Guild Wars 2

Svarty.8019:

No, no, no GS is fine. Nothing to see here. Please get back to complaining about the real problems such as;

• base HPs.

That’s not an issue. Guardians would be absurd if they had the base hp of a Warrior. The problem is that Warriors have too much healing after the Healing Signet buff – they beat us in mobility, control, passive sustain, and hp.

If you’re looking for an issue that can and should be fixed on the Guardian’s end, look no further than crappy minor traits: all Zeal (outside of PvE), Radiance 15 (outside of PvE), and Valor 15. There’s plenty of terrible and/or uncompressed major traits as well, but those can at least be substituted with better ones.

Guild Wars 1 was a masterpiece. It took the common trinity roles and repackaged them in such a free-form, versatile way that it was often easy to forget that Guild Wars 1 was, in fact, a trinity game. Furthermore, each profession had a huge number of builds and was often not set in its role. Monks, the “dedicated healing” profession could go offensive support, damage prevention, healing, and even nuker. Some of the most popular healers in the game were actually Necromancer/Ritualist combinations that utilized an interesting combination of flexible heals and preventions with energy management via Soul Reaping. Said Necromancers could have just as easily gone indirect tank (minion master), control, or AoE dps.

Guild Wars 2 succeeded in keeping the spirit of flexible class roles from its predecessor. Every class can be customized to do every role in one or more unique fashions and flavors. It’s a great concept.

The primary failures of Guild Wars 2 as compared to the first are as such:

Fewer skills. Yes, this was done to decrease the number of unviable skills. Unfortunately, the percentage of unviable or highly situational skills is approximately the same as its predecessor – resulting in a net loss of build variety.

Skills locked into templates. The removal of free form skill selection COULD have been effective if each class had a large selection of available templates to choose from and/or multiple combinations to choose from for each weapon. Unfortunately, this is not the case. This is probably the single largest contributor to the game’s perceived lack of longevity. One can only use the same skills for so long before it just gets freaking old.

Guild Wars 1’s simple, but elegant system of allocating attribute points into skill lines allowed for roles to be more effectively streamlined. Depending on your Secondary class and your attribute point allocation, you could define your primary to perform any role – but they still performed a role of some sort. If you tried to do everything at once, you would doom yourself to be less effective. A dps could not support almost as effectively as a dedicated support. While this could sound like a bad thing on paper, it wasn’t in practice. It encouraged thought and team synergy before the player entered each mission. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have this; a GW2 dps can remove conditions, control enemies, and heal allies almost as well as builds dedicated to these things. The result? Why build anything but dps (in PvE) – it’s not like mobs are intelligent enough to be a real threat.

Guild Wars 1 had fully refundable stat choices that encouraged experimentation. Guild Wars 2 locks players into rigid builds through gear-locked stats and traits that require a return to some city to refund.

Faowri.4159:

I’ll take anything with fewer trenchcoats and buttcapes.

Also if they were gender-balanced, that would be sweet.

I think Heavy armors actually need more buttcapes, not less.

It should be 10 silver per Fractals scale level.

Stinson.5972:

This is like the fifth thread about this but… dredge still sucks so I approve. It’s stupidly longer than any other fractal, even if you do it right. Every little detail makes it take longer. Like the bomb part where most parties wind up suiciding; even the darn bombs take forever to respawn. It’s built in – it takes long no matter whether you land the bombs or not. At least one of the major elements – the gates, or the bombs, or the rabsovich fight, or the clown car, just needs to be cut out.

I’d vote for the gates. It’s the part that seems to be most unanimously despised by players. There’s a kitten good reason that this part was/is often skipped.

That’s kind of why I was leaning towards keeping it a Light Field and having it grant Might instead of Retaliation. GS already gives you retaliation through light fields with its leap finisher, but stacking Might through the symbol’s base effect in addition to that and its current function of cleansing conditions with whirl finishers would open up more versatility and group utility for the weapon.

Onisuo.8607:

I thought they made it clear(Anet), they could give a rat’s rear end how charr and all other non-human races look in armor. I complained for months about Norn having over-sized weapons and weapons clipping in the arms during idle animations.

