Guild Wars 2

Been to long I’d say

Just move the Mastery Points down one tier to Bronze and Silver so new players have an easier time getting the HoT masteries filled. Eiether that or nerf them into the ground for the same results.

Then never bring back adventures ever again in any future content updates.

HoT gave us three maps with DS which I just count as the final boss and LS3 gave us four maps and none of the LS3 have adventures. Currently their event testing basket brawl though it gives no rewards so peeps don’t care but new activities on the daily rotation instead of useless adventures is the way forward.

Of course they need rebalanced just look at AB as a gleaming example also the biggest issue I see in this posts are that so many people have no idea what the difference is between balance and difficulty.

East- Glide over everything and bomb no armors even needed
North- Take any path you want across then set up a turret you don’t have to recross at all for the remainder
West- Shroom jump and glide over the right hand side bypassing mobs to release spores
South – Dead straight through the center of all the mobs pushing a bomb with lots of CC needed and the bomb will even get entangled from time to time with the most armors needed.

The balance is so bad in AB that most of East is constantly afk just hitting the vine to get credit and waiting it out. While South has the biggest burden the longest mechanics and the final burn itself is even left to South to call. Each lane should be balanced to one another so that the entire thing isn’t so dependant on one land or another lane can be filled with lazy afk players each and every go.

The wide variances in difficulty in the same meta has been an issue since HoT launched by far DS is the most balanced of the bunch with its three lanes but the others were in dire need of an overhauls months ago. It’s not even about exploiting by design depending on were you are during a meta your either carrying that meta or coasting for some easy loot and the burden should be equal across.

The issue now though is after so long people barely do the other metas and AB is still done the most because the meta’s themselves aren’t balanced as AB is by far the fastest and easiest meta to do in HoT it doesn’t even compare to the others. With new maps these metas will eventually die the damage is already done too many TD meta’s were the entire map blames Nuhoch lane and toxicity has gotten out of control. You only get one map but so many people flood in Nuhoch these days because that’s the one that’ll fail it leaves the other lanes short while others stopped trying the meta all together.

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

Raids influence things outside of raids. They don’t exist in a bubble and though I can ignore them, saying that they don’t affect anything else is demonstrably not true.

Of course they do. And PVP influences PVE as well and has always been, while PVE is affecting WvW. But how are those changes that were a result of Raids made your experience in general PVE worse? How did those changes negatively altered your game play?

You’ve obviously played the game long enough to understand how Anet balances this game. Pushing Mesmers into a support boonshare build in raids means they have one of the lowest dps outputs in all the other modes. Giving raiders the ok for dps meters means dps meters are used in other aspects of the game. Core classes can swap out anybtrait at will elites on the other hand each have a role made for raids and can only seal out two of the three trait lines. Meaning their trinity push is maintained in PVE while outclassing the core such as Chrono outclasses the Mesmer. You went from looking at all classes to do anything to the classes being skewed with their raid role. Heck perma stealth theif was only nerfed because a thief solo’d a raid boss recently months of WVW complaining ignored and it’s only when their raids get tampered with do they take action. Heck their are other OP builds out their that far exceed what’s reasonable but none of them get touched unless they caught soloing raid content.

The nature of the broken builds is enough to prove that other modes are completely and utterly neglected arguing that raids aren’t the primarily influence on all the other modes falls rather flat when you consider the elites specials are all designed with the trinity that raids themselves introduced so the game is mainly blanced to the raid.

If things go south through bad choices the player base starts demanding a vanilla server.

In Gw2 however it’s asking for gw1 content though the vast majority of it relates to gw1 QOL. As for the weapon skins sure somenget asked for it the design for them already exists and they own the rights so it’s just easier to take gw1 skins and port them over. A new weapon needs to be designed and discussed an existing weapon already has that work done for it and thus can be created in game much faster and cheaper.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Keadron.9570:

Doam.8305:

It’s changed

The purpose of each class used to be your own personal taste because they’d be viable in any mode. Every class could be a condi, power, hybrid, and so forth and you’d always get the job done.

The raids hit and with raids they slapped trinity elements and thus some classes became better at being tanks, healers, and so forth. It’s not even elitism as a casual group can’t just fill up with randoms and head of to town. They need people to fill roles now and some classes outshine others greatly.

If all classes were just as capable as the other classes in each role though with different mechanics and methods for doing it then we wouldn’t see the rise of these posts asking for pure role classes.

Elite specs killed a part of the game because they completely changed the nature of the classes. The elites have particular roles behind them while the core classes did not its rather plain and obvious. If they want to see pre HoT numbers again in this game they need to reverse course with pushing roles with elites.

^This

Not exactly.

While it’s true that there’s always a “best in comp” build, it doesn’t mean that other builds and comps aren’t viable. VG doesn’t require a chrono tank; it’s just a lot faster with one.

The lesson from raids is the same we could have learned at launch, in our first dungeons, our first L50 fract, our first nightmare fract: understanding the mechanics is more important than build. Raids are the most challenging content in the game and so people gravitate to what they think will make it easier; that isn’t the same as the game requiring certain builds or team comps.

tl;dr the purpose of profession remains a matter of taste (although that alone won’t guarantee you spot on a PUG raid)

So your saying instead of a chrono tank, ele dps, and druid heals the raids can be completed with a thief/eng tank, chrono dps, and reaper heals? Heck not all the classes even have access to the taunt mechanic and some of them posses rather selfish healing.

Some builds aren’t viable and that’s because at the heart of viability in this game is the trait system. Core has the choice of 3 in any combination so they can set up for anything while the elites can only set up for 2 of the three 3 and that static trait sets the role for the elite. So by its very nature of forcing a traitline of course some builds will become nonviable for certain roles.

castlemanic.3198:

Doam.8305:

Paragon is the least represented GW1 class in the entire game

Only represented by "Virtue of Justice " which is just a slightly modified “Anthem of Flame” from Gw1.

Not exactly true, guardians are a mix of paragon and monk from Guild Wars. This is, admittedly, a more visual “plate armour with magic and shouting” than any abilities transferred as you discuss below.

Paragons for those who remember trigger effects by their own party members completing an action. So for instance if a Paragon casts a heal the party will get a buff and that heal would only happen when the party members get hit, cast, strike, or, something. If your afk standing still with paragon support you get nothing but the characters doing something will get greater results than the other blanket support classes.

I don’t believe that would work, it would require a variety of effects to be designed and triggered upon skill use or whatever scenario you can imagine. The effects that have been released in the game have all been passive. By passive, I mean they’re all fire and release. Dervish kinda has the same issue. It’s infinitely more likely than monk or ritualist, but I’m not sure that it would really work with the current GW2 combat and effects/boons/conditions system. It might be possible as an elite spec by changing the mechanics of virtues into something else. But other than that I don’t see how. Maybe you can enlighten us.

I just said only one skill reflects the mechanic and thus the mechanic exists already. When a guardian activates virtue of justice all party member in earshot will inflict burning to the enemy with their next attack. It won’t trigger and nothing will happen unless the other players take action they have to activate a skill first since in this game even basic attacks are skills. So whenever they decide to activate that skill then and only then will the guardians effect come into action and thus burning gets added to their strike. Why it’s only limited to that I don’t know but its an entire mechanic reliant on other players for a single skill.

As an elite or a class it would be simple with weapon, heal, utility, and elite categories. We already have Runes of the Mad King that summon a flock of crows when an elite is activated so what if that elite was an elite of its own and elite that said all parties within earshot summon a flock of crows to attack their target with their next elite usage for the next 10sec.

Additional effects on skill usage is already in the game and it worked fine for GW1. TC is listing two of the three gw1 support classes completely ignoring the poor paragon.

Amaimon.7823:

HoT gave us
1 Armor
1.1 Bladed Armor
1.2 Leystone Armor
1.3 Guild Armor
1.4 Mistward (Heavy Only)
1.5 Miscellaneous Armor Pieces
2 Weapons
2.1 Auric Weapons
2.2 Chak Weapons
2.3 Reclaimed Weapons
2.4 Plated Weapons
2.5 Machined Weapons
2.6 Shimmering Weapons
2.7 Tenebrous Weapons
2.8 Gold Fractal Weapons
2.9 Elite Specialization Collection Weapons
2.10 Miscellaneous Weapons
3 Backpacks
3.1 Bough of Melandru
3.2 Auric and Luminate’s Backplate
3.3 Story Backpieces
3.4 Legendary Backpiece
3.5 Scribe Backpacks
3.6 Radiant and Hellfire Backpieces

Considering they had more time to prepare for the next expansion I think it’s fair to expect at least as many in the next, maybe not a lot more, though.

