Guild Wars 2

Posted this in another thread, too.

They will not only nerf the FGS #4 fire fields, but also nerf the fields for Burning Speed and Burning Retreat (can not be stacked onto each other – at 24:55). I don’t think that nerf is needed at all on those two later skills.

Well the nerf they teased on the Ready Up 20 that just aired was expected.
What I don’t understand that they want to nerf the burning fields of “Burning Retreat” and “Burning Speed” as well. I really hope they will think about that move and keep everything as it is for those two skills.
Signet changes are nice, but I expected more love for Glyphs, like making the GoEP more active (reduce recharge and duration by 1/3) and slightly tweak the summons. Getting active control over the abilities isn’t that awesome to be honest and feels more like window dressing than actually helping the skills. The traits I still have to see in everyday gameplay.

Sreoom.3690:

Commander’s Color should be based on experience. There should be a leveling system in place for Commanders..maybe based on Points captured, time commanding, kills accrued.

No way to track that.

Colours should be a basic feature, there is no way to see it in any other way (unless you are a Anet Dev at the moment ).
Icons (which we will not get) should require something, like a regular purchase (100g is fine, even for a account bound feature), a guild upgrade you have to pay influence for or even a RNG drop, with a temporary icon (would always require the basic handbook). You could even put up limited vanity icons on the gemstore for each WvW season.

(for reference)

As it is a grenade type weapon with a 450 radius you can reach everything that is now reachable with AoE “wall spam” like meteor showers and necro marks. If the radius would only be 240 a lot of well placed siege on the walls would be safe, while attackers could still take out gate rams and catas built at the walls.
The way it is presented now, it will always be in favour of the larger attacking force with more supply and being able to chain those disablers on one or two ACs defending. If the disablers will be available only at spawn at the “tricks & trap” merchant tower defenders can’t even buy them during a siege at the T2 “siege outfitter” merchant. I really hope they add those vendors to the T2 level too.

Compared to Tinkard’s Orchard, the Nightfall “party” we had to attend in GW1, this was lame. Indeed, there was a lot of dialogue (a mixture if good and bad), but I had a different problem with it:
Its not the reading, its the inconsistency of how dialogue options work in this instance.
You have the yellow pyramid icon, which indicates there is a “forking path”, you have the red “return” arrow, you have the green arrow and you have the “green star in the bubble” which usually indicates you have the right option. There are also the “red swords” which indicate the end of the dialogue and the NPC turning hostile.

In this instance I got the impression that those roles are not defined and I had no clear indication when to stop to talk to Kasmeer again before restarting the dialogue. Eventually you will get to the end, but it not really involves real logical thinking and turns more into an trial and error thing. Especially with the achievements that need you to arouse no suspicion at all (or a full suspicion bar), this is a pretty annoying task, IMO.

I have done the fight only once (with my Ele) and I had some troubles, because when the minions head appeared it looked like it could only be attacked from range. I swapped to my staff and stowed my D/D. This dropped my DPS significantly (staff being the exotic weapon + not traited well for staff fights) and prolonged the fight. I think I was defeated three times before finally driving off the boss.
Can you attack the boss at melee range? D/D would have been much easier for me then.
I cursed a lot, but it was still doable without having any clue about what was happening in that instance. Professions with a lot of condi cleansing and abilities to regain endurance will do significantly better in this fight, but that is the mantra for almost all fights in this LS.

“Fühlt ihr euch zu Höherem berufen?”

is the German one which translates the “Do you feel glorious?” differently. It’s more like “do you feel called / summoned for s.th. more important”

Perhaps it is really a tease for some commander features that are not super clunky “/supplyinfo” commands with almost zero range.

@Waikd.4632

A simple solution to the PvE all zerker meta would be to add “Iron Hide” to a champion’s ability bar (timed perhaps), each time Defiance gets renewed. Since it reduced direct damage by 50%, the CC and conditions by the ones actually running condi or hybrid builds would matter a lot more.

But don’t forget to stay on topic guys.

