Guild Wars 2

Kusumura.8642:

Hear here.

I’m in almost the exact same boat – sans a wife. I don’t have the time for all the stupid, insane amount of hours that goes into a Legendary. Sorry, Dark Souls elitest wanabes – but fact is, the game is alive because of people like Egg Shenen and I. Why?

I don’t have time to throw at a bloody game – but what do you think I do when I’m not playing? I work. Now, just because I don’t have infinite time to put into the game, that doesn’t mean I’m not a good player. On the contrary. I’ll school half of the Dark Souls wanabe legion in how not to engage an Engineer and here’s a hint: Don’t. I wanted a Legendary, so I got one. The only way the game would ever let me.

I don’t give a snivelling kitten if y’all bunch of high school tweenies want to call me a, “Credit Card Warrior (Engineer, thanks)”, but the fact is, with the $400 I purchased my Predator with, the some developer’s wages for the week were paid, some server costs were covered, yada yada yada.

The lot of you better wake up and smell the coffee – the game’s not here to provide for you elitests. It’s here to make money. And the developers made a very smart decision – side with the people actually earning money that will be willing to put it into the game, rather than being obstinate elitests themselves. That’s business, kids.

If it makes you feel any better, feel free to try and kill me when you see me rolling around the Tarnished Coast Borderlands. Go on. I dare you.

Yeah… and I think most people agree that the time sink for a legendary is the problem… mainly because it’s practically the only thing required and really says nothing about the player other than “they grinded a lot” or “they paid a lot of money”.

I’d be fine with being able to get a legendary in an afternoon… if you’re good enough to get it. The time it takes to get a legendary should be able to be expedited by skill. I want to see a legendary and think “Wow, he must be a great player”.

I’d have to ask… does that legendary you bought really mean anything other than a rare skin? I’m sure that if legendaries were account bound on pick up you would have probably bought one of the unique exotic skins instead… you might have even felt inclined to get the legendary yourself if it was a question of ability to play the game and not one of how much time you have to commit to it; and you would have been up $400. ArenaNet may have been out that $400… but I’m willing to bet that you would have given that money to them in the gemstore regardless.

Long story short… I’d rather it take less time for a legendary and more individual skill. As a customer I’m sure you’d rather keep that $400 if you could get a legendary off of your own merit… you seem pretty confident in your ability to play the game.

Make more things account bound please.

The skill probably won’t work like that live… but I can see the comparison.

Durzlla.6295:

I was kinda hoping for a -little- bit more than what was shown, maybe like showing off one of the combat abilities or more importantly one of the other mushroom types (so excited to play with those speed ones xD).

^this

I just think it would be wise to hold off on revealing features in PoI until they’re a bit more “prepared”. The negative reaction might not be as volatile if these features are shown in a more complete form. Doesn’t have to be complete mind you, but just enough so we can actually see what’s being discussed.

“We have these cool mushrooms that give you speed boosts to complete certain adventures”, cool… I’d like to see it. If you can’t show it to me then you might as well write a blog.

So… in that sense, maybe it would have been a better idea to hold off on this “bonus” PoI and just stuck to the regular schedule so you maybe could have shown more of the feature a week later. People tune into the stream to be shown and not told generally.

A little bit off the beaten topic… but I am a little bit sad to see ArenaNet so scared of being transparent with features not yet finalized. I understand people get upset when features get cut down for whatever technical reason… but it feels like the backlash from drip info is possibly just as bad… maybe worse.

Rashy.4165:

The precursor collections could very well be an implementation of just that. We don’t know the details of that yet, all we know is that it could be a collection. One or more, or even all, of the collection items could require stripping off a component after defeating a hard-to-defeat boss.

Malthurius.6870:

So, say in order to get a specific item for your precursor, you must do a specific fight and do the fight fulfilling a specific requirement in order to make that fight drop a specific item that can’t be obtained otherwise… something similar to that.

