Guild Wars 2

Please tomorrow character slots, please. Otherwise this sale is way worse then last years.

Mike Obrian talking now. He surely talks like he’s gonna make the game free. pretty sure of it.

And my gut feeling was correct….

Free to play so bad, even with limitations.

Trolls, jerks, spammers, spies, cheapskates, gem>inflation causers…

Influx of this Mike Obrian/Anet. No way to filter it out. Bad decision.

5 years of work thrown in trashban.

If you make a game free to play (even compared to 5 euro to join basegame cost), the level of easyness for a troll/jerk to join the game becomes 10x easier. That alone is reason enough to not make it free.

And as a economical analyser: just no. The base game costed 5 years of hard work, and contrary to what some people say it’s content for a basegame is massive (try map completion for one). If it’s boring or not is another mater, but it’s there, massive content. And just throw it away like those 5 years of hard work don’t mean anything. It is as wrong as you could be. Most people joining ‘free now’ will NEVER buy gems, except with gold (wich is another issue, bringing total free to play masses to gw2, if they come, will super inflate gold to gem rate, at such a rate it won’t even be fun anymore and some people might leave the game).

Just bad. Let them buy HoT to get game, or 5 euro per game but NOT free to play.

It would also mess up login rewards. People could creates 10 000 login accounts for massive laurels.

And and wvw hacking, trolling, spying! Worse then ever. Thanks Scribe the mad.

Free is just bad. Make it as cheap as you want, but not free. Even gw1 was never free and was a much less complex game. It survived. Why not let gw2 survive ‘while costing’ money? Say you ask 5 euro per ‘old expansion/core game’ (2+ years old), then even the F2p mass has no reason not to get game 10 euro isn’t hard to come by for so much hours of entertainment.

My biggest fear is 90% of the people, and instances they run will now be swamp. Pathetic to be honest. Grawl, winter fractal, even dredge to some degree: they are fun to beat with a clever/good team. Now? lfg ‘swamp only, speedclea’, ‘only swamp’ ‘Nothing but swamp, got it? or pkick’.

To early release. With all the specs, unfinished, Druid still not revelead (as engineer spec), verdant brink maps (+ the other secret one) barely tested. Raids not tested (clearly not included in HoT), I think the release was pushed to soon. 2 months is not enough to fix all the issues and finsih the new specs and revenant. Take an example of The Witcher 3. They had courage to postpone twice, but people are now gratefull with an amazing game. They already forgot it was pushed twice, cause it’s GOOD. It has bugs, but overall reviews agree they are minimal (means the big bugs for such large scale game, all have been quelled pretty well).

Take an example. Thanks.

I can’t agree with core game free to play. Make it free trial (if so, make it long time, like a month rather then regular 14 days). Then ask 5-10 euro’s for account.

Why? Anet still need money. People are not kitteno pay a minimum of money on a game that looks promising with lot of existing content. And it attracts trolls, bots, resellers, market crashers, hackers, glitchers, elitist, gamebreaking toxicity spreading people, etc. No limitations on new accounts will prevent this.

I suspect the pvp part of gw2 with all their 50 000 dollar throw aways (that’s 5000 new accounts they need at 10$ each, to just fun de price money per WTS.) They clearly are ‘overmarketing’ pvp, and it’s failing a bit. So they are gettng desperate. Last years gw2 (not HoT) income was about 1000 000$ (just a wild guess). Anets strategy: We right now throw even more money away on WTS. 1m dollar all for more people to pvp (free to play). Kaboom. Already toxic, elitism pvp community becomes next level toxicity. Toxicity that will even surprise people like Josh Davis.

Personal conclusion: free to play is worst thing to do ever. Especially on a game without monthlie fees. Think about it Anet you needed 5 years of work on base game. And it’s huge with a lot of maps. We only got 2 other new maps so far. And HoT even though spectacular in 3D size, will still be small 2d map. So the base game is big, very very big, (look at how much time map completion takes). Just throwing it for free, especially when HoT is (no matter what you think) smaller then people expect… Not good. Gw2 won’t yield it’s steady money anymore, and HoT ‘unhappyness’ will make the price expectations crash. NOT GOOD ANET.

But if Mike O’Brien awakes and finally joins a twitch event, we should be scared. He sometimes sees things to simple, and this could be one of them ‘lets make gw2 free to play’.

