Guild Wars 2

Bifrost has a more pronounced trail, which will add a lot of flair to Vault and look really good. It’s also better looking as a whacking stick, whereas Nevermore’s shape would be clumsy to wield in melee. If you can make its colors work, I think that Bifrost is probably the best for these reasons, though I agree with others that you don’t have to use a legendary with Daredevil.

Skyline Crash.6254:

I think what would help would be a 1/4 second cast time rather than 1/2

I think this is the best thing Anet could do to really bring D/D up to snuff in competitive environments. It’s also very low effort compared to other options.

Vavume.8065:

I fail to see how squad UI has anything to do with this matter, we are talking about new content that has always required work to get, the trait lines require work from the moment you start playing the game, its an ongoing thing… and has no relation to squad UI, how you made that jump just because the term new content was used it actually worrying since you are supposed to be a specialist? lol that argument was actually quite pathetic, you should know better.

New content is content that is new. I fail to see how anything coming with HoT is not relevant to the discussion. I presume the argument you intended to make is that squad UI is infrastructural content, and that elite specializations are playable content. If that is indeed the case, hopefully the following statement will make better sense. Anet has advertised on numerous occasions that their plan for horizontal progression was to use masteries, and elite specializations are not masteries. The fact that grind is associated with these new specializations is both a surprise and, in my opinion, unwelcome.

Also:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Also, not that my status as a forum specialist matters at all for this conversation, but if you seriously think you or anyone else would do a better job than me please PM Gaile and Mark. They’ll happily take applications and replace me if they agree with you.

Lastly, just a friendly reminder to keep your posts civil or they will be deleted. Thanks.

Vavume.8065:

why should everything be added to the game retroactively? that’s basically what you wanted, new content should require new work to be done to obtain it, basic MMO 101.

Interesting, so then why are so many other features in HoT being made available to all players right away without additional grind. Why am I not forced to grind a mastery to get my new squad UI? That’s new content. The entire point of masteries is that is where the grind should be, and that is where the horizontal progression is. Locking elite specializations behind having to do a metric ton of effort in the Maguuma Jungle in addition to the grinding you already have to do for masteries is part of why this is not okay. What’s also not okay is dropping this information on people so late instead of doing it before they’ve spent months working on map completion on a ton of alts just to get their elite specializations on release.

Vavume.8065:

I am 100% behind this decision, Elite specs are not called Elite specs for nothing, they are supposed to be something special, do you really think that you would just get that handed on a plate to you? either work for it or don’t, but stop embarrassing yourselves by crying about it.

I’m sorry, I thought doing 100% map completion just to unlock the elite specialization counted as working for it. The devaluation of core Tyrian hero point challenges combined with the inordinate number needed for the elite spec and the fact that you have to unlock everything else first is truly unnecessary and something worth being frustrated over.

Skoigoth.9238:

Just be careful when asking for FGS in pugs, I got kicked once because the guy thought I was calling him and his guildies f*gg*ts for not being able to do the heat room themselves X)

That’s ridiculous, hahaha.

displacedTitan.6897:

Wow that’s an excellent false dilemma. As if having the Elite Specs for Halloween matters in some way?

The RAID forum specialist is complaining about time-sinks and essentially being “hardcore” in an MMO. Maybe someone else should take your place, eh?

Sorry that I’d like to enjoy some part of the new playstyles coming with HoT while doing some limited time content that comes out on the same day.

Also, not that my status as a forum specialist matters at all for this conversation, but if you seriously think you or anyone else would do a better job than me please PM Gaile and Mark. They’ll happily take applications and replace me if they agree with you.

This is obscene. The fact that a huge time-sink in world completion only gets you barely halfway there is crazy. This not only totally devalues hero points in the core Tyria areas, it means that we have to grind Maguuma just to enjoy the elite spec for Halloween which is time limited.

I do think some cooler enrage mechanics would be welcome. I wouldn’t want it to be the case where you could just tank or mitigate whatever the mechanic is, though; the idea is to punish the players for taking so long by making it near-impossible to beat once it reaches that point.

Charblaze.6958:

Yep, but with a little of AoE healing “Rise!” could make Reapers pretty much immortal in PvE.

Blighter’s Boon and the fact that precision is scarcely needed to maximize DPS already make Reapers nearly immortal in PvE. “Rise!” will both be a DPS loss and add unnecessary bulk basically anywhere. I can’t even foresee it being useful in raids (unless you’re bad and want to facetank mechanics you should be avoiding); you didn’t need to mitigate even close to that much damage in the first encounter.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a really cool change, I just want to make sure our community doesn’t start bringing minions everywhere thinking they’re awesome only to draw flak because they’re still bad.

