Guild Wars 2

Sorry guys. but Grindy—- no.. not compaired to a lot of mmo out there.

Try harvesting ore and gaining the skills to fly a Super Carrier NyX in EvE – or grind fraction in WoW version 1 (max lvl 60 back then).
You are working on a skin… that from creation was set to highest vanity item in game. Its not needed. It does not even come with any special abilities other than change of stats and a night/day indicator on one item.-

Hours used in game for it? rather low compared to most items players in other games grind for.- the only thing that ofsets it is the RNG of the precurser… but you can just grind money and buy that.— its not a “bind on pickup” with 0.004% drop rate…. Ive been there.

I have no hate for the sellers.- I do have limited understanding of why one would want to buy a path.. – If you don’t do the dungeon your self. where is the feeling of achievement. ?
Whats next? paying someone to play your character?. Would it end with you just popping by a professional player and say “so how is my character doing…. ooh my character looks good… do I have fun playing it?… look at me go there with that grotesque over-sized legendary unwieldy sword… oh my do i pee and make shiny puddles where ever i walk? shiny!”… well Ill be back next week. let me know how I’m doing."

But joke aside. I guess much of it is about farming the same stuff again and again to get something- especially if you are limited in time. You might want a colourful hat and do not want to do the same dungeon 10 times for it.. That is sort of fair..
But it also does mean I give very little acclaim for someones looks as they can just buy them selves to stuff.

and lastly. yes. I would like better filters so I can search or setup varius things like: ignore path sales. or ignore.. you must be Zerkwarrior with an axe- trait xyz know the dungeon by heart- team have only 10 min before mom calls for dinner. speedy run—- but will wait 1 hour for that specific member.

yup.. new trait system makes it less fun to level up.
Mega servers make it harder to finish hearts or find events that are not hunted down by others.

As Nerelith stated. (well besides trolls) its mostly because… suddenly a lot of players that didn’t bother with temples before are suddenly there trying to get the traits….

Since they don’t know how it works.- They will just stick around and attack whatever- hoping that she spawns soon…… and she wont, as they are counter-productively defending it..
- Sometimes players are their own worst enemy.

IndigoSundown.5419:

There is plenty of build diversity available in PvE. More builds are viable in this game’s dungeons than in most other MMO’s. Adding trinity would reduce build diversity. There’d be one slot for a tank running the right build, one for a healer running the right build and three for DPS running … the right build. Trinity would kill all groups that currently allow “play what you want.”

If you’re in a dedicated speed-run group, you’d be embracing the optimum build and group composition, not complaining about it. Since you are complaining, that tells me you’re wanting any build (or maybe just your build) to be acceptable in the PuG experience — random strangers on the internet with different desires and priorities.

No one who understood the game expected that Ferocity would suddenly mean that pseudo meta PuG groups would suddenly become more accepting.

I’m not saying the trinity would be the solution, but to be fair: Build diversity would triple from all the same dps build. – to 1 dps build, 1 tank build and 1 healer build-

Building a good Dungeon environment for a game is far more complex then just adding trinity. But then again. non of those things like zerker- stack etc- are “needed”- Its just the fastest way. Been in plenty of Dungeons where we didn’t do any of it.- it can still work.. Players just usually do not have the patience for it.

Berformet.2981:

how about we remove stealth altogether, and while we’re at it lets take kits away from engis too, and rangers pets, and eles mist form, and necros death shroud, and mesmer clones, and just make all the classes the same… thatll make every1 happy :/

i man as much as i hate fighting thieves, its a part of their roll to have stealth, if you want to get rid of it then we might as well all just run warriors instead. leave the classes as are and learn to fight them.

Well there are quite a difference in how powerful those powers are.
Having the ability to become invisible is a very powerful ability. – if you don’t like a fight you can escape far easier. Mist form? certainly not permanent its 4 secs… 4 secs where you can’t do anything but move. and clearly visible where you are going. you can follow.- you can anticipate where they will go and place aoe on that location.. You don’t loose the target.. and its a trick you can’t repeat – unlike stealth

With stealth you can stay around or run in any direction and you loose the target… dump down aoe?- where? all over? you will run out of aoe soon.- you can just wait till the aoe are over and re-engage.

Element of surprise. Getting first strike capability is very powerful in a pvp environment- Especially if that profession also have heavy options to have burst ability… and the option to rinse and repeat—- stealth – burst – stealth – burst.
Just about any other profession you can see running towards you and act on it.
Most will even loose a second or two on reaction as you try to figure out where the attack came from.
Combine with stuns, petrify or similar and you can’t even respond after that for a few seconds.- Likely you will have to both try to get away.- rinse conditions. heal up and return fire— all that in the few seconds it takes for the thief to burst you down.

Sure clones can be annoying and even deadly- and they have stealth also.
Ranger pets:….seriously? what? oh noes— .
Death shroud: sure extra health and good damage..-. But they are clearly right there! You can fight something you can see… .a thief can just move out- stand around as invisible and look while the death shroud runs out.

