at least you guys get new maps
We didn’t want this skyhammer. This dammed “funny” map which was added to tournaments roster.
You didn’t want this map. Skyhammer is important for casual players and for those who want to relax with something less serious every once and then. Being in the tournament might seem silly, but it’s a good way to test it and to get feedback. Of course, there are more important issues, like new game modes, but I wouldn’t say Skyhammer is useless.
My fresh air builds goes for 0/30/0/10/30. General Scepter’s strategy is to stack might to your party, general fresh air strategy is to switch to air every 5s to activate lightning bolt and the electric discharge trait. That’s a lot of damage – burst and sustained. You should quickly kill anything before dying, and you’ll have perma vigor and healing-on-dodge for your survival, which coupled with your weapon skills, is more than enough for general pve.
Celebrations is what the festivals are about.
The story inbetween the festivals is disattached from the main narrative, and offers little to the main story outside of one or two glimpses of character development and a rather bland “omg, here’s new bad guys. You have two weeks to kill them before other bad guys appear!” plot arcs.
EDIT: This is possibly an experimental period for anet, and future stories might turn out to be better. Hopefully. I think we all want an epic narrative that can both excite us and feel us extremely involved in its events, but for that to happen, it requires something more ambitious, with stronger narrative/ character build up, an intense climax and a satisfying closure. Maybe with some epic plot twists in between. It’s what the main story with Zhaithan tried to do, although unsuccessfully due to the many issues already discussed by the community.
We probably won’t see again an attempt to do something like this until we get an expansion-like update, though.
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As a hot-join map, I think Skyhammer works great as it is.
For tournament, I think the instant-kill elements should be toned down/ modified. For example, the “glass floors” could make players fall into a floor bellow, instead of instant-killing them. This would make knockback/ launch builds strong, without making them overpowered.
I also think the cannon room is too tight. It’s way too easy to protect it by spamming aoe, and it has the extra disadvantage that you can’t see anything because of spell’s effects, and you can’t dodge to anywhere because you’ll simply die. A suggestion is to place the portal a bit higher above the ground, where the player would be required to fall to the cannon room’s ground, and use a jumping pad to get back to the portal and leave that room. This would make it easier (I think?) for players to avoid traps, assuming that traps couldn’t be placed right next to the portal this way.
About templates, I like to experiment new builds, but I don’t do it often because of how inconvenient it is. The same applies for PvE. This was an extremely convinent feature in GW1, that incentivated me to experiment more (= fun) and diversified my gameplay experience, as I would change builds more often.
About changing builds to new game modes, I would love to. Especially in a game mode that would put stronger emphasis on control and party support, and less on bunkering. I would absolutely love to see a game mode where (defensive) party supporters would be more important than self-defensive bunkers, for the simple reason that the former implies team playing, the later does not (or not as much). Control is king in Skyhammer, and decent in Spirit Watch. Party support is decent in Spirit Watch. The flag mechanic is cool because if incentivates builds that work around protecting the carriers, but unfortunately, bundles do not work well enough in this game to make an entire mode out of it. If I could make a suggestion, is to make a conquest map or a assault-the-base map that would work similar to JQ/ FA in GW1, where protecting NPCs and preventing opponents from reaching them was a crucial strategy. Support builds are completely unreliable in current conquest maps, skyhammer included (except giving stability to allies, I guess), especially in solo queue, because players are always spreading.
Its still conquest map, SO ITS CRAP!
Conquest works fine in this map.
This map is really fun in non-organized play, but when people start taking it too seriously (= competitive), it starts feeling cheap. It’s a map that’s fun when the instant-kills are chaotic and not coordenated, so it works very well in hot join. I’d say this is the single best casual map in the entire game.
Keep discussing, but I’m curious: Would having templates alleviate the issue of not wanting to respec for certain maps?
Certainly yes, but I’d say templates are generally more important to incentivate people to experiment with new builds, or to help them diversify more their own gaming experience. Many builds work well across all maps, skyhammer aside.
Has a discussion on the goods and bads of the change. But the move is now more like an Elementalist’s Aura.
