Guild Wars 2

Jski.6180:

Brutal Arts.6307:

How truly awful.

Why?

A 10% reduction in the output of Zerker builds will not make people more likely to use support builds (healing power/toughness/vitality are still bad stats that promote bad play).

It’s just going to make already tedious encounter 10% slower.

anyone else have any thought? Got some pretty decent discussion going on reddit. Lot’s of support for the idea but concern about the effect on PvP/WvW and how difficult it would be to overhall so many skills.

Lately we’ve had quite a lot of discussion about the Berserker meta. One of the main arguments against reducing the effectiveness of Berserker stats are that other stats are simply not useful: builds do not lose out on active defenses by speccing for damage and defensive stats tend to promote bad play because there is more reliance on passive stats and less need to learn encounters and play skillfully.

An interesting thought would be to tie the effectiveness of weapon skills and utilities to stats more heavily. Non-boon support/utility skills (like blocks, walls and knockdowns) don’t scale in duration/effectiveness (except for specific trait/rune modifiers). What if the duration of skills scaled based on your toughness? Say Shield Stance was not fixed in duration but instead scaled 2..6 seconds based on the toughness stat. Obviously this would not be a solution implemented by itself but I think it could be a useful complement to other changes. It would provide an incentive (along with a redesigned defiance) to use defensive stats in combination with damage pieces to meet breakpoints and reach specific stat levels (instead of running all equipment from one set of stats). It would also promote using defensive stats to improve play instead of relying on them as a passive stat crutch to make up for bad play.

CMstorm.8679:

25% hp isn’t that much. But I see how it can be a little problematic for condi-spammers…

The biggest issue isn’t in team fights, it’s that engis are often far point assaulters fighting lots of 1v1s. If they come across any condi-spec in 1v1 it’s pretty much a guaranteed win for the engi (or at worst a stalemate)

Any trait that can provide a 100% uptime while under 25% hard counter to conditions is inherently overpowered. It provides complete immunity to a large chuink specs and is a 100% passive ability (no skill play). I propose two changes to allow at least some counterplay

1) Condition durations are reduced for while below the health threshold. Health threshold: 25%, Duration decreased: 100%, 6s duration, 10s recharge.
2)Condition durations are reduced for while below the health threshold. Health threshold: 50%, Duration decreased: 50%

These changes both prevent engineers from having an automatic “I-win” button hard counter while pushing far point against condi builds while still providing very useful + powerful condi defense. Cheers.

The question of loot was brought up on reddit:

EmporerPenguin

They could try to fix this by working on the loot tables and removing “lootless” mobs… I was in Arah the other day with an awesome group with some ridiculous DPS, so I decided to just kill everything. (This was path 3 from the first boss to the second) the mobs didn’t drop anything…
In GW1 you would farm the dungeons. Here? Forget farming, it could be exploiting if the mobs decided to drop some good loot.

Here’s my response:

I don’t think loot is the issue…it’s the challenge of the dungeon. Linear sequencing in dungeons necessitates that the group always stay together, and that tends to develop a single tactical doctrine which you just run over and over each time you do the dungeon. By having simultaneous objectives that were handled by splits in GW1, individual bars had to be flexible enough to take care of completing an area outside your pre-run area of responsibility in case someone failed. No one run was ever exactly the same and there was always room to do some other area if you got bored of one. Been doing T3 too much in UW? No worries, go play T2 or T4 for a while and see an entirely different set of content. It kept things from getting stale.

Just giving more loot to trash mobs in existing dungeons doesn’t really change the problem of dungeons getting stale because each path follows the same routine every time through due to sequential gating.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

This is not true, you can go under the map, over the map and through the map!

I get that this is tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, but even those techniques are just efforts to break out of the imposed linearity. What I think we should be looking for is a dungeon in which linearity is removed: none or very few of the objectives require any other objective to be completed before they can be started and the failure of any objective results in the failure of the run.

