Guild Wars 2

It’s not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction. No <79 and 80 transmutation stones anymore, account-wide access to unlocked skins, and relatively easy-to-obtain stones right now (“charges”). I hope transmutation charges will still be easy to obtain like the stones now, but knowing Anet, that’s doubtful. Like most, I dislike that we are still bound by finite uses of transmutation (at least, in the short term), but it’s such a big QoL improvement that it’s actually a decent update for once. At least it is a step toward a perfect system.

The only other things I’ve liked about GW2 updates are the map from Bazaar of the Four Winds and less Risen in Orr. In other words, I’m a pessimist when it comes to updates and I actually find this wardrobe system quite nice.

Posted this awhile ago, but not many people cared to listen. This is what I thought of Orr – both what it was back in the day, before the war, and post-war, right now.

https://soundcloud.com/tim_six/shadows-of-the-past

I wrote a piece titled “Shadows of the Past” dedicated to the Tarnished Coast server, specifically those who spend most of their time in Orr. More detailed description in the link below:

https://soundcloud.com/tim_six/shadows-of-the-past

Please turn up your speaker volume and hope you enjoy listening!

If it’s over 50% of the original box price (which was $60 for me), not worth it. We don’t need Sims 3 in the MMORPG market.

My first time playing Lunatic Inquisition, got bored out of my mind. Maybe Anet felt the same way, so they decided to ‘balance’ the professions. Yawn.

Nothing to see here, move along…

The levelling system for a new player’s first character is fine. The sense of achievement is not. Alts that are created after achieving level 80 should receive some sort of permanent XP buff until 80. I doubt most people actually enjoy a repeated levelling experience, especially if they are playing as the same race (or dare I add profession). Most people who reach level 80 and start a new alt are familiar with the combat system and do not need 79 levels to learn how to play a new profession. That being said, reaching level 80 does not guarantee that a person has a good understanding of their profession (warrior + guardian GS in PvE = get through almost all content).

Perhaps letting players change profession at 80? IDK the solution but the levelling system is putting me off from being an active player, especially when I have a bunch of alts that are 80 already.

I don’t play very much anymore. When I do, it’s to go on sPvP on my thief and troll kill with zerker backstab build. I think the biggest factor in why I’m bored is because my achievements aren’t reflected on all my characters. I got world completion a few months ago. This is something that for me, personally, was very hard to do and was a very big achievement for myself due to lag, all solo experience, and really just immersing myself in my character’s progression. I even paid gems to transfer servers because WvW didn’t have colour rotation system in yet so I could get WvW POI and Vistas.

Then I made an alt and had a (deserving) shock that I started at level 1, had to repeat everything I did, and essentially grind my way to level 80 before I got to the good stuff. Dailies were always a grind, idk how people do them in 10 minutes, maybe I am just not as good as them as a player. Also when I used to play 4+ hours a day, dailies were like an extra bonus and it was nice to get. When I played 1-2 hours a day, I had to go out of my way to get crafting achievement, laurel vendor, etc. It is not hard but it is not fun either.

I am bored mostly because I am tired of getting that gold star back on my alts. I think the gold star means a lot as an achievement and should be toggle-able for all your characters since you put in the time and effort on one. Just like how some ppl use transmutation stone for legendaries.

Thanks for reading

sazberryftw.3809:

I will add, the new sound makes me more excited about achieving what I’ve achieved. It’s fun.

Exactly how I feel. I’m actually excited to do my dailies now! The new sounds are better than the old ones in my opinion, but I understand why people dislike this. It’s a drastic change and some people just have different preferences. Would it hurt to let users customize this option? Of course, let’s not go down the slippery slope of “if we have 2 options, then we’ll need to have x amount of options”. It doesn’t hurt to let the players choose their preferences.

Take everything here with a grain of salt… I think most responses were made by some pretty experienced players…

As a new player, I would give you this advice: ignorance is bliss. ^^

Once you actually delve into the world of builds, fractals, sPvP, TP economy, high-tier crafting, etc., you’ll realize how good life was when you were new… The important thing to always remember is to enjoy the game and play for fun. Don’t play for a goal or it will become a grind, or you will burn out because a lot of content (story wise) is repetitive.

