Guild Wars 2

Rising Dusk.2408:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Like we said in the beginning the strength of a micro-transaction model is it gives players the power to say what is worth their dollar. If it’s popular enough, we’ll continue to expand and improve the whole system.

Keep in mind that it might not be worth it to a lot of people in its current form and thus they won’t buy it, but with an emote panel or something like that, it could be worth it to a ton of players. Just because something isn’t selling doesn’t mean that a significantly improved something won’t do significantly better.

This is exactly how I feel about it. I can’t justify the inventory clutter the current system thrives on and as such I avoid buying anything other than minis which do have collectible tabs.

If the game came with an unlock system like DCUO I would have most likely already bought a bunch of skins. I did it in that game and I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as GW2 overall. The emote panel sounds great and I hope it eventually ends up implemented along with a skin wardrobe and ( since I’m dreaming here anyway ) proper housing.

Got it and I stand by my previous assessment. It’s completely luck based and doesn’t depend on your own skill as much as your opponents’ skill to conveniently line up for the karka roll. You can try to lure but good players will simply evade the roll.

And what makes this really difficult is that some players just stand in a corner for most of the match waiting for the chest. Good luck to all those trying to get it. I guess the only real advice is to bear with it and hope to get lucky. At least the mini game is kind of entertaining to play.

Mammoth.1975:

Try pressing one.

Usually works fine for the bone fiend. Wish I could say the same for the golem and the shade. As an axe user I had the shade attack in about one out of ten fights so I just stopped using him entirely. Luckily I was never a big fan.

Considering they’re absolute trash in PvE I’d say no. They’re just a victim of bad design. If the thief hadn’t been designed around a broken mechanic like stealth it would have probably been a lot more fun to play and balanced overall.

I’d place the limit at three under majority rules. That said, I agree with your other suggestions.

Why not laurels? Anyway, I’ll second the request for a reliable method to acquire precursors which doesn’t involve farming gold.

I can’t help but view this kind of conduct as extremely disrespectful towards your server community. You are after all occupying a slot somebody actually wanting to fight it out could make better use of to fraternize with the enemy. Shame on you if you engage in this treachery.

As a collector I currently find collecting skins a fruitless endeavor. Subsequently I haven’t spent a single gem on skins. If the game had a wardrobe system in which you unlocked skins in a similar fashion to the HoM unlocks I’d be much more inclined to spend gems. I’d also be inclined to play more and do more dungeons to get them all.

So why not do it? Do you not want my time and money? I must confess I’m at a loss here.

But catering to whims is exactly what will make them money. If they continue refusing the community at every turn they will quickly find themselves with a dead product and at that point it will be far too late to start playing nice.

As a necromancer I want this and I want this BAD. For all that is unholy let me dye my spirit links a ghastly azure!

I really, really want the system used in Guild Wars back. It was so much better and it was nice being able to toggle your town clothes for instances for a bit of variety when grinding. I think Anet would see a sharp increase in cash shop sales if they actually started working on a more universal system for these things.

I don’t mind them being sold, Anet has to make a profit somewhere after all. I just wish the system was better and that the book was consumed upon use and simply unlocked the emotes for regular / usage. Right now Guild Wars 2 feels too cluttered and messy and it really discourages me from using the cash shop. I’m already wasting enough precious bag space as is.

Skins fall under this too. Why would I pay money when these things aren’t permanently available to me for convenient usage like the heritage stuff? Add in a costume merchant like Guild Wars had and I might actually buy something. Hell, why not put them in the woefully underutilized Hall of Monument room? That place could be so cool as a personal instance for cash shop unlocks. Make me want to spend gems, kitten it!

NinjaEd.3946:

No they cannot avoid area damage, they just can’t be taretd by area damage. If the player vs. a stealth player cannot predict where they are (obviosuly they want to kill you) then thats their fault.

If a stealth player deals any Direct Damage they are revealed for 3 seconds. If that isn’t enough for you to react/retaliate thats your own downskilled issue. In spvp, or wvw stealth hardly affects me. In fact, from the amount of posts about this topic, I’d bet a lot of people have found counters to stealth and have no issue with them.

L2p. Or ask H2P. If you cannot counter stealth at this point you have done nothing to help yourself but post a stealth counter thread. Which has lead to nothing, because stealth comes down to player skill.

