It would still cost the silver it does normally, it would just make stuff convenient if you were in the middle of a dungeon or something and realized your group needed more CC instead of DPS or that a specific trait in other line would be more helpful.
Well the time sink is actually the key part. The primary reason Anet made respec’ing so inconvenient was to give permanence to character progression. Not that I agree with it, but that’s the path they took with most of their design decisions outside of sPvP.
Doubt this will happen, because Anet loves their gold sinks and time sinks. And being able to retrait on the spot for each situation might be considered pay to win if it costed gems.
2.) Infrastructure. NO ONE is playing to win and people are simply killing each other on the mainly populated portion of sPvP such as hot join. Maybe an incentive to actually play the game the way its meant to play is to completely get rid of hot joins? A lot of people can find getting zerged by 6 people anti-fun, little things like that add up to why GW2’s population is deteriorating instead of flourishing.
Getting rid of hotjoins means that all those players will infest soloQ and potentially ruin your game with their zerging, ignoring objectives, etc.
I think what can be done is better emphasizing soloQ as the primary direction for newer players once they finish the tutorial. For example, making an account based heart or quest that is to complete X amount soloQ matches for a huge reward. Then once they reach deer rank, another quest for teamQ. Even little things like making the soloQ buttons really big or animated go a long way.
You could have a separate queue for $$ subscribers. Since others in the queue are investing their money you would probably have more serious teammates. But don’t be surprised if you wait 30+ mins to get a match…
Thief isn’t a bad choice, they aren’t the most powerful atm but they have plenty of ways to escape bad situations which is a good cushion for newer players especially in WvW. However like the Ele it requires good reflexes for reactive play.
You would be surprised how much damage a dps guardian can put out, so don’t discount the class as nothing but bunker/support.
You should also consider necromancers as they aren’t incredibly difficult to play, but they are slower pace and do damage via conditions (usually).
I would say warrior in general, however the easiest spec has to be Ranger Longbow + Bear pet (traditional tank and spank). Thief isn’t hard to figure out but it relies on quicker reflexes so your friend may lack that.
Try to get into the Living Story sooner rather than later (but after you finish starter zones) since Living Story content is temporary and will go away. Personal Story will always be there for you to complete and some people get to level 80 and never do personal story.
And most of this game is so easy there’s no way you will need a strategy guide except for the hardest of dungeons.
I would make sure to pick up signet of locusts for its convenience, well of suffering for its aoe destruction, and spectral armor cause it’s a great “ohsht” skill, especially since you are learning the ropes of gw2. Make sure you pick up epidemic in the future as it is very important for many necro condi builds.
Also, get a new self heal skill asap. The one you start with has bad ai and likes to get itself killed at the most inconvenient times. The other two are great but for general PvE I’d say go for the well of blood because of its sustained healing and party support.
As for playstyle my biggest advice for newbie necros is to not forget to utilize your death shroud both offensively and defensively. Weapon skills are rather straightforward compared to other classes so balancing your deathshroud use is where alot of the class complexity lies.
The inability to target the enemy is just as annoying even if you know exactly where he is. Unless you are a staff necro that’s most of your skills he is immune to.
^ Completely agree. If you don’t like GvG then you should run your zerg over to their GvG events and wipe them. Then they will qq louder and Anet will give them their own arena and everyone will be happy.
7 classes excel at team roles and 1 class excels at solo/duo role. Since these 1v1 or 2v1 situations happen so frequently in WvW you have a single class that monopolizes that entire realm of play, and the other 7 classes must share the other realm (though you could argue guardian > all).
OP, perhaps you need to consider thief players themselves as one of the sources of their reputation. They love to downplay their class as terrible and useless every time an issue comes up, yet for some reason thieves are still dime a dozen.
Living Story is brand new content being added on a bi-weekly basis. But it goes away after a limited time. This is one of the primary ways Anet is trying to revolutionize the genre, so don’t miss out on it.
Fractals are your more traditional endgame mini-dungeons where you can grind higher fractal levels and ascended gear.
WvW is ongoing war against other worlds. Unless you are in a packed top tier world, they could probably use your help on the front lines. It’s casual PvP so don’t worry about going in and others getting mad at you for sucking (that’s sPvP).
