Guild Wars 2

Bearhugger.4326:

Let’s see…

• Since it’s always been a mystery to Guild Wars players, let’s make the expansion in whatever setting was planned for Guild Wars: Utopia.

That’s never going to happen. Everything that was unique about utopia and the people would have lived there was repurposed and turned in to the asura and parts of the design of orr when Anet decided to make GW2 (and decided GW2 needed to invent a bunch of playable nonhuman races simply because every other game does it) The magitech, mayan influences, golems, architecture, etc. etc have already been used. The Tanneks were changed in to Primordius and the destroyers. Other bits of the architecture were repurposed for the art style of Orr.

There’s literally not enough left clinging to the bones of utopia to resurrect it, and there’s no reason to. All you’d have left would be the idea of time travel and chronomancy, and some mounts, all things which I’d rather not get in to as Tyria’s lore has been abused and mishandled enough in the transition from the first game to this one, and mounts are just plain fanservice in GW2’s design without any real gameplay reason to exist. I can only imagine how much more nonsensical things would get by throwing an entire time travel continent in to the game.

BrunoBRS.5178:

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m starting to think that they could make leaps and bounds on the balance front if they simply doubled HP for every class in PvP, and balanced from there.

GC burst would still be valuable, but classes wouldn’t be able to build glass cannons that downed targets in mere seconds. Conditions would need to be reapplied more, which would create more desire for heals and cleansing focused builds to exist in the meta. The way HP pools exist now, only 1v1 fights have and chance at a decent back and forth before a clear victor emerges, but the thief’s escape mechanisms make them too able to take a position of “win or not fight” while other classes are limited to “win or lose” doubling HP would mean thieves would be on more equal ground, they’d have to scrap a bit after a burst like everyone else and commit to the fight to win it rather than immediately being able to ditch it if the burst fails, and that would open the door for other glass specs to compete for their 1v1 win. This wouldn’t remove the thief’s ability to selectively engage, which i think is a hallmark feature of the class that should remain, but it would bring us in line with how other glass specs have to sacrifice some escape utility.

Teamfights are often completely determined in the initial 5 seconds of combat, often before either party has a change to make full use of their tools and team composition. As long as that’s the case, I don’t feel like there’s room in the game for support and bunker to share space with glassy damage specs, the game will always revert to ‘everyone is a bunker so that they can use all their tools’ or ‘everyone is glass so that they can win where it counts’

it would just lead to more immortal bunkers, really.

i think the numbers are fine, it just comes down to balancing the defense mechanisms of each class. eles get to outheal almost anything when they spec defensively (read: water), thieves have a bunch of damage denial skills through blinds, teleports and evades, etc.

I dunno though, I mean, if we talk about enhancing base HP, i don’t think values/ratios would need to be as high as they are on bunker abilities. The advantage to base HP increases is that they affect everyone, while adjustments to defensive mechanics are pretty hit and miss. Adjusting water heals doesn’t change the game for dd glass builds for instance, but doubling hp (or just increasing it) across the board would, and I feel it’s a lot easier to dial down defenses incrementally than it is to dial down damage in a game with the possibility of a 5-6 second TTK in 1v1 fights. I feel like when that’s possible, even against an AFK player, it’s really difficult to balance spank versus tank.

Either way there’s still a lot that needs to be done in the way of build diversity.

Kohlteth.3715:

PopeUrban.2578:

Things world bosses lack (Not just the shatterer, but most of them)
-snip-

I like all of these ideas a LOT !!

I edited in a few more “bonus points” before you posted too, thanks!

Things world bosses lack (Not just the shatterer, but most of them)

Stack Breakers

If it’s possible in any sense of the word to stand in one place for an entire fight with a boss and not die, that fight is broken. This doesn’t mean you need to one shot people, but the pre-nerf fire elemental felt like just the right amount of difficulty for a mid level boss. His flame pools hit hard, but were small and easy to avoid as long as one paid attention. Golem MK2 is a great example of easy-yet-gratifying boss design due to the mechanics of the static field. The simple act of seeing the tell for the field and moving out of the way, only so see John sleepypants next you you bite it because he didn’t is really gratifying, but not at all complex due to the otherwise completely ignorable other abilities.

Movement/Purpose/Grand Strategy

World bosses have no objectives. They show up and then stand around waiting to be killed until the timer runs out. Sure that shaman might be theoretically summoning a giant elemental, but in reality he’s just standing around waiting to get killed. The Ancient Karka was a great example of what a world boss should be, despite the massive lag and such due to problems with server tech at the time. That thing went on a RAMPAGE through the zone, and we busted up a fair amount of the environment and had a lot of different experiences throughout the fight. Chased it through trees, threw rocks at it, hit it with an avalanche, weathered a spiral of endless hatchling zergs, and finally stomped it through a hole in the floor. It was easily the best designed boss encounter the game has yet had (the recent pale tree boss is a pretty close second.) Sure some bosses have “phases” but they don’t feel like a meaningful and epic power struggle. They’re just minor abilities that even the boss doesn’t seem too interested in. Zone bosses, even the easy ones should be map-wide events with big set pieces of destruction and interesting mechanics related to the path the battle follows. Bonus points for branching paths based on player action or random number generation! A dragon rampaging through a zone destroying stuff is still a timer, it’s just a much more FUN timer than having a bar on the screen while it sits still. The fire elemental could tear through the lab, destroying equipment. The shaman could command his ice elemental through the zone, freezing monsters and ambient critters in his wake, add spawns could appear from logical places like huts and caves along the battle path rather then out of nowhere. It would still be the same fight mechanically, but it would be a lot more fun to take them all “on tour”.

Unique Rewards

The “hard” bosses have these, But the easier bosses should have them too. What harm would it be to make all of the rares from each boss bonus chest contain a unique skin set for the boss they come from? It would increase the reward factor for fighting them even if they didn’t technically hand out better loot. Nobody said all the skins added to the game had to be super-rare. Heck, maybe put a handful gem consumables on their loot tables as well. Surely you won’t automatically see a huge dip in gem sales if boss chests dropped the occasional booster or black lion key as people determined to get these for free already use rerolling key farm to do so more reliably and in a non-gated fashion.