Well. there is a higher chance of mega -mes… since its rather random what shard ppl land on. you can spend a lot of time trying to ferry player forth and back. you can theoreticaly end with all the servers commanders on 1 map.. you can have commander speaking in Spanish to french zerg. etc. but sure it should be possible.

Ehm- could all of us get those please? or even better just remove the stealth part from wvw/pvp? would be nice.

Bloodsaw Greatsword
Bronze Greatsword
Ebonblade
Kymswarden
Krytan Greatsword
Khrysaor, the Golden Sword
Lionguard Sword (greatsword)
Lovestruck Greatsword Skin
Naga Fang
Skybringer
Vision of the Mists
Seraph Greatsword
Aureate Highlander Sword

Are all two-handers you can look into.
Though they tend to have to long a hilt. or a bit to much hand guard frills, they are close to an actual working sword.

And yes there are kitten awful swords out there. Some of them do not even have an edge, and if the design is to be taken as exact- then it should be categorized as a blunt weapon.
In general. I would like to see all the 2handers reduced by about 15-20 cm hilt length
about 5-10 cm blade length. . and for most drop about 2 kg worth of hand guard material.

But I guess they cater for a certain personality as they are… compensating or something.

KOPPER.1458:

I am wondering what server most of you are on. I come from a T1 NA highly populated server. Overflows are not new to me at all. World bosses being a giant ball of light are not new. A zerg of players decimating LS event and or normal events is not new.

I realize there are other concerns here, but for those concerns I am a little puzzled.

Well we would be from many different servers. and as such previous experience differs.
I was from EU Vabbi. notoriously smallest server in the game.
As such- I likely experience the most drastic change when mega servers came.
I used to be able to team up with 2-10 friends/guilders and take down the common WB’s. A good challenge when we where few.. you learn how to fight.
-The bad side was – never being able to do large scale LS events or Teq etc. unless we went on purpose to an OF/big server.

I did visit Desolance.(big EU) just to see how that was like. and yes experience there was much like Megaserver with hundreds of players on a simple WB. = boring.

Ideally I guess would be to gain old server system back and either make WBs scale even better+ better AI .. and/or make the population on servers more even— but keeping the server identity.

Fuwa.1365:

The megasever system at the moment caters to a smaller population
It benefits (immensely):
Solo Players
Small Guilds
Less populated areas and events
/snip

Highly disagree.
Its pure awful for solo players, small groups/guilds.
every kitten event has far to many players on it to make it even remotely interesting to play.
WB or even most champs have a god kitten zerg train up to more than 100 running it down. again making it kittenesk easy.
You have no chance of making a community as a new player- as all you meet are from different server communities and you will likely never meet them again—
The map chat is more hateful and you end up wanting to remove the map chat.

If you want to join major events you still have to zone in to the few non contested wp.‘s try to see if its possible to do event. – log out- log in log out. in the hopes of finding say a temple event that isnt done already..
Many events you will never see as they are always completed—- or chain broken due to WB changes.
You will never learn your profession as a new player- as NOTHING is remotely challenging.
Leveling is not faster (if that’s what you want) as actually many of the heart quests you have to wait for spawns to reemerge – while competing with others for those kills… and you sure have to spam that damage fast to get a kill registry.

And a-net wanted to have diversity in gear- spec options…. well now WB will make you focus even more on zerker gear and dps race. – If you come to a WB as anything BUT a high dps… you will not list up as having done enough dps to get loot. you have a few minutes to contribute damage along the 150 other players. . If you are on a support guard staff buffing. you increase 4 other players might- while you didn’t do any damage- each time reducing your chance of getting damage enough done to contribute.
Condition damage? even worse in pve now as the bosses die even faster and more players join on the same boss.

Mega servers work directly opposite of what devs proclaimed to want to achieve.

Yeah…. playing less and less the game after this megakittenup. Its properly good for me.

All the MMO developers- for any game,- would like to have all it’s content used by all its players- for as long as possible.
Simply cause that extends its viability before the need to expand or make new content.
PvP oriented games are easyer to make supply for the demand. as players mostly create its own content…
You might need some score boards or new incentive in the form of rewards.

PvEe will always be the hardest to fill demand for as,- especialy a sub group of pve’ers,- will skip most low level content to rush to max level and only focus on top range of content- (very sad) thease will usualy within weeks of lunch have maxed level and demand new max level content——— you can not as a developer satisfy this demand- it is impossible. – You can not develop faster than players make progress.

So: naturally Developers will try to do another thing that is virtually impossible…
try to get pve’ers to play pvp, and pvp’ers to do pve….
Again yes. some do all of it. and that is the “best” customer to cater for. .
Why?—- if the game had been purely pvp (the easy one to create for) all the pure pve’ers would have ignored the game.

So the middle grounds makes -the most customers -the least unhappy.
(it still leaves plenty of players unhappy)

The new setup is exactly to goat players into gong into all the content.-
I’m a PvE’er and hate pvp. but I must admit its a far harsher problem for the purist pvp’ers. They are down to 2 pure PVP and 2 wvw ones… the majority of the pve ones – can be done in wvw though-(not map specific like Orr, but gather etc)
But they have to enter the middle ground of wvw.

