Guild Wars 2

The Priory has two branches – the Scholars and the Explorers.

Rangers and Warriors both make for rugged Explorers and also provide in-organization ‘shepherds’ to run flocks of the more delicate researchers out to field study sites. More defensive and support roles than the Rangers & Warriors of the Vigil, but still well represented in those classes.

1) I would like to see the elite skill Entangle made into a ‘trap’ rather than a ‘survival’ skill. This would let it work with the following traits:

Skirmish VIII: Trapper’s Expertise — Trap skills use ground targeting and are larger.
Skirmish XI: Trap Potency — Conditions caused by traps last longer. Reduces recharge on traps.

2) Replace the 5 point skirmishing trait with a new trait~

Lone Wolf: You gain +25% damage while your companion is stowed. (Stowing and unstowing can only be done out of combat).

Pennry.9215:

Sorry, but orphans burning each other is just in bad taste.

I’d like to hope anyone who would suffer genuine moral outrage at that joke spends their time doing something important like volunteer work rather than hanging around MMO forums.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I think that’s fair but there wasn’t much back and forth on the topic since our commander system is so simple there isn’t much to discuss.

Well, on the subject of quick fixes the overwhelming uniformity of responses was pretty telling, I’ll give you that…

But when the possibility of a major overhaul was suggested, I think the lack of any Dev-side discussion of the scope such an overhaul could encompass left what could have been a very deep topic nearly dead until you yourself mentioned the possibility of folding in UI elements from the Dynamic Events system – and then the thread was brimming with excitement at the possibilities of a more in-depth set of changes. A near-perfect example of “the more the Devs put into these chats, the more they can get out of them” .

Thanks for the feedback though I’ll make sure and cover some more reasoning/explanation for things next time.

I look forward to it!

So, I got the ultimate surprise from the chests you get for gaining a WvW Level:

An Ascended Weapon Chest.

I got it for reaching level 16 on an 80th level character. I would not have guessed those were part of that loot table.

Probably never happen to me again, but maybe some of you will get lucky that way too!

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

What where some things that could have been done better in that thread? What are some examples of collaboration you are looking to see ?

In general I would like to come out of the thread feeling like I have greater insight into how it works, why things are the way they are, or what inspirations you found in the thread. While the Devs asking us questions is a good ‘ice breaker’ to get people warmed up, there comes a point when I really felt like a separate systems of surveys would be better than using the CDIs that way.

I think it should be clear there in the ANet offices that the summaries every few pages are to help new readers get a grounding in what’s already been covered, and NOT the SUMM TOTAL of the Devs’ expected level of participation. Being told “no, X won’t be easy to do because of consideration Y” would be vastly preferable to us guessing if certain ideas had been read at all.

There was some discussion of including a primer post or some other general explanation of the topic when each thread launches. We got a tiny taste of that with the post answering the question “What do the Devs feel the current system does well?” More of those sorts of insights (especially at the outset) would be very welcome .

Liquid Rhino.7192:

“Chaaaamberlaaaain….. LAY DOWN MY SCEPTER… RAAAAWWWRRRRR”

Trial by stone?

Trial by stone!!

Oh man, If only.

Not all of the previous ones have ended, and I believe there will be another review-and-improvement thread before another wave.

I didn’t have a full set of numbers, so seeing more is helpful. 1 second cooldown on the heal is a bit embarrassing – I thought it was also a syphon, so hmm… some missed potential there.

Even if hard to use, that’s still one of the most damaging of all #6’s .

I’ll look it over closely once we have the actual numbers. There may yet be some clever combinations using it. It doesn’t have to be strictly better than what we have now, simply by virtue of being different it may enable a new spec.

So, first off, its a signet. It goes in your #6 slot and it’ll proc the new Runes of Resistance set.

The passive effect is every time some someone hits you, you syphon them. Its like perma-retaliation with evil sprinkled on top.

