Guild Wars 2

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

There’s a problem with offensive vs. defensive stats, and the long in short of is that, especially with the way dodging works, the best defense is a strong offense.

That’s the best part about Guild Wars 2

Not when there are defensive attributes in the game that become nigh-useless as a result. That’s just an unpolished system.

I talked about this a little in an attribute redux thread I posted, but I actually think that the asymmetry of the attributes is the problem, and that the most obvious solution is to roll precision and ferocity into one attribute. That way, each “role” in combat is covered by two attributes, and you can hybridize (and in fact must, since all high level gear has at least three attributes on it) and still be effective. Gear choices would become a lot more interesting, IMO. Condition builds shouldn’t be dependent on condi procs from critical hits any more than power should be dependent on condi damage to supplement its power damage.

I just honestly think this would improve the whole system and also make it easier for Anet to balance different playstyles.

AliamRationem.5172:

I disagree with the basic premise. Players don’t use full glass builds in organized PvE because it’s safer. They do it because PvE doesn’t force them to do otherwise the way PvP/WvW scenarios typically do. If you can have a healer cover your group in full glass and not wipe, it’s a no-brainer to do so. To do otherwise simply makes the fight take longer for no benefit.

If you’re talking solo open world, I still disagree. You’re telling me that having a bunch of extra armor, healing, and/or health actually makes it harder for you to survive? I can think of very few scenarios where this is true.

It’s one thing to say that full glass is adequate for survival and preferred for skilled players, and even that defensive stats are “useless” in that sense. I mean if you’re comfortable in full glass, then why wouldn’t you use it? It’s faster! But that is not the same thing as claiming that you are literally less likely to die in full glass than defensive gear.

It sounds to me like you have too little experience with defensive stats. Not that I blame you. It also sounds like you have little reason to waste your time with them. But as the basis for this argument, I don’t think your claims hold water at all.

No. They do full glass builds because it’s the most efficient. And it’s the most efficient because not only do you kill faster, but killing faster also provides you with the best form of defense because of the way that dodging works – it’s highly limited and not impacted by any defensive attribute, and it’s the main way you avoid damage.

I love how people are arguing with me about this when the game has been dominated by a berserker meta since launch, demonstrating that there’s a problem very clearly. Now, of course, it’s more of a problem in PvE than it is for PvP, but that doesn’t make it less of a problem in my eyes.

The solution to fixing defensive attributes is to expand the scope of both – Vitality to dodging, and Toughness to conditions (even if it’s just a small %)

Linken.6345:

Or you know easier just to make some more skills add vigor boon

Except that doesn’t address the problem I’m actually talking about.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I’m not against the idea that dodging could be intertwined with stats or that passive defense could be buffed up. I’m just against doing more than tweaking unless there’s a really, really powerful reason… and the OP hasn’t provided that — they have just asserted that it’s better.

Based on other statements, I doubt I’d agree with the OP’s idea of what would be more fun. Notably:

• “There’s a problem with offensive vs. defensive stats, …is that…the best defense is a strong offense.” — this is, in my opinion, an amazing feature of GW2 combat.
• “This is not just a product of dodge existing, it’s a product of how dodging is designed – specifically that it is both limited and unaffected by any defensive attribute.” — which is the bad part? that it’s limited? (in which case, why is it such a problem?) or that it can’t be increased by stats? (which is just a different sort of limit)
• Further, there’s also an implicit assumption that dodging is the only form of active defense — it’s not.

Basically, the OP seems to disagree with ANet’s design of the combat system. While I agree that it’s got a lot of room for improvement, I do think it’s an amazingly enjoyable and durable and adaptable system. I disagree that it’s fundamentally flawed as suggested by the OP.

No I don’t, and I’m not sure why that’s how you’d interpret my post. Suggesting adding a dodge bonus to Vitality is not a suggestion of an overhaul to the system. I’m not sure why anyone think it’s a good status quo for defensive stats to actually undermine your defense.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

Daroon.1736:

The reason I specifically asked about build templates was because with 9 new elites specializations coming, coupled with the fact that the recent direction of the game has been towards harder ‘group’ content that requires players to be easily be able to switch builds to get into groups – A build template system should have been something the Dev’s considered as an essential game system that they should have developed years ago in anticipation of where they were taking the game, rather than something that players wanted and ‘not a priority’

This and all the other examples we have had over the years of ‘things’ introduced to the game without proper thought or planning which resulted in them either being abandoned or having to find ‘fixes’ after the fact, really do sum up the state of the game.

