Guild Wars 2

Congrats!
May you happily tear up many Mordrem together~

quaniesan.8497:

They should put bags in the currency tab, lol.

You “lol”, but this is a terrific idea. >.>

I haven’t yet, but the severe lack of “good” in Warrior right now is making me very much considering nabbing a Herald and finishing the story content.

So many weapons (besides friggin’ Greatsword) need tweaks and enhancements to match Scrapper and Revenant.
Physical skills are a joke.
Rage skills are a flaming joke.
Banner and warhorn got nerfed unnecessarily, so warrior support is in the gutter.
Berserker burst skills don’t seem to add enough to justify the elite spec.
A lack of reliable stability means warriors are chumps against the constant no-cooldown charging/rolling-knockdowns of every dinosaur in Maguuma.

At this point, even a Black Lion Kit couldn’t salvage Warrior, and I’m on the verge of dropping the class that brought me into the game in the first place.

I’m beginning to think half my frustration with playing warrior in HoT is warrior itself. Or how every mob seems hellbent on countering warrior (and melee in general). The accusations of “Range Wars 2” aren’t wrong by any stretch.

(The other half of my frustration is shoddy layouts in portions of the map design.)

Could be that part of my combat frustration is choosing hammer, for the sake of murdering Defiance bars (and squishing pocket raptors :P), instead of the “more acceptable” greatsword and longbow. But that’s kind of the point in saying it. If you’re not using Phalanx Strength/Greatsword or ShoutBow, there aren’t any decent builds to tackle HoT content.

My non-Chrono mesmer walked in and wrecked shop, effortlessly. My ranger sails through most of the enemies. But my warrior has to close massive gaps in order to deal subpar damage, while enemies either leap-stealth away or charging-knockdown with no-cooldown skills.

So, I’m not sure if I regret HoT itself, or just experiencing it with a warrior.

Khael.7325:

After these changes I actually feel like the Berserker is a pretty solid spec. What most people are complaining about, or should be complaining about, is the base warrior. It needs a fair bit of work. These changes were welcome in my book though.

Yup.

Good that Berserker is finally getting some updates. Problem is, if you’re not going Greatsword or Shoutbow, there aren’t many effective options.

Warhorn and banners got unnecessarily nerfed. Hammer skills and the associated trait are pathetic in comparison to Revenant and Scrapper. Rifle is still a joke weapon. Mace/Shield is mostly PvP action-denial that doesn’t work well in PvE.

Warrior was good. “Too good,” they said. So it’s gotten hit by the nerf bat repeatedly over the balance changes, in places it shouldn’t have.

piza.9310:

Xillllix.3485:

Considering that they don’t even have a raid or dungeon out yet for the xpac I doubt we will ever see SAB again.

ever is a big word…

No, “ever” is a very short word.
Four letters.
Like many other words I have for Anet. :P

I like money. I’ll continue to sell candy corn and gift boxes as I get them.

..well, not candy corn, since I need 20-slot boxes. I should be buying candy corn right now. >.>

+1 on that Adrenaline decay comment.
I’d be fine with 1 per second lost, so I can at least keep it a little while, but it feels more like 5 per second.

As a hammer fan, its trait needs a re-write. I don’t know to what, but bonus damage on a slow-moving hammer when its best stun is 2 seconds? Poor design, unless you have a thief friend spamming gun-daze. I end up using the quickness trait instead, since it applies to any weapon and isn’t reliant on finding an enemy that won’t Defiance bar or stun-break out of it.

And let’s be honest, after seeing Scrapper’s triple-diving-hammer and Revenant’s 15sec-cooldown-ranged-AoE-stun, Warrior hammer needs some huge improvement on effect and cooldown times.

Banners need to have their time switched to 75 seconds on, 90 second cooldown. 30 seconds in between banners is just hateful. And with healing becoming more important for PvE, I’d recommend a pulse heal go with the trait to pair with Regen.

imsoenthused.1634:

Wasn’t the whole point of bags to completely subvert their own mechanics and make magic find useless. Oh, ya, it was. That’s the part that really burns me honestly, way more than the clicking.

This. Yup.

Because Gaheron forbid someone with +300MF loot one extra precursor among the population…

lawl, Warrior was already nerfed. -_-
Banner, warhorn, classes with significantly better weapon abilities (Scrapper, Revenant)…

But hey, shoutbow still works, right? -_-

RyuDragnier.9476:

It’s not lost. Turns out they put it in another line. I’m not sure what determines which line they put it in, but they definitely put it in one. Forgot about my mastery points for a while, remembered about them, thinking they were lost. Turns out they threw the excess exp from my Pact Commander Mastery line down into the Fractal line.

