Guild Wars 2

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Kormir be praised!
(Looking forward to seeing the implementation of some of the ideas people have offered in these forums.)

I wouldn’t expect this soon. Anet stated repeatedly that all the features that are coming with HoT have already been mentioned in the “road ahead” post. No mention of build templates.

I also think those templates are much less needed than ever before because:

• we now have seperate builds whenever we log in to WvW, PvP or PvE
• the new trait system allows selecting new builds in a matter of seconds

Build templates, if introduced, should come with the possibility to attach gear to it (weapons, trinkets and armor). I’d love to see something like that in the game.

they are talking about balance changes later… maybe other healing specs get buffed as well, would make a lot of sense imo.

Sicarius.4639:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

A LOT of people will love this, and A LOT won’t. That’s just normal for this type of role reveal imo. Cut the dev some slack!

Personally: I love it. It will bring some decent new aspects to the game.

Nothing is new about a healer and a trinity.

well I meant new to GW2’s gameplay, healing wasn’t very important in GW2 so far.

A LOT of people will love this, and A LOT won’t. That’s just normal for this type of role reveal imo. Cut the dev some slack!

Personally: I love it. It will bring some decent new aspects to the game.

Kidel.2057:

I usually get up to 52% crit chance with Berserker, then I start using Valkyrie.
Or you can bet and get up to 45% with Berserker, then add Valkyrie. You even get more power with Sharpening Stones compared to full Berserker.

do you use this in PvE or WvW?

something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAS8MA-TVBXgAAKPCUiFqbgWJYv6PkCYUhWA-w
?

Kidel.2057:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Valkyrie gear… Rev already has perma ferocity uptime, do I need more from stats?

This sentence here makes no sense. Revenant has permanent Fury uptime, that gives you critical rate (so Precision, not Ferocity) and double compared to normal Fury (so +40%). This makes Valkyrie stats very useful on Revenant.

sorry, I confused ferocity with fury… and I was almost sleeping when I wrote this. Thanks for the advise nontheless.

I’m currently crafting my first ascended gear set for Rev (I loved Herald/Shiro gameplay in the beta) and I have no idea which stat-combo I should go for. Playing WvW mostly, zerg and roaming.

Berserker gear… arrowcarts will probably bring me down quite fast
Knight’s gear… I heard the Rev is vulnerable to condis, so toughness would be second choice, better vitality
Valkyrie gear… Rev already has perma ferocity uptime, do I need more from stats?
Soldier’s gear… too tanky and too little damage?
Celestial gear… too little power to be effective? Are berserker trinkets a good choice additionally?

I’m torn, as you see. Crafting ascended gear is probably a one-time thing for me since it’s hard to come by enough gold via playing WvW mostly.

any advise?

Coulter.2315:

I’m sure they’ll try to incorporate smaller stories here and there but because we know there is a giant monster so they have to balance little things with the players thinking ‘this is irrelevant we know a Dragon is sitting over there waiting to destroy the world.’

well, the base game had Zhaitan as well, nonetheless almost all maps had smaller interesting stories to tell.

I really hope Silverwastes was just an experiment in creating a WvW-like experience for PvE players and no indication of how the new HoT-maps will look like. From what we’ve seen from Verdant Brink so far…

it is absolutely beautiful
it is absolutely fun to explore
it is absolutely challenging and fun to fight the enemies
but
it lacks the unique small events which made Queensdale so much fun (from what we were allowed to see)

I think it’s also about the big drop in quantity. Less events means less stories to tell.

Queensdale (if I count correctly) has 71 events and 17 heart activities.
Silverwastes has 43… but a lot of these are the same

take a look at the events yourself
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Queensdale
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Silverwastes

It’s like Anet doesn’t want to “distract” the players from the big metaevent-chain, so they deliberately leave out smaller, more interesting, events.

Lately it seems to me that event design has more moved in the direction of telling bigger stories about the war (currently against Mordremoth). The Silverwastes is a nice map with a cool theme – basically a single big meta event chain, but imo it lacks a bit of the smaller event chains which tell interesting side stories.

Drytop also suffers from this problem, even though there are some smaller chuncks of this there: the mine-event, the sparring master.

