Guild Wars 2

Cantha was an interesting place. The mission mechanics were a lot of fun, The elite dungeons were cool, and the art design of the jade sea and petrified gothic-forest was neat, but let’s be real here.

The faction/alliance system was a pointless mess that served no practical purpose aside from alienating and annoying players for no good reason while not rewarding alliances who owned cities.

The majority of quests required an obscene amount of fetching and running stupidly long distances despite the established use of map-travel in the first campaign.

The entire plotline and all of the voice acting for that campaign was god awful compared to that found in nightfall/prophecies/EOTN. In fact, the Winds of Change arc done by the beyond team years later was a much better story, with no voiceovers or cinematics. Factions was hands down the weakest and most contrived plot in the entirety of the lore. But it’s lore now, we’re past it, and it does make for interesting backstory.

If we’re to revisit Cantha again, there’s definately room for improvement.

Chessrook.8643:

Actually, I can tell you what would happen if Supply Camps had walls.

We’d have Pangloss.

But everyone would have one or more!

Actually a lot of these sound interesting.

foofad.5162:

PopeUrban.2578:

My point is, specifically, why do you need such a large number of members if there’s so much administrative headache for so little payoff to either the members or the organization. What is it you need all these people for? “critical mass?” To sustain what? If your natural sustainable number is in fact eight people… then did you really want those other 42 people in your guild in the first place if you had to prod and coddle them? If so, why?

Like I mentioned in my OP, we’re an RP guild. In theory, the main reason we’re together is so that we can RP. That’s where a lot of the fun and the glue comes from. We participate in other aspects of the game, naturally, I’m not one of those people that spends all day on a level 20 character hanging out in a tavern. Having a lot of people in the guild means more RP, and more vibrant RP because of the different perspectives. It also means that when we aren’t RPing, there’s more opportunities to do other things in-house.

As for the 50 members – because of the recruitment process I get to know everyone. And because we’re already highly social because of the nature of the guild, I get to know everyone by virtue of that as well. There’s only maybe a dozen people that I’m not too familiar with currently in the guild, and that’s because they’re inactive.

The net result: When there’s no RP to be had, people wander off to find some.

And that’s really the crux of your issue I think. RP requires substantial personal interaction, and it sounds like the situation you’re in has you responsible for things in real life that preclude that kind of a time investment. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not telling you to “hang it up” but I’m asking, quite honestly, if RP is the focus of the guild and it falls apart when you personally can’t log in, how many of those players are actually using the structure of the RP guild to interact with one another on that level?

More to the point: If they can’t RP without direction, do you really want to have to kick them in the pants? TC has a pretty large RP community, and a lot of it doesn’t share a guild tag. In fact I see a lot of small RP guilds tooling around in the form of various companies, krewes, warbands, etc. Unless there’s some overall RP purpose for which your guild needs a massive membership, why not just scale it back, make some relationships with other RP guilds, and save yourself the headache?

Rising Dusk.2408:

His view of his situation isn’t the problem, the problem really is the situation he’s in.

It is important having players represent because it gives people others to talk to and interact with and play with. It’s not as simple as being okay with inactivity or what-have-you, because you need to present your players with an “active enough” user base so that they want to stay active themselves. This critical mass for a guild is important for the sustainability of the guild.

My point is that the “critical mass” is subjective in terms of player expectations. Originally, our guild lives in a PvP siege game called shadowbane where numbers were absolutely crucial to daily survival of the guild and it’s holdings. There was a symbiotic relationship between the game’s systems and recruitment drives. People had an apperant need to be in a guild, and developed attachments to it because it provided security and incentives. We recruited because we had to and held a membership of between 40-70 members. I can honestly say that running it, while fun, was tons of work. I can also say that among the people I still know or remember from that time, the majority are still playing with us, while the rank-and-file soldiers that were recruited for the symbiotic relationship of mutual security I can’t honestly remember. I am not ashamed of this because that’s simply how large guilds work.

In a game like GW2, where the incentives provided by the system itself aren’t something vital to the players, the only reason to remain active in a guild is the social aspect, or to a lesser extent effective large scale WvW. When you have a guild that reaches past a certain size, you’re walking in to the territory of serving a consumer base. In the case of GW2, you’re trying to keep those consumers because they provide influence or WvW numbers. However, in a 50+ member guild you’re not socializing with all of these members regularly. if you’re running a WvW guild, then people are joining specifically for security in numbers. If you’re running any other kind of guild, only a select few are joining in order to socialize. The rest are joining for what you can provide them. For the buffs, for the dungeon runs with competant teammates, for the hard numbers perks. Later, these players may develop relationships, but if you’re not holding a vast empire with expenses, supply lines, and jobs that need to be done to sustain, then you’re running a loosely associated group of cliques.

In GW2 you’re doing none of these things. At best you’re running a single WvW guild tasked with maintaining a single capture point 24/7.

My point is, specifically, why do you need such a large number of members if there’s so much administrative headache for so little payoff to either the members or the organization. What is it you need all these people for? “critical mass?” To sustain what? If your natural sustainable number is in fact eight people… then did you really want those other 42 people in your guild in the first place if you had to prod and coddle them? If so, why?

Firstly, fifty people is a large guild. Secondly, running an RP guild is akin to running a guild and DMing a D&D campaign at the same time.

That’s a lot of workload for a game.

You might do better setting the bar a little lower for yourself, and being a little more selective with your recruiting. My guild commonly sees 6-8 people online on a good day, and “leadership” consists of only myself and a single “officer” and you know what? We’re perfectly happy with that. We all know each other well (mostly because we’ve been playing games together for years) everyone’s input is valuable, and things happen organically. We have fun. We get things accomplished.

Don’t obsess over numbers. When you open recruit, you find this a lot. Players will join easily just to test-drive the experience, but the larger your guild becomes, the less valued your members are. To compensate, operators of large guilds have to provide incentives. That’s not a slight at your leadership abilities, it’s simply the way MMOs work.

Are you more concerned with having a solid core of members to play and RP with, or posting huge membership numbers? Large numbers come with large administrative headaches. It’s a fact. It’s going to be a lot of work. Perhaps you should focus on leveraging your dedicated players and align your guild with a larger roleplaying community. RP guilds tend to be very good about cross-events because it helps to spice things up, and it gives them more people to RP with.

Inactivity is only an “issue” if it bothers you. Maybe in stead of seeing your remaining actives as a problem, you should see them as the few players that are worth being in a guild with, and embrace the naturally operable size of the guild.

This was a perfectly timed adjustment. A lot of my old guildmates from other games just started playing, and it feels really nice to be able to help them out and still get those sweet 78-80 rares no matter where I am.

Difficulty wise I’m not noticing a lot of difference outside of Orr being extremely easy now, but the loot is most definitely better. I pull in 4-5 L80 rares a day just helping my lowbie friends clear stuff and MFing my greens.

In light of the coming WvW enhancements, I started rolling around some scenarios in my head, theorizing how the overall WvW landscape might be altered by systemic changes.

These aren’t suggestions exactly, but more of a brainstorming excercise in “how would we play the game differently” that I found fun to think about, and I figured I’d post ’em up and see what theory crafting went on.

1 What if: Players could only pick up supplies from non-supply camp sources.

2 What if: Supply camps had walls.

3 What if: You had to own your borderland’s keep to access EB

4 What if: You could repair siege with supply

5 What if: Score was tallied based on how long you owned something, rather than who owns it when the timer rolls over.

6 What if: You could command and store NPC allies

7 What if: Defensive siege upgrades were auto-manned by npcs.

8 What if: Workers for upgrades upgraded from the outside of the objective.

9 What if: Orbs were reworked as single use siege WMDs that “powered up” at their pedestals

10 What if: Siege had to be finished by NPC caravans.

Have fun!

Moddo.7105:

PopeUrban.2578:

You’re actually in the wrong class forum if you’re looking for sPvP “I Win” builds. most sPvP opponents know exactly how to counter thief burst by now.

