Guild Wars 2

Me and my dungeon party did all the dungeons on lower levels (In blue/green some under leveled gear) just fine during the first month learning all the tactics ourselves. It’s just an elitist trend where unless you have full exotics lvl 80 gear it somehow makes you less skilled even though I’ve seen more level 80’s fail at dungeons than level appropriate people because they tend to listen to instructions or are on an alt with dungeon experience.

Not to mention there is actual communication in stead of dead silence and no rush and skip all the content. It’s why I tend to specifically ask for lower levels and new people to help them out and point out that I’m not skipping content.

I loved the encounter just moments ago on Deso borderlands where we fought Elona in Arah’s Hope and just as we started to retreat because they outnumber us Arbor came in and we fought Elona on our hill on one side and Arbor on the opposite hillside, essentially sandwiching Elona on the pathway beneath us raining AOE down on them. Love these kind of three-way fights that I’ve seen a lot of this week (Even when we are the unfortunate side)!

KratosAngel.7289:

Actually I think you’ve misread the whole thread.
The point was not to nerf it but to modify it.
The option to grant heal on use and not after channel would be a great buff, that’s why we had to provide ideas for slight compensation not to make it OP.
I think there were great ideas such as :
- Reduce heal between 1k and 1k8
- Mini CD of 2-3 sec for all mantras (not to spam as hell to get full health again)

It should be ok with both nerfs and this buff imo (see OP for reasons)

I see that as a nerf to be honest, It works quite nicely the way it is. Reducing heals and adding more CD would make using mantras awkward again like before with the longer cast time. It’s a big change to get used to using mantras from a mesmers usual playstyle and like you I struggled to get used to it initially but once I got the hang of it I quite enjoy it, just got to get used to the rhythm and timing of the different playstyle it also feels strange not being able to dodge as much as a Mesmer being normally so mobile, just gotta play smart.

The cast time actually can be quite useful. If you’re in ranged you can use the time to run to melee range to heal people there while casting the mantra so you don’t waste time since you would’ve had to run there anyway before swapping to melee and then casting another mantra while blinking to ranged if you’re taking damage healing yourself and anyone in ranged.

You can pop in and out of combat that way while casting mantras in between those times. You do end up feeling like you’re running after people a lot because no matter how many times I tell them they still run away from me at times rather than towards but yes the cast time gives people a chance to run towards you as well as they can see a heal incoming. People are starting to learn to see me as a healing turret

Welcome to the master club I gotten mine quite a while ago (see signature) it’s a nice feeling to have achieved all that Well done!

It’s a shame you did it with PuGs, it was far more challenging but also more fun to come up with tactics yourself because they simply weren’t around in the first month of the game. With lower level characters and blue/green underleveled gear. So much fun I miss that time when it was all new and people didn’t skip everything.

Leo G.4501:

So when does the voting start?

I think the general vote is that we all win because asura are all cute!

Have you fought Lupicus or Subject Alpha? They are definitely not tank’n’spank and require a lot more practice/skill than the storymode zhaitan encounter. The world bosses are all just zerg/lag encounters. It’s explorable dungeons that are the more challenging ones (not including fractals). Especially if you go in with a group who hasn’t done it before and if you don’t know the tactics.

I use a mantra power/heal build where I use Mantra of pain to do damage while using my weapon attacks and between that I channel mantra of pain to heal. Overall I do more damage now than I did not using the mantra at all with the added benefit of healing when it’s needed.

I essentially can swap between healing machine to dps/control really easily. It’s almost like having three sets of weapons rather than 2 + utility. The mantras feel like a weapon in and of itself. Yet you can use both at the same time (can be quite a challenge!).

4x default heal, 1x mantra of pain every 5/6 seconds + bonus one if mantra of resolve runs out. That’s 6 heals that you can chain of each other, 3 of which affect party members also.

I use the 3x mantra trait for domination line so it balances the mantras usefulness with healing effectiveness now quite nicely with the reduced cast time.

30/20/0/20/0

I found that with the reduced cast time it’s actually viable and quite fun when you get the hang of it.

With good timing it has saved myself and my party members quite a fair few times. So no I don’t think it needs reworking other than a better explanation on the tooltip/wiki and maybe a better radius indicator, It can be tricky to guess.

It’s especially amazing with those few encounters where you can stack up, I would say you become on par with a guardian at that point in regards to pure healing power, if not more so when it comes to sustained healing (Great for WvW as well).

