Guild Wars 2

Strang.8170:

Woodenpotatoes completed prophecies solo, without henchmen….not really relevant but i thought it was pretty awesome thing nad also since gw1 happened to be mentioned.

Release era, or after NF with all of the expansion skills and the builds resulting from them? Either way that would be cool to watch. I need to look up those videos.

Due to the fact that the NPCs involved with this system are marked with the gold “special event” star it leads me to believe they’re temporary.

Lore-wise the donations are being collected to rebuild lion’s arch, and this is a task that will eventually be completed, probably being finished off with the rebuilding of the lion statue in the plaza.

The rewards aren’t all that useful for junk loot, but are a very attractive sink when levelling crafting, so my advice would be to level crafting disciplines on your alts now and donate your crafing trash, using that to grab the most cost effective long term items, the sturdy harvesting tools, then bank them. It also may be attractive to get the low end lionguard weapons for the skins, or if you want a little leveling upgrade for your alts.

Daddicus.6128:

HOWEVER, those of us who are complaining need to remember how impossible GW Prophecies was before heroes. I would have hoped the designers learned at least a little of what “fun” means in 7 years. And, they definitely have made huge strides in this area. But, they have to divorce themselves from both impossible foes and innumerable foes. That’s not fun. It’s a means to an end; it is nothing more than a grind to get through.

I disagree on the point of prophecies being impossible before heroes. I used to make it a point to solo missions with henchmen (before you could flag them) simply to prove it could be done to people that said it couldn’t be done. In the end I managed to complete the entirety of the prophecies campaign solo with my ranger. Probably the hardest mission in prophecies during that era to solo was the end of thunderhead keep, and it took a lot of GW1’s most important skill: watching the minimap.

This was still leaps and bounds harder than moving through orr or southsun solo. A lot of it is adopting a more GW1 mindset for these areas. Adjust your bar to the challenge ahead, have a plan, have an exit strategy, and (this IS harder than GW1) be very careful with your aggro.

It’s not that hard. There are only seven things you and your group need to know to complete this fight.

A> Designate two switch pullers, A and B. If A draws aggro mid-fight, A goes down, B goes up.

B> If you are not kiting this boss all the time, you are doing it wrong. You pull, dump, and pull to the next. You DPS the boss while pulling. If you’re melee, either get very good at it, or have a ranged weapon in your pack specifically for this fight.

C> Make sure everyone knows which point to pull to. Usually this means picking two points and just moving between them. Some groups like to just loop around the room. If your CC works here, use it to keep him under the lava point for easier dumps.

D> Teamwork! This fight is easy when the entire team is on the same page, pulling to the same location. This fight is nearly impossible if so much as one person decides to be on the wrong side of the boss and starts a game of aggro pingpong.

E> Interrupts! Stuff happens, sometimes you lose the heat and the boss attempts to heal. Make sure at least two players are packing an interrupt. These three players should usually not be on lava duty, but on the ground where they can be sure the interrupt won’t be obstructed or out of range.

F>Pulling takes priority. This includes downed players, dead players, your own HP bar, etc. Any action with the potential for pulling the boss in the wrong direction is the wrong action. If someone is down and behind the boss, you either leave them or send a stealther to loop around after the pull has moved out of aggro range.

G>Ressing! Quickly ressing downed players is extremely important in this fight if you want to keep the pull going. The boss will pull whether you are hitting him or not, and there are only four of you on the ground at any given time, in front of the boss and in the direction of the pull. This means you have a built in grace period to res that player. Drop everything and do it. Be ready to dodge out of that res as soon as you see a bomb, and be ready to run right back and finish it after the bomb explodes. If you can’t make the res by the time the boss gets to the downed teammate, see point F.

Honestly, current exotic dungeon sets should, like the legendaries, be updated to ascended.

Kitting out in Exotics is a small accomplishment. Kitting out in dungeon armor is a much more involved and trying process.

In addition:

WvW exotics > Ascended This is a similar effort to dungeon exotics and should be rewarded accordingly.

MF transmutes for top tier crafting mats>vial of condensed mists. This should require a large number of crystals or philosopher’s stones, as these are purchased with skill points gained from completing all types of content. For instance, 20 orichalum+200 philosopher’s stones+20 dust = 1x vial.

The current ascended rings should be added to crafting discovery, or MF craftable as an upgrade from a similar crafted ring, a vial, and X amount of dust.

If Ascended is the top tier, we’re not going to ever invent new top tiers, and we’re going to stick with the idea that ascended items should be statistically superior to exotics in all content, then the tokens, mass collections of skill points, crafting material, crafting skills, and other time consuming tasks that currently exist should reflect that reward.

There’s baseline Exotic that you can put together the week or two after 80, there’s ascended which is a touch better to give you something to work at, and there’s legendary for the optional ultra long haul.

Just a few thoughts:

Fighting anything while naked makes you a detriment to the group. Even if you’re running a support spec. Where’s your healing power? Where’s your armor? If you’re dying so much that its breaking your bank with armor equipped, then chances are you’re not very good at avoiding or mitigating damage in the first place. The lack of armor rating from… you know…wearing armor amplifies this effect.

See, people complain about repair costs when they die a lot. If your entire group is dying a lot, its possible that the problem is your group. In which case it’s usually a good idea to either stop the run and have a quick strategy session to avoid that, or simply find a new group if your failing party won’t listen to reason.

I’ve run several L1 fractal runs in the past few days as well as some longer runs up to L4. I’ve taken people as low as 50 on the L1 runs and they were usually an asset to the team, and were not getting killed noticeably more often than anyone else. Most of them were much better at rezzing downed players than the 80s.

The fractals aren’t the reason you have a huge repair bill. Its either you, or your group. If everyone else in your group isn’t getting killed over and over, then logical deduction points to only one possible cause for your huge repair bill, and that’s you.

This isn’t a way of just saying “well you suck” as much as it is a reminder that repair bills are directly related to how often you die from monster attacks (environmental deaths do not damage armor) If you’re having trouble breaking even, you should probably examine your build, playstyle, or group to figure out how to die less, as the vast majority of players in all content don’t have much trouble making enough money to cover repairs and still profit.

