Guild Wars 2

Just give them a wider but shorter cape so that it doesn’t drape over the tail. And if that fails then blame Anet for making them so kitten y (truly? You had to censor the word beginning with ‘D’ and ending with ‘erp?’) looking to begin with.

Then roll an Asura – the race who get away with murder no matter the fashion in question.

Tomokou.2479

You have to keep in mind that Dungeons will no longer be/are no longer end-game content (which it previously along with fractals was). I don’t like it too much either, but at the same time it is understandable; you shouldn’t put ‘that high of a reward’ on something that is at a ‘starters’ level in comparison to say the raid content which will be the new end-game content (along with fractals I guess? Though the rewards for that is horrible too atm).

Which is rubbish. That we’ve even got players here talking about ‘end game’ and that it’s being accepted as just a part of guild wars shows how far Anet has strayed from their vision.

Part of that vision was that no content, no matter how far back, be rendered worthless or obsolete.

So what if Dungeons aren’t on the bleeding edge of developement. It isn’t the community’s fault if what’s on offer in HoT isn’t their cup. Play how you want.

There’s nothing that should have kept them from improving fractals, from introducing raids, and leaving dungeons contents and rewards(fractals too) as they were whilst in the same breath introducing masteries and the jungle story path. Nothing.

‘If you build it they will come.’ Corny line from an old film, yes, but it does ring true. If the story were appealing, if the jungle were appealing, if the masteries were appealing by their own merits then shouldn’t that have been borne out in time? We’ll never know now.

If we want to step into conjecture, perhaps it was datas collected over the course of the life of Drytops and Silverwastes pre-Hot that showed that while there was some heavy activity during their own respective launches, many players -once having gathered what they’d wanted from those zones- then them and returned to their nightly routines. Which is not a bad thing- it’s sort of the entire point of this game.

Play how you want. Play when you want, and lower content never made obsolete or unrewarding so that as new blood comes in- or old friends join you in it nobody feels inconvenienced in helping them through it as they experience it for the first time. It’s one of the ways that Anet -til now- had succeeded in making this persistent online world feel more alive -no ghost towns. But now?

Was it out of fear of a negative statistic that they chose to render a mode of play nearly obsolete? If it is/was then you have wonder what other features will come next to the chopping block and whether this company is ever to be trusted again.

Much as I’d want to I won’t kitten other players for their choices/preferences but for my own- I don’t trust Anet now.

As someone who’s spent a goodly amount on this games gem store- why was my money being spent to cater to raiders while my prefered mode of play -Dungeons- was not only ignored, but cheapened?

I don’t begrudge Raiders being given that content. I’m happy for them as it promotes the play how you want philosophy of guild wars. A bigger community is a healthier community, right? Sort of? Perhaps?

That said, fractals and dungeons at the least should have been untouched as rewards come. What’s more, when it comes to dungeons and their treatment in this expansion I find Anet was a bit shortsighted.

How hard would it have been to simply add a bit more content to the dungeons for this expansion?

Using the preexisting environments within the dungeons, why not add bookend story/exploration wing chapters to them?

Ascalonian Catacombs – something mist themed to do with finding clues to Rytlocke’s disappearance. Perhaps utilising that hidden room with the invisible bridges accessed via the staircase above the Howling King’s chambers? Find residual energies from the ritual – perhaps when Rytlocke fell through tot he mists a shade of something or someone from Ascalon’s past escaped and found its way into the catacombs.

Caudecus Manour – a battle within the grounds where the floating statue in the garden and other hoarded magical inventions within the estate have attracted the attention of mordrem.

Twilight Arbour – Strange, carnivorous tendrils and pods have begun sprouting throughout what of late was believed to be the abandoned Aether complex.

Sorrows Embrace – more reports of strange plant activity that have come about due to the Dredge and/or the Inquest’s ‘delving too deeply.’ Something akin to Moria but with a Mordrem theme.

Citadel of Flame – Attracted by the magics employed during Gaheron Baelfire’s attempt at ascension, a Mordrem behemoth has tunneled to the citadel leaving a path behind it for Destroyer beasts to follow it through – the breach must be contained.

Honour of the Waves – Something deep below the waves has breached the ocean’s floor and is warming the waters. The ice is beginning to melt, the glacier ships are calving and and if something isn’t done, the Kodan way of life will be threatened. Perhaps a cameo by one or two Norn heroes who as yet are not convinced of the enormity of the Mordrem threat.

Crucible of Eternity – A distress call was received by the council in Rata Sum, but from the Inquest! Parts of the Crucible complex have blacked out. Something has begun to drain power from the infinite coil reactor, and worse -test subjects once believed to be well locked away in the depths of the complex have escaped. If that wasn’t bad enough, many of them appear to have further mutated, with strange plant/spore outgrowths and horrifying new abilities.

The Ruined City of Arah – Druids deployed with Pact forces left behind to garrison the ruined city as it and the lands around it recover have detected a disturbance. The the flow from the ancient healing spring beneath Orr has begun to slow. The creatures and the plant life that had slowly begun to return to the land after the Pact’s victory over Zhaitan, have become aggressive, feeding on everything -whether living or unliving- and no one is safe. Wander the once believed lost path to the Underheart beneath the ancient city with help from a Druid and a Revenant -the returned spirit of Orr’s last King- and solve the mystery together.

They needn’t be massive affairs but certainly dungeons and the players that enjoy them still have a place in Guild Wars Two.

First this from a thread I read before this:

El Psy Congroo.7965

Well that was HoT for me then,the only reason for me to explore the new maps and masteries was to eventually complete all the Hero Challenges and completely unlock my Elite Spec,
now I’ll have it free without even seeing the 3rd map yet, no sense of rewarding experience anymore.
This is ridiculous, the new content is supposed to be challenging but you immediately nerf it because some minority of casual players ask for it? Ridiculous.

