Guild Wars 2

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

I’ll laugh if they make tomes un-usable when HoT launches….

I’ll laugh even more if Elite Specs require more than 150 Hero Points

They won’t be, they have already said that it will be possible to level up using the scrolls and tomes after hot comes out. As a matter of fact one of the developers said he plans on doing it himself.

For myself, I plan on running the elite for the mesmer, the Necromancer, the engineer, the thief. As for the others, I don’t play them very much, I do plan on playing the revenant, but I actually prefer to the other legends over Glint.

No, you play an elite by selecting it as one of your traitslines. Simply deselecting that trait line will restore you to a standard character

Guys, you do know that trees is the new elite specialization for grass, right? And paper is the elite skill for treats, and we have recently discovered that paper always beats rock so grass with trees equals an op set up. It needs to be nerfed.

Purecura.1795:

Welcome NEW PLAYERS!

I will do whatever I can to help you ALL OUT!

Add me in Game. My character’s name is Vanity Roseheart! I’am the most beautiful Mesmer in all of Tyria!

Also the most modest :-)

Kentaine.4692:

meeflak.9714:

Someone explain 15 char to me…. Please

The 15 chars is because the forums won’t let you post unless you have 15 characters (letters, numbers, spaces) in you post.

And here I thought it meant that you wanted 15 charrs :-)

How many of you have a core class you like to play but not plan on using the corresponding elite specialization?

Edited for several autocorrect mistakes

Scipion.7548:

Extreme.8350:

You only have to put 1 trait point in the new trait line to unlock it its not like you have to play an entirely new class

Never said the contrary. It seems you missed my point.

Apparently you missed the point that a druid is a ranger, and a dragon hunter is a guardian.

I decided to do the tomes route.

On the plus side, they are adding an Ascended salvaging tool with hot as well, so you will be able to salvage that ascended piece.

I think the fact that legendary can change stats on the fly outside of combat is great, but it becomes a lot more irritating when you’re stuck with the same upgrades unless you keep on over writing them.

I think this will be much more exaggerated with legendary armors, I’m curious what people currently do with their current legendaries when it comes to sigils.

Eponet.4829:

Morfedel.4165:

Please explain how this is any different from leveling from 1 to 80. Or, you know, the leveling experience in any MMORPG.

Also, consider this. For those of you complaining about stuff being gated in terms of exploration, it took me maybe an hour to unlock hang-gliding 1, which is the single most important of the skills for getting around. It was trivial.

Leveling to 80 can be done in base Tyria, WvWvW, or even SPvP, whereas Maguuma masteries can only be advanced in Maguuma, a region that, unless they haven’t announced anything for, doesn’t have heart quests, only has four maps, most of which we wont be able to get map completion xp for until we have most of the masteries anyway, doesn’t have dungeons, and can’t be contributed to via WvWvW or SPvP.

Apparently the beta weekend masteries were actually accelerated in order to allow people to test them, and unless there’s something not shown, the only ways to advance them have been the personal story, which you can only get XP from once, or doing the same event chain over and over.

On the plus side though, people with a dozen level 80s can probably do the personal story with all of them for a good amount of XP due to masteries being account bound.

That still isn’t really any different. Because I can’t go do cursed shores or go fight Jormag until I’ve gained many levels either. It’s a slightly different flavor but it really doesn’t change anything. It’s simply another type of leveling, and leveling is prevalent in every single computer RPG in existence.

Please explain how this is any different from leveling from 1 to 80. Or, you know, the leveling experience in any MMORPG.

Also, consider this. For those of you complaining about stuff being gated in terms of exploration, it took me maybe an hour to unlock hang-gliding 1, which is the single most important of the skills for getting around. It was trivial.

Eponet.4829:

Morfedel.4165:

How many rpgs of any kind out there doesn’t have some kind of leveling?

I spent years playing on a Neverwinter Nights roleplay server where you literally just created your character on your own computer within limits (Level set to 30, no items above effective item level 20).

