Guild Wars 2

Just waiting for the next ‘Karl tells us what’s coming’ thread. The Daredevil and Dragonhunter have both seen thought out and substantial changes in the home stretch. I’m hopeful Tempest will have similar ‘OMG we love you Karl’ finish .

BrunoBRS.5178:

you’re just dying to have someone ask you what “super unicorn” is, aren’t you?

Honestly I shouldn’t have to, since it’s been our premier bunker build for nearly 3 years.

snoow.1694:

I like the overall changes Karl but Hunters Verdict has a way too high Cooldown for 1 simple pull, I would match it up with Spear of Justice and would male DH really enjoyable, also SoJ is really hard to hit.

We basically just stole Scorpion Wire with no additional cost to ourselves. Only our Scorpion Wire pulls multiple foes if we line up the initial shot right. If there’s a case for something-for-nothing to be even better, I’m willing to wait until we’ve actually played with it a few weeks on live.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hi all,
Here’s a list of new stuff we’ve got going as we draw closer to launch. Traps are gaining a functionality and are branching out just a tad bit, granting boons to the guardian when the trap is triggered.

I was hoping for some fields, but boons are solid and will certainly promote the synergy with Altruistic Healing.

We’ve also been evaluating a secondary ability for Spear of Justice, which will pull all tethered enemies toward you, should you desire. In testing with the interaction of Radiance’s Justice refresh mechanic, we felt like this would blow out in quite a few scenarios. Thus, the cooldown of this secondary is separate from Justice itself, allowing for adjustments more freely. Renewed Focus does recharge this ability.

• New skill: Hunter’s Verdict
• Hunter’s Verdict: Pull all tethered enemies to you, breaking the tether. This ability’s cooldown (40s) is separate to that of Justice.

Wow. That’s a really flexible with maximum player-agency version of the concept people have been throwing around. I think that’s gonna to be a constant counter-argument against the people who insist ‘traps are useless’ like it’s a mantra that has to be repeated over and over (hint: they aren’t).

• Procession of Blades: Increased damage per attack by roughly 20%. This trap now grants Fury for 8 seconds when triggered.
• Dragon’s Maw: This trap now grants 10 stacks of might for 8 seconds when triggered.

These two being used in conjunction giving both traps and the DH 8 seconds of might/fury is going to officially be known as “The Death Sentence”.

You heard it here first .

• Fragments of Faith: Fixed this trap striking multiple times. Base damage has been reduced by 40% and is no longer unblockable. This ability is now instant and breaks stuns, as well as granting 3 stacks of stability for 5 seconds when triggered. note: The design of this trap is moving back toward its defensive nature and has much more functionality than before, thus the reduction in overall damage.

Outside of it’s brief buggy period it’s purpose was always defensive.

Just checking, when you say “This ability is now instant and breaks stuns” you mean when placed? Because if what I’ve always said was the best of the bunch just became an insta-cast stun-break, I may swoon.

• Test of Faith: This ability is now instant and grants protection for 6 seconds when triggered. Additionally, it now strikes enemies for 66% of its full damage when it triggers.

Looks like the runt of the litter is finally finding it’s legs. While I won’t likely use it with Longbow, melee trappers may find this a good tool to work a fight in close and punish foes whose nerve breaks and who try to run.

• Light’s Judgment: This trap now grants Swiftness for 10 seconds when triggered. Reduced cooldown from 45 seconds to 30.

Heh, heh, hehhh. Stealth-reliant Thieves thought the pain was over when Fragments got debugged…

• Purification: This trap now grants regeneration for 10 seconds when triggered.

Outstanding. My biggest problem with this skill during the BWE3 is it’s so big and so fast in a melee furball that I’m reluctant to cast it until my life is a little on the low side. Having a lingering heal component makes it much easier to accept a little bit of overhealing. With the right traiting and gear this could lead to near 100% regen up-time in a brawl.

