Guild Wars 2

Right now there’s Starter, Common, Uncommon, and Rare. All the Black Lion dyes get shoved into the Rare category – I think they should have their own category, either Exotic or Black Lion.

hey sorry guys there’s 11 posters in this thread and only 10 spots, someone will have to leave

please post your dps and gearscore below so i can decide who to kick, thanks

Torolan.5816:

Dreggon.6598:

I really just want to be able to run things with friends and guildmates without ever needing to exclude people.

It is the very nature of a raid to exclude people, Dreggon. I don´t even mean this a a counterargument to it, that damage is already done.

But with a hard raid you take these people out by default:
-The severely handicaped
-The old
-The very young
-The slow, both in mind and hand

You make it hard for:
-The casual that plays half an hour a day
-The special class lovers
-The non meta users whose class is sonsidered good, but his equipment not
-The non-conformists
-The people that don´t want to raid but still want the legendary armor

I heard, both by foreign word and with my own ears, how raid leaders have said to people:
“Look, Steve, you´re a nice guy and we all like you. But sadly, you simply don´t cut it and we already filled the backseat that could go to you tonight. Maybe better luck next time, dude? Ok? We´re really sorry. "
Usually, several people will opt to give their place to Steve, but you can´t afford to have too many Steves in this kind of operation, not to speak of how poor Steve must have felt.

Raid means exklusion. Hardcore raiders who lobbied for it knew that frrom the start, but then you hear the htfu speeches, or my personal favorite,the “mind your own business as we do mind ours” response, basically confirming with it that exklusion is not only unavoidable, but also wanted.

This is true while also being avoidable by making the raid sizes flexible :^)

I really just want to be able to run things with friends and guildmates without ever needing to exclude people.

I’m honestly baffled at the people arguing against this proposal. Why would you object to something which can only help people?

Larynx.2453:

Dreggon.6598:

BIGHARSHNESS.3510:

There is an lfg tool to fill the gaps. Problem solved.

No, if i have 11 people they can’t all play together.

Then act like adults and rotate people out?

Why should we do that?

BIGHARSHNESS.3510:

There is an lfg tool to fill the gaps. Problem solved.

No, if i have 11 people they can’t all play together.

Zalladi.4652:

The thing is, how many players out there will play raids if they require groups of 20 players or more? The answer will likely be a lot fewer than if raids only required 10 players.

You could consider some world bosses to be the large-scale raids you are looking for (mainly Triple Trouble as the prime example – hopefully they will add more), so I doubt they will add 20+ raid sizes as a result.

Flexible, not 20

My guild(s) contain hundreds of people and one is bursting at the seams with a waiting list. We frequently have many more than 10 people online, and there are probably going to be more than 10 wanting to raid. If I have any number not divisible by 10, we won’t be able to play together.

Instead I’d request raid sizes of a minimum maximum (i.e. the smallest amount that the maximum raid size should be) be 20 players and preferably more, so if I have 21 we can form groups of 10 and 11, or larger groups if I have more than 21. This game is supposed to be about everybody playing together, not being excluded because “we have enough people”.

I play guardian and I think their traits need a second balance pass, so here’s some feedback
I tried spacing these to be more readable but the forum doesn’t like multiple spaced paragraphs
This will not include every trait, just those that need to be looked at

Zeal

• Major Adept - Wrathful Spirit: Aegis gives retaliation when it ends.

Retaliation isn’t a fun thing to put on a trait, and should be replaced with something… fun.

• Minor Master - Symbolic Exposure: Symbols apply vulnerability to foes.

The vulnerability is one stack for 3 seconds, which is barely anything considering how short symbols last. Maybe a hammer could get more than 5 stacks of this, maybe.

• Major Master - Binding Jeopardy: Immobilizing or blinding a foe also applies vulnerability to them.

3 stacks for 8 seconds, not bad. With Dragonhunter soon being a thing, I’d suggest this be changed to “Movement-impairing effects or blinds” so that the autoattack bounce cripple on the longbow can also apply vulnerability.

• Major Grandmaster – Expeditious Spirit: Spirit weapons burn foes they strike. Spirit weapon summon and command skills have reduced recharge.

The burning only lasts three seconds, which isn’t much given that you have to sacrifice all your utilities to make it work. I haven’t seen a spirit build since the specialisation patch.

