Guild Wars 2

zealex.9410:

No we need hype. I dont like that the game is a waste land for 3 months after each update because no news. Sure overhypimg is bad but no hyping or communicating is just as bad.

This. Hype requires a happy medium. Anet seems to have trouble finding it.

Yeah, I don’t think they were well executed and did more harm than good overall. It sucks being basically forced to play one specific build out of many different possible builds because only one is competitive. They would have been better off implementing a multiclass system to expand build options, not restrict them. This is a fallacy many MMOs commit – that they need to restrict and railroad players for the sake of balance. It’s analogous to micromanaging people – it doesn’t actually help improve the gameplay and just frustrates players. IMO, it’s a lot of the reason GW2 failed to take off as well as it could have. If we basically had a system like GW1 with GW2’s engine, it would be phenomenal.

Of course, Anet (seems to have) gotten a lot of their ideas from Nike, who, IMO, isn’t as much of a game design luminary as he seems to think he is.

Yeah, I would wear my hat all the time if it didn’t fudge up the hair. This is one of those things that should have been fixed 3 years ago and now probably never will.

My biggest complaint is not with how the armor itself looks, it’s mostly fine – it’s just that it’s absurd to take years to develop three sets of armor. Something is massively wrong with this game’s engine and/or Anet’s management that such an insane amount of time is put into such small amounts of stuff.

Crinn.7864:

Toughness is fine. 33% damage reduction is more valuable than 75% increase in base health.

Why? Because this thing called healing exists. The less damage you take, the less healing you need to stay alive. With vitality however you are still taking the full value of incoming damage which means you have to receiving healing on a 1:1 ratio to incoming damage, which is impossible because damage in this game way out scales healing.

Vitality is only really good against spikes, it’s terrible in any form of protracted fight.

Vitality is also good against condition damage, while Toughness does nothing. I think Vitality is okay, I think Toughness and Healing Power are both generally underpowered.

I think it’s a bad system. I feel like toughness should be reworked so that it reduces damage by a fixed amount rather than by a percentage, so that minor hits can easily be shrugged off while heavy hits still need to be dodged.

I actually agree with the OP. Toughness not being strong enough is a lot of the reason we have an entirely offensive meta in the game. Bunker builds in PvP can be a problem, but it’s more of a problem with specific skills than it is a general mechanics problem.

Or, another way to think of the problem is regarding mob design in PVE. Mobs hit slow and hard, which leads to dodge being overemphasized and passive defense being underemphasized in PvE combat. They should generally be made to hit faster for less damage.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

The bottom line is this: Hype is nice, but we want results. Given what happened with HoT before and after, silence is the better course. The next expansion will make or break Guild Wars 2 . . . and there’s no getting around that.

Why they put themselves in this position in the first place, especially given their earlier success with a different model, is still beyond me. But here we are . . . and time will tell if they survive it. Guild Wars 2 is the MMO I’ve played the longest, and even I can see they’re in trouble.

Hype isn’t going to save them, but an amazing expansion might.

I basically agree with this.

Anet has always had serious game management problems. It’s like their whole team is comprised of developers with no proper communication or resource management skills.

Amaimon.7823:

Einlanzer.1627:

Anyone with half a brain and little bit of experience knows that most MMOs have both better quality and better speed than Anet has. If there’s any doubt, just pick up FF14 for a few months. So all of these “take forever so it can be more polished” arguments are kittenhit.

As for mounts, yes I do think they are very attractive to the majority of MMO players as they are an attractive collection item while also adding immersion to the setting. I’m not sure what’s so extravagant about them, considering nearly every other MMO has them. I would wager my life that they generate more interest and revenue than they cost to produce in virtually all cases. I would actually take the argument even further and state that the fact that GW2 launched without them did damage to the game that it may never recover from.

