Guild Wars 2

I am tempted to vote for engi as well (also because it is my main and I read more the notes for it) but I’m a bit scared for the future.
They made so many changes to the profession that I would call it the less “stable” profession right now. Basically starting next week people will push the limit of every single traits and find some awkward synergies so that in the end engi could the most nerfed profession between next week and HoT release.

Too many changes at one time is a high risk.

Tbh the real equal thing ( not balanced, equal) would be a scaling based on team statistics.
So the more power the team has (power*crit*feroctiy for each char added together) the more HP the boss has, and the more defense the team has the stronger the attacks of the boss.

In the end you get an encounter that is equally long for every setup and then the gear choice of each of the members doesn’t matter anymore. On the paper it should be a nice idea but :
-there is no more progression for anyone, no easier setup to learn and no harder setup to perform. The results are binary, either you go through the dungeon or you fail but once it is cleared it will be always the same
-if the skill level is a bit to high to begin, casual players won’t spend time in dungeon more than twice because it is too hard (remember the game launch!)
-hardcore players won’t be able to improve their playstyle and time completion so they will leave the dungeon areas (and maybe the game) sooner than later

So in the end I wouldn’t wish too much for a new paradigm. Just wait for HoT and see : the not-downscaled content will be harder than AC and select those who are good enough to play with Meta builds and zerker gear.
I mean I’ve seen so many people playing Meta “because it is meta” and don’t understand any SW bosses (and open world content is easier by far than dungeons!) and die constantly without improving over time and only blame “AOE on red” to explain their bad performance.

Morfedel.4165:

Leonhardt.8164:

I hope they don’t nerf zerk meta, I’ve always been a dps class and i love dpsing, i dont want my ascended zerk gear to be useless

no one wants it to be useless. We just want the other gear to be as viable a choice as zerker without, for example, getting booted from groups for having “non-meta” gear and all that garbage.

Actually it is a viable choice, Source : me who have almost no beserker dressed barbie and runs dungeons every day….
If you don’t want to get booted, first don’t join the group “lvl 80 exp zerk only” because you don’t fit the description. Instead start your group " everyone accepted, no need of any zerk or guard", wait a few seconds and say “hi” to your new team

skowcia.8257:

Ranael.6423:

I hope they keep the surprise the same way they did at release. It so much better for the people who will be among the firsts to complete one of the new legendary to discover their skin and animation.

And end up with a clown pistol, disco ball on a stick, joke longbow that shoots with flowers or shortbow with unicorns? Nty sir.

Legendaries are not mandatory nor are you forced to be among the first to get one of them. Wait till everyone has it and decide which one you wanna do or stick to the ones you already know.

I hope they keep the surprise the same way they did at release. It so much better for the people who will be among the firsts to complete one of the new legendary to discover their skin and animation.

Ranael.6423:

ForeverAway.5948:

but your way isnt fun

why r u playing the game if u dont want t have fun and just rush rush runrun 111111?

Fun is really not an objective thing, people have fun while earning IG gold. And really I wish to see once a group of people rushing and only pressing 11111 though an entire dungeon, even AC, and go till the end without dying.

join a pug with two elles youll see[/quote]

Have you played an ele recently ? Do you really think they don’t swap attunement and only auto attack? Have you ever tried to take an ele and stack might and fury for your group by just pressing 11111 ? I admit some path (especially low level dungeon) have bosses that melt too fast ( downscaling is meowed ) but if it is too easy for you then stick to HotW and Arah and try the 111 even with three ele. Watching a video on youtube doesn’t make you play, it just gives you the impression that everything is too easy.

ForeverAway.5948:

but your way isnt fun

why r u playing the game if u dont want t have fun and just rush rush runrun 111111?

Fun is really not an objective thing, people have fun while earning IG gold. And really I wish to see once a group of people rushing and only pressing 11111 though an entire dungeon, even AC, and go till the end without dying.

Every profession has currently a healing spec. Some are most powerful than other but still…
So a new profession should have it, there is no surprise but it doesn’t mean it will be more required in any game activity. Actually you can perfectly play healer in the actual state of the game, even in dungeons. The fact that it is not required is a different story.

The difference with Rev is that you have a big boost in outgoing healing which makes sense from a design point of view since we are speaking about a heavy armoured and medium life profession, so obviously giving him to much self healing would be too strong or too mandatory if base healing was low.

That said I quite don’t like the fact that healing is dependant on a Legend AND a weapon. I can see the point of having an off legend for healing but I fail to see right now any synergy between staff and other legend. I truly think Staff revenant will be the next bearbow, as in they will suffer from auto kick upon grouping.

This is a nice video but to me it confirms what I always thought : downscaling sucks.

