Guild Wars 2

I check the 1st 5 pages and see only 1 thread about Tengu, and that one is actually about any potential payable race.

So what’s your problem?

So you think catnip is to blame? Or something harder? We may have to call some Peacemakers up in here. . .

reikken.4961:

It’s fine as is. It encourages people to populate the lower level maps a bit.

I don’t think anyone’s asking to have all mithril replaced in high level zones (well, some are but I don’t agree with them) but it does put a hard throttle on certain progress. Not to mention, I find myself vendoring the high level materials when I cap out my storage and don’t feel like hitting LA or the airship quite yet.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a gathering mastery or salvaging mastery that gave you a chance of getting lower level material (toggle-able to your needs) among other exclusive perks you can pick from?

No one made a Tonton joke?

Well what was your character names?

A character’s look is only part of what others see and can change the tone of everything they see.

I occasionally get annoyed with what people name their characters, and depending on my mood at the time, I may even drop team.

And the reverse option would be putting out an expansion full of either more of the same stuff or stuff that is irrelevant and few people would want to bother with it and no one will buy it and thus have been a waste of time and money making it.

But I feel the OP’s issues lie with core spec balance not “pay-2-win” mentality. So you could continue whining about stuff and waste your time or you can suggest changes and improvements to the core specs…and waste your time.

I guess it IS just easier to whine about stuff but far less entertaining.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Leo G.4501:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The black feather wings are a backpack. This is not.

The bubble glider isn’t a backpack but it exists.

This just seems like a no-brainer suggestion if it hasn’t already been suggested many times before.

You’re right, the bubble glider isn’t a backpack.The bubble glider is a GLIDER and it doesn’t require a reworking of the animation.

Completely misses the point.

Perhaps you’re missing the point? This is, more or less, suggesting the magic carpet (and the magic broom) be available as a glider skin.

Animation reworking is irrelevant since I doubt anyone is suggesting how easy or difficult this would be to implement. Frankly, trying to imply reworking animations for this is overstepping your bounds. You’re only guessing what effort is required.

On topic, I never bothered with these toys because they just don’t suit me but as a glider skin? That’s very different and I’d definitely buy that skin.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

The black feather wings are a backpack. This is not.

The bubble glider isn’t a backpack but it exists.

This just seems like a no-brainer suggestion if it hasn’t already been suggested many times before.

I just checked the gem store >_>

Warrior is suppose to encompass the Simple Fighter motif. Wolverine is a rather simplistic fighter considering his main features are undefendable melee (adamantium claws + trained combat), physically hardy (adamantium skeleton) and a survivor (regen factor). IMO, that is what a warrior is.

The thing Warrior needs to be is MORE types of simple fighter. Think The Thing, Colossus, The Hulk, Iron Fist or even The Punisher. These are all guys who pretty much say “I’m gonna hurt you real bad and there’s nothing you can do about it”, they just do it in slightly different ways.

Now where we’d start diverging from the normal warrior motif is when incorporating other MMO roles like healer and utility. Tanking comes with the territory of being a high profile “I’m gonna hurt you” archetype.

…PS, I sure miss CoH…Warrior should be honored to join the ranks of Regen Scrapper.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

You misunderstand me. I already like underwater combat, even with the issues. I am as sure as you that if it were simply fixed to work as designed (never mind improved), more people would enjoy it.

Despite that, simply fixing UW combat (never mind making it ‘good’ for most people) would be incredibly expensive. It means basically balancing yet another game mode (after PvE, Fractals, Raids, sPvP, & WvW), using the identical traits as terrestrial PvE.

Well, I agree that it’d be expensive to fix but it’s not quite the perfect analogy cutting UW as a whole other game mode. UW is a part of the core game, not a segmented portion like Fractals are to WvW or Raids are to PvP.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

And even though I also agree with you that ANet can chew gum and tie a shoe at the same time, there remain many, many other things that would improve the game for more people more often.

ANet works on a bunch of projects at any given time. Of those, some can be closed and resources re-allocated — but most cannot, because they are far along and/or the repercussions of changing them would be enormous (see: indefinitely postponing new legendaries). In practical terms, that means only a tiny fraction of folks that can be moved around easily. Right now, just consider the projects we know about, ANet is already working on WvW, on Raids, on Expac 3 (although — I hope — probably fewer people than 2 months ago), on LS3, on skills balance generally, on improving the overall experience for HoT, on adventures, on fixing legendary journeys, and so on.

I wouldn’t move people away from any of those to work on underwater combat.

Which is why I bring up this thread in the first place. It seems many people write off UW as half-kittened, unliked/unwanted, fine-as-is-but-not-good or just plain crap therefore further push UW aside as allocating more resources would seem a waste of time. I just see that line of thinking as a self-fulfilling prophecy: it sucks because it needs attention, it’d be a waste of resources to make it better therefore it will suck.