Reducing the healing is a bad idea you might as well return the long cast time then. The cast time also gives the enemy a chance to interrupt it to balance out the way mantras can be used no matter what. I think it makes sense. I also don’t think it should be moved to a grandmaster trait because mesmers are meant to be a versatile not super specialized in any one thing.

Don’t suggest nerfing a build when it’s finally a viable option…If they nerf it then they might as well get rid of mantras all together. Barely anyone was using such builds before the cast time reduction because it didn’t work.

Reducing the heal also doesn’t help. Keep in mind how vulnerable a mesmer is while casting a mantra. There needs to be some balance to make up for that. I think it’s perfect as it is at the moment.

That all said I think mantra builds are best used in dungeons and WvW, It wouldn’t really work as well in sPvP and perhaps that the whole idea behind it. sPvP is too fast paced, Mesmers need their mobility to 1v1 successfully. I find I struggle a lot more in WvW when I end up in a 1v1 situation when running a mantra build.

It’s good that they made a build that makes mesmers more useful in PvE, you have to remember our professions weakness has always been PvE/Dungeons in comparison to other professions or at least have always felt awkward within those settings with the majority of our utilities having PvP in mind.

It’s not really relevant as much in WvW because no matter how good your computer is you won’t be able to see all the enemies until there are suddenly 50 on top of you. Nor can you see anyone in cities unless you stand right on top of them for 5+ seconds.

So it’s more about how shiney and pretty you want the world to look because the lowest settings look pretty terrible and pixelated and the lighting is bad as well. It’ll run fine but look bad. I guess it’s more the question of whether you want a nice looking game or if you can put up with it looking ugly.

I do suppose that a bad computer wouldn’t really be able to render all the spell effects etc. in WvW but I noticed that despite having a good computer you still get frame drops and/or server lag. For example I had good FPS during jormag yet it was still like a slideshow because the server I think couldn’t keep up.

They should just boost the minimum spec requirement up so that they have to sacrifice less to try to keep the game so everyone can play (Like the forced culling mentioned in first paragraph).

I’ve not been doing WvW for a very long time (couple or so weeks now, tagging along with IRON). I run a mostly PvE guild so I never liked WvW much up till that point.

Main reason being that it always seemed like whoever had the biggest zerg wins and I never realized that there are some tactics involved and a good community behind it.

You also don’t get any good rewards from it (if anything you loose it on siege/upgrading/repairs) and so I always felt it a waste of time when I could be making that 2 gold in that dungeon in 30 minutes instead. You don’t get rewarded for helping out with defense, sieging, building siege, rezzing people you only get rewarded for killing enemies and capping.

The reward system in WvW is the most abysmal one in the game it’s almost shocking. Badges? I barely get any on my Mesmer compared to what I get on my alts, the annoyance of culling and tagging people then looting the near invisible bags that end up being left behind in the heat of battle.

The lack of being able to do much as my Mesmer when storming a keep because you don’t have decent AOE nor can you hit anyone on the wall without getting obstructed and now with the portal nerf we’ve essentially become nigh on useless in WvW getting virtually nothing useful out of it. But I digress…

The point I’m making is that coming from a mostly PvE background even I can tell that all this PvE stuff within WvW is bad. The christmas presents, jumping puzzles (maybe they’re okay if WvW itself was actually as rewarding or moreso but as it stands they’re taking away from the manpower needed on the different maps).

The armies of random polar bears/wolves/kraits/moa’s that are just waiting to be hit by accident. Why are there 10 polar bears in the same small meadow? Aren’t they solitary creatures? It’s just an annoyance a hindrance and has no place in WvW, at the very least cut them down to 1 per meadow for ‘Atmospheric’ reasons.

Then there’s the breakout event, I don’t understand why this was put into WvW? Isn’t it about whoever is best through tactics not whoever can get the OP npc commander to do their work for them and then placing trebs to win? It seems unfair to those servers/guilds who try hard to win legitimately.

If you’re going to insist on having this breakout event in WvW at least make the commander easily defeated by 5 or less people just like guards ‘defending’ places are easily defeated. That way WvW guilds don’t have to waste manpower to keep and deal with these little towers every 2 minutes.

I completely agree that the WvW developers/team should have a long conversation with some of the full time WvW guild leaders about what they would like to see improved/added/adjusted and be more open about ideas they have. Even if you aren’t going to implement it just give people a list of ideas and then listen to the feedback.

