Guild Wars 2

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

Leamas.5803:

Malediktus.9250:

Remove daily achievements.

Why?

Probably high up on the leaderboard and is sick of having 99% of their playtime dedicated to dailies and LS stuff.

Ahhh, PvP achievements. Makes more sense.

Malediktus.9250:

Remove daily achievements.

Why?

Wallace MacBix.2089:

When was this? At least in the last beta the cap was already there (at least I remember it being there). And it was certainly there on -3 day launch.

Hmm, I don’t remember, perhaps I’m remembering a short lived bug or something. But I definitely remember seeing it. I want to say it was during Lost Shores, which was horribly buggy right from the get go. Up to that point I had done primarily solo stuff and map exploration, so probably would not have noticed the cap anyway. Perhaps I dreamt it, who the hell knows it was so long ago. Still, doesn’t change the fact that the current system is broken in PvE groups. Realistically, personal caps of 20-25, or uncapped it the only way to fix it.

WOW, I guess I’m casual even for casuals. :P I might get a an hour or two of actual play a day, on average, less on the weekends.

1. Get rid of ascended weapons/armor and vertical progression. This is not in line with what the games was advertized as and puts the top tier of gear so far out of so many people’s hands it’s almost insulting…not to mention the unbelievable grinding that’s required to makes these. This is not casual nor alt nor multi-build friendly.
2. Get rid of the condition cap in PvE. As it is now, really any more than two condition users in a group is redundant, but you can have as many power users in a group as you want and they can all be effective. In a large group any pure condition spec is essentially useless since every class/build has the ability to cause conditions and chews up those stacks.
3. Filter armor by class in the TP light/medium/heavy…really, c’mon.
4. Get rid of the gem to gold conversion in the gem store, it causes unnecessary inflation in the TP.
5. Some useful infusion for those who do not want to do fractals. Cosmetic infusions for instance, just to add some sort of effects to weapons, infusions that add to boon duration, condition removal or stamina recovery. Anything that would make them useful outside of fractals. The ones at the laurel vender now…+4 condition damage? I realize the boosted stats are already in the item, but that infusion is really not worth 1 laurel let alone what they actually cost.
6. I would love to see the bots brought back to bring down prices in the TP (Don’t bother to hate-spam me because I don’t care). You could just watch prices go up daily after the big bot purge. It was A LOT of supply suddenly not going in to the TP.
7. Get rid of soulbound items. Legendary/ascended items should never be soulbound. If bound at all, items should be account bound. This is a large part of the reason I’ve never bother to level an alt. Dyes too, there’s no reason a dye should be soulbound.
8. Make hair accessories part of the headgear dye palate. I have green ribbons in my hair with my red/black/white armor. Doesn’t look good. I’m happy with my appearance other than that and not using a pile of gems on a hair style kit to change the color of the ribbons. So I wear a hood instead.

coolmanx.5726:

I only get to play about 3-4 hours each day (more on weekends) so for a casual player I have to say I feel like I accomplished a lot in such a short amount of time.

Is this what’s considered casual? No wonder it takes me forever to do anything. LOL

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I disagree with your premise. Why should Warriors be able to do more damage than a condition necro? If I spec full condition damage then I should be just as viable as a direct damage person.

Also there is currently a cap on duration of 100%. There are a few traits that ignore this cap (all of them necro traits) but this is why you don’t see anyone using condition duration on their gear. With 30% from traits and 40% from food you are at 70% already. Duration above that is currently mostly wasted since you can get to the bleed cap with only that 70%. non-necros benefit more from more duration since they don’t hit the cap quite as easily. 100% is possible with runes and sigils, not to mention weapons. (No armor exists with condition duration as far as i’m aware)

Also why would it be overpowered? why should my DPS suddenly be reduced because I hit some invisible wall. If I invest gear points into longer conditions then I am losing those points somewhere else. There is still a cap based on gear quality. Crit damage doesn’t have a cap but you still can’t get it higher than ~%120. The same should be true of condition duration. A full condition duration set should be able to get me up to ~150% (numbers can be tweaked) which would give me the maximum possible dps and allow me to reach higher stacks than someone who opts for more defense.

Some skills will need to be tweaked for this to work, but the concept itself doesn’t automatically mean we are OP.

I believe condition specs should be just as viable and diverse as power based specs are. There is no power equivalent to the duration cap, no power equivalent to the condition cap, and no condition equivalent to zerker gear, which is why condition specs are crap compared to power specs.

I didn’t say warriors should be able to do more damage, but that warriors should be able to deal it faster. Warriors pay a price for their DPS, they typically have to be right next to the mob taking the brunt of the attack where a condition user can sit back and enjoy the show, so to speak, so I’m OK with slower damage. The biggest problem with condition users is that their damage does not stack (Well, not beyond the 25, which is VERY limited) making more than 2 in a group redundant, where power users are completely unlimited. And…typically, condition users cannot use marks, a primary attack for necros, against world bosses nerfing their effectiveness even more.

I think a condition build would be just as viable as a power build if the cap were removed.

See the “problem” they faced before they implemented the cap is that they had large groups of necros roaming around doing the champs and taking them down like nothing. I remember seeing upwards of 80 stacks of bleed. I’m not sure why they considered this problem and decided to nerf it in to the ground, but more players should take a champ down faster. :/

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The solution is pretty simple really.

