Guild Wars 2

silvermember.8941:

DiogoSilva.7089:

silvermember.8941:

Taunt isn’t the defining thing in the holy trinity, fixed roles are.

This is not accurate. The holy trinity is not defined by fixed roles, but by very specific fixed roles: dps, heal, tank. Swap one of them for another (control, support, roam, burst, whatever), and it would no longer be the holy trinity, even if roles were still enforced.

So exactly what I said?

I know reading can be a lot of post on a forum is d tedious but maybe go reread what I wrote. I say almost exactly what you said. (meaning your first sentence).

What you have said is quoted in my original post. You’ve said that holy trinity = fixed roles, which is incorrect.

silvermember.8941:

Taunt isn’t the defining thing in the holy trinity, fixed roles are.

This is not accurate. The holy trinity is not defined by fixed roles, but by very specific fixed roles: dps, heal, tank. Swap one of them for another (control, support, roam, burst, whatever), and it would no longer be the holy trinity, even if roles were still enforced.

I hope this level of quality and excitement remains for the next PoIs, especially if there’ll be ones for showing specializations and/ or what is left to show of the Revenant.

Drawing Guy.3701:

- Unroot the Guardian Sword 3 skill

I like when skills have inherent disadvantages like auto-rooting or easy side-stepping. If anything, those skills should have been given more impactful effects instead (like buffed damage).

Thanks for the screen caps!

I’m personally hoping the most to see screens for traits, because everything else was well explained in the PoI.

Invictus.1503:

Eggs.3142:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but i’m pretty sure its Rubi’s show…

Not today it wasn’t. Jon and Peter took off with it and never gave it back until the end.

*Jon and Roy.

I know Jon Peters was 2x awesome, but he’s still 1x person. :P

DiogoSilva.7089:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

morrolan.9608:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

The skills on the right half of your bar are tied to the legend which you are currently invoking.

Lets see if I can phrase this unambiguously:

When I am invoking Bob the Mighty, will I have a Bob-themed pool of skills to choose from when filling out my right-hand tray, or does channeling Bob the Mighty give me an absolutely specific set of 5 skills without variation from any other Revenant invoking Bob?

I realize the answer may be different for buttons 6 and 0 than it is for buttons 7, 8, & 9.

That is not set in stone yet and something we are deciding still.

As noted earlier in the thread if there isn’t a choice it appears the revenant will feature less customisation than other classes and may be quite inflexible.

There options really are the legends you bring which offer unique playstyles and skills, I can see your point though.

Make it so that, for each legend, you can pick 3 out of 4 utility skills, plus any racial skill. I think that could be a solution.

Alternatively, or in addition to, just make some traits that heavily modify each fixed skill.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

morrolan.9608:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

The skills on the right half of your bar are tied to the legend which you are currently invoking.

Lets see if I can phrase this unambiguously:

When I am invoking Bob the Mighty, will I have a Bob-themed pool of skills to choose from when filling out my right-hand tray, or does channeling Bob the Mighty give me an absolutely specific set of 5 skills without variation from any other Revenant invoking Bob?

I realize the answer may be different for buttons 6 and 0 than it is for buttons 7, 8, & 9.

That is not set in stone yet and something we are deciding still.

As noted earlier in the thread if there isn’t a choice it appears the revenant will feature less customisation than other classes and may be quite inflexible.

There options really are the legends you bring which offer unique playstyles and skills, I can see your point though.

Make it so that, for each legend, you can pick 3 out of 4 utility skills, plus any racial skill. I think that could be a solution.

Nike.2631:

Interesting. Could you take a moment to compare and contrast it to Thieves then?

Thieves can spam while revenants need to think about it. :P

@Roy

1. How many weapons are you aiming for the Revenant to have? I know you might still not have an exact number on that, but what is the plan? Something like engineer and elementalist, with only very few weapons to choose from? Or are you hoping for more than that?
2. How are utility skills picked?
3. How does racial skills interact with the revenant?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

There is a mix of recharge and energy/upkeep costs for the Revenant skills. Every skill doesn’t necessarily have recharge though.

Hey Roy, what made Anet go back to a traditional energy+cooldown system? Is it merely playing around GW1’s nostalgia, or do you recognize it as having its own merits as a balancing and high-risk/ high-reward tool?