All the threads about Meta mix two things : speed and DPS. While they often go together you showed in this video that speed comes mainly from the runs between bosses. Not only this but you showed (sorry I’m going to devaluate your skills) that this is not something hard to achieve as long as you know which skills to use AND as long as people around you know how to react. But how many thieves have taken their “running support” build to only see pugs escape SR or stand far from AOE stealth ?

Arguably the running support can be done by other classes like guard or even PU mesmer if RNG is favorable… but yeah guard and thieves are kings for that.

Nevertheless I see a lot of bosses melting really fast in this video and I think this comes from downscaling since you did that in the popular low level dungeons. As an example, the first boss in TA doesn’t have time to pop adds. Ok one could think if you bring enough dps then you should escape boss mechanics… but somehow this is a bit silly that when you gear as “easy mode” you have to face boss mechanics that make the encounter harder while being in “hard mode” makes it so people don’t have to fight those mechanics. In that context you can’t really talk about skilled play for the berserker gear since you have nothing to show your skill… I mean rotation is not so hard to do.

Now I don’t have a doubt on skills of many people around this subforum as I know that they can be as efficient in EVERY dungeons. However I think the bitterness from other players towards meta and berserker gear comes from the fact that many not-skillfull (no idea about builds but than “I have a DF ready”, never cooked or bought food, think guard can perma aegis ..) players are able to melt the 4 first dungeons and think they are good enough to treat other as baddies…

Just to be sure to finish on a positive note for your video : I liked your video a lot and it brought me to want to remove the dust of my thief, and your toon is cute

I watched this video and this is full of bitterness. He’s sad to not play the top rated profession of the game… at some point he should deal with it.
Now the part of glitch and exploit is a bit ridiculous. He’s talking about bugs that have disappeared or even make some game mechanics sound as bugs just because he doesn’t like them. For example he suggests that playing with opened inventory to swap weapons between fights is more or less a cheat… I personally don’t change traits and builds within a dungeon because I don’t want to go in that “super optimized” direction but if people do it and succeed I wouldn’t see myself blame them for MY laziness !!!!

The consequences of meta are ridiculous… toxic environment really????!!! Then I don’t understand why so many people on reddit keep on making posts about how the community is so great in that game…..

Now OP there are two possibilities for you. Either you have never played meta builds in meta comp (I’m not blaming you, I never did either) and I don’t think you can judge this gameplay as easy or you did it and succeed and in that case I would say " congrats you are a good player".

It has been said many many many times :
-AC/TA/SE are not representative of the game difficulty
-Zerker is a gear, the build coming with the meta has a lot of ACTIVE defence. If you are able to go through a fight only by dodging, preventing damage and healing efficiently then why take passive damage reduction instead of damage? If you are not sure of your skills then you take more HP or toughness to compensate for the mistakes you can do.

Bubi.7942:

For me squeezing 5 people in the corner at the end of AC3 (or 1?) so the NPC also stacks on you, thus you avoid the any damage that can be done by done falling ceiling falls under the category of exploiting. You could argue that it is just “smart play”, for me, it’s pretty clear it’s not intentional.

The NPC creates a bubble to make you resist the cave in ability, of course it is intended for players to go in the bubble. Now you can run everywhere and pack during animation in the bubble or everyone stay around the NPC so that you are sure to be in range of the bubble…. are suggesting that the NPC has been given an ability to help players unintentionally?

petyr baelish.9675:

You didn’t read my post at all, and if you did, you didn’t understand it.
Oh. And you didn’t quote this importan part, which actually adresses your closing statement:
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Honestly, most people that ask for ‘zerk gear’ in their group don’t really care about the berserker gear. What they actually ask of you is that you:
1) know how to run the dungeon
2) have the right build = traits, weapons and utilities
3) know the proper damage rotations and provide the support that’s expected of your class.
4) (bonus) use the right food
These 3(4) things are far more important than wearing berserker/asassin gear. Unfortunately, gear ping is the only way they can filter. This way they still won’t know if you are up to their standards, but at least they’ll know they’re playing with like minded individuals, or they’re getting trolled by nomad warriors that keep a zerk set in their inventory to ping.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

To be really honest I have seen many times people asking for “80 zerk exp” in low tier dungeons (AC TA SE) for self esteem. Many times I grouped with friends with no zerk gear myself but we still go in dungeon together where they open such an lfg.

In the end they have no clue about builds, might stack before pull, fail half their deep freeze or bring any food. They even don’t necessarily dodge well but still keep on saying that I should play zerk only (I actually have most my toons with zerk jewels and power as main stat on armor).

I am not against berserker gear at all but but everyone should be honest in these bi-weekly discussions :
- No, playing berserker gear is not ez win
- No, having berserker doesn’t mean the player is good
- Yes, low tier dungeons are too easy because down scaling is badly implemented for them

And please why people don’t bring real numbers of completion times. Try a meta build on another gear and show the time difference with the same players.
Unite non experimented players with their fav build/gear and compare with same player on meta builds.
Comparaison w/ or w/o food?