1. Remove the condition cap or at the very least raise it and make it personal
2.Remove the cap on condition duration. It is a stat and I should be able to actually increase it.
3. Introduce Condition Damage/Condition Duration/Precision gear
4. Adjust numbers/conditions on skills so a CD/CD/Pr geared condition player outputs the same dps as a zerker.
5. Conditions are fixed and viable in PvE.

This would be extremely over powered…and I am a condition necro.

I agree with you on 1. Raise it or make it personal…the shared 25 is useless when every profession/build can apply conditions.

Point 2, is there a cap on duration, or just limited ways to increase it? There are sigils that increases individual condition durations by 10% and another that increases all condition durations by 6%. There is also food which will increase duration by as much as 40%. The way it’s built, you can’t have unlimited duration and still have stacking…this would be God-like.

Point 3…For the gear, how would this be implemented? What would be the limits? Are you suggesting matching runes as well?

Point 4…conditions should not have the same DPS as a zerker. Raw DPS is not their purpose. However I do agree with the essence of this in that You can have as many zerkers in a group all applying damage (AND conditions to the cap) and the DPS just keeps adding up. 50 warriors = 50x times the damage. Once the condition cap is hit, which can typically be done by 3-4 of necros, 2 if they’re fully speced for conditions. I can maintain 16-20 bleeds myself with food. 50 necros = 2 necros condition damage-wise +50x the marginal physical damage necros cause. In any case, 50 condition speced necros might be able to match the damage of what 10-12 warriors maybe? 100 necros, maybe 20 warriors due to the condition cap? The damage doesn’t scale in a balanced fashion.

I don’t agree a necro should be able to take something down as fast a warrior, because they shouldn’t. What I am saying is that 50 necros should be able to take it down 50x faster than 1 necro. Just kitten warriors will currently take it down 50x faster than 1. Currently, this is where there is a horrible imbalance in the professions. Groups do not up scale properly.

Not So Secret was difficult, but there are certainly more difficult JPs in this game. Skipping Stones, Clock Tower, Dark Revery, Chaos Crystal Cavern, Snow Globe (Especially last year, when you had to do the entire thing in one run). NSS is much easier if you do it with others so you don’t have to worry about the mobs as much and you have to be able to land on target as the spacing for some of it is less than your max jump distance, greatly increasing the difficulty…and wait for agro to wear off. IMO, Skipping Stones is, by far, the most difficult/maddening JP in the game.

enzo.7182:

i do agree that condition damage in PVE is a little under powered due to having trouble getting stacks up and your stacks not hitting as hard as a crit/ crit damage/power build. im not even saying that they do to much damage in pvp. my main argument is that there is not enough defense against conditions at the moment.

Are there equivalent defense against physical attacks? I don’t even think a guardian can heal fast enough to mitigate all the physical damage of a direct attack. The whole point of a condition build, especially necro, is to control you so you can’t get to them so they can kill you slowly. They said exactly that in the current rebalance notes. If you increase the ability to always be able to shed conditions, especially CC, you remove the viability of such a build. If I can’t keep you away, I’m dead. Luckily for me, the zerker, glass canon build, is among the most popular in WvW, which makes me extremely effective at controlling enemy zergs. Especially if I’m defending from battlements. If I were to build a warrior, I would make it a zerker glass canon, but I would also understand and accept the fact that I would be useless against an effective condition user…and not whine about it. Again, if you’re not equipped or your build is not able to mitigate the conditions, sometimes it’s simply better to retreat. Not every build will be effective against every build…that’s simply not how it works.

Like I said in a previous post, I’m so disheartened with how under powered my condition necro is in PvE, that I’ve opted to level a new character to give me more grouping options because conditions users are so notoriously under powered that no one wants them in groups. To fix it, for the most part, all they would need to do is increase the stack limit to at least 50 or remove it altogether, ideally. This would not really affect PvP or WvW at all since players are not strong enough to live long enough to build even the 25 stack but it would make condition users much more viable in PvE.

UGGGHHHH AGAIN WITH THE OP CONDITION HATER THREAD. Can some moderator please merge the threads, there has to be dozens of them. It seems one pops up every week or so.

mons.1386:

Conditions OP ?
Probably the reason why so many people don’t want a necro to do a dungeon run…
The OP sounds like a troll.

I have to be honest, I LOVE my necro and am very good with it, but I’m leveling a guardian simply because I want to do dungeons and people don’t want necros for dungeons. Part of it that conditions spec is underpowered while part of it is that many using necros, and casters in general, don’t know how to use them properly. Dungeon groups will sometimes ask what your profession is or outright say no necros. Or advertise explicitly what classes they want. If necros are so *kitten * OP then why don’t people use them in dungeons?

This statement says it all,

enzo.7182:

There is not enough condition removal, negative condition duration or skills to effectively deal with conditions right now.

It seems you want to stand there and be able to cleanse conditions indefinitely. Why should this be possible? Would you expect to be able to stand there and let a zerker warrior hack at you without taking damage? Of course not, because you understand that damage. Damage is damage, learn to deal with it, dodge your butt off, run away and heal, hide and let conditions expire, but stop trying to nerf an already horribly under powered attack. I run, hide and heal all the time, it’s better, typically faster and much more effective than going down. I don’t take armor damage that way and I’m usually back in the fight faster.