There is no skill to hitting a completely invisible player. It’s about dumb luck. Will he go right or left? No way to know in an open area. Now if thieves flickered in and out of stealth I’d be more inclined to agree with you but perfect stealth is as the name implies perfect.

The new WvWvW traps directly counter stealth, slapping down AoEs hoping to ensnare the thief obviously does not. As ArenaNet saw it fit to include a direct stealth counter, albeit in a very limited form, they obviously do not agree with your assessment and if you’re so afraid of actual counters being gradually introduced perhaps you are the one who needs to learn to play?

Good thieves will buckle up. Bad thieves will continue being overly reliant on stealth.

If they removed stealth entirely and gave the class a bit more build flexibility I might actually play my thief again.

I do feel for you thieves. It’s true that stealth is your only real defense but the fact of the matter is that it’s a very broken mechanic which should have never been implemented to begin with. Hopefully ArenaNet will take steps to make the thief less reliant on stealth and glass cannon builds.

It would be one thing of the game was achievement driven and you actually got your legendary from doing all these various feats across the world. But it’s not, it’s gold driven like every other MMO under the sun and this is why people are forced to rely on farming unless they get astronomically lucky or just decide to play the TP for a month or so.

The biggest problem with stealth right now in Guild Wars 2 is that there is no direct counter to it. Sure, you can swing your sword around like a maniac trying to connect with the thief but that isn’t really countering the stealth itself. I’d love to see ArenaNet add utility skills directly aimed at disabling stealth to promote more skillful play.

My asura would definitely appreciate a boot toggle!

It used to exist in PvE but they removed after one of the beta event weekends with no real explanation as to why. Currently the set is PvP exclusive and it’s a real shame as it’s one of the most unique looking sets around.

I’d like to see more changes going towards making alts actually enjoyable to keep in general. And yes, this is definitely a step in the right direction. What would be even nicer would be if ArenaNet made them scaling weapons so you could keep them from level one all the way up to eighty.

Right now I honestly have zero desire to roll any alts as it would entail grinding all my dyes over again along with everything else. It’s just completely unappealing. I do believe this is harmful for the game as a whole as it leads to players playing less.

What your suggestion would effectively do is render the entire game into a legendary grind for players wanting to remain competitive.

No, no and no again.

I’m all for weapons having unique properties and whatnot but this should not be limited to players with thousands of gold to spare.

They should just make it a true teleport already. It’s not like it would encroach on the mesmer’s ability to offer party teleports. Make it spawn by the necromancer’s feet to prevent exploitative behavior.

Giving this a well deserved bump because I just spotted this armor on the PvP vendor and it looks absolutely fantastic. One of the few armor sets without boots and as such ideal for little asuran feet.

Please bring it back, ArenaNet? There are so many boring armor sets in the game and this one just stands out with all the color and flair.

The spite trait in particular is just a massive joke. Why might and not protection?

Sometimes I feel like a thief with no burst and no stealth. Other times I feel like a guardian with no boons. Most of the time I just feel like a mesmer with no glam.

But a necromancer? Hm, no, can’t say I’ve ever felt like that.

The necromancer reminds me of the dominator archetype from City of Villains. They were balanced around a mechanic similar to deathshroud ( except it was way better in that it rendered the dominator immune to all forms of crowd control while greatly boosting the dominator’s own ) and this lead them to being overbalanced and woefully underpowered compared to the other archetypes. I played that game for almost two years and the disparity was never addressed.

I can’t help but see a repeat of that in the Guild Wars 2 necromancer.

Welp, pets are utterly worthless in the new dungeon and the additional health points did not make a difference as expected. When will they realize that pets need to take heavily reduced AoE damage in order to be viable in PvE?

The fact that minion AI still isn’t fixed is honestly inexcusable.

The game has issues but hyperbole this blatant is just going to turn people off from even discussing those which is a shame.

Anyway, here’s my input for whatever it’s worth. The current cosmetic progression system sucks. I’d much prefer a model similar to DCUO in which you unlock skins over the current transmutation nonsense. Also, I’d love more skills. Make skills rewards for completing dungeons and give us some real character progression here.

Bas.7406:

Wait, so your thief stealths but never moves making wells a great drop. Full Stop. Nope, only bad thieves stay in a location long enough for you to throw down a well. Please let me know where your stationary thieves play so that I might face them.

