Guild Wars 2

As always, we are still recruiting! As a guild we’re super excited about guild halls and will try to build ours up as soon as the expansion is released and we’re able. Other than that, we’re still doing the stuff we normally do on a weekly basis, so check us out if those things interest you!

Here are some questions I have:

• Will all utility/healing/elite skills and traits be refunded and then need to be repurchased with the new hero points? Or will those that characters have now be grandfathered into the new system?
• What is happening with the racial skills?

It applies to all damage. This is one of the suggestions I worked with them on, and it was done this way to give Necromancers an additional 10% damage modifier that they desperately needed for organized (and solo) play.

Really though I think it is pretty conspiracy theory level to claim that [rT] is doing anything in any organized fashion to game rules. I’ve worked with Weth on this enough to know that it is literally just him doing this stuff. If you’ve got a problem with the system, that’s fine, but don’t make the mistake of convincing yourself it’s some plot to take over the ruleset.

I really do think discussing things and formalizing whether or not some things are okay is good. The killing NPCs thing is a good example. I always felt it was fair game, but some other approvers saw it as breaking events and so we discussed it and really made no headway. Having that be voted on would be great.

I also think formalizing whether that Molten Furnace leap was allowed was a good idea, although I totally would have just made it a path specific allowance instead of rework other rules to allow it.

In principle, Nike, I completely agree that once we get stuff that works to leave it alone. We don’t need a vote every week to refine something. I also don’t want to see that suddenly GL wall reflecting is allowed; that shows a serious disconnect with the voting body.

I agree with everyone else here. Wall reflect bashing GL is very cheesy and the only reason it hasn’t been fixed in-game is because it takes a much greater amount of development effort to fix than ANet can spare. No, it’s not as easy as moving his projectiles to flying out of somewhere else, nor is ANet okay with making his spells look like crap to fix the issue. They also, apparently, don’t want to make his projectiles unblockable. This should be banned in records.

I don’t really care too much about the Wahlen thing one way or the other, so I’d default to the guilds’ perspective. As far as I’m concerned, auto-killing GL is equivalent to intentionally bugging GL based on my understanding from ANet.

NikeEU.7690:

Weirdly it was really clear and didnt require weekly tweakings before your guild took over managing it.

I feel compelled to point out that Weth is not in [rT] any more. He left before taking up his current role of managing the records and takes their input no more or less seriously than that of other guilds.

Your upgrades continue even if you are not representing the guild. If you leave the guild, the guild will go away permanently.

I think what restricted/unrestricted means has always been a colloquial thing and never formally defined. It sounds okay to me if we want to have some description, if only because it will help newbies who read GW2 Dungeons know what the rulesets mean outside of the specific rules themselves.

Just reiterating in case my previous post wasn’t clear that I agree with Nike. I’d much rather have the general rules we have and then path-specific rules to address CoE and Arah p3 and the like.

I really appreciate what you’re trying to do Enko, but I’m just not convinced that it buys us anything other than more of the kind of interpretation that leads to the disagreements you mentioned disliking earlier. It’s just going to have unintended consequences and take more work to manage when new issues come up.

I’m just going to reiterate, Enko, that many of our rules—and many of the voters in these polls—are against changes that enable things that “feel exploitative or unintended”. Many things some people think are exploitative other people think are clever and/or neat usage of intended mechanics, however, resulting in the mish-mash as we currently have it. Honestly, I like our current ruleset a lot.

I think we should, honestly, just keep doing path-by-path exceptions. Just explicitly say that the p3 door is okay and the CoE door isn’t. It’d be nice if we had rules that weren’t vague and covered everything, but as they stand they are open to interpretation.

Man, here I thought you were talking about me and I was going to post “Uhm, duh? I’ve talked to literally every dev’ who will listen to me about that!”

Enko.6123:

That vote was held after it was approved.

You had one approver saying it was approved, another approver saying they were going to move it to unrestricted until the vote happened, and it was left as approved in restricted before the vote.

I would say that’s pretty inconsistent.