Interesting, if true.
The tutorial states that the experience is lost, but it’d be a polite feature to have experience funnel elsewhere if your current one maxes out.

Celtic Lady.3729:

By this logic, why would anything be tradeable? Why isn’t everything account bound so you have to do the work yourself and prove you played the game? We could simply farm everything we need, no currency necessary.

Since, you know, laziness…

Works for Diablo 3!

Sort of. I stopped playing again midway through Season 4, but it’s a nice thought.

Nah, Berserkers are kind of weak, along with the rest of Warrior.

…or is that because I’m using Berserker gear on my Berserker when I should be using Sinister? >.>

GW2 grind > WoW grind

GW2 variety > WoW variety

Second statement matters much more. For endgame WoW, it’s the same stale daily hubs in one lackluster zone. Starting in Mists, they tried to do some open-world stuff like GW2 has, but it ends up with the same open-world problems of “once it spawns, it’s dead,” so there’s no point.

For all of WoW’s verticality, the only goal is grind raids once a week, if you can even muster the patience to do it.

Where GW2 has a problem is that its grind is so punishing because it is largely luck and materials based, in order to serve a market mechanic that buoys around Legendary weapons and their precursors.

Well, that’s disappointing. No correction to the numerous nerfs or rebalancing of weapon skills with Revenant in play.

I added 5 characters for HoT, so..

C = X+5
I can’t quite remember what X is, but given X>10

C > 15

Pockets.3201:

I’ve done all the JPs, but I can’t blame people for hating them. This game does not have proper platforming mechanics when it comes to controlling your character.

Ohgawd, thank you for saying this. I thought I was alone.

There’s a big difference between the frustration of “maybe I just need practice” and the frustration of “the controls are crap and why aren’t they designing for their controls”.
Egg skill #2, I’m looking at you, by the way. You have no place in Sanctum Scramble(d Egg).

HtFde.3856:

Yup – biting the dust all by yourself can be a bit of a problem. But once you have the shrooms and gliding 2 you no longer walk – learn the maps and where the updrafts are. It still takes time (depoending which waypoints are contested) but it’s pretty safe as long as they do not include flying enemies as well …

That’s not entirely true~ ;3

Mordrem Snipers will one-shot you out of the air. I was in a team of three people, two got whacked in nothing flat. I tried to sneak my way in (though didn’t actually have stealth gliding :P) and caught a deathsnipe to the face. Fell into a corner and rezzed, and finally pulled one of my buddies up while the other waypointed.
I was amused.

Dungeons don’t really need a cash buff. But they do need more incentive to run. Right now, the token grind is still unforgivable, but they really should raise the token rewards as exchange for reducing gold.

Choppy.4183:

@Arewn
Why give it an ICD at all?

Greatsword (and arguably, OH Axe) have the highest potential for the greatest number of hits in the shortest period of time, and yet nobody’s saying FG is overpowered, afaik.

If there’s an internal cooldown, it’s precisely because of the difference in number of hits. A 1-sec internal cooldown normalizes the effect for all weapon types.

So much sass and snark. :|

Anyway, I wouldn’t think it’s illicit. It doesn’t give any real-time advantage, manipulate a market, or automate things that shouldn’t be automated (one button, one action rule).

I will say that I’d be highly skeptical of your results. GW2 is far more complex than a simple ticker-tape DPS meter is going to keep up with. But good luck with it.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I do agree that PvE here in HoT is easy, but look at the alternative…we could have another Orr, with CC spamming adds everywhere. That’s actually the only reason why I consider Orr the hardest place in the game, even now…THE kitten ED CC SPAM!

Wait, whut?

The most CC I get in Orr is a few cripples and maybe a charging rush from an easily avoided abomination. Even old school Orr wasn’t that bad, just a little cramped.

Expac? Literally, almost every reptile mob has a knockdown attack, and most of them charge while doing it. And they’re borderline immune to counter-CC. Mushrooms, same deal, and the kings have a scorpion wire attack. And it all happens on virtually zero cooldown.

Jong.5937:

. Run and they will bring you down!

From range 1200!

Yeah, they’re a little bugged, actually. Fortunately, I have a hammer, and they splat pretty easily.

