Guild Wars 2

Fletch.3572:

Auesis.7301:

Thief is very punishing for error, but rewarding when encounters are played correctly.

This is kind of the entire point of peoples meh on thieves.
I’m almost exhausted after doing a run on my thief compared to some other classes I have.

I think that’s true, Fletch. It’s the both the best and most difficult thing about the class — it’s not an easy-mode profession that’s for sure. It’s also due to the fact that a lot of people go “full berserker” and then cry when their glass cannon build goes down on the first big hit.

Auesis.7301:

What Hawken said. I’d go so far as to say Thief is incredibly potent in PvE, contrary to the whiny babies who don’t know encounters and then blame the game for their shortcomings. Thief is very punishing for error, but rewarding when encounters are played correctly.

Running full Berserker with Scholar runes, 25/30/0/0/15, sometimes 10/30/0/0/30 if boons are lacking in the composition, and carrying all weapons for any situation, mostly S/P. I have a PTV set that I swap in and out of depending on reliability of damage evasion and volume/strength of hits eg. Underground Fractal at the trash runs (blind immunity and HUGE amount of incoming hits that some are eventually going to get through), back to Berserker at the bosses.

I should emphasize that although I think the “full zerker” setup is a viable choice and obviously does a lot of damage, I don’t think it’s the optimal setup for PvE (personally). After trying many builds and setups, I now believe in leaning to more balanced stats for various reasons. Going for, say, 80% direct damage via power/crit and then 20% investment into condition damage and surviviablity makes a lot of sense, considering all of the different combat situations we can get into. AoE bleeds, torment and poisons may seem like small change when you see those big crit numbers pop up… but they still add up in group situations.

style.6173:

It depends what you mean by PvE. If you are referring to dungeons, other classes are much better to take along. If you are talking living story, thief is fine.

Again, sorry this is a ridiculous statement. I play most classes but particularly guardian and thief and have run most dungeons on both. Thieves can be very effective and helpful to the group in dungeons. They offer high dps and a lot of utility — at the very least, access to group stealth (Shadow Refuge:“http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Refuge”) and AoE blind/stealth (Blinding Powder:“http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Powder”), AoE bleeds, roots, AoE healing, etc.

Thieves are just fine in endgame PvE. We’re absolutely not weak and don’t listen to people say that we’re too squishy, it just isn’t true. If you are THERE to be squished, then you’re not playing the thief effectively. Evasion, stealth, blinds… we have a lot of options for avoiding direct damage. You just need to keep mobile.

There are a lot of options for gearing and traits, though after playing full condition set/builds, full “zerker” and various hybrids, I’ve finally settled into a heavy power/crit setup, with some armor pieces from other sets to boost survivability where needed.

Arrow.3856:

Big Tower.5423:

Hay, i just had to give feedback about this really great patch! I love how the enemies can be stomped, and the instance was fantastic, spesific classes, and useful spells and combat imfact of the classes! ;.) that’s really cool! The area was also fantastic designed and the new skills is perfectly balanced, however it wasnt competly perfect, as living stories in the patch, it got trouble with telling players what to do, becuse after the great instance you just get put in kessex’s hills and no idea on what to do. And its about a little to mutch open word teamfights. But great patch guys!

I see your new to the living story. Coming in from WvW I see. Keep that hopeful attitude up Its great to see that atleast the new pve players start off with lowest of expectations. They wont be too disappointed

Funny, I’ve been here since launch, off and on, and I’ve played and raided in most major MMOs over the last 10 years, so I definitely don’t have low expectations. I think the new content is great, even taking into consideration all of what I’ve experienced across other MMOs. This is a nice, dynamic evolution of game mechanics and environments. It’s nice to see an MMO developer not be afraid to shake things up with the existing player base.

Also wanted to add that I’m REALLY enjoying the new content. I was really not hyped about it before it came along but I really love the structure of the events in the area and the introduction of some new game mechanics.