What you want, sir, is a warrior or an ele. Those are the solid competitive builds.

Actually isn’t sPvP mostly hotjoins? Skill level is usually very low. tPvP is where you will find more organized and skilled players.

Suppose that’s a valid point. You may pubstomp pretty well with a GC backstabber still.

I’d happily give FD to necros, thieves, and mesmers.

Necro – FD while remaining visible and channeling a life essence gain. When this channel ends, fear all nearby enemies for 1-4 seconds depending on how long the channel was held.

Mesmer: Cloak for 3s and create a stationary FD clone. If shattered this clone stands up before shattering. This clone lasts 60s, or until shattered or destroyed.

Thief: FD, replacing 1-5 with dirty tricks. The thief may use one of these dirty tricks to break the ruse, or break it automatically by moving – Throw Dirt (AoE blinding pulse, every .5 seconds, lasts 3 seconds), Leg Sweep (single knockdown), Gut (single Bleeding+Vulnerability), Suprise! (Self Fury+Protection), Escape (Self 3s evade+Swiftness)

You’re actually in the wrong class forum if you’re looking for sPvP “I Win” builds. most sPvP opponents know exactly how to counter thief burst by now.

What you want, sir, is a warrior or an ele. Those are the solid competitive builds.

That said, if you want the standard burst build for thieves You’re looking at berserker gear, taking 30/30///* and making sure you pick up the trait for auto-crit from stealth, taking assassin’s signet, basilisk venom, hide in shadows, and wielding two daggers.

The rest is up to you, but the basic kittenick here is that you get close to the target, then

*1*Basilisk Venom (To set up your backstab)

*2*Assassin’s signet (For moar damages)

*3*Cloak&dagger>Steal (Using steal before cloak and dagger finishes to get the damage from the Mug Trait and then followed immediately by C&D hitting, which deals additional damage and gives you stealth.)

*4*Get to the back and backstab.

At this point, if your target is low on HP, or just has an extremely glass cannon build, it may be down, in which case, skip to part 7. If not, continue:

*5*Finish off to 30% HP with autoattacks.

*6*Spam heartseeker until down.

*7*Finish with autoattacks, shortbow, or stealth+quickness stomp

If you fail to hit with any part of 1-4. (because your opponent has a stunbreak, or knows how to time a dodge, or has any sort of PBAoE CC) you have failed, and you get to take a 45 second time out wherin a strong gust of wind will obliterate you. Then you get to try again.

Probably a similar setup to my own, and one that’s pretty popular in WvW.

Pistol/Dagger with a Shortbow Swap, carrion gear.

Traits:

0/0/30/20/20

This thief is extremely durable due to the limited initiative use from the cloak+dagger>Sneak attack attack chain. With the proper traits, this thief is capable of maintaining 10-14 stacks for 120+ damage bleeds on a target with the pistol alone, healing passively while in stealth, curing conditions while in stealth, and having enough initiative to swap to his shortbow and use infiltrator’s arrow to escape when things go south.

We excel at killing slower targets with limited amounts of condition removal, small Hp pools, or both. This makes us particularly effective versus damage-build warriors as the warrior class tends to have a very limited amount of condition removal.

counterplay

The P/D thief is extremely reliant on cloak+dagger stealthing. In order to keep up his DPS, he needs to successfully hit with cloak+dagger in order to trigger the two initiative return on stealth, as well as the majority of his survivability traits, which are all activated only when in stealth.

The build varies, in utilities, gear, and some trait selections from person to person, but the constant is that to survive and successfully kill things, the P/D thief needs to stealth often, and needs to trigger that stealth with a melee attack. The most effective counter for the P/D thief is countering cloak+dagger by blocking, evading, or knocking back the thief do it doesn’t hit. This causes the thief to waste six initiative on a failed stealth attempt. This prevents the thief from stealthing, cutting off his condition clears and stealth talents, and successfully countering this attack three times in a row will force the thief to either blow a cooldown for some initiative, or simply leave him without an opportunity to re-stealth or enough initiative to utilize any of his CC or gap-opening weapon skills.

I reccommend rolling a quick P/D thief in the mists and practicing the cloak and dagger>sneak attack chain on a dummy. You’ll learn the rythem of the common attack sequence pretty fast, and learn to recognize when a P/D is likely to swoop in to melee to C&D. This is the “tempo” of P/D and learning it is the first step to sucessfully countering him.

Daggerstorm wasn’t ever overpowered, but it will always be extremely useful in large WvW for thieves.

The appropriate counter, as you’ve discovered, is using anything that’s not a projectile and focusing the thief until he buggers off.

I play a P/D bunker thief in WvW, and my average offensive use of DS goes something like:

Wait for battle to be joined so enemy is distracted
Shadow refuge in quiet to gain the long-stealth
Run to largest concentration of enemy zerg
Caltrops from stealth
Daggerstorm in caltrops

This is the point where the enemy has the opportunity to control how effective I am with daggerstorm. If three or more people melee me, or if some smartypants boon rips me and stuns, I need to cancel and get out to live. If none of the above happens, I can happily twirl for the full duration.

I’ll do this once to open a fight and see what the reaction is. If the “deep twirl” is quickly countered, I won’t go for it again and in stead save the cooldown for something more useful in that situation, like protecting allies from projectiles, messing with other thieves shadow refuges, or as an escape tool.

I’ve found that Daggerstorm is as effective as it has ever been, but that the “deep twirl” maneuver is something I get to put to best effect less and less as time goes on.

I’d like to direct you to This thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Self-Heals/first#post948836

In which we had a nice hard numbers breakdown of thief healing.

I play a P/D/SB carrion condition build, using signet of malice, a life sigil, and a single apothecary item (shoulders) and survivability versus damage is rarely a problem.

If you’re using an offhand dagger and important point to pay attention to is the ridiculous amount of healing you can pull off by using dancing dagger from within a shadow field (like shadow refuge or some necro wells)

In any boss with adds situation, I’m commonly wielding P/D rather than SB as the overall sustained bleed DPS is better, and I’m focusing the boss. I can take a 90% hit in HP, pop Shadow refuge, and spam dancing dagger from within the field and be fully healed in seconds. In addition, spamming unexploded cluster arrow in any water field is an easy way to toss out a 50% or more AoE heal for everyone around me.

Thieves can be extremely durable due to these heling synergies combines with acrobatics and stealth, and are actually better equipped than guardians to tank large waves (Whereas guardians handle bosses much better) of trash due to the way the skills synergize. In our instances, my thief is the one that charges first in to any encounter where the enemy is strong in terms of number rather than individual power.

YES

To infinity

But only if levels past 80 function the same as they do now: you gain a skill point and that’s it.

Gameplay-wise I think the current cap feels good, but hey, why not have large numbers just to remind us how awesome we are?

I don’t see the problem with them honestly. All the stuff in the new dailies is stuff that just sort of happens accidentally in a 2-4 hours play session, or is stuff you can knock out in ~30 mins if you just want to do the daily.

Yes, it takes around 20ish days to get an amulet, but honestly, those amulets are accessible to everyone now. There’s not a single player that can’t reliably get the ascended amulet they’re after by putting in a bit of time and effort to get it, and that was the entire point of the ascended rarity as stated by Anet: It’s supposed to be a long term goal, but not light years long and hard like legendaries.

You’re not supposed to have your ascended gear as fast as you got your exotics, and so its all based around some time-gating gaps to ensure it’s a gradual progression. I don’t see a problem with that, as it is the intended statistical “best” you’re ever going to have, and it’s really just icing on the cake for the majority of content so you’re not overly disadvantaged during the acquisition process. Makes spending time with a character valuable in a way that twinking out a set of exotics for your new 80 simply wasn’t. As long as the acquisition is spread around to different parts of the game, i like the “multiple time gated but short or fun tasks” approach much better than the “Farm an extremely high amount of X, get extremely lucky, or both, then do it again” approach at acquiring the pinnacle of a character’s power.