The active effect is you clap 25 stack of “Kill this guy right HERE” on the target, and each time they are hit by anyone, one of those stacks goes away and they attacker syphons them once. After getting syphoned 25 times, the mark over their head goes away.

There’s still some very important questions about timing: does the passive have an internal cooldown? How long until the 25 stacks of ‘it literally sucks to be you’ expire if they aren’t used up?

But mostly it sounds like an insane amount of fun .

I liked it pretty well.

Then again, I don’t mind taking a little time to show folks new to the WvW maps the highlights or how to do the jump puzzle. They may be here just for this month’s achievement, but they may also come back and try it on a more serious footing if they find the place isn’t full of PEOPLE WHO SUCK.

Caliburn.1845:

Crazy Friday, each character only has one life. You die, that toon is locked out of WvW for 24 hours.

Play smart, WvW just became hardcore.

Wow. I’m incredibly not hardcore and I’d still get a kick out of that from time to time!

Alvain.7364:

So, who wanna bet the devs don’t reply to a single of these threads?

Why should they? The GAME ITSELF delivers a pretty clear statement about how they think things should be.

It will be delivered early next month. It does not get mailed the moment you buy enough gems.

Less vigor. Les Endurance regeneration. It’s coming. Get over it.

The Berserker>Everything crowd have made their point that the game BREAKS when you can dodge everything.

It was a wildly powerful effect that cost 5 Points. I won’t go so far as to say its obviously bad design, but it was clearly design from before they knew just how thoroughly dodging would trivialize content.

One of two things will happen and BOTH of them are good things.

Either we’ll adapt.

Or we’ll be so savagely annihilated that maybe they’ll have to actually take a look at the Ranger class and expend some brain-sweat on fixing any of the six OTHER gapping holes we labor under to get the class back on its feet after loosing this crutch.

You can control it with weapon swapping – build 25 stacks then put the weapon away ‘til you’re ready to cash out.

It’s likely those 25 stack shave the same restrictions the other stack-building sigils do: one type of stack at a time. Maybe you just blocked yourself by starting a different stack?

Its really a shame how sometimes you have to back off on traiting full DPS.

No, wait, it isn’t.

That “different material” is the ascended level weaving silk. Eventually jewelry will call for the Xunlai Electrum and the crystalline mats.

You’re gonna be in for a surprise if you don’t think every single piece will require it’s own vision stone…

My sympathy… I seem to have misplaced it.

I think rather than try to refund existing tags, we just need more ways to acquire them.

Bought with 100g OR 1000 Badges of Honor OR 100 guild commendations. (numbers purely speculative)

All three paths open simultaneously.

That’s still thinking tags are on a per-character basis. Any form of account-tags is going to trigger some sort of refund for those who already have more than one tag on their account.

Dear Krait,

My name is Sandy Banelore, and I am a student of blood magic. Could you please forward my interest in attending advanced classes in blood magic to the Bloodwitch of Kessex Hills or the Mistress of Blood in the Mount Maelstrom Region (I am uncertain what how Krait refer to the area, as I doubt they spend much time climbing about on the volcanic rocks that litter the cliffs).

Previous attempts to arrange classes have lead to some spectacular displays of hemokinesis and spontaneous exsanguination, with lab materials being provided chiefly by the overzealous Krait students who kept trying to cut in line during sign-ups… Most of whom I would like to think have recovered/respawned by now. If those past exhibitions are inadequate proof of my sincere love of blood magic in all its forms, I am also prepared to turn over a small trove of rare Krait weapons I have accumulated in my travels to cover tuition costs.

I have all necessary diving permits for underwater class-work and my familiar ‘Teqie’ has so far proven waterproof (my flesh golems, not so much. Still working on that conundrum…). It would be a privilege to see such masters of The Red Art at work and to learn even their most basic techniques.

In the spirit of continuing Krait/Krytan relations, thank you for your time in this matter,

S. B.

Finally found some leggings that don’t clip with the phalanx boots on a Norn .

