Guild Wars 2

Rama.6439:

I totally agree, I love fractals but I have almost quit running them cause they just buff them and nerf drops, its all Anet knows how to do, nerf this and that, they need to quit it before they lose all their players except the kids that are playing with their parents, cause they wont stick around when something new comes out.

Hardcore players are the ones that stick around Anet, I thought you had Blizz employees working there, you should know this…

Agreed completely.

To be honest, I think there would be a lot more outcry about lack of PVE except that ALL OF THE HARDCORE PLAYERS QUIT 2 months after hitting level 80 and want back to WoW and other MMOs with end-game.

It’s just those of us with patience, and love for this game left.

For a game that launched with such strong PVE, and followed up with Fractals so well… it’s been a kittenty seven months.

It should be reduced slightly in PVE. I hate missing jumps because of that kitten.

I’m not complaining. I want Anet to confirm this intended before I buy more.

I would really like a confirmation that this is intended and not going to change before I purchase more based on the speed.

Well thank you very much

Bump for importance.

It appears to harvest faster than normal sickle.

I want to know that this is how it will be, forever, and that it will not get nerfed before I buy it for my other tunes.

Oh no one cares. :P

Thanks for what has to be a really elaborate copy and paste

Hey all,

I would love to identify the track that plays while Trahearne is cleansing Orr in the personal Story.

I would then like to make that song replace the title track and combat music. Is that possible?

Change the stat Condition Duration to Condition Intensity.

30% Condition Intensity causes a condition to do all of its damage over 30% less time— it essentially becomes a 30% damage boost instead of duration.

For conditions like weakness, chill, etc, Condition Intensity continues to increase duration as before.

This would be a step in the right direction for conditions.

Meteorlogicus Suggestions:

General ideas:

-Increased chance of environmental weather effects.

-Floating “star” particles added to various moves. Similar to the blue dots that several Guardian moves spew out.

-Can apply different effects for Swiftness than default, such as some floating stars/clouds in a trail behind someone with swiftness. This works for all classes.

-Cloud footprints gets thrown around a lot. I’m not a fan.

Main Effect:

-A Ray of Light, as if from the heavens, can replace spell effects for several of the scepter wielding classes. This could be similar to the effect that appears above the carrier in the new Crab guild challenge. A more transparent and blue one, with visible stars, would suit this legendary better.

Elementalist

-Dragon’s Tooth replaced with Ray of Light. Perhaps a piece of Moon Rock descends downwards from within it… or the ray of light charges up and then explodes.

Other ideas:
-Change all fire to a blue-white/sunlight colored… with some floating star particles. Maybe a bit too much.

-Change Earth 2 to coat the wearer in pieces of whiteish moon rock rather than normal rock.

-Water 3 no longer becomes a Trident—the scepter glows brightly instead.

-Earth 3 changes color to be whiter/with stars.

Guardian:

-Scepter 2 becomes a Ray of Light beaming down from the heavens—like the effect that appears above the carrier in the new Crab guild challenge.

-Scepter 3 could bind the enemy with Stars/clouds instead.

Mesmer
-I am unfamiliar with Mesmer moves. Sorry.

Necromancer:

-Effects aren’t really going to suit the class, but nor does this legendary.

“Grasping Dead”—uses Ray of Light like Guardian 2 move. Instead of hands of the dead, could be blue-ish spirits reaching up from the underworld.

-1 move does a flash of stars instead of a flash of blood.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

haviz.1340:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Facepalm.

A 20% damage increase vs. foes under 33% health is only equal to a 6.67% overall damage increase if all other factors are removed and the situation is that of an Elementalist as the sole source of damage against his target. No opposing heals. No allied sources of damage. Nothing. Any other factors will either increase or decrease the overall damage percentage increase of the trait.

And a 20% vs. low health foes makes the Elementalist a good class for finishing foes off – a 6.67% flat increase vs. all foes would make the Elementalist mediocre during an entire fight rather than excellent towards its conclusion.

How many mobs can heal themselves? Try to read thread title before throwing facepalms, it makes you look less ignorant.

Quite a few actually, especially dungeon bosses, skale, etc.. And why assume everything is about PvE? It’s not like PvE requires specific theorycrafting.

And I think a facepalm was warranted. I shouldn’t have to re-explain a simple concept.

Because the OP says “This is a PVE build”. Because it is a PVE build that I admit is not good for PvP. Because this thread is intended to talk exclusively about PVE.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Hamartia.3421:

I really don’t want to have to nit pick every part of what you’ve said because I’ve tried it and the damage is a lot lower. That’s really all it comes down to. Fire moves just hit hard and have short cooldowns.

Sure, you get a lot of % damage increases along the way— but percent damage increases can’t do much for you when your base damage is so low. 300 healing power and 300 vitality do nothing to help your damage. 20% reduced CD on air is crap compared to 20% reduced CD on fire, which hits much better.

Bolt to the heart only does bonus damage to those with less than 33% health. So its a 6.67% damage increase, not a 20%.

Those builds also throw away 3 moves that vastly increase your damage in favor of survival utilities.

Thanks for critiques.

A 20% damage increase vs. foes under 33% health is not a 6.67% overall damage increase. It is exactly what it says on the tin – a 20% damage increase against foes below 33% health. As in, it provides you with a huge chunk of extra burst against low health foes, as well as helping you to finish off your target. It implies a change in playstyle as well as becoming that “6.67% increase in damage” if you were to remove all other factors and box the Ele into a prolonged duel.