Pandabro.8743:

This is the problem:

PVE = Condition damage is crap. 2/3 conditions only have one stack so only one person can maintain them and it’s a crapshoot for who that person will be. Unless they change the stacking system (Which apparently they aren’t going to do because of server limitations?) they will always be crap.

The stacks are shared up to 25, but a condition spec necro with food can maintain upwards of 20 stacks of bleeding alone when solo. This is only possible against strong foes as it takes time to build that stack. Anything other than solo and condi necro damage goes down because they have to share those stacks with everyone and since pretty much every class causes bleeding this makes a condition build of any profession pretty weak. One on one damage is comparable and I might even say tips in favor of teh condition user. I’d go toe to toe with anyone of any class. In a group, especially a large group, condition speced players are nearly useless. The whole system has to be reworked so groups scale properly regardless of who’s in the group. Now content like dungeons, group composition SHOULD matter, but entire classes should not be excluded due to such a limiting damage system. And according to the notes they’ve lowered Necro DPS even more…sad…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates
“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 damage conditions that the 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 focus on sustaining themselves through the use of death shroud, health siphoning, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.”

This, plus the addition of Dire gear, they’re essentially forcing necro’s to become support tanks. Trust me, it doesn’t take much to put down a necro in carrion or rabid gear…even with the huge life pool, the lack of and real armor or toughness means a necro with 31k+ hp can still be easily 1-shot. The change to death shroud just makes us all the more squishy.

Where are the recipes for the armor though. Anyone have a URL?

LordByron.8369:

Playing the tp means you are profiting other players.

Aside being unethical (imho but its a long debate), its NOT a viable solution for players.

If all players started to flip the TP, we would just obtain a 30% loss for everyone.

In the current situation you just have few players profiting at other players cost (+ 30% loss totaly on other players).

that is why i hate TP so much.
The damage is way worse than the benefit for the Whole community…but few players at least are rich without Killing a mob….

Its also the ONLY form of FORCED pvp in this game.

I disagree on almost all of this. Every player has the option to put an offer in instead of paying the asking price. No one is exploited. I do both, depending on how time I have. Offers are preferable, but sometimes I just don’t want to wait. You mentioned 30% profit a couple times. This is at the high end and with a 15% loss on sales (5% is non-refundable) there is a hefty gold sink built in to the TP. So to gain 30% profit on top of the 15% loss…well, there just aren’t that many things with that much profit margin. 15% clear profit is a more reasonable expectation. Without this 15% tax there would be even more money in the economy and items in the TP would be even more expensive. A larger problem, IMO, is the gem to gold conversion. Now some of the staunch will argue that all of the gold people buy come from in game by people that convert gold to gems for sale. Of course, this is just another flipping transaction (More of a long term investment) and people have made tons of money flipping gems. My personal opinion is that the gem to gold conversion should be killed as it injects more money in to the economy than the gold sinks can handle and until I see numbers from ANet no one will convince me that the gem store does not inject enormous amounts of gold in the economy that causes huge inflation. Flippers with big money, certainly not me with a meager couple hundred gold, don’t like ascended because it’s going to take the focus away from big ticket flipping items such as precursors, legendaries, and many of the top end exotics, such as destroyer weapons and so many other things. In general, this should hopefully bring the prices down somewhat on such items as they become more difficult, at least temporarily, to move. Legendaries should never have been tradeable, but imagine how expensive precursors would be if they weren’t.

I’d like to see new whole set of “real” zones, starting zone, personal story, 4 or 5 new maps with DEs, renoun hearts, etc. based on a new race. Not quaggans or kodans or any of the stupid races, perhaps dwarves…I never played GW1, but were they in GW1?

Shockwave.1230:

I would be very disappointed if Gw2 had it’s level cap increased. It would be like ANet finding a loophole in order to continue with vertical power progression while not doing another tier of gear.

The problem they face is that they HAVE to increase the stats and level on the legendary weapons if they’re going to introduce a new top end tier since they are the ultimate and best weapons in the game. But what happens to all the other level 80 gear? What of Exotic and Ascended? Will a new tier be added between ascended and legendary? Will ascended get bumped to 90 and legendary to 100? It all spells bad news and will cause many people to leave the game. If they want to add another tier and bump the level to 100, their best option for player retention is to bump everyone currently in the game up and create a new tier on the bottom. This isn’t a shiny new game anymore and they can’t be running around alienating huge amounts of players or they will simply leave.

Flissy.4093:

Thief is the highest in an optimal group setting. Warrior being highest is such a common misconception, it’s just easier to achieve that high DPS. 1 Warrior is all you need (to take banners), a second is a “waste” of a slot and could be filled by a better profession.

Warcry.1596:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Max buffed, from best to worst:

Mesmer (Sw/Sw with 3 phantasms) = ~15k
Thief (D/D backstab) = ~13.5k
Elementalist (fire staff or LH) = ~13k
Guardian (GS+Sword) = ~11k
Necromancer (D/F+WH with all minions) = ~11k
Warrior (Axe+GS) = ~10k
Ranger (Sword and Feline pet) = ~9.5k
Engineer (Grenades) = ~9k

Sadly, Guang is known for being purely theoretical and those values are so off in practice. Take the Mesmer for example, he totally disregards the time to get 3 phantasms up (bosses are dead by then anyway), as well as any cleave/shatters they die from.