What you shouldn’t do is make yourself a liability by selfishly leeching off the increased risk your party members are forced to incur when you strip down and fight. You’re not helping your group that way, and you’re sending a message to them that your personal income is more important than the success of the group as a whole.

Neither of these areas is by any means “impossible” to navigate solo.

Every class has the tools avaliable to comfortably navigate these zones. If you’re bringing bad gear, or full glass cannon gear with no escape or mitigation strategy it’s your fault that you’re getting killed repeatedly.

In orr, dodge hooks, in southsun, bait pulls and dodge acid sprays. You don’t need any special gear setup to do either, you can literally bait and completely avoid pulls and acid spray simply by strafing intelligently. Now should you walk up and say hi to a veteran karka, risen giant, or other large monstrosity in these zones without a build designed to do so, yes, you may find that fight impossible.

Luckily, all of those large monstrosities are spaced pretty far apart, enough so that as long as you’re paying attention you can avoid their aggro completely.

If you haven’t figured out before getting to the L80 zones that GW2 combat is much more about avoiding large spike damage and mitigating smaller packets with boons, heals, I recommend taking a refresher course. AC story is a good “GW2 PvE boot camp” for all players, as completing it requires a firm understanding of aoe avoidance, attack telegraph recognition, use of environmental weapons, and dodge timing.

That said, if you really and truly can’t be bothered to step up to the challenge of these zones, loot scaling has recently been adjusted so that you can have a shot at decent L80 loot in zones as low as 50 now, so I’d recommend just playing somewhere else that you find fun.

Short answer:

PvP glass cannon burst builds are bad at PvE and will die horribly before contributing to a PvE fight.

Survivable condition builds are very good at PvE and add a lot of utility and damage to a PvE group. These builds do not kill people as fast in PvP (but are still pretty decent)

I run a P/D condition build and I find that caltrops is a good situational skill in PvP, and a must-have when I’m in PvE.

In PvP caltrops is really effective as a denial tool, but it isn’t as solid a denial tool as just plain killing people, or a lot of the other denial tools available to other classes.

In a WvW zerg fight? Yeah. Caltrops is hilarious. Most stairways and fort features are the perfect size to be completely covered in caltrops. For extra laughs, try long-stealthing with shadow refuge, then walking in to the middle of the enemy zerg, dropping caltrops, and running away. Its like that science experiment with soap, water, and pepper, only some of the pepper bleeds to death.

In a small 1v1 to 5v5? No. Players are generally smart enough to avoid or dodge out of it before it can have a meaningful enough effect for its cooldown. If I’m looking to get in to a smaller fight I’ll usually switch it out for blinding powder, scorpion wire, or infiltrator’s signet depending on my group, surrounding terrain, and if I’m feeling saucy.

PvE is a whole other story though. Mobs are by and large stupid enough to just walk through then, accruing bleed stacks and proccing signet of malice. I’ve singlehandedly capped bleeds on bosses with a single caltrops drop, and I bleed for 130+ damage per tick. That’s a 3k+ dps aoe that lasts for a very long time and allows you to do other things while it deals damage and heals you. It’s just plain stupidly good in PvE, and even better than casting daggerstorm in most situations. When combined with daggerstorm, the ability it gives you to severely maim or just plain outright kill massive groups of monsters is just stupidly fun.

I run a support/condition P/D build that solo’s efficiently and makes friends in groups all the time.

it’s a 20-0-30-0-20 build that utilizes steal for group buffs, C&D for AoE blind spamming, and the strong synergy between blind spamming, pistol’s sneak attack, and signet of malice for some pretty impressive self-sustain.

I don’t personally enjoy sPvP, but in WvW it makes a pretty darn effective scout, runner, and small group roamer.

That said, when playing a condition build in PvE, remember that the stacking limit can cap your damage. In the instance that you’re working with a party which can already cap out bleed stacks, you may want to consider a less-spammy support option by keeping up 25 vuln with the now-not-totally-useless body shot, or applying a shortbow as a poison field spammer and blast finisher machine.

Now I kinda want to hunt the island for “diffuse” and “specular” as well.

Nice bug find

glacialphoenix.3160:

PopeUrban.2578

The fact that everything was scheduled so meticulously and people that were unable to attend are often just seething at their inability to do so baffles me.

Well, yes. They did announce the kick-off time, and everything, so we’re in agreement on that. I knew from the moment the announcement was made that I wasn’t going to be able to make the finale event thanks to my timezone, and it was pretty disappointing for me.

I think a lot of people are seething because not only was it a one-time event that wasn’t accessible to a great number of people, it was a one-time event that awarded supremely good loot in comparison to what they would normally get. I’m hearing tales of people pulling two precursors from the chest, and people generally getting three exotic pieces from the chest – which is far better loot than most dungeon chests will ever offer you.

Obviously the most harped upon will be the precursors, but even without that, it’s still a pretty big blow to people who couldn’t make it, many of whom were already upset about not getting to attend it in the first place.

And that’s not including people who did manage to make the event but were d/ced out, or people who made the effort to get up early for the event but had to leave due to IRL commitments… in other words, people who made the effort to be part of the event, who contributed to others being able to get the loot, but were themselves unable to get the loot.

As I stated before, people who fell afoul of technical problems are completely validated in their frustration. Not getting a reward for something you actually did is pretty crappy and I’m happy to hear that those people will be compensated somehow.

The loot itself felt very equal to the task. Sure, some people figured out you only needed to show up at the end and server hopped for multiple drops, but in general the time and effort I personally spent on this event felt in line with the reward compared to spending a similar amount of time in a level 1 fractal. Our little group was honestly surprised at the contents of that chest, and was thankful that even our lower level members got some nice stuff for coming along.

I think the biggest problem, which should probably be addressed in future events, was the ability to reap the rewards without doing any of the work. Our map saw two or three complete zerg wipes, and a very tense situation in the last leg where only five players survived near the end (Okay, so I was one of those five, that felt good) and heroically rezzed the rest of the zerg under constant hatchling fire (That felt seriously good) We battled annoyingly long waves of very tough mobs, and there was a lot of dying in that time span, moreso than I’ve seen in orr or any instance in a long time.

