Guild Wars 2

I really don’t see how this qualifies as a grind. You’re doing 20-40 completely different challenges. That means different fights, jumping puzzles, etc. for each one.

It’s only a grind if you choose to make it one by rolling seven thousand alts. In which case, I mean, didn’t you already choose to grind a lot of stuff you didn’t have to anyway?

Ayrilana.1396:

PopeUrban.2578:

Despite the buggyness, it was an epic fight. Rebalancing it for a 5 man fractal boss would be slick. I mean let’s face it, we need more boss fractals, and this would be an amazing one.

I want to chase it through the forest, knocking down trees, dropping the side of a mountain on it, survive the hatchling death spiral, and do the epic stomp again. Doing it under the influence of instabilities would be a really interesting challenge.

Please new fractal team. Make it so after HoT launch!

Rebalancing so it doesn’t take 3+ hours? Lol

Most of the time sink in it was the camp events if I remember right. Make the camp events boils down to a single mob wave (say a champ karka with respawning elites, kill the champ to move on) and you’re left with just the fun bits (chasing it down and forcing it in to the lair for the final battle) and that would put it right around ten minutes or so if its HP was appropriately balanced for 5 players I think. if the camp events were all champs, the loot would be at a scale that compensated for the slightly longer clear time than maw/mai trin/duo

Alternately, you could just have it skip the camp events altogether and make the mob wave sections just a single wave of mobs.

most of the time sink of that event was the multiple “okay, now clear ANOTHER lengthy mob spawning section!”

Really, what was fun about the boss was the chase section. The actual boss fight once you got to the bottom was pretty meh, so spreading it in to linear HP sections (so phase 1 has just as much hp as the final phase) would pace the fight pretty short, but it would still be a nice multi-phase encounter, and unique among fractal bosses as a moving boss fight.

Despite the buggyness, it was an epic fight. Rebalancing it for a 5 man fractal boss would be slick. I mean let’s face it, we need more boss fractals, and this would be an amazing one.

I want to chase it through the forest, knocking down trees, dropping the side of a mountain on it, survive the hatchling death spiral, and do the epic stomp again. Doing it under the influence of instabilities would be a really interesting challenge.

Please new fractal team. Make it so after HoT launch!

Skylark.1274:

Please clarify something for me Dara,

Based on what was said in this link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Guild-Bank-security-when-HoT-launches/first#post5602172
“If your guild had Guild Stash, Treasure Trove and/or Deep Cave before HoT, your guild will still have access to them after HoT. They will still be accessible from the Guild Bankers.”

And per this post:

Dara Potocska.8196:

Good day, friends! Are you Faren well today? To answer a few of the questions:

12. What are the Notary and the Market? And do we have to claim a Guild Hall for my Bankguild first to get back Access to my Bank?

The Notary and Market are 2 of 7 areas of focus for your guild to gain upgrades from (the others include the Tavern, Mine, Workshop, Arena and War Room). The Notary will be accessible through the Guild Initiative Office and the others will only be accessible through the guild hall once it is obtained. If you don’t have the guild banks unlocked before Heart of Thorns, you will need to get the upgrades from those sources after launch.

If looking for further answers on Guild Banks, you can find them in this post here: Guild Bank security when HoT launches

My guild already has the entire bank unlocked.

So it appears we have access to the Treasure Trove /Deep Cave AFTER we upgrade the Market. Or is the Market only needed IF we one doesn’t currently have the Treasure Trove /Deep Cave?

So BEFORE we have access to the Market in our captured guild hall, will we be able to access our Treasure Trove /Deep Cave?
And will we have deposit and withdraw abilities?

Guild banker NPCs work like they did before. The difference is how you unlock the upgrades.

In the new system, if you don’t have the upgrades, you can get the stash upgrade from the notary (guild initiative) but in order to unlock the other two you need to build/upgrade a market within a guild hall.

if you currently have those upgrades you still keep them, and thus can still use them from guild bankers, even if you haven’t claimed a guild hall or built a market.

Does that make more sense?

Congratulations on your human precursor! Try not to get too frustrated by the grind, you’ll have crafted a Legendary Adult Human in no time!

• Remove massive stack of xp, birthday, and celebration boosters from bank, move to main.

• Run final countdown guild missions tonight

• Que remaining merits as yaks or banners or something

• Take a nap so I can wake up stupid early and get stuck in.

• Probably be late for work tomorrow.

because revnant was the repository for all the good class ideas they wanted to stick on existing classes.

And then the community demanded “we want new classes even if they don’t actually add anything to the game, because only 2 heavy classes is unfair, and we would rather reroll than play existing characters”

So arenanet gave the community what they wanted. We could have had 2 elite specs per class so the system was actually interesting at launch in stead of in six months, but in stead we got a new class that took all of the useful mechanics and mashed them together in to a fundamentally boring and uncustomizable package.

It’s not at all suprising.

They want to axe dungeons because it’s much easier to develop and deploy a single new fractal than a single new dungeon path. Fractals are generally shorter and don’t come with the expectation of lore, extensive voice acting, etc.