How many times do I have to say this is a PVE build?

I really don’t want to have to nit pick every part of what you’ve said because I’ve tried it and the damage is a lot lower. That’s really all it comes down to. Fire moves just hit hard and have short cooldowns.

Sure, you get a lot of % damage increases along the way— but percent damage increases can’t do much for you when your base damage is so low. 300 healing power and 300 vitality do nothing to help your damage. 20% reduced CD on air is crap compared to 20% reduced CD on fire, which hits much better.

Bolt to the heart only does bonus damage to those with less than 33% health. So its a 6.67% damage increase, not a 20%.

Those builds also throw away 3 moves that vastly increase your damage in favor of survival utilities.

Thanks for critiques.

CuRtoKy.8576:

Here are my thoughts:

1. 30 fire trait I find is just wasted because your ring of fire will go from 6 seconds to 7.8 seconds. I just find that you will be able to stack might in the normal 6 second duration since you will cast the fire spells in melee and arcane + earthquake is almost instant. On top of that, Earth 5 gives you the might stack after the skill is used so this trait is wasted.

2. 20% on fire I don’t find that useful since you are going to use like say: Dragon’s tooth -> Ring of Fire -> Phoenix -> swap earth -> Earthquake -> Earth 5 -> swap air -> Air 2 -> some damage maybe air 3 if needed -> swap fire. Something along these lines and when you go to fire again the 15 second skills will be up. The trait reduces these skills to 12 seconds but I don’t find that useful since it will be up under both conditions based on my experience. You can try this to see if it is true for you as well.

3. I would drop 20 in fire and go for 20 air with Bolt to the heart which helps you finish your enemies with higher burst damage. And the extra 20% for RTL.

I would suggest something along this for traits (from my previous s/d build):

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|b.1c.h1h.8.1c.h8|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1|2t.0.2t.0.2v.0.1n.67.1n.67.2v.0|0.k69.0.k38.u54b|39.7|1l.1u.1r.1t.28|e

or

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/elementalist/?1.0|b.1c.h1h.8.1c.h8|0.0.0.0.0.0|1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1.1n.a1.1p.a1|2t.0.2t.0.2v.0.1n.67.1n.67.2v.0|0.f6.0.p38.u54b|39.7|1l.1u.1r.1t.28|e

I know this is a PvE build but I feel that these trait lines are very good for harder PvE stuff like dungeon bosses and at the same time it is good for WvW pvp if you ever wanted to go into it. This will decrease the amount of grind that you have to do since you have a set that works well for both game modes.

A lot of people have suggested that build instead. I don’t understand why except that it is more standard. It does not seem to do nearly as high of damage. The gear choices are absolutely tragic. Why would anyone need that much survival for PVE? There isn’t any content that hard in this game.

Fire moves hit harder with this build than air moves do with that build. In practice, I did not find that I was able to get full might stacks without the talent— it might just be that the extra time accounts for user error/lag.

It also helps a lot with keeping up the 25 might stacks during a fight, when it becomes far more difficult to do this rotation perfectly— I’m almost never able to do this perfectly in an actual boss fight, but I can always maintain the 25 might stacks. It is possible that that talent could be swapped around though, and maybe even the points taken somewhere else.

It sounds like you’re suggesting abilities that are a lot more useful for pvp— just not a concern of mine as I don’t mind retraiting.

It’s possible that all the condition damage, with the 30% duration, is actually boosting the damage more than one would suspect without any additional crit damage beyond what might provides.

Jester.1546:

6×3 = 18. Where are you getting the other 7 stacks of might? DT, Phoenix, Earth Roll, earth 4, earth 5, arcane wave… six blasts.

Oh hm. I think I’m actually able to wait and get a second DT off in the fire blast.

Either way, on the second rotation through you do fire 2,4, 3, for another. I just stopped at an arbitrary place in the rotation incorrectly.

Chaoz.7846:

Forgive me for my ignorance, but how did you get the might stacks? And how did Apply
to everyone else?

No problem!

The might stacks come from using this game’s combo system.

Blast finishers in a fire field give 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds AOE to party.

Fire 4 is a fire field. Fire 2, 3, Earth 4, 5, Earth dodge, and arcane wave are all blast finishers.

So if you use ANY of those moves inside the fire field, you give 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEEQJArYlw1iMWZQzAPyAApAKhHEwQBlH5EjNA-jgyAYLhQCCIZBI5psm9EELdht6GtybQ01YKXioaA-e

Note: This is intended for PVE.

What this build sacrifices versus standard builds:

Some condition removal (still feels like plenty with water 5 and water dodge, optional ether renewal), and 100% fury and swiftness uptime. I feel that other classes bring fury while sacrificing less than an Elementalist has to.

I’m not happy with Elementalist meta builds, I feel like they give up too much damage in favor of support, and that the support provided is not an adequate recompense. This is my attempt to fix things. Note that the 10 in water can be swapped out to 10 in Earth or 10 in air for to fulfill slightly different needs.

What it brings:

25 stacks of might to party, great damage, great AOE. Feels incredibly fun and versatile.

Rotation:

Take a deep breath

Use Arcane Blast asap, its off the GCD.

