400 hero points is outrageous. The specs are hardly worth playing miserable pve for that long.
From a practical standpoint its 40 points (since the new locations are worth 10 points each)… they just delivered a “divide by ten” kick in the junk to all of the effort people have made to prepare for HoT.
The real question is round two of Especs… I plan to skip Berserker so when the second Warrior Espec comes out I’m gonna be sitting on 600 points. How much is the second one gonna cost? 2,000 with each hero challenge on the new map being worth 50? Or will I have to buy all of the Berserker spec I DO NOT WANT before I can spend points on the second warrior Espec? Is that how you’re gonna stop “first day completion” when the subject comes up next time?
The precedent being set is TERRIBLE.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I have 5 Guardians. I was planning to turn 3 of them into Dragonhunters. Not sure how much learning there’s gonna be doing the same 40 HP a second and third time…
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I’m personally glad that I can enjoy a paced and gradual sense of character progression with elite specs. I want my characters to feel strong because they worked to be strong.
I’d like for there to be new content LEFT to see for the first time after unlocking my Espec, rather than being the final reward. I’d been looking forward to doing new things AS the Espec.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Doesn’t matter what the rate is when you take into account you need every single point in the old maps as well. That x9 is too much.
Except you don’t! There are enough hero challenges in the jungle you don’t need to do any in the core tyrian world – those simply speed you up on day one if you already got them.
10 to 1 pay off for doing the same sort of things on the new map with the prices inflated to devalue the holy heck out of existing content. …Have you hired people from Turbine lately? Because this is the kind of spite for players I’ve come to expect from that studio.
I get it that “play the way you want” is an advertising jingle that’s done nothing but haunt you guys, but this scheme comes dangerously close to “don’t play any way except how we intend you to”. You WILL play the jungle — heavily — to unlock your profession’s Espec. End. Of. Discussion.
Who knew we’d come to miss paying a gold to two for a book to unlock our new toys.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
This is not currently possible. For this change we made creatures, at the base AI level, look at what they are targeting and what they hit to adjust damage accordingly, it has nothing to do with player damage interactions. Doing this for WvW. adjusting outgoing player damage to minions, is not tech we are currently working on and likely would cause some perf issues as well. Players attack much much more often then creatures. So doing checks on each one of the damage targets from a player can become expensive very quickly. Though, that’s not to say that we won’t ever consider investigating it, but for now this change is specifically for creatures attacking player minions and we’ll be balancing it and seeing how it goes.
Hmm. I see the concern. That’s unfortunate… because this kind of partial fix will probably end up hurting the chances of getting a good general fix in the long run.
Seeing the occasional use of player summons in the various PvP modes would have been a nice boost to variety.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Literally anything you summon/control as a player is a player minion. Turrets, spirit weapons, ranger spirits, ranger pets, gyros, phantasms/clones, necro minions, etc.
And Banners!
…except they’re already 100% immune to everything including players…
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I completely agree no one at Anet is hearing these arguments for the first time, the reason people are arguing against Ohoni and friends is to stop them generating an angry mob fueled with misinformation and madness. If you let bad ideas/idealogies fester and gather strength you can see mob rule breaking down good things.
We had an impressive angry mob in the ‘change the Dragonhunter name’ thread and that sank to the bottom of the fish tank with the rest of the detritus a few days after the other side stopped feeding it.
Its a good model to iterate on .
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I’m sincerely impressed the moot court has gone on with such enthusiasm, but we keep seeing references to a majority no one can prove and a majority that has never mattered in the first place because it’s not a democracy. Insert endless loop here.
To me the only real question these threads have to offer is ‘will they retain their vigor after HoT launches?’ I’m guessing ‘yes’, because the actual raids are still a few weeks out. But really I’m surprised the defenders of the status quo feel threatened enough to feed the fires this long. IF Ohoni is right then things will change, though not until long after the raids have been live and generated real use-case data. No one here is going to talk ArenaNet into changing course. And I think it’s fascinating to believe anything has been said here that wasn’t already considered behind closed doors when a path forward was being decided on.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I think there’s plenty of range between nuthin’ and 95% mitigation that could bring more variety to the current meager list of competitive builds. Saying things are “fine” right now is just cruelty to the abused and under used skills. Something that can move us back to a point between ‘horrible’ and ‘non-existent’.