Radiance

• Major Adept – Healer’s Retribution: Gain retaliation when using a heal skill.

Again with the retaliation. The other two traits in this category give fury when you hit someone with more than 3 stacks of burning, or 15% increased critical chance with one-handed weapons. Compared to that, retaliation on heal doesn’t contend at all.

• Major Master - Radiant Fire: Gain zealot’s flame when you critically hit an enemy. Burning duration is increased. Torch abilities recharge faster.

Trait is bugged; even when not on cooldown, applies randomly on critical hits. Unreliable, but aside from that bug I enjoy it.

• Major Master - Retribution: Gain increased damage while under the effects of retaliation.

Bugged; erroneously grants bonus damage to spear and sword damage. May just be a tooltip error, but it’s another retaliation trait so I hate it.

• Major Grandmaster – Amplified Wrath: Burning damage is increased. Burn enemies whose attacks you successfully block.

Has a one second cooldown, which guts it quite handily. If it was a one second cooldown per target it would be more satisfying to use, like the mesmer blind-on-dodge/block trait.

• Major Grandmaster – Perfect Inscriptions: Gain light aura when activating a signet.
  Signets recharge faster and have improved passive effects.

Light aura? That grants retaliation. Come on, give me something fun!

• Major Grandmaster - Radiant Retaliation: Retaliation damage scales from condition damage instead of power.

This trait has a completely gamebreaking bug: it still exists. Maybe if this applied bleeding to people who hit you while you have retal you would start seeing some retal specs, but as it stands this trait needs to go away.

Valor

• Major Master – Stalwart Defender: Gain additional toughness while wielding a shield. Shield ability recharge is reduced.

Guardian shield is bugged already; the absorbing dome doesn’t last the full 4 seconds. I have no idea what to do with this trait, but it needs some love. Maybe put its skills into the Ward category along with Line of Warding on staff and Ring of Warding on hammer, and make this trait affect those too? Or let us move around instead of channeling the absorb dome, and have it channel itself in place? Something.

• Minor Grandmaster – Might of the Protector: Gain might when you block attacks.

Like Amplified Wrath, has a one second cooldown that should be per target instead of just a cooldown. If I’m blocking lots of attacks from lots of targets, I deserve more than two stacks of might.

• Major Grandmaster – Retributive Armor: Gain toughness for a period of time when blocking an attack. Gain ferocity based on your toughness.

Kind of a weird one, feels like it was slotted in because nobody could think of what to put here. Bunker guardians use Altruistic Healing, so I’m not sure who this trait is for.

Honor

• Major Adept - Invigorated Bulwark: Gain increased healing power for a period of time each time you block an attack while wielding a mace. Stacks up to 10 times. Mace abilities have reduced recharge.

Doesn’t contend with the next trait:

• Major Adept – Protective Reviver: Activate a shield of absorption when you begin reviving an ally. Upon successful revival, you and ally each gain aegis, protection and regeneration.

This should be a grandmaster for how good it is.

• Major Adept - Protector’s Impact: Create a Symbol of Protection when you take falling damage. You take less damage when falling.

This trait is critically bugged; every other profession has a cooldown on the effect they create when taking fall damage (e.g. warrior’s Death From Above has a one second cooldown, the elementalist skills each have a 5 second cooldown, etc.). The guardian’s is 8 seconds, but this doesn’t just apply to the created effect – it applies to the fall damage reduction. This means if you take fall damage, it gets reduced by 50%, but if you take fall damage again within 8 seconds it is not reduced at all. No other class has their trait bugged like this; you can even see the cooldown on the trait. There’s one for the created skill, and one for the trait. Please remove the one on the trait so that it’s normalised between classes.

• Major Master - Empowering Might You and nearby allies gain might when you land a critical hit.

Has a one second cooldown, but the might only lasts five seconds. I get that you don’t want staff/hammer guardians giving 25 stacks of might to an entire group (only warriors are allowed to be that overpowered) but the cooldown should apply per attack. I use this trait with a staff and it applies at most every 2 seconds, because a staff attacks slightly faster than once per second.

These next two I’ll do together:

• Major Grandmaster - Pure of Voice: Allies affected by shouts have conditions converted to boons. Shout abilities have their recharge reduced.