Yah. They weren’t as cool as I was hoping for either .

You can pretty much put dual wielding off-hand weapons out of your mind – the off-hand only weapons are all cheaper than main hand weapons (check the Dungeon vendors). They’re not going to prioritize super-cheap set-ups.

No problem. The wiki does describe it correctly, though.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Binding_Agent

Just save the ones you have left to bring up lower tier bits → cores.

It fuses multiples of the lower tiers. Used on cores → lodestones its the same as a single wine.

nerovergil.5408:

I think you need to fix this Anet… and heres my solutions. According to current reward i dont expect much, but please increase it to at least.

1) 80-100 tombs of knowledge

2) 200 globs of ecto

3) permanent gold dolyak finisher (winning server really need this! something permanent that can be an evidence they has won !)

You “don’t expect much” huh? I read that and all I could think was ‘are you out of your kitten kitten-kitten kittening kitten mind?’

It was play for a few weeks and maybe do an hour or two of stuff you wouldn’t normally.

And if any of you guys has any ideas of how to fix the reward, please post here

Here’s one: Get over it.

Your expectations are irrational.

Ayane Hajinmon.9165:

My noble human necro

Just wanted to give a shout out. Your design made me go back and look at one of my characters again, leading to…

Please take this as encouragement, but also thoughtful review.

You know the maxim ‘success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration’?

A lot of this is 1% work. Top level goals are exciting, but they’re also comparatively easy. My own experience is that really good ideas carry closer to a 3% : 97% ratio and while I think most of these are really good ideas, they still prompt at least 30 times as much work to make them happen as they take to come up with.

I’d be a LOT more interested in seeing the schedule you have now fleshed out in more detail than seeing another year or two of top-level concept work.

Some recommended viewing for Devon and all the CDI-hosting Devs .

Ranger with Axe main-hand is not to be underestimated. button #1 with its 2 random ricochets and a base range of 900 can tag a whole zerg in seconds at greater range than a Guardian’s staff.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

Questions:
2) I’ve always felt the best commander organization tool would be the ability to create events. Like drop a siege and the commander can set this is a build event then everyone gets Ui like build this flame ram 0/50 supply needed. Or Destroy this gate <show gate health bar>. Lets assume for this discussion there are no rewards to the events just a communication tool. Thoughts on commander created events?

Seed.5467:

An excellent idea that i agree. Would be nice to see that implemented. A notification is popping up like “Commander XYZ is attacking X.” Bring supplies to complete the “Siege-Equipment” event. Or an event to “Capture the Enemy Commander” maybe ?

One bit you mention in passing that I think should be strongly highlighted:

Having those events say who initiated them would be hugely helpful with not getting sidetracked by ‘subversive commanders’. In fact it would help you identify who is throwing trebuchets in dumb places trying to leach the group’s supply.

People should have to own their good directives and their bad ones.

The events also need fairly brief timers so they don’t linger. A command to break the door becomes superfluous after a near wall goes down. Its also meaningless if the group is driven into retreat. Timers aren’t flawlessly context sensitive but they do ensure adequate clean-up.

shauncoates.6874:

When a commander uses a waypoint, a popup should be displayed to commander’s squad asking if they would like to use waypoint with the commander. Minimizing a common reason commanders get suppressed in mapchat and adding value to players who join a commander’s squad.

Ooo. I LIKE that!

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I think this thread is nearing it’s end so I wanted to do a quick high level summary of what I’ve gotten out of it so far and a few questions about each.

• Removal of buff display to enemies. As well as we should avoid doing skills/abilities that highlight the commander to enemies.

Mostly an observation that right now commander endure increased risks, which is a significant part of the reason they could be given additional powers/benefits. If the risk is removed, then yes, there’s less justification for their receiving abilities – including squad intel and direction abilities. Personally I think that having commanders be visible to the enemy increases the interaction in fights and promotes interesting gameplay. Some tactics only work because the commander can act as a lightning rod or bait for their own traps (pay no attention to the thugs standing next to me just waiting for you to come at me…). But I like trade-offs rather than strict advantages.