Fire 2 as you’re running into melee range, 4 (fire field), 3—> earth, (dodge) 4, 5— while 5 is casting, arcane power, arcane wave, (25 stacks of might will now be up for the rest of the fight) —-> Swap to air, 2, 3, water 4… back to fire for two rotations of 2, 4, 3, then after a few rotations of your high damagers in fire and air, (still getting timings perfect), swap back to Earth for a 4, 5 inside the fire field. (repeat).

During “downtime”— when all but your fire moves are on cool down, feel free to use Earth 2, and water heals and evasive arcana for a minimal DPS loss. Also use RTL as a damaging move in PBAoE situations. Fire 5 is also good damage to slip in whenever you can.

You can also use earth 3 blind before churning earth, and air 3 blind DURING Churning Earth to keep the boss unable to hit you while you use your big attack.

Why is this build good?

Churning Earth crits every time you use it. Arcane blast and wave do great damage off the GCD— meaning they are absolutely free damage increases. Arcane power ensures that every Churning Earth cast ends up being worth it. Fire damagers all hit surprisingly hard.

Possible Tweaks

If you don’t have a Guardian, you can give up whichever Arcane Trait you’d like for Elemental Attunement. I’ve also tried out “Arcane Energy” instead of Renewing Stamina. It gives you less stamina overall, but right at the moments when you need it to dodge away from churning Earth, and a bit more control over when its available.

Arcane traits can be swapped around a lot of different ways depending on if you care more about providing buffs, gaining lots of stamina, etc.

I’m currently using 4x boon duration 2x might duration. I haven’t tested if these are actually necessary to maintain 25 stacks of might; I strongly suspect you could maintain 25 might with just ruby orbs instead, for even more damage.

Ether renewal is the better heal in some situation. I find that water 3, 5, dodge gives me a nice mid-sized heal, and that I prefer having one HUGE heal available with the human racial heal.

Alternative Gearing Option

Standard is zerker, with PVT in 3 slots to make it easier to spend a lot of time in close range and get off your churning Earths. Perhaps a better player than me could pull off full zerker. Theoretically, chest or legs with knight armor, rest zerker might be an even better balance than PVT in 3 slots.

Since you are using Arcane Power and arcane blast, which guarantees crits, you can theoretically go with a much tankier PVT/Celestial mix, or PVT/Zerker mix rather than full zerker. I’m not saying this is a good idea, but if you’re already running full tanky gear, you will be hurting less on damage with Arcane Power than you would with other builds.

This will allow you to still benefit from crits at the most intense parts of your rotation for nice burst damage. You can also use Arcane Energy or Vigorous Scepter instead of Renewing Stamina, since you won’t have as much crit.

Balanced Gearing Option

Zerker hands, feet, shoulders, weapons. PVT helm, chest, legs. Celestial trinkets.

I’ve tried this one out personally and it feels infinitely survivable with great damage.

Why Celestial? Scepter benefits from the condition damage, time spent in melee range will make your 3, 5, and dodge heals a bit more in demand and +200ish healing power from celestial will make them a bit stronger. Obviously lower damage than going pure Zerker, but this feels like a balance that I am happy with in casual play.

Thanks for Reading/Critique away please!

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I tried very hard to find a second consecration that lasts for 5 seconds, but I couldn’t.

Edit: The wiki is wrong. Sanctuary’s base duration is 6 seconds. I went ahead and fixed it.

Lmfao, thanks!

Well, kitten . I was really hoping this was an oversight, because I really want to stack 6 more might with hammer, but I hate rotations that don’t feel smooth.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Master_of_Consecrations

Every other consecration, including the other one that lasts 5 seconds, is increased by 2 seconds. Purging flames is only increased by one.

This seems especially like a bug because in order to get 2 mighty blows off with hammer inside of purging flames, you have to cancel a rotation of your one move. With that extra second, it would all sync up nicely and make this a more viable option.

HikariNoTen.1402:

For sure, AI is a real complex problem and I suppose we won’t see a real change on AI before “soon” or “when it is ready”.
I guess they will have to do a skill split on many skills if they want to upgrade the different classes in PvE. But I guess it will also put out a higher entry level for PvP, so the devs are kind of postponing as much as possible these changes.

Edit : what bugs me also is that condition damage is capped in ALL content (number of stacks) and direct damage is not. Seems totally unfair for some classes…

If conditions didn’t suck I imagine some classes in rampagers gear could offer really competitive DPS.

I can’t be the only one who notices that that spell effect looks nothing like the class and awesomeness other air moves get. It seems like beta art that never got finished.

HikariNoTen.1402:

Nikaido.3457:

HikariNoTen.1402:

@Hamartia : warriors can bring a lot I guess, because they have access to many weapons with different effects and they have a nice boon/condition coverage. But they do not bring everything !

But bring the mesmer and guardian and you suddenly have everything. Group stability, regen, aegis, best crowd control of the game, blind, immobilizes.. W/G/M has everything. Changing the dungeon content is not going to make that group set up worse.

One simple example : add a monster which can only suffer direct damage while chilled, and while chilled becomes rock solid with a hardcap on direct damage. Warriors have no access to chill apart from runes/sigil

Could probably just make do with a secondary set of weapon for that type of encounter. No big deal again. Hell, the ghost pepper popper could probably work decently if all 5 in the party used it in dungeons that are considered night time. It has a 1 second internal cooldown and has 40% chance of giving chill on crit.