What do you see yourself spending more time on, PvE or WvW? Warriors are considered strong in PvE (heavy class), Thief is considered very strong in WvW (stealth). Eles being ok at both and a very flexible class in general.
I’m pretty sure (not entirely though, which is why I’m leaving room for doubt) that’s 100% incorrect. Chill causes skills to CD 66% slower While chilled, otherwise it seems like it would be ungodly OP.
Last time I tested was september, so yea I may be wrong.
I’d just like to point out that when a skill is cast, the cooldown continues to recharge 66% slower even after the chill has ended – something thief initiative doesn’t even have to worry about with the proposed change.
Completely agree with the graphics option to default everything to human, there is already a similar option in WvW to default everyone to male with generic armor.
Nothing is visually telegraphed except some warrior skills.
There are no battle lines or distinct sides in teamfights, just a cluster****.
Most skills in this game are spammable with low effects/cooldown, not only does this clutter the field with spell effects but it makes it more difficult for the spectator to get inside the competitors head and follow his decision-making process.
Compare to successful esports like DotA/LoL where each skill may have time to be used once in a teamfight, each is a bigger decision.
GW2 is like a thousand micro-decisions that spectators cannot easily follow.
Fear is unlike other conditions because it functions more like a hard CC – making the target nearly helpless for a certain amount of time. However, it also retains the benefits of conditions: increases with condition duration/stacking as well as traits and equipment, and does damage over time (if traited), but is susceptible to allied condition removal.
Being as strong as it is (like any hard cc), should Fear duration more difficult to manipulate like other control effects? Maybe Fear could fill more of a utility role with a larger variety of builds instead of ‘Fear burst’ as we have now?
Should a hard CC even be stackable like a condition?
And if Fear was turned into a control effect what mechanic could replace the dot from Terror?
EotN continues the story of Prophecies, but you can buy any of the stand-alones (Proph, Factions, Nightfall) and get to the EotN expansion content. Factions is the most stand-alone in terms of story/lore, Nightfall story has some ties to Tyrian lore but is somewhat independent as well.
With the recent diary on the main page implying classes will be getting new skills, is it safe to assume the class will gain some real group value in the future? Am I missing something about the class? That it fits some niche that is actually fun and valuable to the WvW meta? I mean sure they can kill dolyaks and take camps, but so can every class. Sure they can trigger swords. But these aren’t real tasks or roles… they’re chores.
Is the supposed strength in roaming ANet’s excuse for Thief class offering nothing in any other aspect of this game? I’m concerned that with every post on this forum being nothing about random complaints about stealth and shadow fields the reality of the situation with the class is being ignored or missed.
Will anything change?
Stealth is what holds thieves back. If they weren’t balanced around a broken mechanic, Anet could buff them in other more interesting areas.
According to the devs when they first released class info, Thief was not supposed to be a stealth focused class. But since this game was supposed to attract the WoW audiences, I’m guessing Anet decided at the last minute they needed a stealther like every other mmo. I applaud them for their attempt to make it feel different though.
Thief has alot of stealth and resets, excellent for WvW, but currently not as good in sPvP and PvE (not bad by any means tho). On the bursty side, uses an energy system instead of cooldowns.
Ranger is great sustain damage, more innate survivability but less escapes than thief, great in PvE, ok in sPvP but considered subpar in WvW. The pet is a big part of the Ranger, so it can make or break the class depending on whether you enjoy pets or not.
It’s sad to see these well made cities perpetually empty while the same one is recycled over and over. I hope they rotate the other racial cities for holiday and living story events.
Typical condition Necro is Scepter/Dagger + Staff, and often takes Epidemic. It’s ranged, AoE, tanky enough, and relatively simple. It may not kill as fast as other options though.
You need to give us information about yourself, your playstyle, classes you enjoyed in other MMOs, and anything else that interests you if you expect a legitimate answer from anyone. Because as you said, it is very subjective.
This game is less than a year old and it feels like it’s been powercreeped beyond what the original design and core game mechanics were meant to handle, even though not much powercreep has actually taken place. Every profession is overpowered, every bar can be spammed or rotated effectively. But what was left behind were core elements such as positioning and timing. I’ve played mobas, and some competitive RPG-like games, but gw2 just feels extremely spammy by comparison. Everything from skill spam, evade/ dodge roll spam, condi spam, blink/leap/stealth spam…is this game made for ADD children?
