Guild Wars 2

i personally am against this kind of thing, although now, considering it, i’m not exactly sure how it differs from selling outfits or the like

The enemies spawned for fort defense don’t drop anything. The lane enemies during VW don’t even give EXP. None of the breach bosses or VW champs give anything (besides the reward chest). Open world mordrem/anything not tied to an event drops loot as normal, but the mob density is pretty low. The enemies spawned during caravan escorts do drop loot.

In dry top most enemies do drop loot but there aren’t nearly so many spawned enemies, other than the dust mite farm in sandstorm. The normal inquest mobs spawned by the race can drop loot, but i don’t think the veterans do. The Elites/Champs definitely don’t.

by and large, 33-75% of the mobs you kill in either zone have a 0% chance of dropping anything.

grknwrt.5493:

I refuse to waste my time killing those unrewarding mobs for god knows how many times, thats just boring to pieces, ill go tag them and move on watch some show.

Welcome to the “part of the problem” club!

Narrrz.7532:

BrokenGlass.9356:

After rereading the entire thread it seems that there is still a simple fix here.

have Vitality have an internal logarithmic buff to healing received

have Healing power tied to boon duration (forget every other spitball I threw in this vein on page 1 please)

reduce the effectiveness of the #6 key on all classes by something like 30-50%

The problem there is that you are kindof arbitrarily forcing people to take those attributes, rather than making them contribute attractively to the current balance.

It’s a solution, i grant, but i personally would prefer the current ‘problematic’ situation to this fix

(yes, i’m quoting my own post)

Right now, people do stack toughness for pve. (i’m people right?!)
They do take vitality, although the more informed players don’t stack it to nearly as great an extent.
Healing power, however, is almost entirely absent. You don’t really die to conditions in pve, and vs direct damage, toughness’ effect on increasing the effectiveness of healing is just so much greater it’s ludicrous – 45-60% per 1k toughness vs 15-25% for HP.
Essentially, if you understand the game mechanics of pve, you have no business using healing power. at all.

Adding boon duration or increasing the scaling on healing isn’t likely to ever make healing the go-to choice for pve. Its application is very limited (1-2 skills for most classes; 3-5 in best case, those being the classes with a much greater number of accessible skills, ie Ele & Eng) and it only extends survivability if you can already survive the levels of incoming damage you’re taking (if you get hit by a 1shot mechanic, 10 million healing power won’t do a thing for you).

This is the foundation of my case that Healing power is fundamentally broken as an attribute; The harder the content, the more healing is needed but the less the healing power attribute is useful especially compared to the other defensive attributes.

If the goal is to make it useful/viable/worthwhile in pve, the adjustment to scaling required to make it attractive compared to other defensive stats is so high that it would break it entirely for other game modes.

BrokenGlass.9356:

After rereading the entire thread it seems that there is still a simple fix here.

have Vitality have an internal logarithmic buff to healing received

have Healing power tied to boon duration (forget every other spitball I threw in this vein on page 1 please)

reduce the effectiveness of the #6 key on all classes by something like 30-50%

The problem there is that you are kindof arbitrarily forcing people to take those attributes, rather than making them contribute attractively to the current balance.

It’s a solution, i grant, but i personally would prefer the current ‘problematic’ situation to this fix

TJgalon.5012:

more or less, they are getting less from there afking, a lot of the good loot comes from the killing of the monters, at least it how it seems to me, a tag event here and there, they are spending more time, trying to get a couple things, then actually playing.

Actually, that’s not true, but you’ve stumbled on a solution i hadn’t considered.

since so few of the event mobs actually do drop loot, the afker really isn’t missing out on much. Change that, solve the problem.

i think it’s a necessary evil. Unless afker levels climb to the point that events seldom succeed (remember that they do fail from time to time regardless – poor luck, too few players, etc) then any change made is likely to punish the much larger number of ‘proper’ players much more than the afking minority. Apart from the bosses, i’m not sure that the events in the SW scale at all – and if they do, not all that steeply. The only way to really combat afking would be to increase this scaling to the point that every player must do a certain amount of dps and that inevitably means that sometimes (often?) the event will fail regardless of every person present actively contributing – because they just aren’t contributing enough for the new standard.