Ok…well I tried !

That’s the problem. We can’t pretend that new dungeons are going to fix this. The issue is class balance and the fix is nerfs.

Before Anet adds new legendary, I imagine they’re going to finish adding particle and spell effects to those that are still missing them. Maybe they are having issues brainstorming what to do! I’d like to hear ideas for giving more umph to the legendaries that still need it.

Meteorlogicus Suggestions:

General ideas:

-Floating “star” particles added to various moves. Similar to the blue dots that several Guardian moves spew out.

-Can apply different effects for Swiftness than default, such as some floating stars/clouds in a trail behind someone with swiftness. This works for all classes.

-Cloud footprints gets thrown around a lot. I’m not a fan.

Main Effect:

-A Ray of Light, as if from the heavens, can replace spell effects for several of the scepter wielding classes. This could be similar to the effect that appears above the carrier in the new Crab guild challenge. A more transparent and blue one, with visible stars, would suit this legendary better.

Elementalist
-Dragon’s Tooth replaced with Ray of Light. Perhaps a piece of Moon Rock descends downwards from within it… or the ray of light just explodes and disappears when the move ends.

Other ideas:
-Change all fire to a blue-white/sunlight colored… with some floating star particles. Maybe a bit too much.

-Change Earth 2 to coat the wearer in pieces of whiteish moon rock rather than normal rock.

-Water 3 no longer becomes a Trident—the scepter glows brightly instead.

-Earth 3 changes color to be whiter/with stars.

Guardian:

-Scepter 2 becomes a Ray of Light beaming down from the heavens—like the effect that appears above the carrier in the new Crab guild challenge.

-Scepter 3 could bind the enemy with Stars/clouds instead.

Mesmer
-I am unfamiliar with Mesmer moves. Sorry.

Necromancer:

-Effects aren’t really going to suit the class, but nor does this legendary.

“Grasping Dead”—uses Ray of Light like Guardian 2 move. Instead of hands of the dead, could be blue-ish spirits reaching up from the underworld.

-1 move does a flash of stars instead of a flash of blood.

Black Teagan.9215:

Hamartia.3421:

BLACKTHORNTK.5739:

Nah Warriors are fine as they are no need to nurf them or u will see them as weak as the Mesmer’s are now. They need to allow tanking back in this game for warrior’s as far as I can say.

With my suggestions, Warriors would remain the highest damage. You would just need say, an Elementalist to stack might and fury. Or a Ranger to provide Fury with warhorn/pet and another class to stack might.

It really opens up a lot of group compositions.

I agree but only against groups, against only one enemy it should be the thief of course

I don’t have a strong opinion on this. =)

nethykins.7986:

HikariNoTen.1402:

laokoko.7403:

The truth? I think the combat system is bad(for group pve), and basically the dungeon content is lackster. I don’t think the dev put alot of though on how the combat system and dungeon should work together. The combat system revolve more around “play style” than “how they should work in a group”.

And you never really need to balance range dps vs melee dps in other game since if your tank is dead in other game, the range is dead too. In this game players are rewarded much more for fighting up close since they are more in danger. In other game dps melee have tank to take the damage for them so they are not rewarded for more.

But the reality is I don’t really care about balance. Unless you care so much about speed run. I think it is just culture of the game. People care so much about time vs reward in GW2. In other game people focus on “killing the boss”, that’s it.

Agreed !
I do not care about about the reward/time equation. But I do care about the safe/fast equation in fights. At the moment Safe and Fast are equal in most PvE parts, and dungeons in particular. The OP put forward a solution to diminish the Fast part (removing might from warriors mean they will output less DPS). Even with less DPS I still think the 4War+1XXX will be above most groups in terms of Safe and Fast.

I am not a hardcore player, I am more of a “hardcore casual”. And I have tried out various contents with different team compositions with my friends. We started out with high survivability and low damage (PVT lots of utility) in dungeons, and now we have moved to high damage and low survivability (Zerker no utility). Overall we perform much better, we have certainly improved our skills, but we all feel like going back to the what we think is “Safe” would only make everything much harder and more dangerous.

This is what I am really against, at the moment there are no real roles in a team that would make it perform better. No roles like boon-producer,condition-mancer, disrupt master, blind spammers are very demanded in the dungeon meta.

Again as the OP stated some professions are able to do too much with too little effort in PvE which is bad for a PvE balance (well known teams clearing all dungeons with almost the same team composition means there is a problem, especially when you have 3 to 4 people of the same profession).
The dungeon fights not being a real challenge compared to PvP fights and not containing enough diversity of extreme situations will also discourage team variety.

Give us enemies that have a damage reduction cap unless they are chilled or burning or stunned or have a high regen for which we will require poison. Give us enemies with high armor and low HP, give us really fast attacking mobs with low damage retaliation and confusion mancers will be happy. Give us fast moving enemies jumping in and out of the fight and killing us at range. Give us a variety of all of this in the same fight and we may see a change in the meta.

Stop it with enemies sitting on the same spot thinking that shooting arrows non stop on a reflection wall is a good idea.