That’s actually very few for an expansion for instance we can only count Reclaimed weapons in the trash category. Trash mobs and their loot tables typical have new weapon skins and armors in your typical expansion. It’s never anything special of course but nothing says MMO expansion than killing that first mob and getting a shiny new pair of pants.

That category is woefully lacking and what TC wants is from that category of killing the big bad and getting loot. I may be wrong but nothing akin to Tequatl weapon set or the Triple Trouble Wurm armor pieces exist in HoT. Heck GW even going back to GW1 is a game known for dishing out special weapon sets at the very end we got a set for Zhaitian just like we got a set for Shiro but no free token to pick up a free weapon for Mordremoth heck we got greens(legendary) in Gw1.

It’s changed

The purpose of each class used to be your own personal taste because they’d be viable in any mode. Every class could be a condi, power, hybrid, and so forth and you’d always get the job done.

The raids hit and with raids they slapped trinity elements and thus some classes became better at being tanks, healers, and so forth. It’s not even elitism as a casual group can’t just fill up with randoms and head of to town. They need people to fill roles now and some classes outshine others greatly.

If all classes were just as capable as the other classes in each role though with different mechanics and methods for doing it then we wouldn’t see the rise of these posts asking for pure role classes.

Elite specs killed a part of the game because they completely changed the nature of the classes. The elites have particular roles behind them while the core classes did not its rather plain and obvious. If they want to see pre HoT numbers again in this game they need to reverse course with pushing roles with elites.

Paragon is the least represented GW1 class in the entire game

Only represented by "Virtue of Justice " which is just a slightly modified “Anthem of Flame” from Gw1.

Difficulty is achieved by exceeding the reasonable limits a single character can accomplish on their own and forcing that character to rely on others to survive. So I can understand wanting more viable healers as I think every class should have a viable build for every role if the old play how you like in GW1 is still to hold. But that obviously didn’t happen but if you want an additional primary healer then it should be Paragon not monk or ritualist.

Paragons for those who remember trigger effects by their own party members completing an action. So for instance if a Paragon casts a heal the party will get a buff and that heal would only happen when the party members get hit, cast, strike, or, something. If your afk standing still with paragon support you get nothing but the characters doing something will get greater results than the other blanket support classes.

Do we really need a farming spot for coins?

Wouldn’t adding a clover farming spot balance the market a bit more than that of coins?
How many coins get flushed for the sole purpose of clover collecting plus clovers can’t be sold on the trading post so the people farming will be the people farming it for us not to sell. That means your not flooding any market either while reducing the demand of coins and ectos while increasing the demand on other mats because people would craft more. More coins means more crafting and more clovers means more people pushing towards their legionaries and people talking on map chat about clover uses in the farming area further spurring legend crafting.

In the end not only would clovers still have the desired effect on coins but farming clovers makes a lot more sense than farming coins because farming coins basically means your a pickpocket, murderer, and thief.

Just about everything has a chance at droping and ascended chest

Of course Teq and Triple Wurm have have aa chance to drop unique skinned ascended gear as well as the regular lot.

I’ve gotten from bags, Teq, guild mission I think, HoT meta, and I think one dropped during a Season 1 meta event.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_chest

We can’t even get an easy(training/explorable/experience) and mythic(elite/rewarding/toxic) difficulties for raids.

Why not instead of all this purchase deal we pull some things from gw1. First off add extra maps that have absolutely nothing to do with the story in gw1 this maps lead to special areas, elite skills, and excellent farming and took multiple maps to reach and people would pay runners. In Gw2 these maps would lack waypoints.

Also vanquish from gw1 which was kill everything on a special instanced hardcore map. In Gw2 we have megaserver so an additional map instance filled with elites, agony, and random effects could work. Maybe pull a nightfall and make them nightmare versions of the maps that people would have to talk to a special box to talk too.

As for easy mode just make more roads for instance HoT doesn’t have traditional MMO roads to walk from point a to point b without battling through mobs. Like in WoW and any mmo roads are a mechanic and players need to leave the beaten track to see tons of mobs instead of so called roads full of knockdown based enemies and raptors.

If they add it they should make it legendary while there are multiple things I’d love for gw2 to pull from gw1.

This staff would fix a problem with Gw2 legendaries because legendaries exists for the elements that all the dragons represent such as fire(incinerator), plant(kudzu), or earth/crystal(Mace). However we have no zombie like legendary and Zhatian is forgotten so make this staff or one of the other undead gw1 skins into a gw2 legendary.

Djinn.9245:

Rednik.3809:

Djinn.9245:

Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but this is how gaming works. Raid loot is always much better than anything else and it should be. People dedicate a lot of time and effort to raiding and they should be rewarded for that.

So, at first people were asking for challenging content and rewards to show off. Now there is “I’m entitled not for just exclusive, but for the best rewards because I’m doing content I asked for”. And then some people are wondering why raid community have such reputation.

I don’t really understand what you are saying, but traditionally in MMOs Raiders get the best rewards because Raiding requires the most dedication / time investment in the game.

The dedicated raider looks just as impressive as the dedicated PvP player in other games. The time and effort required are equal and that’s why you see unique items for both pvp players and raider in other games the only difference being since raids are against the AI then they increase the stats and difficulty to compensate so gear stats go up. This of course isn’t true for GW2 there is much more mode overlap/disparity.

Personally I don’t care about the raid rewards the other modes have more longevity as pvp/wvw has the vs player aspect while fractals has the treadmill in the form of AR.
The worst thing you could do to raids at this point is to actually give them those superior rewards especially legendary armor. To much time making rewards and not enough time trying to strengthen the mode to survive after. Heck a simple fix would be to lock raid mastery points to the raid so even if people get the big reward they may enter the newer raids just to get new points to increase their mastery. But nope it’s all about the legendary armor and rewards so can raids survive a good chunk of their population afk in LA?

Rasimir.6239:

Doam.8305:

More importantly is that PvP a mode that a player can start and play a character at lvl 1 with the only PVE requirement is the game intro and entering the pvp lobby now have to do other modes. If your one of these pvp born players who for over four years never had to do any content in any other mode to be successful how would you take this change?

Why exactly would a pure pvp only player with low-level characters want to go to all the expense of getting ascended equipment? Equipment doesn’t do a thing for you in pvp in this game (aside from giving skins, and you honestly can’t expect some of the hardest to get pve skins to be given out for (almost) free in pvp).

Doesn’t matter what they use for that’s not the issue the case is it was changed and now those people have daily gated crafting mats to use. A change that came post raid what other major changes has PvP undergone since Raiding came about? The correlation and reasoning is obvious for the change.

maddoctor.2738:

Doam.8305:

Please oh wise one tell me how the acquisition of ascended gear in fractals and pvp became so much more easier and so much more intuitive by tying it to pve crafting. To buff something is to make it easier of course so how did these changes make it easier??

Getting Ascended gear from Fractals costs half of what it did before the change. From 550-600g to ~350g, how is that not “easier”? Even if you include the cost of leveling crafting to 500, it is still way cheaper than the old version. You also need less fractal pages, so less days, less grind, to get it.

Is that the number for all items purchased or is it one of the ones that take into account farming for mats. Not just increasing it 500 but time is also a factor for instant daily gated crafting in addition to ripping people out of their preferred mode of play into another to make some end game progress in that mode. You don’t need ascended to start but you do once you need to stack AR.

More importantly is that PvP a mode that a player can start and play a character at lvl 1 with the only PVE requirement is the game intro and entering the pvp lobby now have to do other modes. If your one of these pvp born players who for over four years never had to do any content in any other mode to be successful how would you take this change?