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the linearity of dungeons in GW1 compared to GW2. These thoughts were sparked by discussion on new rules for record runs of dungeons in GW2 and I thought it would useful to discuss the issues involved in the way dungeons in GW2 are completely linear.

Here’s what I mean by linear: dungeons in GW2 are effectively giant tubes with gates in sequence. To unlock each gate in the chain you must complete an objective (usually killing a boss or group of trash mobs). This means that the best/most efficient way to beat a dungeon is to run to each boss in the sequence and kill it while ignoring everything else in the dungeon that must not absolutely be killed. Tactics become very uniform and are not difficult for most players to master. IMHO this is the biggest issue facing the endgame in GW2.

Compare to GW1 endgame (UW/FoW/DoA) which were completely nonlinear: You basically just had a medium sized map with ~10 objectives that needed to be completed to successfully finish the run (and failure of any one of those events would fail the run). Now almost none of these events depended on one another so there was a massive variety of tactics that could be employed. If you weren’t particularly good at the game you could take the slow-and-easy(-ish) way and complete each objective sequentially. If you had a group of more talented players you could split up into smaller groups (or even solos and duos!) to complete objectives (designed for full teams) simultaenously for a fast run!

Because there was no sequencing involved, there were many, many options for completing the dungeon and the non-linearity opened up a massive number of advanced tactics. By offering players the ability to complete objectives out of sequence, the game suddenly has the option to be much, much more difficult. If you want to go for the fastest time possible, you can have each party member attempt to solo an objective meant to be completed by a whole team and the success or failure o the run is suddenly much more dependent on the technical proficiency of each player in the run. It provided a challenge that kept people playing the same content (happily!) for literally years because there was almost always a more advanced tactic to master.

IMHO that’s the kind of dungeon Anet needs to develop. One that truly tests individual technical ability and actually allows the best players to gain an advantage by employing advanced tactics. A linear dungeon just doesn’t allow that. So let’s hear your ideas. What do you think of developers adding non-linear dungeons to GW2? What’re the pros/cons? What’re your ideas for bosses/mechanics/trash groups that would be interesting for non-linear dungeons and would prompt players to employ advanced tactics?

Gotten 3 skins and 12 rings (7 infused) in my last 20 runs. You just have bad RNG i guess?

Wethospu.6437:

Fair enough. More dungeons like this or is this the only one?

Either way, what do you think will happen next? People copy your tactic and all runs end up “withing several seconds”.

Similar stuff can be done in all of the arah paths as well as a few paths of TA, CM, CoE. Ideally there’d be a bunch of creative tactics designed to try and improve on people’s times. Each meta would shake things up though and a perfect time probably wouldn’t be reached before game changes make you have to adapt. At least that’s what usually happened in GW1

Wethospu.6437:

I would like hear an example of these amazing splits.

2-2-1 split in Arah p2 can have alphard WP prepped + Belka + Abom finished all within the first 4 minutes of the run. WP back to kill Lupi->WP to alphard->finish run sub 9 minutes. Wouldn’t be possible with a linear run

mahariel.4981:

If we ever require more damage mitigation, first thing I’m trying is blast finishers on water fields.

GX+Axe/wh new warrior meta!

GS? You cray? Gotta be Hammer/Longbow for those controls + ranged blasts/immob. Jeeeeezzzz

Wethospu.6437:

That’s why there are going to be two categories.

Errant Venture.9371:

Wethospu.6437:

That’s why there are going to be two categories.

We don’t even have the community to support one set of rules for records at the moment. What makes you think that introducing more categories of records will do anything but splinter/confuse the record community even more?

So we should just keep exactly same system as before? And somehow expect different results?

Also feel free to explain how map exploits make it more skillful. All I know just skip encounters reducing amount of skill required.

If you still require that all bosses/objectives then the only advantage to door sticks is that they allow you to split off 1-2 players so you can complete multiple objectives simultaneously. I’d argue that completing bosses/objectives with fewer players than those bosses/objectives were designed for is much more difficult than following the standard linear path designed for the dungeon.