I do think that for clarity, such effects should all be named similar. As in, it should really be called Chaos Aura.
I agree, but then Elementalists have Fire Shield, which shields them from nothing. xD
In fact, Fire Shield is one of the worst skills for an elementalist to have. It’s an underwhelming aura that goes against the way that profession was meant to be played. If its duration was increased from 5s to, say, 7s, it would only be average at most, because elementalists don’t even want to be hit due to their squishiness.
Stun Aura and Frost Armor are great auras, but I wouldn’t say Chaos Storm is any worse. Protection is one of the strongest boons in this game, and even when it doesn’t specs it, Chaos Armor offers conditions on top of its boons. Besides, the cripple + swiftness combo is decent for escaping. Probably not as reliable as frost armor, but it gives a dual purpose to chaos armor.
There’s also the chance, and more reliably in a 1 versus Many scenario, that protection will spec several times, unlike the previous version. In those situations, this actually makes the new chaos armor stronger, due to how strong protection is.
The pve leaderboards measure the time invested and dedicated on this game, and indirectly on anet as a whole. It’s not a competitive leaderboard system, unlike pvp’s, but more like a “thanks for supporting us” hall of fame.
In that regard, I think the free extra chest for the players that have invested years on GW1 is well deserved. Even more so, it’s part of a promise. Anet has promised us that our dedication in GW1 would be worth cosmetic skins and acchievement points. For those who like or use the skins, cool for them; but for those who don’t, the extra points were pretty meaningless.
After this update, their dedication for GW1 is worth an extra chest. And because, in this game, it’s easy to get more acchievement points thanks to the dailies and monthlies, I’d say it’s perfectly fair as it is.
People will always complain about everything. If this change didn’t happen, the dedicated GW1 players would now be complaining (and rightfully so) that their investment gave them meaningless acchievement points. In the end, Anet decided to offer them this little extra, and I see it as a good thing.
Thanks, Anet!
Does it really have higher critical damage than berserker? Wow, that’s surprising. Were the stats for ascended celestial amulets also retro-actively changed after this patch?
There’s barely a difference between 3s and 5s cooldown. You don’t need less than 5s, because scepter’s air #2 is also under kitten cooldown.
Fresh Air is crazy good for pvp, and surprisingly enough, for pve as well.
Anet doesn’t wants to invest much on cosmetic gear in their cosmetic-driven game.
^Hopefully, Rock Solid + Ether Renewal should be good enough to counter that.
If going with Tempest Defense, we could get something like 30 air, 20 earth and 20 arcana. Elemental Attunement, Renewing Stamina, Zephyr’s Boon, Bolt to the Heart. No healing, though, so outside of dodges, you would have to rely on killing a squickly as possible on a stunned/ KDed foe, and then cast your arcanes/ lightning flash.
No, I am right. Note what I’ve said:
GW2 is balanced around pvp. Even though the balancing team tries to not hurt pve much, they do not directly focus on it either.
They are splitting skills so that their pvp changes do not hurt pve much. However, they are NOT directly focusing on pve, few exceptions aside, and this is as clear as day.
Since the game is out, we have seen all or almost all meta pvp builds nerfed, and a massive attempt at making all classes viable in pvp. But we have yet to see the same effort being done for pve.
Anet has a pvp balancing team that cares about not hurting pve (much). They do not have, however, a dedicated pve balancing team.
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Sometimes simplicity and elegance is the best. Even when they are highly stylized.
I would like to see more lordly clothes for light armors, and especially a vampire-themed set. But certainly something more elegant, simple and/ or majestic. Not overburdened with unnecessary accessories and straps.
Defiance needs to go for control builds to be needed. Support builds need better infrastructure and skill mechanics, and after that, they should be strong enough to be needed. Conditions must be balanced around the caps – or have the caps removed entirely, to be needed. And then, because several new builds will be needed, pve no longer will revolve around a dps rush, but around a team with a good composition.
You know, like that game called GW1, which didn’t even have tanks, yet had far more build diversity than your average trinity MMO, and even more than GW2 can hope to get.