When I look back at the base game there were some of these smaller stories hidden in the world. It felt so rewarding to find them. I remember that hole in the ground (Kessex Hills), you explored the underground area and suddenly a small girl appears and needs your help.

Or the story with the giant which needed help to get to his fallen comrades.

Stories where characters have their own problems, besides the world-problem that is the Elder Dragon. Stories that need to be found and aren’t always there waiting for you. Dynamic Events.

Is someone else with me?

I was lucky to participate in the beta events – Verdant Brink is an awesome map with nice big-group events… but I missed those smaller hidden stories. (…which may have been locked from the beta).

my only explanation of why this turned out to be the way it did:

The event was designed by new members of the team who weren’t involved in living story season 1 and 2.

Honestly, this isn’t playing together for a common reward but it’s everyone for himself. Best accomplished by tagging and leaving asap.

thanks guys!

both are roamers, I’m looking for people who showcase their builds in ZvZ gameplay; sorry if I haven’t been clear enough.

can anyone point me to really good youtubers who do WvW build guides for Necro which don’t focus on roaming?

I love Nemesis and Brazil, but they cover sPvP and PvE mostly. I can look at the builds posted in this forum, but I have no idea who the posters actually are (I’m quite new at playing Necro).

thanks

A Reaper is this angry unstoppable avenger that comes for you in the night.

And what is Anet doing?! They give us infobits about underpowered skills and traits of the Reaper profession. They are creating tons of angry Necro-players. Once they Reaper goes live those will come for you, furious without hesitation or remorse.

come on, no one wants to face a happy smiling Reaper, you know it.

;)

oh, I confused the datamined warhorn skin with the tempest warhorn skin, sorry for the confusion stacks :-/

I’m curious, can someone think of a reason why we already have the tempest weapon skin as BL-skin?

I thought the specialisation weapons / armor would be rewards for putting points into the tempest progress line?!

BUT how does it actually work? Is there one button for Legend & Weaponswap (both are swapped simultaneosly) or 2 buttons and I can swap legend independently from weapon?

I can’t help but feel like this is a forced change, something that wasn’t really planned – like a kneejerk reaction without thinking about the consequences. I may be wrong, all I remember is an outcry of a few loud ones and a reaction from Anet to this outcry. Was it the right move?

Roy, can you elaborate how the switching works, please? Do you switch Legend & weapon together with one button, or can you switch them independently?

Bahir.5132:

What will happen to the 500+ points I have in skill point scrolls that I have hoarded in the bank?

from their blogpost:

“Old skill points in excess of those earned by leveling and skill challenges will be converted into crafting materials for the Mystic Forge. Items and activities that were previously repeatable sources of skill points will now also provide that same crafting material. "

What if each reset of WvW-points would simply reset the hero points you’ve gained from that? You’d reset the hero point reward tracks with it and would have to respend all the points left again (just as you do in the WvW specialisations track).

Nike.2631:

But I could spend those points in a different line and get more of them if I retain my old ones…

Nightmare. Honest.

I see, true. Well a non-resetting system like the ranks would make sense then, I guess. If only the system wasn’t as boring as it is now.

Nike.2631:

I like the concept (a lot, actually) but it would be a nightmare to untangle each time they reset all our WvW points…

Hm good point. What if you only get these points the first time you spec into that tier rank? Doing a reset wouldn’t delete the hero points and you wouldn’t get them a second time you spec into the same rank of the tier.

about the problem with the finite character of hero points:

What if unlocking hero points in one gamemode (e.g. WvW) cuts those points from the other mode?

Let’s say you get 5 hero points in WvW, now a random skill challenge in PvE which would reward you with 5 hero points would reward you with 1 gold instead.

This way there would be one specific number of hero points available, you could get 100% from doing only WvW, you could get 100% for only doing PvE AND you could get 100% (and not more) for doing WvW and PvE.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Nike.2631:

I like the concept (a lot, actually) but it would be a nightmare to untangle each time they reset all our WvW points…

What about tying it to Rank?

I’d like that, but I think ranks should become more important and visible when doing this. Like a reward track for ranks with additional “goodies” at certain places in the reward track

• rewards new skins in certain intervalls
• rewards hero points in certain intervalls
• …

At the moment ranks are a bit bland if you ask me.

On the other hand we have quite a lot types of reward tracks already, which might get confusing for new players. Achievement points, skills and traits, sPvP, zones,….