Deathblows

World bosses are one-note fights without a lot of personal interaction with the players. Sure, they target you, but what if they had unique ways of finishing off players that died within their zone of attack? This would be another way to increase the epic feel while not making the fights much more difficult. Let’s say they randomly target players that have been dead for over 15 seconds and do nasty things to them. Maybe shatterer picks a guy up and eats him, of the shaman/elemental sucks them up in to the vortex to spin around for a while before being flung over a nearby ridge, etc. This would make the fights far more thrilling. “Oh crap, look what it did to fred! I’ll avenge you fred!” In addition, having a “corpse clear” mechanic for them would add a low impact way to make them feel nastier that normal mobs while only slightly increasing difficulty. Conversely what if random players were selected to land the final blow with an amazing and heroic animation similar to the ones we see in games like skyrim or dragon age? Don’t tie any achievements and rewards to it, just have it be a cool visual thing that players get to see themselves do on a rare occasion. Bonus points if player deathblows come with a (skippable) cinematic camera angle that showcases the person delivering the deathblow, or showcases your own grisly demise if the boss deathblows you.

I’m starting to think that they could make leaps and bounds on the balance front if they simply doubled HP for every class in PvP, and balanced from there.

GC burst would still be valuable, but classes wouldn’t be able to build glass cannons that downed targets in mere seconds. Conditions would need to be reapplied more, which would create more desire for heals and cleansing focused builds to exist in the meta. The way HP pools exist now, only 1v1 fights have and chance at a decent back and forth before a clear victor emerges, but the thief’s escape mechanisms make them too able to take a position of “win or not fight” while other classes are limited to “win or lose” doubling HP would mean thieves would be on more equal ground, they’d have to scrap a bit after a burst like everyone else and commit to the fight to win it rather than immediately being able to ditch it if the burst fails, and that would open the door for other glass specs to compete for their 1v1 win. This wouldn’t remove the thief’s ability to selectively engage, which i think is a hallmark feature of the class that should remain, but it would bring us in line with how other glass specs have to sacrifice some escape utility.

Teamfights are often completely determined in the initial 5 seconds of combat, often before either party has a change to make full use of their tools and team composition. As long as that’s the case, I don’t feel like there’s room in the game for support and bunker to share space with glassy damage specs, the game will always revert to ‘everyone is a bunker so that they can use all their tools’ or ‘everyone is glass so that they can win where it counts’

The basic idea is to add a counter to burst and ganks, allowing the thief a backup plan if a fight is going badly of sticking in the fight rather than using escape mechanisms to reset it. It’s also useful in groupfight and point capping scenarios and certain PvE scenarios, effectively allowing the thief an elite option that isn’t about damage but rather affording the ability to stay in a fight, while providing an additional escape mechanism if that sustain fails.

It’s a good option to secure stomps, hold points, better initiate with their team in PvP and PvE groups, and counter outside revealed applications or react to an enemy burst with a corresponding burst of sustain rather than having all thief elites centered around initial damage. It also allows the thief a long CD option for immediately resetting revealed at the cost of their elite slot.

In short, it’s a defensive elite because we don’t have one, and if we did we might not be as reliant on a certain handful of utilities, which would free up that space for more situational or interesting options.

I got the idea from tornado and juggernaut, wherein the elite is a brief “mode swap” that allows the player to have a panic button option for when they just need to stay alive a little longer until allies can help or they can shave that last bit of HP off of their target when low on HP in stead of being forced out of the fight.

Bryzy.2719:

BrunoBRS.5178:

^ what he said. seriously, 1v1 specs are cool and all, but can we have some build variety? everyone else that has drastically underpowered specs gets overhauls, we get… nothing. it’s getting annoying.

Most professions want more ‘build variety’, but I think that’s just naive.

Players naturally gravitate towards the builds that are the most rewarding without being too difficult for them to learn – hence the formation of metas. They will play through all builds they think might be viable until they find the ‘best’ one for their favourite gameplay mode, whether PvE, PvP or WvW. Sure, Anet could introduce more variety by revamping existing skills and traits or adding new ones, but that won’t stop players from forming metas in each game mode after they’ve sifted through all the potential new builds looking for the most rewarding one.

A well balanced PVP game has a meta that changes without reacting to developer changes to its mechanics or values.

GW1 had this. The PvP meta was constantly in flux not because of balance changes, but because players designed new group compositions in response to the existing meta, which then had to be reacted to, which where then counter-reacted to again, and so on. When they balanced things in GW1 it was because a skill broke that mold and stopped the meta from evolving because it was the alpha dog best option which prevented any other from countering it. It’s the same reason they adjusted PvE skills. When a specific build or builds defined a class and made anything outside the mold sub par, they changed it so that players had the opportunity to build characters in diverse but equally successful ways.

The term “balance” isn’t just about making sure a handful of skills don’t strike each other from existince, but also making sure that every choice made about building a character is a meaningful and rewarding choice that isn’t by default inferior to a single build that pushed the entire idea of choosing skills, traits, and gear out the window. Otherwise there’s no point or reward in choosing those things for the player.

Flip Out (Trick)
Elite Skill
Cooldown: 120 seconds
Becomes Backflip for 15 seconds when used
Adds Revealed: 15s

The thief grows brazen, throwing caution to to wind. While flipped out, your Power/Vitality and Ferocity/Healing Power values are reversed and you deal and recieve 50% less damage for 15 seconds.

Backflip
Stun Break
Removes Revealed
The thief ends the effects of Flip Out early, and evades backward, breaking stuns.

An Ode to Daggerstorm.

There’s something insanely awesome about daggerstorm because it’s directly opposite of everything else the thief ever does. Normally we’re attempting to avoid notice, doing these little hit and run tactics, lurking on the fringe of fights, dancing cautiously with our opponents. Then comes daggerstorm.