The only thing that I can complain about — and this is a general issue with the game as it is right now — is the prevalence of “zergs”. I can’t imagine what the solution to this is and obviously at least a good chunk of the players don’t think there’s an issue with it, but this whole champ-farming-zerg thing feels like it’s gotten a little out of hand.

Anyway, really well done otherwise, Anet, I’ve been feeling a bit fatigued with the game lately but it’s revitalized things for me.

1. Fix Conditions in PvE. I think that I don’t need to spell out what this means, it’s been brought up enough. It relates to the growing corruption of “full zerker” attitude within the game and I think it’s something very crucial to deal with in the near future.

2. 10+ man dungeons/raids, whatever you want to call them. Larger, organized, instanced events which guilds can take on.

3. If I could choose “Fix Conditions in PvE” twice I would, but in lieu of that, I’ll say: Multi-trait/build functionality. I don’t even care if I have to pay to switch it back and forth, it would just be nice to have two stored setups.

+1 I agree… don’t nerf! Nice to have some non-zerg large group content in the game, finally.

Gandara… EU. I find the population great. Never problems finding people for events, the last month especially.

olleandersson.9408:

I’ve got 2 legendaries which i worked hard for to get, it took me quite some time, i’ve played actively since release. I did my daily dungeon runs, flipped some items on the trading post and ran some events in Orr. I’m now going for my third legendary with currently 1,2k karma on my account. I just bought the obsidian shards needed for the clovers, it took me 230 shards (~490k karma). I wasted ALOT of time getting the mats and all i need is obsidian shards. Oh well, i guess it’s going to take me another 2 months to get it now, since the karma income is a joke. Players aren’t doing events in the open world, so the karma income for trying to do that with 3-4 other players is pathetic. What they’re doing is champ farming, which doesn’t result in any karma whatsoever.

Thank you ANet, i love you.

I don’t know what server you are on, but “players aren’t doing events in the open world” is completely inaccurate on my High (high, not very high) population server. There are events, champions, temples and world bosses being done every where I go, from low level to high level zones. I’ve never seen the world so active, at least not since launch.

Seriously, get over it. It’s called balancing. The karma intake was way out of whack with what could be purchased with it for most players. They’re fixing it, but introducing things to buy with karma which are actually good (people complained about the uselessness of karma endlessly in other threads) and reducing the rate at which you can earn it.

I also think it’s a welcome change, and I’m not one of the people with millions (or even 1 million) karma in the bank. Even without farming, I was able to gear up my main with karma exotics at 80 quite easily, and though that was fun in a way, it also felt too easy.

Yeah I have to disagree — as the previous poster points out, it’s more of a case of bridging the gap rather than adding a new tier. There is some argument about whether it’s worthwhile to go for ascended weapons or straight to Legendary, but I think that’s a matter of preference (which is the great thing).

To me, as I initially posted above, the important thing to me as a player is that I have a long term goal which I feel is attainable. That makes the game more interesting so that I can do all of the fun things I like to do, in-game, while still having that in the back of my mind.

So, I haven’t visited these boards for a long while, and it’s no great surprise to see all the QQ hasn’t gone away, despite the fact that my in-game experience is fantastic and that my guild is full of positive hype about the coming ascended weapons.

Just to offer another perspective, I love the fact that Anet has an overall mantra to keep the gear grind to a minimum — and in this case, I define “gear grind” as the ever refreshing wow style grind… where the moment the critical mass of players has geared up to the current tier, a new tier arrives, etc etc. They’ve laid down Lengendaries as the end-grind, and that’s fine.

But as a semi-hardcore player, who doesn’t want to commit to the long haul of Legendaries, I also felt the design at launch didn’t leave a realistic middle-ground for players like me to strive for. I’ve geared up with the nicest exotics that I could — those priced in the 100-200g range — but I’ve for a long time wished there was something at the mid-way point between these exotics and legendaries.

And obviously I’m not alone in this. I would argue that I’m among the silent majority who’s lives are too busy to even HOPE for a legendary, but enjoy the game and still would like a mid-tier, long term goal.