Played 9500 hours (some time of that is afk of course). to finally get precursor. And it was Venom only (underwater 65g prec). Not complaining though, was nice for a change. I take peace in that I will never get a serious precursor drop.

Looking at the preview, human and norn (presumably the others as well) have issues with the dress clipping in the ground (like charrzooka pointing down into the ground with the longest part of the rifle).

Not really something, that I think is worth 1000 gems (I hate ground clipping).

Well cooking outfit is already 5 ‘different outfit’ (10? not sure if different on gender). And it costs 700 gems (got it 520 gems when on discount).

So yeah a bit high. Will have to think it through if i will buy this one. Is this a permanent sale item (like Examplar Attire inspired by Countess Anise) or will it be a temporary sale (like mad kings outfit)?

Fsp sometimes on PURPOSE looses objectives, just to hang in the ‘nice fights’, or prolong them. FSP is the opposite of a PPT server. As a result, with similar (or more people) as Desolation, they perform worse. I also admit, that Desolation got an american guild (I think, not sure, but our night presence certainly improved). It’s nothing crazy, but this small amount of extra people, make a gazzilion difference to ppt. I’d say about 70% of people are PPT based on Deso and 30% Raid/GvG/fight oriented. FSP is 90% Fight based and 10% PPT.

Like FSP wins most fights against SFR. But they loose the matchup. Why? See above: more number, more coverage, more ppt oriented, etc. Doesn’t make FSP a smaller server with less Raid-minded people. They have the lead amount of EU in that, simple.

As for why Deso is so strong this week: We were since beginning in top 3 (sometimes top 5). But we won very rarely. Now that SFR is slacking, what do you think Desolatians prefer? To slack another weak. Nope to finally grab the victory. Once SFR (and other servers) stop slacking, Deso will be again on part (perhaps slightly in front of ) fsp again. The ‘blowout’ will decrease a lot. So again, this score says only half of the story.

Conclusion: Glicko says nothing about the number of ‘raid’-oriented people, just the PPT focus. It makes ‘very good servers’ look bad, cause they don’t focus on ppt, but win fights all the time.

Desolation has loads of Pve players (and to an extension PvX). It has been lead server in pve player since day one (apart from some of the language servers).

I think the system is flawed, in that even the people who just cap a centry for daily ap (could be a hell of a lot on Desolation cause of big PvX player base), is counted towards the cap. Cause indeed:

SFR: massively overstacked (please don’t try to deny it, I havea a lot of friends there, and they keep me posted, for instance, the lead ap farmer: almost all went to SFR for easy Eotm (always win) ap farming).
FSP: ‘borrowed’ a lot of desolation people, and other servers (including piken I think). They don’t have ap hunters, Eotm people, but the ‘veteran, we want wvw raids and win fights’ player base is the biggest amount EU, Pretty certain of that. (SFR is bigger cause Karma train/AP hunting sort of people).
Then comes desolation (third spot). If we purely count the Queues (that are next to non existant, low commander prescence, low raid prescence, then it doesn’t match the ‘full server status’ we own at the moment. But I admit we are close to it. My fear is old vets who rarely/barely/sometimes play are messing the system up, making it think of desolation ‘to high’.

Quit a bit behind all these servers are:

Kodash (temporary slacking? They used to be t1)
Gandara (used to be low, but growed steadely over time).
Piken square (most of time a medium server but in last tournement got 3rd spot, went down a bit, and now up again. Quite a bit below other listed servers I think (but a lot bigger then medium servers).

Jade Sea. Perhaps same player base as Kodash, but more ppt oriented (hello Old Vizunians), hence the higher Glicko.

Then come mostly Medium servers. It will be interested to see, how Elona reach does. (and to an extend Baruch bay and Vizunah square). CAuse they got the biggest Pve (from what I saw) populations among their language, always hanging in the full, even when all other server didn’t. But atm their performance in wvw is ‘normal’ (not excellent, neither weak). It’s interesting to see, how old veterans (that don’t play, or rarely play – but are a lot on those servers) are calculated into the formula by Anet.

If you kill anything (that is veteran or above, so no worker, quartermasters), in vicinity of objective you tag it, you don’t even need to stand in circle. However, if you killed 1 target, that would give bronze reward, standing in circle gives gold always.

This is normal wvw, eotm is diff. Killing npc’s has NO impact on reward, you MUST STAND IN CIRCLE to get it. Exception is player kills. These tag the objective for you if you kill them in it’s vicinity.