This lets them release more “dungeon” updates more frequently, as fractals those updates have more longevity (as they scale for a hundred levels, and have a more long term relevant reward system than dungeon tokens) and in general lets themwork instance content on a similar release schedule as LS updates, and leave the raids for the “heavy lifting” lore/voicework/etc. expenses.

My guild keeps an “event goer” rank for people who don’t really want to join the guild, but want to roll with us to get their rewards for missions and such once a week. It’s been a fairly successful program in the past for us and we’re starting it up again.

Basically, we don’t expect event people to rep outside of the events, and we ask them not to expect us to do anything for them outside of events. Sometimes people covert to full members, sometimes people just mob in for their weekly events and then go on their merry way until the next week.

No matter what, release times are always going to be horrible for about half the world.

That’s just physics for ya.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Yeah, the f2p players won’t even be able to go into the actual guild hall . . .

Actually, they can go in from the guild panel. They just can’t really use anything in there, according to what we have been told.

I made a much longer post on a similar thread a few weeks back, so I’ll give you the cliff notes here from a guy that has been playing deathblossom in pve for years and tested it extensively with daredevil in the BWEs. There is no “one way” to build it, but here are some things to consder that have changed my build over the years as I went from secondary DPS to primary melee initiator on my PvE groups. Much of this is focused on survivability, so if you like to keep skewing toward damage but feel you need just a tiny bit more tank, consider any or all of the below points!

Energy sigils ain’t that great, use a shortbow, you will need to drop back if you take a big hit and regain SoM health sometimes and SB1 and 2 are great ranged multihitters to do that quickly

Consider mad king runes any time you are running SoM. The bird attack counds each bird strike as an attack, turning your elite in to a pretty nice burst heal without putting your signet on cooldown. It also combos very well with carrion gear on any bleed build. This lets you swap out daggerstorm for BV or another elite for single target fights and still get a nice (and more frequent) burst heal. It’s going to give you enough duration that you can near-cap it with food, and in general tends to have great overall synergy with the damage pie of deathblossom builds and the healing charactersitics of SoM. I pretty much swear by it for this build.

Consider a sigil for condition removal. It actually helps a lot due to the high hit volume of deathblossom (and now lotus)

Consider roll for initiative as a stunbreak. It gives many of the benefits of withdraw (on demand evade to get you out of a tight spot) while still allowing you to use SoM as your heal. It is also a trick, which means it drops a condition when traited. The initiative it grants makes a nice DPS boost, or a good emergency refill when you need to shortbow-heal at range with some cluster bombs after rolling away after a big hit.

Seriously consider a plague sigil. With potent poison this is actually pretty solid aoe damage for a sigil.

Go Carrion, if using a crit sigil take enough sinister pieces to get crit around 10-15% depending on your digil cooldown. Without taking critical strikes, crit doesn’t really do much at all for the condition thief aside from buff the minimal point of your damage. Having more base HP is extremely important when using SoM as a heal, as you don’t have much in the way of reliable burst healing so you need to have a deeper hp to take a few more hits and generally survive if you have to drop back and SB heal.

Caltrops! Caltrops actually proc SoM, and are useful in PvE as many bosses are stationary, and most trash is happy to cluster on you, taking your phat bleeds and providing you extra HP. They’re also a trick which lets you use them as a condi cleanse (though this isn’t usually practical due to the cooldown, it does help passive removal a bit.)

Don’t count out shadow refuge! SR, aside from its ninja nurse abilities, is also a pretty fly combo with SoM and offhand dagger. dancing dagger procs both the dark combo field lifesteal and som on each target hit. If you take a big hit and still have a lot of init, SR can allow you to spam a bunch of dancing daggers and be back up at full HP. The dark field also interacts (less reliably) with shortbow auto for the same healing trick, and it also interacts favorably with impairing daggers (which as of laucnh are 100% projectile finishers) SR is always a good swap for boss fights for both group utility and personal survivability given its versatile nature as either a big stealth or a very useful dark field for personal healing combos as listed.

C-c-combos!
Don’t forget, shortbow 2 is a burst finisher which can net a lot of useful group heal. Necro wells are dark fields which grant the same powerful stacking heal interactions I noted in the paragraph on SR. deathblossom, lotus, and daggerstorm are whirls, so keeping in water, dark, or light fields whenever possible helps team and personal survivability with healing, cleansing, or lifestealing combos that passively trigger while you’re just doing your normal whirly thing.

Shadowstep.6049:

Dadnir.5038:

For boss : learn tell, dodge on tell. Its easy, thieve is probably the profession with the most dodge in game.
For trash : blind them.
For every mob that can hit from range : use smoke screen.

Tips : do not rely on stealth except for trash skip.

actually standard pve build has just as many dodges as any class (nobody plays acro in pve)

Except for the part where the standard boss dps build is d/d, and one of the more popular trash killing builds is unicorn, and the people that don’t run d/d often run d/p, and dagger auto actually grants endurance, so you actually have more dodges than every other class without taking acro any time you’re wielding a MH dagger, which is literally 1/3 of all thief melee builds.

Rashagar.8349:

Rashagar.8349:

PopeUrban.2578:

burning just needs to be made interesting in stead of just being “flashier bleed with higher damage”

Give it a special effect like all other non-bleed conditions so it has actual tactical uses beyond just dealing more damage.

