Guild Wars 2

Kadera.7861:

I couldn’t see much reason to go back either (I’m sick to death of barrel-rolling karkas and “crap, there goes half my health” drakes) except for all those ridiculously easy-to-get-to mithril and cyprus nodes, plus the rich, unguarded rich orich node, plus a couple of ancient trees. And the fact I can send any character I have over level 60 to go get them because they’ll be boosted to 80 and thus be reasonably able to survive the place.

The level upscaling is going to be removed post-event , so I wouldn’t get too used to that aspect…

It was fun overall. I enjoyed the multi-tiered progression of not only the Ancient Karka battle / luring, but also the initial assault on the nest.

However, certain parts did drag far too long or lean more towards “frustrating” than fun.

The biggest offenders of the above were the reinforcement bits of the Ancient Karka luring, which went on WAY too long (probably 30 minutes a piece) and had rather terrible difficulty pacing. Every time a new group of Veteran Young Karka popped up they would zerg whipe pretty much the entire group, and you’d end up with a fraction of the group either disengaging and surviving or waypoint rallying and slowly pulling 1 or 2 afterward, slowly making their way to revive the people who didn’t want to spend the money to rally or didn’t want to risk bugging / disconnecting at the loading screen if they waypointed. That sort of pace of “group whipe > outliers slowly kill a few and make their way to the dead” made the parts take even longer.

The same sort of group whipe situation also happened a couple times during the initial nest assault. At one point while fighting the Champion at the top of the nest there was a spawn of about 10+ Veteran Young Karka right in the middle of our group, which again led to most everyone dying and a few just running back down the ramp until they disengaged, then slowly coming back up and reviving everyone.

And in the first overflow group I was in (I disconnected from that one and got into a different overflow where the event was just starting) when we first got to the bottom of the nest there were probably 10 adult Veteran Karka and at least 1 Champion waiting (the second overflow group had nothing like that, just a couple vets and a champ, don’t know if the first was bugged or what). That was rather ridiculous, dodging the acid pools of 10 veteran adults at once may as well be impossible especially when half of them aren’t even showing up on the screen due to visual overloading (I even turned my graphics to minimum and I still couldn’t see half the enemies in that large group), so again it was an “almost everyone dies, a few run like mad and work their way back reviving everyone”.

I don’t really see whats wrong with Southsun Cove being “just another normal zone”. Why does it need to be some huge special area thats going to lure everyone to be there constantly? I see nothing wrong with simply expanding the game world with an additional area.

I do agree they could spruce it up with a few vistas (the landscape is beautiful, I want to see it in those nice sweeping camera angles) and skillpoints. And more DE’s, since a lot of the existing ones were related to the event and probably won’t be happening any more. I do seem to remember the devs saying at some point that they would indeed be adding new DE’s after the event, though I may be remembering incorrectly. Not sure about making it count towards exploration, though (aside from maybe its own seperate achievement / exploration reward, not related to overall world). On one hand I’ve seen people with 100% exploration who’d be more than happy to have another area to explore, but there are others who hate the idea of their 100% becomming anything less.

They could also stand to tone down the HP of the enemies since they potentially upped it just because they expected people to be grouping due to the event (and tone down everything about Reef Drakes because screw Reef Drakes).

Persephone.5384:

I like the points people pointed out so far, but I would like to add something. I liked the big event with the ancient karka (despite the lag). My biggest problem with this was the timing of the event. I live in Europe. The event started here at 21:00 on Sunday. Because I work every weekday I (and a lot of my friends with me) was not able to finish the event. The perfect time (12:00 midday) was chosen for America. Because the makers of the game want the Americans to be first to try the event, the rest of the world gets crappy timing. This is far out the most annoying thing I encountered this event. It would be nice that the next time a good starting time is chosen for different time zones. This would make it more fun and entertaining to play. If events only take in account the wishes of American players, it could be they will be the only ones left after a while… I wonder if this is what Guild Wars wants?

They time the event based on the time when the highest number of players are online. Thats straight from the mouth of the developers on at least 2 occassions that I’ve seen. They look at the data of when the highest number of players is commonly active, and thats the time they set for the events.

Its not favoritism, its a simple issue of catering to a majority, the largest player count they can get at any one time. Its just that said timing favors a certain group of players who make up that majority.

The largest number of players are in the US, so obviously the time when the highest number of players is active is likely to coincide with a US timezone. If a majority of the playerbase is in the US and a majority of those players is on at a certain time, thats going to be the time where the highest number of total players is active. And thats the time they base the events on.