It’s a bug. Like the server trying to organize the rewards, and sometimes overwrites player queues in the process somehow, and thus deletes their ‘tagged objective’ presence. It happens both with lag, and with absolutely no lag. To be fair, it happens only in normal wvw, did quite a lot of eotm, and never got an issue there (if i stood in circle – killing npc is another matter, see above).

@ smitske: nah. I’ve been investigating this issue all to well. Even standing in MIDDLE of circle, can get you a fail. I even tested the stairs on hills on purpose (part of cap circle goes quite a bit upstairs, I thought that 3D difference, made the circle unable to cope with it). But wrong, even if you stand on top of stairs (within circle), you get reward if the bug doesn’t kick in.

I saw a mesmer falling down, then he was right up again. I know thief SB 5 can get you up from falling, but you gotta start casting BEFORE falling (and since it has cast time you fall a bit, then to ‘shadowstep’ you up again. This was mesmer however, blink has no cast time, But you cant use skills when falling down as fast as I know.

Rappelz is a WAAAAY worse game, way greedier company behind it, way more ‘stab you in the back’- patches (aka less loot, more grind), poor quality control, bugs everywhere, worse graphics for certain, way more forced to use cash shop (that game is actually pay to win, 5000 dollar at least if you want the best pet + equipment). The playerbase has slowly shrinked But, even now 6 years after I left it: STILL ALIVE.

Guess how many ‘rappelz is doomed’ threads, had to be (forcefully) closed, ever since. They all were wrong so far

Already was an earlier thread about this. Agree with it. Old ones were better (smaller but draw more attention, exactly what a mini map icon should be).

As long as you have 15 ap points from it (or 20, one of the repeatables required a slightly higher repetetion rate), it’s ok. It’s like the activities (southsun survival, crab toss, etc). You can do the ‘do this 6x for 5 ap’ 10 times. Then your ap is capped at 50. However the achievement tracks keeps resetting, for the sake of giving a reward rare loot bag every time it’s repeated, so times it will look ‘not complete’, but remember if you hover over it, it will show ‘repeated X times’ (can be more then ap cap). And it will show 50/50 ap (maxed out).

Not a Bug. Basically if your personal reward level is 41 or higher, then you would be able to get a chest for highest frac rage (41-50) + a 31-40 chest. As long as you are not there, you will only get one chest per day for doing the level 30 range.

I have experienced it many times. Aprox. 1% of my captures has failed this way. Camp captures almost never failed (if they do it’s probably because of server lag). Tower, and especially keep, and even more so Stonemist Castle, fail to reward, quite a few times. This most of time happens when there’s no lag. My theory is that the server only rewards a certain amount of people. If you are over it, then some people fail to get the reward. But then again, if often rewards all. So it could be just a bug. Killing person or veteran npc in vicinity of objective tags it. 3+ and you are gold, no matter what. One time I killed a whole zerg and 10+ npc’s, and it still failed to reward me, so my guess is a bug in the code, that sometimes makes the server fail to reward you. The bug has been there since launch.

Instanced content seems super buggy. Finally got in Gendarren fields, but when clicking home portal stone, fail to connect again.

42:0:9001:4418 error here too.

Build 51902

Can’t login after patch.

Would like to be able to log in my home instance before reset (2 hours).

I’m not 100% sure, but the wxp bonus seems included in the new ‘global exp’ bonus. A wvw guard just gave me 30 wxp, with no outmanned buff or other buff. Isn’t it normally 20 wxp?

UPDATE: WXP boost still exist. just tested it on keep: IT GIVES 1200 wxp, wich concludes the new booster works on wxp, but has no text info about that. Just a text bug thus!

Good for us wvw’ing people. With the boosts stacked, this is actually better imo (even with slighly lower time on the exp boost).

Wxp seems removed (used 150 candy corn), gotten 30 min speed boost, 20 min regeneration, 25 min of the magic find boost (that now though is better then in past, also works on gathering). The ‘dominant’ boost now seems EXP+PVP reward track exp. 1 hour 27 min (though it seems you only get 5 or 10 min from it rather then the old 15 min. Very bad since it will almost worn off before you get a ‘good amount of time’. Secondly, seeing how they merged everything but removed wxp, best solution would be to add wxp to the ‘+50% exp and pvp track’. Make it 50% exp/pvp exp and wxp. Problem solved.