Anyone with half a brain would have half-thoughts like that. Luckily. Most people here have whole brains. I never said anet was the fastest or best producer. But wanting to be better doesn’t actually make them better. And mounts work in other games because they’re the transport mechanics of that game. We have a different transport mechanic so mounts are superfluous.
And the fact that you believe that this game failed solely because it has no mount shows how little worth there is in arguing you anymore. So my only advice so you is.. go play a game with mounts if that’s more important than content

Yeah, most do, mate. Mounts are not only a transport mechanic, they are a very, very desirable collection item. Why do you think WoW has so many of them? Since GW2 more heavily revolves around collection than other MMOs do, it’s almost absurd that it doesn’t have them as a way of expanding the endgame.

“And the fact that you believe that this game failed solely because it has no mount”
Strawman and hyperbole exposes the lack of worth of your argument.

Anyone with half a brain and little bit of experience knows that most MMOs have both better quality and better speed than Anet has. If there’s any doubt, just pick up FF14 for a few months. So all of these “take forever so it can be more polished” arguments are kittenhit.

As for mounts, yes I do think they are very attractive to the majority of MMO players as they are an attractive collection item while also adding immersion to the setting. I’m not sure what’s so extravagant about them, considering nearly every other MMO has them. I would wager my life that they generate more interest and revenue than they cost to produce in virtually all cases. I would actually take the argument even further and state that the fact that GW2 launched without them did damage to the game that it may never recover from.

OniGiri.9461:

ProtoGunner.4953:

FF14: ARR came out a year later and releases a 2nd expansion this summer…

Just to make people feel how extremely slow anet is. I lost motivation after a couple of months after HoT and I don’t bother to log in anymore because I am so bored (and some great games coming out the past months).

They need to learn that a steady stream of content is needed to keep players coming online. Why they only think they have to reinvent the wheel with new ‘concepts’ etc. is beyond my comprehension. People just want cool and meaty content like dungeons (non-gimmicky like Aetherpath). They just need to gaze upon their ex-company Blizzard to know how you do things.

Generalize much?

“People” want different things. Different players, different expactaitions.
Im perfectly fine with the speed we are getting new things.
New maps, new and revamped fractals, new raids, new story stuff, new pvp seasons, new legendaries, etc.

Im glad they try out new stuff. If i wanted the same ol’ same ol’ – there are plenty of other games that deliever that.

You are in the minority. Anet releases new content much, much slower than virtually every other MMO ever, including ones that make less money. I have no idea why, but it’s a problem they need to get a better handle on.

I think mounts need to happen, FYI. I don’t think any argument against them really holds much water at the end of the day, and they are one of many peoples’ favorite collection items in other MMOs. They will bring in more money for the game than they will cost to make.

Yes, they do. They will never feel complete until they get two more weapons. I don’t even think they need to mess with the spear, really. Just leave it be. They need at least one cond-enabled ranged weapon and at least one other condi or hybrid enabled melee weapon.

Aury.1367:

Einlanzer.1627:

I honestly think the Revenant needs more than this to feel complete. They are lacking in two major things – number of skills available (period, not just at one time), and infexibility of their weapon and utility skills in general.

I still think that this would solve the main problem (im not talking about bugs): No Skill variations. Yes you would still not be able to choose freely, but 3 legends grant way more choices and possibilities.

No, it would mostly only grant the illusion of more choices. The reality is that the revenant is severely railroaded due to the very different function each of their legends and weapons.

A good example of this is a condi revenant. The only functional setup whatsoever is Mallyx/Glint + Mace/Axe. What does opening up a third legend actually give them? Not much, since any legend other than Mallyx/Glint won’t do much good. What they really need is more condi options on their weapons and more hybridized skills, or a feature that modifies their weapon skills somewhat based on their current legend.

I don’t necessarily think giving a third legend is a bad idea just for improving the general gameplay, but there are much more important things that should be done.

I honestly think the Revenant needs more than this to feel complete. They are lacking in two major things – number of skills available (period, not just at one time), and infexibility of their weapon and utility skills in general.

In short, their game-play is far too railroaded, with too little ability to customize granted to the player. They need more weapon/utility skills AND more flexiblility between the different sets. This could potentially be one of the new features, but it alone wouldn’t make much of a difference.

