In the patch notes, it says:
“Hero points are now earned every odd level from 11 to 80. A total of 398 points are earned through leveling.”
I used about 9 scrolls on a low level warrior earlier, (from 23-32) and got 0 hero points. Do they all come in one group at a certain level the way skill points used to, or is there a bug here?
I think this is my main concern with pre-ordering too, at the moment. We’ve only seen a very small amount of what I would typically call an expansion’s worth of content. A fraction of a new map (which just seems like Silverwastes 1.0.1 so far), less than half of the new elite specializations, a new PvP map and screenshots of other bits and pieces. That doesn’t justify a $50+ price tag to me yet. And I really want to buy it too! lol. I love this game, and the first one. I still remember the hype I had for Factions and Nightfall (the same prices as the original IIRC, but were games in themselves)! Please make me want to buy it!
That is ENOUGH! No more sense or reason please! Release date or RIOT!
Seriously, chill. If you think about how far along the elite spec reveals we are, we are still at least 2 or 3 months from release. You’ll have a breakdown by then if you’re so worked up about a computer game at this stage.
Hi, I just logged on to the game after taking a break for a couple of days to find a mail from ArenaNet which included an Heroic Chest. And I really have no idea why! I checked the wiki, and there was a link to these forums saying something about some players who participated in the “recent” (I’m not sure if it was the one just passed or a previous one) closed beta stress test would get one if they met certain conditions the next time they logged in. I have logged in multiple times since the (portal) beta test.
The only other thing it could be is it says you get one mistakenly if you have been banned and had the account reinstated, and I’m 99.9% certain that hasn’t happened. Is it just a late delivery or has something gone wrong somewhere?
They may well be a “Jack-of-all-Trades” and pretty good at each trade too, but they can’t do them all at once. You have one weapon and two legends. If you have a staff and are traited and equipping Ventari, then all you can do is support with some limited damage (as far as we’ve seen so far, you can’t say for sure until all has been revealed). I’m not sure how that is overpowered. You’ll be pretty useless once healing or projectile deflection is no longer needed. If anything I’d say a staff (or almost any) ele is more versatile and “overpowered” in that sense, as they can switch between support, CC and damage in combat.
This. The main part of your angst seems to be that the classes don’t synergize enough, but in GW1 you were never solo, as in, on your own without other players or heroes/henchmen. You could build around team synergy. GW2 is a totally different game. It’s an actual MMO for a start and not an instanced game, so there are times when you will need to be completely alone. Having skills that don’t do anything for you personally whilst solo makes no sense.
Dynamic events over hearts any day. The problem with The Silverwastes in particular was that it was dynamic events… but on rails. You stood around repeating the same series of events, at any fort you were defending. Defend->Rebuild->Escort. Possibly skipping the rebuild part if none of the walls got destroyed. Then after a seemingly arbitrary amount of time had passed, kitten opens, and you do the same champion fights.
This would be interesting… if winning or losing the fight had any impact on the confrontation with the Vinewrath. The only thing it affects is the amount of rare loot bags you get. If it had been that not defeating one or more of the champions had an effect, it would have added excitement, variation and a motivation to actually pull your finger out (e.g. the champions not defeated periodically stood on a cliff above one of the “lanes” and threw poison blobs that healed enemy allies when defeated or pustules that exploded if not killed). They have talked about winning and losing events having more of an impact in HoT. I’m just hoping that doesn’t mean more or less bags to open.
Edit: lmao at the censoring on this site… the “kitten opens” was supposed to be a reference to the fissures in the ground opening to allow access to the chambers underneath, but apparently the words “a” and “hole” next to each other is filthy and crude. What a prudish world ANet live in ahaha
AND I pray that Anet don’t mess up the clipping and equipping it preserves my character’s full beard.
More trenchcoats and buttcapes. “yay” I get that it’s awkward to animate upper legs and hips, but it’s not that awful in this game that it needs to be covered up at every opportunity.
I think ArenaNet needs to hire a permanent mod to shut these threads down as they appear… Amazon, and other big retailers, have done this since the beginning of forever. It’s a scam to get you to commit you to buy from them rather than someone else. Unless it appears on the Guild Wars 2 website, it’s BS.