Of course, the next step would be to give actual weaknesses to each build, instead of making them self-sustainable. So team playing could actually play a key role. But because GW2 desperately needs to be innovative, in anet’s eyes, we should get satisfied by having a massive multiplayer online game that revolves almost completely around solo-playing and minimal player interaction.
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GW2 is, by design, heavily driven by cosmetic items. Yet, it seems like Anet has decided that the production of cosmetic equipment should be under a low budget. We rarely get equipment skins, and when we do, they’re either incomplete, or only available from the cash shop – and almost always pallete swaps.
It’s just an example of how inconsistent Anet is with its own game.
You would think that a heavily cosmetic-driven game would have more unique medium armor by now, or scholar’s male armor that wouldn’t make us spellcasters choose between picking generic cleric cloth or exaggerately ornamented, hyper-realistic, non-sense grabs. :P
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GW2 is balanced around pvp. Even though the balancing team tries to not hurt pve much, they do not directly focus on it either.
So, unless (or until) GW2 gets massively revamped in several key areas, dps builds, and especially GS warriors will continue to dominate this game’s pve. It’s a direct consequence of this game’s vision in not having any required roles to do content.
It said it’s per target, so it may be that you can still get lots of boons in a 1 v Z scenario, but it definitely makes mesmers weaker in general, and very much so 1 v 1.
It’s pretty much like Elementalist’s auras now. You no longer get as many benefits from multi-hit attacks as before, while slow attacks should go unaffected. I don’t mind the cooldown change, because otherwise it discriminates some classes over others, and as I’ve said, the Retaliation boon also needs an internal cooldown for the same reason.
In pve, or in pvp versus professions like, say, the Warrior, the cooldown change has little to no impact. Meanwhile, if you get by something like, say, Guardian’s third sword chain, you’ll only activate the effects once instead of three times.
If multiple different sources hit you, you should still activate the effects multiple times.
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^ Let’s not forget the conditions this skill still inflicts. Blind is pretty much a free Aegis, and cripple + swiftness can be movement worth of a free dodge.
I hope they have adjusted the boon durations. 3s of regen or swiftness is pretty crappy, while 5s of protection is massively good. Usually, the norm for other professions is protection lasting 3s while other boons last 6-10s or more. It just makes no sense that you can get something as bad as 3s of swiftness or something as good as five seconds of protection randomly.
As far as I know, no other profession has a skill only that applies an armor that can be gotten via combo field (I could be missing something though).
Elementalists have Frost Armor and Fire Shield. And Fire Shield is sucky for them. :P
Chaos Armor is getting the same treatment that the Elementalist’s auras did a few patches ago, with the internal 1s cooldown. I just hope the Retaliation boon gets the same treatment someday.
I’m surprised, however, that they went back to making this skill completely random.
If conditional +10% damage boosts are used in other classes, then so will Stone Splinted be used for eles. D/D, and even some s/d builds should seriously consider it now.
The dominance of zerker gear is not the fault of the players, but of this game’s balance and design. It’s a direct consequence of GW2’s innovative “party-roles-shouldn’t-matter” battle design.
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I’m aware of scholar’s runes, but depending on the profession, divinity runes are still an equally good choice. I wouldn’t use divinity on warriors, but it’s perfect for, say, elementalists.
Let’s not compare runes with gear. I’m sure the entire gearset will offer more than 12% critical damage.
But see it this way: how many runes offers as much critical damage as runes of divinity do? Not much (if any?), so divinity runes are one of the best options for dps builds. Zerker gear + Divinity Runes, or Valkyrie/ Cavalier gear + Divinity, depending on the profession. The general stat boost is just a (very) nice bonus to professions like the elementalist or the guardian.
Meanwhile, celestial gear, as seen by the ascended celestial amulets and some other celestial trinkets, offer less critical damage than some other gear, like valkyrie’s or berserker’s. No dps build is going to use it, and more all-around professions will prefer using valkyrie’s gear (pvp) or Cavalier’s (pve) over celestial’s.