OriOri.8724:

While I can’t speak for others, I’m not looking for major balance changes every month. A major balance patch would be fine every 3-6 months, as long as we were getting smaller changes every month or so that were addressing over/under tuned skills/traits. We shouldn’t have to wait 3+ months for the devs to knock 5 seconds off the CD of a skill that isn’t used because its payoff doesn’t justify its large CD.

Unfortunately, what we currently get is these average sized balance patches that should be coming monthly every 3-6 months. And we get few to no of the major balance patches. The last balance patch that I consider a major patch was last April, but even then it wasn’t nearly large enough to be the only balance patch of that magnitude over a 12 month period.

The biggest reason I want more frequent balance changes is because the balance patches that we do get are not big enough to justify the 3-4 month wait every time.

This, in a nutshell.

Can someone please explain why they only happen once every several months? That’s ridiculous and does very little but a.) create gameplay staleness, and b.) lead to a ferocious cycle of tension build-up and massive disappointment/frustration when almost no one gets the exact changes they want to see and everyone realizes it’ll be another several months before they get a new one. I’m sure it helps keep players away from the game more than it does any good whatsoever.

They need to happen on a bi weekly or semi monthly basis.

I’d keep them for when we get the Mausoleum of Knowledge in the near future.

I’m surprised anybody ever bought BLK. Not only are they fairly poor value, but, unlike with most gambling systems in video games, there’s nothing particularly exciting that can drop from them.

It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. Meta maps are good on occasion. The problem is we get them too often these days. HoT’s biggest screw up was making all of the new maps heavy meta maps. That doesn’t work. People need to be able to play the game casually and more serious players need to be concentrated as much as possible.

tl;dr – Meta maps are great as long as they are the exception and not the norm.

Lack of content is still the main problem. Living world releases do not generate that much hype, really, and hype is what causes people to spend the most money. People want real, substantial content – new continents to explore, new armors, new dungeons, new skills, new systems, maybe some mounts, etc. Expansions are the only answer here. Anet really screwed up by not doing them sooner and better – the game should have had 3 by now at least, all bigger than HoT was – and they’ll probably never fully recover.

The second main problem is just how bad Anet is at iterating the game. They don’t do balance changes with nearly enough frequency, and they still haven’t gotten a handle on how to do an attractive endgame that doesn’t revolve around a berserker meta and no vertical progression. Neither open-world content nor FotM replaces traditional dungeon content due mostly to the immersion factor, and the fact that Anet doesn’t seem to care about addressing this is really hurting GW2.

The third biggest problem I think is the loot and gear system. I don’t think we need a lot of power creep, we just need interesting gear. Right now, gearing is very uninteresting. It’s too uniform and systemized. There are essentially no exciting potential drops in the game, which is a huge problem.

Ashen.2907:

Randulf.7614:

Thanks for the heads up Ayrilana.

Can’t say I am a fan of this idea. It locks the farm behind those who have access to ls3ep4 only and doesn’t benefit the wider playerbase. Better drops and salvage rates were the answer imo.

If supply increases then the wider playerbase benefits (or suffers) whether or not they have access to LS3-4.

This is true, but it still would have made more sense to simply tweak the drop and salvage rates.

The problem with GW2’s endgame isn’t lack of vertical progression, IMO, it’s lack of enough variety of horizontal progression, and blandness of many of the progression systems.

The mastery system is a solid foundation that needs to be built out a lot more. Additionally, there should be more skills and traits to acquire after hitting the level cap.
You could argue that they shot themselves in the foot by having 80 levels in the game to begin with, because it creates an illusion that the game is built around vertical progression when it really isn’t. If I was Anet, I’d probably crunch the number of levels down to 40 or so and expand the level ranges of existing zones, and rework drop tables, gear levels (IMO, gear shouldn’t have levels, it should only have rarity, which has a minimum level) and rewards to contain a smaller number of much more interesting items .

Speaking of, the other problem is that the gearing the game does have is very trite and uninteresting. Select your stats, select your skin, farm your precursor, apply your runes. There’s nothing exciting or particularly rewarding about this. Themed equipment with unique drop locations and unique stats and affixes would be far more interesting.

OriOri.8724:

Astralporing.1957:

OriOri.8724:

Yes, you paid for HoT. You did not have to pay for LWS3, you did not have to pay for the new fractals, or the new current events, or the new maps that LWS3 brought with it.

