Guild Wars 2

I never really thought about that before.. Shield and Focus #5 skills should absolutely be swapped. It makes perfect sense, both in the function and feel of the skill. Focus is more of a magical item, it makes sense it could be used to create a massive bubble. Shield is a defensive item, it makes sense that it could be used to block attacks on yourself.

I feel like this was an oversight.. maybe an intern at ANet accidentally put them on backwards.

BORING. Maybe I’m just using them wrong. Which is to say.. I’m not using them at all. 90% of the time I’m either solo or with a friend and it doesn’t seem worth it at all to put the passive effects on cooldown for a small buff to everyone. For a main profession mechanic, the virtues seem to be quite dull.

I’ve not seen anyone else discuss them to this capacity on the forums so I’m guessing I’m just doing something wrong. That or they really are just very straightforward and dull and everyone has gotten used to it.

Thoughts?

Sounds like you deleted it by accident then came to the forums to claim “bug”.

I’ve had cases where I bank items and they disappear from my inventory and never appear in the bank, but a quick re-load of the windows shows it moved but the icon was never updated.

rozcinana.7249:

You’ve kind of answered your own query, OP. “I love guardian! Why are there so many other guardians?”

I don’t notice it as much. I see more warriors around than guardians.

Haha yeah, I know. I guess I’ll throw that to every player enjoying a different playstyle. Just because I like it doesn’t mean everyone should.

I honestly dislike sword as well.

At first I tried it with the autoattack on… and the entire thing just looked.. AWFUL. As well at the movement prevention, the animations are just trash (for a norn, anyways).

The animation on leap for norn is just .. completely awkward. Especially if you’re attacking a single target in melee range. He does like.. this really odd twist in the air then strikes.

Looks bad and feels bad. I turned autoattack off but it only helped slightly.

I honestly don’t understand the combo. Are you meant to hit twice on one target then leap to another? Hit twice and leap to a third (or back to the first?). It is by far the clunkiest weapon I have seen.. it’s like they developed it in beta and it’s been ignored while the rest of the game got polished.

I don’t know how you guys can even use it.

Maiden England.3491:

I used to be the same exact way. Idk what happened but I just don’t see it anymore. the highest profession made is warrior and second highest is guardian, third being ele. I don’t remember where I saw this but it was some chart anet released. I do understand what you mean though… It is a bit wired, but not really true.

Thank you for this. I feel like I’m hallucinating and I need people to reel me back in, haha.

So I finally ended up rolling a guardian and immediately loved it. I love smashing things with a giant hammer and having some nice supportive skills. Great melee/ranged hybrid.. lots of fun.

What is turning me off though is .. absolutely every other player I see is a guardian. It’s getting pretty ridiculous. I wish I was exaggerating but it’s like.. at least 40% of the other players I see are guardians. Now, I know that guardians are one of the more popular professions but I honestly thought elementalists and warriors would be at the same population .. and the rest of the professions only lagging behind slightly..

But I’m serious. I see guardians EVERYWHERE. I know there’s gonna be other guardians. I know there’s gonna be other guardians with the same race. Other guardians with the same race same appearance and proportions.., hell, some of them might even have a similar name. But this is just silly.

So please, help me. Is this all in my head? Do I just happen to be in guardian infested areas? Or is this profession really flooding the world? Because if it is, it really turns me off to the guardian.. and then I need to start the whole profession picking process all over.

Thanks for reading

Thanks for the replies guys. Nice to know I’m not the only one who goes a little crazy about this. I’ll take some more looks at the screenshots in the guardian forum and hopefully be inspired.

I also just found this which gives even more statistics on choices. It seems sylvari guardians are pretty uncommon.. adds to the appeal. Can anyone speak to how heavy armor looks on them?

So I’m the kind of person who tends to obsess about the small things. Mostly things that aren’t that important. Wish it wasn’t that way but it is.

