Guild Wars 2

Almost 500 replies already so obviously you will excuse us for not addressing them all. Also keep in mind it’s now the weekend. I’ll try and get on for enough time sometime this weekend to address the bigger points of discussion but until then please keep the responses as civil as they have generally been thus far. We appreciate all of your assign for this stuff and are working hard to make the right decisions. I can say that many of the concerns brought up were at the heart of discussions when making these changes already so we are aware of a lot of the implications. This is an aggressive list of changes but we wanted to share them so that we could confirm what the highest risk changes were and try to discuss some reasoning. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate or understand the nuances of all of that reasoning, but I do have faith that you will be passionate about it so try and remember to look at all sides of the issues. It is called balance after all.

Thanks all and keep them coming. I can promise I will read every post in this thread. Have a great weekend.

Jon

Thief:
One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%. We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again. The change to Infusion of Shadow is meant to stop players from gaining initiative by applying stealth while already in stealth. This should keep thieves from being able to recharge all of their power while idling in a very long stealth. We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok, but re-using the same ability over and over for almost permanent stealth was just bad for the game, especially when gaining large amounts of initiative.

• Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 5s from 8s.
• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 10s.
• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.

Warrior:
The overall goal here is to reduce the damage for the very high control warriors. This means reducing some dependency on going 30 points into discipline for Burst Mastery, making warriors spend 20 points in Arms to get the benefit of Unsuspecting Foe. We also reduced the damage on the hammer’s burst skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both. We also increased the readability of Skull Crack, which will allow opposing players to more easily react to it. Combustive Shot on longbow also saw some rework. It will scale better with adrenaline levels, and still provide strong burning per adrenaline level, but the raw damage was toned down slightly.

• Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%
• Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold form 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds.
• Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.
• Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.
• Tactics 5 – Determined Revival. Now correctly displays the amount of toughness.
• Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.
• Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.
• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.
• Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. Overall physical damage has been reduced by 15%.

Necromancer:
For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.
• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.
• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

Ranger:
For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits so that rangers should have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere. We also brought up some Marksmanship and a Skirmishing trait to make power specs more appealing. We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits. Due to this, we’ve made adjustments to Wilderness Survival traits, and we’ve also brought down the passive of Sun Spirit and the active effect for Storm Spirit.

• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
• Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.
• Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
• Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
• Wilderness VIII – Oakheart Salve. Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20s->15s
• Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
• Nature Magic I – Circle of Life. Cleared up the text of this trait to clearly identify that it happens when downed, not defeated.
• Nature Magic V – Strength of Spirit. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.
• Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.
• Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.
• Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.
• Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.
• Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%.

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

• Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
• Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
• Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
• Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
• Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
• Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
• Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
• Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.

Mesmer:
The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things. 1) Bringing up some of the mesmer support traits and condition removal traits. 2) Reduce dependency on certain trait lines. The changes to Mender’s Purity and Shattered conditions as well as the move of Dazzling Glamours are meant to accomplish the first of these two. The changes to Shattered Strength and Illusionist’s celerity are what we feel accomplish the second one. Before this change mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds. Now they can place only 15 points in there to get the Illusion cooldown which will give them back 10 more trait points to open up some new builds. Finally, we felt that the Mantra traits were fairly difficult to collect. Moving Mantra mastery to adept tier takes some trait pressure off of the Dueling line, allowing mantra mesmers to gain a good trait with only 10 points.

• Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to also increase daze duration by 25%.
• Dueling VI – Protected Mantras. Moved to Master Tier. Increase Toughness from 400 to 600.
• Dueling VII – Mantra Mastery. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Chaos 25 – Chaotic Transference. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Chaos I – Chaotic Revival. Reduced cooldown from 35s to 10s.
• Chaos VII – Mirror of Anguish. Reduced cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Inspiration IV – Mender’s Purity. Now removes 2 conditions.
• Inspiration XI – Shattered Conditions. Increased radius from 240 to 600.
• Illusions VI – Illusionary Invigoration. Recharge reduced from 90s to 60s. Moved to Master Tier.
• Illusions VIII – Dazzling Galmours. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Illusions 15 – Shattered Strength – Moved to Grandmaster tier.
• Illusions 25 – Illusionist’s Celerity – Moved to Master tier.

