Guild Wars 2

I would have been more interested/enjoyed it more if there were three not terribly grindy Achievements related to the event…

• Achieve 15 stacks in a single invasion: 1 point
• Participate in invasions on all three maps: 5 points
• Accumulate 100 blooms: 5 points

…And stop. No nightmare grind-a-thon. No encouraging tap-and-run chasing after 30 stacks. Just a couple of simple goals that would commemorate the event in my Achievements log forever.

A part of me is really looking forward to Dragonhunter so every pro-superfly-PvP killah out there who claims they can avoid all the traps spends some time growling at their screen every time they walk into one anyway in the heat of the moment. That’s hours and hours of sadistic glee just waiting to happen.

They could return as raid bosses for all-Charr raids .

The new blooms are currency.

Currency goes in the wallet, not our inventory.

John.8507:

Nike.2631:

The tap-and-run strategy needs to die in a fire. Specially “You may only be progressing 1 site of a mega-event at a time – if you log advancement at a new site before the first one is complete you lose your credit towards the first event.” Make people finish what they start or at least wait until it’s finished to start the next one. You could still partially game the system by leaving a little early, but you’d have to carefully wait to start bashing the next group until the first has completed.

This is good, but maybe not loose all your progress but have a limited reward, or bonus for still being in the event area on completion.

I like the current completion-at-any-distance rule Dynamic Events have now – if you die and way-point/slog back you still get credit even if you’re nowhere nearby. That’s a good thing and trains good habits because there are many open world events where if you get killed you should WP/slog back instead of dragging down your group by forcing them to rez a corpse when they are already pretty fully occupied.

Maybe we could get a new set of runes that give super-speed on shout similar to trapper runes giving super-speed on trap placement.

Karl McLain.5604:

While the changes listed are the ones you’ll be seeing in the next beta weekend, we haven’t stopped making changes as we work to improve the Dragonhunter specialization. Here’s a few more changes we’ve been playing with for the longbow.

Puncture Shot: Arrow velocity is slow! We’re looking at increasing it so that it’s less strafe-able. What we’ve got it at is ~66% increase, putting it at around Hip Shot (engineer rifle) velocity. We’re also looking at the base and bounce functionality.

True Shot: To make this ability more rewarding for stopping you in place, we’re looking at further increasing the damage.

It’s gonna be real interesting to see what comes out of the underlined comment. We could already perma-criple with just our auto-attack if there was a secondary target positioned to trigger the bounce. If they ease up on the positioning requirement DH could become a very effective at kitting without any speed buffs at all.

Isarii.2804:

I could just as easily point out the knockback, leap, Pure of Sight (more damage to distant enemies) trait, and addition of snare mechanics to the specialization. The Dragonhunter is clearly meant to maintain range (even the chanelled skills are evidence of this, as the self-root makes using them in close range not smart)…

Agreed on all point so far.

…and in any non-zerg situation, that means kiting – not to mention that kiting is usually a large part of getting things to actually run into your traps.

And here we part company. This looks like good choice of placement is key to me – placement of yourself and placement of your traps. I realize GW2 tends towards the hyperkinetic end of the spectrum (Wildstar being more so, most MMOs being less). As I implied above with the LotRO comment, I’ve played this model before and if the rewards for placement-over-scurrying skills are high enough it can be a very fun and effective playstyle… and quite different from what most GW2 builds offer. I don’t think the Dragonhunter is quite there yet as a competitive example of the breed, but the changes we have seen all point towards that being the place they want to get to.

ShalymaAr.3685:

If I told you nothing about the class other than you have a Longbow with 1200 range and traps would you think that the class is designed to kite others into their traps??

I would.

Play more MMOs I guess. Because the Dragonhunter looks like classic ‘red-line Hunter’ from Lord of the Rings. Which is to say a hunter build that does tons of damage in exchange for mobility and is a spec that works best in groups as opposed to 1-on-1 PvP.

Branden Gee.2150:

Can we start generating a list of potentially lost skin unlocks? I’d like to see if there is some sort of pattern.