While changing the timing of the event to “primetime” in other timezones like GMT might seem fair from a certain perspective, its a false fairness, because they aren’t basing the events on one timezone intentionally, or even one specific group of people. They aren’t catering to the Americans specifically. Its pure numbers, when they can hit the largest number of players at any one given time. Not in terms of groups based on country / continent (Americans, Europeans, Australians, ect) but in terms of the entire playerbase as a single large mass, and how they can catch the largest number of that overall population.

That questline was shut off.

Seems fine to me. The scenery is amazing (a few vistas to get a nice look would be good, though), the events seem alright though I think some of them will be changing after the event anyway.

The loot does seem very lackluster, though, I get better loot from the Shelks (that is, the Ridgeback Shelks which are found in other areas, not the new Reef Shelks) than the Karka or Reef enemies, which seem to drop very little. Have yet to get even a single Karka Shell material yet.

I need to know this too. The Lost Shores event page on the official website seems to suggest it’ll take place entirely in Southsun Cove, and yet the unofficial guide on the forum here says Lion’s Arch for the starting point.

Even if its going to be on Southsun Cove, that doesn’t really tell you where. There are 2 landing points and a half a dozen waypoints, could be anywhere.

I already missed the Part 2 Lion’s Arch event because I was a little late getting on and missed the Southsun Cove “building” events because I didn’t realize there was going to be anything like that and tried to finish the Investigation quests before heading to Southsun, I’ll be darned if I’m going to miss Part 3 just because I don’t know where its happening.

You… actually WANT them to charge for new areas? I have no words.

Every jumping puzzle in the game technically requires people to jump onto small spots like this. The only difference is that every other jumping puzzle isn’t newly added, so there isn’t large groups of people doing it at the same time (typically, anyway).

What you’re asking for is essentially for no more jumping puzzles period, because any decently challenging jumping puzzle they add is going to make people jump onto the same small platforms unless they decide to add a multi-path jumping puzzle (and even then, its not like there’s going to be 50 different paths and every person is going to happen to take a different one).

draxynnic.3719:

I had an ANet rep show up while we were waiting for the largos on Sanctum of Rall, who looked it up and said that apparently Miyani’s quest had been disabled – the extension was only for Noll and Canach.

Guess thats about as close to dev confirmation as you can get.

That really sucks. I tried doing Fahd’s part of the quest 4 times and every time he was bugged, either unresponsive or just plain not there at all (as was the case when I tried today, his “quest” was active near the Blood Witch but he was nowhere to be seen). I guess if you missed the few-hour sweet spot between the time when they released the bug fix patch last night and the time he bugged himself again, you’re out of luck.

Quite bummed I won’t be able to finish the quest after I spent so much time on doing the 2 working parts and waiting around trying to get Fahd to work. Not that the reward is anything special, but I just like to actually finish the events.

Reef Drakes are much worse than Young Karka to me. That freaking instant AoE confusion field attack, man… not only does it apply confusion which in an of itself is deadly (especially for my Ranger who has but 1 condition clear and its my heal as well), but the attack does multiple ticks of relatively high damage as well, AND the drakes can stun / pull you so that you can’t escape the field.

I’ve pretty much decided I’m not fighting those things ever again unless I have to. And if I do, ranged all the way, melee is just way too dangerous.

Young Karka are tough, especially for normal enemies, but aside from that one projectile volley they don’t really have any other nasty tricks. Just straight up high health and damage.

Of course, the OP is obviously talking about adult Karka, which… don’t really seem that bad. They’re relatively dangerous and resillient as heck, but since you’ll probably always be fighting them in groups of players (I sure as heck wouldn’t try one solo at least, it would take ages even if you didn’t end up dead), it makes them a lot less dangerous I think. Not that they’re pansies or anything, they’re good enemies and sufficiently tough. But as a whole, I fear Reef Drakes the most.

Zalifer.6140:

Miyani has been removed. That was part of phase one, and was working as intended yesterday. As such, she was removed as intended.

The reason the “noll” event chain is still there in phase 2, is because it was bugged.

Bah, both event chains were bugged. Fahd whatever (the largos) was screwed up like crazy all 4 times I attempted to complete his part of the quest. Guess I missed the few hour “sweet spot” between the time the bug fix went live late last night and the time he broke again.

I’d argue Fahd’s part was bugged worse than Noll’s, because I got past Noll’s part just fine while it was still bugged. I had to do the event about 10 times, but eventually I got a couple hits to the point where I could get credit for the event. Fahd was just plain stuck (or not even there) every time I saw him.

Should have extended both quest lines, IMO.

