Guild Wars 2

I also think that if you’re elite-specced, it should change your logo and class-name to be that class.

My $0.02:

Dragonhunter was better than I thought it would be, but the arrow-sound needs to get replaced with something more awesome sounding. The little light arrows aren’t impressive looking, and it sounds just like a regular bow. I can just play my ranger to do that.

Reaper: lol – where do I begin? That elite spec is the absolute. If only all of them could be like that! I really do think that class is going to go from being one of the lesser-played to one of the more commonly played.

Chronomancer: Feels like a mesmer with just a few new tricks, but I like it.

Tempest: Feels like I’m still playing an Ele, just that I can over-charge. The warhorn abilities are different, but I don’t think I’d play them over a DD.

I’m tempted to say that the classes that just got off-hands don’t really feel all that new. I mean, I’m using the shouts, and yes I understand Tempest is more frontline and whatnot, but I just don’t feel like they’re all that different. Skills 1-3 are 1-3 for reason IMHO – you use them the most. If the main-hand doesn’t change, it still feels a lot the same. Perhaps that’s just me, but I’m interested in hearing what people say about it.

I really do think Tempest and Chronomancer should get new main-hands as well. It’s not about a fairness thing, I think it’s just a feel thing.

The arrow sound needs to change. Forgive me for sounding so trivial, but it really makes me feel like I’m playing my ranger, not a dragon hunter.

I agree, it was only the illusion of choice. The better builds are available to everyone who’s interested enough to spend a half hour researching the net. Allowing crummy builds only served to give free kills to vultures preying on the n00bs.

I will wait until Elite Specializations drop, before passing judgement (whatever that’s worth.). In the end, elites were a big reason they did all this.

Just to add, my point is that it is doable, but you really do have to hustle for it. The 60 points also doesn’t cover any additional skills you would want to buy.

Based on the wiki – a toon in their 30s should have roughly 100 hero points to spend on buying into a specialization and skills. At that point, you’re also earning ten hero points every two levels. To earn another 100 hero points from leveling, you will have to make level 55. At 45 you gain the use of a second specialization, so you will end up just keeping the one assigned to you (or one of them, if you were assigned more). It takes 60 points to completely buy out a specialization.

It also seems that by your 30s, there’s about 13 zones you have access to, and with an average of 7 hero challenges per zone (rough estimation based on looking at four or five zones), you’ll earn 91 hero points if you complete all challenges in every zone that’s 40 or below.

It would seem then, that to completely make back what you lost to the auto-assignment, you’d have to do every challenge in every zone you can. To make enough to buy out a specialization, you’d have to complete 9 zones worth of hero challenges. You can also level about 6 times (the actual number depends – more if you’re in your 20s, less if you’re in your 40s and 50s).

Rough numbers, just to keep it simple.

The short answer is, we’re stuck with it. The best thing thing we can do at this point is go hunting for hero points and/or level so we can buy our way back into the lines we want.

I think at 47 you should be able to have two specializations so if you have points left over, you could try buying into at least fire or air and see if you can’t recover some of your play style. Anet may have spent some of your points on water and arcane trees, but you don’t have to use them; you can still switch out to fire – you just need to buy it.

A warhorn isn’t so bad, it kind of fits in with the whole tempest thing anyway. (which we’re sure is the point…)

Elementalists are just too cool – in the end we’ll be the ones to make warhorns cool too.

Laraley.7695:

Divine Flavor.2016:

Cecilia.5179:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Cecilia.5179:

Everyone and their mother wanted sword ele. This would be the worst class to surprise us with something different.

You can’t say everyone, since I pretty much did not want a sword.

It’s an expression…

I’m pretty sure our mothers didn’t all want swords, either.

I’m pretty sure all mother don’t all want warhorn, either.

You never know; there may be more than a few mothers with warhorns hiding under the bed.

Lyle.8591:

Belzebu.3912:

Are you guys for real?
Get a couple levels and do a few hero challenge and then unlock everything, I’m sure you don’t even need to be at level 80 to unlock 100% of the skills and traits, this “problem” is temporary and can be solved in a few hours of gameplay.
If you don’t want to level up and/or do the hero challenges so why do you even care about build anyway?

we are critiquing an implement of a frustrating system, i don’t understand why people get so mad when someone gets frustrated. sure its just ‘a few hours’ what if my time is limited! what if i have a job and can’t play gw2 all day and want to play the character i was building before the patch in my free time!

everyone cares about build at least to some extent i think. they want to play the game ‘their way’, make their own character and progress with it!

it’s not an issue of not having access to it all in the end, it just felt unnecessary!! and the algorithms for the autobuild were woahwacky it seems. it’s like ‘oops you had the wrong weapon equipped!!! here is a full spec of (thing you don’t want)’ haha

People just assume everyone is more or less like them.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Ralanost.8913:

I just deleted my little ele and remade her since I knew that would be the outcome. Really stupid decision on Arenanet’s part. Should have just reset everything and let us spent points as we want.

That was a silly decision. Could have just used ToK to level up.

It sounded like he didn’t want to sit and wait a month on it, or farm for them.

Astraea.6075:

I haven’t checked all my sub-80 toons yet, but the autobuild worked fine for my level 36 ele. She got given fire spec, and all the skills she was previously using were trained as well.

While it is unfortunate that it didn’t work out so well for others, the complaints about having to “grind” hero points are a bit too dramatic given you can get them just by logging in (tome of knowledge login rewards) if you truly believe the autobuild has made your character unplayable.