Communication is the key, WvW has a lot of potential to be long lasting and remain interesting if you listen to the WvWers and please fix the culling and view distance. It’s incredibly hard to have an honest fight if you don’t see the 50 people right in front of you. (This goes for all parts of the game, Lion’s Arch for example looks like a ghost town unless you stand on top of someone, I still don’t understand who thought this was a good idea, allow the user to control what they see not the server).

Either way as I stated I’m no WvW expert, The above is just my observations and opinions. Please take some time to have a chat with the WvW guilds about these issues. Especially with this super secret February patch coming up. I’m just here to show my support.

I would like a sunrise beam and more obvious sunrise moves on my sunrise but at an asura when dodging the flips make the sunrise leave a lot of swinging type trails so it’s not too bad on asura apart from the fact that they’re tiny O.o (please bigger weapons on asura!)

Thank you everyone for your responses.

The reason I mentioned what I did about my background is to hope to give some weight to my feedback as someone who has played the game a lot and comes from a gaming background as well as not being a 10 year old kid raging on the forums

As I said, I love the game but I’m worried about the community because there isn’t anything there to keep it together other than peoples good nature. I’ve heard of many other guilds struggling to keep members on board and people un-representing frequently.

I know this is an intended feature and I’m sure it can be useful in some cases but for a guild to have an active, lively community it needs members to represent full time. As well as reasons and things to do in a large group.

Communities and guilds are the building blocks of MMO’s, if the foundation is neglected it will crumple. For now guilds are holding together by strings thanks to the rapid adding of new content. It’s not a long term solution and the strain of keeping a guild together is becoming more and more noticeable.

I really hope Arenanet takes note of the guild issues. It needs to be addressed as a priority. I much rather tolerate some buggy dungeons than see guilds and communities around me fall apart.

bluewanders.5297:

Hi Fay,

I don’t normally reply to these “feedback” threads because the points they make normally don’t interest me much… but you mirror my feelings almost perfectly.

To add to your feedback… I would also like to see community built through weekly “challenges” and player created content.

A weekly guild achievement would be an awesome idea! Some sort of challenge you have to do as a guild. Maybe a random Dynamic event build to require at least 10 people of the same guild to complete in a special guild instance (should of course allow more than 10 people and it scales with size).

Then if you complete it everyone in the guild gets achievement points and maybe a nice reward. It doesn’t have to be super fancy but just something fun to do each week.

mojowalker.3798:

I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but I like knowing there are other players in a zone, chatting away idly in map, and that I can ask them for a hand or lend my own, whichever the case may be, but do not dig that I also have to accept that for certain aspects of the game joining with a PUG is going to be a necessity.

As you’ve said yourself, Guild wars 2 is a multi-player game and will therefore always put first things with multiple people in mind. The problem currently is there is only stuff to do for parties and strangers together. There isn’t anything for communities to do.

I think although it would be nice for people who like playing multi-player games solo to have things to do as well. The attention should first be on fixing the lack of large community content. If they fix content for guilds to do then by all means I’d support people to be able to play solo as well.

Amiron.1067:

To Fay; I agree with a lot of what you posted. The RNG is going a bit too far, and I agree that the guild system needs some more “oomph!” to it as well. Otherwise, I’m pretty darn happy about the game thus far.

Oh, and to add to it; I really, really, really hate diminishing returns on Karma and on loot obtainable. I don’t want to be punished for farming because I chose to spend 3 hours in Orr. (Sometimes all it takes is 1 good hour of farming before hitting diminishing returns, which is really disappointing.)

I personally hate farming because it’s boring to me but I can see how it could be frustrating for those who do like farming. That’s why I suggested farming DR should be made into areas of effect.

Where if you keep moving through different areas to farm you wont be hit by DR but if you stay in the same area grinding like a bot that you will be hit by it. Like the dungeon DR variety of content played is rewarded.

Hope you guys enjoyed the Plushy Griffon Zerg on Elona Borderlands (It happened after our plushy griffon party in Lion’s Arch). We charged into enemy zerg couple of times then un-transform to fight (Geez you guys have a big zerg!) the griffon zerg didn’t last long Merry Wintersday Hope we gave some of you a smile!

If you find a word or item in game and you do not know what it means just type /wiki and the thing you are looking for example “/wiki charr” and it will open your default browser with information on the subject. You can find guilds to join here: www.gw2guilds.org

Lutharr.1035:

Nayru.3947:

Why do you need to say you’re a girl in every post?