I’ve only spent a mere 500 hours since I got the game in December (I say mere because many here have spent 1k+) and I have grown to dislike too many aspects of the game to still say “wow this is a great game!” That is not necessarily the developers or community’s fault, but just the way things turned out for me.

I like your mentality though, play it and move on. It was, is, and will be just a game! There are finer things in life to enjoy. ^^

http://www.gw2bear.com/status.quaggan?check=Grenth&server=NA

Grenth currently open on Jade Quarry, Blackgate, and Crystal Desert. Website is 100% reliable, hopped between Tarnished Coast, Dragonbrand, and Henge of Denravi (home server) for all karma gear, all thanks to gw2bear.

Thanks for all your feedback!

Will add you Paz, cheers. ^^

Ursan.7846:

Just a few tips for people in this thread.

1. For Jade Maw, simply keep your pet stowed. Stay out of combat, it’s very easy to do. Stick on crystal refreshing duty.
2. For Griffonrook, keep your pet passive. You won’t get into combat if your pet gets attacked. You only go into combat if your pet attacks.

Pet stowing during combat will be nice. However, suggestions that pet stowing should give you some additional powers are pretty silly and will never happen.

I’ve made the mistake of not stowing pets and running spirits… didn’t realize it until boss went through a pet, spirit, and swap all in a row :P

Thank you for replying Tribio! :O I feel a bit starstruck from the video uploader’s reply I don’t have the build (in the vid) fully set up yet (all those shiny ascended items!), but so far I’m loving the raw DPS it can output. I’m picking up a rabid set soon just to see how well I fare with the added toughness.

I have been using the suggested combo since using a personal variant of your build and it has indeed worked great in WvW (I commented as Achiox on your vid) ^^ just very squishy in team/zerg fights :’(

S****ße! And I just blew a bunch of gold and badges on Berserker gear a few days ago. Oh well, at least I can still use it to melt mobs for world completion…

Thanks for your reply mate, I would like to see that video someday (preferably soon). ^^

If I go condition damage, doesn’t that mean I can build toughness and vitality as well, since power, precision (untraited/no sigils) and crit damage stats don’t apply to a condition build? I’m actually quite interested in a tankier build now that I’ve had my keister handed to me several times.

I enjoy long walks at Southsun, candle lit dinners…

… and not being such a fail ranger in WvW. :‘( I’ve tried looking for the “classifieds” section on the forums but nope, non-existent! Are there any full zerker WvW rangers that can coach me for a few sessions? I’m playing on the Henge of Denravi server at the moment.

My build + preferred playstyle is very similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRFszeYiXWg so extremely glassy and essentially a thief magnet.

After getting melted countless times in WvW, I have come to conclusion that I’m really just a joke of a glass cannon. Is there any hope for me?

Celebratty.1632:

No dude, its our CORE mechanic. Warriors can’t ignore their burst moves and eles are forced to attune, every thief has to steal or he gets stunned whenever its off cd. Everyone is punished if they don’t take full advantage of their core mechanic and play it perfectly, why should we be exempt? You know how irritating it is doing jade maw and then that dang warrior forgets to use his burst move, crashing the game and uninstalling GW2 from our computers.

/s

I disagree. Warrior adrenal health is very much a passive trait and relies on warriors to not use their class mechanic at all (just build it up and let it sit at max) for full benefit. Not everyone is punished if they don’t take full advantage of their core mechanic.

mtpelion.4562:

Reisinger.4203:

“mostly far left extremism” <- LOL, and yes I saw you edit that out.

Resources in the market are not the same as resources obtainable elsewhere. The market is a source of obtaining resources for individuals. Control of the market, through amassing goods (such as buying out enough of a good), thus significantly limits a the ability of an individual to obtain said resources. Pretty sure that’s not how a healthy economy works.

I felt it was too inflammatory and disruptive. Sociology is essentially the art of parroting your instructor’s opinions back to him so that your GPA stays high enough to participate in the athletic program.

If you’re going to get into semantics and completely disregard a field due to what you’ve seen in your own, (probably) poor-quality post-secondary institution, then why shouldn’t we disregard your views as well? Why bother replying at all as what you’ve said in this latest post has nothing to do with this thread?

