Guild Wars 2

1. The ability system has potential

>> expand existing abilities to T10 (only the two Guard ones have that)
>> add new defensive ones (the current ones emphasize offensive abilities too much)
>> add the ability to create small scale upgrades depending on you ability (e.g. imbuing a sentinel with the ability to light up enemies on the map for a short time, like the sentry turrets in EotM; bought with supply)
>> If you grab a siege weapon a “kittens” marker should appear above your head, so the “who has mastery” and “I have full mastery” whispers can be reduced.

2. Supply chain

>> Some sort of possibility to transfer supply by dropping it to a depot and not be dependent on dollys. Perhaps linked to an ability that reduces the “fee” for transferring
>> Downed dollys – I like in the Silverwastes. The dolly isn’t dead and can be rezzed for a short period of time (of course will a mastery that either allows you to rezz it faster or kill it faster)
>> “Hire/Trigger” NPCs to either disrupt a camp (we already have that) or strengthen a camp (possibility for a diplomacy ability that lets you hire or bribe e.g. the centaurs)

3. Some BL variety

>> Some small scale environment effect that can be researched to make borderlands a bit different
>> I loved the old Quaggans and the Krait stuff (e.g. you could send Quaggans to Bay to contest it, which required some more scouting or could sneakily contest a WP)

4. “Rewards” for guilds claiming

>> I think there should be a small reward, even if it is just symbolic (for over all balance reasons) for guilds to claim a structure
>> Perhaps tie the claiming time (especially having keeps in mind) to the number of buffs activated. I remember times when big WvW guilds desperately want to claim a keep to give it buffs and it was claimed by a random person which activated no buffs at all.

5. Time outs on Siege

>> Kick people off a siege engine if they don’t use it actively (like in the Silverwastes), so AFK people can’t e.g. block a vital defensive Treb.

6. “Rewards for the stewards”

>> Scouting, upgrading and dolly escorts need to be rewarded more with at least XP/Karma/WxP/Badges whatever

7. GvG

>> Either create a section on the maps (expanded Obsidian Sanctum) or a designated area on the map that allows GvG fights. Perhaps even award PPT rewards for the winner of such a match for the server.

8. Commander tag functionality

>> less suppressing of Cmdrs in chat in WvW maps
>> “/supplyinfo” typing … do I need to say more?
>> some sort of new interface for commands, “like go there” which will create a white circle people can see on the ground

9. Skins and Items

>> We can’t salvage the WvW armours and weapons, perhaps allow that?
>> Add collections some people can drop their badges into
>> Add Mistforged exotic collection to the list?
>> give WvW players some exclusive stuff (PvP players have their tracks with only in PvP items and rewards)

10. Revamp achievement tracks

>> Escorting dolyacks until 2037 to get the track maxed out? small exaggeration
Those tracks need a serious, realistic revamp

Probably more, like new maps, better match-ups, alliances and a lot of other things.

Yeah, my cameo appearance made it into the final cut of the movie! I hope you all will have a great time on the 27th. Merry Christmas, Wintersday or whatever seasonal festivity you want to celebrate these days.

Well, back at the launch of GW2 I tried to get members of the gwonline.net community to be part of a Elementalist centric guild, but the turnout was pretty low, so it was disbanded and never really popped up again.
Part of the problem why profession specific focus groups are no big deal in GW2 is that a lot of stuff is highly focused on efficiency these days and less on fun. A group of Eles (if you happen to get a party) will e.g. be much slower in completion of a dungeon or a fractal with Condi gear than in Berserker/Celestial. It is also hard to pull off “snowflake” builds, because the meta is so set in stone (look at the supremacy of Cantrips in any competitive environment)

The next technical aspect would be that GW2 has limited us to a few guilds and I guess most of us have their slots filled up already.
Go for it, if you want to try, but don’t be surprised if the idea doe snot take off.

Depending on the level of your characters, levelling up has changed a lot (for characters below level 30) and the changes to some traits have been significant. Read update notes, especially for the “feature patches”.
Wardrobe skins & Minipets, if you have a lot of them need your attention too.