Questions:
1.) How important is it to see your squad members as a different color and always visible on your map like party?

Inversely proportional to squad size? With 10-15 it sounds great. With 40 I think it’d turn your mini map into a field of colored snow…

• Seems to be some debates on buffs to followers, but there is a lot of good examples of ways to do that.

Just wanted to reiterate that buffs that tip the fight are bad. Buffs that help set up the fight (speed to get there, wxp to encourage group cohesion) can help with the reality that most Commander-lead groups are fairly casual affairs. Groups that are not casual are generally on voice chat which trumps 99% of the changes suggested here for speed and clarity of communication.

2) I’ve always felt the best commander organization tool would be the ability to create events. Like drop a siege and the commander can set this is a build event then everyone gets Ui like build this flame ram 0/50 supply needed. Or Destroy this gate <show gate health bar>. Lets assume for this discussion there are no rewards to the events just a communication tool. Thoughts on commander created events?

It certainly plugs directly into the condition responses of players . You’d need safeguards against innocent spamming and hostile misdirection, but as a way of communicating its wonderfully visceral.

• Gating using WvW abilities seems to have some debate to it, but seems like something we should avoid.

People say that, but I’ve heard very little reasoning behind it. Gating needs to happen in one form or another so “it’ll slow down Commander acquisition” is the point not a strike against the concept. Its hard for me to shake the feeling that people just don’t want to give up their stacks of guard leech or their favorite siege skill and actually commit to being a commander on some of their characters. Wxp would actually encourage diversity of roles – paying with wxp, commanders (initially) need people who have diverse wpx skills rather than doing everything themselves.

• Account bound commander tags vs character bound.

With world experience becoming account wide, it gives you a nice situation where the entire account becomes commander-capable at the same time and then its a choice: “does this character command, or are they going to be my supply runner, or are they my guard-leeching roamer?”

As they continue to gain wxp, they gain the privilege of doing more things simultaneously. Logical expansion of the existing environment.

3) A guild gating system would be clean but require all commanders to be in a fairly active guild is this a fair gating system?

Hell. No.

4) What did I miss on this list

Cookies. Good commanders should have their own currency of ‘cookies’, granted as an extra drop when they complete wvw world events. They can then mail them to squad members. These cookies provide no buff, but man do they taste good!

Nah, I’ve got nothing else .

Thanks for listening!

I can’t help thinking all these “assign sub-leader” functions can be ditched in favor of “commanders may choose to join other commander’s squads as lieutenants” or something similar.

Since the consensus is that once you have a tag, you should have it account wide, and nobody wants to pay an opportunity cost, in the long run people with commander tags are going to become very, very common…

Robles.7458:

I can get better rewards in 8 minutes in cof p1, so I won´t complete these achievements again. Bye WvW.

Uh, bullkitten?

You can get better heaps of blues and greens, but I don’t see dragonite dropping in CoF. I don’t see transferable levels dropping there either. And having watched the buying power of gold turn to sparkly motes and blow away on the wind, I’m not sure that big ol’ 1 whole gold coin at the end of the dungeon is all that spectacular either.

Sure. I’d do a season 2.

Dragonite for an achievement I’d be doing 90% of the requirements for anyway?

Yeah, no problem.

The critter dies?

They are pretty cool .

Funny… I think I’m actively AGAINST profession Icons.

…Possibly because I have both a Ranger and an Engineer and I’m kinda tired off being pooped on for it…

Now, if you could self-identify with ‘Role Icons’ —

‘I am a DPS spec’ / ‘I am a Support spec’ / ‘I am a Control spec’ / ‘I am a Bunker spec’

— I think you might be able to put together more meaningful groups than just Professions (and assumptions) tell you.