I think it would be cool if burning returned to duration stacking (possibly with a bit of a damage bump) and naturally spread its remaining duration to all nearby non-burning targets each tick, like disease in GW1. Then it would have a unique function like all the other conditions.

This would put it in the same niche as disease. It’s a relatively low DPS condition, but it’s very difficult to completely remove due to the way it spreads. Disease was pretty darn effective at breaking stacks, keeping up AoE pressure, or simply keeping up as a cover for other conditions you didn’t want to be removed quite so fast, and builds designed around exploiting burning on your target could have a lot of that burning damage moved over to effects that benefit from burning in stead.

This is a really interesting thought.

Been thinking on this further, and while I definitely still like the idea of burning having it’s own niche and think that the spreading to nearby targets would be a very cool niche for it to have (I’m not so sure if it’s still an issue but I know it used to be the case that condi builds in general used to have a bit of a problem with dealing AoE damage, and this could be a really interesting way to solve that problem while, as someone else said, discouraging over-use of stacking tactics in content) I don’t think I like the idea of burning returning to stacking by duration any more, since it just goes back to the problems we had before that was changed (where it was near useless to make a build centred around burning).

If it was reduced in power (for the sake of argument let’s say to the power of a current bleed stack), but gained this AoE dimension to it, say a 3 second burn application would, after 1 second, pulse 2 seconds of burn to enemy targets in a 240 radius, so if left unchecked it could spread like, heh, wildfire, among large groups of targets. That would definitely be an interesting change. There might be a problem with the technology being there to make so many of those calculations at once though. It would mean it’s use in sPvP could suffer, too. But if the burning on the secondary targets could also spread, in certain scenarios that could build up to an insane amount of damage.

*Quick and dirty maths time. 1500 condi dmg, ~160 bleed, 425 burn ticks currently.
Currently, Target gets hit by 3s burn: 1275 dmg.
AoE burning suggestion: Set both burn and bleed to 150 for ease.
Primary target gets hit by a 3s burn tick. 450 dmg over duration.
Best Case Scenario: Happens to have 5 nearby allies (has stacked): 2s to each of them: 300 dmg each
3rd second: Nobody moved away when they saw the flames start to spread, Primary target gets hit for 5 stacks of 1s burning: 750 extra dmg. Secondary targets take a spattering of other damage too, depending on distance from each other.
Total to primary target: 1200 dmg.

Thing about this is, it gets scarily exponential among things like wvw zergs, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing? It could just mean that tactics will have to adjust. Besides, I kind of like the idea that, if you see an ally on fire running towards you, you gtfo unless you have AoE cleanse.

It’s definately a thing that would need to be field tested, and honestly burning’s intensity stacking might not even be an issue if it were balanced more like bleed, but wit the aoe spreading element.

It would of course necessitate changes to many burn focused traits and abilities so that they’re not left in the dust. I think burn guardian was a cool build when they added it, and I think it’s a cool playstyle. I’d hate to see it just become useless. I’d hate to see flame engineer return to being mostly useless as well.

However, giving those builds alternate methods to pump condition damage while still being burn-centric could keep them in a good place, and actually give them more unique roles as more stack-breaking builds. I always sort of thought engi flamethrowers should really be a highly effective way to break stacks, and burn guardian is very similar to burn-paragon, so giving him tools similar to that would keep the build in a great place (aura that gives allies burning attacks, take less damage from burning foes, other effects that just plain make the guardian and his allies better when their opponents are on fire)

It definately seems like it would be more fun than “the damage condition, and that other damage condition” in any case.

The game is in maintenance mode, so it’s no small wonder they still charge decent amounts for it just to cover server costs.

The can afford to make GW2 f2p because it’s still experiencing updates, and the f2p system is designed to convince people to but the next update.

With GW1 there will never be a next update, so the only money they’re making from it is initial purchases. Without that income it would be a financial black hole that just sucked money away from GW2.

I swear if there’s not at least one vaporware joke in the next SAB update I will be super sad.

Moto had best comment on the delayed production schedule next time we see him.

Heck, they should at least update his dialogue with some soon and when it’s done jokes in the mean time.

DeceiverX.8361:

Would like to point out that this thread is rapidly approaching the number of views that most patch note threads have, and that talking in chat so far has yielded around only one in five people actually knowing about this, with around 3 of 5 usually responding with “that’s stupid” or similar responses.

@Pope:

Whether or not people leave, I don’t know. But I mean grocery stores could decide to mark up prices by 500%. I mean, nobody needs luxuries/snack foods or pre-prepared meals, no? The money spent on doritos in the past could have gone towards more ingredients to make dinner with. It wouldn’t make their customers very happy if they did this, though, but people would still probably buy food for three meals a day to satisfy their hunger, when in reality they can sustain themselves just fine on only a few hundred calories per day.

And if they realize they’re hurting people? Well, you’re basically saying it wouldn’t be justified to reduce prices because people would complain that they “wasted money on overpriced food in the past.”

That’s effectively your analogy. Exaggerated, slightly. But ethics-wise, it’s pretty much identical. It’s not that the sky is falling; it’s that this is just blatantly screwing people over for no real reason and a portion of their customer base is upset about it.