Two approvers disagreed, we decided it wasn’t sufficient to just go between the two of us, discussed it offline with Weth and in another thread with both Weth and other approvers, and it was moved to a vote. Instead of creating more work for ourselves, we opted to wait until the vote completed before performing a final action to the record. Disagreements happen; that does not make us inconsistent. We pour over records to make sure they are fair to the absolute best of our ability, and when disagreements arise we handle them in as fair a manner as humanly possible.

If you would’ve handled it differently, please inform us what you would have done and we will see if that is appropriate for future disagreements.

Right, in this case the exploit rule 8 prevents is the dodge roll cast, the Ele Fire Staff 4 into a cast, and similar. If you watch Asuna Hiraga’s PoV closely you’ll see that the Guardian does not move during the Ice Storm cast, and so it is fair game. For example, it is legit to use Ice Storm against a wall to compress the AOE into a half circle.

Eco, at a quick glance I don’t see what you’re saying in either video. Can you explain where you’re seeing what you’re seeing?

Wethospu.6437:

Sure, if you can get them here to state their opinions.

They gave me this kitten job so they wouldn’t have to.

Enko.6123:

I did concerning the Molten Furnace and going out of bounds.

The Belka Bone Wall skip was mentioned when that one first happened and was approved anyways.

MYTH’s post of CM P3 had a lot of pushback on things not based in rules for why it shouldn’t be approved initially and it wasn’t until there was a fairly large discussion on it did it get approved.

If you look at the discussions that have been happening on this week’s thread and last week’s threads, these issues should have been looked at when those records were first submitted since they’re apparent grey areas.

A vote was held regarding Molten Furnace and it was determined to be allowed. The Belka bone wall situation is precisely why we’re having this discussion and poll now because it is controversial. I’ll give you that MYTH’s post of p3 was disputed because it didn’t seem like a serious record and non-serious records waste the time of the approvers, so there was opposition from some people. Once we got over that, however, it was swiftly approved. That said, we should respect the time of our approvers because we don’t want to push them away since it is a thing that needs to be done. Still, I’m unclear on how any of these situations show approvers being inconsistent in applying the actual rules; could you be more precise on what you find inconsistent? If it’s just on controversial topics, well, then the appropriate solution is to have those controversial topics brought up in these polls.. Which is what we’re doing. What would you change?

Wethospu.6437:

I would say what Anet considers OK doesn’t weight much at this point.

What ANet thinks does affect peoples’ perceptions, and relevant guild leaders are much more likely to vote to disallow something if it feels or is known to be exploitative.

We’re still recruiting and doing all of the things we regularly do!

• Tuesday / Wednesday All Guild Missions
• Nightly Reset Tequatl Organization
• Thursday / Saturday Triple Trouble Organization
• Saturday I personally lead our Tequatl Organization

We’ve also been working to set up dungeon nights with our skilled players running and finishing Dungeon Master with our other members!

If any of the kinds of stuff we do in the casual, friendly environment that we do them in sound good, let us know! We’d be happy to talk to you about your possible fit in the guild.

Artaz.3819:

But then how would we double-click the scrap to open up the Weapon Skin merchant? These specific “currencies” act much differently than the other types.

You could do that by doing the same thing they’ll do for Pristine Fractal Relics, where right clicking it from within the updated brings up other options.

Enko.6123:

The problem we’ve been having is that the same issue is being denied on some videos and being allowed on others.

Regardless of the rules themselves, can you please cite the times these rules have been applied inconsistently? We, as approvers, would like to review them and ensure that things are approved consistently. Furthermore, if you notice this in the future, please let us know so we can look into it!

These items are used exclusively as currencies, so they should be added to the wallet as currencies.

EDIT: Ugh, why did it post to this forum. Give me a minute… Fixed!

Ryn.6459:

100 gold into cond duration runes…

The best two are dungeon runes and therefore account bound, however.

spoj.9672:

The developers made those dialogues and cutscenes for you to listen and watch them. Its no different when you look at it like that.

