Guild Wars 2

Gyler.8150:

Could still start off with mace for vuln application and then go pure GS yolo.

True, and that’s so much more interesting

I think at this point I may just say kitten the meta and play sub par builds that are more fun. D/F even though it’s taking a hit. Axe/mace+Axe/Sword rotation? I don’t know, but this meta while it won’t have FGS/IB OPness I think may be the most boring meta we’ll have for some professions. At least Engi will still be fun, and to get back on topic Mesmer sounds like it’ll be quite interesting.

cranos.5913:

Jerus.4350:

That last sentence is what is bugging me.

It’s not so much that I think things will die so fast that they are boring, I mean we already have that if we stack up all of our offenses correctly and deep freeze.

It’s that the easy play styles are going to just tear through things where at least currently to blow things up you have to glass up quite a bit so when you do make a mistake you pay for it.

Hammer 60066 guard, 66060 War GS camping PS war, 66600 Staff Ele, Some kind of Thief, and new mesmer. You’ll tear through things and have all the safety nets you could ever need in place.

I hope that makes sense. It’s not the new max damage I’m concerned with, it’s how easy you’ll be able to replicate the speed we currently go at in a casual tour. Not that it’s all that hard right now, but at least you can die, I’m not so sure that’ll hold true when you have all this new stuff.

Makes perfect sense and it’s bugging me too, but that’s the way they wanna go with the game it seems. TBH you could see it coming from a mile away as soon as they introduced the PS warrior. Everything, from trait changes to the new defiance system is to simplify gameplay. Better to accept it or find a new game. I sure will if there’s no new content in HoT. The only thing left for me to enjoy atm are fractals.

Yeah… at least right now you use fast hands, so swapping axe/mace doing the full rotation you can get vuln out as well, with the change you’ll likely be going 66060 meaning no more quick swap rotations and just pure faceroll GS…

It’s just a bit sad. I hope the content is actually fun.

That last sentence is what is bugging me.

It’s not so much that I think things will die so fast that they are boring, I mean we already have that if we stack up all of our offenses correctly and deep freeze.

It’s that the easy play styles are going to just tear through things where at least currently to blow things up you have to glass up quite a bit so when you do make a mistake you pay for it.

Hammer 60066 guard, 66060 War GS camping PS war, 66600 Staff Ele, Some kind of Thief, and new mesmer. You’ll tear through things and have all the safety nets you could ever need in place.

I hope that makes sense. It’s not the new max damage I’m concerned with, it’s how easy you’ll be able to replicate the speed we currently go at in a casual tour. Not that it’s all that hard right now, but at least you can die, I’m not so sure that’ll hold true when you have all this new stuff.

Exactly, I guess we could just swap it out to selfish pricks instead of PHIW. I’ve never meant to aim that term at say a Spiritweapon condi guard who joined an anything goes run, just when they join a “zerk exp” run.

See Icebow nerf will actually be nice IMO, like FGS it’s something that is just too good (at least imo). Again, my concern is more how much support we’ll be able to have no while doing high damage. Either way we’ve gone quite off topic, sorry

Looks great, I’m looking forward to playing with a lot of tools I couldn’t really bring myself to use as often as I wanted to because of the loss in damage. Now I’ll be able to use fortified turrets or experimental turrets. I’ll be able to do alchemy/inventions/tool builds while still keeping all my key damage traits.

So I’m pretty excited.

spoj.9672:

The power creep in this case is more of a new strategies rather than a raw numbers increase. So its less impactful. And it will only really feel like a power creep to organised groups.

True, but teams that do harness it, wowza. And it’s not just kill times I’m thinking of, honestly I don’t think that difference will matter all that much, it’s more the ease of things I’m concerned with. With Guardian buff for instance we’ll be able to do the quick kills AND have the support now, that’s more what has me worried about hwo it will end up. Fast kills AND easier to do it.

Either way, we’ll see.