Basically, I can’t seem to decide what race seems to look the best in heavy armor.. and I know this is purely opinion based, but I was hoping some input might help me decide. I’ve looked through galleries and it seems like many races have access to a lot of the same armors which is neat.. means the decision should be easier. The cultural armors are a nice bonus, would be neat if those looked good too. I guess one big question to be asked is… Besides the cultural armors, are there really any differences in the style of armors available to each race? Sylvari seem to have leafy stuff and asura have gears and floating stuff.. is that normal armor or is that cultural stuff?

One other small side note, I like to stray away from picking the obvious or most popular choices. I’ve already strayed from this by picking guardian, would be nice if I could at least be a less common race.

For each race:

Charr: Seem to look generally kitten. Seen lots of screenshots where it was a massive charr in spikey armor .. looks beastly (guess that’s the point!). But I really don’t like the head region. The way the neck and head poke out from the body and the way the head looks.. can cover it with a helmet but it doesn’t really help. I feel like they only look good from the front. Looks like texture stretching is still an issue. Also.. Charr just don’t feel like a guardian. No one expects support from a beast. On the plus side.. there really aren’t many charr guardians.

Norn: Seems like the most obvious choice for a guardian. A giant hulking along in heavy armor. Seems to fit the role pretty well.. everyone expects the “tanky” (yes yes, I know, there’s no tanks) guy to be big. Plus the armor looks great on him. Downsides.. exactly what I said to begin with. Most norns are guardians (well, rangers, aparently, but…close second). I realize this shouldn’t matter to me much but it does. Also, they’re so big that the movement animation is slow and it actually feels like I’m going slower. I know I’m not but it feels weird.

Human: Obvious favorite race for all professions. All armor looks great. Feels normal. Problem, most popular race.

Asura: It’s kinda hard to show off any armor or equipment when it’s 10% of the size of everyone else. Pros are that it’s kinda neat, being a tanky guy (yes, again, I know) in a mini form. The armors do look good.. when you zoom in and can actually see. Movement is fine, always feels like you’re moving fast. The attack animations are just so-so though. You hit someone with a hammer as a norn and you can feel the impact. As as asura .. you see their health go down but it doesn’t feel like a big hit.

Sylvari: I had really high hopes for sylvari. Frame similar to the humans but slightly smaller, good animations, and a fairly uncommon choice for heavy armor. I didn’t even think about making this post until I looked up some of the armor though. Lots of heavy armor just didn’t look quite right on them.. and the cultural armor didn’t look right either. It just didn’t look … HEAVY, ya know?

Anyways, please feel free to share any and all thoughts about this. I encourage people to attach screenshots to support points.

Thanks for reading

<Demographics Source>

I’m surprised at the number of “use illusions to tank” responses there are. Generally I’m using sword/sword which gives me 2 reliable damage immunities.. I’m not constantly dying, my problem is the gameplay just seems haphazard (though not as much as Engineer did) at this level. Many times I’d summon a phantasm and the enemy would quickly turn and 1 shot it before it could do anything .. then a quick AoE takes out the clones. It feels like as soon as I get 3 illusions up, I should just shatter them ASAP because otherwise they’re wasted which really defeats the whole purpose of phantasms. Seems the only safe phantasms to use are torch or staff.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Seems like someone needs an infraction. I suggest you take a trip to the nearest anger management counselor. And the definition of casual, you need to go read it up.

Casual Gamer. Taking the two literal definitions and putting them together:

“A relaxed and unconcerned person who plays a game or games, typically a participant in a computer or role-playing game.”

Now there’s a bit of a grey area here. What does it mean to be a casual gamer? Does this mean you are not allowed to have any concern at all for the game which you are playing? If this is the case, I submit there is no such thing as a casual gamer… or that the only “game” that would support this definition wouldn’t really be a “game” at all.

The game would have to have no objectives, no goals. No motivation to accomplish anything. I cannot think of any way this could be done. It would seem you would need to remove all player interaction all together.

Are you starting to see the vagueness now?

Maybe not.. so let’s continue.

We can be a little more interpretative with the definition.