Elementalist:
This patch’s goal for the elementalist was to increase the power of the Earth, Air and Fire lines, while taking away some of the need to go into Arcane. This was done by bringing up the base cooldown of attunements so that elementalists aren’t forced to go as deep into Arcane in order to get the old attunement cooldown %’s. In doing so, we decided put some of the most powerful Adept tier traits in Water magic and Arcane to the Master tier to avoid power creep that would have occurred by letting players gain powerful effects in Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire, Air, and Earth and still get the extremely powerful traits in Water and Arcane by only splashing in 10 points.

• Fire II – Burning Fire – Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.
• Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
• Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
• Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes: 5% to 10%.
• Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
• Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
• Earth VII – Strength of Stone. Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier. redesign: Gain Regeneration(3s) on incoming critical hits. 10s recharge.
• Soothing Disruption move to master tier.
• Cantrip Mastery move to adept tier.

• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown 90s to kitten .
• Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VI – Arcane Resurrection. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier. This trait will now function outside of combat.

The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.

• The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
• Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.

Engineer:
We wanted to maintain the engineer’s core roles while still increasing build diversity. We also wanted to take out some of the random effects for some of the class’s traits. The biggest change here is allowing Modified Ammunition to work with any skills so that an engineer, regardless of build, can look at putting 30 points into firearms. By increasing the swiftness duration on Speedy Kits, we hope to allow Swiftness to be maintained more reasonably without having to constantly be swapping between Kits. This change will also bring down the total up time for Vigor due to its interaction with Invigorating Speed. We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.

• Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.
• Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold. 25% to 50%
• Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.
• Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. Now works regardless of equipped weapon.
• Inventions V – Energized Armor. Increased conversion: 5% to 7%.
• Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. Decreased interval from 10s to 3s.
• Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.
• Power Shoes. Will now function outside of combat.
• Alchemy V – Blood Injection. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
• Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. 10s recharge.
• Tools XI – Armor Mods. Changed this to now trigger on struck instead of on critical hit incoming. Reduced the cooldown from 25s to 15s.
• Blunderbuss. Updated the ranges on this skill so that it is at 100% effectivness with anyone in melee range. Increased range 200 units when using the trait.

General
These are the proposed balance changes for the Dec. 10th build. These changes are not final and are subject to change. We are posting them early so the community can discuss them with us. We wanted to be more transparent with the community about these changes to help expose problems that riskier changes might create.

Our goal for many of the classes was to increase build diversity while still maintaining class roles and identities. Some of the things we increased were abilities/skills that people don’t run very often. Our goal was to increase these abilities to make them viable alternate builds.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.
• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!
• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.
• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.
• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.
• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.
• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

What is does is start to reduce the amount of particles and details on effects once you have a certain # of them on screen. This system relies on us manually setting up a value for how noisy any given effect is so if turning it on does nothing in certain areas, we could simply not have set those effects up correctly. A cursory look at the data seems like they are setup, but there might be some caveats in how the Effect LOD system works that keeps it from turning on for those instances because it is an “important” boss. I’ll dig a bit deeper when I can.

Jon

To add to what Colin said, the first step is to go into options, click on the graphics tab and make sure the Effect LOD option is checked. We will continue to tweak the #s that option provides as well but I want to make sure you are at least using that option.

Jon

I think a good way to look at it is that there will generally be the same amount of PvE, but more PvE variety in objectives. Right now in WvW, when no enemies are present the content is the same Door killing and meat sack tower lord fight over and over. In Edge of the mists, the activity you do when no one is around will have variety. The nice part of this is that it also means the PvP activity you do at those locations will have variety.

Tiborb.1453:

Q: Will Edge of the Mists have small PvE elements (i mean wolves, oozes, deers) like the others WvWvW maps or will be a full PvP map?
Q: Why the map is filled with orrery-looking-objects?https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2426103-WvW-maps.jpg

Edge of the Mists will have a lot of content elements but much less arbitrary than the current maps. You won’t see random wolves wandering along the plains but there might be a nice cave with wolves and a Boss wolf den mother where players might go to farm and others might go to gank unsuspecting farmers. Here are some existing examples which are subject to change.

• Some bridges between islands are currently destructible and then can be repaired with supply.
• There is currently an objective that internally we call the altar which you capture by being the world who kills the most Elementals near it. Holding it allows allied players to run through and get a powerful buff that persists until they are downed.
• The desert region has an ogre theme currently where objectives may be guarded by ogres and their griffon pets. There may be unique ogre siege weapons in this area.
• The current arctic area keep lord is a Kodan with a giant hammer who can collapse the ceiling on enemies, breaks stuns with a powerful ability, has a in knockdown shockwave as his basic attack, and is constantly surrounded by a frost aura which chills his attackers and heals him.