Next WTS starts next week and finals will be held on 8 August at Gamescom. I wouldn’t see such a big meta changing update being released during this event.
Unless they find a way to let people play with the old build for the competition.

Never too late to share some feedback (just discovered the bumping override ^^):
1/ Behemoth : good fight overall though adds should aim for people not helping with portal and be some threat
2/Fire Elemental : Pre too long and fight too short. I preferred the fight at release tbh
3/Wurm : Good fight overall, I’m still amazed by the number of dead players…
4/Shatterer : should either attack on side or be only vulnerable from a frontal conic area. His healing shouldn’t stop by itself so that players actually need to break the crystals (maybe his regen should be lower then)
5/Teq : good fight but too much depending on the first phase completion, other burn phase are not engaging.
6/Mark II : remove the safe spot or make it higher so that climbing while in fight after the knockback would be too tedious. The fight is really good if you do it on the ground (I actually was on a map where we were like 10 to do it and it was way better)
7/Claw : I like the fight but the champ in phase 1 should drop chest while crystals should have a stronger effect (like reinforcing the ice shield) to make it clear that it should be dealt with.
8/Vinewrath : cool fight for now, a bit too rewardful compared to other but if you do the map objective + breach it actually takes a longer time… to be seen when SW won’t be that trendy anymore
9/Taidha : discovered recently the not perma immo fight and liked it… could be better if chain immo wouldn’t break it. The pre event is too long though, a weaker door with more canoneer would make it more engaging.
10/Karka Queen : globally good but dies too fast for a hardcore WB.
11/Sand Giant : Should pop between sandstorm event and crash site. This is a good fight which requires a bit more skill than other WB but sadly nobody ever want to fight it.
12/Maw : pre event too easy… really too easy (from grawl to portal). The rest of the fight is good.
13/ Ulgoth : Pre event ranges from too short to too long depending on where it was before the timer. For the fight itself, dogs are fine, Earth elemental is too weak and barely attacks and the final burn is totally useless. A better solution would be a longer elemental phase but the pony would die immediately after.
14/Megadestroyer : again the pre is random, but I find it good. The fight could be better if the boss was actually moving by itself with no aggro mechanics from one side of the pool to the other and attack players. Right now it is a bit dependent on the presence of 1234 LB ranger.
15/Temple : nothing to say those fights are the best. Maybe the defense should have some reward or be totally unbeatable. It is still confusing (not only for new player) that one should actually fail an event to be able to get a reward.

For general comments I would add that non structure bosses display too much skill effects which makes there animations not clear at all. On the other hand the structure ones don’t trigger traps or marks, which is not intuitive at the beginning.

Kasteros.9847:

Well if they do so, i bet that 3/4 of WvW community – they play for fights, will leave this game Cos u can’tt have huge fights at spvp and lootbags are a pay for hard work, if tehy nerf loot no1 will like to vaste hours to not get anything – in same amount of time they would get much mroe at pve. Also anet nerfed WvW loot lot of times by so called “ninja nerfs”.

That is exactly what I meant, people don’t love big fights for fights, they love them because of the rewards. I’m quite sure that if it was more rewarding to split in 10-20 man groups and defend objectives, people would love that… still not because of that but because it rewards them more.

I think colin in PAX East made an analogy of WvW with a RTS game. I found it a good comparison. An in such a game you don’t send your troops against other to just PK, you do that to get some ressources or deny some space to the other teams. That’s why the new BL will have all these chokepoints. Some people are the “drones” who gather supply or drive dolyaks. The difference is you don’t build the structures, only their defense.
The “rule” of the game is PPT and saying it is PK is just saying that sPvP is made for dueling. This is only true in custom.

That said, since people in majority don’t set global objectives for themselves, it is the role of the devs to balance the rewards towards what they want the objectives to be. For example defense should be rewarded like SW (personal chest or keep chest), the stronger your keep the better the reward. The reward could also scale with your PPT. Some games have dungeons in RvR objectives, attracting more people in the game mode. Or EB could be only accessed via the borderlands (either in a keep or a portal open if you control enough of the map).
On the other hand bags from ennemies could be capped per short time frame to promote roaming while discouraging zerg versus zerg or GvG.
Note this is not what I want or not, I’m just saying that the devs should make the rules they want clearer by putting the rewards where they want the game to take place.

Not that I am an expert but I feel this change (and the examples given for the new BL map) show a push from the devs to split the huge zergs/blobs to smaller entities to multiply the battle front.
If you look at CC, the ones laid by ranged characters are in majority really visible and then avoidable (if you compare to the ones of melee characters). The thing is when 30 to 50 people lay their fields in the same time they somehow deny some space for everyone as no enemy can enter but if they get out of this field the are vulnerable.

