Everyone is talking “meta”, as if being as effective and efficient as possible has become the sole purpose of this game, everyone wants a build template and a skill rotation and they’re good to go.
Where is the fun in this, when has character individuality become something to shun, everywhere i go, whether it’s applying for a guild, looking for a dungeon group, or even asking about pvp builds, everyone is talking about the meta builds.
Yes, meta builds are good at what they set out to do, but they are made by human beings, and human beings aren’t perfect and neither are meta builds.
I now understand why so many people are opposing the trait changes as if it was the devil’s work, it’s because players have become rigid and unimaginative, they’ve been in their hamster wheel for far too long they can no longer escape it and therefore object to any change that interferes with their routine.
Fellas, we need to stop this, GW1 and GW2’s skill system was meant to provide limited active options using a large pool of choices to allow the players to come up with combinations to serve a particular gameplay goal set by said players, it is not about following a meta-council’s wishes as if it was the bible.
Buy a black Poly luminescent undulating refractor.
NCsoft undoubtedly takes part of the profits from ANet, but to say that all the revenue from the gem store goes to NCsoft is just pulling stuff out your bum.
No respectable publisher does that, period.
You are disregarding the fact that NCSoft is not merely a publisher for GW2. They are outright OWNING the ArenaNet and thus the game. Every single $ ArenaNet earns is money that is owned by NCSoft. NCSoft can then decide where they will put that money.
i see.
well the GW franchise has been a very good money maker ever since gw1, i don’t see why why NCsoft would want to limit funding to ANet.
this isn’t wow.
and ANet has always been good to their playerbase.You brought up that they have earned money from the gem store and thus could have a lower price. I brought up the fact that WoW is earning way more money every single month and still have about that cost for expansions.
They are good, but they still need to earn money. They are a business, if they don’t earn enough money they will die. Simple as that.
It is also worth pointing out that it is fully possible to play the game without every paying anything other than the initial cost, which I would actually guess is what most people do.
GW2 follows a different revenue model than WoW.
WoW relies on subscriptions and expansions which are more like the old GW1 campaigns in their scope.
The problem for ANet in GW1 was the lack of sustained revenue, they relied on periodical campaign releases for money, and the cash shop came very very later on and even then it provided very little compared to what the gem store has now, but now that we have the gem store, ANet can space out its major releases much more than for GW1, because the gem store offers a continuous stream of funds rather than a burst of funds.
What this also allows ANet to do is distribute the revenue for any given content between the initial cost of the content itself (which would be rather low in comparison to other similar releases in the genre) and the cost of accompanying items in the gem store, a perfect example is the living world content and events like wintersday and halloween and such.
So comparing HOT to a WoW expansion would be very unfair and unrealistic, one expansion is not equal to another, the word “expansion” is meaningless in itself, what you want to look at is “relative scope”.
This continous stream of founds would be valid if it werent possible to buy gems with gold or get it for free each 5k ap chest you get.
And do we know that the gems that are bought with real money that those money then are infused into anet or are ncsoft just taking it as profits.
Why wow was brought up was you misstakenly thinking that having a cash shop should make expasions cheaper.
Then having cash shop and subscription that game should really just give away expasions for free but they are not they charge for that to.
Maybe you should go down to your local store and say they should give you food cheaper the more you buy becouse I mean they get more money the more food you buy.
NCsoft undoubtedly takes part of the profits from ANet, but to say that all the revenue from the gem store goes to NCsoft is just pulling stuff out your bum.
No respectable publisher does that, period.
As for gems for gold, yes that does cut down from monetary profits for GW2, but to assume that everyone does that because everyone farms SW for gold or grind PvP for transmutation charges all day everyday is very narrow thought.
this isn’t wow.
and ANet has always been good to their playerbase.You brought up that they have earned money from the gem store and thus could have a lower price. I brought up the fact that WoW is earning way more money every single month and still have about that cost for expansions.
They are good, but they still need to earn money. They are a business, if they don’t earn enough money they will die. Simple as that.