I feel that the reward was, in general, in line with the risk for players that were around for the majority of the event. For those of you who swooped in and just clicked chests, yeah, that shouldn’t have been possible, but congratulations on quickly responding to a profitable opportunity.

In terms of exotic drops versus potential for grisly and horrifying death and time spent, a solid fractal run running the same amount of time has similar potential for gain in slightly more time with slightly less risk of repair bills. The risk/reward was in line, what wasn’t in line was the potential to completely avoid the risk.

Does that mean people should have their shinies revoked? No. However it should be looked at and addressed for the next such event.

Belanna.6150:

They don’t need different timezone servers and they don’t need to run the event 3+ times a day, nor do they have to ditch the great rewards. If they used phasing for the events then EVERYONE gets to experience the one time event when the time is reasonable for them and the world still changes for those that have completed it.

I’m really surprised Arenanet didn’t follow this path when one of their major selling points was ‘dynamic events that change the world’, because that’s exactly what phasing is.

Except that phasing only works in a bubble.

If your game is filled with nothing but solo players, or players that always play in groups with the exact same group of other players at the exact same time every single session, then yes, phasing works so flawlessly you don’t even know its there.

In reality, phasing is a poor attempt at reconciling the potential for permanence found in an instance with the dynamism of an open landscape, and does so poorly. People end up unable to do content with friends, end up in group content with nobody available to help them complete it, constantly view other players making (more than usually) irrational actions, and a number of other nasty hurdles.

Phasing is never an answer to anything. Its an ill considered malformed kitten child of two working designs at best, and a byzantine headache of invisible npcs and people waving swords at nothing and then falling over dead at worst.

Midnight.9205:

glacialphoenix.3160:

I agree that making one-time events repeat for 24h would not expunge all the complaining because nothing ever does.

But when you’re talking about missing events: it’s one thing to opt to miss an event that you could make, and another to be completely unable to attend a once-off event because of your timezone. 12 noon PST is pretty much a horrible timing if you’re in Asia or Oceania.

Nobody should expect to be able to attend all events, because other things crop up and take precedence – but nobody should be expecting to automatically miss out on all the events due to timezone, either. (Which is what will happen if one-time events keep getting released at 12 noon PST Sunday.)

^^ This x <insert number>

I don’t see too many folks in the timezones affected by the 12 noon PST time frame demanding that they get things scheduled to only suit them.

I see them asking that the concept of “one time” events be worked to include them.

Y’know – really, all they’re asking for is an equal opportunity to attend than is given to other time zones? And yet folks here on the forums are shooting them down in flames, calling them whiny and complaining etc?

I honestly would ask – if the tables were turned, how would things be?

Oh don’t get me wrong here, I’m not against making one time events more accessible. I’m also not against people campaigning for such things. For instance, Oceanic servers.

What I am against is people, after having ample notification that an event would run once, and what exact time it would run, showing up and simply whining about it and demanding it be fixed for them, right now

Not “can we look in to something a bit more friendly for future events” or “maybe in the future we can schedule these on server timezones” but rather “I COULD NOT SHOW UP, SO I AM ANGRY AND YOU SHOULD APPEASE ME BECAUSE I PAID FOR THIS GAME AND I DESERVE STUFF”

There are valid concerns about one time events. Personally I’d like it if these sorts of things were never announced ahead of time and happened more frequently. I’d be just as happy to hear that I missed the epic karka battle that just spontaneously happened one time as I would to spontaneously recieve that ingame mail while I was just out killing risen.

The fact that everything was scheduled so meticulously and people that were unable to attend are often just seething at their inability to do so baffles me. That’s all.

Sarevok.2638:

This event has been a disaster thanks to the end chest. A massive wedge has split the community now and it isn’t going to heal easily.

And you, sir, are that wedge! Congratulations.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

PopeUrban.2578:

C: Couldn’t attend the event
Again, Boo hoo. No matter how it is scheduled, no matter for how long it runs, there will always be people that can’t attend. The only alternative to this is to never hold one time events. This means no holiday festivals, no world-changing events (because golly, new players won’t ever get to experience the old content that’s being replaced!) and a completely static world. Those exist already, in a large library of both multiplayer and single player games. How SUPER important is is that you missed something? If it was that important to you, would you not have somehow adjusted your schedule to attend? If not… then is it really that important?

Or, you know, they could repeat the event multiple times during a single day, THE WAY THEY DID IT IN GW1.

Good point, but it would do little to expunge the complaints. People complained about halloween. People will complain that “I had to do X all day that day and I missed it” Etc.

The point I’m making here is that, no matter how conveniently you schedule an event, people are going to miss it due to real life obligations

If you miss an ingame event due to real life, then was it really so important to you that you have need of complaining that you did not make time to attend the event you care enough about to complain you were unable to attend?

Chances are, if you missed it due to scheduling, then it was not as important as whatever you were doing that caused you to miss it. I missed several GW1 halloweens and wintersdays. I did not however posit that they should be adjusted or scheduled in such a way that they fit my specific personal time constraints, nor did I angrily rant about how the fact that I could not set aside time to attend was someone else’s fault.

People will miss events. I will miss events. You will miss events. I wasn’t able to do Miyani’s quest chain in this one. I wish I was but I had other things to be doing. That’s no reason for me to come to the forums and demand it be extended, repeated, or made accessible in a way that makes me, and my personal schedule compatible with it.

Next people will be claiming that all random loot should be removed and everything should be obtained solely by some ultimately fair but uninteresting credit system.

Oh wait.

Agree, the event was a lot of fun aside from the reinforcement sections, which felt overly long and more like filler between the fun and unique parts.

That’s not to say that zerg versus zerg of monsters isn’t fun mind you. The bits at the end where you had to persue the ancient past an ever-spawning horde of hatchlings was fun, and probably would have been just as much fun with stronger karka.

It’s also fun to hit the players with a single large wave of enemies, or several waves of scaling intensity or different monster types. That adds a sense of progression to the “kill many monsters” objective.

However, in the reinforcements sections of this event is was just wave after mindless wave of the same enemies, in the same place, for extremely extended periods of time.

Any situation where the players need to just destroy a horde of monsters needs to be designed with the end goal in mind. Killing a bunch of monsters for the sake of killing a bunch of monsters is rarely fun after the first five minutes without some kind of secondary objective to spice it up.