Leveling is the most unimaginative way of adding a sense of progression. For instance, progression in SPvP comes from actually getting better at the game, not because playing mind numbing tasks for longer but never learning anything entitles you to having higher stats or more traits.

In the server I played on, there were just so many areas that it would take ages to actually get through each of them, that, and the fact that hanging around the Red Lion Inn’s bar and chatting was so much fun, assuming we weren’t charting an expedition into the Orchards of the kitten ed in the infinite layers of the abyss, Reclaiming our souls from devils in the Hells after accidentally selling them, breaking out of the prison planes of Carcerei after being trapped in its deepest layer, joining up for a stint in the blood war, journeying deep into the hearts of outland in order to reach the library of thoth, and then reading through the tomes contained within in the search of a description depicting the scene described by an prophetic character viewed within their dreams in order to figure out where it was that they were seeing, staging a heist on the god of thieves in the depths of Gehenna, before reaching the treasury getting caught and trying to escape, dealing with players plotting to overthrow one of the factions and gathering support, etc, and that’s not even counting the portals, all tied to random easily obtainable junk that we’d discover from just hoarding everything as we explored in order to try and find each of them and determine just which item corresponded to each key.

Character progression is a crutch that’s only needed if your gameplay isn’t interesting enough to generate a sense of progression from developing your skill as a player/You don’t have enough content to keep people interested.

That was an individual home made server, and not the core game. I’ll ask the question again: how many games come from their company to our computer without a leveling system. Yes even NWN had leveling, I played that a lot. Perhaps that home brew didn’t, but thats not what came to us out of the box, that was a home made change.

What I can say is, I’ve been playing rpgs of one form or another for 33 years, and some form of experience-time-based character improvement has existed in every single rpg I’ve played, bar none that I can recall.

In other words, this complaint you and others are leveling against GW2 would be accurate to level against EVERY SINGLE COMPUTER RPG EVER MADE.

All this whining is stupid. Leveling of one sort or another in rpgs is very nearly universal.

How many rpgs of any kind out there doesn’t have some kind of leveling?

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Khenzy.9348:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Linfang.1087:

Roy I hope you won’t vanish on us after launch!

Kidel, we will get vuln with the attack.

Nope, no vanishing.

Any news on that GM trait from the Retribution spec you mentioned before? It sounded awesome. Did you ditch the idea entirely?

Yup, that’s a thing. Rite of the Great Dwarf procs when hit at or below 50% HP and makes Rite of the Great Dwarf provide 50% condition damage reduction as well.

Roy, we still haven’t heard about Embrace the Darkness. Just wanted to know if you guys are watching this, think it’s fine, considering a change, none of the above? :-)

In edge of the mists, I was on a narrow bridge fighting an enemy when he hit me with a knock back. I had mirror of anguish equipped on my trait line, so he and I both flew off the bridge, and somehow ended up face to face as we fell. If we only had more expressive faces, I could have imagined what his look like and I laughed out loud lol

Danikat.8537:

I was exploring Queensdale one day on an alt when for no apparently reason I came across an army of snowmen roaming around.

I watched them for a while, then all of a sudden I get mail. It’s a snowman tonic and the message “You will join us!”

So I did.

I used the tonic and ran around after them for a while, freaking out other people who had no idea where all these snowmen had just come from. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending how you look at it) this wasn’t at a time when there were lots of new people or they might have been really freaked out.

It was good fun, and reminded me why I enjoy MMOs, you just wouldn’t get something like that in a single-player game.

A couple of years ago my guild had all of us as part of a contest transform into festive golems and then run across world vs world as fast as we could. There was maybe a hundred of us doing it. The idea was whomever survivee the longest crossing the eternal battle grounds would win a prize. The problem is we ran across groups of the other two sides fighting, they just just stopped fighting and watched us run by, so the entire group crossed one side to the other with not a single fatality lol

Brtiva.9721:

Long time ago.