A sociological view on this economy isn’t some sort of speculative, subjective professor-vomit. If so, a lot of the users that have posted on this thread must be very attentive during their sociology classes.

The point: it’s not a fringe “Occupy X” mentality to have a shared disapproval of concentrated capital in the market.

Thank you all for your kind comments. ^^

This may sound cheesy, but I’ve played a few Megaman games a few years back, and one feature I particularly liked was the soul unison concept, where you could bring up the abilities of a prominent enemy you defeated during the storyline.

As you have suggested, this would work in a similar manner. If pets are “stowed” or somehow connected to us [insert cheesy, spiritual background for how this works here], we should receive a buff to certain traits (depending on the pet) so that we are brought up to par with other professions, especially those in our medium-armour category.

(I do apologize for repeating a lot of what you said, but I started writing after I read the first two sentences in your first post, and then continued reading and finishing this post after I read the rest. Why is this significant? The concept of pet stowing isn’t revolutionary or difficult to understand at all – I’m sure other rangers, in due time, would find this as an interesting mechanic to use.)

I really like the idea of being able to use our stowed pet’s abilities as well.

Chopps.5047:

With that build, I’ve found the deciding factor in whether I can reliably beat the zerk thief is whether or not I have torch equipped.

Yes! This is a great suggestion and in fact, should be included into some sort of counter-thief tutorial for rangers new to WvW.

In regards to the healing bunker build, I think you are overrating the healing abilities. I’ve tried a shout build (mostly for swiftness) with some healing power (had a mix of everything) and found the healing to be negligible, at least in contrast to a profession like warrior. I run a shout-healing build on that, and with rare-quality healing power armor, I heal a lot more than I do on my ranger.

That’s not saying it’s not a viable build, but in my opinion, if you’re trying to primarily heal with a ranger, you’re best off setting yourself up for a spirit build and running warhorn 5 with healing spring than actually focusing on healing power for your gear.

Cuchullain.3104:

Target dummy for the elite classes in WvW. The ranger is designed to fail in anything but a pro’s hands, and even there…it lacks. This game is geared toward having ridiculously op classes downing people with passive abilities like retaliation or three-shotting them when standing there like an idiot getting shot at fails. Someone has to be the broken class that’s easy to down and spike. That’s us.

The guy with a pirate hat and a pet next to him is always easy to identify and kill. Rangers are definitely my easiest kills and rarely kill me unless they are melee.

This. There’s been countless times in WvW where I was in a party, PUG, or zerg, and despite the majority of time being an upscale with a group of other upscales, they target ME. So I now have a grudge against all enemy thieves I encounter in WvW and stocked up on stealth disruptor traps because you picked on me so many times :’(

In all seriousness though, think of rangers as the only profession that has their damage handicapped by a profession mechanic. As others have stated, condition damage is negligible because other professions do it better, we have lower DPS, and our support is mediocre (I have never seen a healing build fail so much on a profession). If anything, we’re long-ranged burst/DPS. I know for a fact that LB warriors don’t even come close to the long-ranged DPS of a ranger, but I haven’t played enough mesmer or ele to say that long-range DPS is our role.

Liking the discussion here, it’s good that people recognize this massive (hopefully unintended) flaw in the profession.

Zerytha – 5/10
Vixsique – 3/10 (would rate 9/10 if it was just Vix, intelligibility is important to me)
Villynia – 8/10 (most closely resembles human names that I’ve seen)

My peeps:
Warrior – Niklaus Bauer
Thief – Lucius Cartier
Ranger – Quentin North

Fungalfoot.7213:

mtpelion.4562:

No matter how much money I amass, there is not a single thing I can do to prevent you from obtaining something in game because every item in the game can be generated, either on demand or at random, at any given moment.

Now that isn’t entirely true. ArenaNet frequently releases limited items which a lot of power traders pounce upon in order to resell at a later date for ridiculous sums. Some of the flame and frost dyes went from ten gold to a hundred.