So, thanks Anet, for listening. I know we’re not as loud as the extremely noisy minority on these boards, but we’re out here and we’re playing daily

Funny, even my lowly macbook pro has better performance with the culling removed. I love it now… crazy how many people there are around AND better framerate.

So, I’m a huge fan of the game. I played it in early beta and I’ve really enjoyed levelling, the dungeons, and endgame. Due to work though, I’ve had to move from North America to Europe. This means my play time has been reduced lately. However, now I’m settled once again in a new place… I get the internet up and running and… wonderfully I log in to GW2 for the first time in a while.

Only to discover that I need to pay 1800 gems to relocate to a European server. Really?! This seems just incredibly ridiculous! I can imagine putting the fee that high to discourage people from swapping servers too often for PvP reasons or something, but in my case it’s a simple relocation to a new time zone. I don’t even care which server I move to, as long as it’s in Europe.

Count me as a very disappointed customer, after being a long time enthusiast for the game.

Hi Lt Surge. It might be a bit rough with your setup. I play on two machineS:

Machine 1: iMac 2.66 Ghz Quad core i5 with 4gb ram, ATI Radeon HD 4850

Machine 2: Retina Macbook Pro, 8gb ram, GeForce GT 650M

I find that on the iMac, the game runs great in Bootcamp with mostly high settings. On the retina, not so much. I was getting 50-60 fps under Win8 for a while, but then after some recent random driver update, it’s back down to 30fps on medium-high setting.

On both machines, it’s not great under the mac client. A reasonable 28-30fps on the iMac perhaps, but still not close to under bootcamp.

So on a straight up macbook? No sure, but I somehow doubt you will get good performance unless you’re running low settings.

Urxx.6840:

Hawken.7932:

The legendaries form a natural cap on item progression.

You could have said the same about exotics.

Hey, they won’t add anything more powerful than exotics, because legendaries are a natural cap.

A cap that gets moved up every time they want to add a new tier.

No, if they had moved the legendary cap, which they haven’t, then that would be true. As it is, they’ve only made a tier which bridged the gap between exotics and the top.

NastyPiggy.2046:

Hawken.7932:

It’s irrelevant, as MMOs should have organic and evolving design, and not be held hostage to the principles they used while fleshing out the design pre-release.

But how many just come out and say this is what we’re about fundamentally and then just go to the other side?

You know, this game also said it was a MMO without a monthly fee, what if they cross that line too? Quite easy to do, they keep a free “basic” version while new gear that will make a difference in all areas of the game because “expansions” that require a monthly fee to acquire… then possibly toss in the ability for armor/weapons to decay unless you go to a certain person in the monthly fee areas?

This is the problem, once a major line is crossed the player base no longer can just take what the company says as the truth.

In my own opinion, they haven’t really gone back on their principles. The legendaries form a natural cap on item progression. Ascended gear isn’t the start of a gear grind, as they won’t be able to continue to add new tiers to gate off new content (as WoW does), as they are naturally capped by the legendary tier.

Imho, it’s an omission in the original design. In fact there SHOULD have been the ascended tier right from the start, to bridge the wide gap between exotics and legendaries. They realized this (as they have said) and they added it in.

It’s irrelevant, as MMOs should have organic and evolving design, and not be held hostage to the principles they used while fleshing out the design pre-release.

Scyte.2801:

Ascended gear though, has better stats, and the fact that resistance gear exists in other MMO’s gives it even more reason to not go down that road. So if you want to get the absolute best out of dungeons for example, you NEED to have ascended gear, no way around it. It’s just sad to see that Anet is leaving what everyone loved about GW1 behind, and follows up with the hundreds of hours of boring grind for the best gear in the game, wich COMPLETELY contradicts their initial statements before the release of the game.

If Anet was bound to all of the statements they made pre-release, they would never be able to organically evolve the design over time. I’m sorry, but that’s just not now MMOs work. The best possible situation for players is that the company behind the MMO takes data constantly and adapts the design over time to give us all new goals to strive for, new rewards to accumulate, new content to explore, etc.

They NEED to make a statement, why exactly? They’ve already made a statement — both in what you call a “convoluted” blog post, and here in the forums.