Anyway, you’ve played 1500 hours? Uh… looks like you’re happy with the game as it stands. So why are you complaining?

Also, just wondering, why do you have “1500+ hours” in your signature? Is it a personal achievement?

nice attempt to derail an actual constructive thread.
Would you correct someone if they refered to you as female when infact your a dude? I know I would. Same stands the other way round.

1500 hours is a kitten lot of time. But just cos someone can spend more time in a game more than what you think is the norm dont take away from their view on things. Seems to me you just have a personal issue with this poster.

ON TOPIC
I like the dungeons as they are. Only thing they should really change is what you can spend tokens on. Its been mentioned in other threads a few times about expensive mats being available purchasable with tokens, and i agree.

FOTM
The whole divide was a MASSIVE mistake, along with the AR concept. But it would seem they are trying to address that now with lowering the mats beend to infuse rings, and helping rings not been a complete lottery with the new token and rings purchase thing.

My real major gripes about the game atm is the farming DR thing. Its down to people to decide for themselves if they want to farm. SHouldnt be down to Anet being greedy and trying to make an expensive economy to attract more gem sales.

lack of a LFG is killing off half the world due to people reluctant to leave LA.

To many sodding bugs littered around that should have been concentrated on before adding new things. Even though I know big shiny events distract some from this, but alot of people think you dont care about the bugs and ignore them to move onto something more shiny. Long lasting games fix first, impliment additional things later.

Thank you for your constructive reply Trolls will be trolls.

The farming DR I feel is necessary. However there should be a better compromise made. Farming repetitively is done a lot by bots so it’s a good strategy to stop bots from farming (scripted farming routes).

The way to counteract bots is the way they’ve done DR in dungeons, by making it so you get rewarded more by doing different kinds of content (different paths and dungeons). So perhaps if you move zones or areas each of them has it’s own DR rather than a time limit attached to it.

Make more areas with the same loot it should allow for farming while diminishing bots farming activities. That said I don’t like farming, I prefer doing other content.

I’m mostly concerned about the lack of abilities to keep a community together, nothing to talk about in guild chat because it’s all about parties and solo content. No activities to do as a guild other than WvW (which unless you are a serious wvw guild isn’t really a thing to do as an event or you might obstruct rather than help the efforts).

There really needs an urgent focus on guild communities and having more content and interesting perks to being in a specific one. More reasons to stick to one and not guild hop, represent/un-represent without good cause. As well as fixing the lack of guild functionalities.

Community builds the game, if there’s nothing for community to stick around as one, no strong community building activities then the individual will get bored and move on repeatedly as I’ve seen happen so much, to do their own things and not work towards their guild. It makes it less of an MMO and more of a play with random strangers and pugs.

plasmacutter.2709:

Waffler.1257:

How is it possible that you have played 1500 hrs? The game has been out 4 months so that means you would have to play 12.5 hrs a day every single day since the game launched. That blows my mind.

he played all the beta weekends.

She* but yes I play a lot most of the day That’s beside the point other than me having experienced the game a lot to give some weight to my feedback. I just hope the dev’s read and take note of my concern to the community building issues especially.

Rewards/Dungeons

Overall I’m most happy with the dungeon design in this game (fractal aside but I’ll get to that in a minute). My only gripe with dungeons is that with the current economy effort versus reward is still not where it should be. In regards to gold anyway.

The only dungeon I have issues with is Fractals, It splits people up because not everyone is on the same level. There is also the issue of ascended gear blocking progress but I believe there are fixes being made to this but to be honest it’s already too late for me because I’m bored with them (that’s saying something when I still enjoy AC after many…many runs).

I love each fractal design and fight mechanic wise but they are too short, by the time you immerse into one you get pulled into the next one. I much rather have had each fractal be a full length dungeon than feeling so rushed around. I don’t like this ‘speedrun’ feel. It discourages people from having a chat while in the instance even less.

Also to get to the more challenging fractals you have to repeat the same content over and over so that by the time it gets interesting you have done the dungeon so many times that it’s just a bit boring. There isn’t that excitement of finally reaching that end boss, not knowing what to expect because you already done it a 100 times in easy mode.

I much rather have dungeons that are hard to begin with and not a grind to the fun parts (that are being made inaccessible by the agony resistance being blocked).