Drow.2081:

I’m level 50 but trying a lvl 50 zone is to hard. ?

Have you upgraded all your gear to about that level? You the closer the gear is to your actual level the “easier” it will be. You should not wear and use anything that is below level 40 (better to have stuff between lvl kitten now)

If you leave Caledon Forest towards Metrica Province (about halfway up the map on the west side), you will enter the Asura starter map at around the max level of that map. If you enter Brisban Wildlands you will enter a lvl 18 area (Brisban is hardest in the NW).

If you are “under-geared” , I would go to Metrica, clear the northern part and then exit to Brisban and do the south and east part of the map.
That would be the natural “foot path” without using Asura Gates much. But like others said, you can always use gates to LA and the other racial home towns and do starter zones to gain some more levels (especially if the fights are too tough due to crappy arms & armour).

The Salvage o Matics are convenient items. The 3.5 copper per salvage compared to the 3 copper auto-deduction of the gem store item is only statistically better. Do not forget you have to pay 800 gems for the convenience.
I’d say use Basic Kits (=copper o matic) for whites & low cost blues and greens (depending on who much mats compared to gold you want)
Use Mystic Kits for rares and BL Kits for exotics.

Hopping in late on this.

I think Rin does no really want more PvE events, but actually more tactical variety on the battlefield, especially for the more defensive player (dolly escort, camp upgrader, scout etc), which right now is completely unrewarding to spend your time on.

If I would take the time to search the WvW forum, I am sure I will find countless ideas for small additions that are following that concept (e.g. upgrades to sentries, so they can take down a dolly alone, moats, watch towers, the comeback of Orbs, skills to make people unable to rally of wildlife etc.; GvG areas)

In the end it all boils down to the general lack of vision for WvW and the disconnect the WvW veterans feel when they read the “scarce” posts by devs about the game type here on the forums (e.g. the removal of white swords).

lordkrall.7241:

How is that elitist though?
Anyone (as far as I know) can join the guild, so just join it if you want in. Especially since you can join multiple guilds.

In my case, I have all my guild slots used (two of them dedicated to guilds that help making the community better organized on my server). I don’t have a free slot available.
Preferring guildies over PUGs is also fine, but keeping PUGs out, that could be part of the event if I chose to is an elitist attitude I don’t like. Perhaps TxS has changed? I don’t know.
With megaservers making server based stuff (like Tequatl kills etc.) more difficult to organize (I know, because we did that on AG), everybody that can achieve stuff for the greater good of the community, should do so. My experience might be an isolated incident, but just naming event guilds and thinking the OPs question is answered (his desire to kill the TT wurm) just won’t do it.

Just my experience in the past …
I landed on a megaserver shard with TxS killing the three worms shortly after the megaserver update came out. This was my first and only time I was able to see this happen (I am stuck at one kill and two heads severed ever since). I kept the commander on my friends list. When I asked him a few weeks late if he was willing to taxi me to an organized attempt if the map was not full already I got the reply that he and the guild in general will not do that, because you have to join the guild for this service.
I have no idea if TxS is still holding on to this elitist crap, but I have not tried to get the Triple Trouble off my to-to list ever since, although I would like to see it be done.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Not sure about that, since I got a Mordrem Heart (gold), as well. Still, I’ll keep ‘em just in case. Worst case scenario? I’ll lose 50 crests.

It would all be so much easier, if Anet would have been more precise with their wording
e.g.
“I have this Mordrem troll spleen.” but you turn in a “Mordrem Troll tendon”
This makes no sense

Better would haven been:
all things with a “toxic” prefix are bonus items, so not only call it a “toxic gland” (rare for 50 crests) but also “toxic heart” (exotic for100 crests).

A small update from “the original poster”, just to illustrate how I am progressing at finishing up the collection without being able to re-do the story parts:

I am around 300 crests short of getting the third armour box (which is around 2 meta event cycles) and I have not bought any extra lock picks since Tuesday (so all my crests went into the glove acquisition). At my possible gaming times and play style, this translates into around 5 days to get one armour part set. For a time frame of two weeks, that’s about 1/3 dedicated to get the stuff done.
Is it that bad? No. Would I have preferred to get it via the story – yes.