I always figured the term came from the guardians who would refuse to slot Wall of Reflection “because it’s not in my build” using the “play how you want” phrase to excuse themselves from working to benefit their team as a whole.

So that’s what was always in my head when using or reading that term, it was already in use by the time I started playing here.

A guy who literally “plays how he wants”, fine and I’d never call them a PHIW, a guy who joins a zerk group not bringing banners on the warrior and running a PVT shoutheal build… PHIW. /shrug To me just as bad as the guys who kick because you’re using D/F Ele instead of Staff or silly tryhard elitist stuff like that.

cranos.5913:

Jerus.4350:

Sounds awesome, but is anyone else pretty worried about the power creep effect with the new trait buffs and now things like this? Eek. (I know I’m a party pooper)

Power creep is normal with MMO expansions though.

Ofc, they’d have to give us new difficult content to keep the challenge even partially alive. :P

Aye, just without really having faith in any new challenging content (no matter how much they repeat it I won’t believe it till I see it) this power creep is going to hurt doing the current content.

We’ll see though, and I really should shut up and stop being a downer.

Gyler.8150:

I agree with Jerus, the whole alacrity and ability to be able to dual timewarp, seems very strong, sounds like if you don’t do chronomancer, you aren’t going to be helping your team out.

That wasn’t really what I was getting at, but you have a point. I was saying more that between all the changes we’ll be able to kill things faster and easier than ever before it looks like. That’s all.

maha.7902:

what does pvp have anything to do with dungeon balance?

Because PVP is what determines how bad or good a profession is allowed to be.

For sure, and to add, when you give it a shot again there is a nice resource put together at gw2dungeons.net that has all you need to know about dungeons. Just something worth tossing in your bookmarks for if you have any trouble.

Zoid.2568:

This is really bad. They should cap at 1 and let other people get beta portals!
If that person didn’t get 1 more portal someone else could have got it who needed it. This is really stupid..

Are you implying that there is only a set amount of them in the game?

I don’t think it works that way.

Unlocking all traits does increase your abilities quite a bit. More damage, more defense, more access to certain skills, just all around a lot.

It is doable at the levels but yes, it’s harder. Leveling will make it easier.

As for the idea “i need better gear”, it’s more just needing to learn what’s happening so you can correctly respond to what’s going on. GW2 is built on this idea. When you see say the Spider Queen shooting her webs out, you want to dodge and avoid it. When she spits the poison you want to again dodge it and stay out of the fields. Just learn what’s happening and come up with a way to deal with it.

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Sounds awesome, but is anyone else pretty worried about the power creep effect with the new trait buffs and now things like this? Eek. (I know I’m a party pooper)

the old traits is the new normal for powerlevel. I dont think Chronomancer will be 100% more powerful, and its likely that its skill ceiling is higher to achieve similar results. you would be giving up some powerful stuff if you have to drop a specialization.
focus reflects?
deceptive evasion?
shatter cool downs?

what are you going to give up that has no value for these abilities? Its definately more interesting, but more powerful? perhaps not.

Aye, not talking just Mesmer, but more everything all put together, seems like the big picture we’re going to be much more powerful in the sense that as a 5 man team we will be doing more damage and have more defenses. But, I’ll shut up now and stop being a buzzkill I just hope the devs have a plan to address it.

Sounds awesome, but is anyone else pretty worried about the power creep effect with the new trait buffs and now things like this? Eek. (I know I’m a party pooper)

Stars.2179:

That symbolic avenger seems op, BUT some of the symbols the guardian place is pulsing which means it will interfere with ele’s fire field maybe they should clarify the mechanic of multiple fields. I don’t think it’s first in first out (the data we experimented on is pretty inconsistent). Or the meta might change to just having the warrior solo might stacking and forget about fire field hehehe.

The first one placed is how it’s SUPPOSED to work, however often times it doesn’t.

Well considering it’s probably never going to happen, not really worth worrying about. But, I’m sure there are ways they can keep the impact down on PVP/WVW.