PVE’ers like me. can do pure pve and get daily 5 done.. I am annoyed that I can get less achi points than I used to,- sure. but I would always be behind top achi gainers as I didnt start on day 1. don’t do pvp, and have ignored pvp oriented limited time content like pvp JP’s etc.

All that said. The greed for achi points. did lead me to do more wvw.. and I will only admit to this in a forum like this – so that long time friends do not laugh at me ^^ I’m actually enjoying most of it.—
There are issues I do not like. such as the wast out numbering that happens far to often. or that many defenses are so unrealistically hard to defend (who builds a castle that is easier to get into than to defend? seriously?)=

Do I still think devs should not try to goat players into doing all content? YES definitely.
Do I expect them to make content constantly to cater for the- super fast to end gamer’s- Hell no.
I would like to see more incentive to make new characters to those that only play 1.
I would like to not have a billion players where ever I go- so that I might enjoy the pve content that already is there.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Beldin.5498:

Megaserver now however makes harvesting worse

Out of curiosity, how? We have our own nodes and the TP was always global.

Many used a guest server trick when they found a rich node, or the t6 mats in Orr. etc.
basically harvest on that server- log out- guest- harvest same node location- log to new server- harvest same location -and back.
new mega system: Guest swapping means nothing- if you log in and out. you will either land in same shard or a random new one- and they are not setup so that the nodes spawn at same location- or something-

I don’t do it my self much- done it a few times on rich metal nodes. –
Some players like gathering, as an almost meditative way of relaxing,- while gaining something in a game.- I am certainly one of those.

“worth it” is a very biased feeling. Some times it’s the legendary or asc. gear or as here the harvest tools-
No.- in general it’s not worth it if you only want x
Yes.- if you want y

Fo mer. I have 8 characters and would love to have the harvest tools on all characters- but its far to expensive to get for all.- so the one I play the most have a set of 3-
Why have at all = convinience- less bag space. – I’m also a bit OCD, so I would be annoyed if I used only oricalum tools when at a copper area. – and have many times broken fibers on the alts from using a to low lvl harvester gear.
My OCD also means I spend a lot of time placing the inventory – just right –
Unlimited- means less issues with that.

Ideally I would spend – a number – of real money to have all my characters have unlimited tools- copy from my mains 3.

ehm. do you mean pressing Num Lock. so it runs without movement keys?-
and when you get to the point where you wish to stop. you press it again or press the opposite direction.

Solution could be- less players pr. server/shard. (aka the opposite of Mega servers)
Being 2-5 man against Maw or similar is quite challenging -at least for me. I’m sure some one will come and say they solo it.

Have caves with the monster in it. and that system sets a max number of players. (low 1-25) pr. shard. scale it accordingly. Have the AI do a random adjustment to behavior when group enter so the encounter is slightly different each time.
Give every single boss a kick- it uses every time players are all in one spot.- that knocks them back in opposite directions.
Let finishing move be an actual animation based on that characters weapon choice.. Much like Dragonage (1) had. and remove the stupid banner finisher from pve monsters.

+1 billion +1’s

If you provide Profession- Hours – Deaths
I will sum up the entries for statistical purpose in a month or so..
Though there are many factors involved- we should get some interesting numbers out of this.
If we have enough entries to calculate on – we can even out the variations.

For me so far there has been quite a few surprises. already.

Will be keen to see if numbers variate much from last year. etc

In general .my hand can feel that there are more clicks now than when I started.
advanced mice. keyboard are currently what keeps me from carpal tunnel syndrome.
Remember the loot bags during LA LS? again sooooo many clicks….. So its not only the luck.

I would suggest a drop down menu option of – use all.

I think what you have misread is – that Thieves get Invulnerability and not invisibility- Though its kitten close.
Without a target to hit on perma- invis thieves- you can hope to hit with aoe the thief- you will go into cool-downs while the invisible thief just laugh at all the failed location of the spells…

In this case its very clearly that the channeled spell hit you before you became invisible.- thus continuing that spell.—— should you become immune to one of the few downed spells that necro has at his disposal? you could just interrupt it. move out of range.
Should a power that is so kitten easy to have constant popping make you invulnerable to enemies- more than thieves already are?—- Kittens no.

One little thing though…. some kind of good system to filter it out of chat- minimize distance from emotes -before its activated in chat…. I see a nasty spammage of emotes in city/zerg area. with this…. trolling of commanders trying give chat commands… its already rather strange to experience a wvw enemy spamming your chat from a fair distance…
But besides that. kit-kat yes! more emotes.

The game has sadly been very low on players based fun videos – (I don’t count -“look at me on selected clips of ownz in pvp” interesting)
And I do believe a lot of the reason is low amont of emotes possible.