Yes, Rangers should be reliant on their pets. Thats the way Rangers are designed and presented within THIS game. This isn’t GW1, its not DnD / old school fantasy, its Guild Wars 2 . Comparing the Ranger profession in this game to other games (even its predecessor) and saying “Well Rangers didn’t need pets in that game” means little, this game is its own thing and doesn’t need to adhere to what others do. In this game, Rangers are designed with a heavy reliance on their pets as partners. Thats how they’re designed and how they’re promoted.

I didn’t play Beta, so I don’t know if Rangers used to be something else early on, but from launch onward pets have been paramount to the Ranger, and thats enough time that radically changing the profession now should be avoided.

I agree that a permanent pet stow should be possible because at some times you just don’t want a pet around and taking the control out of the hands of the player is bad, but giving bonuses based on not using a pet, not so much. If you don’t want to use your profession mechanic, fine, but you shouldn’t expect to be rewarded for it and should expect the exact opposite, to be worse off for it (most of the time). Elementalists are free to ignore attune swapping, but will be at a disadvantage for doing so. Mesmers can largely ignore clones and shatters, but will be weaker for it. The only class that can really ignore their profession mechanic entirely and not be largely disadvantaged are Guardians, and thats only because virtues are passively buffing you anyway (and its still a disadvantage to ignore them completely, just not a huge one). They’re “profession” mechanics for a reason, because they define the profession and are a central core to it.

I know this is probably going to sound rude and thats not my intention, but if you don’t like the pet mechanic then you shouldn’t be playing a Ranger. And don’t say “But I want to play a Ranger, I just don’t want a pet”. If you don’t want a pet, you probably don’t actually want to play a GW2 Ranger, you want to play the “idea” of a Ranger, what you think a Ranger should be based on other media. Because in GW2 the Ranger goes hand-in-hand with the pet, in a way the pet is the class. If you just want to play a huntsman, then… well, really, play any class. We’re all running around the wilderness surviving outdoors and hunting animals.

As far as the general question of “Was it a good idea for the devs to design the class this way”…. eh, doesn’t really matter how anyone feels about it at this point, its done. Though personally I love the decision, I love pets and the Ranger class being reliant on them is fantastic in my own opinion. I love the co-depenency between Ranger and pet, its relatively unique and a step beyond how most other games I’ve played handle pets.

Definately agree that all future events should be a week and not a weekend. That would allow 2-3 days per phase as opposed to 1 day each, allowing more leeway for fixing bugs and just more general time for everyone to get to experience the events.

Obviously things like the planned Sunday event chain need to be 1-day only, and thats fine, but yesterday’s event chain and today’s would be perfectly fine if they took place over a few days.

Seriously doubt its going to happen since it wouldn’t make much sense in regards to the game world, but I would appreciate it all the same.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

We’ve identified the fix for Noll’s event but this fix will require additional time to implement. Because of this we’re going to leave the Phase 1 dynamic events (investigation of the Karka attacks) open even after Phase 2 starts (Saturday November 17 at 12pm Pacific Time), which will allow us to push a fix for Noll’s dynamic event later so that players can complete phase 1 of The Lost Shores event.

I really hope this applies to ALL of phase 1 and not just the chain with Noll. Because I’ve specifically made time to play this event even though I normally can’t on weekends, but said time starts right at 1pm my time (which is noon PST, launch time) and I will be very disappointed if I can’t complete the other scavenger hunt with the underwater races just because they were bugged past the time when I logged off last night.

Femanon.4028:

Just logged in to test RTL and magnetic grasp. They still stun you a lot of the time. Didn’t test if they improved on RTL pathfinding when charging players who change direction.

I’ve heard you no longer get traited bonuses (like fury, swiftness, protection) for auras you gain from combos? Is that true?

EDIT: I’ve just tested it, and indeed you don’t get bonuses from a fire aura you create by leaping through a fire field.

Believe some people have said that its a bug with Magnetic Grasp not correctly acting as a combo finisher (shows the finisher text but doesn’t give the actual bonus), not combo field auras. Said they tested it with Eruption + Frost field and it worked fine and correctly gave traited boons, just not Magnetic Grasp’s fire aura. Seems plausible to me, since it seems many of the skills they changed get bugged in the process and they did change Magnetic Grasp. Like how they bugged Dragon’s Tooth to have no finisher at all instead of properly moving it to the drop location.

I liked the way they did it with the Halloween event. It would appear if you were in the area (Lion’s Arch) like any other major event notice, but anywhere else it’d be gone.

