Guild Wars 2

A few points:

1. This has been said before, but Dailies and Monthlies are not “grinds” they are anti-grinds. You cannot grind Dailies or Monthlies — you are limited to 1 per day/moth. A hardcore player who has 2000+ hours under his belt and 3 legendaries cannot complete any more Dailies or Monthlies than a player that plays for 1 hour a day.

2. I agree that laurels being limited to Daily and Monthly rewards are a poor implementation. However, remember that ANet said Laurels are going to be rewards for completing all categories of achievements, not just dailies and monthlies. When this does get implemented, Laurels will be rewarded retroactively for completed achievement which means a lot of us will had many, many more laurels even without doing even doing one daily.
When will this actually be implemented? Who knows? But considering most people are at least 1 month away from getting their first ascended earring, they’ve got some time before it becomes a real issue.

Hardest to Kill: Stealth Spamming Thief; Bunker D/D Ele

Most Likely to Kill Me: Necromancer (Without any condition clearing skill on my typical skill bar I can easily find myself loaded down with lethal stacks of conditions if I make a mistake).

Easiest to Kill: Staff Eles, Warriors, Rangers, Other Mesmers, GC Thieves

On a related note, anyone else notice a severe lack of competent mesmer fighters/roamers/duelists out in WvW? Most mesmers I run into are pathetically easy to kill and have no understanding of their class. For perspective, I’ve spent most of my WvW time in Tiers 1-3 so I believe most people are running Portal/Veil bots.

Kamata.5762:

This is a L2 kitten ue for everyone whining. I almost never lose a 1v1 fight against a thief in wvw. ( I play a mesmer ) Every class has his own tactics to defeat a thief, if you don’t what they are, then just ask a thief friend to duel you and you will find out eventually.

for example, me as a mesmer, whenever a D/D thief stealths, I just dodge, decoy = stealth for me and 2 clones up, so he wastes his backstab on my clone, or he pops out of stealth searching for the real me or I just pop my invulnerability, F4 or #2 on sword, and yet again he wastes his backstab or heartseeker spam. Or I can blink/phase retreat#2 staff, away, so he can never reach me. It mostly never comes to this since glasscannon thieves are so weak I mostly one shot them, but when I screw up my chance to one kitten him, look above, 3-3-2-mirror images-decoy-F1 with sword main hand. Even if the thief uses stealth, he will still be immobilized and I still can use all of my skills to hit him since its AoE.

When the thief uses shadow refuge, I just blast him out of it with GS #5 or pull him out with focus #4. Not a problem there.

We’re not talking about GC thieves, we’re talking about stealth abusing thieves that build tanky enough to survive a burst.

I’ve killed a lot of GC thieves on my mesmer, but the vast majority of fights with tankier thieves end up with me damaging them down to a third of their health, them stealthing, and then them shadowstepping or shortbowing away to reset the fight. There’s really not much you can do about that and that’s the problem.

sostronk.8167:

Eliyahu.1467:

sostronk.8167:

Thieves can’t cap points in WvW whilst in stealth either.

The ability of a class to cap points has near zero importance in WvW compared to sPvP since there’s almost always going to be someone else with you to do that job when you’re capping a point. The only reason it was removed from WvW was that perma-stealth thieves could perma-contest supply camps because you couldn’t kittening kill them. You still can’t kill them but at least you can capture the camp.

I solo cap points all the time with every class I play.

And how important was the fact you can’t cap in stealth? Not at all.

Tell me how many times you’ve defended a point solo for several minutes without killing your opponents because that’s the reason why stealth capping was nerfed.

Mars.6319:

We call them thiefs because anet didn’t name them rouges.

Not sure if clever or hilarious mistake…

Pyroatheist.9031:

I guess the thing that really gets me is how some people are so content with the current state of the torch (broken blast finisher notwithstanding).

Yes, the torch works great in some builds. Yes, the prestige is an awesome skill, and is the reason the torch is so amazing. However, the iMage is just horrible.

Seriously, think of how much MORE amazing the torch would be if it actually had a phantasm that wasn’t COMPLETELY useless. The torch would be an awesome pick in a ton of builds instead of just a few really specific builds because it would have 2 great skill like every other offhand we have.

Yes, the torch works fine in some builds now, but that is absolutely no reason not be clamouring to give it 2 real skills.

The whole idea about giving that phantasm a confusion attack was a poor idea. Confusion is only really useful in PvP so the phantasm is automatically useless in PvE. Then on the PvP side if you give the thing too much confusion and confusion that lasts too long, you allow for ridiculous confusion stacking and maintain on a target, which would make it op in small scale WvW. The line between too much and too little Confusion is too fine and it just creates a stupid balance headache.

I think a solution would be to have it inflict Burning instead of Confusion on a target of such duration and attack rate that 2 phantasms could maintain permanent burning. I think that would put the phantasm in a good place and keep it in line as a condition weapon — plus it makes sense for it to inflict burning as a torch skill.

Embolism.8106:

The fact the community is so divided about it is quite telling.

The meaning being that it’s a fine weapon with kittenty implementation.

It essentially only has 1 skill, but that skill is awesome.

John Widdin.9618:

Depends on the server. Maguuma is absolutely riddled with Mesmers, while other servers we fight again have a gross abundance of Rangers.