The only major change to how the modes operate since raids were implemented were the changes to ascended gear.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Doam.8305:

jihm.2315:

no body is forcing you to do raids stop complaining the game has to appeal to a lot of types of people

Dungeon, Pvp, and Fractal rewards were all nerfed I’d mention WVW but they didn’t have anything to nerf.

Dungeons were indeed to push people into raids and raids were exempt from the so called changes to normalizing gear aquisition.

It’s not that people are forced to do raids but the things people like to do are getting nerfed in an attempt to shovel those people into a mode they have no interest.

Raids are the teachers pet never getting into trouble and getting free passes in life while the others are in a corner with those cone hats. So of course people will be resentful in regards to raids. Probably could have used a better example but meh..

Tell me how fractals rewards are nerfed? T4 fractals daily give the best reward fractals ever had add the 3 daily T4+the daily 100 CM and you get rewards better then raids.
In 1 week, raids give you 150 MS, and a chance of ascended from each boss ( its not rare to get 0 ascended after all the bosses ).
In 1 week, fractals give 21 Master Chest and 21 of other chests, that have a good chance of ascended, and liquid gold, and infusions. More relics that you can get 20 slot bags, some skins, stat infusions….
Dungeon were nerfed, but then they buffed it back, its profitable to run for the achiev of 5 gold.
So yeah, Fractals and Dungeons, are rewarding, even more then raids by the effort you need to do them.
And pvp got the ascended weapons/armor on top of the already good track rewards.
So stop lying about rewards.

Please oh wise one tell me how the acquisition of ascended gear in fractals and pvp became so much more easier and so much more intuitive by tying it to pve crafting. To buff something is to make it easier of course so how did these changes make it easier??

Why of why or great wise one on the mountain weren’t raid ascended items tied to pve crafting like the other modes then? If it such a great buff then surely raids would only be improved to receive such a gift.

TorsoReaper.8530:

as asureus.6287:

2016 – NCsoft boasts a record year on PC and mobile

http://www.jeuxonline.info/actualite/52118/ncsoft-revendique-annee-record-pc-mobiles#reactions

French website use a translator

Not sure if you are aware but NCsoft makes more than GW2…

I think there knocking on GW2 just look at those numbers represented on the charts. They are all going steadily upwards and increasing with the exception of Aion and Gw2. Gw2 is worse of because those numbers represent the hatred shown to HoT because we see Gw2 at 86 prior to HoT, 101 for people giving it a try, and then it falls lower than it even started out as new and old players found that HoT left a bad taste in there mouth with the lowest of the three at 77.

If they wanted to post something positive about gw2 they would have waited to see what LS3 has accomplished instead of showing of how great the Blade and Soul/Lineage apps are going to be for NCsoft.

jihm.2315:

no body is forcing you to do raids stop complaining the game has to appeal to a lot of types of people

Dungeon, Pvp, and Fractal rewards were all nerfed I’d mention WVW but they didn’t have anything to nerf.

Dungeons were indeed to push people into raids and raids were exempt from the so called changes to normalizing gear aquisition.

It’s not that people are forced to do raids but the things people like to do are getting nerfed in an attempt to shovel those people into a mode they have no interest.

Raids are the teachers pet never getting into trouble and getting free passes in life while the others are in a corner with those cone hats. So of course people will be resentful in regards to raids. Probably could have used a better example but meh..

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I thought the NCSoft people said Gem Store sales were steady, and only box sales were down these last few quarters. If so, I guess that would negate some of the theories.

To me, over the past nearly-5 years, many things have changed. This just seems like a bash-Raids thread. I consider Raids to be equivalent to WvW or PvP; something I don’t/did’nt initially find interesting, but would consider/did try out eventually. In other words, just another Game Mode I can take or leave.

I also don’t believe a player can’t be loyal to a game/franchise if they haven’t been playing since/near launch. No more than playing at/near launch would automatically make one a loyal player.

But, of course, each have their own opinion; one no more valid than the other.

Good luck.

I don’t know if your familiar with the term “whale” but whales are the primary target of Cash Shop oriented games. So gem store sales are maintained through whales ts obvious that outfits and glider skins are a favorite of whales and I don’t blame Anet for whaling that’s just standard practice. It just makes it harder for gen sales to fall so remaining steady isn’t a big deal but if sales really started to plummet then they’ve lost some whales and that’s a major problem.

A person doesn’t have to be a vet to be loyal but the term honeymoon phase comes to mind. People don’t take new people seriously because there just in the honeymoon phase. It’s when you can list, acknowledge, and accept the existing problems with the game and continue to play after that people will take notice because the honeymoon is over. Not just games cause the phrase A"honeymoon phase" obviously didn’t originate in gaming.

OniGiri.9461:

Vayne.8563:

This is a vast oversimplification. The fact is, the game is doing worse than it’s ever done financially, and new players who come to the game for raid type content are competing with far more games.

When this game was a casual MMO that was relatively easy, it was actually in a vast minority and that was one identity. The more stuff added to make this stuff more like other MMOs, the more likely it’s just going to get lost in a sea of MMOs.

There’s no way the players coming in are going to replace the really loyal guys who have been here for years. That’s never been the way MMO works. Core communities are what keep games alive.

Guys who are just coming in now, they’re less likely to be loyal because that ship has sailed. They’ll be the guys looking for a cheap or free game. They’ll be the people looking for something to play for free until the next installment of their main game comes out.

You can’t just replace loyal long term players with new guys. So if loyal long term players leave it’s going to affect the bottom line.

What did Anet say about the expansion. New players didn’t buy it as often as they expected. Anet expected more free to play people to buy the expansion and it didn’t happen. This is why the change of identity thing has been such a hot topic.

Frankly I don’t think so many people have left per se, but the less happy I am with the game the less money I’m going to spend on gems and I used to spend quite a bit on gems. Now I spend a lot less. Why? Because I’m less happy.

I suspect that’s not all that unusual either. Certainly the numbers are down. Down lower than they’ve ever been.

However, I suspect those numbers to jump up when the new expansion hits anyway. So much depends on how well the next expansion does.

So you are not going to let off with that “numbers are down” argument even though i already thoroughly debunked that in the previous comments.

Pls stop stating your opinons as fact – it goes against the rules for commenting on this forum.

Where do you get that people coming in now are less likely to stay loyal?
Many of those “long term players” have stopped playing the game for one or two years and come back when ever they feel like playing it again. Who are you to call them disloyal?

Also not all the guys that have been in the game since launch think like you do. You should probably stop talking for more than yourself.

You must be exhausted defending the indefensible all the time you’d probably get a stronger footing for some of your arguments by changing things up.

Obviously sticking with forums Reddit isn’t your thing people are more direct there. However on this very site exists a post called “New player, Sad player the expansion ruined it” that does have numbers supporting the decline of activity in this game and the forums. Obviously new player retention is the number one counter to such a thing so it goes without saying that there are serious problems with new player retention if the overall activity in the game is on a steady decline. It’s an older post and maybe you’ve commented on it for all I know but being old it’s a bit to late to really go on the defensive about it.

Arguing about whether or not things are down is pointless because they are its important to discuss improvements and steps takin after rather than be dismissive.

OniGiri.9461:

Doam.8305:

Dungeons have story mode WVW had mapping and roaming wall PVP has unranked and private sessions. Fractals of course have lower tiers that don’t even need agony resistance.

Yes raids have no tiers/easy modes/story modes etc.
But they do have different difficulty levels especially since the last wing was introduced.
In the AMA to the LS Episode 3 they also came out and said the new wing (speaking of the newly released) will have bosses to serve as stepping stones. And they do. They are a good mix of challenging encounters but with easier (or even no) mechanics. Two of them being at the level of Tier 3 Fractals.

Doam.8305:

Raids have nothing I can do any of this it doesn’t get any more strait forward than this simple truth. All videogames have these basic entry steps the fact that so many bosses exist at this point only reaffirms that this is their current direction. Quoting multiple bosses is meaningless as dungeons, fractals, and even the various WVW lords exist. Raids do not act like any other content in guild wars the difficulty tiers seperate the toxic element from new people trying to enter a mode. The try Garda will be there say one with new raiders were in other modes they’d be seperate in ranked/explor/AR??/

The notion that mid and end bosses are akin to the modes that other aspects of the game have doesn’t fit either. That’s after the fact and not a basic introduction with people who will probably expect people to know the mechanics off the bat just like they would if they entered the raid in the current state. Basically no difference there is no difference for new people trying to get in and test the waters.