I am looking forward to the announcements about the Thief and Warrior profession. It will be interesting to see if the Devs have the will to nerf some stuff on their favourite professions up till now, to keep them more in line with the others.

coglin.1867:

How do you want WvW balanced?

If you are going to claim there are issues, it is perhaps best if you list them. As well, what you claim as issues may be non-issues to the rest of the population.

One issue, e.g. is the problem with perma stealth for thieves. In PvP, where control points can’t be taken by an invisible thief, the area to move around is more limited than e.g. in a WvW camp. This also means the area that needs to be bombarded with AoE is much larger allowing a perma stealth thief to having a much greater advantage over other professions. The ability to reset in perma stealth (or by moving out of combat range, a GS Warrior issue) is much bigger in WvW. Don’t forget the WvW meta where perma invisible players can hide inside keeps to rezz downed Mesmer for portal attacks.

ShadowStep.3640:

Ya, Taimi is safe because of the rating rules, but who is Raisin?

“Raisin” was the Asuran progeny that talked to a Charr near the bank in pre-destroyed LA

Asura child: “Your face is funny! It’s all mushed and weird…”
Charr soldier: “No, YOUR face is funny. It’s like a little raisin…”

It was something we heard pretty much every time we went to the bank. I went searching for that kid after the attack and I know many others did too – and that is some sort of emotional connection we did not have with e.g. Belinda.

We know they considered killing Marjory at the end of season 1 and did not have the guts to do it.
Taimi is safe (at least on screen death), because they can’t kill kids because of the game’s rating (I still don’t know about “Raisin” from LA).
The death of an iconic character matters to you as a reader/player/watcher of a movie if you have an emotional connection to that character. Did we have a chance to get to like Belinda? We practically knew she would die from the second the told Marjory she has to go to Brisbane Wildlands because something dangerous might be there (and that was the epilogue of season 1).

Which characters are we emotionally involved with? A few from Destiny’s Edge perhaps (For me it’s Rytlock, Eir and Caithe, but not Zoija and Logan), Traherne (who had at least a character development and gets too much hate from the community) and the new DE 2.0

PS: Game of Thrones hardly kills off characters you don’t care about. If you think that you have not read Steven King books.

“If I want shiny stuff, I will have to invest some effort into the task.”

I think we can agree on that. What this LS does wrong so far is the combination of RNG + dependence on community + repetitiveness of item acquisition (= “grind”). No past event has been related to all three aspects so much.

Lets take a look at the ambrite weapons
1. RNG luck to get a fossilized insect
2. Repetitive events to get Geodes which are in low numbers in lower tiers of Dry Top
3. Trying to find a server shard “that does not suck”
4. Having enough Geodes to buy recipes (exotics first)
5. Its cheaper to buy them on higher (=better community organized maps) or get them at all (T4 for weapon recipe)
6. Having to get an exotic nomad inscription requires Sheets of Ambrite, which exclusively come from locked boxes (which require lock picks bought with Geodes, because RNG and not getting enough LPs from reward boxes of instances)
7. Buy lock picks ? Buy recipe for weapon?
8. Go back to 2.

If you only want to create one weapon, you should be fine, but you want to unlock a second or a third skin (out of all the weapons available) you are in trouble.
Does it come over time? Dry Top will eventually get emptier. DEs in that map will be very difficult to do alone then, not even thinking about T4 merchant access.

But all those skins are optional you might say (which is correct), but skins are also content of the new patch / living story.
So it is annoying to work fo hard for the content and it takes out a lot of the fun we should have with it.
At this point the player has not bought any new food recipes (because they cost Geodes) or has started to find those T5 wood nodes to get Foxfire clusters for the back item (my current ratio is 1.25 Foxfires a day).

My likes and gripes with the season 2 achievements so far.

1. Regional achievements / open world
Those were OK and pretty balanced between going through map & story + replay/grind values. The negative thing about them is the silly jumping on those bamboo sticks combined with a timer. The thin line between challenging and just annoying has been crossed with those.