Then they put up a big sticky saying there’s not much they “can” do about clipping.

Norn have it a lot better than male Sylvari. Most of our armors are comically oversized and/or have a skirt effect that blows hanging parts a foot from our bodies (see HotW heavy armor for a good example of the skirt effect).

Sabyne.6329:

Maybe we could decide individually which field take priority and set it in our options.
You could chose fire > water > x >y and someone else could chose light > dark > z if they prefer it this way. I don’t know if this would be easy to implement but I would find it nice.

This would be the best option, if it is possible.

Finished Sunrise yesterday.

Our Greatsword is currently a fun, but often lackluster weapon as it is often outperformed by Hammer in sPvP and most PvE situations and outdone by Sw/F in PvE. It’s dps is nothing special while it’s burst is easily avoided and on a significantly longer cooldown than Mighty Blow.

One of the core issues, as I see it, is that Symbol of Wrath is rather redundant. As a profession with a high retaliation up-time, we don’t need a symbol that provides us with retaliation on both the skill effect and through combo finishers. As such, I would suggest two changes that would help the skill out.

Either

1) Make Symbol of Wrath grant Might instead of retaliation.

Or

2) Make the skill a Fire Field.

The first change would have the advantage of making the skill a might-stacking option for the group – an alternative to the Staff, assuming the numbers are good. This would also keep the GS a viable condition cleanser through Whirling Wrath on the field. It would also keep a source of retaliation through its leap finisher.

The second change would provide extra AoE burning options, a Fire Aura option, and synergy with the Hammer as a Might-Stacking alternative. It would remain a potent Retaliation stacker.

Personally, I’m leaning towards the first one.

Ashabhi.1365:

Mesket.5728:

Ashabhi.1365:

You know, everyone talks about how much they hate Scarlet. Funny…isn’t that what the devs want?

Hear me out: They’ve thrown a villain at us that is cartoonish, silly, and really doesn’t DO anything other than have her minions (ahem…alliances) fight for her. In a way, she’s just a superfluous figurehead. But, she has galvanized most of the rest of us into hating her, and wanting to see her dead by increasingly cruel means.

Scarlet needs to have her story fleshed out a bit, and she could be a great villain. Finally, when we get to the last chapter in her living story, everyone in the entire game is going to willingly complete it, just to see her die. And, if it’s an instance, they’ll do it repeatedly…

So, in a sense they have accomplished exactly what they were going for with her. We all hate her, or at least most of us do.

No,… everyone hates the Lanister, but we love how well developed those characters are. Not the same hate we have for Scarlet.

First, no… Not everyone hates the Lannister. There are some who genuinely like parts of them.

Secondly, I never said it was the same type of hate. All I said is that if the mission was to make everyone in the game hate her, then they accomplished it well.

Indeed. Jaime is probably my favorite character. Tyrion is a fan favorite.

Support is meaningful. Unfortunately support gear is not – and probably will never be – meaningful until each set of gear offers unique additional skill options that aren’t available to the others. That will probably never happen, however.

How did you get those stats?

xarallei.4279:

sirjosh.9561:

Gabby.3205:

Since you are new, maybe you wouldn’t mind deleting your characters? You can star off fresh on a new server if you do that.

Hmm so Jade Quarry sounds good except I don’t know when people will be on all the time unless it is Oceanic based, if I deleted my character wouldn’t I still have to pay in gems though?
Or wait 7 days?

Black Gate or Jade Quarry will probably be fine. Both those servers tend to have some people on 24/7 pretty much. If you’re character is very low level you might as well delete and choose a new server. You do not have to pay or wait if you do this. It’s free.

I wouldn’t recommend swapping to BG unless you like 30 minute+ queues for Borderlands and 3 hour minimum queues for EB.

Ping.5739:

Leveling is totally useless imo. People who seek lore will discover them no matter questing exist or not. People who desire end-game will rush through low level content. So what is the point of leveling? To force player spend more time in game.

