Guild Wars 2

A bit off topic but I noticed recently that Jurah’s jewel is also available at laurel merchants once.

So the main issue comes in sub 80, not all, dungeons?
I used to think that down scaling is a bit too generous in low level dungeons, but then I thought that these dungeons were good training ground for those who learn to play the meta before they tackle with serious things like Arah or high level Fractals.
But maybe the training ground is too easy ?

About Aegis and boon, I wouldn’t really talk about spam. They actually need a good timing and a good rotation from what I see.

Marthkus.4615:

Some sort of anti-stack measure would destroy every noob-zerk pug group out there.

Most the zerks I see that stack in pug groups do not know how to dodge. They should not be able to get away with that.

Can you explain a bit more your point? Naively I would think that stacking under a boss makes the entire group directly in the range of the things they have to dodge… so if those you describe are bad at dodging they are then more exposed while stacked no?

Galespark.7835:

It’s a nice try, but this thread will probably end the same way as the others because the two sides on this one just can not seem to connect. Your post already starts by considering there is a problem, which many people do not agree on. Anyway, my take:

Which content is affected?
Dungeons, all of them.

What is the problem?
People seeing groups on LFG requiring damage builds (called zerkers) and sometimes other things (that vary in degrees of ridiculousness) because they want a fast run. These groups tend to fill slower than groups that welcome everyone. Then three things are likely to happen:
-people create their own party, have 2 minutes of patience, problem solved.
-Instead of trying to make a group, or perhaps trying once for a minute, they wrongly perceive they cannot play the content they want anymore because of these zerkers and feel there is a problem. Then they come to the forum demanding big changes to something that is working as intended, and propose dubious, sometimes outrageous solutions, each time starting a new thread instead of posting on one of the existing billions.
-They try to join a group they know they don’t fit the description of, get told off, then continue as the former option describes.

How does it negatively impact your game experience?
It does not impact mine at all, but the sooner people realise there is no gamebreaking problem related to zerkers, the sooner they can enjoy their game again.

I think I could have written the exact same thing than you except for the first answer (I don’t think high level dungeons are so much of a trouble because less people do them).
Of course I personally don’t see any problem but at least I hoped that when those who think the game is awful, toxic, not diverse (and so on…) really wonder what is the exact problem we don’t have to loose ourselves explaining how it is unnecessary to rebuild the entire game to shift from the actual situation to a situation where everyone is happier

Right now, some hide behind the “stats in the game are bad” argument to put all the frustration they have. If it is possible to reorient the thinking towards a “AC zerk meta is not my playstyle but thanks to LFG I can easily do it in 2 minutes (group filling) +20 minutes of dungeon run” then the frustration could be lifted, games are not made to generate frustration.

I think you didn’t receive a gold coin but rather a mystic one.
See http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Coin for all usage you can do. Basically they are used in mystic forge recipes to craft objects.

The daily reward chest is a new feature which grant you the rewards of the former dailies and monthlies (save achievement points) when you log in over a time period of 28 days.

Have fun with your comeback

@ OP : try to find people in your guild/Lion’s arch that have access to season 2 and ask them to host you so that you can see what is happening. If you decide you want the rewards coming with the episodes (not sure about the second part of Mawdrey but essentially a back item and the luminescent skin) then you will have to pay (gold or RL money) to get the gems. At least you can try it and be updated with the story before you decide

@ Loki : when you say the damage is too strong whatever your gear, do you refer to specific encounters or content?
And about non damaging conditions, does condi duration help to increase the time window of action. For example, is a short duration cripple easy to land a the right moment on a teragriff and if not does condi duration bring some comfort to be sure it will be affected at the moment it charges? Or have every crippling skills a too long base duration?

Thank you for the reply.
Is there a way to “control” their target (husk or centre) or is the target of each bubble randomly chosen when they spawn?

Tom Gore.4035:

sigh
Finally, I would like to say true randomness in an MMO probably isn’t the best way of handling progression and loot. A good system would be random, but would also include a so-called “streak-killer” algorithm, that would cut (at least) bad streaks eventually, guaranteeing a “hit” after enough “misses”.

Problem with “streak-killer” is how to sort them. I mean basically each time you use a skill you roll a dice to know if the hit crits or not, which means you would have to record a lot of data for each account to kill bad luck streaks.
In the same way you could just cater the record on mystic forging but then each time you upgrade a material it should be counted. If one system is created for precursor only then everyone will ask for the same system for chests on vinewrath, then for ecto salvage on gold, for bags during festival and so on….

RNG is so much involved everywhere in the game that killing bad luck streaks for everyone in a uniform manner would require an analysis of so many cases that the work and data handling would be overwhelming. On top of that it would actually create a “big brother” effect since now it would be true that each account would be watched to play with their luck….

There are a lot of discussion about the so-called zerker-meta problems. Yet those weekly/daily threads end up as being the same discussions about what is hard or not, how new stats should be introduced or how scaling should be changed. But in the end exhaustion make those threads disappear without any consensus nor dev intervention.

Maybe it could be nice to gather some details from the people considering there is a huge problem in the game. To do so maybe a bit of organisation is required by answreing those questions.

Which content is affected? Open world PvE (a specific World boss? Some categories of events?) WvW (when roaming? when zerging? when defending?)? Dungeons (all of them or specific paths?) ?