You must be fun to split a check with after eating out.
AI builds take a lot less effort to make them work (basically close to no effort, judging by the past), the moment they become as good as any other build it’s not fine. AI carrying bad players against others way out of their league is not fine – spirit ranger, MM nec, turret engi have all been the focus of community outrage in the past.
Because ‘middle ground’ couldn’t POSSIBLY include tuning it so that the human component has to carry a certain amount of weight in the match up, and yet MAYBE be higher than the 0% mitigation we’re seeing now.
Not every build deserves to be the same in terms of strength, in an ideal world hard builds are also the most effective ones and AI builds should be absolutely bottom tier.
They don’t deserve to be NON-EXISTENT even in the hands of skilled players. But thank you for your vote for an equally brain-dead ‘minimum diversity meta’. Its truly a joy to have so few competitive choices and for the Ranger completely absent from the list of likely opponents you’ll have to know how to counter and deal with.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Actually ANET made the right decision here. Everything you mention is considered skill-less play in PvP. They don’t belong there.
It’s not a lack of skill required to hold someone down with Guard Scepter skills long enough for spirit sword-and-hammer to work them over, its a lack of up time and those tools getting cleaved into oblivion. There’s TONS of other skills that get more play that take less coordination or timing. Why are banners ‘skillful’ and Nature Spirits aren’t? Oh, because the difference isn’t skill its one of them’s invulnerable. Auto-target has also come a long way since you could hide behind your zoo.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Did you even read my comment? I wasn’t asking if spirit weapons were included. I was moving on to the next step: what this means, particularly in light of spirit weapons’ unusual habit of pulling agro.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
The zoo meta was horrible in PvP. The turret meta was horrible too. We don’t need more AI in PvP.
I think there’s plenty of range between nuthin’ and 95% mitigation that could bring more variety to the current meager list of competitive builds. Saying things are “fine” right now is just cruelty to the abused and under used skills. Something that can move us back to a point between ‘horrible’ and ‘non-existent’.
Necro minions are being used.
I’m confident the balance team can pull the metrics and catch my drift .
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…
That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
As some of you may have seen in raids during the last BWE, we were trying out something new with player minions. Basically, in that final BWE, player minions did not take damage from boss attacks. We thought that made minion-based professions feel so much better in combat, but that change did expose some problems such as minions being able to withstand a damaging attack indefinitely.
We wanted minions to not die left and right, but we did want them to have some attrition instead of being completely immune to attacks. This problem is mainly prevalent in PvE as we have huge attacks all over the place that are meant to be dodged by players but unfortunately for minions, they can’t dodge.
After reviewing BWE results, we wanted to create a better system to accomplish this as a global change for minions. To do that, we made it so that unless a minion is specifically targeted by a creature, they will be dealt drastically reduced damage and condition duration from attacks. Currently, this is set to 95% reduction as we feel like it’s a good starting place, but we’ll continue to monitor and adjust it. This means if your minion gains agro from a creature it will still take full damage, but if there is area effect damage hitting your minion, instead of usually killing it instantly, it will slowly attrition it down.
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
The change is for all player minions, this includes things like engineer turrets and ranger spirits as well. This will be in for HoT Launch in a few days.
So, now they don’t get splashed to death. Though with their ability to pull agro they are still gonna get creamed.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Guys, the release date had to be late October so they can get their boxes on shelves for Black Friday. The code didn’t go along with the plan, so now its release-in-stages as pieces come on-line. Its really as simple as that.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Wanted to give you a quick heads up on a handful of notes relevant to Heart of Thorns launch in a few days:
With so many of the changes to Elite Specs coming close to launch, are you planning any sort of unified “here’s what’s coming” for our characters?