+1

We’ll have to wait and see if they actually can script better encounters that benefit those who vary group builds. The emphasis for them is currently “This dungeon is kitten. Let’s ramp up the damage/increase mob count/give minor mobs questionable skills, and prolong the battle”

I always feel the changes, for the standard dungeons at least, it isn’t about making it fun, or varied for all classes. It’s about stopping you from running it in 10 mins.

I think all these posts saying “Anet needs to change the encounters, not the classes” are failing to realize that in just about any imaginable content, these group compositions will be ideal. It is highly versatile, and has all major buffs and utilities covered.

HikariNoTen.1402:

OP I do agree with you that warriors tend to too easily stack might. Overall in PVE they bring a lot to a group for little personal loss.
But this is not the only problem if might is the only solution then I should be king of PVE with my elementalist, using cantrips and combos I can go up to 25 stacks of might.
The real difference for me is in content, there is a reason why warriors are still not great in PvP but are great in PvE. In PvP warriors suffer from slowing conditions preventing them from being in range of a target and the enemy dodges and kites out of your burst attacks. In PvE apart from Karkas and some archers in CM I very rarely see enemy dodge/evade/kite to improve their lifespan.

The reason no one cares your ele stacks might is because a group of warriors can get 25 stacks. If they couldn’t, suddenly other classes ability to stack might would matter.

haxi.9038:

Hamartia.3421:

Ayrilana.1396:

I guess there are those people that don’t understand how the 3 warrior / 1 guardian / 1 Mesmer type group came about. People didn’t arbitrarily pick those and just go with it. They tested all of the classes with the various builds and found this works the best.

Since you seem to be aware of the issue, what do you think of my suggestions?

After looking at your “suggestions”, it seems to me that you just want us to be nerfed to the same level of effectiveness in pve as your engineer or whatever.

I don’t have an Engineer. I have a zerker warrior, a Guardian, an Elementalist, and a Necro at 80 and exotic/ascended geared. =)

Ayrilana.1396:

I guess there are those people that don’t understand how the 3 warrior / 1 guardian / 1 Mesmer type group came about. People didn’t arbitrarily pick those and just go with it. They tested all of the classes with the various builds and found this works the best.

Since you seem to be aware of the issue, what do you think of my suggestions?

BLACKTHORNTK.5739:

Nah Warriors are fine as they are no need to nurf them or u will see them as weak as the Mesmer’s are now. They need to allow tanking back in this game for warrior’s as far as I can say.

With my suggestions, Warriors would remain the highest damage. You would just need say, an Elementalist to stack might and fury. Or a Ranger to provide Fury with warhorn/pet and another class to stack might.

It really opens up a lot of group compositions.

HikariNoTen.1402:

I think it will be difficult to nerf/buff a class at this point. The teams are not a problem the content is.

The only thing that could beat a greatsword warrior team is an exceptionally high armored target (over 9000 Toughness!!!) with a high attack rate of high damage close combat aoe(beating dodges and aegis cooldowns), however small HP. Then we can use control and condition damage/retaliation and other stuff that may seem useless at the moment!

You’re saying it’s hard, but to be honest I think I came up with a pretty elegant solution.

It won’t make warrior/mes/Guardian much less powerful, but it will get at least one more class invited to COF speed runs and will get other group compositions some mileage.

With my suggestions, and then buffs to the UNDERPOWERED classes, I think this game would be in amazing shape for PVE.

Episoph.5289:

It’s an ongoing issue with Arenanets design philosophy. They want to give each class a unique feel and have, in my opinion, succeeded if you only take the playstyle into regard.
You suggest to give warriors less might and fury and compensate with giving prot, regen and stability? That just ends up fusing warrior with guardian elements (guess some could call it a freud’sche reaction based on the comment that guardian is your main).

Balancing pve in the current state is a rather hard feat because not enough skills are (yet) split between pve/wvw and spvp which is a matter of utmost importance for this sake.
In my humble opinion it is neccessary that the dungeon encounters themselves get reworked so that pure dmg with minimum utility isnt always the optimal choice.
If every player of the party is skilled a mix of war/guard/mes currently simply fills anything that the pve content asks for and that is the core issue.

This argument comes up a lot.

Guard and Mes are pretty much the best in any situation that doesn’t require high DPS as well. They are not particularly high DPS classes. So then it’ll just be something like 3 Guard/1 War/Mes.

People really, really don’t want to admit that classes are unbalanced because other games gave them shellshock.

Your comments about warrior are astute though. I wasn’t really offering suggestions, just saying “Give them X sorta stuff”. I personally think very high stability uptime suits them, as well as some ability to gain critical hits into healing (omnom pie, built in). Perhaps that could be the fix to healing signet.

Gabby.3205:

Let me guess, you are Asuran xD
I like your suggestions. Too bad they don’t solve the problem that Rangers would still be cast aside, and since it is my favourite class, that makes me sad.

Ranger buffs are something I care deeply about as well. I just decided to focus on this big issue in this thread, assuming that Anet is aware of individual class issues. I wanted to address the OP meta— since I figure Anet is working on the underpowered classes.