It is also worth pointing out that it is fully possible to play the game without every paying anything other than the initial cost, which I would actually guess is what most people do.
GW2 follows a different revenue model than WoW.
WoW relies on subscriptions and expansions which are more like the old GW1 campaigns in their scope.
The problem for ANet in GW1 was the lack of sustained revenue, they relied on periodical campaign releases for money, and the cash shop came very very later on and even then it provided very little compared to what the gem store has now, but now that we have the gem store, ANet can space out its major releases much more than for GW1, because the gem store offers a continuous stream of funds rather than a burst of funds.
What this also allows ANet to do is distribute the revenue for any given content between the initial cost of the content itself (which would be rather low in comparison to other similar releases in the genre) and the cost of accompanying items in the gem store, a perfect example is the living world content and events like wintersday and halloween and such.
So comparing HOT to a WoW expansion would be very unfair and unrealistic, one expansion is not equal to another, the word “expansion” is meaningless in itself, what you want to look at is “relative scope”.
this isn’t wow.
and ANet has always been good to their playerbase.
$39,99 – $59,99 seems like a likely price range for standard edition.
This is wildly expensive for an expansion pack that -in contrast to the base game- provides a fraction of the content.
Also considering that ANet had the gem store from the get go this allows them to drop xpac price much more than a full game.
[FEEDBACK] Elem attunement should be baseline
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: RapidSausage.4620
Agree with OP completely.
It’s something every ele takes for granted may as well be baseline, though being an AOE buff is kinda OP for baseline, so like suggested above, make it player only and baseline it.
I don’t earn that much (still new on the market), so i can’t always keep enough money stashed for my gaming needs, certainly not overstash just in case something turns out to be more expensive than i thought.
I also do not have a credit card simply because i’m an impulse buyer at times, and a credit card will only serve to make it worse, so all my online purchases i do with a debit card that i have to deposit money into to use, and this process also takes some time.
Please ANet, at the very least give us a price range, you already know most of us will buy HOT regardless of pricing, so may as well tell us the price so we can set money aside for it.
anyone?
i could use more opinions about this.
Server is Piken Square, 7~9pm GMT, on EB, PSBL, Desolation BL, and Far Shiverpeaks BL, an absolute torture.
Whenever any blob is even remotely touching another blob, it’s insane rubberbanding and packet loss time, as people warp at least 300*insert ingame measuring unit* forward and back, the skill lag is horrible as well, and did i mention the D/Cs???
Give wvw some love already ANet, or at least lower the cap again, cuz afaik it was raised.
The ping you see on the settings screen is not only network ping but server processing. It does go up as more and more players are around you and even more if they are in combat.
i should’ve mentioned that i monitor my ping using resource monitor as well, it goes up there.
also i’m talking about ping under the same circumstances, not fights vs not-fights.
Whenever i join a borderland or Eternal Battlegrounds in wvw, i get one of two things, either my ping is the usual 80~100, or i get 120~200, and the only way to fix the latter is to rejoin the map, and ofc there will be a queue.
what’s going on with that??, is that a problem on ANet’s part or is it related to my network?
If i had to guess, since we will have 3 full trait lines, there will be a total of 1800 missing stat point (accounting for 3 main attributes and 3 secondary attribute, excluding percentage based stats).
My prediction is these 1800 points will be distributed across all equipment, this means 6 armor pieces, a weapon, 5 trinkets, and a back item, which all offer varing numbers for the same stats.
The best approach would be to distribute these 1800 points to equipment pieces based on a percentage of the total stats offered by each piece, so let’s say the chest piece offers 7% of the total stats, then 1800 * 7% = 126, and assuming that gear piece offers the same amount of stats for all of its 3 stats (which it doesn’t), then each stat will increase by 126 * 33% = ~42.
So you see, you’re not gonna lose TOO much if anything at all, and if you do lose anything it’s very easily compensated cuz with less gear you can compensate for a higher amount of stats now.
When there is so much warping it almost feels like star trek…….which is always.