Also just look at the CM p2 records. Dieing and running to the boss before mobs spawn, blinking through a floor, getting turmaine stuck near the tree and so on. Yeah theres no way what is and isnt intended can be used as a valid reason. As weth said to me earlier. Its not about whether something is an exploit or not (intended/unintended). “It can be a good exploit or a bad exploit”. But why do people consider jumping over a door worse than breaking/teleporting NPC’s and skipping/exploiting triggers? I dont understand it at all.

I agree the NPC exploits are cool and add to the records but they are far more exploitive than a harmless jump in my opinion.

Because an NPC following players teleporting to those players out of range is intended functionality and is working by design. Because a dead NPC not talking is intended functionality and is working by design. Using these two functionalities in unison is a clever way to speed up functionality. I literally know that this is OK by ANet and do not even have to guess.

Enko.6123:

So if there’s a door that is supposed to close but players glitch it so it doesn’t close and they’re able to go through, is this ok?

I would say yes, they are fine because the door never closes and/or opens early.

Drarnor is correct; chill and fear will both continue to stack in duration, not intensity.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/

So the biggest change here that perked my ears up was the change so that Vulnerability affects condition damage as well as direct damage. This is pretty huge, and may enable condition damage to become a serious contender for damage in speed clears coupled with the increase in condition raw damage output with max condition damage.

I’m also pretty disappointed by the leap distance normalization, both from a PvE and a PvP perspective. I think speedy leaping enabled great build structuring for skips, and in PvP scenarios (a little off-topic) it enabled play/counterplay for engages and escapes.

What does everyone else think?

Fade.1743:

I’d have to disagree almost entirely up until that last sentence. If conjured weapons do more damage than our normal attunements, then they will be required in order to builds for damage. Not only that, but since we have to use both of them to get our highest damage output in this scenario, then someone grabbing our second conjure and using it lowers our output.

I appreciate your sentiment, but I think you have it backwards. Because of the long cooldowns associated with conjured weapons, they need to—while active—be stronger than our other options. If that is not the case, then they are neither worth the utility slot nor the DPS/utility loss. This is especially true on an Elementalist who already has four attunements worth of skills to utilize without cutting into their utility usage.

Anet just hasn’t found the sweet spot where a conjured weapon is worth taking for certain situations or certain builds without deadening the playstyle of the rest of the Elementalist. Certain skills on them are too strong compared to other skills, resulting in them carrying the value of the weapon and turning into a singular-use utility when it was not intended to be so.

For everyone’s benefit here, I’ll quote something I said in the dungeon forum the other day.

Rising Dusk.2408:

For reference, Lightning Hammer is something I’ve already talked to them [developers] about and they had this to say:

• They don’t want to remove builds (ie. S/F) from play.
• They recognize the impact a nerf to LH would have on the S/F build’s viability in PvE.
• The balance team is making changes to the Elementalist based on player feedback.

A closed door is literally a physical manifestation of the developers’ desire for you to open the kitten door. To skip it feels extremely exploitative. Things like killing an NPC to skip some of its dialogue, in contrast, feels clever because you’re still completing the event and killing the boss, you’ve just discovered a tricky way to speed up the prerequisites for that boss’s activation. Another example of things I like is the cutscene in CM where if you have someone stay in the cutscene the Riflemen don’t spawn, allowing players to get into position before starting the boss’s burn.

Skip the scraps, go farm dungeons / silverwastes for gold, and then buy the staff skin off the TP.

I don’t think triggering every dialogue or cutscene should be necessary, really. I find that killing NPCs to skip dialogue (like in CM or Arah) is extremely clever and takes an extra layer of micromanaging the path for teams. The important part for me is that mandatory by-design events aren’t skipped. This means you can skip Kohler, but you can’t skip the scepter collection event, etc.

For what it’s worth, I agree with Nike in that I vehemently oppose being able to jump over doors like the CoE door. I’m okay with bypassing a door if you have to move fast enough at the onset to pass it before it closes, but I’m not okay with jumping over it after it is closed. Therefore I would vote option A for that one. Then I would support option C for the follow-up in that blockages that you bypass legitimately don’t have to later be opened.