They will not nor should they ever remove the timer; it is important to do a minimum level of DPS to the boss constantly to beat it.

nacario.9417:

Many would like to know if they update the vendor at launch, making us able to purchase fractal skins with pristines

This will be in at launch. Literally the only thing not in at launch for Fractals is the leaderboard, and since some items for the legendary were tied to the leaderboard, that will be unavailable as well (you can still work the precursors first, and by the time you finish the precursors the other components will be out). Everything else will be present.

I solo it on 50 with my Necro in full zerker. It requires full DS to be loaded, and you need to charge DS while SR is selected as a specialization (for the bonus LF). Key traits follow.

• Speed of Shadows
• Vital Persistence
• Unholy Sanctuary
• Master of Corruption

For the heal I bring Consume Conditions (although if you’re human, Prayer to Dwayna is great too). For utilities I bring Flesh Wurm, Well of Power, and Locust Signet. For elite I bring Lich Form for the 15% LF when it ends. Basically how it goes is I teleport in, double dodge, spam 1 a bit and run normally, use heal skill at around 20% HP, then immediately DS. Once in DS you just trudge along, healing with Unholy Sanctuary all the way. Dodge as soon as you’re able to. When you run out of DS, you should enter and leave Lich Form, spam 1, you should be able to get a second heal, and then you should get an extra dodge at this point. Use DS again on that extra 15% as needed, and you should make it to the end.

This gets even easier if you set up a cooling rod first and gets ridiculously simple if an Ele drops you an FGS.

They are coming with launch. I can assure you of that. The only delayed portion is the leaderboards again.

I just wanted to follow-up that I hope this never gets implemented in PvP environments. There are countless times where in a team fight you position yourself to cleave multiple minions or turrets or whatever down, and to have that damage reduced simply because you can only select one of them is awful. If minions are too weak in PvP/WvW, there should be traits that buff them up so that they can be useful.

For PvE, though, this is absolutely great. Thanks for this update.

Minions are still lower damage in PvE than simply performing standardized rotations. I definitely expect that this will benefit PvE minionmancers substantially, but that doesn’t mean you suddenly start running one if you plan on moving through content quickly and efficiently.

This is huge, and is something we’ve wanted forever. Thank you so much, guys.

Silverkey.2078:

Currently, the most complains I’ve read about reaper is not its damage but its sustain, most specifically Bligher’s boon.

The base heal or LF regen of BB can be easily tweaked. But considering that Reaper is so restricted to melee AND has little mobility, I believe we should wait for people to realize how much counterplay there is to the reaper before changing anything.

This is the post that best describes my current feelings on the situation of Reaper in PvP.

SlyDevil.3952:

Do you gain life force when plague form ends? you get 15% for lich form ending

No. It is a corruption skill, not a spectral skill.

I would be willing to have SB5 nerfed if only because it would result in the Thief being so bloody undertuned and unwanted that everything else would get buffed and maybe the class would get some diversity and be more useful overall.

[VZ] is incredibly excited for Heart of Thorns and we’re definitely still recruiting those who like out attitude and who want to explore the new content (including raids) with us! Tonight we’ll be finishing our special event series of hero point rushes (to unlock elite specializations), and otherwise we’re still continuing events as per the normal.

Let one of our officers know if you’re interested in the guild! We’d be happy to chat with you and see if you’re a good fit.

P.S. For those interested, we’re very likely going to be pursuing the Gilded Hollow guild hall.

Amineo.8951:

Guardian, Ele and Thief are dead for raids or people think they are useless? I’m kinda offended because these are the 3 classes I play the most…

We have no idea what the other encounters may demand of players, and the only context we can theorycraft around right now is the anomaly encounter. It’s entirely likely that they will have valid roles in those future encounters / wings, especially Elementalists.

deSade.9437:

I’m generally strict about exploiting stuff – for instance we don’t exploit arah p4, yet maw is so incredibly boring and so punishing in its forced timegating that I just… can’t. It’s such an awful fight, Jerus…
Have they talked about any plans to rebalance or at least look at the existing fractals again. Too many mechanics that are plain horrible.

Life steal versus the Jade Maw is not an exploit. It may not be what they ultimately want the fractal to be, though, but it’s not exploitative per their definition. It’s a lot like life steal against Liadri was; they eventually changed it because they felt it made her too easy, but it wasn’t an exploit to do it when you could. This is exactly how life steal is supposed to function.