Ele still has burning retreat and sandstorm in max DPS setup as well as personal reflect available and not to mention Earth Ele to help out.

Thief you can still slip in a Death blossom if you time it right and need the extra evade. And you can even just slot withdraw.

Not going to comment on PVP stuff because I don’t know it that well, but I highly doubt Ele or Thief are running bare bones max damage.

Either way Necro don’t even have a vigor trait, they have no option to get projectil defense, no blocks, no extra evade frames, and their blinds are mediocre at best. ALL they have is deathshroud, I don’t see how they can be called OP for having too much survivability.

Thaddeus.4891:

No. Thief and Elementalist have a really low survivability (both in PvE and PvP) to reach their top dps. It would be kind of broken if Necro could have both a Top dps and a good survivability (because of their deathshroud).

Thief/Ele have low health, but they have loads of active defense tools. Necro has…deathshroud. We all know how much better avoiding damage is than mitigating it, and necros only option is through mitigation…

Yeah I heard the stuff with HIM, not sure on the Farmer Boys stuff, but yeah I liked it more when it was just the cellos but overall they’re awesome anyway. I’m always a fan of stringed instruments, and I like radiohead so I was stoked with my friend sent me that song, it is about as perfect as it can get to fit my taste. Couple of my old buddies played in a more modern “screamo” band, but they were both concert level violists, always told them they should add some of that in, but they refused

Apocalyptica is a group that plays cellos and they have a drummer now I believe. They did a cover of Metallica which is how I was introduced to them. It’s sweet, they have their own stuff where they have singers from other bands come join them for a song or two. Really good stuff IMO.

Personally right now I’m listening to a bunch of retro video game music I have quite a diverse taste, just depends on what I’m in the mood for. Been listening to Steely Dan quite often lately. I think if I had to choose a favorite song though it’d be this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RcBje6II6M

Just a comment. In my previous game for their tournaments they did Individual ranking. Even with the team events. They gave winners so many points, second so many and so on. When 1v1 tourney’s happened samething. 2v2 tourneys same thing, 5v5 tourneys same thing. Individual players rose to the top having placed or won in all categories. I always thought it was pretty cool having ranking on players vs just teams. It’d be neat to have the same thing for these. Place in the 5 man tourney get 5 points for a win, 4 for 2nd 3 for third, 2 for 4th, and 1 for 5th, same thing for 3 man tourneys. Rank the players not the team. Use those ranking and accumulative rankings to placement in successive tournaments.

I don’t know, just a comment about how I thought it was cool done in a previous game.

Xyonon.3987:

And this is the global engineer answer to the OP’s post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

:D sry kid but no

So much YES.

Mortar kit is awesome, I loves it, I’d make loves to it if I could

Miss Lana.5276:

A decent focus skin that doesn’t play annoying sounds every 5 seconds would be nice.

:D i wish the focus played more sounds. I want that sound to play every second, my old Bard ways never die!

spoj.9672:

I think having absolutely no utility or group buffs is bigger justification for being the best dps profession in PvE.

I’d be all for making Necro the best DPS if they don’t want to give it support. Then at least it would make sense. They need a niche somewhere.

Zerker people are just more charismatic so when we make everyone welcome parties they fill faster, duh.

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Titanimite.2534:

Then Mesmer will remain in the dumpster where it is.

Strange, is taht the dumpster where we pull multiple of the same profession for speed runs out of? Are they hanging in there with Ele/thief/war?

Mesmers are anything but trash, they just have the worlds worst profession mechanic.

Don’t really see how their proffession mechanic is the worst. I think they kind of balanced them wrong though. They basically balance mes for max dps, ignoring that it has ramp up time and is mitigatable by aoe/offense.

That’s it, it’s just completely impractical. The amount of times you can actually reach your potential is very small. And even when you do you’re mediocre

Gern.2978:

That’s not at all what they showed. They showed that you can only choose 3, one of which you can go 6 deep in, the other two only 5 deep. Nowhere did they say anything about keeping the 5 trait line setup.

