Guild Wars 2

That’d be nice.
Celestial is spelled out on which stats increase, but Divinity runes should either be more specific or add their bonuses to Expertise/Concentration
I also wouldn’t mind a stat set similar to Celestial but with all stats.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

I haven’t bothered with GS yet… I decided to become competent in all the other weaps first…. but GS is coming up soon.

~EW

I’ll admit, GS does have the damage behind it, and it gives up any real sense of utility to do it. Mace/hammer are solid for defiance breaking, warhorn for buffs and traited condi removal. GS has the Might-stacking, but that combo really ought to be shifted more toward Phalanx Strength to do might on crit so other weapons can do it as well.

TempestMoon.5403:

I’m probably in the minority here but I’d like a buff to maces. They’re my personal favorite weapon in the Warrior’s kitten nal but they don’t seem to have a place. Of course you’re going to have the trade off in power for CC capability but even that is average compared to other professions.

I feel the same about Hammer. For both mace and hammer, the weapon traits just don’t mesh with the slow, easily-dodged, moderate damage those weapons have.

But Greatsword gets easy-mode Might, pairs extremely well with Phalanx Strength, and it gets a generic damage boost in its weapon trait. I can appreciate the synergy, but tacking on a flat damage bonus is lazy design on something that already gets such a huge benefit. It all makes GS best in slot, and that’s fairly irritating.

Not the “worst,” but another lackluster backhand from the balance team.

Sustain in PvP reduced (PvP skill splitting? say waaaaah?).
Still no change to banners.
Other classes got baseline additions or better weapon/trait synergy. We’re stuck with FG/PS. …woo.

But we got a slight bonus to axe damage, so we’re gonna be OP now, right? -_-

Tomas.5029:

If it was up to me, she’d be stripped of any rank/status. whatever passes for skin on a Sylvari.

Fixed that for you.

ArchonWing.9480:

Hot adventures suck but Orr gathering? Really? There’s so many random nodes in there and a lot of them aren’t near enemies; not that it should really be a problem. HoT maps; just grab a friend or two or use LFG for a meta map or even just a map with any organization. Or just ask in chat for help. if it’s really that hard; but it really shouldn’t be.

For any quick daily Orr gathers, I usually start right outside Fort Trinity. Especially for herbs. I have to wander a bit for mining nodes, but it’s done in relative comfort. Lumber ends up being pretty quick if you find one of those circles of trees everyone parked at for Foxfire Clusters. So yeah, Orr gathering, not so difficult.

I’m ambivalent about the Adventure dailies. On the one hand, most of them suck. They suck even more when everyone is flailing around, blocking LoS or turning the entire field into a poison-laden death zone. But at least it reminds me that they’re there, and if I haven’t done it before, it provokes me to getting at least Silver so I can get the mastery point and never do it again.

There really is an odd look in the Human and Norn male chests. Most everything else feels suitably proportional, except that one section feeling a bit overlong and flat.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

Crap. I was working on Bifrost and I sold the fragments assuming that they were only good as trophy collection items like everything else I have ever gotten that is collection related. Now I find out that they are crafting materials and that they can only ever drop once and can’t be reacquired. So I think this means I can now never get Bifrost T_T

I think there’s one of the two legendary folks who might also be able to retrieve the item for you. Really not sure, though.

Khisanth.2948:

That whole sequence is a demonstration on how not to design a game that you expect players to replay.

An ouch-statement if I’ve ever seen one. But all too true. The worst part is that some truly obnoxious, “flinch once and restart the entire instance” achievements are out there without a viable means of resetting after a failure. Inhumane design.

Nuuuu, don’t spoil my already slumping watchwork sprocket money stream!

(No really, get that Watchwork Mining Pick, kiddos. ANet isn’t likely to change it anywhere near soon because of the spit that would storm over it, and the extra cash is handy.)

Greyhound.2058:

Lol that was exactly my thought last night XD

But at least I’ve discovered I totally suck at Shooting Gallery. So…yay.

:P

I raged at it until I got Silver. I’d been meaning to make time for that anyway, but it was extra obnoxious with everyone in my way. Minigame dailies are always such clusterbombs.

Save them for the next elite spec. Probably won’t be until next expansion, so breathe easy.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Just press G while on any PvE map and goto the guild hall, use the scribe station to get your keys, then press G again, leave guild hall and you will be exactly back where you started.

Just don’t do it in Verdant Brink or any map that tracks meta participation as a part of the rewards. (Or if you don’t care about those particular loot scraps, to the guild hall!)

#GuildHalls

Though, I find nodes of all types to be pretty plentiful just from traveling. Hitting up one meta usually does it, especially if you course Auric Basin.