Rolling devils on the other hand…

I agree with a lot of the other suggestions above.

Physical skills are mostly counters, but their damage is pretty pathetic and their cooldowns are long. And for group support, it’s even worse. Banners and For Great Justice do much more than a high-cooldown love tap.

Rage skills are just glorified Physical skills, which Warriors don’t even really need. Their effects are nifty and such, but it makes Physical skills worth much less.

Banners definitely need some kind of help, and possibly a big buff to their held skills. I’d recommend giving banners some some equivalence to summoned weapons that Elementalists can use. A warrior with the trait could then afford to be a mobile banner buff and still get the held effects off the banner. So, the trait upgrade would look more like:

While wielding a banner:
Pulse 3s of Regen every three seconds.
Held banner skill cooldowns are reduced by 20%
Stab has additional effects based on the banner.
-Strength: Strikes inflict vulnerability (1 stack, 5 sec)
-Discipline: Grants Quickness on hit. (1 sec effect, 5 sec internal cooldown)
-Defense: Does damage to Defiance bar and grants Protection (3 sec, 8 sec internal cooldown)
-Tactics: Heals a small area per hit.
-Battle: Gives user stability (1 stack, 1 sec) per hit.

…something like that, anyway. Give a warrior incentive to hold a banner, even if it isn’t his own. That would make a two-warrior party more desirable, since they can splity the banner load between them.

And let’s be honest, after Revenant, Warrior Hammer looks like garbage.
Revenant: Ranged, AoE, 2 second knockdown, 15 second cooldown.
Warrior: Easy to spot, long melee hit, single target, 30 second cooldown, 2 second knockdown.
Normally, I’d say don’t compare the two in isolation, but this is on such an absurd scale that it defies sensibility.

And like EVERY SINGLE mob cripples, stuns and pushes me back.

Truth. It makes playing a melee character nearly impossible when the mob shove/KDs, runs halfway across the map, then runs back with charge/KD enabled. Cripple won’t work, because it either ignores it through breakbar or charges are speed-normalized anyway. It’s made playing my main very frustrating, where my confu-mesmer can waltz in and wreck shop with no problem.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the terrain physics were consistent, especially between character types. Charr and Norn have it terrible.

What’s more frustrating is the pitiful jump height and the horribly uneven ledges they expect you to traverse, such that the slightest hill could stump a jumper for a solid minute, assuming the surface is jumpable at all and not “too slick” or “invisible walled”.

Or running into the other physics problem where pushing forward and jump doesn’t work, but jump then forward (in totally cartoon/platformer fashion) is actually the solution.

Glad to see this as a top post.

I don’t mind challenge (I’m a little sad the Modrem snipers disappeared at the bottom of Verdant Brink, actually :P), but some of the Hero Points are still 2+ only. Champion frog+2 is probably the worst offender in Verdant Brink at the moment, especially when it’s surrounded by (veteran) wasps. It’s a fight that easily turns 5v1 with mobs that do way too much.

I get that the devs wanted the challenges to be hard, and thus more meaningful, but mechanical benefits shouldn’t be locked behind requiring a group.

Suggested it before. Still suggesting it now.

Probably better to boost to 80 as fast as possible. If you’ve owned since release, one of your starting characters should have the 3-year bonus scroll. Boom, instant 30.
That leaves 50 tomes to farm up and hit 80.

You won’t have access to Herald right away, but the rest of the class will open up, and you’ll gain Mastery experience that can be applied to mobility options for hero challenges.

If you’re short on tomes, try digging into WvW. It has an option to unlock random hero point locations.

Labjax.2465:

Eh, from what I’ve been able to glean from reading stuff, it’s not going to be as bad as people are imagining. I think it’s gonna be one of those things you’ll feel on the 3rd or 4th character, but you won’t notice a whole lot the first time around.

I likely won’t notice at all with my main~

Because Berserker is meh. So he’ll stay in Green Dry Top earning mastery experience for a bit. Flying and such should make getting hero points on my alts much easier.

It would seem that the biggest qualifier for aggro is “who hit me first?” AI has a bad habit of chasing that one person until it kills them. Not just downs, kills.
Sometimes I find that a knockback or launch skill will force the mob to re-evaluate its aggro, probably due to a sudden shift in distance.

Aggro does feel like it needs a rework, though.