To be honest I currently see very few use for the cobbler. Sad cause I had stocked up 40 000 candy corn… To use in edge of mist when I could further farm my achievements (aka when I could join SFR in there, rather then fight against them). But nope… To bad.

I would count on 35gb (gw2+HoT).

Also a lot of ppl have access to the beta. To make the playable, Anet has to add the files to the game, otherwise not possible (Verdant brink map etc).

And making two diff clients (one small one and one big one) would take double the bug testing, double the approving of patches time, double the developping time. The more everything is streamlined the better for Anet. You having the full game on your pc, but with a line in the code that prevents you to play the HoT parts is way easier to code then what you ask (would cause a ton more bugs).

And last: Hard disk space is cheap as hell. 128gb is like the minimum and that can carry gw2 easely if you don’t stow other games no it. 256gb+ (very easy) can hold gw2+other software (though multiple GTA5 giants of games will be difficult). If it’s desktop just buy HDD (or SSD wich is getting cheap now), to have them run the game on it. If the pc’s have less then 100gb it’s your own fault. Over 8 years it’s already possible to get good performance/price/Terabyte drives in pc. If you failed to get that, it’s research failure. But I suspect you got laptops, wich are all handy and cosy, until you realize the feature you are missing and can’t add easely. For laptops you have to anticipate double as hard. ‘I think i need 200gb’ on my laptop. That being close to 256gb size of SSD’s and the growing nature of software, you should then shop for a 500gb laptop (if money doesnt allow, buy HDD and not ssd). But so many ppl don’t research when buying a laptop it’s crazy, and then they are dissapointed. I can say with full confidance for instance that in Media Market (huge electronics shop), half of the laptops ain’t worth their money (to old config, to high price, not up to date on some stuff, low quality assembly – one or multiple of these). But if you listen to salesman, well then you know wich he will recommend. Just don’t listen to him. Do your own research (or ask on the proper internet forums, people gladly will give advice). Spares a ton of frustration AND MONEY. Electronics wise, I only did like 2 purchases that afterwards felt like the wrong decision. All the others have proven to be great/amazing. Wich in the end spared me 1000’s of euro’s if I think about it. Maybe start doing this too? Sorry for the rant, but people take to much for granted. Some things you do better yourself. 200+gb drive laptops have been available for Ages. If that’s a priority feature that’s now lacking it’s your mistake for not ‘anticipating it’.

Times evolve, games evolve. Even from launch Anet said game is 25gb big (much bigger then launch GB so they took their margin cause they knew it would grow, and they didn’t want to face people’s rage that they didn’t specify correctly).

Would be perfect for me No reason not to do this imo. Southsun cove (new map) also brought new drake, so this is a good opportunity.

@ person wanting dinosaurs, it would bring only dissapointment. ‘Bad animations’, ‘underpowered’, ‘wtf they call this a dinosaur?’, etc come to mind. They can’t make bigger pets stronger, but a Dinosaur would feel underpowered with the current set of pets. It also could cause lag if it’s body requires to much rendering.

I want it to be “Maelstrom” with similar effect like in gw1. Would be much better, fit tempest, and give us an elite worthy to use as extra slot (and not optional, only usefull in few occassions transformations, or the ‘mobility only ’ (after numerous nerfs) Fiery Greatswords. Glyph of elementals has use, but it’s small, and this one skill cannot make the Ele’s kitten nal feel great, like it is for guardians now, and thieves etc. They got plenty of (in situations that has use for it) very good elites.

It’s your bad luck tekfan. My recent farming of wood, had the same random streaks of just 3 logs, and sometimes more. I don’t feel a nerf.

Worst lag in ages that I had for EB. Normally the super slow skills only happen in 3 ways, and then it’s a huge delay in skill casts mostly. Now it’s just random slowing down; One time one zerg gets 100 skills off (downing some ppl even), and enemy cant respond, sometimes it’s other way around. But the skill lets a few (sometimes very strong, like Well of suffering) skills happen, then all next skills get blocked/long slowed down. Weird kind of lag. And uneven spread lag (the uneven part of the lag is bigger then before, making battle even more unfair then they used to be). First lag that also prevented me to cast lightning flash (instant cast skill) for over 15 secs period of time of spamming it. That was always a skill that slipped relative easy true skill lag. Not anymore.

