Guild Wars 2

seen much more positivity after fails than not.

Qaelyn.7612:

Relshdan.6854:

this can happen when you mix difficult content with open world. casuals vs. hardcore.

It’s what happens when a company makes a game that caters to average players, and then puts out a new release where average players fail the event 90% of the time.

okay….but there are enough good players to do the event right now….and also by now, many casuals are good enough to do it. unless you want a game that stays “catered to casuals only” i don’t see the problem here. casuals, by nature, will stop playing after too many fails. those that end up figuring it out join the ranks of “good players”. this kind of content actually makes the pool of decent players larger.

eventually this happened with teq….and will eventually happen with wurm.
it happened very quickly with marionette.

personally, i think they now should focus on challenging/organized content catered to a smaller player count (30-50)….but marionette is a great start (even if temporary) to making the kind of world event i’d be happy with.

Red Queen.7915:

Kajin.5301:

2 suggestions:

-make the scaling of the amount of mobs in the 5 lanes match the amount of players in the area. When you’re in an overflow at the 4-5th lvl, you really don’t have enough to stop the leaks of champs reaching the portal.

-dynamic scaling of the platform wardens to match the amount of players inside.

It already scales just fine. We did it at around three in the morning with ~10-15 players on each lane and we got to two severed chains, so we didn’t fare any better or worse than we did earlier with more people. That said, the scaling of the wardens might need some tuning, yes. Still, the wardens scale as well, maybe just not as much as the mobs in the lanes.

this,
same experience in terms of scaling.
its just a really well designed event. the bug where you can’t attack sucks tho.

…if only this was the permanent event.

this can happen when you mix difficult content with open world. casuals vs. hardcore.

to the contrary, i’ve only completed once and failed many times in overflow………very little bitterness. most love the event and just get ready for the next attempt.

its a great/fun/well-designed event………if bitter people make it unfun for you….sorry, but it isn’t the same everywhere.

nice to see this thread started………this is the type of tweaking that would actually help balance PvE and promote build variety. hopefully this doesn’t get lost in the sea of “zerker meta/ferocity” threads.

hopefully these kind of stat scaling/functionality changes are being considered. the new nerf to crit damage would make much more sense if it was coupled with buffing support/defense/condi-damage stats.

Carighan.6758:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

When I was talking about weapon damage, I’m talking about the actually attack/damage values on the weapon itself.

Those values hardly matter however because they don’t translate into damage done – depends on the scaling of the abilities.

this.
skill damage scaling is more important than base weapon attack value.
whether 1hand or 2hand is higher dps depends entirely on the skills and the class.
gnerally, the auto attack on mainhands tend to be higher dps than 2handed….skills2-5 stronger on 2hand……though obviously there are exceptions.

as for topic…..adding the second sigil to 2handed is absolutely necessary.
the kitten to 2hand weapons only having one slot is far more unfair than having to craft another weapon.
single handed weapons allow more flexibility of skill choices by being able to match them with various offhands……….that is the equalizer to crafting cost.

personally don’t think teq is worth the time (waiting) to do, but i like that there is large-scale content (70+ players).
that said, i think they should also design content for 35-40 organized players (as Blaeys suggests) if only for the variety and ease of organization.
it would be nice to have content that sits somewhere between balth /grenth temple and tequatyl.

fixing pve requires changing mob AI to attack faster and have various weaknesses (so active damage mitigation/or stacking melee and direct damage isn’t enough in all situations), and re-scaling of support stats (mainly healing) and condition damage to actually matter in group play.

Columbo.5924:

Another issue is that a lot of skills were nerfed because of dhuumfire (bleed stacks removed etc.) when there was never a problem with those bleed stacks in the first place. Now that dhuumfire is going to be rammed into the ground, all those bleed stacks and other nerfs should be reverted as well. But this is not very likely to happen. This, in fact, is my major problem with the current balancing of GW2. Just look at the elementalist. It was nerfed so hard that it became practically extict in any competitive environment. The fact that even the developers decided to undo some of those nerfs in the next patch is proof enough of the situation.

this…………all the nerfs done to the class to account for Dhuumfire, need to be reconsidered/reverted.

fixing bugs is hard….nerfing numbers is easy.
anet balance team manifesto.

agree….that nerf is a joke. should not be higher that guardian virtue…period.

dylan.5409:

Given the amount of qq over pu cond mesmers, nullifying the build may in fact be the intent.

lame nerf…..those mesmers (pure condi PU) are too niche to worry about. Solo wvw roamers, nothing more. if they increase the scpeter auto attack speed (like they should), it may not even matter much for pure condi specs,

personally, as a hybrid PU mes, i don’t care as much….rather have my phantasms stay up….still odd.

took the easy/ineffective way on the crit dam change. no shock there……..prepare to wait at least 8 months until the next “phase” of balancing the other stats…at best.

thankfully, it doesn’t really break those that want to play zerker in pve (yuck to wvw, tho)……..but ineffective change until the scaling of other stats increases, nonetheless.