• Major Grandmaster - Writ of Persistence: Symbols last longer, are larger, and heal allies.

I like to run shout hammer in dungeons. Because these two traits conflict, I can’t do that. Please rename Writ of Persistence to Writ of Exaltation (which is a better name that was removed with the specialisation patch) and swap it with Protective Reviver, so that people who don’t use symbols or shouts have something to do with this line.

Virtues

• Minor Adept – Inspired Virtue: Virtues now also apply boons to allies when activated.

Bug: Tooltip erroneously reports a 1200 range; range is actually 600.

• Minor Master – Virtue of Retribution: Gain retaliation when you activate a virtue. Retaliation you apply lasts longer.

Retaliatiooooon!

Everything else in this line is actually pretty good.

Dragonhunter

• Major Adept - Piercing Light: Trap hits bleed enemies.

A mere 6 seconds of a single stack of bleeding. Should be 2-3 stacks, and the trait should reduce trap cooldowns, especially given that traps are a core feature of this elite specialisation.

• Major Adept - Soaring Devastation: Wings of resolve deliver an attack upon landing.

This should at least increase the range and maybe even the radius or cooldown.

• Minor Master - Defender’s Dogma: Blocking an attack causes justice to reach its maximum charge.

What if justice is already at maximum charge? This trait should do something else.

• Major Master - Dulled Senses: Enemies you knock back are crippled.

What knock backs does guardian have? Staff 5?, hammer 4, hammer 5?, shield 5, longbow 5?, downed skill 2 – a 4 second cripple isn’t useful here, and if you’re using a longbow your autoattack already cripples. There’s a grandmaster trait that turns you into a bearbow ranger (automatic knockback) but again – your longbow already cripples.

• Major Master - Hunter’s Determination: True shot grants stability for each enemy struck.

There shouldn’t be traits for one specific skill. Stability is fine, but extend this trait to other skills that aren’t specifically longbow 2.

• Major Grandmaster - Heavy Light: Longbow arrows knock back when enemies are within the range threshold.

120 knockback, 7 second cooldown. I don’t see the point, you’d switch to a melee weapon.

Major Grandmaster - Hunter’s Fortification: Apply protection in an area when activating a virtue.

Has a one second cooldown – why? Radius is also 240, which is less than the Virtues minor trait.

A few bugs

• Hammer 2 – Mighty Blow: Being immobilised while jumping with this skill will lock you in the air and prevent you from using any of your skills.
• Greatsword 3 – Leap of Faith: See above
• Any leap with any class, really: See above
• Utility – “Retreat!” (shout): Can’t be used while airborne, despite having no cast time. No other utility shouts have this bug.
• Staff 2 – Orb of Light: Has a target limit of 5, but is not separated between allies and enemies; if there are 5 allies between you and your target, it will heal all of them, but not deal damage to the enemy.

edit: more bugs

• Torch 4 – Zealot’s Flame: The secondary activation of this skill fires a ground projectile (like hammer 3) rather than being tossed overhead like other projectiles. This means that it can’t hit enemies over short gaps.
• Scepter 3 – Chains of Light: Range is 900, compared to the other scepter skills that are 1200.
• Hammer 1 – Symbol of Protection: In narrow corridors, the symbol created by this ability can occasionally fail to spawn. I think it might be hitting the roof or something, but it doesn’t appear, or deal damage, or grant protection.

And for now, that is enough writing.

The Jennah mini is account bound, the level up scrolls are account bound, the upcoming finisher is probably also going to be account bound – why not the cake gun? It shouldn’t matter if specific characters on my account weren’t made at the same time as my earliest, like the revenant. I just wanna shoot cake!

Healix.5819:

The mastery system is simply a way to simulate an increased level cap. People want that sense of progression and ArenaNet wants you to level through the new content like you would do in any other MMO. The problem that ArenaNet has to deal with is the fact that you can basically do whatever you want. Mastery XP is just a distraction. Its only purpose is to simulate leveling. Mastery points are the main goal. They ensure that you’re actually playing the game, rather than, for example, grinding the entrance.