And then from this thread:

El Psy Congroo.7965

Totally agree with OP, there’s just no reason for me to play the new maps.

This puts the lie to the arguments against having elite specs unlocked at the beginning of the expansion. To all the 10 of 10 reviews on metacritic praising the sound, the graphics, the layout of the new areas on offer etc.

In effect what you, and many other folks arguing against the shift from 400 to 250 are saying is that you aren’t so different from the casuals.

The tacit truth in your statements -the truth you won’t voice(not wittingly) due to your contrarian stances- is that you hate the new jungle layout and the mastery gating as much as the players who’ve said as much til now.

And further implied -that given the choice- if given the elite spec from the beginning you wouldn’t set foot in the jungle and would instead go back to ‘playing the way you want to.’

So let’s recap- there isn’t truly that much content on offer in HoT. What is is rife with gating and grinding to get past those gates in an effort to extend said contents. If you didn’t have to play through them to get what you want(read: elite specs) you wouldn’t bother. Right.

Thanks again for that bit of truth.

Here’s feedback. Someone in another thread mentioned that HoT had a metacritic rating of 4.3.

After that the votes began to rapid swing upward so it’s safe to assume that all the contrarians read that, then got together and said, ’Let’s go over to metacritic and vote 10.0 across the board. Just to show em’.’

I just want to know where and what rock Mike O’Brien’s been hiding under during all of this and what he has to say about it(HoT) and for himself. He’s been markedly quiet/absent during this whole situation. It’s his company, his game, and his manifesto, after all.

He convinced quite a few disaffected players to pull up stakes and leave their games to come to this one, yet he’s not even posted to explain why GW2 has suddenly taken this turn away from his statement.

He needs to explain. You don’t get to badmouth -even indirectly- your competitors products only to end up emulating them without taking some sort of flak for doing it.

Will he risk being pilloried coming out and posting a statement? Perhaps. But that’s the cost of being foolish enough to issue such a manifesto in the first place. Love it or not, that’s where these player expectations have come from.

It’s time to put up, Mr. O’Brien.

FoXX.4159

To all the dungeoning community out there, from what i’ve read on the forums, reddit and other sites, about this, and from John statement , that Dungeons will be left to die, or be removed in the near future (this is me thinking), can we allow them do this without having nothing to say? Can we realy not stop them in removing something we enjoy in this game?

Not to be flip here, but there was never anything for the community to allow or approve of. What’s more, apparently players complaining about having something they’ve spent for -something much enjoyed- being deprecated in order to force a method of play on them that they might not necessarily want is now ‘crying.’ Who knew?

Yet it seems puffing yourself up and being e-tuff on an internet message board, denigrating your fellow gamers when your own chosen method of play isn’t affected is cruise control for cool.

NikeEU.7690

I knew the last two weeks were too good to be true. The longer the forum cryhards go without shedding tears the more overwrought and pathetic their inevitable outburst becomes.

In all the complaints I’ve read as of this announcement, I haven’t seen dungeon enthusiasts calling for raids, fractals, wvw, or spvp be removed or to have their rewards lessened. Yet it’s open season now to dump on the dungeon community and label them ‘cryhards?’

All anyone has said here is that they(Anet) could have kept rewards the same for dungeons, then added inducements to fractals and their newer raids and little would have been changed for the negative. Choice is a good thing, right?

And even so, there are only so many hours in any given day for any given playstyle. It isn’t as though the Guild Wars Two community is a collective of round-the-clock robots bent on gathering gold every day all day before their hearts blow out at their computer desks. But that’s the way these changes are being represented.

If we’re to believe the devs here, the flow of dungeon gold is somehow, single-handedly ruining a pretend economy and a pretend world where the operators of both manipulate every aspect of both and continue to do so with zero transparency. Anet sets the gem to gold conversion rates. Anet sets the scarcity of collectible commodities from nodes and monster loots in the game world. But ‘dungeons are to blame and so we’re disincintivising them by having their liquid rewards reduced.’ I see- so it’s less gold from dungeons, ‘cause reasons.’

Is it any wonder the ‘cryhards’ would complain about this sort of hatchet surgery?

Seems rather simple to me. Don’t enjoy dungeons? Don’t play them. Don’t enjoy or want to keep developing dungeons any further? Then don’t and more power to you. But it you want to get more players playing fractals/raids, here’s a notion -make them fun and worth playing without ruining the existing dungeon experience.

Over the last few years I’ve watched GW2 devolve from inclusivity, multiple roads to reward, and, ‘play how you want to’ to, ‘Play how you want to so long as it’s how and where we tell you to play.’

It’s sad to see a one-time innovator feel that in order to compete they have to backslide and trace the steps of the competitors they’d once ridiculed when carving out their own niche in the MMO space. But this is where we are.

Some would disagree and call this doom-saying, others will agree and add that this game seems to be living on borrowed time. Whatever the case, it’s never a good sign for a game’s longevity when being a bunch of divisive kittenbags to to one segment of its community is condoned, if not quietly/tacitly endorsed, by the game’s management so long as it dovetails with their current design philosophy.

Windsagio.1340

It was broken. You guys should be glad you got to ride the gravy train as long as you did.

Is that the speech this rotation of devs is going to be given after being made into scapegoats and handed their walking papers?

It’s bait and switch. They roll out Heart of Thorns, telling the world how grand it is that the base game is now free -and then in the same breath they make the base game worthless.

Way to be.

Elomite.2396

How can people defend this, the loot system is so watered down and terrible. Dungeons were one of the few currency rewards in the game, now this update is to try and deter people from doing dungeons and instead move them to other areas of the game, I think it’s hilarious because the reason I solo or lowman a dungeon is a completely different reason to why I would ever even consider doing open world content.