Gray.9041:

just so I’m clear – do you think that – given the undertuned nature of thief – daredevil is as good as any other elite spec, but is hampered by it’s base class, or are you saying that daredevil is on par with other elite specs despite the current state of thief?

The former, definitely. Daredevil is good, but the core Thief could use a little bit of work for it to compete with a number of other elite specializations.

Gray.9041:

and I do think many aspects of Daredevil are quite good. but the “altered class mechanic” is certainly not one of these. I don’t think it’s significant enough to be considered for the name, and I don’t think it brings a huge change to the class.

I don’t think everything has to be flashy and totally brand new to be exciting and awesome. For me, the simplicity and elegance of simply having a third dodge and then being able to interact with all dodges in neat new ways is very flavorful and very exciting. Reaper may stand out from Necromancer, but that doesn’t inherently make Reaper a superior elite specialization.

Gray.9041:

for example, a reaper without reaper shroud would play very differently. a druid without celestial avatar would be barely a druid at all. like them or hate them, overloads are a big part of tempest.

but a daredevil with 100 max endurance would be very, very similar.

Except you’re not considering the whole picture. The traits on Daredevil are more impactful than the traits on Reaper, while the core mechanic of Reaper is more impactful than the core mechanic of Daredevil… That’s okay, by the way! The overall net gain is that both elite specs are awesome in their own way, and that’s sort of the whole point.

Pick up an Ice Bow and use the 2 skill on the Jade Maw inside one of your wells. If you have no Elementalist and no one helping you, it’s better to just use a Leeching sigil and repeatedly pick up a crystal until you get the sigil buff. Then you can attack it with any projectile. You want to make sure you have entered phase 3 before you bring it to critical HP or it will bug.

Just based on the current encounter we’ve seen, we know that condition damage at range is important, that buffing matters a lot, that too many buffers is a DPS loss, and that you want a modicum of base survivability without having to sacrifice gear-based DPS. Squishy Elementalists are a liability here, especially when Engineers do more damage to moving targets and have huge condition based damage for the red anomaly. Current thoughts are:

4 Sinister Engineers
3 Berserker Herald
1 Berserker Chronomancer
1 Berserker Warrior (+1 Knight’s Piece)
1 Berserker/Zealot Druid

Subgroups will be:
2 Engineer + 1 Herald
2 Engineer + 1 Herald
1 Warrior + 1 Herald
1 Chronomancer
1 Druid

Kitty.1502:

At the cost of a lot of dps. Going into Astral Form means you aren’t dpsing, meaning that is a significant dps loss. Going into druid in general is a loss in dps.

You can fully charge the GotL bonus in less than 4 seconds in astral form. Enter form, use Rejuvenating Tides, leave form. Now everyone has 15% damage bonus for the next 8 seconds, which definitely counterbalances the loss from entering in the first place. You could even do this before entering combat in the first place while running to the boss, meaning it’s no DPS loss at all.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

wait druid? What’s good with druid?

gin.7158:

Interesting, I don’t play ranger. Why do people want it? spotter and frost spirit, CC bot?
Or preparing druid for hard encounter? is druid better than the base ranger?

Kitty.1502:

Ranger’s support is inferior to other support, though they can be good dps, but they are not meta material.

In response to all of these, let’s revisit what changes they made to Ranger and Druid that make it in-kitten-credible.

• Glyph of Empowerment: +10% teamwide damage for 6 seconds every 16 seconds.
• Spotter: +150 precision to the whole party.
• Frost Spirit: +10% damage 70% of the time when attacking, no ICD.
• Sun Spirit: If you have anyone with condition damage, namely a Sinister Engineer, this becomes huge. It’s still a big DPS bonus even without a condition class, though.
• Grace of the Land: Everyone you hit with an Astral Form skill gains 3% a damage and condition damage increase for 8 seconds. This buff stacks 5 times. Note that Rejuvenating Tides pulses in an AOE 5 times, so it’s really easy to stack this and bail Astral Form to save DPS.

This is comparable to what a Warrior brings to a party, and overlaps exceptionally well. I would be very surprised if a Druid doesn’t get brought considering all of these buffs and everything else a Ranger already brings.

White Hunter.3416:

“Pay 300g to PUG Raids”? Is it true? Or we will be able to use lfg to find people without tag?

No, see, like I said above all necessary functionality is available for free. It’s just the extra bits and baubles that are locked behind the 300g price tag. You can organize and complete raids entirely with the free functionality.

Druid is going to become as mandatory as Warrior. It has Spotter, GoE, GotL, FS, and SS all with respectable DPS on its own. My expectation for top speed clears will be:

• Mesmer / Guardian
• Warrior
• Ranger
• Thief
• Elementalist / Engineer

Congratulations, selected [Att] and [DnT] members! I wish I could be out there with you guys, but alas I have not been selected and thus will continue doing my best over here. Thanks for the heads up, Gaile!