Maybe celestial might be decent for defensive builds who still want to deal decent damage, but celestial is never specialized at something. Divinity Runes, meanwhile, specialize at critical damage while still offering celestial stats.
Of course, this can all change if anet decides to change celestial’s stats. My opinion is just based on current celestial’s equipment stats.
Guardians and eles always have access to condition damage, they have plenty of access to extra healing which makes the toughness + healing combo good, they have low HP pool which makes extra points in vitality more meaningful, and they have decent access to extra critical chance from other sources (fury, traits, etc) to make great use of the gear’s critical damage.
As you’re calling my post a fail, I’ll bold an important side note in it.
This makes divinity an excellent choice for dps builds that make use of every stat.
(Hint: not ALL dps builds.)
Also, Divinity Runes offer some of the highest critical damage out of all runes, while still offering decent power and precision (and condition damage). The difference in power/ precision stats between divinity runes and other dps runes is minimal. Meanwhile, celestial’s critical damage is bellow zerker’s gear critical damage, and the power/ precision difference makes a much alrge difference as we are dealing with much higher numbers.
It would be lovely if celestial gear was as good as the divinity runes. But it’s not.
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Celestial is a complete waste of time, and divinity runes are pretty much junk.
Celestial is mediocre, but Divinity Runes are excellent.
Regardless, any of them fit an Elementalist very well. I suppose they work great on Guardians too.
Celestial stats are worse than Rune of Divinity stats. Divinity specializes on critical damage, while celestial is mediocre at everything. This makes divinity an excellent choice for dps builds that make use of every stat.
The dps loss for losing berserker gear is probably too big. Granted, the health, toughness and healing are going to be nice while still allowing you to deal decent damage, but I doubt it’ll be the best choice.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the celestial stats worse than divinity runes? Divinity might have a bit of every stat, but they also specialize at something: critical damage. This is excellent for elementalists, who have the arcane skills and decent access to fury and decent critical rate with divinity + a bit of precision investment, while still having decent power, decent condition damage, a good healing + toughness combo, and enough vitality for their HP not being too low.
But if I’m not wrong, there’s nothing special about celestial’s critical damage, which makes it just plain mediocre. The small magic find will be worthless to make you stronger. There’s a reason why elementalists don’t use celestial gear in pvp (or do they?). Generally, Valkyrie with divinity is much better for excellent critical damage, good healing + toughness, and strong power, and all you need is a bit of extra vitality and precision from secondary gear.
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Support and control builds NEED to be a necessity in this game. If they are never necessary, players will never pick them because dps ends battles faster, and monsters will never become more interesting for the sake of being doable in all-dps parties.
GW2 has a trinity: Damage, control, support. All of them sould be required in hard content, if the game ever wants to have better combat depth.
Make them necessary, and the current pve meta will have a far bigger diversity of builds. Not only support and control builds, but dps builds that require support or control to be any good.
An opinionated answer by someone who’s clearly not part of this game’s demographic is the right answer. I’d go as far to say that for a person who likes the RPG side of MMORPG, this is one of the first real MMOs, at least in recent history.
What is the demographic for this game? Gamblers and zerg farmers? That’s not what anet has promised. They have promised a challenging game where players would be rewarded by skill and not by farming. And they have promised an highly-focused RPG experience.
GW2 is one of the easiest games out there, ridden with broken mechanics that create incentive for heavy dps builds and punish any other different kind of build or any actual strategy.
GW2’s “personal story” is also tame, only available at the beginning of the main story and long forgotten ever since, alongside a personal instance that has yet to serve an actual role-playing purpose, an overall narrative that is weak and, now with the living story kicking-in, disjointed and heavily experimental. The world exploration is highly repetitive, purely a mathematical grind; it has few to no exciting encounters or dangers that would make the wilds of Tyria memorable, exciting or dangerous; it has little to no treasures or other forms of rewards to be found; and all maps play exactly the same, only with a visual change. RPG games are usually excellent at making their worlds immersive, rich and addicting in many different ways. GW2 is just mediocre (if not worse) in this department, excluding the art style and the music.