In another context, why did “the 99%” get so upset? It’s not like “the 1%” are that rich. Maybe those scumbag wanting things on sliver platters should have just worked harder and dealt with their problems instead of whining about any potential legitimate inhibitions. Not that I agree with the mentality in full, but you get the point.

Or maybe you don’t.

I mean, child factory labor wasn’t holding back children from getting an education, right? I mean the world wasn’t suffering from it; the quality of cheap goods was at its best, and there were plenty of well-educated children in the world who grew up to be successful. Right?

</s></rant></dumbstruck>

I think the exaggeration is the idea that this is somehow screwing people over.

It’s a progression system designed for characters who have been maxed out for years, a replacement for “just add 10 more levels and another tier of gear”

I think the problem Anet had was the way they communicated it. People somehow got it in their heads that masteries were progression and specs were not. Clearly, the intent is that they are two sides of the same system. specs, as class specific things are character based progression. Masteries, as class-neutral things with a grind point that actually would make it nearly impossible to advance on multiple characters, are account things.

I’ll turn the snark off and just state my honest opinion:

People are overreacting to this. People have been pandered to so frequently by Anet that now that anet has realized that was a mistake and is rectifying the problem with meaningful progression and difficulty they are freaking out.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I honestly believe that the way it’s laid out is good for the game, not only in the short term, but for the long view of ongoing updates and adding new specs and masteries.

Sunshine.5014:

So, a non HoT member can still withdraw material from the bank that a HoT member put in. Will it break the game somehow? Like people being able to access things they didn’t purchase. I’m just wondering.

If it can be put in a guild bank, it can be sold on the AH as well, so no, it doesn’t break anything. You can only guild bank tradable goods in the first place. Anything HoT hands out that they don’t want traded to non-HoT accounts will be account or soulbound anyway.

Celtic Lady.3729:

So, I get that elites are supposed to be worked for, endgame content, progression for a char, yada, yada.

If we need to play through the jungle in order to fully use the elite spec, then once the jungle content is done and we’ve got the spec, what content exactly are we supposed to use the elite on? Seems like at this point, everything will have been done until the next expac content….

Well, I mean, if you’re playing now you’ve been using the same specs on the same content for like years. At least in this case you’ve got 50 more fractal levels, and new LS and raid releases to look forward to, and It’s pretty unlikely you’ll have hit all the content by the time that stuff is trained since that whole mastry system is kinda designed to pace that content out, right?

Also, don’t forget all dat farmin’ for guild upgrades, core map rewards system, 50 more fractal levels(with not one new fractal, boo anet, fix that) adventure high scores etc. etc.

Most of MMOs is repeating stuff after all. The question people should really ask is “how much fun is it to repeat this stuff?”

If they did their job right you’ll probably want to run around those jungle maps more than one time.

My summary:

GUILD HALLS AND AN END TO THE TYRANNY OF OF WAITING FOR GUILD MISSIONS TO CRAFT! YEAH!

I don’t even care if the story is bad at this point. That guild hall system is sweet and working up those new specs “for real” after the beta testing is going to be rather surreal. Diving in to a place specifically to learn new awesome skills and stuff? It’s like a big ol’ GW1 hug all over again.

Your preparations provided half of your elite spec progression. How does that trivialize anything?

You finished half of your expansion character progression before the expansion released

Think about it.

I’m still waiting for the mass exodus of people who find the idea of playing the game to earn character progression offensive and unacceptable.

Or for that matter the mass exodus of people that swore the game would fold under some massive revolt when ascended was added to the game in 2012

As far as I can tell it isn’t happening. People will complain about this for maybe another week, and then completely forget about it. The handful of people that leave the game over something so silly will not be missed, and the people that stick around will simply become accustomed to it.

If they make it easier later those same people will make another whine thread about how all their “hard work” was “devalued” and how much it’s a “slap in the face” to “veteran players”

Honestly. How many times can the sky be falling in a year without it actually falling?

Aomine.5012:

I hope they actually expand the CORE class, like add NEW WEAPONS without forcing you into a new trait-line.

This should take much less work than designing a whole trait-line to synergize with weapon/spec. This should also make the core class less inferior than the shiny Specialization.

They’ve explained multiple times exactly why they are not attacking it this way.

Adding to core classes means the thing you added has to be balanced against an interact with all the things you already have as well as all the things you will ever add in the future

This was a huge problem when it came to balancing GW1, and one of the main reasons GW2 was designed the way it is in the first place.

The elite spec system was designed specifically so that they can design new traits and skills in a bubble, only having to balance them against a never-moving target of the core class. This actually makes it easier to add these things to the game, as with each addition you are not also making the next addition harder to balance in terms of potential character build power and controlling power creep.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

PopeUrban.2578:

Because soft CC is often spammable for various reasons (in creasing sustain on some classes, pressure on others) and hard cc is not (because spammable hard CC is unfun to play against) they moved to the stacking stability we have now to allow coordinated hard CC to punch through stability so boon stripping is less of a “make or break” mechanic for team fights in pvp or future instances.

