Guild Wars 2

Game Mode: PvX.

This short proposal has two Quality of Life Improvements for the axe weapon.

Winter’s Bite (Mainhand Axe #3). Make it a projectile finisher.
Reasoning: This would add a little bit more power/versatility to this weaponset which it needs. It is also a natural choice as a projectile finisher, as similar single-projectile skills such as the warrior’s Throw Axe are also projectile finishers.

Path of Scars (Offhand Axe #4). Add a 1/2 second cripple to the outgoing portion of the skill.
Reasoning: Currently, the pull effect from this skill (which occurs on the incoming portion) often misses since the target can easily move out of the way before the axe begins its return to the ranger. Giving a 1/2 second cripple to hit foes would allow the skill to pull more reliably, while still allowing alert foes to dodge/evade/get-out-of-the-way.

Edit: Also, in the text description for Path of Scars, add “Pulls foes when it returns”.

GameMode: PvX. Although you suggest only one game mode, I believe the following should apply to all game modes. Edit: But if necessary, PvP.

This proposal focuses on improvements to Master and Grandmaster Beast Mastery traits to improve pet performance.

General Pet Improvements

Change: Increase pet movement speed by 10%-15%. Replace Agility Training (Skirmishing-AdeptTier: Increased pet speed) with Vigorous Training, which was previously located in BeastMastery-MasterTier.
Reasoning: Pets have a hard time sticking to their target since they can’t attack and move at the same time. They can also have a hard time getting to the ranger’s side due to routing issues. Slightly increasing the speed of pets would help increase their damage (sticking to target), reliability (it is where you expect it to be), and survivability (it will get out of AoE faster when using F3). Agility Training is now mostly redundant, so it is being replaced with a viable alternative from Beast Mastery, which makes room for a MasterTier Beast Mastery trait. However, feel free to add the remaining 15%-20% speed increase from Agility Training to a different trait such as Natural Healing, a grandmaster Beast Mastery trait.

Beast Mastery Traits

The focus of these changes to provide some utility and/or survivability to pets via trait options instead of raw attribute changes. Pet AI is faulty, however there are instances where it works and it works extremely well (25 stacks of might from Rampage as One + Feline Pet). Pure stat increases would make pets overpowered in these instances. Instead, allow rangers the option to make their pet more sturdy, but require trait investment for balance.

Combined Traits: Combine Rending Attacks, Stability Training, and Intimidation Training (Beast Mastery master tier traits) into a single trait. Introduce 2D family symbols for each pet type (ursine, feline, etc) to aid players in figuring out which bonus a specific pet would get. Give Moas an effect (they are currently excluded). Have the tooltip function like the Elementalist’s Evasive Arcana trait where you right-click to view all the effects.
Reasoning: Having these traits separated makes it unattractive to mix different types of pets, hurting build diversity. Combining them will allow for new build options and make space for new traits.

New Trait: Beastmastery-MasterTier: Evasive Bond: Whenever you dodge, your pet gains Evasive Bond, allowing it to evade all attacks. Evasive bond is a buff that doesn’t interfere with the pet, similar in implementation to Master’s Bond.
Counterplay: Using weakness on the ranger to reduce its number of dodges, thus reducing the number of times this trait triggers. Or immobilizing the ranger, thus preventing dodging completely.

New Trait: BeastMastery-MasterTier: Cleansing Swap: When you swap pets, you lose 2 conditions. Internal cooldown of 10 seconds.
Reasoning: Gives rangers a good option for mobile condition removal outside of Empathic Bond.
Counterplay: When the ranger swaps their pet, that pet loses any boons it has.

Moved Trait: Zephyr’s Speed: Moved the Grand Master trait Zephyr’s Speed to MasterTier. Reduced quickness to 2 seconds to compensate.
Reasoning: Quickness is a strong effect, but is usually not worth investing 30 points in order to get it. Moving this trait to Master tier would make it more attractive and allow room for a new grandmaster trait.

New Trait: BeastMastersy-GrandMasterTier: Camaraderie: When you swap pets, the inactive pet gains the same boons as the active pet (boon values are capped). For example, if the active pet has 25 stacks of might for 30 seconds, the inactive pet would get 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds (cap value). If the pet has 50 seconds of regen, the pet gets 5 seconds (cap value).
Reasoning: Increases the amount of punishment pets can take via boon sharing, while reducing the penalty for pet swapping.
Counterplay: If you swap when your pet is dead, there are no boons to copy.