I like the rest of it, mostly. can’t wait to test my D/X ele…..but necro will stay retired,sadly(all nerfs to specs i don’t play…nothing else).
finally fixing 2h weapon sigils is unexpectedly great news….also like the proposed rework of sigils/runes to be more consistant and reward going deeper in the same rune-family. Most of the class nerfs/buffs seem good/fair.

….also glad we don’t have to wait until april for some of these balance changes to take place.

balance patches every 4 months is way too sparce for how minimal the changes end up being.

if crit ended up effecting condi damage, there will be no reason to even attempt a non-condi damage build in wvw………….and the 25 stack limit and “weak attack overwriting strong” makes it still bad in pve groups.

having heals crit would be kinda awesome tho.

Anet is well aware they will lose some degree of players by simply nerfing crit damage (and not building up the scaling of other stats). quickest potential “fix” to zerk/assassin being the best pve gear in all situations. have my doubts that just lowering crit damage would be enough, but whatever (as likely as that is to be their solution, we still don’t know that yet).

but hopefully they realize how much worse the rage-quit will be if there is no compensation (free stat change at the very least). please don’t repeat the error of your fractal ratings reset………i enjoy the game an would like to see it survive another year.

Pwent.2639:

So yes a low skill condi PU is great vs nubs but once you start fighting better players it takes extreme amounts of skill (for example try fighting a mesmer who has played the spec). I see so many mesmers using scepter skill 2 randomly hoping im silly enough to trigger it(a skilled player would watch my animations and bust it when im in the middle of an attack).
Power PU is a lot less passive at lower lvls of play, but because its damage is not as easily mitigated by knowing the spec it doesn’t see the challenge spike from smarter players and becomes more of a gradual increase.

great post.

sick of anti-memser trolls on the forum…………but the writing is on the wall. Next balance patch will be painful. seeing as how much fun it is to play a hybrid PU build, i hope i’m wrong, or that at least the nerf to PU is small.

only flaw with hammer is its symbol light field………….that overwrites others’ fire fields at the end of every 3 auto attacks.

i prefer the AoE of symbol weapons in PvE….and then traiting for symbol size/damage/duration.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Perfect. That’s what you get for selling paths

stealth changes are the issue.

Selenya.6410:

Relshdan.6854:

.but some of the individual pieces are very nice (like female medium helm, heavy gauntlets, or light armor leggings..

O.O serious? Try light armor leggins over a male human ele then…. laugh for half an hour. Doh.

Doh!…subjective is subjective…Doh!

the female version is great…..to me.
the male version would be nice if not for the diamond checker pattern….to me.
non-contrasting dyes can mask that pattern it if you don’t like it.

guildie who solos arah for profit mentioned this. very lame not to put these kind of changes in the notes.

rainynoble.6531:

Darkobra.6439:

Surprised? I’m impressed. They’re actually on top of things.

Are they? they said the recipe: Light of Dwayna is no longer account bound. but then look at the tp.

this is true………i’d be angry if i didn’t get it (and the grenth recipe) already.

but they’ll fix it…..and truth is……you’ll all get it by the end of event (got both recipes within 100 gifts, after playing for a few hours…and before cashing in Glory). we’re not talking BLchest rng here….the giant gifts are plentiful.

mistsim.2748:

fully traited with 3 other meditations and high burst damage, littany is good. it needs to be precast though when your burst chain is available and reliable. if used reactively, it will fail you. so dont pop it when you’re dying…it’s too late. do it early in the fight because the cd is so short. it’s not a typical heal, and it only supplements heals from the other meditations imo.

littany does not work with tanky builds at all. you really need to be able to burst and crit hard.

littany and other meditations scale amaaaazingly with healing power, so hard hitting celestial builds will be scary in skirmishes.

sounds interesting (haven’t tried it on my guardian since i don’t play meds 10/30/30 much).

the new SoS is not that bad.
a bit worse at insta-chase, a bit better if you use the symbol in combat in a way you might sit in it for a few pulses.

no where near the ’OMG" nerf i thought it would feel like.

i have a hard time not using travelers for almost any build (other than when the zerk/scholar set makes more sense).