PS: if chapters 7 & 8 will indeed give you two armour parts each, the “grind” for the collection will increase to 2/3 or the total length of the patch, which is an uncomfortable thought to me.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Mordrem Toxic Gland. Saving it just in case for the next release.

Glands are the “rare drop” from the satchel and worth 50 crests. They exist since the beginning of the Echoes chapter. Turn them in right now.

I really would like to know if the loot table from green extraction item will be modified in terms of addling all items to the pool or if older items will be deleted?

e.g.
“Echoes” – collection item shoulders – tendon – gland
“Paths” – collection item shoulders – collection item gloves – tendon – gland

“chapter 7” – collection item legs – collection item boots – collection item shoulders – collection item gloves – tendon – gland

or

“chapter 7” – collection item legs – collection item boots – collection item gloves – tendon – gland

Well, I don’t think that the map is dead, I just think the degree of selfish behaviour and organization differs a lot.
— If you have a large group AFKing at Camp resolve to keep the Perseverance MF buff high, you are not helping the map
— If you AFK inside a fort, so that the NPCs are constantly rezzing you (and leech the defence events) you make the life of everybody doing the event harder
— if you just tag events and run off, you are slowing the meta progression down
— if you escort caravans from base to fort with more than two people, you are doing it wrong
— if you don’t call in air strikes on recharge, you make the defence harder
— if you don’t use siege on walls and over gates during defence events, you are wasting potential
— if you don’t use siege to cover collection events, you are making a mistake
— if you don’t finish a collection event before the time out, because you just gave one piece of rubble before heading off, you did something wrong

This map rewards cooperation and working for the common goal, because the meta cycle gets so much shorter when the forts are organized, when forts are working together handing over caravans to escorts and – as a bonus – everyone shovels after defence events.
Sadly people still think selfish behaviour (tagging, leeching) and loot-fixation (they took away the easy Amber fort farm) is giving them better results.

“Get in close!” is a troll comment and should have been better worded like “Flank it!” or “Strike from behind!”. That would have been helpful.

They are using the Colocal character model for the Teragriffs (as pointed out in yesterday’s POI episode), but unlike the Colocal queen in Dry Top, which has an orange “danger path” when it charges, the Teragriffs have nothing to indicate their charging path. The same applies to the vine path they shoot out, which is a visually thin red line, although it has a much wider hit box.

@Melanie.1240

Perhaps you are blessed by the gods of RNG and had multiple precursors in the past – guess how many I had?

Good and enjoyable tasks and achievements should not rely on RNG. Saying that I could get an armour piece by RNG is the worst possible way to acquire it. Remember that those are account bound, so the blessed people can’t even put some on the TP.

Like others said, going to the Silverwastes map to have fun with the events should be the prime directive, using exploits, bugs and super efficiency by tagging events should not.
Players will use those methods because the LS parts in Silverwastes do not allow them to rely on the devs to stick to a concept.
(e.g. Caith’s Blossom => suddenly appeared at a vendor and lost its exclusivity by completing Echoes achievements.)
Now they changed the way we can get armour pieces by denying us an option that was previously possible.

I have to agree with DiogoSilva.7089 here. It is a lot of badges, even if you most likely don’t have to invest 1.2k crests into the recipes any more.
I also have not seen a single box (or shoulder) drop from a chest, legendary or breach boss the last two weeks (and I am confident that applies to my guildies as well)

@Electro.4173:
There is no use for crests besides the carapace armours? That’s nonsense. You buy bandit lock picks which open the chests which hold a ton of valuable and useful stuff
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lost_Bandit_Chest

Well, as a D/D Elementalist, you are kind of stuck at melee range >>wink<<
I did both Echoes and Paths with the Ele and a LB/GS Ranger and it is IMO undoubtedly easier to do with a ranged weapon.
e.g. my Ranger could just stand in the middle of the room when the unshakeable Mordrem ran around in a circle and keep hitting him.