Anet needs to work on ensuring that underlying game systems and mechanics are in place, before, not after introducing content.

it is refreshing to hear some one saying it besides me . not only that but I fully agree with you on these things . and think anet should had the forethoughts to do so . but I think we both can agree that is not the case.

Yeah, I agree this is an ongoing problem with them. It’s short of a “shoot first, then ask questions you never answer later”.

Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497:

Not to sound rude, but I think Anet probably has already thought of this when they were designing the game. and settled on this current system.

Dodging was not designed to be spammed for most classes. Thief obviously being the exception here but this is how they make up for a strong lack of sustain and defensive options. They were designed to 1v1 and most likely win.

Dodging, by the limited uptime of it is designed to avoid blows you know you can not afford to take. Dodging wisely will actually keep you alive longer than dodging constantly. This is because most classes suffer some form of cool down or set up.

Toughness ‘reduces’ physical damage. But mathematically speaking it raises your effective HP pool by a certain percentage per point. When you’re dealing with nothing but power builds toughness tends to go a long ways when you compare it to vitality.

Because Condition IGNORES toughness, vitality is your primary defensive attribute to this.

If a target has a low pool of health, Condi would typically be the best way to kill them if they happened to stack toughness.
If a target has a large pool of health, condi will help, but it’s best to use raw power instead as you can deal the damage real fast.
If the target has them mixed, you mix them both.

If they did, then they clearly settled incorrectly and it should be reevaluated. Defensive attributes will never carry the weight of offensive ones as long as ability to dodge is not impacted and we will forever have a berserker meta dominating the game.

I don’t agree that Vitality should be vs. conditions (and physical) and toughness should be only vs. physical. I prefer what I proposed – Vitality should be vs. burst and toughness should be vs sustained, with some overlap. This would be a (badly needed) mechanical improvement to both attributes, and it makes more conceptual sense.

I actually think this could be part of an attribute rework designed to make the system more symmetrical and polished, which I posted about the other day. I do, however, think that Vitality needs to add endurance regen regardless of any other changes that may or may not occur.

So it’s kind of my opinion that the attribute system has gotten really messy and unpolished over the years; there’s a lot of asymmetry and arbitrary distinctions/lines (like what’s the conceptual difference between a primary and a secondary stat, as opposed to a base and a derived stat), and the Hero Panel as a whole could stand to be more intuitive and readable, with slightly fewer stats available on gear, with secondary effects tied in.

To what degree it’s worth revising the system at this point is up for debate, but I was curious what other people thought and how they might redesign it. Here’s what I’d do:

Nine attributes – normalize level-based scaling (either have everything scale to 1000 at level 80 or keep it at a base of 0 with all level-based scaling behind the scenes). Two attributes tied to four major roles (physical damage, control/condition, defense, and support), and then one class-specific utility attribute (all but Rev have one currently – Rev needs and, and these should start appearing on gear). Obviously, we would retain the ability to build in a fluid way with different stat combos and mix and match roles.

Power – as in current game. increases all physical damage
Finesse – replaces Precision and Ferocity – influences both critical hits and extra dmg
Expertise – as in current game – increases duration on conditions
Malice – condition damage
Concentration – as in current game – increases duration on boons
Spirit – healing power (this should probably be normalized a bit)
Toughness – reduces physical damage subtractively, and condition damage by a %
Vitality – increases health and endurance regeneration
Ninth attribute – class specific & utilitarian (guile, build, intellect, etc.)

I believe the lack of any bonus to endurance regeneration tied to any defensive stat is the main reason why offensive stats remain dominant in the game – because dodging is severely limited, the best defense is pretty much always trying to win a fight quickly. Ironically, defensive stats would probably be more valuable if dodging was unlimited. This is something I touched on in a different post.

This would all obviously entail some rebalancing, but, honestly, I think it would give them an easier foundation to work from in the future.

Ardid.7203:

Einlanzer.1627:

I did not say it was a “fact”, however, common sense will tell you that any attempt at unnecessarily controlling players’ time or fantasy is ill-conceived,

Fact.

which both LW1 and the ranger pet thing represent.

Opinion.

Einlanzer.1627:

It’s also a fact that not having LW1 in the game creates a big hole in the story

Fact.

that should be a priority for them to address.

Opinion.

Mixing facts with your personal opinions doesn’t make your opinions less subjective.