And lastly, I would assume that “skill balance generally” would encompass UW skills as well. Perhaps we shouldn’t consider UW combat as a new game mode but instead just different sets of skills?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr sure, ANet can work on lots of things. Even then, underwater is in the bottom half of my wish list. And that’s coming from someone who enjoys UW combat, even with all its current faults.

Understandable. But in the end it’s up to Anet to decide what gets attention or not. I just hope they haven’t adopted the same mentality the forums has toward those skills. There are people who enjoy UW combat so if attention is paid it will definitely be appreciated.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

In short, there’s nothing wrong with the combat or the mechanics. The problem is that it’s still incomplete.

Although I do like u/w combat, I hope ANet doesn’t work on it for a while — plenty of other stuff to work, that impacts more people more often.

I feel this is probably the largest problem with UW combat. Players are apprehensive about effort being put toward improving it. Players feel, if time and resources are put into it, it directly draws away from a specific feature they want implemented. While it’s true that if they’re working on one thing, it’ll take workers from working on other things at the same time, that doesn’t mean the entire team cannot work on multiple improvements.

I was curious if players generally disliked UW or simply didn’t like the issues that plague it, like the lack of skills, sigil stack buff loss, etc. Just fixing some of the simple things may be a large enough improvement to make UW less disliked. If enough ground is made with the improvements, the next step could be adding more features and content to UW.

So would that be a bad goal? And if so, why is that? What content takes priority?

Randulf.7614:

It’s clearly not been well balanced though. Ele and warrior work really well UW as you say. Now try something like thief – it has so little of which makes the class what it is.

I have and granted, it’s not as strong as Ele, it does have that interesting block>counter spam skill.

penelopehannibal.8947:

The only thing I think is wrong with underwater combat is the fact that it’s a 3-D environment, with only 2-dimensional attacks. You can still sort of cleave enemies with a spear, for example, but it only seems mostly towards enemies in front of you, rather than around you, especially the Z-Axis.

So perhaps the devs could update the basic cleave skills to expand their area higher and lower? Granted they could probably update a lot of the area of skills to include more spheres or expanded disks/partial disks.

Agemnon.4608:

For a complete revamp (at least in whatever new hypothetical maps for that expansion) I suggested switching to a first person shooter mode (as in a whole other genre’s mechanics) for underwater or possibly even a railed shooter during part of the meta boss battle. The “underwater” expansion I proposed in earlier threads would mostly be on 16th century Caribbean inspired tropical archipelagos with maybe some volcanic islands. Each map in that expansion would have to be unique in some way but boating or surfing would be a common theme for travel such as a hurricane mastery to navigate in those conditions.

Boating/surfing could even be brought to main game Tyria and would simply be faster swimming in those maps. And who can forget quaggans? The krait are a slaver race and that should be explored further as there are many dynamic events where you have to stop their slaving. That I can see tie into a water expansion. That and lots of puzzle like areas like the base game story mode quest with the Largos Lady. Even if actual combat won’t be in water (out of respect for its lack of popularity, that or with revamped FPS mechanics I mentioned earlier) areas the puzzle solving and swimming part are fun.

That’s also another possibility, changing some of the core parts of UW or add features that amend to UW. Having surfing/windsurfing/etc to traverse the surface in new ways or skills with breaking leaps when done close enough to the surface. I personally think altered physics for UW wouldn’t be a bad thing. Make land combat and UW feel more distinct rather than UW just being a limited version of land combat.

Just curious about people’s issues with underwater. I never had an issue with it. It’s always worked well enough for my mesmer, warrior, ele and ranger. Didn’t play my engineer enough to get a feel for her…

But yeah, just curious why you hate underwater combat beyond just utility skills being unavailable.

Vayne.8563:

The real answer is to join a guild. Expecting complete strangers to do low level fractals to help you out, when they might have limited time or other goals is more like asking for someone to do something for your benefit alone.

But being in the right guild, a helpful guild, is different, because you’re just hanging out with friends, which is always fun.

I will often help guildies with low level fractals. I never pug low level fractals.

As an exclusive PUGer, I’d suggest chilling the kitten out and just do you. If you really want to be helpful to the OP, why not invite them to your Guild and help? Your advice didn’t seem so half hearted until that last part which pretty much brushes most new players aside.

I’m going to go against the grain here and play devil’s advocate on the subject:

To me, it just doesn’t really fit GW to have custom skill looks outside of physical character model animations. I feel this way because the game’s lore seems to bridge us all together using its defined palette and story. Tyria is more defined and concrete with how we see it or how things occur and doesn’t do well allowing us the player to define or explain things about our characters.