“A person who plays a game or games, typically a participant in a computer or role-playing game and is generally relaxed and unconcerned about the outcome.”

Ah ha.. now we’re getting somewhere. So now you can play all sorts of games, but the end result doesn’t really matter. You play Guild Wars 2 once in a while. You like killing things but don’t really focus on if you’re in the right area, whether you’re doing quests, or what your equipment is like. Usually due to the level of involvement required with MMORPG’s you won’t see these types of people in the game. They’re usually off playing bejeweled or FarmVille (I’ve never played that so maybe it’s more involved than I think).

Let’s take it another step further.

“A person who plays a game or games, typically a participant in a computer or role-playing game and is generally relaxed and unconcerned about the specific mechanics.”

And here we see probably the most common used definition of the term, the one that seems to have eluded you. Admittedly, I did structure this definition to apply specifically to the discussion, but I believe it remains valid. The concern of a casual gamer excludes only the specific core mechanics of the game. The casual gamer of this definition will not bother to look up specific builds or guides and probably wont be doing any calculations to find out just how much magic find you have. This does not mean they cannot have an interest in the community or the overall sate of the game and how it is evolving.

I hope this helps bridge the gap between your comprehension and the rest of the community.

Cheers!

So I’ve gone back and forth with mesmer several time, usually getting to lv20 or so before getting discouraged and re-rolling. So I’d like some input on how others feel about the mesmer at higher levels.

At level 20, I feel like I finally have some points to play around with although they’re nothing special. I enjoy pumping out illusions but it seems like most of the enemies beyond this point have large AoE skills which destroy most illusions before I can shatter them or before they can attack. .. so it seems very silly to invest in illusions at this point. Does that get better?

I have heard several times that early leveling is rough with mesmer. I’ve been sticking with sword/sword due to the high damage and high defense (blur and block) with staff as a swap.. it’s kind of hard to NOT use staff. It’s just so good and it seems to pump out much more damage than my greatsword does.

Anyways, I’m gonna stop my self before I ramble on for another 10 paragraphs. Simply stated, how does the mesmer feel at higher levels?

LoneWolfie.1852:

The definition of casual – Unconcerned and relaxed.

Just look at how much you wrote about the other people playing it. An unconcerned and relaxed gamer will ignore both Anet and the other unhappy players. If you forgot what genre this is, let me remind you again. MMORPG – Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

As much as you deny it or classify it, players are a part of the game. By even caring what other players think of this game, you have already involved yourself in a pool of muddied water.

To be honest, I think anyone who wants to post in the forums end up to be less than “casual”.
You just elevated yourself to be a gamer who wants something to be done.

Meh, call it what you want. The facts are that I don’t care about
- Maximizing DPS
- Only using the ‘best’ builds or equipment
- Researching the best paths to take
- Being the first to do anything

I play to have fun, simple as that. I guess there are players out there who are MORE casual. Maybe they log in for 12 minutes and press buttons just to see the pretty colors..

But all this is completely besides the point. Thank you for pulling out one little section of my post and attempting to pull it apart.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Nice lie about being a “casual gamer”. That casual gamer either don’t care or has left the game and moved on.

You talk as though there’s only one set of actions a “casual gamer” can take. Playing a game casually does not mean you need to be 100% aloof. You play the game because you have an interest.

My gripe isn’t about the game, it’s about the people playing it. Therefore while I am casual about the game, I am critical on communities.

What always gets me are the “ANET YOU DONT LISTEN TO OUR DEMANDS” posts. ArenaNet made this game. THEY DID. You bought it and play it because you like what THEY MADE. If you no longer like it, don’t play it! You guys post on here like ANet OWES you something.

It’s a $60 game and I’m betting most of you have hit at least 50 hrs in the game (I’m sure that’s an EXTREME under estimate for some of you).. so you should already feel like you’ve gotten your money’s worth out of the game.

… /rant.

I agree, OP. I too am a casual gamer and whenever I go on these forums, I’m just baffled at the people here. Also I can’t go into any of the profession forums because I tend to get discouraged when every other post is “this profession is useless” whereas in the game I’m doing just fine and dandy.