Yes i will give you that the raiding community was very much closed off in the beginning. It was all about git gud or go home. I was just like you – asking for story modes to get into raiding. The ones you are afraid of meeting – they already stay in their own “200+Li, Eternal, 100 Kill proofs and a dancing monkey”-LFG-groups. New raiders won’t encounter them unless they try to join one of these groups – which would be a big mistake anyway

Doam.8305:

The behavior that was present before was offset by the larger positive aspects. Three dungeon posts may say zerker only but the other six took anyone and Anet didn’t encourage the behavior taking action to balance things around like buffing condi. These days without the basic entry the negativity isn’t offset at all. Anet even encourages them with the meter statement and since raids are there current push like esports prior they made it the face of the game. Even ascended gear was untouched after they nerfed the other modes. So the behavior is different because those negative aspects of the past were refined and given power. We had an official response on meters for raids could you imagine how bad zerker nuts of the past would have been if Anet supported them with an official thumbs up for meters.

How can you say this?? The first dungeon was Ascalon. The one were you need the lowest possible level to enter. And the LFG was FULL of groups saying “LVL 80 only”, “10k+ AP, EXP, Lvl 80”, “Lvl 80 Exp or kick”, “Zerk or kick”, “lvl 80 speed clear, be exp or kick”.
Yes these groups still exist in raids. But the raiding community has grown over the last year. A lot of guilds are offering training runs and explain beginners how every boss works by going in with them, showing them the mechanics and wiping over and over with them until they get it.

I can say it easily a bad kid will only get worse if he is encouraged to do those bad things. Back in the day of zerk those people asked for meters and Anet said no to those demands. The bad raid kids asked the same thing and Anet patted them on the head gave them candy(dps meter) and told them to go nuts. It’s not even about the meter but everything about Anet supporting them and thus the situation/behavior worsens.

All explorable dungeons are set to 80 and supposed to be equal with Arah of course being the outlier with it it being near soloable so selling runs became the norm with it. So of course zerker would be a demand for the level 80 version. The story mode was the entry and I’ve never seen heavy zerker AP no necro for any of the dungeon story modes.

The raiding community growing of the past year is because it has so much room to grow without a developer created entry. Your examples are a player driven side effect because if your raiding group loses some key members you can’t easily replace them your going to have to go out and try to train a replacement doing those easier bosses you mentioned. Player created paths for entry can work but it’s much slower and are a symptom not really an alternative at all to a developer created path.

Nothing wrong with Afk farming because it gives necromancers something to do. Not like a demand for them exists after all for the life of the game.

As for karma someone can correct me if I’m wrong but you can spend karma to get packs to assist in map bonus farming. They speed up the process in getting the rewards which you sell for cash on the tp.

OniGiri.9461:

Doam.8305:

OniGiri.9461:

Blaeys.3102:

So can you pls explain what kind of behaviour raids introduced to the game that wasnt there already?

.

Since the argument was that RAIDS introduced some “game identity changing anamoly” my point that this behavior was already present before introducing them (in dungeons and fractals – which were here before raids) is correct!

Yes its true that raids have no story mode like dungeons or lower tier like fractals to ease you in. But thats not a mistake. Why would you need another instance based content like that? Fractals are already well implemented and fun content. And they can also help groups ease into raids since there are some fast paced, mechanic heavy ones now.

You should maybe refrain from presenting your opinions as facts.

There are 12 raid bosses with different difficulty levels now. Everyone can setup a group and jump into one of the easier ones and get their feet wet by wiping a couple of times.
No need for gearing correctly, meta-classes, meta-compositions, strategies, preperations, etc. Just jumping in and dying until you can kill it.

Isnt that how all video games work? Or how any other content works in Guild Wars?

Dungeons have story mode WVW had mapping and roaming wall PVP has unranked and private sessions. Fractals of course have lower tiers that don’t even need agony resistance.

Raids have nothing I can do any of this it doesn’t get any more strait forward than this simple truth. All videogames have these basic entry steps the fact that so many bosses exist at this point only reaffirms that this is their current direction. Quoting multiple bosses is meaningless as dungeons, fractals, and even the various WVW lords exist. Raids do not act like any other content in guild wars the difficulty tiers seperate the toxic element from new people trying to enter a mode. The try Garda will be there say one with new raiders were in other modes they’d be seperate in ranked/explor/AR??/

The notion that mid and end bosses are akin to the modes that other aspects of the game have doesn’t fit either. That’s after the fact and not a basic introduction with people who will probably expect people to know the mechanics off the bat just like they would if they entered the raid in the current state. Basically no difference there is no difference for new people trying to get in and test the waters.

The behavior that was present before was offset by the larger positive aspects. Three dungeon posts may say zerker only but the other six took anyone and Anet didn’t encourage the behavior taking action to balance things around like buffing condi. These days without the basic entry the negativity isn’t offset at all. Anet even encourages them with the meter statement and since raids are there current push like esports prior they made it the face of the game. Even ascended gear was untouched after they nerfed the other modes. So the behavior is different because those negative aspects of the past were refined and given power. We had an official response on meters for raids could you imagine how bad zerker nuts of the past would have been if Anet supported them with an official thumbs up for meters.

OniGiri.9461:

Blaeys.3102:

It isnt, however, how many formed their guilds/communities in the first years of the game. For us, raids represent a break from the core purpose of the game in PVE – to offer a fun place for us all to play together. And while some can argue that the rest of the game hasnt changed, I think that argument is shortsighted – raids in their current form have had a real impact on how many approach the game – through the “stepford wife” syndrome created by meta gameplay, a feeling of being left out of part of the story/experience/etc, through false airs of superiority emerging across both game chat and various forums, and so on.

You are of course entitled to have your own opinion. I don’t know of course how long you have been part of the guild wars 2 community but let me tell you as a veteran: meta and the exclusion that comes along with it has always been part of guild wars 2.
Maybe you avoided it so far – but it was always there. In dungeons and then later in fractals. People have always been excluded from that kind of content if they didnt run what was then known as the “optimal builds”. And there was always a favoured composition of running a group for specific content.

You are drawing a pink-colored past of guild wars 2 that is not realistic.

So can you pls explain what kind of behaviour raids introduced to the game that wasnt there already?

None of what you said holds any water at all

Fractals weren’t there in the beginning and your dungeons/fractal exclusionary response was due to a small minority of the population. The dungeons were introduced through story mode an entry point for all levels for people to learn the map and layout. The rewards and prestige were all tied to tokens the elites could farm tokens faster for their rewards but the more casual runs would get the same rewards without being all gun ho all builds were viable.

Raids have no build up no entry no way to ease new players in it to get a taste and learn the lay of the land. You go in and you learn through death the trail and error path. New players can’t be eased in and their is no muddle your way slowly over time for them either. They took the elites that demanded zerker and gave them the keys for an entire mode to play.

If dungeons had a scale in difficulty a lower tier that a pug can muddle through for some extremely meager rewards to teach players the ins and outs then allowing those players to take steps on their own then maybe.

Aside the difference it painfully obvious that dps meters weren’t a thing back then.

Dungeons, Fractals, Pvp, and even WvW let the common player get their feet wet first while raids have no such thing and Anet even went as far to make official statement about dps meters allowing their usage. The very nature Anet chose to implement these raids is what changed the behavior of the game. None of it is anywhere near what this game was like at the start its a behavioral shift for the player base and the basic design of the game as a whole.

If their gonna update legendaries then none need it more than Kraitkin, Frenzy, and let’s just call the last one shark week.

Does Kraitkin even change and skill animations?

Why is #2 for Mesmers the only one with shark biting effect?

Kraitkin and Shark Week might as well share an aura with those white bubbles

If we’re never getting any new underwater legends then shouldn’t we improve the existing ones further

Also to be honest I’m not to familiar with Frenzy it changes skills and has a nice aura with those little fishes. But if the other two could use improvement then there must be something about the third. It’ll be the only legendary harpoon gun in the game after all.