I don’t really need to know something is stirring in the Sea of Sorrows while I’m running personal quests in Gendarran Fields.

I guess maybe the intention is to let people know an event is going on no matter where they are, but… aren’t the announcements in the launcher enough for that?

If it makes you feel any better, the NPCs now follow this rule as well. NPCs don’t wear their helmets in cutscenes any more.

Zojja looks so wierd and bald without her headgear…

Have you tried some of the earliest player-crafted Light armor, namely the 2 earliest sets? Those definately have pants, at least on my Sylvari and Asura characters. Don’t know why Charr would be different models, but both my Charr wear Medium armor so I haven’t actually seen them to know for sure.

Also, are you sure you don’t actually have pants on but they’re just hidden by the fact that the Charr have a hunched posture which leads to the coat covering the pants? I definately notice that even on my Medium armor, the many many coat type medium armors end up with the coat almost completley obscuring the pants to the point where I barely even care what my pants look like because I can never see them anyway.

Seems to be a blanket change to NPCs in story events. I noticed also that Zojja no longer wears her headgear during dialogue scenes either.

I guess it fits with how the player’s character acts in scenes (the player never wears headgear even if you have it set to show) but Zojja looks really wierd without her headgear…

Technically, if no one bought any chests from the Gem Store there wouldn’t be any shoulderpads to use in order to make them in the Mystic Forge. At least not until the new zone pops up, since I think I remember reading that the items will have a chance of dropping as well (unless they were talking about different items, which could be the case).

Though not everyone visits the forum so there’s no chance that everyone will stop, so its not a real worry, just pointing it out.

Seems like a bug (or an oversight). The idea of the stat bonuses is supposed to be that the stat bonuses make up for the fact that having a conjured weapon “removes” your real weapon from your hands and thus removes the stats your weapon(s) give. So the bonuses are essentially simulated weapon stat bonuses.

That should mean that anyone holding the weapon should get the stats, because anyone holding the weapon loses out on their actual weapon bonuses.

… the new pet we get is a Drake and yet Drake pets are still bugged to not use special attacks (at least I assume they are, no patch notes nor mention of a hidden fix). You’d think if they were adding a new one they’d at least fix them.

Wonder if the new one is bugged too, or if it’ll be a real kick in the face and the new one will work while all the others don’t.

Well, TBH, 1 shotting a whole group of basic mobs was kind of overpowered. Sort of balanced by the fact that Drake breath attacks are inaccurate and take forever, but assuming they will hopefully fix those issues at some point, the damage would have needed to be fixed. And if it was a bug causing the damage to be so high in the first place (I never realized it was any sort of a bug, just thought the damage was naturally that high for some reason) then obviously bugs need to be fixed.

Still sad to see it go, it was an awesome feeling to watch a River Drake decimate entire groups with that. I was just about to change my River Drake’s name to Dheginsea to properly reflect that awesome damage potential. Does it still do respectable damage at least, or is it bad now?

I already use spirits occassionally, and will continue to do so. Not because they’re good, but because I usually have a utility slot to spare on them (Ranger doesn’t have too many good utilities unless you’re using a trap-heavy build, which I’m not), I like variety and I like the basic premise of spirits even if they’re broken as-is, and their passive nature of just throwing them down and not really having to worry about them afterwards is nice.

This change really doesn’t help much of anything in the long run, though. That 10-second internal cooldown and lack of health are the major problems with spirits and still very present.

Evil Kyo.2078:

I’ve noted this too with my D/D and i’ve done a bit of testing. Comboing fire ring and magnetic grasp to trigger fire shield doesn’t work. It shows the message of fire shield but there’s no icon and no boons. What i have seen is that comboing with a staff to get frost armor triggers elemental shielding an zephyr’s boon. Looks like the problem is with magnetic grasp.

Hmm, interesting. That actually seems plausible, it seems a lot of the skills they attempted to fix in this patch actually ended up getting bugged in some way, so it seems possible the screwed up Magnetic Grasp’s combo finisher in the process of fixing its reliability.

Bikazig.2496:

It seems they added a new pet Juvenile Reef Drake. It’s in the pet list in game atm.

New pet? Yay.

I was hoping for a crab or something though. Another drake… eh, we already have lots of those.

Still, new pets are nothing but good.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Hey all, we are aware of the bug with Ranger traps. A fix is slated for to take care of this bug tonight.

Excellent. I knew it couldn’t have been intentional…

secretly lets out a sigh of relief

Spirit buff doesn’t help at all because there’s a 10-second internal cooldown on the effect happening. Means that even if they put it to 100% chance, you’d still only see it happen once every 10 seconds. It’d be a big help if there was no cooldown (or a much shorter one) but as is… yah.

