I made the Gift of the Juggernaut a long while ago when SDs were 10% as expensive as they are now. I quit the game for the early part of 2013 and when I returned and saw that the price of the Silver Doubloons was hitting almost 2 gold each, the only thing I felt was a mix of disgust and shame. It’s long overdue for a Mystic Forge recipe, and until then it will remain the same absurdly scarce and therefore atrociously abused market commodity it is now.
Champion trains are still in full force whenever I visit Queensdale or Frostgorge, so clearly a lot of players don’t care if the rewards were nerfed.
Why must you punish everyone because of a few bad apples. If anything you should be suspending/closing the accounts of the players who harrass people because they disrupt there “champion train”. Another nerf that affects everyone because of a toxic few that you refuse to punish/deal with, thx anet…
Yeah, this wasn’t nerfed because of toxic players, this was nerfed because of champion farming being far too profitable. It’s only the 15th time ANet has nerfed the most profitable money maker in the game and it’s good on them so you’re not forced to do the same money making scheme to keep up with the inflation that comes from tons of people doing said most profitable thing in the game.
I’m smelling a troll.
If I can make only one recommendation, it’s this:
Map your 1 skill to middle click.
Ari, I love your design.
My Engineer.
Crucible of Eternity chest piece.
Human Tier 1 pants.
Human Tier 2 shoulders.
The Ruined City of Arah mask, gloves, and boots.
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Whenever we get him we just give up and hope for a better choice next time. There’s no point in even trying. Once you get random people jumping in its impossible to do. Even if you can finally coordinate everyone around, there’s just not enough time to blow through all his buffs AND high hp. He needs some looking at indeed. While I appreciate unique mechanics, this one doesn’t really qualify as unique, more like downright frustrating and at times impossible.
It only takes one decent Necromancer or Engineer to destroy all of his boons.
I can’t help but see the “grin” part and think of something more cuddly… So 6/10.
Just made a max height, max fat Mesmer named Gabe Nornwell.
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I’d like to bump this and throw in my support. Players have no idea if they have all the Baubles before killing the boss. This is problematic because of two things: the Baubles from the boss chest are required for the achievement and once you unlock the Boss chest you have 40 seconds or so of haste and disappointment once you realize that you missed a Bauble somewhere and must do the Zone again. Without any way to keep track of what Baubles count, what Baubles you have, and what Baubles you’re missing, collecting all the Baubles becomes a nightmare.
I’ve noticed that while all of the Elementalist conjured weapons and the Engineer’s “Wrench Mace” has its model as a normal weapon skin in game, the “Gear Shield” does not share this, despite it being perfectly fit for being an accessible shield. I’d like to see it included in the game as a Weapon skin rather than just a weapon skill in the Tool Kit.
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I think it was removed because with high Frenzy, the Abomination would literally hit you quicker with that rush that its model could follow.
People saying that it’s a money sink aren’t thinking clearly. If I have a Warrior and an Engineer, I’m not going to make 2 Predators so they can both have one. I don’t think anybody in their right mind would do that rather than just making a different Legendary.
Does transmuting keep the “Legendary” status. I thought there was something about it beoming exotic when transmuted?
Here’s a video of the account bound transmutation, but it is before some of the changes.
It does keep them as “Legendary” but it messes with the look when you link it in chat. My recommendation is to never transmute a Legendary, even if you don’t need the Toughness and Vitality.
In my experience, Guardian, Mesmer and Engineer. Guardian can keep people safe. Mesmer just has the ability to stay alive longer than anyone else (more skilled players use it?). Engineer can keeping running while putting out a high damage output if crap hits the fan thanks to the 360 attack direction of the Grenade Kit.
Ultimately, all classes were nerfed with the Quickness reduction. However, Mesmer is still the only profession capable of producing area quickness and for twice as long as any other profession.