Cyninja.2954:

Doam.8305:

If we’re going conspiracy then HoT had four playable maps and a few legendaries. LS3 has the same amount of playable maps and a few legendaries and will have to be paid for like Ls2.

shocker
LS3 is the expansion the content about the same just with map size offset by more legends, raids, and fractals than HoT. There just trickling it out so people don’t leave in mass. Good call TC

Before anyone goes blah blah but Anet said this or that so such and such. Anet has said a lot of things that never happen. Heck I don’t even believe what comes out of my own presidents moujtg so why give Anet a pass.

Anet is Fake News

You are conveniently leaving out:

- the revamp of the engine they had to do for gliding and HoT mechanics to actually work (as well as then introducing this engine to the old world. They specifically said that the engine took a huge chunk of developement ressources. We even had the no-SAB fiasco that year since they hadn’t come around to reworking it with the new engine)

- the complexity of HoT maps versus the Living World maps

- the entire redesign of traits and all the classes. Yes, while technically this came before HoT it still required a ton of ressources and was part of the expansion

- tons of other stuff

When accusing others of fake newsing, maybe at least pretend to make proper comparisons.

Hmm…
Seems your quoting a bunch of Fake News

But don’t you worry cause were gonna make Tyria great again just look at Bloodstone Fen it was a Yuuge improvement to the gliding mechanics what with the lazers, bombs, and aerial acrobatics not to mention the new gathering nodes. Ember Bay had the best Yuuussage of ley lines yet to traverse the map not to mention those thermal vents and all that water. Bitterfrost had the torch, water, and the bitter cold area of constant degen with new Quaggans to boot. Lake Doric’s subtle day and night event cycle and town invasion mechanics were fan-tastic. All those raids and rewards plus the legends and achievements heck I’m still getting fan mail from mah well buddy. Plus mode selective balancing trumps any sort of balancing they’ve done prior just look at the people happy that epidemic got a wvw fix.

They say since its three teams that each team is probably gonna make two maps each which is six playable maps. Six is average for most expansion so your fake news is debunked LS3 was the expansion they talked about earlier.

Let’s also not forget the cats as the cat collecting obviously took more time and energy than anything in HoT. If it was easy we’d have cat collecting for the guild hall itself too but not a single cat to collect for the hall.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Doam.8305:

I see no difference

The role that gear treadmills play is a mandatory one for MMO’s. They give players something at the top something to do and those players introduced to the higher tiers reduces the amount of players needed to complete old content thus keeping it active.

In addition it has to be earned thus content must be introduced in order for the player to be able to earn it in the first place. Dungeons died cause it’s all skins and raids will die to if their maximum reward sits at legendary armor. They can’t keep it afloat just adding different legendary armor skins alone.

There’s a difference between earning and grinding, and that difference matters. We earn masteries by going all over the world and completing diverse challenges. Yes, some of those challenges are grindy but most of them are more strategic or performative in some way. You only have to do the thing once, or a few times, sucxessfully, instead of eighty hojillion times only to get kicked in the face with all your work being worthless five seconds into the next expansion. I did in fact feed Hungry Hal 50 times, but if every mastery point was like that I would not still be here.

Other games have gear treadmills. You will notice that I’m not playing them. Mastery treadmills are a much better strategy.

And really, the vast majority of raiders just want a prize to commemorate their victory, that they can flash around in towns and everyone who sees them will know what they accomplished. Knowing that they also have +1 damage over non-raiders is not necessary, and the ones for whom it is necessary, well, they never left WoW and they’re not about to now.

What is or isn’t a grind is completely up to the player you can’t sit here and tell other people what they consider to be and what they consider not to be a grind.

Thus my statement stands the people in other games earned their gear just like we earned our masteries and some may think its a grind over there just like some may think its a grind over here. They’re serving the exact same purpose in the end and opinions aside they are both equal methods for a developer to use. Horizontal or vertical progression they are both progression however this is game doesn’t quite have horizontal progression as seen with elites, infusions, prefixes, and masteries.

If we’re going conspiracy then HoT had four playable maps and a few legendaries. LS3 has the same amount of playable maps and a few legendaries and will have to be paid for like Ls2.

shocker
LS3 is the expansion the content about the same just with map size offset by more legends, raids, and fractals than HoT. There just trickling it out so people don’t leave in mass. Good call TC

Before anyone goes blah blah but Anet said this or that so such and such. Anet has said a lot of things that never happen. Heck I don’t even believe what comes out of my own presidents moujtg so why give Anet a pass.

Anet is Fake News

LouWolfskin.3492:

I take the waypoints and other mechanics over having to wait 10 minutes for a gryphon to carry me over to another city just to explore an adjacent area any day.

Ah but that’s the best part of MMO you meet new and interesting people while doing events and in gameplay. However when you wp think of all the interesting people you miss by teleporting. Of all the movement types in this game I only really have an issue with waypoints they don’t fit into lore well and you miss that character interaction while traveling cause everyone will be traveling the roads as well. You see more people in the back allies of even HoT maps than you do in the open areas of core not because of population in the maps but because fewer waypoints mean you have to travel.

I see no difference

The role that gear treadmills play is a mandatory one for MMO’s. They give players something at the top something to do and those players introduced to the higher tiers reduces the amount of players needed to complete old content thus keeping it active.

In addition it has to be earned thus content must be introduced in order for the player to be able to earn it in the first place. Dungeons died cause it’s all skins and raids will die to if their maximum reward sits at legendary armor. They can’t keep it afloat just adding different legendary armor skins alone.

This game doesn’t have a gear treadmill but don’t fool yourself thinking that progression of that nature doesn’t exist. Say you had your full set of ascended before HoT. Well first off new prefixes were added with four star combinations, masteries like chalk acid and the downskill for PVE play, infusing your trinkets for WVW and Fractals, and many other examples exist.

In the end it’s exactly like the mounts in gw2 as that mechanic can’t be left out either. However instead of mounts we have swiftness, speed shrooms, skills, traits, runes, sigils, convuluted builds like centaur healing, nuhoch wallows, waypoints, gliding, leyline gliding,jump pads, thermal vents, and not only things I may have forgotten but all the things they’ll add in the future. You have all that just to answer the simple solution solved by mounts which was no doubt in the long run more time, energy, and resources for them and the player. The same is true for armor progression but not as bad instead of the simple gear tiers we have something much more complicated. A living armor system were additions are made and improved upon as the game moves forward. No doubt since adding slots to trinkets is already a thing Anet will add it to armor. With HoT we got the ability to change prefixes in the forge and we were supposed to have armor. So flushing additional resources into improving our gear is the current method with new prefixes being added with patches.

Carighan.6758:

Doam.8305:

What is group content pre hot and what in core tyria prepares a player for the things in HoT?

I agree that this is a problem, but I see the fault entirely on the pre-HoT side.

HoT feels much more balanced. Still easy, but you cannot go brain-AFK. Things will kill you if you do, unless you are grouped (then it’s entirely trivial again). Which is a nice balance for a social MMO. Group up and it’s all safe haven, go solo but then pay attention.

But ofc, yes, it’s a harsh lesson from pre-HoT, but that’s because honestly, the old world is pretty… boring? As far as PvE goes? It’s all very very bland.

Agreed but to be fair you couldn’t go brain-afk pre HoT at least in regards to season 1 content anyway. They did have a build or ramp up in difficulty and in group play that would’ve eased people into HoT more so than anything shown. The issue is it was all temporary from Aetherblades, Toxic Tower, Marionette, and the assault on LA version of LA you saw large scale open world maps that easily could bridge the gap into HoT. I left out season 1 because it’s no longer in the game but I person would have a much easier time soloing HoT maps then lets say trying to solo climb the toxic tower even if you removed all the toxic bosses.

Greener.6204:

Doam.8305:

Heck just check out the historical traits/skills and look at all the playstyles and builds that are completely removed from the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits

You know, we work hard to give context; please don’t ignore it. The very first bullet point on that page says, “Many of the effects from these traits were merged with other traits.”

I didn’t say effects I said mechanics and the removed mechanics are listed from their old trait lead ins. It’s not difficult the old class mechanics and skills obviously used to have traits that went along with them. Thus “Many” isn’t all and the ones that have completely been removed are the ones tied to the mechanics that were completely removed.