2. Instanced story stuff
I actually find it OK to have to do the story stuff first. You get to know the instance, make mistakes, perhaps respawn – and still succeed. You have no PUG or guildie type sigh in chat when you accidental trigger a trap and ruin an attempt at a achievement.
Not all achievements are explained well though (e.g. Dashed Advantage). I should be able to figure stuff out myself when I pay attention and not have to rely on people with “early access” (e.g. Dulfy) who are especially there to try content are will probably be able to team up with Devs (e.g like we did in the closed beta phase of GW2).

PS: For me the enforced item grind I have to participate to “unlock” new items/skins (ambrite weapons, back item) combined with RNG (e.g. Foxfire Clusters) are the parts I find increasingly frustrating abut season 2 so far.

Pssst, don’t give the Devs bad ideas about buffing chill duration, we Eles suffer the most from chill

Turing Signet of Water into an AoE skill with the same diameter as Signet of Air would be awesome. You could tweak it a bit if you allow it only to hit 3 instead of 5, of the AoE chill feels a bit powerful.

My thoughts on your ideas:

>> Lightning Touch : The hit box is my complaint about this skill (same with Fire Grab); I would like to see a large hit box
>> Vapor Blade: The blades literally get stopped by grass (or any elevation difference), so my tuning idea would be to increase general damage (15%) or do something with “the return path” (if that is technically possible, like more damage on return path or another vulnerability stack on the return)
>> Magnetic Grasp/Leap : Its ability to miss or fumble is legendary, so I doubt they can make it more stable. I like the idea of a range increase, e.g. so catch Thieves, but also the baseline damage could need some love.
>> Churning Earth : The problem is the PvP vs. PvE issue; it works like a charm on the AI, but is bad vs. real people if the can see the channelling animation. I have no solution for that right now.

my 2ct…

There us a trend with the Ranger to de-specialize the traits (affecting all pet types now). Perhaps they will follow this trend with working on the “Alacrity” traits by adding a general ability to them (like so many other “weapon type” traits had from the beginning).
They buffed some lacking skills (and kits) on the Engi, so I see this as a good sign to buff Focus and Glyphs, too.
They also added some projectile speed increases. If they apply this to Ele skills, some of our slow cone attacks could get a speed buff too.

What I would like to see them doing is make more steps away from that Water, Arcana + Cantrip Trinity we should use to be competitive (I know Staff Eles use more Fire, but they still run Cantrips most of the time). I also think we should be granted a slightly lower attunement swapping time for investing 4 or 6 points in Arcana.

My “if wishes were horses” changed would be do close the gap between high, medium and low HP professions by 25% from top and bottom, but that’s a general game mechanic wish and not Ele specific.

4 sec of Chill is one of the longest duration in game for a chill skill.
All other “passive removal skills” (e.g. Signet of Resolve) remove only one condi each 10 sec., so its in line with those effects on other professions.
Not sure how to buff this without making it out of bounds, perhaps getting the cool down to 25 sec – not sure…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/A-plea-for-Glyphs

(My 8 month old thread about glyphs)

I am sure we as a player base have no idea how difficult to implement a feature really is or is not. It’s not a problem of big updates vs. small updates. The current problem is that lack of communication and a sub-par treatment of the process.
Mark Katzbach told us in another thread that Devon Carver is working on things, but apparently the different levels of hierarchy don’t allow us to get any information at all on WvW stuff, while Ready Ups and Point of Interest shar eat least some redundant information every Friday on Twitch TV.

Having dealt with Anet employees in the past during the glory days of GW1, I know that programmers would love to talk about the stuff they work on, but getting it out to the public is something completely different.

Its a game mechanic problem that a gate/wall/object is not really “a solid thing”
1. You can AoE the one side of the gate and damage on the other
2. you can rezz through gates
3. you can glitch pets through gates (not sure if that is completely gone theses days)
4. Mesmer clones are summoned on the other side of gates
5. You can shoot a Treb at the inner gate to create damage on the outer side.
6. you have a better LOS to enemies from below a wall than being on top of a wall defending.

I doubt that the rezzing you mentioned can be fixed without tackling the other issues as well and knowing that the WvW team is rather small compared to other sections of GW, I will try to cope with the problem not hoping for a fix.