Yes, the breaker bar is similar because the hard cc will knock it down much faster. For example something that currently gives 2 stacks of stability maybe gives 10% breaker bar (numbers to be adjusted according to balance). In the current system it takes 2 cc of any strength to get past stability. With a breaker bar it might only take 1 large cc or 3 small ones. The way it currently is, the smaller cc is better at ‘breaking’ or removing stability because it is lower cd and more spam-able and the larger cc doesn’t have a chance. Shouldn’t it be closer to equal? Meaning the larger cc can ‘break’ though stability quicker since they have to wait longer to reuse? and smaller cc take a bit more since it’s widely available and spam-able?

This isn’t only relevant for PvP and WvW because if ArenaNet want to add a boss mechanic with a devastating cc, one simple stack of stability will block it in full instead of having the option of it requiring a larger amount of ‘stability’ (or more full break bar) so you don’t get caught in it.

Also the idea with a break bar at 1% getting hit with a large cc is that part of the cc would be used up to remove that last percent and the rest would still be applied. So something like a 3 second stun get’s reduced to 2.34 seconds after it breaks though the remaining breaker bar.

On mobs, that has a lot more to due with how the break bar reduction values are tuned for specific skills, but this thread is about using break bars on players.

Basically, using break bars on players removes the hard separation between soft and hard CCs. It makes soft CCs stronger than they should be, and hard ccs weaker.

This is okay against mobs, as break bars are mechanics which allow them to design mob CC as a completely binary thing. You either CC the mob or you don’t.

The problem with old defiance was that it worked like stability on steroids, which made it an impossible system to counteract unless you had direct coordination and communication with your allies. As a lot of GW2’s combat consists of having tons of allies you can’t control, and often passive cc applications, defiance effectively made them just plain CC immune.

They moved to break bars to make it much easier to coordinate large uncoordinated groups of players against single targets.

This design is problematic for players because the range of hard and soft CCs are specifically designed to impact players in different ways. Defending players from CC is meant to be more complex than applying CC to mobs, as when you’re fighting other players that extra level of coordination is expected and rewarded, where fighting mobs it can’t reasonably be assumed in many pve encounters.

Mastamaker.2957:

For people crying for mesmer nerfs, please view this post and get your facts straight.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mesmer-is-OP-Facts-vs-Fiction/first#post5632969

Good luck. Thieves have been trying to get people to look at facts for years

It doesn’t work.

Aggro is supposed to be, in most cases, rather unpredictable, just like it was in GW1.

Allowing players to successfully predict aggro patterns leads to the complete obsolesence of survivability stats and abilities, and this is already a large problem for arenanet’s combat design.

Unpredictable aggro means you have to think on your feet in stead of being able to successfully predict the outcome of every fight, and thus end up in a boring and predictable tank&spank

Where anet wants aggro to be predictable (like the aetherpath ooze puzzle) they make it so, and make sure the players are aware exactly how it works. In most cases, however, you’re not actually supposed to know how it works, as it’s not a system they designed to be gamed. It’s a system they designed to be reacted to, and a large portion of GW2’s combat model is built around that primarily reactive rather than proactive design.

So, uh, I do this kind of stuff for a living. I can’t say exactly why anet isn’t interested in upgrading, but I can offer some common reasons I or my clients have not immediately switched to newer API versions in the past.

Because switching to a completely separate graphics API is not a matter of just changing a few variables in most cases. It often requires replacing large sections of depreciated code, and this process is generally more complex the bigger a version jump you are making.

Because designing effects and assets to take advantage of any new rendering features may make current installs unplayable, which means you’re not actually taking advantage of the most marketable features of the API upgrade (new rendering features, material pipelines, or performance enhancements that would allow you to cram more polygons, textures, shader passes, or other visual data on screen)

Because MMOs in general don’t like to demand their users to upgrade to experience updated content. it’s far more likely to lose more players than it gains.

Because art direction contributes more to the overall aesthetic quality of a game than shader technology.

Because no matter what it requires engineers to stop working on new things in order to retrofit an old thing.

Anets reasons could be any or none of these, but it’s not uncommon to “version lock” any external programming APIs the minute a new version conflicts with internal code just to simplify your pipeline.

Having played several games that tried advertising support (shadowbane, anarchy online, battlefield 2142) I can say that it’s extremely intrusive and annoying, and if faced with the option of paying a subscription (not my favorite model) or being subjected to ads, I’d choose the sub every day.

Seeing ads for outside products or services in a game rings of desperation as in every single instance (except mobile games for some reason, but that world is… strange) the developers have implemented it as a last resort effort when the game is basically on life support and they’re not prepared to invest extra effort in to updates or new things to retain players.

The microtransaction/buy to play models are far superior methods from a consumer standpoint as long as they’re done in an inobtrusive way.

GW2 does a pretty good job with this. You only see BLTC ads in the launcher, or when you open the trade post (so you’re “shopping” in way way or another already) and the expansion model is a great move as it de-emphasizes the cash shop so that they’re not pressured to keep pushing it quite as hard due to the fact it’s not their sole ongoing means of income.

Sure, the living story with themed gem store tie-ins was nice, but it also sort of sucked that that model basically forced them in to moving pretty much all cosmetic rewards to microtransactions to keep turning a profit.