Funny how that works, huh? Certain servers and guilds tend to run more of a certain profession for whatever reason.

When I faced Fort Aspenwood I remember facing a ton of elementalist, mostly dagger/dagger, while [LotD] on Blackgate is known for their hammer warriors.

sostronk.8167:

Thieves can’t cap points in WvW whilst in stealth either.

The ability of a class to cap points has near zero importance in WvW compared to sPvP since there’s almost always going to be someone else with you to do that job when you’re capping a point. The only reason it was removed from WvW was that perma-stealth thieves could perma-contest supply camps because you couldn’t kittening kill them. You still can’t kill them but at least you can capture the camp.

Paruza.3162:

I ask because I’d like to do a build focused on aoe auras and healing to sustain the zerg. However I don’t think I’m going to bother if it will substantially harm my ability to get badges…

Your healing skills have cooldowns. Damage people while waiting for those cooldowns and you’ll be fine.

OP is describing the legit 50% HP bug.

One of my groups ran into it a few days ago. Sucked.

And in case you’re wondering, I’ve killed Simin 3 times pre-patch and know how to do the fight with my eyes closed.

It’s ridiculous that ANet nerfed this fight (which did not need a nerf) and did absolutely nothing to address the 50% HP bug which was the actual problem.

Ojimaru.8970:

So much rage.
To the OP, may I ask what kind of sample are you using to define the “average” player? Because I myself run dungeons with many of what I consider as “average”, including guild mates who play 5 hours a week, and they do fine once they get used to a particular mechanic.

Sub-80 characters always complain Explorable mode dungeons are “too hard” and proclaim that only 80s with full exotics can complete them with ease. I always challenge this statement by asking for their equipment and utilities. More often than not, people gear out their sub-80 characters in a mismatch of gear stats, e.g. a longbow Ranger with Condition Damage and Healing, or a Condition Necro with Critical Damage and Magic Find. 9 times out of 10, a Mesmer or Guardian complaining CM EM is impossible didn’t even equip Feedback or Wall of Reflection. Story Mode is where you can bump around blindly and see the pretty cutscences; in Explorable Mode, prepare accordingly.

I couldn’t have said it better. Dungeons take planning. All of your gear has to be up to level and matching the stats you want (greens are fine!). Knowing which utilities to slot for each fight is also important. Lastly, the difference between a good dodger and a bad dodger is the difference between a good dungeon runner and a bad dungeon runner.

Resonance.4216:

What an awesome video, try that in tier 1.

Yishis already has it covered

Shufflepants.9785:

It won’t affect it much. +20% of almost nothing is still almost nothing. Gold from monsters is not a large chunk of the gold production in the game. Far higher is the amount people make from DE rewards, hearts, vendoring items, and so forth.

In CoF Path 1, the most farmed path in the game, the slave driver drops 10 silver and the Effigy drops 15 silver. With a gilded infusion and an omnomberry bar you get a combined +60% gold drops which comes out to an extra 15 silver per run (5 silver from the gilded infusion specifically). A speedrun on this path takes ~6-7 minutes. Assuming you do 8 runs an hour, that’s an extra 40 silver every hour in income just from the gilded infusion.

When you runs dungeons youz willz haz mo moneyz.

That’s how it affects the game. There’s possible gold inflation in the future from this, but I wouldn’t bank on it.

I usually berate people that complain about grind in this game because it’s not all that bad — the ridiculous grinds are still only cosmetic, but I agree with OP on the Dailies and Guild Missions rewards.

The methods of acquiring new ascended pieces are not well implemented. Time limited currencies such as Laurels and Guild Commendations should always be a secondary currency — something nice you get eventually. They should never be the primary way you obtain items, especially best-in-slot items (ascended earrings and amulets).

If someone wants to grind out all of his ascended gear in a short amount of time, let him. Be it gold, karma, or tokens, if a person is dedicated to gearing out all his characters let him/her be able to do it without being forced into an arbitrary time requirement.

Honestly, if the torch were just one skill, “The Prestige,” and nothing else I would still use it.

Stealth is OP as kitten in WvW. Adding another stealth to our bar adds so much survivability and misdirection. With Decoy and The Prestige you can essentially chain 3 Blurred Frenzies together with culling, kiting, and Distortion filling the gaps. You spend so much time either untargetable or outright invulnerable it borders on ridiculous.

Not only that, but we can also have Veil and Mass Invisibility on our bars as backups.

So that’s essentially why I like the torch: chaining invulnerability with stealth.

Tungsten Monarch.6058:

There is some reverse trolling here, the Dungeons are way over the top difficult for the average player. Those thanking the Devs for increased difficulty are trolling the average players.

There was no need to increase the difficulty of AC or any other Dungeon. If you want them difficult then add a hard mode, and for regular mode add a sixth member or reduce the difficulty by 40%.

Right now all paths, all dungeons are absurd, GW1 was nothing like this, and this game had so much potential.

I will be looking at ESO, leaving and not returning.
ANET does not have their act together. Yes you may have my money, but you won’t be getting my money from the BLTC.

You cannot be serious. Normal mode UW, FoW, the Deep, DoA, etc. were ALL harder than GW2 dungeons.

Not to mention no other MMO I’ve played has had easier dungeons than GW2. If you believe AC, even the new AC, is exceptionally difficult then you really need to take a step back and evaluate your play.