It would have been nice if they had not pulled the “get a ranged weapon” mechanic again in this patch, especially since you can’t CC champs to catch up.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I can understand why they did it, but I don’t like it. I’m fine with farming 1000 bagdes per chapter, but 2000 is just too much. Anet should add a third, alternative form of obtaining it (if they haven’t already).

Seems like I’ll have to replay the previous chapter with TWO alts instead of one. I’m afraid of wasting my 1000 badges on the last shoulder piece I need, when Anet’s new direction wants to force us to farm as many badges as possible. :/

If you take a look at BogOtter’s vlog here, you see him playing on a test server (prior to “Echoes”) and featuring the carapace skins. According to the description (which clearly says: e.g. “episode 7”) we should get two skins in episode 7 (pants & shoes) and two skins in episode 8 (head & chest) which would double the amount of crest grind he have to undergo to unlock a complete set.

The armour chests via story mode on alts in Echoes allowed us to get an alternate form of acquisition, but if Anet takes that away from us, they have created a very intense chore to tie people to the map and do events repetitively again and again and again.

When you played the “Echoes” chapter, you could get a second (and third…) shoulder piece for playing with an alternate character.
I have played the “Paths” chapter with a second character now and did not get a reward chest with a glove.

Did you experience the same? Is this intentional or is it a bug?

Playing with an alt was a good alternative to grinding yourself to 2000 crests to complete the set. I am not excited to see that option go away.

I don’t need children as main protagonists, having a teenage Taimi is enough right now. That does not mean that we are not invested in the few fleshed out kids we have (or the kid NPCs)
Who was one of the most important people in LA I was looking for after the attack?
“Raisin”, the little Asura progeny that was in front of the LA bank and that was probably killed or still is missing.

Good duration? Yes, I think the 4 weeks are a good duration for a tournament. The chance for people to burn out is significantly less with this shorter duration

Easy? Yes, too easy. It did not lure PvE players in to stay and play. They capped a few ruins, slew a dolyak or a sentinel right outside spawn. Last tournament meta was close to a sweet spot (a little less, a little more leeway would have perfect).

Fun? Not really. The outcome was determined by coverage, so strong night crews and being able to cover close to 24h decided the winner.

Rewarding? Yes, it was the most rewarding of the three tournaments so far. Sadly the rewards were the same for people spending around 20 in four weeks capping ruins and the ones that upgraded, sieged and refreshed half of their Borderlands. Also, nothing really valuable besides around 2 skins. Just compare it to the total number of stuff oyu get for finishing the latest chapter of LS season 2.

How was your experience? It was OK, but nothing I will remember for more than two weeks, too.

Thanks Grotesque for that long reply.

I know how dedicated you and [vE] are to GvG from your time on Aurora Glade. That’s why I value your input to the Adopt-A-Dev program.

Thanks Mark for your reply as well. I would like to see the outcome of that meeting you mentioned on an episode of Ready-Up or POI scheduled in still in the year 2014.

@Grotesque

I think it is the first time I see/read that a Dev (Jessica Boettinger) really talked about WvW with guilds and I would like to see how she reacted to some questions.

I still consider the “Adopt a Dev” initiative (as it happened) as a failed opportunity to identify the problems of WvW at their roots:
The vast majority (as I could read in the adopt sticky) spend their time in big guilds, in the gold leagues, where coverage is not an issue and where big numbers of players are. They rarely visited silver or bronze league, ran with PUGs, went to off-times e.g. EU night time (which is great for the Devs based in PST time zone).
The goal of the initiative was to get a good picture of the state of the game in its entirety. With the approach that is documented so far, they chose to see the “puffy clouds and butterflies” side of WvW and not the dark sides and problems we so often talked about here on the forums.

Behellagh.1468:

And you can’t use two of the exact same ring. That’s what “Unique” means.

Yes and No.
There are two trinkets available with the same base stats (e.g. Cleric’s), but one of them has a defensive infusion slot (for either Agony resistance or a defensive stat = Druid’s Circle) while the other one has an offensive slot (for Agony resistance or a offensive stat = Healing Signet).
You can even circumvent this, by crafting (very expensive) omni infusions that allow you to add an offensive stat to a defensive slot.

Just remember that e.g. you can not equip two “Healing Signets” at the same time.