Regarding your first question: I guess I’m sort of playing devil’s advocate. I don’t think records have much meaning at all for full-team parties in GW2 because the dungeons aren’t difficult enough to warrant it.

Wethospu.6437:

That’s why there are going to be two categories.

We don’t even have the community to support one set of rules for records at the moment. What makes you think that introducing more categories of records will do anything but splinter/confuse the record community even more?

Key points from my skype convo with cookie last night:

Errant:

GW2 dungeons are so linear + easy that if you insist on no door skips

the limiting factor on record runs will be

how long it takes to run between each boss

not your personal skill level

and it’ll be pretty easy for everyone to obtain roughly the same times

That’s the big problem with trying to impose “no exploits” rules. GW2 dungeons are relatively easy and unlike GW1 dungeons, they’re completely linear. Most boss encounters are not difficult. If you do not allow door skips there will be no room for duo/single splits which are the only real difficult part of record runs in GW2.

Every record run will turn into a race to see who can run through trash from boss to boss the fastest and that will put a hard limit on how fast the dungeon can be completed (without hacking there’s a hard limit on how fast a character can travel). Because bosses are so easy to kill, it will be this time running between bosses that decides the records not technical skill or creative tactics and it will be relatively easy for anyone to reach the record time.

That’s just boring to me.

If Anet ever introduces dungeons like UW/FoW/DoA this would be a completely different story. Endgame areas in GW1 weren’t linear: they werre essentially a medium-sized map with 10+ objectives that must be completed to finish the dungeon. Very few of these objectives were dependent on each other and most could be completed simultaneously: this creates a scenario where teams can split into groups of 1-2 and use creative tactics to attempt to complete tasks designed for an entire group of 8 in order to achieve a very fast time. This was a true measure of technical skill and made records meaningful. Even getting close to a record time was very hard.

Until non-linear dungeons are introduced in GW2, I don’t see a purpose for records, except possibly for the case of solos/duos.

DougNotDougie.3590:

A lot of people sell spots right before the final boss in Arah. Its very annoying, a lot of the time people will kick you just to sell the spot. Does A-net explicitly allow this or is it just unknown?

Screenshot your party before you start each pug…kicking someone to sell a run is a bannable offense (and kicking happens a lot more rarely than a lot of people claims)

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Maps: No going outside the map, jumping puzzles, or bypassing closed doors. If a boss is skippable through “normal” gameplay it is optional. example would be the champ in TAF before the bubble room. You can pass him and continue on without fighting. A non-optional boss is the Mage Crusher in Arah p3.

This is the only real problem I have. Dungeons in GW2 are so linear + gated that if you remove the ability to go outside that linear gating pretty much everyone is forced into the same (or extraordinarily similar) tactics with little room for innovation. There’s no room for creative splits and records just turn into a DPS race: who can run to each boss in succession and kill it the quickest.

Dunno, creative tactics + splits were what made records meaningful to me in GW1. They’re not really possible in GW2 without going outside the map because dfungeons are so much more linear than UW/FoW/DoA were.

That’s the biggest reason why record runs don’t make much sense in GW2. Dungeons have such linear goals that (unless you go outside the maps to do solo/duo splits) any record is just a DPS race and not a measure of how creative + technically skilled players are

tl;dr I think door skips should be allowed as long as you kill every boss/complete every objective required for dungeon completion. Otherwise records devolve into a contest of “who can skip trash and burn bosses the fastest while waiting for gates” and there is no room for solo/duo tactical splits which are—imho—the true measure of technical player skill

Alex.5349:

I vote for luck increasing the chance to increase the amount of Glory gained from everything you do in PvP.
For example capturing a point gives you 10 Glory. With Luck, you can get some extra

Note that I only mean Glory, not Rank points.

Glory is being removed from the game

Lachanche.6859:

Errant Venture.9371:

Lachanche.6859:

Naetell.3815:

This reminds me of Nietzsche’s writings.