Having an open community to discuss the game is a double edged sword, but I feel like it cuts into the good part of the game more than the bad. People, in general, are idiots. Combine that with a person who just had a skill get nerfed and you suddenly have an irrational nerd rage spamming “I QUIT THIS GAME IS DEAD”.

… somehow started ranting again. Anyways, you guys need to relax. And it seems like everyone replying here is saying “Oh yeah I’m a relaxed person; don’t take the game seriously, etc”. Buuulllllkitten. I’d wager that more than 50% of the people on the forums are here because they take the game seriously. I’m here because my job doesn’t block the site and I don’t feel like working.

I almost think it would be better if ANet shut off the forums completely. They give you people a place to discuss things and all you do is poop on the game you’ve spent countless hours playing/enjoying. Sigh.

It’s a weird concept, it really is.

Cons:
- Trying to run around while your interface is spammed with duel requests.
- Nerd raged players hazing with “DUEL ME BRO”
- Creates a ‘messy’ atmosphere

Proc:
- Able to test your skills 1v1 in a controlled environment
- Actually can be entertaining if in the right area

So overall, I’d say no to “Open World”. Although con #1 could be rectified with a ‘Reject duels’ option, I feel it would only subtract from the game.

I remember in playing that old Universe of Fightcraft walking outside a town and seeing 2-3 duels going on. Sometimes it was fun to watch and cheer players on. In a dedicated area, it can be fine and actually add to the atmosphere.

I personally enjoyed being able to duel with my buddies… not to prove who was better, but to practice.

If there was a dedicated area for duels (maybe fighting pits or something in the mists area), I think it would be fine… but no open world.

Basically, if a Norn is X% Bigger than an Asura, will any weapon a Norn holds be X% larger than an Asura? (Is the scaling of weapons a 1:1 ratio with player size?)

And a follow up, does player size affect ability effects/animations? I realize anything with an AoE should be the same across all players, but if it’s a single target projectile, will it look different on players of different sizes?

Thanks

Geotherma.2395:

9:26 http://www.eurogamer.pt/videos/entrevista-game-designer-guild-wars-2

Oh, very neat. Yeah this reflects how it sounded months ago too – mostly even with slight variations.

Somehow it always seems like when I make a character, all I see is other characters of the same class.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Where was the source you found your statistics?

Completely unofficial polls and similar posts from that time. I realize everything on this is subjective but the goal is a “general idea”.

I appreciate the responses so far.

I’m a returning player after taking a few months off. In September 2012, it seemed like the class choices according to popularity was the following:

1) Warriors
2) Guardians
3) Thieves
4) Mesmers
5) Rangers
6) Necromancers
7) Elementalists
8) Engineers

Although the difference between Warrior and Engineer was only a 3-5% variance. Granted, these were statistics gained through the forums, so they may not have been 100% accurate.

My question is, now that the game has been out a while and lots more people have hit the level cap, does the above list still stand? If not, how has it changed?

Also, while I’m on the topic, races. Back at the same time, the popularity was as follows

1) Humans
2) Norn
3) Charr/Asura
4) Sylvari

I don’t care about this as much, but if you have any input on that, I would appreciate it as well.

Thanks for reading

I really appreciate the responses from everyone. I’m going to close out of the forums now before some turkey comes in and says “aw dood ele sucks”.

Seriously – appreciate it. First time in a while I’ve been excited to get back to playing this game.

Mongo OUT!

Well, while the forums are primarily are what’s keeping me from the warrior, the other reason (as mentioned above) is the warrior seemed restricted mostly to melee combat. It makes sense for a warrior to be restricted in that way, but I don’t know how I feel about that.

Hell, maybe I’ll try both an ele and a warrior. Not like I’m paying per month for the game, I can take as much time as I want.

Haha, good to know they can excel in specific builds, but like I said I’m not looking for the “best” profession, just one I can enjoy. I enjoy being good in PvP because of personal skill, not because the profession is inherently better.

