Guild Wars 2

On top of bad scaling with a lot of skills and traits still, I think healing power suffers from the fact that Anet tried so hard to not enforce the trinity in GW2. Since most content doesn’t need a dedicate healer (maybe all? Raids might be possible without a dedicated healer, not sure), there is never much need for a stat that only increases your heals.

I think healing power would be better off if it was either converted into something that you only get from traits (for example healing prism. Hopefully this would be accompanied by a change to how it scales, since the amount of healing power anybody could achieve would be lowered dramatically), which would mean you wouldn’t have to sacrifice offensive stat sets to invest in healing power, you’d just have to invest in a defensive/support traitline/traits (which, if they are balanced, would be tradeoff enough). Or if it was reworked to have a secondary effect (could be anything really) so that you wouldn’t be forced into a purely healing role to make use of it in a game that doesn’t require dedicated healers.

I mean yea, but its kind of weird that we need to use 2 weapon skills just to get the most out of the warden in these new maps.

Yea but they won’t even acknowledge that a lot of players are still not happy with the state of leather. Can we not even get an acknowledgement about this? Even if it was just them saying “We think leather is fine” at least that would mean it was acknowledged

Really? Maybe I just spend my time in the wrong maps, are there any that are more/less prone to getting rifts?

So I’ve only ever found 2 rifts on my main, and 1 rift on an alt who didn’t yet have a stabilizer. I’ve actually given up on ever getting a class II stabilizer because of that, its way too big of a time investment at this point for me to chase down rifts that might as well not exist.

While I agree with you, Anet has stuck their head in the sand and refuse to even acknowledge that a lot of players are not happy about leather.

The Greyhawk.9107:

Here’s one thing to keep in mind when considering who weakened Balthazar….he said “They”. As in plural.

Yea but they could be anything. Could be the other gods, could be the elder dragons, could be menzies teamed up with someone, could be another faction we haven’t even been introduced to yet.

An argument could be made for reducing swiftness uptime, but I do think that shatters should give your illusions swiftness as a baseline aspect of shattering.

What?

Each weapon has a range on its weapon strength. For an ascended staff its 1,034 – 1,166, for lvl 80 exotic staffs its 985 – 1111.

As you can see, there’s quite a large range here, and a RNG picks a number in this range, then multiplies that number by your power and the skill coefficient in order to determine how much base damage a certain attack will deal. Then for the next attack it rerolls a new random number.

Warden would be good for dumb mobs that stay in the AoE, but since it can’t move while its attacking, anything that moves has the potential to dodge all or almost all of its damage. I find that especially in HoT maps where the enemies are smarter its not that great at providing damage unfortunately

I think that would be a great idea. Nice way to earn some revenue from people who want new skins, won’t change gameplay at all.

TexZero.7910:

VaaCrow.3076:

TexZero.7910:

OriOri.8724:

They said in the AMA that they have no plans to ever release another set of legendary armor. So I wouldn’t hold your breath

TFW you realize game design never goes according to “plans”.

TFW when you realise you’re just being pedantic.

Nah, pedantic would be me correcting you on spelling realize wrong. But who would ever do that.

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/realise-realize/

You’re not only pedantic, you’re also flat out wrong. Realise is not an incorrect spelling of the word.

No one is asking for it to be perfect, but the balance in this game is atrocious right now.

You forget how people who don’t mind it are far less likely to come to the forum to praise it than those who hate it. So the responses in that thread are heavily biased towards people who don’t like it to be floating, and even then when I read through it there was a fair amount of support for the floating over clipping.

That thread is not a reliable source of information just due to the inherent bias forums have wherein a lot of people will come out to complain, and relatively few will come out to offer praise.

Shield is for sustain.

Focus is for pulls, and can be traited for reflects

Sword is for damage due to how fast the phantasm attacks, it also offers another block.