Only the last item is an opinion, but it’s a common-sense opinion that emerges from observation of the first three facts. At a certain point, it’s sort of like calling the theory of evolution an opinion.

So, in a nutshell, Vitality specializes in mitigation of burst damage and Toughness specializes in mitigating sustained damage from both physical and condition sources. Additionally, reducing the impact of Vitality on Health would be an indirect buff for Healing Power, which doesn’t scale as well as Health does with Vitality. I think these changes would bolster the effect of defensive attributes and making the process of gearing/building more interesting.

There’s a problem with offensive vs. defensive stats, and the long in short of is that, especially with the way dodging works, the best defense is a strong offense. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the way it’s designed in GW2 creates a problem where defensive stats actually undermine your defense in most situations, which largely makes them a pointless trap option, and that’s just silly. This is not just a product of dodge existing, it’s a product of how dodging is designed – specifically that it is both limited and unaffected by any defensive attribute.

It’s my opinion that this is fundamentally broken, but, as I see it, it’s also something that has a simple and common-sense solution, and that is to have Vitality influence your endurance regeneration, and remove or reduce its impact on Health.

Toughness could stand a redesign as well. First, I think it should impact condition damage by a %, even if it’s by a smaller amount. Second, I think Anet should seriously consider making the effect on physical damage subtractive – that is, reducing damage by a fixed amount instead of by a %, so that it has a proportionately greater impact on weaker hits and a lesser impact on large hits that need to be dodged.

With Vitality adding to endurance regeneration, I’d reduce the effectiveness of Vigor. A 50% increase really is too high anyway.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

My opinion is that Living World Season 1 was great. I wish the Devs had been able to keep it going all these years.

Thus, my opinion is directly in opposition to your ‘common sense’. I hope you are not trying to imply I have no common sense.

Oh!, and I love my Ranger pets. Why can’t Rangers be as they were in Guild Wars, as far as pets are concerned? It’s not like it came as a surprise.

If you think that LW1 being temporary was great, then, yeah, I am implying that. There is a difference between liking LW1 and thinking that it was smart to make it temporary.

No one is threatening to take away your ranger pet. The argument is that they shouldn’t be hogtied to it when they don’t want to be. Disagreeing with that is basically making a false equivocation that your preferred style should be pushed on other players instead of them having the option to not play according to your style.

I did not say it was a “fact”, however, common sense will tell you that any attempt at unnecessarily controlling players’ time or fantasy is ill-conceived, which both LW1 and the ranger pet thing represent.

It’s also a fact that not having LW1 in the game creates a big hole in the story that should be a priority for them to address.

Wolfheart.7483:

Einlanzer.1627:

…
They made poor decisions. End of story.

Much like what you pointed out in another thread about a different topic: that is subjective, not objective. The quality of their decisions is simply a matter of opinion.

Many of their decisions over the years have made the game much better, in my opinion.

Not everything is that subjective.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Einlanzer.1627:

Anet has a particularly bad habit of arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t a priority to the detriment of the game.

These weren’t arbitrary decisions and there’s a very strong argument that these were better for the game/community than the alternatives

Einlanzer.1627:

LW season 1

I’m not sure if you mean having an LS1 or the fact that it was temporary content or the fact that they weren’t prepared for the game’s popularity (and so suffered from server issues).

However, it was hardly an arbitrary decision to include it in the game. The entire plan was in place prior to launch.

Or maybe you mean that they haven’t entirely rewritten it so it can be brought back as repeatable content. That, too, wasn’t arbitrary in the least — the effort & people involved is comparable (if not identical) to those devoted to new living stories and they decided that more people would like to see new content than there are those who want to see old content (especially since it can’t possibly meet our over-hyped expectations at this point).

Einlanzer.1627:

Townclothes tonics

This, too, wasn’t an arbitrary decision. It was spend extra time re-designing for the Wardrobe (by making a light|medium|heavy version of the relevant clothing, each of which has its own set of issues) or indefinitely postponing the conversion so they could release the wardrobe sooner rather than later.

Einlanzer.1627:

Ranger pets

Again, not an arbitrary decision to require rangers to use pets. It might not meet your idea of a “ranger”; it meets other people’s concept though.

Einlanzer.1627:

Dungeons

Presumably you are talking about ANet’s decision to drop support for dungeons. Again, that wasn’t arbitrary. They looked at trying to keep them modernized and recognized it would mean rewriting much of the original code/design. Fixing old content when the same resources could be spent on new content seems like a waste to a lot of people.