So you want green Spirit Weapons for your Guardian. Okay, why? And how? Now if we simply don’t care about lore or story, then the “why” is because we want in and the “how” is just program it in. But from a lore standpoint, magic has a school and those schools have color. It’s very different from a game like CO or CoH where we define every aspect of our character, from what race they are, their home of origin all the way down to the source of their powers but that’s just not the case here.

Oddly enough, I still try to utilize “my own explanations” for my characters but yeah, I still try to work it into the lore of the game (like my Asura Warrior having the strength of a Norn because he was exposed to chaos magic from the Thaumanova reactor accident).

Mea.5491:

Ashen.2907:

This is something that I love in CO, and would be delighted to see here.

Exactly!!! Hello fellow CO player! -high fives- Edit: Yes, Champions Online!

Champions Online? That garbage? Ain’t nobody care bout that :p

TheMagickDoll.7594:

I miss being able to color my powers. I could do it in city of heroes (which still had a lot of far better game systems then current MMOs, still bitter about what happened, but that is another story), warframe, etc. The fact we have spend charges to change armor looks still annoys me.

But this person! Knows what they’re talkin’ about.

Oddly enough though, I actually favor how Blade and Soul handled their cosmetic/armor systems. Similar to CoH, they disassociate gear and cosmetics completely so you can be free to upgrade your stats, skills and weapons and keep your same look or change your outfit every day and not need to fiddle with cosmetic change tokens/charges to do it. Even though there isn’t much mix-and-match to make unique looks in BnS, the outfits look decently detailed and unique from each other. They just need to give the option to dye said outfit.

Sausagefest? That sounds like something different and possibly explicit.

Do you mean Meatoberfest?

Agemnon.4608:

Zephyria.6103:

polearms would be great…but my warrior hankers for a greataxe more.

I think greataxe can work as a greatsword or hammer skin. So not its own weapon type but a skin.

It would depend if you could make such a weapon unique and interesting.

I could possibly see a Greataxe type weapon having a couple of moderate AoE skills + debilitating conditions but high damage/slow activating Single-target burst damage. If it was a high damage AoE type of weapons it would be too similar to Greatsword. If it had high CC it would be too similar to Hammer.

So thusly, it would depend on if the weapon could be made to be unique and if the players would accept what type of gameplay it could offer.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Endless Soul.5178:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Sounds reasonable. He was Eir’s heir and when he lost his Eir he lost his hair. He is now Eir’s hairless heir. The next story line will have Eir’s hairless heir looking for a hare so the hare can be Eir’s hairless heir’s hare.

What a Eir raising tale!

If Zhaitan were still around, things could get really Eir-raising!

Spoil-Eir warning:

Now Zhaitan is really spinning in his grave.

…so what I’m getting from all this is, if I’m understanding you right is…

…bikini armor? I’ll take it, so long as female Charr can wear it.

I kind of wish these types of bugs were just quirks of the various weapons to just give them more flavor when combined with certain traits. . .

Although 6 condi cleanse by itself without anyother traits is a bit much.

Ardid.7203:

I like the idea, and I would LOVE to have 5 different spec mechanics to choose (Engie will at least gain 1 new weapon, to have 1 for every spec, wich would be awesome), but I think it is impractical.

If well done, it would be like adding 5 new elite spec to every proffession. So it would imply tons and tons of work, not only creating the new mechanics, but balancing them.

If done wrong, they would be boring or broken… Various actual Elite Specs already suffer from that. Multiply that by 5 times.

Yeah, it certainly might be like adding 5 new elite specs per profession and yeah it would be a lot of extra work but things like this shouldn’t be viewed as entry costs to implement, simply disadvantages IF implemented. Beyond having pros and cons like that, it should be up to the devs if allocating resources for something should be worthwhile or not.

PopeUrban.2578:

On the one hand, it would make a lot of sense from the mechanics side of things if the “core mechanic” line was a specialization.

This would allow massive changes in the resource mechanics of professions through elite specs, imagine completely replacing thief initiative or warrior rage. This could only work if only one trait line directly influenced that system. You’d have Trickery for thieves being the only line that modified/addressed initiative for instance, so that you could swap it out with another mechanic with, say, “gunslinger” and “ammo” in stead.

However!

The classes aren’t really designed this way. Most classes have their core mechanic altered or modified by multiple lines. in order to really get a good, balanced version of “core line as an elite spec” you’d have to massively rework almost every trait line in the game to support that system.

Well, you’re sort of over reaching the idea a bit. Consider Base Thief vs Daredevil. It doesn’t swap Initiative for anything, it just adds an extra dodge + some skills. Prospecting specs don’t have to completely replace anything, just add a dimension or perk.

I’d say such an idea should have a lean on enhancing specific utilities as well, like Thief Shadow Arts Specialization could enhance Venoms in some way (like working similar to Mantras so preparing your venoms allow you to reapply them several times or something) while Trickery Specialization could give you 2 more ‘steal slots’ instead.