My main is a Warrior. Do not look at me for god-king DPS, its not what I’m traited for .

I thought everyone who finished the achievement got a key and the contents of the chest were largely the same for everyone? With the 1st place server in each league getting their Dolyak finishers in the mail.

I can only speak for myself, but I only did 2 things in the last 7 weeks that I wouldn’t have otherwise: one 40 minute sitting running around flipping over ruins and one evening fanatically devoted to slaughtering Dolyaks.

For that, the 10 skill points, 10 free levels for any of my characters, and 100 dragonite was an excellent return on my time. The Dolyak mini didn’t suck and the sip of +1 World Level is a nice touch.

Its a meta-achievement. Most of them are a single skin. A couple have being a neighborhood node. I’m not sure what people were expecting…?

insanemaniac.2456:

Lets say youre the resident militia commander. you have a sizable group on you… maybe 25, only 4 of whom are guildies. youve just taken bay in an enemy bl, but it was a somewhat drawn out fight, and a couple enemy roaming groups retook the camps while you knocked down inner gate. you decide you would like to hold the keep, maybe throw a couple upgrades on it.

Currently, the only realistic move is to bring every single person on you to the first camp you decide you want. because you cant expect pugs/militia to respond to “5 people go vale, 5 to s camp, the rest on me for nw camp. meet at nw tower afterwards.”

No one will have any clue who you are talking to. 3 people go s camp, 10 go vale, and you sigh while 12 people follow you to nw camp. at least they got one of the instructions almost correct, “the rest” followed you.

This is hardly complicated, a pug/militia commander wanting to temporarily split the group to take multiple small objectives for which a large group is completely unnecessary in order to maintain a high efficiency. a list of players that tells you party compositions is sufficient:

“party 2 go vale, party 3 go s camp and double supplies, the rest follow me. all meet up at tag after taking camps to threaten another major objective.” if your pugs listen, you can have almost everyone at full supply ready to build at least 4 catas or 5 rams without touching supplies at bay or s camp. but as it is right now… no pug will join your squad and even if they did there is no way for you to call him out for a specific task.

Commanding is about delegating responsibility for smaller tasks that your underlings know how to complete, whether its in a single open field battle or in an efficient and fast map takeover. the current squad system doesnt help you do that.

hmmm… hope that helps to answer your question.

It does . It’s a LOT easier to work with a context.

So, in your scenario and it were me in charge, here’s what happens~

Nike: Good work! Now we need to split up. Any other Commanders here?

((sound of crickets))

Nike: I have a couple of people in voice chat with me. They are going to lead some raids so we can fortify here AND capture some camps.
Nike: In the next minute or so you may get an invite to group from either [Friend on voice X] or [Friend on voice Y]. If you do get an invite, accept it and follow them ’til we meet back up.

((Friends X and Y throw invites ‘til they get 5 people each who aren’t complete drooling mouth-breathers and then they scamper.))

Nike: Good hunting to our raiders. The rest of you are with me. We’ll get this place spruced up a little before moving on. The raiders will join back up as we hit the next big objective.

(Substitute guild channel for voice chat if you’re just typing to your guildies .)

I get it that that could be made easier, but its not wildly beyond our current tools.

Cactus.2710:

I saw a comment in one post in the Commander CDI thread that implied ANet was considering a reboot of the Population Imbalance CDI since it was pretty much a failure the first time around (even though it was the #1 requested WvW topic by players). Any truth to that?

That was Chris Whiteside, and as he seems to be in charge of the CDI I’m thinking if he says it he has the power to swing it. They may change their mind between now and then and the WvW might go on break for a rotation the way PvE is right now, but I think your odds are pretty good for getting a second crack at it.