Laurels, dailies, and stuff like that makes that endgame gear something that becomes a “when” rather than an “if” in terms of stats, while preserving content-specific luxury items as cosmetics. I think that’s a pretty good system.

A quest!
Kill ten rats

Ghosting the Machine
Gain a single skill point/level worth of XP without taking damage

Little Stories
Complete five event chains from beginning to end.

We Meet Again!
Find a fedora wearing ex-explorer (any location counts)

Not Good With Hints
Gather 20 ruined ore chunks

Metagaming
Use the /wiki command five times.

Moral Support
/cheer at ten allies

Do a Barrel Roll
Reflect five attacks while dodging.

Tough Love
/laugh at five downed allies.

Pecar.1236:

pls give thief some delay before he can go to stealth (2-3s) or we need see dmg if we hit him

There’s already a three second debuff, called “revealed” that applies any time stealth is broken by using an attack. This applies to all forms of stealth, including mesmer stealth and stealth resulting from smoke combo fields. In addition, exiting a shadow refuge while the effect is still up automatically applies revealed. Revealed prevents re-stealthing from all sources while it is in effect.

Class Name: Pilot
Class Type: Scholar
Weapons of choice: Pistol, rifle, mace, hammer, dagger

General gist/ miscellaneous:

Lore
Since the formation of the pact against the elder dragons, the five major races of Tyria have become increasingly willing and able to share technology and magic, and the results of these collaborations have bred a new class of battlefield weapon: The War Machine. While its specific design may differ from place to place, what is clear is that these weapons require especially skilled operators. The Pilot is such an operator, trained to pilot and maintain any any all of such weapons encountered in the field for the good of the people of Tyria. Unlike other professions, all Pilots experience a replacement low-level story arc which begins with an experimental race-specific War Machine design, and their training in its operation. As they move in to other zones, pilots may acquire additional War Machines in the same manner as Ranger pets by acquiring these weapons from supplies, operators, and other sources from around the world.

War Machines
Pilots are specially trained by their races to operate technological, biological, or magical large mounted units, collectively known as “War Machines” War machines may only be piloted by their assigned pilot, and may not be healed or buffed by normal sources.

Pilots may freely enter or exit their war machines, and, like a ranger may equip two at a time. While mounted, these war machines fill roles similar to those found in the soldier professions, providing groupwide buffs, heavy sustainability, or heavy damage depending upon which war machine is selected.

However, as these war machines can not be buffed, healed, or otherwise augmented through normal means, pilots must exit their war machines to repair or augment them. An unmounted war machine is, incapable of independant action of movement, but the Pilot’s class mechanic may be used to command the War machine to use a limited set of abilities. Additionally, while mounted the pilot’s weapon skills are replaced with those of the War Machine.

Generally, unmounted pilot skills are heavy on CC but light on damage and hard defense, while mounted pilot skills are heavy on damage and direct defense. A good pilot learns when the most advantageous times are to pilot, when to hop out, and how to use the duality of his profession to defeat enemies.

Power
War machines require heavy upkeep, and the Pilot’s primary class mechanic is the Power gauge. When dismounted, many pilot weapon skills increase this gauge when used, in addition to their other effects. While mounted, all War Machine weapon skills incur a cost in power.

Overcharge
While mounted, the pilot gains access to three “overcharge” abilities, which allow the pilot to spend a large portion of power for a powerful effect. These three overcharge abilities differ per War Machine.

Maneuvers
Pilot utility skills marked as “maneuvers” have two distinct effects, one effect while the pilot is mounted, and one while the pilot is unmounted. These skills share a skill slot and cooldown, and often have contrary effects in either state. For example “Escape” while mounted may unmount the pilot while providing a persistant AoE blinding pulse, while using the same maneuver while dismounted will break stuns and instantly mount the pilot’s war machine from a distance.

Repairs and Enhancements
When dismounted, the pilot’s f1 ability is always “mount”, and while mounted, it is always “dismount” However, just as a pilot can “overcharge” while mounted, the pilot uses his F2-F4 keys to execute a number of repair any enhancement skills while dismounted. These skills have no cooldowns, but they are all channeled effects. Some are tiered channels, increasing the power of a given buff the longer the channel is maintained, and some are flat channels, such as the F2 “repair” ability, which simply restores the currently deployed War machine’s HP over time.

Traits
Pilots may trait in to a number of interesting effects, including persistent effects from mounted or unmounted war machines, passing War machine enhancements to other allies, and increasing the effectiveness and utility of mounted or unmounted weapon skills and class abilities.

Example War Machines
While the term “War Machine” may imply mechanical origins, it may be a misleading moniker, as many entities can serve the function:

Engineered tanks and siege equipment (Charr Tanks, Dredge mining equipment)

Large animals in heavy armor (Siege devourers, Armored Dolyaks)

Constructs (Sylvari “treefolk” constructs like mosshearts, Undead or Steamwork constructs, Asuran Golems)

I don’t think I would, namely because loot adds a certain random element to rewards that creates these “oh wow great loot!” moments that you just can’t get with a currency-based system.

When you’re looking down “this takes this many tokens” system, you look at it, and you know exactly how long it’s going to take to acquire thing X. There’s no wiggle room, and from there it just feels like a chore.

When you’re looking at a loot system which is tuned appropriately, you can see yourself gaining progress, but there’s also the chance that you can skip some of the progress by just plain getting lucky.

The way FOTM10 dailies work now is probably the best example of how I like to see good loot handled. Add a currency so that you can get your thingy eventually but also have that random drop chance to have it NOW, and your gameplay time feels more valuable and less like a chore to just collect X number of tokens.

I’m probably in the minority, but I liked Orr, difficulty wise, the way it was. Rather than cutting the difficulty I would have liked it if they just upped the reward.

The game needs more open zone areas where player cooperation is highly encouraged by difficulty, not less.

Orr is just plain too easy now. That’s fine, but can we get something in terms of an open zone with a better risk/reward? I honestly like southsun, but don’t bother soloing the vets (which are the most fun mobs to fight) any more because the drops are awful, and now, without the rich orichalum node, the entire “adventure” of the average southsun run doesn’t have much of a payoff.

You people won’t be happy until all monthlies and dailies read

Do whatever you bloody well feel like 0-100

The entire point of monthlies/dailies is to specifically nudge you toward doing different things each day/month, not to function as a passive reward system just for logging in.

The fact that monthlies/dailies regularly include things people don’t do is a sure indicator that they’re actually working as intended, and the numbers for this month are a good move toward “try” rather than “farm” so I’m not sure what all the complaining is about.

You don’t do dungeons, the monthly is designed to make you want to try a couple. If you don’t like it it wasn’t as if you had to grind them mercilessly (nor was the seven fractals, which was even faster than 5 dungeons) but hey, you humored the developers, tried the content, and got rewarded for it.

Salvages keep showing up because I feel like Anet is confused at how little people salvage compared to the first game. problem is, salvaging was the only expedient method to gain resources in the first game, while in GW2 we have gathering which has a fixed and reliable gain versus cost.

I’ll salvage 500 things, but honestly, if you want to move more of the resource income to salvages like GW1, you only need to increase resource gain from salvaging.

PopeUrban.2578:

Leowan.4389:

Agnima.3714:

I’ve been trying out the 00/00/30/20/20 build with the appropriate sigils and runes mentioned here and carrion gear. So far I am finding the build/gear setup to be rather flexible in both WvW and instances. With a few trait swaps I am ready to play in WvW without need to change my gear. In instances the extra vitality allows for more breathing room and a few trait swaps gives fairly decent coverage in assisting the group.