I personally find it to be a really powerful balancing tool, and energy management also creates an interesting mini-game that remains exciting even in the easiest pve encounters, so I’m happy with it coming back.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

A class whose primary mechanic is energy management. Huh, go figure.

And yet, that’s one of the best mechanics they could haven given to it.

Fashion Mage.3712:

This leak was posted sometime around 2013 btw, and that engi hammer auto-attack sounds pretty spot-on, so I find it hard to deny.

True, and it’s possible that many of the leaked skills were early prototypes and might have changed since then. Especially guardian’s longbow stances: I wonder if they’ll still exist, and if so, if they’ll still be weapon skills or part of the profession’s mechanic.

I disagree that fragmenting the playerbase is an issue to justify shared queues.

See it this way:

Group A: Only cares about stronghold.
Group B: Only cares about conquest.
Group C: Likes both.

• With shared queues, group C players will continue to play pvp, especially if a build swapping mechanic is added into the game. However, group A and B will avoid pvp out of frustration.
• With separate queues, group A and C will queue for one mode, and group B and C for another. It’s effectively going to split group C players, but the new players it brings (group A) can potentially make up for that.
• In comparison, the current queue system we have today attracts both group B and group C players (excluding courtyard situations), so it’s possible that the upcoming, shared queues end up having the OPPOSITE intended effect: instead of preserving queue times, it will probably make them worse, because it’ll effectively mop away players from group B.

Zyrhan.3180:

If you want to cross-promote it for folks who like one but haven’t tried the other, why not add some mode-specific dailies? Or one-time achievements? Mashing them into the same queue is a terrible long-term idea for both modes.

That’s a good solution for the potential issue of playerbase splitting.

Add the following dailies each and every day:

• Play 1 conquest match.
• Play 1 stronghold match.

And then players who like both modes will play both each day.

anzenketh.3759:

I can understand those that want to focus one one game mode.

• Is there a reason why custom arena is not viable?
• If you voted on the game mode first then voted on map would this be acceptable.

Please note: I am not arguing for keeping it in the same queue. As it is right now I rather them be separate. These are questions that a developer may ask.

About custom arena:

• Rewards aren’t as good, and if I’m not wrong, they’re daily capped.
• There are people who will want to seriously dedicate on stronghold, so that means they’ll want a ranked ladder.

About voting on a mode, it’ll still be RNG. What if stronghold players who dislike conquest (or vice-versa) get the game mode they do not want? They will either get punished by being forced into something that they don’t like, or punished for leaving. It’s a lose-lose scenario.

anzenketh.3759:

butch.8136:

Would be nice but still won’t solve the issue.

I have yet to hear a good argument on why build templates would not solve the majority of issues with the stronghold map being in the same queue as the other maps. Would you care to explain it to me.

Players who end up disliking stronghold will be forced to play it and hate it.
Players who dislike conquest and do not play GW2’s pvp because of conquest, will hate it.
Players who want to invest significantly in a single game mode at a time will hate it.

To some, as it is to you, build swapping is the biggest problem with shared queue. To some others, like me, being forced to play conquest is way worse of a problem.

I understand that Anet doesn’t wants to divide their community, but I’d say that a new game mode will actually expand the playerbase, not only split them. By putting stronghold into conquest queue, any potential new player that currently dislikes conquest will remain unconvinced by pvp, doing more harm than good for the playerbase’s size.

silvermember.8941:

What about people who hate the color blue?

Is this meant to be a serious argument, or just a joke? A new mode will appeal to an entire new audience, and putting it with conquest will ruin that.

MidnightSun.7964:

I would definitely like to see a separation of both game modes. If not, then I think that we should have build templates to easily load up a different build for Stronghold.

What about all the players that don’t care about GW2’s pvp because they dislike conquest mode?

For the people that dislike conquest or want to build their characters around stronghold, this will make it impossible for them. And Custom Arenas is not really an alternative, due to the lower reward ratio and reward cap.

I want to play stronghold without touching conquest. Everytime I’ll get to queue and end up with a conquest map, it’ll be a nightmare and a complete waste of time to me.