And they didn’t double down on it, they actually redid the rewards so that dungeons are more rewarding now if you speedclear and about equally rewarding as before if you don’t (but still continue to do 8 unique paths).

tl;dr none of the examples cited were “arbitrary” decisions or a “bad habit”

I’m not at all sure why build templates haven’t yet made it into the game and I think ANet’s misjudged the need: there are so many ways they could make build swapping easier for us.

But let’s not exaggerate the situation. Not liking a decision isn’t the same as considering it arbitrary or even a mistake.

They made poor decisions. End of story. And most your analysis of my comments shows a lack of understanding.

Deciding to make LW1 temporary was boneheaded (I control my own time, not Arenanet), and not fixing it by implementing a permanent version of it before continuing the story only exacerbated the problem, which will continue growing worse until it’s addressed.

Not supporting content that you have in the game is ludicrous, as is deciding that FotM and open world PvE can replace classic dungeon content.

Mandating my use a pet so I can fulfill the Ranger fantasy is absurd. Giving me an elite spec that stows the pet, but then forcing me to dance in and out of it so I still have to interact with the pet is absurd. I don’t even main Ranger and this kittenes me off.

The gemstore meshes that people paid for should have been remade for the wardrobe system. No other solution was acceptable. If they really have that many problems creating individual pieces for clothing, they need to fix the framework.

Daroon.1736:

rapthorne.7345:

No. Devs have said they are aware people want build templates, but they are not a priority and will not be a part of PoF release

This pretty much sums up the state of the game.

Yeah. Anet has a particularly bad habit of arbitrarily deciding what is and isn’t a priority to the detriment of the game. See:

LW season 1
Townclothes tonics

And in some cases they even double down on obviously bad decisions almost seemingly out of defiant zeal. See:

Ranger pets
Dungeons

It’s mostly because of the autoattacks. Both of them are terrible, and weapons with weak autoattacks are particularly difficult (or impossible) to use effectively in most content. The Longbow’s #1 needs a RoF buff like Rangers got several years ago. The rifle #1 just lost too much of its DPS with the removal of bleed and needs to be buffed more.

I guess mostly this is a complaint about Air’s performance on Staff, since Earth and Water have more specialized roles. Air just seems pointlessly weak compared to Fire, which means that, with a damage build, it’s rarely useful to swap out of fire.

I think that’s pretty lame.

Fire seems to be the only consistently usable attunement for the staff. The others are all highly, highly situational – and it mostly seems to be driven by comparatively weak autoattacks.

I don’t really understand the point of this – shouldn’t Lightning, Earth, and Water all have more effective autos than they do? Especially Lightning, since it only deals damage. At least Earth and Water have utility effects so can be more useful in groups.

Just curious.

Main changes – add class-specific utility stats to gear, combine Precision and Ferocity, and alter Vitality and Toughness – the former helps avoid big damage by adding endurance regen, and the latter helps mitigate both physical and condition damage.

Conceptually, this would add symmetry and thematic/mechanical cohesion. Two stats cover each of four “roles”, with an additional utility stat that’s class specific.

Obviously, with three-four attributes on gear pieces, they can and will be mixed and matched as desired (i.e. having a control-focused tank with + vit, tough, and expertise, or a damage-capable support with +pwr, spirit, and expertise).

physical DPS – Power & Finesse
control/condition DPS – Expertise & Malice
support/healing – Concentration & Spirit
defense – Vitality & Toughness
utility – class specific (Guile, Intellect, Brawn, Zeal, etc.)

Precision and Ferocity rolled into one attribute
Vitality affects endurance regeneration
Toughness affects condition damage by a % and physical damage by a fixed amount
Healing Power and Condition damage given thematic name (Spirit and Malice)
Revs given a class attribute, and all class attributes given a thematic name (Guile, etc.)

Standard offense and defense attributes (power, finesse, toughness, vitality) scale to 1000 as they do currently, while support, control, and utility attributes stay at base 0 (expertise, malice, concentration, spirit, and the profession attribute)

Ardid.7203:

Girls are just prettier. Males and females prefer them in the end, without need for any sexual implication.
Its funny because its true.

I could argue that guys are prettier, and I could even argue this being a guy who is sexually attracted to women. In fact, it used to be pretty common in ancient societies.

