Guild Wars 2

I vastly prefer the new Capricorn to the new Skyhammer. I think you guys (ANet) should use the feedback poll and ask the players if they’d rather have Skyhammer or Capricorn go ranked!

+1

2000g+ for the reliquary is ridiculous. Either add another source for the reliquary such as fractal relics at the fractal vendor or make it easier to finish the ascended salvaging achievement. I really don’t personally care how it gets fixed, just that this gets figured out.

I’ve reached the cap and am extremely thankful that there is a cap. It means that I don’t have to chase some infinite AP source if I want to remain competitive on the AP leaderboard.

savacli.8172:

I thought about that too, but then I got stumped on how that should affect Rev’s energy regen since the mechanic has similarities to Initiative.

Well, since Revenants have cooldowns and energy regeneration, I don’t think Alacrity should double down there and affect both. Revenants benefit a decent amount from Alacrity in their weapon sets already in that sword 2 can be spammed more frequently, staff 5 is available more often for breakbars, and staff 3 is available more often for active defense. Alacrity also affects their legend swap mechanic, which enables further rotation maximization.

All I want with a Torch is a fire field that burns the enemy.

We have the lowest condition DPS in-game because none of our condition damage is reliant on the enemy standing inside of a combo field. This is a blessing and a curse.

Thinking about this more, I actually think the change may be intended as a hint of upcoming Fractal content and storyline progression.

To be fair, I do think Alacrity should affect Thief initiative gain.

Jeknar.6184:

In that case, They should just re-introduce WvW as part of map completion like it was before. I think it’s fair since this change was made to appease the PvE’ers that didn’t wanted to do WvW.

Oh the tears of “I only need the green keep vista for my Gift of Exploration” were so delicious…

You’re saying you really preferred when they took up map slots, didn’t contribute meaningfully, and complained constantly? That change was made for WvW players’ sanity as much as for the PvE players. I like going into WvW and seeing people there to do WvW only.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

WvW is the only gamemode with no legendary item assigned to it.

…and that should be fixed by giving WvW a unique legendary associated with it once skirmishes get a proper reward system, not making PvE map completion available in WvW.

Malediktus.3740:

This would defeat the purpose of map completion. Hero points are only buyable with proof of heroics so WvW players can stay competive with their builds.

Having given it some thought, I agree with this post. If you want a PvE reward, go play PvE. Hero points are a special case where it makes sense because you don’t want to be locked out of competitive builds just because of some PvE gameplay element. The same can be said about food/wrench items; if they’re not on the TP, the recipe should be on the heroics notary.

Liston.9708:

Even tapping a gate is lame. I would suggest gate/wall going down to some percent like 75% or 50% (the number can be debated). That is a threat not a ranger plinking arrows from 1200 range or thief attacking a gate with daggers or pistol…..

I generally agree with this. I’m of the belief that you have to deal 5% damage to a wall or a gate before I would want to see the location become contested.

Astralporing.1957:

I haven’t seen that many complaints about differences between fractal and pvp backpack acquisition method.

That’s because they look different and therefore carry different prestige. If the PvP and Fractal back pieces looked the same, then there would (rightfully) be a lot of complaints about it. The same is true of legendary armor. If they add, hypothetically, a set of legendary armor that one can acquire in WvW, but looks different than the raid set, then no one from the raiding community will mind. I hope they do add more varied acquisition methods for different legendaries of the same type to different game modes! I still want my WvW back piece, and I still want my PvP weapon!

An adjustible defiance bar is a spectacular idea. I would also love it if they had a system in-place for adding food and wrench buffs to players without having to waste one’s own food. These two are probably the most useful additions I could ask for, though I certainly wouldn’t mind knowing what my healing per second was or being able to test arbitrary gear setups.

I still think that things like Doubloons, Giver’s stats, and food items should be changed to give Concentration and Expertise as appropriate instead of their flat percentages. Even if this is a huge nerf to certain builds, those nerfs should be compensated by buffing traits, skills, or things like that. There are so many completely unused traits and wasted slots for nearly every class that could see buffs that both bring them to light and bridge the gap in durations.

Sublimatio.6981:

minion with death magic would transfer condis more frequently and deal more damage

You’re right, but you can’t control when that transfer will proc. I’ve tried that and sometimes I’ll be sitting with 25 poison, Plague Signet on cooldown, and my minion transfers on ICD. Those cases happening so often is why I ended up going with “Suffer!”.

