Guild Wars 2

It’s pretty clear that they were as vague and as brief as possible during the reveal because they want to keep hype steady while they release small bits of information up until the launch of the expansion to retain interest.

Sounds good on paper I guess… but it seems to be having the opposite effect because of the community being fed up with waiting and being really pessimistic… at least here on the forums. Among my own group of friends we’re having a blast speculating on features they didn’t go into detail on… but it seems that here there is so much pessimism that people actually believe that what was announced is all we’ll get.

I am a little bit frustrated honestly; and I’m chomping at the bit for any kind of details or minor features that haven’t been mentioned yet, partly just so people could shut up about their pessimism, but also because I am just a tad doubtful as well.

What happened to being transparent with the community? This has probably been the shadiest and most opaque expansion announcement I’ve ever seen in my life of playing MMORPGs.

Chrispy.5641:

No one actually got confused. Don’t listen to that guy. People refer to them, in and out of the game, as crafting professions all the time. Not many people actually care what the proper term is.

Don’t mean to start an argument; but it’s better to have the correct terms than hope the terms you use get the same point across. Better to start early on learning the backwards GW2 terms than continue to perpetuate the wrong ones.

Vert.5041:

Half a gold is not something I’d call cheap, especially when you have to switch everyday to make daily ascended time gated mats.

He’s clearly not at max crafting if he’s asking what disciplines to take, so trying them out to say level 30-50 and dropping them won’t lose him 50 silver… more like 5 silver.

They’re called crafting disciplines in this game, not professions. Your profession is ranger, so your thread title sounds really dumb, haha.

Anyway, Leather worker, Weapon smith, and Huntsman are the 3 that come to mind immediately. But you can change your crafting discipline any time you want without losing progress on the one you swap out, and it’s cheap, so you can try around if you’re not happy with the 3 I mentioned.

I’ve said this in every “zerker meta solution” thread I’ve posted in.

The solution isn’t a change to stats or a mechanic, it needs a change to the way encounters are designed. If enemies didn’t stack on AE and instead moved out of it, if enemies dodge rolled and used evasion like the player does to avoid large burst, if enemies were more vulnerable to conditions and sometimes not vulnerable to direct attacks, if, if, if.

Just design better encounters and the zerker meta will fall behind. Zerker works because enemies are really dumb.

Paragon – Terrestrial Spears

As someone who has a strong greatsword fetish… yes please.

Since beta access I’ve had problems choosing a profession and Revenant having a greatsword would be make my choice so easy and I can finally stop switching my main every other month. However, it seems that they will be able to dual wield swords, and that’ll be sufficient to me… but greatsword please.

The Revenant’s abilities are very similar to those of the Ritualist from GW1. They probably pull from the same kind of magic from the mists.

The thing is, we as players have been to the mists a lot. If you ever PvPed, you’ve been to the mists where Rytlock learned of this magic. Professions in GW2 are less about being taught something new, and more about following your calling lorewise. It isn’t too far-fetched to say that there were potential Revenants before Rytlock discovered his powers if said character had a deep connection with the mists.

Think of it as if Revenants always existed and could be mastered just by virtue of being connected or interested in the mists.

So that’s the devils advocate; otherwise they’ll create a unique personal story for Revenants and racial choice for Revenant will have little bearing on anything… They’ll probably go with the easier to implement “Rytlock wasn’t the first, and Revenants could always have existed prior to Rytlock’s journey to the mists.”

“New and exciting” is synonymous with “over powered”? This is news to me.

You can’t say that with any kind of certainty without knowing the mechanics and abilities of the profession.

It’s a bit silly to say that since dodge doesn’t work against these few boss abilities that it is completely useless. Most un-dodge-able attacks are that way because they’re important mechanics to the fight. Dodge is what separates the good players from the bad, and just being able to get a short burst of speed to move out of AoE is invaluable. You should attempt a fractal with your dodge key unbound.

The solution isn’t to punish players for playing a certain way; they need to remove punishments from other builds. This is a bigger problem than just adding another buff to bosses that annoy players, the encounters need to be build from the ground up with this kind of stuff in mind.

Add boss mechanics where you have to interrupt the boss or he one shots the group; the stability buff is no longer needed because spamming stuns and knockbacks are going to leave you with no options when the boss does his big attack that you have to interrupt to survive. If the boss is still spammed with interrupts, you can give them a few stacks of the stability buff when he starts his big cast so you have to use multiple interrupts to actually stop him.