You’ve got months to collect skins, elite specs aren’t coming until Heart of Thorns. Waiting until all the specs has been revealed isn’t going to change that. You’ll still have months.
One slight concern is that if you want to spec into Reaper but not use a greatsword, the first minor trait in the spec changes all of your death shroud skills to the new melee reaper ones. Could be a bit awkward if you want to make a scepter/staff build using Reaper traits (if that’s a thing).
“The reaper’s first minor trait is called Shroud Knight, and it gives the necromancer a completely new set of melee-focused skills while in Death Shroud.”
Shouts were pretty much the common consensus of what we would get, and I think a change to Death Shroud skills was inevitable too after seeing the “F” skills get changed for Guardian and Mesmer. It’s a bit hard to see how it fits in with the class as a whole at the moment though, without seeing the actual skills, shouts and traits. But first impressions are “looks cool, will wait and see”.
And yes, the teaser video for Reaper looks 100 times better than the Dagonhunter one, good job there. The Death Shroud scythe looks awesome. Slightly more hype after watching a second time.
I think anyone saying July/August is being very optimistic almost to the point of wishful thinking. We haven’t even had the first public closed beta yet (that wasn’t a press event). I’d guess at October-December.
I think anything with “Soul” or “Reaper/Reaping” are out, they already have a Soul Reaping specialization, it would just look strange having Soul Reaping and Reaping as two specializations together.
Expansions move the game forward, if you don’t buy it you should honestly just stop playing, there won’t be anything left for you. This is the case for every MMO in history and this one won’t be any different.
I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about. Sure, you won’t have access to new content or the elite specializations or the revenant but other than that you’re fine if you’re not buying HoT.
You still get the new trait system, you get the new borderlands map, you get the new pvp map, you get any other future QoL update, balance update and feature update. In addition, you should still be competitive in dungeons/fractals, wvw and pvp. Because there is no vertical progression (i.e. new gear levels and new character levels) GW2 is different from other MMOs.
This is one thing Guild Wars 2 has going for it. After the expansion has dropped, new players won’t feel obligated to drop $80-100+ for the game+plus expansion to be relevant. It looks like most if not all of the features of HoT are for level 80 characters, with nothing being added or changed in the “vanilla” game. This way new players can just buy the base game and see if they enjoy it then buy the expansion. Kinda seems like the opposite of “pay-to-win” to me.
Elite specializations are ArenaNet’s answer to increasing the level cap, and advancing character progression, in an expansion. Of course they’re going to be an upgrade to a profession. They wouldn’t be called an “elite” specialization otherwise. But calling it “pay-to-win” is just ridiculous. You could say the same about any MMO releasing an expansion that increases the level cap too.
no, they arent supposed to be stronger, If elite specs are stronger the whole game balance/variability will go in the garbage
I don’t know what post you read, but it wasn’t mine. I never said elite specs were “stronger”. I just said they were a form of character progression. Read the quote you’re quoting before putting words into peoples’ mouths.
There has been some talk about the portal stopping dropping over the weekend, and Tuesday is traditionally hotfix/patch day so I guess they may announce something when they have the numbers of people they were looking for and remove the portal from loot tables.
Elite specializations are ArenaNet’s answer to increasing the level cap, and advancing character progression, in an expansion. Of course they’re going to be an upgrade to a profession. They wouldn’t be called an “elite” specialization otherwise. But calling it “pay-to-win” is just ridiculous. You could say the same about any MMO releasing an expansion that increases the level cap too.
Guardians already kind of have a tether in Binding Blade. Granted it’s only a tiny comparison, but it’s not completely unrelated. And it doesn’t work on the structure-like world bosses (the ones you can’t critically hit, like The Shatterer and Tequatl) so I’d imagine these new tethers won’t work either. And I doubt it would be any different to a hundred skill animations of any kind going off at once. It’s only a line graphic from the player to the target. Even in the livestream it clipped through the ground, so it’s not so flashy and GPU consuming as other more complex animations.
I don’ t understand why you guys don’ t like the dragonhunter.
For me it has a nice design and it can be very strong both in pvp and wvw with his extra mobility.
Moreover MANY of you have always wrote that ranger is strong and without problems or limits.
