Guild Wars 2

I don’t see how it is misleading. With the exception of a bit broad of a generalization. It is technically 100 percent true to the title.

Ah, good point.

So a guildie of mine salvaged one of those rare scraps that the enemies drop in the Aether and got a charged core. Is this bad?

They fixed it, but the dummy in LA is still showing the exact same numbers. I guess it was a nerf to the damage of the phantasms to compensate for that interval, but we didn’t see it until after Feb despite the claim that it went active much sooner. A sad day, but at least we have the truth.

I am on the fence as to what this trait overhaul will do to Mesmers. What do you guys think? Scared or hopeful for this patch?

Raven.9603:

Nova.8021:

Rift + GW2 equals Wildstar. NCSoft was one step ahead of you.

I really like the attitude they have in the Wildstar video sketches, but the pixar art style is really going to make the game hard to care about. Also, 2 faction system might kill it before its even born.

These are all fair points, but I think the marketing personality they are presenting to adults and young adults will ultimately draw players in. I do find the art style attractive, however I realize some people don’t and that could be a deciding factor for their success.

Rift + GW2 equals Wildstar. NCSoft was one step ahead of you.

Balkanwarrior.5132:

And interfere with their excellent business model? lolno. We can only wait and see what direction the game goes in. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the gem store profit is put into wildstar development and gw2 is left in its current state with more temporary content being shoved at us. Some people that have quit said they’ll come back in a year and see if things get better…so wait another year I guess. Play once a week and try to enjoy the time you spend playing it. It’s not worth your sanity to keep wanting stuff from a company that’s main concern is making money.

I do find myself in agreement with this if the rumors are true that NCSoft gets 100 percent of gem store royalties. That would mean that NCSoft is essentially siphoning the funding for this game and holding it for ransom, meanwhile they are funneling it to a game that they want to be better than Guild Wars 2. It would be a sad sight to behold as an Anet employee if that previously mentioned scenario is true. I would wonder who was behind negotiations of that deal, that has proven to be quite the shafting.

I do think Lick Wounds needs to looked at across the board and that includes PvE. Now that Rangers are getting appropriate buffs to weaker aspects this pet ability has been an elephant in the room that people ignored due to the many drawbacks of the class.

In PvP, the healing is needless to say very powerful compared to other methods of healing in the game. You could say “kill the pet”, but with the recent buffs the pets have quite a substantial amount of health now to simply mow it down would be stupid. In a 1v1 fight between non-bunkers this often makes the ranger unstoppable if they get you down at any point in the fight, which often includes after they have already gone down.

In PvE it is also absurd, at least from what I have seen. I recall doing the Flame and Frost bosses in two scenarios where the boss with the gauntlets could not do enough damage to stop the Ranger from healing while downed. I am sorry, but that is just an obscene amount of healing. Other classes need a mechanic like this or it needs to be looked at.

Here’s my short review of the dungeon.

Keep in mind most of criticism is nitpicking.

The mob encounters were entertaining and this was a big plus and a small drawback as some of the enemies such as the “protectors” had a ground invulnerability that you had to pull him out of or wait until he moved himself out of it. This is a drawback in the regard that few skills and utilities exist to forcefully pull targets, so few in fact that it feels annoying to be the one guy in the party that can actually do it. Aside from that, the party has to be patient or attempt successive knock-backs which can seem tedious. So that was a mechanic that I felt was good, but in the current set-up of skills available to the player; it just isn’t something the game is ready for yet. This goes double for anything that already uses a mechanic similar to this. A plus to this was that the mobs in this dungeon were much more forgiving to be hit by than in the current dungeons right now, and this made the overall experience very positive in my opinion.

The “prisoners” acted unusual compared to what you would expect. Instead of them leaving the way we came in; they decided it would be a good idea to follow us for whatever reason and no audio was given to supplement that, which IMO was kinda something that only would have helped. Also they don’t escape with us so that is even more unusual as to what the hell happened there.