Add trash mobs that are resistant to physical damage and weak to condition damage; these exist in the game right now, but they could be used in all of the dungeons in some capacity; namely to some trash that spawn in boss fights.

These examples don’t have to be the only solution to the problem; but I think the way to fix the problem is that ArenaNet need to design better fights; and they have with Tequatl and Triple Trouble… but they still have a lot of work to do on smaller scale bosses.

It’s pretty simple to understand.

Might stacking is a dominate strategy; “Path of least resistance” you might say; so they nerfed it to promote different approaches instead of buffing sub-optimal options and causing the ever so deadly “power creep”.

The nerf is pretty small anyway, and most of the players who care about might stacking will continue to do so. Stacking power will still be the best way to speed clear dungeons, and might will still be very powerful in general. This is only a 125 might loss at 25 stacks; very minor.

Ashen.2907:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ashen.2907:

Im not sure that announcing an upcoming event, particularly on your own peoperty, constitutes hype.

What would you consider hype? An epic trailer with an in-game advertisement for an event? An announcement on the front page of the games website?

What exactly would Anet have to do to be considered hyping up their announcement for it not to be the players fault for “setting themselves up for disappointment”?

You honestly think that announcing an upcoming event or product on your own website/property is hype ?

What exactly have they hyped ? They have made not one single claim, that Ive seen, other than that there is something that comes after The Point of No Return and that it will be announced at a certain place/time for those interested.

The local convenience store near my home has a sign on the door advertising a free donut with purchase of coffee during certain hours. Hype?

If a player makes up, invents, elements that have in no way been claimed then any disappointment when the invented element fails to appear is the players own fault.

I have just received an epiphany that the upcoming release will include a free car for all players with a Ranger main. If I dont get one I will be horribly disappointed and it will be Anets fault for all of the hype.

When said company is starting to trend #GW2HoT and advertising “Save the Date” on the front of their game page… yes that is hype. Hype for what is a different issue all together.

Allelya.6830:

(back office talk at ANet)
“We’re not making money on that crap we threw in the GemStore. Time for action!”

EXPANSION RELEASE!

“That’ll be $50 kiddies! NOW PAY UP!”

-snicker-

You make it sound like they just started working on it. I think it’s extremely likely that they have been working on this for a very long time; especially considering how soon it should be rolling out according to their Q3 predictions.

Also, Anet and NCsoft are making a killing off of the Gemstore; and mind you it’s not like we’re going to pay 50$ (if it even is that much) for nothing.

At this point, anyone who thinks it’s S3 of the living world are delusional. So much evidence points to the contrary of that that it’s inconceivable; Mike and Colin are going to have the Pax stage for 90 minutes to talk about Heart of Thorns, anyone who believes that those key figures in the game’s development are just going to talk about S3 plot threads for an hour and a half are insane.

Allow me to list all the evidence that points to it being an expansion of some kind:
Name Trademark; not used for any Living World content to date.

Buzzphrase “What lies beyond the Living World” suggests that it is not the living world.

The dragon logo has only been used once before; for the original game box.

Key figures in the games development have the Pax stage for 90 minutes soon after the trailer.

Q3 predictions are obscenely high for there not to be any substantial payed content.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Hi everyone,

The article about profession system only presented the idea behind this system and we generally don’t give precise details about these systems unless these details are needed to understand the idea. In this case we can’t share details but we want to reassure players that they’re not going to see changes in loot so visible that some components are going to “rain” or they’ll stop seeing loot variety. It’s more complex than that.

The adjustments to the loot system are fairly subtle and the goals are that, after a certain time, your characters will effectively have more components you can use. So it may take some time for you to see a difference, or not, but it’s not going to feel like a very visible change each time you loot a mob. We want players, in particular new ones or those creating alts, to more often be able to use the items they loot directly or get something that is relevant to their profession. It does not mean that you’ll get less varied loot overall. We’ll keep monitoring the changes to kitten its affects.

Thanks for your early feedback!

If it’s that subtle that it will be barely noticeable, why even mention it? Better yet, why even implement it? If it causes a new player to get 2 extra relevant pieces of armor out of 100 drops, is that substantial enough to really be called a “feature”. Seems more like a tweak that could have been resolved behind the scenes with little effort and publicity.

winterchillz.2564:

Malthurius.6870:

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

No one forces you to play that way, you can play full nomad in dungeons if you want and I couldn’t care less.

And I don’t play that way, because it’s boring. When a certain playstyle is too universally accepted as the best, you start creating a community that refuses to group with anyone other than those who conform.