Most open world stuff is comparable to those mobile games, like cookie clicker, press f to get loot. It’s sad what this has come to, the economy team has one salty dev that considers killing of one area of the game because of a meta he doesn’t like as a positive and suddenly this update comes around. Weekly timegate raid boys and 1 fractal island a day what a great kittening endgame. New legendaries look garbage, reskinned gold fractal weapons look garbage, no new fractals, no reason to run dungeons anymore, no pvp solo queue announced, no hardmode dungeons, remind me again why would anyone buy this bullkitten?

It begs why they don’t just put a sign on their front page saying, ‘QUIT PLAYING! WE DON’T WANT YOUR MONEY!’

The lore of this game is spotty at best. Living story is utterly throw away. The Silverwastes and Drytop zones were, for my guild, not engaging. And fractals were rife with jumping puzzles which quicly grew wearing and in which we had no interest in. World versus world was mildly entertaining til it became evident it was less a matter of skill and tactics and more a matter of what server we picked when we began(population being the penultimate factor in overall realm success -still) The personal story was something I personally did once and wouldn’t do again, even with it branching. Raids, many of us had done in warcraft, ad nauseam. So that left dungeons.

Dungeoning was something fun and still relatively social for a small guild – read: three to five on any given night, of old friends from other games- with occasional pugging for an hour or so every other day and a bit more on weekends. Now? Why? Why bother with Guild Wars two? Why bother paying, even for the lowest tier package of HoT, for contents we won’t be interested in- for one of several elite specialisations we now know we won’t be running in dungeons?

We’ve spent money on skins, toys, bag slots, vault slots, instruments, you name it and done this through your gem store whilst still adhering to our chosen style of play. Now you want to disincentivise that style of play when we’d have been more than happy to keep playing and spending in your store for new cosmetics, etc, enjoying new classes, and masteries well into the future playing how and where we’d wished.

One gold or so per dungeon run(once daily) isn’t enough to break your economy. Not when you alone control and manipulate the gold to gem conversions as you see fit and are nowhere near transparent about it. I’d wager the majority of your gem store purchases come through RMT. But now you’re going to throw the money from a rather broad segment of your player base away?

What then? Does our money count for less? Doesn’t it spend as readily? Are you that flush, Anet, that you don’t have corporate masters breathing down your necks to squeeze every last bit of profitability out of this title?

We’ve made feed-me items, princess, star, hourglass, mawdry etc. We’ve constructed/aquired ascended armours, jewelrys, and weapons. We’ve delved into fractals – but only enough to achieve those goals and then just as quickly got out when we no longer needed to run them. Why? They’re not fun. They’re no only not fun but they don;t even have the narrative of the dungeons to keep them interesting and firmly rooted in your game setting.

Yet for some reasoning you lot have reckoned that the solution to all life’s problems is to shove a play mode down the throats of players who’ve had ample time and opportunity to sample fractals and then in turn expect them to suddenly embrace them. You’re ignorant and on top of that extremely shortsighted if you believe that sort of coercion will work.

You say you want money. You say you want new blood/players. Dungeons were toxic enough for new players a year ago. They’re toxic now for the uninitiated. And who shows new players the ropes? The more forgiving casual evening dungeoners. So take that toxicity and multiply it several fold for fractals. Yet have a community of dungeoners that won;t be interested in them and consequently won’t bother helping newer players with them.

Yet this is what you’re showcasing to the small guild/group player base? This is what they have to look forward to- or backward to?

Recall your manifestos? Recall your MMO migration? As it stands -or as it stood- the draw for guild wars two over the games we’d come from, warcraft, lotro, daoc, eq, etc. was an environment where we could still enjoy ourselves within at least something of a casual atmosphere whilst at the same time not feeling as though we were being disadvantaged for enjoying one or two out of the many other flavours of play.

Yet if the design philosophy of Anet, going forward, is near enough to the venues where we’d come from -as restrictive, unresponsive, ignorant, and disrespectful of community wants as to make little or no differings, then ask yourselves why- why we simply wouldn’t go back to where we’d come from? All those games are still active.

In them we have end level characters, crafting materials, player housing, communities, and contents with at least a better and more cohesive narrative -never minding the aforementioned shortcomings- than what you have on offer.

What’s more, in the end, it’s cheaper and more comfortable to be ignored in the hell we know(and to a certain extent love more -Hello Tolkien fans) than to spend for a buggy, incomplete, hell we don’t, and in which developers are now actively -in so many words- telling us we’re going to hate before it even arrives.

Go ahead, and make the decision even easier for those who haven’t yet committed to Heart of Thorns to give it a miss.

Ehecatl.9172:

I… What? Are you saying that the Sun isn’t the center of our solar system? I’m very confused.

The Sun is a star in the center of our solar system that provides light, warmth, and energy that is absolutely vital to the survival of all life on Earth. It is doubtful that Tyria operates differently somehow, especially since we know photosynthesis exists in the world.

Not just the Sun however. The Moon is important too. It has an effect on the tides and illuminates the night so that living creatures can see and hunt. Last I checked the ocean was considered a part of nature.

Stars are too far away to have a direct effect on life on our planet, but they may effect life on others. Nature isn’t limited to one planet but rather exists wherever life does.

Even then rock and soil are considered parts of nature. Earth isn’t the only planet that is composed of mineral materials. It’s not even the only planet that has water on it.

To consider ONLY plants and animals as a part of nature is pretty narrow minded.

And I don’t know about you, but I consider laying under the night sky watching the stars or watching the sun rise or set to be nature oriented activities.

No, he’s saying you’re being specious and obtuse for the sake of winning an internet argument.

Zeres.8713:

Amazing work Irenio.

I think everyone needs to accept its role as a healer/play it before going off on how mad you are, if you want to be dps.. don’t take druid lol.