I hope that in the next weeks, the zergs will split in several balanced groups so that the range blobs won’t be able to be on every front… so they will also split in smaller groups (10 to 15) and then CC will be more precious and will have to be used in a smart way.

I’m no dev but I feel it is what they want to promote.

I like DE 2.0… well at least I liked it during season1. Since season 2 was all about putting emphasis on PC (cause of feedbacks) they lost a lot of depth.
Basically in season 1 we were meeting them as heroes of the episode in a sense they were in trouble and we were helping them. Now they just follow without any reason.

I’d rate them (from low to high):
-Braham. He lacks of something in the personality. For example in the first flame and frost there was some interesting background for him but not well exploited. Now he is just doing what Boss says.
-Canach. He’s nice and ambiguous but somehow the french actor doesn’t convince me enough. I have strong hopes for him in HoT and his relationship with Anise.
-Kasmeer. I like her a lot but since Belinda’s death she’s absent from the story. At the end of season 1 I thought the way she changed against Scarlett was promising how in season 2 she would have to tame her newly discovered braveness. But no, she just made portals for us and keep on repeating what we just learned.
-Taimi. I like her and she is actually one of the only ones who could survive season 2. Maybe she is a bit too much the comic part of the gang. And kudos to the french actress (apparently it is not as easy to find a list of the french actors who did that good job).
-Rox. Somehow I think she is a great character even though we don’t hear too much of her. Sure I’d like her to be more the spot of one or two episodes, but still she’s like an essential part of the team without being too much talkative.
-Marjory. She is simply the best character for me. She mysterious and sexy at the same time. And the voice acting behind is just so great. But again since Belinda’s death she just became our Ogden interpret….

Honestly my biggest issue is the episodic content of season 2. In season 1 the world was changing and we were witnessing it but someone of DE 2.0 was always around and we were getting closer to them. During LA attack, it was nice to see how Marjory/Kameer were getting closer and closer (yeah I liked their relationship…until guess when : Belinda’s death !). During each festival, someone was around giving some “hey we know each other, let’s work together again”.
Now that the story is so PC centric there is almost no point of having them.

If I compare to DE 1, the character were to me less surprising and a bit stereotypical but the dungeon stories and some of personal ones were really their story and the PC was part of it. But they were the focus even when we kill Zhaitan together. In fact in season 2 Caithe and Rytlock have more focus than DE2.0 when they are present, Caithe is even the main plot of two episodes.

So I would say that DE 2.0 are quite good characters but sadly the story became too much focused on our character as the savior of this world and all the future ones for countless generations which overshadowed all the side characters.

takk.5698:

I understand that these 3 books are the story between gw1 and gw2

if i want to know other timeline like gw1 / gw2
are there any books ?
or I just have to play gw1/gw2

If you want to know the timeline for both games I advised you to read the lore section of both wikis. Beware tough as you might spend a lot of time for each articles and subarticles. For now I think they are the most complete sources.

To me Ghost was the weakest. The story was good but the style was “poor”. Note that I read than in their original version (english) which is not my mother language. I remember finding some inconsistencies and being bored by the writer style.

Destiny’s Edge was a really nice read, mainly because it is like a big introduction to story dungeons in game. I liked it a lot.

The best for me by far was Sea of Sorrow. Not only the style but the story was really good. I read it last summer, and I had really images of Cobiah on a boat and was almost felling the smell of sea. I read it more like a real independent book than a game novel though I’m not particularly fond of pirate stories…

I’m not part of this world either but you could start something like a “new season” when massive changes happen (another one could have been pre FGS nerf). It doesn’t invalidate what people have done before: champion of season 2 will be forever, but now they are challenged to keep their title

spoj.9672:

Why cant they add this stuff to the patch notes?…

Kind of annoying for those of us having to deal with record resets etc.

I think they don’t add this because they never talked about powercaps at all. If they were saying they are changing something they never aknowledged and that 95 % of players have never heard about it would be a bit weird.

I think this info is useful for people who use it, that is the same that discovered it by testing, that is the “world champion” crew. On top of that this crew discovered the change in less than an hour after patch release.
Maybe to have some sort of confirmation, you should bring this question in game discussion (yeah I know…) where things are most frequently answered. Or else the nice Dungeon specialist could try to get some insider info

Guess it is my turn to squish the bug…

Teratus.2859:

I don’t think we need a Holy Trinity but we do need some improvements to some other player Roles..

Healing power for example has been attacked constantly over the years..
some people want to play a healer support role in Gw2.. why not let them make one that’s actually more viable and worth while to play..