Queensdale, the garrison at about level 6. Player with a small girl avi, she was level 3 . She had apparently run from the farm where we used to water plants at level 2 or 3, for a beginner quest.

Well, she carried a bucket from there it seems, and was running around in front of the garrison where centaurs are located.

As people were fighting centaurs, she was running up to the centaurs and “watering” them. Dumping the bucket of water on centaurs.

Somehow she did not get killed; a huge number of players were there at the time and somehow she did not get hit hard enough to kill her.

Struck me as very funny and somehow cute. Of all the odd things I have seen, that stands out.

“Watering the Centaurs”

That is awesome!

About a month ago in silver wastes, I saw in map chat someone said that they loved something that someone had done at the entrance way point and that she loved us guys for doing it. Curious about what she was talking about I went to the way point, and found that someone or several someones had moved literally hundreds of pieces of rubble from the other fortresses to the way point and dropped them off. So when you came out of the way point, you find yourself surrounded with a gigantic sea of rubble. I’m not sure how long it took for someone to do that, or why, but I have to admit it made me grin lol

That and whoever did it must have been really bored haha

The fact of the matter is most games when they come out with expansions come out with level increases as well. Which created that great treadmill, have to get the next highest equipment, the levels, etcetera. The goal of arena net was to have horizontal progression rather than vertical progression. You know the way we were progressing levels 1 through 80, was supposed to be part of the experience. Now they want to do the same thing with horizontal progression where you’re not getting actual levels, but you are increase your characters capability in the other ways

Of course, after you have played the game awhile and obtain the experience Scrolls and tomes of knowledge to auto level new characters, such as what I am going to do with my revenant. Horizontal progression gives us a way to continue to experience the growth of our characters without having to deal with the level and equipment treadmill that plagued World of Warcraft with their expansion

Eponet.4829:

TJgalon.5012:

I do not mind the mastery system. It sorta like, give me to many options and I’ll choose none. This way, with Gliding first anyways, i can ease into it, and still have fun exploring with my partner.

Oh wow.

I thought it was okay so long as it was account bound, but you just worded it to make it sound like the New Player Experience/ the 2nd iteration of traits.

I can accept the fact that it’s an attempt to slow down the rate at which people go through their content, but please don’t try to claim that it’s a great thing because it makes it easier to get into.

Having everything available right away is by far the better option as it allows you to see and experiment with it holistically, and see how things synergise without spending hours with each individual aspect in a vacuum.

Having played WoW in the past, I found an issue in that while leveling, /so/ many people in my guild actually formed terrible rotations that they had to break their habit of using once they finally got the rest of their skills, because they had them handed out piecemeal, and so they just took their basic rotation and stuck with it all the way to 100.

If anything, the mastery point gating is the type that’s likely to cause people to choose no option. Look at what happened with traits and gear.

With ascended costing so much to make, no one experiments with it, they either don’t make it at all, or they ask what the best set to make is, and then make that.

Under trait system 2, people would again, not buy traits until someone told them exactly what build to use, and then very rarely change from it.

Investment kills variety.

While they are at it they should just allow everyone to start every character at level 80, after all we don’t want the leveling experience to be unreasonably gated either.

rhapsody.3615:

Daddar.5971:

…and this gating applies per account or per character? If it is per character, I’m quitting, because I’m NOT doing it 19 times over.

Mastery progress is account bound.

Account bound, as stated

You mean, like staying in business and not just giving away their product at a loss?

No kidding, that isnt ANETs fault. Get real.

so thats 1 minute after midnight pacific time? If so, that’s 2:01 am central time, my time. So those of you who are in later time zones will be getting up regular time to play. For me, its wake up at an ungodly hour or wait to play regular time.

The other problem: start out with HoT or Halloween? LOL

wolfpaq.7354:

Ah gotcha. Is it really the most powerful auto?