Found another thread on same topic back a yeah ago.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/deaths-age

Back then the collective data showed this:
class – # deaths per hour (total deaths / total hours)
1. Thief – 0.65
2. Engineer – 0.88
3. Ranger – 0.88
4. Elementalist – 1.11
5. Warrior – 1.39
6. Necromancer – 1.46
7. Mesmer – 1.65
8. Guardian – 1.67

Will be very interesting to see what numbers we get now a year later.

Great Idea.. love data collections like this.
Note should go to the obvious variations.
First character play-through: We all get better as we play the game- first character will have more deaths then the last.
Done many JP’s on that character vs another? = more deaths with a JP character.
Fractals and dungeons are more deadly than most open world content.
Orr—- especially first time to Orr tends to slaughter players. Many new mechanics. Few yellow mobs.
WvW – will also kill you more times.
Listed in sequence of leveled first to last-
Set V for done.

So—————————-Fractals – Dungeons – WvW – JP – Orr Done – Death/hrs
Ele: 1375 hours – 1120! deaths- . VF VD VW VJP VOrr – 0,81
First character- clearly my “main”

Ranger: 491 hours – 103 deaths VOrr – 0,21
Warrior: 239 hours – 140 deaths VOrr – 0,59 o.O
Engi: 295 hours – 87 deaths VD VJP – 0,29
Necro: 188 hours – 53 deaths – 0,28
Guard: 202 hours – 34 deaths – 0,17
Mesmer: 114 hours – 36 deaths VJP VOrr – 0,32

Thief: 32 hours – 27 deaths – 0,84
New made character- lack of traits due to patch.
Rushing through maps, to get away from all the zergs.

Very interesting data from this and the other players data input.

Bank tabs. Character slots – so you have one of each profession. Unlimited tools. increase mats space. – Quaggan hats/backs.-
But I would save them and buy each of those when its on sale- or a particular new fantastic quaggan oriented gear comes out- if so buy right away. you can’t go wrong with quaggan.

NewTrain.7549:

Gearbox.2748:

3:- There are constant (every 14 days or so) an update. .- Some of them are good. Some provide much gnashing of teeth and pulled hair.

And very few of those updates are new content, and even fewer are permanent content (as in: permanent content additions seem to be extinct nowadays).

Ah right… yeah likely need to elaborate there, as I regard even last patch as content update. new traits, wardrobe, tournaments, new npc dialogs, changed landscape. etc. but yes. by content as a new permanent dungeon etc not much . But I bet as you land in Kessex hills or LA that you will widen an an eye or two.

Btw. some of the videos from the Living story content is avlible if you talk to the right npc’s- while out of context its still some nice videos.

asmariya.1096:

Hi all, I played Guild Wars 2 when it first came out for a little while. (Level 59 Guardian). I was considering playing again, but I would like to know a few things.

Is the player base high or am I going to see a lot of dead areas and times?

Has the game turned into a pay-to-win game?

Are there good and constant content updates?

If any of you guys could give me some tips and ideas knowing what I would be coming back to, it would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

1: After the last patch its pretty kitten hard to find a place to be on your own,- I’ve tried.. so far only the place I could be on my own, was the Charr bathroom^^
2: No. – But you can buy an awesome win -in the form of a quaggan hat and wear it in combat now.
3:- There are constant (every 14 days or so) an update. .- Some of them are good. Some provide much gnashing of teeth and pulled hair.

I’ve made full asc gear for 3 characters now and Im making for 2 more that are ½ way there. – Worth it?—— properly not based on stats increase.
Even with the 5 stat/5 agony resist i also place in all my items- weapons are 5% increase and armor- with added sockets.. 5-7% more…. ‘perhaps’ 10% if you are a heavy.
But this is a game where you make your own goals. And one of mine is to have 1 of each profession with asc full gear-
So in my case it is worth it as a goal-

And for looks……. considerably variation. My Charr ranger looked like CATS! (must be a worse swearword then kittens right?)
My female human ele looks great!- etc. and since I don’t want the same look on all,-
its fine… I’ll transmute the looks on the asc gear on the bad-looking ones,- to something else.

Well: a lot of players sadly become used to massive zergs without thought or tactic in the major servers and QD runs. from early level..
If there where less players for each WB and temple. players would eventualy learn and become better.
E.G If you are 5 man doing Maw you have to learn stuff. if you are 100.. you just stand there and spam you afk active 1 button..

Secondly the wurm had some truly bizarre features, that made it harder than it really had to. Unpredictability…. head running off in random directions. Not always near a wall. -
Misleading information about the mushrooms as one gets to the wurms,.

Since everyone is so kitten focused on crits. the variables of dps output of a group so big becomes gigantic sometimes . suddenly 5-10% more health might be gone—-/that odd thing about its health scaling up and down randomly..

Practice..practice…. In most MMO encounters like this is set in closed dungeons.. guilds ran them. That meant you would have about the same group every time… in an open world environment – there will always be some new players. That makes tactics and practice runs harder to organize. -
Iv’e been part of far more advanced encounters in EVE and Conan (and that other MMO; that shall not be mentioned). Where every single player had to know exactly what to do. and it included basically what can be described as advanced broad-scale musical on ice- level of coordination needed.