Perhaps Engineers could have portal, and Rangers could gain an ability like Time Warp.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

A decent Ranger doesn’t do damage on par with a Guardian. The most I ever hit for on my Ranger with Sword autoattack is around 3k damage with Might stacks and vulnerability on bosses, and I consistently do 4k+ on the first 2 attacks on Sword with my Guardian and 6k+ on the third attack. Ranger doesn’t come close to that. Warriors are only good if the person playing it is good, and I wish that this is something that people would start to understand. I’ve seen plenty of Warriors using shout heal with dolyak signet and Soldier’s gear that barely hit 6k damage with a hundred blades. When you watch videos like what Strife creates and see his Warrior doing 30k+ hundred blades, it’s not because Warriors are infinitely better than every other class, it’s because the person playing the Warrior has optimized his build and understands game mechanics. Warriors are not damage dealing monsters when they kite bosses around with a Rifle and save their shouts to be used as heals.

First off, for Ranger, you aren’t taking into account that you have a pet hitting for 1k every second in addition to your damage. Your numbers are also off based on what I’ve seen, but I was more referring to Strife’s standard Guardian vs a full zerker Ranger in terms of damage. I was not trying to say Ranger damage is fine— just that Guardian damage isn’t that high.

You have to be kidding me. Everyone just uses Strifes guide. You press 2 if you can, 1 otherwise, 3 if youre against a wall. BAM BEST DAMAGE IN THE GAME. And… with my suggestions, that would still be the case. You just don’t get fury and might for free. Someone else has to work to give it to you.

Current balance issues:

How can we get other classes invited into the best possible min-maxed groups in Guild Wars 2? How can we get other group compositions to compete with those listed below?

4 War/Mesmer

2 War/2 Guard/Mesmer

3 War/1 Guard/Mesmer

Warriors do the best damage by a high margin, Guardians do best support/damage, and Mesmers provide unique buffs that make one per group nearly mandatory.

These groups takes care of all buffs needed for their respective tasks, offers great damage, and miss out on nothing significant that another class could be providing.

My Suggested Fixes:

1.) Warriors.

Warriors do the best damage, but that’s not actually the balance issue. The issue is that a group of warriors ALSO brings the best damage buffs. 100% uptime on fury and 25 stacks of might in a 3war group.

Therefore, the fix I suggest for Warriors is that, in exchange for a bunch of PVP buffs and buffs that do not affect damage (such as more ways to gain prot, stability or other boons), they lose their ability to stack significant amounts of might, and perhaps a nerf to their ability to gain fury as well.

Some more details on what type of buffs I think they should get? I think Warriors should gain very high vigor, swiftness, and stability uptime. This would make them a bit more mobile and hard to control, and fits the idea of a “warrior”. Obviously that alone wouldn’t make up for the might/fury loss, so Anet will have to be creative.

Note: I am not suggesting a nerf of warriors so much as I am suggesting making them stronger in some areas in exchanging for losing the ability to stack so much might and fury. In a group composition where someone else is providing might and fury, they would be doing EXACTLY the same damage with more survivability.

How will this affect the meta? One might stacking class gets added to COF P1 farms—lots of other classes can excel at this. In other dungeons, one slot that was devoted to Warrior can optionally get switched to a might-stacking class.

2 warr/2 guard/1 mesmer gets a bit of a nerf since both Guardians will have to swap for staff 4 and sacrifice damage to stack might. With this change, perhaps it would be more efficient to look at the might stacking options other classes have. Most likely, this meta would remain—but other groups would be able to compete.

It seems like a lot of other classes have interesting might stacking talents— but all for naught, since warriors stack might so easily. This would make a lot more traits and builds for other classes worth looking at.

2.) Mesmers (Or Engineers)

Mesmer’s unique abilities make one per group almost necessary.

The simple fix? Give Engineers a “Portal Gun” talent, and give engineers an AOE frenzy buff. Obviously care will have to be taken that this does not buff them in PVP. Now groups can bring one Mesmer or an Engie to fulfill the necessary unique buffs—Mesmer’s still having the advantage of reflects. Alternatively, give Engineers portal, and Rangers an AOE frenzy elite skill. Make it PVE only if you need to.

3.) Guardians

I main a Guardian, so I’ll be honest and say I might be biased here. I personally feel that Guardians do a bit less damage than people realize, and that this low damage is a fair exchange for the utility they bring. However, it is possible that Guardian survivability needs a slight nerf to make it a bit less easy to play compared to other classes. Giving another class, perhaps rangers, the ability to AOE stack enemies might help as well. To be honest, I’m least confident about how to fix Guardian or if Guardian really needs a fix so much as Guardian/warriors synergy needs a nerf. I do agree that they are too common and effective, but perhaps other classes need to be brought up rather than Guardians being brought down. Maybe Guardians are the place where other classes need to be buffed up to, whereas Warriors are just a clear outlier that needs a damage nerf.

Let’s Look Back at the Group Compositions I posted above:

With these changes, I think the games min/max group composition could become much more interesting and diverse, opening up a ton of options. Things can never be perfect, but I think this would be a vast improvement. I have a zerker warrior, and I’m not trying to get it nerfed— I just have more fun when I’m in a group with more diversity, combo fields, buffs— I don’t want every dungeon run to be exactly the same. I want options.

4 War/Mesmer:

3 DPS zerkers/ 1 might-stacker/ Mesmer/Engineer.

2 War/2 Guard/ Mesmer:

2 Zerker DPS/ 1 might stacker/1 Guardian/Mesmer/Engineer.

2 War/ 2 Guard/ Mesmer:

2 Zerker DPS, 1 might stacker, 1 Guard/Mesmer/Engineer.

Thanks for reading and letting me know what you think.