Zerker being the top dog in PvE is a small part of that problem. Skipping fights, stacking on bosses to avoid mechanics, ect. It’s hard to kick someone for not using Zerker gear because you can’t inspect player equipment, but I’d be lying if I was to say I’ve never been kicked for refusing to exploit/skip fights. Looking at stats and conditions vs direct damage is too narrow a view for a much larger problem.

Like I elaborated on before; the entire philosophy behind PvE content needs to change, not the balance of stats. Fights should demand some use of support/conditions/control and deny attempts to LoS enemies into corners. It isn’t fun, and it’s generally accepted as the right way to do things, so not doing fights a certain specific way is considered wrong among the majority of the player base.

For that exact reason; I only do dungeon/fractal content with pre-established friends; that’s not healthy for the social aspect of an MMO when you dread grouping with new people.

Draknar.5748:

Guess I’ve been playing the game wrong for 2 years now, dang.

Wrong according to most players who do dungeons or fractals. I don’t run zerkers, so I’m wrong too according to a large portion of the player base.

Andred.1087:

The word you’re looking for is “suboptimally,” and unfortunately, there will always be a set of optimal builds for each scenario. But I’m sure ANet has the resources to devote to constantly re-balancing everything as power shifts around in a circle.

You misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting any kind of re-balancing; their entire philosophy on PvE encounters needs to change. There should be mechanics that support the use of conditions/stuns/defense/control/support, not “buff these things until they’re good enough” or “nerf zerkers until it won’t work”.

Mind you that’s still a lot of resources to dump into the game, but a lot more sensible than playing nerf/buff whack-a-mole with PvE balance.

Arrk.6507:

This is what exactly has never happened to WoW. Okay, some were sad sometimes. Still, the devs communicated any chnages LONG AGO before they took place. All the beta stuff was available world-wide long before it was carried to LIVE. The Dev team spoke to and listened the community all the time. When the community didn’t feel good about a thing or two, these things were changed rightaway. All of them. Now, that’s a game. Still, I can’t play WoW as it’s too outdated in the Engine terms.

The buggest example proving that ANet is wrong with their communication to the community base is that upone the release, no one (apart for the alpha players) knew how to create a Legendary weapon. They figured this out and bought off all of the starting precursors upon release. ANet didnt chage the formulas, didnt do anything anything about this. They just gave some big wealth to thier friends and some random alpha players. And no, when something like that hit GW1 market, whole game was rolled backed. To many accounts were banned as well.

What happens now? ANet doesnt care. Pls throw in some more cash shop items so the ppl would buy them.

The recipies did change; slightly, but they did. They remained similar enough where alpha players had a good idea of what to do, but there were still unknowns; but what kind of arguement is this? Alpha players had more advantages than just that, and any member of any MMO friends and family alpha have a huge advantage over the common player.

I didn’t want to bring it up, but Blizzard was very intelligent about when they talked about features. They usually didn’t even have to because they would put leaks into their patches for sites like MMO-Champion to look through and understand what’s coming up. Rarely did a dev state an up coming feature before it was visable to the public. The only time this didn’t happen was with expansions, and there are examples of Blizzard teasing features in expansions and not releasing them (COUGH COUGH DANCE STUDIO COUGH COUGH PATH OF TITANS COUGH).

And Blizzard has their cash shop which I despise so much it made me quit. It was too much to take to monetize micro transactions AND a sub fee.

I played WoW for years, and I can make a list of when their dev communication was just as much of a run around, if not more so, than Arena Net. This is derailing though, so we should probably drop it.

Tman.6349:

This debate has been responsible for many dead horses so I’ll just leave you to your own definition of logic.

*If you have the time, go ask some sPvPers and WvW Roamers about how utterly useless conditions are.

Conditions should have a place in zerg and dungeon content. I don’t think anyone is arguing conditions are bad in PvP.

The entire PvE design is flawed; if you’re not a might stacking zerker you’re doing it wrong; and that’s bad… mmmk.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Precursor scavenger hunt…

Tell me again how you don’t talk speculatively?

Please know I do appreciate the time and effort put in to making this post. One long overdue but at least it is now here… Just please don’t make statements that are blatantly untrue…

There are many other instances of features being said that they are being developed some even given a preliminary time table… all to be lost to oblivion never to be spoken of again… I just used precursor scavenger hunt as the most obvious example.

Maybe exactly why they have/should start not discussing things that aren’t coming through the pipes. When they did and it doesn’t come out, people hang that over their heads and throw a fit about how big of a group of liars they are.