Though personally if its going to be more “here’s what the consensus/mob rule think” summaries without one word of actual interaction with the people trying to put forward ideas I don’t see a lot of reason to bother. They could just run a survey and figure that sort of thing out 30 times faster.

chestonu.8059:

- Mass Invite Function in Radius (cooldown timer to prevent spam)

- F5 – F9 keys used to keybind specific Commander commands W/ ground targeting and visible Flags/Icons/Symbols/Effects. “Stop”, “Go”, “Attack”, “Defend”, “Rally Here”

I do like the idea of a mass invite button, though probably with a significantly longer cooldown than most have proposed. I’m thinking more like three or even five minutes.

I also like the idea of mapping your favorites commands (from a preset list) to the function keys, but I think you could probably use that to fire text into the billboard (like the “Scarlet is attacking” messages) with a radius like the normal /say chat for EVERYONE around them to see. “Nike shouts: Rally Here!” in big letters in the middle of the screen, and tagged with who said it to reduced mixed messages. Throw in a moderate cooldown to keep commanders from spamming them (30 seconds?) and now you can direct traffic with or without an elaborate squad panel.

Devil’s Advocate time: maybe I’m missing something, but what do you actually need such fine-grained squad controls/info for? There’s no PvNPCs content of the WvW maps that requires it. Is this just to make the blob-vs-blob fights more tactical?

If a plan is so complicated it needs 2 or more groups spreading out or moving independently, is it unreasonable to expect there be a separate commander for each of those groups?

Do you need detailed health bars to lead when the map plainly shows everyone when folks are downed or dead? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to delegate responding to damage surges & healing through them to the people who will actually do it instead the Commander micromanaging it?

Having the server constantly poll and update you on the supply counts of a large group, either by squad membership or radius is a HUGE drain on system resources. How often do you really need to know? When you set out after first forming up, when your group empties a supply dump, and after each layer of defenses is breached, sure – all easily managed with a ping like we have now. What’s the justification for such an extravagance as having it update even as often as every 5 seconds when 90% of the time you’re either moving from site to site or busting down a wall – times when the count is not going to change at all…

Its a bit better than the first time around , but I don’t think I’d call it “good”.

And if all of those things took you more than 1% of the length of the season… you were doing them wrong .

DevonCarver.5370:

Summary of the past few pages:

General consensus is that the smaller bits that have been suggested would be enough to make the commander system much better for now and that it doesn’t require a complete tear down.

Outside of that there is a lot of discussion about the idea of a fully fleshed out squad system.

So, let’s say we’ve handled the commander side of it for now and just focus on a squad system. If we added a system for squad management, what are the top 3 things you would want it to do? Examples: Show squad position, allow for orders to be sent to individual players, provide health status of all squad members, etc.

This is a much larger project, but getting a sense of what people would want it to do can help provide bounds for the work.

Alternate costs for commanders tags (wxp, Guild commendations, Skill Points, Badges of Honor) don’t even get a bullet point?

I’d also point at all of the non-summary Dev posts in this thread for the last few days and ask one question: Is that really what you want to be the focus of your individual interactions?

Goel.9127:

Side note: I support Devs calling out posters like this when they take cheap shots at devs. None of us know what goes on behind the scenes of the development process.

I’d support it more if there had been more interaction/discussion with people on-topic accompanying it.

They’re spending time putting down hecklers when people who are busting their butts with images and concepts are left with no idea what might have been well received. I don’t particularly expect to get much interaction – I had my share in a previous thread. But there are a lot of people pushing forward ideas who haven’t gotten word one of feedback.

A simple “That’s interesting.” once in a while would do wonders for morale.

Furiousbeard.7602:

Legion is scared to fight you Andy. He’d lose.

I’ve had whole evenings of doing little more than handing Holy Pickle speed buffs and still ended up with a mountain of kill credit. Heck, I’m a handicap since downing me sometimes rallies people he’s beat into the floorboards.

Dude is a 1vAny-and-All-of-Y’all killing machine.

Its actually a bit scary and that’s with a blue nameplate over him .