Long things short on ascended equipment:
>> Stick to exotics for casual game play
>> get ascended trinkets, amulet, rings etc. over time from Laurels that come from dailies/monthlies
>> add Agony Infusions to trinkets if you want to go deeper into Fractals
>> weapons over armour
>> some high end Living Story season 2 stuff requires you to have the ability to have ascended crafting
>> take it slow
>> rather use foods for buffs in WvW
>> enjoy getting to crafting arnour & weapons 500, don’t be in a hurry
>> have fun with your final pieces of ascended weapons and armour in high level fractals or (with WvW infusions) get a small edge over exotic foes (that will beat you in exotic gear if they play better)

How many Devs have actually spent time outside the gold leagues and on EU servers?
From skimming over the last pages I got the impression that a lot of them spent their time with strong servers (with a lot more of them on NA servers than EU) that don’t suffer from the coverage issues like many lower level tiers. How will they get “the whole picture” of the state of WvW? Wasn’t that the initial goal?

Yamsandjams.3267:

Yeah I think they’ve just gone ahead and deleted the achievements completely. Maybe they’ll be back in the future.

And this is a perfect example on how bad QA in the first place and CR after the release is.
If the achievements that were a major part of the update don’t work, you will try to fix it and not push it under the carpet and hope that nobody will detect that or will care.

There was never an update note that said that those don’t work. There was never an update note that it got removed.
If they can’t fix it now (well, almost a month has passed), admit that you have removed it and will add it to a future update. Disable the achievement by giving it that “locked” symbol we all know from achievements, but don’t treat us like idiots that are supposed to fill sixteen storage spaces and wait for the thing to magically fix itself.

Of course this also applies to the Beer/Ale and Wine achievement.

xvalkyrie.6742:

I like using the new wuvwuv one when we’re raiding and going for ppt and need to know timers, the only two drawbacks are it blocks the target name and hp bar, and I haven’t figured out how to close it, without shutting down overwolf.

You can create a hot key to hide banner, so you can see the HP bar and name again.
WuV^3 is the one I am using now too and the timers are pretty accurate.
The “clicking on the bar” for siege refresh does not work for me though (probably a “windowed mode vs. full screen thing”). I wish I could collapse the config window to a small button to get access to more sections of my screen and to adjust the location of the bar.
I chose this app, because it seems to be the one with the best functionality on the smallest available space on my screen. Other apps just take too much of my screen.

I had some time to play around with my trusty Glyph build in WvW & PvE. These are my more in depth observations:

WvW, roaming: Trying to mirco manage my two Summons got me killed twice when soloing camps, which is pretty rare. The activation of the skills just takes way too much time and disturbs your combos. It also happened that I interrupted the skill activation by trying to queue the next skill too fast. The ice elemental’s heal was not reliable at all, when I had the NPCs balled up and the amount of heal it gave was probably less than I lost while trying to execute those laggy skills. I did much better when I just activated both earth variants before the aggro and used them as meat shields and concentrated on my weapon & utility skills.

In PvE I had some time to observe the AI behaviour a bit more. It takes about 4-5 seconds for an elemental’s skill to execute if the summon is not standing right next to the target (air is a bit faster due to its ranged attack). It goes straight to “off combat cool down” when the summon is not in actual combat (you being in combat or attacking does not work as a trigger or is at least nor reliable). This means you can’t trigger the skill and then engag ethe enemy so it uses the skill as its first attack (like it was possible with the Ranger’s pet AI).

Also, considering the summon lasts 60 seconds, the “ideal” execution looked like this (normal reflexes, after casts etc); some phases could even be 1 or two sec longer:

you summon (1 sec)
you attack to get the summon’s AI thinking about engaging the enemy (2 sec)
summon moves towards enemy (3 sec)
you activate the skill (4 sec)
it takes around 2-3 seconds to execute the skill (so at roughly 6-8 sec into its duration it causes damage, heals, etc)
and goes on a 15 sec recharge ( +15 sec)
the skill has recharged at around 21 sec into its total duration of 60 sec.