I lost my heavy armor guild boots during the switch to the general locker from the PvP locker – they are NOT the same as banded boots and simply do not appear in the new array. Can we get that fixed?

The tap-and-run strategy needs to die in a fire. Specially “You may only be progressing 1 site of a mega-event at a time – if you log advancement at a new site before the first one is complete you lose your credit towards the first event.” Make people finish what they start or at least wait until it’s finished to start the next one. You could still partially game the system by leaving a little early, but you’d have to carefully wait to start bashing the next group until the first has completed.

The stack disappearing if you disconnect (or change maps to the same zone!) is ridiculously punitive. Who thought that was a good idea?

Isarii.2804:

I still find it odd that one of the only classes without a 25% move speed passive bonus is supposed to have a kiting based elite specialization now; this functionality needs to find its way into the class somehow.

Wouldn’t the absence of a 25% speed trait tell you it’s NOT intended to be a kiting build? Wouldn’t the presence of not 1 but 2 “you cannot move or you will interrupt this cast” skills make even suggesting its a kiting spec sorta laughable?

Maybe they just wanted fresh data for a “we have X number of concurrent players” sales pitch.

VaLee.5102:

But they have the “No grind phylosophy” !
I’m sure you are all exaggerating….Oh wait.

Ya know, pulling that phrase out really works better if you remember it ONLY applies to getting exotic gear… which is pretty much exactly as trivial as intended. There’s basically no grind getting your basic endgame gear. Skins, exotics, titles, oddities… you WILL grind like a millstone getting those and never once make them feel bad about it.

Customer wants something for nothing. Film at 11.

obesejuanjacobi.1269:

Warrior already has:
The most HP
The most AC
The most direct damage capability
The best bleed
The best Might stacking
and now lets add to this the best burn?

You completely missed the most important thing the Warrior has by far…

The most aggressively protective class developer

Its not even funny how obvious the ‘fist’ (style) of each of the designers is.

Serophous.9085:

The ability to dye weapons

That represents a complete do over of around a thousand skins.

Don’t hold your breath.

Ok, not to be a complete party pooper but the entire point of butchering the old trait system was that there are now no more surprises when it comes to making builds. Its EASY to see all the major permutation in a day or two of tinkering.

I adore Ranger theorycraft. I did TONS of it in the Ranger CDI. My point isn’t to not speculate on what could be done with Rangers and their class mechanics. Its to not frame that speculations as something that has any relevance whatsoever to Druids. That ship sailed over a year ago.

The harm is having players sitting around afterwards bemoaning “oh yeah, I wish they’d done something more like [idea in threa X]” when even a casual understanding of design scheduling would tell you that was never going to happen. The harm is directing that energy at a lost cause when it could be directed at a future Espec that’s not already locked in. And Ranger players are in particular guilty of tilting at windmills like “the Espec that will fix our problems” when the problems have to be fixed in the core profession or not at all.

Why are we talking like ANYTHING about the druid is still up for discussion? The new trait line/class mechanics is already set in stone and is going to get only the tiniest of all beta-testing cycles which means only really, really small tweaks are going to be possible before the Druid is pushed to Live.

You want to have a conversation about the next all-new Espec for Rangers, great. But you are WASTING YOUR BREATH pitching ideas for the Druid. What they are already planning (and have been planning for the last 20 months or so) is what they are going to do with only the most minute course corrections from us.

So how about save that energy for when we actually know something about the Druid and test/comment the heck out of it then?

scerevisiae.1972:

I’d be very happy if tempest lost all its support, as would many other ele mains. It’s a large part of the reason why tempest is so hated.

And I think it’s blatantly obvious the Devs would like to see less absolute domination of DPS (with and without team synergy) over all other possible roles tackling the content. Churning out more DPS-heavy build options isn’t going to make that happen.

So who did either BWE with Runes of the Trapper? or Traveler?

I got pink. I’m mulling over whether to pull the handle again or just wait for my anniversary dyes.