@SlippyCheeze – While you do have a point, I think you miss why we need such a comprehensive balance patch. And that’s because stuff just isn’t balanced within classes. Elite specs in general still bring too much of everything. Berserker still offers huge offensive pressure due to stupidly low cooldowns on primal burst skills on top of ridiculous range on some of them, on top of %dmg modifiers, all while still offering huge defensive support for the warrior due to primal burst skills acting as T3 adrenaline skills (so permanent t3 adrenal health without even trying, 3 condis cleansed every 3 seconds in berserk mode etc….). CS affecting mesmer elite skills makes balancing core mesmer elites impossible as they will either be balanced around being used in CS and be weak as kitten on their original cooldowns as soon as you stop running the chrono line, or they will be balanced to be worth their regular CDs and be ridiculously overpowered when used in conjunction with CS. Scrapper is still designed for PvP, which would be fine if engineers had another elite spec, but they don’t.

All classes have traits that are never used, as well as traitlines that are almost never not taken, which means that clearly something isn’t completely balanced here. No traitline should be so much better than the others that its almost guaranteed to be on your bar. Similarly, no traits should be so bad that no one runs them. Same thing for skills. A lot of skills are worthless, while others do way too much at a single time. The amount of spam in this game needs to be toned down, massively.

We need a proper balance patch. And the longer ANet puts it off, the more work it will take to implement.

Abelisk.4527:

The only class I’ve seen that was able to out condi-cleanse a condi mes was Ele with DS + Auramancer, and in some cases Guardian.

Mesmers have neat condi cleansing so against Necromancers they have 0 issues. The thing about Mesmers is that they constantly apply huge stacks of confusion and torment coupled with doom and in some cases bleed from geomancy, as well as vuln, immob, and cripple.

Mesmers can trait for amazing condi cleanse, this is true. But they have to give up almost all offensive pressure to have top tier condi cleanse. Which is a completely fair tradeoff. Though they have absolutely nothing on berserker, I don’t know how you can talk about condi cleanse and not include the berserkers, with 3 condis cleansed every 3 seconds when traited while in berserk mode, on top of their resistance on their heal if they need it.

I thought it was updated a while ago to reset to the spawn point when a character holding 1 died?

Kingsdavid.3598:

OriOri.8724:

I am not a fan of making the mastery system character bound, I don’t see a way in which it could be done without it either being completely trivial per character, or having way too much grind (which would be ironic considering that reducing grind is the most often repeated argument in favor of character bound masteries that I’ve seen).

Plus, how would the mastery points work out that way? Right now, as account bound points they could act similar to WvW ability points, where you earn them once and then can spend them freely on any character. But immediately that would make it no different from account bound masteries at best (as soon as you hit 80, you open up the hero panel and just assign all the points you earned on other characters), and at worst just introduces substantially more grind (you already have the points as soon as you hit 80 on any alts, but still have to grind out exp to unlock each mastery tier).

So only solution would be to make the mastery points character bound. But how would this work, since all of them are tied to achievements? Even the communes and strongboxes, the actual mastery points are tied to completing the achievement, not to channeling the point (and I suspect theres some technical limitation here, which is why the achievements are only worth 1AP each, its there because that was the only way to give us the mastery point for doing the commune). So you’d only be able to gain the points once anyway under the current system. Which means that to have truly character bound points they would have to be decoupled from achievements, which means you’d have to earn them either through completing the story (needless grind to force us to do story completion on multiple characters) or back to performing certain events in game (which again would be needless grind, since you’d have to repeat it on each character). Or they could just be handed to you through playing the game, which would trivilaize the entire thing. On a more technical side, there might not be a way to hand them out on a character bound basis outside of just handing them out for getting experience, which again does nothing to address the grind and would just make it worse for players who have alts.

So while yes I think the system could have been more immersive if it was character bound, I don’t think it would make the system any better to go for it now. Plus, we still have to sort out the issue with how you obtain the mastery points. Any way I can imagine it either makes the system even more trivial than currently, or just introduces way too much extra grind, to the point of making it no fun to go for masteries on alts period.