carrying this to its logical extreme, SW content would become ‘hardcore’ content inaccessible to casual players who aren’t intimately familiar with their class, and you haven’t even necessarily solved the afk problem – if only the most competent people go there, probably they can still exceed the requirements of the events by such a margin that an afker or two can leech without the events failing. All that’s been accomplished is to punish the keen-but-not-overly-competent majority.

~~~~~

TL;DR: There’s no simple solution, and it’s not enough of a problem to warrant an extreme one.

Rauderi.8706:

Just thought of another way Healing Power could be put to good use, and it would still encourage skillful play. We just recently got a stamina nerf via Vigor’s 50% reduction.

So I wonder what it would be like if stamina recovery got a bonus based on Healing Power. Crazy thought, and probably overpowered, but it’s worth thinking about.

Again – too strong in pvp, too weak for pve.

Ardid.7203:

Vitality absorbs any damage, including Power and Condi (but not limited to that… vitality also absorbs “environmental” damage, like falling, sand rivers in Dry Top, fractal’s ambient agony, glint plane damage, etc).

Actually, all those scale to max hp, so vitality doesn’t really affect them. Someone wearing Carrion doesn’t survive a fall that would have killed someone in Rabid gear.

Serious.7083:

Narrrz.7532:

refer to all the current threads on how useless healing power is, how it needs a buff or just to be removed entirely.

So you buff healing with D/D eles as OP as they are in healing?

Better to nurf the effectiveness of all the other stuff.

This is exactly the problem with healing power. It’s good, can be great in pvp; it’s crap, verging on worthless in pve.

how do you change it to make it similarly useful and powerful in each game mode without completely throwing out present game balance?

Hyper Cutter.9376:

You’re not paying attention. With a few exceptions like the daily bag, spirit shards are automatically added to your wallet now, so it’s easy to overlook them.

Including the daily, i think i’ve gotten about 25-30 in the past day of play. Only caught maybe three of the actual ‘dropped’ ones going into my wallet.

healing is a very small subset of support – are military medics the only personnel considered “support”?

this game doesn’t have a very strong need for external healing, by design, and the healing power stat has always been an oddball because of that.

Arioso.8519:

Maybe they should make them sell-able like mystic coins are.

Now there’s an idea i could get behind

Pockets.3201:

I’m glad I never converted what few karma boosts I have. I just wish I could get a refund on the resources I wasted making the combined boosters now. Everything else they do just isn’t all useful.

well, you can’t do anything more with the base boosters than the enchanted, if you never converted karma. i grant that you lost the 10s used to convert each booster, but unless you would have otherwise destroyed all your other boosters outright (or you really only had one type) then that’s still gold well spent to consolidate them.

don’t forget, too, that they can be used as gathering boosters.

Ashen.2907:

SenorMoody.5908:

But the buyers don’t really have a choice. Those are the prices set by the greedy ones, and they are not gonna drop.. In fact they will get even more expensive.

Potential buyers have the most important choice of all. The choice to not buy.

If no one pays those prices they will come down.

this exactly. These are not essential items.

I’d like to think that i’d like it as a harder version of silverwastes (or verdant brink; probably a better example) but i think in reality, constantly failing bosses because the other players were badly under par wouldn’t make for such fun gameplay.

i think it’s coming with mastery tracks. you won’t level up anymore just progress towards a mastery.

but some kind of intermediate level up reward WOULD be nice. even if they multiplied spirit shard costs & quantities by 3-5 and then made each level give 1 again.

~

refer to all the current threads on how useless healing power is, how it needs a buff or just to be removed entirely.

runeblade.7514:

I think Healing Power should tie in with reviving player.

In a Dungeon scenario, if 1 player goes down, a zealot geared player can res faster than 4 players without healing power.

That won’t actually help in the least.

wetwillyhip.7254:

Still waiting for a response from a Community Manager on this….

SOME response would be nice.
Even just “i can’t get answers/i’m not allowed to talk about it right now”

give us the bwe to test, take a week or two for final bugfix & polish, and then roll it out fo’ realzies.

I just had an earth elemental play the same sound when i spawned it from rubble in Mount Maelstrom.

What the kitten is going on here?

Steinpilz.5078:

Wiki.4079:

1) What about using a script to create some chain events ?
For example : If I click once on my mouse button it will trigger my utility skill 1, if I click again on the same button it will trigger my utility skill 2, finally If I click a third time it will trigger my utility skill 3.
This way I could create a 3-skills combo by clicking 3 time in a row on the same button.

Script usage is legit?
Would this not be against the 1 key = 1 action rule?
But if it’s allowed, I want to use this too.
Looking forward for a statement from A-Net.

I believe it’s one key press to one action.
each individual click is considered an action, hence my thinking that a double-click bind is a no-no.

Edit: i don’t think they can detect what key you have bound to an action. so if one button sequentially does 3 actions, that’s fine – just so long as you have to actually press it for each of those to occur.