Daggerstorm is like opening a window in a dark room, instantly your thief goes from a skirmisher selectively picking at single targets to a whirling engine of destruction with a big flashy effect that says “LOOK AT ME I WILL KILL ALL THE THINGS!” as if, for a brief moment, he forgot everything he knows about the world and just said “kitten it, I’ll just flip out now”

Sure other classes have flashy “mode switch” elites like tornado or juggernaut or that awesome cloud thing that necro do that I can’t remember the name of, but they aways feel like bigger versions of what the class already does to me. Daggerstorm is different because it looks at its class and says “you know what? screw all that, I’m gonna spin in circles and attack everything at once because I’m daggerstorm. Say something about it”

Pile on mad king runes and signet of malice, and daggerstorm becomes even more awesome, summoning a flock of white birds at his brief moment of invincible glory like the living embodiment of every John Woo movie (do it with a P/P build and wear a trenchcoat for maximum cinematic effect)

For eight seconds I am invincible. I am immortal. I am something greater than I was. For eight seconds I am free. For eight seconds I kiss the face of the divine. And then it’s over. The skill ends or my boons are stripped and I am once again that fragile scrapper, evading or being mercilessly beaten to death. You allowed me to taste a glory for that short time dagger storm.

I love you.

I wouldn’t say it’s anti-thief. The one really big nerf was black powder, and it was needed to add some counterplay without completely destroying the build.

It’s not suprising they didn’t make any big adjustments to the thief’s meta builds as they are already quite well balanced.

The problem is that the patch doesn’t do much to FIX the massive number of things that are broken on thieves. They’re continually doing things to buff and fix usless engi kits and turret builds, but we’ve still never seen a single update do anything meaningful to our traps or non-share venoms. We’ve seen multiple classes have skills drastically changed to address inconsistancies in damage typing or build roles. We’ve seen multiple classes have stuff drastically buffed or changed to afford more build options.

Thief, however, is always ever-so-lightly tweaked around its 1v1 builds, and has never been meaningfully adjusted for build diversity or skill consistancy. They keep ramming venomshare down out throats, but what they fail to realize is that people don’t want to run venomshare becuse, unlike shout or banner warrior, support guard, etc. it’s a support spec that requires blowing all of your cooldowns at the same time and then standing around doing nothing. It’s a fundamentally not fun spec to play, because the mechanics of the spec preclude it from having utility or survivability outside of its burst, and its burst requires treating the entire utility bar like one skill. It’s the same reason people hate/don’t run signet stab builds. Builds that let you do something meaningful once in a blue moon are only fun to play when their burst is ready.

We don’t need more or better damage specs, but if you’re going to balance us how about fleshing out our build options so that damage speccing isn’t all we have to bring to the table? What if we could spec in to stealth blinding, or shadowstepping our allies out of danger, or trap cc builds? Or melee range heal/cleanse builds for highly kinetic evade/support?

What if we had elites that were useful and fight defining like warriors and mesmers (or like basilisk venom pre-nerf)?

What if we could build around stealing as a primary build focus?

It’s not that thieves get consistantly big nerfs. We don’t. We get consistant small adjustments to existing specs, but what we never get is those big sexy adjustments that create new viable spec options that every other class seems to acquire each patch.

BrunoBRS.5178:

PopeUrban.2578:

IMO Thief deserves mace and rifle first, both as control-heavy low damage single target weapons with high init costs.

This would make them pair really well with the thief’s existing skillset, with the high init cost mitigating the potentially overpowered ability to apply hard stuns/dazes and weapon swap to spam damage.

I’d place the buff traits for these weapons on the trickery line, granting the thief boon procs for successful CC.

In addition, this would give thieves a really great 1200 range role, thus giving them a valuable and unique option for WvW and open world content.

can we please have something that isn’t single target?

Part of the thief’s design is that they’re good single target combatants as assassins or duelists, with a lot of great tools to selectively engage.

Having a “nuke weapon” isn’t something that fits well in to the thief toolbox when paired with our evasion and disengage ability. Our current AoE option is a good example of this. Shortbow can plink at a group, spam an aoe that gets less effective hte long the range to target, has two mobility skills, and has an AoE support skill poison field to help but not overshadow more AOE focused classes like ele (to go with the burst for a weakness/vuln combo)

I’d say a “trap weapon” aoe set would be a good fit for us, but they decided that mines were more of an engineer thing (as we assume characters build their own devices) as thieves are more focused around martial combat than devices. Plus, again, it would be a bit overpowered with our existing stealth/evade mehcanics as it is passive damage which would allow us to get a little too much utility out of our active evades.

I’m pretty sure he heard it through the grape vine.

Basically, Rits in lore don’t exist because that style of magic (binding spirits) only ever existed in Cantha, and Cantha hasn’t been in contact with the rest of the world for a very long time. Rits in game don’t exist because their mechanics (turrets and held item summons) have been split between existing classes. Being sneaky and fighting with daggers, on the other hand has existed everywhere, and it was only a mechanical absence in prophecies because they thought an assassin archetype wouldn’t work without stealth, and at that time they didn’t think stealth was a good value addition to GW1’s mechanics as they were trying to build a game without aggro management.

Also, Anet has said several times that classes represent archetypes in GW2 rather than the specific professions they represented in GW1. They’ve also said that they’d be unlikely to invent new classes unless they fulfilled an archetype that wasn’t currently present. Ritualists are death/spirit magic users, and their archetype is already represented by GW2 necromancers. If we ever do make it to cantha, I’d wager that ritualists would be represented as necromancers, and most classes would gain access to new cantha-style weapons or skills (fighting staves, war glaives, spirit binding magics, urn magics, weapon enchantments, combo style skills)

I miss skill rings. I often wonder what GW1, and by extension GW2 would have been like if skills dropped as items and were tradable like they were in the old GW1 beta.

I also miss the idea of in-combat skill captures that were hard to pull off and wish that they had fixed that system and made it more uniform across all skill types rather than replacing it with captures from dead bosses. Also, I wish skill captures was still a thing in GW2.

Honestly, I think they should simply add a dueling lobby in the mists. That way you wouldn’t be swamped with duel requests in PvE or have stupidity like the fight clubbing in WvW.

Direct trading is unnecessary, and is a relic of MMO design. Anyone engaging in honest trade can do so much more efficiently with automated auction house/personal shop systems, and furthermore, games without trade are also games without people spamming every channel ever with WTS posts. Seriously, you should have seen what GW1 LA was like before they made and enforced trade channels, or tried to trade anything AFTER they added them. It was a mess, and is a mess in every game which supports point to point trading, and only benefits scammers while making it harder to buy the items you want to buy from people.

As long as you can give items away there is literally no need for player to player trading, as that is its only useful function in a game with a functioning auction house.