Thanks, LordByron. I’ll give it a shot. I’m not looking to top leaderboards for damage, just want something fun that I can actually enjoy playing the game with.

I played engineer to almost 30 (27 I believe). Overall, I did not like how the kits fit together. No kit felt like it could stand alone like a weapon (rifle, pistol/shield, pistol/pistol) could. It was very disappointing. Profession felt like it had a lot of potential, but absolutely fell short. It’s not an area I want to re-visit.

Necro and guardian are out because I simply don’t want to play in a group with others of the same profession on a regular basis. I understand it will happen with random groups, but it’s just a personal preference.

The only reason I’m putting elementalist above warrior is because I feel like they’re almost inverses of each other. Warrior is primarily melee who can do some range, elementalist is primarily ranged who can do some “melee” (moreso just mod-close range). I think I prefer the latter.

Haha, thanks. Yeah I end up making all my characters either Norn or Human simply because I think equipment looks the best on them. Might try out a sylvari for the elementalist though, who knows. More than likely just end up making another Norn..

I agree, forums are bad. Ideally, I can soak up something useful in this thread and never return. Just while I’m at work trying to avoid doing anything work-related, the forums seem appealing …

also, thanks for the reply.

Played for a little bit on release, but after spending a while trying to enjoy a few professions, I decided to take a little break. I was desperately trying to enjoy engineer, but it’s just not for it. It feels too lackluster.. some people like that playstyle, I do not. I want something that feels finished. I also tried Mesmer for a while, and while it wasn’t bad, I feel like it was slightly off from what I was looking for. I feel like it was too heavy on the manipulation side and not enough on the damage side. I know they’re supposed to be the 1v1 PVP kings, but I don’t really care about that.

I am avoiding guardian and necromancer because I have buddies playing those.

Thief: I tried one for a little bit (Around lv 10), I didn’t really like the initiative resource, although I think I could have dealt with the profession if it didn’t use it.

Ranger: Tried one for a little bit (Around lv 10) .. honestly, the pet bugged the crap out of me. I don’t want to watch another object’s health and position and I don’t want something to just tank stuff for me. I feel like if you weren’t required to have a pet, I might have enjoyed this profession.

Warrior: I haven’t really done much with warriors. I like the idea of big weapons, smashing faces, planting banners for support. I’ve avoided warrior so far because .. well, because of these forums. People consistently say they’re so easy/dull that it’s not fun.

Elementalist: I played one for a very little bit and was immediately turned off by the element switching, but this was when I first started playing and didn’t really understand the importance of swapping. Now, the only thing keeping me from playing it is again, these forums. Every profession forum kittens about their profession saying its the worst, but elementalist is almost completely agreed as being the worst. Kinda turns ya off to playing it.

So here I am, trying to give GW2 one last shot. I almost always play mages in MMO’s.
- In WoW I did a warlock, but I enjoyed the versatility of a druid (however I could never get the hang of PvP in melee range… so much easier to sit back and nuke). When doing dungeons, I was always jealous of the guys who got to be up front smashing stuff while I sat in back queuing up abilities.
- In Rift, I played a mage (necromancer/warlock, sometimes chloromancer).
- Lineage 2, I loved my orc destroyer,
- Aion I enjoyed a chanter (for a brief time, but that game wasn’t great). EQ2 I played a bruiser but immediately hated it in PVP.
- Guild Wars 1 I could never really find a class combo I enjoyed.
- In AoC, I played a Herald of Xotli (a 2-handed weilding mage.. very fun class).

I feel like I might enjoy elementalist .. is it REALLY as bad as people say it is? And if so, how?

Anyways, hopefully the game has been out long enough that the trolls have gotten bored of the forums and I can get some helpful responses.

Thanks,
Jeremy

Asura –
Pros: Fits the genre perfectly. Animations look great with all the tumbling engineer’s do. Racials fit.
Cons: There’s a lot of them. Your weapons and gear look much less epic when you’re tiny.