I feel like this has happened with another MMO before; but when devs are so transparent that all their ideas are laid out before the community, the community goes absolutely nuts when only 1 of those ideas goes through, and the mere mention of those ideas becomes a ‘promise’. It’s crazy.

Then, the worst thing the devs can do is say “this idea didn’t work out”, oh no, then the community is grabbing pitch forks and torches about how they’ve betrayed the community.

So, the only sane option is to button lip on development ideas and only talk about what is a sure thing, and I guess that’s starting for Anet now.

The CDIs are great because it allows ideas to come out of someone other than the devs; then those ideas don’t become promises because the devs didn’t present them.

Looking forward to the CDIs again, btw.

Arrk.6507:

Conspiracy Theory Bull Kitten

That’s an awfully big list of assumptions you’ve made there.

I found the fight “a step in the correct direction” but “not punishing enough”.

The entire living story suffers from the issue of “not punishing enough”. Death has no consequence, and even if you do end up dying a lot, you still don’t fail. It is literally impossible to fail unless you leave. That isn’t inherently bad; you shouldn’t make the player completely redo the instance the moment they die, but I don’t think you should be dropped directly back into the fight you died in. That doesn’t happen in dungeon bosses, why should it in solo bosses?

When you die you should have to restart the fight you died in, then the difficulty would be spot on because death would have some kind of consequence. Other than that big nit-pick with the entire living story in general; the fight mechanics were of a perfect difficulty. The mechanics were easy to figure out, no mechanic felt overly cheap, and the fight wasn’t too long or too short.

Still though… Anet, get on making death mean something in these instances.

I remember back when Sanctuary was an Elite skill that could literally cover an entire point and gaurentee a reversal of a situation.

Just make players inside of the bubble immune, so that it’s literally sanctuary; the heal might have to be removed at that point, but it’d still be great then. I mean, why not? Warrior have a 4 second immune on a 60 second CD, why not give us a small AE control bubble that gives 4 seconds of immune on a 120 second CD; and even then the players have to stay within the bubble.

Facepunch.5710:

My concern is that we’ll need the gem store version to begin upgrading toward the Ascended version. I don’t want the gem store version. But I don’t want to find out after it leaves the store that I can’t get the Ascended version until it hits the store again.

That couldn’t happen, because even the people that bought the sword on the gem store (Like me) no longer have an item to represent that we did, it’s a skin item, 1 time use and it’s gone and the skin is unlocked on the account.

So they actually can’t make the gem store version a requirement unless they feel like being giant jerks and force everyone who wanted the imbued version to buy the normal skin a 2nd time.

I see no problem with them making the better version obtainable in game while a lesser version is available for limited times on the gem store. For one, it allows players with limited time to still benefit from Anet’s work on new equipment; second players that get the skin through legitimate means won’t feel very slighted because their version has a unique flair to it that shows that you did indeed do the content to obtain it.

It’s not all too different from what they’ve decided to do with the PvP armor they’re releasing soon. The tournament version will have all the bells and whistles, while the more trivial to obtain version will be less flashy.

If they do something similar, be it through entirely in game means like the PvP armor, or splitting it between a flashier ascended piece and a less flashy skin on the gem store, I believe it would make quite a few players quite content; especially if the difficulty of getting the flashier versions is high.

jebo.2461:

Absconditus.6804:

which does not have a subscription fee, does not force-bait you into the cash shop

We must be playing different games then.

In mine we got a MICROSCOPIC bank (shared with all the 5 character slots available) where I can’t even store two full different sets of gear without having to cough up money.

Could be worse, you could have to store all your crafting mats, pets, skins, and dungeon tokens (like you used to) in there.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

It might be an experiment. They might see how many people will pursue the in game model (which might be coming soon) versus having the skin on the gem store.

I’m not sure though. Considering it is ascended makes me think it will be available as a drop or a LS reward

They’ve done similar things with ascended armor and the triple threat boss where the boss dropped a more thematic version of the same skin.

This would be a first to release a lesser version on the gem store and the ‘true’ version through achievement in game; but I can see this being a thing.

Exxcalibur.6203:

Arnath.2319:

I would really like to see the LongBow added.

What? Shocking…even a crossbow for a guardian would be a stretch…

Would it be? I personally find it kind of silly that we can summon a bow but can’t use one.