I dont know. LOL

Rym.1469:

Once raid encounter starts, you won’t leave or break combat. Area becomes restricted with walls and mobs don’t drop aggro till everyone wipes.

Well that sucks lol

So much for that idea

So, I’e been thinking, after a conversation with an acquaintance who mains a D/D ele who told me that celestial was perfect for the D/D ele because that build could do literally everything, so they needed the stats to support doing everything.

And it occurred to me, from a certain point of view the same is true with Revenant.

Think about it: elementalists can change their weapon loadout via attunements, but based on their utility selection, attunements changes at least some of the functionality of their utilities as well.

We can completely change our utilities with the click of a mouse. So, for instance, we can be condition heavy with mallyx, and suddenly switch to dps with shiro. Furthermore, if we have to change our build fast, we can break combat and with one weapon set change and one legendary change we can adopt another profile fast.

for example if we think we might need to play healer, but prefer condi/dps we could take the traitlines corruption, devastation, and salvation, and take the mace/axe and sword/sword. That raid starts to get a little hairy and the group decides they need another healer? Maybe even during a combat? Break combat, retreat click change to ventari, click change to staff, and run back in, celestial gear supporting that too.

Maybe not quite as versatile as an ele, but I think we come a very close second with that flexibility. And celestial gear thus would support us role-switching as fast as that.

wolfpaq.7354:

Arkantos.7460:

hammer1 – best autoattack on range

Please stop spreading misinformation. Best autoattack range is 1500. Hammer1 is 1200.

I think he meant best damage for a ranged auto attack.

Arkantos.7460:

hammer1 – best autoattack on range with great dps
hammer2 – great range dps on 3rd pulse on 2 sec cd ….
hammer3 – evade frame with traveloption if you have orb ^^ and good dps
hammer4 – block wall on 12sec cd … nice
hammer 5 – knowdown EPIC great for offense and defense to kite

Hammer is my favorite, just standing outpoint and shoot them all because capping and then losing is more important ^^, also this will be my first crafted legendary

So, no hammer traits needed ..

What do you mean by with travel option if you have orb?

I really want to hang glide down into the heart of Mount maelstrom lol

Roy, I know there’s been a lot of discussion about embrace the darkness, has there been any thinking about changing it or is this one of those things you guys are still watching?

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Rauderi.8706:

zomg, THIS. There is no reason to have emote ranges that large. And to make it worse, emotes don’t highlight the user name, in case that person needs to be blocked for spamming chat.

IIRC blocking someone does not block emotes from that person (last I heard)
I rarely have need to block and always turn off the emote channel anyway so I’m not 100% sure though.

Actually I think it does now, although it didn’t used to. However I can’t say that with absolute certainty.

lordkrall.7241:

When are people going to supply actual examples of all these massive amounts of retcons being made everywhere all the time? Becuase people bring that up rather often, but I have never really heard of any actual example. Maybe it is just simply a matter of people thinking that moving the story in a way that they don’t like is a retcon?

The only retcon I can recall is the calendar one. Is there anyone else that I missed?

I agree, I’ve heard of people such as some in this thread saying that anet retconned this, and has retconned many other things, but I haven’t seen an actual example. As such, I find such claims doubtful, as THIS isn’t a retcon.

So, seriously, what retcons are there already?

Swagger.1459:

Dungeons were not the most popular pve content, open world stuff was.

John smith had said doing dungeons was not the most profitable activity anyway.

IMHO, dungeons here were terrible in design

The devs have stated that it was too difficult for them to change, modify and spruce up dungeons. Fractals provide much more flexibility for the them as far as work, design and maintenance goes.

Fractals are “dungeons” for all intent and purposes, but better designed and offer more variety to players in the long run.

I’m curious what IS the most profitable activity. Silverwastes?

I’ve done some real hang gliding. Not a lot, and never got my solo license, but it can be amazing.

Hang gliding in game reminds me of those days, and makes me start thinking about going back and getting my solo license.