It would eviscerate the fundamental balance of the game. Some classes would be immediately much more powerful (warriors, elementalists) while other classes would remain largely unchanged (Thieves, Engineers)

Class mechanics are specifically designed around the weapon limitations in play. Ele spells are powerful but niche specifically because of range limitations and attunements. Kits are powerful specifically because they replace a weapon swap. Thief skills are spammable specifically because they don’t combo well with swapping sets and use a shared cooldown.

You’d have to redesign every class from the ground up if you made this change.

That’s an unfair assumption, because, were the gender roles reversed, nobody would bat an eyelash. If we had only one female iconic and she was “the stereotypically pretty but dim witted one”, if evon was female and Kiel was male (though, to be fair, that plot point grew from a player-decided event) or hey, if We had a king of kryta and the lady leader of the seraph ran off “for love of that guy I’m kinda in to”…

It would be a social justice kittenstorm, and rightly so.

Not only that, the way the Kas/Jory romance is literally shoved in our faces every time they are together is, quite honestly, offensive to anyone in any sort of romantic relationship. You wouldn’t hang out with people that do that in real life because it’s equal parts rude and annoying, no matter what their sexual orientation was.

Equality isn’t about misrepresentation in the opposite direction. It’s about fair and honest representation. Moreover, it’s about establishing characters that feel honest and true to form.

Take a look at Bioware’s Dragon Age games. There’s no shortage of bisexual or gay characters. There’s no shortage of strong female characters, or females in positions of power. However none of the bi/gay characters are defined by that trait. The game isn’t overwhelmingly slanted toward strong females (or misogynistic males)

Zevran is… let’s say he’s a free spirit, but he’s not DEFINED by that. Isabella on the other hand, sexuality is a big part of her character.. Merril, Sigrun, Aveline, and the vast majority of female character are, however not hopeless stereotypical sexpots, and the vast majority of gay or bisexual characters (Anders, Liliana, etc.) are not hopelessly flamboyant flirts. Those types of characters exist, but are not the rule of law.

In GW2, female is increasingly becoming shorthand for “Spunky, hard working, and clever” and male is shorthand for “Angry, stupid, and boastful”

This is a problem not because there are so many female characters, but because all of them are defined by their merits, where as the male characters are defined by their flaws.

That’s not a misogynist statement. It’s not saying women should conform to preconceived gender roles. It’s not assuming the innate superiority of males. It’s calling attention to the inequality in gender treatment among these fictional characters. It’s just as sloppy a way to write as making all of the females sexy desire objects that are good cooks. It creates a world and characters that are unbelievable because they don’t represent a wide scope of individual identity across the scope of the relatively unimportant traits of gender or sexual orientation.

GW2’s release content wasn’t written this way. It’s much more varied in its characterization and depth of characters as people rather than a collection of gender specific internal tropes.

[Moderator note: this post quotes a post that was deemed inappropriate and therefore the quoted portion has been removed.]

I like the achievements, as they remind me of the secondary objectives in GW1, however where GW1 differed was that you could always complete all of the objectives in a single playthrough (though is some cases it was a lot EASIER to do separate playthroughs) and actually accidentally do all of them on the first playthrough.

Thus, I’d like to just see a victory screen that looks more like the original game, maybe with three treasure chests with descriptions of the achievements at the end, and the ones you didn’t get greyed out. At this point the achievements themselves unhide, and you get the helper description buffs on subsequent playthroughs.

If the first leg of LS2 is any indication, they’re absolutely delivering on the idea of “a new expansion every season” in the way players told them they wanted it. Permanent, and with a feel that matched the release content of solo story instances and fun explorable zones.

I think if they stick with the LS2 model they can continue on this path successfully for quite some time, trickling in zones a piece at a time every two weeks, occasionally devoting an update to non-world content like big PvP updates or full scale dungeons or world bosses (which may simply show up in existing zones) being worked on outside of the LW team schedule.

I mean, the next content update is a perfect example of how to do it right. Take the balance, QOL, and PvP features and release them when they’re ready, and push through the easier to balance and less technically challenging content and story patches on a quicker release schedule.

I agree with this actually. The wallet was specifically implemented so that Anet’s favored method of content specific rewards, token currencies, didn’t take up ALL THE SPACES. The collections tab was implemented for the same reason: so that crafting materials don’t take up all the spaces. (And then they added gem store upgrades to it for compulsive hoarders, a great gem item that doesn’t reek of cash grabbiness)

Clusters and geodes (and a lot of LS tokens) specifically cause the very problem that was, in theory, already solved by the inclusion of QoL based system that allow these reward systems to be viable methods for future implementation.

Maybe the problem is that they designed the wallet interface (on the hero page) in too static a manner, conveniently forgetting that they might want to have more types of tokens in the future. Perhaps week 3’s “collecting and trading” feature pack reveals will reveal that “we redesigned the wallet so that it can be used with all future token currencies, because we sorta forgot that we will probably add more dungeons and tokens and stuff. Dunno how we forgot to future proof that.” And they’ll have a set of checkboxes/filters in the new interface so you can choose which currencies are displayed when you open your inventory, or add them on the achievement tracker in place of achievements. At least that’s how I would do it.

IMO Thief deserves mace and rifle first, both as control-heavy low damage single target weapons with high init costs.

This would make them pair really well with the thief’s existing skillset, with the high init cost mitigating the potentially overpowered ability to apply hard stuns/dazes and weapon swap to spam damage.

I’d place the buff traits for these weapons on the trickery line, granting the thief boon procs for successful CC.

In addition, this would give thieves a really great 1200 range role, thus giving them a valuable and unique option for WvW and open world content.

Modified version, with PvE and support utility, modified to be more thiefly and less ninja-like (while still being useful for ninjas)

The idea here is a quicker cooldown elite with significant drawbacks for failure, encouraging counterplay while rewarding successful use. In addition, it makes a fantastic support ability for PvE, where thief lacks a lot of party utility.

Morbid Wager (trick)
Description: Places a mark on your target, if the target dies while the mark is still active, you and up to 4 allies near your target are encouraged by the success, gaining quickness for ten seconds. If the target is alive when the wager expires, you become embarassed, losing all initiative and becoming dazed and revealed for 5 seconds. Targets who die under the effects of this ability do not enter a downed state if they normally would.

