Guild Wars 2

Spvp, fractal, dungeon, metas, etc. players don’t get legendary armor either.

Multiple sets of ascended gear costs less than one set of legendary gear, be it weapons, armor, or backpacks.

There’s no advantage to legendary gear other than the skin, the challenge of obtaining it, and prestige of having it; if you’re into that sort of thing.

What I’m hearing is people who have played a lot of wvw are bored. People who haven’t burned themselves out still enjoy it.

Moonyeti.3296:

Chadramar.8156:

Retroactively looking for Zhaitan’s “weakness” is futile IMO because the whole concept was one of HoT’s worst kitten pulls, overshadowed only by Mordremoth’s weakness being one of its own domains. That’s like saying we can kill Jormag by throwing snowballs at it, or Primordus by holding a lit match to its tail.

I know the vanilla story gets flak here, but IMO it beats the pants off anything that came afterwards in terms of actually feeling like a massive concerted effort instead of “go wherever and do whatever some gasbag brat who singlehandedly knows everything and has absolutely unlimited resources and contacts tells you to”. Zhaitan didn’t have a single simplistic killswitch, defeating it required a multi-pronged approach of tackling its supply of corpses and magic, its eyes and mouth, and the corrupted Source of Orr, and that was information from multiple sources that we actively participated in acquiring.

Yes! For all of it’s faults, the personal story got this right – the campaign against Zhaitan felt like a campaign. There was build up, multiple fronts of attack, and for all the flak it got, I like that we killed him with an airship instead of walking up to him to give him a beatdown sword and board style, as it felt like the final push of an army, not a handful of dudes. (Yeah, I know there were only a handful of dudes on the airship, butI could easily imagine the presence of more on the ship, or on other nearby ships helping)

If you consider the HoT metas as part of the story, the attack on Mordremoth involved a lot of fighting outside. The story missions even reference the battle going on outside during the meta. The characters admit to the meta battle being essential for going into the Mind of Mordremoth.

I don’t think you can consider the HoT story without also considering the metas as part of the story. In VB we had to reorganize after Mordremoth kitten slapped the Pact Fleet, AB we didn’t do much, TD we had to punch kitten into DS, and in DS we had to occupy Mordremoth’s attention to allow the Pact Commander to attack his mind.

Taking that into consideration, the campaign against Mordremoth was probably bigger, since he blew up Lion’s Arch in LW1 and a couple forts in LW2 before his main Modrem forces were stalled in the Silverwastes.

Zhaitan may have had more offensive success taking Claw Island before the Pact was organized.

It’s still possible to explore more Zhaitan battles and aftermath via Fractals… hopefully some day.

Taimi told me he has a weakness though!

Ider.1276:

Hesacon.8735:

It’s dues ex machina if it ends now. But the story didn’t end now, there’s still more living story season 3 and a new expansion to go.

I think you don’t understand what deus ex machina is.

“The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the inspired and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object.”

There were 2 active elder dragons, there was Taimi’s machine, 2 dragons were disabled. It doesn’t matter if in expansion 7 Primordus will wake up, cause we already had that abrupt resolution of “zomg we have to deal with two active elder dragons at once” LS3 plot. Primordus waking up will be new, separate plot.
So that was one of the most canonical deus ex machina after the greek dramaturgy. Because it had literally a god in a machine.

Which assumes that we actually solved any problems here. If you look at the leaks for the next expansion you’d know that Kralkatorrik wakes up and is quite kittened, probably caused by the events of _this_ episode. You can call it dues ex machina, but really it’s making other problems worse.

Primordus wasn’t exactly putting up much of a fight in this episode. Neither he nor Jormag destroyed a city. Both Zhaitan and Mordremoth destroyed Lion’s Arch, among other things. These two were in serious need of coffee. Not exactly threatening other than a couple minions near their home base. Zhaitan and Mordremoth were running amuck all over Tyria before we even saw them.