This is my hope, but we’ll see… the worst thing they could do is just make the collections required rare random drops… then we’ll just be trading 1 extremely rare drop for many slightly more common drops.

darkm.4839:

I can understand what you’re saying here.
Normally when people complain that it’s too easy it almost sounds as though they’re demanding a change to current legendaries to make it harder. Maybe it’s not their intent, but that’s always what it ends up sounding like.

I would prefer if the tedium was removed in favor of a skill bar to reach or surpass; so that the work is similar, but requires a different resource other than just time.

darkm.4839:

I’ve been put off of making legendaries for a long time because of how tedious and resource intensive it is making them. It’s not “easy,” I’ve been at it for months and months. If you have any way I can get the materials as easily as you did, please enlighten me.

Well… Tedious=/=Hard

Time shouldn’t be the one and only gate for a legendary; skill should be part of it too. Mind you, I’ve never had a legendary, but I don’t like the fact that you can be a terrible player and still have what should be a “prestige item”.

It’s not a good thing that when I see a player with a legendary and think nothing of them… sometimes I think less of them if they actually prove to be incompetent.

ekarat.1085:

Why this one spot? Because it’s the most finished.
Why not UI for masteries? Because it may change before release.
Why just 1 mushroom? Because it’s probably not done.

That’s exactly what people fear… and that’s really bad considering the client they were on said “beta” and they have a demo to present at Pax East in a few weeks.

Compared to the base game; they’ve been excruciatingly tight lipped about the content so far…

I hope they don’t conflate “consistent” with “easy”.

I would much rather the precursor require a really challenging fight or objective to meet over random chance or tedium.

So, say in order to get a specific item for your precursor, you must do a specific fight and do the fight fulfilling a specific requirement in order to make that fight drop a specific item that can’t be obtained otherwise… something similar to that.

Grimwolf.7163:

The separate “biomes” they mentioned, like the ground and canopy levels of the jungle, actually are distinct zones unfortunately. If you drop out of the canopy, you get an auto-death like pits in platformer games.

I’m not entirely convinced this is true; since it seemed they were in an instanced area of a much larger zone, and the kill plane at the bottom of the pit might just be there to keep the player fenced in while instanced.

skullmount.1758:

Thanks. Looks like I’ll probably skip it then. I had hoped it would have had a better explanation of the mastery system (maybe even an alpha/beta/whatever stage pic of how it could look). I don’t really want examples of masteries (at least not yet), just a better picture of how the system as a whole will act (their article before wasn’t really clear).

They did explain that masteries will basically be a gate for content. They mentioned encounters that will require specific masteries, and that masteries won’t give you bar abilities, but mostly the abilities to interact with objects in the world in a way you couldn’t before. Also how masteries will allow you to reach places otherwise impossible to reach. So, it really is metroidvania style.

Argon.1563:

At one point, David said “We wanted to give gliders a sense of freedom.”

hypocrite

If its meant to feel free, then why give it an endurance bar? The character shown was supposedly decked out with Masteries to make the endurance bar longer, and it still felt so restrictive. Even with the Masteries, she was barely scraping jumps by the skin of her teeth, thats not freedom, thats just a good way to give someone a nervous twitch.

Well, the alternative or comparison rather is no glider at all in the base game… that’s really what he meant. You can’t argue that this gives more freedom of movement than we had before.

Personally; I felt it was lackluster.

Why do they feel the need to limit our view of the area to this one spot?

Why couldn’t they show us the UI for masteries… that could have been interesting.

Why couldn’t they show us the other mushrooms or show us anything else other than gliding and that 1 jumping mushroom in the one particular piece of land.

Honestly; I believe they’ll be better off giving all of this information at once than giving us these small and insignificant pieces that mean barely anything. I feel like what they showed here could have easily been shown last week; or shown next week. At least if it was done last week that PoI would have felt more significant, if it was shown next week maybe we’d be a bit more excited to get more information.