You’re just blowing off the people who weren’t as fortunate as you. Some people got steamed, and rightfully so. They came on the forums to seek redress because that’s what forums are for. It would be dramatic if they went out and ran over a kitten.

i think people are just frustrated that their character is suddenly remade into something not of their choosing!

which is actually a valid complaint.

Cecilia.5179:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Cecilia.5179:

Everyone and their mother wanted sword ele. This would be the worst class to surprise us with something different.

You can’t say everyone, since I pretty much did not want a sword.

It’s an expression…

I’m pretty sure our mothers didn’t all want swords, either.

You have to admit though, it does kind of suck. They sold this game on the idea that the journey was the reward – take your time, do what you want to do, level at your leisure. Now they’re basically saying – just get to 80 and unscrew yourself.

rotten.9753:

There are 6 weapons with “ascended” prefix in that datamine and they all are connected to elite specs:

Ascended Longbow -> Dragonhunter
Ascended Shield -> Chronomancer
Ascended Greatsword -> Reaper
Ascended Warhorn -> ???
Ascended Staff -> Druid
Ascended Hammer -> Engineer spec

So most probably, we will have another 3 elite specs released soon and those specs will be a druid, an engineer spec and some spec with a warhorn. That can be a thief, a revenanat or an ele (warrior already has warhorn skills). Out of those, only an ele had datamined sword (not confirmed) so I would put my money on a thief spec.

My understanding is that the only thing we really know is each class will get access to a weapon they can’t currently use. If that’s the case, Ele could get shield too, for all we know. (Yes, I’m trying to remain hopeful that it’s not warhorn.)

We will almost assuredly need them to buy into Chronomancer, and the other elite specializations, once HoT arrives. With 200 to spare after buying everything, I’d say you’re probably in good shape.

I think there’s some kind of quest-line too, to get an elite spec, but I’m not certain.

Orangensaft.7139:

wtf did all of you even take a single look at it??

just click on the little arrow at the left side of the traitline and take another traitline…

Let’s hope. When you spend points buying into skill categories, you can’t unspend them. The interface is the same for traitlines, you buy into them. I don’t assume we can unspend the points there as well.

I spent about an hour with it this morning, spread across 7 characters (6 80s, 1 37). Not much time spent with each one – just enough to adjust traits, and whack a few things. The 80s are no big deal – you just buy up everything and make adjustments. The 37 is kind of stuck. Oh well.

I hear you, Laser. I went through all of my characters and even I felt like whoa, this interface is kinda busy. But it’s not like these were the only two options. They could have asked me if I wanted to have them automagically recreate my build or not. It irks me that I wasn’t given that choice.

Personally, I don’t know how anyone can play this game and not know the change was coming – if not today then at some point. I like what another guy said – what they’re REALLY missing, is a good tutorial. I would have taken a good tutorial over a bad auto-assignment any day.

Exactly – it doesn’t hurt your level 80 characters, because they have should have enough points earned from hitting 80 to completely unlock all of the skills, and all of the specializations. If your build is no longer working as well for you, or you just want to change it up, just spent all your points, buy up all of skills and specializations, and change to your heart’s content.

For some fresh 80s, it might even be a little bit of a boon, since you may not have had enough skill points to buy everything in the old game.

It also doesn’t hurt the very low level characters, ones that haven’t earned any points to spend yet. (I don’t know what level that is, someone said 30, but it might be lower.)

However, for my 37 warrior, it’s kind of an annoyance. I was thinking today I could finally spec out of Strength and go to something else. Instead, I log in and find all my points have been put into Strength for me. Now that kind of sucks.

Sure, assuming I make 80 on this toon someday, it’s really just a temporary thing. I just have to power through it, scour the map for skill challenges (sorry, hero challenges), scrounge up enough to break into another specialization, and generally make the best of it. In the end, it’s just a game, right?

But that’s also the problem – it’s just a game, not real life. Like a country-western song, if you play it backward, your wife, your truck, and your dog all come back.

Yeah. I really do like this game, and this company – they do seem to be a little tone-deaf lately with respect to their customers, however. I don’t see how something like this gets past everyone in the company, unless people aren’t encouraged to speak their minds. Somebody had to have noticed this.

The new system is nice, but the real surprise is that we didn’t log in this morning and see a fresh pile of points to spend and a blank canvas.

Instead we logged in and found the new system, along with a message that says a program automatically spent some or all of our points to recreate the current build we had.

It’s incredibly short-sighted. It assumes my warrior specced into Strength because I like Strength over Tactics, when I just needed the power boost. Now those points are already spent unlocking the Strength tree and now I can’t buy anything, change over to a new tree, etc.

Don’t you have to be older than 2, to play this game?

This move seemed to really short-change mid-level characters. It’s nice that my warrior doesn’t have to spec strength just to get the damage bonus, but it sort of defeats the purpose of the new system when I log in and find out my points are now permanently spent on strength specialization.

It seems like ArenaNet was thinking only of 80s and the new toons we’ll roll in the future.

it was worth that + the extra 30 bucks I slammed down for additional character slots + the extra 20 bucks I laid out for gems (need my transmutation stones!).

38 and loving it.

Tengu would be a great expansion race. I would think a new class would have to introduce one or more new weapons as well; I feel like the weapons are fairly evenly distributed and having a new class use largely the same weapons would make it feel too similar to older classes.