Even if you don’t change targets and execute the skill right after recharge, you will not get a third special skill activation out of the summon before its duration runs out after 60 sec, even worse with the 18 sec of the Earth summon.

So, what is the difference to the AI controlled special attack we had before?
You waste a lot of time micro managing the skill, which makes you deal less DPS (you don’t have time for attacks, even auto attacks), your enemies can spot those “breaks” easily in competitive play when they see you activate the glyph, which is highly visible and you break your flow of skills with this unreliable micro management. Also, the skills are not that awesome after all and a weapon bar skill other than skill #1 will have a greater impact on the fight than your summons ability.
I believe that the old AI was not slower in executing the special ability and it did not interfere with any other skill use on the skill bar.

IMHO, there is no other verdict on the changes that in practical use, the players has no benefit from the changes at all and suffers from a lot of effects that make him less effective and more vulnerable.

I run a Glyph build for quite some time and I use both summoning Glyphs, so I have experience with how those two worked so far and learned how to pop them effectively.
But, what looked like a buff to summons made those special attacks and the summon worse for several reasons:
1. The activation time of the special ability is 3/4 sec, which is no instant cast, but actually a full skill use. It feels much longer in-game (probably due to the AI figuring out priorities). This breaks your normal skill chains and makes you lose one or two auto-attacks at least.
2. Welcome to the world of Ranger pets BEFORE the fixes to pet AI. The execution of the skills takes a while, so the added time until the skill hits, is 2-3 seconds at best.
3. The recharge of the special skill is at 15 sec(on the Elite), so you can use it three times if you are lucky but if you don’t want to use it at recharge, you might only get two uses.
4. The earth “Stomp” is at 18 seconds, which does not look so much more than 15 for the others, but adds up in the time frame of only 60 seconds.

I really wish the skill activation would be instant and would not interfere with the normal use of skills. Also, the Ranger’s pet AI seems to work much better these days, why can’t the summon share the pet AI?

Although I am “thankful” they are still trying with balance, I still have severe problems with how it is implemented:

>> Balance is focused on their dream of sPvP being an E-Sport, which is highly debatable IMO
>> The fear of making bigger steps with balancing, e.g. to get Eles out of their Water/Arcana/Cantrips setups.
>> The lack of reacting to changes that affect skills that are not part of balancing (Burning Retreat / Speed nerf that comes with FGS#4 changes because they share the same base mechanic). 4 weeks and not a single “we are aware that this changes the damage output of …, too”)
>> Defiance/Unshakeable needs to have DPS cap too and not only a condi cap; the game mechanic (Iron Hide) is already in the game, but no word on if they have ever considered such a much since those boss attributes were introduced as a temporary solution to stacking stuff on bosses.

I know this sounds sour, but the current balancing only scrapes on the surface of the underlying problems. At this point all those “we are thinking about this” & “we can’t tell” posts" of the past months don’t make anything better. Devs need to spend time on issues, not window dressing.

In the early levels, try to upgrade armour and weapons whenever you have the opportunity and prefer defensive stats. Don’t forget to get trinkets from Karma vendors. A +4 to Vitality look trivial to a veteran, but it is a lot for a low level character.
Is this your first GW2 character? If you do not know the special attacks of foes, Ele is pretty unforgiving because it has the lowest health and lowest armour. Using a weapon with range like scepter and staff could make it easier than employing a dagger as a weapon.

I’ll try to be more precise…and shorter.

Both Burning Speed and Burning Retreat “tail fields” work as fire combo fields. That has been so for quite a while and will remain the same after next week’s patch.

Looking at your threat’s title I guess you want to be “less good” and not “more mundane”?

In the past, you had the change to react to NPCs differently and choosing that Personality is still part of character creation. Its use in game has just vanished.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scoundrel#Personalities

The home instance would have been the place to reflect your personality, but it looks like Devs have given up on that idea.
How would a home district look like for a Brute? NPCs could run away from you in fear. A noble? NPCs could bow. A Captivating one? NPCs could wave at you and throw kisses.

I don’t think you should have more “evil” choices. What we need are the emotional and moral consequences of what we are doing in game. The game does not have a lot of those.