+1 Vote for Keys-in-Wallet (aka, Keyring). We don’t need them for crafting, and we don’t need them clogging up our inventory.

IndigoSundown.5419:

In SW, it’s a lot easier to drop in, participate and have fun, whereas in HoT if your timing is off you might as well not show up. Also, the abomination that is taxiing was less of an issue in SW for the same reasons.

I cite Dragon Stand as further evidence. If you don’t taxi, you have a dead map, period. Even then, you have to show up at just the right time to taxi in. It’s not healthy for that area, which is a huge chunk of HoT’s content.

TheMagickDoll.7594:

Also fixing the range of /em being seen would be nice as well, as it way too large. Putting it as the same range as text I think would fix that and not sure why it has not been done all this time.

Please! This needs to happen. Rata Sum and the Grove are some of the worst locations to visit because of the emote range.

Khisanth.2948:

Rauderi.8706:

Khisanth.2948:

On the one hand the original had more flexibility.

On the other hand the original had some very trashy traits. Great for showing off a big number of permutations possible but in practice it was a much smaller number.

This.

The one thing the older trait system had was being able to dip into more than 3 trait lines. Useful in some edge cases, but we’re better off with fewer, more potent traits.

There is still stuff like Powerful Synergy. I still haven’t found any compelling reason for using it.

True, true. There’s still a lot of “why bother” traits. That’s not a flaw in the system itself, but in the details.

The current trait system is great. It’s quick, easy to understand, and provides reasonable flexibility without tacking on a legion of useless permutations.

We need intra- and inter-profession balance at this stage. We need to whip those traits that aren’t being used to make them better and more compelling.

penelopehannibal.8947:

My ideas for roleplay support are as follows:
• Convert clothing tonics to outfits.

Repeating this until the end of time.

-

I’d love to see more RP support as well (except, y’know, cancelled legendaries…), so some other things to beg for:

• More emotes (Maybe not FF14 level, but we’ve got so few!)
• Butts in seats! We can’t use chairs.
• +1 to shard opt-in/out (I’d like to be able to duck away from cringe-worthy personal RP done in public, honestly.)
• Right-click menus on character names for emotes (as with /say /map, etc), to block those who spam or /emote inappropriate content

Heraldusluminare.2946:

I’m not a musician by any stretch, so I know my opinions don’t count for much, but I think the music for HoT had a lot more… character than vanilla GW2.

I liked the music for Auric Basin, but I especially loved the piece used in the final boss fight. Original GW2 used a lot of orchestral (choral?) sounding melodies, in my opinion, while HoT had a wider range of instruments, making the music sound less dreary and a lot more exotic.

HoTness does have some beautiful moments in its music score, especially for combat music. Core GW2, I was using the music replacement thing to make the combat music less blag and droning, especially since the triggers for it were usually after a big fight is halfway over.

Banchou.5628:

Takoyakii.2146:

Eh… from what I remember TD music is pretty good and blend really well with the map .

I think he/she is unlucky and only wp into Chak Gerent fail maps: when the Chak Gerent event fails, DS music start to play and simple keep looping just the “two chords with a slide in the middle” part forever lol

It’s possible! But the DS music didn’t bother me. (Spent a few hours there this week on empty maps, so I would have noticed.)

I don’t know if there’s something about certain spots in TD I end up in to get “trembelo, glide, WHOMP,” but it was really irritating.

Khisanth.2948:

On the one hand the original had more flexibility.

On the other hand the original had some very trashy traits. Great for showing off a big number of permutations possible but in practice it was a much smaller number.

This.

The one thing the older trait system had was being able to dip into more than 3 trait lines. Useful in some edge cases, but we’re better off with fewer, more potent traits.

Get all your movement-based ones first. You’re good on froggy-masteries for now, and Exalted beyond removing the first borders is all you need.

Get to at least Advanced Gliding before you consider anything else. (Maybe Ley Line Gliding, but it’s not that tremendous for most of HoT.)

MF doesn’t work at all, so no worries~

Yeegh, thanks for the reminder. Tangled Depths is horrid for background music.
Two chords with a slide in the middle. That’s it. I can’t believe someone got paid for that.

To answer the title question, no. I’m annoyed by HoT.

At least the legion of checkboxes (Heart of Tracking) has me going through the content at a comfortable pace (while watching lots of videos of “how you can’t get there from here” and “lol aren’t we designers so clever?”).

I’m settling into HoT, but it’s not “??? ??? ??” for me. Rather, I feel like I’m settling. I respect the good design decisions, but there are so many bad design decisions that I abhor that most of the time I find myself trying to avoid being irritated instead of enjoying the scenery and events.