To be honest, I should have just stuck to the Warrior part as it is the only one I believe is important. I just wanted to address all of the most glaring balance issues.

I’m a Knights/zerkers Guardian and I do great damage for what the class does. I’m just saying that people don’t realize that a decent Ranger does damage on par with a properly geared and spec Guardian… which is fine.

Most people do not ask for this comp. People who know what they’re doing avoid running anything else if they can help it— this group comp trivializes all content in this game.

Current balance issues:

How can we get other classes invited into the best possible min-maxed groups in Guild Wars 2? How can we get other group compositions to compete with those listed below?

4 War/Mesmer

2 War/2 Guard/Mesmer

3 War/1 Guard/Mesmer

Warriors do the best damage by a high margin, Guardians do best support/damage, and Mesmers provide unique buffs that make one per group nearly mandatory.

These groups takes care of all buffs needed for their respective tasks, offers great damage, and miss out on nothing significant that another class could be providing.

My Suggested Fixes:

1.) Warriors.

Warriors do the best damage, but that’s not actually their largest balance issue. The issue is that a group of warriors ALSO brings the best damage buffs. 100% uptime on fury and 25 stacks of might in a 3war group.

Therefore, the fix I suggest for Warriors is that, in exchange for a bunch of PVP buffs and buffs that do not affect damage (such as more ways to gain prot, stability or other boons), they lose their ability to stack significant amounts of might, and perhaps a nerf to their ability to gain fury as well.

Note: I am not suggesting a nerf of warriors so much as I am suggesting making them stronger in some areas in exchanging for losing the ability to stack so much might and fury. In a group composition where someone else is providing might and fury, they would be doing EXACTLY the same damage with more survivability.

How will this affect the meta? One might stacking class gets added to COF P1 farms—lots of other classes can excel at this. In other dungeons, one slot that was devoted to Warrior can optionally get switched to a might-stacking class.

2 warr/2 guard/1 mesmer gets a bit of a nerf since both Guardians will have to swap for staff 4 and sacrifice damage to stack might. With this change, perhaps it would be more efficient to look at the might stacking options other classes have. Most likely, this meta would remain—but other groups would be able to compete.

It seems like a lot of other classes have interesting might stacking talents— but all for naught, since warriors stack might so easily. This would make a lot more traits and builds for other classes worth looking at.

2.) Mesmers (Or Engineers)

Mesmer’s unique abilities make one per group almost necessary.

The simple fix? Give Engineers a “Portal Gun” talent, and give engineers an AOE frenzy buff. Obviously care will have to be taken that this does not buff them in PVP. Now groups can bring one Mesmer or an Engie to fulfill the necessary unique buffs—Mesmer’s still having the advantage of reflects.

3.) Guardians

I main a Guardian, so I’ll be honest and say I might be biased here. I personally feel that Guardians do a bit less damage than people realize, and that this low damage is a fair exchange for the utility they bring. However, it is possible that Guardian survivability needs a slight nerf to make it a bit less easy to play compared to other classes. Giving another class, perhaps rangers, the ability to AOE stack enemies might help as well. To be honest, I’m least confident about how to fix Guardian or if Guardian really needs a fix so much as Guardian/warriors synergy needs a nerf. I do agree that they are too common and effective, but perhaps other classes need to be brought up rather than Guardians being brought down.

Let’s Look Back at the Group Compositions I posted above:

With these changes, I think the games min/max group composition could become much more interesting and diverse, opening up a ton of options. Things can never be perfect, but I think this would be a vast improvement. I have a zerker warrior, and I’m not trying to get it nerfed— I just have more fun when I’m in a group with more diversity, combo fields, buffs— I don’t want every dungeon run to be exactly the same. I want options.

4 War/Mesmer:

3 DPS zerkers/ 1 might-stacker/ Mesmer/Engineer.

2 War/2 Guard/ Mesmer:

2 Zerker DPS/ 1 might stacker/1 Guardian/Mesmer/Engineer.

2 War/ 2 Guard/ Mesmer:

2 Zerker DPS, 1 might stacker, 1 Guard/Mesmer/Engineer.

Thanks for reading and letting me know what you think.

I’d also like to add:

1) When you log in to the forums, it should put you on the page you were at when you were forced to log in.

2) Ranger pet names should save. It really just feels cheap that it doesn’t. Make it save client side or something.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Out of sheer curiosity, what makes you think these improvements would be quick and cost effective?

To the post:

2) Expanding Art

I disagree with allowing HoM skins to be made available to everyone. These were a nod to the GW1 players who played quite a bit and supported the company beforehand.

With the re-skinning and re-colouring, GW allowed us to dye our weapons. Maybe a similar system for non-named weapons (Foefire’s Essence, for example) would allow more customisation than just adding a bunch of other models, and also less ‘clutter’ in-game.

I personally come up with a suggestion where people could create skins out of different parts and small effects.

3) Others

I agree on the hammers, for the most part.

Giving away HOM rewards will undoubtedly make the players who have them a little upset. But in my opinion, this game has too few skins for any of them to be withheld. That being said, the best solution is to simply create more and new skins. However, if ArenaNet is unable to do this, this is a stop-gap solution.