In the end… this grain by grain feeding of information is only making people cynical and angry.. this is anti-hype.

I personally feel that legendary items should be represented by models/skins that are wholly unique to anything else in the game; and sometimes that means being ridiculous.

We have a lot of phony legendary exotic weapons that are flashy but not as ridiculous; like Foefire’s Essence or Mjolnir. I think it would be better if legendaries stayed crazy flashy and sometimes jokey or ridiculous, and the more reasonable flashy weapons were reserved for the pho-legendary exotics.

Besides… if you don’t like the super crazy legendary skins you can always put a simple skin over it and keep the legendary stats… because if you want a legendary weapon but don’t like the skin, then the only reason you would want it would be for the stats, and you can put those stats on any weapon skin you like without losing anything.

The last panel of that is the only thing amusing… “let me hold my shield away from the enemy”. Nothing particularly wrong with being a lefty… Link is a lefty.

Also… think the artists had a hard time figuring which way to flip the shield lol.

The only weapon we know for nearly for sure is sword… and it seems likely that they will duel wield swords; as seen in this concept piece: http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/4689/2720189-gw2hot_01-2015_heart_of_maguuma_cityconcept_revenant_blindfold_concept.jpg

Many will wager that they will get melee staff; but I tend to believe that in the trailer it was a polearm used by Rytlock only and not Revenant PCs. Hopefully the release more information on the Revenant’s features soon, because we know very little for sure.

Scoobaniec.9561:

And what updates will it be? Pavilon? SAB? Dragon Bash? LS is dead.

My guesses are:
Super Adventure Box makes a lot of sense. Low development cost on their part and very popular with the player base.

A new world boss revamp in the same vein as Tequatl could be a possibility. Perhaps the Claw of Jormag or the Shatterer.

Replayable Season 1 of the Living Story is still on the to do list; maybe they’re finishing that up, but that’s probably quite a bit of work so maybe not.

Touching up the Zhaitan fight would be a very minor update but very much welcomed in my opinion.

Feature Pack… most likely right before or on the day of HoT launch containing the features that will be available to all players regardless of purchase.

I don’t see Pavilion or Dragon Bash happening seeing as what just happened in the story… not exactly the time for a celebration.

I’ve come to the realization that the only reason leveling actually exists in this game is to parse out content for newer players so that they do not become overwhelmed.

Since that’s the case, I don’t think it would be a good idea to give people that buy HoT a free 80… at least if they haven’t level to 80 normally first. If you want a free 80, just play the game until HoT launches and you’ll end up getting a nice supply of tomes of knowledge and at least 1 scroll of experience from a birthday I’d imagine.

You can’t confirm or deny something you don’t know… and I don’t believe that ArenaNet even know yet. It’s a shot in the dark date just so there is a date to the game….

Linken.6345:

Ops i dced Ops 2 i loged into another char poff inside dungeon and full armor again

Oops, when you log out in a dungeon you’re placed outside the dungeon… and the game could give you a notification like “Your group entered this dungeon with a different character/build, entering the dungeon will switch your character and build to what it was when you originally entered the dungeon with your group.” something similar to how GW1 handled it’s instances… except not forcing you to start over unless someone completely abandons the group… then the person that abandoned should receive a tag on looking for group saying how many times they’ve abandoned.

I could go into more possible options for how this could be handled if you like instead of taking my vagueness as a gap in my logic instead of an attempt to be brief because this is completely off topic.

Linken.6345:

that still wouldent do anything people can just take turns to go out and repair aslong as 1 stay inside dungeon…. would just make it more of a hassle for people

“…and make it so that leaving would have consequences.”

Why do you need to jump if there are waypoints?

Waypoints get you to a specific spot; chances are there aren’t going to be waypoints directly at a hidden area or secret, and I also doubt there will be a waypoint at every level of a zone vertically.