Using Taimi’s machine was literally deus ex machina. It’s gone now. We also don’t have the foggiest idea what happened to Balthazar.

Let the story play out.

Rauderi.8706:

According to the lead dev for material storage, this might be something they can’t undo.
…but I really hope they can. Those items should have been put into the Wallet.

And honestly, the Wallet needs a bit of a UI upgrade, if only to sort/separate the various currencies by source (dungeon, LS2, LS3, etc).

Proofs of Heroics were tokens and turned into a currency you acquire by right click —> add to wallet. They’re glorified tokens now, I imagine it’s doable.

Either way, I’d rather have by bank slots and inventory slots free again, especially with a new map token. I boycotted Lake Doric in protest of the continuing clogging of my inventory. That issue has gone away now.

The reason I bring it up is because Taimi makes it a big deal during this episode that we need the machine to destroy Jormag and Primordus, as they are each other's weakness.

Between halfway through HoT and all of LW3, a big deal is made about elder dragons having a weakness that can be exploited and is basically needed to defeat them. Mordremoth destroyed a Pact Fleet bigger than the one that attacked Zhaitan in at most a couple minutes.

I do rewards tracks for the clovers. Everything else is just a nice bonus.

Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay tracks also give siege blueprints.

I got quite lost, but I was able to complete both the map and the story.

We have 2-3 months between episodes, 1 map per episode, and this game is about exploring. Having a map that’s not a Queensdale is fine. It adds to our growing spectrum of maps to enjoy. If you don’t enjoy it, play on a different one.

I happen to find this one way less frustrating than Ember Bay.

It’s dues ex machina if it ends now. But the story didn’t end now, there’s still more living story season 3 and a new expansion to go. The leaks from the expansion seem to indicate that the things that happened during this episode probably made things worse, and kittened off someone else entirely.

If Jormag and Primordus are each other’s weakness, and Mordremoth can be attacked through his mind, what’s Zhaitan’s weakness? Giant lasers?

Warrior is balanced, you should see them in wvw. 1v1 or 50v1 it doesn’t matter, the warrior doesn’t die.

Whenever SoS is defending DBL, that’s the one that gets queued. People love attacking us.

Honestly, I take way more falling damage trying to get out of the citadel of APL than going anywhere in DBL.

Both maps have their own charm, and it’s no harder to traverse DBL than APL, if you spend 2-3 hours running around it to learn it.

When we were 2-1-1, the matchmaking took care of itself. With 5-4-3, anet has to micromanage the glicko to break up bad matchups.

This was the original argument I made two months ago before the switch happened.

On the subject of legendary weapons and their sounds, why not make it so unlocking the legendary skin unlocks multiple skins for the legendary. One with the sound as it is now and one without, and just transmute it if one wants a quieter version.

Everyone wins, people who like it keep it, those who don’t have an out while still using the otherwise full skin.

As a wvw player:

• I’m playing this season for the dyes because I’m making The Bifrost
• I wish anet would try to lure new players to my preferred game mode
• Rank 20 to participate is a larger barrier than you think

Seriously though, if a fraction of those participating for other reasons decide they like spvp, it’s good for the long term health of the game mode.

narcx.3570:

Hesacon.8735:

I run marauder’s and have no issues in T4. Wells and epidemic go a long way.

What’s the point of running epidemic with zero condition damage?

25 stack of bleeding is still 550 damage per second and there are conditions like vulnerability that the typical condi necro won’t generate. With might it can go as high as 1675 damage. In a 5 necro party it still adds a lot of damage without needing condi damage.

Warrior is about as broken as it gets in wvw, so naturally they got buffed with the balance patch.

In wvw the best thing you can do is lure them to the water. They’re movement is as bad as ours so you can run away. Once in the water a necro will eat them, or they won’t follow and it’s a draw.

Failing that, you’re stuck corrupting their boons and hoping you take out their stability and resistance.

