Guild Wars 2

Not a bad idea, but TP and mail should be completely locked for the purpose of posting. Can still buy off TP or receive mail. No WvW access. 24 hour play or one week.

This would block bots, as with no way to get that equipment back out into the world, there’s no point. Also closes out expendable accounts for gold sellers. Still allows players all the access they need with the only sacrifice being the income option of TP.

As for a permanent option for not buying the game – not worth changing the mechanics that much. If Anet/ncsoft is struggling to get population that much, they would just lower the price of the game.

Daecollo.9578:

roachsrealm.9284:

I love this idea. sadly, I bet we won’t ever see it happen.

how about this: for every piece of armor you don’t wear, you can spend more trait points? (not effected by accessories or underwater breather)

That would give some classes a big advantage over others.

The point thing doesn’t really give anyone an advantage, because everyone benefits from 10 extra points.

Everyone benefits because it would be so powerful everyone would have to get the runes.

As for divinity runes, yes they are indeed the best stat boost rune for any class that is not min-max. You sacrifice the ability(ies) for those extra stats. That also shows you that often abilities are more important than stats – I have some divinity runes saved up, but 0 of my characters use them. Ele uses mixed runes to keep boons up. Warrior uses Ruby orbs to min-max damage. Mesmer has air runes for swiftness access while keeping burst up (or I’d go Centaur). Guardian uses soldier runes for more condition removal and tankiness stats.

There is a reason that divinity runes are one of the most expensive, but meh abilities can tie into characters to make them more powerful and beat out stat boosts. Do you pick your traits just based on stat bonuses? But if I could give up any stat bonus or even rune abilities for my trait abilities? My AH, Justice spamming Guardian can now keep up 100% retailiation AND empower/two-handed? It’s no longer a debate for 10 fire or 30 water/arcana on my ele? My Mesmer can now keep traited for pistol without giving up my vuln stacking? I can slip in Leg Specialist on my glass cannon Warrior spec?

And that’s not even touching minor traits I would also get. Every single class would take it, every single class would be weaker without it… and when that’s the case, one needs to ask, if something is better than everything else in every way… is it OP?

Lets see – a rune set that allows me to have 215 points worth of stats and one meh ability, or a rune set that allows for 200 points worth of stats and two extremely powerful abilities (major/minor traits)?

Short answer, FAR FAR FAR too OP.

Teg – #2 is very useful if there is only one person stomping you and they don’t have stability. And if you managed to use it, they’d be stupid to ignore you – if my warrior stands up and they don’t do all they can to drop me or actively engage me to avoid my attacks, they WILL die. It just happens to be that there’s always 2, so there is jack crap I can do to avoid a stomp. I’ve managed to get Vengeance ONCE in all the times I’ve allowed my warrior to go to WvW.

Meteor Shower is a skill that is worthless against one target (unless it’s a large target), and epic against a zerg – it is the only AoE skill in the game with no target limit as each meteor is an individual projectile. I find it to be a fun skill.

Really, though, it’s those nerfs that helped make “dagger/dagger” the only real combo.

How I would like it changed (instead of them just nerfing d skills)

Static Field
-Create a combo field which stun (2s) targets as they cross it (so you have a direct stun control)

Unsteady ground
- Complete revert or at the very very least increase cripple to 5s. One would think that a ground torn up and shaken like that would twist your ankle and have it hurt for more than 2 secs. Making it an actual wall, though, would stop people from going to earth eles and getting their super easy dodge dailies though. :p

Shatterstone
- Revert the radius only. “Walk away” damage fields actually annoy me as the create just a “kite” game rather than a more active “bait dodge and skill” game. Though considering Anets opinion of AoE, maybe all fields will be shrinking?

Gale
- Simply said, 50s cooldown for a 2s single target knockdown is weak. Preference is revert as 3s has better synergy at a high cost. Otherwise, this should be on a 30/35s cooldown.

With staff having its control skills again, or focus that has a CC that lets you land the slower scepter skills, you just may see more variety in Ele and the builds that support those weapons. Though with only 4 weapon choices, there will always be a more limited build for Eles. :p

Really, vengeance is an awesome skill. If you can survive 20 seconds, you’re golden in more cases than most other classes. The problem is that the warrior has absolutely no options for the “slight” chance that there will be more than one person in WvW or PvP, or more than one mob in PvE. You have ZERO options for multiple targets. All of the other classes have escapes or aoe knockbacks (though necro has fear, which is much better as it’s not screwed over by stability). Most classes also have AOE damage skills. I want the Warrior #2 to be changed to a ground slam (lifts arm and pounds ground) and have an aoe knockback. That would do a lot to giving the warrior an actual chance of ever using their Vengeance.

I can write off the happy kids along the lines of kids resiliency even in bad times. You can be happy with the life you’ve always had and don’t know how bad things really are.

It’s true that games have touched on kids dying/killing, but most people are not ok with that. Why step into such gray areas? Stepping into such social taboos is simply not worth it imo.

I’m curious as to how D/D can outdps a warrior… a warrior can just sit and spam axe 1 and average over 6k per second. 100B + WW + axe or rifle filler can beat that. If a D/D can beat that, there’s zero reason to be running warrior over ele. D=

Runes of the Soldier: sacrifice a bit of DPS for tankiness and condition removal
Rune

My problem with rage/strength is the wiki states the 6th doesn’t work, and haven’t been brave enough to try it. If it DOES, those would be serious considerations. With eagle you lose power and crit damage for a sliver more precision and 5% for below 50%… I consider that a big loss on trash for a 2.5% DPS gain (actually less, as that’s not counting the power/crit damage loss) on bosses/champions.

So really for glass cannon warriors, I only really consider Divinity, Soldier and Ruby Orbs. Would be nice if someone confirmed the 6 rune for Strength/Rage, as that would be the difference of those being a good option or not.