Greatswords are extremely popular and widely used, and for a reason. Their skins stand out while, for most other weapons, you can barely see them in screen. Greatsword animations are usually more fluid than one-handed weapons, and they never get to be too slow (“slow” attacks and usually left to hammers). Also, they are some of the most confortable weapon sets to use in general pve, due to the aoe and mobility that they usually offer. I really hope that Revenant gets to use one.

Lucius.2140:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Yes, the Revenant will have a specialization as well.

So its gonna be one specialization per class at release?

Yes.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Unfortunately, I can’t yet. Quite a bit of info will be coming soon™ though. Sooner then you may think.

Hello, Roy. I’ve always wanted to invest in a heavy armored profession, but I dislike non-magical classes (Warrior), and Guardian is stricly too defensive for me (I’m more into professions that offer a higher diversity of damage and/ or control builds). Is the Revenant for me? :P

It sounds like you’ll enjoy the Revenant, but you’ll have to try it and let me know what you think.

I can’t wait.

Scoobaniec.9561:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Unfortunately, I can’t yet. Quite a bit of info will be coming soon™ though. Sooner then you may think.

Hello, Roy. I’ve always wanted to invest in a heavy armored profession, but I dislike non-magical classes (Warrior), and Guardian is stricly too defensive for me (I’m more into professions that offer a higher diversity of damage and/ or control builds). Is the Revenant for me? :P

Nice try but he already told us at some point that revenant = dark knight

Roy Cronacher.1576:

The Revenant is quite different from both the guardian and the warrior professions. Think a darker heavy armor class that imbues magic and power of the mists into it’s attacks, along with drawing power from past legends.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. The dark knight-ish influences are very enticing. :P

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Unfortunately, I can’t yet. Quite a bit of info will be coming soon™ though. Sooner then you may think.

Hello, Roy. I’ve always wanted to invest in a heavy armored profession, but I dislike non-magical classes (Warrior), and Guardian is stricly too defensive for me (I’m more into professions that offer a higher diversity of damage and/ or control builds). Is the Revenant for me? :P

Scoobaniec.9561:

He wont give us his toy.

More like, he is probably anxious to show us his new class, but he can’t yet.

BrunoBRS is probably right. Endurance will be a content gating mechanism to determine how far you can go, and I take a guess that gliding will probably not last more than 3-5 seconds on average. Underwater content is totally different, as it involves long-term exploration and has actual combat in it.

Tiborb.1453:

That’s should be called Trials, not Adventures. :/

I agree with this post!

When I think of the word “adventure”, I think of some sort of very elaborated quest. For example, structured content that tells a secondary story, makes you explore key locations, talk to NPCs, fight some bad guys, and ultimately get a nice reward at the end for all your effort. That feels like a real adventure, especially if gameplay is narratively structured, with an introduction, rising action, climax, etc.

So far, the examples given for adventures feel more like they should be called trials instead. They’re pretty much achievements, aren’t they? “Do this content you’ve been doing, but faster”. That’s a trial, not an adventure.

In my opinion, Anet should rename this system to trials, which is a shorter and catchier word to memorize, and then have a subset of more elaborated trials to be actually named “adventures”.

Example of a trial: Finish this jumping puzzle in 10 minutes.

Example of an adventure: Go to a town, investigate an issue with NPCs that will ultimately lead you to a mountain, get ambushed by bad guys, cross the mountain, do a small jumping puzzle, unveal the story’s mystery, fight a boss, get back to the town, receive a nice reward.

Of course, adventures can be shorter and less elaborated than that, as long as the experience feels, well, adventurous. Usually, it should involve exploration, because I can’t imagine how something can even be called an adventure with no exploration at all. Certainly, mini games and other stuff could be part of adventures, but are they, by themselves, adventures, or merely trials/ achievements/ (or as they are already called) mini-games?

EDIT: I do think the system itself is more interesting and elaborated than renown hearts (with the addition of leaderboards, repeatable content, anet’s goals to make it challenging), but I’m afraid the content design won’t stray too far from what hearts already offer, which might not be a bad thing if they’re merely “trials”, but might lead to some disapointment if they really are meant to be “adventures”. Hearts didn’t feel like adventures, nor will this one do if it plays similarly, regardless of the addition of replay value.