On topic on what kind of changes have been made:

We have to differentiate between
1) general game mechanic changes
2) quality of life changes
3) bug fixes
4) and new/altered content

The fix of culling problems has improved WvW a lot, but also was the base for allowing those massive PvE zerg events in the open world during season 1 of LS.
Account bound (picking it because it was one of the last ones) is a quality of life change, allowing you to manage WxP better and branching out to other professions, too.
Bug fixes are self-explanatory, but we all know that there are still a few more that are burning under our nails for a while now.
So that leaves us with “content”. Those updates (or the lack of them) are the ones that are causing the most discontent among WvW players. EotM was a huge update in terms of map design, some new mechanics and events. The problem is that EotM is not the “fun playground for WvW/competitive players” it was intended to be. Instead it is a mindless loot/karma/WxP train for the simple minded. Why is that so? The rewards are so insanely good that you practically have to be stupid not to take advantage of it. It is Anet’s fault alone for letting this happen for months now without making any changes to the loot.
Why do the WvW core players have no chance of reclaiming WvW? Cross server factions make it hard to coordinate, so why waste your time trying to ferry people to one map when you can do the same on BL or EB with less set-up time. No use in upgrading anything, because nobody every stays behind and feels the need to defend, knowing it gets flipped in 10 min anyway by a zerg.

You have to make a difference between raid commanding a small force e.g. two or three party sized groups max or leading a blob to battle.

As a raid commander, the Ele is in a decent spot, if you spec into more tanky builds, like Soldier, Celestial, Knight’s or a mixture. The choice of weapons isn’t a big issue as well. Your tactical skills count the most here.
If you think about blobs the Ele has a few disadvantages:
1. You want your allies to follow your tag exactly to stack and push. Your low health and armour, combined with limited access to Stability makes you vulnerable (and that’s why Guardian is pretty good commander class).
2. Big groups profit most from your AoE or Aura share abilities. For that you should be in midline or backline of the army, but you can’t direct pushes from there without 80% listening to you on TS. Movement and pushes will be slower if the Ele commander runs in the middle of the army.

Your skills for Staff look OK, but Arcane Wave might be more useful than GoEP and Cleansing Fire might be a better sustain than Lightning Flash.

When I flag on to command in WvW, I get the feeling that “it gets worse” if I go past the “raid level” in terms of coordination and effectiveness. Blob commanding is not made for the Ele class IMO.
Small havoc teams, raid parties etc. are OK though.

I am running a glyph heavy build myself, but with the difference of using Arcane Wave instead of GoEP and actually using the healing glyph instead of the signet. I also run mainly celestial stats.
Not sure which game aspect this is designed for, but here are things you might want to think about (that would be a problem for me)

>> PvE: With your very high toughness you will be a NPC magnet. Are you prepared to deal with that?
>> Low dodge & heal abilities. Without Renewing Stamina e.g. and low healing power, are you sure you can deal with pressure just with regeneration from Soothing Mist and Rune #6?
>> Condis in general. You are very vulnerable to condis & CC, just think about the new LS 2 mobs that are very mobile and spread a lot of condis
>> Boons you create will not last very long, without any points in Arcana. You will generate might in Fire magic, but you get significantly weaker if you have to swap out.
>> Pyromancers Alacrity? I think the main hand dagger skills recharge pretty fast. Are you counting on more Flame Grabs?
>> in WvW environments, the Condis will be a problem as is your slow speed. Enemies will be able to run away or break off fights very easily

Perhaps another person posting will illustrate that something is wrong with this achievement.
1) I did it alone, so only seven NPCs need to be rescued (if that info is still valid)
2) When I talked to Lindsay, I ran to the Vigil watchtower and sent the three NPCs away after the combat.
3a) sent the Caravan guide in the water away first
3b) sent the Priory explorers in the cave away
4) rescued the Vigil in the water at the shallow lake in the north
5a) Still had 1:40 min on the clock for the “Time achievement”, when I approached the Asura Lab and triggered the defense event, the “On swift wings” achievement icon disappeared
5b) waited for the timer to run out and make the “Time” event fail. Again, when I approached the Asura Lab and triggered the defense event, the “On swift wings” achievement icon disappeared.