The average player is perfectly capable in AC. There is a guy in my guild who is 65 years old and has a condition that leaves him in terrible pain most of the time. He is physically incapable of handling 10 skill keys so he clicks all of his skills. He still just does just fine in dungeons and is only missing Arah for his dungeon master title. If you cannot come close to matching even his level of play, I have no sympathy for you.

I really wanted to take torch for WvW reset…

Daeqar.8965:

Eliyahu.1467:

You’re being pretty thick. You have to balance WvW around all engagements, large and small.

You say people who are advocating for a stealth nerf are only pushing for balancing around a small scale. That is false. Nerfing stealth will only serve to help balance small engagements and will do nothing to unbalance large engagements. There is absolutely no con to nerfing stealth other then you and yours won’t be able to endlessly troll other players anymore.

You have all but acknowledged that stealth is overpowered in small engagements, but you have yet to present one legitimate reason why it should not be changed. The argument that WvW should be balanced exclusively around zerg v zerg with no consideration for small engagements is absolutely absurd. If one does not affect the other you can balance them separately, making your argument completely and utterly irrelevant.

The thief class is weak/limited with large engagements. It specializes in small engagements, and only because of stealth. If you make it even just mediocre in small engagements (which are largely inconsequential towards winning,) the entire class is weak and pointless for WvW.

There are plenty of thief builds out there that excel at small engagements that aren’t “perma-stealth” variants. If you believe a thief needs all of the stealth it has access to right now to be successful in small fights, you are mistaken. It’s one thing to be good in a small fight. It’s another thing to be able to invariably escape death when engaging 10 players.

Oh and as a note, I’m not opposed to thieves getting a simultaneous buff to their survivability/durability with a stealth nerf. I think the class needs a small redesign in that regard.

Straegen.2938:

Eliyahu.1467:

The reason why it’s not an issue in sPvP is because you can’t cap points while stealthed, which leads to poor objective control with a roaming class — not exactly the best combo.

A player cannot cap points in stealth now. The control point doesn’t tick while a player is in stealth and a player cannot damage anything while in stealth.

Eliyahu.1467:

As to Power/crit stacking, thief damage is not and has never been the problem. Thief damage is fine as is. The problem is stealth granting ridiculous survivability and sustain.

Huh? The biggest complaint on the forums about thieves is they hit like a truck and often cannot be seen when it happens. No class should be able to kill another in 1-2 seconds and certainly while never appearing. Culling addresses part of this but GC thieves stacking bloodlust and popping signets with 6k + mugs and 12k+ stabs is a real problem for a lot of players. This isn’t a problem in sPvP because of the soft caps. I am not saying WvW players should have the same soft cap but no single player should be two or three shotting other similarly geared/leveled players.

I’m not sure what you were trying to accomplish with the first response. You just reiterated exactly what I said.

To the second part: GC thieves are by far the easiest type of thief to deal with. One well timed dodge/block/evade/blind/invuln on your part and they’re screwed. Because they’re specced into damage it is much harder for them to stealth, get away, and reset the fight. Dodge and respond with your own damage combo and they’re dead.

I hate the fact that people complain about GC thieves on the forums, mainly because it detracts from the real issue: stealth.

oZii.2864:

Daeqar.8965:

When it comes to thieves in WvW, they are what is likely the best class at executing a losing strategy. That strategy being lonewolf PvP in a large scale gametype.

If you want to move around the field alone, quickly, and potentially pick off stragglers, I can’t think of anything better than a thief. This does have some niche value in WvW for things like murdering dolyaks at low personnel costs, but if even a disproportionate fraction of a server is running these lonewolf spec thieves, they will get absolutely destroyed in WvW by the server running a tight, unstoppable ball of team specs like hammer warriors, guardians, eles, necros, etc. that support each other and play together. If folks ditch the narcissistic attitudes, they would realize that thieves are actually a very limited value class when it comes to winning WvW. The game is called Guild Wars for a reason.

Pretty much the only opportunity a thief has for a useful role in that winning, tightly-knit teamplay is just for on-demand blast finishers with shortbow. (No permastealth or burst combos here.) Bring two shortbow thieves: role filled. Everyone else re-roll a more useful class or be a scout/dolyak-killer (better yet, let pugs do it) and miss out on all mega-bag drops.

Hit the nail on the head but people will come with a counter argument that nobody cares about the objectives in WvW and everyone is just looking for small team fights/1vX.

We need to balance WvW around 1vX and 5v5’s and solo roamers that is what matters in WvW according to this thread.

You’re being pretty thick. You have to balance WvW around all engagements, large and small.

You say people who are advocating for a stealth nerf are only pushing for balancing around a small scale. That is false. Nerfing stealth will only serve to help balance small engagements and will do nothing to unbalance large engagements. There is absolutely no con to nerfing stealth other then you and yours won’t be able to endlessly troll other players anymore.

You have all but acknowledged that stealth is overpowered in small engagements, but you have yet to present one legitimate reason why it should not be changed. The argument that WvW should be balanced exclusively around zerg v zerg with no consideration for small engagements is absolutely absurd. If one does not affect the other you can balance them separately, making your argument completely and utterly irrelevant.