Tom Gore.4035:

Yeah armour damage does seem a bit redundant now as a death penalty.

Armor damage still exists so you can’t just body rush fractals. Honestly; they should also remove the repair anvil from all dungeons and make it so that leaving has consequences… off topic though…

Getefix.9150:

but spears are aquatic and staves arent….

Yeah, and staves aren’t melee… what’s your point?

I’m no programmer, but I don’t think it would be that difficult to turn spears into an amphibious weapon type. It makes more sense for them to use assets already in the game that are actually polearms than to shoehorn staves into that weapon type, especially when a lot of staves aren’t designed to be swung over someone’s head.

But this was a “matter of fact” after my initial point… being that we’re probably not getting either melee staves or land spears and Rytlock is just showcasing something that’s been happening with NPCs for a while in that they can use weapons we as player characters can’t… anything could happen though I suppose.

It’s probably just an NPC unique weapon at most; like nightmare court using whips, Mai Trin using a rapier, or Horric using a cannon.

I don’t think they would re-purpose staves for melee use when they have a slew of spear skins that could easily be re-purposed for land and make more sense for this type of combat instead.

Have a look through your wardrobe in game at the staves in the game. Some of them look like they might be decent at being used as a melee weapon, but some would be ridiculous. Look through the spear skins in the game; nearly all of them would fit these animations perfectly; except for the legendary spear oddly enough… no place to really grip that thing…

I think it’s more reasonable to call that an airship harbored near a cliff. In a sketch like this, black is just negative space and literally anything could be there. I don’t see anything in the sketch that screams “asuran”, no pyramids or familiar architecture here that scream asuran to me.

We also know that the guild halls will be in the jungle as stated https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/en/?_ga=1.150419126.127833180.1422404549#section-guildHalls
The other concepts of the hall in the video you linked seems to contain more ancient looking architecture; mayan esk almost.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

yup you know about sheep? They come in herds.

Now I’m positive you’re trolling; just like a troll to ignore well formed rebuttals and reply to shots against your position with something like this to discredit their opposition.

Okay; how about this. Maybe this will be a “teeny tiny” expansion… yeah it might have kitten all for content. Maybe it’ll be a huge expansion… yeah it might have a ton of content.

We don’t know how extensive the major features are, we’re not entirely sure we know all of the features. You’re preaching a misguided opinion from a soapbox of ignorance. I’m not even saying you’ll be wrong… I’m saying you’re counting your chickens before they hatch; and anyone who says this expansion is huge or average is doing the exact same.

Then what’s the point of the legendary other than the ability to switch stats? Save the more mundane skins for every thing else; legendaries deserve to be over the top… and if you want a legendary for the stats, just put a skin you like over it. Ever since the wardrobe came out, if you thought the legendaries were too flashy, you could just put a steel sword skin over it and still get the stats of a legendary weapon.

Classy renaming the thread to “Teeny Tiny Expansion”. Now it feels like baiting to be all honest.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t comparable to Guild Wars 1 when it comes to content. They are completely different types of games; and even if GW1 is classified as an MMORPG, it’s much more enclosed and interesting content is much more sparse. Even in the comparison of 2 classes in Factions vs 1 in HoT, GW1 classes were much more homogenized that GW2 professions.

The point still stands that until we understand the details and how extensive the features that have been announced are, calling the expansion “tiny” is a misguided opinion… and you’re welcome to your misguided opinion.

When they officially announce there are only 3 new zones, masteries only give you gliders and mundane bonuses, specializations only give 3 new traits, guild halls are just static instances for guilds, there are no new dungeons, the story is only 5 hours long, and stronghold only has 1 map. When we know exactly how extensive these features are… then I can respect your opinion… right now it just seems cynical for the sake of being cynical.

Thiagugu.9682:

It was confirmed that there would be NO SPEARS ABOVE LAND. I repeat, NO SPEARS.

No, it was confirmed that there would be no polearms… which is the same thing granted, but the wording was more broad than specifically no land spears.