I assume you’re talking about the ascended tier and the fear of them adding more in the future. It’s a baseless fear, as they have already made “Legendaries” which are an insanely long grind for most players and laid out in the game as the ultimate achievement. They’re not going to be able to make gear which has higher stats and is perceived as a better reward than those items, so they are naturally capped in how much they can add.

Ascended gear is really much like resistance gear in other MMOs anyway — a set of gear which you accumulate to counter a specific mechanic.

I agree, I think it looks awesome. I also thing the gear tier is just fine, as I’ve been wanting exactly that — some bridge between exotics and legendaries.

Strang.8170:

Hawken.7932:

Latinkuro.9420:

One other thing, eventually when full ascended armor is introduced it will make exotic dungeon/crafted armor obsolete, this is a big concern. Maybe when they add full ascended armor gear they should also rework all dungeons to include agony mechanics.

Why is it a problem, when all gear can be transmuted? As I see it, even now, dungeons are just skin collecting. I have my exotics already, then it’s just a matter of collecting the skins and stat distributions that I’m after.

Dungeons offered way to gain those stat distributions, one way of getting max level gear.

Now enter ascended gear, nobody can just do dungeon and get gear they want, they need to do new dungeon to get the stats and old dungeons to get the looks.

“Need to do” — I don’t see the problem here. All the content is fun, so I think I’d re-phrase that as “Get to do”, or “Have incentive to do”.

Latinkuro.9420:

One other thing, eventually when full ascended armor is introduced it will make exotic dungeon/crafted armor obsolete, this is a big concern. Maybe when they add full ascended armor gear they should also rework all dungeons to include agony mechanics.

Why is it a problem, when all gear can be transmuted? As I see it, even now, dungeons are just skin collecting. I have my exotics already, then it’s just a matter of collecting the skins and stat distributions that I’m after.

I think this news is awesome! Really looking forward to the new content and gear.

I agree, really looking forward to it. I love the overall philosophy of the game design but I’ve felt from the start that there was room for something in between exotics and legendaries. It doesn’t really feel like a new tier though, more like the introduction of a resistance set in other mmos.

Blackmoon.6837:

Lately it’s been difficult finding groups that actually want to run a full dungeon. Most of the time, groups are just skipping content or utilizing cheap tactics (such as stacking on each other to prevent damage). I’m aware that we should be reporting things like the stacking etc. but as for skipping content downright, isn’t there a way to prevent this?

I can’t ever seem to find groups that want to actually play out the dungeon in full, and it’s aggravating. It’s always the easy paths + skip and repeat for daily. Granted it saves time, but it also diminishes the value of tokens and loot. There has to be something you guys can do to break this conventional wisdom.

It’s even more frustrating because people are sticking to this mindset and now it’s even more difficult to get a group going for the harder and longer paths. If people can’t skip enough or if it isn’t short enough, then it’s not worth people’s time. . .what a terrible system for dungeons.

I agree, OP. I find the people who demand to skip trash really obnoxious and I think it’s ruining the dungeon experience as a whole. I really like the dungeons in the game, and I have since the start, but the skipping of trash just reduces the dungeon to a speed run token grind, and that’s just a drag.

I also just don’t understand why the designers have done this, as in some cases, there is ALREADY a mechanism in the dungeon which would prevent some trash from being skipped. For example, at the beginning of Twilight Arbor, there are four mobs before the first boss (the flower plant whatever it is boss). There is a vine doorway there which blocks progress if you haven’t activated the NPC at the start. Why not just have this NPC do this after these mobs are defeated? I simply can’t understand it.

I’d really love to hear some comment from the dungeon designers on their philosophy regarding this part of the design, because it seems like it’s really working against the intended experience and breeding a culture of speedruns.

(note: turning off leashing of course would be another more standard way of doing this)

Mostly Twilight Arb gear, with a Wall of the Mists on my back

Post level 55, I’d really recommend Twilight Arbor (the “up” path to start with). I pug all three paths of this dungeon regularly, and in my opinion at least, it’s one of the most fun dungeons in the game. I haven’t failed a single pug run at this since the early days of the game.