Duration: 5 seconds
Cast time: Instant
Cooldown: 60s
Range: 600-900, must have LoS.
*Has no effect if used after the target is downed.

evilapprentice.6379:

BrunoBRS.5178:

PopeUrban.2578:

You know, we could solve this with a trait.

Rupture Deadly arts, Grandmaster
When you apply bleed it is removed and you deal X damage to your target. This damage can not critically hit, but can be increased by boons and other attributes.

P/P problem solved, Deathblossom problem solved, caltrops usable by more specs, more interesting gearing options, etc. etc.

spec into bleed damage anyway. watch as your enemy melts instantly.

your trait suggestion is “bleeds get all ticks instantly, can’t be cleansed”. have you seen the numbers on those bleeds? hell, death blossom would become a murder machine. caltrops would hit harder than necro wells.

He said “X Damage” not “The bleed’s total ticks in damage”.

This

Dumping actual bleed damage would be super overpowered, which is why you’d need some balance tweaking to figure out the right amount of damage to equate per bleed.

The thinking was that it would convert bleeds to critless white damage that still penefits from +power, might, etc. like mug does. It would also have some synergy with signet of malice and on hit sigils as it’s technically an additional attack.

I don’t feel that it’s locking weapons behind a trait wall really, but rather than it’s a gimme for the thief’s poor base condition selection. However, if the question is one of forcing people to GM, it might work to have the damage ticks lowered uner GM level an thus put the trait lower, given the synergy it has with onhit type effects.

This wouldn’t 100% fix the damage issue P/P has, but it would give it additional sustain and utility options, espeically combined with ricochet, which might be another way to fix it up some, make P/P a tankier midrange spec (since, you know, it’s a midrange weapon already) rather than attempting to balance it around pure glass cannon unload.

BrunoBRS.5178:

PopeUrban.2578:

It already does something interesting. Every hit of the projectile is a 100% projectile finisher. Using it from inside a dark field like shadow refuge or a necro well is a significant heal in a isutation where just using your SR to stealth won’t save you (like, for instance, when you’re staring down a 3v1 and need to stall for a cooldown) even with no traits/points devoted.

However, the intended use of the skill is a gap opener and escapse tool, which is why it’s more effective versus multiple targets and adds cripple.

Maybe adding freezing to it as part of an otherwise unremarkable trait to allow people to spec it in to a better escape tool?

if you’re on a 3v1 and shadow refuge is available, you drop SR and keep dodging inside it, then get the hell out of there, rather than break stealth for some life leeching.

Which is fine when:

You have endurance avaliable

You’re not already in such desperate need of a heal that any tiny amount of cleave or AoE will faceplant you anyway

You’re not looking at three players who among them have at least one launch.

You weren’t already revealed by your own traits, failing to gank, traps

etc. etc. etc.

Use SR and run is always the go-to of course, but in some situations it just plain doesn’t work. When you end up with your pants down and revealed (which happens about 50% of the time you use SR since this isn’t release and people know how to counter it), a couple dancing dagger combos, and a dodge is sometimes exactly what you need to hang for the time it takes to burn revealed, finish the cooldown on roll for initiative/shadowstep/etc. etc.

I’m not saying it’s PERFECT, it definately needs a little love (I like the idea of adding torment to it) but I wouldn’t be so fast to discount how useful it can be when used in the situations it’s designed for.

sleight.9638:

I didn’t say they kill miassive numbers at any point. Just that they kill enough to dress them in their fur :o
Physical Activity require food though. No food, no energy, no activity.

Norn don’t hunt animals to turn them in to clothes. The wear clothes made of mostly animals because they hunt so much. It’s an important distinction.

Basically, hunting is central to their culture, not a byproduct of having no other option, and as such they don’t wear all that fur and leather because they are warm or they can’t make textiles as much as they wear them because they’re fashionable statements of norn hunting prowess.

ArchonWing.9480:

I don’t necessarily agree about it, since traits arrive so late in this new system that I wasn’t even factoring them in until level 60. If anything the inability to play with traits earlier has made some even more clueless.

Take my thief, who has been the only character I’ve rolled since. I pretty much just bought the ones that I needed and haven’t really tried anything else.

That’s my point though, in relation to new players. You bought the ones you needed, but in order to know which ones you needed you had to carefully consider everything on offer. Well, you didn’t, because like myself you’ve been playing long enough that it was pretty easy to figure out your optimal build.

New players aren’t as well versed in GW2’s trait mechanics, which are a little complicated and esoteric in comparison to other MMOs they may have played before which usually just handhold them through a tree to prevent them from making bad or useless choices by requiring complimentary traits as a prerequisite for other traits lower on the tree.

Having spent time last month helping some new people with builds I can confidently say, at least in my experience, it has caused new players to be a lot more aware of how important traits are to defining a build, and as they hit 80 they’re much better at timing, dodging, and making the best use of their hotbar than the new players I had before that change. In the old system, newbies often bought whatever karma armor was close to their level, chose a bunch of random and unrelated traits, and later wondered why they sucked because they never had pause to think about their build. This frequently gave me headaches as I routinely found myself explaining very basic things to level 80 newbies who often had to completely re-learn the game, often had to purchase new gear, and didn’t even have a concept of “build” until they were already in content that expected them to know these things.

It’s harder for newbies now, for sure, but the end result I’ve seen is newbies being excited to go on grand adventures for specific traits they theorycrafted, and seriously weighing the pros and cons of different gear stats as early as level 15. This has resulted in an average higher skill level for newbies, and a more interesting and freeform approach to encounters for veterans.

Sure, in comparison it sucks for those of us who raised mains in the old system, and feels like a chore, but for a lot of people there was a distinct lack of personally meaningful content while leveling, and that was changed for the better. The leveling experience has definite objectives that are more personally rewarding and under your control whereas before you just completed zones and got boxes of stuff that may or may not be useful.

If you were to make chill effect initiative regen, you’d have to do several things to balance it:

1: Make the thief’s weapon set use separate initiative pools You’re not just cooling down skills used, you’re cooling down every single thief skill across both weapon sets. This means the thief, unlike every other class in the game, can’t mitigate chilled by swapping to avaliable weapons/kits/attunements. It’s like putting all of your skills, kits and attunements on cooldown timers whether you used them or not as soon and you are chilled.