I liked the fact that the orichalcum ore was harder to get to and ore was incorporated in the dungeon altogether; this is overall a plus. I did not like how one of the ores was basically a trap to kill players in a very indiscriminate way if they were not paying attention. I felt that the first orichalcum ore placement was well done, whereas this one seems to be unnecessarily penalizing people who aren’t paying attention (Thus hurting the fun factor but not breaking it completely). Also, the placement of the large paper weight machines is totally unusual and doesn’t make much sense logically. In fact, it felt rather primitive even for the dredge to use them at all.

The environment I found to be attractive graphically for some odd reason. The ever changing environment/areas were impressive to the overall feel of the dungeon. There was however a flaw in the set-up in which some of the slopes and bridges specifically, that could cause one to be obstructed (at least I was) by standing on top of these slopes and shooting down in scenarios that should have been caught in early designing stages. The inclines were simply too steep at some parts that caused this to happen and could have been avoided entirely by reducing the overall angle of some of the slopes.

The cut scenes that were included were very enjoyable and only served a positive influence on the dungeon. If you hate the cut-scenes you can get out because those “dialogue scenes” are far worse in my humble opinion. Also I would be remiss to mention just how impressive the boss cut-scenes were, but that is coming up.

The boss encounters were of WoW raid variety in terms of stuff going on at one time and that was in itself very impressive. The boss dialogue was enjoyable and the boss cut-scenes were the best cut-scenes by far in the dungeon. The others were clouded by the boss cut-scenes in dramatic appeal and aesthetics, but I didn’t mind them being there.

The loot was decent without giving us a flat rate of silver to compensate for otherwise poor loot. So that was a plus, and I would like to see rewards of silver being fazed out with more impressive loot and other ways to get more adequate amounts of silver.

The overall dungeon design and mob encounters were far more entertaining generally and this dungeon completely clouds all of the standard dungeon currently released right now. Quite frankly, the Flame and Frost team should be recruited to be a permanent part of the dungeon team as they brought a lot to the table that wasn’t already there. In my opinion, Anet would be remiss to let their talents go unused in this department of development. Even if the Flame and Frost team didn’t do so hot generally in other aspects of this event; they still created the most impressive dungeon in GW2 to date, and that should be worth something. Anyway here is my rating on how well the various teams involved in this did:

Rating based on Guild War 2 dungeons 10/10
Rating based on some of WoW’s best dungeons: 8/10

Edited for some spelling errors.

This is horrible. I was just thinking about this today and noted how my zerker is somehow hitting lower in PvE than in PvP. Why has nothing been done to resolve this borking? I think the mesmer community has been more than patient on this matter. I would gladly take the previously longer attack interval if we could retrieve a sliver of the damage he had.

Well there’s not much to say other than I can’t remember my password and apparently the launcher couldn’t either, because it was blank today out of no where, but somehow the forums remembered it so that is a plus.

I do not know of this serial code and I don’t know how I am expected to remember it, but I know I do not have one on hand.

Also I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I got an email dated 12:30 AM yesterday (27th) that said my account was frozen due to suspicious logging activity, which has happened before I will admit. The difference between that and this is the client did not forget the password in this instance.

So now I am pretty much stuck without this serial code and unless I can get emailed a new one this is quite the quagmire.

Thanks for your time.

I am mostly surprised that the OP has played that much, but didn’t consider that he may have played “a lot”, haha.

In any case, Congrats sir. We shouldn’t be looking to tear other people down for their achievements.

@Robert

I agree that challenges in dungeons isn’t a negative attribute, but isn’t it a bit toxic at the very first dungeon that new players have access to? I think I have only once done a low-leveled dungeon (CM) with a group composed of more first timers than veterans and let me tell you, that was the utmost brutality possible for a group of noobs. It took us easily 1-2 hours on story with the only worthwhile reward being the cut-scene at the end. Now the time it took wasn’t much of an issue, but it seemed to create a lot of group tension and solved by throwing our bodies at the enemies many times until we succeeded. This was before the disabled re-spawn option in fights though.