Splinter Shot and Greatsword buffs are nice.

Call of the Wild was bugged and not working with the cooldown reduction of Off-Hand Training, I believe. Its range is also unaffected by Off-Hand Training. Not sure which of those was changed (I’m hoping for range increase so I can use it from max Axe range and still hit my pet), though either way its a nice change.

Throw Torch speed boost doesn’t seem that impressive to me. It seemed to move at a decent enough speed already, IMO. But an improvement is an improvement I guess.

Tooltip / description fixes are needed and technically nice, but in a patch where people were expecting more meaningful bug fixes and the like, not great.

Whirling Defense boost I haven’t tested yet, but hopefully it means the attack will launch projectiles when used in a combo field as other Whirl finishers do, rather than how it was before where it only applied field effects to reflected projectiles. If that is the case, a nice change though one that won’t really effect me since I don’t use offhand axe much (Torch and Warhorn are too good).

Projectile finishers on underwater attacks is pretty pointless, considering the fact that there are barely any combo fields underwater. An improvement in theory, but in practice not really a meaningful change at this point (unless they’re planning on adding a lot more underwater fields soon).

There are SOME good changes, certainly, but not that many meaningful ones and by comparison the Ranger section was still smaller than the changelogs for some other professions (and thats counting for 2 months essentially, since we got nothing last month).

The fact that we didn’t get any changes last month due to reasons of “needing more time to do the changes right” and the general dev post stating that some fairly big improvements were in the works had people expecting more. That and the fact that many of our major issues are completely unaddressed (namely pet survivability and effectiveness in combat with players) is whats got many so worked up.

“This profession needs the most improvements” does not mean “every other profession is perfect as-is”.

Wha?!

Ugh, please let this be a mistake.

Eh. I really, really didn’t want to be one of the people who was going to instantly look a gift horse in the mouth and complain about this patch. I wanted to be happy with it, I went in not expecting instant problem fixes or anything, just a decent number of bug fixes and improvements. I really don’t want to be the instant complainer.

But really? This is just… nope, I can’t be happy with this.

There are a couple good changes, added GS damage and counterattack while moving is nice and I’m thrilled that Off-Hand training is going to apply to Call of the Wild (hope that means range too and not just cooldown). Whirling Defense I barely use because I don’t like offhand axe much, but if it now actually fires projectiles on its own in combo fields thats a great change.

But there’s practically zero bugfixes unless you count incorrect descriptions as bugs, absolutely no pet improvements, no real changes to spirits (from what everyone keeps saying the spirits still have a long internal cooldown which means the increased proc chance means little on its own, and no health increase means they’ll still die like a paper lantern in a hurricane), no changes at all to signets or shouts, a bunch of underwater projectile finishers when there are almost no underwater combo fields to use them with… 3/4 of the changes are miniscule in effect at best.

Perhaps the real issue I have with this, though, is… what exactly in this patch warranted an extra month of work? It takes an extra month to decide “we should increase damage on a skill”? Or “this should be a combo finisher now”? Really? I can’t see a single change thats any more complicated than any of the other changes other professions got last month or this month, and that has all other professions getting 2x the changes between the two updates (and many professions got more changes than Ranger this month too). The whole “we needed extra time to implement the changes right” thing amounted to absolutely nothing, far as I can tell.

Maybe they’re planning big mechanics changes and even an extra month wasn’t enough, I don’t know. Maybe I just shouldn’t have looked into those words at all.

Male Asura names should end in a consonant according to the Wiki, so thats half your list gone right there.

My favorite off your list is Srrast. Sounds properly snappy for an Asura name. If thats taken, you could alwyas play around with the double-letter (try Ssrast, Srasst, Srastt, ect).

bastiondg.1058:

MadDemon – 7/10. I like the last name, but something about names with ‘oth’ in them I’ve never liked for some reason.

Mine is Hiafax Tyrant – Charr Blood Legion Warrior.

Eh, I’ll give it a 5. Its an alright name on its own, sounds alright, but its not very Charr-like. First name fits well enough though I can’t really put my finger on how to pronounce it. The last, though… Charr last names are 2-word combinations, one for the warband and one usually a description of the individual in some way, so that last name doesn’t fit at all. If it were a title (EG Hiafax the Tyrant) then it would fit, but as it is not so much.

I’ve got 2 Charr characters, so I guess I’ll put ’em in the same post.