The damage is pretty decent as well and all the condition damage and bleed duration buffs you wouldn’t have in a typical dagger build makes cluster bomb deal some very good aoe damage. This is an overall good build that is more flexible then dagger builds and I think I will be playing around with this for a while.

I have had the same exact same experience with this build. In fact, I feel just as useful, if not more useful in some cases, than my 80 AH Guardian, in dungeons and WvW – for different reasons.

I use the same build for both WvW and instances, and I agree that it’s a good heavy pressure bleeder in WvW with high survivability, and with a few trait swaps is a great blind/cripple spammer for PvE.

For runes I actually run a full set of mad king. You’re losing a tick on bleeds, but you’re gaining a bit more white damage, and the synergy between the elite birds and signet of malice’s heals is literally gobs of HP in a pack of enemies. Since bleed sigils won’t cover the last 25% bleed duration to get the final tick, I in stead use +healing power stacks to further increase survivability, 50% end refill on my SB swap, and flat damage on the pistol.

This is less DPS, but the overall survivability increase in most situations I find works out really well, and the bit of extra burst is nice in PvP where you often won’t get the full duration of your bleed stacks anyway.

Leowan.4389:

Agnima.3714:

I’ve been trying out the 00/00/30/20/20 build with the appropriate sigils and runes mentioned here and carrion gear. So far I am finding the build/gear setup to be rather flexible in both WvW and instances. With a few trait swaps I am ready to play in WvW without need to change my gear. In instances the extra vitality allows for more breathing room and a few trait swaps gives fairly decent coverage in assisting the group.

The damage is pretty decent as well and all the condition damage and bleed duration buffs you wouldn’t have in a typical dagger build makes cluster bomb deal some very good aoe damage. This is an overall good build that is more flexible then dagger builds and I think I will be playing around with this for a while.

I have had the same exact same experience with this build. In fact, I feel just as useful, if not more useful in some cases, than my 80 AH Guardian, in dungeons and WvW – for different reasons.

I use the same build for both WvW and instances, and I agree that it’s a good heavy pressure bleeder in WvW with high survivability, and with a few trait swaps is a great blind/cripple spammer for PvE.

If you’re coming from a trinity game like WoW the most important thing to remember in GW2’s instance play is that you have jobs other than dealing damage.

Thieves deal damage ranging from decent to amazing depending on build, but don’t forget that you’re the best source of trash DPS mitigation via blinds and spammable aoe cripples, you have the game’s only truly spammable blast finisher (so learn combo fields and when to use it!) and you’re the only class that can safely stealth-rez downed players (by stealthing both yourself and the downed target, and applying an AoE heal to you both to speed up the process)

These three things are what people are expecting to see you do as a thief in instances, as everyone in GW2 has to pull a bit of weight in terms of team support. It might sound limiting, but any thief that’s not packing shadow refuge in an instance gets a lot of eyebrows from his party because it’s really one of the best and easiest to use support tools in the game.

karka have a lot of channeled attacks, which tend to showcase a flaw in GW2’s stealth implementation.

If fighting an enemy who has begun casting an attack, stealthing before the cast is finished does not break the targeting of the attack.

So if the karka sees you, starts an attack (barrel roll, acid spray, etc.) and you stealth, it will finish executing that attack against you before it forgets where you are. This behavior is the same with every other mob and player ability in the game.

digiowl.9620:

The problem for me with the anchor pull is that it has such a range, and the risen model so bony, that it simply blends into the background. Especially on Orr where terrain and “population” is equally bleakly gray…

Aslo keep in mind, for pulls specifically, pulls lead to knockdown, knockdown counts, functionally, as a stun, and can be reacted to with a stunbreaker. I made a quick list of “all star” stunlock breaking utility in another thread here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Stunlock-issues/page/2#post1186597

Remember that dodging is limited, so knowing your enemy’s tells, as well as taking the proper skills with you for the enemies you face is important in PvE. Simple stuff like “when facing lost of knockdowns/pulls, bring a positional stunbreak to avoid stunlock” or “when facing blind-immune mobs, swap traits/skills that become useless”

Anet has said a lot that one of the things they want and expect players to do is regularly swap the parts of the skill/trait system that are freely swapped outside of combat to fit the current situation, similar to the way swapping builds in towns to deal with the next bit of content was the way the PvE meta was designed in the first game.

Also keep in mind that certain “big hit” attacks don’t have the trademark gold vortex tell, but rather a specific mob animation that precedes them.

Karka of all varieties come to mind here. They don’t have the same “big hit” tell effect you see on, say, an ettin smash, but their big attacks have very specific leadup animations they only use on those attacks. The same can be said for many other mobs, as it is extremely uncommon for a given mob to use the same animation for two different attacks unless it’s prefaced by the “vortex” effect.

This is something you’ll learn through practice, like the way certain karka will assume a noticable “stance” before acid sprays or stomps, The risen anchor dudes will spin a 360 before their pull, and a variety of other cues used to telegraph most attacks. it often takes a little study of the mob before learning those tells that aren’t super-obvious, but they are there!

I’ll have you know that Certain Sylvari don’t fit the mold of prim and proper confused plant person.

Some Sylvari are simply wantonly destructive, abrasively aggressive, socially awkward, flamethrower wielding, turret constructing, rocket-boot kicking balls of pure awesome.

Root Hazzard! Coming to a theatre near you!

The Sylvari propensity to learn lends itself perfectly to being an engineer. Sylvari are natural learners, and as they are born fully adult they don’t have the childhood baggage of doubt about being percieved as “awkward” in a role that doesn’t befit timid forest folk.

Seras.5702:

The Flame Legion brought some corrupt gods to the Charr and were leading them astray. The other legions fought back & drove out the gods.

Wrong.

There were no four distinct legions at the time. The “legions” were not autonamous entities as they are today, as all Charr were led by a single office, that of the Khan-Ur.

The Charr were united at the time of the searing, there was no “aww you shouldn’t have done that flame legion”

The turning point against Charr worship of the Titans (who aren’t gods as much as they are pawns of so-called “gods”) is lived through by the player in the Eye of the North expansion for GW1 was the machination of a single warband lead by a single Charr (Pyre Fierceshot), and, in fact, Several humans were instrumental in this event, including Logan’s ancestor Gwen. Without human intervention and assistance in rescuing Pyre’s warband, there would BE no legions as you know them now.

Charr owe humans a lot more than they like to admit.

Chavido.3529:

16. COF Dungeon – The Dungeon is contested too often. It will be available to enter for about 15 min, but will be contested for almost an hour. No other dungeon is ever contested. This either needs to be removed, so that the dungeon is always available, or the times are reversed. 1 hour it’s available, 15 min it’s contested.

Don’t reset the door, but reset the event chain. You shouldn’t be able to just reliably walk in to CoF. It’s the flame legion’s stronghold. You should however be able to fight your way in via event chain any time you bloody well please.

Chavido.3529:

17. Token Vendors in Lions Arch clearly say what dungeons tokens are required to purchase items from them. I can’t tell which dungeon is required if I want a specific piece of gear. If you hover over the tokens, it doesn’t even say what token it is.

I remember some pre-release information that had the token vendors near the dungeon entrances. I’d like to see token vendors re-worked and explorable dungeons treated similar to FOTM wherin the first “room” of the instance is a lobby containing vendors specific to the dungeon, which the party is returned to after completing a path.

Chavido.3529:

18. Turn down the brightness of the “White” color on the snow. It’s overly blinding in some of the Norn starting areas when the sun reflects off the snow. It makes it impossible to see certain ground items, and makes leveling in that area aggrivating on the eyes.

Postprocessing in certain areas could be adjusted a bit, yeah.

Chavido.3529:

19. Event Helper, just like with the quest helper in the upper right hand corner of the screen, if we could have an Event Helper, that would show ALL active events currrently taking place on the map that you are on, it would make it easier for people to see what’s up and come and help.