Wait, what, I was under the impression it was 6 in each.

Sagat.3285:

Jerus.4350:

Titanimite.2534:

Then Mesmer will remain in the dumpster where it is.

Strange, is taht the dumpster where we pull multiple of the same profession for speed runs out of? Are they hanging in there with Ele/thief/war?

Mesmers are anything but trash, they just have the worlds worst profession mechanic.

Necro says :“Hi!!!”.

What’s a necro?

Titanimite.2534:

Then Mesmer will remain in the dumpster where it is.

Strange, is taht the dumpster where we pull multiple of the same profession for speed runs out of? Are they hanging in there with Ele/thief/war?

Mesmers are anything but trash, they just have the worlds worst profession mechanic.

Aye should be manageable, however, it’d sure be nice if they did “in combat only” if only to make it more reasonable to use it in combat. If I’m running along keeping my swiftness going, get to where I kill, refinement’s on cooldown… what a waste.

Welcome to the Dungeon subforum Windsagio, where you might see some things as completely inappropriate, well, that’s just the way we roll here

BLC as mention above, and the mystic toilet. They already have gambling here.

Bran.7425:

Jerus.4350:

Umm it’s a huge part of most fractals, and the AegisX2 per shield is nice as well for doing things like facetanking Archie to keep him stable for faster kills, and mossman for reflect and aegis.

MoC traited, WoR, hit shield at 22/23 on WoR reuse, when shield falls you’ll have WoR popping back up for near complete overage for about 36s.

And this is why Anet stated making unblockable attacks more common in PvE.

Mhm, and rightfully so, now if they would just do the job completely and change the animations so they make sense

runeblade.7514:

Jerus.4350:

That’s how I’d do it. I mean, shield is the only good spirit weapon, I wonder why? wouldn’t it make sense to have the others work similarly?

Shield isn’t really a good spirit weapon. Its only use is for 20 seconds reflect which is mostly for the golem boss at every CoE path.

Umm it’s a huge part of most fractals, and the AegisX2 per shield is nice as well for doing things like facetanking Archie to keep him stable for faster kills, and mossman for reflect and aegis.

MoC traited, WoR, hit shield at 22/23 on WoR reuse, when shield falls you’ll have WoR popping back up for near complete overage for about 36s.

That’d be nice. Will have to wait and see I guess. If you’re right I’ll shove my foot in my mouth and enjoy mesmer again

IllegalChocolate.6938:

Harper.4173:

This is because people secretly – in the back of their mid whether they’re aware of it or not are jealous. They’re mad because someone is doing something they can’t.
Someone is playing well, being “more of a hero” than they are.

MMOs are about an empowerment fantasy. Fighting and killing Lupi as a 5 man PHIW casual party feels like a huge achievement for them (since Lupi is big and seems scary) so when they see someone can solo it – even with more mobs added they’re going to have that fantasy ruined to some extent.

See up until that moment they felt like the most special snowflakes in the world but once that person has shown them just what he can do and how good he is by soloing it they’re getting a cold bucket of water to the face.
They’re no longer the “awesome heroes that win at everything forever” because they now have a different standard that they compare themselves to.

People say they play MMOs for their own fun, for the social aspect and what not but people lie – to others and to themselves. Most people play MMOs in order to openly or secretly compete with others.
Otherwise you’d be playing an RPG.

And when others do significantly better than you, you take it personal. You start hating and looking for reasons why it happened.

That’s why you get :

“Zerker is exploiting” or " stacking is cheating" or “skiping is cheating” because they’re crutches used to dismiss what those people are doing and achieving.
By applying this logic and putting them in the “they’re playing the game wrong” you can still safely delude yourself that you’re one of the best out of those who are playing it “right” and thus you can become the hero again.

That’s pretty much how these people think and feel.

And this is why the zerker meta receives so much hate.

The people who bolster about it come off as if their the only ones who study and practice the game. They come off as if they are only ones who know how to properly use active defense measures or pour their energy into perfecting their boss solos or know numbers or at worst, know how to operate their base functionality to play the game properly.