EVERY class needs to be brought down so the core elements that everyone respects like good positioning, resource management (of cooldowns), decision making, calculated risk, and timing play a larger role in the gameplay instead of whose broken mechanics can be abused harder.
In GW1, there were PvP and PvE characters who were allowed to participate in the same PvP. The PvP characters had a very generic armor and the PvE characters were allowed to look awesome.
I thought this was supposed to be the motivation for grind in gw2 – looks. Alot of PvPers in gw1 even the top teams grinded out their PvE characters and played them in tournaments and casual arenas. But others who didn’t have that kind of time on their hands could still run with PvP characters and be just as effective.
Maybe a compromise to the OP’s problem is for players to use sPvP customized characters to participate in WvW with a single generic skin (per armor type) without changing how PvE characters operate there. As many of you in the thread have stated, sPvP customization is limiting so it’s not like they will be more effective than the hardworking PvE grinded characters.
Not exactly an equal playing field, but to those of us with a life it is still a thousand times better than the ineffective upscaling mechanic and gear grind. And your hard earned PvE armor will stand out even more among a bunch of generic PvP armor.
I don’t know if you were around for the whole Kaineng thing, but free transfers to low pop servers is a very bad idea.
I was on Ferguson when it happened. In the short term we got our ***es kicked for a week, but the population was better redistributed, a server was lifted out of poverty and from what I hear they are in good shape now despite the drama they had in the beginning. Transfers can cause pain early on but help even everything out in the long run. And large guilds are not as serious about WvW like they were in 2012 especially with Anet’s negligence of the format, I doubt there will be so many mass migrations like we saw in the past when the game was new and these guilds were trying to establish themselves.
I do not think they should. Because what you get on free transfers is people with nothing invested. So if they show up, don’t mesh well with the community, then they just hop to another server….Or worse drama builds, and everyone suffers.
Investment might make a player more serious about the game, but throwing money around doesn’t solved personality conflicts. And with your logic we should be charged gems for joining new guilds since they represent the pinnacle of community investment (and drama) in these MMO games.
GW2 is more like LoL where you have positions (carries supports junglers) that must be filled, but not necessarily by specific champions that synergize. GW2 devs said that they were heavily inspired by LoL and TF2 when designing their game.
The problem with teambuilds is the same problem with dual professions and complete freedom to customize 8 skills (64 total). It’s too hard to balance.
Why charge for the transfer in the first place? This would help direct the flow of transfers towards the worlds that need players, rather than upwards. The way it is now if someone is willing to open their wallet to transfer worlds then they might as well throw in a couple more $$ to get onto a “good” server.
If there were free options instead that would make a big difference. Guilds that wanted to move but don’t want to ask all 50 of their members to shell out cash now have an obvious option. Groups of friends that were simply caught on separate worlds and want to WvW together now have an obvious choice of worlds to congregate on. Players who wanted to get off the overcrowded T1-2 servers now have that $$ barrier removed.
Why should Anet deny the players this capability to balance the server populations for them and make WvW more even? So they can make a few more bucks?
Your argument is that the people of differing opinion will lead everyone else away from what you think is the ‘better’ game mode. There are other legitimate reasons why DM shouldn’t be implemented, but the argument you’re making is silly.
Hi thanks for the reply. Yes this is basically my argument I have seen this happen in other games. For example moddable FPS games where “headshot arenas”, flat almost empty maps where every player has the same sniper rifle that kills in one headshot, become the most popular mode. Also this is why I made the analogy to schoolboy football I’m sure everyone in the UK has seen what happens when children try to play football without someone imposing rules, it degenerates into a mindless blob. If you speak to these children afterwards the large majority of them would prefer a ordered game but the vocal minority rule the day.
I struggle to see why this argument is silly when I have seen it happen before but perhaps you could lay my fears to rest more effectively
You comparing us to very very young children. Too young to have any idea how to take initiative themselves and make the game fun with rules. Most of us playing guild wars are not children, but I can see how your concern may affect the youngest members of our community. Also your analogy never presents the alternative as a clear choice. If the children are too young to understand why rules work they cannot be expected to make the rules – they become a mindless blob because of the absence of a rulemaker, not because they deliberately choose the blob over rules.