Some sort of cleanse (on cast or on trigger) would still be welcome and fit the skill’s name, but I’d be willing to take my chances with this skill as it is now. I’ve never had a problem getting people or NPCs into my traps.

• Pure of Sight: This trait now grants bonus damage of 7% from 0-600 range, 13% beyond 600 range.

Part of me wants to complain this is still a minor trait. Then the part of me that maths tells that other part to shut the hell up because that’s one of the best damage boosting traits in the game allowing melee trap-setters to beat down while enabling snipers to aim for the pink mist.

Once again, thanks for the constructive feedback through the beta weekends.

That is a LOT of good stuff and makes comparisons to the all-mighty meditation utility line a lot closer thing I feel. So I’m not trying to be churlish when I say I’m down to two items left I have to ask for attention to~

• Hunter’s Ward (“cages!”). I still feel three ticks of damage before caging is too much telegraphing. Two ticks first — even at the loss of some damage — will help make this skill a terrifying control threat on the battlefield.

• Spirit Weapons. These need help in their own right and have for years now. Doubly so now that we have a ranged spec where these could truly shine. Please review the health/toughness curves because testing them out they are crazy OVERpowered at low levels and too fragile at endgame. I also implore you – unify their mechanics with Necromancer minions: Let them last until destroyed, then go on cooldown. Yes that means the two utility weapons (bow/shield) will probably have to proc less often. And finally, please let us know if their forced-agro behavior is deliberate. I’ve single handedly beaten a veteran 2/3s to death from melee range building agro, summoned a spirit sword and had it take agro before its first swing. What is going on?!?

Cheers,
-Karl

Is it the 23rd yet? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it? Is it NOW?

So excited .

For folks asking for +25% speed:

That is a GUARDIAN problem and it needs to be addressed in GUARDIAN trait lines. If it’s not we’re just gonna see a “speed trait tax” on every Guardian Espec from now ’til the servers go dark.

Fix it where it’ll do the most good.

Karl McLain.5604:

Here’s a couple other updates that had been in the works and are now in testing.

• Vault: Reduced aftercast by 80ms. Added a 500ms evade at the start of the ability.
• Distracting Daggers: Projectiles from this ability are now counted as 100% projectile finishers.
• Impairing Daggers: Projectiles from this ability are now counted as 100% projectile finishers.
• Weakening Strikes: This trait now grants 10% damage reduction when being struck by a weakened foe, in addition to weakening foes on critical hit.

Muhuhuwahahahahhhh…

Oh man. Super Unicorn is BACK with a vengeance, baby!

Runiir.6425:

If it is over 100 I expect a full armor set of skins, not just a single piece.

Well, you already know that’s not happening.

Morfedel.4165:

Then things get interesting. A No-Prize to the first person who gets the following reference.

Well, I can tell you that part will happen pretty definitely.

jubov.2037:

The optimist in me wants to think that the lack of information means it won’t be too difficult to unlock elite specs.

The realist in me says there’s a pretty serious soft cap on how high it can go because they’ll want to put out more Especs in the future and they’ll have to ensure there’s enough hero points available to cover one character unlocking everything. Given how slowly maps are added… we probably will need to be able to buy two, maybe three of them with what we have access to now + what’s in the HoT maps.

Contradictory statements MUCH? If no one’s gonna use it, you have nothing to fear from it hitting so hard.

I cannot wait to see what happens when some of our alpha predators find their stride with the DH line. The DH video thread was a thing of joy.

I think it’s also maybe unclear to people how FAST the doubling spirals out of control. 2 minutes after getting you start you’ve built over 90 seconds of quickness. You can wait over a minute and between casts still keep going. about two minutes after that you’ve built over an hour. At which point you really do just cast your heal when you would normally for the rest of the night.

Puck.9612:

Whether something works or not can mean 2 different things. Can this be accomplished by doing something absolutely ridiculous like you suggested? The answer is yes.

Does that make it work in game? The answer is no. There isn’t enough of a benefit to go through the trouble of doing this. Running a regular group is far more effective because a group of rangers won’t beat an organized guild, the second their boons are stripped, they are downed, or they have to man siege, the gimmick is over and they would have to wp to spawn to get their boon monkey guardians to set the whole process up again.