What is the problem? Try here to give details. For example if you talk about condition viability, is it in a context where everyone play condi build ? Is it a problem of gear or of build?

How does it negatively impact your game experience? Can’t you complete some specific content? Isn’t it possible to find people to play with? Try to give some insight on the frustration generated.

I hope that answering those questions may help to actually focus the discussion and maybe help the dev team to propose solutions or other players some advices that could make everyone happy

I have a question for the Copper boss in Red keep in Silverwastes.
As many people, I have noticed that the boss actually started to be failed when people started to yell on chat “NO AOE AT RED NOOBS”.

Before that the fails mainly came from boss resets due to having nobody in the arena.

However yesterday I experienced the boss differently and I’d like to have a bit more understanding on how it works.
Basically in the first run, when I arrived somebody lured the boss at the entrance so that everyone was at range. I decided to jump in the arena to see if I could attract the offshots and kill the bubbles before they reach the mob. Offshots got on me but as I was alone in the dirt pool I couldn’t kill the big bubbles by myself … but they in fact bursted on me / in the middle of the pool (far from the boss, so no heal)… perfect run

Second run as I arrived first I attracted the boss close to the entrance but nobody jumped in the pool with me. Basically the bubble came close to the boss to burst and I think I moved it far enough from the aoe range because the husk received few heals. Perfect run too.

My question is : how do the poison bubble work ? From the wiki or other guides I found they should explode by themselves when in a 200 range and heal in 200 radius. I think this is what happened in the second run but in the first one I’m quite sure they were further than that before exploding (almost always in the middle of the pool) but they were not killed by players around either (or I could have missed one player really really strong).

Has anyone here well understood how they work and could share his valuable knowledge?

Skoigoth.9238:

No one is forced to run a specific set of gear under any circumstances. As far as I can tell, you can complete everything in this game using whichever stat combination you like. Naturally, people have become better since launch, therefore more people started using purely offensive stats for better kill-times/faster completion of content.
You don´t like the “active playstyle” associated with offensive stat combinations, or simply can´t pull it off? Fine. Use something else and stop bothering other people

What I find funny in those threads is that in other MMOs you have to gear according to the theorycraft or you can’t win the encounters of your level. And surprisingly few people complain and just do as told.

Here you are free too do almost whatever you want and you go through almost everything. There is a better way (as in other games) but the “lesser” customizations are also viable but people complain (see also the trinity thread). Some people want choice but become angry when others have…

Also this thread suffer of too much generalization. It would be a better discussion to give some context to problems. How is berserker gear more rewarding against world bosses? In open world? In exploration and jumping puzzles? All these activities give rewards and I’m not sure the gear affect the reward. In dungeons, berserker gear is not more rewarding neither, because you gain the same amount of token and chest in the end.
People choose their reward rate, if you really want the fast one choose the fast gameplay. If your goal is to play for funny builds then the reward rate shouldn’t be your measurable parameter.

xDudisx.5914:

I guess people are too salty today becuase of losing 125 power hahaha.

Actually losing 125 power from ~3300 (full zerker +25 might) is a loss of 3,8% of stat, and the same 125 power represents 7% of a full nomad + 25 might… so in the end the nerf will, as the ferocity nerf, push more towards having passive attack power (from stat) than active (might stacking). So I’m not sure that the Meta community will be the one that will see much difference.

By the way if you remember the ferocity introduction, they “nerfed” zerker gear but in the same time the “up’ed” the downscaling. That is why the more they “take action against the zerk meta” the shorter the records are.

Behellagh.1468:

ColinJohanson.2394:

Similarly, ascended mats can be acquired from a wide variety of content types and game modes to allow you choice and options so you don’t need to grind to complete those goals.

Except they’re not. Bloodstone from exotic champ bags. Okay, so you have to take on champs. Easy enough to do in groups but sometimes, a lot of times, you don’t “qualify” for the exotic bag. I’m not talking about standing autocasting your 1 attack but throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it. Champs at boss events are a lot tougher simply due to the number of players attacking if the qualifier is some % of damage done to indicate participation.

That said most players have 30 stacks of bloodstone. Dragonite and Empyreal drop easiest from Dungeons, Fractals or PvP. If you don’t do either because you don’t like those types of play, you are stuck getting a few here and there while PvPers or Dungeon runners (including Fractals) get them by the truck load.

You may not think it’s grinding, but when the most direct way to get the materials for ascended mats is doing activities you aren’t thrilled about over and over again, I think most people would consider that grinding.

Just another PoV to consider.

You get plenty of dragonite from world bosses and silverwastes chest for example. Empyreal drops in champ bags, jumping puzzles and iirc Eotm is also a good source of it.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Traits are something that is very close to ‘you need it’ (is mandatory), however to get them, the grind is tremendously high, especially all of them.

I’ve been trying to shortcut my way into the only other way to get traits (gold + skill points), so far in those few months, i only managed to get 300 skill point scrolls. Your most likely response: ‘WHAT? 300? That’s a hell ot of a lot’. It is. But in the way for unlocking traits its absolutely nothing. It’s barely enough to get one character all the traits (240 if you don’t count the XIII traits). If I imagined, that i didn’t level all character to 8 (and all professions) before the trait update, having to do this trait grind 1-7 times, that would be an extremely big grind. Potentially 1680 skill point scrolls necessary and 350 gold.