Doesn’t fury stack duration? So why would you need to stagger the shouts? I say let the other warriors know that you’re warrioring, and they better be warrioring too!

The food crafting system is definitely well though out in combinations, but in it’s interface, it’s far too simple, so it becomes clunky and not useful. Luckily there are plenty of sites that have broke down various levels of organization making it not too tough to find a food you want. Personally the Wiki has been enough for me as it is organized by buff and level.

It is indeed ironic that Elementalist went from one of the weakest classes to “OP” because of meta. I just hope that they don’t kill the permaboon (limited to specially equipped for boon duration) crazy swap – the concept of an elementalist blasting all of the attacks of all elements as fun, and if they take away that aspect, it will become a ‘only trees that max self/party dps’ meta… it should always be a case of building diversity and new metas, not killing existing ones. There is hope, though, as there are those in Anet that share that sentiment.

@Majora: Thief is indeed probably the class you could get away the easiest without swapping. You can mix short/long range, and don’t have cooldown timers. However it is also the squishiest medium armor class – you will have to make active use of evasive moves, dodges, and placement to make the best use of even a single weapon set.

Probably the easiest class to get away with “1, 2, 3” no swap gameplay is warrior. Just walking up and pressing “2” with GS is enough to kill most kittens in PvE. You have gap closers and evasive moves to keep the DPS going, and you don’t have to actively keep changing trait builds to squeeze in your rifle for when you can’t safely reach a target. Don’t think people complain about warriors that run only GS in dungeons either – when a single HB can kill a burrow in AC or even a veteran (might stacked glass cannon, hits peek in the 30Ks), as long as you play with enough smarts to not constantly die. Though I do constantly swap weapons to keep bosses crippled 100% of the time, lay in a rapid/kill shot (especially on grouped mobs), give heal breathers without stopping DPS, make sure there is bleeds on before a 100B (as that’s 10% more damage on my build), etc. I would be a lot less effective if I didn’t constantly swap, but it’s not make or break like it is for Ele.

Honestly, a mesmer or an ele is a boon to any party. An ele can do what a mesmer can’t do – combo field out the wazoo increasing party DPS and giving boons to all. Plus they can also drop weapon summons to allow any other class member fill a role gap along with themselves. They may not be a “speed run” boon that a Mesmer is, but they are an awesome party rounder. I’ve seen more than one ele carry pugs.

Does that mean you can be a DPS build and do that? Not on the mesmer level – dipping into DPS trees lower your support, but think of it this way – your damage is you + your party as you’re giving them that DPS. I would take an ele over a mesmer for any class but my Warrior (as my warrior can give plenty of might and fury to himself, and doesn’t need ice bow or fire GS)

I have been having an issue with my game tabbing out on me… and I can’t quite trace out the cause. Quite frustrating as it’s cost me many fights both in PvE and PvP.

I’m using a custom keybind:
Original key > my custom bind

f1 > 1
f2 > 2
f3 > 3
f4 > 4

1 > q
2 > e
3 > r
4 > mouse button 4
5 > mouse button 5
6 > shift + space bar
7 > shift + q
8 > shift + e
9 > shift + r
10 > shift + f

q > a
e > d

The ONLY trend I’ve noticed is that the tab out almost always happens while I’m panning the camera with right mouse click. I have not been able to purposely replicate the tab out. I have always been able to click/tab back into the game with no issue. Accidentally alt + tabbing out can be ruled out as I know for a fact this has happened not being close to those keys, and is an unlikely button-combination mistake in my setup. I know of no combination of right mouse click and my bindings that would cause a tab out.

Looking to see if anyone has had this issue also, may know what is triggering this, or any help that would be appreciated. I admit I haven’t sat down and tried ever combination of keys + right mouse clicks to do a full replication attempt, and will do so when I get home.

Would a petition work? Personally I love kiting a champion and accidentally clicking a veteran with a camera rotation. Or going for a kill on a runner in PvP, adjust the camera, and hit someone else giving time for the heal/cripple removal.

Please give an option! Kitten, I’d be happy if they just disabled right click targeting period – you have left click to target, right click to pan. Assigning multiple functions to a single button is just plain poor design.

Personally I think two things need to happen:

- Weakness debuff should have 50% of crits become normal hits.
- Sigil that grants toughness stacks.

I see protection as the counter to might. Having toughness being a total counter to 100+ crit damage glass cannons is too OP as toughness + high condition removal = invincible to all but a zerg. However having a tool to help counter power climb (Sigil of Stone anyone?) plus a debuff to counter glass cannon would work.

This game allows you to fully reclass at any point – the reclass costs less than it does to port somewhere at 80, so really the only cost is deciding how to gear yourself… and honestly you should be carrying multiple sets of gear to handle multiple situations, so at the end of the day, experimenting is a GOOD thing. There is no “fix it now” ever, just “can I do this better”. Note that “this” is not defined by the meta-gamers here on these forums.

So what do you want to do in this game? If it’s to play it like every other MMO where you play with a static set of gear using the exact same attack rotation over and over… this is not the game for you. This is a dynamic MMO – you have combo fields, buffs, debuffs, and mobility that all go in hand with a variety of situations that need adaptation. Every single class has multiple tools that they can actively use at their disposal – to not use those tools is ineffective. When you have your strongest fire moves going, what is better: auto-attack, or switching and dropping a field that allows the entire party to heal, chill, daze, etc… and this is not counting all the bonuses you can give yourself by switching. There’s no question that a fire nuker can hit hard, but your other abilities have far more purpose than just other attacks with different animations. Look into it.

Full berserker with Ruby orbs is the obvious gear choice for max kill shot damage. Full bloodlust stacks, might to 25 stacks, signet of migh, 25 stacks vuln on enemy, etc etc… the only real question for “as much damage as possible” will be decided by trait points. Strength, Arms, Discipline all have stats and traits needed for max damage.