Also please at least make an LFG chat channel with a much more reasonable ‘spam’ limit or something to help people find groups.

RNG

This is something I feel this game is starting to take too far. It was already pretty bad to begin with but more and more is being added all the time. I feel popular items should be something also obtainable through a set course of action (like collecting tokens) and not just through trading post/lucky drops/gemstore.

Especially when you add items that you can’t get in the gemstore either (choir bell, infinite hairstyle contract etc.). I want to enjoy the game not go to a casino and watch people win all around me. It’s just not fun. It causes jealousy and envy amongst players and resentment. It doesn’t help the already lack of community and activities/dungeons that fracture it even further.

As much as I think it’s okay to have random drops of rare items and them being able to be bought on the store. I also feel there should be a set way for people to gain these items through effort. I much rather grind for 1000 tokens of something and be guaranteed to get my item then to pay a fortune in gold/real money to obtain it.

Because lets be honest, you can’t realistically gain the gold required for some of these items through playing the game normally without being a trading post wiz unless you play the game for years.

You did it right with the dungeon tokens, this is the way to go. RNG is a step backwards. Nobody but those who are lucky or rich like RNG. It’s not fun, it’s not fair.

Conclusion

- Make several activities you can do with guilds and fix those where you currently can’t
- Activities should always have a way to be done in set parties/guild groups not forced randoms
- Make guild halls a stop between like Heart of the Mists
- Fix guild lack of functionalities (Roster issues, Influence, Bank functionality)
- Get rid of so much RNG and move more towards the token type systems, For every RNG/Gemstore system there should be a way to obtain it by playing the game in a guaranteed way
- Fractals was a nice idea but it didn’t work. It needs reworking.
- Make an LFG chat window or improved system like gw2lfg.com

I’ve been contemplating making this post for a while and now I feel I have enough to say to make it a worthwhile feedback. There is a lot of praise I have to give this game, I love it a lot but this feedback is specifically to give constructive critism for the things I feel need to change. First let me quickly explain my background a bit.

Quick Background

I’ve been playing since Beta Weekend 1, all subsequent weekends/stress tests and since headstart I’ve played about 1500 hours. The character I played most on (1350 hours) is my Mesmer.

I run a pretty succesful guild with about 120 members (http://www.destinysedge.net). I’ve played MANY games and have been running (or in leading positions) in guilds since I was 16 (I’m 26 now/Female).

Community/Guilds

Community focus is incredibly lacking in this game, not incredibly… severely. The majority of the current mechanics within the game are either lacking in functionality and/or have this feeling of being forced to play with PuG’s/Strangers.

There is no content for large groups and guilds to do within this game other than WvW and Dragons (The latter being hardly worth mentioning let’s be honest). All the content that I was envisioning there to be for guilds after launch isn’t there.

Instead I was forced to come up with activities for my guild to do through creativity (Hide’n’seek, Run naked across tyria etc.) or even things outside of the game itself. The point is there is only so much I can come up with and I shouldn’t have to be the one to provide all the guild entertainment. Guild wars 2 is the MMO and should therefore provide content for guilds.

People are getting bored with the repeated made up events and starting to feel forced to mingle when there is nothing in game that really requires you to be a community.

All the fun activities (with all I mean there is really just one atm…) and now holiday activities are all about playing with random people. People don’t want to be forced to play with random people. They want to play with guild members and friends.

Keg brawl, Why was this so neglected? Why is there no way to make set teams/tournaments for guilds only? Where are the other many mini-games promised that aren’t about playing with randoms and/or holiday themed?

Then Wintersday came a long, perfect opportunity to have some activities going with guilds and friends in mind you’d think…. Can’t play snowball mayhem with parties (fair enough it’s pvp, need to be fair but still.. it’s meant to be a fun activity), Can’t do bell choir with the groups you want (Not to mention the horrendous lag spikes).

Jumping puzzle, sure we can join others from our party but lets be honest it’s mostly a solitary activity, Tixx Dungeon… Fair enough this is a party instance (If repetitive). Then there is Toypocalypse, there is NO reason why this couldn’t have been a party instance or even better a guild instance.

Guild Halls… Fair enough they are coming up but PLEASE make them in the same manner as Heart of the Mists, a stop between the world and Lion’s Arch, simply press G and ‘Go to guild hall’ would be perfect. Within the guild hall have mini-games you can play with your guild and run events.