Really though, there’s almost nothing you can do against a competent warrior. They’re worse than ghost thieves.

I run marauder’s and have no issues in T4. Wells and epidemic go a long way.

I’ve been using ghost pepper poppers on a power necro for several months now (only at night). The chill effect on its own is pretty good as a control effect not even considering any bleed stacking.

It doesn’t help that a lot of power based foods are pretty blah. 100 power and ferocity doesn’t help those infinite cloak builds. Increasing their cooldown times does.

The thing is, dozens of matches into last season, at least 80% of my matches were blowouts. To see a similar ratio in my first 10 this season doesn’t give me a lot of hope that playing more is a worthwhile endeavor.

I play base necro instead of reaper and I have no issues roaming except for warriors, since they’re basically unkillable.

Thieves can be annoying if they chain-cloak, but at that point it just becomes a long drawn out attrition battle and if you get them to screw up once they’re toast…

…except I ran into one the other night that pot shot me from cloak for 2 minutes before I finally hit /sit. I couldn’t target them and was just taking damage. But hey, necros are in a good place.

Finished my placement matches, went 6-4, which is fine. I landed in silver which might be fair. The problem is 7 out of the 10 matches were total blowouts.

Last season I had this problem: most of my matches I either:

• Won by a total landslide, which is boring
• Lost in a total blowout, which is also boring

After my placement matches this season, it looks to be more of the same. I should not, within 2 minutes of the match, just be waiting for the timer to end because we’re clearly going to win or lose. It’s not fun.

For those who have played beyond placement matches: is it more of the same and I should not bother, or did they change the matchmaking enough from last season to make it a fun experience?

It never made sense in the first place for ascended gear to be in spvp, since it can’t be used there. They were trying to lure people into the game mode, and got them in it long enough to max out on shards at which point they stopped.

By changing it, they’re hoping to keep people’s attention longer. I think they changed it too much, to the point it isn’t any better per unit time to do spvp for the gear than other game modes (and crafting it). All else being equal, those who don’t like spvp now have no compelling reason to give it a shot.

Wvw still has nothing, and the gear is mildly useful there.

New league season, but why is there no call of the mists?

Exciton.8942:

They need to stop this 5:4:3 point system. No one thinks it brings any positives to the game to begin with. Now it is obvious it just doesn’t work well with glicko to reflect the true strength of a server

I pleaded with them not to, but they had some fuzzy logic. The results are not exactly surprising.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Why 5,4,3?
Both 5,4,3 and 3,2,1 were suggestions from the Official Feedback Thread: WvW Skirmishes (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Official-Feedback-Thread-WvW-Skirmishes/page/2). And we have seen general interest in trying 5,4,3. If there is a different set of numbers you would like to try instead, feel free to suggest them.

How is 5,4,3 different than 3,2,1?
Since there has been a lot of debate on this, with most people being right but debating different points, there are three things that are true:

1. The scores will be closer.
2. The placements won’t change.
3. This could impact world rating used for glicko matchmaking.

This is assuming play style remains identical to how it was when 3,2,1 was in play. Player behavior may change since the scores will be closer, but we aren’t sure if they will. This was the same situation with 2,1,1. We weren’t sure if it would change WvW play style, but players seemed generally interested in giving it a shot and one of the reasons WvW is a 3 team gamemode, rather than a 2 team gamemode, is so that worlds could team up and try to take down the dominate world. This isn’t something we incentivized very much before 2,1,1 but having 2v1s in WvW was intended behavior and when it works correctly can lead to more balanced matches.

Will 5,4,3 be there forever?
As stated with the patch notes with 2,1,1 and stays true for 5,4,3: “If we aren’t happy with the results we can change the Skirmish score values again.” If we get feedback that players don’t like 5,4,3 and want to go back to 3,2,1 we can do that. If we get feedback that players want to try some different numbers that we haven’t tried before, we can do that. Changing the numbers is easy for the team, but do keep in mind that it requires a game build, and that schedule is determined by the studio as a whole.