In any case, my point is that the lower level dungeons are kind of crazy considering players that have no prior experience in dungeons (especially the lower ones) experience a negative stimuli in playing them early on as they literally have no training in the field of teamwork. This will most likely act as a repellent to anyone who wanted to have a positive experience in a dungeon. It is also assumed that this will cause players to work together, but I am sure if we did a study using groups of 5 players who haven’t done a dungeon before and see how they react to getting whooped, I feel that the reactions would be nothing like that, although I would like to think they would work together to overcome the obstacles, that is just not the reaction of all 5 people in a group at any given time. So the teamwork mentality could develop, however it would be a chain comprised of several crude links that could break at any moment.

I do think we need a simple dungeon to introduce players to the way of dungeons, and since AC is the first, it is the expected contender. Now if such a thing was to occur, it would only be fair to make the 80 gear accessible in other ways. The only reason any sane individual would put up with that beating nowadays is merely due to the perceived value of the anesthetics provided.

Garambola.2461:

Nova.8021:

It gave me an idea of the numbers actually. We have many players with Teamspeak and mics in our guild of 500 and we have peaked in the 100s of people on it at a time. Of all the people that have talked with mics, the women hardly even make up a 10th of that number.

I do wonder if the findings of this http://www.realityisagame.com/archives/1677/study-female-voices-in-online-games-get-less-respect/ have anything to do with your experienced numbers. I know I am timid about voice communication and actually did not even have a microphone until the beginning of this year.

You do raise a good counter-argument. I tip my hat to you as I was carelessly oversimplifying the matter.

Isslair.4908:

In our 500-man guild I know 3 ladies and heard about one more. So yeah, you can see the trend.

This.

It gave me an idea of the numbers actually. We have many players with Teamspeak and mics in our guild of 500 and we have peaked in the 100s of people on it at a time. Of all the people that have talked with mics, the women hardly even make up a 10th of that number.

I don’t see why lupicus is considered hard, I managed to kill him on my first try along with a group of people who also didn’t know the fight. I was one of the people still up at the end as a glass mesmer with a guardian still up as well.

In WoW it was 10 to 1 in real life comparison in a poll done a while ago. That is a good rule of thumb.

As the lead designer (First of all, I hope that doesn’t require any skills in designing and just the manpower as I know nothing about designing)

First thing I would do would be to consult the team on who thought farming was bad and should be eliminated. Those people would get an earful probably unless they could provide an argument decent enough to justify killing off a population of players that like farming.

Secondly, I would also ask why farming is being eliminated, yet somehow, was allowed to be accomplished in a single dungeon to a disproportionate degree compared to the rest of the game.

Third, I would ask the team why is the endgame dungeon Arah so god kitten unprofitable? I mean it is endgame….I guess? It makes no sense how it is less profitable by drops and loot than lower level dungeons.

Fourth, What is with the trinity? And I don’t mean the Tank, Dps, Healer trinity. I mean the Tank, Dps, and Support trinity. We ended up with one even worse than in previous games. How did that even happen? At least people wanted healers…nobody wants a support class that is essentially a borked healer.

Fifth issue would be DR as I don’t farm on this game, but when I did, I felt I was being penalized at every turn to the point that it became depressing. Is DR really worth making some parts of the game not fun? I would wonder who on the dev team supported making a game not fun? I would have questions for them.

Last but not least, I would poll players on a lot of the aspects of the game and take their feedback until the team can come to a consensus of what the players feel is needed the most at this current time and divert a substantial amount of resources to that cause. While making balancing a major priority that we would not be against taking risks, but risky undertakings will be tested with the player-base to prevent class-breaking maneuvers.

I do worry what will happen if they revamp it. I see the bridge as a likely solution in the short term.

They will make the bridge part be impassable and either 1. give slight loot for completing it or 2. no loot at all. Unfortunately, they tend to gravitate towards fixes that are apathetic to the player base so I feel the latter is far more likely.

Also, there is the implication to what will happen to the economy when this method of funneling large amounts of gold into it is abruptly halted indefinitely. As far as other dungeons go, the amount of gold per minute is so disproportionate to CoF it is crazy.