MashMash.1645:

Not if you bought them all when they were $10.

Still kicking myself for not grabbing a few farm accounts. >.>

Lightsbane.9012:

Aidan Savage.2078:

There’s no reason to bump a dead thread. There’s a reason they say to MAKE A NEW THREAD. Also, a “greataxe” isnt really any different than a hammer.

try chopping wood with a hammer tell me they’re not different.

Logging Axes as weapons confirmed!

Sartharina.3542:

Rauderi.8706:

Tangential, but very similar play experience to Scramble: Ley-Line Run.

I did this last night and ran into so many of the same issues that Scramble has.
Glitchy skills. The required teleport could have been useful if it would target where it says it will target with any reliability. The forward dash might save a second or two on straightaways, but it also snags uselessly and is inconsistent for crossing the starting gap.
Terrain is Ley-Line’s biggest sin. Every time I had to restart, it was because the straight-dash hitched on some quirk in the terrain or the teleport targeted a surface that wasn’t stable and dropped me off the run.
…and that’s it, really. It might have been a fun experience, but the terrain design was garbage, which fundamentally ruined it. Same thing for Scramble: the terrain was over-rendered and interferes with glitchy skills, so instead of being fun, it’s anti-fun.

If you’re using the straight-dash anywhere but high up in the air (And ONE flat stretch that you should dash on while waiting for your jumps to cooldown/save for the next set), you’re doing it wrong.

That said – I find Sanctum Scramble the hardest of the ‘races’ because of the size of the course Though Fungus Among Us is up there as well. I have an easier time with it, though, because it’s flatter. (On the other hand… its skills are less forgiving)

There’s two reasonable straightaways to use the dash. The rest of the tracks are either too short to justify it or too jump-climby for it, since all it does is boost a short distance. The starting dash is good for the first jump, except for those times it shoots short for no reason and drops the player to the floor. Whee. Shame about those teleports not working as projected.

Fungus actually feels reasonably short. Ish? It’s just that the actual segments are kinda crap and too full of garbage terrain hitches to get a clean run in one go.

Tangential, but very similar play experience to Scramble: Ley-Line Run.

I did this last night and ran into so many of the same issues that Scramble has.
Glitchy skills. The required teleport could have been useful if it would target where it says it will target with any reliability. The forward dash might save a second or two on straightaways, but it also snags uselessly and is inconsistent for crossing the starting gap.
Terrain is Ley-Line’s biggest sin. Every time I had to restart, it was because the straight-dash hitched on some quirk in the terrain or the teleport targeted a surface that wasn’t stable and dropped me off the run.
…and that’s it, really. It might have been a fun experience, but the terrain design was garbage, which fundamentally ruined it. Same thing for Scramble: the terrain was over-rendered and interferes with glitchy skills, so instead of being fun, it’s anti-fun.

Since it came up in MO’s statement, can we get a status on the Charr male voice actor/acting? Some concerns came up in the new raid wing.

mjhungness.8059:

Those moas, man, they’re bad. Give me nightmares. Even though I keep telling myself, “Stay focused! Engage the veteran Minotaur that’s pounding away at me”, I still see that moa out of the corner of my eye, munching away on his leaves. I hate that moa. Just as soon as I kill this Minotaur, that moa’s dust! No!!! Be strong! That moa means nothing! Nothing, I swear! Do not look at the moa … must not … Dwayna help me … AHHHH!!! You’re going down moa!!!

To be fair, moas are poultry nodes and often neutral XP-bags. It’s the Six telling you the feathery nuisances are ripe for the plucking.

On topic, is it just me, or has auto-/tab-targeting logic just gone right out the window in all MMOs? I had similar issues in WoW.

Silas Eorth.7348:

For ANet’s sake, the update better pop tomorrow…. At the rate that I’m becoming a Pokemon Master, I don’t know how much longer my heart will belong to GW2….

You’ll be back when your data runs out. :P
Besides, great thing about GW2 is you can come and PokéGo as you please.

There are some civilian clothes I wouldn’t mind having skins of, especially some of the Charr.

Blude.6812:

Boogiepop Void.6473:

The shooting gallery? Really? The shooting gallery is the second easiest gold in the whole of HOT (the salvage pit is the easiest, especially if you bring a daredevil).

Nah—Drone Race is.