Currently the map does show you important ones for the meta, but I think it would be nice if “completed” scouts would just furnish you with a map of all events in the zone. This would give scouts a reason to exist after you’re finished with their hearts.

Chavido.3529:

20. Change the symbol of Elementalists or Engineers. The little waterdrop icon looks too similar, and are at times confusing when delegating responsibilities in dungeons, or forming teams.

I’ve never had problems with it, but I did always kinda find it odd that the engineer was a potion bottle rather than a wrench, considering they’re portrayed more as mechanics with a slight aptitude for elixers rather than the other way around.

Chavido.3529:

21. The ability to purchase multiple items at once. I.e. If i want to buy 250 Ash Legion Spy kits, I don’t want to have to click “Buy” 250 times. Give me an option to select an amount to purchase.

Yes. So much yes. make it a right-click to open a dialog or something.

Chavido.3529:

22. Hunter Pets should get stealthed when the player uses his Ash Legion Spy Kit. Because we can’t put them away in combat, they just end up dying because we can’t stealth them with our spy kit.

No. That spy kit is already borderline broken in terms of PvE. It does not need a buffs. Rangers do however need a way to stow their pets for multiple PvP and PvE reasons. Address the issue here, not its individual effects or you’ll be “fixing things around one class” for a long time.

Chavido.3529:

23. When previewing an armor tem, give us the ability to adjust the dye colors on it during the preview so we can tell if it is something that might match a speciic color scheme.

Yeah, it seems like the way to do this is to drag dyes in to the preview pane, but because of the way dyes work nobody just has bottles of dye laying around. Just use the color interface from equipped gear.

Chavido.3529:

24. Weapon Dyes or auras. If I want an Abyss Greatsword, I should be able to dye my Greatswords blade an Abyss Color.

I think the reason they said they removed this feature has something to do with making it easier/faster to add more weapons to the game. I’d like weapon dyes to come back, but not at the expense of having it slow down the rate at which new weapons make it in.

Chavido.3529:

25. Weapon Previews need to actually show the weapons without having to remove leggings to see them. Adjust the preview to mimic what the character is doing, i.e. if I swing my weapon in game, it swings the weapon in the preview, so I we can see any graphics or auras associated with the weapon.

Just a button in the preview to switch in and out of combat mode would do the trick i think.

Chavido.3529:

10. Give Jormag/Tequattl/Shatterer three different attack patterns. When we ALWAYS know what will happen next, it defeats the excitement of beating him. But if the dragons change tactics half way through a fight, it puts people on their guard and forces them to adapt to ever changing conditions.

I agree that the current world bosses are stupidly easy. Make them harder and it will feel a lot more natural to also increase the rewards for defeating them. Also, most of them don’t have a FAIL condition. There should absolutely be a way to fail these encounters, and failing should kick off a chain where their forces become much more pervasive throughout the zone, allowing the failing group of players to quell the anarchy throughout the zone and work their way back to another try at the encounter.

Chavido.3529:

11. Auto-LOOT option, selecting loot once, automatically loots everything that the player killed

You mean one button to just vaccum up 20 corpses? Nah. The current auto-loot is good enough. Go to corpse and hit loot, get all loot. Your suggestion would result in HUGE loot overflow windows for full inventories.

Chavido.3529:

12. Badges of Honor in WvW are automatically deposited into bags if you kill/help kill an enemy player. It is too dynamic, too many people moving around, too many effects being used to notice a little bag on the ground next to you.

Loot/Badges and WvW do need looking at. One suggestion I’ve seen is having the system track your kills/objectives and then letting you pick up all your loot bags at an NPC after the fight. I rather like that.

Chavido.3529:

13. Guild Members have a different color icon on all maps, and will show you positions of every guild member on any map, or in WvW even if you’re not in a party with them, or even near them. Would be nice if I go into WvW and see two guildies on there as well, to form up a team.

I like this a lot, but it could be very problematic in large guilds. Should be an easy toggle button on the minimap for it at least.

Chavido.3529:

14. WvW parties have the option of having a team “commanders Icon” that can only be seen by that team, but allows them to stay with the group. Icon is not visible to everyone on the map, just party members.

Groups already show in blue, and only have five people. I don’t see how it’s at all difficult to keep five people together.

Chavido.3529:

15. Dungeon Waypoints are automatically unlocked when achieving the level required to attend it. I.e. If I get an email that says Hey come check out this dungeon, you’re now eligible. By reading that email, and viewing the attachment of where it is, should automatically unlock the waypoint for the dungeon.

Nah. The fact that you can’t simply “walk in to mordor” is actually one of the better PvE decisions in the game. Certain dungeons only make sense when you’ve actually got to fight your way in from time to time. However, the chains to access the dungeons should always be completable by a 5 person dungeon party. As awesome as the assault on Arah is, needing 10+ people to open up a five man dungeon is just bad design, and I’m glad they changed it.

Chavido.3529:

1. New characters automatically start with pick, axe & harvesting tool and four 4 slot bags.

The whole concept of low-level bag drops and costs for low level harvesting tools are there to increase the number of “functional upgrades” in the levels where certain gear slots don’t drop, effectively giving you more fun stuff to acquire and equip while making those first shoulders, gloves, back, etc. still important and meaningful to the new player. In addition, this would encourage re-rolling lowbies to gather low level crafting materials, effectively tanking the market and making the sale of those tools completely pointless. These items are cheap and easy enough to acquire for new players already, and trivial for existing players rolling new alts.

Chavido.3529:

2. Guild Tab shows ALL crafting professions completed by a certain toon, instead of just the two currerently available.

I kinda like this. Maybe some sort of right-click “profile” option. Note that leaving the general roster as-is is preferable since switching crafting professions regularly can be pretty costly, its better to have a quick-list of people who have to profession you need already active.

Chavido.3529:

3. Ports TO Lions Arch from anywhere in the world are free.

Also like. Its just a minor QoL this that prevents having to sit through two load screens to get back to LA through the mists.

Chavido.3529:

4. Give Guardians the ability to use a Rifle for ranged attacks

Guardians don’t need rifles, they already possess more than enough CC and buffs to make up for the lack of range. Elementalists don’t need shields, Engineers don’t need weapon swaps, etc. You’re talking about adding somthing to a class that doesn’t actually need it because they have built-in class functionality that makes up for its absence.

Chavido.3529:

5. Third weapon swap ability. This way someone can have a primary weapon up, have their secondary set of weapons for fighting, but can swap to the third set for abilities that are not often used (if in combat), such as speed boosting and such.

Again, this is completely unnecessary. The whole point of a two-weapon swap is that you have to be decisive about which two swaps. Adding a third just creates the potential for abusive and game breakingly long burst-chains on every class but thief, while giving thief a game-breaking selection of positioning and damage options.

Chavido.3529:

6. Crafting Item stacks increased from 250 to 1000.

I don’t see the point. 250 of crafting items is enough to craft anything you need to. Tokens are a different story. Most token recipies require more than 250 of their respective tokens so it seems silly that they still stack to 250.

Chavido.3529:

7. Black Lion Keys are guaranteed drop from each final boss in a dungeon

Unfairly advantages dungeon runners, seriously screws up the entire cash shop model. A better system would be the potential to acquire them through the new crowns system, since by buying the keys you’re forgoing other useful and desirable items.

Chavido.3529:

8. Toughness/Vitality/Power sets should be craftable. Maybe with a 4th piece (Karka Shells X15) added to the crafting discovery pane?

I agree that all existing stat configurations should be craftable, even if the recipies for those pieces are somehow dropped and then tradable. People should not be forced to run specific content for a specific stat spread, although that content making getting certain spreads easier to get is fine. Specific content should, like GW1, only be rewarded uniquely by unique cosmetics.

Chavido.3529:

9. Character Story events should be no more than 2 levels from the previous event. Doing a story quest chain up to lvl 45, then having to leave story quest to go grind in the world for 5-8 levels until your next story quest becomes available sucks, because by then you forgot the plot of the story. It’s nice when you get hooked into a story, and can do that non-stop.