QFT.

Guild Wars 2 is currently what I’d call a Retroactive Sandbox because of downscaling. Once you hit 80, the game becomes excellent if you ignore rewards (which is unfortunately a difficult task for the average player). IMO, the game would have been better if it had been a full sandbox with no vertical progression at all. All content would have been equally playable and rewarding. All experiences in the beautiful world of Tyria would have been entirely up to the player. All that would have been lost is artificial numbers.

Come to think of it, much of Guild Wars 1 was effectively sandbox content. After Cantha was added, you could hit max level within hours and the addition of Hard Mode allowed all content to be challenging and rewarding – much like our downscaling. Guild Wars 1 had next to no gear grind, rendering its vertical progression almost non-existent. Interestingly enough, it’s PvE was viable – and even popular – until they stopped releasing expansions.

Celtus.8456:

No, Trahearne is a good character compared to Scarlet.

QFT.

Actually, the funny thing is that Trahearne is a good character in general (IMO). It’s just that Anet’s presentation of him has been incredibly lackluster.

His antisocial, dull nature is to be expected of a character who has lived alone in Orr for years on end and who is considered a social outcast among most of his peers in the Grove.

It is natural that the Vigil would desire to recruit him, as he obtained valuable knowledge of the undead from his years of study. With training, he would no doubt make a superb tactician.

Is is natural that the Priory would revere him; he is Tyria’s foremost scholar on Orr and (arguably) the boldest scholar in Tyria.

It is natural that the Order of Whispers would not only desire his information but would also respect the natural gift of stealth that Trahearne would have needed to have in order to survive alone in Orr for decades.

With these things in mind, Trahearne’s character comes across as the perfect fit for the role that he has been given. Unfortunately, he is introduced so late and in such a lackluster fashion that he comes across as a pointless, show-stealing Marty Stu.

If Trahearne had been introduced early – in both the game and in the novels – he could have had more potential for characterization. Really, his biggest issue is that he never develops. He just kind of immediately steps into the shoes of Pact Marshall without having to learn advanced tactics. He immediately earns the player’s loyalty and friendship without really earning it. He never learns how to socialize (or even lose his monotone) despite occupying a position of command. Basically – he immediately does things that should require multiple story missions to develop.

Character development is more difficult than characterization – and this applies double to the MMO genre. As such, it’s rather easy to understand why Trahearne suffers from this developmental failure.

Scarlet’s problem, on the other hand, is that she is a legitimate Mary Sue who naturally excels at everything for no discernible reason. Trahearne earned his knowledge through years of study and survival. Scarlet just somehow managed to breeze through schools designed for Asura. Trahearne demonstrated the qualities and possessed the knowledge that the Pact organizations needed to face Zhaitan. Scarlet commands her underlings because… because she’ll kill them all, or something. Scarlet is just sorely lacking in terms of both development and in core characterization – she does things for teh evulz with no clear motivation or explanation.

For heavy

http://serenesforest.net/media/fe10illust/e/nephenee_en.png
http://serenesforest.net/media/fe10illust/e/geoffrey_en.png
http://serenesforest.net/media/fe10illust/e/haar_en.png

The third image actually looks really cool.

angelpaladin.7921:

Hey could have been much much worse we could have gotten the Fall of Abaddon. I could see this now… Scarlet steal’s a TARDIS goes back and time and twist and warps Abaddon to be one of her minons.

To be fair, that would actually be hilariously awesome…. or awesomely hilarious… one or the other.

RedStar.4218:

I love that idea. But I’m scared that the choices will simply be terrible…Medium will probably get ranger ancient or norn, light will get elementalist ascalon or istani and heavy will surely get dervish norn (If you don’t see what’s wrong with the last one, check the male armor carefully).

Ranger Norn was a popular armor set – and it was one that I personally liked.

I also liked Dervish Norn Male; I’m not seeing the issue at all.

Instead of selling reskins of old armors, which wastes store space, gives off a lazy image, and occasionally leads to downright insulting scenarios (such as a reskinned cultural armor), why not port some Guild Wars 1 skins in through the cash shop?