LS3 and new maps it brought cannot be accessed without HoT.

The new fractals can. The WvW and PvP changes can. But this is all beside the point because you aren’t paying for LWS3. These people are trying to argue that we have to pay for all of this content, but we paid once for a single expansion and got access to all of the content that came after it.

You’re missing the point. What we did or didn’t have to pay for is largely irrelevant. GW2 is an MMO. Anet is in charge of the business model, but, to retain players, they have to meet market standards for content. It wouldn’t matter if the game was completely free to play. Anet couldn’t expect to hold on to many players long-term, and people would still complain that they weren’t getting enough content, which they have a right to do since Anet is in charge of both the game and the business model.

If the micro-transaction model they’ve chosen isn’t doing a good enough job to provide them revenue to iterate on their game, then it’s their problem to solve, not players’.

Plautze.6290:

I find it rather sad that the majority in this thread is whining about the slow pace of the game’s updates while all those updates come completely for free. Please note that not a single item from the Gem-Store is needed in any way. So the whole company is fueled by many players buying the game and some very few people buying mostly QoL items. A lot of QoL items. Often. If you take a look at other games offering micro transactions, you have to literally pay for everything. Wanna press enter to get to title screen? Buy the title screen DLC. Wanna start a game? Buy the start a game DLC. Wanna change settings? Buy setting DLC. You get my drift.

So, basically, nobody of you did pay for those updates you all seem to be taking for granted. You did pay for the base game? You played it. You did pay for HoT? You played it. You did pay for wasps destroying trees or little robots dancing through herbs? Here they are, destroying and dancing. But you did not pay a single penny for the updates, so basically ANet delivers in advance, hoping that the players will take the update benevolently so they buy a flute that makes a nuclear strike collect their herbs or a rainbow barfing unicorn kitten their ore.

So, saying that ANet has chosen the wrong payment system is a double-edged sword. Perhaps some of you have chosen the wrong company, knowing it utilized that payment system. If you are tired of waiting so long, you should consider leaving or adding some more purpose to your life than just and only GW2 so the wait does not seem that long.

At the end of the day, all whining won’t speed up things in the least. It was clear from the beginning that GW2 will be for the casual, so here you are, as a power gamer, complaining that the updates don’t come fast enough… if somebody complained to me that our vehicles don’t fit into small parking lots or use up too much fuel, I would reply that maybe they should not have bought a pickup truck…?

And, knowing this forum: Come on, hate me.

Back to topic: I’d rather have a good legendary armor that was worth the wait and the grind instead of having a skimpy one that came out too soon just to be on time. But that’s just me.

No, that isn’t how it works. The updates are not “free”, particularly not since they adopted an expansion model and over-charged for the amount of content that was delivered as part of the first expansion.

Anet chose a business model that isn’t sub-based and instead involves optional micro-transactions and, now, over-priced expansions, but all of that is irrelevant. To keep people playing their game, they need to meet market standards for delivery of new content. If they don’t, they can’t expect to retain players. The simple truth is, they don’t meet those market standards.

Now, with that said, it’s come much closer to being acceptable since LW3 started than it was before, but considering how much of a vacuum they left from the first 2 years of the game, it isn’t really enough. Numerous systems need faster iteration than they’re getting.

While old LA had a certain amount of charm, I prefer new LA.

Lalainnia.3598:

lol it hasn’t even been that long and ppl are mouth foaming already good to much of a good thing I guess

People are tired of the incredibly slow pace nearly everything tends to happen in this game. It’s frustrating.

OriOri.8724:

Content is something that you can play. You can’t “play” armor sets. They are almost universally released with content that allows you to obtain them, but the sets themselves are not, and never will be, content in and of themselves.

I mean it’s fine that you make up your own definitions for words, but I’m not sure why you seem to think you have the authority to dictate them to other people.

Content – “the things that are held or included in something”.

It would seem to me this includes armor skins and all kinds of other things. Now, can we quit this silly semantic exercise and get back to real substantive conversation?