The mastery system ArenaNet chose is identical to “mastery” systems seen other games. In some RPGs for example, you equip a skill and improve it by gaining XP with it equipped. Sometimes it’s simply based on number of uses or targets killed however. In action games, this system can be used with combos instead. For example, you might find a new weapon with various combos. To unlock them, you first have to do the basic combos a certain amount of times to level them. ArenaNet could have gone with either one, but the other way would certainly require more resources. Imagine having to take ~100k fall damage to unlock gliding, glide for ~5 minutes to unlock updrafts, use ~20 updrafts to unlock the next and so on. Finally mastering gliding would require completion of a timed glider “jumping” puzzle.

Considering the failure of the old trait unlocks, I doubt mastery points will be hard to acquire for the average player. They would have to offer alternatives if they were, which would just bloat the system.

I could go for a mix of this and my suggestion – instead of being able to immediately splurge on the latest masteries (as I suggest), or grind unrelated events to gain XP and find mastery points to unlock them (as the current system works), require players to do content that is relevant to the mastery being unlocked before you can spend points in it.

You’d still have a glut of mastery points, but you wouldn’t be able to mass dump them into whatever new masteries come out – you’d have to complete relevant content first. It would be better than the existing system.

Coulter.2315:

Dreggon.6598:

It’s not unreasonable to assume that dedicated players will be earning several hundred mastery points, and any new masteries introduced in following patches would be immediately gobbled up by people like myself with an overabundance of mastery points.

The system is literally design to avoid this very thing, you’re proposing something opposite to what the devs want.

Its not a good idea.

Could you provide a source for this? I have not seen any developers mention it.

1. Essential
Required to access core content of the game, these are the cheapest tier of mastery, and the most important. Gliding, bouncing mushrooms, masteries that unlock adventures or let you access areas of the game, all go into this category. These masteries would require a minimal number of points to unlock, because they let you play the content you paid for. And if you want to play with your friends, the barrier to entry is going to be low. There’s not a lot in this category, but if you need it to access significant parts of the game, it goes in here.

2. Useful
Things that are nice to have, quality of life, convenience. Includes the masteries that let you do tricks with your glider or fly with it forever, or eat the stoner frog mushrooms and fight the resulting hallucinations for a daily prize (which is actually the frogs paying you to leave), or combat stuff like tearing the bark off that one Mordrem guy that the developers talk about, or automatic looting, or any number of nice things that don’t actually bar access to important parts of the game.

3. Luxury
When you’ve got too many points and need something to spend them on, like this uh, brand new Lamborghini here. Since this is Guild Wars 2, that Lamborghini is actually a legendary precursor collection. But precursor crafting only goes in this tier as an example; what I actually propose goes into this tier are masteries that essentially act as dumps for your excess mastery points. I’m talking 25 points per tier for a mastery that increases your chance to get rare gathering materials, or 100 points to unlock waypoints for all your characters, or 200 points per tier to increase how many items you get from map reward bonuses. Purely luxury things for people who already have everything else.

I think I’m supposed to do closing words but I already wrote a lot of them, please let me know what you think. I wrote this because the developers seem to actually be reading and responding to feedback and are willing to change things based on it (e.g. adding weapon swap to revenant), so I am hoping to get some discussion going.

How many times have you leveled up since skill points were replaced with spirit shards? I’m sure nobody keeps track, since right now the reward for leveling up is nothing. Unless you count the AoE knockback and full health refill – hardly any sort of reward for filling up an entire experience bar – there’s no tangible reward. But when Heart of Thorns eventually comes out, that will be fixed, right?

Only temporarily.

See, right now a mastery track requires two things – sufficient mastery points to unlock the track, followed by a certain amount of experience to make its benefits yours. Don’t have enough mastery points to unlock a track? Your experience will go to waste. 3 months in and you’ve completed all the tracks? Same again. Spend all your mastery points on Exalted Lore and stoner frog shroom bouncing, but don’t have any mastery points left to level gliding so that you can reach all the mastery nodes that require gliding to access? Hope you enjoy never, ever getting to fly around the Maguuma Jungle. Also, your experience points will go to waste. (But also you don’t get to glide. This is an actual thing that needs to be fixed independent of my following suggestions.)

