Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

Since the Scrapper reveal I’ve been up to my eyeballs in Druid development.

In my off-work hours I’ve been watching the forums and wanted to reply to some of your concerns and discuss some design intent.

• The hammer is intended to have good damage output and heavy proactive and reactive survivability options. Good damage does not mean best damage. No weapon or skillset should be the top of everything. Since the livestream recorded video I have made a few modifications to the damage numbers of the Hammer autoattack combo, Electro-Whirl and Shock Shield, increasing the autoattack damage, decreasing the Electro-Whirl damage and smoothing the damage distribution of Shock Shield while adding an additional strike.

• As many of you spotted, some of the Medic Gyro’s numbers were undertuned on the recorded gameplay from the livestream. The personal initial heal had already been bumped up a chunk to provide a more competitive option prior to the livestream itself, but we were unable to get the updated build in time. The initial heal is currently around 4.5k.

• Bulwark Gyro has a decent pool of health and low defense. If you and several allies are taking heavy AoE then it is going to die quickly; that is the situation where it should die quickly. This is a skill that has the potential to be very strong. I’ll be watching feedback closely, but I am holding off on any changes for now until you’ve have had the chance to play with it.

• Function Gyro requires a target. It appears at the target’s location when summoned so long as you have line of sight to create more gameplay options (across gaps or around obstacles). This summon happens nearly instantly so that you can be more reactive in resurrection situations and proactive in stomping situations. I am reviewing the recharge and duration currently.

That’s all for now!

Hey everyone.

Not all feedback could be addressed this iteration in fair part due to time constraints on key members of our design team. That does not mean we are dismissing your feedback or that all the issues you’ve raised up to this point will go unchanged before expansion release.

This is a small set of changes from the first beta weekend event; we will continue to iterate on the specialization skills and mechanics and shall be listening for your constructive feedback.

We will be reviewing the Tempest traits along with casttimes vs. effects on overloads among several other aspects of the elite specialization.

Greetings Tyrians,

Thanks for all the feedback on the Tempest from this last Beta Event! After poring over your posts and doing some of our own testing we’ve made some changes to address issues with Warhorn skills and Elemental Overloads.

You’ll be able to check out each of these changes in the next Beta Weekend Event.

We gathered from you that, on the whole, Warhorn skills felt decent even if a few felt undertuned. We’ve made the following adjustments to bring them more in line with other profession skills.

• Cyclone – Increased damage by 20%.
• Sand Squall – Now a blast finisher.
• Lightning Orb – Increased damage by 36%.
• Wildfire – Increased damage by 32%.

The concepts behind overloading an element were pretty well received, however you called out that the time cost of overloading compared to the final rewards were too unbalanced. Overloads are intended as potent tools which are not always available – to push this feeling each of them has been given a stronger effect to bring some more parity to the risk vs. reward of using them.

• Overload Air – Increased damage by 30% and increased the radius of effect from 240 to 360.
• Overload Earth – Increased damage by 50% and increased the immobilize upon end from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
• Overload Fire – Increased the damage by 20% and increased the duration of burning applied per pulse from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.
• Overload Water – Increased the amount that healing power affects pulsed healing by 400%. Increased the final heal value by 50%.

We’ll continue hearing your feedback and reading over your excellent discussions from the Beta Weekend.

Catch you in the jungle,
Irenio Calmon-Huang

Edit: Minor formatting change.

Hail, all!

Now that the Beta Weekend Event has come and gone we’ve been firing away at various notes we’ve gleaned from your discussions about the Guardian Elite Specialization, the Dragonhunter. After distilling a lot of your comments we’ve settled on several changes for the next iteration of the specialization that should help address your damage, survival and versatility concerns while retaining the core of the new playstyle.

These changes should be available to you in the next Beta event.

A large chunk of comments we read centered on the new virtues being good, but not quite good enough to be left without the virtue passives. As we want to see you using them in the appropriate situations we tweaked each of these so that while the choice remains a trade-off, there can be more cases where the actives are used.

• F1 Spear of Justice: Increased range from 900 to 1,200. Increased impact damage by 20%.
• F2 Wings of Resolve: Increased heal value by up to 50%.

The longbow skills were generally well received, but Symbol of Energy felt on the weak side compared to the rest of the weapon skills.

• Symbol of Energy: Increased burning duration from 4 seconds to 5 seconds and Vigor duration from 1 second to 3 seconds.

Traps were another area of concern that we’re addressing with the following modifications:

• Purification: Increased bonus healing based upon level by 50%.
• Test of Faith: Increased the damage multiplier on this ability by 20%.
• Fragments of Faith: Decreased the duration that fragments remained on the ground from 15 seconds to 10 seconds. Increased the duration of the aegis granted from fragments from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
• Procession of Blades: Increased the base damage by 36%.
• Dragon’s Maw: Increased the maw trapping duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. Damage increased by 20%.

Lastly the elite specialization traits needed a little more love to really drive the defining components of the Dragonhunter.

• Piercing Light: Added a 20% recharge reduction to Traps.
• Soaring Devastation: Increased the duration of the immobilize from 1.5s to 3s.
• Hunter’s Determination: Increased the duration of stability gained from 4s to 6s.
• Dulled Senses: Added that when you apply cripple you also apply 3 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds.
• Heavy Light: Increased the internal cooldown from 7 seconds to 10 seconds. Increased the knockback distance from 120 to 240.

We’ll be keeping a watchful eye for your impressions and constructive feedback from the Beta Weekend!

I’ll see you in Maguuma,
Irenio Calmon-Huang

Edit: Minor edit for formatting.

I’ve hit some of these compiled issues (like the 150 pet stats, some offhand range items and some pet traits not working while downed) and those should be getting addressed soon-ish.

We are working heavily on HoT and trying to get to these issues whenever time allows.

Thanks for compiling these issues!

I’ll keep an eye on this thread. Changes may take a bit to reach live, but they’re being worked on.

Thanks for compiling these in a single place. We’ll be trying to address most, if not all, of these issues as soon as we’re able.

Hey all, I’m looking into these!

Thanks for the information – noted these!