Charr -
Pros: Fits the genre perfectly. Racials fit.
Cons: They look pretty ugly and so does their equipment

Human –
Pros: Generic enough to fit any situation to some degree. Gear looks good.
Cons: They’re everywhere. Racials don’t really fit.

Norn –
Pros: Equipment looks great. Giant guns and weapons.
Cons: Racials only kind of fit. You’re large.. take up room and block camera.

Sylvari –
Pros: Not as many of them. Even fewer are engineers.
Cons: Doesn’t fit at all. Tree people with guns? Looks silly.

What do you expect to gain by posting here? Buying an MMO is not a commitment. You bought the game. If you don’t want to play it, there’s a very simple solution .. don’t.

If you need help or want a discussion, this is a great place for it. If you just came here for some attention so people will coddle you when you get sad, you came to the wrong place.

Suggestion #1: Pick a profession and STICK IT OUT until level 20-30. You will have quite a few skills unlocked and you can START to play with different builds. If you make a bunch of characters, level them to 10 and decide you don’t like them .. well, that’s not good enough. It’s like walking by a restaurant, peeking inside and deciding you wouldn’t like anything there (people do it.. but it doesn’t make it right).

Let me point out some of the positives of each profession, maybe get you inspired a little bit:

Warrior: Giant weapons, heavy armor, face-smashing awesomeness. Although many choose to play a warrior with a bunch of passive signets, you can run with shouts and banners, adding great utility to an outstanding damage profession. You can easily use both melee and ranged weapons. Truly an awesome profession.

Guardian: A phenomenal as seen by the sheer number of guardians in the game. You shouldn’t let this dissuade you, however, because it’s an MMO and if you pick a profession based on what others pick, you’re not going to pick anything. Able to use heavy smashing weapons or magic weapons, you can play guardian in a variety of ways. Your survivability is through the roof and you can easily switch from heavy damage to support at a single weapon swap.

Ranger: Not just for bow wielders. Ranger has a truly diverse set of skills that allows
them to adapt to many situations. You can choose between long range, medium range, and short range, all while maneuvering around the enemy to avoid getting pummeled. Although I was initially turned off to pets, I found them to be a great asset and fun to use.

Thief: The ultimate hit-and-run king. Stealth, in past games, has always been a fairly boring mechanic. You sit invisible, waiting for the perfect moment to strike someone. If it goes poorly, you can sometimes just stealth away. Here, stealth plays a much more interactive part in combat. Your stealth comes in short bursts which can be activated at the right time for both offensive and defensive glory. Traps and teleports add to the fun factor of this profession. You can also wield guns and bows to switch it up and their weapon combos (main hand/off hand) are incredibly fun.

Engineer: A bit of an odd duck profession that I feel still hasn’t reached its prime, but the potential is limitless. Weapon kits allow you to adapt and react to any situation. The engineer is given the tools to control combat and explode those who don’t like it. It is easy to be discouraged with this profession, but if you stop worrying so much about it, it makes it much easier to enjoy it.

Elementalist: Master of elements. Similar to the engineer’s kit swapping, the elementalist will be swapping to different elements fairly consistently based on the need. I don’t have a lot of experience with this profession as I’ve only played it to 18 or so, but I did find it very enjoyable to master the elements, know when to use each one and how the combos between each element are utilized.

Necromancer: A very awesome profession that I’m glad ANet decided to implement. Not a typical ‘sit back and nuke class’, the necromancer plays with many different styles of abilities, many focused on ground-targeted AoE. The weapons choices are pretty awesome and you can choose to play the necro at a distance or melee range. Pets are not required for this profession, although they are absolutely an option. A very diverse profession that has very fun mechanics.

Mesmer: Level 1-10, this profession may feel very clunky as you get used to the idea of illusions. After you’re comfortable with them, this profession really starts to shine. They have some pretty amazing weapon choices and easy to use combo fields. Although the illusions are a pretty big part of this profession, as you level you do not need to focus directly on them. Also, this profession gets some pretty awesome skills. Being able to create portals, go stealth, give your whole team stealth or quickness.