2: Drastically increase the effectiveness of secondary effects on all thief skills. Thief skills have very short/weak conditions specifically because they can be spammed. If you’re going to globally chill initiative regen in order to limit incoming damage, the thief needs increased survivability tools that he can use to mitigate damage with the precious little initiative he has available when chilled.

3: Give thieves more condition removal. It’s extremely difficult for thieves to remove chilled at the moment. The only builds that can do so semi-reliably are stealth-based, and they have to use weapon skills (which you have just put on cooldown) to reliably stealth in order to remove the chill, or blow a stunbreak. By chilling thief initiative you are actively making it more difficult for the thief to remove chilled, and that can’t be the case. Not only that, but you’ve doubled up on the mobility penalty of chilled by doing so, as thieves need that initiative in order to avoid damage when slowed to a crawl by chill, and thieves rely more heavily on mobility to survive than other classes due to their lack of other passive defenses and low HP pools.

Build: Leech d/d
Runes: Mad king

Why: Mad king gives good bonuses to both condition and raw damage, and in a leech dagger build you use a combination of deathblossom and heartseeker for damage, so you can’t gear too heavily toward one or the other. In addition, the elite effect counts each bird peck as a separate attack. This combines extremely well with signet of malice+invigorating precision combo. This means that your zerg-healing is off the charts with daggerstorm, and you have a reliable and quickly recharging burst heal to go along with your passive heals when using basilisk venom. Also, you’re a walking John Woo movie with all of those birds and flashy acrobatics. That’s just fun.

You know, we could solve this with a trait.

Rupture Deadly arts, Grandmaster
When you apply bleed it is removed and you deal X damage to your target. This damage can not critically hit, but can be increased by boons and other attributes.

P/P problem solved, Deathblossom problem solved, caltrops usable by more specs, more interesting gearing options, etc. etc.

There can never be enough threads about how awful last refuge is. They just need to make it clear revealed and lower the stealth duration to 1.5s and it would be worth a crap. Then you could use it WITH your other stealths to help survive like its intended rather than having it break your other stealths and make you explode.

If it worked this way, you could see it trigger and then stack another stealth on it within the 1.5s, use a heal, or at least dodge in a weird direction during the duration to help you survive.

Honestly, I think traps need a GM trickery trait to make them worth it. Just add a second charge to all thief traps and have them prepare/deploy like mantras.

Thus you could precast them, have the two charges, and use them as uninterruptable CC/gap openers.

This would make P/P a LOT more viable, and would add traps as a viable defensive replacement for evades or stealth.

Along with that, how about adding an elite trap to round out the mix? Decoy trap? Net trap? Explosive trap? Mark/recall shadowstep trap?

I’m pretty okay with these changes. I worked up a d/d hybrid/passive heal bunker when invigorating precision came out and it’s been a pretty great PvE spec since then.

The combination of mad king runes, basilisk venom (single target fights) or daggerstorm (zergs) along with IP and signet of malice opened up a lot of gearing options. Deathblossom and the dagger auto bonus endurance give good sustain in this spec, and it can gear pretty well for condition, direct damage, or all-out bunkering and still deal pretty decent DPS without relying on filling the utility bar with evades/stealth just to survive.

It’s a “balanced spec” that didn’t quite work before IP because the passive healing wasn’t big enough, but it’s been getting progressively better and more PvP viable each balance pass. Fire/air/water sigils on the daggers round out the heals and make it a pretty scrappy group fighter which can still hammer in some deathseekers or C&D to help stomp.

Venoms are still kitten, and will continue to be kitten until they’re moved away from being balanced around venomshare. They need to buff all venoms, then change venomshare to effect one nearby ally. The net support effect would be the same, but it would allow venoms to be useful outside of VS builds, and make venomshare more intuitive since you’d only need to hug one ally to get the full benefit, and you can control your distance to a single ally yourself while you need a whole group to hug you in the current implementation.

It already does something interesting. Every hit of the projectile is a 100% projectile finisher. Using it from inside a dark field like shadow refuge or a necro well is a significant heal in a isutation where just using your SR to stealth won’t save you (like, for instance, when you’re staring down a 3v1 and need to stall for a cooldown) even with no traits/points devoted.

However, the intended use of the skill is a gap opener and escapse tool, which is why it’s more effective versus multiple targets and adds cripple.

Maybe adding freezing to it as part of an otherwise unremarkable trait to allow people to spec it in to a better escape tool?

Rainin.9812:

You make a good point. I agree partially. I just see someone that earns them in game as saving their money and they get more of the satisfaction out of it. If they made a model that allowed you somehow to go back and earn these things (laurels or whatever), I’d be okay with that.

Though if they made them available in Gem Store I wouldn’t really care either. If I earned it in game, good for me, I saved money. If I didn’t, then cool I still get a chance at the aesthetic prize, but theres a price to pay for missing out on its original release.

They already did for most of the season 1 meta rewards. Some are missing, but a good/easy way to do the teq wings would be to add them to his meta-achievement along with the title. It’s harder to get than when it was a “common drop” and would somewhat approximate what the original acquisition model was while requiring a little extra effort to get them as your “late penalty”

No, it makes utility consumables (like potions) last a lot longer when it is active. It works exactly like the metabolic primer gem item does for foods.

petespri.6548:

So, I mostly play warrior, necro, and engi.

none of these classes can wield torches. I hate exploring caves without use of a torch. I have a mesmer at 30 and tunnels and caves are so much more fun to enjoy with a torch.

looking at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_source, I see that there are some items that may give illumination in caves. I don’t think the wiki is complete, so I was wondering if there are any other options that are not recorded here that the community knows of?

also, I think anet should make torches a universal offhand weapon for all professions.

Anywhere that’s dark enough that you need an extra light source conveniently provides bundle torches. The ones i can think of are obsidian sanctum dark room (torches by the entrance to the dark cave, as well as things to light on fire to light up the room) the mine in dry top (torches on the right as you enter, by the cart tracks) and the JP in lion’s arch (torch is on the floor to the right, Captain weyandt’s ghost will complain when you find it.) and that one new-ish temple where the torches are the central mechanic you need to complete the JPS and kill the enemies there.

The ones in sanctum and the mine can light a fire on the floor and be dropped if you need to get your real weapons out to fight, or you can try using them as wearpons to burn your enemies to death.