On the necro, D/F+WH, what’s that mean? Dagger / focus and warhorn? I’ve always though double daggers were highest DPS for necro. And you can’t have focus on main hand I don’t think. I’m a pure condition build, so have little DPS, but I am curious about other builds.

Astral Projections.7320:

I hope not. All the people who maxed out expensive exotic armor and weapons, some of whom got more than one set for different areas of the game, all will need to completely redo this. And I’m not even going to factor in the ascended stuff.

They need to stay at level 80. It would be heartbreaking to have to grind out more gear for no real reason.

And all the transmutation stones that will be needed. :/

I would leave the game before I regear.

Depends what you consider “fun”. Everyone has a different idea of fun. Some like grind, and farming, some like dungeons and others like exploration, while others still are in it for the money and rewards. I was in the same boat as you. I didn’t play from launch, but started mid-September (2012), so not long after. I played it A LOT up to the end of the November and after the loot nerfs in November, I gradually lost interest in it and stopped playing altogether perhaps mid-late February. Lack of rewards were just sucking the fun out of the game for me. I picked it back up again this fall when the Halloween event was released, primarily because I wanted to do the clock puzzle, being the only jumping puzzle I had not completed. I found new interest in playing the TP, found a friendly and active guild, and have even started leveling a new character. Oh, and rewards are marginally better than they were. But I think the new guild is the best thing I did to renew my interest.

I do believe an engineer does more than a necro, even if a necro is speced for DPS.

They might have said it, but I can’t see how they can do it without losing tons of players. I tell my kid I’m going to beat him all the time, doesn’t mean I’m going to do it.

They can’t. Their entire game structure, trait systems, weapon system, everything…would have to be adjusted. What about all the 80’s that already have max exo gear that they spend huge $$$ one. The only way they could do it and not have a ton of people leave the game would be to literally adjust everyone and all their gear up, essentially adding a new 1-20. So all 80’s go to 100, all 70’s go to 90, etc. It would be a massive redesign, just on the gear element alone. If they just raised the cap and didn’t adjust everyone, or even worse, only adjusted ascended and legendary, they would lose A LOT of players.

With ESO scheduled to come out in the spring, at least when I last looked, after ascended crafting, I wouldn’t expect to see any major game redesigns any time soon. They won’t risk alienating huge swathes of players, it’s just too risky on the dawn of ESO which arguably is the most anticipated MMO in the history of MMOs. Ultimately, I think it will fall flat and disappoint because many many people will be going in there expecting Skyrim as an MMO, which it won’t be, and can never be for so many reasons.

Personally, I don’t think there should be underwater legendaries.

2900 hours since launch, never had a single precursor drop. I think if I get your kind of “luck”, I might weep.

I’m only about 900 hours, but I think my reaction would be the same. I did get “The Hunter” drop from the karka chest, but sold it since it wasn’t one I could use. Kicking myself now, a year later, for not holding on to it. At 480g, it’s going for more than 3x what I sold it for. :/

The only way to “fix” RNG, especially in the mytic toilet, would be to weight it. If people are throwing rares in to the forge, ANet KNOWS they’re after a PC. There should be a max try limit and the odds of getting a PC should increase with each failed attempt. I know people who have gotten two PCs with less than 100 rares, so in ~25 tries. I know people who have tried 1000’s of rares and still have not gotten a PC. From everything I’ve read, the odds of getting a PC from 4 rares are about 900:1, but I know for a fact that there’s something wrong with the RNG in the forge.

I threw 62 rare staffs, plus the rares returned, in the other day and received 7 unnamed exotics back. Now it’s supposed to be random. This is what I got, in no particular order…

Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Shaman’s Etched Batch of Rage
Rampager’s Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Carrion Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Valkyrie Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)

So, 3 identical staves, 3 pearl quarterstaffs with no upgrades, 4 staves with superior sigil of rage. This from ~20 tries. If this is considered random…it’s broken.

I’ve seen similar things in other areas as well, on more than one occasion I’ve had rares drop within minutes of eachother and have similar stats, once, I had two identical rares drop within about 2 minutes, one from Jormag and another from just some random mob right after Jormag ended. With RNG, this is possible, but the frequency I’ve seen it points to larger issue, such as a bad seed. I’m not sure if it’s the case anymore, but it used to be that some people were just lucky and others were not and it was predictable to the point that it could be measured and tracked. Again, this points to a bad seed and/or buggy RNG.