Straegen.2938:

This has been said before several times, but stealth is not an issue at all in sPvP. The only reason it is a significant issue in WvW is culling (soon to be removed) and Power/Crit stacking. Put a soft cap on Power/Crit and suddenly super builds that have insane damage out of nowhere no longer exist.

The reason why it’s not an issue in sPvP is because you can’t cap points while stealthed, which leads to poor objective control with a roaming class — not exactly the best combo.

In WvW, the ability to cap points is not important as there’s almost always going to be other people with you when you’re taking an objective. Killing and disruption is a lot more important in WvW and you are free to stealth as often as you like.

As to Power/crit stacking, thief damage is not and has never been the problem. Thief damage is fine as is. The problem is stealth granting ridiculous survivability and sustain.

stobie.2134:

Eliyahu.1467:

Okay so I’m a tad bit confused with what people are complaining about influence wise.

A guild bounty unlock costs 30,000 influence or 60 gold and is a one time investment. After that it only take 200 influence to launch a guild mission.

Are smaller guilds really saying that they can’t scrape together 60 gold to do this in the worst case scenario?

It should be relatively simple for a small guild of <10 players to come up with that type of money. If you’re small then it should be easy to get everyone working towards that goal. If you find this too difficult then the problem isn’t with your size, it’s with your members not being active enough.

The problem for us isn’t the money – we can do that, & are already on it. (it would have been a lot nicer had this NOT been in the pvp category – but we can do it.) But once that’s unlocked, the bounty missions apparently require full raid-sized efforts.

The other problem is the increasingly negative attitude & behavior of large guilds. How can a smaller guild recruit when all benefit is now being part of a huge guild – and I mean really huge? A lot of people prefer small guilds – a lot of us have endured mega guilds in other mmos, & that was reason enough never to play one again. GW2 specifically presented itself as something different – a step away from raiding games, from gear-based games. And now where are we? Forced to join big guilds (because recruiting is no longer a likely option) or not do the content, or get the gear that really does make a difference.

This has nothing to do with working for unlocks, or wanting things handed to us. It has to do with preserving the quality of a game that wasn’t supposed to be another Warcraft. Now, maybe these Guild Missions are just a small fragment, designed to please the huge guilds who have been squeaking about something to do en masse. (though I think small guilds would have loved to have missions, too) If that’s the case, I’m sorry to hear it, because it seems to me that missions could easily have been designed to fit all sizes, & why we have to unlock a raid sized set first, I don’t know.

I’d like to hear if this really is their chosen direction. Are we seriously being aimed at joining a few huge guilds per server? They haven’t set up Guild Alliances, for instance, where linked guilds could benefit from the same mission. We can try to talk people into helping us, but that does defeat the purpose of doing things as a guild.

The real problem, it seems to me, is having the large guilds suddenly dwarf & overshadow small ones. A person might prefer a small guild, but realize there’s no chance of doing these missions – the easiest way to get the new gear. I personally wouldn’t choose this route for anything – I really, deeply despise large guilds, & given how unpleasant they’ve been here & in game, I’d much rather not play at all than join one. But a person who wants to do all the content & advance with gear will pick the large guild simply for that reason. That undercuts – or even negates – any sense of community, & is an awful step toward being just another WoW.

A small guild is perfectly capable of completing a tier 1 Guild Bounty. And guess what? All tiers of guild missions have the same personal rewards — the only difference is that the guild gets more merits which does not affect the individual players at all.

So if a player in a small guild wants Guild Commendations he definitely does not need to join a larger guild. If he wants his GW2 experiences to revolve around Guild Mission variety and frequency, then he would look for a larger guild.

bewhatever.2390:

Eliyahu.1467:

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

In this specific case, OP should have posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-guild-missions-opinions-concerns/first

Distinguishing the people who always whine, from a segment of players who’ve been disenfranchised or more likely messaged badly, from a real and game wide issue is a very difficult challenge for MMOs. If you read history books or textbooks on MMOs you’ll find that the normal life cycle of a MUD had the dungeon master ruin the game in response to a vocal minority.

At the same time, I have seen DAoC, RIFT, and to a lesser extent WoW attrit major segments of their player base because they didn’t listen to beta testers who said “scrap this expansion, don’t take it live”.

Separately, the issue of this thread is much larger than the most recent content. It is equally applicable to the release which brought us Fractals, and the release which reworked the dailies a month or so ago. My choice to create a separate thread is based in that broader concern. If you have read all 29 pages of the thread you mention, you will find I have posted several times, but those posts are specific to the topic of that thread.

Okay so your original post addresses player attrition, which you have no conclusive evidence of actually being problem. People naturally get bored with a game over time and so a player base will naturally shrink after launch. The game still has a very large very healthy player base regardless.

The examples you use were expansions that fundamentally changed the games and led to mass exoduses. We have seen nothing like in this game — neither in cause nor in symptom. You are attempting to explain a problem that does not exist.

Chuo.4238:

Eliyahu.1467:

Chuo.4238:

Ojimaru.8970:

But you don’t have concrete proof that these new content, which you include Shadow of the Mad King and Wintersday, alienated “significant groups” of players. All we have are sporadic outcry from vocal forum goers, with positive counterpoints. Are one side’s opinions more valid than the other?

You can kind of tell when the forums are just a low buzz of people QQ-ing over this or that, and when a large number of people are actually upset about something. There’s a difference.