The zerker meta isn’t just some meta game min maxing. Its a religious practice of blind hate empowerment. This post that was quoted is sheer proof of this.

The moment I wanna play around with a condi mesmer out of curiosity in fractals, or start using weapons on my warrior that isn’t axe/mace + greatsword like a mace/shield missile deflection build EVEN if I am full zerker I am crucified the moment someone catches onto it. The only people who do this are zerker meta enthusiasts.

Optimizing damage or your play is fine. The discrimination isn’t.

people who actually are PHIW accepts people who min max if that is how you want to play because its play how you want. PHIW does not look down on people who min max but the zerker meta people look down on us for choosing not to do so to the standards of the zerker meta.

And your post just demonstrates the hate from the other side.

And, yeah, people do join “zerker” advertised groups just to lecture people about how they’re elitists and are ruining the game. So, no, the idea that it’s just zerkers who are self righteous kittens is quite false.

Yeah, I’ll have to look more into it. I am hoping for more with the elite spec, mesmer just frustrates the heck out of me because of how often it’s kittenblocked on reaching anything close to it’s potential. And yeah, like I said, mesmers are still great, it’s just frustrating to play one a lot of the time for me.

I need to watch the video again, but how does that “recharge phantasms with shatter” thing work? Tooltip says 2%, so a 3 phantasm shatter will shorten the cooldowns by 6%?

I do like the 1s of distortion on phantasms.

Your rotation makes sense Dusk, but the same problem that’s always been ther will still be there, likely you’ll have to shatter those things much sooner than that in many cases so they don’t simply die on you.

Which is exactly why ANet should let us segregate ourselves. But then of course no one would carry their casual players and they couldn’t complete vinewrath while they afk

spoj.9672:

I liked most of the changes on mesmer. They made sense and all that extra confusion could be useful with the condi reworks. So while i was watching that stream i was thinking “there is hope if this guy is doing necro”. Needless to say I and many others were disappointed. My initial reaction to the new spite line was good. But then after close inspection i noticed the ICD’s. An eternal problem for necros it seems. It happened to Withering Precision, now it happens to everything else and they decided to delete withering precision.

What’s good for Mesmer? The new boon copy thing is cool, but nothing fantastic. A lot of “on interrupt” stuff but with the new breakbar, well, pointless on any boss.

I haven’t looked that in depth or spent much time with it (just browsed over) but doesn’t seem like they’re doing anything to adapt the mechanics to be more practical for mesmer. Still going to have that giant issue of a huge ramp up time just to watch your phantasms get cleaved down by the boss in one shot and shatter will still be /meh.

That said, mesmer can still be awesome, but just seems like the major issues they have are still present and nothing really done to address them.

Howl’s Moving Castle is great, but so are just about all of Hayao Miyazaki’s stuff. Princess Mononoke is my fav though, probably up there as one of my favorite movies ever.

And another movie is Wolf Children if you like that kind of movie (you know the ones that try and make you cry)

We need some skill that can allow us to do more damage when we don’t have illusions out. Simple as that. Something to mitigate the impractical nature of Mesmer’s professional mechanics in PVE.

Yeah I was suggesting the same thing but for the scepter trait to initiate it. Someone pointed out how it could be OP though, or moreover the synergy with the new Symbolic Avenger could be. The reason 20% isn’t unreasonable in PVP for that trait is because it’s tough to get a symbol in place where the enemy wouldn’t just walk out of it before your big hits. Scepter would make it far easier beinga ble to toss it on a node from range.

Not sure what I think about it with that in mind, I do think it could be neat, but /shrug.

Emtiarbi.3281:

Do not forget that engis are getting aoe Moas or something like that.

“Elixir X now transform enemies in an area to Moas.”
http://dulfy.net/2015/04/24/gw2-specializations-ama-livestream-notes/

In the video it’s a 2-3s moa, big difference, though still surely subject to change (was like 25s recharge too iirc, pretty sure that will change).