You guys complain too much.
ANet said that this is all work in progress, and if there is a build that will be ruined by the changes you should let them know, they said that multiple times during the stream.
And assuming a build gets ruined, so what??, you’re not meant to be playing the same build for years, for a bunch of people talking about diversity you cling too much to your builds.
Games change, you can either help make the change, adapt to the change, or keep complaining about the change while clinging to the past, and i’d rather be the former.
All classes are getting things shifted and modified, what makes you think YOUR current build will be balanced when thrown into the mix of all other classes and builds??, it’s not like only your own air or arcane ele builds are getting changed, EVERYONE’S builds are getting changed.
I’m sorry you feel that way. At least, those reading will know that 540 is the number you consider ‘not many’. I can’t say I feel the same way. It is certainly more builds than I will ever use on a single character.
Of course, ymmv.
Good luck.
builds are not really just a random collection of traits.
some of them will not make sense to select together at all.
also, your 540 includes elite spec i think, which is HoT only.the reality is there will be a lot fewer realistic choices.
HOWEVER they boosted the baseline power of most builds, and most builds take up other builds powers.So less different builds, but most builds are more powerful/versatile.
likely hood is though, most people will be running around with very similar builds.
a lot of the people are missing the point behind this change.
first of all, not all traits will remain in their respective lines, so a spec that previously required 4 different traits across 2 different trait lines may find itself only needing to spec into a single line and 2 traits to get the same effects as the old traits, this is very apparent in the whole grouping of traits related to a single skill type into one or two traits, or some functionality even made baseline.
second thing is we will have the equivalent of 18 trait points now, so even if your build can’t be replicated to the letter anymore, you still have lots of room to modify it.
third thing is, everyone is so upset about this change because it ruins their favorite build or meta build, but isn’t the creation and experimenting with traits to make new builds part of the fun of the game?, sure some things will get taken away, but many more things will be added in, or do you want to be running the 100b warrior in PVE since launch with every single thing you do being the same boring rotation
It’s so weird – ANet only just made the changes to PvP so tomes and skill scrolls drop there. That was a conscious decision on their part to allow people to unlock PvE skills through playing in PvP. (Because as of right now, in PvP all skills are unlocked – you don’t need the skill scrolls for that.)
And in the future, I will have to take each one of my alts and run them through 25-50% of Tyrian maps and hunt the same skill (hero) challenges over and over, just to get to the same point that I’m already at right now… that does not make me happy.
I believe the reason why tomes and scrolls are pvp rewards is because ANet didn’t want the pvp players to be confined to pvp, they wanted to give them rewards that also helped them progress their characters outside pvp without giving outright better rewards than other game modes.
No one has time to be pvp-centric AND grind dungeons/fotm and world completion.
The second paragraph is how i feel pretty much.
a question that still remains unanswered :/
they didn’t answer much from the AMA thread if at all this time round.
but not to the point where i’m watching 9 pixels, i can’t even see what the ingame character properly
I’m on the twitch AMA stream and i can only watch on mobile quality without lagging, earlier in the stream i was watching on high no probs….WHAT IS GOING ON!?
I am deeply concerned about how the Hero Point system will affect WvW-centric players.
Since Hero Points will exclusively be attainable through what is known at the moment as Skill Challenges, and the lack of those Skill Challenges in WvW will force many to play PVE to get all their skills and traits back, will WvW offer appropriate methods of gaining hero points at a comparable pace and difficulty as PvE will offer??, because this is a pretty critical point for people that have no interest whatsoever in playing PvE.
Well, we will see. There may be other avenues made available to WvW-centric players. They did boldly accentuate that nothing announced was yet set-in-stone. =)
i’ll be watching today’s AMA very closely and will attempt to get this question answered.
Are you truly just ignoring the sentence quoted from the Blog that states ‘several unique full builds’?
Instead, you feel it suggests ‘A’ build?
My goodness! That is a rather deeply entrenched interpretation.