Also, I enjoy challenging dungeons, but where is the fun? I like the loot, the loot is fun, but the dungeons lack a certain enjoyment like the first time I played the underwater fractal and got turned into a dolphin. Now that was fun.

@Janson

It very much makes me happy to hear this, as I have seen such great work on both armors (Flame Legion for one) and weapons (Legendaries mostly, but some rares and exotics) that made me wish such beauty wasn’t far and few between.

Yeah, it is silly that they just added “unique” and assumed everyone knew what it meant. If you played WoW you probably knew, but if not it was a slap in the face.

Even worse that they made identical ascended amulets without ultility slots, which resulted in myself and both of the people I know that play this game to get rid of their amulets because we got useless offensive and defensive slots. They need some kind of tool tips kitten

To the people saving up baubles to sell these, stahp. They are green and account bound.

Look at the ones on the TP, notice a difference?

If you couldn’t figure out this was a game aimed at young adults/adults until now, then I do worry what demographic you are in. Most of the people I meet are young adults, some are older.

I know a lot of people in college like myself that enjoy this sort of thing and also play the game. Also, I am 21, where did the late 20s figure come from? I easily reconize its resemblance to Zelda among other things.

I do think it is one of the best right now. The fact being that integrating dodging into combat the way Anet did it is revolutionary in making more interaction in MMO combat. I feel as though a lot of MMOs that come out will measure itself to that level combat immersion in the future.

That being said, the team also made a lot of moves I do not agree with whether they were pressured into releasing before adding all the things they wanted I do not know, but it is surely nothing less than a PR nightmare that will take a while to recover from. Right now though I find the combat the most fun in any MMO regardless of the fact that a lot of incentives are missing.

I do feel that this very idea of making the world feel more alive is only a positive change and only good things will come from it in the long run.

I do however worry about the idea “that the world is constantly changing” because even though I had a hand in changing it, I really don’t feel like I did. This is of course prevalent in dynamic events and getting those golden hearts. Even if I help a town clean up their infestation, they show no signs of caring aside from a guy selling me stuff.

I want to see more phasing changes in locations where players did things to make a difference is sort of what I am getting at and I hope we can expect something of the sort in the future.

Wow, if you guys consider all of those things as negative dungeon influences I would just uninstall right now. People who do things you hate are a part of life and they are always going to exist. By looking at this list, I can assume they will exist in a vast majority of people you run with. If I were you, I would just avoid dungeons altogether as you will be a very exhausted person trying to tolerate instead of accept the failures of other people.

I have run with people that get upset at such trivial things and let me tell you, that’s why we have the kick feature.

Yeah, if they take the dragon chests and CoF in one patch then it really will be gg, lol.

Wait, there is an upcoming nerf to CoF?

I swear to god…I will have literally nothing to do if they nerf it anymore. Also, can I get a link to where they said this?

My constructive feedback as of 2/4 of Living Story is this:

Positive 1: More events to do and keep the player interested in the game. These are somewhat a new style of events and I give the Dev team props for making my leveling experience in Wayfarer Foothills more interesting and entertaining

Positive 2: More Npcs to make the game feel more alive. Somehow the population of Wayfarer Foothills has apparently tripled as of late. This does however make me feel little regard for these refugees that seemingly popped out of nowhere.

Positive 3: More achievements and rewards this always makes me happy.

Negative 1: Storytelling: I see what is going on, yet I actually still have no idea what is going on. I say this because of the cultural differences between the two allied factions and the fact that there has been not even a single clue why these unlikely allies would ally. Although, I understand I may have missed an explanation or even speculation on the matter but if that was the case, this in itself seems like an issue.

Negative 2: The Npcs: What is with the refugees? They somehow managed to escape some sort of natural disaster (That we cannot see nor observe) and yet somehow, they are completely useless in an information aspect. They did not tell me one thing about the story that was actually useful. I return their item and they tell me something about themselves like we’re in a committed relationship all of a sudden. As far as I know, all of these individuals could have been homeless before the “disaster”. It was 10 times worse when I had the impression from the blog that these individuals contained vital information, but maybe it was a misunderstanding on my part.