Ilien.5302:

Ceremonial plated outfit is the armor shown in Cursed shore loading screen…

Um, no it isn’t. It’s Grasping Dead Heavy Armor set from Arah and the Avenger’s Heavy Armor set which is a human cultural set. The third character in that loading screen isn’t visible enough to identify; but it doesn’t look anything like the Ceremonial Plated Outfit.

Glog.4275:

Is it not unlocked across all characters?. I bought it for my warrior and notice none my other characters unlocked it.

It is, just use the item you got in the mail and it’s unlocked under the outfit wardrobe slot. It’s quite nice that is doesn’t cost any transmutation charges to change your outfit.

Most chest plates don’t appear painted on, they all tend to have mass or appear to.

I’m impressed with the detail, but not being able to hide the gloves or over sized shoulder pieces is a hefty negative in my opinion.

Oh, and I totally forgot about this momentarily, the shoulders actually clip with the collar, at least on skinny male norn. That’s pretty lame considering it’s a full outfit. One of the reasons I actually wanted to hide the shoulders in the first place.

This isn’t the same sword that was leaked a while ago.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Delaqua_Family_Blade

It’s nearly identical, but it lacks the wielded effect. What does this mean? I guess the Black Lion one is a ‘replica’ lore wise, but does that mean that the actual blade is of some significance still? Will the version with the glow be available to players at some point?

Scepter Symbol of Wrath actually being a symbol.

Removing the projectiles from whirling wrath and just putting the damage into the whirl itself to make the damage more reliable.

Move the symbol on the hammer auto attack to a slot 2 and make it’s cast time near instant like Greatsword’s symbol, and make the 3rd attack a weaker mighty blow in the auto attack chain.

Either make empower or orb of light on staff cure at least 1 condition.

Cleansing Flame should cure conditions on the guardian as well.

Shield of Judgement should give more protection than it does.

Fix sword wave so that it doesn’t freak out and miss sometimes when attacking objects and sometimes enemies.

Inner fire should activate when you burn other players, not yourself.

And last, but not least…

Remove Kindled Zeal and replace it with something else. Kindled Zeal is completely outclassed by Amplified Wrath in every way; especially since Guardians only have reliable access to burning for damage.

I wish you could just tell use what hit you for 3k crit. When we know that, we can tell you if the attack was justified in doing such.

Just knowing your toughness and the fact you were crit for 3k tells us nothing. All attacks aren’t made equal.

But without context, 3k is a pretty low hit if that’s the highest number you saw.

It’s gating content by staggering the release of it; it keeps players coming back for longer. If they released it all at once then they’ll have people completing it the week of and having nothing left to look forward too other than the option grind for cosmetic gear and achievements.

Mind you, this is how it is now, but it is much less extreme this way when those feelings of having nothing to do but do optional achievement and grind content only last 2 weeks.

This content is planned and thought through. It hasn’t been made in 2 weeks time. Future patches may have new dungeons and such relevant to the story at the time, we don’t know, but Anet know already what content is coming out.

Oh no, say it ain’t so;

Does the community of this game really need a green star or a green circle to understand where to go? She flat out tells you where she is or something to that effect when you get near her.

Please Anet, do this more often so people can’t blindly run through this content; don’t make ignorance like this your rule book on leading the player. Make people think more.

On that note, make failure an actual option. When the suspicion meter maxes, you should have to start over. When you’re defeated, you should have to restart the fight. Quit making auto pilot an option.

That looks like the same text my Norn Ranger got; if there is different text, that isn’t the line.

This would be better suited as a grandmaster trait. I hate to bring up WoW, but hunters in WoW had a talent that allowed hunters to tame exotic animals, and these pets would be objectively better than normal ones and would require an effort to actually find and tame.

Adding a grandmaster trait that simply allows you to tame a grouping of ‘exotic’ pets would be fine I would assume; the details on how strong they are are up to discussion though. My problem with my own idea is that the trait would become objectively better than all others in the trait line as the grandmaster traits in the beastmastery are now.

I do like the idea though, but implementation is an interesting debate.

This is exclusively pertaining to PvE and no other game type.

Are drakes too good? They do hefty damage, they cleave, and they’re chunky; able to take a decent beating. Compared to other pets in PvE, other’s either lack damage, most don’t cleave at all, or they’re so squishy that they get stamped out by any large attacks you forgot to micro manage for.

I think it would be better if more pets cleaved honestly; either that or tax the drake a little bit for it’s ability to cleave.

Thuggernaut.1250:

also, someone above mentioned Harbinger, now that would be straight cash. we could actually get a real villain into instead of these mindless dragon zombies. how about a dragon/Harbinger assumes direct control and taunts the kitten out of the boring useless destiny’s edge fools? and hopefully dispose of that obnoxious Taimi too.