If you believe my scenario is beyond the willingness and ability of dozens of WvW guilds in this game then the motivations of Devs are going to forever remain a mystery to you. And of course a real group is not gonna be mono-Ranger. Duh. But it’s a crazy power-boost to those Rangers who are present. This is a 5 million account game with the vast majority of the playerbase networked together. The worst case scenario is the ONLY scenario that matters because a stunt like this will propagate like wildfire.

Nah. Too hard. It takes a whole four adults who don’t mind sitting around 5-10 minutes making their buddies into rampaging beasts for the rest of the night. What kind of Guardian even wants to buff their allies, am I right? I know! The Devs did it for sheer spite. I’m sure that’s it. Came out and made themselves look like amateur hour in front of the industry with a recursive meltdown that got all the way to Live just so one of them could get off a mean-spirited tweet.

That’s gotta be it.

Puck.9612:

I’m saying a really bored guild might try it once and then never again because it is completely impractical and useless for anything other than hunting down small groups (which a 20 man ranger group could easily do without wasting a bunch of time trying to pre stack buffs).

Like I’ve said numerous times, just because it works on paper doesn’t mean it works in a fight.

So, because you aren’t an exploitive weasel they shouldn’t design with exploitive weasels in mind. Because that’s worked SO WELL for them in dungeons…

That it works at all (something I hope we’re done contesting) is a strong enough reason to hot-fix it out of existence. And they did.

Now hopefully we can get a real WHaO soon rather than the knee jerk untested kludge they dropped in in under 48 hours.

Fortunately, I’m pretty sure we’ll see the current True Shot damage make it to launch where more extensive data can be collected.

The city might be the intended destination, but they revealed the egg’s fate in the video trailer… the big thing Rytloc swings on at the end .

Puck.9612:

Look at what you wrote and think about how ridiculous that is.

You saying it won’t work or that you’re jealous you didn’t think of it?

Put 4 Guards not in a group in a line. The two ends 601 to 800 apart (so Guard 1 and 4 are outside of each other’s shout radius). Put the ranger and pet in the middle. Cast Feel My wrath. Press recursive WHaO any time in the next three seconds. DONE. Perma Quickness. The extra 1-3 seconds doubles every 16 seconds.

You could set up a “car wash” at the entrance to a borderland or EB and prep another ranger every 36 seconds. This is child’s play for an organized WvW guild and perma-regen and perma-protection are even easier.

Sandzibar.5134:

Durations were a problem yes.

But the fix was equally heavy handed in the other direction.

To a degree, certainly, but keep in mind the reference point was really badly designed skill vs. really mediocre skill .

There just seems to be very little in incremental change at Anet… it’s always extremes.

Could be some o f the others were feeling a little jealous of Irenio’s epic ‘mic drop’ and just wanted a turn in the spotlight. Even so, yeah, I’td be nice ot see the skill settle out to something a little less… impulsive.

The might stacks capping at 3 was somewhat unfair given how much boon stacking other classes have access to – even more so with some of the sheet the new elites can do.

If you watch the classes as a whole, you’ll see some other places they’re nibbling away at might stacking. I think the casual 25 stacks of might ecology we’ve got right now is going to see steady erosion throughout the year…

Aomine.5012:

The one who destroyed it is not even the one who’s in charge of ranger.

No, the one who tweeted is Roy. It’s actually a team that handles the classes together and I’m really impressed you think you know their internal politics so well. I’ve been there in person and been introduced to the whole crew and I certainly don’t think I have a perfect grasp of what goes on behind the closed doors other than that the doors are closed.

Also you didn’t rebut any of my points because you can’t.

I didn’t rebut them because you’re doing a better job of embarrassing yourself than I ever could. I ignored them as a courtesy.

And yet the skill (in its recursive form) is gone within two days of hitting live. They got rid of it before a lot of people’s guild night, and that’s a GOOD thing.