See how that works? It’s called subjectivity and opinion. In reality, neither sex is objectively more attractive than the other, and arguing otherwise is pretty clearly absurd.

I kind of want to try out a Commander based fractal build for Rev – does anyone have any insight on how manageable this is?

FrostDraco.8306:

Einlanzer.1627:

Linken.6345:

We have know for what 4 years that there arent any dungeon team so it shouldent blow your mind at all mate.

Edit
Well we had 1 new path when they took away an old path since it wasent popular due to buged last boss. ( aparantly it was to hard to fix)

What blows my mind is that they think it’s good for the game to not have a dungeon team for 4 years and never have new real dungeon content.

Because dungeons were a failure. It’s simple really. If you want new ‘dungeons’, Just play fractals.

And this is just a brainless, lazy excuse.

Linken.6345:

You may think your average but like most human beings your probabely overestimating your ability

Nah, I’m pretty sure I’m not. If anything, the difficulty is more a result of being out of sync with the class you’re playing or not having a great build.

Pifil.5193:

Einlanzer.1627:

costepj.5120:

Einlanzer.1627:

Danikat.8537:

You know what I find odd about these discussions: so many people talk about the importance of being able to identify with the character, but that only ever seems to apply to their gender matching yours. Nothing else.

Actually I would argue that isn’t true for most people who use this reasoning. I try to make my character like me in as many ways as possible more often than not, even when I’m not playing a human (which isn’t as often – my mains are almost always human), I try to imagine myself as whatever race it is and approximate it as much as possible – this includes build type, facial structure, hair and eye color, and so forth.

So how do you reconcile yourself with the fact your character is a bloodthirsty homicidal maniac?

Oh, please. That’s taking some liberties.

Is it? I mean our characters are mass killers, I must have killed tens of thousands of sentient creatures in this game by now.

Of course, there isn’t any real choice here, that’s how you deal with foes but it doesn’t change the fact that you do it. If I identified strongly with my character that would be a thing I had to reconcile. Thankfully it’s just a game.

Not really. It’s very easy to accept as an abstraction of the game world. Besides, I wouldn’t necessarily not do the same thing if that was the world I was living in.

Esquilax.3491:

It’s a game. like a guy playing Lara in Tomb Raider or a girl playing Link in The Legend of Zelda.

. If anyone actually gives any kind of kitten what gender your toon is, that’s their mental problem, not yours.

I happen to agree as a guy, the female characters are more aesthetically pleasing to look at, why wouldn’t I make one. Like, your brain is hardwired through millions years of evolution to like looking at females more than males (if you’re a straight male). It’s absolutely normal lol.

I know gay guys, they roll male toons for the same reason. I’m not saying you’re gay if you make a male character, you can sometimes manipulate them to look brute, toughguy or whataver you find cool. Point is, it’s a game, play it how you want to have fun.

Slightly off-topic, but this is actually more cultural than you think it is, because aesthetics and sexuality have very little to do with each other. It was the norm in many ancient societies to revel in admiration at the image of the adonis nude male figure at least as much as if not more than the female figure, and it isn’t because everyone back then was gay.

costepj.5120:

Einlanzer.1627:

Danikat.8537:

You know what I find odd about these discussions: so many people talk about the importance of being able to identify with the character, but that only ever seems to apply to their gender matching yours. Nothing else.

Actually I would argue that isn’t true for most people who use this reasoning. I try to make my character like me in as many ways as possible more often than not, even when I’m not playing a human (which isn’t as often – my mains are almost always human), I try to imagine myself as whatever race it is and approximate it as much as possible – this includes build type, facial structure, hair and eye color, and so forth.

So how do you reconcile yourself with the fact your character is a bloodthirsty homicidal maniac?

Oh, please. That’s taking some liberties.

Danikat.8537:

You know what I find odd about these discussions: so many people talk about the importance of being able to identify with the character, but that only ever seems to apply to their gender matching yours. Nothing else.

Actually I would argue that isn’t true for most people who use this reasoning. I try to make my character like me in as many ways as possible more often than not, even when I’m not playing a human (which isn’t as often – my mains are almost always human), I try to imagine myself as whatever race it is and approximate it as much as possible – this includes build type, facial structure, hair and eye color, and so forth.

Linken.6345:

We have know for what 4 years that there arent any dungeon team so it shouldent blow your mind at all mate.

Edit
Well we had 1 new path when they took away an old path since it wasent popular due to buged last boss. ( aparantly it was to hard to fix)

What blows my mind is that they think it’s good for the game to not have a dungeon team for 4 years and never have new real dungeon content.