I’m sure devs realize this, and they’ll need some time to fix the countless issues that GW2 has (we know raids and housing are in the works, we are getting acchievement improvements, and the new dungeons have been better – even if just temporary), but to claim that anyone who dislikes this game – or doesn’t like it as much as they wanted – is because they are not part of the demographic that GW2 is appealing to, is just wrong.
It was GW2 that has failed to appeal to a big portion of its demographic. It is currently only successful at holding wandering casuals, mindles farmers and rich gamblers; and everyone else is either giving up, or faithful waiting for their promises that everything will get better someday.
Most of the other so called mmoRPGs are just MMOs that have completely forgotten what RPGs are all about.
I can’t talk about most others, because I haven’t played them, but I’ve heard SWTOR is mostly story-driven, and from what I’ve played so far out of FFXIV:ARR’s beta, that game has far more story-driven content than GW2. I’m sure FFXI used to be pretty tight at story-telling too, and GW1 certainly was better than GW2 at story content and world immersion.
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I would like to see a conquest mode that promotes offensive play and pushing into opponent’s territory (wasn’t that UT2004’s conquest mode?) over one that promotes bunker builds and a meta driven around bunkering and passive position playing.
I like that they have buffed a lot of underused skills for all professions – that made the patch very fun. But anet should be more careful with aoe/ condition/ boon spamming, which this game already had too much of.
AoE is a problem with skill design, but I’d say the condition/ boon/ cleansing spamming and the lack of strategy or skillful play behind them, is because of the trait system. Think about it, what are traits currently adding to each build? Mostly statistical boosts, boons and conditions to already existing effects.
I’d say the trait system is bloating this game with effects. A skill that would be perfectly simple and elegant, without the traits, becomes a massive spamfest with them. For example, cantrips are fine skills as they are. But traited, each of them gives vigor, regeneration and condition removal in addition to their strong effects. It makes them nearly mindless to play with.
I would much prefer a revamped and expanded skill system that would be restricted and balanced by “skill traitlines”, then having traitlines whose only purpose is to add passive effects to already existing skills.
I also think that builds should be toned down to the likes of a warrior, or a staff ele, or a staff guardian, that rely on team play to maximize their effects; than constant buffs to make sure that each build is able to spam everything.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if Burning Precision was changed to Engineer’s/ Necromancer’s version someday. Incendiary Powder used to work like our trait, except it applies 2s, before it was buffed. In the end, Burning Precision is an incredibly outdated trait. :P
We were also the last profession to get the Renewing Stamina’s effect.
And you thought that was balanced before? This is nowhere near the nerf that Mesmers make it out to be.
Just like RTL’s nerf is nowhere near the nerf that Elementalists make it out to be.
“Looking into it” has previously been used for future buffs as well. Anet knows that the conjures are not being used for their intended purpose, so I hope any change to FGS will be to rebalance it (nerfing the mobility, buffing something else).
Renewing Stamina and all the equivalents for the other professions should be nerfed, imo. I would make it 6s vigor every 10s, not 5 every 5s.
The + damage to burning foes should be upped to 10%, like Guardian’s version. The + burning on critical should be buffed to the Engineer’s version, although I’m unsure if that one is used or not.
Diamond Skin should offer 15%, have an extra effect, or go down a tier. 5% isn’t even good for an adept trait (as the air trait shows), so I wouldn’t be surprised if diamond skin was fine even as an adept trait.
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The power of a profession is determined by its entire build, not a single skill. It’s perfectly normal that some skills are better than others, without making the profession overall stronger. An elementalist is much stronger than a warrior in pvp, for example.
Also, RTL is a more reliable escape skill because it is not affected by chill and cripple slowdown.
RTL was a problem, it certainly was. A bunker build who could leap out of battle every 15s/ 20s was near immortal.
People cry about RTL’s nerf, but the skill is fine as it is. I know some have a hard time accepting this, but RTL is still a good skill in every format of the game. It does not need buffing (reverting) at all. The skills that the devs should focus on buffing, are the weak/ underpowered ones, like several in the focus line, or shatterstone, or several utilities, etc.