Without any other clue I have no idea what else to do or do differently. The “rezz after the event guide” that still is on dulfy did not work too (but I guess it was never intended to work that way anyway).

Please fix this or at least describe what we have to do to complete this thing.

EotM’s rewards for mindless “training” are simply too good. You get everything, ranks, XP, boxes, karma, badges – you name it
A dedicated and engaging WvW 2 hours on a borderland, that includes some roaming, capping, defending and taking a tower e.g will not give me half the rewards that a EotM train zombie can achieve.

Sadly Anet does not have the guts to nerf it to the ground on at least some aspects.

Healing Power scales awfully IMO, so it’s the least favourite of them. I tend to prefer toughness over vitality, though.

Like Thaddeus said, toughness (together with your low base health & light armour) makes you a NPC magnet. You have to be aware of that. It happens to me a lot when entering a camp with one or two other players. I get the aggro of every NPC there and they will not lose it by getting hit by others or running by them. You have to accommodate to that fact.
When getting hit by siege, I think toughness is slightly better than vitality.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Specifically there are a few WvW traps abilities that we try to avoid:

• Traps that can instantly kill players. We don’t want you to be able to passively wipe a group by stacking three invisible explosive traps on top of each-other. That said, we are more open to these types of traps as long as there is some counterplay available (like the trap has a visible land mine effect, or gives the group warning to dodge away quickly before it explodes.)

• Traps that summon additional combatants (guards, creatures, golems, etc.) This is more for server performance concerns (skill lag.) While we have exception to this in WvW already, the idea is to avoid making the problem worse.

• Traps that are functionally extremely similar to an existing profession skill. Ranger Spike Trap, Thief Needle Trap, etc. Similarly we probably wouldn’t do a trap that just applies a standard condition to an area (Cripple, Poison, Burning, etc.)

Concerning the visibility of “instant death traps”
>> Please don’t. As soon as sparkly effects are up you can’t see anything that is on the ground, like another red circle or a blinking mine. Instant down/death traps should not be an option.

Concerning summons
>> Understandable, but it would have been a good thing to kill off lone roamers e.g.

Concerning skill mimicry
>> Why not? Is there a reason behind this statement? Slowing people at choke points would be extremely helpful for defenders. With the “one trap per player” limit you can’t really mess up a a lot of balance issues if you can’t build another trap in a perimeter of perhaps 360 units (same as circle of meteor shower)

PS: Trap mastery WvW skill is defensive ability we lack for a year now. We need more defensive stuff, because that does not drag along fights, but allows tactics.

I would love to see an out of combat weapon swap for the Ele profession not for the sigil stacking/swapping thing you mentioned, but because of …

… switching from staff to two one handed weapons is a hassle with the inventory and I am sure I am not the only one that had to fight a Thief with only the main hand dagger in hand, because I was ambushed.
… Eles already have the short stick when it comes to the weapon swapping mechanic (attunements) as only them are effected by Chill on their weapon swap ability.

Without having taking a character to crafting level 400 in a few months, but with eyes on the materials for ascended crafting, I would say go for Karma armour for protection as you level up. Weaponsmithing can work while levelling up, as wood & ore can be farmed from nodes and are more available than the fabrics you need as a secondary materials.
In the past, the fine mats for insignias/inscriptions were my limiting factor, but as long as you don’t want to go for a specific stat while levelling use what is there, mix with karma stuff and wear dropped items, too.

I completely forget about the blueprints. Yes, don’t makes them more expensive for those WvW defenders that are already putting personal assets into helping out the server

CeNedro.7560:

If you want an Itemssink: Thick leather.

Just a side note:

If the armour smith profession would use leather as a secondary material and not a fabric, we would have a much more balanced out situation than right now

(It depends on whether you want to introduce a de-buff of the blob team as well and how you address the over all coverage.)