To counter my own suggestion, another problem would be the finite character of hero points. Players who play WvW and PvE would get more hero points than players who only do PvE.

Webba.3071:

They should just base unlocks for existing characters on what has been unlocked already. If that means for some legacy chars that certain skill challenges/hero challenges only count towards map completion and dont award a hero point (because that character effectively already has it) then thats hardly a problem.

take a look at the reward track UI for the new skill/trait unlocks:

http://massivelyop.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/gw2hot_04-2015_ui_specialisation_reward_track.jpg

Now think of it: you have trait/skill 12 unlocked but not skill 2, 5 and 7. In the new system you have to unlock the skills/traits one after another. As I mentioned above I can imagine that there are technical restrictions with giving you traits/skills without giving you everything that’s located before that in the corresponding reward track.

It might work without a problem though, I don’t know.

What about traits you bought with gold?

just a quick suggestion

We already have reward tracks in WvW with the rank up system. How about putting some hero-point rewards into the tiers of the specialisations?

Example: Guard Killer

1.)1% damage to guards
2.)2% (total) damage to guards
3.)3% (total) damage to guards + 1 hero point
4.)4% (total) damage to guards
5.)5% (total) damage to guards
6.)All guard killer bonuses now also affect enemy lord and supervisors + 3 hero points
7.)7% (total) damage to guards, lords and supervisors
8.)Gain 50% of your endurance back after killing guards, lords and supervisors
9.)10% (total) damage to guards, lords and supervisors + 6 hero points
10.)Add 1 stack of Applied Strength on killing a guard, lord or supervisor
Applied Strength: Increases power and condition damage by 20 (max stack of 5, stacks are lost on death)

personally I’d be happy with a compromise:

Everyone has to unlock the traits/skills with the new system again BUT those unlocks would be accountwide. So leveling up your 2nd tief would have all the thief skills/traits unlocked you got before.

Also hero-challenges could be accountwide as well, so you don’t have to do a hero-challenge in the world twice. (do a hero challenge with a tief unlocks these hero points for all of your other characters). You still have to level up each of your characters for the most of the hero points though.

(the problem with this compromise: you’d have lv.1 characters which already have hero points to spend from hero challenges, so new characters would have access to tons of skills/traits already.)

I also see the problem though, traits are located in the new reward track system, so you unlock those one after another. If you already have trait 12 unlocked, this would mean that you get trait 1-11 as well, even if you haven’t earned it in the old system yet.

So keeping the traits you have now and simply not giving us the traits we haven’t unlocked yet, might not happen because of technical limitations of the new reward track system for skills and traits (speculation).

I see where you are coming from when you’re talking about the things you earned. Earned by spending time to unlock things in the world or earned by paying gold in order to unlock traits.

Imho earned things shouldn’t be taken away from players, this only creates anger and frustration, especially when looking at alts and the repetitive process of unlocking it the same way as before over and over.

I reckon the system could detect who has done which skill challenge in the world, so these points could be kept. The problem left is traits unlocked via gold.

spoj.9672:

This bar is more pug friendly now. But it looks like it might be possible for organised groups to completely stunlock bosses with even greater ease (chain icebow 5’s).

well I don’t think the bar is permanently visible on the enemies, the Wyvern for example has a phase when it attempts to fly – and in this window the bar appears (as I understand it) and you’ll be able to use your CCs to deplete the bar. Once the Wyvern is in the air, the bar can’t be drained / isn’t visible (?).

correct me if I’m wrong

Aidan Savage.2078:

Not just that. What about attacks that pierce? Using the suggested mesmer GS AA, what happens if my target is at max range, but due to the piercing nature of the attack, another enemy gets that close? Does my AA suddenly stop attacking at range? Or does the game just suffer a stroke because I’m attacking in melee range and long range at the same time?

as I said, the attack would still be the same – only the animation would be different. Technically the character isn’t attacking in melee, his ranged attacks will only have a melee animation.

I’m not someone who knows GW1 very well, were Jalis and Mallyx obvious choices for legends if you hadn’t known it’s them?

To me it seems those are rather sidecharacters who have been chosen to become Revenant legends. Because of that I think we won’t see Shiro as legend. Correct me if I’m wrong, please.

melee animations would still have projectiles (like guardian’s sword skill) but hitting someone in melee would feel different than shooting something from range.