Simply put: Arenanet doesn’t want rolling more characters to have too great a mechanical advantage, as it would really unbalance the game and essentially require everyone to have a full sheet of 80s to keep up with the economy.

This was a problem when boss chests first came out, and they changed some things to fix it, in order to ensure that people don’t feel like they have to roll and gear several characters just to enjoy the game and afford basic stuff on the AH.

It’s a QOL thing really. We can already swap builds out of combat with the new trait system as long as we brought the gear to do so. I don’t see any reason not to link loadouts/traits/hotbars to a unified interface to further reinforcethe idea that GW2 wants us to alter builds to fit specific situations so they can design more intricate content as they did in the first game.

ArchonWing.9480:

Vol.7601:

Doesn’t take long to get 3g and 20 SP

That’s not the point. Of course it can be easily worked around, but it’s still not good design and that option might as well not exist.

This could be a minor trait that nobody uses and costs like 10 silver and it’d be just as silly.

I disagree. I think that cashing in for trait unlocks and having infinite free trait respecs any time you’re out of combat is a vastly superior system to the old system which actively prevented you from doing build swaps without going to town (or buying a gem store item)

Permanent unlocks are always a better system than constant cash sinks, and the ability to build swap on the fly allows them to make much more variant and interesting content that requires you to swap things out now and then similar to how GW1 worked.

Yes, it’s more expensive/harder than it used to be, but this resulted in new players actually carefully thinking about builds, wheras before we had a bunch of braindead 80s running around with no idea what any of their traits or stats did.

That said, I agree that no trait unlock challenges should be on the WvW maps. This is okay for map completion as legendary acquisition is assumed to be a thing you do after you have “finished” your character, but asking people to go to WvW for a trait challenge is asking people who probably haven’t finished their first build to PvP, and that’s a bad idea.

Rainin.9812:

Filaha.1678:

Vexander.9850:

Filaha.1678:

I hope not, since that would trivialize the time people who actually earned it spent on it.

It was a reward purchasable during the attack on Lion’s Arch.

Got it myself. Would not care if it was put up on the Gem Store or Laurel Merchants. It wasn’t hard to get at all. People need to stop acting like everything you can’t get anymore was as hard as pulling teeth to get in the first place, Geesh!

Didn’t say it was hard. Strawmen don’t fight back, but you gain nothing by being able to best them.

It consumed time and resources. Had I not spent those resources on the Selfless and Thoughtless Potions, I could have spent them on other items offered by the same trader.

By putting it up on the gem shop so that anyone with a few dollars can buy it, then I’d have to question each time they put up a special reward for an event whether it’s worth it to put the time and effort into working for it while forsaking more potentially useful rewards, if I could just potentially drop an hour from a paycheque into the game and buy the same thing later.

Why bother putting in anything for special rewards if you’re just going to offer it for sale later?

I’d be just as annoyed if I farmed out 2,000 geodes for a good set of bug weapon skins, just to find out next month that they put the bug weapon skins on the gem store for a couple hundred gems each. Because while it isn’t hard to get geodes, I could have used those geodes on 100+ lockpicks that would get me ascended materials which are actually useful and potentially get me kites to sell.

Well to be fair, you DO put time and effort into getting your money to buy things off the Gem Store. Its just done in a different format. I see no reason to punish people who are late-adopters of the game or those who may not have been playing during the time of an item’s release.

Me for example, I wasn’t around/on a server capable of doing Tequatl when the event was big. So I never got the Wings of the Sunless… and to be fair, I’d LOVE to buy them in Gem Store or earn them via in game events somehow. So who am I to say other people can’t have something I put my time into (playing the game) in another avenue that they put their time into (working a job/extra hours).

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to earn rewards late, like the wings of the sunless, but the logic of “I work hard for my IRL money so that should translate to farming in game” is flawed.

These are not comparable activities because 800 gems may cost me a lot less in “real dollars” than they cost you simply because we live in different places, make different amounts of money, have different levels of living/family expenses, or whatever reason. Some people make 800 gems every five minutes in interest from having money in the bank.

In game our earning power is normalized by the strictures of the rules of play. This is why they made the old LS rewards laurel-based, to ensure those that wanted to be late adopters had to earn them rather than cash in gems>gold and pick them up with little to no effort. It ensures that all players that want to pick them up have equal earning power so as not to trivialize the acquisition of what are “antique and limited edition” rewards.

There are already a dizzying array of skins and items designed around gem purchases, which are far easier to obtain by spending your real money, and that’s okay, because that’s their permanent acquisition model. LS rewards are simply on a different account-bound acquisition model to ensure that nobody can simply buy them with some gold or gems, and that doesn’t need to be disrupted.

Rainin.9812:

Last two posts are epic..

But back to PopeUrban’s point. I agree that festival achievements shouldn’t be available year round or anything like that. But in my opinion festival achievements shouldn’t be where the “Elite Achievement Gamers” get their kicks. Make the ULTRA HARD achievements a part of permanent content so that everyone can try to become a better player to achieve such feats. Make the festivals more fun and care-free with the achievements and such.

I would agree with you also that they have come leaps-and-bounds since releasing South Sun and making a boss (and giving rewards) that only people who got on at a specific time on the weekend could have access to. The one good move they made was giving the rewards at least to people who were there and crashed/disconnected. But all those people that just happened to work, go on vacation, get sick, have soccer games, built a house or picked their butt that weekend missed out. And I could understand why those people would be pretty upset. Glad they haven’t made a mistake like THAT again.

I’m totally with you here, with one caveat. I think festivals (and all content really) should include at least one “hardcore” bit of content. The clocktower, liadri, tribulation mode, etc. are very small parts of that content, but the idea behind festivals is being inclusive, and as such they should include a wide range of content to include those players as well.

I agree that a wintersday that was all hard jumping puzzles, or all PvP modes, or all rythm games, or all zerg events would alienate more people than it draws in, but I think they’ve tried really hard to make a range of festival content so that all types of players have things they find fun do do during festivals. Wintersday is a great example, where we saw them bring back the old modes, but significantly increase content where it was lacking in world events by adding new events.

It’s also possible that they decided to divorce new dungeons from the story.

Like, perhaps they implement a new dungeon for each new complete zone, dry top being the first, but the dungeon doesn’t have much to do with the main storyline. Say, for instance, the dry top dungeon focuses on helping the magumma centaurs deal with some inquest or something.