You could say, just do normal way then? That is just as much of a grind AND limits your choice a lot in how to get them. Only ONE CHOICE then to get them. The other option is like above skill point scrolls, wich luckely, quite some content now gives.

So to stay true to this pilosophy, either traits must be able to be unlocked in a lot more content (even pvp, that can unlock pve traits), wvw, etc, or the skill point requirement must be lowered a hell of a lot, (to something like 50-100 per profession to get all but the XIII traits).

I think you nailed it

But I also think that trait revamp was a premise of masteries. So I may be too optimistic but I really think that all challenges required for traits right now will count toward masteries and we will spend some mastery points into trait. Meaning we won’t be force on one particular challenge for one particular trait.

But again I may be too optimistic, this is only my speculation from how Colin described the mastery system and the post made by Gaile about the fact we will hear about how this thing will be revamped soon.

tigirius.9014:

That’s my point, it should be balanced to include all dps specs right now they only have 1 and 1 only for every situation, that’s not balance.

This is simply not true…
You can complete every aspect of the game in something else than berserker gear. Berserker is the way to go when you are sure to know the fight enough so that you will avoid the most dangerous damage, when you have good cooperation with others and if you don’t waste your survival options.
For all those parameters you will be rewarded by being faster than everyone else which makes you able to complete more dungeons with the same amount of time.

But in the end once every path are done you have no other advantage. In the open world you won’t make silverwastes faster since they are on timer, nor on world boss train since they are precisely scheduled. You won’t go in WvW since the meta while being less strict is far from zerker gear… so really I don’t see the zerker meta being any problem, especially since it is not mandatory for any activity (few to no gear check encounters in the game)

Revert suggestions for all people wanting to introduce mechanisms to avoid berserker gear to achieve its optimal damage :
- If you have more than 2000 power, you have a bonus of Vitality, even more when you reach 2400
-If boss is immune to crit every critical damage you would do is returned as heal
-For every percentage of crit above 50, you gain 1% of toughness

I mean berserker prefix is max damage so if you want it to not achieve max damage then give something back.

In the same idea since full toughness/vitality/healing power sets are too resilient, why not introduce over complicated mechanisms on boss that reduce your defense every minute of a fight? Some special skills also that would corrupt your heals into damage ?

If everyone start to think about how to make what he doesn’t play weaker, I’m sure everyone will be very (un-)imaginative…..

I don’t know if I’m in the right discussion but even if the seed planted by Ronan was from Mordremoth, the Pale Tree by itself could not be.
What I mean by that is the seed could have grown something else but this one particular has a connection with the Dream, which until now is not necessarily stated as a draconic realm.
For an unknown reason the seed planted by Ronan could have gotten access to the Dream which gave some sort of sentience to the tree, making it change from a “mordrem factory” to the Pale Tree as we know it. Then I wouldn’t treat the Pale Tree as a champion of Mordremoth.

Then the Tree shaped her children as human because of Ronan and gave them the teaching of an old centaur while protecting them with their connection to the Dream. But this protection is not invulnerable and now that Mordremoth is awaken he can strike it, especially now that the Tree is injured. Like he would reclaim his “children”.
So yes sylvari were meant to be draconic minions but thanks to the history of the Tree they escaped their fate and became another race.

FlamingFoxx.1305:

Why would you need to talk to every single newbown Sylvari if you had at least one mender (Mender Serimon) who was clearly doing the exact same thing.

Menders don’t deal too much with dreams. They are here to be sure sylvari awaken in a proper manner, that they are not alone when the pod opens, that they understand they left the Dream where Ventari’s teachings were given to them.
When our character awakens and tell mender Serimon that he felt a call to kill the dragon, the Mender acknowledges this as a Wyld Hunt but by no mean interpret it further.
The interpretation is given by the Pale Tree when she says she believes that our character will fight Zaitan.

He did the same with Ceara as he is not specifically speaking about what she dreamt about but only that she understands that she is born in a world where she should use the knowledge given by her mother while she was dreaming.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Cadeyrn, the first of the Secondborn, states he was only awake for a few months.

Thus your comment of “the new (in recent months) influx of sylvari” would include all – or at least most – Secondborn. Eitherway, FlamingFoxx has a point. The instance is talking about how there isn’t a structure yet for dealing with the Secondborn. But What Scarlet Saw clearly shows that when Scarlet woke there was.

If you refer to the presence of Serimon, I don’t think this is a structure. And this is the only thing mentioned in the first paragraph of the short story.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

On top of that, these flashbacks are stated by Caithe to be shortly before the Nightmare Court’s forming, but as we see in the old blog post Dream and Nightmare stories, the Nightmare Court was established after things like Wardens were (unless the hunting party of noon sylvari led by Niamh was not a warden party) – in fact, the very reason for the Nightmare Court’s foundation, and how/when Faolain joined the Court, gets messed up with Episode 8 (Faolain fell to Nightmare long after its foundation, per Caithe in Twilight Arbor story; Caithe was the cause for Cadeyrn’s decision to go rogue, and it was relatively fast – there was no preaching and meetings to discuss things based off of the blog).