Also weird things happening with skill animations. Sometime you got cast bar, like for Either renewal but your hp aint healing. And then 10 secs later, you see you hp heal, but no cast bar or animation. Weird. Is this just a complete visual mess of the animation queues, or is it the server actually making mistakes? (lagging badly). Or combination?

The Witcher 3 was pushed 2 times back: And with good reason, the number of bugs at launch were much lower then expected (for a Skyrim size game). All the fans of the game were happy during and after the anouncement with this decision from CD red projekt.

Why can’t people in mmorpg think similar.

It took them weeks/months for this update. Coding somethign like this is very complex, be happy you didn’t truly loose ap, you didn’t truly loose traits, now that would be bad, their testing prevented this. The only thing (wich is rather small, all things considered), that still bugged was visual representation. A rather small bug, relative easy to fix. Also very random bug (wich is why it’s not tested cause some chars have it, others not).

Stop complaining so much people. So far it purely looks like a display bug. I still got my Karmic converter, even though ap is now reset. I still got all my traits (my water skills are -33% cd still on ele), so this means traits exist still, are unlocked still, they are just not shown. You can even play just like normal, like yesterday. Only diff thing is the display of unlocked things. Pretty small to fix don’t you think? And the npc/pets in Hall of monuments will soon be fixed i’m sure too. They kept saying for months now complex an update like this could be and how much coding errors it could cause. It did, but in my opinion, a visual only bug, means Anet so far did great job. Bug will always happen and this is just an example of that. You can’t stop bugs from happening/slipping through testing. It’s the nature of the beast. You can change however by fixing it, wich they will.

So what is the problem? Don’t see it. Soon both HoM owners, not owners will be happy and play on.

If you mean the Core specializations with ‘old specs’ (Like Elementalist is Core, Tempest is it’s specialization: Yes they keep existing.

To give an example, Guardians Elite tomes got completely overhauled. That is ‘work on the old specs’ in your words. All conditions got an update now. All damage conditions stack now (like burning and poison now too) and weakness grants also bonus condition damage. That is pretty much ‘work on old specs’.

As for your question will old specs return? Don’t really get what you mean. Elementalist will never be gone. Instead you will be able to choose between Elementalist, Tempest or a combination of both for some builds. Just like Ranger can still go pure ranger, or focus on Druid spec.

As for unique builds, having played Engineer, ranger and elementalist since patch, from a pve perspective: build variation went hugely up (especially for ranger). If they fix some ranger bugs it’s gonna be even better. In pvp some people feel forced into one build. And while this is true for Tpvp, I think for ‘casual pvp’ matches, this is not true, and build variation is high. With Stronghold coming (a gameplay that allows much more different playstyles then in conquest), I see build variation going up a lot.

As for cost of Elite specs: I think it will be similar to cost of current core spec. However they made it so (after some feedback of players) that Core specs get enough points by being level 80 to get all traits/skills of their base profession. However to get elite spec you will have to earn some hero points (old skill challenges around the world). Nothing to crazy, 40-80 will suffice, my guess. In fact, I think if you make a new char and keep your points all the way to 80, that you will be able to spend them on tempest first and our left overs on elementalist but i’m not sure of that.

Getting more skins, more achievements (like yesterday farmed crab toss achievements for a bit), farming gold (always usefull, I buy gems to keep a huge backup pile, so if a good sale comes I can buy it all, i’m at 10 000 backup gems now – most are meant to use on char slots when on sale). Getting more unique weapon skins (Daydreamer is cute, Scientific is good for engineer I think, so getting more gold for that). Preparing for new legendaries. Like if Ele would have gotten sword with Tempest I would have made bolt, but now that remains to be seen. I could make another legendary though.

I keep high variation in my playstyles to slow boredom down. I also met a lot of nice people lately, wich makes it more fun. For instance, I didn’t do Honour of the waves dungeon in a while cause most pugs fail at this bigtime. Then I met a guild, who did a lot of dungeons runs, but was that day 1 person short (4/5). I joined them for 12 dungeons runs, including HoTW. Had a lot of fun, added them to friendlist. They called me yesterday again to join HoTW. Ofc i joined. Was fun! Almost like playing new content, with the time that has passed since I played that dungeon.

New specs. The new trait options make gameplay a lot different on all professions. So far only 3 professions, I played since the Core Specialization updates. That’s 5 more to playtest/have fun with.