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAWnMISLDW9AeNAdEEIFoIHANQ/XuEqgNA-TxRDABO8AAwR9njU+lqSwCM/F1+DAcBAAA-e

You can try this : you won’t fill all your mates’ bars as in other games but still they’ll feel the sustain you bring a lot!
Between heals you can also, as opposed to the traditional trinity make some damage, help stacking vulnerability and save your explosions for stacking might instead of heal.

This is far from optimal but still playable, one of my guild mate only plays her dungeon Ele that way…. Tbh between her ele and her full DPS ranger our completion time doesn’t change a lot (no numbers just a felling) on easy paths.

Aidenwolf.5964:

The hunt portion and crafting requirements were both fun/fine imo but foxfire requires serious commitment of time harvesting and luck in getting foxfires to drop. My Mawdrey is infused (why wouldn’t it be) I would never stop at exotic when crafted backpieces have better stats than exo Mawdrey does.

Well since you already had better items you could have stopped at exo for the skin and decided that the infused version could wait or wasn’t worth the gold you spent or the time to farm the wood.
So I think it perfectly fits the “non-mandatory” property of the grind in the game, doesn’kitten

Aidenwolf.5964:

Ranael.6423:

Sorry but when you raise a reputation in WoW to get a mini that you “hunt” by doing the same daily quest everyday for more than a month you call it a farm but doing so in GW2 you call it a grind…
Did you grind or hunt Mawdrey? Did you grind or hunt your Ascended gear?

Anyway you will reject that comment saying I just debate the semantic.

Mawdrey was a massive grind…. Are you saying otherwise? Good luck with Foxfires post nerf. Of course I bought half of mine on the TP as it’s nearly impossible to gather them on your own due to RNG.

But you made it because you hunted it… (I know it is not the same user posting). Stopping at the first or second step (exotic) wasn’t enough (less foxfire required)?

And honestly it is user dependent. I bought some clusters but some people in my guild decided to wait for having enough by cutting trees… and it worked. Did they grind wood or simply farm it?

Benie.9312:

Ok. I’ll do my best to keep as much drama out of this post. Please understand, everything I say is my opinion.

So, I’ve been struggling with this leveling system since I got this game about four days ago. Please understand and take into consideration, that I came from WoW and have played that game off and on for 8 years.
I came to this game, hoping it would be my “WoW Killer”. Unfortunately it’s not.

But my real concern of this game, before I got it, I watched the promo videos. And how the devs said that they don’t like the fact you have to grind. Let’s talk about that.
An example; I help this town by filling up the heart. A few minutes later, it goes under attack by Centaurs (which starts a Random Event). I defend it. All is well.
20 minutes later, it goes under attack the same way(the same Random Event). How is this not grindy? The same can be said for the escort quests. I’ve already helped this group get through a ‘mine field’ of mobs. Why.. would I want to do it again? Just for the XP? That’s grindy.
Doing/killing the same thing over and over, is grindy.

And there’s another thing that feels very grindy. In the 25-35 area for Humans, I constantly see “Boss X up” in map chat. I kill the boss. Why does it resurrect 5-15 minutes later? It’s not being spawned by a player as a random event. It naturally spawns like any normal mob.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but it feels I’m being… well… not told the truth by the devs. I’m trying not to bash them (as part of the rules).

It would be better if creature were permanently dead forever once killed… but then you wouldn’t have too much to do in the game since after more than two years every single creature has been killed….

That said, you are not supposed to stay in the same part of the map through your leveling. Explore the world and find events you’ve never done, I’m quite confident to say there is more XP scattered in every Events in the game than needed to reach level 80.

Sorry but when you raise a reputation in WoW to get a mini that you “hunt” by doing the same daily quest everyday for more than a month you call it a farm but doing so in GW2 you call it a grind…
Did you grind or hunt Mawdrey? Did you grind or hunt your Ascended gear?

Anyway you will reject that comment saying I just debate the semantic.

I would have preferred a half/half solution where you get a Gift and a Title from Open World exploration and another Gift and Title for WvW Exploration. After all only one gift is needed per legendary.

The grind in this game is the “end content” for hardcore gamers… not hardcore in the meaning they are good but rather that they spend a lot of time on the game (people able to spend more than 5 hours per day in this game are not the majority).
The core design of the game was from the beginning that everybody can access to everything, whatever their dedication. Basically if you can play 5 hours per week you are still able to join every game activity. Now if you want to spend more time the devs have to give you something to do and to get. That is where grind appear. They could choose as other games to make the old content obsolete regularly but no they decided on adding things slowly so that casual gamers are not lost when they log in and all their effort in the past are still meaningful.
But in the meantime they also spread the rewards everywhere in the game so that by doing any activity you are able to get more or less the same things… more or less as there are some specific tasks leading to specific rewards.