We’ve also seen a lot of change (and possibly power creep) for the new utility skills. When do you anticipate a review of existing versions of those skills like Ranger and Thief Traps or Guardian Spirit Weapons in light of the new context?
And while threads like this and the semi-regular appearance of the Balance Team to discus the new elite specializations has been probably THE highpoint of Player-Developer communication in the entire life of the game, there’s some (legitimate, I think) fear you guys are going to vanish back “behind the curtain” after Heart of Thorns launches.
Looking forward to HoT, but I really hope the effort and communication leading up to it is the real sign of things to come!
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
While I FULLY expect a class headed up by the developer that brought us hambow and sheltered his pet class against a righteous beat down with the nerf bat for 2+ years to be almost ludicrously over the top on launch day, I’m just not that interested in a class that says “do it like the dev insists you do it” with almost no flexibility. This is the class that when revealed the designer was so certain he knew how we should play it didn’t even have weapon swap. Revant is still the most inflexible profession in the game.
You want a part of that, go for it. I’m gonna continue to main Guard/DH and enjoy 6 out of 7 of the other existing professions. I’ll make a Rev, but its strictly on probation for now.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
actually they are working on AI, but they outsourced it to a 3rd party client. So it’s really on the timetable of that company, not Anet. There was a video on the AI workshop where a few Anet devs were there for classes to learn some new AI tricks. The company running those classes is the one reworking our AI. It’s just going to be a while before we see any changes.
Hmm. 18 months later and nothing to show for it. I get development cycles are long and all, but without even a bullet point crowing about their improvements after a year and a half, I’m going with that investment didn’t pan out.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I’ve been pitching ideas for Runes in a couple of the profession forums (excluding Berserker, Chronomancer, Herald as I don’t have a good feel for what those professions need in the way of rune support).
Here’s where my ideas are at currently.
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DAREDEVIL
(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) +10% weakness duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict weakness for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) 7% of Condition Damage is converted to Toughness.
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DRAGONHUNTER
(1) +25 Precision
(2) +10% cripple duration
(3) +50 Precision
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict cripple for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Precision
(6) +15% cripple duration, +25% move speed
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DRUID
(1) +25 Healing Power
(2) Gain up to 400 Toughness while reviving an ally, based on your level.
(3) +50 Healing Power
(4) After using a healing skill you gain resistance for 3 seconds. (Cooldown: 10 seconds)
(5) +100 Healing Power
(6) 7% of Healing Power is converted to Precision.
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE REAPER
(1) +25 Power
(2) +10% Chill duration
(3) +50 Power
(4) 25% chance when struck to summon a shambling horror. (Cooldown: 90 seconds)
(5) +100 Power
(6) +15% chill duration, +25% move speed
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE SCRAPPER
(1) +25 Vitality
(2) +5% daze and stability duration
(3) +50 Vitality
(4) +10% daze and stability duration
(5) +100 Vitality
(6) +10% daze and stability duration, +5% damage while you have an active companion.
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE TEMPEST
(1) +25 Toughness
(2) +5% Condition duration
(3) +50 Toughness
(4) +5% Condition duration; –50% Incoming Cripple Duration
(5) +100 Toughness
(6) +5% Condition duration; when you activate a shout skill you gain aegis for 6 seconds. (Cooldown: 30 seconds)
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Then go complain about pet AI, you are making comparisons that aren’t even there.
No, I am making comparisons about the fact that they have said they won’t work on AI because they don’t have the time to do it, yet they are working on stuff like this.
Link? I’d love to see where they said that.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Which is why a offensive-stat set capped by move speed would be something genuinely different and help Reapers control the fight against foes smart enough to run when they see the slasher-movie Reaper coming .
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
I really appreciate how every complaint about the process means less people who will have the finished product. The people in it for a sense of uniqueness are going to be well served.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Persistent Worlds are at their core about one thing: the accumulation of advantage over time. That’s why they persist. It’s not a trick of the English language that they reward persistence.