Maybe a good compromise here would be binding these limited items upon purchase from the trading post to prevent excessively wealthy players from cornering the market and leaving common goods ( which can indeed be generated whenever ) as are.

This ^

mtpelion.4562:

Reisinger.4203:

mtpelion.4562:

In what way are the “poor” players competing with the “wealthy” players?

There are infinite numbers of everything available to every player. No one can prevent you from obtaining anything in this game.

If you have studied sociology at all, that is one of the fundamental flaws in the capitalist system. Many academics agree that the “infinite resources” or “unlimited opportunity” ideology is flawed. This is 2013, not the 20th century.

There’s no one that can say “no, you can’t have this”, but they can sure put up barriers to hinder your pursuit of that object.

If we ignore the philosophical debate that must be answered before your point can even be considered and just go straight to the meat of your argument, this is a video game in which infinite resouces and unlimited opportunity are programmed to exist, so any arguments against capitalism in real world economies are irrelevant.

No matter how much money I amass, there is not a single thing I can do to prevent you from obtaining something in game because every item in the game can be generated, either on demand or at random, at any given moment. If I wanted to prevent players from obtaining a specific legendary I can’t. If I bought 100% of the precursors and materials new ones would be instantly available for me to have to continue buying, 24/7. Even if I did manage to completely lock down all supply on the market by constantly buying EVERYTHING, a poor player who wants the legendary can still get it the same way the first players got it… farming the materials themselves.

There is no competition for resources in this game because all resources are equally available at all times to all players.

“mostly far left extremism” <- LOL, and yes I saw you edit that out.

Resources in the market are not the same as resources obtainable elsewhere. The market is a source of obtaining resources for individuals. Control of the market, through amassing goods (such as buying out enough of a good), thus significantly limits a the ability of an individual to obtain said resources. Pretty sure that’s not how a healthy economy works.

mtpelion.4562:

In what way are the “poor” players competing with the “wealthy” players?

There are infinite numbers of everything available to every player. No one can prevent you from obtaining anything in this game.

If you have studied sociology at all, that is one of the fundamental flaws in the capitalist system. Many academics agree that the “infinite resources” or “unlimited opportunity” ideology is flawed. This is 2013, not the 20th century.

There’s no one that can say “no, you can’t have this”, but they can sure put up barriers to hinder your pursuit of that object.

idevourwater.3149:

Or guard makes both ranger and pet invisible in a small area (sorta like shadow refuge) making first attack from stealth hit 150% more. Could b an ambush skill or an escape skill

I think that’s a bit too much like thieves’ combat mechanic… Stealth-based attacks are sort of their thing ^^

I like the idea of a longer guard range though. Right now it’s a useless skill. I used to use it for a 100% swiftness build (30 in NM, 10 in BM, no runes needed) and the range was abysmal.

With the current range, it just looks like a ranger has stowed their pet.

Rufy.6093:

Reisinger.4203:

Kasama.8941:

From what I’ve read, it sounds to me like the players complaining, are those who likes to use longbow as a “fire and forget” weapon. Where as the players who likes the new changes, are those who are more into active combat.

I am totally that kind of player. Guardian PvE was my best PvE experience ever, because it was the most simplistic playstyle ever: run in, GS 5, pull group of mobs in, do that spin thing, and then autoattack until everything’s dead. That is how I prefer to play against mobs, to stand there and unless absolutely necessary, move. I’m willing to play, but I’m not willing to put in more work into a game than I do in real life (I’m doing IT work and it’s a lot of typing).

OK, I do apologize that I’ve digressed too far into semantics about game mechanics, so are there any “fire and forget” weapons for ranger, even before all the nerfs? The only weapon I can think of is shortbow, but after the range nerf it’s not really effective for sitting in one spot and picking things off… I think unless you use bear, it’s always active combat for a ranger. ^^

Go back to guardian then. Ranger is actually being made better and much funner now. I actually mained my ranger after all the recent patches. Auto attack shortbow is excactly why I avoid shortbow.

I actually left Guardian because I ran through PvE like it was a joke. ^^

Kasama.8941:

Reisinger.4203:

I’ve tried using bird but there aren’t always ambient creatures around the map and I’m horrible with the targeting system. Good suggestion though, that is definitely useful in WvW.