As far the Thief thing goes, the update was to fix client crashes. It’s likely that the Thief fix thrown on because some designer completed that fix in the two days since the big patch and there was no reason to not include it with the patch.
I’m okay with this. It means that some developer somewhere at least has eyes on Honor of the Waves.
Considering both my Engineer and Thief took a hit, I’m glad that my Symbol Guardian had both of the important symbols fixed.
While the new changes are appreciated, the 20 second cooldown across all kits combined with the short duration of the abilities themselves makes the trait worthless. Time to get a new trait.
I use four kits for my utilities. All this does is stab me in the foot and further sidebench my Engineer by adding more cooldowns on the “no cooldown” kits. If that one global cooldown really hits every kit, every other buff the Engineer just received is moot to me. They hurt the OP Grenade Barrage on equip, I thought that was a band-aid until they thought up a better solution. I guess I was just assuming the guy doing Engineer was intelligent…
Why the hell did they work so hard on making new Kit Refinement if they were just going to make it worthless in the same move?
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IMO, Bolt, Eternity set, the Predator, the Moot, the Bifrost, Quip, the Dreamer, and the Kudzu are all very nice.
Meterologicus and The Minstrel need an effect besides their unique models.
Flameseeker Prophecies should leave a trail of blue pages as someone mentioned.
Frostfang and Incenerator needs off-hand frozen/burning arms and something like a special freezing/blackening effect can appear on the enemy model.
Possibly add the aforementioned blackening effect to Rodgort.
Give better notable and unique sound effects when the Howler is “blown” rather than its current somewhat muffled howling noise.
It might just be me, but the Juggernaut’s footfalls (or “drops”) like very much like pigeon crap. If they were made reflective and just shinier I’d appreciate it. Aside from that, it’s great.
When dual-wielding different Legendaries with footfalls (such as a Necromancer with Frostfang and Rodgort), have the side of the Legendary leave a footfall from that foot. So the right foot would leave the frozen footfall and the left foot would leave the fire footfall.
Underwater weapons… yeah…
Quick thought, does Rodgort turn blue when used by a Guardian?
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I like it, though I’m biased as a dungeon runner. Make forging the Precursor similar to forging the rest of the Legendary just makes sense, IMO. You have the 3 Gifts that are made through work gathering mats, getting karma, exploring the world, doing different things in the world, and just generally trying to have fun in the grind. Then you get to the Precursor and you’re faced with three options: get an obscenely lucky drop, flush anywhere from 4 to an innumerable amount of exotic weapons down the Mystic Forge, or save alot of money up. The entire Legendary concept trips so hard on the Precursor that it drags the entire thing down into having a horrible reputation. Simply because of the Precursor, Legendaries go from being a symbol of hard work to a symbol of wealth.
I’m not counting Mesmer because their illusions get within close range.
Long range single target: Ranger if you count Pet, Warrior if you don’t
Long range AoE: Elementalist
Medium range anything: Engineer
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I can’t stand the new AC. It’s “hard” but it’s not like how Arah is hard. It’s hard because it’s cheap. Spider Queen’s AoEs are ridiculously punishing and last far too long and the constant poison makes healing when you inevitably screw up hard. I’ve seen more people being pulled by Kholer now because there’s less attention on him thanks to his infinite ads and that’s no fun. All three bosses have damage that I consider way overtoned. Howling King spams Confusion more than any boss in the game, Ghost Eater does those ridiculous AoE Damage+Vulnerability fields that stack despite that he’s now a puzzle boss. Colossus is just untested garbage that almost every group refuses to fight normally (Grast needs to be made sessile, invulnerable, and actually function correctly or Colossus needs to not stack Defiant).
The reality is there isn’t very much difference between a level35 and a level80. They changed the stats for down scaling a while ago. If a level80 can do it, a level35 can do it too. Weather or not someone new to the game can do it is another story.
Disagreeing on 2 points.
Stats. While the stats are downscaled, people level 60 and higher have 3 sets of stats per equipment rather than 2.