All they can tell is whether an event corresponds to a keypress, but i think whatever they use to detect this is limited and “loses” input on things like free-spinning mousewheel for rapid clicks.

of course, it’s hard to see how that could be used to get an edge in combat, so i don’t really know why they care…

my understanding of what is allowed:

1)yes
2)no
3)maybe (apparently their catchment system can’t readily distinguish this from a single button multi action bind)

Rauderi.8706:

It’s certainly something to keep in mind, but a blanket statement doesn’t really cover the how and why. Not a ‘strike’ so much as a ‘balancing concern.’ Done properly, both could be appeased.

The question is, is there a ‘properly’? The way the game works now, healing is useful (but not essential) for pvp & useless (and unwanted) in pve.

If your aim is to fix it for pve, you’re either talking about bringing in a dedicated healing role (see: unwanted) or just generally making healing more powerful in the hopes that people will at least include some level in their build (see: useless)

trying to change it for pvp is an even more dangerous game. It’s not game changing now, for the most part, but i’m certain that more than a few matches have been decided by one team having a healing-focused player. I’m not sure dedicated healing is any more welcome in pvp than in pve; as soon as you buff it enough to be powerful, it becomes required, and then the random queue system either falls apart (No healer on our team; GG ANet) or needs to be completely rebuilt so that it will search out a player with one of the healing power amulets for each team (which will probably affect queue times)

Maybe there is another option i’m missing but i think that any change to healing power is going to be for the worse. I’ve posted extensively in my own thread (which i won’t plug here unsolicited) about how i think that healing power is a broken attribute which does not belong in the system we have in place – it would be much better as part of the trait system, or as a fringe benefit of vitality (or both).

Then again, maybe an obvious solution does exist, and i’m just too narrow minded to see it. /shrug

Tasty Rocket Monkey

I feel like the -50% reduction should be baseline, just while out o combat.

Then the “trigger on fall damage” could be rolled into those traits that trigger an effect when you get hit below a certain health threshold.

Jade Nekotenshi.8702:

Would adding Boon Duration into Healing Power make it even a little useful, even a little of the time? For the sake of debate, ignore the “nerf base boon duration” concept.

It’d throw out pvp balance without making it attractive enough to itemize for pve.

i’m sure that fits some definition of ‘useful’.

Eclipsiste.3251:

Narrrz.7532:

It’d be cool if we could throw 4 rings in the mf to reroll.

I was more thinking of a method similar to what’s in place for weapons & armors: craft the exo jewel, and put the ascended trinket, the exo jewel, 5 ectos and 1 anthology of heroes in the MF. 4 ascended rings in the MF to obtain a single one would not be cost efficient.

considering how easy and common they are compared to other ascended pieces, i think it’s perfectly reasonable.

axe would be pretty much identical to dagger, then. chain melee on #1, long channel #2… just the #3s different

yessssss

Valgar.9576:

So I recently looted 1000 bandit chests (over a few days) and I got approximately 120 gold from just opening the “embroidered coin purse”. I pretty much threw all green and yellow items into the mystic toilet and came out with 13 exotics (highest value was 4 gold).

If you do a chest run, you’re looking at 10-15 gold per 100 chests. That’s my guess

i think you accidentally put a 1 in front of the gold amount you looted.

coin purses drop 1-10s each, and it doesn’t average 5. even at an outlier figure of 10s per bag, 1000 bags would only net you 100g.

Karma functionality has been removed from enchanted reward boosts, which could (and can) be created from karma boosts, albeit at a 50% loss (the only boost of which this is true)

For me, this made it wasteful to convert karma to enchanted; it’s just one extra inv slot, and i was still able to condense the other however many boosters, and i would have thought that anyone who valued karma boosts would likewise have left them alone. apparently this is not the case.

A lot of people have made it very clear, with differing intensities of emphasis, that they are upset that they can no longer choose karma from their enchanted reward boosts, and that they feel cheated. As i understand it, this was not advertised in the patch notes, and outside of support ticket responses, no official position has been offered.

So, here, if you will: Can a developer, or our lovely community manager, give the community some word on this change:
Bug or Feature? If the former, when can we expect a fix, and if the latter, what is the reason behind it?

TexZero.7910:

Narrrz.7532:

But if it works, and more importantly, if you enjoy playing it, it is by definition a good build.

Thank you for getting the picture.

It’s not about forcing your playstyle onto others either by demanding a core gameplay change.

Instead look to play with like minded players and you wont find any problems with you daily routines.

I’d have to say i DO want to see a core gameplay change; i want healing power as a stat gone, and folded into traits and other attributes.

really, it’s not that bad builds work; it’s that anything that works is not a bad build. If you come away with loot, your skills & your build were up to par.

That some things are more efficient is inescapable. There’s always going to be an edge somewhere.
But if it works, and more importantly, if you enjoy playing it, it is by definition a good build.

Aetrion.8295:

TexZero.7910:

You can play anything in PvE content and get away with it.