Kojiden.8405:

Celeras.4980:

People complaining that someone else got a RNG drop? Give me a break. It’s not like they were handed out, tens of thousands did an event and a few got lucky rolls on their exotics.

I would think that the market crash on precursors means that, yes, they were just handed out.

The only reason there’s a market crash is because there are now more than a handful of them in circulation. There’s actually some market surplus now, wheras before there was zero surplus. The only precursors previously on the market were extremely priced because there was no competitive market whatsoever.

Where there are exactly 5 of a highly valued item on the trading post, there is going to be very little price competition. The people with them have an essentially cornered market.

When that number rises to a more reasonable supply, all it takes is a few people to undercut the previous standard. This doesn’t mean that even 10% of the entire game population posesses them. Remember, that in a global marketplace serving the entire worldwide customer base, the previous supply of these items was as low as double digit numbers in some cases. That’s less than 100 items in comparison with every GW2 player on earth

Even a small duck in rarity will completely realign that market.

Kojiden.8405:

PopeUrban.2578:

Also, it’s complete BS that I have personal and biological obligations that prevent me from attending the Claw of Jormag event every time it occurs. It is patently UNFAIR that I am not given a fair chance at the drop rolls of this chest because I was unable to attend. In fact, any looting system based on a random number generator is profoundly unfair. I’ve often gone as long as a day of playing without so much as seeing an exotic item.

I once heard about a guy that looted a spark off of a normal risen trash mob, but I have killed hundreds of these mobs in my time in game, yet I still don’t have my precursor.

I guess arenanet is such a kitten company that it doesn’t understand that the most valuable items in the game should be mailed to every character on creation, so that EVERYONE has an equal chance at obtaining the most difficult items in the game with very little effort or luck.

KITTEN this game. I’m done!

Honestly people. Grow up.

Are… are you comparing the claw of jormag chest with the ancient karka chest? Ummm…. what? Also, the claw of jormag spawns like every 3 hours. This event is OVER. FOREVER.

I’m comparing all chests and event timings with all other chests and event timings. The most valuable things in the ancient karka chest are something that you can quite literally achieve by doing pretty much anything else in the game. The least valuable are the unique accessory and 20 slot bag, which can only be achieved through this event.

Somehow, I’m not hearing people complain about those. They’re complaining that -

A: Did the event and couldn’t get rewarded due to technical issues.
This is totally valid, and I sympathize. Being unable to get your loot roll because of a bug or disconnect is pretty crappy.

B: Didn’t get drops as good as someone else
Boo hoo. You didn’t get the best drop on the table. Neither did I. Neither did a lot of people. That’s how drop tables work. Luckily, the best stuff is stuff you can still acquire outside of this event. In fact, if you never get lucky drop rolls, that stuff just became a lot easier for you to acquire via the auction house.

C: Couldn’t attend the event
Again, Boo hoo. No matter how it is scheduled, no matter for how long it runs, there will always be people that can’t attend. The only alternative to this is to never hold one time events. This means no holiday festivals, no world-changing events (because golly, new players won’t ever get to experience the old content that’s being replaced!) and a completely static world. Those exist already, in a large library of both multiplayer and single player games. How SUPER important is is that you missed something? If it was that important to you, would you not have somehow adjusted your schedule to attend? If not… then is it really that important?

Sollanon.8450:

The main thing is about precursor being handed out for this event.

Who won’t be jealous if the person next to you got a precursor for doing the exact same event as you (not to mention, it’s a 1-time only event with a high chance of getting precursors)?

Would you care if someone threw in 4 exotics and got a precursor?
Not so much since they have to work to get the 4 exotics in the first place and it’s only 1 more precursor in the market.

ps. I’m sour about missing the event, but I’m even more sour about them giving such a massive loot bag to people who could attend the event. It’s like a slap in the face laughing at someone who want to attend the event but cannot because of real-life dedications.

For the record, I didn’t receive a precursor. However, just like all other loot in the game some people’s drops will simply be better than others. That’s how random loot works. People get rares from trash when I don’t. People get vials in fractals when I don’t. It doesn’t bother me. How is this any different?

There is always, always a person that got the “best loot” in any situation. That awesome loot moment is memorable only because you’re not always that person.

The long term effects of this are that precursor and named exotic prices dropped significantly, meaning if you’re not lucky enough to have an “awesome loot” moment from this event… you’re still coming out on top.

INVALID NAME.9362:

Normally, I’d be like “this sucks, but it’s just a cool skin and we’re all on the same playing field,” but with the stated plans to boost legendary stats above ascended stats (which likely means two item quality tiers above exotic) they’re basically making the quality of your gear dependent on RNG.

That’s pretty awful.

Actually, they’re boosting legendary stats to be equal with ascended stats.

Here, read this again:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

“You’ll also see more Legendary items in the future and an update to our existing Legendary weapons. Legendary items were always intended to be on par with other “best-in-slot” items. So fear not, all existing Legendary weapons, which are currently on par with Exotics, will be upgraded to be on par with Ascended weapons at the same time that we add Ascended weapons to the game. Thus Legendaries will remain “best-in-slot” items. All Legendary items going forward will be of Ascended power. We also have plans to add more fun ways to acquire Legendary precursor items with a more “scavenger hunt” feel than they are acquired currently.”

Also, it’s complete BS that I have personal and biological obligations that prevent me from attending the Claw of Jormag event every time it occurs. It is patently UNFAIR that I am not given a fair chance at the drop rolls of this chest because I was unable to attend. In fact, any looting system based on a random number generator is profoundly unfair. I’ve often gone as long as a day of playing without so much as seeing an exotic item.

I once heard about a guy that looted a spark off of a normal risen trash mob, but I have killed hundreds of these mobs in my time in game, yet I still don’t have my precursor.

I guess arenanet is such a kitten company that it doesn’t understand that the most valuable items in the game should be mailed to every character on creation, so that EVERYONE has an equal chance at obtaining the most difficult items in the game with very little effort or luck.

KITTEN this game. I’m done!

Honestly people. Grow up.