Strength: Power stat and Berserker’s might

Arms: Precision stat, precise strikes (bleed on crit), Critical Burst, Attack of Opportunity (10% damage on bleeding foes), Rending Strikes (vuln on crit), Crack Shot

Discipline: Crit damage stat, Burst damage stat (though laughably small) and traits for getting your adrenaline up.

Basically I would say the unquestionable trait points is 10 in Strength (berserker’s might) and 25 in Arms (10% against bleed is big on top of get bleed and vuln and your rifle trait). That leaves a 35 points to calculate where to best land. I personally run a 20/30/0/0/20 build. Realize this kicks kitten in PvE, but is fail/squish in PvP against anyone that is good enough to avoid the horribly predictable moves as you’re a squishy build with only a few (predictable and unreliable) mobility tools. Still fun to 1-shot glass cannons.

You make me cry a little bit Lansolyn. People with the funds to buy thousands of mats to buy out the drive down and keep the prices high is what makes crafting unprofitable and me poor. shakefist I’d say limit it to like 20, but legendaries do require 250 mat stacks, so blarg.

Personally I think the Gem > Gold is way too low and Gold > Gem is way too cheap. The whole point of the gem store is to get people to donate money to pay for the servers, and when 10G (or less) can get you whatever you want, why not do a handful of dungeons instead of giving up your hard earned cash? Why the heck would I donate for Gem > Gold when it would take $100 to scrape enough gold for a bare bone armor set? I’ve donated some for a gold here or there to feed my lazy/lack of time/altaholic needs, but I felt like I was horribly ripping myself off each time I did… and I’ve never had an issue donating to games (good job, not much time to play, competitive). I wouldn’t consider it on the bottom side of fair until it hit 100 gems > 3g. Having Gold > Gems coincidentally also hitting to half or 1/3 their rate also would put it in the field of “Should I save up for or buy?” rather than it’s current “farm a day or two and just get, don’t buy”

It is definitely RNG – I had friends who kept playing the game of buying dyes, opening, and making profit. My roommate has went through hundreds of dyes, keeping all the ones he didn’t have (even abyss), and STILL pulled profit. Myself, I’ve tried several times, and out of 20G spent on dyes, the most valuable was 7s… 99% were less than a silver, and most repeated (bought in batches of 20, and had one time where I only got 3 different colors out of 20 unids). So when your luck is like mine, and want dyes for money, opening them is kitten If you’re a lucky SOB – open away.

I’m just terrified to start my RNG game for clovers and precursors….

Sorry CookMETEnder – my comment was pure sarcasm. When a stat from a trait tree makes so little of a difference that you don’t even notice a difference, that is a problem.

Personally I would like it put back, or settled with at least .5. Or Artemis’ suggestion would also be good. I’ve never picked trees for their stat points alone – it’s Major > minor > stat… but it’s nice to have those stats as an actual side dish like every other class rather than a ‘little’ side dish.

Really, what I’m reading here is the fact that you can’t control the market as someone will just undercut you by 1c and stops you. Really, that system is ALL that stops the economy from being completely controlled by market manipulators and everything costing 50 times more. It is a game of ‘go big or go home’. You are dealing with a SHARED market that taps hundreds of thousands of people – unless your hand is big enough to control a stock from that many sources (and no one person’s is, but there are many who do what you’re trying to do, so it happens), all that is going to happen is your dip and then get undercut if you don’t sell it fast enough. It also is a bit more complex with the “buy” requests.

Lucky for you, there is an end game triangle: by controlling precursors, you also control rare/exotic weapon prices (as flipping that dusk from 500 to 700 will encourage enough players to buy out weapons to mystic flush to try to get a piece of that pie). By controlling weapon prices, you lower an ecto source, and drive that price up. With Ectos up, armor goes up. So someone buys that weapon? 100G profit. Mean time, you’re building margins for everything else that you bought low and can now know you’ll be able to sell higher on. I’ve watched prices double on ectos/weapons/armor with the flipping of precursors, and I don’t think that’s natural inflation.

Wait, the Discipline Tree increases your burst damage?! Never noticed.

Depends how you define ‘abuse’. If you mean employing combos that take advantage of culling issues for 100% invisi, that is exploiting. All CnD > Steal > Backstab combos employ this exploit as the 3 second stealth cooldown is not enough to counter culling. If you mean ‘abuse’ by the fact it is a mechanic with no counter other than spray and pray? Yeah…

As for CnD… hmmm… you’re telling me you have the reaction speed to dodge an action that you can’t see happening in less than a tenth of a second? Start in stealth, trigger CnD animation > steal to teleport yourself to target and do mug damage followed by immediate CnD damage (as your cast time is over when you hit the target) automatically restealthing to land your invisible backstab. Godlike reflexes might save you from a backstab – but you’ve got nothing you can do against that CnD setup unless you have pregonizance or extreme luck on a random dodge roll.

But with frequent access to stealth and zero way for people to see you in that stealth, you can always leave or enter a fight with no penalty except if you’re dumb enough to walk into their attack (aka you were predictable) or sheer dumb luck on their part in guessing where you are.

So tell me, how is 100% stealth fair? I have it on both my Mesmer and Thief (ranger/engineer have minor access to it) – it’s fun – but I consider it broken. It can’t be too obvious or it would be useless, but it HAS to have a counter.

I think it’s simple: make stealth 10% visible. This would solve the imbalances of stealth on so many levels:

1) Stealth would stop being an end all uncounterable defense (as I don’t count AOEing and hoping the thief is there as a counter). The thief will still be easy to miss, especially in a big fight, but your counter is a sharp and attentive eye.

2) This would automatically solve culling. The character is already slightly visible, so there shouldn’t have to be a new render. And even if there is one, you still have a basis to go off of (the slightly visible transparency) rather than a broken mechanic to exploit.

3) Would require more advanced use of your skills. When you might be seen just walking up to a guy, you actually need teamwork, distractions, or luck to set up your attack.