Traits. Things like Altruistic Healing on the Guardian, Grenadier on the Engineer, Elementalist’s Cleansing Water, or the Thief’s Executioner (and those are just the Professions I’m familiar with) makes a huge difference in the output and utility of the class. Not having said traits makes a big difference.
I’m not an elitist, I did AC with 3 people less than Lv.50 two days ago. The run was mostly fine and the weakest link was a Lv.80 Signet Warrior rather than any of the lower levels. But there are notable disadvantages to running with players lower than Lv.80. Those factors can be made up by skill and experience of course, but it’s reckless to say that there are no advantages to being level 80 rather than level 35.
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I never though about it, but I’d be absolutely fine with no spawning windows and just adding 30 or so minutes onto the current timers.
Before I’m accused of it, I’m not complaining about this, I just want to talk about it.
I was discussing Confusion with some friends earlier today and we all had something to say. Two people we’re saying it was fine, another said it scaled far too much with condition damage for something that stacks. Someone put in that it was the only condition that hits more than once per second. Somebody brought up the oddity that rolling/dodging is considered a “skill”. Someone mentioned that it’s likely the single best damage condition in the game. And somebody brought up the point that it’s a mechanic that in a high-speed, twitch-based game it’s a skill that says “forget that, stop or die” whenever a swirl shows up on your condition bar.
So I’m wondering what the forum thinks of it.
Anybody who dismisses what any profession can do because their numbers aren’t as big as a Warrior’s is a fool. Argument over.
Empowering Might is more or less necessary for Altruistic Healing to really be great and Writ of Exaltation is amazing when paired with the Hammer.
My recommendation is to use both. Even with my PoV Shout build, I use Writ of Exaltation in place of Superior Aura.
While Thieves are great for damage, so many people ignore their support capabilities.
I thougt Greatsword was the big thing with Guardians? Then again, I haven’t played my Guardian in a few months, so it’s likely that changed. I’m a little iffy on Mesmer as well. I leveled as a dual sword/greatsword Mesmer, so that probably skewed everything for me since I never shattered my clones ever. I might have to relearn that class completely.
Magical math was done and it was discovered that the Hammer actually has more damage over an extended period of time due to the Symbol of Protection combo and the frequency of Mighty Blow. That’s not counting how great 5 second blast finishers and 50% Protection up-times are. The Greatsword is still better at spiking and Binding Blade is still one of the best CCs in the game, but as far as extended boss fights go it’s a choice between the Hammer and Sword rather than the Greatsword.
Fire fields might be the best field for dungeon running for the pure Might, but as a Utility Engineer (double Super Elixir that I wish was Water field) and Hammer Guardian (constant big Symbol of Protections), I’m constantly producing so many Light fields that any other field has little chance of surviving if it’s under my feet. Don’t get me wrong if you’re thinking I’m just throwing out the Light fields because I don’t care, I despise covering up much both valuable Fire, Water, and Dark combo fields with the Light field because Retaliation is very poor in PvE. If Light fields instead granted Protection with the Blast finisher I would be more appreciative but as they are now, the only Light field I can appreciate is the Wall of Reflection because people rarely use it for anything but cleansing conditions because of it being a vertical field.
I’d like to point out that Necromancers and Mesmers already have boon hate. That’s 25% of the professions already having anti-boon mechanics.
This sort of thing is necessary not because of Guardians but because of how broken the D/D/ Elementalist is.
I don’t mind the 100nade nerf (I use it in sPvP and if I get a drop on somebody, I just simply win) but I wish the designers would leave Super Elixir alone. Not only do I rely on it to cleanse conditions because 4 kit builds don’t have any way to get rid of conditions except for the rather slow Med Kit, but as a dungeon runner if it’s barely worthwhile when stacking 2 layers of it. Not to mention that it’s constantly being nerfed and buffed. It’s becoming tedious to even try to use it.