Depends on if the thief is using a shortbow or not. Even so wells provide far better utility than minions incapable of dealing with stealth outside of charge and that’s assuming it actually hits. Zone control should never be underestimated and we can excel at it with the right traits and utilities.

Bas.7406:

I could care less about the viability of Minions in tournaments. I know their shortcomings and their positives. I don’t play Minions when I play tournaments, because they don’t fit my role on the team. Plus with the current meta favoring AOE spamming engineers berzerker minions die too quickly.

We aren’t defending viability. We have freely admitted that they lose effectiveness at certain levels. What we are defending is trumped up assumptions and ridiculous over exaggerations that stretch the truth in an attempt to blackball anyone who thinks differently.

What exaggerations? It’s common knowledge that thieves exploit pets for CnD and that it’s really not ideal to bring minions along when facing one. You’re just making it easier for the thief by doing that. What’s the point?

Do note that I think minion masters are capable of besting a lot of opponents. I just don’t view them as an ideal fit against thieves due to this glaring weakness.

Bas.7406:

And apparently you live in a world where everything else always functions perfectly except minions. I mean the fact that minions are the sole reason you lose to thieves is quite impressive. I must say that the fact that you never miss with a single corruption skill or always have people stand inside your wells, and never see a missed CD with your elites is quite impressive.

I mean the fact that every single other skill we have is perfectly viable, and all minions due 100 percent of the time is nothing but watch you die is totally a fact. Thank you for bringing to our attention that minions do nothing and every other skill we have works perfectly.

Your world is so much more fascinating.

Minions do not attack stealthed opponents. Full stop. This is not debatable, this is simply how the game is coded. Putting down a well on the other hand will effectively damage the thief even when in stealth and it’s thankfully not influenced by the laggard AI. Of course I’m assuming he is immobilized which is kind of the entire goal when using dagger and warhorn against one, yeah?

Look, I get that you two are on this constant crusade to defend the viability of minion masters and whatnot but even you have to realize that at this point it’s just kind of getting silly. But I digress.

Bhawb.7408:

You were saying that minions become a liability, you can easily burst down a thief with the above combo, big parts of which are based on minion CC, and also using minions allows you to go full Soldier gear while retaining the burst; something you can’t do with any other utility.

Indeed, I suggested that the minions would become a liability since they’d stand around dumbfounded offering the thief free CnD opportunities. How exactly is rigor mortis going to benefit you against a stealthed opponent? Even if you’ve got the thief pinned in stealth your minions aren’t going to suddenly start hitting him. You’d be whacking away at him alone with your utility slots effectively wasted.

You seem to be living in a dream world here.

Bhawb.7408:

Dark Pact, Wail of Doom, Charge, Rigor Mortis, and Doom. If he’s still alive by the end of that then you messed up somewhere and it’s your fault you lost.

I’m not seeing how that is even tangibly related to my comment. I merely pointed out that minions are not ideally used against thieves since they can use them for CnD which is a simple fact. If you’re going to go dagger and warhorn for that combo there are far better utilities than minions.

Bas.7406:

3) Any thief

Stealth bugs minion behavior like nothing else and thieves can repeatedly abuse them for easy CnD. Against a good thief minions quickly become a liability.

Instead of acting like a condescending kitten why not help your group out with some friendly advice? Not everybody is going to be experts at running fractals and if you join a random group you need to be aware of this. I’ve had a lot of beginners in my groups but I’d much rather deal with that than some armchair general screaming at everyone and making the group morale plummet.

Raine.1394:

I too find the change more frustrating than ‘entertaining’ or ‘interesting’. Challenge is an interesting concept in games. One distinction I’ve learned to make is true challenge and artificial challenge. Of course, I’m using ‘true’ here in terms of what represents challenge to me. I find in good challenging games like, say, Dark Souls, the challenge is seldom questioned. Why? Because, if you do a postmortem of the fight, you can usually understand where you went wrong and what you need to do to avoid a similar outcome in the future. I find GW2 provides more of the artificial variety than any true challenge. That is, one minute you are alive fighting and one second later you are dead and you don’t have the slightest clue as to why. You look at the combat log and see that some mob hit you with two quick shots that took half your health each, but there was no real reaction called for in the combat itself. You know, you see the attack coming and you evade? This happens often enough that it characterizes GW2 combat. It’s not satisfying. At least not in the sense that Dark Souls is satisfying.

