Guild Wars 2

Whoever came up with the great idea that drakes should be able to apply confusion with a duration of more than 10 seconds (!!!) should be fired, especially when there’s at least for of them around a brood mother. Wish I could do that, then confusion would eventually be slightly useful in PvE. Same for cripple, being cced forever isn’t fun. Also, making the smaller karkas attack in waves, where it’s hardly possible to dodge their sting attacks, ist stupid. Generally, some very deadly attacks are very hard to see which means hard to dodge. Also the mobs respawn too fast and are placed too close, just like in the original orr. The crab minigame is just crap in its current state. And finally, southsun cove seems to be hardly optimized - in some places, FPS drop below 30, which normally happens only in huge WvW zergs. GPU load is about 50% then, so again it’s a CPU issue. All in all, I’m not really impressed. I’ll try to get as many achievements as possible, farm mats and rip off people for porting at the JP and then probably never return to SC if it isn’t changed any further.

Southsun Cove is hardly optimized as it seems. Standing in some places, I’m getting FPS around 30 for no apparent reason like in larger WvW battles.

Then the proper fix, which may also happen as a side effect to some other fix, would make it incredibly op. Workarounds are almost always bad as "it just works" then and people tend to forget about it until half the code consists of workarounds and you can’t fix things properly at all without tweaking a thousand other occurences.

Who needs sources to backup claims.

Ross Biddle.2367:

If you’re referring to the damage of the izerker, all the damage is being dealt. Its only the damage bubbles that aren’t all showing.

Welcome to April. It has already been shown countless times that this is wrong. Hint: not every post in red is true.

It’s quite funny that the Drakes in Southsun Cove can now stack confusion with a duration of more than 10 seconds.

Rusha.4725:

Get ready to stealthed thieves runing into zergs and building those traps while remaining stealthed. I’m a thief and sure I’m going to do that alot. So they’re gonna learn building stealth traps while stacking in a place and it’ll ruin my life forever as a thief.

- build an anti stealth trap first
- nerf stealth, you shouldn’t be able to do anything while stealthed

Problem solved.

If they actually wanted to prevent zerging, they would simply have to make it so it requires at least 25 players in 1200 range to trigger the trap, affecting up to 50 players in a range of 1200.

I’m gonna pop some traps
Only got fifteen badges in my pocket
I’m, I’m, I’m hunting, looking for a come up
This is f...ing awesome

ocgreg.3910:

If you actually thought about it like a donation and that you are supporting the game then you wouldn’t be asking for something in return. That isn’t a donation.

Thanks, just wanted to say the same.

BossFi.6917:

As a condition Mesmer (I still am)….

Before the nerf, I had 30 points in Illusions and I was destroying everyone including other mesmers.

After the nerf I still beat everyone as a condition Mesmer but I had to re-trait so now I don’t have any points in illusions.

The illusion tree isn’t viable anymore if you spec condition because so many traits minor/major are based on confusion.

So Arenanet need to fix the illusion tree, not bring confusion back up!

Fine for me, considering confusion is pretty useless in PvE and they’re unwilling to fix it anway they could as well remove it altogether. They could change Illusionary Retribution to apply bleeds instead of confusion or whatever and rework the other traits to do the same. I only shed some tears for Cry of Frustration because it has the second lowest recharge of all shatter skills, they could change it to bleeds as well.

If there was no learning curve, the others wouldn’t be better than you.

If they didn’t fixed that: when I last did it it was possible to jump up the geysers at the end and skip most of the JP.

The devs said they shouldn’t have made them tradeable from the beginning, but also that they won’t change it now because it’s too late.

LameFox.6349:

blurps.2340:

Omg you make us do that jp again…

I hate you Anet.

All my characters are pretty large, so after a few tries I got sick of jumping and skipped it. I’m at 24/25 achievements and there are still spares, so… I doubt you need the puzzle.

If they didn’t fix it, you can get to the end of the JP from behind and skip the “difficult” part in the beginning completely without the help of a mesmer.

0.3% instead of 0.1% still is a very low chance.

Zedrix.2104:

I did the dungeon on my lvl 80 and 4 others between 30-40. This dungeon was the easiest in the game so far for a story dungeon.

This. First time I’ve been in we were a group of randoms, just casuals, no epic gear, nobody played it before. Abolutely no problems until we reached the final boss(es). Took us five attempts to down them then.

hluill.2790:

I mainly just duo with the girlfriend. The other night we tried to join a group and were told that it would be too hard for us.

That sentence made me giggle (like Quagmire)

When it’s easier to farm, prices will rise. You can’t win that game.

uknortherner.2670:

Here’s the thing though – I suspect a lot of people play GW2 (including myself) to get away from real world issues/events, not to be further immersed by them. I’d rather not see real-world analogues (camo uniforms, etc) in a fantasy game such as this.

Same here.