Now since ascended was the focus of the discussion in between quote battles, don’t forget that this tier was presented as something to have to do while you’re hitting the legendary wall. In other words, if you are not lucky enough or too poor to get a precursor but still have plenty of materials you have a goal to reach. They also made a clever thing which is daily craft meaning that rich player will want to pay to get their item faster … making other players not interested in BiS richer and throwing money through TP taxes.
The other successful thing they did is to make people want absolutely these items while not making them more powerful (or quasi useless in sub 80 zones). In fact it is always the case when something is added in the game : people want it more than anything. The good thing compared to other MMO is that this new thing is far from mandatory… so hardcore player have something to do now while the others set their own long term goal.

Every MMO has grind but GW2 is clever enough to make different grind almost equivalent in term of gold while competing for an extra (under RNG or not). Look at the situation of silk (because that was one of the last complain) : You have literally plenty of source in the game (zone as DT or SW, dungeon, WvW, PvP reward track, World boss, champ train, JP…) simply because reward are unified under the “masterwork rarity or better” loots. You may argue the reward flow is different but I’d answer that profitability and fun are not synonyms. And even in that case as I said before there are also places in the game where you can drop ascended chests, you are free to join them as well.

So to the question where does grind start I’d answer : “when people prefer to be efficient and do activities they don’t enjoy, only to possess something they think they absolutely need.”

Devata.6589:

In GW2 if I want to hunt down such things I have 2 options buy them (what is not playing) or grind gold. So in order to get them I have to grind!

You can also focus your in game activities on the ones where you can get an ascended chest : Fractals, Teq, TT and some guild missions I think.

My personal feedback.
Before the update I was playing normally and at some point around midnight was stopping everything to be sure to finish the daily.
Now I log in to get the reward and see what is proposed to get some more and decide if I will do it or not. On top of that if there are daily fractals it motivates me and my guildies to play Fractals because else we stick to our lazy behaviour of doing a simple dungeon.
In the end I’m happy with the new dailies since I know I’ll get a reward by just starting the game but on the other hand my AP are growing much slower. This last thing actually gave me some motivation to finish some achievement that I never cared to finish… which is also a good thing for me.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

What grind is there for ascendeds… in normal play you earn everything needed being bloodstone dust , emperyal faragments and dragonite ore, with skillpoints you get every 250k XP and some materials you can get from the TP and your dailies you have everything, not instant that’s true but you’ll get it with no real effort. only thing you’ll need to find is obsidian shards…

The few ppl who think they’ll need ascendeds because they’re there and cannot possibly live without ascendeds, which are downscaled to exotics anyways in all sub level 80 content anyways…, are farming like lunatics and will find there is a black hole after they finished their -self-imposed- “grind”.

below level 45 anything above rare is already downscaled…. below level 30 everything above masterwork is downscaled…. below 10 everything above fine is downscaled…

Just to notify: You are farming your heads of for 5 regions (cursed shore, southsun cove, dry top and silverwastes) and a 2 small parts (malchor’s leap, and frostgorge, (NOT even including the Claw of Jormag area)) and 3 dungeons (Arah, HotW, CoE)… in all other areas exotic will do the same dmg and be a few stat points weaker… making it not even 1% WORSE.

So just buy a damask if you have 12 gold to spare and see when some obsidian shards drop in SW and take as much time as you want.

1 remark: HoT is going to be full 80. When it’s out it will matter 5% over there, but mechanics may or may not dictate other gear then zerk… your choice. I doubt you’ll be able to reselect stats

Nice post, true in many ways…. but you just forgot what ascended was implemented for : Fractals. Those could almost be considered as a separate game mode… where you can earn ascended quality gear

Bernie.8674:

Yes. You’re required to run champ trains, farm silverwastes, or WvW in order to get the champ bags required to generate 7200+ scraps of silk and/or collect the 172 gold required to buy all that silk.

Which means silk has several sources that are linked to several activities in the game.

Sorry but you are basically saying that you have to play the game to get the rewards from it… but in fact no you forgot that you can also use real money to get gold.

Life is a grind : every morning you have to shower or you can’t stay clean for a long time.
Soccer is a grind : you have to score goals every game if you want to win, not just once for the whole season.
Sleeping is a grind : you need to sleep everyday to get mana, you can’t even sleep more and have extra energy for a week.
Logically grinding games are a good representation of an alternate reality

I mean if you want to see grind you can see it everywhere, even in forum posting.

LegallyBinding.4937:

I would love to see a slight shift toward the trinity. I think allowing for some dedicated tanking and a need for buffing and healing in combat could help make the PvE more rewarding and complex.