Negative 3: The rewards: There is only one reward thus far and it is a decent karma boost and I have no problem with that. I feel the reward fit the work in that scenario, however, I can guarantee that there will be a problem with the upcoming rewards because players have no idea what reward they will be getting. This is compounded by the fact that Anet on a blog stated something along the lines of “great rewards” which is a dangerous promise because it will give very high expectations to the player base and that from my point of view is very risky. A solution to this would be to somehow show the item you will be rewarded with for completing said achievements in your achievement panel so players know exactly what they will be getting. If they don’t want the reward, then they won’t do the achievements = player base is happy. The player base = angry, if they feel tricked.

Also, it should be noted that the content between the two patches feels very small in regard to what we were promised. This IMO would have been better to have been fully released after a month (One part a week) and keep it up for two to three months (with a new dungeon being the shining crown at the end)

Assuming these are all for PvP concerns here are my PvP questions:

1. Would you consider adding more incentives for PvP? (experience, gold, armor tokens for armor outside of PvP, etc)

2. Do you think it was a good idea to balance on team-play rather than a 1 versus 1 aspect? Do you feel that there was no better way?

3. Are there any plans to better integrate guilds into PvP or WvW (Excluding what already exists for WvW)

As for my PvE concerns:

1. Do you feel that the concept of DR is a positive influence on the player base?

2. Will there be more elementally inspired armors such as received from Citadel of the Flame?

If any of these got answered I would love the devs forever.

Yeah, as an avid PvE, WvW, and PvP guy I have tried all 3 (pvp being last) and I have to say I got quite a rush at first from pvp, however the incentive to continue playing it is lacking atm. I got the monthly done, and it took a couple hours. I didn’t get anything I could remotely use to financially boost or level up my character further. This makes little sense to me.

I would like to see:
An experience gain of some sort for PvP
Some means of profit for PvP
Rewards that are solely from PvP that can transcend into the PvE and WvW realms (Such as unique skins)
Expansion of the trait system for more build variety (for of course all modes of game-play)

Now I think all of these things will be added in the future as they are only logical improvements, but I wonder how long such an endeavor would take? I sometimes feel as though Anet is working on too many things at once or something big that is taking up too much time and resources. I would just been happy if they made an announcement that they hired a kitten ton of people so we know they can handle it all.

It’s a major pain to do any large group WvW or PvP in its current state :/

Haha, I come back home to find a very constructive thread and this makes me happy.

On a side note, if anyone wants to do their own match-ups with a similar title I will not take offense.

My personal opinion is that although the ranger has his own sort of controllable AI the damage output from what I have seen of the phantasms (My 80 Mesmer) are devastatingly higher in comparison. Since the Mesmer can throw out multiple I think they would need a buff of the pet or ranger in some regard to contend with that, but keeping in mind it is a tough mechanic to balance against undoubtedly.

Two glass cannon specialized classes wearing berserker gear are about to enter a grassland plain and fight to the death.

The Mesmer is concentrated on single dps and buffs his phantasms wherever possible without sacrificing damage from himself. He uses mantras and he is not a shatter build.
(30/30/0/0/10)

The Ranger is concentrated on single target dps as well choosing to buff his own dps over his pets, but traits to support the pet wherever a sacrifice of his own dps would not occur.
(30/30/0/0/10)

Rules:
Vote for which class you think would win and add why if possible.

Do NOT talk about condition builds, Trap builds, or Shatter builds, just what you think would make the classes more even in this 1v1 to the death (such as buffs, trait/skill/ability here or add something) and/or why they are not even now.

Now have at it!

I run a glass phantasm mantra build and the additional dps I get from mantras as well as the use of dispelling two conditions of any stack each time I click (for 3 clicks) is amazing. My single target dps compounded by my phantasms is not a crutch by any standard (With the exception of Zerker being bugged currently)

I have no problem in WvW or PvE using this same build as I hit high numbers consistently. The mantra you mentioned that did like “890” does 2300 for me easily and I can use that three times as well, but it would reduce the damage buff if I used it.