Obtena.7952:

The best use I found for mace is not something commonly discussed. I know it’s not popular or cool to do this but … mace is great for farming Orr trash. In fact, I think it might be not far behind GS for that. You get upfront symbol on good recharge with decent speed and damage from #1 using a strong build focused on farming trash with it as well; 10/30/20/0/5.

The important thing for trash farming is how much damage you can bring at the beginning of the 3-4 second fight. Mace isn’t the highest damage but it can do that better than any other weapon we have.

YES!.

its awesome for soloing orr. only time i use it (w/ focus) in pve.

guardians are good.

they were good many months ago

they are still good now.

can they be improved? yes. but other classes need much more work (ranger anyone?).
honestly, i’d rather they not tinker with us too much…..play wit improving spirit weapons and making some Zeal traits good………..other than that, leave us alone.

they don’t address balance complaints the next day….never have. they really never did until these “CDI” threads.

and to be honest, if they did address things on day-one of balance changes………other classes have it way way worse.

we got some negligible trait changes, a niche heal skill, a buff to sword damage, and a weird change to symbol of swiftness (not sure if its worse or better….with WritofP and 25% boon duration from traveler runes and 10 in virtues, i get 28 seconds of swiftness sitting in the symbol for its duration……using it the way i used to, i can barely tell the difference…few seconds less maybe).

From a PvE perspective:
it’s a bit worse in open world “chase the pack”/escape the Orr mobs situations, but if staff is something you use in combat, swapping with a melee weapon, you’ll probably sit in the symbol enough to almost always be in swiftness while in combat (28 sec swiftness….15 sec CD in a generic 15/25/0/20/10 symbol traveler rune build).

annoyed i wasted so many quartz charging them. got 3 times as many charged quartz today as i did since they were introduced…………could have sold the base quartz.

why SUCH a high frequency from gifts?

the full sets are pretty ugly…..but some of the individual pieces are very nice (like female medium helm, heavy gauntlets, or light armor leggings.

am disappointed that they are so much weaker than T2/3 culturals (and most exotic sets), but some of the individual pieces are great enough to get over it (considering taste is subjective).

good for new players…..and honestly, we don’t need new skins every update (and they would only be christmas-kitch anyway.

i’d rather they just introduce new skins every few months and make them count (jade dragon quality), than every 2 updates (existing skin w/ new glow).

Dahkeus.8243:

So…what’s the point of this thread? To be a jerk to the people that make a video game you enjoy?

they are one of those people who get more joy out of message board-whining than they ever could out of a game.

at this point, you know every patch in this game (and every other MMO) has many bugs on release………the fact that Anet has an emergency patch the same day is something to be happy about.

…..now if only they would extend that urgency to skill/trait fixes.

bummer about the cast time……was looking forward to adding this when running a symbols dps build (was salivating at a GS 4+2 combo). will give it a try in pve anyway.

can’t imagine using it for WvW (its interrupt-able and makes you need to burn a stability /blind/aegis to land it).

it really seems Anet balance team will always make the anti-player decision first (if something sounds exciting….they will implement it in a way that frustrates you).

Just like there were many ways across game-types to obtain exotic, same should go for ascended. they’re getting there, but being able to use/convert other game-type currencies into means of acquiring ascended gear is necessary. they just need to establish a fair cost…..remembering that crafting is time-gated, any new means (aside from drops) should also be.

timmyf.1490:

Here’s an alternate question… do we really want the following actions to be one of the most rewarding ways to play Guild Wars 2:

1) Waypoint
2) Run to champ spawn point
3) When champ spawns, auto-attack with no fear of failure
4) Repeat

I’m not opposed to rewarding ways to play the game. Or even lazy, repetitive ways to play the game. I do tend to think it’s a mistake for the laziest, most repetitive way to also be one of the most rewarding ways.

it shouldn’t matter to you if you are playing to have fun. play what you enjoy.

what you really are asking for is to be e-rewarded fairly.
you could make champ rewards a once-a-day thing (i personally wouldn’t mind this), but they will still be a more efficiently profitable activity than more difficult/time consuming content……the train would simply move from map to map, instead of staying in one map. if you remove champ rewards altogether, you get what we had before the champ reward patch: empty maps and lonely champ events.

i like playing many aspects of the game, from JPs to dungeons to just exploring…………but sometimes i want a nice “shiney” that requires money or materials.

things like champ trains or world boss trains (done maybe once or twice a week….doing it all the time is unappealing to me) allows me to do have my cake and eat it too.

this is not the same farming events…..it does not keep other players from completing events……its just a way of playing content. you may not like it, but it harms no one. there are plenty of other content options if this style of play doesn’t appeal to you.