For the record I think a balance between LS and the gem store could have continued to work, but hey, people wanted to wait and get big chunks of infrequent content in stead of small chunks of frequent content, so Anet gave the people what they wanted.

It’s entirely plausible you might want to replace the existing sigil. You know, if you got the weapon as a drop or something. Or you just plain want to leave a slot open because you’re saving up for a different sigil. Or any number of reasons.

It’s also why there’s a big confimation dialog that asks “Are you sure you want to replace sigil X with sigil Y?”

Just to make sure you have to confirm by hitting yes that you want to make a costly mistake, same as the confimation when salvaging rare+items, deleting rare+ items, selling rare+items, etc.

Obviously these “mistake proofing” measures can’t stop all user error, but they eliminate most of it.

If all I read were the forums, I’d swear this game was called Refund Wars 2.

Hero points are contained in open world maps.

Living story updates contain new maps.

Living story will continue after HoT launch.

Gosh, it’s almost like they want you to play the expansion to progress in the new expansion mechanics.

Submit your refunds now.

The boss loot is locked out, but you can run the content as much as you like to help others. It’s basically the same lockout system as the current guild bounties.

DeWolfe.2174:

PopeUrban.2578:

It’s a matter of taste really. You prefer to pretend your characters have accomplished things. I prefer that my characters actually accomplished things. You’re not wrong, I simply don’t share your viewpoint.

And, whom said my characters have not accomplished things? The issue is the redundancy as we, the real life human being, are the actual entity experiencing and accomplishing things. Now nothing prevents a player from doing content over again per character for their own personal experience. Though forcing players to do content over and over and over again is completely different. A design that will lead to repetitive and non engaging game play. For example, I’m betting the majority of character’s in game do not have map complete. Why is that, because the human being doesn’t want to do it again and again. Especially when it’s such a poor experience to do but, that’s a different conversation. Though most players I’ve come in contact with have expressed they did it once and never want to do it again. That’s why the game has to be designed around the human experience and not the pixels.

At what point did any game system force you to roll 50 characters?

You chose to roll 50 characters, and I’m guessing many of those were rolled when the game was far less alt friendly than it is now.

There are no material benefits from having more characters leveled up and doing content. In fact the only system that actually makes alts an advantage from a mechanical standpoint is crafting.

Alts aren’t an assumption, they’re an option. That option comes with the understanding that the game is not at a base level designed to require you to roll a bunch of alts.

You chose to roll 50 characters? Great. Good for you!

However the game as a whole is not built around the assumption or requirement that people have giant stables of alts.

It is an option. A pact you signed when you decided to roll them that says “I realize I have to level again, get some new gear, walk to waypoints, and generally put in more effort than I would if I played my existing characters.”

The (PvE) game isn’t designed around alts. They just happen to have been very cool about enabling alts. This is a classic example of people having been given an inch who are now expecting a mile.

Nobody forced you to roll 50 alts, and nobody is forcing you to update 50 alts to elite specs, just like nobody is forcing you to craft a full set of ascended for every single one,or do 100% world completion on every one, or even level every one of them to 80. Those are choices you made, and I’m guessing you put in a lot more time and gold in to gearing alts than I have because it was your choice.

You already chose to go through a massive amount of redundancy by choosing to create so many completely redundant characters. You’re expecting them to cater to people who already clearly enjoy doing the same thing over and over by… not making them do the same thing over and over?

I just don’t get the logic I guess.

You need favor and 100g for the expedition.

Anet has not stated exactly how much favor.

I am betting it is far more favor than people assume it is, and we will have a multi-page thread of people whining about it.

Diak Atoli.2085:

Swagger.1459:

I think each hp spot should be worth ten points

Each Hero Challenge in Heart of Thorns, and the WvW option for Heart of Thorns, is worth 10 hero points…

Ironically, it costs more hero challenges to unlock a standard elite specialization in core Tyria than it does to unlock an elite specialization in Heart of Thorns,and the elite also gives you a set of 6 utility skills and cosmetic items.

There’s nothing ironic about having expansion progression mechanics be more effectively progressed inside the actual expansion.

Also, this isn’t how you use the word Ironic, unless you’re singing an Alanis Morissette song that doesn’t understand how to use the word Ironic.

SlayerSixx.5763:

That’s the problem. If you want to look at it thematically, thieves aren’t characterised by their stealth. They’re characterised by their subtlety and/or deftness of their fighting style. Mobile, quick, accurate and precise. The stealth just feeds into that. Having them run around with gray/black smoke and blowing things up kinda looks like…..

Necros death shroud.

If you want to suggest something tied to stealth (I have no idea why anyone would want to do this, what with all of the reveal flying around), have it tied to this sort of stealthy teleport barrage. Have the thief start in a location and, like S/D, teleport towards their target, strike, drop two markers before/after/during the strike and have the thief teleport to the marker of his choosing, stealth and then repeat the flurry until he either misses, is blocked, or is blinded. Each two successive markers placed have even less range and even less duration but increased stealth duration and damage per strike. If the thief is fighting more than one enemy he can choose to continue and follow up on that new target with a 50% increase in damage (after all of the boosts) that should one shot the next enemy. The increasing ramp up of damage is meant to reward the thief for actually landing all of these hits, but counterplay, aside from guessing when a stealthed target is about to strike, lies in smashing the markers or using some of the copious amounts of reveal that will be running around in the game in less than 48 hours.