Ashen.2907:

The fights are great for solo players. Finally a use for our interrupts, CC, target prioritization, a reason to dodge and move.

Too bad about the actual map design.

Depends on your class. Something that gets talked about surprisingly little is how much variance there is in ability to solo easily from class to class. Personally, I think a lot of story bosses are just hellacious playing solo. Like I have almost rage quit the game on a few occasions, and I know I’m at least average in terms of play skill.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Every player demographic in the game thinks their favorite content comes out too slowly. Every. Single. One. This feeling also applies to fixes, balance patches and cosmetics.

This is largely because historically, and objectively, content is released very slowly in GW2 compared to most large MMOs. There’s a reason why players get frustrated. It blows my mind that we’ve had no new world dungeons in 5 years of content with the excuse that we have new fractal mini-dungeons every great once in a while.

Absolutely blows my mind.

Toons in an MMO mean different things to different people. I’m the type that prefers playing same-sex characters, because I think of my toons as being extensions that represent me in the game world. But to other people it’s different. It may be like reading about a character in a book, or there may be no thought whatsoever besides whatever they find most aesthetically pleasing. For others it may be an anima/animus thing, whether conscious or not. Then there are probably some who are consciously or subconsciously acting out bizarre “puppeteer” fetishes in playing opposite-sex toons, which is incredibly creepy to think about.

It sometimes surprises me how many people play opposite sex toons (in particular guys playing girls) in MMOs, but that’s just because of my own bias. It’s not something you can make sweeping generalizations about.

Yeah, it’s really really not good for solo players.

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

This is why I favor giving melee weapons deflection or armor bonuses.

Which would affect content where melee is just fine, if not overpowered, that’s not a solution. Making scaling work better, adding more mobs, giving scaled mobs better skill sets is what can help. Mobs inside instances tend to have more complex skills to deal with, while in the open world they use less skills but up their hit points and damage by a lot.

It’s a solution if they buff ranged damage. In fact, it’s the bast way to handle melee vs ranged discrepancies. Not making melee do way more damage.

Yeah, the problem is that it’s not a priority for them, when it clearly should be. We should be seeing more fractals and raids at a much faster pace IN ADDITION to the occasional classic dungeon.

But we have no real dungeon team, so, alas. IMO, it’s a serious mistake they’ve been making for about 4 years now.

Meanma.5623:

In this game close range combat is way too hard with far too little pay-off . In theory you deal more damage as melee weapons have a higher output but in reality you are only doing damage about half the time while the other half is spent dodging, strafing in circles, running in and out of attack range, healing, actively blocking, and crowd controlling.

The ranged folk plop down somewhere comfortable and have a nearly 100% damage uptime, only dodging or leisurely taking two steps to the side if the enemy throws an AoE right under them. They don’t need to bother with crowd control either if they don’t feel like it because both AI and other players tend to have tunnel vision and exlusively hone in on the target right in front of them instead of the one standing off to the side.

Basically this. It surprises me that melee is getting so much defense. It’s the most intuitively obvious thing in the universe that ranged just flat-out works better in most scaled content.

This is why I favor giving melee weapons deflection or armor bonuses.

It’s one of the inherent problems of so much content being so zerg-oriented in the game. It’s one of the reasons I think they need to put more energy into creating more classic organized/instanced content.

Honestly, I preferred almost everything about how leveling worked at launch than after that revamp where they added all the per-level rewards and combined skills and traits under HP, for a large variety of reasons.

Chief among them is that I don’t believe that skills and traits should be competing for the same resource and should have separate unlock paths. Per-level rewards are just tedious. And unlocking weapon skills through use is way more fun that auto-unlocking them by level. They should have just slowed the rate down a bit.

Yeah, I mean, it’s not the easiest mistake to make. I’m pretty sure it even literally pops up a window warning you it isn’t usable on your current character. Not sure why you disregarded that.

starlinvf.1358:

Considering Soul Beast expressly exists to get rid of the pet….. how do you convince people to spend money on skins for them?

Not really. Soul Beast is not designed to get rid of the pet, which I find a little bit unfortunate.

Yeah, I was always confused why they didn’t just remove it when they made it free. It’s just an annoying thing you have to routinely remember to do that serves no purpose. If they’re concerned about there being no “punishment” for death, there are much better ways to deal with it.