Why don’t you tell us what professions you’ve tried to what levels and why you didn’t “love” them?

No one can tell you what to play, but if you start questioning yourself at every turn, making a new character every day hoping that one day you’re going to love every single aspect of it at level 1 .. you’re not going to play this game.

Suggestion 2: Don’t create a character, enter the mists, and try to PvP to figure out the profession. It works for a select few people. For the rest of us, we get frustrated and hate the profession.

Suggestion 3: Stop reading the forums. People come here and just kitten ENDLESSLY. In every profession forum you will have 80% of the population claiming the profession sucks and all others are better. If you still want to read the forums, stop taking what everyone says so seriously. People exaggerate way too much here. Take it all with a grain (or a pile) of salt.

I would like to just know that it’s on the list at all. If it takes a while – fine. But let us know if this was even considered…

@Zinwrath: I absolutely love the idea of having kits “attach” to our currently equipped weapon. Not only would it allow us to see our legendary rifle/pistol/shield, but it would be more incentive to have weapon stats affect kits.

This still puts us slightly below par with other classes as it caps us at 3 unique weapon appearances (aside from the kit usage), but if this was in place, I probably wouldn’t feel the need to make a post complaining about it.

If he did a lot of damage with his shatter, it’s because he used 2/3 skills prior to stack up illusions. There is a little ramp-up time there.

I consider their ‘design decision’ to be an ‘oversight’ .. :-P .

If I didn’t have to wear a mammoth backpack while throwing grenades or dropping bombs, that would be a great step forward.

However, it only MILDLY resolves the issue of “Two engineers with the same kit will have identical weapons”. This can only be said about other professions if they just happen to have the same weapon model. Kinda not fair.

If they need to implement another interface to accommodate this, I think we’re owed that much.

I understand that since engineers are the only ones who can use the kits, they are not as much of a focus for ANet. All other weapons can be used by at least 2 professions:

Axe: 3
Dagger: 4
Mace: 2
Pistol: 3
Scepter: 4
Sword: 5
Focus: 4
Shield: 3
Torch: 3
Warhorn: 3
Greatsword: 4
Hammer: 2
Longbow: 2
Rifle: 2
Shortbow: 2
Staff: 4

Engineers can still get good looking pistols and rifles, but the kits are supposed to compensate for the engineer’s lack of weapon choices. The lack of appearance choices should be compensated as well. Since engineers are the only ones who will use these kits, I can absolutely understand not putting as much focus on alternate skins. However: I believe no fewer than 5 options should be available for each. Give us SOMETHING. Besides, these kits are just BEGGING to be re-skinned.. you could do some really awesome things with the models that wouldn’t make any sense on normal weapons, but would fir perfectly with the engineer’s style.

With such a strong focus on customizing the appearance of your weapons and with the epic Legendary weapons, it is a MAMMOTH oversight that ANet did not include any way to customize kits.

I’ve brought this up before, and so have others, but it needs to be addressed.

How much work would it take to get kits on par with weapons in terms of appearance choices? TONS. But they’re the ones who decided to use this system, why should we be penalized for it?

Why does using a shotgun mean you can’t stand still? Why does anything in the tools trait line mean you can’t stand still?

If he’s saying the trait that increases turret damage does not actually increase turret damage, that is absolutely not “working as intended”.

All the gold accumulated through taxes should be pooled as a jackpot for a lottery. Players can get lottery tickets from the black lion chests.

At least then the money would feed back into the community and it would help promote buying keys. Win/Win

Spoken like a true thief

I’m an engineer. I like to be able to sit back and control fights while providing utility for my group. This has led me to play many magic-using classes in the past but engineer fits the bill pretty well.

I was hoping engineer would be more like the Heroes of Newerth hero “Engineer”, but .. maybe someday.

I love big weapons and smashing faces but for some reason I could never stick with a melee class for too long.

The problem with adding a new class in any MMO: Every player, their immediate family including mother, father, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, first cousins, in-laws, and their respective pets will be playing this class.