Have useful vendors there (banks, merchant, trading post) but leave crafting and mystic forge in Lion’s Arch only. This will also alleviate overflow issues within Lion’s Arch. Nobody likes being in overflow in cities.

Of course have a portal to Lion’s Arch here. A way to thoroughly customise the guild hall for a guilds personal flavour would be great too. I will literally cry if guild halls are some far away instance you have to deliberately travel to, out of your way.

Guild rosters, Why is there no way to see how much someone is representing? (A percentage when hovering their name would be great) and why can’t we see when someone last logged in? I’d also like to be able to see which crafting professions people have regardless of character and at what level each is (Perhaps make it so you can click someones name and open a profile with more in depth detail about that person?).

Influence, Some of the buffs everyone uses cost too much influence. What I mean is as a PvX guild to run all buffs at all times (meaning you have to speed up some builds) just costs more than you can make even as a good size guild like my own. I feel forced to pick between a couple at a time.

Chat, Because everything is about being in parties or running solo there is hardly any incentive for people to talk in guild chat. There needs to be more content for guild groups to do and talk about.

There is a lack of incentive for people to stick with a guild, be loyal and communicate. No matter how hard you work for it, it’s like trying to get oil and water to stick together, Guilds need some help from the game itself, an adhesive, a reason to have a community. It’s just not there at the moment.

Continued in next post…

I just tried doing it again to help out but nobody was talking or listening to what I was saying they were all just standing in the centre using their weapons and not building siege/defenses and also kiting toxx in the centre x.x

I just got lucky and completed the achievement with a good PuG, good luck to those less fortunate in this PuG gamble. They really need to make such mini-games with guilds and parties in mind. Just getting sick of having to share the fun stuff with strangers rather than friends.

Einsof.1457:

build walls and snowmen to protect the siege

We had the entire place build up like a fortress with walls, snowmen, other siege. Like I said Toxx came along, ignored all of us, went straight for the dolyaks whirlwinding all the siege equipment destroyed before we could kill/stop her. If she at least aggrod on someone then we can stop her from going into the centre but she just kept going.

So you are put in a group with random people (Who may or may not do whatever they like) and you’re meant to build siege/defend the dolyaks…you get some siege going and everything is going alright but then overpowered Toxx comes along and kills all the dolyaks and/or siege ignoring all party members. Was able to get the 10 rounds, but all Dolyaks kept alive, really? That’s a bit difficult for a holiday achievement for a PuG teamwork event :/

[Thread title edited by moderator for clarity.]

This… I know it’s an old post but why aren’t more people complaining about this? It’s so incredibly annoying when you can’t kick an offline party member from the party to invite someone whose online. Or to do anything guild management/sending friends mail related.

Every single time I’m in WvW all I can do is report. I’ve been trying to just deal with it but the more I’ve been playing WvW recently the more annoying it’s becoming. I shouldn’t have to leave WvW just to manage my party or to have to remake a party each time.

Guild armour and weapons look hideous compared to almost all other armour in the game. I guess they made it that way because it would be easy to obtain. It’s a shame really, makes it not worth showcasing your guilds emblem because then your character looks terrible. I would suggest forgoing the guild armour and going for dungeon armour instead, looks much better.

More of the same today Almost identical to yesterday. The only noticeably different one was the first day.

Sativo.9754:

If you want to do this boss, get 3 full dps wars and 2 mesmers with time warp. I was lucky enough to find a group the other day on gw2lfg that had been in there for hours (i believe they said 8-9) and were up to this boss and were looking for a dps heavy war which i happen to be.

They were fighting her in the cave and prior to engaging we stacked about 30-40 tears against the wall where us 3 warriors would stay to prevent agroing sparks and mow her down. The other 2 were an ele and a mes who did a great job at getting the sparks into position and with a couple of nicely timed time warps we took Simin down on our 2nd attempt.

Afterwards they reminded me how lucky i was to get in that group haha. Thanks again guys.

This is the problem with profession balancing. 2 elementalists, a mesmer, a necro and an engineer should be able to accomplish the same encounter as well. It shouldn’t be restricted to insane deeps 3 warriors + mesmer timewarp.

Sarcasmic.6741:

Restorative Mantras + Mantra of Pain + auto attack on said mantra = merry Christmas, you have a heal bot.

This is how I use it, goes great with power type builds so you do a lot of damage while healing.

I’m just curious how it prioritises people if you have lets say 20 people in range. Lowest health first, nearest first, random?