FYI: not everyone received a precursor. It was on the drop table with all the other named exotics. In fact, like every other exotic drop in the history of the game, the vast majority of players did not receive one.

20 slot bag, exotic all stats accessory, 2x named exotics, 2x rares.

I’m pretty happy with the rewards for the time spent and the one death I suffered.

It was a small karka attack in which the lionguard furnished the players with a special alchemical solvent. Basically, you either grabbed a sprayer or used a barrel to coat your weapons in the stuff, which allowed you to damage the normally invincible large karka.

Our overflow was pretty light on people so we spent a good deal of time with my little group on the walls of fort mariner. In my memory the first time I have ever actually used the place as a fort.

That said, if you missed it you didn’t miss much, just a slightly easier version of the initial karka attack with a lot of yelling at trebuchet builders to stop taking beer breaks beforehand. The real fun today was all out at southsun cove.

They really aren’t all that hard, you just have to pay attention to the mob behaviors and learn to fight each one. I have a lot more fun in this zone as I can’t just auto-pilot some meaningless rotation to burn down mobs like I can in most other places. Fighting here actually requires a good bit of attention paid to what the enemies are doing. Basically, you’ve got to pay attention to what the enemy is doing, and counter that.

Young Karka: Bait the initial slow moving ranged attacks, then sidestep the attacks as they come in. You can literally avoid all damage from that volley just by strafing back and forth quickly to throw off its prediction. After the volley just beat them to death with whatever ranged or melee weapon you have handy. This works on most other slow projectile attacks in the game as well.

Reef Drakes: Again, bait/blind/block mitigate the first attack, and don’t stand around and get confused. These guys have a pull, so keep that in mind and save a dodge to hope out as soon as you’re pulled in if you don’t have a way to mitigate it.

Veteran Karka: When shelled, this enemy deals reactive damage when struck. It will “evade” (which, IMO should have its text changed to “block” in order to make this mechanic more clear) when it pulls all of its legs in so time big or crucial attacks right after it does so. The knockdown is a two-bounce AoE that’s easy to avoid. Don’t dodge when it jumps, as you’ll evade the initial impact but get hit with the “bounce” in stead dodge just before the impact and you’ll evade both bounces. As for the roll, it also has a fairly obvious telegraph and due to its linear path is extremely easy to avoid. Just think back to fighting boars. These large karka will sometimes lay eggs, which when left untouched will hatch in to swarms of hatchlings. Save your AoEs to deal with the eggs, as the resulting hatchlings will explode for decent damage, as well as attach themselves to you. Attached hatchlings function a lot like a mini-condition that’s unclearable, and are generally detrimental to your combat ability, so making the eggs, or if you mess that up, the resultant hatchlings your first priority in these fights is paramount.

You’ll have to deplete the HP bar of these twice, once to remove the shell, and once to kill the beast. Once the shell is gone you can be a bit more aggressive with damage as the reactive damage no longer applies.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Some of the fractals are pretty fun with a good and geared team, some of the fractals though are downright poor and frustrating as hell.

The inquest prison fractal was horrible ~ we ended up just quitting out of that one. Getting up the jumping puzzle with the harpies knocking you off wasn’t the problem, getting inside the tiny room at the top and having to fight a veteran bomber, champion ettin and a champion fire shaman was – the fire shaman alone practically covered the entire walkable area with lava fonts. Anet – this needs nerfing, one champion there is enough!

We did this one pretty much problem free. Saw the capacitor, cells, and went “stop”

We saw the champion lava shaman and knew he would be a huge pain, so we focused him down while kiting the ettin who is a pretty much non-threat in any situation.

It isn’t the dungeon that needs adjusted, it’s just your teammates. Honestly, the golem midboss later on was a bigger problem than the room with the lava shaman IMO

Oddly enough I just completed my first full run of 3 fractals with a pickup team and it went really well. it took us time to figure out the mechanics of some switch puzzles and one boss but all in all the group only wiped twice the whole run.

While it can be frustrating now being in the same instance as guildmates, remember you can invite them to a party from the guild menu, go to lion’s archm, then right click their name to join their instance.

That said, fractals are a little more mechanically complex than other content in the game, but we found it was possible to learn the encounter as we were doing it rather than wiping, for the most part it just took us longer than it would have if we knew the “trick”

Something that seems it wouldn’t be hard to add, and would help in certain situations when crafting, theorycrafting, or other times where players may need a calculator.

for example:
/math 138+482

Returns the sum of 138+482 to the chat window in the whisper channel

It wouldn’t really need to handle complex operations, just simple maths to easily multiply, add, subtract, or divide two numbers without needing to go find your phone or alt-tab for a calculator.

Ramei.2715:

Much of what the humans think are historical facts are fiction created by their “gods”.
The gods for example did not create Tyria, though they did try to reshape it. How do we know Abaddon was bad and the other gods good? Because they said so.

Well he was evil in a completely relative sense, just like the dragons are evil in a completely relative sense.

Stuff that wants to kill or enslave you is usually considered evil, and Abaddon was pretty in to that.

The sane part of this thread:
“My class, the Ranger, has some serious balance issues in PvP. Please look in to adjusting my toolset so I have build options for 1v1 fights if I choose to build a character for that purpose.”

The nutty portion of this post:
“Remove classes that can kill me because I was not paying attention, and certain builds are designed for burst damage at the expense of survivability.”

Yes, rangers have PvP issues. Its a fact. IMO you should have the option to stow your pet and receive a hefty buff of some sort for not having a pet present. if I remember correctly this was originally planned for the ranger long ago anyway. Lets deal with the inadequacies of the ranger class first, and then look at how a dedicated 1v1 build played by a competant player fares against such builds.

Wraithforge.8710:

PopeUrban, I’ll at least agree that our utility skills (including weapon skills) are not very compelling. There are a couple of good ones, but most are boring, and not worth their cost.

I understand your point in keeping utility and damage separate, to encourage thoughtful decisions based on initiative. Basically, “should I spend the initiative, or do I need it for something else.” That’s cool, I get that, but I think there’s an even more compelling option.

I’m very in favor of stacking multiple effects on every single weapon skill. Effects that may not even have anything to do with each other.