Again, good luck!
right, i’m sorry, didn’t read this part properly, totally my fault.
but we’ll still hit a cap and will have to run around getting hero points if we want to be able to use everything.
The vast ignorance of assumptions being made by some players on this Trait change issue is quit amusing. How about we all get some more info, before we start ranting at the sky about the ultimate doom of the game…..
Assuming the worst (“red mark”?, REALLY?) is par for the course around here, so I guess the chicken little threads should not be surprising to anyone…
the reason for my assumptions are because they gave info on how the whole hero point system will affect BOTH PvE and PvP, but absolutely no mention whatsoever of the WvW implementation or lack thereof.
and i did say that my assumptions are based on THE AVAILABLE INFO, and that it could end being that ANet IMPLEMENTED A SOLUTION FOR WVW.
refer to the last paragraph in the OP
O..k…
I wasn’t aware ‘several’ meant ‘one’. Nor was I aware that once you chose a build, it could not be changed.
If you are determined to be disappointed/out-raged/insulted/etc., I’m sure nothing said here will placate you.
Perhaps, after the AMA, information more enlightening and acceptable will be available.
Good luck.
sorry if i was a bit aggressive
What that blog post suggested was that reaching level 80 will provide enough hero points for A wholesome build, the A suggests “one”.
“HATE” is a pretty strong word for the OP to use when what he perceives he will “hate” is pure speculation on his part….(WvW only players getting shorted by the new Hero Point system). I’m not saying a post about being “concerned” over the potential of WvW only players not being properly thought about with this change isn’t warranted, but just assuming this will be the case is a WHOLE LOT of assumption….
I’m not going to be that naive. I’m hopeful, but I can already envision how the code is likely to work. On first log-in:
Reset all trait/skill selections, lock stuff as necessary.
Convert skill points into Mystic Forge materials (or whatever purpose they will serve). This purges skill points from cheating the progression.
Grant Hero Points based on level. This will be a baseline number for the level 80s.
Scan the old skill point challenges for completion and grant Hero Points.
Done.
Players will spend accumulated Hero Points to re-craft their builds.So, for as bitter as the OP has been about it (“hate” in the title? Really?), the devs do need to focus on getting more Hero Points out to the WvW crowd. It might even be a secondary reason for the new maps. Tucking Hero Point challenges at/near strategic goals would reward roamers and siegers for participating in WvW.
As for me, I’m already focusing on more world completion for my 80s. >.>
……
It could end up being that ANet has thought of this and implemented an alternative method for WvW players, but for now using the available info, this is just a big red mark in ANet’s image.
I don’t know how many builds WvW-only characters want to have access to, but the Blog does state this:
A level 80 character that’s done none of the hero challenges should be able to unlock more than enough skills, specializations, and traits to make several unique full builds.
Maybe we can wait until all the information is released before being affronted by any fingers wagging around.
I know it’s hard to believe, but many people like to experiment with skills and traits, to allow roughly a single build to be fully functional at level 80 is just extremely restricting and defeats the whole philosophy of what GW2 is meant to be.
The great thing about GW2 is that even similar builds have differences that are decided by the player for that player’s playstyle, to suddenly restrict everyone to the “meta” build and any other builds need to be grinded throughout PVE content that isn’t necessarily some players’ cup of tea simply isn’t acceptable.
Im a WvWer, T1 in fact. Thats my life, i hate PvE i cant stand it. I see what your saying but i guess its just another of those you will have to do PvE to get it if you like it or not things. Kind of like gold haha.
Gold i can understand, because WvW can theoretically be rigged, i.e nothing prevents two commanders of a zerg communicating with each other to set up a zerg farm, each taking turns killing each other, that doesn’t happen but in theory it could and is very easy to set up.
With PvE you can’t do that because you don’t control AI, and AI is inherently predictable and therefore exploitable.
Currency making has always been the domain of PvE in all MMOs and i don’t mind occasionally running a pve champ train for some gold, but i sure as heck ain’t running around pve doing skill point challenges to make my self remotely useful again.