I have only been there once since the one time karka event. Even the farming nodes aren’t worth the hassle, there’s just nothing going on there.

The problem is that she no longer takes damage in stealth but still heals a lot while in stealth. This causes issues for certain party setups that aren’t geared towards high DPS or professions who are of medium damage output, regardless of how well you do with the sparks.

You just can’t get enough DPS in to outweigh the health healed + some extra. She just needs to heal a little bit less while stealthed and it should be fine. No issues with sparks whatsoever. It’s just a balancing issue, fight mechanics are great.

All the events were pretty much the same as the two previous days it was quite disappointing Was hoping for some variation at least. Anyone else felt this way? Other than that I’ve enjoyed everything else about Wintersday, this just felt a bit cheap to recycle the events within the Tixx’ Infinirarium dungeon

Thank you all for your answers, I tried testing it myself but other than roughly the range of the ability I couldn’t figure out the healing limit.

I have one more question, Does it prioritise those with lowest health first or whoever is nearest first?

Winds.3087:

Range is roughly ~600-700, 5 target limit.

Did you get these numbers from observation/testing?

Healix.5819:

If you know how the song goes, I can confirm it is possible to play the note even when it lags out and dissapears.

Just a few minutes ago, I played through the part that goes 8-9-7 even though all 3 circles appeared on the same line (as if all 3 should be played at the same second) and dissapeared roughly a second before reaching the middle. It lagged out a few times, but I still managed to get 600. As my first time playing today, it kind of felt nerfed compared yesterday, since yesterday, I was failing to play the note when it was in the middle, but now, it seems to count even while almost out of it.

Guessing sometimes works but if the buttons don’t respond and half the notes for a few seconds are lagged up like that it’s just impossible to do perfect score. I know there’s no reward for it but it’s frustrating because it’s not something I can do anything about. Maybe Anet should get some more server power behind bell choir going so it runs more smoothly.

Lag seems to be getting worse and worse, Entire songs just lag out, notes disappear, keys don’t respond. It’s such a fun game it’s a shame it gets spoiled but these lag spikes

Embolism.8106:

It may have uses in PvE because you can see huge CC attacks coming and proc Stability preemptively, but you’re really better off getting a utility that will get you out of said attack.

In sPvP it has absolutely no place, 1.5s of Stability x2 is not worth taking at all over the Mesmer’s other, more powerful, utilities. Stun break? Pffft, the Mesmer has far better stun breakers (Blink and Decoy for example: the former is also far better at dealing with CC moves than 3s of Stability is, since you can use it reactively instead of preemptively).

I’ve found plenty of uses for it previously and have tried it out in PvP settings with some success more so in WvW than sPvP though the play style using it isn’t my thing. You’re also forgetting the use mantra three times trait + restorative mantras can make for interesting burst style play.

The person said the ability is useless but it’s not it can be used in certain play styles and as you said yourself it has uses in PvE foremost (Many knights forward-forward TA path comes to mind, Searing Effigy CoF).

I don’t think an ability becomes useless just because it’s not as PvP orientated as majority of other situational mesmer abilities.

That’s just my opinion though, I’m just saying that there are people who find the ability useful. There’s a lot of people complaining about mantras but with the decrease in cast time now mantra builds are far more viable and I can see this ability be useful in such builds.

I would like to see some sort of passive swiftness sigil be introduced though the small in crease in swiftness that was added is already making some difference.

I would love to have a quaggan plushy and a skritt! I think they already figured out people love them because of the mini-pet quaggan. Felt this was appropriate:

Embolism.8106:

I’d love to see this replace the useless Mantra of Concentration.

Mantra of concentration isn’t useless. I’ve used it quite a few times for certain dungeon encounters and it can be incredibly useful for pvp as well.

Qelris.6901:

@Fay: I actually prefer Veil over Mass Invisibility.

I find it imprecise, people love to miss it entirely + it’s a dead give away that you’ve used stealth rather than temporal curtain.

It’s only 3 second stealth compared to 5 for MI + it guarantees everyone near you gets stealth and at least with decoy you distract your enemy away from you + breaks stuns so you can be of more use to your encounter by putting down that nullfield/feedback you equipped in stead.

That’s just my experience and opinion of veil, I can think of little few situations where it’s truly useful and superior to MI and decoy. I just feel it’s a waste of utility slot.