Unless you want to link historical in game class mechanics the historical game traits shows much more than the mechanics as well. The elixir-infused bomb trait and used to be the base line for an entire engineer support build and a guardian who used tomes would have course had to trait them.

I use common sense in my posting and it should be common sense that every single build in this game begins with the traits. If a skill is removed its traits are removed you remove certain mechanic based traits and class diversity will plummet as many class builds are even named after single traits like a PU Mesmer.

If the first bullet point said all of the effects were merged then you would have a point. But if your nitpicking that then I feel further explanations are in order because the upper half of the page features historical traits post launch while the bottom half of the page features historic traits during beta. I wasn’t referring to either the beta traits or the merged traits if you click on any of the traits they will link to another page as well. From that page it will tell you if the trait was merged or removed completely during a balance patch it will even give the exact date as well. You can go through the traits of whatever your main class happens to be and see what has been removed over time if you feel like it.

SigiSixx.4826:

Doam.8305:

Anet balances all the time(Adjusting numbers anyway)

The game was of course balanced to the zerker heavy armor only no necro’s in the early days. Moving to lets balance things in the name of esports and the balance cause we have trinity now for raids.

Balance comes in two forms for Anet a simple adjusting of numbers or pruning then sweeping it under the rug to be forgotten about forever. Member underwater combat, Anti-Toxin Spray, Clone Death, Ranger pets moving, skill animations, Guardian tomes(My guardian was shelved after tomes were cut), and though I’m not familiar with every class it seems every class is a little lighter on the mechanics today than they were in the past. Even with elites because things like guardian tomes were unique mechanics however elite specializations didn’t bring new class mechanics they reused existing mainly from wells, shouts, traps, and so forth its true classes got access to these things but there mechanics that existed on other classes.

Heck just check out the historical traits/skills and look at all the playstyles and builds that are completely removed from the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits

I’m all for balance but Anets version of balance is the reason why my Engineer can no longer heal with explosions. In this day an age with raids elixir-infused bomb trait would have been nice.

Its a good decision that anet removed skills from come classes.. Lets look at necros build and skills.. There is the minion build, NOBODY plays it.. People abuse this build just for afk farm. And minion build will never be usefull in pvp or pve..

Thats just kitten

Its just boring, all classes can choose 3 of 5 builds, but always only 3 are played because “most effective”.

That’s a really bad example because Necro’s can and still do afk farming in addition the necro lost some support and tanking abilities I think. Like gaining healing power based on power or increased toughness while channeling.

How is removing the entire Tome mechanic from Guardians or cool healing explosions from Engineers a good thing? Also the entire most efficient statement of yours doesn’t carry water at all. What’s most efficient for pvp isn’t what’s most effiecient for other modes. Perma stealth in WvW or boon share Mesmers out in the world alone. Every mode had a couple viable builds per class from pve, wvw, dungeons, and pvp back in the day. That alone is enough for class diversity because the healing branches a guardian could take in wvw, there different bunker builds to hold points or even other builds to cap points in pvp, and of course the zerker dungeon running and anything goes pve. Class diversity was much higher and many more viable builds existed in the past.

You say its good but trying to hard to troll with the no one plays necro minion build statement. A bit more control over what and when their minion attack and they’d show up more in fractals, pvp, and raids there just fine in the other modes though. Also could have stated an actual dead build that was killed through skill removal. They were all viable builds like in GW1 an MM vs an SS Necro but for esports that could get confusing for the viewer apparently so they axed some viable builds so each class could have a solid single front the boring broken never used builds weren’t touched because they weren’t used in the first place. Exactly how our skill animations were axed you cut down on esport clutter by removing tomes flashes of light or all the explosions from engineers explode healing thus only viable builds were really touched.

Lets take a look at the last legendary

1. The Rifle is well a Rifle and only the Engineer and the Warrior can use the rifle which would mean locking all other classes out of that buff because they couldn’t use a rifle.

2. Its a buff so wouldn’t that push the Warrior and Engineer to use the rifle as a weapon since their other weapons wouldn’t have that buff unless they slot additional legionaries into those slots.

Outside of all that I’m not going to do fractals for a legendary backpack and I’m not going to do pvp for a legendary backpack. I’m also not going to do raids for legendary armor either. Sadly I’m a filthy WvW fan and WvW gets nothing so because I prefer WvW I’m out of luck getting legendary buffs if legends granted buffs. In addition WvW is in dire need of some reworking in certain areas and lets say it does have a proper reward system like the other modes with a legendary reward of some kind. Then people would be forced to do that mode they had no interest in to get the legendary and the numbers would be artificially inflated by people that despise it.

Carighan.6758:

Chun.5827:

Its interesting how you equate a “challenge” with group content.

Considering the genre of the game we’re talking about (A Massive-Multiplayer Online RPG), I sure hope that the difficult content is group content. Otherwise, someone screwed up somewhere very early in the design process.

The whole point of these games is to play in a more social manner. Because let’s be frank (or bob, if you prefer), if not for the social aspect I could play a few dozen much better games. :P

Multiplayer doesn’t hold up as an excuse for challenging content because a precedent was set prior. What is group content pre hot and what in core tyria prepares a player for the things in HoT?

People have everyone right too dispute the multiplayer aspect because for more than half the content in this entire game and the content prior it was irrevelant. Group content prior was zerg, zerker, and stack. To say people shouldn’t complain due to a multiplayer aspect is to anser TC questions about whether the game lost its identity. So from your perspective if you think the content being group based is a nonissue then yes the game has lost its identity because the ground work built by the core game doesn’t match the group based content we see today.

Heck all the advertisements that sold people on the game were based around mobs and events scaling to the number of players involved. From a single player to a hundred players the content would scale to you. This isn’t true at all in todays game its doesn’t scale to the individual and doesn’t seem to adjust to the upper tiers either more people just means things will die faster instead of ramping higher.

Anet balances all the time(Adjusting numbers anyway)

The game was of course balanced to the zerker heavy armor only no necro’s in the early days. Moving to lets balance things in the name of esports and the balance cause we have trinity now for raids.

Balance comes in two forms for Anet a simple adjusting of numbers or pruning then sweeping it under the rug to be forgotten about forever. Member underwater combat, Anti-Toxin Spray, Clone Death, Ranger pets moving, skill animations, Guardian tomes(My guardian was shelved after tomes were cut), and though I’m not familiar with every class it seems every class is a little lighter on the mechanics today than they were in the past. Even with elites because things like guardian tomes were unique mechanics however elite specializations didn’t bring new class mechanics they reused existing mainly from wells, shouts, traps, and so forth its true classes got access to these things but there mechanics that existed on other classes.

Heck just check out the historical traits/skills and look at all the playstyles and builds that are completely removed from the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits

I’m all for balance but Anets version of balance is the reason why my Engineer can no longer heal with explosions. In this day an age with raids elixir-infused bomb trait would have been nice.

mauried.5608:

One of the problems with threads like this is the term “challenging content.”
What is it?
Ive asked this question many times and have yet to get a sensible answer.
The bottom line is that “challenging content” to some players is impossible content to others, as everyone in the game doesnt and never will have the same degree of skill.

Challenging content is side/optional content regardless of how you view it should be in the game.

Using GW1 as an example since they did it properly they had two types of maps. If you played the story path in GW1 it cut through certain maps and certain paths on those maps. Mob density and so forth along that story path was easier because it was made so for people who just wanted story. Then there are maps that don’t even get touched through the story these maps were optional and were faster routes when traversing the maps lacking vendors and any sign of civilization usually people would actually pay other players to run them through those areas on alts. Gw1 also had vanquish mode but the off beat maps had higher mob density with a higher grade as well with greater rewards to be found. You had to travel through them to find elite skills, elite armor vendors, or special instances.

World of Warcraft even has roads but those roads don’t exist in the timeless isles and other locations.

One of the reason why HoT was so difficult and failed so badly was because they didn’t seperate anything they never did the very basic step of separating the story path and making challenging more difficult content optional and on a seperate map. They did it once properly with the centaur farm area the bitter cold area doesn’t count do to elixir gating the area. If they made an entire map with no storybimportance akin to the centaur area or an entire map akin to the bitter cold with a slow map wide degen then that would fix a lot of the issues. A lot of the people screaming HoT isn’t hard simply don’t comprehend the need for basic seperation needed from the story based areas and maps as is done with every MMO including GW1.