Of course all of this is subject to change, but I think it lays the foundation for what to expect.

2) I think answer #1 somewhat Answers question #2. What you see in that screenshot in the distance is an objective currently dubbed “the observatory.” It is one of the “towers” in the jungle area and is captured with a series of control point and conveys unique bonuses to other jungle objectives if you hold them at the same time…

Jon

docMed.7692:

DevonCarver.5370:

docMed.7692:

DevonCarver.5370:

docMed.7692:

This new map sounds very cool and I’m excited to learn more about and hopefully be part of the development process!

• edit ** Thought about it more; less-server allegiance doesn’t make sense no matter how much I think it may present an issue for the larger population server. With the seasons enabled though, there certainly will be a population issue an Server A having a much larger pop than Server B/C.

Q: What objectives and/or incentives would be available for Server A on a potentially empty opposition map?

We aren’t quite ready to talk about how we are addressing that, but it is a top-level consideration for the success of the map. It has to be fun when you are the only world and be fun when full of all three worlds. Once the testing begins we’ll talk more about the mechanics we intend to solve that problem.

Sounds good. Seems like a tough thing to balance!

Another Q: Are there time limits regarding the duration of an edge map such as PvP or will each overflow essentially be a persisten server as long as there is some minimum population?

The duration of the map will be less than a full WvW map. We are currently looking at 4 hours per match, but that number is subject to change as the test goes on. The idea is that it has some heft to it, while still being an amount of time that feels reasonable to complete in one sitting. Feedback on this will be crucial to determining the final values.

Q: Are there going to be win/loss scenarios? First to 1000 points, first to take X objective, etc? If so, might run into scenarios that spvp faced on a small scale (i.e. premades vs pugs).

Thanks again for being so responsive.

These are exactly the kind of questions that are going to be part of the discussion that happens as part of the test!

This is something that we are working on as part of the changes to the new map. I suspect it will be part of the testing process. It won’t be exact position/time if I had to guess but approximates. We will be updating some of how the queue works as well to make these approximates more accurate.

Jon

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

JonPeters.5630:

I mean for example this Edge of the Mists map, we are intending that each objective potentially has unique guards and keep lords. If that works well we could make changes to EB or borderlands that make the guards/lords at objectives in those maps more unique.

Would be certainly interesting if these guards/lords would have real boss-mechanics.

Yes it would.

Legno.6548:

JonPeters.5630:

Yes if there are elements of this map that are popular those elements will slowly make their way back towards the borderlands and EB, where it makes sense.

With this you mean we can expect either terrain modification and new mechanics (like bloodlust) on the border, this seems fair, but do the borders have enough space for those upgrade eventually or the devs have plans on amplifying those borders?

Btw Im very satisfied with just this announcement and will soon talk with my guild for the survey

I mean for example this Edge of the Mists map, we are intending that each objective potentially has unique guards and keep lords. If that works well we could make changes to EB or borderlands that make the guards/lords at objectives in those maps more unique.

Legno.6548:

If this map will introduce new mechanics who are liked from the large majority of the www population, are the devs considering the chance that this map will steal population from the proper www maps ? Do u believe wich once u create new mechanics into the edge of the mists, those mechanics can be introduced into the old borderlands maybe with a restailing of those maps?

Yes if there are elements of this map that are popular those elements will slowly make their way back towards the borderlands and EB, where it makes sense.

Q: Is there a certain respawn area like a border waypoint of the likes, so teams are able to regroup / gather? Or is it one giant pit with random respawn?
A: There will be safe zones, much like on the other maps. We are also going to work to make these areas more conducive to comeback mechanics. We don’t want people being camped and we’d like to solve that with this map.

EDIT: From here on out Devon and I will just answer questions inline because the OP is too long to add to and maintaining a second list halfway down just feels impractical and confusing.

Jon

Hey Colin! I started a living FAQ for the map as well everyone so jump in there and ask questions and I will try to answer them throughout the day. It is stickied in this sub forum.

Jon

I’m on the bus ride in to work but I’ll start this thread answering a couple questions and try and keep it up to date for the day.