I couldn’t find a statement of Caithe saying this sadly. If it is true then you are right that there is a problem especially since when they chase the kraits it is said that they are with “two others of an even younger generation than Cadeyrn”.
Nevertheless during episode 7/8 I’m not sure one can say for sure that Cadeyrn and Faolain have already fallen into Nightmare.
They question Ventari’s teachings but they are not in the state where they want to influence the Dream for the future generations. Faolain only says she doesn’t think the Secondborn should be reminded the teachings the all day as would Wynne and Trahearne do. But all Firstborn are focused on protecting the new ones from death.

Guardian Of Tyria.6397:

TLDR;

GW2: many many viable builds, very few optimal builds and most revolve around how fast you can dps the mob

GW1 had many more optimal builds because it had a larger diversity of battle conditions/scenarios

True but GW1 had also way more non viable builds than GW2. In that case the game was totally unplayable and there was nothing teaching you what to do… how many minion master warrior did we see?
So yes reduction of the total number of builds reduces diversity but reduces by at least the same amount the non viable ones.

Nick.6972:

Those are SC builds, count ALL viable and working individual PROFESSION builds.

Well we are talking about SC here too. For solo PVE, world boss and non speedy dungeons you can perfectly run healer builds which make less damages but help others life… I do it when I want to play differently (I even did with a staff mantra healer mesmer, fun but repetitive). I checked metabattle for example and nowhere it is advised to play venom thief in dungeon, hence not meta. Is it viable? Well since it is my main build with my thief (with condi gear, blasphemy !) I can tell you that you can complete the content without sweating a lot. It gives a bit of life to others and some might, which is always welcomed if you have no might stacker in the team, and I don’t talk about the stun through defiance.

Now for your build you haven’t sloted any traits, so at least 50% of your build is missing. But why couldn’t you play a signet build with GS? Or medi?

Nick.6972:

Don’t be ridiculous.
Go to http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/PvX_wiki and count all Meta/Great/Good working builds for each profession, PvE, and PvP.
Then come back.
Thanks.

Out of the 11 meta SC builds, 8 rely on having at least 2 people (tanks) using shadow form as an elite, if not 3 to 6 people using it. Just by that it is clear that tank builds were not so diverse….

Yoroiookami.3485:

But I did. Ascended Armour, Dungeon Armour, crafting Mawdrey and if you’re interested in more:
- getting Legendary (and precursor)
- getting Pavilion rewards
- unlocking titles
- repeating winter activities to get wintersday rewards

With dungeons and legendaries being the least obnoxious ways of grinding, as they vary things a little. The only other way of getting some of those things is buying them for gold, which requires, in turn, to grind for gold or buy it for real money.
Unless you don’t see it as grinding. I sure as hell do.

The whole game has come to this.
Do you have enough materials to get this thing? No? Then grind for materials. You don’t want to? Do you have gold? No? Then grind for gold.

But those are rewards not content. The “no grind” is about the content access, basically you can jump in dungeons, LS episodes, new maps, PvP, WvW or World boss train right after reaching the required level. In the manifesto it was to be opposed to some other MMOs in which after getting max level you have to do daily quests for long enough to get a token or a gear piece that will allow you to enter a new dungeon or raid.
The different approach in GW2 is that you can do whatever you want as soon as you reach 80. Then if you “specialized” in one activity you will get a cosmetic reward. But if you want to change your activity during your playtime you also can, you will just won’t be able to show that armor or that weapon to everybody. In the mean time you won’t be really weaker or have less access to character customization (cosmetic aside) than the rest of the crowd.

Happened to one guildie last night. You can also get it from different charr zone JP if you only have one toon; like Loreclaw expense or those in Diessa which have a chest (e.g. not the wall).

Just because I’m not native english speaker,could someone explain me the goal of this thread?

I’ve read the OP, which doesn’t raise any discussion, only helps the poster to have his name on front page. But the most hilarious is the discussion after, basically there is no problem and OP agree with all people contradicting him, just there is a misunderstanding …

At some point discussion for the sake of it shouldn’t be worth to stay on the forum more than 2 hours…..

Nice idea, and while we’re at it, if we could select mats from the bank it would be appreciated

If I remember well, this issue as already been talked about by a dev here and I think he said the structure of MF is so different than crafting that it wouldn’t be an easy task… but who knows

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I believe there’s no need to articulate the issue.

Then no need to articulate any solution. By not describing what you feel is a problem, you are jut showing that there isn’t any problem.
Now I guess there are enough already opened thread about the matter on first page, just reading them show all arguments in favor of something like what we already have and those in favor of changes like yours. By now I would say it is clear :
*there is no Zerker meta, Berserker is about gear, not build. The meta build don’t only revolve around maxing power, berserker gear does.
*If one only see groups asking for meta and/or zerker gear it is because the other groups (no stress, phiw, slow pace, no skip… call them how you like) are filled way more quicker and doesn’t appear long on the lfg window…. create your own group and you will see.
*If solution like yours were implemented, there is no reasons to also implement enrage timers to have dps check, “scared” debuff on boss when they take to much damage too rapidly that make them unable to act for some seconds. Balance goes in every direction.
*The game is “soft” enough to let everyone play how he wants, 5-man healer dungeons can be cleared, it will just be longer while more open to mistakes.
*If one want to play something else than berserker gear and meta build, the first thing is to find the right people to do it. If you fall when you run there is no need to cut every runners’ leg, just find other walking people.