EDIT 2/ TL;DR The system is fine if it gets to be renamed to trials, because it creates the right set of expectations. However, it’ll need to offer more elaborate content if it is meant to live to the expectations set up by the word “adventure”.

I want to say that Revenants channeling the powers of known legends is the most interesting thing about legends themselves. It leaves me very curious on how those legends will be re-imagined in GW2. If some legends were entirely new guys, without any lore or narrative that stood out behind them, it would leave me cold. They would just be randomly-named new guys I don’t care about. The concept of legends PLAYS on nostalgia. It just does.

To many players, GW2’s combat design is broken. “Learning how to play” a broken game will not automatically means players will suddenly enjoy playing a broken game.

Look, I love games like Final Fantasy VIII, where the mechanics are so broken, you can have a party to defeat the final boss right before you fight the first boss. You must “learn” how to acchieve that, you must “learn the game”, and as I am a perfectionist kind of player, I love doing that. But is that game better for it? I don’t know. To your average player, it’ll be a boring GF spamfest or they will feel the poor progression pacing as they play it.

Back to GW2, the community might have found the importance of support and control in PvE, after months/ years of breaking the game. But ultimately, GW2 and its devs are consistently pushing for and hyping new stat sets, and the game is presenting them with equal importance to zerker gear. Ultimately, stuns, KDs, heals, conditions and defensive sets are highly impactful in PvP, and devs are consistently balancing them to remain that way, as it is shown in every patch notes ever, while PvE simply ignores it due to how broken it is. You don’t need to be a genius to understand that not even Anet agrees with the actual state of PvE meta game, and that becomes even clearer when you read some of their posts.

So no, this is not “working as intended”. And no, “learning how to play a broken game” won’t make it any less broken. There might exist good examples of how support is meaningful, for every good example there’ll be a bad one.

Also, we can go a bit further and create a new argument that is not merely about balance. Immersion. The more distinct each role is from each other, the stronger they will be thematically. If most builds are to play similarly (DPSing with zerker gear and predictable rotations, while supporting with even more DPS buffs/ debuffs, and throwing the occasional reflection or aegis), then that sense of distinction won’t be clear between roles. Thematic strenght is very important (why do you think Anet is adding specializations?), and for it to be at its best, half of this game’s unique mechanics souldn’t be ignored as they currently are.

Finally, the problem with the archaic trinity system was never that it had roles. “Roles”, by itself, is a good thing. It brings many positives to any game. The gaming playerbase, in general, absolutely loves roles. That’s why profession/ class systems are so popular. The problem with the archaic holy trinity, is that it needs to be improved. It’s too strict, places too much reponsability on two out of the three roles, and the popularity between roles is very uneven, leading to huge queues for DPSers.

GW2 never wanted to be a game without trinity. It wanted to replace the old trinity with a new one, instead. And the new one is, on paper, much more sophisticated. Healing and tanking evolved into the less rigid support and control setups, DPSing was meant to evolve into “general damage”, where bursting and aoe were intentionally meant to be as important as DPS, and everyone would be able to bring a decent amount of damage and self-survivability. On paper, this is great. It pretty much fixes the problems with the old trinity. Support and control builds would still exist, damage methods would be more diversified, the “everyone would be able to DPS” concept would make all roles more evenly popular, and responsability would be more evenly distributed to each player.

But in practice, it failed hard. The entire stat system is not appropriate to this game, and very inferior to what GW1 offered. It works in trinity games where healing and tanking must be maximed, but it doesn’t works in this game. GW1, in comparison, offered active stats that directly tied to how effective control and non-healing support skills would be, becoming a necessity if you ever wanted them to be meaningful at all. Another thing that GW1 was superior than GW2, was by offering combat content without defiance. Its solution was to have PvE content mimic PvP’s, where you would fight against a well-built party of enemies with decent AI, instead of a single foe. AoE, mass control, healing and protection, minion mastery, burst damage, were all key to victory, not simply dps, offensive support and the occasional “let’s block their big attacks” support. Condition stacks did exist, in the original, though, and that was equally a problem with condition damage there.

So far, and unfortunately, GW1 is the evolution of GW2’s concepts, when it should have be the opposite.