Arken.3725:

You could make the cast-time instant, cd 15 seconds and have 50% dmg converted to health and I would STILL take shelter over it. This is how bad Litany of Wrath is.

I’d seriously consider it if it could be instantly cast alone. The key here is that you could chain LoW and Smite Condition while CC’d to sustain through heavy burst.

The skill is arguably more useful in PvP than PvE because you can use it to catch Thieves and Mesmers in stealth to proc Fire/Air sigils while they’re invisible, identifying their location to you. That said, it still could use some work to be more generally useful.

The core of the part I disagreed with is that I don’t think we need to rebalance the Dagger autoattack in exchange for an updated Life Siphon.

Life Siphon is pretty okay right now, though I don’t think it’s particularly ‘awesome’. I think it being a cone attack like Drake’s Breath, but with life steal, would justify it being stronger than it is due to the skilled nature of its targeting, and would just be awesome in general. That said, I do agree that a little bit of a cast time reduction would put it in a good sweet spot if they didn’t feel like remaking the skill to be more awesome in general.

The only ‘trick’ to beating Rangers is to dodge PBS on Longbow and Entangle. PBS is a really fast animation, but if you can dodge it and stay in range then you’ll win the pressure game. I realize you’re condition, but as a power Necromancer I can close the gap, lure out Lightning Reflexes, immobilize, and burn them out. With a condition build you (typically) lack WH5 for Swiftness, so you’ll have to rely on connecting with DS2 to bridge the gap. For what it’s worth, Signet of Smite will smash Rangers that lack Healing Spring (useful for yolo queues).

I’m pretty excited for the trait revamps now. The specialists have collected so much feedback on them, and I know that every single suggestion therein went straight to the balance team. I think it’ll be good, especially for the Necromancer.

Vokigen.1320:

Just hoping the minion AI, and minion builds in general can at least be reliable/stronger in the coming patch/expansion.

Don’t set yourself up for disappointment. You won’t see major AI overhauls pre-HoT.

Anubis.7058:

…2 turned into a facing/cone based aoe channel?

This would be really cool even if I don’t agree with the other part of your post.

Lingering Curse frustrates me because it is a lazy GM trait and it pretty heavily outclasses Terror in most contexts, especially considering we lose the +30% condition duration from Spite with the specialization changes. The other thing is that you can hit with all of your fear skills while in Scepter (drop Staff 5 then weapon swap before it hits, and Doom while scepter is equipped), and this completely negating the need for the Master of Terror trait and enables you to use other useful traits there.

This trait line is also very frustrating to me in PvE. There is no power option for the GM slot, and Target the Weak being made critical chance instead of raw damage smashes what little DPS we can already sustain.

Litany of Wrath is actually exceptional in downscaled and even some not-downscaled PvE where you deal inordinate amounts of damage to mobs. Using it even without the traits sustains you at 100% HP for its entire duration almost without fail. I use it like that to solo quite an astonishing list of champions and events.

It really should have an instant cast time, however. It would be pretty clutch being able to activate it while CC’d and then use Smite Condition for a burst heal.

I think MediGuard is actually in an extremely good position in terms of strengths and counters. What I’d do, however, is tweak Merciful Intervention so that it is worth considering as a skill over the other meditations. Currently MI is just too weak to be worth slotting.

Fay.2357:

Generally speaking, the disqualification of a participant in a tournament after the tournament has concluded does not result in rematches for all games that they played. The matches occurred within tournament rules, and so the results of those matches are valid. The only change is the removal of the said participant from the final results, and all other participants in the tournament are moved up to account for that.

+1

This is how competitive tournaments function as a general rule, and I would expect this tournament to maintain that.

I have done every achievement associated with every dungeon, including Dungeoneer. At this point I’ve done them so many times that I only go when friends/guildies ask me to go, and that’s because I enjoy the social experience of small-group content in good company. I do not pub dungeons at all anymore, but I did for a fair bit after I finished my achievements. What I really hate is the lack of anything new to do. It’s all so old to me now.