So please before posting it would be good to prove that there is no other way to play than playing the PVE meta. Then the discussion can be opened about how you can improve the gameplay you want to use. No need to destroy others’ fun to feel more powerful.

Chase.8415:

China is the worst thing to ever happen to this game.

Pre-made semi-racist sentences like these are the worst things to ever happen to this thread…..

Lishtenbird.2814:

I want to play Tequatl and Fractals 50 and CoE speedruns to get AP to get the most powerful rewards of Hellfire and Vambrace skins and the upcoming Pinnacle weapon skins.

Can I? No. I have to grind Queensdale events and harvest plants in Caledon. Yay?..

The thing is Hellfire is not a powerful reward, just cosmetic.

Now I don’t fully disagree with you for this thread but we have to bear in mind that in this game everyone is equally powerful, at least it is easy to be (and you mostly play how you want for that). Then since it is a MMO you need some farm/grind to get people attached to the game. In other MMO you grind to be able to beat the content, here you grind to have a new skin by doing the content.

Now what they are adding is some branching in the rewards. Basically since feature pack 1, every activities are more or less equally rewardful in term of gold or rare and exotic drops. But if you target a specific reward then you must do a specific activity. If you want luminescent skin go to Siverwastes, for more rares do the world boss train and for more gold do dungeons.
Now they added the AP reward under specific tasks so that not everybody gain AP passively from daily activities but the people who will wear Hellfire skin will be seen as dedicated AP chasers. I don’t say it is better or not but I think it follows a trend that as started for one year when they decided that specific reward should be permanently acquirable (rather than time limited reward and content).

For you other point in OP post, while I think there is truth I can also see good points in the cited changes, like finding more people since mega server, not missing world boss by 2 minutes or learning trait effects at you own pace with new trait acquisition.
In the first version we got we couldn’t compare between before and know but in many cases I think that reverting some changes would make the original flaws shine more than the actual ones.

Leo G.4501:

Ranael.6423:

Filaha.1678:

They should just remove stats from gear and traits entirely or make everything Celestial.

Then everything comes down to your own skill and what skills you bring along with you.

No more “Must be zerker”! Now it’s “Must be good”!

I understand that you are (at least half) joking but gear stats are meant to be the difficulty level of the game and by putting all celestial you average everyone on the same level which creates difficulty walls for less skilled players and boredom to the best ones.
Also the rewards spectrum would become narrower because time of completion of any content would be normalized around the same value ( outliers would still exist but would be closer to average).

I really dislike this mentality.

In what games do you play where the difficulty setting of the game makes “easy” the “everything dies really slow an so do you” and the “hard” setting “everything dies fast so I’d doesn’t matter if you do or not”?

Back in my days, hard mode meant you could die at the drop of a hat and the enemies took more to kill.

Our maybe people are just relating this to gw2 inappropriately.

Well normally hard mode means also better rewards, but here in GW2 (sorry to only refer to this game) there are no better reward hence “hard mode” aka speed clearing meta increase the reward… flow. You basically have the “die at the drop of a hat” part but since you won’t get better reward you don’t increase monster’s life. But the compensation for the risk is the time you take and then the gold per hour.

This is not a hard mode per se, it was a comparison … and you know it.
In this game you set yourself your comfort zone by your gear and the reward for not needing too much comfort is better reward flow.

Filaha.1678:

They should just remove stats from gear and traits entirely or make everything Celestial.

Then everything comes down to your own skill and what skills you bring along with you.

No more “Must be zerker”! Now it’s “Must be good”!

I understand that you are (at least half) joking but gear stats are meant to be the difficulty level of the game and by putting all celestial you average everyone on the same level which creates difficulty walls for less skilled players and boredom to the best ones.
Also the rewards spectrum would become narrower because time of completion of any content would be normalized around the same value ( outliers would still exist but would be closer to average).

LeoG, I have two quick comments on your wall of text.
First introducing more randomness to combat and defense would make the game too far away from its original foundtions and while I’m not a programmer I guess that introducing additional dice rolls in the code to know if you block or not would increase latency and then weaken the dynamic aspect of combat.
Second, the potency stat is a very dangerous one that would then strike the build diversity by locking skills to gear. Just a quick example : I am a turret engi defensively geared with no potency, I make my turrets explode in fire fields and get kicked immediately because I stacked weak might on my allies instead of letting the potency guy explode in the field.
I’m quite sure that at least these two suggestions wouldn’t bring anything good to the game and the community.

Ok, this is more addressed to Gaile or other Dev reading, but maybe it is time to re-emphasize this :

Mike O brien.4613

We want to talk design philosophy with you and hear how you want to see the game evolve.

From the “Communicating with you” thread.

This debate about “meta”, gear stat, and stacking strategy comes every second day on the forum and only ends up in empty discussions (I think) because everyone think that the devs wanted the game to be like that or not.
In the end it would be cool to have one of the devs (I think few years ago, Izzy wrote the blogpost about stats) clearly explaining how they see the game in term of itemization, encounter strat and if they are happy with that or not and eventually give an idea of how they would like it to evolve.
The game as it is now is a result of a long process of design (with several iterations) and I’m sure that there is a philosophy under the choices made. It would be nice to share them with us now.
Maybe some players will be disappointed that there will be an evolution of the gearing stats towards something they don’t want (or the contrary) but right now this is only players arguing over and over about the same topic without any real ending. If there would be a nice answer stating the game design philosophy then when such a topic arises this could be an answer to refer to.