Never say ‘adorbs’ ever again. And don’t you dare put a ‘totes’ anywhere near it >:o

Einlanzer.1627:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

One additional problem I’ve thought of is the matter of scaling. If a substantial portion of a new expansion is leveling maps, then those maps can’t have mobs that give a level 80 with full exotics/ascended gear, all skills and full trait lines the same sort of challenge that a leveling person with crap gear and some skills and traits will have.

If full level 80s try to do events with low levels in leveling maps, they end up roflstomping the mobs/events and the low levels can barely tag the mobs (as seen by what happens when you mix low levels and large numbers of max geared players during event dailies). In addition, the high level players can to get to events/mobs faster, either because of speed boosts or already having the waypoints. It’s one thing to have the occasional level 80 in with the low levels. It’s another to have a large population of high levels trying to do the new content alongside the new people. The new players are going to be frustrated when they can’t tag mobs and can’t get to events because the high levels are doing it all and the max levels will be frustrated because everything is so easy.

TL:DR Because the leveling maps will have to be set for how weak the new people are, that means they can’t be harder in difficulty than vanilla maps. That means a substantial part of new expansions will be trivial for max level players.

Super-challenging content in the open world shouldn’t be the norm anyway. It’s okay to do it with the occasional map, but not okay to do it with all maps or even the majority of maps.

Exactly. Not every piece of content added needs to be tailor made and advertised as try-hard and the next big threat. There shouldn’t be a rush to get to the end but it seems many players are so flustered about resource economy that everything must aim to r reach the end-story. I think there’s time for world enrichment as well.

Ashen.2907:

This question assumes there is a problem that the OP’s suggestion will solve. Others don’t believe that the suggestion serves such a purpose. There is no solution because the suggestion has no bearing on the hypothetical problem.

If someone started a thread suggesting that we needed to change the name of the Easter holiday to chocolate bunny day in order to get new people to buy into GW2’s next expansion, what solution or positives would one be expected to provide? This example is comparable to the OP’s suggestion, IMO, because neither is reasonably remotely likely to have the intended effect.

To clarify, I would be interested in a new 1-80 path, but it would be meaningless to someone for whom the existing leveling paths are all bright, shiny, and new.

Imo, having more 1-80 paths goes hand in hand with enticing older and newer players. You’re bringing together older and newer players as well as enriching the replay value for both. There’s also the matter of polish. Imagine if the amount of effort put into making the newest maps had been applied to the first ones.

But the disconnect from our perspectives here likely stems from that term “story path”. Introducing more paths and not just branches can make the newer players feel like they are apart of what is going on now vs catching up on old content.

I’m sure we all could expound on negatives and possible problems with ideas. That’s easy.

So when are we going to start discussing positives and possible solutions (because I already have multiple for the issues you just brought up)?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Leo G.4501:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ANet is giving everyone who buys the game plus HoT a free level 80 boost. Since the HoT will be folded into each expansion after this, that means all new players who buy the game+expansion from now on will get the free level 80 boost. This will allow them to jump right into the expansion if they desire or play on the old maps, as they please. So setting up a series of expansion leveling maps is made unnecessary by this item.

Whatever happened to just making a vibrant distinct world to explore? And who says it all has to be in a specific bracket of levels? And this whole “expansion must be level 80+ or bust” mentality makes even less sense with the whole dynamic leveling system. For any level 80 player, the scale of the zone map doesn’t matter.

The fact that ANet is handing out a level 80 to all purchasers of an expansion indicates to me that this is the way that they are giving new players immediate access to new expansions. This way they don’t have to make a series of leveling maps but can go straight into making level 80 maps with harder mobs. This allows the new player to jump into the expansion or not as he pleases.

Correlating to what is happening isn’t going to satisfy what should happen.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ANet is giving everyone who buys the game plus HoT a free level 80 boost. Since the HoT will be folded into each expansion after this, that means all new players who buy the game+expansion from now on will get the free level 80 boost. This will allow them to jump right into the expansion if they desire or play on the old maps, as they please. So setting up a series of expansion leveling maps is made unnecessary by this item.

Whatever happened to just making a vibrant distinct world to explore? And who says it all has to be in a specific bracket of levels? And this whole “expansion must be level 80+ or bust” mentality makes even less sense with the whole dynamic leveling system. For any level 80 player, the scale of the zone map doesn’t matter.

Jeebus, this took me since yesterday to fix. But yeah, I downloaded the installer from this site, renamed the GW2Setup.exe file to GW2.exe and after multiple attempts, the patch downloaded and I can log in.

Anet, fix this ASAP.

The icing on top of this update would have been them officially announcing they are working on Tengu as a playable race.

They don’t have to give us teasers or a due date, just a word.