First of all, I think they should remove the achievement based masteries. Make it only open world (like the ones in the maps you can get to/glide to or even once that at the end of jumping puzzles), Adventure base and compliting open world bosses/meta events/Raid bosses/Fractal bosses (for the first time with each character). And they could add the open world masteries to the Vanila maps.
Second, if you make it that every mastery cost the same, and it cost only 3 points it makes the point getting alot easier, and not feel like a chore. Today you have to get 186 mastery points to complete the whole set. But if you make it only 3 for each one it will cost you a total of 108. That is 78 point you can throw away (via all the achivemnt based ones). And if you make it that you can choose freely which mastery to unlock and not be forced to do the whole tree just to get one mastery you like, you can not do certain masteries and be happy with yourself. You can have only 60 Mastery point and have the masteries you want, insted of having 108/186 masteries and feel like you only did most of the becuase you needed to unlock the last one.

I addressed this in my comment. There is reason to believe that Anet cannot give us mastery points without tying them to achievements, since even from the mastery point communes we still get the actual mastery point from the achievement associated with communing.

How would this work for unlocking it on multiple characters unless it was unlocked by default? And again, if I am forced to kill all the HoT bosses in order to max out my masteries on every alt I take through there, it introduces needless grind, which would not make the game more fun.

I reiterate my belief that it would be impossible to switch to a character bound mastery system without either making it just as trivial if not more so than it is now, or introducing excessive grind that would just kitten off players

We don’t even need an overhaul so much as just a proper balance patch. Give the balance team enough time, and enough devs, to balance all skills, all traitlines, in all classes, along with runes and sigils.

Do you have data to back that up? Because according to the data Anet collected while the armor was in testing, your claim is flat incorrect.

I think swiftness to our illusions when we shatter should be baseline honestly. But as for time catches up I think its fine, its the endless illusion spam that we have access to through the chronomancer line that is the root of your complaint.

All of that said, I think a hybrid system would have been best. Some masteries (notably movement masteries and stuff like the fractal line/possibly raid masteries) would be better off being account bound, but the lore based ones would have worked better as a character bound system.

This way, you would still get the experience of having to “train” each character in the lore masteries to unlock those specific perks from those lines, but the convenience ones, the ones used to make traveling in HoT maps not so rageworthy, would be a one time thing. You get them and you are done. To me, this would have been the absolute best way to deal with masteries, having aspects of both account bound and character bound systems.

I am not a fan of making the mastery system character bound, I don’t see a way in which it could be done without it either being completely trivial per character, or having way too much grind (which would be ironic considering that reducing grind is the most often repeated argument in favor of character bound masteries that I’ve seen).

Plus, how would the mastery points work out that way? Right now, as account bound points they could act similar to WvW ability points, where you earn them once and then can spend them freely on any character. But immediately that would make it no different from account bound masteries at best (as soon as you hit 80, you open up the hero panel and just assign all the points you earned on other characters), and at worst just introduces substantially more grind (you already have the points as soon as you hit 80 on any alts, but still have to grind out exp to unlock each mastery tier).

So only solution would be to make the mastery points character bound. But how would this work, since all of them are tied to achievements? Even the communes and strongboxes, the actual mastery points are tied to completing the achievement, not to channeling the point (and I suspect theres some technical limitation here, which is why the achievements are only worth 1AP each, its there because that was the only way to give us the mastery point for doing the commune). So you’d only be able to gain the points once anyway under the current system. Which means that to have truly character bound points they would have to be decoupled from achievements, which means you’d have to earn them either through completing the story (needless grind to force us to do story completion on multiple characters) or back to performing certain events in game (which again would be needless grind, since you’d have to repeat it on each character). Or they could just be handed to you through playing the game, which would trivilaize the entire thing. On a more technical side, there might not be a way to hand them out on a character bound basis outside of just handing them out for getting experience, which again does nothing to address the grind and would just make it worse for players who have alts.

So while yes I think the system could have been more immersive if it was character bound, I don’t think it would make the system any better to go for it now. Plus, we still have to sort out the issue with how you obtain the mastery points. Any way I can imagine it either makes the system even more trivial than currently, or just introduces way too much extra grind, to the point of making it no fun to go for masteries on alts period.

They said in the AMA that they have no plans to ever release another set of legendary armor. So I wouldn’t hold your breath

Its a technical thing. Backpacks were not designed to be dyeable, and unfortunately in order to be able to dye even a single backpack, the entire system would have to be redone, and every backpack in the game would have to be redone to allow for dye channels (even those that wouldn’t let you dye them).