If you don’t like the mantra build then don’t use it, as I don’t see any that are currently broken and the condition removal is hugely useful in both PvP and PvE of all sorts

Also, how are these thieves evading you? Berserker phant cripples are devastating to thief and magic bullet stuns them quite heavily. The fights over at this point. You can even throw out the iduelist if you want before the cool-down on zerker phantasm is even done. Then switch back and throw another one out for the lulz.

I have also noticed this strange behavior and it seems very bot-like. I have seen this 5 times in a half hour when a material seller will undercut the lowest seller by 30 percent ( a percentile that wouldn’t in a million years be logical in “playing the TP”) and it was always 1k+ stacks sold by one person. The undercut would almost always be 1 copper above the highest buyer, which in itself is odd.

Of course I observed this because I was the one buying them out. Profit to be made there.

I agree with Kyn, everybody should suffer from the DR. You want to run the same dungeon path again for some money because you prefer it over the others? Well, get out, because you might as well be hacking (unless you are ridiculously slow).

I mean it is obviously working (not counting the 10s of thousands of lower materials flooding the market more than usual this week in stacks of 1k+ undercutting by approximately 30 percent each time).

You can defend DR all you want Kyn, but if WoW did it better then so can Anet.

I was making Quaggan movie jokes 5 days ago in LA overflow chat. Didn’t know it was such a hit.

Does anyone have footage to prove it is broken? If so, please make sure it finds its way to Anet.

I don’t think the “fear of elitism” argument is valid anymore as we have players being denied from some dungeons for gear already, as well as some professions outright.

After a few dungeon runs I believe I have found the problem. He appears to be missing a hit that previously he was almost guaranteed to make.

I base this on the notion that I was doing about 2k less which is about what he does per hit and I did see him do his usual damage, but only once so it does appear to be bugged. Also, he isn’t carrying the master’s sword when he spawns anymore which I hate.

I hope we get some sort of response to this as I have no intention of letting this thread die until then.

I support anything against DR as I love GW2, but it is an obvious self-defeating concept. The Vigil should just change their slogan “Some must be penalized so that we all may be screwed”.

I did manage to crit a 11k in WvW on an obviously under-scaled player with zerker phant last night. Too bad there is no combat log that supports this claim.

Miss Pink Floyd.9730:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Hey everybody, thanks for your input on this. The chainsaw sound was not intended to trigger as often or play as loud as it is currently. Apologies for the auditory discomfort. A fix is in the works and we will be addressing these issues in a future patch. Thanks for understanding.

No disrespect Mark, but,
Your recent Greatsaw “FIX” has now eliminated the sound all together for me.
Whatever you have done to “FIX” the Greatsaw, has now made it so that I am unable to even hear it at all anymore.

Please, either notch it up a a little bit, or allow the players to be able to set the volume of various items like this themselves. The later option would make everyone happy because people could customize their sounds the way they like it.
The way it is for me now, without sound, has ruined the Greatsaw for me.

I agree with everything on here. The desirability of the weapon is lost now because of the stripped audio from an otherwise masterpiece of graphic design from the Anet team. If I was part of the design team I would be a little depressed that the work that went into designing that chainsaw resulted in it no longer sounding or functioning like a chainsaw. I was in a group with 2 players that had it and didn’t hear it once. The players with it expressed similar concerns.

Put in a “Weapon audio effects” in the sound settings please because this is saddening.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Sorrow’s Embrace Path 2’s final boss requires constant kiting and ranged DPS.
In this case, Warriors (who have excel at melee dps) would not be ideal.

It would be better to have Rangers and the other professions who are slightly more adept at ranged damage. (As well as professions who excel with CC)

Maybe I am missing something here, as it is true the warrior has less CC, but if you put a rifle in that warriors hands he will undoubtedly do more ranged damage. How is this fair?