That sounds like a good tweak now that armour repair is gone

+33% Experience => increase to 50%
+20% Magic find
+25% World Experience => Increase to 50%

=> Killed players should no provide loot bags and badges + stomping points

It does not adress the problem of flipping towers and keeps on rotation unless it applies to NPCs too (e.g. making lords and supervisors not drop ascended mats and champion bags)

Anet has to find a way to make servers compete to win by encouraging the two teams with the lower scores to fight against the one leading and not the top two farming the lowest point team and whoever farms best gets more PPTs, which happens too often.

No, the reason why you want it more rare is to sell it at higher prizes to make a profit.

Why do we have so much Mithril? Because many people play in high level areas and farm node, because we get loot depended on out level even if we are downscaled and that loot again can be salvaged into mithril.

If Anet would want to work on giving t5 mats (like mithril) a higher value, they could work on the loot tables, like increasing the percentage chance of fabrics and leather compared to those mats that can be farmed from nodes by instance hopping.( just one idea).

Just shift back a gear and try not to do it in a few days?
Next to the scheduled world boss events and WvW already mentioned the temple events in Orr are also giving dragonite ore

Recognized PvE players in the old days were the ones that did the most for the community, by hosting events, recording dev statements on fan sites etc. – but that was back then when Anet was a different company.
How? Some people got immortalized by adding them as NPCs to the game or using their input to name a boss (e.g. Molotov Rocktail IIRC was one of them).
I don’t want any leader boards for speed clears or maxed damage. PvE should be about playing together and not against numbers.

The “silk problem” is not only a problem for ascended crafting but with two other issues as well:
1. New players to crafting
Players that are relatively new to the game will experience crafting as a horrible and expensive thing. In the early days of GW2 the fine mats like “blood” were the limiting factors for creating new armour, now it is easier to get those because t2 to t4 mats are up in price already and once you get to lvl 60+, when you require silk you probably can’t craft your own personal armour as you progress in levels, because you can’t afford both basic mats or completed pieces on the TP. I can remember buying a set of lvl 65 winged armour for about 16-20 silver. Now a Knight’s variant was roughly about 3 gold on the TP.

2. Equality rifts
As you can farm nodes for metals and wood + salvaging weapons, you get get more of those mats than by getting leather and fabric from salvaging armour only. That is OK. The rift starts when all armour crafting professions need fabric for their “padding” as a secondary material. Do loot bags drop more fabric than leather? Do light armour pieces drop more frequently? I don’t think so.
As explained a couple of times on this thread already, the refinement process does not help at being an equalizer: You need only 2/3 of mithril ore for an ingot than you need scraps for a bold of silk. In the next phase you need 50 of the ingots compared to 100 bolds for the ascended step.
In the end, a light armour class player (or better, a player who likes his profession so much that he wants to have his main character go to ascended level) will ask the question why he has to pay so much more than other professions or why he has to work/grind the game so much more than other professions. This creates discontent among the player base.

I think it is worth getting this thread to attention on the first page again, to get an answer to the insanity that is the problem with silk for light armour classes right now.
I can not understand the opposition of some of the posters here against a drop in amounts of silk you need.
If I take a look at the TP right now silk goes for around 1.90 silver while leather is still at 0.08 silver. That is about 24x times the price. If you do not want to farm and just buy you get the mats for the time gated (daily) ascended crafting mat for 12 silver for leather and for 5.7 gold for the silk based one (not counting other ingredients).
Anybody that does not see a need for a fix must be blind on both eyes.

Of all the abilities listed here stealth stomping is by far the superior variant.
As long as downed state is such a faulty game mechanic (you lose target, can’t see conditions on you) it enhances stealth even more.
We need some sort of “reveal” ability for professions beyond “Sick’em” (which was introduced later, btw) and “Unveiling shot” + “Stealth disruptor trap”.

The problem usually is that the 2vs1 scenario applies to #1 & #2 are farming #3 which applies to 90% of the fights.
The #2 placed world will get easier loot, karma and PPT if they raid #3 most of the time, because #1 might be too hard to fight.

IMO Anet missed a chance to encourage teaming up against the #1 server when the worlds are not equally matched.

But still, coverage is a main problem in playing for points and player zergs vs. door has to end.