My rounds of practice and getting gold in drone race took less time than a single run of Sanctum Scramble. Let that particular imbalance of effort sink in. :\

emkelly.2371:

The warrior forum is a very good example of how suggestions are not a wasted effort. For almost a year warriors became so distraught with the state of the warrior that players—Incluging myself— started creating entire threads based on the concept of rebalanced suggestions and while the devs to my knowledge never once comented on them, they did in fact hear the cries from the warrior community and made a much needed change to the warrior. it was a small change, and it may have been overboard as many players will say AH is overpowered, but it was an elegant solution to a problem that can be easily balanced (and i suspect it will be eventually) at a later date. It may take months for the devs to actually get around to fixing an aspect of the game, but they do in fact take into account suggestions. they may not run with the exact suggestion, but they will attempt to make changes in the spirit of what those suggestions involve.

I remember being very engaged during that set of discussions. I didn’t see most of my desired changes, but I consider the anti-nerf of warhorn (from convert 1 boon to cleanse 2) to be a glittery star sticker to put on my Howler.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

I’ve only ever even gotten to the end of it once out of probably 100+ tries, and then not even in Bronze time. You have to do so much with pixel precision and pixel perfect timing, you need lean techniques, there are so many places where the idiotic “if you stick on terrain that has nothing to indicate it is different from the terrain in front of it, you move to the side on the pixel wide object and fall off before you can react” places that you constantly fall off anywhere from at the start to at the end, there are multiple spots where you can go through a gate too high to trigger it… The list of problems with this adventure goes on and on.

100% this. I find similar issues with Fungus Among Us. There are random hitches in the terrain that will stop a run/jump for seemingly no reason, and it makes climbing jumps on such a strict time feel incredibly broken.

It happens all over the game, on jumping puzzles and vista paths as well. Something that looks completely unclimbable is somehow supposed to be climbed by flinging your body at it until you “stick” on a pixel the developers put in as a jumping point.

The shoddy, untested terrain design is just made more prominent by having Sanctum Scramble (and Fungus) randomly requiring stupid amounts of precision and not having any conveyance for it. And it’s a shame, because SS could have been fun, but when one of my biggest restart points is 5 seconds into the run because the jump doesn’t go quite high enough to clear the glitchy opening branch, it gets beyond frustrating.

SS is also just too ruddy long. The Gold threshold is over two minutes long (2:35, by wiki). While restarting after a mistake is quick and easy (good design, especially for difficult challenges), the iteration time to a failed run is still painful by game standards.
Perhaps too late to go back into it and add a checkpoint system, but it would really help SS not be so crappy.

Palador.2170:

We do need more festivals, and I think the end of HoT should be the origin of a sylvari festival. (Well, maybe not a “festival”, but… It’s a day they should remember.)

I’m thinking a weekly festival, celebrated right at the start of the weekend. Wherein, we set ablaze Mordrem in effigy. Or Nightmare Court. Or that one Sylvari nearby giving me suspicious looks.

I call it Fry Day. It will be great.

I’d agree with that, but because of the jumping puzzle part. It’s that the jump itself is so poorly designed and attached to a complicated jump string that’s beyond infuriating. Absolutely zero conveyance with fatal consequences. So, basically, it’s the Battletoads of jumping puzzle diving. -_-

Dashingsteel.3410:

Not a fan of openworld mazes……. Please, Anet, no more maps like this unless you can improve your minimap system.

It’s all I really ask.

kevintheradioguy.9438:

Also, more town-looking outfits. Like monks, cooks, etc., they look much cooler then most fancy armours… at least, more real.

There’s roughly 17 tonics that could be outfits, pretty easily, since the assets are already there, and they were previously town clothes.
hinthintnudgenudge, ANET

Zucchini Crab Bread.

…whut? You know they would.

Pifil.5193:

Yep, I’d say that the best Mastery unlock order for getting around is:

Gliding:
Glider Basics - 1 Mastery point
Updraft Use – 2 Mastery points

Itzel:
Bouncing Mushrooms – 1 Mastery point

Nuhoch:
Nuhoch Hunting - 1 Mastery point
Nuhoch Wallows – 2 Mastery points

Exalted:
Exalted Markings – 1 Mastery point

Once you have those you can go just about anywhere. After that I’d go with gliding to the end.

This is advice I give to new HoT players as well. Once you’re reasonably mobile, you can explore just about everything. After gliding, scoop up Poison Mastery to get to those few areas that are still blocked off.

OriOri.8724:

Can’t speak for OP but learning how to fight Chak effectively didn’t make me hate them any less. Same with mushrooms. I just find them to be incredibly annoying enemies

I can appreciate chak design and still not like fighting them. But usually, I don’t mind beating on a few while getting around.