“Why should one live? All is vain!”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

How the kitten do you pronounce Nietzsche

NEE-chuh

I’m not sure, that sounds way too chinese for a german dude

Let me google that for you

Josh Davis.6015:

It would be in your benefit to salvage the items from the chests for luck.

The stuff in chests has a massively lower chance of giving luck than PvE items (which can be farmed at an absurdly faster rate)

Lachanche.6859:

Naetell.3815:

This reminds me of Nietzsche’s writings.

“Why should one live? All is vain!”
-Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

How the kitten do you pronounce Nietzsche

NEE-chuh

Can we PLEASE get a response on whether this is intended or a bug?

r40 main mes but experience bunkering home point with ele/engi/war/ranger as well
Definitely down to pug some team queue

The equations that calculated rank in GW1 were completely transparent

The game used a simple yet robust Elo system to calculate ladder standing. The equations that calculate the rating + rank change after each match were known publicly.

I get that Anet decided to switch from Elo to Glicko for GW2, and while I disagree with that choice I can understand it. What I don’t get is why the PvP team won’t publish the equations used to calculate rank.

This would clarify so many things and help the playerbase understand exactly why the leaderboard is so volatile. Right now a single match can catapult you hundreds of ranks up and down the ladder. A player who goes 10-20 can often outrank a player who goes 20-10. And the players don’t understand why this happens because no one outside Arenanet can understand how the leaderboard calculates positions (other than in the most vague, qualitative terms)

Please publish—or at least become more transparent with—the equations used to calculate rank-change-per-match and MMR!

uberkingkong.8041:

Silentshoes.1805:

The leaderboards ranking is dependent on the MMR rating of the people you play against. It’s not about how many you won or lost. It’s about WHO you won against, or lost against that counts.

What this guy said.

So just quit playing against newbies and play matches against top tiered people.
You can have a 50-2 but still be ranked worse than someone who is 10-20 because that person played against experts and not newbies.

How’re you supposed to control who the yolo queue matches you up against?

There’s far to much voltatility in this dumb as kitten Glicko-2 system, I don’t understand why they didn’t keep using the incredibly simple + robust Elo + k-value ranking system from GW1

Edit: here is the link to how the GW1 Elo system worked. You know, the one that was very simple, accounted for high ranked players facing low ranked players, and had a completely transparent equation so you always knew exactly what was going on and how your rank was being calculated.

uberkingkong.8041:

Kugron.5128:

I’d personally like an explanation as to why when I win 4-5 matches in a row that I fall 20-30 spots in the leaderboard. Seriously how is this even possible?

You need to start playing against experts instead of newbies. It goes of mmr, if you keep playing against newbies you wont go anywhere.

MMR and leaderboard rank are completely unrelated to one another, and we’ve got about a half dozen red posts confirming that. We have no information at all about how leaderboard calculations + decay are performed

GW2 doesn’t use elo. The leaderboard standings are claculated using a modified version of Glicko-2 and the rankings it produce are completely incomp-rehensible to players (in part because Anet refuses to disclose the actual calculations used for the establishing rank)

I’ve never really understood why they didn’t just use the simple, ihghly effective Elo ladder system that worked for 8+ years in GW1

piffdaddy.8014:

Now that you have posted this on the forums, the price will rapidly drop. Anet may even decide to NERF it. GG, next time keep quiet about things like this.

Price has been holding steady for 24hrs and it takes all of about 30 minutes to dump all of your glory

Obviously the extra supply is plenty to keep up with demand

Yeah…what do thieves have left?

Permastealth → nerfed
S/D evadespam→ nerfed
S/P Pistol whip → nerfed
D/P condis → Can’t hold a point, useless in teamfights

Thieves are only effective against full-glass casuals who don’t know how to counter their very simple mechanics.

Price is still holding steady above 2s, very cool.

If you’re looking to turn your glory into gold, now is the time. Giant Wintersday Gifts are selling on the TP for between 2s and 2s50 right now, and they move FAST.