What they put out BREAKS. It’s not coming back. Ever. So maybe there’s room to negotiate on what comes next, but that first attempt, its done. It’s an embarrassment. If the focus here is on trying to get some improvement for core Rangers (who I am so on board with NEEDING some love) great. Lots to talk about there. But pining for the silly monstrosity that slipped through the tattered net of in-house testing is not helping.

Eurantien.4632:

I will try raids. If I can’t handle I will go back to my PvP end game.

I’m glad to hear someone is open minded and ready to try new things.

I’d warning you that raids have a sharp learning curve but if you’re already a PvP player you’re probably familiar with the idea that not all attempts are going to succeed.

Have fun. Maybe I’ll see you there .

I feel that making your champions into armored balls of pure magical energy is shortsighted considering the Dragons they’re supposed to oppose feed on balls of pure magical energy…

All Glint did was make a bunch of crunchy novelty SNACKS for her former masters.

This won’t end well.

Malediktus.9250:

HaxTester.9816:

It’s about time! It takes me on average 8 to 9 hours to finish a reward track. In those nine hours, I could have farmed atleast 15 or more gold. :P
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Zaishen_Key

In 8-9 hours you can probably farm 100 gold

Which means the reasonable price for one shard is 40-50 gold…

It’ll be less because there are lots of sPvP players who just won’t care about the shards and dump them for way less than their time is worth in equivalent gold-farming, but it’s still gonna be no joke buying someone else’s time.

Palador.2170:

Thanks for reminding me, that’s the other reason I expect some RNG. They’ll want to be able to adjust the rates of that coin transfer if it’s too high or too low. If it’s set at one per, then it’s hard to adjust. If there’s a variable there, then they can adjust it and there’s little visible impact.

A valid point, but they often just let the chips fall where they may.

Puck.9612:

“Real players” didn’t try to pull off some ridiculous gimmick build that required them to gather up multiple guardians to stack quickness on them and to constantly spam their heal to keep it going.

Do you not have ‘guild nights’ in your universe? Because I’d have had death squads of 20+ Rangers with perma-Quickness and probably perma-Regen and likely perma-Protection just for giggles by the end of the week. Pirate-ship meta meet 21st century USN destroyers.

We may also have different definitions of “Ridiculous gimmick”. All you have to do as the Ranger is carry ONE skill, and once the Guards say (shout, really) “Gettum!” all you have to do is press that one skill every time it comes off cooldown. We’re not even talking a trained monkey being required. A trained CHICKEN can peck a key when a light comes on…

Chokolata.1870:

Nike, I do not think that anyone here is arguing about the boon duration copy on quickness, protection, swiftness etc. Most people have an issue with the 3 might cap and the fact that the whole thing was handled very poorly.

Oh, I don’t disagree with that. This is basically the second time in a month (that dreadfully exploitable invasion event) they’ve shown their internal testing process is critically flawed. This skill should never have been seen by players in the first place because the curiously MISSING in-house weasel-tester, the guy that’s not there to rubber stamp things but instead is there to exploit new content in development like a real player would have/should have caught how vulnerable to recursive exploitation this skill gets in under 5 minutes.

Dude. QZ is gilding the lily. Once you have ANY amount of quickness above 16 seconds it goes recursive. Whatever that excess is, it doubles each time you press WHaO. So if you want to look like you don’t math, please press on with your obliviousness to why the skill got shut down the moment it made it out of the soft and cuddly laboratory and into the hands of real players. Because real players will use it break ANY boon that stacks duration.

You don’t need them in your party. You need them ONE TIME at the entrance to a WvW map to charge you up for hours of continuous quickness. Again, it actually builds margin with quickness on pet swap so you don’t have to fire it instantly on cooldown after a little while either. You only need to keep it above the critical 16 second threshold of recursive absurdity. And while the heals might not come at the precise clutch moment you’re hoping for they still come literally as fast as they can: every 16 seconds. 16 seconds where you were dishing 24 seconds of your favorite damage. If you can’t figure out which fights to pick with THAT kind of advantage…

Thing is if the goal is to move coin out of the hands of PvE players who make lots of it and into the hands of PvP players who make very little of it the FEWER the shards we get the better.