BrunoBRS.5178:

i mean, assassins and paragons are definitely never ever happening, and the sin and para mains have long gotten over it because we have an equivalent :P

Three shouts in the utility bar does not a paragon equivalent makes. :P I’m 99% sure that someday, we’ll get a paragon-ish/ musical specialization for the current classes. Specifically, one for guardian, and/ or a more traditional bard theme for mesmer.

Assassin, however, IS the thief. Can’t do much about it.

You can’t simply “ignore” WPs just because you “don’t like them”.

Maps with less instant travelling are designed differently by developers. For example, a long journey traditionally rewards players with a nice reward at the end. But if you spam its locations with WPs, players would simply be able to farm chests, at which point said chest would need to be nerfed or removed. This is just one example.

Maps with less WPs, where the journey is challenging and rewarding, is far more immersive and satisfying to me as a player. But if I suddenly choose to ignore existing WPs, it won’t enhance the game like at all, because current maps in GW2 are not fine-tuned to long travelling.

Silverwastes and (to a lesser extent) Dry Top are really good at that. The fewer waypoints, coupled with all the acchievements they offer, make for a more immersive and rewarding experience than warping to everywhere or ignoring WPs to travel through bland maps.

Wait, did the art team troll Colin’s shirt too?

If each utility works like a glyph, then they’re going to need a massive amount of text for each legend that exists, unless there’s only 4 legends to choose at max.

Another possibility, is that you equip a legend much like you would equip a pet, and only then will you be able to choose your utility skills.

And yet another possibility, chanelling legends won’t occur all the time in battle, so you’ll be using normal utilities sometimes, special utilities other times.

And hype it up in a trailer that is full of hints of what’s to come. :P

Roy Cronacher.1576:

The Revenant is quite different from both the guardian and the warrior professions. Think a darker heavy armor class that imbues magic and power of the mists into it’s attacks, along with drawing power from past legends.

Is it safe to say that it takes some influences from Dark Knight-ish classes? It certainly seems so, when it comes to Rytlock’s armor. Will it be more offensive-oriented, in contrast to guaridan’s more defensive nature, or will legends make it anything it wants to be?

We want to know MOAR. :P

Generally, the “back half” of the skill bar is also the “least interesting half” of the skill bar. It’s the weapon skills and the profession mechanics that make combat fun, not simplistic utilities with high cooldowns and gimmick elites with even higher cooldowns. Some exceptions exist, of course (Lightning Flash, Portal, reflect skills, etc). But even in pvp, most of the back half skills are relegated to “filler” stun breakers or “filler” condition cleansing.

Which makes me even more curious about Revenant. Will it follow the unexciting tradition of the back half of the skill bar, or will it break it and make it more exciting than usual?

It also makes me guess it’ll kind of work like a more active version of dervish forms. Dervish avatars didn’t change your skillbar, but they gave you plenty of skill-enhancing abilities, to the point where it felt like you had “upgraded” your skills. I wonder if the channeled utilities will create a similar experience, but with active skills instead of being entirely passive?

Finally, if legends replace your utilities, and weapon skills are their own, then what will be the revenant’s normal utilities? Will all of them be legends? Probably so, as you won’t have much use to equip “normal” utilities, when those normal utilities are to be replaced by legends all (?) the time. So I’m guessing their legends will be their utilities (and elites, and heals). Which would make revenants more customisable to each player, but it also frees up their profession mechanic to something else.

Theories.

From an interview, it seems like legend’s skills complement but are not the weapon skills themselves. So it definitely reminds me of conjures/ kits. Hope it feels different enough from them, though.

Dark Knight-ish, like the majority of guardian players out there. But a rusty-looking phalanx armor, or a legendary/ golden looking mix of phalanx/ other pieces, is very appealing to me as well. And if possible, a mythical looking set.

Revenant’s concept is very interesting, appealing, and it certainly brings some ritualist/ dervish flavor to GW2. I didn’t care much about ritualists and their weird-ish designs, but a heavy armored equivalent, that is not restricted to cantha culture only, and that is focused on legends, sounds so awesome.