These traits would give rangers the ability to have sturdier pets. Important to note is that since these six traits compete for the same two slots, some decision making will be necessary when creating a build.

I’m curious about this as well. I suspect that they will make allow us to make unlimited withdrawals of skins that are in your locker, but for sPvP use only. Kind of like how we can make unlimited withdrawals of the achievement point weaponskins. It would answer the problem of frequently losing skins when you change your build, because you don’t have enough storage space to hold onto all of the old skins. Although, I think they said they were going to get rid of sPvP crafting, so I’m not sure how we’re supposed to get skins in the future. As far as I know, they haven’t confirmed that we’ll be able to use the sPvP skins in PvE either.

Pyriall.5027:

Have a link to the ready up?

Full, stickied post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Dev-livestream-Ready-Up-Feb-14-2pm-Scrims-more

Livestream link:
www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

The lack of dedicated healers prevents deep-wound from being added, since there is less protection against spike damage available. A coordinated spike of 3 people can already pretty-much instantly down people. Reducing the target’s health by 20% on top of that would make it too easy. As for the reduced healing portion, that is already in the game in the form of poison.

As for disease, it would be very computation intensive since the engine would try to apply it to all characters within spreading range, so it would be like a continuous AoE from each infected creature (100+ in zerg fights). That is, if it isn’t cleansed quickly by the amount of condition removal that flies around in zerg fights.

I assume by balance you mean both positive and negative.

1. Ranger (no need to explain)
2. Warrior (a bit too good at everything at once)
3. Thief (high damage professions tend to pressure players into going heavy bunker or heavy glass-like specs to survive)

I had a feeling there was already a topic on this. Although this has happened to me occassionally in the past, it usually could be fixed my weapon-swapping from the hero panel. Today however, that didn’t work and happened to me on three occassions during the large-scale living story events; twice on my ranger and once on my warrior. I am bound to encounter this again, so I’ll try the waypointing or fall damage tricks; much better than relogging and missing and losing at least 15 minutes of effort.

Interestingly, during the marionette event, I hopped into a golem while bugged and was able to use it’s shield skill, while I couldn’t use any of the other skills. But of course, I couldn’t leave the golem because the #5 skill doesn’t work.

If this skill were turned into an elite kit with a lot of improvements I could see it being used in some circumstances. It is also more likely to see improvements that way, as the existing art, sound, and animation assets could still be used. Making a completely new skill from scratch would take quite a while.

It’s role would be as a heavy-hitting, long range weapon kit. It would be similar to grenade kit but with more focus on power via a single projectile; while grenades are left to focus on conditions that use multiple projectiles. You would still be immobile during it’s use, but it as actually more mobile than before since it is a kit. The damage that the kit can inflict is balanced by the engineer having to be stationary.

The changes that I recommend are:

• Fix the bugs.
• Has a default max range of 1500.
• Improve the 5 skills.
• Allow it to turn immediately.
• Cannot be destroyed, as it is now a kit.
• Does not grant stability. [Permanent or quick access to frequent stability is too overpowered for a weapon kit with a 1 second cooldown].
• Affected by relevant traits.

Other things to consider:

• Remove the global cooldown on skills. The cooldown may be necessary for both technical and balance reasons; otherwise give the skills a short casting time like grenade kit.
• Lower the projectile arc and/or increase projectile speed. This may not be necessary depending on the strength of the improved skills.
• Giving it some sort of 5-10 cooldown when swapping out. This may become complicated when considering different types of crowd control and not being programmatically identical to existing kits.

The end result is that the elite skill actually gets used, but is not overpowered in pvp situations.

Not everyone likes split skills either. Personally, I don’t like them for a few reasons, such as:
Balance in PvE (if you believe in such a thing) becomes terrible after a while, because more attention has to be payed to the PvP side of the game, where skill balance has a greater and more noticeable effect. Then we eventually get things like Ursan-way, meta builds for FoW and UW, 3+ mandatory skills on every build (think paragon) because they outshine everthing else by miles, etc. And then everyone pretty much runs (or practically requires) the same overpowered build for profession X.

There are a few other reasons I dislike splits as well, but I won’t go into them.

So that both EU and NA players can have a relatively close connection to the servers, thus reducing network lag. It is unlikely that the two will be combined until the time it takes for data to cross the Atlantic Ocean (or to go from California to Eastern Europe) becomes negligible and consistent.