And that’s the trouble. All the other professions got an additional line where there was a bit of something for everyone’s play style. Not so here.

Even so, the Elite Spec concept they’ve dribbled out over the past few months has come across as lukewarm at best. There’s nothing Elite feeling about them and I often wonder if ‘Elite’ was used in lieu of “Superfluous crap we tacked on for Heart of Thorns” just because.

I’m trying to be diplomatic and failing here. It’s my opinion – but opinions are tightly interwoven with perceptions of what is fun for the individual. To me Celestial Avatar is as stupid and as broken for the Ranger as Death Shroud is now for Necromancers.

This isn’t the Druid I’d hoped for- say an augmentation to Beastmastery that would have altered pets to make them ‘Dire’ versions as in D&D. Or a staff-wielding powerhouse.

I’d hoped for a Melee Staff with a three ability chain auto chain with the third strike offering a three hundred radius low level heal.

-Button two being a short recast bramble field which bleeds and a cripples those within it(immobilised if traited for.)

-Button three Thorns -a strong strike at the ground which does a low level point blank area damage and for a short duration gives the party combined protection and retaliation.

-Button four wasp swarm- summons a swarm of angry hornets to poison and slow your oponents- functions the opposite of the quickness enhancement.

-Button five Healing spring – take it from traps, keep the same cooldown or lower it and have every step fo the auto attack chain have the ability to proc a water finisher that heals all within the radius of the spring.

I was hoping for somethign that would take aspects of Beast Mastery, Nature Magic, and Survival and add a little something more to them. All to make a semi frontline healing/melee role that would synergise with those respective trees.

What you’ve showcased is such a radical departure from Druid. It leaves me wondering that if you were willing to squander development time and funds on something so completely different why not give Ranger something akin to the Druid above and just make the ‘Celestial’ its own class apart from rangers/druids- the same as the Revenant?

As it is- anybody who’d wanted to play the druid mentioned above will role a Ventari Revenant. And even then that will be sans pets. Which int he end won;t be nearly as fun as what we could have had.

If I had it my way, if I had the money to give you the time to do so I would say swallow the bitter pill, murder your darling, and develope the druid again from the ground up with more of an eye to the underlying class you’re building it over.

Ryou.2398:

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Iozeph.5617:

So are Druids going to be given the ability to blood sacrifice a party member, or a baby even, for a short duration boon during combat?

Say, a five-eight second channeled elite skill(after the fashion of the old guardian tomes) that summons an altar upon which any friendly player or NPC within range has a stone knife thrust into its chest by the Druid in order to create a field in the form of a slowly spreading pool of blood around them. Players standing in the pool receive the boon.

I’d be all for that -naysayers be kitten ed- you know… Seeing as we’re all so obsessed with verisimilitude here.

The whole human sacrifice thing was a fabrication by Caesar to garner support for his genocide in Gaul. Sorry to burst your bubble, but animal sacrifice is as close as you can get, and everyone did that.

Yep, totally made up crap, druids for what records are left have no evidence of doing any kind of sacrifices. I Do not think they even had evidence of animal sacrifices, that was something adopted later into celtic paganism I believe.

Actually the jury is still out one way or the other. With Strabo and Caesar it could be argued their writings are of a political nature but we just don’t know for certain. Even now we have only an incomplete picture/record of the Roman era.

Then you have the Lindow man, and the Alveston burials, both of which could be taken as evidence of sacrifice, a punishment, or in the case of Alveston, even cannibalism. Still, those are incomplete pictures.

What it comes down to is whether or not you want to go with what surviving written histories or accounts there are from the time, or whether, as has been done off and on with the Vikings, you choose to rehabilitate the Celtic and Druidic cultures to fall in line with whatever positive bias you hold.

This has to be here now. I won’t be able to see a Druid in game without hearing it playing in my head.

So are Druids going to be given the ability to blood sacrifice a party member, or a baby even, for a short duration boon during combat?

Say, a five-eight second channeled elite skill(after the fashion of the old guardian tomes) that summons an altar upon which any friendly player or NPC within range has a stone knife thrust into its chest by the Druid in order to create a field in the form of a slowly spreading pool of blood around them. Players standing in the pool receive the boon.

I’d be all for that -naysayers be kitten ed- you know… Seeing as we’re all so obsessed with verisimilitude here.

Why do I get the feeling that they announced Druids then the dev team for Revenant said, ‘You know? This class sucks.’ and so they stole the intended mechanics for Druid and gave them to the Ventari Revenant.

^^This, which is why it’s taken so long for new(read: borrowed from other classes) mechanics to be compiled and then excreted as the current version of the Druid which they’re presenting to us now.

I was under the impression we were going to get a staff with a melee autoattack with one or two buttons for healing/suport fields and then the last two for roots entangles which would have allowed us to have a semi-frontline healing/melee role that would synergise with our Beast Mastery and Nature Magic lines to make for a stronger Druid/pet melee combination.

Granted, it’s only my opinion, but what I see now is a watered down necro/water ele hybrid that has nothing to do with the Ranger underneath it.

If they were so hot to create an utterly new profession then they could have released the current ‘druid’ as the Celestial along with the Revenant and sold HoT as having not one but two new, out-of-the-whole-cloth professions. And having done that, then give us the Druid we should have been given.

All the gushing in our forums about the Druid comes across as a sort of quasi-Stockholm syndrome -where Anet’s held off and kept us in the dark for so long that half the Ranger community has gone around the bend and is so pathetically grateful to hear anything new that they’re taking even the drek squeezed out of the HoT dev process and treating it as gold.

The profession update should have been writing on the wall. Oh well. This might not be the Druid some of us wanted, but it’s the druid we’re getting and the druid we deserve for shoving money at and indulging these derivative hacks for so long.