First one is Geirikk. My first character in the game period so I didn’t even think to look up the “proper” naming conventions, just picked something that sounded good and went with it. I’ve kind of RP’d it off as a situation where he was formerly Flame Legion (conveniently I happened to pick the Flame Legion sire background), and when he left Flame Legion he chose to ditch the surname because of what it represented. And his Legionaire in Blood Legion didn’t think a former flame legion deserved to adopt the name of the warband, so he never took a new one. Really, though, I’d love to get a proper surname on there and will if they ever introduce a name change system (unless its too expensive to be worth it).

Second is Cazza Gearburst of Iron Legion. Proper Charr name this time. Gear warband (no relation to the ones with the same warband name earlier in the thread, though I’ve actually seen at least 1 other Gear* named Charr in-game so it’d be funny to get them all together and form an RP guild), not the most creative of warband names but fits an Iron warband well enough, with the warband being all about creating and using machinery / gear (hence also her being an Engineer). Burst because she’s quick and has a preference for explosions.

Healing Seed and Seed Turret don’t play well together at all. Occassionally both will spawn (usually if you spawn Healing first) but most of the time its one or the other. Definately seems bugged and not by design, but who knows.

Healing Seed kind of sucks anyway. Enemies seem to want to slaughter it right away every time I use it, so I haven’t used it in quite a while because of that.

I see no reason why Sylvari need to wear cultural armor or should look odd not wearing it. Just because they can shouldn’t mean they need to. Growing your own armor is a handy ability to have, but that doesn’t mean its better than cloth and metal. Actually its probably the opposite, other than cloth I would assume leather and metal are both better protection than leaves and branches (which is why I refuse to put my Sylvari guardian in any cultural gear until I can grab T3, which at least looks relatively sturdy, the others are too leafy to be heavy armor).

I think the reason it seems so odd to some people (maybe you as well TC) is because the vast majority of Sylvari NPCs wear cultural gear. It makes you feel out of place if you aren’t wearing it too. Granted, thats true of almost all races really, there’s a ton of NPCs wearing cultural, but its most noticable with Sylvari because it obviously looks so different from normal clothing. If there was a better balance between NPC Sylvari wearing cultural gear and those wearing “normal” clothes, then the player wearing normal armor wouldn’t seem so strange.

As for sylvari colors… eh, can’t really say I agree with you there. I can see where you’re coming from with wanting to keep them looking like plants, but Sylvari are the only colorful race in the game. I really think there needs to be at least 1 colorful race. Plus, plants are actually really colorful anyway, maybe not leaves and branches which do tend to be green and brown mostly, but as far as flowers and mushrooms (which aren’t technically plants but I guess they fall under that as far as Sylvari go) you can probably find just about any color in nature. So it fits from that perspective.

And don’t be hating on the branch and mushroom heads. Those are awesome. More “hair” styles would be nice, but why remove the most unique ones for more leaves and grass? Just add more, don’t take away.

Based on the fact that the “hair” matches the clothing those NPCs are wearing, I’d wager its not hair, but a hat for town clothes. Town clothes that is unavailble to players at this point (though I hope it becomes an option at some point).

On a convenience level I agree.

But I don’t know how the game handles a character in character creation. It might load them into a temporary “creation” area or something, in which case that area would be part of the server and it would HAVE to go offline when updates happen, because the whole server needs to go down.

It would also potentially allow people to bypass downloading an update, if they’re in the process of character creation when an update hits. Of course they’d be forced to update the next time they shut off the game and started it back up, so nothing permenent, but for a while anyway they’d be running an outdated version of the game. Which would probably be bad.

The one thing I will say thats related to this issue that probably wouldn’t cause any problems is that I’d like to see them remove the “inactivity lockout” for character creation. Maybe I’m just really freaking slow at character creation, but I know that twice while I was creating my 5 characters I got kicked from the character creator for inactivity (because apparently those sliders don’t count as being “active”, its not like I was actually AFK). And you don’t get any warning that its coming when you’re in character creation, because you can’t see the chat box or anything (which is where the notification that you’re about to be inactive-kicked shows up). Heck, I wouldn’t even know what happened at all except that in one of those cases when I got done with creation and entered the world I noticed the inactivity warnings in the chat once I got into the main game.

Agree 100%. Just add a preview option on the TP please. The Gem Store already has a preview function as do normal vendors, so I can’t see how it’d be difficult to give it to the TP as well.