Firstly, I don’t really agree with your lore reasoning about the core specs. Who are you to say someone can’t be disciplined as well as someone who utilizes wrath when the moment arises? Or that the berserker is losing control at all and not using extreme discipline to channel his rage for specialized purposes? Not only that but this line of thought falls completely flat for practically every other profession like necro, mesmer and ele which would have no qualms using arcane of any other element with tempest or being a duelist or inspirational or chaotic with chrono.

That being said, the base premise of the idea has merit. Not only is it rather messed up that the core specs are overshadowed in many ways by the elite specs but the game does lack a spark of variety in builds.

So how would you change this, OP? You didn’t really post any concrete suggestions to being the discussion.

If I were making a suggestion for this it would go something like this:
- a distinction between “Specialization” and “Trait Generalization”. At any given time, from the point you unlock traits, you must have 1 Specialization. After that, you can have 2 trait gens.
- your first choice in traits then becomes your Specialization. When elite specs unlock, they are only usable as a Specialization, not a trait Generalization.
- trait gens work like the core specs now. Specializations work like elite specs now with some differences.
- elite specs are different because they unlock weapons and new utilities as well as profession mechanics. Regular specializations offer enhanced versions of utilities and profession mechanics.

For example, if you specialize in Tactics as a warrior, not only do your banners last longer but you get unique banner effects that can stack with other non-tactics spec banners and their burst skills are replaced with combo skills don’t spend adrenaline, but instead builds it so you can perform a powerful supportive action at the end of the combo.

If I weren’t on my phone I could elaborates and brainstorm more ideas but what do you think should happen?

Not gonna lie, I’m a bit miffed.

I liked rifle even before the elite spec (although I knew it was underperforming) and when berserker came out, it brought fun to the build. Granted, Gunflame needed a nerf, I think they just took all the fun out of this weapon.

Why doesn’t it pierce while every other skill pierces by default? And if you take away the pierce, why nerf the damage? They should have just fixed the bug of the skill hitting twice and either:
1. Remove the piercing and raise the base damage.
2. Lower the damage but keep the piercing to retain weapon continuity.

Haven’t read the post but from experience:

I had fun leveling every profession and learning their style…except for Mesmer. Mesmer shines best once it gets its traits and is the dimmest gem without traits. It’s satisfying once you learn the profession’s quirks and unlock its potential but without that potential being available, it’s more of a pain than a pleasure.

~reads title~
You’re in love.
~reads thread~
I was just kidding :p

Blaeys.3102:

It takes 2-3 seconds to go to the reddit subforum.

If that channel already exists – and it has the tools needed to make a back and forth discussion more easily than the forums do, why in the world would ANet not use reddit – or spend money/time/resources to change these forums?

Is it really such a hardship on people to hop over to reddit – especially when they give you a notice and a link on this site to make it easier?

Not to mention, if Anet goes out of their way to morph the official forums into a format more easily usable for Q&As, there will be a deluge of people complaining about how bad the format change is and want the old version back (people already don’t like reddit! so how would making these forums more like reddit help!?).

I swear, people will complain about anything. If it’s not using the official forums enough, then it’s using reddit too much or time zones or someat other malarkey that just sounds really argumentative.

Get some perspective people:
*Yes it sucks that the devs live and work in the US and keep with US time zones for stuff like this but it’s be even more inconvenient to shift sleep schedules and life commitments just so one other time zone can feel included (while excluding other time zones).
*Yeah, it’s a bit annoying that the chat won’t be on the official forums but have you tried having decent chats on this one? It gets messy and clunky and it’s overall slow.
*Why even have these forums? Why not just reddit? Have you seen the complaints? Some people don’t like reddit!
*Yeah, reddit is tough to get used to but when you’re Q&Aing, it’s far more clearer what is being discussed and who is being addressed without all the clunky forum bugs and inefficient tools here.

That all said, you’re not the center of the universe. Other people get shafted with any decision or action, just not everyone is going to be that guy that complains about what is essentially how the world works.

Lol and people got all kitten about the devs canceling the next set of legendaries…

I actually got the staff precursor from dropping random rares into the MF (my only bout of luck in the game and it was super luck!) and I planned to go ahead and craft it instead of just selling the precursor but only cause I heard you can change their stats whenever you want. It’s the only reason, as I’ll never have to buy another staff again and all my characters sans my Warriors can use staff.

Beyond that, I was just going to put a different skin over it anyway…I just want that stat changing! Why I haven’t yet? Too lazy and it’s a lot of work. I don’t even have a character with 100% world map yet…

General Health.9678:

I left YouTube.
No good new content to speak of, some reality stuff that most people don’t like. Tons of new lolcat videos so there is that.. the lolcat community is doing ok.
Otherwise not really any new content for about a year, there were some new music videos but even in my own family, not everyone likes the same music.
YouTube failed greatly on content altho you can replay it, over and over if you want. Thing is it has NO storyline. NONE. Also not many dungeons, what’s up with that?