OriOri.8724:

You’ll have more luck with this if you pick the 1 or 2 classes that you think need a rework the most, presenting an argument as to why you think they need a rework, and then give a proposed solution to that so ANet has something to consider.

But just asking for a rework in general won’t get us anywhere.

People have gone in depth with their individual classes for years in their personal class forums. If he did pick a single class and go into detail it would just get removed and added to it’s class forum then forgotten like the others.

Classes were nice at launch outside of the heavy zerk meta anyway then they started adjusted things to get into esports. Then adjusted things again to accommodate the light trinity elements for raids.

Regarding TC’s request I don’t think being too specific or asking for a rework will change anything cause its been asked for in varrying degrees in the past.

What we really need is to separate both our skills and traits into the seperate modes. They separated some skills like epidemic to balance things our for WvW a bit but traits need to be split as well. The issue I see is they keep on adding modes at this rate we’d need PVP, PVE, WVW, and Raids(Trinity elements) with individual tweaks to skills and traits and that’s four different areas.

Mesmer no contest
Not Mesmer the class but Mesmer in the game meaning I’m not held to target an enemy to summon clones. Zombies are dumb so a couple clones running around and the zombies will go after them and I could shatter to destroy the zombies.

Phantasms too along with stealth, teleport, protection, buffs, and even gw1 era skills like illusionary weapon meaning illusionary gun should be possible too. Means Mesmers would be king of the zombie apocalypse regarding zombies, looting, and using mind tricks to bend other survivors to your will.

Also speaking of zombies why don’t we have a zombie legendary weapon the other dragons have legends that tie to their elements so why not Zhatian?

OriOri.8724:

Doam.8305:

Alacrity should be renamed and the buff should be spread further to other classes. Rev is an odd choice it would be more fitting for usage with an engineer via temporal gadget cause time machines. Guardian could have been given access through tomes if the still existed because that’s reading off spells and a time based on temporal spells could have worked. Rangers through some sort of unique pet, and the only way rev getting it would be if the original idea of time mages from GW1 panned out because then they’d have a hero that made sense.

Also Moa or similar skills should be shared too the mesmer is a bad class kept afloat with OP and required balloons. If we snipped the two balloons alacrity and Moa then maybe Mesmers could get the rework they need to be an all alround great class with viable builds a manipulation, glamour, mantra, and so forth style of builds are all terrible because niches are carrying the weight of our class and not its skills we have the worst diversity of all the classes it’s shatter or shatter and that’s our options with maybe wells I really have no clue how a well based Chrono would do.

Giving away Moa more (engineers already have access to it) would not make ANet redesign mesmer. And they can redesign the class without giving away Moa.

This wouldn’t accomplish anything to continue giving away unique mesmer skills/effects.

Since this game started people have been asking for Moa to be nerfed and even Mesmers asked for Moa to be nerfed. It’s was useless in PVE and overpowered to the point our entire class hinged on it and was balanced around it. Since then of course they’ve obviously turned it into a signet and added those passive abilities while adjusting it’s CD. People wanted Moa nerfed so the other elites could be buffed and maintain balance but instead they buffed Moa and nerfed the other elites some more. PU nerfs hurting Mass Invis, conditions removed from glamours hurting Time Warp. Then added another crutch in the form of alacrity even nerfing alacrity output but mesmers are still taken because of it. Wouldn’t it be nice to be taken into a group not for our Alacrity, Portals, or Moa but rather because of our raw ability.

More or less chop down the overgrown tree blocking the light to the forest so that other things can finally get some light shined on them and grow together as one. I agree that giving it away to more classes might not get anet to fix some issues but I’ll still don’t think they’ll fix anything regarding Mesmer without addressing Moa and Alacrity. Heck and this point I’m positive that the next elite spec for Mesmer will also have some sort of OP gimmick.

I guess it boils down to the old bring the player not the class mentality vs the opposing bring the class not the player. I’m a mesmer main and tons of people have mesmers they just use those mesmers for alacrity in raids, moa in pvp, porting golems in wvw, and porting Jp runs in pve then shelving them afterwards.

Alacrity should be renamed and the buff should be spread further to other classes. Rev is an odd choice it would be more fitting for usage with an engineer via temporal gadget cause time machines. Guardian could have been given access through tomes if the still existed because that’s reading off spells and a time based on temporal spells could have worked. Rangers through some sort of unique pet, and the only way rev getting it would be if the original idea of time mages from GW1 panned out because then they’d have a hero that made sense.

Also Moa or similar skills should be shared too the mesmer is a bad class kept afloat with OP and required balloons. If we snipped the two balloons alacrity and Moa then maybe Mesmers could get the rework they need to be an all alround great class with viable builds a manipulation, glamour, mantra, and so forth style of builds are all terrible because niches are carrying the weight of our class and not its skills we have the worst diversity of all the classes it’s shatter or shatter and that’s our options with maybe wells I really have no clue how a well based Chrono would do.

I sold mine but now I regret it as I made my legendaries and sold the rest to help by the pre for the last one I made.

However mystic coins aren’t just used for weapons their used for the nightfury shoulder bat aura and winters presence with the snowfall too. While I’d really like an ascended queen bee aura myself the issue is that more auras may come in the future then again a mystic coin farm other than ley line may come too.

So if you have no interest in current weapons and current auras I’d say go ahead and sell them.

Limodriver.4106:

I dont think they care consider they still dont have a solution to convert exotic aura to ascended.

100% this you see auras all over the place but what you don’t see are the exotic auras because those are a stat decrease and a gold item in a sea of red just looks weird.

I’d put a serious effort into getting the preserved queen bee if I could be used with ascended gear or even tied to a shoulder slot for trans like the bats.

I like these however the lack of eng, mes, or necro

For instance why couldn’t a shadow knight be a necro with a one hand sword or even a mace/hammer.

They say the devs thought of giving the rifle to Mesmer at one point so sniper could also work for them perhaps.

As for Eng maybe ritualistic since wngineer isn’t all mechanical they also have elixirs so alchemy thus the healing aspect of ritualistic that carried objects for passive and dropped them for effects could be moved over to engineer. Just with scented chemical of some kind that gives a passive then an effect when you drop the bundle since it would shatter.

Miellyn.6847:

Doam.8305:

…

I never said that mesmer is the best damage dealer overall but at this specific boss that counters your argument that mesmer deal no damage at all.

Ranger and Revenants have also only one damage build and Revenant has only one competetive build at all.

Moonyeti.3296:

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Even Blizzard said that the conversion rate from LFR to normal is bad. Stop making things up. LFR didn’t to wonders and it is needed as WoW has mostly raid patches, nothing else. Unlike here where most patches are actually Living World.

The ranger and Rev build are both capable of outputting much more dps then the mesmer there listed after all. Ranger is actually one of the hardest dps hitting classes right now. It’s not about being the best it’s about being so bad and so low with dps that the other classes literally have both condi and power and varient builds that are easier to use and still are capable of much more dps then the very best a mesmer can pull off. Some class has to be at the bottom but when you consider the top ten or even

Also Revs are new well sorta people gave them time and are still giving Anet time to fit Revenants in a proper position.

Oh about that other comment I played WoW and Blizzard themselves have stated that LFR helped with raid retention. This game having more game content is just lol too. WoW doesn’t have pure raid patches like Gw2 did with the first few patches after HoT. Raids in WoW just don’t open they have Thunder islands and other new areas that open up that introduce the raids. The world is expanded to accomadate that raid and that new land has new mobs, pets, lootables, and primarily a brand spanking new faction to get exalted with rewards and perks. Also LFR/Easy mode is where the new and casual players go the toxic bunch go into higher tiers. Toxicity is the major problems and lfr separated that toxic aspect no one cares about the difficulty they care about going into a raid and not worrying about dps meters and people yelling all the time they just want to have fun. In addition old content can be soloed if someone wanted the full story from vanilla to Cata i think since I’m not sure if Panda end raid mechanics can be soloed then they can easily. GW2 isn’t a game of treadmills so it needs the easy mode more than even WoW not like anyone is clamoring to do Arah or Aetherpath these days and the raids will end up just like the dungeons in time. It’s only an issue in this game because of how its set up and its obvious their trying to shovel people into raids as ascended armor acquisition was left untouched in raids while there also getting legendary armor while the other modes are getting the WvW/Dungeon treatment.