SilkySmooth.1574:

not really because its an instant skill

but the majority of your heal might be based on the attacks you do afterward….

some of those look scary without knowing the actual numbers…..warrior stance heal better not be a direct 1 to 1 damage to heal.

the added tough from CAV will probably help more than the slight difference in power/precision….maybe mix in a cav ring/trinket or two (without going full cav) and see when it is enough toughness for you. not a big WvW guy, but i’d generally want to have at least bout 2400 armor.

travelers runes are well worth the investment….probably even with a condi build. can’t imagine not running them as a mesmer….good stats/bonuses and perma +25% speed without taking up a trait or utility slot is very nice to a swiftness-starved profession.

the fractal is fine….the whiny hyperbole in this specific forum stinks. OP enjoyed playing it, but scarlet’s mere involvement ruined all that? so hard not to hate 75% of the people on this forum (willfully accept infraction to say that….you devs agree with, tho you can’t say as much).

….shrinks back to professions forums where at the whining actually is warranted and helps improves the game.
you all continue hating every piece of content the introduce…

Nick.6972:

Because I want Arena Net make something more qualitative?
I’m pretty sure majority both here on forums and in game really don’t consider living story great.

so you do care……you just don’t happen to like the LS updates, anymore.
had you simply worded your title to correctly describe your sentiment, this thread may have been more constructive and less of a whine-fest.

as to what would improve the LS for me:
instanced permanent content…..that doesn’t over-write existing content. Love what the New Teq brings to the game (something that requires mass coordinated effort), but it should have been introduced as a completely new threat.
Love the new TA path….but why did it have to replace an existing path?

Also, some of the content that has gone away could have been permanent as it didn’t really have to be tied to the LS.

Queen Gambit’s Colosseum, would have been a nice permanent addition for solo play.

Adding the Aether Retreat dungeon and Molten facility to fractals is a nice start (good content whose story arc has passed, and thus would no longer make sense in open world)….but why not design this “temporary featured content” so that it could be added to fractals as soon as the event is over?

i’d go with a symbols build.
12/25/0/20/10 (as described by others in this thread) is a good baseline for doing dungeons and having solid support to go with your dps.

25/25/0/20/0 for open-world/world bosses. take signet cooldown and condi-cleans on signet traits, as you’ll want the heal signet, and the +power and -10% damage passives on those signets. last utility is situational so it can be whatever you want (if its a shout, you can take the shout cooldown trait).

in both builds, you’ll want Hammer/ GS/ Staff. Hammer/GS is the more offensive combo….but i like staff for mob tagging and the brilliant Empower skill (extra heal and 12 might stacks), and then swapping to hammer or GS (with hammer, you’ll have almost perma 43% damage reduction).

Jeroen PwN.9601:

Check your skills first mate. Its also buyable for 25 skill points :p

probably quicker to do it that way too. most of us proabaly have 25+ skill scrolls from champ trains in our banks.

Sororita.3465:

Relshdan.6854:

Sororita.3465:

the heal isnt AoE, only the condition cleanse is.

have you tested? I haven’t yet……but its worded as “heals themselves and nearby allies”.

again, the range of the AoE with determine how strong the skill is.

if its just a small range AoE condi cleasne (and of only 3 conditions), i doubt it will see many player’s skill bar.

wouldnt complain about it if i didnt test it, not once did it heal anyone around me.

good to know……i’m no longer concerned.

Sororita.3465:

the heal isnt AoE, only the condition cleanse is.

have you tested? I haven’t yet……but its worded as “heals themselves and nearby allies”.

again, the range of the AoE with determine how strong the skill is.

if its just a small range AoE condi cleasne (and of only 3 conditions), i doubt it will see many player’s skill bar.

stinks for necros and mesmers……guess this is an odd attempt to alter the condi-meta? weaken more “unique” conditions while giving every class an extra heal (AoE at that…range?) to weaken the remaining damage conditions.

not sure how this will play out…….

the game needs to have pve content like this. the rewards should be better, and it should probably be an instanced event…….but this type of event is needed (more difficult/coordinated large-scale events) even if only a small fraction of players will want to play it.

there are tons of content options that are quick and efficiently rewarding (most world bosses, champ trains, and some dungeon paths).

honestly, i’m glad they’ve done as little as they have with skills and traits, and focused on playable content.

the 2 two things Anet does poorly IMO is class balance and QA….what they do strongly is art direction and content design.

so i hope they continue to put off new traits/skills….and keep making better content like the Clocktower JP, SAB, Zephyr Sanctum, Aetherblade Retreat, new TA path and Teq event.