In fact those builds are already allowed and possible. Try to have more toughness than anyone in your group and you ll see that mobs and a lot of bosses will love you more than your team mates. Play a nomad mass/shield guard and you can be a tank with plenty of self heal and blocks.
You can also be a healer, try water staff ele with altruistic healing and sigil of water and rune of the monk and you will be pleased by plenty of green numbers.
Does it make encounters more challenging ? No, they are just longer but easier.

Basically this is allowed but it is not mandatory which is the design they wanted from the whole beginning.

And just some food for thought : a lot of people join a World boss train or kill champion randomly on the map. Having a need of tanks and healers would be hard to implement for them since everyone not in a group would receive no targeted heal. On top of that, most of the time one or two tanks would be needed so all the others would just be denied the playstyle they choose.

Killface.1896:

Well if they add HC mode or somthink,main reason why dungeons are fail in GW2 is they are that easy you can run them with 5dps(Bezerkers) and easy mindless dungeons get boring fast….

Correction : the dungeons became easy after 2 years of running them. Look at that thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Incredibly-hard-incredibly-unrewarding, you will see how time has passed

warbignime.4610:

you might be able to ru n dungeon with other build, but zerker will do it much faster and easier.

Faster yes, easier no.

Ofc if you speak about level 35 to 55 dungeons (AC to TA) it is easier because downscaling suxx. But I don’t think everyone starting the game gearing with berserker stats and grabing a Meta build (gear =/= build !) will have his life easy.
If you dig in the forum, everyone was whining at release that Dungeons were too hard and that being a zerk was not viable as it was meant too be … but people learned the encounters and taught others. Some people carry noobs who themselves think they are super powerful… but most of the time their examples are taken in low level dungeons.
Arah, COE and HotW are the dungeons to take into account, the others are training grounds.

PierPiero.9142:

for a pve map where you can duel with people you can go in wvw … it is not a real duel envirorment but you can do it. Usually people who wants to duel wait near EB SM or in the central island on borders ( between bluebriar and lake )

I think you can also custom arena in the Mist.

warbignime.4610:

So I was watching Towelliee(a popular WOW streamer), and he said this:
“GW2 has the best PVP and combat out of all MMOs, If GW2 had Holy Trinity, with that pvp and dungeons ,it would be the No.1 MMO in the world” this is his quote,

Sorry but this entire quote doesn’t make sense. The quality of combat in GW2 (more action base, active dodge and so on) can only exist because there is no Holy trinity. Hence adding it would then make the combat worse….

If you have dedicated healer then you loose the good timing of your personal heal (which is one of your main tool of survival).
If you have a real tank then that means defense becomes passive (often seen as evade and block % in traditional MMO) and you loose the active defense needs of dodge and active block.

So Holy Trinity could exist but then combat would be less exciting… so the very base sentence doesn’t make sense.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

No it doesn’t

Feature pack and Gear Unification ring a bell?

All items give zero attribute, rune, sigil, or infusion bonuses in PvP.
All items function as level 80 exotic-quality items.
Chest, leg, and boot armor still contribute to the total defense value.
All attribute values are consistent with the old system.
PvP gear now includes unique rune, sigil, and amulet slots.

And you don’t see a difference between PvE and PvP ? They have the exact same equipment ? Ever heard about PvP amulets ?

Unless you were talking about skin balance….

PvP has separate equipment yes… and not all skills are split in GW1, only 10 to15 %.

And as said in this thread PvP split wouldn’t change anything because the cap doesn’t exist because of pvp but because of pve and number of calculation. The only thing that can be changed is the damage they… like how retalation and confusion are split currently.

Out of the different things you do in game (sPvP, WvW, open-world, World boss, dungeons, exploration) the condi cap is mostly reached (and a problem) in two cases World bosses and Dungeons… but not always.
In term of damaging conditions, confusion and torment are less a problem than the others.

In the case of World boss for example, the vinewrath is not so awful for condi cap since during lane phase not everyone focus the same mob. Arguably during boss phase when enough people died against thrasher you’re free to apply your conditions. Orr bosses are really often done by 10-15 people without too much trouble for conditions.
Other World bosses are anyway just a zerg fest since the introduction of timers. You can do them as full healer or tank (aka with minimal damage) and the boss will die in any case.

In dungeons it mainly affects un-organized PUGs who don’t want to go as fast as possible. If you run a “slow” dungeon with guildies you set up your builds before starting in order to optimize the conditions applications.

So the problem is really not as bad as people like to complain about. I don’t say the statu quo is the best deal but I don’t think this really hurts the game so much.

To get condi build a bit more reliable I would change all minor traits that apply condi on crit from minor to major so that players have to actively slot them… it would greatly reduce the bleed cap (and maybe burning too) at least in dungeons.
World bosses are a desperate cause since they are so easy and timed….