Evolved wurm actually doesn’t need that much—— IF those strange things are fixed/changed.. and if players where more used to small group teamwork from earlier gaming.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I’m guessing they’re forcing people to take longer to get to 80 because of lack of endgame content.

What they should be doing is making leveling more fun so that people want to take their time moving from1 to 80. But that’s not as easy to accomplish.

Sadly for me at least it has had the reverse effect. I want to speed up my leveling to get past the lack of traits-
I always scoffed at level books and items that made you instant 20- why would I need it? leveling was fun even on the 7th run. fiddling with traits for a new profession etc…… now I’m humbly looking for them for my final 8th character- Rushing to get out of Megaserver maps and leveling with limited traits.

maddoctor.2738:

JustARTificial.3175:

I have leveled a Mesmer prior to this patch, ankitten ow leveling up an Ele in this patch. It is just horrible. I feel 20-30% weaker.

Elementalists are known to be harder to level up than other professions, unless you build the character effectively, then it’s as easy as any other.

Absolutely correct. However now you can’t build your ele.. cause no traits till far later.
and yes as stated by others. if you play a warrior it will be easier.

Several professions are highly dependent on traits to function while leveling.

And the last point. It was something very much to look forward to. Every 5 levels you had a new trait to consider. It was good.
I am leveling my last missing class. and All i can think of now is to level it fast to get past this hurdle. – while I wanted to savor the last class and really see if something had changed in dialog. stop and smell the roses if you like.

anzenketh.3759:

Gearbox.2748:

vorir.7684:

I think the megaservers are great for this game and will help new players with the leveling process tremendously. If Anet wants to attract new players to the game, this is a great step. I can’t wait until the roll out is complete.

Thanks Anet!

Not really – There are so many players in the maps, that the monsters that you need to finish a heart quest is constantly cleaned. and you have to rush to get monsters tagged to finish the quests.. Players are angry shouting at each other, Camping spawn locations to get kills..—- exactly all that this game was supposed to not have compared to other MMO.
On every single map lvl-range 12-35 so far has had queensdale zerk like map runners. doing the champs… in the useless we swarm all and kill all type system.- New players will learn nothing except that is how the game is to be played. no skill needed. just mass zerg all. .
There is no enjoy the atmosphere of the world as you have tons of players bunny hopping throughout what you do.. Map chat is a horrible constant looping meme and troll fest.<
If you believe that leveling is some-kind of burden to get over with fast- then you are right- I want my new character to level up fast – to get away from that and hope to get to a zone without mega server in it.
I believe leveling should be about exploring the world. seeing events. trying out different tactics and builds to overcome obstacles.

This can be fixed with tweaking the system. The concept is still good. What server and map are you on? I have never run into this problem.

Well… I would be on a mega server- server- naturally but my home server is Vabbi. and yes that would mean I’m rather used to few players on maps-
maps where Diessa Plateau & Kessex Hills
– and also Snowden Drifts- oddly enough as its not listed as mega yet but sure felt like it. and had the language mix and all.
Some of it might just be; that many are out doing map finish for more transmutes and hopefully it will calm down a bit.

As for tweaking. sure. sufficient tweaking would likely fix it.

vorir.7684:

I think the megaservers are great for this game and will help new players with the leveling process tremendously. If Anet wants to attract new players to the game, this is a great step. I can’t wait until the roll out is complete.

Thanks Anet!

Not really – There are so many players in the maps, that the monsters that you need to finish a heart quest is constantly cleaned. and you have to rush to get monsters tagged to finish the quests.. Players are angry shouting at each other, Camping spawn locations to get kills..—- exactly all that this game was supposed to not have compared to other MMO.
On every single map lvl-range 12-35 so far has had queensdale zerk like map runners. doing the champs… in the useless we swarm all and kill all type system.- New players will learn nothing except that is how the game is to be played. no skill needed. just mass zerg all. .
There is no enjoy the atmosphere of the world as you have tons of players bunny hopping throughout what you do.. Map chat is a horrible constant looping meme and troll fest.<
If you believe that leveling is some-kind of burden to get over with fast- then you are right- I want my new character to level up fast – to get away from that and hope to get to a zone without mega server in it.
I believe leveling should be about exploring the world. seeing events. trying out different tactics and builds to overcome obstacles.

Lucyfer.9517:

lordkrall.7241:

I love this community:

Before megaservers:
“Buhuhua all maps are empty, the game is dead!!!!”

Now:
“Buhuhu the megeserver system sucks, it is the worst thing ever added to the game, why can’t I play on my server?!?”

And pathetically enough it is often the SAME people that said both of these things.
I suppose complaining for the sake of complaining is something we just have to get used to here.

As a deso player i never complained about population it was not an issue, i could go to any boss at any time and have many people to complete it with. And yes the megaserver sucks, it would be good if it was enabled for small servers only. For big servers it brings nothing but harm.

Well as a Vabbi player (Notoriously lowest pop server) I would like to also not have mega servers please.
Yes we have issues with never having population to do LS large scale events, Teq-karka-3hwurm. Often even not enough to do Claw.. Hence we had to guest to try those events. And yes. wvw would always give us Outnumbered boon.