As long as we don’t get that VIP system from GW2 in China, I can wait another day for the Americans to celebrate Labor Day on the wrong day.

TBH, I would like to have a dodge roll or hitting #6 for the heal skill cancel any other stuff you are doing, like accidental rezzing a suicidal NPC, “involuntary mining” because you stand close to an ore during a fight and picking up event items (like oil drilling in EotM). I know that swapping weapons works (or dancing , but you might have those on coold own (or not available as a Ele).

Fast-Cast Ground Targeting — Normally, ground-targeted skills require one click or key press to activate the skill’s target overlay, allowing you to select the target area by moving the mouse cursor, and finally a second click or key press to activate the skill at the targeted location. This option condenses the function into a single click or key press, selecting the target location from the current location of the mouse cursor.

from the wiki

tanztante.6532:

i’m confused now,… does it turn the trail into a fire field or not?

Short answer: yes

Longer version:
It currently has a fire field component and a burst raw damage component. The fields that create the trail tick for damage and create a fire field that causes condi damage through 1 sec of burning. The final blast is raw damage and can affect up to 5 foes in a small radius. the bast does not do condi burning, so with the foe slightly moving it can easily happen that he takes no burning from this skill which can ruin a Fire Grab.
What Eles do now is try to execute Burning speed at an object with the foe in front of it, pretty much like FGS#4. The fields stack, give you the stacked field damage and as the foes is standing in the fields longer about 2 sec of burning instead of 1. It also makes sure the foe is still burning after the blast section of the skill for your Fire Grab (if you don’t use that with Dragon’s Breath). The fields last for 4 sec, so after the initial field and burn damage, you can use the field for a might stack with a blast finisher.
The later component will be untouched by the game mechanic nerf (duration of fields), but as they will no stack together on one spot any more, you lose some field damage and a little condi damage. (IIRC about 15% of the total bas damage of the skill, a little bit more if you have higher condi damage). Unlike FGS#4 which gets a buff to the blast section of the skill, Burning Speed / Retreat don’t get a damage buff to the blast. They have the misfortune of sharing the same mechanic as FGH#4 and although they are not part of the balanced skills, are negatively affected from the changes.

What I want to see and hear from the Dev team that did the changes is at least say that the FGS nerf (which was needed) affects those skills, but they see/don’t see it as a problem for Burning Speed /Retreat right now.

PS:

Concerning the mechanic:
reducing the damage of the fields (with FGS#4) by 70% is one thing, fields not stacking a second one. FGS#4 has 12 fields that all do the same amount of damage, so stacking them is so super efficient right now, plus the fields tick each second for direct damage. Burning Speed / Retreat has half or even less fields so stacking them is some soft of tactic, especially as those two skills include an evade opportunity, too.

Nevertheless, Burning Speed/Retreat get a damage reduction due to the fact that they share the same mechanic as FGS#4. That alone should be at least acknowledged by the Devs that were working on the September balance, even if they don’t want to buff those two skills in their individual blast or field damage to equalize the lost damage. (e.g everybody that used Burning Speed against an object like a Flame Ram at a gate knows the loss of stacking fields will make a big difference)

Cantrips: 3 Traits that work with them
Arcane: 5 Traits that work with them
Signets: 5 Traits that work with them

and Glyphs: 2 Traits

I wonder if someone at Anet noticed that?

“Inscription” needs a buff with the might stacks, that’s true. And “Quick Glyphs” needs to change from 20% to 25%.

Dry Top has been a problem for me the past few days. I have never seen T6 since DR part 2 started, T5 once and a few times T4. Due to the lacking sorting mechanics of Megaservers you can easily get stuck on a T1 or T2 map and never get higher. You are at the mercy of people on T3+ maps to look at the LFG tool and ferry you to a higher tier map, which rarely happens these days.

If you have a character slot for key farming, daily PS or simply sitting there there are two great uses for the lvl 20 scroll:

1. Buy an Augur Stone with the 20 skill points you get by levelling up (Augur Stones are account bound and a key element in ascended crafting)
2. Upgrade your WvW blueprints to superior variants (Siege Masters Guide is soulbound, the blueprints aren’t). Turn 40 normal ACs to 20 superiors? Nice.