OriOri.8724:

maddoctor.2738:

I’d rather ask here instead of making a new thread because it’s about the legendary armor:
Anyone else thinks that Legendary armor is going to be like an expensive Outfit?
And what I mean with that is, if each piece is created with animations that work when you enter combat, it will be really hard to combine an animated piece with a non-animated piece, reducing any kind of skin variety.

Not necessarily, it remains to be seen with medium and light armor what the animations will look like. But certainly some of the smaller pieces like the helmet, shoulders, gloves and boots could fairly easily mesh with most other armor skins.

Einlanzer.1627:

Astralporing.1957:

cranos.5913:

Randulf.7614:

It’s partly delayed because it requires the next round of raids to patch into the game. That was my understanding anyway.

If anything is getting delayed it’s the actual raid because of legendary armor. They are horrendously slow at creating armors for some reason.

That has been explained. With each armor they not only need to make sure there’s as little clipping/misjoins as possible. They also need to make sure there’s no clipping/misjoins on every combination between each new armor piece and every already existing one within the same weight category.

Which, of course, means that each next armor takes them longer to make than the previous one.

I assume, that, with legendary having animated pieces, it’s even harder.

And that’s only technical problems. There might be an additional slowdown if they decided to, for example, make a second legendary set for a different content (which, frankly, they should have done at the very beginning).

Well this is clearly a structural problem they need to solve, and actually serves as a perfect example of how inefficient they are at creating new content. It’s not an excuse.

I have to address this misconception. Armor != content. It never has and never will. Just because ANet is slow at making new armors does not mean they are slow at making new content. One does not cause the other. Whether you think they are also slow at making new content or not is a personal opinion, but being slow at making new armor does not in any way mean they are also slow at making new content.

Sorry, but I disagree. You don’t get to dictate what content means for other people, and I say armor skins are content. Of course different teams are responsible for different types of content. Nobody thinks otherwise, and it’s largely beside the point.

Regardless, they are slow at both, as well as with balance iteration. There’s clearly a management/structural problem in the company. LW season 3 is the first time we’ve hit anything resembling a reasonable pace for content releases.

Astralporing.1957:

Einlanzer.1627:

Astralporing.1957:

cranos.5913:

Randulf.7614:

It’s partly delayed because it requires the next round of raids to patch into the game. That was my understanding anyway.

If anything is getting delayed it’s the actual raid because of legendary armor. They are horrendously slow at creating armors for some reason.

That has been explained. With each armor they not only need to make sure there’s as little clipping/misjoins as possible. They also need to make sure there’s no clipping/misjoins on every combination between each new armor piece and every already existing one within the same weight category.

Which, of course, means that each next armor takes them longer to make than the previous one.

I assume, that, with legendary having animated pieces, it’s even harder.

And that’s only technical problems. There might be an additional slowdown if they decided to, for example, make a second legendary set for a different content (which, frankly, they should have done at the very beginning).

Well this is clearly a structural problem they need to solve, and actually serves as a perfect example of how inefficient they are at creating new content. It’s not an excuse.

Yes, it’s not. It’s merely an explanation.
They are slow, because their design for armor system is flawed. They should have reworked it long ago. Especially since with each new armor introduced, any rework will end up requiring more and more effort.

They should have done it when they released the wardrobe, which would have allowed them to handle town clothes more properly.

Astralporing.1957:

cranos.5913:

Randulf.7614:

It’s partly delayed because it requires the next round of raids to patch into the game. That was my understanding anyway.

If anything is getting delayed it’s the actual raid because of legendary armor. They are horrendously slow at creating armors for some reason.

That has been explained. With each armor they not only need to make sure there’s as little clipping/misjoins as possible. They also need to make sure there’s no clipping/misjoins on every combination between each new armor piece and every already existing one within the same weight category.

Which, of course, means that each next armor takes them longer to make than the previous one.

I assume, that, with legendary having animated pieces, it’s even harder.

And that’s only technical problems. There might be an additional slowdown if they decided to, for example, make a second legendary set for a different content (which, frankly, they should have done at the very beginning).