A companion ability for mortar kit while wielding a hammer that changes orbital strike to drop Doner Kebabs.
Eating the Doner Kebab allows you to shout down your enemies with garlic breath and become the Doner King.

Whilst under the effects of ‘Doner King,’ every dodge deploys a six hundred unit wide cloud of poison flatus gas with a fortyfive second duration. The cloud is ignitable. Those caught in the cloud have it stick to them and remain under the effects even if they leave it for another twenty seconds with a twenty five percent chance of projetile vomiting or succumbing to explosive diarrhea.

That’s balanced, right?

So what is the point then? Gutting non-Elite trait lines to build stupid, gimmicky ‘Elite’ specs, which are anything but Elite? To have yet another busted leap ability that glitches? What was the brainstorm on that one? Let’s have a profession that more or less sort of worked before butchered in order to fill out what basically amounts to another flavor of imbalanced/unbalanced fail? So that apart from the jungle themed rubbish, which is going to be abandoned in quick fashion, they’ll be able to say they delivered ‘something?’ Oh right- and part of that something is promoting raiding.

The battle -whatever that is- is a non-event. They’re going to do/have done what they want with professions. They’ve done a bang up job perverting the Engineer.

Complaining and then getting over it is about all that ever comes of this. I just did mine here. So whatever.

I’m ambivalent. The name doesn’t matter so much when the concept itself is so stupid. It doesn’t do anything to undo the damage done to the class by the update, and if the fellow in charge of the elite spec had even remotely anything to do with that update then I see nothing to be excited over -apart from additional worrying over how much worse it could be than what we currently have.

Yes, we certainly do.

Unless they’re giving us a MUCH deeper vitality pool it won’t. With all the conditions out there now -with how easily they’re reapplied after clearing- additional toughness just won’t do enough to make us good in the front. We need the buffers that distance/pets provide. For a bit we semi-had them with turrets, and that was static. Now?

I just want to know how they expect a Forge(gag) to fare in front line with Daredevils, Dragonhunters, Berserkers, the new and improved Revenant, or all the old baseline classes that had no trouble stomping us before their respective changes via HoT.

Are we getting weapon swap at long last? Is hammer going to be so good that I never want to touch a kit again? Would it even matter? I don’t believe so.

It isn’t as though there was much to gut from Engineers to begin with that could have subsequently been funneled into an elite specialisation. Not without breaking the base profession. And for all the wrong they’ve done I don’t see as stark a rehashing as what was done with the thief’s acrobatics and daredevil lines. They’re not giving us back deployable turrets, and giving it over to forge? That would just be stupid.

It’s been months and they’ve still left out many similar abilities that they’ve only of late begun trickling back into the condenced traits. So yes, What we have now is functional, sort of. But humping bomb kit, grenades, or flamethrower through instances, begging players to wait in between so that I’m able to shift between them in order to keep some functionality from elixirs or gadgets in the other two hot bar slots isn’t fun.

Getting an elite specialisation that keeps us firmly in the ‘thematically fun to play but still essentially worthless’ category isn’t going to be fun either.

To me Forge is akin to Anet saying, ‘Here Engineers, become elite!’- but with what is essentially a watered-down Necromancer.‘(is that even possible?) If so, then at least they’ve given Necromancers something to laugh about between consecutive bouts of crying into their beers.

I’d love to be wrong come Friday. I’m praying I’m wrong about all of it. Right now I’m just not seeing it. I’ve little, if any, faith in Anet’s current ability to do right by this profession.

Speculations? That it will be the second least play tested, after the druid, and consequently have the second to least BWEs and QA done before launch and will be a wreck.

And what were we missing that we needed hammer? We have the ‘Toolkit’ which is defencive melee. It’s just that turrets have been weak and only made weaker such that it isn’t worth it to use it, even traited, for the turret repair side of the kit.

They could have given us anything- Staff, with a melee auto attack and some techno based ranged enhancements for Two-five.

One- Auto attack with the ability to apply vulnerability as well as repair turrets and mecha.

Two- a spark attack similar to Elementalist air attunement staff two.

Three a temporary cloaking device similar to Ranger Long bow Three.

Four- a magnet beam running opposite to Ranger longbow four.

Five- an oil field which functions as an oil slick, but which players using fire attacks are able to ignite to turn into a fire field.

Then take a page from the Asura legendary abilities and the mecha boss from Sorrow’s embrace and give us three models of permanent non AI Robots(ala ranger pets) to choose from which are racially modified.

A ranged attack defence bot, a pbaoe condition bot, and a melee monster offence bot.

Asura get their line of Golems.

Char get gear bladed mecha similar to the fractal boss in aesthetics.

Humans get Watchwork automatons.

And Sylvari get minions similar to Scarlet’s steam minions.

Call them ‘Techromancers’ or ‘Golemancers’ and have done.

Or “Failsmith?”

Omie.4519

I normally dont respond to posts like this but you are so far off base I had to.

What is a Clerics engi? I almost thought this post was a troll but then I read the entire post and saw that you were serious. As far as not wanting to play an engi in HoT I think you are missing out. They just gave us an AOE moa which is incredibly strong AND a mini sky hammer. Soon we will also have hammers. What more can you want? Condi is amazing p/p and p/s also zerk riffle is still just as good as ever if not more. You have so much cc as an engi I dont even understand why anyone would want clerics anything. I run full glass in spvp, wvw and pve and never run out of buttons and escapes. When we get our hammers the trolling and joy will be endless. Seriously it sounds like you should roll a guardian or a girlfriend specced ele.

Did you even read their post?

They know about the other builds and stat combos. They’re lamenting the loss of what was probably their own favourite playing style- supporting others via healing.