Stormdancer.4972:

Rotate the art 90 degrees.

would be quite a wild sideways-strafe then ^^

I really like the fact that Hammer on Revenant is a ranged option, but I’ve thought about how a dynamic change in animation could make the autoattack skill feel even better.

What if the animation of skill 1 changes when in melee range? It’s still the very same skill, with all the same effects, but instead of having a throw animation you’d really bash into your enemies with full swings.

Having a target moving in range:100 changes the attack animation into a melee attack animation on the fly.

What do you think? The same could be done to Mesmer Greatsword and other ranged skills.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Edit²: I have to confess… Bigtony and I are the ones behind the Revenant’s concept.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Class-Sugg-Let-s-fight-fire-with-fire/first#post4463086

hmm I doubt that they came up with the idea only 4 months ago, seems more like a really big coincidence to me.

If this was legit, I’d wonder how crazy development of new stuff looks like at Anet.

Dirame.8521:

currently having 3 utility skills each

I don’t think this is true because of the white arrow above the utility slots. There’s something to switch, I guess it’s more of the legend-specific utilties, I may be wrong though.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Well if the Ele does specialize with a sword, that will mean 7 out of 9 will use a sword…

I see no problem with this as it’s probably Anets goal to add all weapons to all professions over time. Sooner or later this will happen anyway. I’ll get excited when one profession has all weapons as this might mean that the next specialisation will use entirely new weapons.

oh, that’s how you meant it… lol – yeah I agree, definitely terrible for wall defenders ^^

aspirine.6852:

Taunt sounds like a terrible condition for defenders in wvw?

not if you want to keep your enemies away from your teams glasscannons

what I don’t quite get…

How can utility skills change a playstyle? Isn’t the playstyle mostly defined by your weapon skills?! Or does the Revenant change this considerably, having high-active utility skills?

When I look at the other professions, cooldowns of utility skills are quite high.

Skills to get you stealthed are mostly tied to skill 4-5, no? (Thief dagger 5, Mesmer torch 4, Thief pistol 5 smoke field + dagger 2 heartseeker)

Wahaha.7938:

I would definitely prefer to have fewer legends with more swappable skills, than to have more legends with a fixed set of skills.

I agree since you only can switch between two at a time.

it’s better to have this option:

Legend A (1,2,3,4,5) take 3
Legend B (6,7,8,9,10) take 3

than this option

Legend A (1,2,3) you have to take those
Legend B (4,5,6) you have to take those

whew, all that speculation, I should have waited until we know more… sorry!

what I think they should do (revenant only): because of the limited choice in build-crafting (you choose sets of skills, not single skills) you have the unique option to choose from a pool of weapon skills.

(example: Hammer gives you 8 skills, you slot 5 of those)

I see it like this: other professions have about 20 utility skills which means, that the revenant will also have 20 utility skills. Now to have some kind of customisation with each legend, you need at least 4-5 legend-specific skills.

This means that we will see 4-5 legends, not more.

Legend A (skills 1,2,3,4,5 – you slot 3 of those)
Legend B (skills 6,7,8,9,10 – you slot 3 of those)
Legend C (skills 11,12,13,14,15 – you slot 3 of those)
Legend D (skills 16,17,18,19,20 – you slot 3 of those)

this seems to be really limited to customisation-options. You can’t equip skill 7, 14 or 20 when you’ve chosen legend A.

I think a option to enhance the build variety would be a 6th set of skills which work like Elementalist glyphs:

skill 21 A, 21 B, 21 C, 21 D (a different effect based on the legend you’ve chosen
skill 22 A, 22 B, 22 C, 22 D
…

now you could mix those skills 21 – 25 into the build, each skill still having ties to the legend.

got excited too soon The same connection issue appears that I experience for a few weeks.

Once I’m connected, the ping-boost is great, but I can’t even connect sometimes.

thank you, tried it and it works quite fine at the moment

I’ve enough of my connection problems and lag when playing the game so I read about this problem and some people mentioned VPN tools.

Has anyone of you experience with VPN? If yes, which one do you use, are you from NA/EU, how long do you use it and how has it improved your gaming experience?

thanks!