I agree it is nice, but I think it’s also healthy to have some long stretches between “arcs” of the story. The points where you make the big-level breaks shouldn’t be in the middle of a plotline, but rather at the end of one story arc, and before the next.

cesmode.4257:

Ty i wiki the locations. Any chances at pre cursors or exotics frommthe chests?

In theory you can get exotics. normally the chests contain a combination of equipment (blue-yellow) and gems/talismans of usually green rarity (with the occasional blue from the chests in low level zones, and the occasional gold if you’re lucky)

Would completely destroy many of the loot and crafting mechanics. There are only ever seven tiers of items in the game (and the highest tier, ascended, isn’t finished being implemented) in addition to an eighth cosmetic only tier (legendary) and the currently available stat spreads exist for balance reasons.

Allowing players to just change stats on items would remove any utility in finding an equal item of equal tier, ever. They’d be worthless to use, and worthless to trade since nobody would need your items.

This is a bad idea in a game with an intentiaonally short and easy vertical progression. Acquiring sidegrades and cosmetics is the only thing that makes looting or trading actually worthwhile or rewarding.

You’ve got to travel to the entrance (but not necessarily do or complete) any of the jumping puzzles listed in the “jumping puzzles” tab of the achievements list.

In general these aren’t hard to travel to, and completing the puzzles is not required for the monthly. Wiki for “jumping puzzles” if you don’t quite feel like searching for them yourself.

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

DaShi.1368:

Any chance of Karka as a future playable race?

Karka Mesmer:

Karka Mesmer performs mind-shattering barrel roll!

Blackgate Invader pressed Z or R Twice!

Blackgate Invader Evades!
Blackgate Invader Evades!
Blackgate Invader takes 9001 Damage from Karka Mesmer’s barrel Roll
Blackgate Invader is down, press F to revive
[local]Blackgate Invader: Nooooooo!
[local]Blackgate Invader: Nooooooo!
[local]Blackgate Invader: Nooooooo!

Wvw is fun, but it’s a bit disheartening that when it comes to the “big picture” of war, the roles of all classes are largely equivalent. The current field combat capacity of classes is a good thing. Everyone is generally useful in a ground-fight, but one you start talking in terms of supply and logistics, there’s no class flavor, and limited tactical options.

Thus, I came up with a few WvW profession skills to spice up siegeworks and supply. it was fun to think up and I hope someone likes the idea.

Warrior
Built for War
Siege engines manned by a warrior suffer 10% less damage from all sources, and have the cooldown on all skills reduced by 10%
Guardian
Consecrated Assault
Siege engine shots fired by a Guardian also heal any ally within their area of effect for 2% on their max HP. Targets can not be healed in this manner more than once every ten seconds.
Thief
Creative Acquisition
Thieves may use the steal ability to steal up to five supply from enemy players, build sites, supply camps, and dolyaks. This ability does not allow the thief to carry more than maximum supply, and will only steal as much as the thief is able to carry.
Elementalist
Enchanted Engine
Elementalists gain one additional attack with all siege engines. This ability differs based upon siege engine, resides in the F1 slot while manning a siege engine, and has a 60 second global cooldown (in other words, you can’t pop it, move to another engine, and pop it again to skip the cooldown)

Flame Ram – Ebon Plating – For ten seconds, this siege engine and its user suffer 30% less damage.

Arrow Cart – Snowblind – This Arrow cart cycle chills and blinds foes in the area of effect

Ballista – Lormar’s Last laugh – This shot burns players, and sets enemy siege equipment on fire, dealing normal damage as a DoT over ten seconds. Flaming siege equipment removes any players manning it, and prevents its use for the entire duration of the effect.

Catapult – Arcane Vortex – This shot deals normal damage to players, while pulling them to the center of its area of effect. When impacting a wall, this wall pulses a single charge, causing a blowout effect around said wall. The pull triggers 1 second before the blowout.

Trebuchet – Enchant Ammunition – This attack causes the next trebuchet shot to deal no damage (though it still knocks back) and spawns an allied veteran earth golem at the point of impact.

Siege Golem (both) – Typhoon – This attack fires a wave of wind and rain forward in the direction the golem is facing that measures 900 units across, and travels 1200 units before dissipating. It deals no damage, but knocks back any enemies hit, functioning in a similar fashion as the Claw of Jormag’s wave attack.

Engineer
Siege engineering
Engineers repair and build 50% faster than other classes. In addition, engineers manning a non-golem siege engine may use their F1 key to channel a slow repair on the engine, restoring its hp at a rate 1/10the the speed of a single builder.

Mesmer
Greater Illusory Weapon
Mesmers manning a siege engine may use their F1 skill to conjure an illusory clone of that engine anywhere in a 1200 unit radius. This engine does not deal damage, but can be manned and fired by other players. This skill has unlimited duration and a 10s recast timer. This illusion shatters with no effect if the mesmer releases control of the current siege engine. Illusory engines appear mesmer-pimk and transparent to allies, as well as carry the nametag “Illusory X” for all allies.

Necromancer
Possession
Necromancers manning a siege engine may enter death shroud. While in death shroud the siege engine’s skills and statistics remain unchanged, but the necromancer’s spirit form is fused with the siege engine, preventing the necromancer from taking damage. While possessing a siege weapon, all shots fired cost Life Essence, and all damage incurred by the siege weapon in stead deals percentile damage to the necromancer’s essence pool, equating the total HP of the engine with the total value of the essence pool.

In addition, necromancers may use ‘F’ to possess an enemy or friendly gate, This possession treats the possessed gate as the necromancer’s body, and allows the necromancer to target and use skills targeting foes on the other side. Only one necromancer may posess a gate at a time. The necromancer may leave or be forced from death shroud as normal, and Dark Path loses its teleport ability, but gains a life essence steal.

Engels.8537:

PopeUrban.2578:

This is exactly the function of guild road markers, which I have personally used to set up efficient roads for supply runners in WvW. In stead of a passive buff on a raod, its a flag that grants 30s of swiftness, and what’s better, it works regardless of combat. Road markers allow you to create a “road” anywhere you want, simply by dropping the flags 20-30 seconds (running time) apart.

It’s one of the first upgrades available to any guild, each flag lasts an hour and only costs 50 influence, and not nearly enough people use them in WvW simply because “the masses” usually run around in zergs where swiftness abilities fall from the sky like caffeinated rain, and people like to pretend they’re sneaky in groups of 20+ despite the opponent knowing exactly the two or three routes any group will take to get to any given objective.

In Summary: Get your guild to use road markers. Problem solved.

It’s weird how the OP ignored your post. I guess it’s way too much work for some people to make a few clicks on the guild pannel or people just want to have the +33% for solo roaming.

+1 for you. Nice to see not everyone forget the “guild” part of Guild Wars 2.

Also, sorry, it’s 20s, not 30. Still it’s one heck of a long swiftness and easy to set up for very little influence.

Also, these markers can be used by any ally, not just the claiming guild. Our guild doesn’t have the numbers, resources, or buffs to hold/upgrade structures usually, so I like that setting road marks gives even the smallest guild a way to meaningfully contribute to WvW.

Engels.8537:

4. What you are describing is caused mostly by the mesmer “Illusionary Leap” ability. What’s broken for me is that mesmers/thieves lose their target icon when they stealth.
Some say “you can’t target what you can’t see”, but really? So if a party is targeting me, on my ranger, and I go inside a keep, or get behind something out of their LoS, the target icon above my head will dissapear? No, it doesn’t work that way, that’s why it’s stupid. And I’m not asking to be able to see the target icon WHILE they are stealthed, I just want them to keep it when they come out of stealth.