With as much polearm art there is in the game, merch, trailers, and cutscenes…. I’m starting to think that it isn’t the art team trolling… but maybe Colin is trolling us by claiming they’re not a thing… I mean… this is Colin we’re talking about; he’s practically a walking troll face.

Being a former WoW player, in WoW they would have a big patch with the groundwork for content that would be available to everyone regardless of whether they had the expansion or not.

So, I think it’ll be pretty likely that we’ll receive a sizable patch prior to or on the day of the expansion launch.

Inbetween that? Who knows; other than that I can only see very minor changes; perhaps super adventure box to hold us over… hopefully.

My guess is that since they probably want to avoid dividing their player base as much as possible; they’ll try to make as much of this content available without purchase as their publisher will allow. How much of it? We can only guess right now. I don’t think maps will be withheld, but I do think that masteries, specializations, precursor crafting, the story, and the Revenant will be withheld for people who buy the expansion.

So, my guess, remember… is that you’ll be able to play in the new borderlands, PvP mode, guild halls, and even the heart of maguuma… only caveat on going into the heart of maguuma is that you’ll need masteries to get very far and you won’t have access to those, and that’ll probably motivate people to buy it despite having access to the new areas.

They used the phrase “New set of utilities”.

So, you know how professions have utilities with certain tags… like meditations for guardians or wells for necromancers? The specialization will probably get a new set of those, so probably 4 to 5 new utilities, as par for most sets like that in the game.

It might be reasonable to believe that professions that have specializations that get 1-handed or off-hand weapons might get another one for the sake of equality. So perhaps Elementalists get to use a sword in off and main hand. Mesmer might get main hand pistol in addition to shield.

I still think the wording on the “confirmation” that each specialization will get “one” weapon is loose enough so that they can still do that. “Each specialization will get one new weapon” doesn’t scream “only one” to me for some reason. Might be optimistic, but we’ll see.

We know each specialization is getting a heal skill and an elite skill… most likely just 1, but who knows.

Profession mechanic is the really interesting bit; how much does the mechanic change? The ranger in the trailer was using a wolf pet still, but we’ve seen that the trailer doesn’t represent the full state of the game (Rytlock using a spear like weapon doesn’t mean Revenants get a spear on land). Changing the profession mechanic could make a profession feel like an entirely new one if it’s different enough. Imagine an Elementalist without the ability to switch attunements in combat… that’ll be nuts.

I think the traits will be more like an entirely new trait line replacing the line that is no longer relevant based on how the mechanic changed; for most professions this will probably be the 5th trait line. That’s a lot of new traits if that’s the case, but we don’t know how extensive this is either.

I wish we had more information given to us during the reveal; these are table scraps of information.

Even if we knew every minor and major feature; we then have to ask how extensive those features are before we can make a judgement. Right now we know the bare bones of the ‘major features’, in that we know what we’re generally going to get… a new profession, specializations for more profession abilities and build options, guild halls, a new region, ect. That’s fine… but how can we honestly compare features we know next to nothing about to features we know everything about and say that the expansion is “too small”.

It’s the same level of lunacy as calling Revenant overpowered just by the prospect of “it sounds like it’s overpowered”. This thread is the exact same thing. “It sounds like it’s small”. How about we clam up about being disappointed until we have a more complete picture…

Knighthonor.4061:

You do events at level 1. But not dragon events. That’s a different kind of event. You can’t do dungeons at level 1 which again proves my point that endgame does not start at level 1 when you can’t do all the same content that a level 80 can. Dungeons being a good example.

It’s not about how many different kinds of content there are available, it’s whether or not what you do at level 1 is still relevant at level 80, and it is. Compared to say WoW where you will never go back to the starting area or even bother to quest again once you reach level cap; in GW2 there is still a reason to go back to those zones. That is what makes GW2’s endgame start at level 1; level 1 content is still relevant content at level 80.