But… I would still much rather miss out on all that and not have everything else in the game become a boring zerg fest – including all the way down to normal heart quests I used to solo.
It must be possible to scale things so that you can do solo-able quests and 2-10 man-able WB’s, and still sometimes be able to do a Teq. —
And if not-- fine— ill miss out on the LS major events and such-
Rather that then this Mega-Cat-Kitten- Feline- Felidae—Felis server CAT

Mega servers and wb events—- horrible just awful. Please remove.
Maps are filled with players. making questing fairly often imposible to do. all the monsters being dead before hand.. We fight to get to hit the mobs….
map chat all over the place sounds like kitten QD chat with hate talk and the same meme’s being said again and again.

can’t even see my bank with this many players..

WB?? seriously…. no fun anymore.. I choose Vabbi- Because! it was low population. It was a great game to do Fire elemental 3-10 players. Now there is 100 at every kitten champ. sure it was also thus impossible to do Teq or karka or LS major events and we had to guest to get enough for those. BUT
You have made every single Encounter into a boring zerg!.
I would rather for ever miss out on the major bosses, then always have so many players there.
There is also no good way to figure out when we can do a boss. (yes saw some kind of table on the forum- but we would need a proper tracker)

I have gone from emjoying killing some 10 WB’s a day- to about 1-2 and I now find no enjoyment of it.

Worst Idea ever-

Every situation is different. like how many players are at a given WB? if you are 3 persons on Fire shaman you can have greater use for far more skills on the staff. if you have 100 doing it then properly not.
Earth blast finisher is extremely important. would not be able to play without it.
the earth wall has some very nice uses if placed right. even hillarius ones. more wb’s then you think are affected.
Air 6 combo with eath 2is a natural movement speed buff. used in wvw, dungeons and even solo.
earth3 —- reflect missile. besides the defensive part… its heavy damage back at a ranged enemy. very useful in every circumstance
earth 5 is what I usualy start out with in most scenarios..
Gust air 3. fun for wvw edge of mist ^^ and for pve it can give you a little defense.
-
air 1…… go into TA dungeon….. and this time stop listening to the same old dredge about "you have to have x " in this case . you have to have a guard to staff clear flowers….. and just use air 1.
hell even earth 1. gives weakness….. not that many powers- for any class does that.

There is no problem in playing supportive Elementalist – and staff is fine.
First off… get out of the kitten QD train- you learn nothing from it.-
So many new players get to around lvl 10 and hit the QD- cause its there, and lots of players do it…
Problem is they stay in it- thinking that’s how to play…
Go out and solo—- in your support set… and lvl up like that past 80- and into Orr. – Continue.
You will die a lot—- you will need EVERY single skill and some kitten good reflexes. But you learn how to play well.
Ele properly has the highest learning curve and very tricky to use powers, compared to other professions.
So go solo some champs. Learn how a well placed Earth Staff 4 can save you. – Move on and learn how to make your own combo fields.
Learn the – many – useful elites and when to use what —- Fiery Great-sword is very liked by many, but using summoned elemental- the right one -for the right content, is also useful.

And you do not have to be full water/arcane to do well as support.
I’m what used 6fire and 4water arcane (or what ever the new numbers are..)
Staff user and staff-lover from day one..
Traits to look for are Cleansing wave and Arcane atunement.
switch atunements for the right powers at the right time in all fights and learn that way.
Sadly now with so many players out there you will not be able to be a small 1-4 man against most world champs – temples etc. But supporting while doing your share of dps there is a very good training..
Making a group where your job is to keep NPC alive at Grenth Temple in Orr while still needed as dps. – 3 man Fire Shaman etc.. that’s the sort of thing you want and the challenges you will feel proud doing.

As for gear… celestial is good. I mix a lot. have some celestial. some soldier, some zerker, and some rampager.- tbh it is not the most important part.- learning exactly all your powers is the key.

and expect to do well in groups… and be molested by thieves on the way solo -> to the zerk in wvw.

Complaints here in the forum is simply – Mostly pvp small group.. and that we are measured by devs based on our FGS as an integral power- and that we are jack of all trades- masters of none.

SkylightMoon.1980:

fought an ele using it on me as a warrior. found it quite annoying considering a warrior must land all his big hits to be effective.

So you cant fight a thief. Mesmer, guard etc who also have access to blind?
or is it just how often the blinds can be applied’+? if so how often does a thief with D/P blind you pr minute?- or stealth evade.— I’m thinking if you need ALL big to hit- you will have a very hard time.

sort of the same here.
was online at server day change. and the timer just got stuck. no new day change.
Went to bed and now. timer is active- BUT- 3 achivements where completed and I had not gotten the points for them. and cooldown for daily asc mats was just like sgloomi, bypassed..
Home nodes was not recharged.