Sidegoals: Getting more alts, wanting some fun/Rpg elements bonus I wanted to get Permanent Hair style contract. Got it about a month now. Took a lot of dedication to farm it, but now being able to change hair style on the fly is a lot of fun. And to be honest, there’s a lot of new (exlusive to hair style and make over kits) hairstyles now. Being able to experiment with them is nice (Making a new char doesn’t show them so, so making char, not being happy, delete, make it again, doesnt work for new hairstyles). These kit makes that possible, and its account bound so works on all char. Quite happy with it. Good example of what an endgoal could be (and one that improve gameplay if you like this sort of stuff – changing hair).

Anticipation goals also keep me busy. HoT will for sure have stuff that costs a lot of money (legendaries? other skins?), but that we want. Why not farm it now, and then just enjoy content? Few thins certainly will come: 3th birthday sale (farm goal in anticipation of sale – this is even double win, cause you get enough gold before sale, and you get cheaper gems (they will go up in price when sale happens). Halloween is the first even coming that’s almost garanteed, it’s not to far away tbh, so while they will still make HoT they are force to finally release a temporary event then. Clear your stock of halloween items, practise some jumping puzzles to do the Clocktower achievement Stuff like that.

Upgrading home instance: personal goal. Got all but 1 node (and the treasure chest) now. When other goals that require gold are done, I will go for treasure hunter title (Already completed Exotic hunter). These things keep you quite busy

But most important is, put variation in gameplay (change profession every now and then, change gamemode, change map etc, switch between your open goals). I’m 9500 hours now, still having fun.

Other Offhands Better.

Xyonon.3987:

thelorion.3680:

Since the patch i miss… balancing!

Too many nerfs hit the engineer. Its ridicolous.

Still upset about the mortar kit nerf? Please …

Having just played Ele, and the mortar before/after nerf, I have to say: Still unnecessary that nerf. Meteor shower/lava font, cannot be reflected, harder to dodge, hit multiple times, hit harder, can be traited for cooldown reduction, etc. Just so good. While mortar is there now and ok, it’s just that ‘ok’ nothing more. Wich is ridiculous in the all ‘superior good’ changes to some professions now.

Having played a pve beta with revenant, (hammer, sword and axe i think): I’d rather say it’s underpowered. I just feels a lot of ‘special looking skills’ with specials effects, but ultimately, low dps sustain and almost no spike damage. This could obviously change, but to me it looks Anet is rather scared to make revenant to powerful.

Well i’m glad i only payed 43 euro’s. Closer to gw1 expansion price

Only reason gems are that cheap now (been as high as 93g for 400 gems during the wings sale) is cause there’s more gem purchase then ever in short period of time because of the ultimate edition pre-purchase (4000 gems).

as for nobody buying skins: I think loads of ppl took a break from the game. I think we need some festivall or something else to really pull people back. And seems lately there is some sort of ‘have enough skins now, don’t need any more unless really really cool skin’ effect on the people.

Yep using Resounding Timbre, i was like hmm let’s see, protect me is good, guard definitely nice cause of short cd, Search resque maybe cause this trait is no longer grandmaster, ‘wtf 90 secs cooldown on only downed people ress’? No thanks. Hope Anet makes it a more usefull skill in the future.

If you spam a key more time then it needs to register, the game sometimes queues up the button you press again, leading (if skill is not on cooldown) another cast of the button related skill. Probably what happened here. Only spam skill once (maybe twice, but not more).

They said something in the lines of (Gaile Gray, community Coordinator): “While we do not have a time yet when you will receive your extra char slot, rest assured that we are working as fast as possible on this. No worries you will get it in due time.”

Ranger had crapload of very weak traits, or builds the requires full 70 points, without room to pick some fun extra traits. Now with the update, There’s a huge amount of viable, fun to play, satisfactory builds. Just look at the thread Heimz Karlfield (sorry if spelled wrong) made. Tons of builds! A lot of them were not used/viable before patch. And with beastmaster traits being very good now, the choice between 50 pets also got more interesting. So for ranger builds definitely increased imo.

Engineer is more complex. While it had room for an enormous amount of builds, it never really shined apart from some meta builds. Now there’s slightly fewer buidls, but the traits are more synergized (important imo), the minors are better, but most traits are more powerfull merged options now meaning, you might have slightly fewer builds, but the ones you take now, feel more powerful, more that you chose the right thing.