Note that this ALSO would apply to Mesmer stealth (or any other instance that grants stealth). NPC AI for targeting stealthed characters should not be improved in any way as it doesn’t break NPC targeting enough as it is… if anything, stealth needs to be improved in PvE.

As long as they balance transparency levels to a point where it can be spotted, but not obvious, I would consider the broken OP mechanic fixed.

I also think the class function skills need more complexity (like every class that has less than 4). “Steal” should store the stolen item in slots f2 – f4, with a first in/first out if they over steal. Universal cooldown. This means that steal/mug is always available instead of replaced, and the thief has the ability to ‘prepare’ for fights, which I would think would add to the depth and tactics (you never know what tools a thief may come into battle with).

The game will always be what you make of it – Every class can set up a build where you can just go up, hit auto attack and take a nap until everything is dead. Guardian can get away with sneeze stuff to death as he won’t die with so much access to passive heals. Warrior can get away with this as he can just walk up to a group of mobs, press “2” on his GS and read a book while everything dies to that single move. Rangers can plink whatever while their pet face tanks even Champions. Pretty sure thief only has “heartseeker” on their skill bar. Engineer doesn’t matter what weapons you pick as you can just use flamethrower. Mesmer can just dodge back and forth spawning clones just spamming auto-attack between “4” or “f1”. Elementalist just drop a bunch of staff fields on them, and then switch to water and rain/fountain yourself as you watch everything around you die. Most classes can add “run in lazy circles” for tough to kill stuff.

In short, you can indeed get away with standard boring MMO gameplay in PvE with any class. However to play ANY class to the best of its ability, it takes active gameplay. Guardians can be buffing the entire party with pretty much any boon under the planet and keep them cured of conditions without ever stopping DPS by actively keeping an eye on the party and dropping fields where needed most. Bad guardian: “hey, squishy people stand on me so I get better AH and you get cleaved hoping my boons are enough to keep you alive”. Good guardian: says nothing as you watch boons pop from no where, somehow drops condition fields on you while never stopping his boss face tanking never losing aggro, and keeps walls of reflection up on bosses with projectiles. You can’t play like that without watching at least 6 things at once and positioning yourself to be epic.

There are classes, though, that ramp up better with skill than others. Mesmer and Elementalist are both examples of high skill cap classes – you will get STOMPED by low skill cap classes (such as Thief and Warrior) until you learn how to play your class, then they basically stand ZERO chance against you. It’s a balancing concern Anet has, since how do you nerf a class that sucks if not played well, but is OP if it is? If you buff the low skill cap classes, you’ll get something like a Thief as they can win in most cases with little effort… effort should be rewarded.

Personally I think it’s simple – high skill cap classes have two factors: high combat mobility and 4 ‘f’ skills that add complexity and options. Take away mobility, and you have a class like Engineer that has difficulty keeping their tools effective. Take away ‘f’ skills and you get the horribly predictable warriors or Guardians who’s f’s are just buffs/heals. Thief would be predictable and pitiful if not for stealth (and culling). A real culling fix would help balance thief, though stealth is a crutch that will always make up for their predictability/simplicity. Complexity/mobility needs to be added to the simpler classes so skill caps even out. THEN the real buff/nerf hammer needs to be looked at, but not until then.

TL;DR – Yes, both Elementalist and Mesmer are higher skill cap classes. Played right they are a class of their own. My Mesmer can solo whatever I feel like because I can’t be touched in PvE. PvP I’ll almost always win in 1v1 except against better played Ele/Mesmer or a thief that caught me off guard. And I find it a blast to play because the difference of me owning face or facing dirt is my active play and skill… including in PvE (glass cannon).

As others have said, it’s more of a 30% difference. It is indeed possible to profit if the market were to flunctuate hard enough – like back in the new years sales caused the value to shoot up about 35%. But that is the ONLY time I ever seen a fluctuation high enough to cause a profit margin. I doubt any one person can self create a fluctuation on that level, especially considering them driving any one price up would cause others to hop on it and drive it back down.

Short answer: Theoritically possible, but the market is not volatile enough to have the margins needed to make it a safe bet.

Actually, pierce is > cleave if you line yourself up. Cleave can hit 3 targets, pierce 5. Add in a flame sigil that can proc off any pierced target, and you have an issue you’re DPSing more targets than that melee guy ever will, and likely will pull aggro. I personally pick the farthest away mob from myself and line up shots. Mass cripples, mass vulns, mass bleeds, while still having high damage? No, the rifle can handle multiple targets as well as single.

As for my comment on rifle, I must note that max damage =/= DPS. Rifle has some nice burst (Rapid Shot that plink 20k by the end of the combo) and Kill Shot (which can also break 20k). I can run around open world and never even have mobs reach me. If they do (usually a vet), just 5 punch it away and unload another rapid shot into it. This beats GS as I’m not rooted for my moves – unless the mob blocks/evades/reflects (which also would screw your GS), my combos hit. When your bursts take down the target, DPS doesn’t matter. On targets where it does NOT, then things pass it (like axe)… but then comes the question of the ability to lay that DPS down. A ranged person has little to interrupt them – a boss that hops around (as long as it’s not crazy like the Champion in front of the CoF enterance) doesn’t escape your DPS. Bosses that force ranged. Kiting Champions with ranged is easy… and against ranged Champions is even easier.

Situation always dictates, but there are situations where Rifle wins, and is good enough if traited and played right to be used even as a main weapon. Only groan when you see that warrior shooting downward at the mob at his feet when there is a group right next to him – that is the player, not the weapon, making it suck

It completely depends on the situation – if you’re in a place you can lay in 100B and WW (I’ll purposely let myself get hit by cripples and roots with ‘Mobile Strikes’ off in PvE to make WW an in place evasion DPS move), simply nothing compares. However in any situation where you can’t lay in HB and WW, then Axe is better. When you can lay in 6 attacks in 1.75 seconds vs 3 in 1.5 of pretty much any other weapon, you have to have big hits to close that DPS race.