Crazy stupid example, to help illustrate what it does to your thought process: (Headshot)

What if Head Shot did as much damage as Heartseeker but only at 25% health, interrupts spell casting for 1 full second, and removes a boon, but it costs 9 initiative?

-If all you want is damage, you’ll use Heartseeker x3, not Headshot.
-If you want a finisher, but they’re out of Heartseeker range, you might pay for Headshot. But what if you’ve got another player on your tail? Do you need to save the initiative to deal with him?
-If you NEED to remove a boon, is Headshot worth it? Maybe… But if they’re not casting a spell and/or below 25%, it’s a hefty initiative price to pay for a boon removal. You’ll have to decide if it’s the right for the situation.

If you can line up a Headshot where all three effects will activate, GREAT. That’s why the initiative cost is so high. But if you only need one or two effects, you have a lot of decision making to do.

This allows us to use more of our skills more often. Right now Headshot barely gets any use, and even it it was an AWESOME interrupt, it would still only get used as an interrupt. We need more reasons to press more buttons.

I see where you’re going with that, although that’s a pretty extreme example. I do think the point stands though, Initiative as a class machanic should be about having abilities with vastly different functions that encourage moment-to-moment decisions about initiative use.

A good example of a skill that is well designed for initiative is P/D 3

This is a skill that does something that no other skill on the bar does, and if it weren’t prone to bugging out at the slightest hill and shadowstepping all of two feet it would be a lot more useful. Its a skill you don’t really use for damage, and you wouldn’t just idly hit in a fight because using it wrong puts you in a bad space initiative wise, and in this case probably positioning wise as well.

A similarly good initiative skill is dancing daggers. It has a situational use as a ranged cripple against a single target, or as a very high damage dump against two targets, or again as a useful cripple against more than two targets. Its a skill that encourages use when its appropriate, and for the thief to learn when it’s appropriate to use once, spam, or not use at all to swing a fight.

ASP.8093:

I don’t think Spear 5 is “the elephant in the room.” It’s fine for what it does, and spear does already have decent area-attack options. I don’t think it’s weak or redundant. I really don’t think thieves need a full area-effect attack underwater, you know?

Spear 4 is the skill that just doesn’t work. The way it’s implemented, it’s like Scorpion-Wiring yourself. It’s a really awkward self-stun at anything other than max range.

Moreover, Speargun 1 doesn’t work. The damage is pitiful, even with big bleed specs. I basically only use it to test range so that I don’t miss with Speargun 2.

Interesting feedback. I admit that spear 4 would probably see a lot more play if it just plain worked like scorpion wire with a cripple. Spear 5 is the one that really has the problem of overshadowing the entire bar simply because its a spammable-to-infinity evade channel with very minor traiting needed to make that happen. Who cares if its damage is sub-par? My thinking with what I was talking about with 5 was to make it a little more useful as a tool by removing the self-root, while compensating for that utility by making it more situational, and thus less attractive to just endlessly spam.

Basically, any self-root feels very wrong to me on a thief bar, considering the entire class concept is about mobility or misdirection as a primary defense.

And yes, fully agree with speargun 1. The autoattack bleed is too short to be useful, and the sneak attack is pitiful considering the extremely limited opportunities to stealth underwater.

I think what we’re finding out here is that people have not a lot of problem in spear with power/crit builds. Don’t get me wrong, the evade is very good, and spear really seems like its in a good place. However, I do agree with Wraithforge in that while those evade moves are AMAZING when they work, they’re also very redundant.

I don’t deny that other classes have underwater problems, or a whole host of other problems, however this is a thief thread, and personally my only other character with sufficient playtime is a level 14 engineer, so I am simply not well enough informed on these issues to comment. What I can see from observation and playing with guildmates is that other classes don’t appear to be quite so binary underwater. For thieves you’re either going to win an underwater fight extremely easily, or lose without much chance to do anything about it. This is true in both PvP and PvE and this is really a problem. Our underwater skills are simultaneously too good in some situations, and absolutely useless in others with no inbetween that actually feels like a fight.

I still feel like spear should get a small rework to be made the thief’s condition option underwater, but it says a lot that people are reccommending going in to a downed state on purpose in order to win a fight with a condition thief underwater. if that isn’t a sign that condition damage options underwater need work, and possibly underwater downed state needs adjustements, I don’t know what is.

So lets back off the speargun for a moment and just focus on the spear itself.

Basically, we could break down spear in to:

1 – After the multitarget buff to most classes spear abilities, this is a really solid auto. The auto-poison has good trait synergy and feels useful without being overpowered

2- The evade seems very redundant for what it accomplishes, the vuln, like body shot from pistol simply doesn’t contribute enough to a fight to make it worth the initiative cost in most engagements, even if used once as an opener. Could stand to lose the evade and buff the vuln to make this more usable, both as a personal tool and to add some team utility.

3 – The damage from the reactive block is stellar, and mechanically its a really fun skill to use. The game should have a lot more reactive/conditional skills like this one. There’s really nothing wrong with this skill. It’s powerful when used properly, and a laughable waste of initiative when used improperly.

4 – Basic gap closer for a melee weapon. In theory this is very useful. In practice its a skill that can often be completely forgotten. That said, I think its mechanically sound. Its a gap closer with a single target cripple, and it meshes well with the other spear skills for its purpose.

5 – The elephant in the room. Undeniably an amazing skill, but also too spammable and roots you in place. Its great for holding on to a tank, but its also extremely unsatisfying to use, and far too spammable for what it does. I’d be open to removing the root component to allow other options for its use, while increasing its initiative cost to make it less spammable, as a moving evade-ball of damage is something that’d be just plain broken and overpowered.

Nope, my GW1 ranger retired on a beet farm in Beetletun, was cremated after death, and had his ashes sent to Palawa Joko with a note reading “One less zombie. Love Markus”

Honestly, who wouldn’t have themselves cremated after fighting hordes of the undead? That’s just silly.

Narcemus.1348:

Oh I’m sorry, frilly ideas…. Um…. The wizard who made all the floating rocks decided to make a spell allowing people to float in water. His spell was hard, and many people ended up flying into space because he weakened gravity on them too much, but he was finally successful.

That’s the spirit!