We all know that programming isn’t easy, that’s not a universal excuse though. See it from a customer perspective, you can’t go and say "oh well yeah it’s broken but we can’t find the issue, bad luck". The gaming industry is one of the very few industries that’s in the comfortable position of actually being able to ignore even big bugs for months (or forever). The iZerker bug isn’t gamebreaking, but it would probably be better to dedicate a slice of the development schedule to this problem than to just sit it out until a mass of people affected by that problem turns into a very vocal and dedicated crowd of haters spreading complaints all over different platforms.

PhelanDisturbed.1650:

I. Leap is the most depressing issue for me...

It’s any leap, which is even more depressing for a sword/sword player because Phantasmal Swordsman also sometimes fails for the same reason. That’s two broken skills at once.
Actually, worst thing that happened to me so far: I tried to escape and Illusionary Leap failed, at the same time Phantasmal Swordsman failed so I couldn’t kill the enemy quick enough either. I switched to staff but Phase Retreat teleported my into the ground, so I got downed and then Deception actually got me unstuck but I went straight into an AE.
First time I ragequit.

drongas.4189:

from where this QQ about phantasmal mesmer?

Is there any time people don’t complain about mesmers? If they nerf phantasms, rest assured that they’ll find something else to complain about. Probably shatters.

Puts you in even worse positions and requires a target. Compare that to elementlist’s vapor form.

1s would be op as it heals more than omnomberry pie and also deals damage, but 2 or 3 seconds would be cool. 5s is way too long for the effect.

I actually got a G13 specifically for GW2 and my gameplay really improved.

Sebrent.3625:

I’ve found that when I’m using Mantras, I like them best when I’m using a Staff. I think this has to do with several reasons:

• Phase Retreat and Chaos Armor are instant casts so can be used without interrupting you if you’re channeling a mantra
• Staff clones (and phantasms) are good damage in the right builds, so not attacking for 2.75 seconds isn’t too damaging to your dps
• Phase Retreat makes it trivial to gain space needed to channel a mantra against a good opponent that would otherwise try to interrupt your channel

Honestly, I have yet to see a heal from any other class in the game that gives as much healing per second as Mantra of Recovery with the various Mantra Traits. It’s pretty beastly.

Did you already post a concrete build for that somewhere?

I’d agree theoretically, but considering the amount of builds that can take a really, really long time take them down, the concept wouldn’t work out well and nobody would use mantras again.

Btw., is it really a 200% bonus (i.e. 300% actual health) or is it just 200% health and ANet is still incapable of doing proper percent calculation?

Welcome to HelloKittyWars.

Wow, that infraction happened quickly.

Vargamonth.2047:

It wasn’t just the damage; on WvW you also have food (+40% condition duration) and ascended gear (condtion damage / vitality / thoughness) at your disposal.

There also is -40% condition duration food and confusion is capped at 10s, so that’s a maximum of 6s and for most skills confusion duration is pretty much laughable. Only problem: people don’t want to use that food because it takes away from their dps. And, except for pry bar (which was even buffed in february, again one of those stupid but typical ANet style kamikaze changes), confusion often also can be avoided easily. Some simple changes to a few skills would have fixed confusion, but nerfing it by 50% without taking into consideration that WvW is in many, many ways different from PvP was way easier of course. ANet likes to take the primrose path with unsophisticated or even mindless changes that require absolutey no effort whatsoever. The portal “nerf” is another example, it didn’t address any of the underlying issues but is just a major annoyance. Now that they started to separate WvW and PvE, they would have to go through every single skill and balance it again. But again, that would take some time. Fixing conditions? Nah. More and more viable builds will disappear from the game until everybody’s running a bunker or glass cannon build that’s easy to balance.

The CPU normally boosts to 4,2GHz according to the specs I just looked at, does your board apply some additionaly dynamic OC?

You pasted the link twice

Shootsfoot.9276:

I like the 5 skills slots per weapon. I just wish there were, say, 15 skills per weapon to choose from to put into those 5 skill slots.

They cannot even balance the skills we already have. It would just boil down to one set of skills everybody uses because they’re the most powerful ones. They’d better work on fixing the ones that already exist, considering many of them aren’t working properly since release.

Which improves condition damage. Clappity clappity.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Vol.5241:

Quick question Colin – are we still able to kill people doing the puzzle? Or is this gonna be a pve area?

Kill away! It’s still very much a WvW map, just its own map now. It’s all growsed up.

Does that mean you’ll end up in a queue again when you want to get back from the JP to the EB? Not that I’d care, just wondering.

Vol.5241:

I really hate karka. They’re the hardest type of mob in game after dredge. The veterans have a huuuuge hit pool and the smaller karka have a pretty painful initial attack.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reflect makes the small ones quite easy.

I’m so looking forward to seeing LA without culling, especially on reset And the dragon fights of course.

Stark.1350:

The end of culling in PvE? The entire patch could have been just that and I’d have been happy.