It’s simply a matter of learning where creatures are located. Just key bind “Targeting: Foe-Nearest”, and targeting isn’t a problem at all.

Oh that’s right! Forgot about tab-targeting for a minute. Yes, will be including bird in my build, thank you!

Kasama.8941:

From what I’ve read, it sounds to me like the players complaining, are those who likes to use longbow as a “fire and forget” weapon. Where as the players who likes the new changes, are those who are more into active combat.

I am totally that kind of player. Guardian PvE was my best PvE experience ever, because it was the most simplistic playstyle ever: run in, GS 5, pull group of mobs in, do that spin thing, and then autoattack until everything’s dead. That is how I prefer to play against mobs, to stand there and unless absolutely necessary, move. I’m willing to play, but I’m not willing to put in more work into a game than I do in real life (I’m doing IT work and it’s a lot of typing).

OK, I do apologize that I’ve digressed too far into semantics about game mechanics, so are there any “fire and forget” weapons for ranger, even before all the nerfs? The only weapon I can think of is shortbow, but after the range nerf it’s not really effective for sitting in one spot and picking things off… I think unless you use bear, it’s always active combat for a ranger. ^^

We have a burst?

Oh you mean LB’s 2 skill: use shortbow 1 ^^

Thanks everyone for your responses. Dahkeus, I’m going for full cleric’s and I’m considering superior water runes now because of AoE heal on my own heal skill.

I’ve worked on a build (this is the first time I’ve seriously considered a build with traits + armor (my first time I’ve even looked at rune effects too)) and you can see it here: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNBjOD7koiugDswvCULDINFTSl8KMLuHgyoEiA-jEyAoNBZaTk5FAZxioxWdLiGramIqWbjZxLiWdQAOD-w

I didn’t include pets but I would probably use fern hound (aw yiss more regen) with bear for tankiness. Shark and Jellyfish for aquatic.

I’m worried that I went a bit overboard on healing power. I’m tempted to have 3 pieces of armour on Magi’s for Vitality and the other 3 on Cleric’s, just so I have a bit more survivability.

Would this build last in Orr? (Efficient killing for hearts, skillpoints, etc.)

hyjaxxx, no horn?! This is fantastic, thank you for that info!

I’ve tried using bird but there aren’t always ambient creatures around the map and I’m horrible with the targeting system. Good suggestion though, that is definitely useful in WvW.

Chopps.5047:

The stealth mechanic is cheesy? How so?

If you have to ask, I was really just looking for a place to use the word “cheesy”.

In all seriousness though, I just have to learn how to use stealth like OP said. It’s like we suddenly got some mesmer-esque confusion infliction on our axe 3 – it just made little sense in terms of the typical class playstyle (I have only seen jaguars used in dungeons to avoid mobs). But again, I haven’t actually worked on using LB 3 effectively yet, just spamming it as usual. ^^

Such quick responses… My main question has been answered, THANK YOU to both of you!

Didn’t even consider boon duration runes, thanks for that suggestion.

Yeah after the SB range nerf nobody is forcing us to play longbow…

Apart from that though, I dislike having to build up a vuln stack on my target and stealth is cheesy (I read this somewhere in another thread) but it’s not like this patch was the end of the profession…

Not yet at least.

I’ve been thinking about how to go about asking for this build for a few weeks now and having searched the forums, YouTube, etc. for advice, I haven’t quite found what I’m looking for.

This is probably because what I’m looking for is a really ‘unorthodox’ build. Here are my criteria and questions/details:

Criteria #1: 100% uptime on AoE swiftness
Most important question: Is this even possible for Rangers?
Warhorn will obviously be the foundation of the build
How do I calculate swiftness boon duration with runes, Nature Magic trait line, etc.?
What kind of runes would I need? (Are centaur runes even viable? I have seen a grand total of 0 builds (in most professions too) that use centaur runes… Also, if I used 2 Runes of Air and 2 Runes of Speed, would I get the +40% or would it only count as a +20% swiftness duration?)
Does this cut me off of contributing significant DPS? (Please see my above question regarding runes too.)
Will this force me to go into a spirit build?