Whether or not the rest of you agreed with it, or outright kicked players from your groups for it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a thing in the past. I’d mixed and matched armours, weapons, and accessories for a mix of healing and damage and to good effect before the update. Healing doesn’t work as well now, certainly not in WvW or PVE for Engineers as once it did.

The stats changes had little effect on healing by comparison to our traitings. There once was a compromise, a way to do solid sustainable healing whilst damaging before with healing bombs. Now there is no compromise. Gadgets and turrets are rubbish but that’s a side discussion all its own.

Even so, as you’ve stated, going full damage is often better -if not better in every situation for Engineers now. What was once a choice is now a fait accomplis -kitten ed whether you do or don’t.

Knowing this, and knowing about our getting a dubious new weapon and elite specialisation, which are going to get the least pre-launch exposure and correction, doesn’t make the pill any sweeter to swallow.

The OP is right to be concerned until we’re shown otherwise.

You want to see things change for the better in WvW? Simple:

Get rid of eternal battlegrounds. Get rid of the current score system, and either give another currency beyond badges, or make the things we’re able to buy with badges count for more. Components for ascended armours and weapons would be a good start. Perhaps even a road to legendary weapons and armours.

Have winning actually mean something for the players who aren’t playing in WvW, whether it’s a passive world-wide bonus to currency, mastery experience, or general experienced being earned whilst your realm is ‘winning’ winning being determined by how much land/objectives you currently hold, so that more guilds actually feel invested.

As for maps, the three borderlands should have been more than enough. Again, WvW needs to be personal, the players need a stake in winning, beyond self aggrandisement. As it stands-due to megaservers, WvW is one of the last vestiges of our original server communities. Community needs to count for something again.

Right now, Eternal Battlegrounds is just a dumping ground for players that don’t want to defend their realm or go on offence against the others.

Admittedly it becomes even more attractive to realms that are undermanned compared to others- where having some score as opposed to nothing at all makes taking SM or other objectives in EB more lucrative than being plowed under in your home realm.

EB drains players from their respective realms where they need it. And what’s more, realms which enjoy a numerical advantage know they don’t need it to win.

Of course all this is just one player’s opinions.

Beyond that, as mentioned, unless some sort of solution for wide disparities in WvW populations is actually addressed and sorted, (beyond the usual incestuous process of stealing, begging, or even paying for the transfers of players/guilds to have them come in and bolster your own realm), match-ups are going to continue being a nightmare for the unfortunate realm that finds itself at the bottom of the heap- no matter what condition the map is in.

TL;DR: This part of the game is just an infernal mess. Please fix it, Anet.

SkiTz.4590

WoW has a bunch of bs like attunements, gear treadmill , etc etc .
That’s what ppl don’t like about raids

no one hates raids as the actual content. Its fun, its a group effort, its challenging and its a different style of play than what we already have. That is sorely needed in this game thats been lacking for 3 years.

There’s nothing wrong with raids, stop being so melodramatic.

You’re right. Nobody technically hates raids. It’s the nine/thirty nine other individuals they have to suffer in order to get them done.

If the complaints about the dungeon community being toxic as it is right now are anything to go by due to elitism/ping requests/arbitrary kicks then it’s going to be a whole other level of drama once raids are live.

I, for one, and bringing popcorn.

Zalladi.4652

The lack of interest for LotRO wasn’t solely the move to free-to-play. There were content decisions that drove several away, such as the announcement that they were no longer producing dungeon/raid instance content and focusing on solo play, as well as the statement that there were not going to be any more expansions.

Grouping and raids as you mentioned were some of the last nails in the coffin, but free to play came hand in hand with the in game store. Everything began rotting out from under the players after that. And to top that off they had to revamp the character traits from pick what you want to talent trees? Any of this sound familiar?

Guild wars two let its dungeon team go. Not everybody playing is going to want to raid.

Many were/are still hoping for new dungeons/five-man content. Not watered-down versions of the same old fractals we’ve had for the last couple of years. This has the same feeling as LoTRO, where the last holdouts keep calling for Moria instances, Great Barrows, School, Library, and the Mirkwood instances etc. the way they are today.

If what ANET is now trying to positively spin is a shift driven by a financial gun set to their heads by their Korean overlords, then I wouldn’t go getting my hopes up just yet that things are bound to get better here rather than worse.

I want to keep having fun here but all I’ll say is savour what we have -the way it is right now. It has the feeling once again of ‘make or break’ time.

States.6387

Considering f2p games are known for toxic communities, bots, and hackers; people voicing their concern over this game going f2p is warranted. Ignoring these peoples concern and writing them off because they have different views than you on these new changes only shows your ignorance. You need to remember that an opinion is neither right nor wrong.

Happened with LoTRO, which used to have one of the best gaming communities. Many of their changes were done due to new management and money troubles.

Nothing changed. Nothing got better. And as a result both Guild Wars and then Guild Wars 2 certainly benefited from the mass exodus.

Where is LoTRO now? Oh right. Consolidating/merging servers and buggering up those so much they’ve had to postpone them.

Good call. Instead of blowing a party to… ahh… victory you could hum them there. I knew there had to be a silver lining.

Remedy.3429

I want everyone claiming this elite spec “sucks” or “is completely useless” or “that its making them not even want to buy the expansion” to swear an oath that they will never play it. We are having a live stream today, and I bet it’s going to showcase some traits that are going to make this spec a lot better than you think it is. Mark my words, Tempest will return dagger/x to PvE.

Just figured I’d correct you and get this one in early. This elite Specialisation doesn’t suck.

It blows.

Voting five.

Didn’t need another kittene offhand. Won’t bother using it. Would have rather had a sword.

Warhorn is the gaming equivalent of sending your enemy a ‘strongly worded letter.’ and then having your teeth knocked out for your efforts. It’s clown shoes.

The only way they could have made this worse was to make it a kazoo instead.