Just to compare with 2 other games that I played, Wow and Aion, a new class/profession was released 4 to 5 years after launch… so I wouldn’t consider the company being late from any schedule….

This thread should be stickied so that people would know what the “elitists” think and how they see the game… and whatever their complaints there are people in game that just think differently and won’t change their mind so easily.

On a side note, when you see a topic that you consider a useless discussion, just don’t answer, it will magically disappear in page 2 where nobody will look for it

Aaron Ansari.1604:

I don’t know how it would tie into the theory, but the eagle motif is also common among the Tarnished Coast/Central Transfer Chamber structures in the first game.

I was wondering if it could also be related to Ebonhawk’s eagle too ? Well at the begining I thought it was more a tribute to Ebon Falcon but now that I read this….

In fact I always thought The Eye of the North was a former jotun structure (dunno why).
But could it be that after the Dragons went to sleep the Gods associated with the former races to “watch” their next rise and build some structures for that : CTC, The Eye, Crystal desert ruins (though Kralkatorik was not here, Glint was… and they may have wanted to keep an eye on Abadon too), and now Silverwastes ? They all bear with a common symbol : the eagle.
If this symbol is related to the gods it could be a reason why it appears in the human fortress (but I don’t think we were told eagle was a symbol of the gods…).

Also I have a question about Silverwastes : when we went in Silverwood in the first game we never saw any fort (in the overlaping part). So do you think the ruins were buried under the forest and due to climate changes they are now uncovered or do you think it has been built and abandoned during the 250 years ? I would say the first answer is the one but I’m not sure.

Well if you need to kill 2 or three adds that don’t move you could split team in 2/3… or have mobs like mordrems thrashers.
Teq is not just a huge blob, people are at canons, during flight you split…..

Optimizing the group : Examples

Everyone knows that structure bosses are immune to crit so bringing a full berzerker set on such a boss would be a useless loss of survivability. But then add “mandatory” adds to the boss and mixing your roster stats will be an advantage.

Take jungle wurm. Today there are some adds but nobody cares about them. Now imagine at 66% and 33 % the jungle goes underground and won’t go out until you defeat those adds (tier 1 : defeat those adds… bring zerkers). These adds are husks so if in tier 2 they were like mordrem you would want to bring some conditioners as well to defeat them (and split those guys on a different husk to not erase their condi). Next tier could be that while underground the wurm create an earthquake that pops damages regularly. What will you do ? Of course you need some high dps people (berzerker/sinister/assasins) to go through that phase quicker.

Other “hard” mechanism ? The Svanir shaman tier 3 could have a pulsating AOE that unless interupted will cause a wipe. Solution : bring some defiance stripers ( so that mes,engi and thieves will be liked). Mess up with the defiance ( sorry I poped my long bow 4 without even noticing) and the boss being immune to interrupts at that moment will crush the group. Challenging ? From my casual point of view I would say yes.

Other mechanisms could be a shield on the golem were runners need to fetch some bombs to get rid of the charges, be sure to protect the camp of the pact during the Claw, limit the amount of flamethrower in the same fight, two or three people who must “tank” Ulgoth ( while someone someone is on top of the hill he won’t come and cleave in the raid, so these 3 people need to soak his attacks) while the earth elemental as to be take care of….. well I’m no game designer so my imagination is a bit limited

Advantages : Plenty… source : me :p

First, challenge is cool for those who can be dedicated to such activity. The reward system allows to “control” the flow of reward through raiding (by tuning mission XP and gambits) so that it can be (at least) the same as everything in the game (maybe a limitation of kills per day would be needed ?).
Also in term of economy there would be a high demand on new stuff, because hardcore gamers would like to be ready to face any situation and any “role”.
People bored by the same daily dungeon runs would find new fights to master and people wanting to “kill the zerker meta” would be delighted to know that there must be a role for non zerkers in some of the fights.

Disadvantages : Plenty… source : you

It is time for you to criticize the suggestion or not even answer if you find it so bad that even trolls wouldn’t bite.

tl,dr : Skip everything in the post but what follows “ incoming wall of text ” to have a good summary.

Since the CDI on the topic was too short, I hadn’t time to really think about it. On top of that, from the recurring discussion about how to change the stats to kill the meta there was one good thing said : rather than changing the stats change the fights mechanics. With this I started to mentally design some raid concept. I’m pretty much stuck now so I need to write it and if you like it and can improve it maybe it will give rise to a nice concept. If you don’t like it then don’t answer and let the topic die.

I prefered to post in this sub first as I think the most interested people are here … and generally there are also good discussions around this sub

Incoming wall of text :

Name : Mission of the Pact

Basically you form a group of 10/15 people and go to Fort Trinity were the leader select the encounter. Once done everybody is ported to an instance like map where the fight will happen.