If you think the dragons are mindless zombies then you haven’t been paying attention.

In the last few parts of the original personal story, and even now, the dragons show the ability to plan and defend themselves. They are far from mindless… single minded? Yeah, but far from mindless. Oh, and we had a Harbinger anyway, Scarlet, and people tend to not like her anyway (However, I thought she was alright as a villian.)

Sweetblue Huntress.9856:

Play the one you enjoy playing now. If the all weapons for all professions comes to pass, that might not be for a looong time. This was written almost a year ago. Then you would have gotten bored playing a profession you’re not to thrilled about. Also, there aren’t any details. You might have access to the weapon, but what skills would you have? Would there be limitations?

Then, if/when it comes to pass, you’ll have fun with a whole new character!

Yeah, this is the most logical choice. But my interest in ranger wanes just thinking about the prospect of other weapons on other professions. I end up feeling like my time with ranger is going to be wasted if I’m going to jump ship the moment they add weapons to every other profession.

I guess I should be more married to the moment rather than the future though.

“What’s more is that the team is also working very kitten finding a way to make it so that every profession has access to every weapon and their own weapon skills for those previously locked weapons. Engineer plus Hammer? Check.” -Colin

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/feature/7597/ArenaNets-Master-Plan-for-2013.html

Oh god, this quote has thrown my profession loyalty into turmoil.

So, I love every profession in the game mechanically. I mained a guardian first during beta and the head start, but I became bored after a while since I ended up deleting my guardian charr and rerolling guardian norn; I ended up burning out on the game after that.

I came back to roll a ranger, which I also loved. But, oh god, the quote above came out and I immediately questioned my choice to main ranger. You see, aesthetically I like bladed weaponry. Like many players I like the way the greatsword looks. I like how visceral it is (excluding mesmer). I love 1 handed swords, I like axes, I like bows and I like guns too. Hell, I like all the weapons in the game.

So imagine my excitement when it’s mentioned that some day all professions will have access to every weapon. All of a sudden I stopped choosing my profession based on what was there, but what could be there in the future. My choice was more or less dictated by what theme I enjoy more, not what weapons they can use now. With this in mind, Engineer is at the top of my list of professions I would main if they had access to every weapon.

Done and done, right? Engineer, right? Well, it would be if I didn’t doubt the ‘every weapon for everyone’ thing coming to pass. If I know, beyond a doubt, that this was going to happen to the game, I would be on my engineer right now instead of typing this. I like everything about engineer, don’t get me wrong, but the biggest turn off is what isn’t there.

So, help me make up my mind. Should I play engineer in hope that they eventually do follow through with ‘every weapon for every profession’? Or should I just continue to play ranger and ignore the prospect of getting a weapon I enjoy aesthetically on a profession I enjoy more mechanically.

Sorry for the wall of text. I’ve been struggling with this for a long time.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Azhure.1857:

Ionut.2307:

Azhure.1857:

Ionut.2307:

Now let’s wait for that white knight posting that we shouldn’t play for reward.

One should always play for some kind of reward. Just maybe that reward doesn’t always need to be $$$. Mmkay?

Absolutely agree with you.
But for this particular encounter, which is it?
Is it an engrossing story?
Is it amazing combat?

Besides “insert AP checklist here”, what reward this encounter does provide?

To be perfectly honest, I can not speak for any of the events in the 5/20 Update… yet. I logged online in the evening to my guild saying it wasn’t fun and wasn’t worth it. Take that coupled with the fact that I don’t enjoy being told by ArenaNet what to do and when – I’ve felt no need to jump into it yet.

I’m also not an AP farmer by any means. I’ve got around 7k points from just enjoying the game, though compared to many of the people on my friends list I think I sometimes get laughed at for how low it is.

As for my earlier post – I responded as I did because in the large scheme of things players should play for reward. Just that so many people are using the argument that the reward is either $$$ LOOT $$$ or Bust. I disagree.

To be honest, I purely attribute the not fun to poor execution, not the fights themselves.

They seemed to have balanced the bosses around everyone being optimised, with zerker sets, and being somewhat organised. That just won’t happen.

Unless you’re somewhat good, zerker is probably going to get you killed more often than not. My friend who runs celestial gear fares much better than me and my warrior friend when it comes to longevity in these fights.

Optimization isn’t the problem really, it IS the fact that everyone is in zerker that can’t withstand the damage of the fights. Being dead is much much much worse than wearing say sentinel stats.