Guild Wars 1 skins already have existing concepts – you’ve done them before. You’ve designed them before. That cuts the first stage of armor design out of the equation entirely.

Certain Guild Wars 1 skins were extremely popular in that game and would no doubt become popular purchases in this one. Just look at the Primeval Heavy set, which is among the most popular heavy armor skins in both games. Now just imagine how well sets like Elite Kurzick/Luxon, Elite Templar, Druid, Elite Druid, Vabbian, Ancient, Non-Heavy Primeval, and Obsidian could sell if they were adapted to Guild Wars 2’s graphics and art style.

And, unlike bad reskins of existing Guild Wars 2 armor sets, these would not be likely to leave a bad taste in the community’s mouth. Primeval and Krytan sure haven’t. In fact, I’d wager that there are plenty of loyal fans from the first game who would be overjoyed to see such nostalgic sets get a face-lift. Why not throw them a bone and make some easy money on these traditional skins rather than create another Flame-Kissed fiasco?

My personal suggestion – release some of the simpler, non-prestige sets from the first game to game content while releasing some of the elite/prestige skins to dungeons or the gem store.

I’m aware that transmuted precursors cannot be used to make a legendary, as they are no longer recognized as a precursor. Does this also apply to soulbinding one?

Thanks.

Must it be said?….

That’s racist!

I would still play Guild Wars 2 over all of those.

IMO, silver should be removed from champ bags entirely. It’s a relatively small amount of the profit from said bags, but it is a major contributor to the inflation in the economy right now.

They could also allow players to trade champion loot bags, effectively diminishing the value of some of these through tp taxes.

I really wouldn’t cite League of Legends as an example of great skill design and balance work, considering they’ve been mostly stuck in the same meta (at least in the NA scene) for well over a year now. Apparently, it’s just starting to move towards a different strategy.

It’s meant to be a seasonal mini-game like the Lunatic Inquisition. It’ll be back when Dragon Bash happens next year.

That said, I would like to see it come back, even if I prefer Sanctum Sprint.

foofad.5162:

You guys are completely missing the point. Anet has said time and time again that ultimately endgame gear progression is cosmetic and not about stats. Cosmetics are competition in this game, not just in the traditional way. If it gets to the point where it is completely and utterly cost prohibitive to transmute gear, then it will absolutely be a case of the rich being able to outcompete the poor in terms of progression.

Frankly I think it’s absurd that Anet sticks to this whole “skins” and transmutation stones paradigm when what’s in the best interest of the players is to have a wardrobe feature like almost every other game out there.

Edit for clarity: What I mean by a wardrobe feature is you have two equipment pages, one for stats and one for appearances. Appearance slots override the appearance of your stats gear. No mess, no fuss.

Cosmetic endgame competition is an oxymoron. There is no competition in a cosmetic game because there’s no direct advantage to any one piece of gear. Even appearances are subjective; in one player’s mind the starter medium armor and plain daggers might look better than T3 cultural with dual Incinerators. Who is winning in this case? Noone – they both got what they wanted.

I buy gems with gold regularly. The rates are still fine, IMO.

The poor can compete. The lazy and poor can’t.

Doggie.3184:

Sad thing is the Ascended medium I actually like. But the Skirt makes me wish I had Scissors.

My point exactly. Great skin, but terrible proportions. It looks perfect on a human.

morrolan.9608:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

EQN has shown nothing that would provide evidence of it being a superior game. Combat trailers have shown incredibly boring, stationary combat with the same weak, barely customizable skill system as Guild Wars 2.

40 something classes and players can get access to all of them on 1 character, this fact alone sounds like it will be quite customisable.

That is indeed a matter of interest, but it is not something to be taken as incredible at face value. Last time I checked, nothing was mentioned as to the variety of customization available to each one. For all we know, each EQN class may have far fewer options available to it than a GW2 profession.

Honestly, the EQN class system strikes me as being reminiscent of Rift’s one. And while that did provide a fair amount of customization, it wasn’t anything to write home about either.