And I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the goal.

Come on, I’m STILL laughing that for even one second they let a version of WHaO exist much less get to the live servers that you could have four Guards click Feel my Wrath, and then you had PERMA QUICKNESS until you left the map… With Ranger being better than most professions at adding even more quickness duration from time to time so that each cast of your heal actually built up your buffer even higher…

Quickeness on pet swap and Sigils of rage just make it more ridiculous.

Seriously folks, what part of gathering mats to make a Legendary has ever been anything but ‘way too much time’?

They aren’t going to be worth “a little gold”. They’ve going to be worth a LOT OF GOLD.

PopeUrban.2578:

bliss.4305:

I don’t understand how any thief here can find logic in being able to deal damage and stay stealthed at the same time with absolutely 0 loss of stealth.

Mesmer Minions

Ranger Pets

Engineer Gyros/turrets

Necromancer Minions

You left out Drangonhunter-Trapper Runes with Spirit Weapons

Ok. Its terrible now. But one day… ((shakes fist at sky))

babazhook.6805:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

babazhook.6805:

Nike.2631:

Bunker thieves (all 8 of us in the entire game…) are already incredibly tanky. The last round of changes builds on that like I could only dream of.

There more then 8

He probably didn’t see those who are in stealth.

What’s stealth?

Ex-actly!

sirjarros.4107:

Wow! Nike you just might be onto something there. Kudos!

Super Unicorn used to be a well known and even respected part of the meta-build line up for Thieves. It’s never actually stopped working and for the most part you can see the Devs going out of their way to not nerf it and even buff it. It also does something we don’t see enough with the poor mis-used word… it’s ACTUALLY metagaming: Examining the expectations and most likely choices of your opponents and preying on their assumptions. It plays so completely unlike stealth-reliant “+1 thieves” that people make mistakes engaging Super Unicorns.

You know what being revealed does to a super unicorn? Nothing. At worst it makes them not Dagger #5/Dagger #1 you… a move already very low on their priority to begin with but something they might slip in every once in a while to keep you honest. And you aren’t chained to SB in your off slot because you don’t run away from fights. You also don’t necessarily have to win fights to win matches. You make fights, even 2-on-1s against you, drag out forever. You take and hold points and force the enemy to come to you and free up the map for your teammates to sweep it.

Not as sexy as ‘big numbers/big damage’, but fun and effective. And very, very much being given powerful new tools to weave into the design with the Daredevil line.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Sigh.

“Thief is being annoying, nerf him so he cannot be annoying.”

Not OP, not too strong, not unavoidable, just annoying, and it still needs nerfing.

Shirk.6421:

Stealth should be a defensive mechanism, not something you stay in 24/7.

Use a reveal. Or call someone that has a reveal. He’s not going to kill you.

Or beat him to death with AoE .

I don’t find stealth annoying… I find this game’s demented auto-targeting annoying. Thief vanishes and now I have focus on a gazelle in the neighboring zip code… I want to fight the other player not bad UI.

Well that was inspiring. Thank you both for sharing .

Treeoflife.4031:

(because really who doesn’t use virtues line)

Which would be exactly why NOT to put it in that line…

Karl McLain.5604:

Bam!
Thanks everyone in advance for your constructive feedback. Please keep in mind that we’re getting close to day zero and that the smaller the change, the more likely we’ll be able to discuss and action that feedback. This isn’t the end, however. We’ll continue to make changes, when necessary, after HoT releases, as well.

Thanks!
-Karl

Karl? In the interests of making the Tempest more cohesive and flow better, since their central shtick is a long channel, could we get “shock and Aftershock!” and “Flash-freeze!” to have zero casting time so all of the non-elite shouts can be used during an overload? Honestly the elite is frustrating enough that putting it on “I am so the guy that just saved you” zero cast time might be the right way to give it some much needed pizazz also .