Honestly, I’d say pick what fits your playstyle. GS gives you the big fun numbers, mobility moves and can be situationally the best. Axe gives you more reliable DPS and while it lacks mobility moves, it’s DPS doesn’t suffer from active movement. Or you can just say screw the meta game, and play what you want as I still hold that the Warrior is one of the few classes with no sucky weapons.

Had a long explanation of various crap, but screw the TL;DR. Looks like you are in full PVT gear – so your DPS is lacking. I would say mix in some zerker gear (chest/pants would be the last to ever switch to zerker as the zerker gain is nothing compared to any other stat gain in armor as crit damage has a low translation rate between pieces). Find a balance between damage and survival.

Pretty much it goes Full Zerker gear is both new gamer and old gamer. New gamer going for the biggest numbers possible, but is squishy and dies constantly. Old gamer because they’ve learned every classes and mobs tell, so they can avoid 99% of damage and still keep their DPS up. Best answer is full set of both tank and dps – mix parts to fit the zone and your playstyle just like you switch weapons to fit the situation.

Sadly Red Falcon, you’ve been wikitheorycrafting. Lyssa is indeed only 5 second boons, and you would have to keep yourself loaded with at least 5 boons constantly to keep up with just “attack of opportunity” (as you glass cannon build should be critting enough to keep a constant bleed for 10% damage). You can’t keep that even half the time, so DPS loss.

@tokitteniller – I wouldn’t consider runes of lyssa a waste – a full condition strip every 48 or 60 seconds is no joke – then you have your boons and precision to go with it. I personally have been debating between these, soldier, and ruby orbs on my Warrior… and i ZERO plans on taking empowered :p

Well, PvP will always be more interesting than PvE – especially against non-instanced trash mobs. When it comes to trash mobs, it’s what you make of it – I can walk up to every single trash mob and just face tank its hits as it will always die before I do – I simply have too much HP and attack for it to stand a chance. What you can do is play actively to make it interesting. Can you kill everything and never be touched? Can you solo that Champion? How many mobs can you take on at once?

Also note that your leveling process is a good time to experiment with weapons. Whether it is to keep the game fresh, or to learn from it, I find it important. Some weapons are great at mobility, some at CC, some at defense or conditions. Don’t rely on these forums to latch on whatever is the flavor of the month – people will say this or that weapon sucks/is OP/for noobs/for pros. That’s all crap – the point of a game is to have fun, and any meta gaming does not make you pro. Warrior is blessed as being one of the only classes that has no under powered weapons – just realize that each weapon has it’s own play style and role – so either play to fit the weapon, or pick a weapon that fits your play.

Deep Strikes is wimpy past 60, which coincidentally is also when you should stop using a signet build if you were using one. Take that off your table period.

I also find the combination of speccing to use your adren and traits that benefit from it being up as counter productive – are you going to be spamming them or saving them for situational use? Depending on that answer, I’d either take some points from discipline or strength – that would give enough points to get stronger bowstrings in the tactics tree.

@Yaki – Yeah, I’m guessing this is personal hate that doesn’t make sense. Sure, bow = better AoE and Warriors only field, but warriors have always been reliant on other people’s fields to be effective. The warrior’s alternate weapon will always be able to handle AoE (be it the bow like kittenas, or cleave off melee weapons), rifle can be traited for piercing, and has some of the strongest single target damage in the game on top of high range bleeds, cripples and vulns. Add in whatever I do triggers teammates fields (projectile) and that I can kill almost any trash with a single volley or kill shot, and I fail to see any problems with Rifle in PvE.

Lokheit has the right of it. You may be scared of the “.05 * condition damage” with your own wikitheorycrafting, forgetting it is PER stack. My condition build has 1520 condition damage. That gives a tick of 118 per stack. Let’s say I have 10 stacks of bleed (which is no effort bleed stacking) – that is 1180 per SECOND. Without condition damage, that is 425 per second. That’s a 277% increase. You get 25 stacks, and you come close to tipping 3k a second. Burning is a 328 to 708 – a 215% increase.

Now if you take my numbers vs Lokheits, by increasing my condition damage from 1200 to 1500, it helped my bleeding MORE than it helped my burning. When it comes to condition damage, increasing it helps (in order) these the most:
1) Confuse (.15 multiple intensity stacking – but this doesn’t hurt runners)
2) Bleeding (.o5 multiple intensity stacking)
3) Burning (.25 multiple duration stacking)
4) Poison (.1 multiple duration stacking)

Being able to reliably get burning and bleeding creates a solid condition build combo. Both conditions are strong DoTs that tick ignoring armor no matter what the target does until they remove the conditions. The ONLY reason to argue against a Warrior condition build is the fact that they have so many high damage physical moves that they have better DPS with power/crit.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Drawing Guy.3701:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Drawing Guy.3701:

<snip>
so that is 3 + 3 + 3 + yourself = 10. The OP is correct. Anet should delete 9 out of every 10 Mesmers to even out game balance.

Except, only 3 allowed up at a time.

Actually you can. You’re able to call up illusions after you have queued them to shatter – it doesn’t destroy the previous ones as they were already considered destroyed by the shatter command. If you are quick, it is possible to call up multiple sets in this manner. I’ve had more than one person comment my army of clones. XD

So how does that work? is it clones only?
SO you get 3 up, click on a shatter and then summon more quickly? like MI?

Any illiusion – phantasm or clone. Clones just happen to be the quickest as most weapons have half second cast times + your dodge clones. Phantasm, however, are usually 2 second casts.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Drawing Guy.3701:

<snip>

so that is 3 + 3 + 3 + yourself = 10. The OP is correct. Anet should delete 9 out of every 10 Mesmers to even out game balance.

Except, only 3 allowed up at a time.