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

Absolute class balance has been achieved in PvE.

Every profession can do everything, naked, no matter what. Any group of five professions with any set of skills can eventually clear all content. What changes is the time it takes, and the amount of dying you do on the way.

So it doesn’t bother you that the classes that can do it best are for an apparent elite few?

I know the developers stated that they do not want this game to be like WoW, and I respect their reasoning in that decision. However, there are things that WoW does better than GW2, and I think Anet should take note of these things, and use that knowledge to do it even better. Keep in mind that I make these suggestions purely because I want this game to succeed. Please read what I have to say and give me your feedback.

Argument:

First off, all classes should be viable in dungeons. How are they not viable you ask? It is quite simple, when our community dungeon runners favor one or two classes above all else and can run an entire group filled with the same profession immensely better than a diverse group, then we have a problem.

Example: 3 berserker wars and 2 mesmers, or 5 berserker wars doing CoF better than any diverse group I have ever seen.

How do we combat this? If your response is to nerf the classes involved then you are not thinking clearly, as that would result in ruining the experience of already enjoyable classes.

If the Anet team really wants a “play it your way” style, then there is no reason the engineer, ranger, elementalist, etc should have lower dps(damage per second) than a warrior if they are just as speced and geared for dps as that warrior is. This is showing little reward to those who favor a certain class by letting another unfairly dominate the PvE realm. I would hate to bring roles into this game (such as tank, healer, dps), but it is clear that some classes aren’t meant to be doing respectable dps, and all classes should be able to do that at the very least. Doing dps is enjoyable, and the fact that some people know their class is on an unfair playing field in departments such as damage just steepens their feelings that this game is biased.

Solution #1

I feel this is something that WoW did well, and that is to make unique class buffs that applied to the whole party depending on the skill points.

Example: A “Call of the Wild” %5 damage buff from having a damage speced ranger in the party would vastly improve dungeon group diversity. This is assuming that these buffs didn’t stack with the same buff. (Can’t get this buff twice from two rangers)

Solution #2

All classes should have viable AoE and single target dps if they so desire. Even the Rogue on wow had a viable AoE if he was speced right. As did the Priest and many other classes to do damage how they saw fit. (Often with a combination of both depending on the situation) Although we only have 5 abilities per weapon set, I don’t see why there isn’t an option to swap out for some new abilities to do damage how you want to do it and making the class more enjoyable as well.

Example: The Rogue class could throw knives while attacking that would stem from targets and hit other targets if my memory serves me right. This made even the preferred ganking class on WoW have good dps in dungeons with a viable AoE and single target compability. In the Thief’s current state that knife AoE is not viable as it interrupts his single target damage immensely which he relies on.

Solution #3

Expand on Elite skills, and bring classes closer together on damage per second. This would probably require for Anet to make glass cannons of every class and use some sort of damage per second measuring tool on a mob, but this is important if we ever want to have diverse class viability. There is also no reason that the ranger’s elite skills can’t rival my time warp. They should have something just as good or better; unlike the Engineer’s mortar that can’t even rival one from WvW, so how elite is that really?

Conclusion:

I note that Anet doesn’t want to play “Whack-a-mole” with classes, but guess what? WoW has never been able to find an absolute balance because the truth is as the game continually evolves with new gear, play styles, and content coming into play, there will always be an issue with balancing. In that regard the game is like WoW in its need for balancing, you can’t change that without removing the classes altogether. To hold back on balancing for fear of “Whack-a-Moling” is dangerous because there will never be a perfect balance, but the developers should always strive for perfection even if they don’t believe in it, because that is what is fair and just to the game and the players in it.

Maybe I am alone in this, but I feel that fear of this Whack-a-Mole game mentality has been a constant with Anet since this game came out, and it is hurting everybody in one way or another. It is almost as if they aren’t even trying even if we know they are.

Kudos if you managed to read all that, and feel free to touch upon any one part or the entire threat. Your feedback will make this better and possibly get some of the things on here considered.

My Mesmer is of the utmost seriousness.