Knighthonor.4061:

Malthurius.6870:

Knighthonor.4061:

I originally brought this game because the developers lied and mislead that GW2’s endgame starts at level 1 which it actually doesn’t since you can’t even build a character at level 1 nor be useful in the group content in the game until level 80.

They didn’t lie. You do the same types of content at level 1 as you do at level 80. The only thing that becomes available to you through leveling is more content while the content you did at level 1 stays somewhat relevant.

Options and player power has nothing to do with endgame. Endgame is what you do at the end of the game, and at level 80 you’re still doing events just like you were at level 1.

That’s a lie. I can’t dot WvW at level 1 nor PvP.

I can’t do fractals at level 1. I can’t do dungeons at level 1.
I can’t wear exotic gear at level 1.
I can’t do dragon events at level 1.

There are many things a player can’t do at level one that a level 80 can do at endgame.

So that’s a lie.

You can WvW at level 1, you can PvP at level 1.
You can do fractals at level 1, it scales you to 80.
Gear isn’t part of endgame, and “dragon events” is arbitrary… they’re still events.

The only thing you’re right about is dungeons… kind of… you can try to do dungeons at level 1 but you’ll probably die; however dungeons become doable at level 30… not 80.

You didn’t even prove me wrong though, that’s the thing. You do events at level 1 and you still do events at level 80.

Knighthonor.4061:

I originally brought this game because the developers lied and mislead that GW2’s endgame starts at level 1 which it actually doesn’t since you can’t even build a character at level 1 nor be useful in the group content in the game until level 80.

They didn’t lie. You do the same types of content at level 1 as you do at level 80. The only thing that becomes available to you through leveling is more content while the content you did at level 1 stays somewhat relevant.

Options and player power has nothing to do with endgame. Endgame is what you do at the end of the game, and at level 80 you’re still doing events just like you were at level 1.

5.00
4.59
4.58
ect
4.01
4.00
3.59
3.58
ect
1.01
1.00
0.59
ect

The game isn’t missing the first second, the duration is only 5 seconds for a 60th of a second; after that 60th of a second, the game displays 4. If the game displayed the fractions of a second, you would see what I typed above.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Technically, the idea of Revenants’ mechanics itself is overpowered. That’s not to say I’m not going to play it. I’m openly making sure the Devs hear my viewpoints in advance, so we can get our expansion as soon as possible.

Haha, are you joking? So you mean to tell me that even if the skills they get from channeling legends were subpar compared to other professions because of their ease of switching, they’d still be overpowered because the mechanic by which they gain access to their skills is just unfair.

Okay then, Ranger is overpowered because they have 2 bodies. Doesn’t matter how much damage or healing they do, that mechanic idea in of itself is overpowered. Nerf it.

Warrior is overpowered because they have heavy armor and the most health. Doesn’t matter if they don’t have many active survival skills, that’s too much passive survivability. I don’t care what the counter balance is, it’s overpowered. Nerf it.

Necromancers have 2 health pools! That mechanic is overpowered, nerf it.

Elementalists have TWICE as many weapon skills as anyone else! That mechanic is overpowered! Nerf it!

Engineers get 4 extra utility skills! Overpowered mechanic! Nerf it!

Guardians get permanent passive buffs! Overpowered, Nerf it!

Thieves don’t have weapon skill cooldowns! Overpowered! Nerf it!

Mesmers have clones! Nerf it!

Revenants have extra utilities! Nerf it!

That’s a silly notion. The numbers matter.

Season 2 had a finale and a climax.

So, were you angry when the Lord of the Rings movies came out and you had to pay to see the Two Towers and then the return of the king after already paying for the fellowship of the ring?

Were you also angry when Warcraft 3, the frozen throne came out and you have to pay to see what happened to Arthas after the events of Reign of Chaos?

Were you also angry when Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ended and you had to buy the next book?