Well, its a little like this:

https://youtu.be/hHVOswNJEoA

Ascended gear is such a pain in the butt to make, but with raids balanced around them, I guess I’m going to have to start making them

DPS meters for personal growth is something I would find completely acceptable. DPS meters for a group working together to improve themselves is acceptable.

The problem is that sooner or later they would also get used to judge people. To marginalize them. To isolate them and in general to cause bad feelings. That is the problem that many of us have because once that starts, that will start having a negative impact on the entire community. We’ve already seen the bad feelings caused by requiring gear checks. Heck I know one guy that was kicked out of a speed run group because the group estimated without even having tools that he might have been less than efficient and cost them an entire 10 seconds on their speed run. That’s right he got kicked out for an estimated 10 seconds.

Perhaps if they had said instead they were having tryouts for a long term speedrun group and they were going to be working at finding the people who are the fastest in the community, then that attitude might have been acceptable. But it was a pug speedrun group who kicked someone out for a perceived not even proven 10 second slower run.

That’s kind of attitude may be great for the group but it’s toxic for the community and that’s the problem

Gav.1425:

They’ve proven they cna do this with the new PvP post-game damage totals. No reason to not add this for PvE.

Anyone who doesn’t want this is probably a kitten player who wishes not to be exposed.

And this post of yours completely proves the point we are trying to make. Thank you for being the perfect example.

Swagger.1459:

Morfedel.4165:

Swagger.1459:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FGuildwars2%2Fcomments%2F3mz8ta%2Fcrystal_reid_raids_will_be_balanced_around%2Fcvk6djq

Any of that will be 3rd party at best, and not something directly from arena net. And yes ascended the gear is recommended but not required.
Raids are balanced around ascended, thus it’s “recommended”…

“Earlier wings doable w/ some exotics by top players”…

It’s not mandatory to do raids for legendary gear, but if you want to do this optional stuff then you better have your ascended gear… Unless of course you will be sticking to doing earlier wings with some exotic gear while being carried by a group of top players…

Gear checks are already here and will be used by top player, groups and guilds. Meters and graphs to gather and display numbers and stats are coming next…

Yup, third party API development that anet will eventually support.

Anet relies on third party to help improve qol features and to bring the community together more by getting involved.

There is a big difference between allowing third-party development and making it an essential experience. Until this thread I hadn’t even heard of Guild Wars efficiency. I asked my guild you are very active and they hadn’t heard of it either. It isn’t the landslide that you think it is by any stretch. & I highly doubt that anything you are referring to will be either.

Let me give you an example. Lucas Studios has been well known for allowing all kinds of authors to write all kinds of fiction about Star Wars. There are some things that are pretty crazy out there in many cases. But none of it is canon. By the same token any third party software that arena net allows isn’t the same thing as it being something made officially Canon for Guild Wars 2.

Don’t confuse acceptance with Reliance. They aren’t the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.

Swagger.1459:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FGuildwars2%2Fcomments%2F3mz8ta%2Fcrystal_reid_raids_will_be_balanced_around%2Fcvk6djq

Raids are balanced around ascended, thus it’s “recommended”…

“Earlier wings doable w/ some exotics by top players”…

It’s not mandatory to do raids for legendary gear, but if you want to do this optional stuff then you better have your ascended gear… Unless of course you will be sticking to doing earlier wings with some exotic gear while being carried by a group of top players…

Gear checks are already here and will be used by top player, groups and guilds. Meters and graphs to gather and display numbers and stats are coming next…

Those meters graphs displayed numbers etc that you think are coming will only be coming from third party sources, just like the gear check you just mentioned. ArenaNet hasn’t done any of that themselves. There’s a difference between them allowing third party software and them actually inserting it themselves. It’s not going to happen. Not by ArenaNet anyway.

And yes the ascended gear is recommended not required. It is likely going to be difficult with exotic gear instead of ascended but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. In other games when it’s required it means you can’t even get into the raid without the gear that is required. And that’s the difference.