Yep, that’s it, 100% swiftness is my only criteria. My favourite part about playing as a Warrior was that I could max out tactics and actually have over 100% uptime on swiftness (I once ended up at 6-7 mins of swiftness from using signet of rage and warhorn 5 with maxed out tactics trait line).

Again, I understand that there are support builds out there, but I am specifically looking for advice on how to build a swiftness ranger. I am very open to suggestions or further questions. Thank you for your time. ^^

EDIT: If you haven’t guessed already, the build I’m looking for is for anything but dungeons, fractals, and sPvP.

This piece was originally written for a “HoD/CV Love” competition hosted on my old guild’s website. Since it’s inception, I have not had a very good experience with the guild, so I am removing their role in the inspiration for this piece. Thank you to all those who listened to it! The (altered) song link will remain on this post for anyone who wishes to still listen to it:

https://soundcloud.com/tim_six/henge-of-denravi

ProxyDamage.9826:

My only problem with the flute is that I have the musical prowess of a dead fish being slapped on a out of tune guitar… Other than that, it’s quite a nice sound and, unlike most of the other instruments, not very prune to “abuse”. Even if it’s spammed it’s still nice and soft, if incoherent, ambient noise at best.

…Wish I did know how to play music though… would buy one in a heartbeat. Sadly, that’s not something ANet has any fault in or is in any way able to fix.

This sums up my thoughts exactly. However, hope is not lost for the musically-challenged – if anyone is familiar with LOTRO’s music system, it’s a fantastic source of entertainment, excellent instrument response, and best of all, you can download these .abc files that the game client will play back through your in-game character’s instrument. Soloist or ensemble-friendly, with automatic timing (like timed emotes in GW2).

To be fair, with GW2 being so late or new (depending on how you see it) in the market, you could argue that Anet was responsible for making this instrument a lot more user-friendly. Then again, you have a minority of Anet apologists that counter this with “oh you’re just a bunch of entitled children”. I think it’s acceptable to expect a new company to live up to the standards that other games have set – so far, in terms of combat, GW2 is (or was, depending on what’s out now) the benchmark.

Also, you’d be surprised how nice a dead fish slapped on an out-of-tune guitar might sound like. Anything is better than bigoted, atonal music!

After playing a few hours of ranger in WvW I must conclude…

Arrow carts > rangers

I haven’t roamed/seen roaming rangers before, but AFAIK ranger AoE is soft. I’ll play my shout-healing warrior for kills, loot, and AoE DPS. Yes, my healing SUPPORT warrior (that’s how bad rangers are in WvW atm).

I play wherever a commander plays (often home BL from observations). With a shout-healing warrior, I usually run/fight right next to a commander. All about keeping them alive – lose the head and you lose the body, at least that’s the case in lower-tiered WvW. That being said, I don’t bother with WvW if there are no commanders. Even with a support build, PUGs are horrible.

My preference is EB, just because there is no other feeling like taking over SM.

tom.7468:

I would love this i just hope it wont have astronomic prices like you need 40g only to buy a chair or something.

Knowing Anet it will probably be about 100 gems for a chair, and 2000 gems for a house upgrade, etc. Slippery slope fallacy or speculation based on what already has happened? I posted this with equal parts sarcasm and seriousness. ^^

These are good suggestions and I see where you are coming from. I would definitely like to see more story integration into this “living story”. 3 thoughts I have on this (they don’t correspond with the original list):

1.) as you’ve already seen, much of the Living Story content is temporary, which creates a problem for new players especially if it’s integrated with the main plot
2.) the main plot is horribly childish. There is no blood, no gore, no men forcing women into…, minimal coarse language (which is unrealistic, especially for soldiers in, say, the Vigil), and there is generally a bright atmosphere. Hell, look at the game’s sky colours when it’s nighttime. I’m starting to doubt whether or not night actually exists in GW2 because it’s just blue.
3.) player-driven stories is an excellent idea. I would really like to see players deciding on where the game should go. And as the forums only represents a minority of players, in-game polls are great.