In this FPS of yours, it sounds like sniper headshot battles were more fun than whatever was intended to be the core game mode. This could be because snipe mechanics were really well designed in that game, or because the regular mode sucked and/or was not accessible enough.
Your argument is that the people of differing opinion will lead everyone else away from what you think is the ‘better’ game mode. There are other legitimate reasons why DM shouldn’t be implemented, but the argument you’re making is silly.
One problem with that is once you put conditions on someone, you cannot remove them. If you are power focused and see the enemy uses retaliation, you can choose to stop attacking him. If you stack your conditions on someone and he pops retaliation, you cannot stop damaging him.
This could maybe be fixed by making retaliation work on every condition applied while retaliation was active. So if you already had a stack on him when he pops retaliation it will not affect those conditions, but if you ignore his boon and keep stacking, those conditions you stacked while boon was up will cause you to take retaliation damage even after the boon has ended.
You gotta tell us about yourself, what playstyles you enjoy, what modes you intend to play. What other games do you play with a class system and which classes type did you enjoy the most?
I’ll concur that Guardian or Elementalist are your best choices for support’ish playstyles that excel at all forms of gameplay (open world, dungeon, wvw, high end PvP). Although Eles are very squishy keep that in mind.
Elementalist is the hardest class to master imo.
Just because ranger is underpowered doesn’t mean it has a higher skill ceiling. If you pick a class just because it is underpowered, Anet will come out with another balance update a month later and you will be the new broken class.
Unless you are thief then you are always teh broken class. thread needed moar thief QQ!
You can play close combat with a dagger ele, but admittedly thief has more weapon options. However, the Ele has 4 attunements worth of skills so you still have alot of variety in that one weapon set. However, if you dislike the attunement system, you will dislike the ele.
They are both squishy, but the thief can mitigate this later on with a plethora of escapes, stealths, and resets. The only solution for the ele is simply to not suck, using your dodge and attunement swap smartly.
The game isn’t at the point where one class will be denied a group, however my experience is that eles are more versatile and ‘fit’ into most lineups easier than a thief.
I usually like to play support characters who are very active around the battle field. I enjoy playing the “thinking mans” classes in most games and really enjoy crowd control and buffs/debuffs.
Elementalist requires the situational awareness to switch to the right attunement. Fire attunement is raw damage/dot, Water is support/cc, lightning is burst/cc, earth is dot/tanky. You will never be expected to primary heal or primary tank in PvE or WvW. There are bunker eles in PvP but that is only one option out of many.
So you could level up a elementalist to 20 or 30 and use his attunements as a benchmark to decide which support style you like most in GW2. Then you could roll a class that more closely resembles that style or keep the ele.
The Guardian is another class I think you’d like, it is more on the supportive side but can still pack a punch. Emphasis will be on boons (buffs), cc, and protection. And some holy righteous fiery destruction.
The Historian is geared for players who are new or play infrequently. I do not think getting and keeping 100% achievements is a priority for the majority of such players – it’s a large commitment even for regulars who play alot. You claim to be a casual player yet set such a hardcore goal for yourself.
Allowing players to complete some of these past achievements would mean bringing back the actual world events as they are the core of these achievements. This opens a bag of technical issues. Do we split the playerbase into dozens of shards, representing different events on the timeline? Do we have giant invisible Karka bosses romping around that only 1/3 of the players can see? Do we simply repeat all the Living Story chapters, hoping the players who missed it will be able to make it this time (many probably won’t), and everyone else doesn’t get bored from repeated content over and over?
I’m sure there are answers to the technical hurdles, but that is not within the scope of the Historian’s role as an compromise, not a full blown overhaul of the system.
I’ve think about this too before, and a great way to make it happen and also make personal storyline replayable, would be to introduce this feature in the Hall of Monuments pool.
I didn’t think of the old Scrying Pool, that’s a great idea!
Perhaps a combination of the two: the Historian tells the story, and the Scrying Pool gives the cutscenes + instanced gameplay.