Yeah, you sound that petty.

MakubeC.3026:

By just completing the map 100% I’m sure you will do at least 70% (of events).

That’s a funny joke. You can easily clear a zone 100% with only running into 10 or 20 events. That’s a drop in the bucket for how many there actually are.

The number of events in this game is mind boggling. Just the other day I came across an event I had never seen before in Queensdale where you have to escort the guy from the orchid carrying a body wrapped in a spider cocoon; I assumed that I had never seen that event because the conditions for it to happen are rare… like failing the event that precedes it which is probably really easy to succeed.

That’s another thing, some events just won’t happen unless failure occurs, and ArenaNet have explicitly said before that they don’t want players to be encourage to fail events. Doing every event in the game will never be a reasonable goal. However, completing specific events can be, they are now.

Even with a blog post with the details on their weapons and utilities, you still will not be able to make a claim on whether or not they’re overpowered or underpowered. Until you compare them to what’s in the game now; best by actually playing with them and playing against them; making a claim on their power is really dumb.

Maybe we’re thinking too hard about it. It’s entirely possible that Rytlock has a polearm and players just won’t. Colin says it was the doing of the art team, so the art team might have elected to give Rytlock a polearm despite there being no mechanics in place for the players. Kinda like Rytlock using an off-hand pistol as a warrior, or the nightmare court using whips.

You need only look at the trailer to see skins and armor pieces we haven’t seen before. We can assume we’ll have plenty of new skins.

Personally, to me, it looks too short to be a staff and it appears to have a point and spikes at the end. If it is a staff, it’ll be really silly looking to use those animations with some of the staff skins we have.

Can you imagine those swinging animations with a staff skin like this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/8/8d/Super_Staff_Skin.jpg

Or this:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/f/f5/Hymenoptera.jpg

Or, imagine Bi-frost being swung around like that; a completely blunt staff with this almost slashing type animation.

I’m just saying, that if that’s a staff, this seems extremely lazy and shoehorned. However, if it’s a spear it would be much tidier.

For example; look at these spear skins:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/d/da/Legionnaire_Spear.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/a/ad/Quetzal_Harpoon.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/b/be/Royal_Ascalonian_Harpoon.jpg

Don’t these skins look more similar to the kind of weapon Rytlock is swinging? Not to mention more conducive to the animations being displayed.

Vehzz.2345:

Apparently it will change all the back half of the skill bar. So weapon skills wont be affected. Got this info from a article from euro gamer.

Johanson explains to me: “[Channelling a legend] actually changes out the entire back-half of your skillbar, so your heal skill, your utilities and your elite are all determined by the Legend you are currently channelling.” Apparently there are traits that “play off” these abilities and combo strongly.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-29-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-expansion-level-cap-gear-tier

I’m struggling to wrap my head around this idea. How do they choose what legend to channel then?

Is choosing a legend part of their profession mechanic (f1-f4)? That would limit them to 4 legends which I can’t see being a thing.

Will Revenants have free choice of utilities like other professions? Or are they limited to pre-loaded sets… that would be pretty poor in my opinion. Maybe they have a set of utilities to choose from for each legend they channel, and then they’ll have potentially more utility options than any other profession.

Maybe each utility has a unique version based on the legend you’re channeling. Maybe you change legends through the utilities and that changes your utility bar and causes the utility you used to channel legend to become the way to revert or stop the channel.

Maybe channeling legends works like profession specializations, so Revenants might be the only profession with many specializations from the start.

This info that channeling a legend swaps out your utilities (when I say utility, I mean the entire back half of your skills clearly) has only given me more questions.

Hopefully there is an initial rush to find out how they play; but I have a feeling that they’ll thin out a lot after a short time; especially if they lack weaponswap and have skill swaping profession mechanics. Those tend to be a little less popular than the norm strangely.

Healing power is very strong, it’s just not desirable because it doesn’t increase damage and therefore does nothing for increasing the speed of encounters.