All I’m saying is – there is no little to know qualitative data about the game yet. We know nothing of their classes outside of how many they plan to release. Little to no information about the variety of features that distinguish one class from another and even less information about the number of potential loadouts available to each.

Edit:
In regards to customization, I was referring specifically to the customization of features within each class. Guild Wars 1’s system was a free-form system in which you could slot any 8 skills (with the only restrictions being that they had to be within the skill pool of your primary or secondary class and that you could only slot one elite). Guild Wars 2 locks half of your skills behind a weapon, one skill into a healing slot, one into an elite slot, and 1-4 of your skills behind a profession mechanic, with only 3 being “fully customizable” within a small pool of utilities. Current information about EQN suggests that they will utilize a similar low-customization skill bar.

Behellagh.1468:

Thalador.4218:

ilr.9675:

An earlier Studio (can and DID) find ways to do MORE with LESS.

That is to say… this would have still been considered a windfall profit for the Studio we all knew back around 2006… So no, they can’t just fix this by throwing out Expansions UNLESS those expansions actually focus on all the things everyone here has been begging them for…. (completely NEW weapon skills, “real” changes to Zerg-vs-Zerg, more meaningful storyline & personal story plot that branches and STAYS branched, compelling dialogue, more frequent PvE skill updates, ….and a serious look at the Ranger class in general probably wouldn’t hurt either considering it was the 2nd most rolled class but the least playable in end-game).

Welp good luck with it in any case guys. The clock is ticking…

This post deserves more attention.

Wholeheartedly agreed.

And that will never happen because it describes an entirely different game.

I know that the original GW fans loved the million weapons and zillion skills and the challenge to find the combination that dominates all others but it’s obvious in GW2’s design that the devs chose to go with a much simpler system to appeal to the more casual player as well as making it easier to balance and less likely to make kitten builds.

They’ve already stated plans to release every weapon to every class – or close to it. Just because the skill system of Guild Wars 2 is less free-form and complex than the original does not imply that Arenanet has ever had the goal of keeping the selection of available skills and weapons low.

And, hilariously enough, the advantage of the current system is only an advantage on paper – the balance work in this game is every bit as poor as it was in the original game, along with the competitive scene for GW2 being undeniably smaller and less successful than its predecessor (at its peak).

Olba.5376:

Shirk.6421:

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Nothing wrong with rezzing, stomping/finishing someone while in stealth. If they are applying burning while they are in stealth and not being revield, that is probably a bug since it is an attack from stealth hitting someone and that should apply a revieled. If they are not hitting anthing when blasting, they should not be removed from stealth.

I’m speaking about that they should be revealed by burning, cmo’n they are on flames…

Yeah so that Guardians, Warriors and Eles are immune to Thieves due to having access to burning without requiring a target.

Also, what’s your counter to stomping with:

• Blind?
• Stability?
• Mist Form?
• Invulnerable?

I don’t necessarily intend to directly call stealth finishers illegitimate, but blind and aegis finishers can (with few exceptions) be countered by using your 1 skill before your cc skill, stability finishers can be removed via boon removal and then subjected to targeted cc (requires a teammate, but this is a team game), Mist Form has a long cooldown which leaves the Elementalist without one of their main defensive tools for a long period of time, unlike stealth finishers, and invulnerability has a long cooldown.

I very much dislike stealth finishing as a mechanic and wish that it did not exist, but it is difficult to provide tangible reasons as to why such a mechanic should not exist.

Namely, one must compare it to stability finishers. If one is to assume that stability finishers are legitimate and intended (and there is no reason to believe that they aren’t), it becomes necessary to judge other “cheap” forms of finishers in comparison to it. Stability finishers can’t be counter-played by the player being finished off, but can be countered by teammates of that player through boon removal followed by cc. Stealth finishers can’t be countered through removal by anything other than a single Ranger shout, but they can be countered through area-of-effect cc. Guardians and Engineers have this on their downed state. Teammates with AoE stuns/knockbacks/knockdowns can also save you from the stealth finisher, whereas they would likely be unable to save you from a stability one.