Actually you can. You’re able to call up illusions after you have queued them to shatter – it doesn’t destroy the previous ones as they were already considered destroyed by the shatter command. If you are quick, it is possible to call up multiple sets in this manner. I’ve had more than one person comment my army of clones. XD

Lets see…. cant count self shatter since if you were right next to them clones would insta shatter:

- dodge clone + dodge clone + weapon clone > 3
- mirror + decoy > 3 clones off queue
energy weapon and vigor should get you ready for:
- weapon swap then weapon clone + dodge clone + dodge clone > 3

so that is 3 + 3 + 3 + yourself = 10. The OP is correct. Anet should delete 9 out of every 10 Mesmers to even out game balance.

You may hit harder and have more HP on a bunker warrior, but the D/D ele has boons and mobility. Mobility > HP always always in PvP. What good is 10k extra HP if it means you get hit for 20k? Add in the fact that the gap closers you rely on to get in quickly are buggy/unreliable, your downed skill is a 20 second wait vs instant, etc… you may be better in PvE, but you can’t hold a candle to them in PvP.

Until they fix the warriors mobility moves, he’s not entering PvP except for WvW map explore. And I seriously hope that they boost mobility to classes that lack it rather than nerf classes that have it – mobility is a big factor of what I see as differentiates this from other MMOs, and find it as what makes it fun… as long as that mobility has a way to be reliably countered.

Well, sword/bow has two finishers that would create fire armor, which also would burn his target on top of the burn from combustive shot. Can easily keep the armor up 6 seconds (not sure if boon duration affects). With bleed on crit + vuln on crit + sword bleeds, he could self stack 25 bleeds, which is the strongest DoT in the game (you can break 3k a second just with bleed).

Guardian definitely sucks at condition, but warrior does not. With the ability to keep two constant heavy DoTs (with longbow and sword or rifle) and two other combat conditions (vuln and weakness), they can play it seriously. HOWEVER the warrior has few ground target skills, so they always have to physically hit the target to keep their DoTs up. Add in that fact, and that most their skills are centered around physical damage bursts, and a condition build really is sacrificing major potential damage.

Conclusion: Yes, you can make a build that can do some real condition damage well. However that build will pale in comparison to a power/crit warrior damage wise. If you’re looking to meta game and go for damage, don’t go condition. If you’re looking for a flavor build to play how you want to play, go for it! You can do it and not suck.

I think I know what Cardstar is saying – he wants it where you select the color swatch on a piece of armor, and then when you hover over a color in the palette, it automatically displays the color.

While I agree that this would be useful – especially when trying to match armor pieces that display shades differently – this happens to be a case of “effort would be better spent elsewhere”. The current system works fine and I have no problem having to apply the colors… I would rather the devs create new content or fix broken mechanics rather than spend time doing this. Now if someone had some spare time… this is indeed a very good idea.

I do think it should be more clear that there is no penalty for “damaged” armor, only broken. No reason to go in for repairs until you’ve gone down a few times, and some players think they need to repair every time.

What I think would solve this issues is MAP TRANSPARENCY. I think this is needed so badly for multiple reasons – one is obviously the ability to run around with full map up. Second is when someone pulls up the map, they could actually see you and know help is coming. I’ll often run right over, and sometimes I need to kill the trash standing over their body first. I’ve learned to heal them for a second to give them a prompt, then cancel to kill the trash… but would be nice if they could just see me.

I think the beefing up of the Black Lion store is EXTREMELY important. First off is the obvious fact that a stronger market would make them more money – right now there is nothing really worth it… some boosters that you get from lion chests, a handful of cosmetic items, and… that’s about it. Their idea of a Gem > Gold > Gem market that flunctuates according to conversions cannot be balanced unless people convert Gold to Gems. I got a few cosmetic items, but the convenience items are just not worth it.

The Quaggan Backpack is a beautiful example of a well thought out cosmetic item. Detailed, well-made and can be used in combat. I’ve seen this around, seen the impact that this (and the broom) made on the conversion – it spiked then settled at a lower gold > gem (or higher gem > gold) conversion. A few more armor skins, combat helmet skins (things like crowns, tiaras, etc), and more backpacks (though keep it more GW2 creature/lore based rather than cheesy wings and crap). Hair dyes would also be good option.

Lower the cost of consumables. You want a balance – something people find worth the cost, but not so cheap they just consider a constant. I’m sorry, but 2-3 gold or $2 for a one hour boost is ridiculous. $3 for a 1 time revive? Traders that only last minutes? They simply are too expensive any way you look at it. Traders need a major boost in duration – this would open the “convenience” from a quick sale/tp in a dungeon to multi-use in that dungeon, a crafting companion for those too lazy (hence “convenience”) to leave the station for the TP… basically make it worth their current cost. The boost and revive items need to be cut at least in half on price. Still expensive, but something that brings it to a point people are more like to, you know, consume.

Due to the fact you can convert gold to gems, I consider the Black Lion Market to be both in-game AND donation. Because of this, it should be fine to put in some non-cosmetic items.

Things I think should exist on the BLM is random luck based items – at conversion costs that run higher than an average acquisition cost (after market balance – gold to gem rate is currently broken as too few convert at this current time). An example item would be precursors. Or mystic clovers. These items are not skill based – they’re nothing but a sign of luck and ‘x’ gold spent and clicking away at the mystic forge. The BLM would take away the luck equation, and the parts of Legendaries that take actual work would still be in place.

Changes like this would do the following for the game:
- With more things to get and consumables at a price range that would generate a more regular Gold > Gem conversion, the conversion rate would actually have room to balance. This would increase the Gem > Gold conversion, making it more likely people would donate for it.

- Become a gold sink. With more gold converting to gems, this helps fight inflation. This is countered a bit by the gem > gold conversion, but considering there is a 30% (guesstimate as I’m not able to access the game at work) loss, as long as the gem > gold rate doesn’t exceed that (meaning 30% more is converted to gold than is to gems), the BLM will have a status of “gold sink”. This fights inflation that would make the game inaccessible to new players that don’t have the starting funds to fight inflation.