I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet has their head in the sand over it, though. I bet they are still wondering why a large chunk of their playerbase left back in November…

The forums for every game released in recent years is full of pointless whining. The people that enjoy the game spend their time playing the game. The people who enjoy whining post on the forums.

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

I’d like to think that this is probably the reason why ArenaNet doesn’t seem to really listen to their customers. Good feedback is just drowned out in the general QQ.

But I think what’s really going on is they have some formula for how they think they’re going to maximize profits, and they’re trying to fit that square peg into the round hole of what would otherwise be a pretty good game.

So we wind up with poorly implemented gear grinds, content that divides up the playerbase (fractals/open world, big guild/small guild, and so forth), and funnels that push people towards certain areas of the game, away from others, and discourage people from “playing how they want”. It’s like they’re trying to please everyone, and that’s mostly just kitten everyone off.

Moreover, they just can’t seem to fix something without breaking 3 other things. Every major update has been bugged badly when it released; and they had to go into damage control mode to try and fix it.

And they just don’t seem to be in touch with the remaining fragmented community at all. Any given communication might be on 1 or 2 social media sites, but it’s never consistent and everywhere. When mega-threads start forming on their own forums, they either let them go ignored, or the moderators look for the one jerk who violated the ToS and use it as an excuse to shut the thread down.

All this tells me that they aren’t listening to anyone, really, and don’t want to. That certainly doesn’t endear them to me at all.

Who are you people, and what have you done with the wonderful ArenaNet of Guild Wars? This fan’s muti-year loyalty is about stretched as far as it can get, all in the course of a few months.

I see a massive disconnect in perception here.

From where I stand:

This is a good game. It has a great deal of room to improve and it certainly has its flaw, but it is a good game and it is fun.

Where you see a “poorly implemented gear grind” I see content in its infancy. They have said again and again that they will be adding new methods of obtaining ascended for varying playstyles. I have no doubt they will do that, but implementing that sort of thing takes time — something very few people on this forum seem to understand.

The reason why they don’t communicate more of what they’re doing behind the scenes is because it’s work in progress and subject to change. If they say they’re working on something and it doesn’t get released in exactly the form the fans thought it would they get called liar who don’t care about the community. Case in point: everything you’re complaining about.

And you are definitely looking back at GW1 with rose colored glasses as a lot of the people on these forums are apt to do. GW1 was far from perfect — the guru forums were always full of complaints. The community was also extremely fractured in GW1. Examples that readily spring into mind are that you could not get an HA or UW group without already being experienced and shoing it with your /rank or with UW tokens.

Okay so I’m a tad bit confused with what people are complaining about influence wise.

A guild bounty unlock costs 30,000 influence or 60 gold and is a one time investment. After that it only take 200 influence to launch a guild mission.

Are smaller guilds really saying that they can’t scrape together 60 gold to do this in the worst case scenario?

It should be relatively simple for a small guild of <10 players to come up with that type of money. If you’re small then it should be easy to get everyone working towards that goal. If you find this too difficult then the problem isn’t with your size, it’s with your members not being active enough.

Chuo.4238:

Ojimaru.8970:

But you don’t have concrete proof that these new content, which you include Shadow of the Mad King and Wintersday, alienated “significant groups” of players. All we have are sporadic outcry from vocal forum goers, with positive counterpoints. Are one side’s opinions more valid than the other?

You can kind of tell when the forums are just a low buzz of people QQ-ing over this or that, and when a large number of people are actually upset about something. There’s a difference.

I’m pretty sure that ArenaNet has their head in the sand over it, though. I bet they are still wondering why a large chunk of their playerbase left back in November…

The forums for every game released in recent years is full of pointless whining. The people that enjoy the game spend their time playing the game. The people who enjoy whining post on the forums.

The real tragedy is that the legitimate criticism gets totally drowned out by asinine complaining. I honestly wish the mods would do more thread mergers here. Far too many topics on the front page of these forums are all about the same topics because everyone who has a problem with something like dailies or guild missions feel like they need their own personal soapbox.

In this specific case, OP should have posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-guild-missions-opinions-concerns/first

The only excuse for failing on Simin before the update was if she bugged — which was a rare occurrence much like Lupicus bugging.

There was absolutely no requirement for a certain party make up — any combination of classes could do the fight. If you failed it was because your team couldn’t run sparks worth a kitten

http://i.imgur.com/iE0VjkP.jpg

You know what that is? That’s a Necro, an Ele, a Mesmer, and 2 Engineers downing Simin. The fight did not need a nerf in the least. It needed a bug fix for a rare bug, that’s it. The only other barrier to completing it was between the chair and keyboard.

Eliyahu
Profession: Mesmer/Warrior/Elementalist
Gear:
– Mesmer: Carries full sets of Berserker, Knights, and PVT gear
– Warrior: Carries full sets of Berserker/Knights and PVT gear.
– Elementalist: Knights/Berserker gear.
Traited: Shatter/Strife/Cantrips
Experience: Paths 1, 2, 3, 4 — all completed multiple times
Time: Late Night EST
Other: I prefer speed running Path 3 since that’s what Path 3 is good for :P . Willing to guide people through 1,2, and 4.

Go 20/20/0/0/30. Important Traits will be:
- Greatsword Training in Domination for fast greatsword skill recharge.
- Blade Training in Dueling for faster sword skill recharge.
- Deceptive Evasion in Dueling for clone production.
- Illusionary Persona in Illusions for shatters.