Karl McLain.5604:

Hey all. Following up on what we talked about last week. Here’s a few more things that we’re looking at doing:

…

-Karl

So, we missed the chance to test any of that. Any updates on traps or what we might see in the next beta weekend?

The reason is Stealth is godawful powerful in this game and doesn’t break on being damaged so there needs to be some sort of counter-play .

Sadly the people that don’t get it seem to be the Devs who aren’t making gear that would better fit roles other than DPS, like FIXING GIVER’S ARMOR for example.

Even if they were made available at 21 (which is not that big of a coding challenge, honest) locking them behind having gotten a character of that profession to Level 80 first meets all of those needs people are putting forward. Making alts IS an endgame activity after you have an 80 of that profession and something worth encouraging to extend the life of the game and multiply the usefulness of the core maps.

The game already has (with varying degrees of success) scaling to zone. It takes some unnecessary jumping through hoops, but you already can make a character, get them through the intro instance, pop them to 80 thirty seconds after you get to a bank and pull out your tomes, and then go play through the world, but its kind of a pain in the butt when all I’m looking to do is extend the life of the content…!

Crimson Clouds.4853:

“Stop making outfits and selling them on the Gem Store” essentially equates to “Stop trying to make money!”.

No it doesn’t and obviously not. Its a customer saying “quite allocating man hours to something I’ll never buy when that same team has made stuff I did buy.”

Yes, they have a plan. As good a plan as they can come up with from their assessment of the numbers. A plan that leaves me and many other in the lurch because the outfits are OBVIOUSLY designed as various weights of armor and for the most part could be split back into and sold as armor if they chose to, while those of who like and use the mix and match system twiddle our thumbs. Obviously they feel they’re making more money this way but they are also alienating customers who would like new armor skins and have been waiting to see new gear roll out for ages while they dump new outfits into the store like clockwork.

What’s short sighted about “I already have an 80th level Ranger and would buy another character slot to try playing through the core maps again as a Druid.”?

I’m pretty sure my Sith has that exact look in SWtOR .

Still waiting for some actual armor. I know they’re committed to not selling it to us any more (which is disapointing, because I’d buy it), but watching this endless stream of all-or-nothing outfits makes me really sad about the way the character art team’s time is being used…

I would like it that if you have at least one character at level 80 in a profession you can use it’s Elite Spec on any character on your account with that profession. I’ve played a warrior to 80 already, thanks. Let my new Warrior experience leveling up through the content as a Berserker, starting as early as possible.

I have a lot of character slots so some of my characters will switch to primarily running in an Espec and some wont.

• I don’t really enjoy Elementalist and I don’t see Tempest changing that.
• I only have 1 Engineer. Waiting to know more before deciding what to do there.
• I have a bunch of Guardians and they’ll split about evenly between sticking with Guard and various DH-based specs (both a melee trapper and ranged zerg-leader for sure).
• Half my Mesmers were created to be chronomancers (Time Warp elite FTW). Now they are able to do that more than ever. The other two will happily stick with Mesmer builds as their thematic focus is more on clones/phantasms and sword-duelist.
• My “well-mancer” Necromancer will probably go Reaper while my Healing and Plague necros won’t.
• I don’t see either of my Rangers switching to Druid. We’ll see where we stand when the next wave of Elite specs hit.
• My Super Unicorn condi-bunker Thief is going to go Daredevil sooo hard . My Vemons thief wont.
• My Charr warrior may go Beserker. My Norn Warrior is happy with banners.
• Making 2 Revenants when HoT drops. Don’t know where I stand with Herald yet.

Doggie.3184:

People who enjoy playing healing classes are just lazy. :| I don’t see the appeal or desire, it’s so intensely boring in MMOs and waiting around to find people to fill those roles is annoying. Anet were one of the few developers smart enough to understand that.

That’s just comedy gold, right there. PEOPLE are lazy, so if healing was a lazy job there would be a lot more of them. Instead about 75% of MMO players gravitate to DPS roles, 15%ish to healing, and about 10% to tanking… which should tell you exactly how demanding those roles are relatively speaking.