Type of fight : World bosses

I know it is cheap to reuse already existing bosses but I feel so sorry that these encounters are not more challenging. On top of that : less design work (no new model, no new map).
Of course the principle is not to use the bosses as they are now. In fact there could be 3 ranks of bosses ( rank 1 for wurm, Svanir and the like, rank 2 for golem Mark2, Megadestroyer… and rank 3 for the dragons ( maybe the former version of Teq), Karka Queen, Sand Giant). For each bosses there would be 3 tiers of difficulty : easy, normal and hard, easy being already harder than the open world version.
For even more challenge you can also choose gambits (time restrictions, power cap, perma retaliation on boss, damage inversely proportional to vitality… basically anything ).

Reward : Mission reward tracks

The structure of sPVP reward could be reused but without the exclusive pvp tracks (put some mission exclusive tracks instead like a new mission armor and some backpacks). The use of it continues the homogeneity of rewards introduced in feature pack 1. The way to progress on the track is given by a score which could be something like Rank*tier*gambit. There would be a progression bar like XP bar or pvp Rank. The mission rank could unlock titles and/or emotes/finishers.

to be continued ….

It could be an opportunity to raise another NPC to one of these rank, a way to get rid of someone they don’t know what to do with…. which could be nice for us to see.

Leo G.4501:

So, are you going to bother discussing what I posted or just make up some notion of what you think I’m talking about and dismiss it with the same stilted argument?

Ok I must be too dumb to understand your point because

Something like:

power = base-strike damage, potency of vulnerability, absorb threshold (blocks nullify conditions/CC and damage up to X and the rest goes through; retaliation shaves off a portion of the attack received)
precision = multi-strike damage, critical chance, fury duration, reflect duration, blink duration (after a dodge you can blink past AoEs, as well as automatically blink after receiving a crit)
toughness = decrease base-strike damage, increase block duration, increase protection potency, retaliation damage potency and CC duration.
vitality = increase base HP, decrease multi-strike damage, increase stamina, increase fury potency (decreases duration but increases attack speed)
healing = increase healing received and granted, increase downed HP and revival speed, decreases DoT, increase condition magnitude (increases the chance of foe cleansing failure)

is so simple for everyone to understand that I don’t see why I’m talking about you making things overcomplicate….

Leo G.4501:

Gosh, it’s like talking to teenagers who are often only concerned for themselves XD

Go on with your bad selves. Nothing I say here on these forums is going to stop you from going unpunished for timing your dodges and avoiding those AoEs in your zerk gear because that’s all I’m concerned with is punishing you with my words.

/sarcasm for the last sentence.

Thing is I never run dungeon in zerk gear… and I’m fine with it. I don’t want to touch that level nor I know if I’m able to. I run dungeons with guildies and pug to complete the group, never asked people to ping gear. Most of the time we have at least one support/healer in the group and if we don’t we can feel it. Oh and I run a lot of different condi build on several characters. I’m not a good player and never pretended to be. The thing is that I don’t feel impaired in the fun I have playing, simply because I like, like in GW1,to change build each time I load a toon.

And right now the discussion is about suppressing a problem that doesn’t really exist by making the way things interact together super complicate. It’s cool to imagine that this trait here will interact with this stat which will increase effectiveness of this skill… but in the end people will even more min/max things so that you may destroy the zerk meta but instead will get something like :
“Have a zerk torso with cleric gloves, magi boot, sinister shoulders, one weapon giver and the other celectial or get kicked”.

Jerus.4350:

Croc, gear is your base offense or defense stats. That’s it.

Why do people feel that gear should be the primary source of depth? Why is the trait system, weapon choices, sigils and runes constantly ignored?

And what about Utilities (oil, stones and crystals) which increas offensive stats based on your defensives… nobody mentions that there is no reverse such things

Leo G.4501:

Well you’re not offering a hyperbolic example of my outlandish solution because you’ve yet to address what i purpose. Your initial response was at me, yes? Granted I like to propose ideas and if discussed, change the idea with the insight from others.

You say it’s a non-problem but people complain about the situation. And it’s not only a few whiners either. Obviously it’s not a non-problem. So do you just ignore it?

I think he’s right : it is not a problem just because people complain.

Imagine a world where people could buy a car that goes fast but without GPS system or cars with GPS that go slower. It is a matter of choice : those who can orient easily will go for the rapid car and those who get lost will opt for the GPS. Everyone can go from point A to point B. Some quicker than other generally but if someone without GPS makes a mistake on his way he’ll lose more time than everyone.
Since people like speed and are always in hurry, there will be a huge trend for the sport cars (as in meta).Is this a problem ?

Now here, people ask for roads to have surprise holes or false roads so that the use of GPS become mandatory if you don’t want to have bad surprises on the road. Basically the fact that people who have a nice orientation should be punished for their skill.

Why should people be punished because they are good at avoiding aoe, timing their dodge …. ? Is there any content that is not doable in cleric/magi/nomad stuff ? I don’t see one but if people complain it must be because there is …

hybrid.5027:

Condition cap isn’t relevant in the discussion of why you don’t see condition builds in dungeons. The condition cap will only become relevant when we hit the point that condition damage is part of the meta and multiple people want to play condi in one group; so basically the condi problem will already be solved before that issue is an issue.

Well I thought it was a general PVE discussion not only dungeons. In open world it is a bit frustrating to bring a lot of condi and to see that they barely tick on the boss. I agree that in dungeons, if you pug and few people run condi builds and in guild I always ask before starting if anyone play condi. If nobody does I like to do it with my thief or necro. The same goes with support character, you can bring one if unsure of how the other will play but 2 of them will make the dungeon really long. Ofc I don’t speak about SC since I never tried them.