My observation, both personal and what I know about my guildies:
>> No precursor for me since launch
>> One precursor from the mystic toilet for one of my guildies (which I think she has turned into a Legendary a while ago)

Personal conclusion:
RNG does not work for me; buying one is not possible for me; Legendary – any of them, not even the one I like – will never happen for me

I got one ascended armour box so far and a total of 2 exotic items that came from rank up chests + bonus chests. The amount of rare items might be around a dozen perhaps. And that’s at around rank 250

AG has organized attempts on Tequatl every Monday and Saturday at 7:30 PM IIRC. Just get to auroragla.de and look at the event calender.
Blood Tide wurms are a different thing. PvE event organizers have stopped doing those at the moment. It might get better with the megaserver update, althouhg I have no idea how it will effect events like the Tequatl one, where at least at the heydays, we gathered in an overflow to get enough active people that can coordinate on TS.

Not needed.
Attunements as our “weapon swap mechanic” not affected by Chill would be a very nice buff to us, as we are the only class that suffers from slowed down weapon swaps due to a conditions (chill on Engi’s is so marginal, you can ignore it).
Btw, there is a thread about that somewhere on the forums, but I am too lazy to search for it now.

All of those headlines are very vague.

What do I feel restricted by? Soulbound stuff I can’t swap around between my charcaters or even salvage (e.g. those soulbound items you get in dungeons, like runes). Silly swapping around the PvP Lobby, to WvW maps etc. to get access to services, but wait … they want be to buy those service tickets on the Gem store. No way to store any town clothes or masks (points at an old game I played called Guild Wars that had an NPC for that). Being forces to play one or two builds + Cantrips with the Elementalist to be competitive in a PvP situation to other classes…

And finally – I hope that’s the change – the silly bad stats on cultural armour are restricting me enjoying those and getting them at all… so I hope you can buy the same armour as a skin and apply it to your existing armour (points at HoM skins, so it is doable)

If we need any siege in game right now, it is “defensive” siege (more like upgrades or traps) that counter the imbalance we have between offensive and defensive siege and abilities.
e.g.
>> Moats that prevent people from running up close to a wall and nuke siege so easily with ranged weapons.
>> Watchtowers that auto-ping enemies like the traps in Southsun Survival
>> Improved Watchtowers that have an archer on top and can spot stealthed Thieves
>> Ramparts that grant protection to defenders fighting on top of walls

PS: Torsailr’s ideas for defensive siege go in the same direction

Server alliances do not work, because you do not control a server population. A few organized people can try to make a truce, but it does not help if everybody else does not know about it or does not care.
People behave like idiots because they can, because they want easy loot and they like to feel powerful when stomping weaker players.
The tournament season would be more fun if battles would be more balanced by game mechanics, but Anet does not have the will or the guts to change that. They favour a very aggressive play style in WvW (just take a look at all the offensive abilities), created metas for a few classes (Thief, Mesmer) and actually encourage mass over tactics pretty much everywhere.
As long as basic game mechanics for underdog participants are not changed (e.g. buy the activation of Siegerazor for 5 badges, auto-kicks for AFK people that prevent the Outmanned buff for your team, double the allied NPCs when you are outmanned etc.) any attempted on cross server alliances are destined to fail.

I think the Ele’s trident skills are decent at the moment, with two exceptions I would tweak:
1. Fire auto-attack is evaded by even the AI because it is so slow. It should do a little bit more damage to compensate for the slowness as every other auto attack is way better.
2. Air & Earth auto attacks are bugged forever IMO. It happens so often that I attack stuff in close proximity and I do not hit anything – even when moving arounf the target or swimming towards it even more. For skills that rely on hitting in a cone of up to three attacks, this is awful.

Ele’s have a problem with “leading the pack” once “zergs collide”. As a staff Ele it makes sense to fall back, lay down fields etc. When people are following your icon they might not be at the spot you want them to be.
Although pretty sturdy with PVT/Knight’s items, I don’t like to be in the front line as a D/D (although it works well in smaller groups of 5-10)

PS: Good commanders are defined by their tactical and strategical choices, supply management and communication in TS or /team chat, not primarily by their profession.