Also: most of the time pubs demand Blood Magic for Transfusion and Reaper is too good IMO to give up post-DM-nerf.

I bring “Suffer!” for Matthias because of the extra condition transfer. I find it does more consistent damage during fire / rain / abom phase than anything else, and it also has a lot of valuable utility as well (I can spread fire phase burns to lingering ice patches to kill them).

afrocrusade.4253:

The point OP is trying to make is that mirror cop demands minmaxing and perfect rotations on a level pugs do NOT perform at. The old comp is still better, just weaker. Mirror comp will only work with very, very talented groups.

Mirror comp actually has the highest base DPS of any composition right now and affords pubs the greatest flexibility in build / class / gear selection as a result. You actually have to be far better to make the other compositions work with such awful quickness / alacrity / banner / ranger buff uptime.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

I’m happy to poke the Commerce Team about adding some kind of conversion to allow folks to condense multiple 25 use BL salvage kits into one larger kit. I only promise to poke, I can’t promise they will do it

That’s all we could hope for! You are the queen! <3

Electro.4173:

I don’t see the purpose of having a storage chest over just expanding the bank storage.

+1

I noticed this change too. It actually sounds like the same voice and even the same line recordings, just with different filters applied to make it sound different.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

It would be extremely hard, if not impossible to make those things stack.

Unrelated to the primary thrust of this topic, but couldn’t you add a Mystic Forge recipe to combine 4 25-use BL kits into 1 100-use BL kit, and then 2 100-use BL kits with 2 25-use BL kits to get a 250-use BL kit? That would be pretty legendary if so, because I currently have ~30 BL kits and they’re way too valuable to just waste.

Khisanth.2948:

How about stuff like the PvP reward boxes?

You’re intended to open those, not store them.

Things that should be in material storage:

• Legendary Insights
• Golden Fractal Relics
• Milling Basin
• Copper Doubloon
• Silver Doubloon
• Gold Doubloon
• Platinum Doubloon
• Amalgamated Gemstone
• Shimmering Crystal
• Tenebrous Crystal
• Blade Shard
• +1 Agony Infusions
• Crystalline Bottles (…and other scribe base materials from the vendor)
• Bottle of Elonian Wine
• Philosopher’s Stones
• Mystic Crystals
• Chak Eggs
• Reclaimed Metal Plates
• Black Lion Tickets
• Black Lion Ticket Scraps
• Blood Ruby
• Petrified Wood

I like this a lot in PvP having tried it out a bit. Can we also get this in WvW, please?

Scipio.3204:

How exactly is the challenge mote at KC is “critical to the meaningful design of the content”?

Achievements: They’re important for an MMO even if you never do them yourself.

Doggie.3184:

Wait till you see how bad the medium buttcape is that turns into a giant umbrella when you enter combat.

My body is ready.

Scipio.3204:

Considering you have a decade experience in sofware development, do you think adding a challenge mote to KC doubled the development time required to create that encounter? Do you think the fact every boss have an enraged version of itself, it doubles the testing time on each boss ever created and ever to be created? If these things were so hard to create why did anet bother? Why not just wipe everyone instead of enrage for example?

• No.
• No.
• Because they were minor implementations and critical to the meaningful design of the content (other raid modes are not).
• Because it’s bad design for a game like GW2.

Scipio.3204:

It’s absurd to argue something would take double the time it needs without thinking a second about implementation.

You’re right. Good thing I thought a lot about the implementation and even spent a year and a half as a forum specialist to interact with the fractals/raid team!

Really all we need is for [qT] to make a Reddit thread that outright says what most of us know that Heralds are still perfectly valuable as one of the DPS options due to offensive support, great CC, and good-enough DPS. Once that happens, people will get in line, but for now all pubs really have to go on is Reddit overreaction.

The part of this comp that’s hilarious to me is why it brought the Druid in the first place: it was to heal the minions from Lich Form to maintain high DPS from the Necros. With the recent nerf to Jagged Horrors, there is no good reason to bring a Druid. Your survivability on a Necromancer is already high enough without a healer, and the combination of Spotter/Sun Spirit/GotL is nowhere near the level of DPS you get from bringing a PS Warrior instead. If you want to be slow and safe, 4 Nec/1 Warr is indisputably better now than 4 Nec/1 Druid, and if you’re willing to give up a modicum of safety you can go for the gusto and just bring 2 Nec/1 Warr/1 Druid/1 Chrono.