Thoughts?

Thieves are very much characterized thematically by smoke, dust, and magical shadow effects. Stealth is part of that, but even the completely non-stealth daredevil retained a massive amount of smoke/shadow aesthetics in its profession and skill effect art.

As for Shadow form, it comes from the precursor to the GW2 thief, the GW1 assassin, who was actually a class without any stealth mechanics at all (as stealth did not exist in GW1) but similarly leaned very heavily on obfuscation as a theme in the form of smoke and teleportation style effects.

I would really like a way to turn off particle effects on legendaries. I’m going to be upset if I like the legendary skin but hate lighting up like the sun every time I pull my weapons out.

Cynister.2865:

Not to point fingers, but if I have to I will, I have noticed (as have many others I’ve spoken too) a noticable increase in snarky, elitist, negative Map chat from what appears to be F2P and new players. Many of these players have generally worn their experience in their previous game (the big MMO that us GW2 players ran screaming from) on their sleeve like we should bow down and be impressed. If you need to keep an eye on the community, it is these new people that have come into the game with the expectation that a game without a holy trinity stinks, and without 10 levels of gear to grind for it must be a waste of their time.

Sorry for the mini rant, but the reason I’ve stayed with this game since launch is the community. PLEASE keep an eye on the droves of refugees from that other game that are bringing their negative baggage with them. Thanks!!

None of them are f2p. f2p guys can not use map chat. Those are all legit new accounts that will lose fifty bucks if they get banned.

What do you mean… “fill up”?

Given the social awkwardness, culture mixing, and general forced pandering to oversensitive asian audiences, I could only see Cantha coming back as a highly diversified “civil war” area in which Canthans split themselves in to recognizable asiatic cultures.

The problem with that is that it completely destroys the aesthetic and theme of Cantha as a place. What made cantha special really was that feel of a “unified asia” and the way that all the architectural, clothing, and cultural elements were blended together.

In a “socially acceptable for asian markets” Cantha, that would be lost, and we’d end up with a really boring continent full of simply mundane “oh, here is team japan, here is team korea, here is team china” vibe.

Or, in stead they could revisit Elona, which was a just plain more well developed and interesting setting in every way.

I’ve seen alternate asia in like half of every MMO ever and if we’re not going to get a unique treatment of “only the coolest looking stuff from all of asian history” like we did in factions that would completely overcomplicate and subvert the existing lore, then I’d rather not see it at all.

Elona on the other hand is extremely unique as a fantasy environment. I can’t even come up with a single other MMO, or even a single video game that really dove deep in to north african culture and built a thriving and sensible world around it.

If I had to choose between a Cantha gutted in the interest of political correctness, or an Elona untouched by anything but the natural flow of tyria’s lore, I’d pick elona every time.

They already have this feature. It’s called scrolls of xp from diong dailies and tomes of xp from login rewards.

You can completely level characters to 80 without leaving the tutorial if you have a means of accessing your bank.

solfizz.5730:

Zietlogik.6208:

Not with HoT, but maybe if we get a “Depths of Tyria” expansion or something would be interesting.

But currently it looks like areas instead are the norm, Kralk will have the Crystal Desert, Jormag will have the Far Shiverpeaks, Mord has the Jungle.

But I would love to see it happen myself.

The only real changes are scavenger hunts, and some reward changes for materials etc.

“Depths of Tyria” …I like the ring of that!

Sorry for my ignorance, but what are scavenger hunts in the context of this game?

“collections”

They’re a certain subset of achievements that task you with collecting a series of items. Collections are a little different than pure scavenger hunts as you don’t really have to turn in the items. for instanc,e the collection for bandit weapons, you simply have to acquire one of each skin. You don’t have to keep them though. As soon as you pick up or buy, say, a bandit sword, the collection is updated, and you are free to salvage or sell it without losing progress.

I usually run all carrion on thief condi builds, but in places where the extra HP is less useful I often swap out by backpack or jewelry for some sinister pieces for a little extra damage.

Carrion will generally put you in a nice place though. You’ll have around 20k HP, which is enough to not be oneshot by most heavy attacks even without any toughness, and you’ll still have great condi damage and good white damage on top of it.

If you’re investing in the critical strikes line, crit chance becomes a lot more important, but if you’re not it’s a mostly wasted stat past the 10% or so crit rate you need to proc sigils on cooldown.

DeWolfe.2174:

PopeUrban.2578:

You have over 50 characters specifically because you don’t care about characters as a concept.

Characters are, thematically, individuals. They have individual stories, classes, races, etc. from both a mechanical and a storytelling standpoint

For one thing, your view of a character is extremely limited as only the actual human experience is what matters. And, our experiences are filtered and altered by the characters we chose to represent us in the moment. Thus, I have that many because they all have themes created to go with content and my desires at said time. Do you have characters with names and appearances for holidays like Halloween and Wintersday??? You probably do not. Though some of us are creative and like to make the most of such times. The cost of a character should not dissuade a player from exploring such experiences. That’s why these specializations should be account unlocks as traits used to be. Also, the issue may be compounded in the future if this precedent of having to unlock everything first before the new specialization. How long will it take to obtain a new specialization on top of the core profession and previous specialization? To sit there and think, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to run a Sylvari (shiny new specialization) in this content!” but, the thought of having to spend 120 hours to roll and level stops a player from doing so. To me, that many hours would be extremely prohibitive and well into the “oh kitten that” time frame. Diminishing and stifling the creativity and number of characters created. Which, in the end, would limit how colorful and grand Tyria could be.