Healing power would be more desirable if fights couldn’t be stacked up and burned down so that the enemies could actually pose a threat to the group.

Mind you, I’ve ran dungeons with a support ranger with high healing power, it is really hard to die with just 1 heavy support healing power player in your group; the regen is out of control.

Ragnarox.9601:

HoT=

1 area (maybe 3+ maps)
Yeah, we don’t know the number of zones yet; just the fact that they are extremely vertical.

0 dungeons
We’ve heard nothing about dungeons, but we’ve heard “challenging group content” over and over again… and that could honestly be referring to anything. So you can’t be sure about that.

1 classes
Yep.

class specializations
Yep, these seems like pretty substantial framework and 1 per class is still a lot of extra abilities, traits, and mechanics.

1 wvw map
When they say “new borderlands” I tend to imagine that it means the entirety of borderlands. Whether each world’s borderland will be different is yet to be seen… I hope they are.

spvp map??
New spvp mode with the potential for different maps for that mode.

new armor, weapon??
Most definately.

You forgot:
Guild Halls
Masteries
Guild Leaderboards
Precursor Crafting

We don’t know everything that’s in the expansion, so your direct comparison is very bad right now. Try it again when we have better details. We also don’t even have a price, so it might be 20usd for all we know.

I don’t think it’ll be exactly like the elementalist, but I do agree that Revenants won’t have weapon swap, if only because there isn’t a soldier with that mechanic yet.

There will probably be a unique spin the mechanic where it isn’t just switching legends f1-f4. I could see it working closer to the engineer and their kits though, but instead of getting a new weapon, it just modifies the current weapon you have equipped; like a hybrid between elementalist attunements and engineer kits.

Jerus.4350:

I just want to point out, that in many cases they tried this. There are enemies that look for range, there are enemies that will trigger evades. It’s simply that it’s very mediocre AI that controls it and we’ve learned to manipulate it. “don’t target the hunter” at hunter/crusher in Arah p3, not doing so avoids his jump back, just as an example.

But… that isn’t a problem of “zerker” it’s a problem with PUG tactics, or not even necessarily PUG but simply AI manipulation tactics. If I can avoid hits, I can wear zerk and will be better for it. If they avoid my field damage (lava font/symbols/whatever) then I simply re-evaluate what skill choices I make, Staff on Ele likely goes down in priority while Dagger goes up.

Though in regards to your comment about condi’s, again, I’d just re-evaluate but then I may go sinister, I’m still not going to look at defensive options unless they down right force me to, which I think is a bad idea for many reasons people have already stated.

In beta weekend 1 of the game, a lot of mobs had better AI. For example, mobs would actually step back out of a guardians whirling wrath and step back in when it finished. Or they would actively move out of placed AE, as a neat side note, you could also hit enemies from places they couldn’t reach and they wouldn’t regen to full. For whatever reason that was removed inbetween betas. My guess is because it was also exploitable, but in an entirely different manner from how thing are “exploited” today.

To “exploit” in GW2 now is to run past mobs, LoS, Stack, and AE in most cases. In Beta weekend 1, you could manipulate the AI in such a way that they would never throw a punch because they would be too busy trying to avoid you. Surely there is a better way to program the AI that they won’t mindlessly take your AE stacking spam or run around dodging your AE all day to where they can never retaliate. So I know very well that they’ve attempted smart AI before… but it’s always been dumb and they need to try it again and do it better, because I truly believe that to be at the heart of the problem.

The tactics of the game allow for the zerker meta. If mobs were harder to rally into one spot and evaded damage while still being dangerous, the zerker meta will become less valuable by virtue of the tactics that bred it being obsolete. Chances are that if the enemy can gain and retain an advantageous position and avoid damage, you’ll eventually run out of defensive options yourself and die to damage unless you’re really good at dodging the right things, have really good support in the party, or are somewhat defensive yourself.