UPDATE: Devon is going to answer most of the questions and then we will update the OP with his answers. Also I didn’t reserve enough space so the F.A.Q. will continue on a post near the bottom of this page…

Jon

Q: Is the Edge of the Mists only open when all maps are full?
A: No, it’s always available from the list I maps it simply is the only WvW map that can overflow.

Q: What happens if you get into a copy of Edge of the Mists with only people from your world?
A: There will be stuff to do. More to be revealed as people start playing the map. For example, if server A have queues for the capacity of 2 overflows and server B and C only for 1 overflow, one copy will have a 3 way battle, the other copy will have just people from server A, however the map will still function similarly based on some solutions we are talking about that will be fleshed out once the tests begin.

Q: I don’t like feature X about this map what should I do?
A: That is ok, this map is in its first stages of development. Apply to be involved in the test and give your feedback. Even if you don’t get into the test there will be NO NDA so you will hear about the progress of the map and be able to comment on it.

Q: Where can I sign up for to help test the Edge of the Mists?
A: Any guild can sign up, regardless of whether or not they play WvW or even play Guild Wars 2. Your Guild can sign up at this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GW2_WvWCommunityTest

Q: Should everyone who wants to be tester register here?
A: 1 person per guild, please. The idea is that we’ll use one person as a point of contact. More registrations will not increase the odds of your guild being involved.

Q: Are players affected by the bloodlust buff while playing in the Edge of the Mists?
A: Maybe. This whole endeavor will be a collaborative open test and answers to questions like that will evolve as the test does. As of now the answer is no because this map is not intended to contribute to score which the bloodlust buff is capable of doing.

Q: OMG, Edge of the Mists is a bunch of floating islands, the gameplay is going to be all about knocking people off the edge of the islands.
A: There are certainly many larger islands as well as many areas with rails. There will certainly be some places where knocking players off will be beneficial, however we expect to use this test to find the right balance that will satisfy both types of combat.

Q: How does the overflow work? Is it possible to fight against other servers? Is it combined with EU and NA or just one specific region?
A: The current iteration is that you will only be matched up against the other worlds in your current WvW matchup. That is one of the many aspects of the map that we will be actively getting feedback on from the community and the testers.

Q: Will there be any advantages to get on the map? Such as a King of the hill thing that grants buffs, or will it be one giant pit to fight on at equal grounds?
A: The map has objectives, from resource camps to keeps, much like the other WvW maps. Once people get into the maps we’ll talk more about the specifics of those objectives. But this is not going to be far removed from WvW, just new.

Q: Can you enter the map from the good ’ol WvW UI Panel? Will there be portals for it in major cities / Border Waypoints too?
A: Yes to the dropdown. We haven’t put portals in the cities yet, but most likely we will.

Q: Can you place siege on the map? Or is it limited to player skills and teams only?
A: Siege is intended to be an important part of the map. Again, this map is WvW so there will be objectives, siege, etc.

Q: What will the max players be on a map from one server?
A: It’s our policy not to release those numbers. And we haven’t settled on that yet. This is something we will be experimenting with over the course of development/testing. It will be somewhere from the limit on the current maps, to some number less than that.

Q: What do you view under ‘We want the best WvW experience’? What is the goal of WvW and what would be the best WvW experience with the addition of this map?
A: The goal of this map is to provide a place for the thousands of people who queue daily to be able to experience the WvW experience rather than being left out. There will be massive battles, epic sieges, stirring defenses, and crushing defeats on this map. We want as many people as possible to be playing WvW and as we expand into other territories we want to make sure they don’t experience the massive queues that we saw at launch in NA/EU.

Just finished reading through all 12 pages. Thanks to everyone for 12 pages of positive and constructive feedback. Keep it up and keep in mind these are updates from just the skills team so try to focus on skills traits and other combat related stuff.

Jon

Jon.2914:

norman.7026:

For the guardian change, is the fury supposed to be on Monk’s Focus or Focused Mind? Focused Mind was the one that made meditations instant, so it would make more sense for that one to be updated.

Focused Mind. Sorry about the mistype.

And now from my real acount. Focused Mind, not Monks Focus. Thanks all. Jonathan is editing the OP.

Sept 17th = no balance
Oct 1st = yes balance

Med.6150:

I am wondering whether CCs documentation has been put through the same level of scrutiny, since nobody at Anet could have foreseen TC getting disqualified until now.

Is it possible that they (Car Crash) will turn out to be ineligible as well?