- And the obvious point: more reasons to donate and help support servers and development.

Almost all of the Warriors gap closers and disable moves are “straight line”. Rush – you run in a straight line, if they move away, you’ll just whiff your sword into the air. Bull rush – you shoulder charge in a straight line, and if they move, you just wasted one of your long cd CCs. He went on – but the main point is you have no reliable way to keep yourself in melee range like most other classes do on anything that doesn’t move in straight lines. Add in their lack of ability to disengage (no stealth, no ports, all gap closers rush towards target – and if you have targeting assists on, they may latch stopping an untargeted rush).

I can also attest to how buggy that these moves can be. I’ve had multiple instances where I’m fighting a target that is standing still – I want to bull rush so I can lay on a burst combo. Instead I charge towards him, and once I reach him, I KEEP rushing in place for the remainder of the charge duration and get no knockdown (trash mob, no stability). That means I have 2 seconds of them wailing on me for no result. Sadly there is also no consistancy to the move breaking to know if I should cancel – I’ve had the move connect after rushing in place (which in itself is buggy and lame) at random durations.

The short story is the warrior is one of the best in PvE (when your cc/gap closers don’t bug) because NPCs are predictable so you can get your moves to connect. You don’t have to worry about disengaging as simply running away in a straight line is enough if you ever need to as mobs reset after a certain distance. Of all the classes I’ve played (multiple level 80s, tried every class), nothing has melted face as fast as my warrior (except trash that can’t survive my mesmer burst combo as that’s near instant kills). But in PvP? A place where mobility is king, and your gap closers don’t work on mobile targets? Where you have next to no self-target abilities, so you have to rely on the iffy game path finding or them being controlled (usually by others)? Where if you see a zerg in WvW come when you’re already engaged, you’re consigned to die?

No, the Warrior needs a close look at it PvP. Fix the gap closers and give them the ability to disengage. And if we’re talking about burst skills, only truly “crap” one is the GS – barely stronger than an auto attack, single target, and each tier just gives a bit longer on a fury buff? Yeah.

Price limits are not the answer. The problem is inelastic demand items that market manipulators take advantage of and there is nothing in place to slow them down or limit them. If my goal is a legendary, I HAVE to buy this many ores, this many orbs, etc. Sure, I can spend months farming 1000 ores off 16 (or whatever the ori node number is). I could also take a few extra hours and walk/bike 20 miles to work instead of spending the double amount in gas (as no mass transit, no one to car pool with). But the fact is, that amount of work is beyond doing for most people. I would spend $10 a gallon on gas before I would walk there and back, just like people with spend 5 times as much on ore than what natural supply/demand would dictate. While gas has limits and regulations that prevent gouging, the game market does not. I could buy the entire stock that the supply has driven the price down to (thus controlling the supply), and place it back up at my gouging price. I can take a stock and set a price floor so anyone wanting to undercut my sell price when buying has to over bid my buy price. This is called cornering the market. Now this isn’t one person doing it, but there are enough that the market is NOT balanced. The costs do not support what the average player can afford, so there would be no demand if not for another rampant issue this server has: gold sellers – and this market helps their success.

It will be impossible to stop people from manipulating the market short of just forcing set prices, but they CAN make it harder. If they were to make items ‘one time buy’ in some manner, that would completely stop flipping (though people who overbought on accident would be stuck with it). Or if you can’t sell it for “x” time after just buying it off TP would allow some market recovery (unless someone has a gold pool deep enough to keep buying while they wait to sell, or cycle goods). Setting a resell timer is probably the most fair limit as it would stop the ‘middle class’ from flipping and driving prices… and that just may be enough to slip the supply beyond the big players hands and allow it to balance. But not sure Anet could easily implement a solution like this at all.

Side note – ectos prices are inflated beyond what they actually cost. You can get them much cheaper – 15 to 30 silver (depending on your luck levels) off the TP. How it ever got above 30, I either blame manipulators sillily buying against themselves, or there are really enough ignorant players to support them.

As others have said, market manipulation is rampant. Countless times I’ve seen entire stacks flipped, people over placing buys. Just watch the market – some people fake the jump by placing 1-10 items to their new inflated price point. Some just jump that 10-50 silver. If a supply run is small, I’ve seen it completely swept instantly (I click “buy” and get an error and see 1000+ items bought and now sitting much higher at a price. As long as people keep overbidding their fake buy stock, they can feed them the items they bought at less than their new buy floor. As long as supply doesn’t go past their control faster than they can profit off of the control, profit!

This is compounded by the fact that many items in this game (crafting, mystic forge, legendaries) surpass what a single person can farm in a respectable amount of time thus creating an inelastic demand. Inelastic demands are easy to manipulate,

Sadly my thought of limiting overbid buy reqeusts limited to by 1 copper is broken by those that I’ve seen small step their new price floors. This basically makes me think of back to price flipping that happened with housing, especially in my state where house prices nearly doubled in just one year… they ended up placing a restriction where you could not sell a recently purchased house for “x” months or face a heavy heavy tax. I’m not sure that is possible here, but I would like to see a timer placed on items purchased off the AH – you can’t sell an item you just bought for 24 hours. This would slow down flipping and give time for it to catch a breath after a buyout… making market manipulation more risky. Make it more risky, less people will do it, and we actually might see the market settle better.

Of course then there is the whole side thing that gold sellers are playing the market too – they profit, sell their profits to people for real money so they can then afford their inflated prices on TP to make more profit to sell back to them. Awesome, right?

You do have a message board on the guild page where you can put updates… Just let people know to check it regularly. I personally don’t want messages popping in my mail – I have a low limit and don’t need your clutter. I can see guild chats. I can see guild page messages. Plus most serious guilds have VoIP and/or guild forums.