I do hope that it’s also a fun-to-play profession, and that it is distinct enough from engineer’s kits and elementalist’s conjures.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en/?_ga=1.55473709.769476340.1411683248#section-revenant

The artwork focuses on the red color, and Rytlock’s animations were grey and red.

Rising Dusk.2408:

No, I think it’s genuinely wishful thinking on your part. I find it to be rather clever that they’re using the Staff as a melee weapon, because then people can have Scythe animations as well by using Final Rest or something like that. New weapon types are a major feature for sure, especially since multiple classes would have to get them in order for them to even make sense. That’d be big news.

DiogoSilva.7089:

And honestly, why go for the confusing approach of staves doubling as polearms, when we already have spears and plenty of spear skins? They could just as easily make spears available on land.

It would be more confusing to have Spears underwater and Spears on-land. They would never recycle the weapon type like that because it would be steps backwards in their NPE.

To be honest, they could always copy some of the staff skins into polearms, much like what they already do with staves/ tridents.

I don’t find it that clever. Most of the staves skins will look ridiculous when used as polearms. This also means skill animations will be restricted to blunt attacks, because piercing hits will make no sense with most of the skins. And ultimately, it will lack immersion and be confusing for players that will not be on-par with how it works. “Hey, I’m using a polearm, but I haven’t gotten a new one for ages. Wait, are you telling me all those magical staves I’ve collected are my polearms? Is this a bug, Anet?”

I think all 9 professions will get multiple specializations.

Andred.1087:

This is purely a perspective issue, by which I mean your perspective. There are no new weapon types. They absolutely would have been announced. And I was not confused by that at all, because they made it abundantly clear that they were going to cover everything in the announcement (except, apparently, price and release date…). They do not want to troll us, you’re just taking something you saw and warping it into what you want it to be, but it’s just not that way.

If you show an armored profession wielding a polearm weapon and using polearm-looking skills in a trailer meant to advertise and hype your product, only for it to turn out false and be nothing more than a staff skin, then that is misleading. It has nothing to do with what I want it to be. It’s what it is, it’s what my eyes and your eyes can see everytime we replay that trailer. If it turns out to be a staff skin, then anet’s advertising was highly misleading.

And honestly, why go for the confusing approach of staves doubling as polearms, when we already have spears and plenty of spear skins? They could just as easily make spears available on land.

Rising Dusk.2408:

There will be no new weapon types. If there were going to be new types, they would’ve been announced explicitly at PAX. The melee polearm you saw the Revenant use is actually a melee-attack Staff.

Source? Anet very explicitly said that they were only revealing the major features at PAX, while there were many other, smaller features yet to be revealed.

Also, I doubt their marketing team would mislead the entire community like that, by showing off a melee-attack staff with a polearm skin. Unless Anet wants to intentionally troll us, which would be of bad taste and lead to unnecessary disappointment.

We don’t know how many magumma maps we’ll get. We don’t know how deep profession specializations are. We don’t know which new challenges and group challenges we’ll get. We have absolutely no idea, and no information, to know if we are getting less content than traditional expansions. It’s absolutely impossible to measure at this point.

We do know, however, that we will get challenging solo content and challenging group content. We just don’t know if it’ll be dungeons, raids, world events or something entirely different. We do know that masteries replace the traditional level cap increase and new gear tiers, but we have no idea which one of either offers more. We do know that profession specializations unlock skills, traits, weapons and even change profession mechanics. We have no idea how comparable that is with skill additions from other expansions.

I’m sure that, if Anet wanted, they could have implemented subclassing in such a way without compromising balance much. They could just make it more restricting and secondary than what it was in GW1. However, it’s too late for that.

With might nerfed, does sigil of battle still needs further nerfing? Anet’s balance history teached me that when they double nerf something, the risk of having it getting overnerfed is high.

I like the changes, but have some doubts about two of them:

1. With might nerfed, does sigil of battle still needs nerfing? Anet’s balance history usually tells us that when they double nerf something, it gets overnerfed, so I wonder if one change still requires the other.
2. Elementalist’s scepter changes are too small to make a difference. Perhaps they will help in PvP, but the weak AAs will still hurt its PvE viability. Also, Shatterstone is a weak skill under a high casting time. Fixing the cast time won’t make it the effect any less weak.

I love the guardian’s and mesmer’s changes.