Alternatively, you can be a good little publing and bring whoever joins and clear it just fine. I did my T4’s today with 1 herald, 1 necro, 1 ele, 1 druid, and 1 guardian in 30 minutes. shrug

Blaeys.3102:

I don’t think we can realistically make any statements about how much time it would add – only developers can do that.

You’re right that I can’t say anything for certain, but having spent over a decade in software development I would bet money that I’m right and it would have huge ramifications on their development cycle. Either way, the developers will never say one way or the other because to do so would poison the well, so I guess we’ll have to keep living in suspense.

Yeah this is definitely a bug. I’ve never seen this happen before, so it could be new with Tuesday’s patch, but either way they should address it. I trust that Paul will see this either tomorrow or Monday.

Buy Some Apples.6390:

To make it so that the devs dont have to read these forums.

It was actually to condense the best and most prevalent feedback down into manageable documents that the developers could then bring to meetings and discuss openly amongst themselves. The developers still read the forums even when we were still specialists.

Danikat.8537:

It’s not there. I checked Dulfy’s site, which had a screenshot of the cat. I went to the exact same place and there was no cat.

It was probably never added to the Halloween-version of the HotM.

Protip: They said that the legendary armor would be tied to the next raid, not the next raid wing. It’s entirely plausible we will get a new raid’s first wing this year, and possibly there will be another raid wing to finish it later.

Astralporing.1957:

Would it? I’d say that’s extremely unlikely. There’s no way doing an easy mode of an existing raid would be more work than making a completely new comparable instance.

My previous comment was based on the concept from the other poster of them adding 1 to N new modes/difficulties, not necessarily just one new mode. If they add just an easy mode, realistically it’s probably an increase of anywhere from 33-50% of developer effort since you’re right, art assets at least can be reused. Still, as I said in my previous post, this would impact their release cadence in an unacceptable way per their stringent release schedule.

thewaterguy.4796:

I get your point in theory, except…I believe that you are exaggerating, how would it double the development time exactly?

There are a lot of moving parts to a system like this. They’d have to design the alternative mode(s) to be sufficiently rewarding without impeding on the unique rewards of the current mode, they’d have to tailor/rebalance their already very specifically made bosses to still work with fewer/adjusted mechanics, there’s a lot of base code necessary to support new mode(s), they’d have to change the GUIs to support the new mode(s), this (legitimately) multiplies the QA time on literally every change that goes out related to raids by the number of new modes… There are a lot of things to consider. Even if the number doesn’t come to exactly +100% per mode, it’s very clearly enough to impact their release cadence for new content, and that’s bad for GW2 overall.

thewaterguy.4796:

Please give me one objective proven reason as to why I am wrong, […]

It would (at least) double the development and maintenance time of raids, and inhibit their ability to deliver new raids and raid wings in a schedule that meets their current intent. In other words, there’s no way they can support another raid mode without reducing the amount of content they output in a year.

Executioner Axe Toy > All

NikeEU.7690:

Rev solves any Might, Fury or Protection issues your team has due to buffing the condi ps and making like 4 might of its own. It let’s your mesmers use scholar runes or run dps food. It buffs each member of the group by about 1.5k dps. 26k + 6k = 32k.

Sounds to me like double rev could actually be a thing then? ie. 2PS + 2Druid + 2Herald + 2Chrono + 2Ele

Crinn.7864:

CD on trigger has so many problems. For starters it means that if the trap isn’t triggered the DH ends up with a effectively infinite cooldown. This makes using a trap enormously risky. Purification would certainly never get used again because the risk of getting locked out of your heal is too great.

This would be easy to ameliorate with a flip skill that activates the trap early if you want to move it. Doing this might even increase the tactical usage of traps to serve as area denial.

The patch was pretty devastating from a PvE perspective. There’s a lot of stat swapping that has to happen on a lot of ascended gear, all classes have reduced build diversity within meta raid compositions, there’s even less class diversity than when the alacrity nerf happened back in the day, and a few classes have been nerfed extremely hard even though they comparatively weren’t top dogs to begin with.

There’s a lot of opinions floating around going either way on whether it was necessary or justified, but suffice it to say that if the balance goal of the ANet skills team is increased build and class diversity that they objectively went in the opposite direction with this patch.