YouTube certainly does have dungeons, you just have to know where to look. The problem with YouTube dungeons though, is that they offer no kind of reward or prize. In fact, it’s a detriment to step foot into a YouTube dungeon. If you ever find yourself in one, your goal should be to run away asap.

Amadan.9451:

I say let our butts be part of this world, free them from their capes and coverage, hell let at least our legs be part of this world.

heh this is likely why I never change my character’s appearance after I find what’s just right. I can’t use the newest stuff because it’s too obscuring, can’t use many of the backpieces because they’re bulky, cover the back and float, half the time shoulders and helmet are turned off…I’ve been rocking the same looks on all my characters since 2 years ago (with a couple touch ups) and have yet to see anything really grab me and make me want to put it on my characters. I like seeing my characters’ bodies in motion, unburdened by flaps of material and bulky lego-block attachments.

Neox.3497:

The good thing with the “trinity” is balance. 3 roles and every class is able to fulfill their role (usually) just as good as any other class with that role.

Now what do we have in GW2? The roles in GW2 are not set and with that comes a lot of unbalance. We get certain builds and setups that are so good that certain professions BECOME a role and that is a problem IMO.

A good example would be the Phalanx Warrior aka “might provider”. Yes you can play without him in a group (PvE) and get the might from other sources but why bother with that if you can just take a warrior instead which is better AND easier?

If “might provider” would actually be a role that anet is balancing multiple professions could fulfill that role purely on their own on the same level. (Or maybe tune the warrior in that role down)

I’m not saying “make every professio the same” but some actual roles that emerged so far are so limited to only one or a few professions which doesn’t feel right. Maybe more elite specs might fill some of those “holes” but I don’t think that this will entirely solve that ‘problem’.

After all the new elite specs created like 3 new roles, at least in raids.

IMO, I think that’s an issue with Might (and to a lesser degree, boon application in general) as well as some combos being too easily accessible…but that’d be another discussion entirely.

Basaltface.2786:

not sure why you guys complain, play charr for a while and then you will actually start to appreciate the skins on other races.

I probably would appreciate the skins on other races if it weren’t for all the glowing bits, wings, gaudy backpacks and weapon trails obscuring what might be a decently crafted character.

…bah, who am I kidding? People that pour on that stuff are likely to dye everything Blackest-black anyway :p

Sartharina.3542:

Tanking isn’t “Absorbing Damage” – it’s “Keeping enemies off of allies”. I actually prefer the term “Defender” – especially the way D&D 4th Edition handled the role. As a defender, it’s not your job to ‘take hits’. Everyone has a hit point pool, and yours isn’t big enough. Instead, your job is to stick enemies in lose-lose situation.

I’m glad they added Taunt as a mechanic, without making Dedicated Tank classes. Being able to reliably haul an enemy off of an ally is fun. That fun should be shared throughout a raiding party.

Right, that does sound interesting.

To clarify, what I meant by tanking in GW2 is mainly keeping the enemies off your people while not dying yourself. Would be interested in seeing a write up on how you’d execute tanking roles in this game with the whole “put the enemies in lose-lose situations”.

But I hear ya. My favorite game by far was CoH and in that game, tanking wasn’t really about taking hits either (well, not all of it). Like an Ice Tanker wouldn’t be all about absorbing hits but laying down ice slicks to cause foes to fall down, chilling them so they would attack slower and do less damage or outright freezing them. Couple that with the secondary and pool powers and you can make dozens of unique ice tankers that could lower accuracy and steal health (dark melee), cleave them with weapons and knocking them about while lowering foes defense (swords/axes/maces), just burning them and doing more damage (fire melee), freezing more people so you’re like a tank/control guy (ice melee), stuns and knockdown with your fists and feet (martial arts and super strength). Just a crazy amount of things you could accomplish with just the powers alone.

Even still, though the archetypes had roles hard-locked into them, I’d still say it was a soft trinity type system. Cause you could use either Tanks or Controllers or Dominators to control enemies…or you could just not and fill the role with more damage types or more support types and overpower the enemy. You didn’t need damage types either as supports could just bolster themselves to deal good damage or controlling the enemies into near inertness could eliminate the need to heal or defend…or if you just had enough damage to nuke everything to death…

Gardavil.1762:

I already described to you what I was taught was the trinity system: Tank/Healer/CC-Support, not Tank/Healer/DPS. That might be Blizzard’s definition but I don’t consider them an authority on Trinity, not their original idea.