The elite pets we have are actually quite good in pve. They have many hidden mechanics that you learn over time to use to your advantage.
Sure I would love to have them stay longer- infinite, But Devs do not like eles so I doubt we would get that.
As it is now for much content the FGS sadly outshines the elementals. in almost any situation. The sad part being that it makes us less of a special class and just a short time dps warrior with a long cooldown.. that can’t handle the aoe damage that we get while not having our base weapons skills.

I would really dislike more – transformation skills.. the ones we have are already highly annoying and less usefull – loosing base weapon skills and adaptability.

Well. I’ll say my part, and I’m sure all will disagree before reading it through.

Remove all the summon weapons.

Its a clutch we end up clinging to. We are measures by devs as being good enough because we have them, yet only a few are really good…
But they are also so good and specific that you are basically forced to use them.
In dungeons: you are needed for one job with frost bow in AC, and in generally ignored for other content..
FGS Is the only elite all of you think we should use..but it’s also the one elite that makes us the least special- and makes us just another melee dps 2hand wielder.
Whole events are measured around having those specific weapon at our disposal..

“clever” setups with removing the enemy collision- or using walls- is breaking the 4th wall. and should in my opinion – be counted as cheating. -
It further leaves the issue of sometimes in an open world random noob picks up the spare and wastes it.
And the primary thing- the one thing that makes us Elementalist special –
The atunement swap- becomes useless while you use it.- and all flexibility and changing to exact right atunement- for the right skill -at the right time-
Becomes nullified in exchange for a pure and overpowered dps race.

It becomes a one (well 2½) trick pony system.

Depends on what you like in PvP/wvw scenarios.
Elem is great for being in a large group. doing team support. plenty of aoe. no matter the spec or weapon choice. good support skills with water fields and might stacks and speed boosts.- But they are also high learning curve and you will have to become a lot more skilled then a comparative other class to do well 1v1 etc. and you will likely find that only 1-2 specs will work at all for it.—
We will likely get more nerfs. and get some buffs that we have no use for. (besides the ones in next patch). I assume its cause some dev plays a warrior- and if the ele is on a wall. then he can sometimes not just kill an ele within seconds. thus we need more nerfs.. I assume. the next step is-. “if ele is on a wall. make him auto fall down”

Guards are great for being invinsible. and will not need much skill. they wont get nerfed either as “guards are like devs like them”.
does really well in anything. can adapt skills and gear on the fly. . they have the same low health as ele. though so going for health gear is quite a valid choice.. but you get constant free ignore damage and easy remove any issue that might come your way..
Down sides……. they are not good at range. and as they have buns of lead. you will likely end with staff for movement speed as your other weapon..
It’s also a great choice for commander profession as you can go look at maps. give orders. – go make toast- come back while enemies have been hitting you all while long.

Mesmers.: high learning curve again. good defenses as everyone chases clones instead of you, and you can be invisible. and teleport your team inside keeps. transport golems .. every wvw team would like a skilled mesmer around to do services for them.
downsides… you do not really contribute with doing damage as most of your power comes from phantasm and they are mostly bugged and just stand around….

Bonus: you have that shiney greatsword that beams a purple ray from it. clearly stating where you are. and that you like purple lightbeams.. it doesn’t actually do much damage but you feel bad-kitten doing it… practice saying pew pew in front of your pc.

Thank you all for the feedback.
Alright, well until patch comes I can’t change spec all the time and do not really plan on moving out of my current 30/0/0/20/20 – nice long range fire spells for wall defense
fire fields for might, water fields for heals. and elemental attunement and cleansing wave for team support..lightning fields for speed- and zerk control with earth and water etc. all nice flexible things for the wvw team.
That I feel works great for support the zerk as well as my usual pve game.-

I do not plan on actually winning against a perma stealth thief 1v1 ever
.—- just survive would be great- – the first strike capability+ surprise of stealth is pretty though to move against. They usually have done some 8-9k damage by the time my first spell can be activated. – but being able to get back to my zerk from wp to the other side of the map would be fantastic.

But diffidently some tips I can use.

For the running from wp- to zerk- change to D/x and once there I can hope to find a time to change back again— I’ll try to spam lightning whip while running across the map- not sure I wont feel really dumb and still get back-stabbed but at-least its something.
Frostbow could be good. . if I survive the initial attack I could activate and shoot in front of me while screaming…. might buy me a few secs as he has to run around it.

I use Glybh of E for healing.. normaly as I have good condi removals from atonement change and waterstaff.
I run arcane shield and air signet for speed and stun breaks. and switch air to arcane blast once at the zerk. guess I could try for armor of earth for the run also.

Basically more defensive and spam aoe around me while moving from a- to -b. got it.

as for my tip on Mesmers—- ignore them if they are in the field- no point wasting time trying to chase them and fighting all the constant clones..
If they are hiding in the castle, waiting to make portal to let zerk back in—- point him out to the team. and let them be frustrated about invisibility and hitting clones while you handle your inventory.
Or do massive aoe around him while he sits and hope to not be seen….. there solved ^^

So. fairly new to WvW but in general doing OK. supporting as staff Ele with a basic pve mixed build. Doing my waterboy job and I do get the occasional joy of ranged dps from a wall. Basicly supporting the zerg.
But as we are made of – soft moldy cardboard – I do die fairly often, and have to run back to the flock..
So roaming Perma. Stealth Thieves that can kill you really quick and you can hardly target. – and IF! you get something off – its mostly condi- that they remove – by going into stealth.
Met a couple of seriously well played stealth thieves the last few days. If I could have /bow’ed from my mangled corpse I would.