Also, the wizard was a servant of the elder dragons. That’s like the #1 rule of silly lore theories, you have to connect them to the dragons somehow.

I can see your concern there. For sure, engaging ranged vs. ranged underwater with a thief is a really painful experience. Where’s my on demand blind? Where are my stealth options?

While the evasion works well, I do agree that its pretty much the only option in multitarget combat underwater, combined with copious amounts of max range abuse with speargun 3, which feels more like exploiting aggro range than it does like fighting. Its an option that doesn’t get you very far compared to the tools that other classes have.

Spear could honestly stand to just plain lose its gap closer I think, or append an aoe blind to it or something. Could also work an aoe blind or stealth of some sort in to speargun 4 or 5.

This would give us some more survival options underwater for sure.

Nah. I personally wouldn’t use it as there are cheaper ways to get vigor and quickness fairly reliably, and fury isn’t all that useful unless you’re already a crit build, in which case you don’t need it that much.

I can agree, though, that pretty much every class could use one or two more elites to choose from. There’s just not a large enough selection of them.

Initiative is fine, It’s what defines the entire design of our weapon skill bars. We’re meant to have two or three solid damage abilities and two or three solid utility abilities with not much damage. On a cooldown based class these skillbars wouldn’t work properly because you’d be stuck in a predefined loop of “damage and fall back to utility until damage is up again” In fact, some builds on other classes work this way already because of certain skill mechanics.

The problem isn’t initiative, its that our utilities are often sub-par for their initiative cost, and that some damage abilities have too much utility, or some utility abilities have too much damage.

The key to appropriately balancing thieves isn’t removing their ability to spam a skill, its creating a good reason to want to save that initiative or use it on something else. As a thief you should be encouraged to play your initiative by ear, balancing initiative between opportunities for solid damage and solid utilities, and based around their synergy with things you steal and changing combat conditions.

Burst is being lowered, and that’s fair. We should have good burst, but currently our burst builds also infer too much utility during the burst without costing us any extra initiative. Personally I would have rather seen the burst left alone and some of the utility removed from the burst skills, as well as having the utility skills buffed.

Since we know burst is being lowered, the only logical compensation is increasing our utility so we have more interesting moment to moment choices to make in combat about initiative spending, and a better ability to survive in a prolonged engagement when playing a burst build.

“Our downed state has really useful utilities for personal survival and group fights”
“I don’t want to make a comment about balance”
“I’m sure ArenaNet knows what they’re doing”

disclaimer
These examples do not reflect my personal opinion, but rather the context and theme of this forum’s average post on a day to day basis.

Thematically I think it’s to differentiate races. The fact that humans seem compartiviely un-special and weak to the tools employed by other races is part of the human ethos in the GW2 timeline. This is pretty common in fantasy worlds, where all the non-human races have all kinds of cool stuff, but humans manage to get by by being adaptable and having a quick wit.

Essentially, I’d see the use of bows as a case of the current timeline. The pact and the peaceful interactions of races is fairly new, and thus rifles, gunpowder, and other technologies are still new and unknown to a lot of people. Just like reality, we didn’t transition from horses to cars or bows to firearms overnight. it was a porcess that took a long time, and Tyria as of GW2 is very near the beginning of that process for the majority of its people. Ranger characters don’t avoid using guns because they’re physically unable to, but rather because they don’t know how and see no reason to learn. Similarly, sylvari dont build giant war machines or golems because their culture doesn’t really need or use them.

Humans, as a culture have the strength of “adaptability” due to hundreds of years of losing ground due to their previous hubris. When your back is against the wall and you don’t have a lot of other options you tend to be a lot more amicable to learning to use an asuran golem, or a charr rifle, or whatever seems available to you.

Dacromir.6207:

In my eyes, the unbalanced part is the pistol’s stealth attack.

Actually, I disagree. It isn’t that sneak attack is too powerful, its that everything else on the bar is incapable of pushing damage.

As for the concept of “just using two skills over and over” Isn’t that the point of the entire initiative system? Thieves are the only class that has the option to repeat their non-autoattack skills, and every weapon skill has been designed around that concept. That’s why thieves have skill bars that usually look like 2 solid damage skills and 3 solid utilities/situational damage, because the entire design of initiative is built around needing to balance initiative used for damage, and initiative saved for defense.

As for the complaints about the P/D bunker, as a whole, I think people really only complain about it versus other common bunker setups because they feel like they spend a lot of time unable to whittle away at the bunker due to stealth. nevermind the fact that, while effective, the P/D bunker takes the longest amount of time to actually kill a target, and has less raw survivability versus direct burst damage.

In short, I feel like the build itself is just as counterable as other similar builds and stands a similar chance of success or failure. The fact that it uses 1115 “cheese” is systemic of the design of the entire thief resource system, in the same manner that backstab burst or pistol whip builds are as well.

If other classes used initiative, you’d be seeing similar behavior for every other build, 2 main damage abilities and the occasional utility tool. The only reason non-thief classes use a large number of their skills for damage is largely because cooldowns force them to do so by design.

Boon duration is fine, like most other classes if you want to maximize a bonus like boon duration you really do need to build around it.

Overall, underwater combat on the thief tends to severely disadvantage condition builds. In a power/crit setup you have a very interesting and useful spear bar with a nice set of tactical options and a highly damaging reactive attack that makes combat a really fun series of moment to moment decisions about where to spend initiative in terms of offense and defense, and gives your opponent a lot of potential counters you need to play around. With the speargun you’ve got a solid shadowstep, a nice spammable burst, servicable autoattack damage, and in general a lower damage but higher survival setup that can still dump inititavie for respectable damage.

The problem is that, when you’re a condition thief your only real option for decent damage is the speargun, and then, all of your damage comes from the single bleed stack on your autoattack, and a poison that only works if enemies move in to it. I find that even against relatively easy enemies in PvE there are simply no solid damage options for the condition thief. Underwater I spend most fights simply autoattacking until enemies get close, and then hitting 3. This keeps me alive, but it doesn’t leave any options for spending initiative on damage at the expense of survival. The result is a very long fight that I have no way to speed up, and I often find myself just trying to swap to spear and using the reactive because mobs are too dumb to counter it.