Araris.7839:

If anybody thinks GW2 is anywhere near being shut down, you haven’t been in the mmo world very long. You gotta fail to an extent that your very name becomes a term of failure. Say it with me, “Warhammer online”

PS: If EQN even comes through on half of what has been shown/promised, it would be a superior game in every way to GW2. Why? Because strip away all its dynamic movement system and destructible world, and you still have a simply improved version of GW2.

Then again, “superior game” is kinda like “most beautiful person”, isn’kitten Eye of the beholder.

EQN has shown nothing that would provide evidence of it being a superior game. Combat trailers have shown incredibly boring, stationary combat with the same weak, barely customizable skill system as Guild Wars 2. The art style is weak. On top of this, SOE’s current additions to the market have all been mediocre, rushed products with abhorrent cash shop practices.

All EQN has now are buzz words – the same buzz words that Arenanet threw out, mind you – and I was (and am) FAR more confident in Arenanet’s abilities to fix the issues with this game and deliver on at least some of that hype than I am of SOE’s abilities to do the same.

I would have gone the route of attaching bonuses to magic find, gold find, exp gain, karma gain, wvw exp gain, glory gain, crafting bonuses, and gathering bonuses to ascended weaponry rather than additional stats.

A sort of pseudo-cosmetic progression, if you will.

My advice is to run dungeons to earn gold and throw the dungeon token exotic shortbows into the mystic toilet for that unlikely chance at a precursor. These dungeon exotics can’t be traded anyway and the resulting item will, at the very least, be an exotic that you can sell.

Edit:

Also, they are working on a scavenger hunt or crafting method to make precursors. The codes for items that you consume to receive materials to start your “journey” to wield a particular precursor are already in the game. That implies that they at least have the framework of the system down. It could be that we may see precursor hunting/crafting within the next few months. Hell, it sounds like a Wintersday gift to me.

Farzo.8410:

It’s known that Tengu was considered being a playable race with Guild Wars 2 release but they scrapped that idea.

Now we at least got updated about what’s going on behind the wall, and it seems that Destroyers are appearing behind there.

If not playable, we might at least get behind the wall soon.

I don’t think they were “scrapped” so much as pushed back. The race has way too many assets to not be an eventual addition to the game. They already have an established racial city, a more-or-less defined culture, and appearance variation options that go back to the first game. And that’s ignoring their popularity with the fans and long history in the world of Tyria and with the previous game.

I’ll grant that to make Tengu playable, the remaining parts are the difficult ones – armor skins, animations, racial city, racial skills, and personal story – but they are still relatively close to playable status.

Oh, and then there’s the heavy-handed hints that the Tengu are simply waiting to see if they can trust the other races. The only context for these quotes would be that Anet programmed them in after “scrapping” the race to imply future playability.

Rainweaver.7302:

Xae Isareth.1364:

There isn’t one 1HKO which doesn’t give you a chance to think about it, except for the first boss in Arah P3, but that’s more down to how stupid the cleansing mechanics work.

Champion Icebrood Wolves with their instant-cast 1HKO leap attack.

Risen Sharks also do absurd damage for the short cast time of their skill. Veteran Risen Sharks could feasibly one-shot squishy heroes and I’ve known Champion Risen Sharks to one-shot (or just about one shot) tank-built characters.

And then there’s the plethora of map bosses whose telegraphs are nigh-impossible to see thanks to the ludicrous number of bloom effects being put out by players.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Quarktastic.1027:

Phoenixfudge.5290:

He’s not actually there. The floating tower is merely an illusion.

You mean there’s a mesmer out there powerful enough to conjure an illusion of a giant floating castle, and no one has heard of them? Perhaps the Mursaat were behind the tower this whole time…I hear they love illusions.

Maybe Isgarren doesn’t like helping people…or doesn’t like people in general.

There was a mesmer who managed to conceal the entirety of the Tower of Nightmares and did it so well even the Priory wasn’t able to break it until Kasmeer (no idea how she did it) came along. Annise was also able to make a clone of Jennah that was so realistic that even Logan, her lover and who was standing right next to her the whole time, didn’t notice.