Again, you’re missing the point of stealth and illusions. They’re supposed to throw off your targeting, their entire design is intended to make it difficult to quickly and efficiently re-acquire the target. In mass combat stealth is supremely effective for quickly losing yourself in a crowd (often at the back of said crowd) and mesmer illusions would be absolutely pointless if you could just paint the real one with a big red marker.

The reason other classes don’t break said cursor is, quite simply, they don’t have any abilities that would be broken by not clearing it. Rangers (and all classes) will similarly clear the corsshair when stealthed by an outside source, and rangers specifically will lose it when entering stealth via camoflauge.

The issue is with the placement and the way it interacts with keep defenses, and there I can see it as an issue. After all, it’s a floating flag that can give you away in only very limited numbers of places, however one of these places is behind wall crenelations.

One could argue that crenelations are intended more so to block LOS than they are to hide defenders, and that abilities geared toward target confusion are just sort of passively better. I don’t feel that this is unbalanced as classes not geared for these abilities already have superior core defensive buffs, and I don’t think it’s a large enough advantage to the mechanics that do break it that it bears changing in favor of LoS, or even how well an LoS check could possibly work. It would be extremely annoying to keep dropping the crosshair under normal combat on every wayward tree or rock in the course of most normal fight. In fact it would just break the call system altogether, and nobody would bother.

NeedCoffee.1402:

PopeUrban.2578:

NeedCoffee.1402:

are they planning to make ascended weapons craftable?

or at least always have a way to craft the latest stats?

that makes sense right? and would fit with the way things are now.

I don’t like the idea of gamers spending crazy amounts of time doing pve and dungeons to get the biggest stats and then walking into pvp (wvw) and dominating. that never made sense to me.

This is one of many, many posts that have missed the repeated developer statements that ascended equipment is intended to be available from every part of the game. This includes general wold PvE (Which is the focus of the next two months) as well as WvW and non-fractal dungeons.

In fact, they’ve even apologized for the move of putting the current gear exclusively in fractals, and agreed that it was a bad move in terms of how it looked to players.

Awesome. That was what I was hoping to hear. Thank you.

and yes your right, i missed any kind of statement from the developers. I should have been a better GW addict and kept on top of that stuff, or at least looked for a similar thread. but the truth is I only have roughly 10 to 15 hours a week to play, so I don’t spend my time reading the forums much.

I have crazy respect for arena net for making so many good choices. I should have just been more patient and not jumped to conclusions.

Yeah, it can be really hard to keep up with the news, as they don’t update the actual news page on the website with important stuff sometimes.

All capture/defend/yak events should really reward tokens IMO, and tokens should be the sole currency of siege blueprints.

Also, I’m curious what the arenanet opinion is of the WvW jumping puzzles? Many players feel that while the free random siege is beneficial, they draw too much “dead weight” in high population worlds.

Personally, I like the JPS, I like the small fights in interesting terrain, and I like the challenge of completing them versus an unknown potential enemy force, but I wish they had more utility to actual WvW to end the “dead weight” argument, and to give me a reason to spend even more time in them.

Maybe add extra exit-only mystic gates that allow “backdoor” access to different part of the map, award points for a control point/keep inside, or even add a worldboss style monster fight to “tame” a nice big dragon or giant or something that will help your world, giving the puzzles similar utility to the jungle and bosses found in Moba games: a hard to cover backdoor with a tough NPC encounter that’s worth persuing because completing it gives a nice overall benefit to your team that may cinch a crucial push or defense.

EasymodeX.4062:

How are the two builds significantly different from each other?

Honestly they seem pretty similar in approach.

The venoms build trades less base survivability utilities for more offensive utilities.

The Tank-bleed-trops build is the opposite, higher survivability via utilities but lower disabling potential.

Essentially, venoms tends to be a better pick 1v1, and tanktrops tends to be better in group fights.

NeedCoffee.1402:

are they planning to make ascended weapons craftable?

or at least always have a way to craft the latest stats?

that makes sense right? and would fit with the way things are now.

I don’t like the idea of gamers spending crazy amounts of time doing pve and dungeons to get the biggest stats and then walking into pvp (wvw) and dominating. that never made sense to me.

This is one of many, many posts that have missed the repeated developer statements that ascended equipment is intended to be available from every part of the game. This includes general wold PvE (Which is the focus of the next two months) as well as WvW and non-fractal dungeons.

In fact, they’ve even apologized for the move of putting the current gear exclusively in fractals, and agreed that it was a bad move in terms of how it looked to players.

1: People keep talking about mucking with downed/dead/rezzing mechanics. They’re an important part of the meta in WvW and one of the things that makes large battles what they are. In other games we relied of a handful of easily focused classes as the fulcrum to a sustainable force in mass PvP. In GW2 a sustainable force is a force that wins. Successful mass play means every player needs to be conscious of, and know how to counterplay the rez mechanics. This doesn’t need to change as it’s the only thing keeping the game from becoming 100% spike DPS on called targets. That type of mass combat was never fun.

2: Agreed. Honestly all attack/defend events should reward badges, and the random drop/chest rewards should remain unchanged. This would make going for objectives the best way to acquire them, leave the JP important and viable for small groups to hit for bonus siege, and reward successful force-on-force play more than individual K/D ratios.

3. Use a more efficient stunbreak. Also, the downed/rez mechanics exist in large part to make stunlock viable but not an instant I-Win button in mass combat. This about this before suggesting changes to downed.

4. That’s the POINT of mesmer illusions. They’re supposed to confuse your targeting. They’re supposed to make it hard for you to determine the real mesmer. The illusions are the mesmer’s primary means of defense, similar to a thief’s stealth. Honestly the illusions don’t do the job as well as they should.

The thing is, stuff getting destroyed as part of salvaging/replacing is a built in sink for economic reasons. There is currently no other event that actively removes equipment or upgrades from play.

Basically, the fact that something is destroyed exists specifically to ensure that its still a good option to make or buy new armor or upgrades rather than salvage the stuff you have.

While the perfect salvage kit in GW1 was nice, it also existed to address an economic concern, which was the cost of the materials used to make it (as well as provide utility for skill points like the other consumables) The problem is that currency in GW2 is much more important to the day-to-day life of a character than it was in GW1

In the first game, one you had your gear, there was no currency sink built in to the game. You literally banked money until you wanted to spend it on something cosmetic or for new gear.

Consumables were part of the response to gold inflation, by making gold have a valuable sink for players who had completed their gear.

The GW2 economic model is much more strict in terms of currency in that, unlike the first game, the currency is designed as something of more intrinsic value to characters due to the way it interacts with repairs and waypoints. This is part of what keeps its value stable, and as a result, what helps stabalize the costs of items on the TP.

Thus, the perfect salvage kit wouldn’t exactly work right here because of the way it would interact with the utility of crafting, resource gathering, resource drops, the value of gold, etc. This is why the best kit in the game (the black lion kit) still destroys what it salvages, because upgrades are intended to be only slightly less “soulbound” than equipment due to random drops being a much larger part of how players acquire them than the way players acquire armor and weapons.

Jiiub.7135:

Love the ideas, some i can see problems with such as the banners being placed in lionarc to be farmed by people if you gain more then they cost. but that can be offset by rules. but seems they all add good stuff.

The original idea was rewarding for non-guild banner-taps, but it was pretty evident that that would be a similar mess.

Honestly if the mechanics were unchanged but they got some custom text functionality/logos were made a bit more customizable it would still be one hack of an upgrade to the banner system.

Guild Logos
While better than GW1’s systems, logos as a whole are still extremely lax in terms of customization. I’ll just point to EVE Online’s logo system and leave it there. This adds avenues for influence and guild-based unlocks use in terms of unlocking more layers, more colors, special borders, and all sorts of things guilds can use to make that logo intrinsically say something about their guild that’s memorable rather than a forgettable combination of a stock logo and a few colors.

Environmental Weapons
So, the art of war tree has these really awesome guild siege weapons. They work just like normal siege weapons, but are purchased with influence and better than the mundane version without being game breaking.