I will say, though, that the mail spam limit is too low – logically it should be 4 or 5… the size of a party. You want to share some food/potions for a dungeon? Nope, you can’t. Want to have a tonic battle and you have a stack? Nope. At least fix this please.

My main is a Mesmer, and I think most of your suggestions are a bit OP, but here are my thoughts:

Weapons
Torch
-iMage: Either return the phantasm to its original 1 stack of confusion with a longer duration, or extend the duration of the 3 stacks we have now. Would be nice, though I would be happy with just a shorter cooldown… this phantom is crap unless you get multiple ones up to get stacks going, and with a 30 second timer, you’re only going to be able to do this on Champions. Makes this too limited.
-The Prestige: Give us the abiliy to break out of stealth with the blast finisher on command like how we can pop a stun using our sword block. Perfect suggestion. The simple ability to pop it on command turns this from just a pansy stealth move that you have to trait (unless you like not being able to attack for 3 seconds) to make good to something that can be very useful.

Scepter
-Ether Bolt: Give each shot a Projectile Finisher for condition builds. Straight up boost that would make it a bit too OP. Seriously, the ability to drop a veil or storm and stack up constant confusion and clones that do the same on a move that generates clones? My god this would be awesome, but no… too OP.
-Block: The projectile could use some pathfinding tweaks, or make it homing. eh – I’ve never had serious issues with the block hitting except at range, and that should be dodgeable at range. Not needed.

Staff
-Winds of Chaos: Vulnerability gives 2 stacks instead of 1. Any auto attack that clones can do should be especially looked at before boosting. Nice, but is it really needed?
-Phase Retreat: When teleporting, check the Z of the ground vs the player’s Z position, and correct approprately so we stop going through the floor. Functionally should happen, though popping me down or up floors has saved me from a few too hairy situations. :p
-Chaos Armor: Update the tooltip to mention the protection! Sure. Though I’m afraid Anet may go, oh, it shouldn’t, and just take off the protection. D=

Greatsword
-Mind Stab: Increase the radius and increase the damage by about 50%, remove the rooted stance restriction. Ummm… this is a 1200 range move already does good damage and is an aoe boon ripper. It casts in a quarter second. Sure, it’s not a staple DPS move to use over your auto-attack, but that is not the purpose of this move. Good as is.

Focus
-Swiftness veil: Allow it to be stacked with other swiftness boons, extend swiftness duration slightly. Yes. The Temporal Curtains swiftness is pretty broken right now, and should be fixed.
-iWarden: Allow the warden to run into melee range with the target While it has a very nice attack, as others have said, the shine of this phantom is it’s defense bubble… which you don’t want running away from you. Good as is.

Utility
Mimic: Enable blocking and reflection on skill activation instead of after absorbing a projectile first. People underestimate this skill as they forget about the 4 seconds of reflect/block that you get after absorbing. Actually taking the hit fits the concept of absorb, but any concept that requires you to eat damage I find a bit backwards. What I would like to see is that when you cast it back, you heal for the damage you took when you absorbed the move. It fits better as it was only an “illusion” you took the damage (of course it wouldn’t be an illusion if it took you down!), and helps bring this move to a proper level.

iDisenchanter: Summon beside the PC instead of in melee range Nice suggestion. It’s already set to prioritize players, would only make sense to be by the player.

iDefender: Increase health Not unless they fixed the defender stacking.

Mantra of Pain: Increase damage, inflict 3 stacks of Vulnerability I actually agree. Pain is nice while you’re low level, but without utility, it has no real purpose outside of that. This would wake the ability up a bit.

Mantra of Concentration (stability): Reduce the cooldown, add 5 seconds of retaliation This is definitely one of the weakest stability moves in the game… long cool down for 2-3 very short duration moves. This makes it a reactionary move, and if you are going to react to a move, you would dodge/blink instead of stability. While retaliation would add use for a bunker build, I’d much rather see it give 4 second stability casts. This would bring it on level with many other classes stability levels.

Mantra of Recovery: Increase base healing (not scaling) slightly to make it more relevant to non-healing power builds Two instant cast heals that you can trait to 3, making it your strongest. True it’s weak untraited, but weakest to strongest based on traits I find to be a good balance for a skill setup.

Mirror: Increase healing slightly, increase reflection time to 3-4 seconds. 1 second is indeed too short, but 3-4 is too long. 2 seconds is much more balanced and effect imo.

I’ve been able to solo Champions ever since I learned to be mobile (though some have far too much HP to be worth the time, like giants). Attacks have tells, so you just need to learn at which point of the tell to hit your evasion move (block, dodge, blur or whatever), and you negate it. Once you stop taking damage from champions, then it’s just a matter of grinding down their health.

Admittedly Mesmers have an easier time of it – they have good combat mobility AND clones to pull Champions off them. On my Mesmer, I pop two phantoms for DPS, and use myself and a clone to keep the Champion busy. Heck, I’ve taken on a champion and three veterans at once with that method without going below half health (which is one Champion hit if I don’t time a dodge/evasion right)

For your Ranger, it actually is also pretty easy to solo champs. You have quite a few evasion based moves, OMG abilities for condition stacking, and a chew toy that can soak some serious damage if you want to be lazy and just pewpew while it gets eaten. I’ve even seen my roommate solo champions that were 4 levels higher than he was on his Ranger.

Good luck and nice to hear you’re enjoying the class!

Would rather they fixed staff/scepter for ranged rather than having to rely on a 20 second environmental weapon to be able to hit crap further than 130 units reliably. I would much rather they go back to the old way. We don’t need more minions – the long cooldown that didn’t trigger until time-out/demise of the current spirit weapon was enough of a penalty imo. Their attack was too slow, and the AI too dumb to handle any mass situation… it was that invulnerability that backed up with the utility if you traited into the 60 points it took to make them useful for certain situations. I want it back that way rather than just another set of minions or environmental weapons like other classes have.