Do we expect 5,4,3 to be a cure-all for scoring problems?
No. 5,4,3 will not make match scores dramatically better than 3,2,1. The scores might look closer, but if a world is dominating 5,4,3 isn’t going to stop them from winning. Population imbalance is the biggest factor in scoring problems and changing the skirmish score values isn’t going to change that. Population imbalance is a different problem that we are working on solving outside of changing the skirmish score values.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Please-don-t-change-scoring-to-5-4-3

UnbentMars.9126:

OriOri.8724:

Something with Glint’s lair in it. Or alternatively Glint and Destiny’s Edge fighting Kralk. As long as either Glint or her lair are the main focus of the fractal.

Twisted Marionette would be an awesome way to reintroduce that fight for players who didn’t play during LWS1.

And something darker. I really love the idea of being a mordremoth minion during the takedown of the Pact Fleet. Fighting against the pact.

Or something exploring Orr. Either post Zhaitan Orr where we have to take down several of the more powerful commanders left alive, or even farther back in history near when the Vizier Khilbron sank it into the ocean.

That would be awesome, seeing the fall of the pact fleet! Could be turned into some of the pact survivors and have to fight as our ship crashes, then maybe survive a few waves of enemies while we wait for the ‘pact commander’ and pact reinforcements to clear us a path back to the Silverwastes or something.

There’s so much pre-GW1 lore that could be explored, I’d love to see something involving the Luxons and Kurzicks or the original Shiro, or even visiting Balthazar’s battlefield

The Mordremoth vs the pact fleet fractal would only take 30 seconds. Mordremoth made the pact look like chumps and Zhaitan look like a super chump by losing to a smaller version of the fleet.

Any chance of a sigil that, on swap, makes your next attack be a blast finisher on target? Blasting light fields cleanses conditions now, which may be a check on runaway conditions.

Generating fields may have interesting effects as well.

Didn’t mag pay for a lot of guilds to move to mag? It seems like those guilds feel they’ve met their commitment and just want to move on. T1 is glicko locked, and I know personally I hate the same fight every week for months.

Being on SoS, when we were glicko locked to SBI and mag for months I started playing other game modes out of fatigue. When you know your opponent’s every trick, the game mode loses its charm.

It’ll cause a lot of ties and solve no matchmaking problems. It’s a step sideways at best.

Lahmia.2193:

Hesacon.8735:

Spiteful Talisman is probably better for power builds, bitter chill for condi. 5% damage from talisman is a big deal, even more so if you use a focus. Condi builds can’t usually stack vulnerability so chilling to cause it helps party DPS.

The thing is with Spiteful Talisman, as soon as the enemy has less than 25 vuln, it becomes wasted. If you remove Bitter Chill from the equation, Power reapers really don’t have as much vuln application as people think. Unless you’re camping axe/focus, which is a dps loss in itself.

I often use axe/focus and can usually maintain 20-25 vulnerability in a group with 4 condi reapers, which is itself like having an extra DPS in a 5-player team. I haven’t had a complaint about it in months.

It’s easier below 50% HP since death’s embrace kicks in and axe’s AA is fast, as is axe #2. 50% is usually when fractal bosses flip their kitten and go haywire, so it’s when extra DPS mattets most.

Epidemic transfers vulnerability too, so it’s not as hard to generate as you’d think, even with 4 condi and 1 power necro.

Greatsword has some vulnerability generation, but is only half as effective.

Servers can’t tank to change tiers, 5-4-3 scoring prevents it. There is a glicko wall between T1 and T2.

The reason TC and Maguuma are doing so poorly is that many of their guilds transfer to other servers.

If you were fighting people 1v10, it doesn’t really matter which classes they were, you’d fall down.

Unless you were a berserker, then you’d probably stay standing for 5 minutes before those 10 could down you.

Bloodstone fen is the best place to get the items you can get there because you can reset them.