Each stack sells for over 5g and you can buy 10 gifts for 200 glory.

I turned ~520k of Glory into 504 in a little over an hour. GG.

Vena.8436:

Why is a trait that counters an idiotic top-heavy min/max build that could kill by auto-attack stacking conditions…. a bad thing? Min/maxed builds and specs will always get “hard” countered because they are completely one dimensional in damage.

QFE

Bhawb.7408:

Errant Venture.9371:

Well I mean the ideal option would be to remove bleeding, burning, the damage portion of poison, torment, minions, spirits, phantasms (clones can stay, they’re actual active play), and all proc-on-crit/hit/anything traits.

Until then I’ll settle for hard counters for these aspects of the game, even if they’re 100% passive (like this kittenty trait)

They’ve been working pretty hard to remove the Necromancer class from the game, so half of that is coming true for you.

Unfortunately, judging by the new heal, Phantasms are here to stay.

I think you underestimate how effective power necros can be (wells win games when the well is the size of a cap point and can make res attempts explode 3+ people, and 4k heat-seeking DS auto attacks from 1200 range are lolwut strong).

It’s just that unlike crazy OP bunker condimancer you have to be hyperaware of your positioning.

Distaste.4801:

UltraHiDef.4809:

Stop spamming conditions with your damageless bunker condition build and you can win. It’s not like bringing elementalist down from 100% to 90% is impossible.
Stop whining, and learn to adapt.

You’ve missed the point entirely. A condition build simply doesn’t have the damage to keep an elementalist below 90% health. That means either a hybrid or power build is then neccessary. The problem is that the best condition weapons are terrible at direct damage, if you swap out a decent power weapon then you’ve lost some of your conditions. If you’re going to go full power build then you might as well pick a class that does it better.

That’s the problem, in order to adapt to this you toss the necromancer away so it’s not even adapting. I think necros need to get a trait now that reduces all direct damage to 1 when above 90% health and we can see how the other classes “adapt”.

Eliminating 100% condition/bunker specs from the game is a necessary step to making the game competitive. Auto-attacking to stack passive conditions is not good for the game.

Forcing players to go hybrid or sacrifice their bunker for power in condi specs is absolutely what the game needs.

Bhawb.7408:

Errant Venture.9371:

Hopefully a hard counter for spirit rangers, minions, and phantasms.

We’d be well on our way back towards removing AI + passive play and re-establishing a power-vs-bunker meta where this game truly shines

Nothing more active than being immune to entire builds by equipping a trait. Yessiree, that there is some good ol’ active skillful play.

Well I mean the ideal option would be to remove bleeding, burning, the damage portion of poison, torment, minions, spirits, phantasms (clones can stay, they’re actual active play), and all proc-on-crit/hit/anything traits.

Until then I’ll settle for hard counters for these aspects of the game, even if they’re 100% passive (like this kittenty trait)

Osi.3504:

Errant Venture.9371:

If you’re just playing PvP for the achievement points then you don’t really belong in PvP at all…

Here we are trying to create a competitive environment and we’re getting dragged down by PvE players who need to farm their AP so they can brandish their big fat farm score to other farmers

How about this: take ALL of the achievements out of PvP so we don’t have lousy PvE players joining tournament matches to make their PvE score go pewpewpew

I guess you are talking to the general population of PvE players, I play PvE/WvW 1000x more than PvP but still am a top ranker in PvP or was before the ladder was reset. Not all PvE players are “bad” in PvP.

Note the bit where I talk about getting rid of the lousy PvE players who’re only playing PvP (lousily) for the AP? Yeah? Guess not.

WereDragon.6083:

Alot of people are bringing their spite for condition necro’s into this. But look at the big picture, instead of bringing a spec in line with everyone else, they gave another class a complete hard counter to deter it. Who’s next after this?

Hopefully a hard counter for spirit rangers, minions, and phantasms.