The closest thing we are likely to see is a “dye set” for specific, luxury backpacks which are just a bunch of skins of the same backpack but with different color palettes. Not nearly as fulfilling as the full dye system, but its the closest we would get.

They received feedback from their alpha testers that they preferred floating backpacks to the extra clipping that would happen if they were moved closer.

And the ironic thing is that for every single person who complained about the floating backpack, there would be at least that many people (and indeed many of them would be the same people) complaining about the clipping that would have resulted if the attach point hadn’t been moved back.

Which means that threads like this are useless spam, as people would have complained regardless.

Rednova.5283:

Thief is the best at their role of mobility. It shouldn’t die if played right, but the argument that the team with the thief will win against a team without is a pretty weak one. Why shouldn’t the team with more mobility have an advantage in that aspect of the match? That’s the equivalent of arguing that a team with a support class will have more support than a team without. It’s very obvious that the team with support will have an edge in teamfight if the team without support doesn’t get a quick down on the other team.

If someone on the team without the thief swapped to a class with some mobility then that statistical advantage of mobility is theoretically evened out. At that point it comes down to player skill. A mesmer can put pressure on the thief’s home if the thief decides to get far and even get back to the team fight arguably just as fast, so it doesn’t even have to be a thief that counters the pressure on points.

Whether the team with better mobility should have an advantage or not is a different discussion than this one (though really we need another game mode where mobility isn’t nearly as required as it is in conquest, just to have more variety). But it still doesn’t change the fact that thief has no one that can compare with it in terms of mobility and its role in fights. If the other team has a good thief then you are at an inherent disadvantage for the entire game if you either don’t have a thief or have a bad one on your team. And its because no other class can fill that role. That’s not good balance to have 1 class that has no competition at all in its role. It just isn’t.

JonnyForgotten.4276:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

Well what other defence does a thief have apart from its mobilty? Everyone knows if they stand still for a second vs a compitent player they will take a huge dent. It’s alright for you lot to hide behind passive anti cc raits/passive dmg midigation/invuls/blocks but when a thief is forced of a point or a fight the only thing they have is to port away, that’s a big no no.

This. A thousand times this. Guess what we trade for that high mobility and burst. . . that’s right, generally dying if hit 1-3 times.

As far as no other class being able to outrun the thief: it’s a team class based game. Each class has it’s function, and it’s counter. Complaining that a thief’s ability to move faster than the other classes is unfair is every bit as ridiculous as complaining that a warrior has high damage and armor and it’s unfair to the other classes. . . it’s the nature of each class. It’s like complaining that Shadow Abyss is just, well, too black. . . in other words, silly.

With the ridiculous power creep in HoT a ridiculously high number of builds die in 1-3 hits as soon as their defenses are done. Just because thief’s defenses are evades and i-frames compared to blocks/invulns doesn’t change this. Its not like other classes don’t suffer from the same problem when their defenses are gone.

I think fewer weapons need to be hybrid actually, all it does is add to spam. Hybrid weapons allow you to deal huge power damage while also kittenting out tons of conditions. I don’t think you should be able to do both at the same time, period. It should be either or.

Ashantara.8731:

OriOri.8724:

I really like it as it is. I don’t understand why other people don’t.

Are you being sarcastic? Because if you are not, I seriously question your taste.

I hate to break it to you, but that candelabra can in no way be looked upon as a “weapon”. It is piece of room decoration, not a weapon. Sure, there are other designs that can’t be considered weapons and are merely created to be funny (like the Improvised Weapon set), but those aren’t legendaries!

IMO, there are way too many legendary weapon designs that are meant to be funny (disco balls, meteorological equipment, aquariums, ships, etc.), and those are not skins to wear with serious pride but in (good) fun. You have to be a somewhat “easily amused” type of character to actually consider those worthy of the legendary status (and worth your time, effort and resources as well).

I was 100% serious. I love the skin. And you don’t think its more impractical than a fishbowl (sorry, quagan-bowl) as a shield? Or a disco ball as a mace? Or whatever the hell Quip is supposed to be? Not to mention, torches aren’t really weapons in the first place.