I see a similar thing with other professions.

Sure a few combo’s where killed in process. But I think those are few. And the builds we now take are more focussed, synergized, and have 90 points (versus old 70 points). 90 points alone (even with the limitations of taking full lines) opens up new builds not possible in past. You can now combo up 3x grandmaster trait, wich are most of time really game changers for builds. With a choice of 15 and 3 (instead of 2) to chooe off, I think most builds are actually better off now. And Anet is listening also, wouldnt amaze me, that they still add Ricochet in some way again.

Not playing mesmer at the moment, but following all changes very closely. While some things may be a tad overtuned, I think the overall idea of how mesmer is playing now is good, and a ‘playstyle nerf’ is not warranted.

Like PU nerf keeps coming back. Can people please think further then their nose please? Sure prestige and decoy are very powerfull with new pu, but look at Veil and mass invisibility. Never been in pvp meta. Barely good enough for wvw meta. And guess what now they are! And they are not overpowered in anyway. Hell Veil itself cannot be run tru twice anymore because of the PU boost. And mass invisibility actually has enough time now, to unleash a surprise attack, or escape. 5-6 secs in past is nothing to escape a big zerg in open field.

With this in mind, A way better argument (imo) would be: Prestige and decoy get +1 second stealth from PU, the other two keep their cloacking time being doubled advantage.

With this little example finished: I gotta say I agree with op. If it the few people shouting PU nerf all over the board MI and Veil would be 90% not usefull state again.

if you mean the Core game ‘deluxe upgrad’, yes it’s been twice, on sale (1000 gems instead of 2000 gems).

Before patch 3200 Wild strikes was about the limit against pve bosses with 25 stack vulnerability, full might, and the most squishy type of bosses.

I see 4000+ in combat log. Judging from other professions, the gain, in power is pretty small. So either he himself builded more squishier then ever (maybe he took full zerker and forgot he doenst have vitliaty/defence of earth/Water traitline anymore).

Protection alone should destroy the number op posted. Ele has very easy access to protection.

Landing 2 backstacks in succession is not easy. Cause once the thief landed the first one, (hardest to dodge), you can imagine his movement, where he is, and turn your character quickly in all directions to make it hard for him to backstab (not behind char = half damage).

The thief clearly has the ‘double damage when cloacked’ damage. Good trait BUT limits defensive capabilities of thiefs a bit. That thief should be easy to burst.

Turamarth beat me to it XD And he quoted the right post. But yes Deluxe/Ultimate get 1x immediate slow (deluxe package) and 1x later a slot, manually added by Anet. Normal version get 1 slot (later), But can get the 2nd slot by spending 2400 gems on the deluxe upgrade. (wich I did).

Tbh char slot is worth 800 gems, so that alone might push it ‘into more’. And 4000 gems for half price (kind of because price setup), is neither bad deal.

From playing the Beta, revanent surely doesn’t feel (yet) overpowered. It’s basically a very interesting profession, in that it has lots of tool to support zerg, but not necessary tools to burst zerg (other maybe then the ranged aoe stun jump with hammer). So basically Revanant support (like long uptime on block projectiles (aoe – no reflect though!)), lot of combo fields etc.

Seeing chronomacner, reaper etc, i don’t think specs will be either overpowered, especially since the current update to base specializations. I think the wvw split will be minimal. And sooner or later HoT will become cheaper and I see almost everyone even wanting to play those builds/revenant buy it.

The glider skin didnt dissapear. I assume Anet will make a new patch where the finishers, mini’s, mail carrier pages are, named ‘glider skin’. Right now, the skin certainly is applied to your account, but only later on, will Anet release an AI to show it (Heart of Thorns isnt released after all).

To clear something up: Pre-purchase has an empty dvd case, but you get char slot.
Pre-order might give this, or a release packet. This is unclear, and up to the seller. (No garanteed char slot, quite low chance, dont do this if you want it).
Post Release purchased HoT should have dvd case with dvd on it with basic HoT patch data on it to update the game. If you mean ‘hardcopy’ with dvd, then you will have to wait for release.

I had 1000 scrolls of knowledge. Apon login in they were gona from Bank but (i have a good number memory so i’m 100% sure) they got added to my wardrobe immediately. Not bad 2000 clicks less, and nothing lost, + extra bank space.