Windsagio.1340:

spoj.9672:

So you cherry picked one game? Its hardly a trend.

Wildstar was actually very successful with raiding. Its just the rest of the game was terrible. Which is the real cause of its failure. It could have worked if more effort was put into the rest. I mean a big part of raiding is having alts and if the leveling experience is crap then thats basically asking for failure.

I sourced 3 games, although I was being cute with 1.

1) Wildstar – People make excuses, but one of the main things they’re trying to change to salvage the game is raiding
2) Lotro, ABSOLUTELY EXPLICIT
3) GW2 – designed without exclusive raiding. Also, apparently poor dungeon participation and disbanded dungeon team.

~~~
I’ve been accused of being dismissive, and I want to be careful with that, but this really reads me as a case of you seeing what you want to see. There’s nothing that will convince you, but you’re only setting yourself up for an ugly reality check down the line.

You could have a look at how WoW has changed its system in the recent past by adding several difficulties to raids so that everyone can experience them, in term of story and armor skin.
They first introduced random raid and made it so everyone was able to set a foot in the content, this in turn made people who were scared by this part of the game to approach raiding guilds and join them.
Now they have non-fixed group size which makes people less stressed to “select” 10 or 25 people strictly. In the end, the devs are creating content for everybody and all players can find the right spot to play according to the dedication they are ready to put into the game.
Some games fail some don’t. If raid were coming in GW2 I would like to see them not fail and for that I think we as player are really responsible of how it will end.

I’d like to see raid coming in the game but with a possibility to have an “easy” mode for pug and “hard” mode for pre made/ hardcore players.

My dream solution would be boss encounters (even re hash World bosses) without trash because they are always either useless or skipped, for which you may choose several difficulty levels or have some gambits which determine a score that makes you progress on a raid reward track.
Everyone could get the same rewards but better groups would just progress faster. The concept seem to work quite well in pvp.

Einlanzer.1627:

Here’s a very quick & dirty example – say you have a boss that consists of something you’re trying to protect, and the boss periodically vanishes from the fight and summons a ton of minions. These minions die fast from any damage dealers but will attempt to swarm what you’re protecting for a certain period of time before clearing.

You could even call the thing you protect Hodgins ?

I dream about the day when players will give actual numbers and compare things.
Make tests, change your builds, your gear, your team setup and come back with facts about how differently you performed, from a time point of view, from a number of deaths in the group, from a “feeling” point of view.

The meta crowd has done this, they have tried, learned and then optimized the builds. And even if meta is barely violently shaken, it has evolved since the beginning of the game. These people actually question themselves often to be sure to sort out the most efficient build.

As for conditions, it is possible to play conditions in dungeons if you are the only one to apply them, that is where team organization is involved. It will never be meta because the ramp up time is too long compared to encounter length and things like torment require the team to play ping pong with the boss to make it efficient (but then melee become less efficient).
They will hopefully never be as strong as power damage because they give a huge advantage in mobility (during your dodge your condi ticks, if the boss moves out of melee for whatever reason, your condi ticks) and many condition builds and gear stats ( save dire and apothecary) don’t force you to loose all your power to make conditions tick strongly.

Aerlen.5326:

Magic Learner said: “Anyone preventing you from starting your own non zerk group/guild? I guess not except you, so no it’s not an issue, it’s only matter of you not using available tools to find players who are similar to you and who want to play game in manner you do.”

There a reason you’re picking on me specifically and justifying some toxic behavior?

I have a small guild. I spend 90% of my time with people who aren’t elitists. They don’t always want or have time to do dungeon/fract content. That leads me to the LFG tab. Enter the problem with some people who view this game as an extension of their penii (which might get changed to ‘kitten’ because of the forum filter).

Magic Learner wasn’t aggressive at all so why are you ?
His question makes sense. You say you have to do with the LFG tab, but in that tab any solo player can promote his group of 1 person with a “p1 no stress, no meta required” comment. If you don’t do it there must be a reason, and he’s asking for it.

Out of curiosity, for Meta groups, I’d like to know:

- How much time do you need for AC p1 ? What does this time become when you only change your stuff (not trais, not strat) if you redo the same with PVT gear ? How does it shift for Arah p1 ?
-If a Meta solo player open a LFG “AC p1 zerk Meta only”, how much time is required to fill the group? If now the LFG is “AC p1” ? How does that translat with Arah p1?

I will be kicked for that but Venomous strength + Venomous aura virtually apply 10 stack of 20sec Might party wide every 32 sec

stacking doesn’t mean one single spot, it means being in a 360 radius circle to share boons. As some people melee most of the time the center of the circle is the boss…..

While I barely use berserker gear nor have I a clear idea of the Meta build, I do stack in many occasion to share boons with my groups. Basically your suggestion will strongly affect my average level casual gameplay…..