What’s problematic is that using a setup that should be suboptimal for my build (raw damage) actually offers better damage than any condition options I have available.

I suggest slightly lowering the raw damage on the speargun 2, and replacing that damage with a bleed. This wouldn’t disadvantage power/crit builds as they already have a perfect set of survival and utilities from spear, and can still use the speargun where its most useful for those builds: as a survival tool. This would however open up a solid bleed stacking option for condition thieves to spend initiative on and deal damage that’s much more in line with the damage numbers a condition build can dish out on land.

Your thoughts?

I think the big thing to take away is that GW2 isn’t really an homage to those past events. In the grand scheme of the average life of citizens of tyria a lot of the struggles our characters had weren’t very important. We also know that Even the most fastidious of scholars (the priory) doesn’t perfectly record or understand all of history. There’s a quest in the priory storyline where you visit the tomb of a famous character, and if you played prophecies you’ll chuckle to yourself at how just slightly off the priory’s understanding is of that character and the events surrounding him.

That said, it would be nice to run across some more shout outs, even if it is just “a band of heroes” and I wouldn’t be disappointed to get some personal story content that specifically tracks down parts of the paths those heroes took.

My ultimate fantasy would just be to find the final resting place (maybe an instance) of all my account linked characters including the text from honor monument in GW1.

This could just be an instanced area, look up the HoM data, and parse it, and I would still be just really happy to find any evidence in GW2 that those characters actually lived and did things.

Ratphink.4751:

@PopeUrban: Actually the interesting thing about the Mists, is that the more your find out about them, the more you find that they’re less segregated islands and more woven together like a strange patchwork of co-opted landscapes. I mean, The Underworld is the one we know the most about, similarly we know that it’s connected to the Realm of Torment via the River of Souls that goes through the Domain of Pain before coming to the Underworld. Similarly we know that the Mad King’s Realm is also considered a jurisdiction of the Underworld.

Now, this last part is purely speculation, but considering the overall atmosphere of the Fissure of Woe, I don’t think I’d be terribly surprised to find out that it too is somehow connected to either the Underworld or Realm of Torment simply due to its own association with the dead (ghostly Eternals). For some reason I had actually though I read that the Eternals were those warriors who died in battle fighting for Balthazar, but can’t seem to find any supporting evidence so I’m left to assume I made this up.

Now on the topic of the Shadow Behemoth, while I agree that they all fought the same battle 250 years ago when they allied with Abaddon to combat the six, I’m really not sure if this would be the case anymore. However without any real word from Balthazar or Grenth on the state of affairs in their respective realms anything we surmise at this point would be speculation. That being said, I think the dialogue in the Domain of Pain adequately demonstrates that though they fight for the same cause, they are not subordinate to one other deities. This can be seen in the dialogue between the Emissary of Dhuum and the Lich in that mission.

Its an odd concept (The mists) but Jeff’s statement in this interview:

http://www.guildmag.com/gmblitz-lore-interview-with-jeff-grubb

Seems to indicate that the mists are sort of the “evolutionary soup” of reality. So, wheras the mad king’s realm is within the underworld, the underworld is within the mists. As a primal force of creation it seems to suggest that the mists autonomously create realms large and small of their own volition, but we do know that the six human “gods” are beings with some degree of ability to manipulate the mists.

It isn’t clear if this is an innate or learned ability, but what is clear is that creating realms within the mists isn’t something that is easy to do, and possibly something those entities don’t fully control. Its similarly possible that the gods lied about creating any of those domains, and rather the mists themselves created those domains as the gods travelled through them, in the same manner that the mists created several PvP battlegrounds in close “proximity” (as things are measured there) to the realm of Tyria, which took on aspects and features of Tyria.

What we do know for a fact is that the gods have some ability to travel through/in the mists, and that it seems unlikely that this is an innate ability as much as that they posess some form of transportation. To use the ocean analogy again, the gods don’t seem to be able to “swim” in the mists as much as they possess a “boat” of some sort. This would account for various stories in which gods are trapped/imprisoned/or otherwise “stuck” in one realm or the other. In effect, whatever tool/power they use to travel is somehow unavailable to them at that time.

We also know that they have an ability to create access points from realm to realm or to various points in the mists. In the case of the shadow behemoth, it’s equally likely that it is directed to our realm by another entity, or that its appearance is just a function of the mists themselves weaving a more permanent connection between our world and the underworld after hundreds of years of frequent point to point contact at ToTa and grenth’s temple.

This, mechanically wouldn’t be so much a barrier weakening as it would be like a path in the woods forming itself after hundreds of years of people and animals taking that path. This seems to jive completely with the understanding we have of how the mists work, in that they’re naturally adaptive to their surroundings and create things to suit them.

Narcemus.1348:

Or, and I know this is a crazy thought, but swimming was very easy and very possible. The only reason we didn’t see it was because of A) Game Mechanics, or Our characters never learned how to swim. I mean who wants to swim in 50 pounds of armor anyways, it would suck. If it didn’t kill you.

Buzzkill :P

OR

People knew it was possible, but didn’t swim because it was considered in bad taste, because water was connected first to a deposed evil god, and then later to the god of death.

So, you know, it would kinda feel like tempting fate.

It could also be completely unconnected. There’s another of those signs that warns of “flesh eating swarms” which sound an awful lot like the scarab plague that decimated Elona.

That plague was a completely natural event, and it is possible that not everything is directly connected to the rise of the elder dragons. It could also be as simple as these creatures being driven toward tyria for the same reason the Quaggan were.

Its important to remember that while the dragons are an impressive force of nature, they’re actually directly and willfully responsible for very few things outside their own claimed domains.

Also note that a long stretch of time has passed between when the temple was accessible to us in GW1 and just before the rise of the dragons. It’s entirely possible that the statues were simply moved for aesthetic or political reasons.

Remember that the temple was built by humans to honor the gods. The fact that the gods accepted that place doesn’t change the ability of those people to change the temple.

As for the melandru statue it’s likely placed there for aesthetic effect with no thought as to why it didn’t sink. The “immune to nature” explanation wouldn’t hold much weight as there is at least one (possibly more) flooded statue of melandru in the world. The Quaggan have taken a liking to it and even adopted a version of melandru based on that statue.