I have well over 400. /smug

…scattered across 17 or so characters. /cry

One main with world completion, so he’s halfway ready for HoT. /yay

…as a Berserker. /cry

Pompeia.5483:

The only ‘headache’ in doing it for your alts is having to unlock all the other trait lines.
The only ‘headache’ in doing it for your mains is having to play.

I admit, I was hating this whole thing till an hour ago when I broke it down in Excel and ran some numbers.

To take a quote from a boss in Rift— “It’s really not as bad as…everyone made it seem.”

I dunno, Rift was pretty bad. :p

Jokes aside, I’ve reconciled with how this is going to work, and I’ll just have to accept some delayed gratification. I still think it’s foolish to lock a major mechanical portion of the content behind the mastery grind (which should have been there to lock the actual content), but I’ll be working through my legion of alts eventually. :P

I’m getting dragged out Friday afternoon. Won’t be back until Monday. ;_;
At least I get one day of headstart.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

Dude, hate much?

We are heroes not villains.

It’s that simple.

Eh, some people just have to be counter-culture and contrarian.
It’s why we have things like Drow or “Flame Legion Warbands”.
/yawn

Thematically, as one who precedes greatness, start with Herald.

Then, Chrono. You can always pretend he came before or after, later.

Finally, Reaper. Again, thematic reasons.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Actually people have reasons for not minding the design, and people have questionable reasons for disliking, and there is no reason for ANet to step in because in two days it will be too late, and in one month everyone will forget all about it just like always happens. Usually because they’ve realized all their complaints were unfounded.

It’s a fine enough point. The complaints will still have merit, but it’s not going to stop people from playing and exploring. It will mar the experience a little, but in the end, the irritation will be largely forgotten.

I know what I hoped for, but expectation and desire is just another form of assumption. The decision will be pretty easy to cope with, in the end. I’ll just be running my 80s until I have sufficient masteries that going back to level alts won’t feel like such a waste.

No biggie.

TheGrimm.5624:

It would help to get a general, or detailed if available, breakdown on where the points total to the 400 mark. Talking with various people in game last night and a lot of them are fine with working towards cosmetic ends as long as the core abilities and mechanics are in place earlier in that 400 mark so that they can effectively play the class sooner rather than later. The other point that would potentially help people understand more is a sample of how many HP are in the first map that people encounter so that they could gauge more of what to expect. I like the goals to work towards but can get their excitement on wanting to be able to play the new elites through the new content as well. Will have to see what today holds.

Exactly this. If there’s one question the devs should answer, it’s this one.

Wolfric.9380:

Hmm if the points are the same for elite als basic traits and utilities and you can leave out base traits taking elite first. Then a reset and redistripution would be a good solution. Making new characters to get elite faster is a bit ridiculous.

Unfortunately, the elites don’t unlock until you buy all the base/core tracks. So all the points you get through level 80 go directly to that. I was hoping it wouldn’t work that way, so I could save points from unwanted trait/skill lines to invest in elites, but alas, they decided against it.

Though, it won’t be so bad if the cosmetic parts of the track were left to the end. I’m hoping the devs were at least that sensible. >.>

Swagger.1459:

One question to keep in mind folks… “Is it fun?”

MagicBall.0008

Could be better.

It feels like the one real expectation that was being defied is using/training the new specs during map exploration. Not after it’s all done.

Said it before, but I’m reiterating, if they could remove the need to buy off the other training tracks, this would work out reasonably. There isn’t any need to force us to play the game. We bought the expansion so we can play it.

Donari.5237:

I’ve seen a couple of comments about having seen some not too hard points to get to in beta. Those were mastery points and had nothing to do with hero challenges.

Hopefully they just didn’t have the hero challenges showing for beta and there will be a couple in the first maps. But no, we did not see a single hero challenge in beta, which is why people were thinking Pact Tyria was the only source until Colin’s post today.

Oh good, so I wasn’t the only one who didn’t see the hero challenges in beta.

TJgalon.5012:

Sounds like this will be a fun time to play and unlock new things. The more i read, the more I wonder why it bad.
People keep bringing alts into the argument, forgetting it be even easier to unlock hero points on alts, since a lot of the mastery are account bound. Also knowing the map more, make it easier too.

Account-bound masteries are the saving grace to it, sure.

Honestly, I’m not ‘outraged,’ just disappointed that this is the direction they went with. I doubt I would even be chuffed at all if they didn’t make us unload all our points from leveling to start on the elite specs.

Drow.2081:

Beer. You should change it to beer.