Now dragonhunter reminds a ranger in its mechanics…..SOOO Why do you complain then ?
Many people aren’t complaining about the mechanics of the Guardian’s elite specialization, just the way they’re trying to sell it as a deep and hard to grasp concept that’s called Dragonhunter.
The whole spec feels a little more cut and paste than the Chonomancer, it really is just a longbow ranger with traps where:
The Dragonhunter’s Barrage doesn’t cripple it has an immobilize instead. The cripple has been moved to the auto-attack, but has a strange caveat of only if there is an enemy standing behind too.
The Dragonhunter’s Rapid Fire is just one big number instead of 10 smaller ones, with the short duration, high stacking vulnerability moved to a trap.
The Dragonhunter’s Point Blank Shot has become a grandmaster trait with half the cooldown (seven seconds (at the moment) compared to the ranger’s baseline 15).
As far as I’m aware Hunter’s Shot for stealth hasn’t been copied over. They even helpfully kept all the skills in the same place as the Ranger’s longbow skills so it’s the same key to press for the same thing.
The only thing Chronomancer took from Necromancer was the idea that Wells are something that goes on the ground and does stuff. There are some new ideas in here with some of the traps becoming like Wards from GW1, and the new Virtues look interesting, but it’s not really revolutionary. Nonetheless it still gives a ranged option to the Guardian, something that the scepter didn’t really offer other than as something to sometimes hit enemies when your Greatsword/Hammer skills were recharging.
The best thing about these changes, is it opens the door to the next (or next next) guardian elite spec having kits, with the tomes being in that skill category. A light wielding faithful warrior who uses his conviction and teachings to smite his foes, using his personal book-mobile library to adapt to any and all situations. New weapon, rifle. Cause you know, sometimes actions speak louder than words. Make it happen ANet.
The whole raison d’être of the elder dragons is that they seek and devour magic, and use magic to create powerful commanders and minions to gather more magic. “A wizard dragon did it” and “it’s magic” seem like pretty good answers to anything relating to the elder dragons.
A couple notes on Dragonhunter. We went with this name because we felt it was evocative of the medieval witch hunters. Guardians consider themselves protectors of the innocent. Followers of their faith be it in honor, valor, etc. The origin of the dragonhunter is a more subtle nuanced version of this. Guardians fight for justice and the dragonhunter faction believes justice is the eradication of dragons and their minions. I understand this is a lot more high concept than Mesmer but at the end of the day we felt like we wanted to try and push a more mature theme here. I hope this helps explain our thinking. We had other generic names in mind but felt like it was important to have a mix of spec names that are generic fantasy, more Tyrian fantasy, and more high concept. This one falls more in the third category.
Thanks,
Jon
I think the problem is, this just came out of nowhere. The Chronomancer was “generic fantasy”. A mage that uses abilities that affect time. Simple. Descriptive. And it works. It’s a trait line you choose in a game UI. It’s not the class you choose at the character creation screen.
Suddenly saying that if you pick 6 traits in this trait line your noble and stoic Guardian becomes morally ambiguous and starts turning on the leader of The Pact he fought to create and defend and fight beside against Zhaitan because he’s a Sylvari is just laughable to be honest. It’s like you guys spent hours in meetings philosophically discussing the moral implications of the zealous pursuit of justice then just turned around to us and went “here is da dragonhunter u guyz”. It’s just not sitting right. It feels like I’ve missed the conversation and just got the tl;dr
I should add that if you take out “Dragonhunter” I really liked the concept of the specialization, and it adds a playstyle to Guardian that was really missing. I’m looking forward to trying it out in HoT. Just don’t expect me to get on board with this “high concept”, which is obviously way over our heads [/sarcasm].
Got to agree, the Tomes were a neat idea, but I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve used the offensive tome (for the couple of time I’ve done Tequatl on my guardian). I’ve never even equipped the defensive one. These look great so far, still keeping the spirit of the tomes, but without the “clunkiness”.
I am prepping 5 characters for deletion so will have plenty of room for new stuff. ;
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But there’s only one new profession..