There are two different sides of the coin “of mobility”
1. Do we want better mobility to be more flexible?
2. Or do we want mobility to survive?

At the moment our ability to stay alive is the more prominent problem, IMO. Like others have posted, a return to a previous version of RTL would solve a lot of mobility issues for the D/D or S/D wielders. The normal double cooldown we have + the “if you don’t hit” thing has hit us hard and we still have not recovered compared to other classes.
I don’t mind not being the fastest class in game as an Ele (although the profession should be in the fast “third”), but there should be something that helps us survive as the light armor profession with the lowest health. Thieves & Rangers e.g. have fast recharging skills that provide evade. The Burning Speed evade addition goes in the right direction – but only a first step.

PS: I see the health split among the professions as a fundamental problem to balance, but that goes off topic here.

KorKor.9452:

People who think LA needs to stay because it is important … are dead wrong.

I admire your faith in ANet, sadly I can’t share it any more.
A lot of things you said make sense, but I don’t see developers do it (e.g. shared chat of major cities on a server, holiday events in all major cities)

They have not utilized the destruction of the watchtower during the Karka invasion. Nothing really new happened in terms of defense after the Aethers attacked and built a hideout. No other city, with the exception of a section of DR has changed (but that is out of use now).
Good living story needs no global events of cataclysmic proportions, it needs steady progression you can discover every other patch, like the rebuilding of the Lion’s Statue after it was destroyed. Or the Norn that finally got accepted to the guild in Fort Mariner.

I don’t have anything against La being razed by Scalet’s forces, but against not allowing us to rebuilt it after each small chapter of LS (if that should happen).
I want a players vote on what do rebuilt and perhaps how, just like the cut-throat politics thing. rebuilt trade (support Evon, e.g.) or rebuild defenses (support Ellen). The winner’s choice will happen in the next patch. That would be living story.

B) No, I don’t like it at all

And here are my reasons:
1) LA as a city is the most prominent link to the past and the stories of the original GuildWars. No other major city in GW2 invokes the feeling of going through a place of history to me.
2) LA is Lag Alot (and got worse with each update), but it is still the main centre to gather and meet if you are “semi-afk”. WvW people get dropped off from home base citadels and the Mist PvP portal brings people to LA.
3) It’s a pretty easy to navigate place compared to the other cities (with the exception of DR) and big enough to offer space for several /local chat groups around the place.
4) It is probably the biggest hub for PvE personal stories & meeting with Destiny’s Edge members as well as other story elements. (e.g. the battle for Claw Island would not make sense any more)
5) In addition to that all GW books have a tie to that city, Sea of Sorrows basically deals with LA being built.
6) Our main festivities happened in LA, including Halloween & Wintersday
7) It is also the location of all our in-game services for PvE, including the Mystic Forge

Do I see an alternative to LA in the Vigil Keep (or other cities) from what I know now?

1) Vigil Keep has nothing in terms of depth like LA
2) If ANet wants us to visit other cities more, they will at least split up the “talking community” into several factions, even more if e.g. Black Citadel would be the new WvW exit, DR would get the Mystic Forge etc. Again, Vigil keep would just be lame.
3) Vigil Keep at least “looks like a small place”, so no room for local chat groups like in LA
4) I have no idea how all the instanced PS content could be transfered out of the now existing LA. “Oh look, LA is a wasteland” => meet Tybalt in LA => “Oh, Tybalt nice to see you selling apples in this instance of LA that was not destroyed a few weeks ago” => Oh, back in wasteland LA => Lets go to Gendaran Fields to find Demi & Tybalt like nothing has happened?
5) Great I read this book and GW2 does interest me. Lets see if I can find that spot Cobiah was. Wait? This place was burned down for the Living Story?
6) Relocate the seal that bound the Mad King to the Grove or what?
7) Mystic Forge gets “more toilet seats” in other cities?

Sorry, the more I think about it the less it will work if LA will be permanently wiped from the map. The developers just seem to over react to the demand of the LS really changing the world and the consequences of this will not make the game better, both lore and content wise.
I am willing to accept ANet people blowing my mind with an awesome solution, but I do not see it happen.