Why are these two separate systems? Why is the only way to get mastery points by finding them in the world, instead of allowing us to unlock them directly with experience? This was how skill points used to work, and nobody complained about that. It was a great system – level up to unlock your skills, or find nodes scattered about the world to unlock them a bit faster. And once you hit level 80, you could keep leveling up to get more skill points, which could be used in the Mystic Forge if you had an excess (we all did). I opened up my mastery page on the beta and was bombarded with eight help bubbles trying to tell me how the system works. I already know how experience works; why not just use that? You don’t ‘train’ gliding by gliding, or exalted lore by reading books, or stoner frog jumping mushrooms by seeing how high they can get you, you gain it by murdering things, gathering resources and completing events. Mastery experience is identical to regular experience and does not need to be gated by exploring specific developer-sanctioned areas of the world. And what if maxing out your masteries requires completion of an adventure or event that’s just too hard for you? Let’s not be elitist – some content is hard. What if Liadry awarded the last mastery point you need to unlock real-life superpowers and 10% off your insurance, but you can’t beat her? You’re stuck.

Masteries should work like the old skill point system. Once you hit level 80, leveling up stops giving… well, levels, and starts giving mastery points. Masteries should cost a certain number of points to unlock, and once you decide to pay those points, there’s no nonsense about ‘training’ them – it’s yours. You’ve already earned the experience, you gained however many mastery points you needed, and you bought the mastery. Transaction completed.

Now thinking long-term: Progression-wise, as time goes on past Heart of Thorns’ release, under this revised system players are going to be earning a lot of mastery points. My main character (guardian) had over 800 skill points when they got changed to spirit shards, without using any scrolls (post-patch I ended up with over 4500 shards, 3000 from scrolls). It’s not unreasonable to assume that dedicated players will be earning several hundred mastery points, and any new masteries introduced in following patches would be immediately gobbled up by people like myself with an overabundance of mastery points. That’s fine – we already earned the experience, but there should still be sinks for mastery points. Ergo, I propose three ‘tiers’ (if you like) of masteries.

5k char limit, cont.

I have some bad news, unfortunately the trait “Retribution” which increases your damage while 10% while you have retaliation DOES NOT WORK! It actually increases sword and spear damage by 10%. I hope this can be fixed so that my condition-based retaliation build can be even stronger.

seriously you can bust entire zergs by yourself with just this trait, it needs to be nerfed or removed for the balance of the game

Black Box.9312:

Wait… What? Is this for real?

Yes, there is a trait that does this

e: here’s the build http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgIBeAL8Baw~

“Retaliation damage scales from condition damage instead of power. "

This trait is too good to even be a grandmaster and I’m amazed that it passed the balance check. With 1565 condition damage I was hitting a guy for 290 in PvP per hit with just retaliation, which I can stack with both a greatsword symbol AND light aura by leaping through it, not to mention extending its duration by 25% and gaining it from TWO shouts and my heal skill, AND all my virtues.

Is this going to get a nerf anytime soon? There’s absolutely no counter to this build because even if retaliation gets stripped I can just reapply it.

I hated mesmer and didn’t and couldn’t play it until this patch. Now people are angry at me because a guy in my guild gave me a kitten build. It’s fun now!

Now about making Signet of Inspiration give permaswiftness…

The ‘build’ is/was essentially Pure of Voice (with the cooldown trait) to clear conditions, and Writ of Persistence to make Symbol of Protection last 4 seconds instead of 2. This build no longer exists because Writ of Persistence is now classed as a Grandmaster trait.

I liked running this build in dungeons because it allowed me to be a casual support/tank character instead of trying to squeeze every last bit of damage out of a greatsword. Maybe it could be folded into the fall damage trait?

If you have character models being culled they will be wearing a set of generic armor, which varies based on armor type. I was wondering if anybody knew what the generic armor is, ideally for heavy armor, so I can make a character will full generic culling armor.

e: if the gear varies from race to race, I’m looking for the sylvari heavy set

Are you cool with me dropping flame rams on the dead corpses of enemies and getting my guild to build them all? I am a dedicated roleplayer and this is my roleplay finisher

If you record a drum loop, and then somebody else enters the map, they will not be able to hear your recorded loop.

Reproduction:

1. Stand in a zone with one friend, and record loop #1. Your friend will be able to hear your manual drum beats and the loop.
2. Have a second friend zone in. Your second friend will be able to hear your manual drum beats, but they will not be able to hear your loop.
3. If you record loop #2, both friends will be able to hear loop #2. The second friend will not be able to hear loop #1, however.