I don’t like Stun and knockdown, or cripple, or any other control effect anymore than anyone else, but let’s be realistic, in the context of battle, they’re not unrealistic and I’ve never had problems with them in PvE. Sure some things use such attacks, like mosshearts use snare, some of the risen ion Orr use snare, blind and others and sure, sometimes you die because of it, but isn’t that kind of the point? What’s the use of an attack if you can’t use it to kill something? I don’t like them, but have never found them to be over the top or OP. All I see here are people who want to make yet another non-direct damage attack ineffective. I keep seeing the same argument about conditions in WvW. Conditions aren’t OP, in fact they’re miserably under powered in PvE, 90% of the problem in WvW are lazy players and max power builds not speced to handle conditions. Perhaps ANet should simply implement a god mode…that way everyone can go around beating on each other and no one dies. Ohhh, wait, that’s pretty much how it is now. You die, return to a wp, or get res’d, continue on…no one really dies. Getting “killed” is a minor inconvenience at worst. You might lose a bit of silver in repairs, but so what. Sometimes, there are attacks you can’t survive, and aren’t meant to, solo or in small groups, that’s just how GW2 is. WvW is zerg based. Whether that’s how it should be or was intended, it matters little. If you get separated from your zerg and are being pursued by a group of enemies, you should expect to die. WvW is team based.

I have a suggestion. Let’s make everyone in WvW and PvP a clone of each other, one class, all with the same skills and access to the same weapons and armor, all at the same level, AC, and HP, no magic, no special gear to increase stats, no AOE and no range other than conventional weapons such as bows, guns and siege. This would resolve so much of the whining we see on the forums…it would also make WvW incredibly boring. There is nothing wrong with any of the attacks in WvW at the moment.

Algreg.3629:

well, well.. “unjust”… Unjust would be: having the exact same build, character class and equipment and do differing damage. Is that in game? Or phrased in a pop culture like manner: In soviet russia, damage caps you!

Closer would be nice. As Ghostextechnica.3270, myself and others have pointed out the more direct damage users you add, the more damage is done, the more conditions users you add, any more than 2 really, the damage dealt remains the same and is essentially shared between all those dealing conditions. This is not balanced.

Gele.2048:

if they cap dmg im not gona play the game i wanna do crazy builds that i will crit for milions and u asking stupid things now CAP the dmg each class caped dmg we gona fight conditions all the time get real thac for single player games and its killing the progres that rpg shoud have

Man…use some punctuation…I’m not even sure what this means…“get real thac for single player games and its killing the progres that rpg shoud have”

A good part of the player base is already capped which causes a terrible imbalance in groups and is severely limiting to group composition…that’s what this thread is about. The only way to fix it is to change how the cap is implemented, or implement another on direct damage. Group play has to be balanced because it’s ridiculous as it is now.

Rezz.8019:

Warriors and thieves should do more damage than other professions.

Agreed, but with direct damage it keeps building, no matter how many you have…50…100 players can all cause damage all at the same time…no caps, no limitations. Condition damage is capped at 25 and a couple conditimancers can hit this easily. In a large battle like a dragon, where there are conceivably 50+ players and EVERYONE can cause conditions, those speced specifically for condition are punished for having very little DPS, while max power builds suffer no such caps. The caps should be removed.

I don’t think caps are the solution and I never did. They would only serve to frustrate max power users like they have with condition users, and would ultimately be a lot of hassle. That said, something has to be done to balance condition vs direct damage. The ideal solution, and I think probably the easiest to implement, would be to remove the all limitations on condition damage and give everyone their own stack. It also simplifies the math required to calculate the damage tremendously. I had suggested 15-20 in a different thread. This way, melee/DPS classes can get their occasional bleeds in, while a class speced for it, like a necromancer, can actually build and maintain an effective stack and contribute more effectively. This would also allow dungeon groups with multiple condition users to actually be successful. Again, this would only be really useful in PvE (Elites or better), dungeons and perhaps marginally better against keep lords in WvW.

The short of it, when certain professions can’t get dungeon groups because they can’t cause enough direct damage, something is broken that needs to be fixed.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Cap damage = indirectly buff conditions

You all must be PvErs, but burst is needed to take down bunkers.

The caps are of little concern in PvP or WvW, players go down much more readily regardless of the build and there is little time to build any stack of anything.

Belzebu.3912:

A bigger stack because 100% of the players cause direct damage no matter or what, so more people could enter in the stack.
Also cond damage have 5 ways of proc (bleed, poison, burn, torment, confusion), while in that scenario power would only proc once, so make the only way power cause damage have a higher stack cap would make up for the higher cond diversity.

I know such idea will never happen, but it is worth a good discussion

Other than maybe a necro conditimancer build, you can’t necessarily spec to do all 5 and certainly can’t maintain a stack on all 5. I would argue bleed, of all the conditions, should have a higher stack than 25 since, like direct damage, pretty much all builds and professions have the ability to cause bleeding. Just increasing this one cap would go a long way in fixing the problem in PvE and dungeons, while not affecting WvW or PvP at all, where I consider condition users to be just fine, if not a little OP, which is why ANet is seeming nerfing necros in PvP in the upcoming rebalance.

Molch.2078:

All I see is “Oh noez those people can do dungeons in 1/3 of the time I need, thats so unfair, QQ.”

Why do you want to destroy the way I want to play this game? Srsly, thats just as stupid as the suggestion to remove everything but berserkers gear from the game.

I don’t ask Anet to nerf your fun, please don’t ask them to kill mine.

Play the way you want, my friends, play the way you want.

The problem with your entire statement is that ANet severely hindered condition users, in PvE and dungeons only IMO, by implementing such a low stack, especially on bleeding when all professions can cause bleeding in one form or another. 10 condition users will hit that stack in no time and everything else is useless. Where 10 zerker builds suffer no such limitation on their attacks and cause vastly more damage. We’re not asking to destroy the way you want to play, we’re asking to have the builds somewhat balanced so there are more viable builds in the game, which they are far from at the moment.