Your perspective lacks context then…or more specifically, relevant context. It’s like taking an archaic definition for a word and then going on to tell everyone how wrong they are when the word has evolved and added to its meaning. Some things that have changed since your old example:

Skill trees- games have them. They are there to give you a more specialized playstyle as well as limit how much you can accomplish at once.

re-spec- most games make it easier to do. This is so you don’t feel punished for trying out different builds. Goes so far as to even reclass for some games with little to no penalty (or even advantageous to do so).

Solo- most games have a campaign that is soloable, made so because every class can dps.

Party Finder- since they’ve become so popular, things have been changed to solve issues with this, primarily the reasons why waiting on a healer takes so long. Some games bypass this by not needing a healer or lessen the demand by giving everyone a small heal ability.

Gardavil.1762:

Now for the classes in GW2…. what matters to me is the PRIMARY role of a class, not it’s specializations….

- Honor guardian…. Melee/Tank
- Shadow art thief… Scout/Rogue.
- Water Ele……………… Mage.
- Tactics Warrior…….Melee
- Nature magic ranger…. Scout/Rogue
- Inspiration mesmer…. Mage.
- Blood magic necro….. Mage.
- Invention Engie….. Techno Scout/Rogue
- Salvation Rev…. not sure what these are yet, but from what I have read so far definitely NOT a Healer/Priest as a primary role.

Are any of these classes a Priest/Healer Class as a primary role from level one?

No. Not a single one.

Again, no relevant context here. There is no priest/healer class primary role because in GW2 no one focuses on just healing. This is an extremely ‘duh’ response because even one of the more popular hard-trinity MMOs (FFXIV) the ‘healer’ jobs don’t have a primary role but a mix role of healing/support and DPS. A white mage in that game is only a primarily healer role in name alone (that is to say, the game tells you that that is your job) but if you go into a group and expect to only heal, you will be pestered to dps as well.

In this game, you can build yourself to have strengths. I have a healer tempest build. He heals really well. He’s also pretty tough so doesn’t go down very easily. He also supports with might, vigor and protection. He can also accomplish a bit of condition damage. I can accomplish similar with just water/earth/[take your pick of arcane/air/fire] elementalist. The problem with your comparison is that you can’t do much from lvl 1 because builds unlock throughout the journey. By your logic, you can’t even be a dps because the traits to be a good one aren’t unlocked until later.

Gardavil.1762:

There are Class that have some Healing, but that does NOT make them Priest Healers in my understanding of the trinity systems of the old MMO, which is where we get the idea of a trinity system in the first place (and I would argue determines how far back to look for a definition.

There’s your problem! You can’t just look back for definitions, you have to look to the present as well to give words context otherwise you’re just reciting outdated irrelevant information.

Gardavil.1762:

Anet designed GW2 this way. They wanted no Healing classes, just every class to have healing skills. Those two ideas are NOT the same thing and never will be.

Not wholly true. I don’t think they wanted to have healing classes, but instead support builds. This is relevant because support and bunker specs have existed since the beginning. Healing, in particular, has been in flux, from the ICD on omnomberry pie to the ICD on dodge heals to the rescaling of healing power, etc. Even now, I believe Anet want to have support specs for every profession but healing is only a part of support. You can’t support a group by just dropping heals on them, especially not a fast-paced game like GW2. That’s why equipment has more than 2 stats on them. That’s why you had more than enough points to spec out for healing. That’s why you have multiple weapons to pick from.

DoctorDing.5890:

There would effectively only be one healing class, one tank and one dps, because for each role there would be one class and build that is considered meta, even if it isn’t. The forums would be flooded with complaints that their special guardian/ritualist/druid can’t get a team place even though they can out heal the monk/healer/whatever. Even content that does not need the absolute optimum team would start to have people demanding those “perfect” classes and builds. The other classes will hardly ever be accepted into groups.

With a trinity there is always a shortage of healers, because it is a thankless and sometimes tedious task. Healers can end up not even looking at the main part of the screen and the most exciting part of their job is deciding who to sacrifice when the pressure rises (clue: never the tank…)

That is what the trinity does for a game.

A major, major plus point for GW2 is the lack of a trinity imho.

There are likely shortages on healers because of the high emphasis put on healers which tends to also add responsibility to the role.

But taking another hard trinity game as an example, City of Heroes, even though Defenders and Corruptors were the often looked at ‘healer’ archetype, healers weren’t a necessity. So if everyone died, it wasn’t because the healer sucked (most of the time), it was because you bit off more than you could chew or went off by yourself (and no one cared much if you did run off and die!). Not only that, but the ‘healer’ role was actually inferior to the support role. Bubbling up your allies with resistance and defense and letting them go to town while not dying was more effective than healing the damage after getting molly-whompped. People loved being Defenders and Corruptors! Not that everyone would play one, but what you played hinged on your playstyle and what your character was meant to embody.

I think GW2 can be generally similar if people just looked outside the box of expectation and just try things out and have fun. Too often people will be swayed by what is meta, what is efficient, or overanalyze fun (omg healers just watch healthbars!).