We’d be well on our way back towards removing AI + passive play and re-establishing a power-vs-bunker meta where this game truly shines

f you’re just playing PvP for the achievement points then you don’t really belong in PvP at all…

Here we are trying to create a competitive environment and we’re getting dragged down by PvE players who need to farm their AP so they can brandish their big fat farm score to other farmers

How about this: take ALL of the achievements out of PvP so we don’t have lousy PvE players joining tournament matches to make their PvE score go pewpewpew

If you’re just playing PvP for the achievement points then you don’t really belong in PvP at all…

Here we are trying to create a competitive environment and we’re getting dragged down by PvE players who need to farm their AP so they can brandish their big fat farm score to other farmers

How about this: take ALL of the achievements out of PvP so we don’t have lousy PvE players joining tournament matches to make their PvE score go pewpewpew

winner winner chicken dinner

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

… Look at the screenshot again. HE IS USING THE PISTOL!

Like I said…THAT is a visibility bug that comes from having the weapon equipped while queueing from PvE

The code is datamined. You think it’s possible that, knowing the visual bug happens, this guy went and found the code for the item that’s not ingame yet? Durrrrrr.

Harbinger.8637:

syndicates.9826:

sirflamesword.3896:

Paponzi.1637:

seanpenn.7364:

its clearly not just a bug, the guy pinged the actual wep…
More like an exploit.

[&AgErwAAA]

Did you even look at the screenshot?

There are leaked codes for PVP Legendary skins fyi which will show up as [PvP <name>]

The code wouldn’t have the sigil on it.

If you understand hexadecimal it’s trivial to change weapon chat codes to have the sigil included.

All this guy (or one of his friends) did was pull the chat code for the new pvp legendaries out of the .dat (which is not particularly hard to do)

The problem isn’t that you get 4v5s with players LEAVING matches. 4v5s happen one one player siimply goes afk (i had a match yesterday where our engineer sat in the starting area for the entire match w/o moving, and never got kicked)

The most frustrating thing is that temples and a few other world events are the only practical way to get Dragonite Ore and 3/5 of bugged on TC/JQ/SOR/BG (the 4 biggest NA servers)

Diabolus Anur Kaya.8379:

the only temples that can be accomplished on TC are Grenth and Balthazar…..

and it has been this way for a few weeks now

I am calling BS on anet… this is disgraceful and shouldn’t happen. Fix the problems before you release new content

Lyssa is bugged too? O_o how’d that happen?

Can we please get an acknowledgement that the bug team is aware of this and working on it?

Having a world event impossible to complete on 3/4 of servers is pretty unacceptable =\

Josh Davis.6015:

Team Arena will provide the most gold, followed by Solo Queue, followed by hotjoin.

I believe we’ll be giving specific numbers on Friday’s livestream.

The numbers will need to be significantly more than solo queue to entice people to form pugs and play team queue.

Jax.5261:

Do we get the gold for the time we invested?
Since our rewards are being removed from the game we may as well. Going by 3k+ hours played and you can farm what 10g an hour in pve? Let’s say I was playing 2k hours of that continuously that’s 20,000 gold.

So I will effectively be behind pve players in pvp rewards because of this new gold bs. UNLESS I’m compensated for the rewards they’re removing. Or are we being screwed over again?

Glopry is going to be convertable into gold. That’s your reward.

So new rewards schemes are great and all, but where are the changes to remove the petting zoo and proc culture? Until you fix proc effects and the effectiveness of AI builds (specifically the ability for phantasms, minions, ogre runes, and pets to do significant amounts of damage while having massive health sponges) PvP is going to be pointless.

A rewards system for PvP won’t matter unless you make PvP a system where the best players are rewarded. All AI (other than mesmer clones and ranger pets) need to be disabled or completely removed from tournament PvP.

As per the title. Temple of Dwayna meta events stall out at the quest “Beat up Malchor” and get stuck until the server resets. The event is currently bugged on half of the NA servers. SoR, BG, JQ, and TC haven’t been able to complete these meta events for nearly a month now. Fix it.