Mushrooms make me wonder why the canon storyline isn’t “burn down the entire forest with gasoline.” We can relocate the nice froggies to nice spots in Tyria while we flamigate (it’s like fumigating, but with fire) Maguuma to be rid of the various menaces.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

The map is a mess. Full of dead ends, anything that looks close to you will inevitably be on an upper or lower level that requires coming from a completely unrelated location because only one route leads there, or necessitate knowing about some mushroom or updraft route to access the area, this route itself usually requiring heading to a seemingly completely unrelated area to get started. The minimap is rendered basically useless as there are too many overlapping levels, with too many paths that make unannounced level changes and too many routes that look to be going somewhere only to forcibly redirect due to a wall that is basically invisible on the minimap. Even the roads are almost useless, switching up and down and winding past each other such that what looked like it was the road to one place actually leads to a completely different place. The wallows help a little, but only a little as inevitably the place you need to be is between the wallows and can’t be accessed without running around to other far away points. The waypoints are too few and too far between, and many parts of the map require extensive foot travel from the nearest waypoint or wallow to reach, through often very infested grounds that can’t be safely traversed solo, not that there is any indication of this issue before you are half an hour in and just wiped and have to start all over. The whole mess is almost unnavigable without a guide or without spending unending hours memorizing the layout, completely defeating the purpose of having a map in the first place.

Absolutely, all of this.

Not that I mind the complexity, but I find it really, really irritating that the map doesn’t lend any sort of conveyance and that there are insufficient shortcuts for getting around.

And ANet’s “you can’t get there from here” design of the HoT maps is particularly evident in Tangled Depths. Again, complexity makes the map somewhat interesting, until it stops me from participating in events.

I’ll say this with every “I hate TD” thread:

ANet, the best QoL you can give for HoT maps right now is a set of custom map markers. If you can’t be bothered to have your maps display properly, then allow us in-game tools to be our own cartographers.

Huck.1405:

This. Plus no more butt capes! What could’ve been some nice leggings have been ruined by butt capes.

Light: Usually robes and dresses, or pants-like skins tend to be weird.
Medium: Occasionally some nice pants options. …covered up by trench coats.
Heavy: Metal skirts/kilts. Everywhere. Actual pants options are rare, and then they don’t work with most other armor pieces because of odd embellishments or gloss that doesn’t match dye channels.

It’s like ANet has something against legs. :\

Speaking of legs, let us show ’em off! #SummerOutfit

I did them before the 2g, and now I’m better rewarded for doing them. I’m okay with this.

Medium armor vests instead of trench coats.
Some better options for less-covering armor selections for males.
More pants in all weights.
Culture-themed outfits (finish up the Krytan gods, then throw in Asura colleges, Charr legions, Norn spirits, etc)

DoctorDing.5890:

JPs were never great in this game. Clunky controls and dreadful camera angles.
I only do them when they are on daily and there is a portal. The reward is fine.

That’s about accurate for me too. What counts as a ‘climbable’ ledge and what doesn’t feels utterly up to chance. Jumps that are jump-then-move are baffling when they fail as a moving jump.

You want “great” jumping puzzles, OP, get the dev team cracking on tightening up these platforming issues. Double that on the “adventures”, which take these sodding jumping puzzle issues and add even wonkier controls and a timer.

Nevermind that they’re basically hyper-aggressive, Range 2000 turrets? Hate those boring, irritating HP sponges.

Wouldn’t make much sense for them to be two-handed, but…

I’d love me some claws!

I could see introducing a new weapon type with elite specs.
Warrior: Claw skills focus on fast attacks and a wider range of short-term self-buffs. Warrior is Generous execution of combo finishers. Open up Mantras from Mesmer (and finally a way to inflict Taunt reliably).
Ranger: So much potential for a more primal hunter kind of character. Really draw out the beast-like kinship with their animal companions. I could see Claw skills having a focus of coordinated attacks with a pet (skill does one thing, pet attacks simultaneously). Throw in a Physical skill set to drive the combat style.
Thief: Full-bore condition attacker. Poison, torment, bleeding, along with a stick-and-move style. Add a mystic bent with Glamour or Manipulation skills.
Necromancer: Thinking another long range option, since staff is slow and ground-focused. Hybrid damage, a little less condi focused, perhaps more control in interrupts/cripple/immobilize. Almost tempted to pair it with Facets that drain Life Force, and using Claw skills helps sustain it. Necro does need some kind better support option.
Mesmer: A second mid-range option that doesn’t pop clones all over the place would be grand. It’s phantasm could chase around and nick its target with torment. Hybrid damage with short-duration torment and confusion. Toss in some Spirit Weapons, because one can’t have enough minions.

And if any of those ideas suck, meh, I’m sleepy. :P