I would accept an overall heal nerf if the field type was changed to Water though. Guardians already spam Light fields while our only Water fields are very unreliable thanks to how short the Healing Turret’s field last. It would also put it more in line with what Healing Rain and Healing Spring already do.
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Agree with this 100%. Might breathe some new life into HotW, SE and CoE.
Not hard. Just not any fun. Just look at the bosses: Spider now spams annoying and overly long AoEs for the sake of making him “hard” but killing any chance of trying to melee him, Kholer’s ads are harder than Kholer himself, Howling King spams the most frustrating mechanic of a condition known as confusion that ruins any fun that could be had because it becomes a war of attrition than an actual boss fight, the Ghost Eater is nothing short of frustrating due to having way over-toned damage that takes you by surprise due to a mechanic that pretty much says “DON’T FOCUS ON THE BOSS” to the point where it’s a convienence when his AI freezes twice a fight and you have to CC him to fix him, and how Colossus Rumblus was changed from Howling King 2.0 to Grenth 3.0 and now relies on an NPC that was likely programmed by an intern.
In groups, Mesmers are more appreciated thanks to having a host of mobility and support skills such as Time Warp, Portal, Feedback, and Temporal Curtain. When played properly, Mesmers can set up amazing spikes and impressive techniques that can change the way your group goes about something. Engineers tend to be less appreciated thanks to having generally weaker support and misperceived damage capabilities. On the other hand, Engineers can pump out cripple, immobilize, have access to pretty much every type of crowd control, incredible mobility, and do very heavy AoE damage with bombs and grenades. When played properly, Engineers have the widest variety of skills available to them compared to any class in addition to being able to pour out steady damage on par with a Thief or a Warrior (excluding Hundred Blades) almost entirely at long range.
In general, I suggest to all new Guardians to try Knights armor for the six armor pieces. After that, the weapon and jewelry stats depend on your build. A DPS Guardian would use Berserker, an even tankier Guardian would use Soldier or more Knight, and a supporter Guardian would use Cleric.
I never like relying on sigils that reset upon down. As good as I am occasionally I’ll get downed in dungeons and there goes all your stacks. I prefer strength (might on crit) because I have a high crit/crit damage build and it synergizes well with empowering might.
I know exactly where you’re coming from, but I overcome it by making the sigil stack effect as a “bonus” rather than relying on it. Despite having a Superior Sigil of Perception, I have a crit rate of 46% with food which is more than enough to properly do AH/EM at its maximum output even with the slow Hammer.
As mentioned, might on crit can synergize very well with EM use. However, I’ve always stuck with Fire sigil. It’s just very reliable and I don’t think anyone dislikes extra aoe and burst.
Superior Sigil of Fire is fantastic but the one I have was used for my 100nades Engineer. I couldn’t really fit it on my Guardian’s weapons anyway.
As a note, for all weapons I use the following:
TPP Hammer is Superior Sigil of Perception, main weapon, used for defense support against crowds
PCC Greatsword is Superior Sigil of Accuracy, used for offense against crowds
PCC Sword is Superior Sigil of Strength, used for offense against single targets
TPP Scepter is Superior Sigil of Accuracy, used for offense at range
TPP Mace is Superior Sigil of Accuracy, used for defense against single targets
TPP Shield is Superior Sigil of Generosity, used for defense against single targets
TPP Focus is Superior Sigil of Blood, used for defense at range (90% of the time I’m using it solely for Lupicus)
PCC Torch is Superior Sigil of Accuracy, used for offense against single targets
HPV Staff is Superior Sigil of Hydromancy, used for ranged support
I use Sword/Torch, Hammer/Shield, and Scepter/Focus unless I have a good enough reason to switch up (such as having to use Scepter in melee range for whatever reason), or having to have a quick CC alongside by Sword.
As a Guardian, I find that pure stats and boons helps more than fancy effects.