Why isn’t there a single traditional caster?

Simple.

A traditional caster would actually be fun to play.

No. No they don’t have every base covered. If that were so then there’d be no need to give us access to anything other than staves and have done.

Having the ability to shift between something with a more long-distance or melee-ranged focus is something sorely lacking in the class. Lacking access to on-swap sigils is another shortcoming.

Each attunment swap, regardless of weapon swap comes with a price – extensive global cooldowns and an inability to swap back to a recently abandoned attunements if the situation suddenly calls for it.

Swaping from inventory is something which works wonderfully -perhaps- in single player contents where you’re free to pause as you wish or theory craft but not so well when the party you’re in is becoming agitated that you’ve held them up yet again to dig into your inventory and swap weapons in the middle of a dungeon.

It also shouldn’t need mentioning here but swapping attunements is an obvious tell for opponents in wvw or pvp.

And though the wording of the OP is a bit strong I’m not calling for flexibility to be taken from Revenants.

But it’s high time elementalists got this flexibility as well. Even if it’s a matter of keeping any of the one through five buttons greyed out for a specific attunement(say player uses staff two, then shifts to dagger focus so that dagger two is greyed out) if the player weapon swaps during combat.

In just about every game mode seconds count. And, yes, though it’s lovely to have them, attunements still aren’t as strong and unfettered as many players have been lead to believe.

Where are ours, and the engineer’s weapon swaps? Yes, we get elemental attunements but we’re still missing out -regardless of weapon choice- on things such as sigil swaps during combat- whether for new damage sigils or on swap sigil activations.

Just saying…

Here’s one I just read a few minutes ago- more or less says it all.

“insta kick”

Lotro Runekeeper

Barf

Or if we don’t actually get a new weapon- what if our specialisation is open/bare handed fighting?

An MMA themed specialisation which functions sort of as a kit in that you keep the benefits of the sigils and attributes of the weapons you have equipped- say the way the summonings for revenant function, but when you shift to ‘karate mode’ you’re given new left and right hand bars.

Why not daggers- along the lines of combat knives use?

Bit of a weak analogy, I know, but Rambo was famous for his combat knife. He fought in jungles. It’s a jungle themed expansion. And though he did SOME sneaking I’d say he was still more a warrior than a thief.

Perhaps it would be a weapon/weapon set (dagger/dagger) centered more on control- or dirty infighting? Say using hamstrings or dazes, blinds(sand/dirt in the eyes) along with newer physical abilities(along the lines of kick) to confound opponents?

I’d be interested in seeing that. Or even a dagger pistol offhand- we could get pistols as well, you know.

True. As it is, I’d love to have a longsword – where the number one skill would function similar to the warrior’s number one skill.

Ours would apply (or even just have a chance of applying) a condition corresponding to whatever our attunement was.

Say, bleeding for earth, burning for fire, chill for water, or a stun for air. That and have the one skill have a twenty percent chance to trigger a melee-based finisher – seeing as combo fields and finishers seem to be the focus of the latest round of changes.

Why aren’t we calling for an additional weapon slot? Attunements or not- one weapon all the time still isn’t the best for every given situation.

Are we ever getting it back or made baseline in some way? Just wondering.

Quarktastic.1027

What’s wrong with getting a bit of free damage every time your aegis pops?

It’s not like guardians have any shortage of aegis applications. In fact, shattered aegis can be quite powerful when it’s made the focus of a build.

On the face of it, nothing. But it’s something that should be baseline for aegis or tier one at best.

A bit of free damage when a defencive bubble is popped isn’t the sort of thing that has me saying, “Oh my god! How did I ever get on without this?”

Every grand master trait you have in every line should have you saying that. That’s when choosing them becomes a tough choice.

By and large the GM’s are in the same boat they were before these changes came. And this is for many classes, not just guardians.

You might have a single good GM trait in one line and that might follow to being the one good GM out of every two or three given trait lines.

Overall they’re rubbish, they feel throw away or placeholder- As though they needed something -anything- to set into the other GM slots beside them. If only to to have three things to click on when the new system was launched. That rather than any sort of placement commensurate to power or utility. The new specialisations system just feels rushed.

Adding insult to this is that we’re now beta testing them live and live gameplay is suffering for a lack of internal testing beforehand.

What – it would have taken five ANET employees five minutes in a dungeon to walk in with all guardians and parse symbolic avenger.

Bush league.

Anchoku.8142

This thread needs to be locked. It started flaming and will not stop.

No. This thread needs to stand. It’s comedy gold how the original poster isn’t posting anymore. And even richer how -in being taken over by a toss fest comprised of the usual forum warriors- most of his points about the community have been validated.

If the OP wasn’t trolling- then what this thread reveals about the current state of the community is sad.

If it’s a troll post then it’s beyond well-played. Perhaps trolling the Anet boards needs to be made more challenging too?

Given what’s been said about Braham taking up his mother’s weapons, why wouldn’t he take her shortbow over the longbow?

Thematically, as an outgrowth of the Guardian class, I could see Dragonhunters using the shortbow more than I could longbow.

The first skill would be an autoattack/projectile finisher and the two through five skills would lay down an assortment of symbols which could be comboed.(similar to the elite mortar kit)

Give the first skill nine hundred range and the symbols eight hundred. Up that to one thousand and nine hundred respectively with a trait from the dragon hunter tree and perhaps lower the cooldowns on the symbols with a trait from one of the other trees.

I’m still not fully sold on bows for Guardians, but short bow seems to fit better than longbow seeing as how shortbows -on near every class that gets them- seem to be more about laying down fields or area effects.

And it would be sort of nifty to lay down four symbols from range in quick succession. Add a healing from symbols trait again and you’d have a method of healing the party from range as well.

Oh, well. Just throwing it out there.