It wouldn’t be out of the picture.

The real question in that case would be why. Come to think of it, we never found out who concealed ToN.

Not to mention that Jennah managed to create powerful enough to fool an army of Kralkatorrik’s minions.

Precursor crafting/scavenger hunt.

Vayne.8563:

The question isn’t if it’s PvP or not, because WvW is PvP and awards no glory.

Glory was originally the reward for people who SPvP. That was what it was. It’s understandable they’d want a reward for that that’s exclusive, because they get no experience and very little loot from it, unlike PvE players (the players who mostly play mini games) who get tons of loot.

In fact, when you finish a minigame you get gear, you get coin, you get karma….which isn’t true for those who SPvP.

Either Anet needs to add other rewards to SPvP or we should leave glory to them as the only real currency they acquire.

WvW isn’t explicitly defined as PvP. It’s gear-based, unstructured, and integrates a number of PvE elements for no legitimate competitive reason whatsoever. It’s clearly intended to be a bridge between PvP and PvE without actually classifying as either.

Mini-games are technically structured and pure PvP, despite most of them not involving direct combat.

Now, honestly I would prefer that sPvP and activities have entirely separate rewards. Mini-games need more incentives and more achievements. SPvP could use exclusive skin unlocks for the account that could be carried over to PvE.

BlackDevil.9268:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

BlackDevil.9268:

VOLKON.1290:

BlackDevil.9268:

You know, you can kill everything in the tower with full zerker too. You just need to ‘’learn to dodge’‘. Would be fun when they would release a dungeon with boss timers so you actually need to run dps specced.
Until they do that, I don’t think I’ll enjoy PvE in this game a lot…

Ugh… a dps race type of boss would be horrible for this game. It would only reinforce the fallacy that dps trumps all in GW2. I like that they’re working to break that bad habit that lesser MMOs have cursed upon so many.

Why?
The whole game is already based around ’’dps’’, especially PvE.
The real ‘’pve pro’s’’ only run in full zerker to finish everything as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t blame them tbh, getting rewards the fastest way is pretty much the only thing that keeps pve interesting in this game, the combat itself is just horribly motivated to make a macro to spam 1, move with 1 hand and kitten with the other one. That’s about the skill you need to play PvE in GW2.
The only way to fix that is to put a time limit on bosses so people actually start figuring out what else there is besides #1 spam and troll defensive builds.

So yeah, I don’t really see your point.

That’s precisely the problem.

Basing the entire game around dps creates uninteresting fights, invalidates all but one set of gear, and reduces the game’s skill ceiling to learning how to dodge. If twitch reflexes and an eye for telegraphs are all that’s needed to be “pro” at this game, then this game is not worth playing.

So tell me, what does require skill then? Running full soldiers and tank all damage that you’re supposed to dodge? Right……

And you’re missing the point entirely. I am not implying that tank gear as a substitute for dodging requires skill, because it doesn’t. My argument is this – the main source of the game’s skill ceiling should lie in your usage of positioning, skills, and combo fields to support your team and yourself. The skill of a player should never be dictated by the type of gear they wear, because that leads to shallow gameplay and invalidated item nomenclatures – which is precisely the case in Guild Wars 2 at the moment.

In an ideal situation, that tank should be capitalizing on his gear to do some form of skilled play that is entirely different from his zerker teammate. “But isn’t that traditional gameplay?” Not necessarily. Traditional tanks tend to operate on shallow taunt mechanics that aren’t particularly immersive or logical. Guild Wars 2’s soft-trinity is meant to be “damage, control, and support,” but the control aspect of the soft-trinity tends to be non-existent thanks to the defiant buff and dumbed-down build system, as well as poor dungeon design. Ideally, Guild Wars 2’s PvE content should be designed such that characters in tank gear contribute to the team through body-blocking and obstructing projectiles meant for their squishier teammates (as opposed to taunting foes and holding aggro). If not for this use, tank gear serves no purpose, and may as well be removed from the game. Skills such as Line of Warding should be much more important than they are from a PvE standpoint.