Of course, much of this post represented my own negative opinion towards the story, so it’s naturally biased against Living Story integration. Again, great ideas – always easier said than done of course. ^^

This was indeed an excellent map. I hate to say it, but this single new map makes the rest of Tyria look small. I’ve done world completion and I never kick the feeling that the entire world of Tyria is small (possibly because it’s a world designed for no mounts). There was really no sense of grandness until Fractals or BotFW. But this is coming from a LOTRO fan, so my expectations for draw distance are set especially high.

Excellent map, and on the subject of this update, having a minimum amount of fortune scraps for kite fortunes is a strong step forward against the strongly-disliked RNG system.

I think it’s more of a problem with new content being permanent, rather than the speed of content being introduced into the game.

Xenon.4537:

I can’t overstate how much I don’t want to be walking through Queensdale, or Plains of Ashford and seeing ramshackle huts, cabins, or other randomly-placed abodes. They might as well let Coka Cola go in and smear their advertisement feces all over the landscape. Seriously, could you imagine seeing some odd-looking building rammed into the side of a hill, awkwardly placed in the middle of a corn field, or right next to a centaur camp that has no purpose other than to stroke some idiot’s ego? The game would become a graveyard full of monuments to the vanity of the unwashed masses.

TL;DR

No, it would be ugly.

Agreed. Instanced housing > open-world housing. And “stroking some idiot’s ego” could be applied to commander tags as well (plenty of bad commanders out there), but I digress. In my experience, LOTRO has the best player-housing experience thus far.

cafard.8953:

A handy one to know is that Drakes have a Blast Finisher in their attack skills (the ones you don’t control), and they like to use it early in a fight. So if you need it during a fight, swap pet to the drake, and it’ll use it almost immediately. With the healing spring water field, that’s a nice aoe healing that adds to the heal and regen. With a mesmer’s ethereal field, that’s chaos armour for the whole party, etc…

Thank you for this advice, even though I did not ask the question I found this response very useful. ^^

I run GS/longbow for PvE and sword/shield/longbow or sword/warhorn/longbow for WvW, never had this problem in either situation (using longbow mostly of course).

Have you tried turning on that collision feature? It stops you from running through mobs, can’t remember whakittens called. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been affected by the issue. But I also tend to 3 on the GS to tag a group of mobs and then 100B for DPS.

However, I do agree that the logic behind dagger and greatsword ranges being the same as a bit silly… You should see the ranger forums regarding axe and shortbow range. ^^

Agreed. This is annoying.

Pedra.4381:

jubskie.3152

So not getting what you want gives you the right to verbally abuse them?

Seriously, if all that hate was directed at you, would you be motivated to work at all?

jubskie, this misdirected ire of yours grows old. If the ANet employees were working out of the goodness of their hearts and for our adoration then you would have a point. But since neither of those are true, you don’t.

We are customers (paying customers, I might add) and they treat us like mushrooms. They troll us, they flat out prevaricate, dissimilate, obfuscate, and are quite frequently disingenuous. They have NO meaningful discourse with us.

There have been attempts by a number of people to have intelligent, thougtful discourse with ANet developers and some of those people even put tremendous effort into detailed analysis. And what did it get for us? What good did it do? Did they even acknowledge it?

So, keep crying for the poor ANet developers if you wish but they are undeserving of it.

I totally agree. In this day and age, there are far too many corporate apologists, who live in a fantasy world in which as long as they see selfish benefit in the product, the product is good for everyone.

Also, I’m not sure if this has been brought up on the forums before (I really only started posting after the recent Ranger nerf), but has ANet ever justified any of their updates? Have they ever mentioned “this update is due to an imbalance in sPvP, where we have seen evidence that profession A’s trait has been negatively affecting their desired DPS”? And then begs a further question, what are these desired goals for each profession?

I’d really like to see some rationale or justification for what they do to the game in terms of combat. Bug fixes are great because we are told about the problem alongside the solution. Sure it’s the nature of bug fix updates to do this, but why can’t this be the same for profession mechanic updates?

Can ANet please hire this guy? This is what the game needs – developers who understand a profession in multiple scenarios, rather than “fixing something that ain’t broke”.

Great analysis and suggestions.

Doesn’t hinder anyone’s play. Good suggestion.