…and then I fell because the floor was still open.

:(

It’s a very noticeable increase – takes about double the time.

Is it possible to do the Opening Ceremony again? I did it on my sylvari but I’d like to do it on my human noble so I can talk to the coolest guy, Faren.

Their signature move is to use as many signature moves as they like. My signature move is to use one mango pie.

Hi! I saw a lot of people having trouble with this ability, and so to clear up any confusion I’ve created this handy guide on reliably reaching your destination, with no hassle!

Hopefully this guide will prevent any troubles you may have had in getting some of those pesky crystals, and may even teach you how to be a better player!

After finishing the toyshop, you get a reward chest. Is this once per day? Will I be able to get the mini christmas quaggan if I miss a day or two?

Grenade damage is high because there’s no tracking. I’d love an alternate grenade kit that can autoattack and uses tracking, like every other class in the game.

KirinDave.6451:

Sigils only work for the weapon they’re applied to

I thought we’ve all agreed this isn’t the case?

As an engineer main, I wouldn’t know anything about it, but I’m fairly certain it holds true as far as weapon-specific sigils go – i.e. if a sigil gives a 30% chance to apply burning it only works if you use the weapon it’s applied to, but if it restores health on a kill then it doesn’t matter which weapon you use. But again – I really don’t know.

Sigils only work for the weapon they’re applied to, e.g. if I have a sigil of air in my main hand pistol, my 4 and 5 skills won’t be able to apply it. However, with kits, I’m not sure whether I’ll only gain the benefit from a main-hand weapon or if I can gain it from an off-hand weapon as well. It might even be that having two weapons with two sigils will allow my main-hand weapon’s sigil to apply to grenade skills 1-3, and off-hand’s sigil to apply to skills 4-5. I’m hoping someone can explain how this works – I love the rifle for Rocket Jump, but if I can use two sigils on my grenades…

Are all of your settings at the absolute lowest?

If they are – it’s time to upgrade. Can you tell me what parts you have?:

1. processor
2. graphics card
3. RAM

is pretty much the most important stuff.

The sticky says “DO NOT MISS” the event, but unfortunately it’s locked so I’ll put my question here – by “DO NOT MISS”, does it mean that there’s going to be some sort of cool event on which I can reasonably miss, or is there going to be some sort of exclusive item/achievement (e.g. the Attend the Party achievement)? I’d normally give you credit and assume that this isn’t going to be the case, but the event is one-time-only so I get the feeling that there are going to be some unattainable rewards given out.

I’d like a ‘second’ grenade kit that’s automatically unlocked for free when you purchase the current one – the current one has targeted AoEs, and the new one can just throw grenades automatically.

A guildmate brought up a feature in Guild Wars 1 wherein characters that have existed for a year receive, every year, on their creation date, a gift. I believe this was a miniature or something.

I was wondering – is this feature in Guild Wars 2? Should I create a lot of characters now so I can receive gifts this time next year?

I would have loved to see your friend/mentor/ally, who you chose at the start of the game (i.e. mentor for asura, warband buddy for charr [e.g. Clawspur, Dinky]) come in and start whaling on the Sovereign Eye of Zhaitan. I spent the whole fight on my human noble thinking “OK, maybe this is the part where Lord Faren drops down from the ceiling and destroys the Eye all by himself” or “This is the part where my warband charges in and goes to town on the Eye”. But no, it’s just Trahearne tanking it for 20 minutes.

Despite having the perfect voice for it, Trahearne doesn’t even make any amusing quips over the course of the fight. It would have been exponentially more fun if he’d used that dry, sarcastic-sounding voice of his to say things like “Oh, look, he teleported. Again.” or “I really wish he’d stop doing that.” Overall the fight is exactly what I’d expect of an MMO – attacking only the part of a boss which touches the floor for 20 minutes and hoping that it will eventually fall over. And when it finally does, the version of Fear Not This Night that plays is almost too quiet to hear, and it isn’t even the voiced version.

I also had a Vigil Crusader at the beginning of the instance. Every single other NPC there was named, and I had met most of them (some I had never met and I still don’t know who they are), but in a sea of named NPCs there was this one Vigil Crusader. That was his name. Vigil Crusader. I felt sorry for him.