As for mimic it can be a fun little gimmicky thing but it’s incredibly situational. Like I love using it on those risen that pull you in at orr, then you use that ability to pull them to you, it’s quite amusing. But that’s about it… amusing.

Just wanted to point out that I love using mantra of pain with power/heal mantra builds That said yes there are a lot of utilities there that I would rarely choose to put on my bar because they are so incredibly situational. For example Mimic, Veil (why use veil if you have mass stealth and decoy).

I’d be far more inclined to equip blink, feedback, nullfield, mantra of resolve, portal, decoy (depending on whether its pve or pvp settings and whether or not I’m alone or in a group, sometimes varying between certain dungeon encounters).

So with the decrease in mantra cast time, mantra healing builds become far more viable. My question is what is the range on the heal exactly? Is there a limit to how many allies will be healed? The tooltip only says ‘heals nearby allies’ and it’s not mentioned on the wiki or anything else definitive that I can find.

An official response to this would be great so I know what my limitations are so I can stop guessing and being in the dark about this trait (and the wiki can be updated with more accurate information).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Restorative_Mantras

Why is the mesmer clone a problem? It doesn’t event stealth the actual player so it’s so easy to see which one is the clone + if you already have the mesmer targetted you continue shooting the mesmer not the clone. Might as well not have the clone ability there.

The most annoying extra skill I’ve seen is thief with the stealth and guardians seem virtually untouchable and I saw a warrior with double speed buff (picked up + another one?)

Smoeki.2756:

Yeah I’ve gotten hit with it a few times also. I’m not going to try to get a perfect score, but I’d like to be the top guy at lease once lol. It’s just a bit sad that the rewards aren’t so great for getting a higher score. I stopped doing the Bell choir and went back to the jumping puzzle.

It’s more a fun thing you can do to challenge yourself I suppose it would cause a lot of upset in the forums no doubt if there was some grand prize that only the musical inclined could get. Same with the jumping puzzle is just a karma jug. Smart really.

Confirmed Doable. We completed it, just tricky to find everything that needs destroying Just keep on looking! Little trees, everything breakable counts.

Mathim Caim.8930:

I must say there is nothing special from getting perfect score I have gotten it. I still only got 4 Personalized Presents.

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/79n9w)

I know but it’s a personal challenge :P It’s hard to do with the random lag spikes.

Me and the people I’ve spoken to about it have reported lag spikes while playing Bell Choir. It makes the notes disappear and even though I have all the achievements it makes it difficult to get perfect score.

I really don’t get the impression that this is coming from our end because why would everyone I talk to say they are experiencing the same thing? Is anyone else getting this problem?

I would love to know this as well I can see some ‘wad of enchanted stuffing’ on the trading post but is it the right thing and how do we make/find it?

I loved it myself it was like the clocktower but a tiny bit easier! Well done Anet!

YES! FINALLY! Mesmer buffs! I’m so happy but I’ll wait till I can try things in game to see how I really feel about it. Love the mantra channel improvement (makes damage/heal mantra builds far more viable), speed buffs, initiation time for phantasms to do their move. -fingers crossed-

Gehenna.3625:

It could have something to do with the ending of ME3….a lot of people, myself included weren’t too happy with that ending, neither the alternate.

As always it’s a matter of opinion. As a game I understand people can like GW2, even though I disappointed with it. But as a RPG there isn’t much to be happy with from my point of view.

Role Playing Game. It lacks the depth I expect, the story is poor, the voice acting is bad. I feel no connection to the story or my characters. Replay value is low for me. As much as I enjoyed leveling my first character to 80, I didn’t like doing it again on an alt….and I am an altoholic.

So as a MMO it may be a great game to many people still. But if you think it’s a great RPG, I can only conclude that most GW2 players don’t have high standards or requirements in the RPG side of it.

I agree that the lore and character building element in this game is pretty dreadful like the things you’ve mentioned. Thus my surprise that it won over mass effect 3.

That said though Guild Wars 2 is worthy of some praise, it has a beautiful immersive world, some interesting ways of approaching an MMO etc. but yes the RPG award has me a bit baffled myself. It would be more worthy of an artistic award, music, pc game of the year… something along those lines.

I’m glad Guild Wars 2 won they deserve it but I am surprised it beat mass effect 3 purely because of mass effect having a huge fan base + it’s a lot more RPG than GW2 (I never played mass effect 3 just surprised seeing how successful mass effect 2 was).