Remove the notion of toxic backlash by separating the weeds and elitist toxic dps reading elitists and raids will thrive and you can’t do that without splitting raids into difficulties. People will be more open knowing the tryhards are in another mode there like rabbits and get spooked easily they’ll report but they’ll also never set foot in that mode again do to the bad experience.

Miellyn.6847:

Orpheal.8263:

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Ressources are finite. Take some for difficulties and they disappear on other content. Slower content productions is also less content.
Dungeons don’t have difficulties they have different paths in the same area. Something completely different. A training mode would be the same in a different instance.
The example you want is fractals and fractal development is slow. They said implementing a new difficulty is almost the same work as a new instance. I rather take the new instance instead of another difficulty.

Mechanics get added over time during the boss fights. There is your training mode. Just ignore the timer, get better at the mechanics and the damage will be enough unless you run 10 builds with zero offense.

There are guilds that are dedicated to train people for raids. Everything is there all you need is to show some effort that you actually want to raid.

Fact is that it wouldn’t make anything better. It just slows down content production while training guilds exist and train people every day.

Doam.8305:

….

Mesmer (not Chronomancer) is one of the best damage dealers on Matthias. Condi Mesmer is already disgusting in PvP, but you can’t get enough right?
Chronomancer is balanced around alacrity and perma quickness. You have the best damage support in the game and want more damage, thats how you get 8 chronomancer, 2 warrior groups.

trolling used to be better

You list a raid boss with niche mechanics and pretend that solves the world while completely negating the article that straight up dictates that mesmers are not equal. Your view of a the class is a one trick pony got for mechanic abuse.

Most importantly that one trick pony build is the only mesmer build on the entire chart. The other classes make multiple appearances cept mesmer and its other dps oriented builds don’t even register high enough to make it at the bottom of the barrel like the one condi build happened to do.

It’s not the best damage dealer if its only on a single boss and the only build that does enough dmg to be listed. The other classes have multiple varients that do more dps than the single dps build that people keep trying to quote. Whatever dps your imagining your gonna do more dps on another class its just how it is heck we don’t even have a condition elite the other condi classes have a condi elite but mesmers have no such thing ever since they stripped conditions from glamours.

As for PvP strip Moa as pvp is the only thing moa is good for since it’s not equal in usage for breakbar pve content. You remove Moa and you have nothing in regards to Mesmer pvp well below the other classes. All classes are up there do to balance and strong builds while mesmers are up there because there so light and frail they can be carried by a balloon the mighty Moa balloon. Mesmers since well before HoT have literally posted numerous times to nerf Moa so other aspects of the class could actually be strengthened and balanced.

Miellyn.6847:

Orpheal.8263:

Simply because people don’t want to be dependant on OTHERS to do the job for them, just to that they are able to experience the story part.

Your argument is a very cheap excuse for Anets bad game design around the Raids, because in an optimal Game Design there would exist various Game Modes in Raids for just both types of players, without that one side is by design dependant on anyone else!

No in optimal game design there is content for almost every difficulty level and designed around that and not everything in 4 difficulties with less content in the end.

Dungeons also provide a seperate “Story Mode”.
There is absolutely NO reason for it, why Raids can’t have this too as well.
A Story Mode also hasn’t to mean that ENemies have to be made extra for it easier – it would be already just enough, if that Story Mode has No kittened DPS pressure mechanics built in, so that this Mode gives people the chance, without being dependant on helpful other people to practice them, without that there is any stupid included pressure in the run.

The dungeon story modes have nothing to do with the stories that the explorables path tell. There is no DPS pressure. Most enrage timers are big enough even for very low DPS groups. If you want to focus on mechanics to learn it just do it. Easy modes teach you nothing other than to succeed with the wrong tactics.

That would open up for this mode then also the chance for all players and their prefered classes to be taken with the group, because then don’t have the people to look after perfect DPS from anyone anymore, just so that the run has a chance to be successful and not to be a waste of time for 10 persons.

DPS is close together since the last balance patch. Every class can be played. Every class != every build.

As a Mesmer main I just can’t let that statment stand things will never improve for my class if peopel are running around with rossey glasses saying everything is perfect and fine when in fact things are burning and in desperate need for repair. Mesmers aren’t taken for DPS and are in fact kicked for being anything else but support.

Mesmers are fundamentally broken from the ground up we have to work twice as hard as the other classes to get any sort of decent numbers and even then were at the back of the pack. We toss tons of confusion and torment but at the same time are loaded with slows, stuns, and interrupts which complete counter those condition. We don’t have condi elite and our only elite that does dmg has a CC so long is reduces the dmg done by our confusion/torment since their not moving or attacking. Other classes click a button for instant dps and action but a mesmer has to click a button to create a resource then that resource has to survive have its own CD’s and another button has to be pressed to use(shatter) that resource which move slower than other class projectiles to the target unless traited. In pvp were balanced around a single skill Moa and everywhere else were balanced around a single mechanic alacrity. Were the most reliant on our F1 skills and the most dependant on our elite specialization granting us the lowest class diversity.

The last balance patch was water that raised all classes but didn’t address there standings an issues.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5wbgt6/qt_updated_benchmarks_for_all_classes_february_22/

With all those builds every class has a build that appears above even multiple times above the highest dps output for my main class. The necro wasn’t calculated at the time so their not mentioned outside of the info that they didn’t have time to calculate them but Necro’s have the easiest time with PVE content while mesmers have the worst not like Confusion or torment was ever designed for slow moving and attacking world/raid mobs anyway.

The DPS is all over the place and classes will and are kicked the primary goal of and reasoning behind the request for different difficulty tiers has nothing to do with actual difficulty. But rather everything to do with shoveling toxic elitist players with their dps meters out of the mass of players who simply want to have fun. Giving them an elitist cesspool in some higher difficulty were others can learn to enjoy the mode and move their way deeper into it if they want. Which doesn’t happen that well when mesmers and other classes are neglected because of the variances of their output and the push for 1% elitism. Dungeons thrived because story mode was a none toxic place people could learn to appreciate the mode while raids have no such thing at all.

People wanted

Access to all their skills underwater
and
For some class balance regarding the underwater weapon abilities across the class

Anets response was to of course remove water from pvp and stop production of all underwater weapons from future black lion ticket weapon sets. Underwater weapons were also the first legendaries to be canned with HoT. They also drained lake doric before releasing it which is a shame.

Some can argue Esports for the removal of underwater pvp but the fix is simple as they just have to do what the players originally wanted. Create underwater access and variants to underwater skills and balance the classes while underwater. No reason for some classes to be OP and for Flesh Golem to be so afraid of getting wet.

Could use the Pale tree to view the past again

However I’m against raid locked story content

This game lacks difficulty levels in raids there is no easy mode LFR mode in this game as there is in WoW. So major story points like this should be excluded from raid content.

Before people tear my remarks down lfr is a difficulty setting like heroic or mythic. In Gw2 I’d expect a higher mythic like setting to be Guild only, heroic to be current status, and lfr to be for the experience and training rewards adjusted per setting. Before anyone goes the raids are easy as is route difficulty settings have nothing to do with actually difficulty. They make things fun because they reduce and contain toxic players. Easy mode will be ignored by toxic tryhards kicking people over dps and being rude they’ll instead want to go the normal route. The highest being locked by guild and no lfg function would provide something this game needs being guild prestige and guild teach and nurture future raiders while obviously kicking bad eggs from the guild.

This locks the worst of our community in the middle tier and toxic people keeping raid participation down by scaring away curious players would be a non issue. With this I’d be fine with locking story content behind raids toxic players are the death of any game and this one has done a poor job outside of the whole report deal but the sheer fact people have to report means there fun has already been soured and that reflects very badly on the game mode whether there reporting a toxic player in raids, pvp, dungeons, WVW, and so forth.