Yes, and the fact that playing anything other than a tiny number of builds is considered “getting away with it” rather than being able to challenge yourself to the fullest with a character build of your own design is exactly why this game is completely broken in its current state.

You have a real way with run-on sentences.

Aetrion.8295:

The fact that the game is so easy that you can succeed with a bad build doesn’t excuse the fact that so few builds are good.

on the bright side, i’d say that in HoT you will no longer be able to succeed with a bad build.

Whatever their actual reasons (and my opinions), an explanation from ANet would go a long way, i think.

What would you guys prefer, a reason you don’t agree with or no explanation at all?

Leo G.4501:

Heck, even if Healing Power was rolled into Vit, the combo would be niche status, but at least you can make a healer that won’t die as easily to a time burst and has some resources left to allocate to offense.

People do take vit now. The main purpose of this idea is not so much to make vit more prevalent, but rather just to bring it more into line with toughness, and at the same time make healing stronger in pve without (hopefully) breaking the meta in pvp, which is the more likely result of simply buffing healing power.

The benevolence idea, if implemented, would be balanced separately to keep healing roughly in the spot it is now – that might work out to be less effective healing than a full healing power focused build, simply because at current ratios, giving any character the equivalent of 1600-2200 healing power with a single trait &/ line switch would probably make healing too good in both game modes.

For those who really want some way to itemize boon duration, that could always be added onto vitality instead of an increase to healing received. that might be harder to balance effectively, though, and i think that almost certainly would cause a significant increase in peoples itemization of vitality.

It’d be cool if we could throw 4 rings in the mf to reroll.

Firebaall.5127:

Add the 50% WvW exp bonus to the new EXP buff…and we’ll all call this done like dinner. We will even look past the underhanded nerfing of the random boosts getting cut in half duration.

“+50% exp in all game modes”
the patch notes confirm that it applies to wvw.

no. you are rewarded at your personal reward level or the fractal level, whichever is lower.

in essence you did a lvl 35 and then a lvl 36 fractal. had you gone on to do one in the 30-39 bracket, you wouldn’t have recieved a chest for that either.

Biohazard.7523:

What do you think about reporting this issue on the support ticket ? Maybe then we will get the answer

Unless the devs are really set on no longer allowing karma boosts, i think you’ll get that functionality back if enough complaints are lodged through any of these avenues.

I still think it’s a non-issue, though.

It’s an item called ‘maize balm’. wiki it.

Glenstorm.4059:

Added to the bugs list on this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Updated-Ele-Bugs-as-of-8-13-2015-patch/

Out of curiosity, does this bug affect both Glyph of Lesser Elementals as well as the elite Glyph?

I’ve only seen it on npcs, so idk – do ele’s ele’s (hah!) use that ice lance thingy?

AllNightPlayer.1286:

Narrrz.7532:

I remember reporting this some time ago, but i haven’t noticed it in a while, so it may have been fixed and then broken again.

Basically, the audio is completely wrong for ice elemental NPCs ice lance skill – it plays what sounds like the frostbrood norn death audio.

Long time ago, they changed the ice elemental’s guttural audio pool (Earth elementals are still using the original one. Fire elementals use the harpy’s guttural sounds.) towards the jotun’s/centaur’s guttural audio pool (Most frostbrood Norn are using it now, too. Although they used the Norn’s guttural audio pool before.). So, if you see an ice elemental, you will hear a “Noooooo!” at the moment. This audio line inappropriate of course.

it’s actually only played when the mob in question uses this particular skill – and it’s always a death sound. maybe i’m just not understanding but i don’t see how the scenario you describe would generate this bug?

Underwater content will need a revamp when we finally meet bubbles, anyway (presuming the game lives that long; fingers crossed)

WORDS

I’m sorry, i’ll edit this into a real post when my eyes hurt less

Edit: this is a very different game to wow. If you enjoy wow for its mechanics… you probably won’t enjoy gw2. ever. Dungeons seem to be a thing of the past, we’ve had no official word on raids, general consensus is that mounts are not a thing the community wants, gear treadmill or mobile levelcap are both big no-nos, despite some recent unrest i still feel confident in saying that the tank-healer-damage dealer party arrangement will never make an appearance.

with regards to story, the dragons are forces of nature. They are nature doing its thing. Nature on this world wakes up every few thousand years and eats all magic, basically extinguishing life. We don’t want that so we fight it. It’s not a personified enemy, apart from the minions and champions we fight, and scarlet is probably the closest we’ll see to a nefarious villain. If these things don’t appeal, then absolutely, definitely, walk away. You won’t have fun and the community will be the worse for one more bitter member.

MORDREMOTH WILL DEVOUR YOU ALL

grumbles kitten vegephobes…

kokiman.2364:

The same goes for the birthday boosters, you removed an effect from it.

That happened quite a while ago, though, i believe. they haven’t given karma for a long time.

the less confusing the systems, the less time taken to understand and them and feel comfortable within them.

When i previewed it i just had to laugh. i’d probably have tried for those skins for their own sake but the ‘reward’ for the collection makes me not want even the base items anymore.