This is a massive boon for WvW, but why can’t the PvE guys have something similar? Take the consumable environmental items found at karma vendors or lying around the world. Any player has access to these for a bit of coin, and often can simply find them lying about in the world. Now, kick them up a notch by improving skill recast time, damage, or some other facet of their function. Sure, they’re still not as good as your skills, but they’re better than the (already quite situationally useful) stuff you get from karma vendors or the floor.

Call it a supply drop, complete with guild-logo-crate full of X improved environmental item. Imagine being able to spend all that influence on boxes of spawnable elementals, flamethrowers, charrzookas, or any number of useful items for PvE, and hey, maybe even a few that are balance-approved for WvW as well. This is a high visibility, fun use for guild influence that players would adore both for aesthetics and function, because lets face it… who doesn’t want to just spawn a box of rocket launchers, bombs, elemental powders, or whatever else you can come up with every now and then.

Hirelings
Imagine you could use that hard earned influence to convince someone that isn’t you to gather metal, wood, or plants. Of course, influence isn’t money, so you’re going to need to buy the materials when he’s done, but he’s a good contractor and he’s heard how great you are, so he’s willing to cut you a deal.

Specifically, hirelings would be guild-specific merchants that could be targeted at any given map and directed to harvest wood, metal, or plants. They would randomly populate a limited inventory over time for as long as their contract lasts from the materials avaliable in the zone, and at the point of sale would sell any member of the guild resources from their inventory at the weekly average market value -10%

In short, hirelings will gather less resources than a player would over the same time period, have a more random supply due to hitting everything in the zone, but will afford the guild the ability to get some small stacks of material at a discount in gold by in stead spending influence.

I don’t think this is an economic break, as it is an influence sink for a minor gold discount on something that is extremely easy for players to pick up for free. It’s a “hard” economic perk for the economics tree, which currently consists of largely randomized economic benefits of questionable economic effect. You could do a whole line of these in varying skill levels, and for added fun points, it would be nice to see them actively appearing at and using the nodes in the zone every now and then as server load permits, again to increase guild visibility.

Guild Weapons/Armor
Aside from the common cry of “we need more variety and armor slots” A major problem I have with the weapon and armor contracts is that while the guild can foot the bill for the contract via influence, there’s no way to use influence to provide players with the completely cosmetic upgrades they provide. Considering there’s no way to directly translate influence in to gold (nor should there be) it falls to individual members to purchase their own identifying markers, as these items are soulbound. I’d like the ability to actuall provide guild arms and armaments to members. I’d like these items to lose soulbound status and be pruchasable via influence at a rate lower than the standard gold>influence rate used by promoters.

This allows the guild to optionally invest in its own representation, put skins in the bank, or even have guild-focused crafters truly craft sets of guild arms and armor by crafting items, applying the transmutes, and depositing them in the guild bank for members to pick up. The gold option should remain unchanged, but for a guild that opts to do so, it should be an option to spend the guild’s supercurrency to kit its members in these items. After all, they’re cosmetic representations of the guild, not the individual player’s bank account!

Guild Halls
I’m glad arenanet isn’t rushing this one. We were told they didn’t want the guild halls to be “just a place” and I wholeheartedly agree. In too many games I’ve found myself working extremely hard for something that serves little to no practical function. I’m not going to try to design these systems as I know that there are probably a few whiteboards in washington on the subject, but I’ll just say that guild halls should encourage a group-based risk/reward system.

Let people build a guild farm, plant plants they want to harvest, but on the flip side require them to defend and maintain it so that its cost in time is equivalent to gathering those resources in the open world.
Let them establish a mine but make that mine cause them to be vulnerable to NPC attack events.

What’s important is that, like Guild – Versus – Guild PvP (Which I hope comes back bigger and better with a lot of WvW-alike bells and whistles) These should be opt-in systems. A Guild wants to try and capitalize on the profits of an omnomberry farm? They should have that option, but that decision should also require and upkeep in influence and the risk of NPC attacks that must be responded to.

The Guild Hall does need to be more than a place, but not at the expense of the non-guilded solo players that make the open world thrive. Guild halls should be a place people can actually play the game, and how much time they spend there should be directly representative of what they can get out of it.

Don’t want to PvE at the guild hall? Don’t build PvE resource structures. Don’t want to PvP? Don’t que for it, don’t bother building PvP defenses. You get the idea.

The guild should have the option to be as much or as little involved with the guild hall system as possible. My guild is the type that would love to spend the majority of our time there, hargvesting our materials, defending it from mobs, entertaining the occasional GvG match, etc. however many people just want a place to have the odd meeting or party, and they shouldn’t be forced in to those systems just to have a nice looking hall.

Banners
Banners, on the surface, are a great concept. There’s a flag, with your guild tag, that gives people buffs. They see your guild tag and think “yeah, what cool guys, I’ll remember them and if I’m unguilded might even try to get in that guild.”

In reality most players find themselves just going “oh, banner, click it and walk off” and guilds not dropping banners because… they already clicked someone else’s banner and have the buff.

How about granting influence for banner uses by guild members? Nothing drastic, perhaps 2 influence per banner-tap on your guild’s banners, and cap the banner-gain to a reasonable number per 24 hour cycle (200-500 cap) This would encourage banner use as a whole as they could potentially pay for themselves depending on use, largely offsetting the fact that their provided buff is less intuitive than the guild-wide buffs. In addition it would do a lot to ensure that the sight of a guild banner in the world is more often accompanied by members of its guild. Somehow that just feels right.

In addition, how about letting us define custom text for those banners? In stead of “enjoy this complimentary service of our guild” Which people immediately skip because they’ve already read it on every banner EVERYWHERE… what if we could pass along a tip, give the name of a recruiting officer to mail, or just share a joke or something memorable? These are political tools by nature and suffer for being identical in every instance they are placed aside from a largely forgettable guild logo and tag.

I’ll preface this by saying I do wholeheartedly enjoy the influence system. There’s a nice progression to it, the bonuses are useful, and overall it lends a sense of progression to the very act of being in a guild. However, I think we could do more.

Influence problems
Currently, the best ongoing uses of influence past researching new level tiers are all tied to transparent character buffs, or WvW fortification buffs. These transparent buffs are really nice passive options, and do a good job of creating powerful and useful influence sinks that benefit the guild based on activites done together. The buff systems are honestly perfect just the way they are. I feel they’re tiered well and have manageable costs which allow large guilds to work hard at attempting full upkeep and smaller guilds to specialize for what means the most to them.

However, the really meaty and fun stuff comes in the form of consumables. Any of the banners are fun simply because it’s a flag, the armor and weapon vendors are cool because they allow you a shot at something useful and guild specific, the WvW siege engines are very nice rewards for being so far along in the tree, and the banquet is a nice afterthought to the politics tree. heck, even little touches the like bank summoning yak are really great, as it creates an impression that the organization isn’t just a mess of guild tags, but actually possesses resources and connections within the world.

These items are visual markers of the guild, and easily the most fun parts of the influence system, and where I believe it could use the most improvement. I’m going to bullet point these in bold text, addressing currently existing, and a few new ideas for influence uses.

This is exactly the function of guild road markers, which I have personally used to set up efficient roads for supply runners in WvW. In stead of a passive buff on a raod, its a flag that grants 30s of swiftness, and what’s better, it works regardless of combat. Road markers allow you to create a “road” anywhere you want, simply by dropping the flags 20-30 seconds (running time) apart.

It’s one of the first upgrades available to any guild, each flag lasts an hour and only costs 50 influence, and not nearly enough people use them in WvW simply because “the masses” usually run around in zergs where swiftness abilities fall from the sky like caffeinated rain, and people like to pretend they’re sneaky in groups of 20+ despite the opponent knowing exactly the two or three routes any group will take to get to any given objective.

In Summary: Get your guild to use road markers. Problem solved.