While we were investigating the eligibility of TC, we did the same diligence for CC so that in case of an issue we had our backup plan in place. CC will be eligible and will be playing.

DiogoSilva.7089:

JonPeters.5630:

You are correct. This was a technical drawback from the initial implementation of the system that we did not have the bandwidth undo. In order to do I now would require a significant rework of many other things. Not something I would rule out but something we would weigh considerably which means don’t expect it soon.

What if the two-handed weapons used the off-hand slot to acchieve the same goal? Do the current systems support equipping a second sigil on the “empty” off-hand slot and have it count towards the main weapon?

The upgrade is tied to the item so that is not possible.

Redscope.6215:

In an effort to stay on topic, the only reason I can see why they haven’t made two upgrade slots for two-handed weapons is because all gear has only one upgrade slot period.

It will be interesting to see what they do with ascended weaponry and armor. Maybe they will finally alleviate this situation. Or at least give an equal stat bonus from two-handed weapons when compared to using two weapons.

You are correct. This was a technical drawback from the initial implementation of the system that we did not have the bandwidth undo. In order to do I now would require a significant rework of many other things. Not something I would rule out but something we would weigh considerably which means don’t expect it soon.

Still on vacation so I can’t go into too much detail but the PvP team has a blog coming with details before the patch hits. That should explain exactly how solo arena works. How it impacts team arenas, as well as other smaller stuff that impacts this part of the game, but wasn’t big enough to be listed in the overall marketing piece.

Look at that! https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-06-2013/

:)

This is a subject we talk about frequently. It’s not something we take lightly because the implications would be far reaching for thieves so until we move to a more seasonal balance cadence it will be hard pressed to see the light of day.

Yeah this system is game wide and like I said, you won’t even need to be that patient as we are close to being ready to talk about it. Should help PvP, WvW, big events, dungeons, etc.

Jon

Defektive.7283:

JonPeters.5630:

We believe the majority of the issue is the effects spam. News on that front coming VERY soon. Once that is out of the way we can start to address other concerns.

Jon

That’s probably a good first step. However, it’s fairly common for competitive games to have standardized avatar models.

Example: Unreal Tournament.

I wouldn’t put it past the community to request this as a feature since it does make sense in the scheme of things.

Didn’t you just basically request it? :P

I’ll bring it up when I get back, although I know we haven’t explored it much and there will be some issues.

I just wanted to stop in and say a huge thank you to all of the teams that participated in the tournament today, as well as all the spectators. I watched as many of the games as I could from my phone on vacation. So many hard fought battles and great to see the enthusiasm grow as the rounds went on. Extra congratulations to Team Paradigm and Car Crash for an exceptional final with so much great back and forth and so many great plays. You guys really showed what Guild Wars 2 PvP can be and why we can’t wait for more tournaments in the future.

Hopefully this is just the humble beginning with lots more to come for GW2 sPvP. Near the end of the finals, I saw someone mention how friendly the Twitch chat is, and how they would be sad when/if GW2 gets bigger that we would lose that. That really hit home how great this PvP community is and I think if we work together we will keep that up no matter how big our tournaments, streams or prizes get. Looking forward to more great fun in the NA qualifier and to hopefully meeting many (or at least some) of you in Seattle for the finals.

Thanks,

Jon

Daecollo.9578:

JonPeters.5630:

We believe the majority of the issue is the effects spam. News on that front coming VERY soon. Once that is out of the way we can start to address other concerns.

Jon

Jon, I would love it if instead of using so many particle effects we instead used more weapon trails and .swh effects.

They are just as pretty (A lot of them in the game seem /hand painted/) and don’t clog up the entire screen with explosions.

As I mentioned at some point earlier, we are working on a system that basically weights these effects and tries to make the noisier ones less noisy. This system is in a good place right now on our development servers so expect to hear about it fairly soon.

It will definitely try and bring out the streaks and such a bit compared to the chaos storms, for example.

Jon

We believe the majority of the issue is the effects spam. News on that front coming VERY soon. Once that is out of the way we can start to address other concerns.

Jon

Among other benefits the stealth on hunters also let’s you cast the beginning of barrage without detection.

The heal sig is a typo. The numbers are correct but it should say per second. Yes, that is correct, 392 health per second.

Stickying this thread because it is great. Thank you.

Just to be clear this being a stun break now is on purpose. Sorry it got left off the notes.