You’re entitiled to your opinion, obviously, but that’s exactly what I’m trying to address.

You don’t value characters as mechanical entities. You value them as sets of clothing and weapons. You’re not interested in what they achieved individually but rather what they can do for your efficiency or roleplaying as a player, as you interpretation of advancement is that of you, the player, making gains, and the characters are all simply tools to that end.

You created some holiday characters because they allow you to play dress up, but you’re not really concerned with these characters having any kind of footprint or journey through the world.

I don’t agree with that viewpoint as I believe it’s important that characters themselves have internal sets of accomplishments. The characters are the heroes, not me, I’m just the driver. My guardian killing a dragon doesn’t mean my thief deserves a trophy for killing a dragon, as as far as the world is concerned, that thief never killed that dragon.

It’s a matter of taste really. You prefer to pretend your characters have accomplished things. I prefer that my characters actually accomplished things. You’re not wrong, I simply don’t share your viewpoint.

Sthenith.5196:

I don’t believe any condition build matches to the DPS of a zerker, it’s just not possible given the time frame of boss fights

If you’re talking about boss fights that don’t last long, then yes, zerker dps is much higher in a short amount of time. But if, like i suspect, HoT will bring longer fights into the mix, then no, Condi dmg can reach pure zerk builds.

Just look at the Condi dmg a dire build mesmer can reach, 2.4K condi dmg with skills that can apply burns, confusions and torments (2227 torment dmg…) in a matter of seconds, burns that last for 10.5 secs…. Not to mention that survivability is way higher then a zerk build.

As an example, look at some WB’s. When there’s a lot of condition classes/builds present, the WB’s HP just keeps melting away even past the point where you can’t hit them. (example : shadow behe)

I just hope the condi builds will become even more viable (or a mix of DD+condi), and that they will finetune the minor issues. Fingers crosses for HoT.

Well, from what we tested, we were staring down bosses with 2 million+ HP that we had to tackle with ten people, and at least one if not more of those people purposely running sub-optimal DPS.

Conditions were pretty effective.

Arenanet’s definition of a guild as said by Colin during the stream, officially, is “groups of five or more people”

less than that “Isn’t even a group” and they aren’t designing guild systems around that, but encourage you to team up with/bribe others if you want to play the guild system in unintended ways, as they will not attempt to prevent you from doing so.

Do whatever you like with that information, or check the guild week player Q&A stream to hear directly what Colin had to say on the subject.

That said, I’d be happy to get some of my guys to team up with your guild and help you accomplish whatever it is you are after to get your hall. no bribery required

Probably not. GW2 is built on a buy to play business model, so they generally expect people to have to buy occasionally to play more content.

I think the three years we got out of core tyria was pretty rad, but changing it more would make the experience even more disorienting and confusing for new players than it is now.

Like, the living world is a great concept, but it isn’t fully deliverable within the narrative restrictions of how GW2 is set up past a certain point.

You can’t both say that all new characters exist before the formation of the pact and a death of zhaitan while simultaneously continuing to make massive changes to open world zones that at a basic level assume being “stuck in time” at a certain point.

This was the lesson they learned from LS1, and why they moved to the LS2 model of subtle changes that aren’t confusingly out of place when you go “back in time” on new characters. You end up murdering content that new players rely upon to understand the ongoing story, and really confusing them.

I’m already tired of explaining to new people why LA looks different in their story missions since the game doesn’t bother.

Bettik.4982:

PopeUrban.2578:

PvE is absolutely a game mode about characters rather than the person playing them. This isn’t a “roleplaying” standpoint, but a basic fundamental fact of PvE world, encounter, and reward design.

I don’t agree with you here, I’m afraid – all game modes should be about the player – the character is subsidiary – the rewards in a game should be designed around the player account, rather than it’s transitory characters.

We’ll have to agree to disagree here. You view characters as “transitory” while I view them as central to any given PvE experience. The game mode is about the player only in as much as the player is the “brains” behind the character, but the accomplishments and rewards are thing the character (under the control of the player) earned as part of the world.

There is nothing worse than an RPG that continually encourages people to roll new characters and shelf existing ones.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Furajir.3815:

With the new evades that throw daggers and cause condis, anyone have any luck with a staff/condi thief? Relying on lots of dodging and torment etc?

Lotus Training is not that great for applying condition IMO — I abused the heck out of it the last BWE and it’s not what I expected. You have a better result in applying bleeding and torment using P/D.

This. It’s great as a supplement to a condition build to make it better, but you can’t create a built solely focused on the effects on a dodge ability. If you really like lotus, I highly reccommend rolling a condition D/D deathblossom build, as lotus was designed primarily around bumping up that sort of evasive/condi build.

With staff though, you’re going to be much better off looking at the other options.