What the beer are you talking about? That’s the most beerish idea I’ve ever beering heard.

…Hm, dunno, but I figured I’d try it on for size. :P

To be honest, the part that bothers me more is the requirement that we finish training all other traits and skills to get the elite unlocked. I’ve done some searching, poked the betas, and I already have an idea of what I want. If there’s a trait line and two skill lines I don’t want, being frugal with points should be rewarded.

The 10-per-HoT ratio favors the new content, which is good, but it shovels emphasis on masteries (a long grind on their own) in order to reach them, and it devalues the core content. Not so much salty about it as pointing it out, but I’m sure it was also intentional.

Though, to think about it further, having this chunk of a grind also puts a lot of faith that the elite specs have value for doing so. Which for Chronomancer, Reaper, and some others, I can see. Berserker and Dargunhurrdurr? Why would I torture myself for those? :\

Yeeeah, I don’t even want to hear a WvW-centric kewing about this. -_- I’ll admit the system for WvW is pretty fantastic, but PvE side, locking the elite spec that way is inexcusable.

400 points. 100% world completion only gives half an elite spec. I wouldn’t be anywhere near as salty about this if I didn’t have to buy everything including stuff I didn’t want with the free 400 I get for hitting level 80.

Some good ideas so far, folks.

I like the thought on Bull’s Charge, for making it hit everything in a line instead of charging an enemy and stopping (which leads to glitches). That, and I want the special joy of having it renamed Teragriff’s Charge. :P

Kick actually isn’t too terrible. It’s a low-cooldown interrupt. And it’s hilarious to do to bears. I would rather it be a knock_down_ instead of a knockback, but it’s functional.

Stomp and Fear Me are both anti-pressure skills, so.. are both really necessary, as is? Both have big applications for controlling PvP points, so I’d be reluctant to change them too much.

Bola could do well with a gap closer of some kind. Granted, Immob is already helpful for that, and the skill’s short cooldown is decent, but it’s very.. lackluster. Adding a chain-activated pull to it would be thematic, as would a chain leap, which could feel a field combo.

In thinking about it, with Body Blow and Distracting Strikes, the Physical track could do well as condition add-ons. The bonus damage on Peak Performance is fairly weak, though. The 100% damage boost almost made them decent.

+1 on the recipe reintroduction.

I heard some rumor about special item vendors that might be introduced. Can anyone confirm?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Narrrz.7532:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

On a more serious note, here is the reason they gave: Source

ReginaBuenaobra
ArenaNet Poster
Kittens are cute. Even the most hardened internet denizen has a soft spot for kittens. :-p

The filter words in the German, French, and Spanish official forums are different.

In German, the word is “Liebsche” (a term of endearment roughly equivalent to ‘honey’)
In French, it is “papillon” (butterfly)
In Spanish, it is “minino” (the more harmless form of the word ‘kitten’ in Spanish)
The goal for these filter words is to diffuse the abrasiveness and take the bite out of posts containing profanity.

The irony of course being that us hardened forumites now use kitten as a curse word, even in our daily lives XD

Kitten that! I never would!

(Ok. Maybe I do say kitten, for real, sometimes)

I never say kitten in real life, but sometimes, someone is just so.. GRR.. that I have to type kitten because no softening of a vulgarity will do otherwise. :P

cam.6850:

Also, if an A-net dev is reading this, PLEASE introduce something similar to the party bomb Extra credit makes reference to! Love this idea

They kinda do with the Box O’ Fun. :P
Bobblehead fountain and Aviator’s boxes, too.

And good luck on that thesis! Been there, and I wish I had a cool topic like this when I was working on it.

Hrm. Tried the BrainHex test. Found it a bit wanting in usability, so it skews my perception of the results somewhat.

Ended up with: Socialiser: 17 Mastermind: 13 Seeker: 12 Conqueror: 11 Achiever: 6 Daredevil: 3 Survivor: -2

I’m suspecting some phrasing or grouping issues that lead to Socialiser over Mastermind, though I do enjoy relaying shared experiences, even if it’s trading stories over single player games. I’m probably more Mastermind, sub-Socialiser, basically.

Should be surprised by how high Conqueror is, but Bartle’s theory actually explains it better. Tackling difficult challenges in the world is gratifying, but ruining someone else’s day is not. (Means I’m not a kitten, yay.)

From the Four Player Types test:
58% Strategist, 56% Innovator, 44% Ace, 11% Effector