Same here \o/

RedCobra.7693:

Rubbish I play mesmer with runes of the centaur

Good for you, now try without those runes like anybody else. They aren’t even available for condition builds.

RuneCrimson.7380:

I am still not convinced that you cannot steal another persons loot I have been playing none stop for weeks off and on. I have seen it happen so many times its not funny.

Whatever happened to you, it wasn’t somebody stealing your loot.

Astralporing.1957:

Knighthonor.4061:

Would you like to Level your alts and give them EXP while playing and enjoying your favorite character class main?

Nope. If i am not playing a class, i will never _learn_ playing that class. Besides, i don’t see a reason to create alts i’m not even bother to play on.

I agree. Plus leveling is really easy in GW2 anyway. I’d rather wish for an option to quickly switch traits and gear sets for an already leveled character so I can take different roles without having to manually switch my equipment and retrait all the time. That’s a major reason I’m currently not playing GW2, because my WvW setup differs a lot from what I’m using in PvE.

Gaidax.7835:

I like it this way. I was playing WoW for 4 years (quit for good just before the whole Pandas thing). I first played GW1 (in between WoW breaks) and I was really sold to the whole 8 skills concept. IMO it is awesome, because you don’t have to be a pianist this way and there is an added value of flexible builds where you can “create” a spec yourself and not go by the mostly predetermined road.

10 skills make it natural to play while the build flexibility retains the whole feel of depth. IMO, having 3 full bars of skills and then the “mod” wars to control it all is pretty much an outdated design.

IMO, it provides a right level of complexity without you having to bind 20 keybinds on top of movement, just to control your character. IMO, the real complexity should come from preparing beforehand, taking tactical decisions and using right tools at the right time, like it is done in MOBA games.

Couldn’t have said this better.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Less abilities is better. The Hud in WoW is a mess!

Exactly. And with mods, it gets even worse. You barely see anything except the HUD. Now you could say: well, then don’t use them – but that’s not an option, you’ll be forced to do so.

It’s hard to balance a multiplayer dungeon for solo play, especially when mechanics that require teamplay are involved, and special solo player dungeons are way too much work for the limited audience - it would simply be a waste of time.

Oranisagu.3706:

I fully agree gear sharing is something not everybody will use or have use for, but the notion it would magically make all players ravaging idiots who insult people for their gear choice is unsubstantiated and in my opinion rather silly.

So you never played WoW? It doesn’t really matter if you personally would actually use it wisely; what matters is what a majority of people would do. And I can promise that the amount of people trying to sneak into a group by giving false informationen is totally negligible compared to those rejecting people for not having the right setup. Yeah, people have been rejected not only for having bad, but also for having the wrong gear or spec according to what the group leader thought was right ("OMG shadow priest? NO WAY!")
WoW generally is a good (negative) example for what happens when you give out too much informationen, DPS meters, gear checks, hostile player names and so on.
That’s a bit similar to people claiming that removing the AE cap would make WvW better - no it wouldn’t, which can be seen by looking at any other MMO (guess what, WoW for example) that tried this and finally implemented some kind of cap or DR.
You can’t change how people are, and MMOs unfortunately are full of... well, something that would probably be censored.

Svarty.8019:

As an alternative, Isiah Cartwright stated that they want small groups to do things such as attacking zergs, splitting up and initiating attacks (somehow -probably some simultaneous capping thing).

This is also what I consider the correct approach. Don’t force people to do something, give them an incentive to do so.

I hope not, I don’t want GW2 to look like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9xMzMCOvb4
And that’s not even a worst case scenario... I really like the basic UI.

Although I’m a mesmer and it’s one of my elites, I’d say: it should be removed from the game altogether. There’s already too much burst.

Oranisagu.3706:

it might come as a big surprise to you, but I actually find groups very easily when using such specifications. the problem starts when we are 4 people who all want to do a dungeon run with these exact specifications and the fifth person to join is a troll who thinks he can hang back and let us do the work. I’m tempted to say a person like you.

this is why I said I want the ability to SHARE my gear/build. I never said it should be shared by default. but a group with clear specifications can ask for everyone to share their setup and all players can have a good time, without anyone trying to ruin it for them.

So if you share your gear/build, what would prevent the same "troll" from joining? You know the answer: nothing. All that will happen is that he won’t share his info, which means you’ll reject him. Which means you’ll reject anybody, no matter if it’s a troll or just a random nice player with bad gear. That’s why it breeds elitism. I’m tempted to say: it only benefits people like you.

http://i.imgur.com/I1f1SC1.jpg
What Behellagh says is correct. GW2 is actually utilizing multithreading quite well - it’s just that in huge events, like WvW zergs or at the dragons, there’s a problem (a sequential fraction of the code) that is not parallelized properly (either an oversight or they couldn’t do it better), which means the only thing that helps in these occasions is raw single core power. The effect is actually known as Amdahl’s law.