Mireles Lore.5942:

bound by NDA? Why even post this? Just to let everyone know they were passed over for something they never had a fair shot at being considered for?

To let everyone know that ANet is serious about this being challenging group content to the point that they’re pulling people on to test it who would be among those to try and beat it in the first place. This is good for us to know.

Non-commander raiding squads are available for all players to set up raids for free. You’ll have access to all necessary functionality without buying a tag.

Those are all concerns they are aware of, and while they haven’t told me how they plan to address them, I do know that eventually we will get new fractals. They just had to spend a lot of time focusing on removing the RNG element from Fractals and handling other details. I imagine new fractals will get interspersed into the old ones, and old achievements will just change or be moved to historical, or maybe they’ll treat it as “seasons” of fractals, which would also be cool.

I want to make it clear that I’m not justifying their choice to not include new fractals in HoT, just describing why it ended up this way. They really do want to provide more content for fractal-goers, though, and they’ll come in time.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Thief in a great place? Reaper and revenant would like to have a word with you, my friend.

You should reread what I said. I think the Daredevil elite specialization is in a great place, and I specifically called out not ten characters before that I feel the Thief overall is undertuned right now. For the record, ANet agrees.

Wethospu.6437:

I will just respectfully disagree to avoid a 2 week ban. :P

Unfortunately, with Fractals they charged forward trying to get stuff out for it without a solid feel for what people wanted, what’s the best way forward, how best to handle difficulty, how to reduce the RNG, and so forth. I realize the new system may seem crazy and may require rebalancing of what maps are what instabilities in the future when they add new fractals, but I treat that more like seasons if they have to go that route. We’ll see.

ANet has already confirmed that the AR requirements will be rebalanced in lieu of the changes to Fractals. I would expect the highest levels to require more than 70AR, but it will not scale linearly and will not require things like +15 infusions or new infusion slots.

Gray.9041:

first, it’s only a third dodge at the start of the fight. since our endurance regen doesn’t change, it make no difference over an extended fight – especially since none of the endurance-refill skills affect the third bar.

I originally felt the same way, but having played with the extra dodge it’s very easy to regenerate, especially with all of the endurance regeneration boosters a thief has. Between Staff Master, Steal giving 50 endurance, Signet of Agility, and Vigor… It’s really easy in practice to get above 100 dodge during combat assuming you only dodge when necessary.

Gray.9041:

secondly, you can’t really tell me that one extra dodge at the start of the fight can possibly be compared in any way to reaper shroud, celestial avatar, rage burst skills or any of the new profession mechanics. even dragonhunter virtues – which, I believe, were considered mildly underwhelming – are far more impactful that this +50 max endurance.

Again, I used to feel this way too, but then I played it a ton in the betas. Dodging is perhaps the single most fundamental action in GW2 combat. I consider having an extra dodge far better than, for instance, the ranged stomp/res that a Scrapper gets or the swapped virtues a Dragonhunter gets.

Gray.9041:

you mention the interaction with the third dodge, but as far as I can see, nothing interacts with the third dodge. sigil of agility ignores it, there’s no bonus for having it, and anyone who has all three bars full is probably using the class wrong.

Swiftness on dodge, caltrops on dodge, condition clear on evade, vigor on evade, the grandmaster effects on dodge, healing on evade… There are a ton of things that interact with dodging on a Thief.

Gray.9041:

while I’d agree that the third dodge is the mechanic, not the different types of dodge, I don’t really see how this lives up to the name. it’s a far cry from any other profession’s mechanic – base or elite spec – and it leaves the daredevil feeling weaker for it.

I do think the Thief is one of the most undertuned classes right now overall, but as far as just the elite specification Daredevil goes, I think it’s in a great place, especially with all of the fancy new damage modifiers and the damage reduction we got on the weakening strikes trait.

Maybe I’m just used to Steam early access where games you pay for end up far never getting finished more often than not, but I am fully okay with getting 98% of everything on release date and having a few things—things I still end up getting for the money I paid—staggered downstream a bit.

I mean, it’s like we were all promised Living World season 3 with our HoT purchase, but obviously that’s not something we get right away on launch. They even told us we were getting raids and legendaries delayed the day they announced those specific features in blog posts. I don’t think ANet has been dishonest at all.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Weren’t Forum Specialists to be renewed/replaced every six months? I’ve not seen any call for new applications….