At least ANet’s raid designers are integrating the hard earned wisdom of enrage timers which serve exactly one purpose in a game without mana-pool management: to make it absolutely clear when it’s the DPSers who are falling short. Not surprisingly most of DPS players don’t like being scrutinized, because in any group of people only one-in-ten is actually in the top 10% percent. Enrage timers separate the self-aggrandizing blowhards from the real alpha predators.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

Same with BL ticket scraps. I bought 12 keys and got 1 scrap and no full tickets…

Ok, stop. Stop right there. Lets talk about WHAT JUST HAPPENED.

Drop rate for scraps is about 20%. That means average for 12 boxes is 2.2.

You came in ONE SCRAP below average. That’s totally normal. That’s not “bad luck”, that’s perfectly typical distribution.

Full tickets are more like 4%. Out of 12 boxes the average is .48. If you’d gotten one that would be the weird outcome. Not getting one is extremely normal.

That your friend got crazy lucky (ignoring the monumental sampling bias for a moment) does not mean that’s somehow the new average your results should be pivoting around.

The correct answer for Found Belongings is… They’re currency and should be in our wallets instead of taking up inventory space.

PopeUrban.2578:

The guild armors are still completely obtainable ingame. They simply removed the clone pieces. You can still get the skins that aren’t avaliable from the guild merchant, the guild merchant was just adjusted to only sell the skin unique to him (the chest) because it was a bit silly to have him selling the skins for the other bits that can be had much cheaper elsewhere. This confused a lot of people who basically overpayed for karma skins.

They were a little overzealous removing stuff. The guild boots are very different from the banded boots on Norns and they could put the pants back on the vendor too .

I have about seven characters that will turn 3 over then next week or so, so I’ll likely get both, but the reason I’m getting electro blue first is it works very well for ice- and Jormag-themed costumes.

Grats to all who hit jackpots. I got a couple scraps. Progress is progress .

Looking over some of the new tech used in the (very fun!) Daredevil Espec… Would it be possible to make our elite trap Dragon’s Maw a finisher with its final damage pulse KILLING downed characters/players?

Its a real corner case and unlikely to happen without carefully planning but it would be a way to help make the skill feel more elite and fearsome without a bunch of buffs to damage.

The standard trinity is fundamentally stupid because it hinges on “tanks” — a role based entirely on BAD AI BEHAVIOR. This is why you don’t see ‘trinity’ behavior in games played between people from table-top RPGs to chess or in the real world either. Intelligent gamers and real combatants do not attack the enemy with the toughest armor and least damage output first. This is why ‘tanks class’ always have to restructured in PvP (and why healer classes get mauled first, foremost, and always in PvP)… Intelligent opponents don’t waste their time on tanks unless the game does a triple backflip to force you to prioritize them (such as forced behavior like GW2s new taunt condition).

Most “bad luck” is just normal behavior clustered around an average that is much, much lower than people want to admit…

I think one of the most important would be~

• Elite Specs must NOT break existing traits

Reaper had to do a little song and dance to meet this requirement in regards to Necromancer traits that affect Death-shroud skills. It’s also why Rangers will never be fully rid of their pets unless changes are made to the core profession (they have far, far too many traits that modify or trigger off of their pet).

And I would rephrase the weapon commandment…

• Elite Specs will always include a set of new weapons skills – either as a new weapon or overwriting an existing one

lordkrall.7241:

And there we have it then. You complain about lack of (in your eyes) good selections, and yet you didn’t even try to do anything about it yourself by submitting something that would be good in your eyes.

Ok, seriously, it’s possible to have an opinion as a user without being skilled as a creator. Believe me when I say many game company art directors I’ve worked with are not themselves wildly skilled illustrators. They have to understand the principles and be able to articulate their desires (often with words rather than imagery) but they don’t necessarily send each artist they are directing a sketch of what they’re looking for.

“More heroic” and “Less cutsey” aren’t highly specific, but they’re still actionable guidance. “Less than 40% quaggan, please” is definitely actionable .