This wouldn’t get the hate it has if people weren’t so used to mindless zerg trains. Nothing is more amusing than watching the worst player in the zerg be the guy with eternity.

I suprised that very few people STILL haven’t noticed that the tokens that are constantly dropping can be used to buy nearly EVERY item from past living work achievements in labyrinth cliffs. And if you already have them all, you can buy a bag with a masterwork or better item in it with them.

The tickets they drop can be used for the queens gauntlet, and completing those gives you even more tokens. Gambits multiply the reward of tokens. In the end you can still get a lot of loot from the tokens, but not as much as you used to. I would have thought that most people would jump all over the fact that you can now get all the equipment, home instance nodes, minipets, and tonics that a lot of people missed out on from past living world metas.

What the actual heck…

They’re nerfing farm trains because they’re mindless and not fun. Their existence was never intentional and they do nothing but tunnel vision farm minded players into doing nothing but.

You can still farm for gold, you just have to ‘think’ and ‘communicate’ a little bit more. I want them to do what they did to the queen’s champions to every champion in the game.

Down with the mindless Zerg. Down with zerker stacking. Down with farm trains.

My biggest issue with the new trait acquisition system is that they were lazy and added the exact same requirements for every profession. I expected cool things like “Find this book in a necromancers cave to learn this neromancer trait from him”. Instead we got generic things, mundane things like map completion, not even level appropriate. 100% frostgorge for an adept trait? Are you serious?

The trait missions should have been profession specific, soloable, level appropriate, and most of all, fun. I don’t even think any of them should have been attached to events; I came across a meta event that was bugged that prevented me from unlocking a trait I needed for my build.

I thought this was a call back to the old trait system they talked about in alpha. This was a rushed job. I like this concept of unlocking them, don’t get me wrong there. I only wish that the missions were unique and made to go places players would have otherwise ignored. Jumping puzzles, certain books, NPCs, points of interest, skill points, and maybe even reasonable kill goals like “kill x number of things with x weapon” would have been great. Champion Group Events, WvW Captures, Zone Completion, and dungeon completion were bad ideas. Story path missions are ‘meh’.

I’ve been thinking about the next generation of legendary weapons (and maybe armor) for a while now, and I feel like there should be some things added to legendary weapons of the future to make them both even more unique and “harder” to acquire (not through more grind, but skilled play).

1. The ultimate cosmetic flavor items.
Legendaries currently in the game give your character a unique flair when compared to other players who lack them. An Aura, Footprints, physical effects (Incinerator’s fire bracer effect and frost fang’s ice bracer effect) and mild effects on weapon skills.

This is very cool, but I think this can be 1-up’d. I think it would be very neat for weapons to completely alter the aesthetic of the weapon for the profession. Warrior’s using any of the current greatswords get a very flashy effect very similar of what I’m thinking of just because of the nature of their skills. But imagine if a guardian using the legendary greatswords, instead of still having the blue effect had the twilight effect instead in it’s place completely, maybe even things like whirling wrath creating a spiral galaxy effect. Certain legendaries already do this better than others. They could also make more legendaries change the sounds of the attacks (within reason) like quipp. My idea for this is for legendaries to make profession almost ‘look’ and ‘sound’ like different ones completely while still be recognizable. A complete aesthetic overhaul of weapon skills for the work.

2. Less Grind – More Skill
My biggest gripe with legendaries right now is that they don’t really require you to be good at the game, just to have a lot of time. My friends and I joke a lot about if they added a legendary for combining the 4 weapon colors you can get from SAB tribulation, it would be the more prestigious legendary in the game; you would know what that person had to do to acquire that weapon, and it wasn’t easy.

Adding specific challenges for specific legendaries in the future will give legendaries that wow factor that they’ve lost; especially if these challenges are rock hard, like they should be.

I also think that having legendaries be sellable on the trading post is a mistake; it’ll be an even larger one if specific difficult challenges are added. Part of the pride in having a legendary, or any difficult to obtain item is the limited ways you can obtain it. I personally feel legendaries should be representative of something other than ‘time’.

3. Lore and More Specific Themes
The current legendaries are very cool, however they would be even cooler with a healthy dose of lore behind their origins, what they are, and being themed after more specific things. ‘Fire’ ‘Ice’ ‘Space’ are all cool themes, but a bit generic really. Legendaries like ‘Moot’ ‘Minstrel’ ‘Frenzy’ and ‘Flameseeker Prophecies’ are much more interesting in this regard. The lore and theming can be further supported by the challenges mentioned earlier.