The Mesmer Greatsword is going to be vital to a farming build. Specifically the Phantasm which does not have a cap on its AoE targets and will allow you to tag all of the mobs it spins through.

Your secondary sources of AoE will be your shatters Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration.

For swap I would have Sword/focus. Blurred Frenzy will be your tertiary source of AoE.

And obviously full berserkers gear would be preferable.

uberkingkong.8041:

Yes I agree they are much more of a grind now.

Here is the list if anyone is wondering.

Daily Kill Varity (13 types of enemies)

Daily Underwater Slayer (25 enemies)

Daily Gatherer (20 things)

Personal Story Completer (1 story)

Daily Healer (10 rezes)

Mystic Forgesmith (10 items)

Keg Brawl Stealer (5 steals)

Group Event (2 events)

Daily Mist Invasion (10 kills)

Thats a hell of a lot of stuff to do compared to the PvP daily

3 Captures, 3 Matches played, 5 Kills, 1 Top Stat Awarded.

The PvP daily only takes a few minutes. You will get 3 captures in a single game, you will get 5 kills in a game, and top stat is very easy to get as well, just use the trebuchet or repair it or kill forest creature everytime he appears.

Now I wouldnt mind doing all that random wierd stuff, but theres A LOT of random wierd stuff to do, you made the daily list a lot longer than normal.

And just to be honest any idiot gamer will never figure out how to use the mystic forge because theres no guide telling you how to use it in game. They dont explain it as well as Diablo2 explains how to use the horadric cube.

Psst….You only have to do 5 of those not all of them.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I have ideas for Simin… like the one as follows if we keep the stealth mechanic and don’t change her much:
When she stealths, players have X seconds to get the 5 sparks to their slots around the statue. If she gets knocked out of stealth before that, she regains no health. If players fail the mechanic, she heals to full.

My god. I can taste the hypothetical tears of Arah P4 groups xD

Qahlel.3805:

Eliyahu.1467:

Qahlel.3805:

Eliyahu.1467:

Then don’t do the daily. No skin off my back.

You can’t be bothered for 10 minutes of your time, so don’t expect ANet to spend 1000s of man hours catering to your every whim at the expense of other players, princess.

If you’re going to make exaggerations, don’t expect anyone to take your post seriously.

Look princess, you clearly don’t understand what a dev team needs to do when developing a game. Updates to this game are not a simple process. It takes a lot of real people doing real work trying to make millions of players happy. The experience simply cannot be personally tailored to each and every princess in this game so that that princess will never have to do anything she finds boring. That, princess, would take quite literally 1000s of man hours.

Oddly enough I’ve worked on triple A titles and at present, am employed as a software developer. I know what this ‘real work’ consists of, because I live and breathe this industry everyday at work. Don’t try to lecture me on my own domain.

Secondly, your analogy is flawed as you seem to be under the impression these are my individualistic requirements. You’re halfway right! One half says that I, as a individual player of this game, should feel the game is fun. The other half, the point that I’m really getting at – is that a game should be generalized enough such that anyone can jump in and play as they like. My views are for diversity. I speak on behalf and from the point of view of the more casual gamers. In otherwords, when I use ‘I’ and ‘my views’, these are not the personal pronouns refering to the writer, but I as in the user in a ‘use case’. (Google if you don’t know what these are)

The whole model of GW2 was that it could kick the traditional MMO model that would require deep time commitment and investment before they could even do anything they’d like to do in the MMO. Which is why I feel that by making dailies more time consuming and RESTRICTIVE, it violates this vision.

They are neither more time consuming nor more restrictive. They are more flexible and more interesting.

Your view is that they should reduce dailies to a bland and generalized set of goals. Bland is bland, princess. Guess what? If you make this game bland everyone will not be able to “jump in and play as they like” because some people like specific goals in RPGs. It is an unreal goal to make a game for millions of players wherein no player will ever have to do anything they do not want to do.

What your argument basically break down to is “I feel like I’m not having fun in all of the game so ANet should change the game” and their catering specifically to my desires okay because all they have to do is make the game universally fun for everyone. That is impossible. Nothing is 100% satisfactory to all users. So do not presume to represent the interests of everyone. Additionally, do not feel entitled to be 100% satisfied with the game, because your 100% satisfaction is someone else’s less than 100%.

runeblade.7514:

Eliyahu.1467:

Are you serious?

Dailies are now “Pick any 5” instead of “Do exactly these 5.”

They’re less difficult now and more flexible.

Killing massive amounts of Air elementalists for 250 lodestone isn’t hard at all. It is long and boring. Just like Dailies.

Stop thinking Grind = difficulty because it is not.

Do you know what a non-sequitur is?

Volatility.6729:

Thank you for finally “fixing” Prestige as it should never have been a channeled ability.

Now if you could only lower the CD on it. Torch CD reduction trait is just completely not viable for the current builds that actually utilize a Torch. Alternatively, extend the stealth time.

Eh, I think the 30 sec CD is fine — the stealth was already good enough for people to take it in PvP/WvW before the buff. It would, in my opinion, border on OP if it was less.

Then again I believe that thief stealth is OP (specifically too much stealth, not anything else about the class; I think they’re fine for the most part).

