances lie at some of the arbitrary, restrictive details, like forcing players to backtrack map completion due to no access to vistas/ SPs (=not elegant), trait progression coming too late (something that the new system SEEMS to fix), or the pure dumbing down of early events/ hearts.
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)
do you think stop drop and roll is going to be useful in the meta?
soothing ice? in a meta where you try to never get hit?
remove a condition when you go water attunement? 1 condition?
All those are meta in pvp, or were one picked even at a higher tier (stop drop and roll).
Their effectiveness in pve is, as you said, related to design and not to trait selection. Hopefully, the new encounters will make those traits viable there.
I can say what you said much more forum friendly: “games are getting more stupid so lazy new players don’t have to learn them so we can sell more boxes; p.s. who cares about veterans, they’ve already paid”
see? I said the same without wall of text
And I can make your post even more forum friendly:
“There’s no such thing as lazy players”.
See? I said the same as you with even less words.
(Veteran) Players have this idea that more options, in videogames, makes them intrinsically better. Well, that’s not exactly how it works. Games have proved once and once again that offering a massive amount of “customisation options” only leads to a graveyard/ pile of filler. It makes any game a lot less user-friendly, and it adds a lot of clutter, for no meaningful gain.
It’s not by chance that game design has been evolving out of this. It’s not because players are “stupid”. It’s because focusing on quality over quantity pays off.
A high customisation system that only allows for virtually 1-2 optimal builds gives the illusion of something that it is not, and ends up with a high barrier of entry for the sake of something that does not even happens (diversity).
A lesser customisation system that, in theory, can allow for as many virtually optimal builds, if not more thanks to easier balancing, only gets to gain by being naturally more elegant, user friendly and clearly focused.
Yes, if we were to strip all options from gaming, we would be left with interactive movies. But the opposing extreme does not leads to anywhere either. There must exist some sort of balance, between enough meaningful options to make players happy with customisation, while at the same time not overloading the game with those options so devs can have an easier time to maintain the quality of those options. It’s a win-win scenario if/ when done right.
And the new specialization system will still offer that balance. With 3 different traits per tier, and a selection of 3 tiers out of 6, players will still be able to adapt their characters to the style they most like. It won’t be a highly detailed level of customisation anymore, but the meaningful number of builds that will exist out of it will not be any less. Probably, we’ll get more optimal builds because trait stats are no longer an obstacle, trait replacement will no longer be so arbitrary, and the gap between better and worse traits will be a lot shortened.
On a final note, many of the examples the OP has given are flawed by themselves. One such example is the one given for the staff elementalist. The fact that the build itself is already based on “camping Fire attunement after the initial rotation” does not helps, but if we disregard that, the reason why a staff elementalist goes 6-2-2-2-2 is to collect as many damage modifiers as possible. There’s no diversity in here, just maximizing. With the new trait system, a staff elementalist will be able to, for example, get two damage modifiers from water magic spec alone.
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)
Ascended vs Exotic, new stat distribution?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089
Personally I don’t care about that aspect. I crafted 4 ascended armor knowing that it was only a small increase in stats. Ascended gear was a mistake from the beginning anyway, it limit build diversity. Ascended is not really friendly for using different build or rune or alts.
I agree that ascended gear was poorly implemented. However, it is in the game, nothing can change that now, so I’d personally enjoy it more if it was slightly more effective.
Ascended vs Exotic, new stat distribution?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: DiogoSilva.7089
But with the second option, ascended will stay as strong, while exotic will get nerf and it’s the best way to kitten some people off and QQ even more on the forums.
It’s also the best solution to make ascended statboost be worth anything in the first place. Currently, working hard to get ascended gear is one of the most unsatisfying, most unrewarding experiences in this game.
The 5% boost tries to appeal to both types of players: it’s not too high so the anti-vertical-progression crowd doesn’t gets too mad, but it exists so that vertical progression crowd has something to work for. However, it ends up appealing to neither of them. Its very existence is already annoying to the first group of players, and the boost is too low for the second group of players.
I’d rather want them to make the gap bigger, even if not by much. Say, up to 10%. Still tame, still kind of unsatisfying, but at least it’s noticeable enough.