So depressing to see people complaining about this. The monthly is a cross-section of the game — you do a bit of everything and are given a decent reward for doing so. If you don’t want to do the work, then you do not get the reward.

That new style of dungeon sounds greeeeeeeat!

It’s an okay fight, but not particularly interesting to do more than once. I’d agree, it is more of a story feeling boss, than a real boss with difficult mechanics. It feels for the most part, like one of the open world bosses with slightly more complicated movements and attacks.

I would rather do Twilight Arb. explore mode any day.

Agreed. Nice to see this sort of content added in dynamically.

Knote.2904:

I’m not going to argue against your first 2 points, as for the most part you’re 100% correct.

But for your third point, highly disagree, the combat/skills/builds are incredibly shallow in this game. =p

Well I, in turn, totally disagree with your assessment of the combat. I find it the most interesting and engaging of any MMO in recent years (and I have played most).

That said, it’s heavily dependent on play-style in the sense that it’s not a math equation like most games, but much more about player movement and positioning.

On the other hand, I would still like to see new weapons added to the game over time – as all classes could use more variety (except perhaps Warrior).

Yeah agreed, this bug is pretty annoying. Still present.

Yeah add “Opening Strike” to the list — it also seems to have less than a 50% success rate in my experience.

@Riaky: great assessment, I’d mostly agree with your list there. Overall, TA exp is my personal favourite, with the exception of the last boss which is a bit of a snooze. COE has some fun moments, but also has a few issues here and there. I enjoy the dungeons quite a lot, but surely there is room for improvement.

I know what you mean about them being immersion breaking, OP. I agree. Actually for myself, I would prefer they were not in the game, except for one important thing – the load times between areas is too large, and sometimes it actually prevents me from going places. I work in games myself, so I understand why this is (my crappy hard drive also contributes to this), but still it’s a shame that the world isn’t seamless in this sense.

I personally wish they would make one or two “hardcore” servers for GW2 which just didn’t have waypoints, and maybe notched the downleveled difficulty up a bit. If they did those two things, I think the immersion level would go up for me at least by a large amount.

You’ll see other posts referring to these type of armor as “butt capes”, lol, which is so true. I also don’t much like the long coat style which seems to be all over the place for much of the leather armor (while leveling at least).

I’ve seen this come up here and there, and it’s been something that occurs to me time and time again while playing. I’ve been curious if others have the same feeling or if it’s more something which people are happy without and which I’m just being nostalgic over (from other games).

This is the concept of “public grouping” or at least some easier way of forming parties than what’s in the game right now. I find it very strange that the game, as it is now, lacks some easy mechanism to group up — either dynamically or at least in an easier fashion.

I find it a great strength of GW2 that you actively seek out other players in the PvE world to fight with. It’s advantageous in so many ways. But… I often find that when I randomly join in the fight with someone, we travel together for a short while but never get into a conversation because we never bother to form a party. For this reason, GW2 ends up being a bit of a silent game, which I think is unfortunate.

So I’m curious if others have this same feeling? and if there’s some suggestion we could put forward to Anet about how to solve it if so?

Yeah like others have said, they refer to the existing little dungeons (open world) in the game. I really love these things, but I agree, I’d love to see more extended and difficult ones start to appear.

azurrei.5691:

Free transfers should of been closed WEEKS ago…OR at least put in a 1 week CD on transferring. WvWvW is royally screwed up because of free transfers…

Agreed, the guilds swapping servers to be on the winning WvWvW is really killing things on our server, as 3 big guilds have recently left after losing one week (which is sad in itself).

Yeah I’d agree, I thought Orr just completely sucked when I first started to go there, but the events are pretty cool once you start getting into groups and doing them. Very interesting how some of them chain.

Agreed, OP. It’s one glaring flaw in the game as it is now. I love the effects, as they are, but I would say that the game should adaptively reduce the intensity of the effects based on the number of players attacking in a given area. Like if ten people are attacking, those effects should be reduced by 1/10 in their intensity, or something similar.