In terms of farmable maps, bitterfrost is on par with silverwastes in terms of loot you can get. Plus the berries can be consumed for unbound magic instead of salvaged. one. at. a. time. with. an. annoying. prompt. each. kittening. time.

Unless you’re doing the leather farm, doric lake is a horrible map for loot, same with ember bay.

Doing the rewards tracks from wvw and spvp go a long way. 14 days of doing all 4 dailies from either will complete an entire track, not counting progress made playing and doing the dailies.

In fractals it’s just easier to avoid the ones that spam condis on you. Usually there’s a choice at T4 between condi spamming enemies and adrenal rush. Adrenal rush sucks, but it’s more manageable than a room full of normally trash mobs that become nuclear bombs.

It’s a case of using up your dodge vs. watching those classes that can’t cleanse melt.

Spiteful Talisman is probably better for power builds, bitter chill for condi. 5% damage from talisman is a big deal, even more so if you use a focus. Condi builds can’t usually stack vulnerability so chilling to cause it helps party DPS.

Loop.8106:

Are commanders actually selling squad participation? Id be willing to pay ~500g for half a reward track on SFR. Hook me up.

That’s a ridiculous amount of money to give someone in wvw for doing what they’d do anyway (play the game). That’s not the kind of money you can make in wvw in a reasonable farming kind of way.

Sigils that cause either fields or combo finishes could be cool.

• Sigil of Blast Finisher – 30% chance to cause a Blast Finisher at target on hit, cooldown 10 seconds)
• Sigil of Ice Field – 30% chance to create an ice field at target (360 radius) for 5 seconds on hit, cooldown 10 seconds

Would make teamplay more interesting. Might also reduce come bunkering if more fields could be laid on points.

Would also be nice to then get the same sigils in pve/wvw.

• The Pale Tree’s escape from Mordremoth (assuming the Pale Tree isn’t a setup and is truly Mordremoth and we’ve all been played as chumps the entire time)
• Finishing off Zhaitan on the ground after he went ker-plunk after getting laser’d like a chump.
• White Mantle’s internal power struggles between Xera and Caudecus, it would be interesting to fight with one of them as an ally, especially since both of them die like chumps.

Rognik.2579:

It’s almost like defeating Mordremoth is what brought this band together, and now that he’s dead, everyone wants to go their separate ways. Almost.

Silly mortal, Mordremoth was never defeated. Everything is going according to His plan and soon He will return. The syvlari will be free and Tyria will belong to Mordremoth! You will fear the power of the jungle dragon!

I’m not sure everyone in this thread is understanding the point I’m trying to make.

I don’t have any issues with the raids themselves, they are quite fun.

My issue is that it’s exceedingly difficult to find 10 players who know how it works. I have more or less stopped looking for raids because they take way too long to organize.

You have to make sure every role is filled. Sometimes you’re checking builds. Sometimes someone who doesn’t understand it joins. First wipe 3 people leave and the process restarts.

It can take an hour to build a pug group.

T4 fractals? After reset there’s dozens of parties. Pick any of them and go. In the time it took to even start one pug raid you finished the daily fractals with pugs.

That’s my issue.

The reason why fractals are like this is that experienced players are structurally separated from learning ones. You know that 98% of the time that T4 group will be successful and you didn’t have to wait more than a few minutes to start.

Raids it’s a craps shoot exacerbated by needing twice as many as fractals. It takes far too long to organize.

Seera.5916:

zealex.9410:

what part of this is your question?

Probably just accidentally set the post as a question. It happens from time to time.

This. Tried three times to undo it to no avail.

The thing with raid bosses is that having fought many of them, they aren’t all that much more difficult than fractal bosses. 100 CM could easily have been a raid had it been scaled differently.