Qahlel.3805:

Eliyahu.1467:

Then don’t do the daily. No skin off my back.

You can’t be bothered for 10 minutes of your time, so don’t expect ANet to spend 1000s of man hours catering to your every whim at the expense of other players, princess.

If you’re going to make exaggerations, don’t expect anyone to take your post seriously.

Look princess, you clearly don’t understand what a dev team needs to do when developing a game. Updates to this game are not a simple process. It takes a lot of real people doing real work trying to make millions of players happy. The experience simply cannot be personally tailored to each and every princess in this game so that that princess will never have to do anything she finds boring. That, princess, would take quite literally 1000s of man hours.

Qahlel.3805:

There are more options BUT they’re far more restrictive AND time-consuming.

1 – The ‘Kill 40x’ quests are ridiculous. Before you could kill whatever you want and play the game as you would like to play it. For me, I’d rack up these kills in the cursed shore where the loot and events are relevant to my level. But now, i’m forced to go to these zones to get 40-80 kills, all the time wondering, why am I sent here? Besides slogging it out for the daily quest, I have no real purpose here.

2 – 3x Skill Points – OK~ but this is still quite grindy, perhaps 1h30 of events to get this. This daily is ok for people still leveling but for casual 80 players, especially for those who have little time after coming home from work, are forced to do activities that give XP. Some activities in GW2 are more lucrative for XP than others, either way, this is time consuming.

3 – Daily Fractal – Wow, a forced dungeon. I don’t run this dungeon often, I don’t have the time. I actually join the dungeon my guildmates happen to be doing or, join a lower level dungeon with low level guild members. How about changing this to, do ANY DUNGEON OF YOUR CHOICE.

I know people are going to get all defensive here but the main reason why I’m playing this was because I was drawn by the notion that arenanet conveyed to me: to allow players to play the game as they want it.

At first I was like, oh cool, individualistic dailies. Maybe I can do dailies that I care about! But now it seems more like ‘here are some dailies that arenanet wants you to do in order to stimulate the market, get more player activity in instance X, etc etc’

Don’t underestimate the size of your casual market, time-consuming dailies are the exact opposite of what we want. The casual market is bigger than ever at this point in time, like it or not. Now, get this: Dailies that prove to be a chore IS NOT a selling point.
The dailies must be generalized enough such that they are applicable to every player and are gradually completed minute by minute by doing the stuff they’re interested in. Now this would be a feature I would be thrilled to tell my colleagues and friends about.

Example:
- Kill Any 50 monsters of your choice
- Make 10 PvP kills in a map of your choice
- Do a dungeon of your choice

The old dailies were like this, there was freedom in what you can do. And the time spent, as you would normally play, would eventually complete it. Now it’s more like, I have to do X number of activities I don’t care about ON TOP of what I’d normally want to do. I really don’t have the time and guess what, dailies become a chore and get BORING.

I’m not whining about making it easier (not like dailies should be based on difficulty anyway), i’m asking for dailies to be more relevant to any player’s daily play.

This is absurd. You are absurd.

You complain about lack of choice. There are 9 different dailies to choose from.

And you’re completely missing a central goal of dailies which is to give you an incentive to visit content that you don’t usually visit.

If you can’t spend 5 minutes in Ascalon or in Norn territory that’s your problem. The vast majority of us like having a reason to go back to these zones and explore content that we haven’t seen in a while or might have missed when we were leveling.

You only mention 4 daily options that you didn’t particularly like….Guess what? That leaves you 5 other ones for you to do. Even if you don’t like some of those just take 10 minutes to do them. Whoop dee kittenin doo.

Apparently you can get them form Guild Missions too, BUT they will take approximately the same amount of time…

They really need to back off the laurel/time limited currency.

Remedy.8051:

Actually. I’ve just restarted the client / tried testing further.

In pve, clones appear to spawn with the weapons.
In WvW, this does not appear to be the case (clones missing weapons).
My motivation to play sPvP is minimal – so someone else could verify there.

(Whether or not the player race/gender affects this – My mesmer is a female sylvari)

I might guess that this was a delibrate change in terms of WvW graphics / culling ‘optimisation’ – but if so, it’s a very big omission from the patch notes in my opinion.

You have got to be kidding me….

Are you serious?

Dailies are now “Pick any 5” instead of “Do exactly these 5.”

They’re less difficult now and more flexible.

Probably because the ones that need the most work….need the most work. Give them some time.

No Pew Pew?!!!

This is an OUTRAGE!!!

(Seriously, the pew pew sound was iconic and the main reason anyone got the rifle. Change it back!)

inb4 “omg ANet it’s not fixed at all!!!!”

I really hope they didn’t make the fight trivial.

Moxic.5892:

@Eliyaho – I don’t know what to say, as we seem to have very different experiences in dealing with thieves. Maybe you’re not shattering enough? Illusionary persona also gives an extra shatter, and you can do 7+ shatter combos pretty kitten quick, so they might clear conditions once, but rarely twice within the span of a couple seconds.

If you do a 7+ shatter combo they only need to clear conditions once to get rid on the confusion — then your only additional source of confusion is your daze shatter. Not to mention confusion will barely hurt a stealth spamming thief especially when you’re not running +condition damage. Stealth thieves are all about initiative management and waiting out the duration of their stealth before attacking again. In no situation will they be spamming skills if they’re being played properly.