The only thing I “like” in OP’s suggestion is the needed threshold for conditions…. but I think it would be better to find a solution for condi cap and the too wide distribution of them (well torment, confusion, and fear are fine) rather than over-complexifying the way the stats work…. simple things are always better.

Apart from that if you don’t like the meta, just don’t play it. It’s the magic of GW2, if you don’t play the meta you are not excluded from success of the content, you just make it longer. If you don’t care about the time you take for a dungeon then meta is not mandatory… this is a great improvement compared to other games….

Elrey.5472:

• The Marionette was the perfect example of replayable content. Probably the best raid GW2 ever had, yet it was removed from the game .
• The Tower of Nightmares was ok and fun for an update, and kept people going there (even guilds raided the tower as an improved guild mission) because it wasn’t instanced only for 1 player (or a group of 5).

It’s funny that nobody realizes that Marionnette was the best raid because it was not permanent. It’s like people always referring to GW1…. it was better because we don’t play it anymore (during its active time there were loads of criticism about the lack of novelty and so on… and also no official forum to concentrate the criticism).
Tower of Nightmares was not so different than the new maps. In fact the principle of it was less deeper than getting a T6 dry top. But again as it only last for 1 month, everyone remembers it as one of the best update.

Anyway, about the main topic, LS takes the good part of PS, that is solo mission to progress in the story, but adds some incentives to do it with friends for the achievements, especially since the success come with a nicer reward (the collection and the ascended trinket). I really think that during those last 6 months they really delivered content for every kind of pve players : solo through mission, small groups through achievements and joining the new maps and organized large groups through the way the maps work.

Now rewards look pretty much like the ones from other open world activities of that level (Orr, world boss..) which is fine in that it doesn’t make the oldest things completely useless…

I’m not sure it has been delayed cause iirc the first blog stated the LS would restart this Fall… so between 21st of September and 21st of December.
If anything it couldn’t have been planned before the end of WvW tournament (to be sure that players playing PvE and WvW wouldn’t have to decide which activity they’d do) which will be around mid October which is also the start of Halloween festival…. then that leads to early November.

Sure it’s a bit long, I think they could have made one festival return during the pre feature pack release.

The only things you can’t do without unlocking (by logging in 10 seconds for 2 weeks or paying gem) are the story steps at will. You can still experience them by grouping with people.

Now the content added contains also a new zone with plenty of events, new weapon sets that you can find, a new type of insignia that are craftable by anyone, gizmo in accessible chests, new types of rune (from tuesday) that anyone can wear. There is also a vendor to start the scavenger hunt for Mawdrey (only the 1st part yet but I’m sure they will give him the other objects…. but as you logged in you can access them) for 4 laurels each.

If you pay you only get the opportunity to play the story at will…. I wouldn’t call that a pay wall. If it’s really what you are interested in then exchange gems for gold (17 gold per episode right now) or log in the game during the 2 weeks time. If you are really interested then it is an easy step…. if it is soooo hard then maybe you are not as interested into the game as you are to just log in the forum to despise a game you are not playing anymore.

I was more focused on giving a lot of corpses in and around Orr… I know death happens everywhere, just I was wondering if the place where the dragon using dead had been purposely fuelled of dead corpses.

Lately I re-read Sea of Sorrows and I just thought how convenient it had been for Zhaitan to fall (asleep) at a place which would be devastated before its next rise….
Every Elder Dragon disposes of a material it can corrupt : Primordus has plenty of rocks it can turn into mockeries of live beings, Jormag is surrounded by corruptible ice that helps to propagate its corruption, Kralkatorik corrupted a huge piece of land by its breath and supposedly Mordremoth has plenty of plants to corrupt.
Zhaitan needs corpses to turn them from dead to undead. But in the mean time the available quantity must be big enough to create a first army to spread its corruption. Is it only luck that so many people died around its body and that the land collapsed so that waking up would create the huge tsunami it did ?

Just imagine one second that, in 1219, Orr was still the nation it was 250 years ago, founded over the rest of the beast. What would have happened ? A crater, some deaths maybe turned into risen but no dead ships, not so many corpses to play with.

From what I remember, it has been stated that the Cataclysm in Orr didn’t had any influence on Zhaitan’s cycle… but what if it was the other way around, what if the scene had been prepared for its return?

If we follow that trail we find …… Abbadon.

So I was wondering, Abbadon being a god of secret, could he have been aware of the existence of the Dragon below the ground? I mean, the humans gods lived in a city in which there was a Jotun (from Shiverpeaks) telescope, a Forgotten altar used to free Glint (Glint and the Forgotten aknowledging the Gods while preceeding them) and presumably the bloodstone (or at least its first form). Was it really possible for the Gods to ignore the existence of Zhaitan and its location ?

In that context, when Abbadon released magic in Tyria, it could have been to accelerate Zhaitan awakening (like putting a hot sandwich in front of a sleeping dog). It could be an explanation of why the Frogotten actually helped the Gods against Abbadon.
Then from the realm of torment, Abbadon prepared his revenge by making Khilbron release the Cataclysm and by setting up the Nightfall to come back in a Tyria with a place full of dead bodies ready to be corrupted.

Does it seem plausible ?