To be honest, I don’t think they care. They made it clear a long time ago that WvW is supposed to be considered a part of PvE, when they kept adding living story to WvW and then eventually integrating the mist war into lore.
There has always been a heavy drive from ANet to play all available game modes, whether you like it or not. Why do you think that some gear in PvE is not easily obtainable but can be had from PvP reward tracks, or that WvW and PvP dailies were added to the system that formerly heavily favored PvE, along with dailies that are irritating and cumbersome to complete in PvE (due to timers, zergs, etc.).
Its probably only going to get worse, because the developers seem to envision GW2 as a single interdependant unit and not as three separate games.
I disagree, GW2 started out with rewards leaning heavily towards PvE, and the reason they expanded achievements to wvw and pvp, and reward tracks to pvp, was to cater to the players that are mildly PvE focused, not to amalgamate GW2 into one single game mode, that job went to the work required for legendaries.
I’ve loved everything ANet has done in GW1 and GW2 so far, of course they stumbled along the way, but their main focus has always been the players and that is what makes them my favorite developer and is what makes the GW games so dear to me and full of precious memories.
This image has been shaken after reading the blog post about specializations and the trait system, which i absolutely 100% stand behind, with one exception, the hero points.
The hero points system sounds great and encourages people to explore, but it seems ANet has forgotten one of the three game types when they were designing it, and that is WvW, which for the longest time has been treated as the step child of the swamp monster, but even then it was never forced into another game type and was mostly self sustaining.
For those who are not on the same page, the skill point system is getting replaced by the hero point system, where points required to obtain skills and traits will be solely attainable through leveling up from level 1 to 80, and through what we know now as skill point challenges (renamed to Hero Challenges), what they did was as expected, sPvP gets all the traits and skills unlocked by default, and PvE has to get Hero points through hero challenges.
The problem with the above is that WvW has very very little Skill Point challenges, and from my understanding, current level 80 characters will have their traits and skills reset, and given hero points based on their level and completed skill challenges, so you can immediately see where a WvW focused player will have problems, these problems being lack of hero points to develop their builds, and therefore will be forced to play PvE to get what they need, and from the looks of it it will need a substantial amount of hero points to unlock all the skills and traits.
This to me sounds like a big middle finger to the WvW crowd, i get that ANet wants everyone to enjoy their beautiful PvE content, but forcing it on people who do not care for that content is just…sadistic.
It could end up being that ANet has thought of this and implemented an alternative method for WvW players, but for now using the available info, this is just a big red mark in ANet’s image.
edit: i must stress on the sentence “using the available info”
(edited by RapidSausage.4620)
If you only enjoyed chatting with your guildmates while wielding legendary weapons, would you complain about Anet shoving any kind of game content down your throat and not giving you free precursors?
It’s your choice how you play. That been said, they already give you Hero Points for leveling up, and since skills are grouped up by Type, most builds will probably be possible without doing skill challengers, such a full-Cantrip Ele, for example.
Read what you said and think about it for a minute…..
When i read the blog post about hero points and watched wooden potatoes’ video about the whole new specializations system, i couldn’t help but wonder what will become of the wvw players??
From my understanding, hero points will be attainable through what we know now as skill challenges, which needless to say are only a handful in wvw, and ANet made no mention of how wvw will provide its players with hero points, i for one rarely play pve, i spend most of my time in wvw because i enjoy it more
So what is going on here, will ANet be shoving pve content down wvw players’ throats, or will there be alternate means to acquire all available hero points in wvw??
I use a razer naga, fantastic mouse to use with gw2.
my keybinds are default but all the skills are accessible to my thumb so it’s easy peasy.
When there are 4 profession skill i bind the f1 to my Q and the rest to 0, – and =
you get healed for all instances of aegis you apply afaik.
in coordinated large groups it can be quite strong.