Belzebu.3912:

Other solution I can see is make direct damage work like conditions, but with higher stack, like 50 or even higher, and stack on damage, but affected by power instead of condition damage, of course.
That way it is fair with both sides.

I suggested capping direct damage users on another thread a couple weeks ago.

In any case, how is that fair? Why should direct damage, which already causes more damage than conditions, get a bigger stack. That makes no sense whatsoever. I say make the stacks the same. It will also encourage more professional diversity because more builds will be much more viable.

OK, I needed to clean up some T5 mats so I crafted a bunch of staves and threw 62 rare staffs in to the forge, plus the rares that were returned. No Legend, no surprise there…but it did do something rather peculiar. I received 7 unnamed exotics for my efforts which is a little above average, so that’s nice, but…3 of them were identical “Dire Orian Staff of Rage” and 3 of them were Pearl Quarterstaffs of different types. It really doesn’t seem very random given the huge library of exotic staves out there, or it’s worst RNG in the world.

Brindled.2179:

Also, their nerfing hasn’t stopped the bots. I’ve been to several different servers and seen the same type of looping bots running through Cursed Shores.

Personally, I never thought the nerfs or DR were there to stop the bots. It just never felt as though it was targeted at the bots. How hard would it be to write some scripts to analyze player movement for patterns and flag them as “suspect”, especially teleporting bots which should be dead simple to identify on the server end? Not hard. The bots are nothing more than a guise to justify the use of DR and loot nerfs to heavily time gate the acquisition of gear. Back when there were A LOT of bots, (Anyone around along enough remembers the groups of naked rangers with bears) and there’s nothing now compared to what it used to be, they did two things. They kept stock in the TP very high and prices down, good for players, bad for ANet and the gem store. When all the bot accounts were killed, you could watch daily as the prices spun out of control. I wish I’d have had enough foresight to buy a bunch of stuff and just sit on it for a year. I’d be rich now. Some things, like some of the T6 mats have increased 1000’s of percent since before the big bot killoff. The other thing bots did was they took the gold they made and sold it to players for about 1/2 of what ANet wanted for the same amount…not really good for anyone for a number of reasons. But what it boiled down to, people weren’t using the gem store. The problem ANet faced was they needed the bots to justify the DR and crappy loot, but they needed to get rid of them to get people to buy gems. That brings us to today where we have a small handful of bots, but not enough to really cause any damage.

Orr used to be VERY profitable, which is why they nerfed it in to the ground. Sadly, the zones are now nearly as dead as their inhabitants. I’ve seen the ground pounders in several zones, including Orr, but with Wintersday just around the bend, when can we feasibly see any real explanation of them? Probably not until mid to late January.

Storm of the Ages.9076:

Apparently someone took a video of 3 of killing a champ without them and told the others they would post it on these forums in hopes that the dev would ban us or our guilds would kick us.

LOL Now that is funny. Of course, the champ trains are borderline breaking the rules and many bot accounts have been banned for doing exactly the same thing and the 3 who did the champ out of turn are more playing as the game is intended. For me, I tend to play with the train simply because it’s faster and the faster I get dailies done, the faster I can play more meaningful content. But I wouldn’t think twice about jumping on a champ in the middle of the train if I were in a hurry and the train just waiting somewhere. Then let then warn me of video and whatever, then then get blocked, or if I’m in a particularly bad mood, they get reported for threatening me.

Henri Blanche.8276:

And I recall a particularly nice moment where a few folks at Frostgorge Sound politely asked the train to skip the Quaggan so that they could tackle it on their own. There was a universal response of approval and folks cheered them on and did not interfere.

Awesome!!

The big draw to the queensdale train is the karma. WvW is the only other “efficient” way to farm karma, and that is hit or miss.

Imagi.4561:

Blacklight.2871:

Hard to believe there are people who embrace the stripping away of their freedom, but of course, it’s usually not THEIR freedom at stake, but someone else’s.

“Freedom”? Oh, please. You make the champion train sound like a victim march.

When people who kill champions outside of the zerg are no longer subject to public shaming for being “selfish” and “rude”, I’ll be willing to consider their “freedom” as an actual topic of debate.

It’s a game, if someone says something you don’t like, block them and ignore them. It’s not like they can do anything other than badmouth you. :/

What it all comes down to is a no win situation. You have two options

• If you make champs rewarding, people will farm them, no matter if they’re on one map or all over Tyria…just like world bosses. Farmers can get protective of their targets and be downright nasty to those who don’t play ball…solution…ignore them and block them. You also end up with those who feel farmers are ruining the game. As we see in this thread.
• Some of us who have been around long enough, have already seen the result of making champions, or any hard content, unrewarding. There was a LONG time, at least 5 months, where champs rarely dropped anything, at all…world bosses and temples rarely returned anything better than blue. All this serves is to irritate people and it had gotten so bad by, say, March (2013) that the mere mention of doing a champion was enough to bring down the wrath of people on map chat. Quite often the result was the same at the mention of doing temples. It had gotten to a point where “champion” was almost a bad word.