I started doing that, then realized I’d rather do it while I was amassing XP towards auto-loot instead of it just vanishing into the ether…

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If you honestly think that 2000 T6 mats takes a similar time commitment as 150 reward tracks then I must assume you are trolling. 2000 T6 mats take ~500g or about 50 hours of play. Not sure how you can compare that to 150 reward tracks… it doesn’t even compare to 20 reward tracks.

I guess the words “personally farm” were obscured by some lint on your screen or something . That you use gold to pay someone else for their time actually getting those items into the economy… would be exactly like buying the new PvP mats from people who are generating them but not using them.

But the time still has to be spent doing it by somebody in both cases.

Ragnarox.9601:

Vennyhedgie.5369:

Guardian is far from being the class with the biggest problems on their core spec by far, I dont know what people are talking about. There’s a reason why guard has always been part of all the metas as eles have.

One more follower of “Guardians are in a good spot” right?

You know the people who say that are the ones who can and CONSTANTLY do look down and can see millions of players at once, right?

What did I miss? You think it’s insane to have to do 150 tracks. I said you’re not the person who gets to decide. And I don’t see 150 tracks to be any more odious a grind than personally farming 2000 T6 mats so its not like the precedent isn’t there…

Toran.4230:

Believe me Tempest and Scrapper are way more tanky if they want to and Tempest can even share it with the team. They are a league on their own ^^

That just makes me more interested in the try-outs… ’cause I think I can take ’em .

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So obviously there are either more ways to get them, you don’t actually need 300, or Anet made a horrible mistake somewhere.

Or your expectations for how hard they will be to assemble are simply wrong.

Yoru.2687:

I just wish that staff would be more viable for condi thief… then again I feel that right now any class without access to burning doesn’t really have a chance at condi. So maby give Thieves some way to apply burning?

I wouldn’t expect burning to remain so out-of-proportion with the other damaging conditions for much longer…

NOIP.1208:

capes worked in gw1 due to the fact we could only play as a human race in gw2 we have charr and we all know if they made capes and a charr had one people would moan about the tail clipping through it

I’d say the tail isn’t the issue.

How to drape it over a hunchback is the issue…

Arrow.4619:

Nike.2631:

All true. Believe me, the prospect of my Thief being a first-round draft pick for raid-tank has me salivating.

Nothing against you as player . . . but I think you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

I’m not offended. What’s your concern? Best capacity to dodge in game, 10% mitigation after dodge, dishes weakness, self-heals left, right, and center (on hit and on spend initiative), evade on #3.

Bunker thieves (all 8 of us in the entire game…) are already incredibly tanky. The last round of changes builds on that like I could only dream of.

Keegers.2573:

Runiir.6425:

The wings are a bit ridiculous most of the time.
Why can’t we have simple capes/cloaks?!

Guild Wars 1 had capes -.-

((Also build saving))

And it didn’t have non-human skeletons.

Wings work because of the huge split between the left and right sides.

Pockets.3201:

I look forward to dragging down whatever team gets stuck with me in PvP when I need to get these.

I’ll be all, “Hey, blame Anet.”

You won’t. The matchmaking puts new/weak PvP players together where they can all slap fight each other to death without bothering the more practiced kids.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

MercenaryNote.8506:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

it will become a normal melee attack which applies vulnerability.

2 stacks of Vulnerability I hope!

Yup 2 stacks for 6 seconds.

Any possibility of self-booning instead?

The vulnerability ecology is badly over-saturated already. Plenty of existing professions with vulnerability that don’t need the new kid crowding the already very limited 25 stack limit.

…and the boon striping/stealing/corrupting classes can always stand to have more opportunities to show off their mechanics.

Especially in raids. Hint-Hint.

Hint.

No seriously, more boons on raid bosses.

All true. Believe me, the prospect of my Thief being a first-round draft pick for raid-tank has me salivating.