Combine this with pure of heart it can be nearly as good as Altruistic healing but is more like bursty healing than over time continuous healing.
i ran a test and all the 8 participants received aegis, i wish i had more people to test with but that’s what i managed for now.
i edited the wiki page and its discussion to include the results of this test as well as a pic.
are you sure about that???, shattered aegis is an AOE, so 5 people with aegis from communal defenses multiplied by the 5 target limit of shattered aegis is 25 instances of damage.
I’m new to guard so take my opinion with a pinch of salt.
Retreat is more suitable for small groups, the aegis won’t be a huge benefit in zergs, and there’s already plenty of swiftness to go around, but in small roaming groups it can be really good.
Save yourselves is one of my favorite shouts when used at the right situation, durations might seem low, but you forget the crucial fact that some of these boons are not easy to get with such durations, such as protection and fury and retaliation, but if you run this this in zergs you better have some good condi removal or else you may get pinned down in a bad spot by a transfered chill/cripple/immobilize and get ganged on, but either way, this shout is great for small and large groups.
This trait looked really boring until i looked it up on the wiki and found out that it has no target limit.
Then i went to the skill’s discussion section and found out that this conclusion was based off one player’s experiment with insufficient data to ascertain the validity of this piece of information.
So here i am asking you, does the grandmaster trait “Communal Defenses” apply aegis to all allies within range or does it have a target limit?
The pr0blem with sword is not its potency, it’s the bad hit registration on skill 2.
I’m really tired of the pack of diversity in wvw zerg builds, it’s always hammer + sword/warhorn and stances or shouts or rarely banners + signet of rage or elite banner.
I tried fiddling with other weapons and it became apparent why hammer is the optimal option:
1- it is brimming with aoe skills.
2- it has a lot of soft cc
3- it synergizes with the trait line that is best suited to survive in zergs.
4- it has a gap closer that is sufficient for the ranges it operates in.
So i tried to replicate that using other weapons and here is what i found:
1- mh mace has absolutely no soft cc, targets always get out of range.
2- oh mace was quite fun actually, but is tricky to land skill 5.
3- mh axe suffer the same deal with maces, good damage but can’t keep targets within range.
4- oh axe very fun with lots aoe damage and builds adrenaline fast, but has no cc and you’re very vulnerable when using it.
5- mh sword actually very good when traited with one exception, the hit detection on skill 2 is very dodgy and i rarely manage to hit with it and it becomes very frustrating to make use of the leg specialist trait.
6- oh sword in 1v1 very good, outside that you’d be gimping yourself.
7- shield is quite good when using skill 5, gets you out of a lot of situations, but skill 4 is pointless outside 1v1 encounters.
8- gs is good as an escape tool and stacking some might, but has no defenses and skill 2 is crippling and makes you a sitting duck.
I may be doing this wrong, but so far the meta build has been the same since forever and i just can’t stand doing the same bloody thing with my warrior in wvw.
is it really worth all that gold just for a 5% increase in total stats???
No. Most of the ascended sets are much cheaper.
yes i know that, but 5% to stats isn’t that massive if you take the importance of skill in this game.
To me, ascended gear is for the elitist members of GW2, and if you’re mainly a WvWer like me and rarely do any pve, you don’t have the luxury of making ascended gear or gold as easily as fractal runners anyway.
If you submitted a ticket, there is nothing to do but wait for a reply. Nothing, really, forum-users can do for you.
Good luck.
This wasn’t what i asked, what i was asking is if this is a common occurrence that ANet is able to take action against.
is it really worth all that gold just for a 5% increase in total stats???
yes i’ve checked, also checked history and it clearly says “sold” next to it.
I sumbitted a ticket about this, i had listed a lemongrass poultry soup recipe on TP and didn’t receive the gold when it was sold.
Is this a somewhat common occurance that is actionable by ANet?
Torch. I can’t think of any build for any class that uses it.
Mesmers use torch as one of their main weapons.
torch is offhand for mesmer too, but it sees more uses with the PU builds, mainly for the stealth, the phantasm is mostly useless.
Torch. I can’t think of any build for any class that uses it.
It is a great weapon for a condi ranger though.
That is rare in and of itself.