Again, the difference would be a hefty gem cost for people who did not get them from Guild Wars 1. I personally think that is a fair enough reward, along with the fact that GW1 players had them while leveling their first characters and when the game was new, before nice skins could be acquired.

Again, this is a spot for debate. It is just a matter of opinion and its up to Anet to decide if kitten off some people is worth adding new skins and making more profit from the gem store.

I actually have a long thread on dying weapons here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/197gnu/a_realistic_proposal_for_dying_weapons/

If for some reason, regular dying is actually doable and not cost-prohibitive, I think it would be the best solution. This is meant to be more of an easy compromise.

3. Simple new Features and Fixes

Once a game is released, MMO creators seem to have a problem of seeing the trees for the forest. You focus on specific details of the game, like SPvP, dungeons, WvW, without remembering that small tweaks to the overarching game itself still offer a huge benefit to the user in terms of your investment. Some small tweaks that I believe have been overlooked are:

New Options:

Sound:

-Toggle added for Player Call Outs (Enabled or Disabled). Players can now choose whether or not they wish to hear their character’s voice during normal gameplay.

-Max sound setting will no longer cause a crash during large group events.

-Size of most hammers should be increased by at least 20%. I don’t know if your art team had a debate about realism vs giant weapons, but it seems like the realism team won for hammers, and lost for every other weapon. This makes most hammers look silly when compared to greatswords. Considering that most hammer animations are slow and weighty, as if swinging something huge with a lot of weight to it, this makes little sense.

-Improve your “Best Texture Filtering” option to give actual anisotropic filtering options, to a maximum of 16X AF, which looks much better than what you currently have in game.

Thanks for reading!

ArenaNet, I believe you have created one of the most excellent games currently available for me to enjoy.

As a result of your great achievement, I am personally invested in your continued success—I selfishly wish to keep on enjoying Guild Wars 2.

Here is some feedback and advice in the interest of making your game the most enjoyable product possible in a way that I believe is realistic with your current limitations.

In the following post, I have focused on what I believe to be the most cost and time effective ways for you to improve Guild Wars 2 and expand your market.

1. Truly Immersive Combat

Guild Wars 2 has great combat. The only problem is that a lot of players treat it like a normal MMO. This can be fixed by improving the control options as follows. This is heavily inspired by the immersive combat mod.

While this will take a fair amount of work on your end, it is the easiest way for you to expand your market, and is highly marketable as a new feature. Some of the improvements that come with this feature enhance the game even for players who choose not to use it.

Patch Notes:
-New “Action Mode” made available. Left click will activate your 1 ability, right click will activate dodge, and mouse turning will always be activated outside of menus.

-Dialogue menu scan now be navigated with the keyboard. 1 will select the first option, 2 will select the second option, etc.

-New option: “Target Location Ground Targeting”. When enabled, ground targeted abilities will automatically be cast at the location of their target. Abilities that are not meant to be targeted at an enemies exact location, such as line of warding, will still need to be manually targeted. Self-cast key-bind added to target spells at players location instead.

-New icons added for each tier of gathering material so that players will no longer need to hover over the mini-map. Alternatively, the name being displayed without hover is a simpler, less elegant fix.

With these few tweaks beyond what the immersive combat mode currently offers, Guild Wars 2 could offer a new and unique way to experience the game, with no bugs, glitches, or any situations where it seems tacked on.

2. Expanding the selection of Armors and Weapons in a way that is efficient for your art team

Part I: Making Existing Items more Available

a) This suggestion will make some players a little bit unhappy, but the net reward is worth it. All Hall of Monument reward items should be available for players to buy at a significant gem cost. This will significantly increase the amount of armor and weapons available to most players without adding any work for your art team.

b) I might suggest making order armors available to players from all orders, but this is already the case with transmutation stones.

c) Consider making more re-skins of existing items in different colors, effects, etc. This will be the quickest way for your content creation teams to add more variation in available weapons because it forgoes the creation of a model and can move right on to a quick recolor or retexture.

Part 2: Fractal Legendaries

Summary: New, legendary version of each Fractal weapon added to the game. Recipe is a bit cheaper than existing Legendaries. Can be completed with any fractal weapon as a precursor, not the specific one you are going for. This removes some of the RNG from achieving the fractal weapon you want—as long as you also put the legendary-farming work into it.

These will undoubtedly be considered less prestigious than the current legendary weapons, and that’s absolutely fine. The goal here is to solve the problem of RNG fractal weapons without giving them away easily, and to help your art team with some incredibly efficient content creation.

a) Many players love a particular fractal weapon almost enough to make it a legendary to them, not least in terms of time invested. Take advantage of this situation to, in a time-efficient fashion, add a new legendary weapon for every single weapon slot with minimal effort.

b) New recipes for Legendary versions of existing Fractal weapons. These recipes will be slightly cheaper than existing legendaries, but will still include some of the easier aspects, such as map completion and world v world badges. The recipe can also include a single fractal weapon, but not necessarily the one being created. This allows players to combat RNG to get the fractal weapon they want, without giving them away.

c) Add a set of footsteps, or whatever other affects you see fit. Improve the existing white line effect from the base fractal model. This single set of effects, glows, whatever you decide to add—can be used for every single fractal legendary. This gives your art team the ability to add almost 20 legendaries to the game for the price of one.