They could also use dungeons to build unimportant characters, like maybe going with job-o-tron to save bloomanoo and peneloopee from the skritt queen or something (which would be the most adorable dungeon ever)

The EOTN dungeons mostly worked this way, in that each dungeon was its own self contained story that wasn’t necessary to enjoy or understand the main storyline, but was still related in some way to the world around it. The GW2 main dungeons are kinda similar in that they tell a separate side story of DE (until you have to do arah for the personal story, which a lot of people don’t agree with)

Palador.2170:

skullmount.1758:

Zardul.3952:

• Pokes Living story team.. wheres our free in-game Waffles?*

How come our chefs can’t make waffles? Do Tyrians not know how to make them?
Waffles totally need to become an ingame food (not sure what the buff should give though).

This is an example of where I’d like to see some cross crafting. Armorsmith or weaponsmith needs to make the waffle iron, then it can be given to a chef to make waffles.

And no buff. Instead, it becomes an item you double click to leave a plate of waffles on the ground. All nearby enemies rush to it. Then you kill them, because they just ate all your waffles. (This part is a joke, by the way.)

Or just use the weaponsmith to craft the waffle iron, and use it as a weapon.

Charrbeque.8729:

If you want content that is harder
Try doing a dungeon without armor

Beat the boss in the nude
And people will worship you dude

You’ll keep up with the best speed runners
While leaving behind all the others

Try PVP without using your elite
And soon enemies will start kissing your feet

I don’t want content that is harder
I could care less about being a martyr

I would rather go play with the skritts
’Cause your challenge gives me the schlitz!

I appreciate your well stated post
and I don’t mean to brag or to boast

but risk is a thing that deserves some reward
so why not an achievement or new shiny sword?

It’s not like you need them to play and have fun
but it would be nice to have rewards, and get some

for doing the things that are hard or elite
then everyone would be happy, and that would be neat.

<3

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

PopeUrban.2578:

It was also a time in which … back in the day)

?

Is your comment directed at me or sentrasia? Or no one? I’m a bit lost in regard to the relevance. :/

Just a reminder that the games you mentioned aren’t necessarily applicable to the MMO sphere in the given example. MMOs were, by comparison to today’s standards, primitive in terms of physics based mechanics, so a lot of the games you listed aren’t relevant to the conversation, despite being great games.

We did have years of standing in one place smashing hotkeys based combat not because nobody wanted to do more engaging content, but because at the time they couldn’t do the type of combat/motion we see in the more action-based setups that are commonplace in today’s MMOs.

I guess that’s my point… and then I just went on waxing nostaligic I guess. heh.

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

Sentrasia.7428:

Jumping is not a new concept. Games without it suck. Games without z-axis/height suck. This isn’t 1999 (Sorry random year there!).

WHAT?

1999 is the year of Super Smash Bros. and Unreal Tournament, System Shock 2 and Legend of Dragoon, Pokemon Gold and Soulcaliber! To use it as an example of some archaic “Stone Age” of sucky gaming is downright offensive. Apologize sir, and we shan’t need to duel.

lorazcyk.8927:

Do you mean the one when you first zone in dry top? Or achievements? I haven’t tried any achievements yet, but the initial jumping puzzle was kind of odd. It didn’t really add anything to the story or to the zone, I didn’t really understand the purpose of having it there. It was weird being forced to do it to get started with the story or even just to start exploring the area.
If it were just for an achievement I wouldn’t mind, since it’s optional. But I couldn’t explore or play the story until finishing that jp.

I’m betting the idea is just to acquaint new players with the mechanics of the crystals. The Festival was set up similarly, but since it’s not a permanent feature there needs to be some form of brief tutorial in place for new players, and that dash and two simple jumps is it.

I’m with the majority of the posters here. Required jumping is minimal and easy, optional jumping ranges from easy to pretty challenging. It’s good design.

It was also a time in which collision and jumping in MMOs was not yet commonplace because they were still trying to make the games playable for people on dialup connections. Adding a third axis to track and coordinate between client/server adds 33% to network load for simply positioning objects. This isn’t a big deal in UT, with a really small player count (matches were limited to 16 players IIRC) but in an MMO this was a scaling problem that would make the game unplayable on dialup.

It’s the same reason a tech generation earlier that the original doom didn’t have a jump button, as old 386 machines with no dedicated graphics hardware couldn’t reliably render full 3d with textures and lighting in real time in single player. In fact, doom was on the inside a 2d game which only looked somewhat 3d. This also allowed them to invent online deathmatches, because it was possible to put four players on a server due to both limiting the player count and using their efficient method of a 2d backed with a semi-3d display and still have people play it without soul crushing lag (unless you had call waiting and didn’t have a dedicated phone line for your modem, which lost me a lot of deathmatches back in the day)

Did you do the event related to it?

The fragments aren’t interactable until the event in their area (listed on the quest text) have been completed (as those events are supposedly uncovering the pieces accidentally, and serve as filler material to pad the length of the story) then they go inactive until the event happens again.

All of the related events are old ones, and soloable, so if you can’t interact with it, hang around and to the event and try again.

You’re all liars.

Note the similarity to mordrem wolves and subtle taunt egraved in the tail section to emphasize the dragon’s intelligence.

Fiontar.4695:

Ultra-challenging material is fine for those who want it, but when Living Story, which was once meant to cater to the masses, keep everyone happy and provide a key selling point for the game, becomes target at the the elite few, I call that content mostly the die-hards will love.

That’s why the instances themselves aren’t designed to be ultra-challenging, and the achievements are optional secondary objectives that don’t lock you out of story progression, but rather give you a chance to earn extra rewards for extra effort.

They’re not going to suddenly make it super-hard to just go through the story, but they might make the side achievements harder so that people who want a challenge have an objective with some nice rewards for doing it.

Thalador.4218:

Jenstone.6891:

LOL… I saw the reference to GW1 and Eye of the North…. reminded me of the Koss (GW1)strength elixir quest… the big bad monster that Koss (and party) was supposed to kill was a cute snuggly bunny….

Nope. It was a heket warrior in need of growth hormones.

Still not as good as the quest where you had to feed enemy soldiers to a pet skale. That one was awesome.