Now you tell me which takes more skill – twitch dodging telegraphs or actively defending your teammates with well-selected, well-timed, and well-placed character positioning and skill usages.

Another important note is that Guild Wars 2 was never intended to not have roles, but rather to lack set roles. There is no such thing as a dedicated healing class or dedicated healer, but there are support-oriented builds that are simply not seeing enough use because Zerkers do the same thing almost as well and with better damage.

Perhaps the best illustration would lie in the first Guild Wars, which is often held up as one of the most skill-intensive games on the market. Clever use of skills and synergy with teammates was the core of the game’s skill requirement, not waiting on a telegraph to dodge. The end result? Deeper, more interesting PvE content.

Of course, the first Guild Wars didn’t bother with item nomenclatures; instead you’d distinguish your character through your skill build, attributes, and runes – all of which were more interesting than Berserker vs. Soldier’s.

sirflamesword.3896:

I’m honestly speechless from this post. I was going to put some sarcastic comment, but my brain actually hurts to much after reading this to figure one out.

Edit: This should be stickied on the PvP forums as the reason PvPers hate PvErs…

This comes across as narrow-minded to me. PvP can be defined as any competitive activity – and the activities are all competitive, albeit casually so. How is this different from any other format of structured PvP?

If we’re going to start excluding one form of competitive play from the PvP rank system for being casual, then we had best remove non-tournament hotjoin sPvP as well. Gaining experience in these hotjoins does not necessarily improve one’s performance in ranked tPvP, after all.

My issue comes in here – WvW is the only really good source of karma, as PvE DE’s tend to be a bit more mediocre about it. Removing karma from dungeons without buffing karma gains from dynamic events was, IMO, one of the worst decisions Anet has made yet.

But at the same time, the value (or lack thereof) of 20% MF is difficult to calculate, and I consider Gold Find to be remarkably lackluster.

Which utility infusion do you think would be more beneficial and increase my earnings by more?

….. Cannot unsee.

BlackDevil.9268:

VOLKON.1290:

BlackDevil.9268:

You know, you can kill everything in the tower with full zerker too. You just need to ‘’learn to dodge’‘. Would be fun when they would release a dungeon with boss timers so you actually need to run dps specced.
Until they do that, I don’t think I’ll enjoy PvE in this game a lot…

Ugh… a dps race type of boss would be horrible for this game. It would only reinforce the fallacy that dps trumps all in GW2. I like that they’re working to break that bad habit that lesser MMOs have cursed upon so many.

Why?
The whole game is already based around ’’dps’’, especially PvE.
The real ‘’pve pro’s’’ only run in full zerker to finish everything as quickly as possible. Wouldn’t blame them tbh, getting rewards the fastest way is pretty much the only thing that keeps pve interesting in this game, the combat itself is just horribly motivated to make a macro to spam 1, move with 1 hand and kitten with the other one. That’s about the skill you need to play PvE in GW2.
The only way to fix that is to put a time limit on bosses so people actually start figuring out what else there is besides #1 spam and troll defensive builds.

So yeah, I don’t really see your point.

That’s precisely the problem.

Basing the entire game around dps creates uninteresting fights, invalidates all but one set of gear, and reduces the game’s skill ceiling to learning how to dodge. If twitch reflexes and an eye for telegraphs are all that’s needed to be “pro” at this game, then this game is not worth playing.

Really? I think it’s the worst update since Southsun Cove. Poor mob concentration and mechanics, lack of incentives to kill things, poorly thought out achievements (must do the Injector achievement to unlock the other Toxic Hybrid achievements, and Toxic Hybrid Master Slayer counts deaths at all points – not just the boss fight).

Overall, I -hate- this update. Literally the only thing of quality it brings is the concept of placing an instanced zone within a living world zone – it does that very well, but the actual content is frustrating and almost impossible to enjoy.

Hopefully by the end of the year. I’d love to have this new face for my Sylvari, as it looks insanely awesome.