Among my most recent dungeon runs of note was an Arah p4 that I ran with [DnT] which was super casual.. and yet only like 4 minutes off from the record. Felt great, would do again.

NikeEU.7690:

I know this isn’t about you or your effort, but what topics can they give you information on in any sort of detail that might be of interest to the dungeon community? Maybe you could get a dev to talk with us about Lightning Hammer or something.

For reference, Lightning Hammer is something I’ve already talked to them about and they had this to say:

• They don’t want to remove builds (ie. S/F) from play.
• They recognize the impact a nerf to LH would have on the S/F build’s viability in PvE.
• The balance team is making changes to the Elementalist based on player feedback.

Because I am not constrained by an NDA, they are pretty careful to not spill the beans on things that may change (because they know I will tell the community). They do sometimes give… Hrm, bread crumbs? Maybe? It’s hard to describe, but I get things that sure feel like hints. It’s possible they do it to pretend to listen to me, but judging from some developer responses to me (both in-game and on the forums) I’m pretty confident they are listening to my reports and while they may not take suggestions as-is and implement them, they sure are taking the spirit of the suggestions and implementing them.

As for bringing a QA person in here to talk about something, I could likely manage that, but they wouldn’t be able to post here anything more than they can tell me by PM, and so there probably wouldn’t be much discussion to be had. Getting the actual balance team in here to talk about the motivations for changes like the Lightning Hammer changes would be even harder, but something I could try to ask about.

For what it’s worth, I probed into this and was told yet again that they literally cannot tell me anything about it right now, but that it’s still being looked at.

Guardians are incredible and will remain indispensable in all formats even after Revenants come out. I agree that spirit weapons are garbage and need a lot of help, but the Guardian itself won’t have its worth usurped by the Revenant. There is some overlap, for sure, but I wouldn’t really worry about the Guardian’s position.

All Thief stolen skills are being rebalanced with the specialization changes, so just hold out for those before passing judgment.

I agree with this. I don’t mind it being a projectile unlike Magnet, but it needs to be more reliable than it currently is.

spoj.9672:

Is this thread even in english?

I’ve been having success putting it through the Google gibberish translator.

Certain CC’s will make you drop the crab for some reason; I haven’t figured out exactly what the conditions for the drop are yet, but it’s definitely tied to being CC’d. You can avoid this issue by having permanent stability uptime or by simply avoiding the veteran Karka CC’s.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

“Nothing’s wrong / Nothing to fix / It’s fine / Leave it”
or
“More challenging content / Make it harder / Do something about it”

Do not make the mistake of assuming that forcing players to kill trash will make anything harder than it already is. They’re called trash mobs for a reason; they’re essentially worthless cannon fodder. Truthfully, skipping the mobs instead of fighting them actually makes the clear itself tougher because being snared, CC’d, or even put in combat at all threatens to kill you.

People skip mobs because it’s faster, and speed is all that matters in a back-loaded rewards system. “Fixing” this, as someone noted before, makes the presumption that something is wrong in the first place, when in-fact it is functioning as designed. Someone earlier in this thread referenced GW1 elite runs as an example of good design, yet apparently they missed the speed clears of Urgoz and The Deep which performed just as much if not far more skipping than GW2 dungeons use. Back then you skipped absolutely everything except the one mob that, when killed, opened the door.

All that said, the argument that skipping is ‘bad’ in a dungeon or really any instanced content is one founded on the desire for more tedium. Literally all that removing skipping would do is make all paths take exponentially longer. If you truly want legitimately harder content, forcing players to kill every mob is not going to achieve that.

4:34 by my clock. Those were some exceptional burns against the butcher, nice job! Approved!

Reading over the rules and watching the videos it seems it would. I’ll hold final judgment until Spoj chimes in, though.

Awesome! Approved.

For future reference, please include player name when submitting a record. If it weren’t for some sleuthing I might not have realized Mareika was Nexus, for instance.