In my experience, I find that the best Sigil to use on the mainhand for someone that doesn’t rely on condition damage are the stat stacking sigils. My Guardian’s Hammer, being the main weapon, has a Superior Sigil of Perception for the 250 extra precision (or about 12% more critical chance at level 80) once things get going. Depending on if your build is reliant of precision (which I think it is given that you have the standard 30 Valor and 20 Honor for Empowering Might with Altruistic Healing), it may be the best Sigil you can go with.
If you think you have enough precision, you can instead try for a Superior Sigil of Strength for 4-5 extra Might on top of your Empowering Might (about 140-175 power with an AH heal with each stack of Might) or the Superior Sigil of Bloodlust for the 250 extra Power. They’re both rather pricey and depending on how you view it one may be better than the other. Superior Sigil of Bloodlust has that cool extra 250 Power but you have to kill 25 enemies to reach that and you lose it on down. Superior Sigil of Strength will have you constantly stacking that Might as long as you’re attacking and you’ll heal around 80 more health every 2 seconds thanks to Altrustic Healing working with that new Might.
This mechanic doesn’t promote tighter teamwork – it promotes exploit discovery.
Pretty much this. There are already three spots I know of that you can stack at and kill the boss while being completely out of the way of the AoE. As a result, almost every group I do AC Path 3 with will attempt to cheese the boss and succeed because it easily works and makes the otherwise buggy, painful boss fight a breeze. I think the whole “interruptable shout” thing is a moot point. Despite the fact that Defiant mechanics are very hard to coordinate in groups that are not familiar with each other (as probably 75% of AC groups are) due to the lack of an in-game voice chat, the window for interrupting the shout is frustratingly slim and still only prevents the AoE half the time it is interrupted.
It is rather annoying that a key mechanic of this boss fight relies solely on this NPC.
And this! So many times this! Warmaster Grast has usurped Magg as the most frustrating NPC in the game. My experience in the game has taught me not to rely on NPCs because of their very weak AI and Warmaster Grast only cements that frustrating sentiment.
I mean, what was the point of changing to boss from Howling King 2.0 if he was just going to be made into Grenth 3.0?
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People perceive the “weaker” professions as too weak to properly do high level Fractals. Engineers and Thieves (the former is amazingly underestimated in possible damage output while the latter has a tarnished reputation due to a lot of people who simply can’t play the professions properly) are considerably harder to play properly in PvE than a Warrior or Guardian and thus you encounter less people who are worthy of playing at high levels. This leads to assuming that your average pug of this professions are the type who are not capable of playing the profession to their fullest extent and thus they perform considerably worse than a pug of a Warrior or Guardian of the same caliber.
While there are issues such a microhealing being relatively useless and the profession based issues such as Ranger pet being extremely vulnerable due to lacking any dodging and agony resistance, I believe it to be almost entirely a perception issue.
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The Dredge are very manageable in SE compared to the Underground Facility Fractal. I run it almost once a day. While the armor designs may not be the best, it’s certainty not the worst in the game. I think they’re the sort of thing that needs to grow on you. It’s also a reason of the stats on those armors. While SE provides the great PVT and TPPr armors, CoF, CoE, and Arah all provide the more meta Berserker stats. And as somebody mentioned, the level 60 rares aren’t providing the frustratingly important Ectoplasm so people are less likely to desire to run the dungeon for easy rares.
As a PvEer, I think the sword does pretty well. It, alongside a Torch, is typically what I use against bosses that I don’t need any sort of survival against and just need to burn health on. My only complaint is that the 2 skill feels a bit underwhelming. All I use it for is to prevent a big hit on my party with the quick Blindness or (more often) quickly close distance to a boss. If it had 20% less cooldown (or 2 less seconds) or proper damage (the current damage is (.0735 * Attack) – 73.826 when it should be around (.735 * Attack) – 73.826. instead), I think the weapon would be much more accepted compared to the Greatsword and Hammer.