So, this is another take on the frustration and challenge. I’m ok with challenge. I don’t think the MMO is about crushing challenge in open world PvE though, or in entry level dungeons for that matter. I think the current frustration with the 2/26 changes is more about developer inexperience than anything to do with the player base, one way or the other.

There are a lot of enemies capable of oneshotting you in Dark Souls. Something as mundane as opening a treasure chest can leave the unsuspecting player mimic fodder. Fortunately these things are usually hinted at by the game which is why it feels fair.

What Guild Wars 2 needs above all else is clarity. During a fight it’s very difficult to tell what is going on and sometimes you just can’t see when an enemy is about to pull his oneshot move even if you’re focused on that enemy which leads to frustration. I like the challenge, I don’t like being rendered blind to it the moment an elementalist decides to rain fire.

Zi Yang.5387:

Fire shaman at Iron march.
Oh those tornadoes where can you find so many tornadoes.
And NPCs are funny.

Totally agree with this one. I did it with a friend and it’s one of the best fights I’ve experienced in Guild Wars 2. It’s a shame most of the content is so easy because the game is ridiculously fun when the difficulty is cranked up a little.

Probably not. Necromancer is a very slow class with little mobility and no real means of escape. We excel at outlasting our opponents but that’s about it.

I think it’s undeniable at this point that both guardians and warriors needs to have their survivability nerfed. Warriors less so but it’s still silly that they can afford to go full zerkers while a thief who does it can expect to get instantly downed in just about every single fight. Where is the balance?

Tanks and healers encourage bad play and I’d rather not see them ever included. Just imagine how boring fights would be if you could just sit in the back spamming your rotation while the tank soaks up the hits.

Xsorus.2507:

one of the weakness’s i find with rangers is our inability to get boons by any substantial means

Might is a prime example of this, other then Call of the Wild (and Rampage as One) we don’t really have a solid source of getting might.

We’re just light period on Boons

I have noticed that most of the classes generally considered undesirable for PvE are very light on boons. Perhaps ArenaNet will spread the boon love around a little instead of centering it around a few classes?

Definitely agree, OP.

I just wish the WvWvW areas were more interesting. We’re in the mists so why not take advantage of that and make all the zones look unique? Floating fortresses, areas filled with swirling magical mists and so on would make for some seriously neat additions and take away from the repetitive nature of the WvWvW meta.

Go figure. It’s almost as if they designed thieves for a completely different game.

At least they don’t despawn the moment you get your toes wet like old fleshy. Count your blessings, eh?

But yeah, it’s just dumb and tedious. Would be much better if minions simply went into an inactive mode of sorts upon defeat which would hinder them from participating in combat while their health slowly regenerates back to full. Would fit splendidly with the whole necromancer motif too. Constantly having to resummon your pets really doesn’t add much to the experience.

Maybe we’ll get proper attention next now that engineers have finally been brought up to par. I certainly hope so considering how hard this epidemic nerf hits our premier spec. At least the deathshroud UI is finally fixed. Now if only deathshroud actually had synergy with most builds instead of just acting like a glorified health pool.

Much like engineers have their kits we too have a gimmick called deathshroud which isn’t really all that useful in PvE unless you spec for it. As somebody mentioned above it doesn’t synergize with most of our abilities. To compensate for this gimmick our overall performance falls below the bar and we’re consistently outclassed in damage output by just about every other class.

Revamping deathshroud into something which is actually useful for all builds would go a long way towards fixing us.

Naw, I wouldn’t be. These days I’m far too casual with my MMOs to justify the monthly fee. I like the fact that GW2 is open to me even when my wallet is empty.

I’d love to see mounts at some point and the mechanic is already there in the form of swiftness. Just have that apply as long as you’re on the mount and voila. Really though, I more want mounts for looks than actual functionality.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Brook.5263:

If Guild Missions are designed for 15+ people then why allow guilds to have less?

• There’s lots of things that guilds do other than guild missions.
• You can be one person, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to have to work with other people.

That would be fine and dandy if there was an incentive for people to actually do that.