Well this is clearly a structural problem they need to solve, and actually serves as a perfect example of how inefficient they are at creating new content. It’s not an excuse.

HolyPenor.8639:

It really is sad how long it takes Anet to push content. Saying that they aren’t a sub based MMO or that the raid team is small is not an excuse, it’s entirely their fault.
They chose this payment model and the fact that they don’t have enough employees is just ridiculous.
It literally takes them 4 months to release 2 bosses… Meanwhile, WoW just released a new raid with 11 encounters 3 months after their first legion raid (which had 7 bosses).

This. Has been a problem from day one, and it’s staggering that they don’t seem to realize that it’s a problem. There’s some serious dysfunction in the way they operate.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Einlanzer.1627:

Certain things about the way this game is managed are unreal. Like not having a public test realm to test patches before live.

A test realm is a particularly undeserved example of “unreal game management”. There are all sorts of reasons why public testing is an inefficient use of developer time. There’s no doubt that some bugs would be caught, but those are unlikely to be enough to make it worth all the extra trouble of maintaining the extra versions of the game, slowing the overall release process, and dealing with all the potential exploits (including economic ones, as noted above) as well as gameplay.

Not so much for bugs, more for collection of feedback as part of balance iteration. Of course, their balance iteration is slow and kind of terrible, so I suppose that kind of diminishes the purpose.

Certain things about the way this game is managed are unreal. Like not having a public test realm to test patches before live.

I think it is. The game is not without its flaws, but I keep coming back to it. The fact that it’s casual and can easily be dropped for periods of time and returned to later without being massively disrupting is an extra incentive to get into it IMO.

Rauderi.8706:

Einlanzer.1627:

As a sidenote, they also need to replace all +boon duration and +condi duration with bonuses to concentration and expertise, once and for all.

The attribute system in general just needs a little polishing up.

/Signed

When I saw the original post title, I was really hoping we’d re-open the discussion of the terrible scaling on Healing Power, and how Condition Damage is roughly similar. Condi gets a semi-pass because it defies armor, but the best scaling on it is Burning at 15.5%. Granted, add 1000 Condi to a Burn, and you double the damage, but it’s not intuitive.

Yeah. Healing Power scaling varies from skill to skill, but is generally too low to be a worthy investment. That’s not the correct way to control proliferation of healing builds. Self-healing skills should scale at roughly the same level as health does with vitality. I know there are concerns with bunkers in PvP, but those can be addressed by other means.

As a sidenote, they also need to replace all +boon duration and +condi duration with bonuses to concentration and expertise, once and for all.

The attribute system in general just needs a little polishing up.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

+1
Malice & Compassion ( I’d rather stick with the old name.. maybe it’s because i play druid mostly at the moment)

“Spirit” was somewhat arbitrary based on my own preferences, but I have two issues with Compassion that I feel make it a very awkward choice. The first is that it’s long and doesn’t roll off the tongue very well, which creates a strong likelihood that players will start abbreviating it as “Comp”. This would be weird since “comp” is normally short for composition, as in party composition. Spirit is easy to say, easy to type, and is still easily shortened to Spi without being confusing.

The second is that most healing skills in the game are self-target. Thematically, “Compassion” is awkward because, how does it make your self-target healing better? I like Spirit because it’s much more generalized, and can easily be applied to both healing oneself as well as one’s allies.

It’s worth noting that there’s a precedent to change it away from Compassion. The original flavor name for critical damage was “Prowess”. When they created a base stat for critical damage, they called it Ferocity instead of Prowess, likely deprecating the latter forever.

XxsdgxX.8109:

HoT’s difficulty is perfect, I hope they don’t go backwards with the next expansion.
I played since launch and now I find core Tyria really kitten boring, the AI and overall mechanics are laughable easy.

BTW I played solo all the HoT maps, made it a very good challenge.

What class do you play, out of curiosity?

Warcry.1596:

Don’t speak for me. Heart of Thorns was everything I could ask for and more. I love it and it has a high replay value for me.

I hope the next one is on par with Heart of Thorns

Heart of Thorns very objectively did not have enough content for the selling price. If you thought otherwise, it’s only because you haven’t played enough other MMOs.