Jon

This is intentional. Looks like some of the added stun breakers got lost from patch notes. I’ll take a look at which other ones and post something on it tomorrow at the latest.

Recharge rate means the speed at which it recharges, so it recharges 30% faster not 30% shorter recharge. Think of it this way.

New recharge time = (old time / 1.3) not (old time* 0.7)

This is an error in how the tooltip has been calculated on all profession mechanic recharge trait lines. We will be fixing this in the next hot fix build.

Intensity (15 chars)

It sounds like it is pulling conditions from enemies of the target rather than allies of the source of the mark. I will take a look at this tomorrow. Is this new?

Jon

Thanks for the report. I have fixed this on our development environment and it should be in the next patch ~10 days.

It took me a while, but here is a better explanation with an image.

The illusionary berserker uses an animation similar to warrior greatsword #3 where they spin and move while creating attacks. The attacks are circles (shown as pentagons in my image) that are created at frames in the animation. In this image I highlight the position of all 4 attacks. What this means is that based on the relative position of a iZerker to their target, and based on the targets motion it can hit between 0 and 4 times. The damage number listed in the skill fact is based on all 4 hits connecting as shown by the 4x next to the damage #. With a static target this is possible but extraordinarily unlikely. The movement is meant to help this attack hit moving targets, which is its primary purpose as a skill which reduces movement speed.

In this particular series of screenshots, 3 of the strikes (#2, #3, and #4 ) overlapped the target golem, but as is known in the bug only 1 damage floater was displayed. I am able to examine the golem health before and after and it takes 3 strikes worth of damage but again the visual damage floater is not appearing. We do not know why this floater is sometimes not appearing but because it is a visual bug only we have prioritized other fixes over it while we try to figure out the root cause of this issue. In the meantime, I hope this image shows more clearly how this attack works and what the real bug here is.

Here is the image: http://imgur.com/idkTMrl

Note: the 3rd attack is visually present in two of the images because of the timing of my screenshot.

This should be fixed on live in < 2 weeks!

I’ve seen some people on here being discouraged about posting bugs and wanted to respond in a more general way. We are not ignoring this sub-forum, but keep in mind the following barriers that keep us from getting to everything:

1) I’ll spare the math but It would take our company about a year, with everyone dedicated to testing 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year to get as much testing time as happens in about an hour in the live environment.

2) These forums alone see hundreds of posts an hour at times so reading them is more than a full time job, however understanding what a bug is about often requires the expertise of a developer who is more likely already working on this or another important issue.

3) Issues do not always have steps to reproduce them and even when they do they often do not reproduce in our development environment because it is constantly changing. This does mean the issue is not there but until we know how to cause it we are not likely to know how to fix it.

4) Depending on how impactful a bug is we can start working on it once we know what causes it but these resources are shared and fixing something can and will take time and time away from other things.

5) Once we have a fix we can’t immediately release it because testing it takes time and while we might not find every edge case (see point #1) it is important to us that we test as much as we possibly can.

6) Once something is tested it can go into the live environment the next time there is a new build (or in a hotfix build if it is truly game breaking). Consider how game breaking something must be to interrupt all other players play experience to put it in right away.

How can you help?

• Give details and don’t just assume we know. I see the following lot: Please fix the game breaking <something> bug so I can play again. Those posts are frustrating because there is nothing we can do to help that person as they have provided no details.

• If you are experiencing a bad bug likely other people are as well, make sure to bump their thread with your own details, instead of starting a new one as bigger problems can then rise to the top.

How can we help?

• I’ll bring this up today at work and see if we can improve the pipeline of getting bugs from the players into the hands of the developers who can actually fix them. I can’t promise anything other than I will work towards improving this in any way that I can.

Thanks for your support, we love this game as much as you do and want to make it better every day.

Jon

Just FYI it does not happen all of the time but we do have a 100% reproducible case now and are working on a solution. I’ll check in on an ETA when I get a chance.

Jon

Ok Spiteful Talisman is fixed locally. This should appear in about 2 weeks.

Kimbald.2697:

Riffled Turret barrels doesn’t increase the range of Rocket turret by the way. How many times did that one appear in a patch note already as ‘fixed’?

This trait actually works with Rocket turret, however, I just discovered that the rocket it fires while traited is invisible. I checked in a fix which should hopefully appear in about 2 weeks on live.

Thanks for the detailed report,

Jon