While we’re on lore, more lore IN GAME would be much appreciated. having the majority of lore either external from the game or fragmented is a bit frustrating. A lore journal and bestiary would be welcome additions.

Don’t take this too critically. I just wanted to throw my own ideas out there.

So by what criteria can we get a refund on skins? Say I bought 2 phalanx armor skins, but only have 2 pieces of the other set, but the full other set. Since having just one piece of the set unlocks the entire set, does this mean I can get a refund for at least 1 of them?

Zepidel.5349:

I have done it all, when Teq came out I went and killed him with a zerg in about 5 minutes, if you call that “endgame” I can see how you don’t understand where I’m coming from.

I think you’re talking out of your kitten on this.

When Tequatl was redone it was a pretty big deal that Blackgate killed it the day of the patch. My server took a day or two to nail it, and others longer than that.

That fight is impossible to clear in 5 minutes, and if you akitten during the fight I would almost guarantee that you died…. a lot. So, I’m not going to go with the others here and say that it’s just endgame content you don’t want to do… I’m going to call you a troll that is making up circumstances and events that never actually happened to make your side appear more legitimate.

Either that, or the fact that you’ve never gotten decent loot from Tequatl is testimate enough that you don’t even try to play the game; just auto pilot. You might have even just gotten killed by the giant tidal wave after you fail to kill the boss, got the worst loot, and thought “Hey, I beat it”.

But like others have said anyway; none of this content requires your participation. You can just quit the game and play when they add something in line with your interest rather than complaining “what about MY needs”.

What is this nonsense about mobs with “auto kill” attacks? There is no such thing, at least none that can’t be avoided. If you’re dying to auto attacks a projectiles, maybe you should try knights armor.

Also, the idea presented here in the OP is a bit flawed.

Are you saying that because more power means higher base damage; losing critical damage will hurt low power gear with ferocity more than berserkers? How is that so? Since berserkers has more power, 1% critical damage is more valuable to them than to assassin or valkyrie. More power means more value in critical damage, not less.

Also, celestial is getting buffed not because of this change hurting their damage more than it will hurt berserkers, it’s because the only reason anyone runs celestial right now is because it has higher critial damage than any other gear set right now. When the change hits and this is no longer the case, no one would want to use it unless they did something to it.

This change is going to bring berserker closer to assassins. Assassin’s gear is taking a hit, yes, but berserkers is still taking a larger one.

10% critical damage from 2000 power crits lost > 10% critical damage from 1600 power crits lost

TL;DR What the OP is implying seems wrong mathematically.

So, the new Zeal grandmaster seems redundant with a trait that converts power into condition damage already there in the trait line.

Did the math actually.
Burning (The only damaging condition Guardian have) ticks for 354 with no condition damage.
With the berserkers amulet in the mists and the conversion trait (13% of power into condition damage), you gain a perfect 300 condition damage bonus. This causes burning to tick for 403.
If the new trait is a pure 33% increase to burning, that causes burning to tick for 471 (rounded up).

There is the new trait in radiance that causes retalliation to be effected by condition damage instead of power, and that might be a reason to take the old conversion trait in Zeal…. except that you already have an obscene amount of power from berserkers gear anyway to get a bonus even close to worth it from the conversion trait.

Seems dumb to me, hope that old conversion trait doesn’t stick around, because otherwise it’s just taking up space.

This is a small idea that came to me on a whim and I wanted to share it.

Basically, adding a Bestiary to the hero pane so that mobs that you defeat (once, or a set amount of times to achieve the info) are listed and given lore along with a model or maybe a concept piece of the mob. This would give something extra for players to do and would be a decent pass time.

additionally, a way to keep books and their contents on the character so that books can effectively be collected and looked at whenever.

and as a little extra, a place to keep a list of the Hearts you’ve completed and their information, as well as the text in the letters you received after completing them.

These kind of ‘lore’ collectables are very attractive to me, and make a lot of sense for a game like this I feel where horizontal progression is the name of the game.

This feature is being added to legendaries because legendaries take a ludicrous amount of effort to create (much more than ascended), and before this update the only way to change stats was to spend money on a fine transmutation crystal; (it was basically milking legendary weapon holders for gold/gems if they ever wanted to use their legendary with a different build).

Ascended just doesn’t take as much work to get as a legendary does, so I don’t think it warrants this kind of ability. You’ll have to wait for when/if they create legendary armor/accessories, but I don’t think that’ll happen in all honesty.