Having thought about this more, raids are no less pug-able than fractals, it boils down to two differences:

• fractals scale and by T4 you can assume some level of skill and commitment, no such system exists in raids. LI is not a proper surrogate for a variety of reasons
• in part because of the first reason, it’s hard to find 10 people eager and committed to doing it

If some sort of formal implied skill system like unlocking T4 fractals and agony resistance existed for raids, it would be less frustrating and more approachable for everyone.

I keep telling myself I’m going to raid, except most pug groups that run take too long to organize and break up after a few wipes. Organizing 10 players with very specific roles to fill? It’s like herding cats.

Fractals only require 5 players and any fractal can be completed with basically any group composition that knows the mechanics (with the possible exception of nightmare challenge mote, but that’s because of timed burn requirements that are unique to this fractal).

It is exponentially easier to find 5 people who know the mechanics than 10 people who can fill out specific roles. The agony resistance requirement separates the experienced players from those learning, making the whole process smoother. You don’t need arbitrary cutoffs of number of fractals cleared.

I’d like to do these legendary armor achievements to say I’ve done it, but there aren’t enough infusion slots in my gear to give me the resistance to the agony of spending an hour to organize a group that falls apart after the first wipe, only to repeat the process.

Looks like it’s time for me to sell.

I am annoyed that warrior can still be all cancer up in my grill, but such is life.

I think you’re right, I went to theory craft some new builds tonight to realize that things that worked before still work and things that didn’t work still won’t work. Maybe there’s some fringe stuff that can be done, but overall it’s a pretty bland update, which I think was anet’s intention anyway.

I got into a habit of crafting the time gated items (the 4 ascended ones and charged quartz) every day so when I do need them, they’re there. I know this isn’t an option for everyone, but for those it is an option you might consider it.

The real killer is the 88 fractal pages, of which you can get max 3 per day. Fewer for those who can’t get into T3 because they need the armor they’d buy with the pages to have the agony resistance to earn the pages.

Glad I spent all my ascended shards over the weekend.

Either the drop rate changed or my RNG luck is shot, but I haven’t gotten an ascended chest from fractals in a while.

Has any consideration been given to wvw? There are some systemic balance issues that these updates make no effort to address.

Warrior (and to a lesser extent druid) has builds that make them essentially immortal while still doing damage. I’ve probably had a couple dozen experiences with warriors while roaming where it will be 3 or 4 vs. the warrior and the warrior does not die. It is unkillable using high damage gear. It doesn’t matter if it’s power or condition based damage.

Is the balance team aware of issues like these?

DTATL.9641:

While I can’t complain about buffs it’s sad to see that there still are no changes to Deathshroud which is the main thing keeping me from using core necro. Some of the other buffs don’t fix the reason the skills were hardly used.

Which is weird, since death shroud is the main reason I prefer necro to reaper. Reaper shroud and the traits have always underwhelmed me, though the ferocity buff makes a compelling case to try it out on some fractals.

Lord of Rings.5371:

Alpine Borderlands

• Garrison’s back gate that enters the lord’s room now has secured, reinforced, and fortified states like all other gates.

I’d call that a win, it was about as cheese as you could get.

Really disappointed Warrior’s immunity to being killed survived.

Fhynix.2105:

Though I like the changes to the thief (cuz they didn’t destroy vital parts of the meta build :P ) I still don’t think the changes will fix the problem of omnipresent guards/DH in sPvP.

The only change that goes towards that is the increased cast time of the Spear of Justice (F1). Apart from that, I see various skills damage increased or have their cooldown reduced.

Please note, that Guard / DH is a very strong while incredibly easy-to-play class with too little counterplay. Although this is a step in the right direction, I’d like to see some changes that disallow a guard to be invulnerable/blocking for more than 5s straight (e.g. chain: Elite + F3 + Weaponskills + Heal).

Warrior immunity to damage makes guardian look like glass, but I see what you’re saying.

The only real counter play to guardian at the moment might be necro, and everything else is counter play to that.

It’s like they didn’t touch the class, which may be a good thing. I don’t think it makes necro any more or less viable than it was yesterday.