Yes, there are a half a dozen workarounds for the lack of TP preview (look it up on the wiki, look up the item code on a website then input the code into the in-game text box, preview in the PvP lobby, ask someone to link it in chat, ect). But just because workarounds exist doesn’t mean there’s no need for them to simply implement a proper Preview function into the TP. The workarounds are exactly that, workarounds to something thats quite obviously missing (compared to everything else in the game)

I agree, but I want this changed for the exact opposite reason as you TC.

I’ll often be trying to rez someone in a sea of dead enemies and all I’ll be doing is picking up loot instead of actually rezzing them. If I come across someone who’s downed and still taking hits, time is of the essence and I have no time to sort through 5 corpses worth of loot before I can actually start getting them to their feet.

Oh yes, lets spawn level 80 events in low level areas to cater to high level players so that low level players can do .001% of the enemy’s total health a hit to those enemies and die instantly from every attack. Thats what low level players want, to feel completely useless against content in an area thats supposed to be for them just because a level 80 decided to wander in. Not useless in the way it is now, where level 80 players do more damage but low levels can still contribute as they normally would in the area, but useless in the way that they’re literally useless for all but supporting and watching the “big boys” handle it.

Just fix the damage scaling. A level 80 player with a level 80 weapon should do the same damage as a level 20 character with a level 20 weapon.

I didn’t get a single dye in about 5 hours of gameplay yesterday, so I agree, they’re too rare now. Put them back to what they were before the accidental drop rate increase, please.

“Charming” pets in GW2 is certainly boring, agreed. Back when I played Star Wars Galaxies (in the days before the 8-class simplification crap) you had to go out, find a baby creature which would randomly spawn anywhere on the planet, mask your scent from enemies (and hope that other enemies in the area didn’t break your mask), attempt to tame the pet which had a certain success rate based on skill from your progress in the profession tree / clothing mods, probably fail a few times and have to run away to get the baby to disengage, and finally get your pet. It was exciting to get what you were looking for after a long search and potentially difficult taming process. Then you watch the pet grow up and get to full strength over time, train it for commands, ect.

There weren’t even “rare” pets (well, not rare in the sense you mention in the OP anyway where you could only find them in 1 spot at the end of a dungeon or anything, though obviously some random spawns were rarer than others) but it was still a pretty exciting process trying to get a specific new pet.

This, like you said, its just “walk up, press F, pet get”. Its already full-grown at that point (or as full grown as they get in this game anyway) and fully trained. And the locations are all set in stone, so a simple look at the wiki will instantly tell you exactly where you need to go. Even if you don’t use wiki, you’ll probably stumble upon juveniles with your other characters and then you’ll know where they are. There’s little actual searching, but if you don’t know then you’re completely blind. You might see adult versions of the animal all over the place in that area of the map, but there may be no juvenile anywhere in the area, so you’re searching in an area where you can’t possibly find, a 0% chance of success (which leads to frustration and saying “forget it, I’ll just check the wiki”). In the above case of SWG, as long as you’re on the planet the animal lives you can find it as a baby.

I can’t say I agree with your other complaints, though. I also prefer the more “fantasy” oriented pets and a few more would be nice, but there’s a decent split of fantasy and realistic animals. You seem to mention Devourers as the only ones, but fire breathing lizards, giant spitting spiders, leafy dogs and prehistoric bears all fit the bill just fine, for me anyway. And I’m sure in time they’ll introduce more pets and hopefully use many of the fantasy-themed animals in the game like Griffons.

I definately don’t agree with the idea of rediculous effects for pet attacks like conjuring storms or lunar strike (whatever that is, sounds like an over-the-top Final Fantasty attack). They’re animals, not gods. Bites, claws, pounces, thats how animals attack. The wild animals in the game don’t do anything silly like calling forth storms, so why would Ranger pets?

The combat log as a whole is garbage. There are so many things missing from it that its near useless for any actual data acquisition. Needs to display pet damage (not just Ranger pets but all pets, turrets, minions, whatever), conditions, heals, boons, whether or not an attack crits, other players’ damage, ect. Even the enemy damage display is screwed up, at one point I got near insta-killed by 3 random bandits and wanting to know WTF happened I went back into my log, and based on what the log said I took nothing but about 800 damage (out of my 2000 health pool).

They need to patch the Lost Shores data in advance, since they’re starting the event at a specific time. If they wait until the time of the event to patch, then you have people downloading large amounts of patch data (content patches are big, especially a whole new area) and “delaying” the event via the fact that no one can actually play. So I’d assume they’ll patch 99% of the Lost Shores data into the game in advance (on the 15th) and then just patch the last bit of data that triggers the event at 12 on Friday. Or maybe there won’t even be a patch on Friday at all, they’ll just have the event trigger on a timer with no patch needed. Thats how they did the 1-time event for Halloween, it just happened.