Anchoku.8142:

Viper Horror got a minor nerf.

The nerf really isn’t minor at all. A very large portion of a Necromancer’s DPS relied on a Druid overheals keeping the Lich Jagged Horrors alive for an extended period of time.

[VZ] is still recruiting!

We still consistently do a lot of stuff together throughout the week, so message one of the officers (myself included) after reading the OP to get a feel for whether or not the guild would be a good fit for you!

We’ve also been doing a lot of training raids lately now that we’ve beaten every boss with our core group, so if you’re interested in learning raids and are willing to have me dictate your builds / gear to some extent, please let us know!

The better solution is a user preference that hides special effects with options for “Suppress Other Players’ FX”, “No Suppression”, and “Suppress All FX”. I would be devastated if they removed or toned down this effect in the slightest; it was my biggest motivator for pushing through and crafting it. ‘Sharknado’ (Kamohoali) is, similarly, my favorite pre-HoT legendary for the same reason.

dlonie.6547:

Every so often I feel like I should just log in and run some dungeons for the hell of it, but then I remember that the HoT powercreep would have killed any enjoyment I got from them.

My solution to this is to low-man dungeons! Also, pubbing dungeons is arguably harder than ever before even with power creep as most of the other players are underleveled / undergeared / underexperienced.

dlonie.6547:

BTW, @Dusk — I notice your specialist title is gone. Did they stop the program, or is there a new dungeon rep?

They ended that iteration of the program. My understanding is that there will be more in some form and at some point, though I have no idea what form it’ll take or when it will be.

kdaddy.5431:

OK with 1 new fractal and broken raids?

If all you’re looking at is the 1 new fractal, then you’re missing a lot of the great changes they’ve made to Fractals this year.

kdaddy.5431:

Do you think Anet said ohh crap we need to change something since people are 3 man killing raid bosses?

No.

kdaddy.5431:

I mean if Anet wants to say that raids are the challenging end content fine but can they at least make it so classes/teams play the way it was suppose to be played?

They can and do. Constantly.

kdaddy.5431:

I mean they have killed PvP/WvW/ and core Gw2 stuff and come to find out that there high end content for TEAM PLAY can be soloed cant be a good thing.

Neither PvP nor WvW are dead, and PvE the way it’s currently being developed is also fine.

I’ve always thought that ANet could encourage me to spend dollars instead of gold on gems if they had sales on large numbers of gems purchased with dollars, or had some kind of volunteer ‘subscription’ where you pay $10/month every month for a minimum of X months, but get 1000 gems for each month as part of your ‘subscription’ instead of 800. Whether or not any of this is realistically viable for them and their bottom lines I’d leave up to ANet’s marketing team, but I think those kinds of ‘bulk discounts’ could really work on a player like myself.

meeflak.9714:

Power / condi druid still mvp

It’ll be pretty tough for pubs, though. I have seen maybe 1 out of 20 groups that take sufficiently little damage such that power or condi Druid could be sufficient for keeping everyone alive (even with 2 of them). If that’s expected to get even worse with the healing value adjustments, then I foresee Magi being hands-down the way to go for all groups outside of very confident guilds.

Fay.2357:

Easy permanent quickness for 5 people if you stick to the rotation.

Having to Mimic-cast SoI makes me barf a little on the inside, but I could see how that would maintain permanent quickness on a 5-person subgroup in spite of a heavy-handed nerf. Worth noting that having to run Mimic over a second well cuts into Alacrity uptimes, though.

Archon.3987:

Are you actually defending the frustrating, exaggerated time-grind mechanic of the two Fractal Research Pages a day?

Yes, I am, because it is neither frustrating or exaggerated. The entire purpose is to ensure that “you’ve played enough of the content”. I did 2 months of PvP dailies for the Ascension and I did 2 months of Fractals dailies for Ad Infinitum. It was neither frustrating or exaggerated, and felt totally appropriate.

Archon.3987:

Well, this forum hasn’t changed at all. I had similar “funny” discussions about the Fractal weapons RNG system back then and how “great” and “awesome” it was, not to be able to choose a weaponskin.

If you know who I am, you know I advocated strongly for fixing the Fractal Weapons RNG system directly to the developers. I do not think the time-gate on Ad Infinitum is anywhere near the level of the old Fractal Weapons RNG. It’s not like you only have a chance to get a Journal Page or something.