It’s likely they’ll leave the answer until as late as possible. Less time for the “rage” to hit the fan. This is the game that came with five character slots for eight professions remember? If you’re really that concerned, it really doesn’t take too long to farm the gold for 800 gems, you have plenty of time (probably a few months) to buy another character slot in preparation. And if it does get announced HoT will come with an extra slot, hey, you just have a free slot to see what leveling up with the new specializations is like.
Some random vegetable told me the other day that some spiders in TA use skills that reduce their cooldowns, and with a lucky reflect, can hit you instead, giving you the green number alacrity-like buff.
While it’s always hard to justify taking Shelter over anything else – Litany IS receiving a significant buff it would seem with Smiter’s Boon
( copy and paste from previous post ):
Not only would get healing from Litany’s base heal + Monk Proc, you’d also get an additional Monk Proc from Smite Condition + 25% of the damage done by SC as healing.
1640+1978+1978+(25% of SC’s dmg) – assuming there are targets to hit, quite easily 6k-8k of healing before you’ve even started a damage rotation.
SC might also have a small chance to clear poison or CC to make Litany more effective and you’ll get Fury for the full duration of the damage window.
They could make Litany of Wrath heal for 500% of the damage you deal and I still wouldn’t take it. Even with all the synergy with Meditation traits it’s still not good. Shelter is good because you generally use your heal when you’re playing defensively and/or getting focused. It negates burst and gives you an opportunity to regain the upper hand. It gives you control over your survival. Litany is the opposite. One dodge roll away from your GS spin (for example) and most of the duration of the back end of the heal is nullified. Plus Shelter will be getting buffed substantially too in the trait overhaul, with it gaining a skill category and benefiting from whatever traits affect it.
I wonder how many people complaining about getting Ranger traps know that Thieves have traps as well…
Though, that tidbit probably only reinforces the point some of them are making…
Which just goes to show how useless and underused the thief traps are in general, and the ranger traps just about beat them, and only just. I’m reserving judgement until we see how the new skills and the traitline actually work, but first impressions “meh” with some “ok…” thrown in. Note to ANet, you should have done this first and Chonomancer second. At least that way the reveals would have been getting better, now I’m worried about the rest.
For PvE: Dungeons/fractals with most random groups on the party finder will demand you bring berserker gear, and usually some other ridiculous requirement like proving it and an arbitrary achievement point amount (usually the amount they have). Granted if you know how to dodge roll and the mechanics of the boss fights, berserkers usually is best. But in the open world zerg world bosses or smaller scale groups like Silverwastes events, I’ve found taking some support traits and skills can be useful. You just need to do enough damage to get enough credit for kills. Running around trying to heal and support will get you little to no credit, and you’ll find yourself standing around hitting upscaled to level 83 mobs for hours trying to kill with no power/precision/ferocity/condition damage.
Paragon would make sense. We do have a ritualist/dervish kind of theme going on with the revenant, and the wings, which are probably just for the artwork (don’t expect gorgeous blue wings to show like the paragon’s gold ones), are a nod to that profession. But I would guess at Seraph or similar. Wings+protector+bow almost seems like guardian angel kind of territory.
I kind of hope that the idea of “something cool” to make up for no more mobile spirits comes in the druid specialization. It kind of fits, druids, spirits of nature, especially as the ranger spirit models themselves looks like the models of the druids in Guild Wars 1. Not the whole trait line, but one or two traits to chose to make the spirits worth taking for once.
The Bone Field, heal-minion, Jagged Horrors from the Death Nova trait and sometimes the small duo-minions work ok if you don’t auto attack outside of near melee range to initiate combat, but the Shadow Fiend and the Golem don’t do anything 90% of the time. Even after using their active skills. Using the Flesh Golem’s charge can be pretty kitten funny to see, watching it come out of nowhere and charge through all the enemies and then just stand and carry on doing nothing.
For the love of anyone please don’t let the Necromancer’s elite specialization have anything to do with minions. Broken since launch and WAI.
They’ve confirmed how it works. If you haven’t read the specialization core blog, read that first. If you have then what you do is you can choose EITHER three core specializations (use to be called train lines), OR 1 elite specialization and 2 core specialization.