The problem is that people were getting legendaries too quickly and not spending enough in the gem store. So, they heavily nerfed all areas of the game, killed over 35000 bot accounts, which were largely feeding the trading post and helping to keep prices low, and introduced fractals to try and placate the hardcore. The problem was that GW2 was heavily marketed specifically to a casual friendly crowd and after the November 2012 loot nerfs it was no long casual friendly…not by a long shot. You had to grind incessantly to even get lowbie green gear. I know at least one person who demanded a refund under the pretense of false advertizing and got his money back.

For anyone who didn’t play at that time, it’s hard to comprehend just how bad the loot drops had become and how hard ANet was trying to make it impossible to make any gold in game (Under the false pretense of botters), while at the same time prices in the TP were skyrocketing between normal inflation and the lack of bots supplying stock. First time I bought a Powerful Venom Sac it was 1s95c, it’s now 31s90c, yet, at the time, they claimed to have increased the drop rate for T6 mats. ANet was facing a huge PR issue. Threads were popping up on their forums, Reddit and scene sites about how bad GW2 was becoming. I remember one thread on this forum that was over 30 pages before ANet killed it with little more than a vague acknowledgement and had over 44000 views. Ultimately, it was a terrible PR fiasco which angered a great many people.

They were left with a choice, either to try and wait out those who were complaining, or to do something about it. For a long time their choice was apparently to wait and ignore. I’m not sure when that changed, certainly not by the end of March when I stopped playing, but I suspect they were seeing many people leaving the game and with summer coming, already down time for many gamers, they had to do something about it or risk losing people permanently. It’s not the hard-core MMO players who are going to leave over bad loot, they’re used to it, it’s the casual players, many of whom this is their first MMO. It’s also the casual players who are much more likely to spend money in the gem store.

Relshdan.6854:

timmyf.1490:

Here’s an alternate question… do we really want the following actions to be one of the most rewarding ways to play Guild Wars 2:

1) Waypoint
2) Run to champ spawn point
3) When champ spawns, auto-attack with no fear of failure
4) Repeat

I’m not opposed to rewarding ways to play the game. Or even lazy, repetitive ways to play the game. I do tend to think it’s a mistake for the laziest, most repetitive way to also be one of the most rewarding ways.

it shouldn’t matter to you if you are playing to have fun. play what you enjoy.

what you really are asking for is to be e-rewarded fairly.
you could make champ rewards a once-a-day thing (i personally wouldn’t mind this), but they will still be a more efficiently profitable activity than more difficult/time consuming content……the train would simply move from map to map, instead of staying in one map. if you remove champ rewards altogether, you get what we had before the champ reward patch: empty maps and lonely champ events.

Ohh, I remember those days. People could get downright nasty if you even suggested doing a champ in map-chat.

Mesket.5728:

Lévis.5489:

Mesket.5728:

You kill a champ: 20 secs = 1 exotic bag
You complete an event: 5 minutes? = 1 silver.

There goes your Orr.

If events on high level maps, spawning lvl 84 vets and elites rewarded as much as killing a lvl 15 champ people would go more often to those maps.

The extremely low RNG to get a worthy (above a silver) drop from a lvl 84 NPC make it pointless to go there.

Also, more chained events and less time gated events are needed…. reward more and more as you progress through a chain of events instead of waiting for a timer and spam 1. One leads to immersion and helps the game environment, the other destroys it.

Most Orrian events spawn 3-4 + champs when there is enough people. You can champ train in between events, too.

Point being?

Orr is fine because it has lvl 84 champs with a lvl 15 champ reward? and some events as well?

Forget what I said then… Orr is fine! its a harder Queensdale so no change is needed…

This^^^^This
It’s harder and slower than Queens or FS, for less reward in the same amount of time…this is why no one is doing it. It’s also more difficult to get around since waypoints are quite often contested.

Neural.1824:

Exxcalibur.6203:

remove the Queens zerg, in order to force change and diversity.

Because forcing people to do things will result in them enjoying it. Yeah, that’ll go over swell.

[sarcasm]Worked so well in Orr that now no one goes there.[/sarcasm]

Facepunch.5710:

UrMom.4205:

I’ve never understood why people run the queensdale train instead of the frostgorge train. Whenever I run the frostgorge train i get significantly better loot. Is there a real logical reason to do the queensdale over frostgorge? serious question.

The main reason I have chosen QD over FG in the past is that I’m on an alt and using the QD train to level at the same time as getting my daily done.

As far as level 80 toons who do QD, I can only assume it’s because the QD train is a lot easier to keep up with than the FG train is. Some people just want that chillax factor.

The queens train rewards karma as well as group event recognition. The FS train does not.

fourhim.3584:

hihey.1075:

Do you really think that NEW players would be able to kill a champ in Queensdale champ train?

If there were enough new players, yes they could. Why would they not be able to? Are you saying they are deliberately designed to be too strong for several level 15 characters to take down?

Two words…“Fire Elemental”. Starting characters have no chance at this event, yet there it is in a starting area…You need 80’s to take this down. Yes, it’s a world boss, but to say ANet would not include content in a starting area that starting players could not do is wrong.

cesmode.4257:

TainoFuerte.8136:

So… what’s going to happen now? Once “everyone” or the “hardcores” or whomever finishes all their ascended gear… what then? Will there be “nothing to do”, just like it was at release when everyone “got their exotics and left”?