Before launch, all of the secondary attributes in the game used flavor names, similar in theme to the names for the four primary attributes, that were then changed into more generic descriptive names around the time the game was prepping to launch.

I always thought this was a mistake. Somewhat hilariously, we’ve slowly re-adopted flavor names in order to easily distinguish base stats that you stack on gear from functional, dervied stats, i.e. ferocity, expertise, concentration. Other than profession specific attributes, the only two left that are purely descriptive are healing power and condition damage. I move these be changed to Spirit and Malice, respectively. Healing Power originally used Compassion, but I don’t think it works as well since healing is disproportionately self-targeted.

Apart from providing more cohesion with stats available on gear, and being catchier, it also makes anything you’re discussing less agnostic. For example, when you say “condi”, you could be talking about the stat, condition damage, or you could be talking about a condi build, which incorporates a lot more than the stat called condition damage. Giving Healing Power a more specific thematic name not only allows it to roll off the tongue/keyboard more easily, but allows you to easily distinguish between the specific concept of the Spirit stat and the general concept of a healing build.

Does anyone know where to obtain the values for healing power coefficients for skills in the game? I thought they were on the wiki, but I can’t seem to find them anywhere.

I main Revenant, so I’m most curious about Revenant, but I’m also curious about some general inter-class comparisons.

Yeah, the real problem is that conditions were originally intended to supplement direct damage, not replace it altogether. A “condition build” should really be a hybrid build, where the ideal is that power/prec/ferocity deals equivalent damage to power/malice/expertise, with the latter sacrificing some burst potential for slightly higher sustained DPS and better overall utility.

In that context, I do think a lot of condition application (especially burning) is over-tuned, which has in turn created a situation where condi cleanse has become too necessary, too powerful, and too prolific.

PlagueParade.7942:

Einlanzer.1627:

They should just implement a sort of phasing in the game where you go to the old Lion’s arch if your current story step is pre-LW2. Pre 80 players would always go to the old LA, while 80 players would have a choice.

It would cost a lot more to do this than just make an instance pass that allows people to enjoy old LA.

Yeah but it would be a good investment in the game’s evolution and would open up a world of possibilities for future LW development. It wouldn’t just be to provide access to old LA.

They should just implement a sort of phasing in the game where you go to the old Lion’s arch if your current story step is pre-LW2. Pre 80 players would always go to the old LA, while 80 players would have a choice.

A 5th, generalized core legend, buffs to Jalis/Ventari, and one or two additional weapons at base would go a long way in improving revenant. As an alternative to new weapons, they could remove weapon swap and have legends supplement weapons in some creative way.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

OriOri.8724:

Adry.7512:

Lordareon.6851:

Hi! i played Guild Wars 2 until just after the expansion was released then i stopped because of Real Life work.
I’m going back now and i found out that Colin left ArenaNet and he was such a great guy, i’d like to know how GW2 is doing without him

Its doing way better without him. They actually created a fixed blueprint for creating content. Meaning that now they know how to structure everything, allowing them to work faster and better.

You can’t be sure that this wasn’t already in development by the time Colin knew he was leaving.

Colin was a great guy with cool ideas, however he was spastic in the way the game was handled as he would jump from idea to idea while dropping a project in progress, or frankly stretching the devs in too many directions to accomplish anything. While Mike might not be an idea man he managed to take all of the moving parts and make a stable functioning game that has a solid plan for the future.

I think this is a pretty good assessment of the reality. He had a tendency to go in weird directions even when it didn’t really mesh well with the framework of the game.

My biggest complaint about where we are now revolves around the poor attention still being given to profession development and balance along with the apparent lack of concern for the state of wvw.

AliamRationem.5172:

Einlanzer.1627:

I agree as well. The HOT maps are too much of a chore. It’s okay to have a map like that every once in a while, it’s not okay when it dominates the end-game. Which, thankfully, it really doesn’t anymore. But I think it’s a mistake that they made all four new maps work that way in HOT. It would have been better to have four or five “normal” maps and one or two HOT style maps. This would also have been better from a sustainability perspective. Now, too many map metas are competing each other, leaving too many of them underplayed. I’m still trying to get my Mistward Helm because I stopped bothering trying to beat the Chak gerent event as it’s largely abandoned.