There were some really lovely pieces in the catalogue of all the entries, but for the most part I think ANet was actively avoiding highly detailed/complex designs including thin lines and intricate repeating patterns like knot-work. Specifically things that will become blurry and indistinct even at medium ranges or while in motion. Once you cull all of those out the 5 that won really are fairly excellent uses of larger, blockier shapes that will stand up to reduction and motion blur.

Super Unicorn’s Revenge

sorudo.9054:

funny, an outfit that looks good is complained about but for some reason a butt ugly armor i would not even wish my worst enemies is appreciated……WTF?

Its almost like the world is filled with people whose tastes don’t match yours…
Bizarre.

I like the boots and the pants aren’t terrible… I’d mix those into the look on a few of my characters… except — oh look — its another outfit.

Basically just more character art team man-hours down a dark hole as far I’m concerned.

The nobles are on free-to-play accounts?

Karl McLain.5604:

Hiya!
Sorry about the confusion. The stuff I’ve been talking about up in the stickied changes post wasn’t slated for this BWE, as that opportunity had already passed. The changes in this iteration are listed in Irenio’s post, in the OP. Sorry for the confusion. We haven’t stopped working on the Dragonhunter, however, and do value your feedback on the current iteration (even if there are changes coming).
Please continue to use this thread for feedback. It’s appreciated!

Well, I’m feeling like I’m getting into the rhythm of Longbow better with practice, but the “not in line of sight” antics need to die in afire ASAP, along with a good long look at what’s screwed up with scepters which should also be a strong choice while in this spec and just aren’t.

Not much to say about traps other than Fragments of Faith has served me well both soloing and in group content. We’re still waiting to see the wisdom earned the hard way years ago that stunbreaks needed to be distributed across skill types applied to the new Especs. We need a trap skill that stunbreaks. Waiting to see what else crystalizes out of the weeks of comments already put forward on traps (and I mean the comments sincerely interested in making them valuable and not just bemoaning the very existence of the skill-type… )

I’ve also been doing a little mix and matching with other utilities… I have to admit I hadn’t previously realized how utterly terrible the elite Signet of Courage is. 10 seconds between healing pulses that you have no control over and can’t see coming is pitiful enough…. but add in a range of 300 units (!!) for the passive effect and we’re deep into the land of bad comedy. But really… a cast time of 4.25 seconds? And the cooldown… 3 MINUTES. Are you kidding?!?? Seriously, I’d like to use this in a backline supporter build but pretty much every number on the tool tip needs to change. You’ve made a lot of attempts this year to make healing more attractive — please don’t kick us in the junk for taking our ‘healer’ elite.

Oddly Signet of Courage does do one thing right… it gives you a modest FX that should signal skilled players you’re constantly radiating heals… a concept I’d really like to see extended to Battle Presence. It’d be a huge help if players could simply know by looking that if they want some healing, come wander over by me.

Keep at it! The clock is ticking down .

I think I may have watched his review before I bought in on the game… But on some levels the entire concept of an MMO “review” be someone with less than 100 hours played at the time is kinda silly… The things that matter most to me are going to be the years of level-cap play that follow the weeks of leveling and how does the studio sustain their creation after launch — something you can really only judge 6-8 months later.

Ramming your cheek into someone’s palm does NOT constitute being slapped in the face. In fact the entire phrase is more like a tool for self-flagging that your attached complaint is supremely hyperbolic.

Beta-testers are working for ArenaNet (at Anet’s convenience, imagine that…) not the other way around.

winterlove.6834:

was wondering if Sigil of Generosity 60%chance remove condition on crit if it would go down in price.

Why would they? The changes in condition behavior like burning stacking intensity rather than duration have already happened.

Also what are some other sigils or runes that might drasticly change in value once HoT launches

Trapper runes become more interesting with Guardians Gaining traps – but they have to be crafted by the account using them so its the mats that are impacted.

Runes that affect shouts become more desirable (Elementalists and Necros gaining shouts).

It’ll be a while before new first tier builds emerge, but people will be experimenting quite a bit once the expansion hits.