So any tips on handling this.?..
Out of some 5-6 Encounters with them – I survived 1 time. by running and trowing all my usual OMG! I’m getting wacked powers. Screaming like a 4 year old girl – and only just survived cause he hit a moa accidentally, – almost killing it, so that from downed state I could kill that and get back up to run and survive.
The moa properly had 10% left after 1 of his knife attacks…. (I will donate to the Lost baby Moa sanctuary as my appreciation naturally)

At this point- If! I could see them that is. – then I might as well do a /sit and just wait for the unavoidable and get it over with.

And before you say – well you should stay with others. cause seriusly what did you think—- You’re and Ele! Eles don’t go solo running a# to b# if you know anything—doh!
I know this — now — . But same thief also took down 1-3 other players that was with me a few of the times.

Thaddeus.4891:

Every profession have his pro and con.

… Ele are good in dungeon and WvW, but not that good in sPvP. Mesmer are good in sPvP or Dungeon, but not that good in Zerg. I’m just saying that i can live with that because i play different profession in different role.

Ehm.. you are telling me Mesmers are not good in wvw?. all those portals for golems… sneaky hidden portal makers in keeps to retake castles.?. option to instantly remove all conditions in a large aoe?, time boost?… good defenses with all the clones/phantasms? chaos storms? chaos armor?

and now they are giving a rather annoying GM trait that blocks use of skills for 10 secs further…. on top of what eles have as cooldowns…..

@ Warkupo. Both high pop and low pop servers have issues.
I’m on Vabbi. as a nice thing. we can pretty much choose when to activate a WB and can do them in small groups. 2-3 manning Fire Elemental is good fun and challanging.
BUT: it also means that loads of events will never ever happen. 3H. Wurm, Marionette, most Many Orr events. Teq, Karka Queen.-
These only occur when a huge Zerg from Jade Sea or the Spanish etc come and invade.
This also means that they fill up the map. making it close to impossible to get in on it.-
Throwing us on OF if we join late.
And worse. since your huge pop servers are so filled- they will also go and do normal (easy) content like Behe on our server while they are there.
So its a positive thing that I sometimes get to do the rare events while they visit- if I notice in time, But it’s also pretty annoying that a huge foreign zerg comes in and steamroll through our normal content.

Further- we will have to listen to verbal abuse if we try to visit big servers to try the new content- just for being guests- while we have no choice- if we want to try the new content.
And don’t get me started on wvw- at a big rare day for vabbi we might muster 50 players- but that wont matter versus 150+ enemies.

Server numbers needs re-balancing – not messing with the down/up scaling.
If 10-20 players wants to go a boring champ farm in QD. I can’t care less.- It’s sad that it happens in human start area. where so many new players get the wrong idea that – thats how the game is supposed to be like- but besides that – meh

“heared of a new player who actually cared about traits before level 80”
Well you have now. Cuase as mentioned messing with specs is a driving force of the fun for me.
@Zudet. yes. and as stated; Since doing traits while leveling was considered fun for me, a tune down will not in anyway affect my issue of missing out on trait fun.
So having you post that- is rather meaningless.

Sort of like the idea.. Only problem is that ½ of a boss hit often does more damage than my Ele can take. and a few trashmobs can still wipe it out far to easy- using exact right combo of dodges and protective systems is constantly needed.

Surely you are joking.
First you mention you want it to be easier to understand for newcomers… but the new system seems much more complex.

It also means while you level up- you now have to wait till lvl 30 to start having fun with talents…
Guess you want players to buy some new items to boost xp from 1-30 – cause talent specking was a big part of the fun.- uh and I guess you want players to have higher death-rate from 1-30 as they have less powers….. what? you think the best way to have players level is queens champ trains? cause this will increase the players that level through such easy gameplay.

Specific traits:
Elementalist? healing others but not your self….. cause yeah surviving is what we do best…..right… so you make options for Guardians- who already can handle the massive boss damage by mitigation -even more solid. and you give Eles who already get smacked by the bosses no option to survive but extra healing to the team… – wow… just wow.

Unlocking specific game guides…. so I’m I guessing this right; Content that you felt players didn’t do – cause perhaps it wasn’t very good,- is now the focus point of what we must do to get our traits?

How about a novel idea- fixing the broken traits instead of messing with the system?
Or how about splitting the pve world from the pvp world so that whatever happens in pvp does not kitten the kat our pve builds.?

So. let me get this straight— we will again not gain any surviveability bosses and aoe will continue to smash us to bits- and we get an increased ability to heal all those others that doesn’t need the healing…. great. . Could we get the health boost of guardian please?