Zealot’s Defense’s root isn’t as big of a concern for me as bosses do not tend to move around like other players do. However, I do tend to notice that even against a sessile target not all 8 attacks hit.
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His last grub always spawns on whichever person/pet is closest to him. Just get someone to melee him in the grub, it should spawn on them.
This is pretty much the only solution, sadly.
I can’t enter Fireheart Rise or the Cursed Shores.
Edit: Fireheart Rise keeps kicking me back to Lion’s Arch but going from Frostgorge Sound to Fireheart Rise let me in.
Server is Yak’s Bend.
I preferred to do the fights with lag than to not do the fights at all.
Quick solution: You can only claim DE chest on your home server.
No need to change guesting due to overflow outrage. No need to change loot tables because of people doing Sunless and Shatterer five times in 30 minutes. It screws the people who are legitimately trying to guest on other servers but the waters have been dirtied by this abuse. People on the home server will still do the events for the Rare and Exotic loot.
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Just today, my glass cannon Engineer 1v1’d the new Howling King and his flunkies after my party wiped with about 40% health left due to a particularly nasty scream combined with a sudden fire ring on top of them.
I started Guild Wars 2 playing as an explosives Engineer. To me, bright lights and pretty particle effects are nothing compared to how constantly obstructive Grenades and Bombs are. I think the picture you posted is the light from “Judgment”.
It does not work on downed players, which is a bit of a pain when a downed player has 20 stacks of bleed on them.
Invulnerability in this game doesn’t actually make you immune to condition damage. Even invulnerable bosses can be killed through tons of condition damage. I can confirm this for Baelfire in CoF Path 2.
Dredge is perfectly possible without the spy kits (did a 38 group without them just now). It does, however, take much longer and require much more effort. Most players who aren’t elitist who do things for the sake of being challenged look at everything they do for loot like Fractals as a matter of time and effort put in versus amount of loot received. Right now, loot from Fractals of the Mist is downright lousy. Rares and exotics seem to get rarer with each passing day, there are 2 types of Ascended equipment that you can’t get from Fractals of the Mist now, and the difficulty of Fractals hasn’t been affected to reflect this change in the situation. It’s still hard as hell in pug groups. It’s still nearly impossible to melee unless you’re a high toughness Guardian or other tanky character. But the reward for that difficulty and time is growing slim compared to the reward for doing things that would take just as much time like running CoF Path 1 six to eight times in the time it would take to do an average Fractal run. As this goes on, less and less people will keep trying to do Fractals and as a result, the content waste away like story mode because it’s simply not worth doing for reasons beyond what you can get at level 10.
I’m… cautious about praising it or dismissing it. Path 1 and the Howling King feel solid. The Spider is a bit of a pain now that its damage is so anti-melee (Guardians wept), Kholer isn’t anymore or less hard (though it depends on luck. A Necro and an Ele spawning with him is different than a Ranger and a Warrior), the Troll is still skipped unless we pair him with Kholer, but the end bosses are the big “eh”. I like the changes to Howling King—though I think Breeding King would be more acceptable now—and while all the mobs hurt my frames it was thoroughly enjoyed. The Ghost Eater… not so much. I understand the mechanics but in a pug without voice chat… it’s very frustrating. I’m sure that a group with voice chat and good communication could make the fight much more fun though. Colossus Rumblus is a different story. He’s not fun. While I appreciate making him different than Howling King 2.0, he was just made into Grenth 2.0, which is a significant con in my book. He’s not fun to fight, the massive AoE spam is frustrating and the counter mechanic (the NPC produced shield) is pretty unreliable. I’ve been in two groups against him and both times we resorted to cheesing him because it was simply easier than fighting him normally even though we all admitted to wanting to try the new AC for its content. That’s not good design.
For now, I’ll probably replace AC with Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1 and 3 as my “I’m-sick-of-CoF” dungeon.