You seem to think 1 shatter combo is enough to down stealth spamming thieves sans any sort of reliable burst from your weapons. I don’t see how this is possible. Not even full berserkers will deal 19k damage from Mind Wrack and Cry of Frustration alone.

GummiBear.2756:

Eliyahu.1467:

GS + Staff for a while in WvW using either 20/20/0/0/30 or 10/20/0/10/30. It’s pretty good except for the part where stealth spamming thieves eat your face :/

Stealth is essentially a complete immunity to single target attacks, which is entirely what a GS/Staff set up is. In the end, not being able to deal with stealth spamming thieves was too big of a problem in WvW, considering they are everywhere.

I find sword/(any offhand) necessary for fighting thieves. The immobilize, invulnerability, and offhand utility (stun/pull/stealth/block) is invaluable.

ehmm put a chaos storm under yourself for the block if you know a thief is around in stealth as just one simple solution, staff gives a LOT of good tools tbh against stealth thieves

Oh sure, you can play defensively for a while but that thief’s health pool is never going to drop and he is most certainly not going to die.

Moxic.5892:

I use this setup with 0/20/20/0/30, and it works great in wvw. The trick with thieves is to use shatters liberally since they are aoe and (in my build) inflict confusion, which means every time they stealth they are just killing themselves. I’ve killed countless thieves this way, though you usually have to look around a bit before you find them on the ground to finish them off. Also, the GS5 knock back is great for knocking thieves out of their shadow refuge, not to mention knocking people off cliffs. With illusionary persona, staff 2, and blink, thieves shouldn’t really be a problem. Runes of Air can help too, due to the 20% lightning strike, and the speed is very nice to boot.

I don’t know what you’re talking about as far as Confusion on stealth thieves. A] they’ll just remove confusion in stealth because they’ve traited for it or B] they’ll simply wait in stealth for the majority of the duration.

Plus, the main stealth thief builds run valkyrie gear (D/D) or carrion gear (P/D) giving enough survivability to survive a round of shatters — if the shatters hit at all, which is difficult to guarantee with no hard cc or immobilize readily available.

And I’ll reiterate my point earlier that all of the damage in the build (outside of shatters) is single target which cannot hit stealthed targets — including phantasm summoning (if your target stealths while you are summoning, you will not summon the phantasm).

The end result is that while you have a decent bit of survivability, the thief will always outlast you in a fight.

IamDuddits.1692:

Eliyahu.1467:

When someone asks to bring a lowbie to a lowbie dungeon, I look at the only heuristic this game has allowed me to develop: Achievement Points.

If you have >2k achievement points then I’m pretty confident you’ll do okay. >3k and I’m pretty sure you know what you’re doing. 4k or 5k is essentially a free pass to bring whatever you want.

<2k and I’ll definitely waffle a bit. If it’s not my guildie or personal friend, it is really bothersome to go through the process of making sure all their gear is level appropriate, ask them whether they’ve done the any dungeons before, make sure they haven’t made any other newbie mistakes in gearing or build, and take it on faith that they’ll be a team player and listen to instructions.

I’m usually not too picky when it comes to who is in my group, but are Achievement points are a pretty decent indicator or is it still a leap of faith? I’ve only ever really run AC, but I don’t think I’ve ever had such awful runs that I’d segregate all non-80s from future groups.

It’s definitely not incredibly reliable, but high achievement points generally means this guy has an alt or alts that he’s relatively experienced with. That player could easily be awful at dungeons anyway and a newer player can definitely be more than competent in AC but those scenarios are less likely.

I’ve had some pretty awful people in AC groups on the level of dying to everything and being completely unable to run past mobs thus forcing the rest of the group to clear everything just for their sole benefit.

I take dungeon newbies from my guild on runs all the time where I spell everything out for them on TeamSpeak, but when I’m pugging it up I simply do not have the time or patience to hold someone’s hand through the instance.

When someone asks to bring a lowbie to a lowbie dungeon, I look at the only heuristic this game has allowed me to develop: Achievement Points.

If you have >2k achievement points then I’m pretty confident you’ll do okay. >3k and I’m pretty sure you know what you’re doing. 4k or 5k is essentially a free pass to bring whatever you want.

<2k and I’ll definitely waffle a bit. If it’s not my guildie or personal friend, it is really bothersome to go through the process of making sure all their gear is level appropriate, ask them whether they’ve done the any dungeons before, make sure they haven’t made any other newbie mistakes in gearing or build, and take it on faith that they’ll be a team player and listen to instructions.

CoE is a clinic in proper dodge skill. If you are dying to Alpha, you need to learn to dodge better — this means timing and conserving dodges.

When you do this path with players that have a good grasp on the dodge mechanic and endurance management, it’s pathetically easy.

GS + Staff for a while in WvW using either 20/20/0/0/30 or 10/20/0/10/30. It’s pretty good except for the part where stealth spamming thieves eat your face :/

Stealth is essentially a complete immunity to single target attacks, which is entirely what a GS/Staff set up is. In the end, not being able to deal with stealth spamming thieves was too big of a problem in WvW, considering they are everywhere.

I find sword/(any offhand) necessary for fighting thieves. The immobilize, invulnerability, and offhand utility (stun/pull/stealth/block) is invaluable.