I know I’ve been renewed for the foreseeable future. I brought it up with them and they got back to me and updated my title to reflect my support of raids as well.

ekarat.1085:

Think of it this way, they could have delayed the release by 2-4 more weeks and given us the finished product instead. I don’t see that as being any better.

You seriously underestimate the value of having players do the raid wings in sequence over time as opposed to unleashing it all at once. As far as the legendaries are concerned, I think it would be crazy to hold up the whole launch two months just because one team has to create 13 more legendary collection ensembles.

Wiella.8567:

1. I know that no one will be banned for that. But is it actually an excuse for using an exploit? I don’t think so. And I am not sure why you mentioned that topic.
2. On the opposite side – they are doing the same to us (a a guild group) trying to force us to play the way they want to. This can be called griefing as well. Also we are not forcing any playstyle on boss itself like a lot of groups out there, we only avoid people from using exploits in our runs.
3. Hopefully character switch will also be fixed.

1. I mention it because a number of players will only stop doing something if it has negative ramifications for them. Since these don’t, there’s literally no downside to using them other than the potential disapproval of your fellow player. ANet recognizes the issues and they’ll get addressed, but in the meantime “oh well”.
2. If your group is the majority of the group (3+ players) and you started the LFG, of course you’re free to set the rules. The other players wanting to exploit couldn’t grief you if they tried, though, because it’s not like they can actively kill Ellen with you protecting her. If they whine, you outnumber them, you can kick them. They are not griefing you. Griefing is defined as taking a tangible action in-game that prevents others from playing the game how they want. At worst the other players can verbally abuse you, which is its own punishable offense, but not the same as griefing.
3. I wouldn’t hold your breath for that one, but it’s possible.

Everything power/condition related is balanced around these damage modifying traits not functioning for condition damage. Changing that would create a major upheaval that just doesn’t do any good for the game, and so I don’t support it.

There will be new fractals, but the infrastructural changes had to be done first. I do agree that it sucks that we got Fractured and then a huge revamp again, but I think they actually have a good bead on what they’re doing now. I’m hopeful.

The context of this thread is pretty ludicrous.

I’m disappointed that we’re only getting three legendaries from the get-go as well, but I also appreciate the sheer magnitude of effort that goes into building those collections for all old legendaries and new ones, so I think it’s okay. As long as it isn’t like 8 months before we see the rest of them, no big deal. As far as raids go, it’s pretty standard fare to expect the wings to be phased in post-expansion release. This is done to continually tune future wings to the correct difficulty and to give people a constant drip of new content to enjoy and be excited about.

There will be plenty of sweet stuff to do before raids even show up, like getting masteries and pursuing the Fractal legendary backpiece. I really want to see how they did with the new 50-100 instabilities.

I really don’t think this is necessary. I feel that the traits are incredibly strong as-is, and that the “profession mechanic” is the third dodge more than it is the dodge traits themselves. The interaction with that extra dodge is already awesome, competitively strong, and useful.

For me the hardest class to play is Thief because it squishes really fast and requires hairtrigger reflexes. I do far, far better in PvP than WvW as a Thief, though, because the power cap is far lower and it’s you have a finite number of enemies that you can focus on tracking.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Lol, didn’t you say the one rule was you couldn’t say what you mained? Immediately followed up by what your main class is? Did I miss something here? Must be I need more coffee…

I think he was saying that you can’t say your main is the hardest class to play.

Amineo.8951:

Only if you’re a Guardian (even though most of her and Horrik projectiles are unblockable) or Warrior.

I actually found it fairly easy on my Necro post CPC change, even without using it to stop the unblockable projectiles.

Wiella.8567:

Aside jokes – you really think that letting people to use exploits does any good? But I guess you prefer using them and will self-righteously defend them at any cost in-game and on forums so arguing on this matter will lead nowhere.

1. No one has ever or is going to be banned for the Mossman or Mai Trin exploits.
2. It actually is griefing actively trying to prevent people from playing how they want to, even if how they want to play is exploitative or cheesy. You won’t get banned for it, but it definitely makes you a kitten regardless of if they, too, are kittens. There’s something in here about two wrongs don’t make a right.
3. They’ll be fixed soon.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Superior Rune of the Trapper Recipe.

Kitten, that’s dark.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hmmm, new amulets. Aside from zealots, anything else you folks think would be interesting?

I think of the remaining stat combinations that might yield interesting builds, Zealot’s, Sinister, Nomad’s, and Dire excite me the most, in that order. I agree that for the Zealot’s, it’d want to look a bit like Marauder’s with some Vitality present. Sinister would need something similar. Some bulk is just too critical in PvP scenarios.