Edit:

As an additional mechanic rather than only doing projectile finishers- perhaps the shortbow could apply as a sort of trap -by applying a stacking attunement or a charge to your target.

Have it stack to a maximum of five(expandable with a Dragonhunter trait to perhaps seven or eight?) and then lay down one of the four symbols on the two through five buttons. When the target runs over the symbol(or the symbol is dropped on top of them) the symbol/field detonates. The corresponding effect/damage is dependent on the amount of charges stacked.

Edit:

Another two- you could have a trait in dragonhunter that combines pierce with the range increase and another trait which applies two charges per autoattack rather than one to allow for quicker stacking for detonations.

And overhead dialogue bubbles are now flickering.

Your latest build has set the aiming of ranged weapons- at least on my engineer to off centre and aiming toward the right.

Lana Del Rey.1873

Totally disagree.
They want us to make bigger decisions, to actually think.
People have to stop seeing the new system as restriction. Quite the contrary!
? Traits got merged, you save space for other useful traits
? Ability to use 3 grandmaster traits
? You can trait into defensive traitlines without losing damage stats

Yes, and most grandmaster traits still suck. Giving us fifty percent more suck -which we’ll have to select from when these changes go live- doesn’t sound good to me nor does it make up for what we’re losing.

Whether the glass is half full or half empty doesn’t signify much when someone’s spat in it first before giving it over to you. Just saying.

MaXi.3642:

better smaller variation than imaginary variation… when you have 13 traits from which 5 is useless, 3 is good, but don’t fit any build and the rest is taken with very small differences, it’s not a real variation… I will rather have less but more impactful choices which are all useful for someone, just in different ways

And that’s just it, right? Who’s to say that everything we have right now isn’t useful, in some fashion, to someone who just happens to not be you or I?

Who’s to say that just giving classes additional weapons options and some new unique abilities gained through Maguuma questing wouldn’t be enough? That balancing would come no better nor worse a task than the balancing needed for the proposed changes? And yet so often MMO development studios feel the need to tinker and tamper with core game mechanics, treating each coming expansion as a blank slate. This, in addition to whatever new play mechanics, landmasses, and classes introduced.

Players are asking for new contents. What they aren’t asking for is a bright red ‘no confidence’ stamp on works developed hitherto.

Not all change is terrible. And if Heart of Thorns was just a bundle consisting of some new weapons types for established classes, a new class, and a new landmass they could call it a day and job well done. The core mechanic revamp- which will be the second of this sort in three years comes across as just another waste of development time and money. Another arbitrary change for the sake of change.

Shouldn’t have to be mentioned, but the ‘Great MMO Migration,’ the embarrassment staged by Anet a couple of years ago, took advantage of just these sorts of misguided changes on the parts of competing MMO’s in order to steal away parts of their disaffected player bases.

Yet now it seems the honeymoon is over. And the company that sold those new players on not resorting to the same sorts of misguided ‘innovations’ is doing just that. Makes one wonder who’s going to site GW2 as part of the problem when the next publicity stunt of this sort is tried.

“Quality > Quantity

Why have the option for 27 builds when only 5 of those are actually optimal or high end?"

And just what in this game is high end? The same dungeons everyone has been running for the last two or more years? Or the same fractals everyone has been running for a bit less than that? It certainly couldn’t be world bosses. Near every aspect of play in this game -as in going out and hunting monsters- is built around inclusiveness. So I don’t see what that’s about.

As for the trait changes themselves it seems to be the same brand of doublespeak that was thrown about before the trait system revamp of Lord of The Rings Online.

There, as it seems now here, it was bandied about that there was, ‘skill bloat’ ‘too many traits’ and that it confused players. So they simplified it. They gave us trait trees, stripped some out, and gated certain skills, once utilised regardless of traiting, behind individual trees whilst making it restrictive to hybridise as before. All in the interest of ‘focusing class roles’ and making it ‘simpler to implement and balance group oriented content’ None of which ever materialised. And yet those class changes stuck. The upshot? Beyond griping, or holding its current incarnation up for ridicule, nobody talks about lotro anymore. So few that lotro is all but abandoned by its former community.

If you’ve played through a few of these games- and their changes over the years you begin to gain a feel for what’s coming- or rather see familiar patterns reasserting themselves- things which factor in whenever someone asks you, “Why did you leave your last game?”

What I’ve read today is that trait lines will be changed, skills will be changed to make choosing them more compelling, but there again I only hear doublespeak with as hyper, positive, and as hard a sell as possible to make readers ignore/forget the past as well as whatever current feelings of dread they might be experiencing. It isn’t working.

Making it such that I’m no longer able to choose three adept skills, two adepts and a master, or one adept and two masters isn’t making the choices to come more compelling. Having it such that I’m stuck with three trait lines rather than the ability to distribute points as I see fit within and up to as many as five lines isn’t widening my scope of choice. Making it so that after these changes my choice of armour attribute(berserk, knights, carrion, cleric’s etc.) will further exalt me or make me a pariah to a community that will even more heavily embrace meta equipment builds afterward isn’t enticing me toward anything more than choosing some other option for how I spend my free time.

After these changes demands for pinging armour/gear will be that much more strident as your build will no longer be the abilities you choose but rather what your character is wearing.

What’s happening is that by dint of a system which, in future, will be much more restrictive, I’m going to be compelled to choose something which I won’t necessarily want or need in order to be included. Something wrong with that as the current appeal for this game is in having the ability to log in, join a queue, and then get into something group-oriented quickly, and without much fuss. This, even with the current dungeoning environment being as toxic as it is.

So how is making it more toxic a good or even better thing?

The quality of finding something compelling- or alluring, is not the same as being compelled- or forced against one’s will. But here we’re being given the latter sold as the former.

And hey- I’ll say it. Hang gliders aren’t that cool either.