Not only does this absolutely flood the game, but that class is treated differently from the rest for several months – overly scrutinized and and the forum will be flooded with “OP” and “UP” so much that the class will be re-worked 12 times before players finally shut up.

Let’s bring up WoW, shall we? Death Knights. When they were released, there were more DK’s than the average 10th grader could count. Not only does this absolutely over-saturate the game with the “role” (not as much of an issue in GW2 due to the trinity removal), but the demand for armor/weapons for that class goes through the roof. The market is ruined (guess it’s already a factor in GW.. soo…). Also, many people, me included, are not interested in being the exact same as everyone around me.

Individualism is not an easy thing to look for in an MMO, but at least in playing a Norn Engineer, I have some. Basically this means I will have no interest in playing a new class even if I like the idea. Many others will feel the same.

I think the only way to add classes to a game is to add other branches to existing classes – another trait tree for each or another weapon type.

I feel like theives should be the ultimate “hit and run” profession. A high risk, high reward kind of playstyle. If they can get the jump on you, they should be rewarded.

However, with a “spammible” (put in quotes intentionally, I know it’s not ACTUALLY spammible but .. enough) stealth, and no stealth breaks, it severely lowers the “risk” of the gameplay.

Solution: When a player in stealth takes damage, a blood spray effect appears at the player’s location and the player is crippled for 1 second.

The player is not ‘revealed’, but it gives others an indication of where they are and, if they are paying proper attention, might even be able to do substantial damage. Perhaps both the blood and the cripple are too much, but one or the other would be useful.

I don’t think the stealth mechanics should be tampered with much. Stealth is really the theif’s primary tactic .. nerfing it heavily wouldn’t do well for the game mechanics. A “reveal” wouldn’t be great either. A slight indicator if a stealth target took damage would be nice (means if you’re lucky with AoE’s it will pay off … or if you manage to get a poison/burn/bleed off on the thief, you might see the effects while they’re running) or a movespeed reduction would be good too (suddenly, the thief is at risk of coming out of stealth before they’ve managed a safe distance).

I honestly don’t know why ANet is having trouble with the rendering of stealth targets. If a stealth target is near the player, load them into memory beforehand so when they un-stealth, the data is readily available to display. If it’s a problem of quickly rendering the stealth target even after they’re in the memory .. that sounds more like a clientside issue. However, I can’t imagine this is the case if so many players are having the issue.

I actually play through the game pretty slowly. I’ve been playing since early access and I’m level 22 if that tells you anything. I play once in a while with friends… I paid $60 for the game, I’m not gonna blast through it in a week (feel sorry for anyone who wasted their money in doing so).

I’m pretty sold on going into leatherwork now.. just gotta figure out if I wanna bother with huntsman. Weapon stats don’t carry over to kits, and I mostly use kits with my engineer. Maybe they’ll change it later and I’ll wish I had gone into huntsman.. arg..

Right now I’m playing an engineer. My options for crafting are
Cook (useful to all)
Jeweler (useful to all)
Huntsman
Leatherworker

I went into cooking and jeweler for one reason – I am contested about crafting equipment.

Pros:
-Ensure you’re wearing equipment appropriate for your level
-Easily customize your characters appearance
-Create stuff useful right up to the end of the game

Cons:
-Completely negates the entire equipment loot system (no point in fighting that epic boss for the super glowwy weapon if you can already make it)

,,, well I guess that’s the only con. But it’s a big one. So I want to know..how does everyone feel about this? I’m finding cooking to be fun, but a huge money sink.

I’ve gotten obstructed a few times, maybe 5% of the time.

Try using battering ram instead of #3 to combo with #2 – more damage, more reliable hit, and usually never obstructed.

All the botters I have seen are Asura Hunters. Just ban all asura hunters and we’ll be good then … :-P

Yeah, I bet you’re right. Just annoying that the trait line that focuses more on the tool kit than any other has an ability that affects shields, but disregards the tool kit.