Konrad Curze.5130:

doing dungeons is an ok-ish way to make money.

sadly, dungeons in this game are an effing chore, handsdown the absolute worst implementation of dungeons I have ever seen in 15 years of online gaming, and practically noone wants to do them beyond their first history mode run.

I LOVE them (the dungeons), but there are certain bosses which are a chore, I will agree. Overall, I disagree, they’re very fun once you get the hang of them.

@SameHH: Awesome question!

Link: Ruins of Orr

I am really happy with the game overall, I think it’s one of best mmo releases this decade, if not ever. BUT, I can understand some people’s gripe with the lack of post-80 progression. To me, taking my time, the exotics are even still a goal (I’m only half geared on my main), but I can forsee a time when that is done in the near future.

Then there is the very far away goal of legendaries, which is cool, but distant.

It almost (to me) feels like there needs to be a “tier” between exotic and legendary, but then that starts us down the slippery slope of gear progression, which then demands content that requires that gear, etc. etc. and likely most of the audience doesn’t want to go that way.

Tough call… we need that second level of carrot, perhaps, but not the gated content that comes with it. Does that mean even COOLER gear to strive for than the exotic tier? I don’t know what the solution is tbh.

I agree, Red Falcon, there are tons of things to do. I initially kindof wrote off Orr as too much of a pain in the butt, but once I got deeper into it and got into some big groups doing events, I’ve found myself having a ton of fun in there exploring and fighting. There are some really great DE’s in that zone. However, traveling the zone by yourself is pretty rough — you definitely need to stick with a crowd.

That said (about Orr), I’m mostly motivated there because I would like two specific skins from my cultural set and those require Karma. Hard to say if the fun of the events themselves would be drive enough if I lacked those goals.

Blaeys.3102:

Here’s hoping you recover from your injuries soon, DoS.

As to the review (which you are in a unique place to make – probably even more so than the professional sites given the time you’ve played), I think it is a fair assessment -both positive and negative.

I particularly agree with your statements about Orr/Cursed Shore. I found that, once you get away from the mindset that “end game” has to be accompanied by a “level 80” tag, then the world really opens up and becomes fun. I find I spend much more time in zones like Gendarran Fields/Fireheart Rise/Bloodtide Coast, get close to the same Karma I would in Orr and have a much more fun (e.g. less grindy) experience.

And, yes, 600 hours in that time frame is hardcore, but not far-fetched for someone in your situation.

Again, get well soon.

Yes, my experience as well. Unlike in most mmo’s where I rush to max level, I’ve forced myself to take my time in GW2 and I feel very rewarded for it. Taking your time and exploring the world is really where it’s at.

I’m a bit undecided about the gear-related-goals in the game as they are now. At the moment, I find the process of grinding, so to speak, for my maxed out gear to be fun — and the quest for cool looking dungeon gear is so far nice as well, but I’m not sure of the longevity of those goals as motivation.

For me there is only one glaring flaw in the PvE game, and that is the lack of very significant challenges for guilds to attack. I know there are dungeons, and they fill this niche a little bit. There are also open world challenges, like harder areas and events in Orr, but I suppose I miss the big raid-style goals. By this I’m not saying that there should be a gear progression grind like other MMOs, but there was something about a raid instance which helped to define and motivate a guild. I’ve been in a few guilds so far, and while they run dungeons and do WvWvW, the more PvE focused guilds lack this sort of meta-goal to bind them together. I suppose I miss the long term progression that raids give you, without really missing the gear treadmill progression part of that.

I don’t know if GW2 needs to necessarily adopt this same type of thing, but it would be cool if — for example — there was an open world boss, or area, which required some serious guild coordination and participation to tackle. How that differs from a raid, or a dungeon, I’m not sure, but luckily it’s not my job to solve this particular problem — I just perceive that it exists.

Dudes… I play a lot, but I’m just going to say… over 12 hours a day in a chair playing a game, you’re just ASKING to get an early heart attack. It’s not a question of if, but when. Just saying…