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

While OP says no trinity is in place I tend to disagree with him… and agree as well…

We have healers, we have had healers for quite some time.

• Druids (3 flavors, Zerk, Zealot and Magi for PvE, Clerics and minstrels for WvW)
• Water Elementalist (needs healing so zealot is mandatory, celestial is less often seen)
• Guardian, mostly forgotten, is still a very decent front line healer, especially with hammer or mace. (clerics/ minstrels) I’d suggest runes of the monk
• Staff revenant Ventari yes, heals…

True, I just think we may need to bring up some builds to make them alternatives like Healing mantra mesmer and leeching venom thief. I suppose a new specialization could help but sometimes I think it’d just be better to improve what we got.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

“We have no tanks, bunkers yes, but no real tanks”.
Difference being you cannot keep yourself alive factanking everything (or can we?)

• Minstrel guardian would be a pretty good tank….with runes of te trooper
• All other classes can be converted to bunker

I’m probably in the minority but I just think the tanking builds should just have more nuanced defensive measures kind of like how Daredevil has the extra dodge.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

But these builds are no real trinity. Trinities are often more fixed roles and these are more builds then a dedicated role. As such I prefer this system as it allows my character -to be everything- provided the character is flexible enough by just swapping builds. in 2 cases you could be all at the same time…(celestial ele, celestial engineer, and if you would be mad enough celestail guardian and druid as well)

I think context is integral to these types of discussion. For instance, FFXIV has ‘fixed roles’ as you describe as a real trinity, but it also has a system that allows your character to be everything.

I think what you describe as builds in GW2 is the same as roles. The problem though is there are really only 2 differing roles: the dps and the healer. Tanking is done with a combination of dodging, defensive cooldowns and boons but I think they could add to the game’s systems to make tanking more of a gameplay style on its own.

Khyan.7039:

Ticky.5831:

I’m VERY confident if I looked hard enough, I could find something even more ridiculous than the bladed armors in FF14.

There are a lot of set ridiculous in FFXIV.

Some examples :
http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_005.jpg
http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_006.jpg
http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_007.jpg
http://www.finalfantasy-fxn.net/images/media/51ba79a0_Final-Fantasy_XIV_Realm_Scholar_04.jpg

None of those are ridiculous. In fact, I used nearly all those sets or currently use them. That said, the subligar set looks better with the sandal leggings.

Artemid.3925:

Okay, so we’re switching to a Trinity system now.

Who wants to be the one to tell everyone who rolled Guardian they only have access to the Altruistic Healing build? or Eles only have access to Water? Warriors are also going to lose GS and axe, because they’re tanks, so they’re not allowed to actually do DPS.

Having specific roles that need to be filled, at all, isn’t hard trinity. It’s just encounter design. Hard trinity means here that any given class can only ever fill one role, period.

That certain builds excel in a position more than every other option (let’s use Druid for healer here) is a balance problem, because you can fill it with a different build for some amount of loss of efficiency. But it’s not a guaranteed wipe.

Just understand that terms like these (the Holy trinity) especially with qualifiers like hard, soft, etc, are terms with fluctuating meanings depending on the context. And no, declaring what the term means to you won’t somehow instantly establish what it means to everyone in all context (for instance, to me, a soft trinity is when there are defined roles but not enforced by content. . . So you don’t need a healer but they exist, you don’t need dedicated dps but it exists. Hard trinity is where those roles are required. . .ffxiv requires each role in its content).

And to me, what you describe as a hard trinity is simply character building. It’s what you craft the character to embody and accomplish. Whether you can change that after you complete character creation is irrelevant.

Mea.5491:

I just want more simple, tight stuff (especially pants) that don’t clip through my weapons and/or arms…

That’s an anti-clipping measure right there and not sure why the devs just don’t do it more often. Can’t clip what is, essentially, what isn’t there and tight pants or a good form-fitting half-shirt can’t clip with a weapon or hair unless it’s already clipping with your character’s model.

Tighter clothes also fits better with other armors more easily.

I sort of agree with the OP but the contrasting examples like from FF14 aren’t really all that much better.

From my perspective, I’d say you and others in agreement with the more interest in BDO and FF14 armor design just like the aesthetics of those games. It’s not particularly the armor itself but just how the game is designed. GW2 has a style that it fits its armors into similar to a game that’d go with an anime look or a cartoony look.

But all those armors from those other games and GW2 alike suffer from the same issue: they are just outfits with little to no flexibility. But at least GW2 feels slightly less stifling with its design so you can craft a somewhat unique look for yourself. I haven’t really explored BDO at all so maybe it does have a great set of skins that seamlessly blend to make amazing and unique looks but no game has really captured that flavor of full-on character customization since the best of the best had fell.