Windsagio.1340:

In general, this thread is a ‘why do they hate us?’

I find in my own life that the most common answer to that question is ’it’s because I’m being obnoxious’.

That’s the thing I’d like to have folks get out of this. As easy as it is to look outward and blame/insult others it’s much more useful, if you actually care about fixing the situation, to look inwards

See that’s the thing. Hating players, I can get, the fact that people hate the strats and builds is what gets me.

Elitists are hated just as much in any other game I’ve played as they are here. In those other games playing the Meta way isn’t hated like it is here. In fact it’s pretty much embraced by anyone doing the top level of content. But I guess taht goes to the segregated communities, the more casual players stick to the older/easier content while the more “hardcore” folks jump on the new content and master it. GW2 pushes us all into the same stuff.

deSade.9437:

Call me a jerk if you wish, but why are we still discussing the venom share build with all the caps on condis and ccs present in-game at the present date…
And PLEASE someone tell me I haven’t read what I have just read. Please, someone.

Many of the Condi caps are going to go away, though I imagine Immob/chill stuff will still be there and CCs will become even more restrictive, though a venom share of basilisk venom could be interesting to see with the breakbar thing.

As for why it’s discussed, /shrug, because unlike now once the new traits hit the loss will not be all that large, if there’s even a situational advantageous use it’s worth discussing the possibilities. That’s what’s so nice about these trait changes, right now you’d have to drop points out of critical strikes or deadly arts, losing power/precision as well as important modifiers. With the trait changes the last 2 points which we already moved around for different situations will now be 6 points meaning more freedom to utilize many of these lesser used utility traits. Engineer Fortified Turrets is also something I’m looking forward to playing with, meta for both professions will likely be 66006 but if you can get something out of a 66600 or 66060 build it may be worthwhile.

You know, I was just remembering reading the PVP forums a while back. Guy made some claims about stuff and saying ANet screwed something up. Dev came in there reported the players statistics to prove what he was claiming was 100% false. They get that kind of “love” and we can’t even get a kittening patch note.

At least they were kind enough to realize that a week of no fractals is bullkitten and hotpatched Molten Facility out.

Titanimite.2534:

EcoRI.9273:

hopefully they forget to put it back in :-) That fractal is definitely my least favorite due to the time gate.

Comments like these are part of the reason they do not care about dungeons and fractals and why we will never get anymore of them. I personally enjoy this fractal, speak for yourself. There is a lot of downtime in it though due to things that cannot be sped up like the drill and the weapons test.

Are you sure about that? What would be harmed if the drill moved twice as fast? What would go wrong if there wasn’t a like 15-20s delay between the phases in the main room?

I like the fractal as well. I’d like it more if there were more constant action, instead of “wait, ok jump over shockwaves and then pound on the center console, wait, wait, ok dodge fiery tornadoes, knockback the guardian and beat ont he console again, wait, wait, wait, ok avoid fireballs knocback guardian beat on console, wait, wait, wait, ok avoid everything and finish destroying the console, wait wait wait wait, kill the boss”

Take all the “waits” out and it could be much more fun.

and I get ya now Faux, though I think simplifying it to “press 1” is the same type of hyperbole that plagues these forums. Is it relativey easy once you understand, of course, but you do have to organize a rotation with your team, like I said though, increasing the speeds could be much more entertaining. Could even put some blue fireballs in each wave which are “unblockable” to encourage us to be mobile while we reflect the normal ones.

But, this is all just talk as I doubt they’ll put more effort into fractals other than breaking them in untested attempts to fix bugs

Rin.1046:

I might be wrong here, engi is not my main, but don’t you need to have a target for Kit Refinement to trigger?

Nope.

Go slot it in lions arch. Activate a kit and watch the effect happen.

You’ll get the little “trait buff” icon telling you it’s ready then the next kit equipped will have an effect… even in Lions arch with no target and not in combat.