The rate of accumulation varies from player to player and you can be logged in racking up /age without benefit, but on the whole an older character is a more advanced character. Or here a more played account is a more potent account.
ANet’s tried mightily to make that advancement not equate to numerical/mechanical advantage, but fact is more people are retained by offering that than are retained by not offering it. Boom: the ascended tier.
Masteries are another go at offering horizontal advantage, but make no mistake — the currency with which you buy that advantage has always been and will always be YOUR TIME spent playing.
This is the essential social contract of persistent world games. If this isn’t a contract you’re ready to sign up for, you’re in the wrong genre.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
By design you will never have “enough” condition cleanse same as you won’t have enough heals to counter a power build. You have to kill the other guy before he kills you. So if you’re not carrying cleanses, make sure your carrying kill-faster.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Due to a design discussion that arose yesterday the recharge on gyros are going back to starting on the death of the gyro.
To help with the recharge going back to the gyro death the recharge themselves are being dramatically reduced. Below is a before and after to help clarify what is happening.
On Cast Medic Gyro CD: 35s
On Cast Medic Gyro Duration: 14s
CD at full duration: 21s New Medic Gyro CD on Death: 20s
On Cast Purge/Bulwark CD: 35s
On Cast Duration: 15s
CD at full duration: 20s New Gyro CD on Death: 20s
On Cast Sneak Gyro CD: 45 seconds
On Cast Duration: 30s
CD at full duration: 15s New Sneak Gyro CD: 20s
This amounts to an overall buff to gyro recharge as the net recharge time is reduced on all gyros except sneak gyro, which is effectively a buff if the sneak gyro would have been destroyed anytime before the final five seconds of its duration.
Blast Gyro’s toolbelt skill, Bypass Coating, is going to be a stunbreak.
That’s quite positive and even generous in light of their relative fragility.
Spirit weapons will thank you when they get a similar treatment.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Could still be in discussion (team, remember) or could be they have a plan that’s proving harder to code than expected and they don’t want to announce anything more until they’re sure it works.
Some of the fixes that are being announced have been whole new types of code. They’re pressing hard over there. Hopefully that groundwork pays off for an interesting and effective Tempest by launch.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
…along with whipping a staff around wukong-style I really want to be yelling “your martial-arts are pig-dung!” at the screen…
SUPERIOR RUNES OF THE DAREDEVIL
(1) +25 Condition Damage
(2) +10% weakness duration
(3) +50 Condition Damage
(4) 25% chance when struck to inflict weakness for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 20 seconds)
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) 7% of Condition Damage is converted to Toughness.
I dunno if condition damage would be good for a daredevil rune. I mean, the “official” daredevil weapon is staff, right? Wouldn’t +power be more fitting?
That said I really would want the set as you have it with condition damage, just dunno if calling it daredevil runes would seem right.
No, that’s good feedback. I’m probably biased by my preference for using Thief as the platform for condi-bunkers. With staff being more of a power weapon you’re probably on the right track.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
Daze might be a good theme, but for the (6) a variation of the Ranger’s damage bonus when you have a companion works in the gyros aspect better with all Scrappers having the function gyro plus the potential of gyros or turrets, both of which trigger the benefit.
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
As we hurtle toward launch most of my time is locked into Druid and Scrapper changes.
After much tribulation I was able to make a change to WHAO to remove the static boon stack application on Might and Stability stacks being copied; this was actually a fairly difficult change to implement as we don’t really have support for copying boons with preset durations.
This’ll go in with the 23rd.
Ok, had to stare at this for a bit, but that seems workable. Might and Stability don’t stack duration so they shouldn’t pull the infinite recursion gag.
Now put a stunbreak on one of our traps and we’re golden .
“You keep saying ‘its unfair.’
I wonder what your basis for comparison is…”
- Jareth, King of Goblins.
.
.
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