I like the weapon because its so different, non traditinal for a torch. its not a boring thing shooting fire out of another creature’s mouth (which would almost be a rogdort clone fyi). It has character, its completely unique. I think ANet did a great job with this as the legendary torch, it gives people a real alternative to just generic “fancy torch must be a creature spitting fire out of its mouth” theme that a lot of games have. It has uniqueness, and ultimately that should be what determines what skins get turned into legendaries and which ones don’t.

Sartharina.3542:

The Elementalist hasn’t been leaked yet. The only one of those that looks “Futuristic” is the Engineer.

Elementalist was leaked, but it was in a different post that came a few days later. I won’t say anything about it so as to not spoil for it anyone who’s reading this thread, but you can look on the Ele forums to find a thread about it (if it hasn’t been deleted yet)

I haven’t felt the need to watch a youtube video except for a few collections and really difficult JQ (chalice of tears)

HollowDean.5134:

Hey! I just wanna know if there’s any other way to get mastery points other than to do achievements? I’m currently “stuck” on 103 and I have no more points to spend. I really hate doing achievements, it ruins the game for me.

For HoT points:

Finish the HoT story, look up the Dulfy guides on how to reach all of the mastery insights on the 4 HoT maps and the 5 new LWS3 maps. Then look up the Dulfy guides on how to get the strongboxes in the 4 HoT maps. This should give you quite a few more points.

For core tyria points, these are almost all grinding achievements.

Could have been pulled in by an updraft (right word?) when Primordus burrowed under the island and lifted it from the seafloor. I imagine that would have created quite a current to anything nearby.

I love it! The only problem with it is that because its so free, we are not very likely to see it again on new maps

I don’t know if its possible, but if it is I would love it for Anet to introduce a nerfed version of the new mastery that they can place on other maps. Probably where you only have 1 shot and have to be within 1,000 units of the oakheart essence on those maps to use it. This should make it easier to introduce to new maps without fear of having this mastery allow players to break them.

Scepter is a hybrid weapon, not power.

I don’t think it needs dialogue. I think its quite perfect at its intended behavior or adding flavor and context to this map. We know how strong the largos are lorewise, so to find a dead one here is just an easter egg. Designed to show that this place is truly quite dangerous if you aren’t prepared.

@Spicy – Not true. These nodes do drop unbound magic, so why wouldn’t they be able to drop another currency as well?

Oh hmm, I’ve stayed away from all the home instance nodes for LWS3, because I thought they shared the same RNG nature of the regular nodes, and I couldn’t justify buying them to only have a chance at getting the currencies. But if they are guaranteed from each node I’ll buy them.

Khailyn.6248:

OriOri.8724:

ANet will never run out of options/combinations. There is nothing stopping them from just giving new skills to a weapon the core class can use when you use a specific elite spec line. Would it suck to be left out and not get a new weapon? Maybe, but its not as if this isn’t an option.

it is possible to run out of combinations just in terms of how many weapons are available for each profession. each elite spec thus far has given us a weapon that wasnt available previously with warrior having the least possible new combinations since they had the most available at launch. the only way to avoid exhausting this would be to create a new weapon type.

No, it wouldn’t. Did you even read my comment? They could easily just add in new skills for an existing weapon that the core spec can already access for when they take the elite spec line.

They are never going to run out of this option, since it can always exist.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

OriOri.8724:

My biggest gripe with these nodes is the inconsistency. Yesterday I was running around on the map, got no primordial orchids from the first 2 nodes I harvested, yet the third one gave me 3. Then the next node dropped 2, then nothing from the next few nodes after that. Why?

How is that different from petrified wood, jade shards, or blood rubies?

Its not I guess, I just don’t like how these nodes aren’t guaranteed to drop their mats. Can you imagine mining a mithril or iron node and only having a chance at getting the respective mat to drop? Because to me that’s what these new nodes feel like.

CrimeMaker.8612:

thats old, I highly doubt they will do any of that..

They confirmed in the AMA on reddit that they are moving forward with that same proposed list of changes to sigils

But there’s no reason it can’t reskin if you are using a legendary. Well I mean I’m sure theres a technical reason, but I wish they would fix it so it reskins if you use a legendary

ANet will never run out of options/combinations. There is nothing stopping them from just giving new skills to a weapon the core class can use when you use a specific elite spec line. Would it suck to be left out and not get a new weapon? Maybe, but its not as if this isn’t an option.