I’d also imagine the rest of the patch (the fixes / updates to professions, mechanics, ect) will come at the same time.

Soothing Mist (Water minor trait 5) is not treated as a normal Regeneration boon, so it will heal in addition to any normal Regeneration. Other than that, as above, it all stacks duration and not intensity.

I don’t see whats good or unique about Magnetic Shield #3. Its a typical charge, which any weapon set that actually wants to get close should already have access to (D/D has plenty and S/D has Ride the Lightning). The daze is nice I guess, but hardly enough to call it unique.

Shield #4 is unique and I could see it being really nice for a D/D build, but between the cast time on the attack itself and the cast time to summon the shield its pretty clunky to use (and unless you’re running a full defense build the hits you’re going to take during the cast are very bad), and seems buggy as to whether it actually works and pulls enemies in or just knocks them over.

Magnetic Shield needs a lot of work, far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t seem to have any distinct theme or synergy to its attacks, just a hodgepodge of different attacks that don’t fit well together at all, its got no combo finishers, no combo fields (though you can’t really expect fields on an earth weapon), and for a shield it provides suprisingly little defense.

I’d personally make the following changes to MS…

1. - Give it a 3-target AoE (a melee weapon that only hits 1 enemy? Lame!) and make it apply Cripple.

1. - Ditch this completely, its garbage and the worst fit for this weapon. Instead make #2 a magnetic burst AoE which throws out shrapnel and inflicts Bleed (4 stacks sounds good) on enemies. Blast finisher as well.

1. - Have it apply a projectile reflection for the duration of the charge, so you can charge through projectiles safely and push them right back. Also needs to be a Leap finisher.

1. - Either cut down the cast time so that its near instant or apply Protection and Stability for the duration of the cast (and for maybe a couple seconds after). I prefer the later personally, give the shield more actual defense. Fixing the attack itself so it always works and always gets enemies to you would also be good, of course.

1. - Extend duration to 5 seconds. If Obsidian Flesh can last for 4 seconds AND let you move and attack, something that locks you down completely should at least last longer.

With these changes the weapon would actually have a good degree of synergy with itself. Pull them in with #4, bleed them with #2, then drop into #5 to guard yourself while they bleed out. Chase them down with #3, then repeatedly use #1 to Cripple them and stay on them.

But anyway, I got off-topic there a bit. As for the question in the OP, I’d say in its current form go with Lightning Hammer. I picked Shield over Hammer on the basis of “I never see anyone use Magnetic Shield so I’ll grab it for fun and variety” and… yah, not a decision I’m happy with. I can see why barely anyone uses the Shield.

Its been brought up before, making pets less like NPCs and more like pure support. And I hate it every time its brought up. I rolled a Ranger because I want a companion who fights beside me, not a mobile sprite / turret that floats around and fires off a special attack every once in a while.

The idea itself isn’t terrible, it would be an interesting mechanic in and of itself. If they introduced a Druid class with mechanics as described in the OP which used animal spirits instead of actual animals (they could still be gotten from juveniles, but instead of charming the actual animal you “commune with its spirit” or something) I’d totally play that class. They could even split off some of Ranger’s current skills like spirits to that class and give Ranger new ones, let Druids handle the “one with nature and commanding nature’s power” theme and just make Rangers more huntsman simply familiar and comfortable in the wild.

But I don’t want to have them simply change Ranger pet mechanics altogether to something like this.

Red Jay.2516:

Pardon me, but aren’t drakes bugged? Apart from basic-autoattack and F2, I haven’t seen them use any of the other abilities.

Correct, Drakes don’t use either of their natural specials, only autoattack and F2. Hopefully that gets fixed pretty soon, they’d probably see a decent improvement when they do. More AoE is nice (their basic already has a small melee AoE even though the decription doesn’t mention it, so having an AoE special as well would be great) and healing is always handy.

Mind you, I think most people are complaining not about lack of other specials, but about inaccuracy of F2. Takes forever to breathe in before the actual attack and all enemies have to do is move a bit to the side to dodge it since its a cone and the drakes won’t turn at all after starting the charge up. Thats definately true and in PvP it makes the F2 all but useless unless your opponents just aren’t paying attention, but the F2 is great in PvE where you have control over what enemies do. Keeping enemies in the blast is fairly easy (as long as its not a champion you have to kite constantly to survive against) and the abilities are quite powerful if they hit. Especially the River Drake’s, that thing can completely wipe whole groups of normal enemies, its wonderful.