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I would like to see something similar to Final Fantasy’s time mage, red mage and summoner. Mesmer has one or two time effects, but that style is underdeveloped. Elementalist could probably be a red mage, if given a sword or a fencer.
Also, certainly, a dark knight for the third armored profession! It could have some risky mechanics that involve health sacrifice, not very different from necro’s but used in a different way; and it could take some notes from the dervish. The dervish was a very individualistic profession, compared to the paragon’s party-driven gameplay, and while paragon involved shouts, chants and many kinds of party support (like the guardian), the dervish revolved more around self-boons, life-stealing, etc. A dark knight could inherit those effects, get the chill effect (as opposed to guardian’s burning) and perhaps, to make it more distinct from guardian, have stronger long-range options over melee (but of course, fans would expect them to at the very least get some strong melee).
If guardian is flavored as a party support/ defensive profession that can be specced for more damage or more control; and if warrior is flavored as a berserker that is mostly about burst; the dark knight could be a profession mainly focused on control and solo/ egoist tactics, with damage and party support left to optional specs. It would be – to make it more distinct from warrior’s and guardian’s control, a profession with plenty of condition control. Keep in mind that I’m talking about condition control, not condition damage – a necro has both, a dark knight would have several specs that would mix direct damage with chill/ weakness/ vulnerability/ etc, and maybe even poison and torment (but no burning, no bleeding, no confusion).
It needs work the effect and sounds are mediocre at best. Hope they work on it like they did the last one.
I hope they tweak the effect too. Although I would be satisfied if they simply made a faster animation.
I know Im thrilled to have a new map. Because a new map is more important then silly things like solo queue, leader board decay, real warrior fixes, more game modes, and increased pvp rewards.
All of them are important, so it’s good that anet is working on all of them.
What drew me to the harvesting sickle, besides the awesome animation, was the shorter harvesting duration. I absolutely love how I can harvest quicker with it – it’s very satisfying.
I have my 800 gems ready, but I’m unsure if I should get the axe because of that. :/
What drew me to the harvesting sickle, besides the awesome animation, was the shorter harvesting duration. I absolutely love how I can harvest quicker with it – it’s very satisfying. I agree with Pixelpumpkin, the duration adds the most value to those items, or at least as much as the animation and the unlimited uses.
I have my 800 gems ready, but I’m unsure if I should get the axe because of that. :/
realize that d/d is stronger than ever.
LOL. What kind of make-believe world are you living in? D/D has never been weaker. In fact, since launch (and before, since IIRC beta weekend 2) D/D has seen NOTHING BUT SEVERE NERFS in every single patch.
This is a complete lie.
D/D is the weapon that has been getting the most buffs out of all we have.
Since launch, the air skills became aoe, Cone of Cold healing was buffed, Ring of Earth started to offer cripple, Frost Aura’s chill duration was increased from 1s to 2s (and later started to offer 10% damage reduction), Magnetic Grasp sucked and was completely revamped into a sequence skill, Lightning Touch’s and Fire Grab’s functionality were improved (although they still miss often), Lightning Whip’s functionality has been improved (it now always hits) and Lightning Touch’s weakness has been improved. Meanwhile, Ride the Lightning’s cooldown was nerfed.
There was a time where elementalists only used s/d in pvp because the weapon skills of mh dagger were not worth it.
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Outside of focus, no, Mesmer’s ability to escape IS terrible. You’re not going to tell me that a random chance to get swiftness out of a mediocre signet is going to make mesmers excellent at escaping? :P And what good build supports this setup? Mesmers must bring portals in wvw and pvp, phantasm mesmers bring their phantasm signet, which leaves only a single slot which they take blink; while shatter mesmers take a clone stun breaker, and have one free slot, usually for illusion of life. And that’s when they don’t take condition removal.
Mesmer is just a slooow class.
Are you saying that mesmer have troubles to escape? even with all buffs to stealth?
They may have some issues preventing opponent to flee but for sure they don t have any to get out of troubles.
My mistake, I meant chase and not escape.