But it doesn’t take that long to get there. Maybe 1 or 2 minutes if you walk, maybe.

Lenaro.5924:

The Good

• The new map is fantastic, particularly the fact that it effectively merges two biomes together within a cohesive theme. Easily one of the better maps released so far.
• The new mastery is fun and the map is designed well to take advantage of it.
• The final fight was engaging and a relatively cool set piece.

The Bad

• The story is dreadful, not in terms of content but in ramifications. There are two possible outcomes.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

The first, it’s not actually Balthazar – which is an awful reveal as all it amounts to is a cheap bait and switch. The second, it was actually Balthazar – this has massive ramifications to the scope of the world. We just fought and beat a “god”.

Let’s assume the “gods” are simply powerful entities – why are we equivalently powerful? Why is anything a threat following this? Even if you suggest the god was weakened, this episode spiked the player power level massively.

The player has killed 2 elder dragons. Its not like he wasn’t already extremely powerful. Mechanics wise, its not possible to show how powerful the PC actually is in game, since it would trivialize everything. They definitely aren’t on the level of a God, but they aren’t exactly weak either. And if you followed the dialogue, Balthazar hasn’t just been weakened, he’s had his energy drained. Notice also that we weren’t blinded when we saw him. This means that his power is almost all gone, to the point where he might not even be one of the Six human gods anymore. Notice that he was too weak to fight us himself, he had to summon his hounds to do the dirty work while he was focused on charging up again. If he had the power to do so, he could easily have killed us himself before powering up.

Additionally, multiple components make no sense, like how Balthazar hired a massive army of Charr, of all things, as mercenaries. The world doesn’t suggest those options exist. Did he pay them? How? Why would they accept? Your character is incredibly well known. When did an army sign up agreeing to fight them?

You answered your own question. They are mercenaries, they work for the highest bidder. It wouldn’t matter that he was Balthazar as long as he kept paying them. And again, mercenaries. They obviously weren’t working for the Pact so they don’t care to follow the PC. They might even resent him. And one last time, mercenaries. They always think they are going to win, in every game, in every story. Not exactly the smartest bunch, but they definitely would think that they would be able to beat us if it came to that

The fact that any humans allowed us to fight Balthazar is awkward. The fact that we chose to is awkward. If a god of any practicing religion showed up and asked for my fancy new toy I would give it to him, doesn’t matter if I don’t believe in that religion. The fact that we immediately antagonized/attacked Balthazar is weird. I’m assuming this is all a setup to introduce some issue with the human pantheon, but it just comes across as odd in an episodic fashion.

Weird? Maybe. Gamebreaking hole in the lore? No. Remember, at this point our PC has fought, and beaten, 2 elder dragons. He doesn’t exactly get intimated or scared easily. All he knows is that he has a goal, and Balthazar is getting in the way of that, and that Balthazar is a threat.

There’s doubtless an intention to tie loose ends together and create something out of this story, but you’re not adding this story in a format which enables that. If this were an expansion a surprise twist followed by enlightening the players can work. This is an episode, it should largely be self-contained. As it stands, this massively undercuts any worldbuilding attempts in the future. If you were really hell-bent on the idea of introducing Balthazar you could’ve done it sensibly and in a more interesting manner. As stands, there was nothing suggestive of Lazarus being a “god” and it simply feels out of left field while adding nothing interesting.

This is just your opinion. There were plenty of hints that Lazarus might be agod.
For one, he survived the bloodstone explosion. For another, he actually did use Divine fire in episode 2, something which I believe only the Six can use

Replies in bold

What? How would having 3 elite specs cause any imbalance? Everyone would still only be able to take one.

…… You’re still going to have access to the HoT specializations if you want to use them…..

Ookamikun.6472:

My only problem really is the WP. It honestly just needs one more, particularly in the Savage area.

Why does it need 1 more? Its already quick to get anywhere on the island if you know where it is and have thermal tubes unlocked, even faster if you have the new mastery (I forget what its called).