Swagger.1459:

Zaroua.2714:

“The benefits are greater than the random picky elite person followed by the complaint thread on the forum taking up space.”

Anet clearly doesn’t want people to be kicked out of groups for wearing an unoptimal gear set. That’s the reason we can’t inspect others. The whole game was designed from the ground up with the same mentality: cooperation over competition. Meters wouldn’t encourage cooperation in open world/dungeons/fractals, where the more casual and less skilled players will be spending most of their time. It won’t help you find groups or make friends, or won’t make others appreciate you because you survive well. In WoW that might be the case, where you can see a clear disparity on meters, but that’s due to ilvl, but that won’t happen in GW2 where there’s no treadmill.

You do realize raids and high level fractals will require ascended gear?

You do realize that there is a site called gw2 efficiency that the devs have approved that allows for inspecting someone’s gear? Serious raiders and fractalers will ask for you to ping them your info before they accept you into the group right? And trust me they will use it for serious stuff.

Seriously, this again? Ascended gear will not be required only recommended.

Mogget.2104:

Morfedel.4165:

We have already seen a lot of elitism and toxicity in regards to whether or not you have the proper gear or playing the proper build even without DPS meters. if you think that it won’t get at least as bad if not worse with meters added in, you’re kidding yourself. So yes there are benefits, but there are also a lot of unpleasant consequences, & a lot of people, myself included, feel the consequences outweigh the benefits by a vast Margin.

Sure, there will always be a great deal of elitism and toxicity when it comes to raids. I just don’t think the game should enable that kind of behavior by giving them tools to quantify their actions.

I agree, that post you responded to was specifically to refute the idea of DPS meters

There will still be dungeon tokens, and the personal story as well. So there will be reasons to do dungeons, and particularly for new players who have never experienced them they will probably want to do each Explorer path at least once. However that being the case, about the only reason to repeat dungeons is going to be for the tokens at this point. Or for the fun if you are one of those people that enjoys the dungeons enough.

We have already seen a lot of elitism and toxicity in regards to whether or not you have the proper gear or playing the proper build even without DPS meters. if you think that it won’t get at least as bad if not worse with meters added in, you’re kidding yourself. So yes there are benefits, but there are also a lot of unpleasant consequences, & a lot of people, myself included, feel the consequences outweigh the benefits by a vast Margin.

I guess I have to repeat it: in the end, dps and other statistics don’t matter anywhere near as much as skill, and there isn’t a meter for that. I’ve seen players in “meta” gear and builds before simply do worse in a fight that someone who wasn’t “meta” but also played much better.

And thats really the biggest reason for not having meters: it doesn’t take into account the skill of the player BEHIND a character.

hellchamp.5412:

The only thing meters are good for are excluding players that others feel don’t meet there standards. You don’t heal enough, You don’t do enough dps , your rotation isn’t right. Meters to me = eletists
Gear checks I am ok with since all my 80s have multiple sets of ascended gear but I still roll with people in fractals or dungeons that use exotic it makes it rough but its a game so I don’t get upset. I don’t mind carrying a person or 2 or even helping them get gear maybe im a different kind of gamer….So I will take all the people that don’t cut it for the eletist with there meters and checks and raid with them there most likely better people any ways less attitude and chest thumping.

Not just that. I knew someone who was kicked out of a WoW raid guild for healing TOO MUCH. Which was ridiculous, she always did just fine in raids in WoW, never had any problems or complaints, but when they looked at her healing meter they said, “you are healing too much, its inefficient,” and kicked her out.

Meters can give you tools for fine tuning your build. It can also give jerks the excuse they need to legitimize them being jerks.

so runes triggers wit h equipping it, and the traits trigger with the toolbelt skill.

That’s too bad. I thought that if they triggered on any/all uses of any of the skills, taking icd into account, it might have helped make medkit a bit more attractive.