>> The Signet buffs are nice across the board.

>> The Glyph changes are a first step and reward active use of skills. Sadly they did not take a second step and reduced and tweaked some recharge times on them e.g. with making “Quick Glyphs” have a recharge reduction from 20% to 25% and also reducing cool down and duration of GoEP to encourage more active skill use and make it viable as a stun breaker.

>> The trait changes are a great improvement for Contingency and Rod. Ashes has to be checked in game because of possible internal cool downs.

>> The nerf on Meteornado and FGS#4 was lingering for a long time and is fine. What could have been done better is giving us a bit more as a trade off, like (again, rewarding active skill use) reducing the recharge on Tornado to 120 (and Whirpool too which ATM has 30 secs longer cool down) and non FGS to 150. They allowed the “exploit” of these skills for a very long time, that’s why I think a little buffing is OK, because those huge damage spikes did not appear out of nowhere after a recent patch.

>> Not OK is the nerf to Burning Speed/Retreat which is a by-product of the FGS#4 nerf. They have to work on that, because it randomly reduces the damage of skills not connected to the skill that was balanced.

The change to the summoning glyphs is a double edged sword.

It is a buff for the active player, who chooses skills wisely depending on the situation. After Sept. 9th you can control the special ability of the summon, which currently is random.
It is a nerf for the lazy player, as you have to activate the skill manually. If you don’t do that at all, because “you forgot”, the summon will lose potential, because now the AI uses it pretty much on recharge, so no extra punch is really wasted, but sometimes used inappropriately.

You can see the preview on twitch TV (ready up episode 20, about 22 min in the broadcast) and dulfy has a summary up as well.

Hmm… did anyone notice the “no changes to focus & scepter” segment? So far most classes got underused weapons slightly buffed (e.g. Ranger main hand axe), but all our changes happened at the utility skills (with the probably unintended nerf to Burning Speed and Retreat).

Mbelch.9028:

Okay, so I didn’t misunderstand him. Then it’s not a nerf at all just a visual change. I’d still appreciate a nerf to the ability to move thru portals tho.

Psssst, IIRC Thieves can Shadow Escape at 600 range trough portals without being affected by CCs.

Mbelch.9028:

Cecilia.5179:

looks like burning speed + lightning flash is taking a hit

How so? I don’t feel like it is at all taking a hit. When you use burning speed, when do you intend to use it for the flame trail? I can count on my fingers and toes the amount of times I’ve done that..

The flame trail isn’t disappearing, either. The most damage on the burning speed flame trail has always been fire anyways. So not a huge deal.

(Theorycrafting, not being able to check in game right now)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Speed

Base damage blast: 672
Field: 34
Burn: 328

since fields can’t stack on each other and assuming we got 5 fields before and now get only one (because we use it against an object, like a choke point in a WvW camp, I will get 34 damage instead of 170 base damage on the attack. If you add up both possibilities and compare them, that’s a 12% damage reduction (assuming 5 fire fields, more if there are more of them, less if there are less)

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

You’ve forgot a major note and that is a nerf to Vapour Form. It’s no longer immune to cc’s. No more sneaking inside a keep in WvW.

I am pretty sure the “retreating to tower safety” in WvW with Vapor Form (being immune to CCs) is not possible right now and is no new nerf to the skill. You can “dodge” in Vapor Form though, which increases the path travelled and being able to evade some CC, but not e.g Immobilize or other non dodge-able CCs.

Raven Twospirit.9342:

It’ll be a few more hours before I get a chance to watch the Ready-Up video; I’m hoping someone who has seen it can satisfy my curiosity before then. Are they just talking about a nerf to just the FGS fire trail, or would it affect Burning Speed/Burning Retreat as well? Or were they too vague to be certain?

Thanks!

In addition: Don’t forget they did not mention any boost on the damage of Burning Speed and Burning Retreat like FGS#4 gets, so because those three skills share the same “fire field” mechanic, two skills that did not call out for a nerf got hit the most.
I hope they take a look at this problem of “unwanted balancing” to other skills they did not work on.