So what they were getting at is that if you are a Chronomancer (the elite specialization) you would have to pick to give up at least 1 of the three specializations he mentioned)
But you’re still not giving anything up. Nothing is stopping anyone ignoring the Chronomancer specialization completely and playing as they do now if they don’t like it. It’s just a new way to play the class.
i believe you can select any 3, including elite, but the point is you will be losing some powerful traits/synergies if you drop any line.
But we don’t know what the new trait line involves yet. It’s a bit presumptuous to think it will have no synergy at all with any of the other trait lines. I think the idea of an elite specialization is that is different to the base class. If you want the same synergy we have now, you don’t have to play as a Chronomancer. Mesmer will still be a thing, and viable.
And I apologize, I think I read your post wrong. I thought you meant that you thought you would lose all of the current Mesmer traits. I understand what you mean now, but we don’t know anything about the details of the new specialization yet, just the vague idea of how it works. I’m sure it will still have synergy with whatever else you chose. If not, then it’s been poorly designed.
illusions? all shatter buffs 15% faster cool downs on shatter skills (includes continum shift, which will probably have super long cool down) phantsmal haste.
power wise, these trait lines pack a huge punch, there will definately be builds that would be better of with these synergies.
HOWEVER they will be lot less interesting.
Why do you think you’re “giving all that up”? As far as I’m aware, you keep the first four trait lines, and only the last one gets swapped for the new elite specialization.
So instead of Illusions, you’ll probably have something like “Chonomancy”. You’ll still have Domination, Dueling, Chaos and Inspiration. I could be completely wrong, that’s just my understanding.
Too bad it’s a trenchcoat I want to see some sexy male butts darn it.
Yea it looks a bit like TERA armor but next time we need pants! Like this
Careful with TERA. People will want skimpy female armors from that game if we are going that route :P
The better (imo) route is AION, their armor designs are next level gorgeous.
AION had some great armor designs. This video made me buy that game when it came out to find that armor lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIPPXNY9U4k The details on it were amazing, and the movements when casting were well animated. Too bad it sucked a bit (I have no idea what it is like now, but back then leveling meant grinding on mobs while getting ganked every few minutes by over-geared opposite faction guys and real PvP was a daily zerg to see who could make the most of the opposite factions’ player crash out of the game).
This outfit… pass. As someone else said, the hole-in-the-torso thing just looks kinda dumb to me.
The “Living World” was the concept of the game changing and evolving as the story is told, for example Lion’s Arch getting destroyed, and the changes to the environments on the edge of the Maguuma Wastes since the game’s launch. The Living Story is the playable “quests” that involves these changes. Season 1 dealt with Scarlet Briar and her crazy schemes (not the same as the Personal Story which deals with an Elder Dragon). Season 2 which has recently ended dealt with the repercussions of Scarlet’s plans and the awakening of another Elder Dragon. Season 1 and 2 of the Living Story are all at level 80, but Season 1 is currently totally unavailable, you either did it when it was about or you’ll have to wait until they find a way to put it back in the game.
Nothing will change if you buy Season 2 until you get to level 80, then you will be sent into the Maguuma Wastes areas (Dry Top and The Silverwastes), which are totally available whether you buy season 2 or not. The only thing the purchase does is add the Season 2 story quests and related achievements and rewards.
No one has any idea whether these skills are anywhere near final yet, I suggest QQing about balance when it releases or when/if they have an open beta. Or at least wait until the class has it’s own freaking sub-forum lol. Even the guy that data mines these says to take them with a pinch of salt.
If you stopped playing “several months ago”, it’s possible you did the personal story already. It was only fairly recently changed to every 10 levels. I came back a few months ago to find that I had finished parts of the story I couldn’t technically do yet with the changes on lower level alts.
Play a ranger for a while, then come back to Necromancer in MM spec. I know ranger pets have their problems but it’s nothing like this. One weird thing I have found (I don’t know if it works for all traits or just this one) but if you have Spite IX, Training of the Master, switching it out for another one then back again while out of combat will get all of your minions attacking instantly and efficiently, switching to your target as soon as you change, picking a new one and running as soon as one dies. It only works for a couple of fights, then you have to switch the traits back and forth again. Kind of annoying but actually makes minions a bit more interesting… in a way.
I want to see some sexy male butts darn it.