The open world is generally not the place to try to have a lot of real challenge or complicated navigation. For the most part, challenging content should be separated out into dungeons and raids, because they facilitate the organization needed to properly deal with challenging content. The open world is too disorganized and zergy. Again, it’s okay to do occasional maps that are done in HoT style, but it should be the exception and not the norm. I’m hoping they will have learned this lesson for the next expansion.

Honestly, it seems to be working fine. I didn’t like it at first because I felt you shouldn’t have to play the LFG game to find an organized map. But I don’t see how else you can have organized meta events without them being on a timer and players using LFG to organize. You see the same thing with world bosses in core Tyria. Why is this any different?

Chak gerent is getting completed every day at all hours. I often do it first thing in the morning before work. I did one last night that went so well we knocked out the chak gerent on Nuhoch lane before it even made it to the last burrowing phase!

If it’s time for the meta and you’re finding yourself on maps that give you the “Volunteer to change maps?” dialogue, it’s because other players are abandoning your map for a map that is organizing via LFG.

Note that the chak gerent spawns every 2 hours on the half hour mark. Check LFG around 15 minutes before the meta begins and you should start to see groups listed there.

I don’t agree that it’s working fine. Events fail way more often than they succeed on most of those maps, and it’s not something you as a player have much control over. Either there are plenty of people and a good commander around, and the event is steamrolled, or there aren’t and it fails immediately.

I’ll repeat what I said above – it’s okay to have some complex metas with hordes of difficult mobs on maps occasionally, but it shouldn’t be the norm. Most maps should be casual friendly.

I agree as well. The HOT maps are too much of a chore. It’s okay to have a map like that every once in a while, it’s not okay when it dominates the end-game. Which, thankfully, it really doesn’t anymore. But I think it’s a mistake that they made all four new maps work that way in HOT. It would have been better to have four or five “normal” maps and one or two HOT style maps. This would also have been better from a sustainability perspective. Now, too many map metas are competing each other, leaving too many of them underplayed. I’m still trying to get my Mistward Helm because I stopped bothering trying to beat the Chak gerent event as it’s largely abandoned.

The open world is generally not the place to try to have a lot of real challenge or complicated navigation. For the most part, challenging content should be separated out into dungeons and raids, because they facilitate the organization needed to properly deal with challenging content. The open world is too disorganized and zergy. Again, it’s okay to do occasional maps that are done in HoT style, but it should be the exception and not the norm. I’m hoping they will have learned this lesson for the next expansion.

The main problem with Revenant is that their utility swap feature is fundamentally “broken” because each legend is focused around filling a specific role rather than complementing the other legends. This is kind of how the Ele works, and would probably be okay if not for the below problems:

Of their four core legends, two are blatantly underpowered while the other two are locked in a dichotomy. Of the latter two, Mallyx only has access to one complementary weapon type, which is a huge pain in the neck. Functionally, this leaves you pigeonholed into exactly one fully functional build – Jalis/Shiro with S/S and Hammer. At 80, you replace Jalis with Glint, and it’s only at that point where the Revenant feels reasonably “whole” as a class.

At the end of the day, the class feels like a great concept that was sort of left unfinished. My opinion is that Jalis and Ventari both needs buffs to make them less situational, they need a 5th “core” legend that operates as a good support for any of the others, and they need at least one additional weapon type at baseline, preferably two. Alternatively, they could remove weapon swap per their original plan and replace it with something more creative that works better for the Rev.

Kelly.7019:

Ashantara.8731:

The game is in desperate need of new fun content besides LW and add-ons. I assume ArenaNet is majorly understaffed if they can’t even fix severe bugs in vital content right away nor provide some variety in the already existing annual festivities.

They could be working on next xpack. Though that would be sad to move people from HoT upkeep to solely new Xpack stuff. But that might be the greed train running strong on most mmos these days.

I think this is the main culprit. They know the next expansion needs to be bigger than HoT was, so they likely have most of their resources dedicated to it.