What is Arenanet going to do to keep these people playing?

I asked this question already in the thread. I wonder too, what is next. Once we all have ascended weapons and gear, and its a year from now…will they put in ascended runes and sigils? What then? Dare they make ascended versions of abilities and utility skills? What happens when we are at the top of Ascended Mountain? Will people complain, and arenanet reveal some other bogus non sense claiming it was part of the plan? Time will tell.

At some point, they’re actually have to create some real substantial content and not so much the LS stuff we’ve seen.

Seveleniumus.5973:

Leamas.5803:

I can see it now…in 6 months…dungeon group…“LF2M – MUST have ascended gear!!” In a year it will be the norm.

Accessories already been there for that long, didn’t see any such posts yet.

Ya, I suppose, without the ability to inspect, how would they know. I’ve seen it happen with legendary weapons but it’s much more obvious with them.

But, of course, they could make you link them in to chat as a check.

I don’t know, I’ll sometimes just roam queens for quick dailies, the train doesn’t seem to be having any negative effect. I still see people around. Lobie area are always fairly low populated, even at the best of times. I do the champ train occasionally, it’s a great way to farm karma or events when you only have 15 or 20 minutes to play. Other than karma from the Queens train, it’s not like you get a great deal of anything worth anything from the trains anymore. I don’t bother with the FS train anymore other than I try to run it a bit every day to get the troll chest for the empy. You tend spend more on salvage kits and wp fees than you make.

Let’s be honest, if it weren’t for the champ trains, other than map completion, what other reason do 80’s have to be in Queens, none. The train brings people in if anything…just ignore map chat.

I can see it now…in 6 months…dungeon group…“LF2M – MUST have ascended gear!!” In a year it will be the norm.

There are no bots compared to a year ago. Literally, over night, one fateful day, ~35000 bot accounts were nixed all at once. Not surprisingly, prices in the trading post started to spiral up at about the same time.

Have they released stats or recipes yet?

Gasoline.2570:

It’s interesting to note how far they’ve gone to nerf the loot there too. Why can’t we have a farmable 80 zone? Frostgorge barely counts, it’s just a champ train. No endgame event cycles that reward you with items you need to get an eventual legendary or skins that require quite a bit of mats.

Two words…“gem” “store”. They don’t want anything in the game to be farmable, they want you to buy gems and they don’t want people concentrating in certain areas. I wonder how long it will be before they kill the champ trains.

The short of it is, giving good rewards in game is counter to people buying gems and before the November 2012 world loot nerf, Orr was simply too profitable. After the nerf, people stayed and farmed events for heavy moldy bags…still too profitable, so they ruined the events. VIOLA!!! Orr is a ghost town and still doesn’t seem to have even remotely recovered other than weekly temple runs some servers do. ANet did it, and it was a conscious effort to get people out of Orr by making it so inhospitable and unprofitable that there was no point to be there.

I’d be willing to bet the only reason they’ve not killed the champ trains yet is that they have a lot time/money invested in to ascended gear and a lot of resistance to the vertical progression from the player community. They want people actually using it, so they’re essentially giving mats away for pretty much free, though getting the craft to 500 is quite expensive. These are essentially T7 mats and should be even more difficult to get than T6, which drop so infrequently it’s stupid, but they’re pretty much giving the ascended mats away. Once ascended gear takes a foothold, the champ trains will be killed in some way and it’ll be back to the normal grind.

Carrion Winged Headpiece (This is literally a 4s item from the TP and I have yet to see something superior or more elegant on an Asura. Initially it was to cover the green ribbons that I can’t change the color of, but I actually really like it and have transmuted 3 times to maintain the look.)

Hell Vambraces

Jatoro’s everything else.

Too bad it looks ridiculous on an Asura. :/ I’ll stick with my Winged Headpiece transmuted over Jatoro’s Mask. Both I like, and are the only two I’ve found that I liked, but alas can only have one. The headpiece wins because covers the green ribbons in my hair that don’t match my color scheme. Not that I’m bitter, but I’m NOT paying for a hair style kit just to change the color of the ribbons. Actually, I find most of the light armor headwear / masks look terrible on Asura. I really wish they would change the ribbon color as part of the wardrobe.

Nijjion.2069:

If bleeds stack were to go to 20 the condition damage needs to be buffed as at to even 25 bleeds to a lot less dps and direct damage.

I was actually talking about personal stacks of 20 (as just an arbitrary number, even 15), not a shared stack in any way. Only a handful of builds can maintain more than 10 at a time on their own anyway, so 20 should be sufficient for even the most extreme CD builds. But, like you said, something has to be done to balance group play since as it stands it heavily favors power builds.

Crovax.7854:

Don’t worry. For grinding out Wintersday achievements you will get a backskin that you will never use because it’s a ‘one time only’. No real money required

Leamas.5803:

The short of it is that in-game rewards do not get people to buy gems. ANet needs money to build content, that money comes largely from the gem store.

Except the money they make goes into the development of other games.

In part, for sure.

The short of it is that in-game rewards do not get people to buy gems. ANet needs money to build content, that money comes largely from the gem store.