I vote for just removing it.

I’d recommend making “equipment” a single pane (the default first pane) only for actual equipment, and then moving all the wardrobe, dye, and skin stuff to its own “Wardrobe” tab in the Hero panel below equipment. I think this be a bit more intuitive.

That is all.

Donari.5237:

I’d hate to make it all account bound. I took a lot of alts through Hearts and Minds to get the ley boxes at the end and get an ascended armor piece. I took several alts through chapters that gave a choice of light-med-heavy armor pieces at the end. I used story to get xp towards masteries.

The achieves are account wide. So you don’t have to take every alt through, only those you feel like in order to get bonus rewards. Converting story progress to account wide would be a nerf not a QoL.

It seems like everyone in this thread is misunderstanding. When I say “make progress account bound” – I’m talking about unlocking the available instances, not rewards from completing those instances. There would be no feasible way to make those rewards account bound.

Dante.1763:

They didnt have to in GW1, so why would they need to do it here? serious question though, in GW1 you had to do the story on every single character, whats the difference?

“Because GW1 did it that way” isn’t really a good reason, especially considering GW1 was a very, very different game that was designed in a very, very different way on many fronts.

Dante.1763:

Id prefer to keep it character based honestly, you get rewards for doing it as it is per character which is enough for me.

However it would be nice if once it was done on one character you could then do the achievements on another..regardless of if theyd played through it.

I would imagine the rewards would still be character based, but the progress in terms of what’s marked as completed and available would be account based. I think they’re going to be forced to make this change sooner or later as the story continues to grow larger and larger.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Do be aware that Trait lines will fill completely, Adept to Grandmaster, in PoF, rather than level-wise (all Adepts, then all Master, then all Grandmaster) as in HoT. So, that should help in learning and using the Elite Specializations.

Not sure how Personal Story can be account-wide when there are branching and separate arcs.

Good luck.

Living world, not personal story. Doing this with the personal story wouldn’t make much sense, heh. Fortunately, there’s no reason they need to, since there’s no interdependency between the PS and LW (you can play through the LW without ever touching the PS).

Point taken on #1 above from different posters. I realized I didn’t accurately describe the problem, so it’s been edited. I still believe there’s a balance problem here and that the solution is to reduce the damage gap and make melee attractive in other ways.

Zohane.7208:

Uhm, I think I disagree on just about all of your ideas…

1) Melee is punishing, oh yes, but it’s also rewarding in that you do a lot more damage. There’s dodges, blocks, reflects and such, plus most big damage attacks are well telegraphed so you can always move sideways out of harms way. (Myself I’m not good enough to pull this off so I take a bit more damage than I should but that’s my shortcoming, not the game’s.)

2) Basically same opinion as for previous – damage avoidance is key.

3) I don’t really have an opinion here.

4) I liked dungeons, but according to Anet they took too much resources/time to develop, so they went for fractals instead. I can support that, but I agree that they should probably be coming at a slightly faster pace.

5) Wholeheartedly disagree – I like running the story sequentially. If they were pick-and-choose everyone (me included) would just run the fun/rewarding ones and skip the rest – eventually they would all be null and void.

6) I don’t have this problem; I’m always wading in hero points so I have no problem unlocking elite specs.

Most of these points above misunderstand the problems entirely – in particular #2, #5, and #6.

maddoctor.2738:

Einlanzer.1627:

I should have specified that I meant melee is a problem specifically in larger scale content, but larger scale content is kind of the norm in this game, so it becomes a problem.

The problem with large scale content is that buffs have a 5-man limit and also you can’t make sure the people you want to get your buffs actually get them, like those standing inside the flame breath area of the Matriarch. It’s really impossible to save/help specific other players and that’s what makes melee punishing in large scale content. It doesn’t help when some enemies get leveled and can 1-shot even characters with more defensive stats, like the little wyverns around the matriarch, at 20+ players they get to level 82 and one shot anyone while their attacks aren’t clear and visible at all.

The problem with your suggestion of giving a new mechanic for melee is that it will obviously be used in content where melee dominates already. A better scaling algorithm, better AI, spawn more enemies instead of leveling them so much, 1-shot kills by regular attacks are never fun (see high level Fractals pre-toughness update) they fixed it in Fractals maybe it’s time to fix it in the open world too.

I would also suggest that ranged damage be increased, because I think making melee do a lot more damage is the wrong way to balance it (maybe slightly more, but the gap should be smaller)