The US servers are in Texas.
The EU servers are in Germany.

From a game philosphy standpoint, the bonus numbers would be debated (double value is too high) since Anet doesn’t want people to discourage others from showing up and helping out. In other words, the advantage of having extra teammate(s) needs to outweigh the advantage provided by the outmanned buff.

Finally, from a technical standpoint, I think it’s possible (would take a little extra development time) since killing enemy yaks already provides 1-3 extra points, based on the number of people who tagged the yak. Making that function with structures would probably require additional work, but should be possible.

This reply turned out to be a lot longer than I intended.

WvW is affected by some medium-sized problems, some of which you brought up in your original post, that culminate into a few massive problems; none of which can be solved by a single solution. To rephrase your concerns:

1. Zergs are too dominant and effective a strategy. Why are they successful? Because the map design allows a zerg to break off an assault and make it back in time to defend their stuff; which is fine. The zerg had to choose between 2 objectives, which highlights zerging’s weakness in that zergs can’t complete multiple tasks at once. If the red zerg is attacking Stonemist castle, but then their Anzalias tower, Ogrewatch tower, and Pangloss camp all come under attack by decent-sized groups, a single zerg would not be able to assault/defend all 4 objectives. The zerg would either have to split up to have a good/decent chance of completing all 4 objectives, or sacrifice 2 objectives to ensure completion of the other 2. Forcing these types of decisions should be more common and (in my opinion) is the way to go to counteract zergs; changes that allow zergs to succeed, but also allow medium-sized assaults to be more common and potentially successful. However, zerging itself is a legitimate strategy. If I send all my troops to complete an easy objective (I outnumber the enemy 5-to-1), I better at least make some progress; even if I lose something else in the process.

2. Comeback Mechanics – Once the spread in scores hit around 15,000, the chances of the 2 losing servers catching up is extremely small. I think this is where your proposal has the most impact, and is the area where WvW needs help the most. Compared to sPvP (and other games in general), there are very few ways in WvW to come back from losing or to slow down an enemies’ momentum.

3. Some servers are just much bigger than others. This is very difficult to address directly (as indicated in the CDI topic on Server Balance), but can be remedied indirectly by addressing some of the other WvW problems (Zerging effectiveness (1), Comeback Mechanics(2), etc).

I think this suggestion, in combination with granting immediate points for targeting the leading server, could help the “Comeback Mechanics” issue; not so much the zerging issue and population issues. As for defining the leading server, there are at least 4 options:
A. The server leading in overall score. However, even leading servers can have poor coverage in certain timezones. Encouraging 2 servers to gang up on the leading server during it’s weakest timezone (50 vs 300 vs 300) would be an effective strategy in reducing the score difference, but would be similar to karma-training (and thus not fun for some) and could punish the leading server’s offhour players to the point of not playing just because their server’s other timezones have more people.
B. The server leading in PPT on that map. This could encourage players to attack an enemy’s borderland or less-active maps, forcing the leading server to spread out more to maintain an advantage.
C. The server leading in overall PPT at that time (my preference).
D. Some combination of A, B, and C; where even the overall leader can be encouraged to target another server who has the higher PPT in that timezone.
However, B and C may encourage map-hopping by the weaker, organized server to a different map, capturing most (or all) objectives for bonus points, then map-hopping again and repeating the process elsewhere. Eventually, the weaker server could lessen a large gap in the score; even though they never faced their opponent in a battle, because the weak server gets bonus points and the leading server doesn’t. This can be seen as good strategy or as undesirable; but it is something to consider. B is more likely to promote server hopping, C less-so because fewer bonus points would be accumulated. D, including the overall leader, could make it more fun for everyone, but opens up the potential for the overall leader to maintain their point spread in offhours, which would reduce the effectiveness of these “Comeback Mechanics”. Also, to encourage servers to target the stronger enemy, other changes and incentives would need to be added as well to that don’t encourage farming, unfair/unfun play, etc; which is where it gets complicated and why multiple changes would need to be made to produce a satisfactory result.

I was in a semi 3-way SMC fight on reset night (the 3rd server came in near the end of the fight (Sanctum of Rall, Tarnished Coast, Magumma match-up)) and was pleasantly surprised to find that the skill delay on my skills was significantly shorter, down from the expected 10+ seconds to around 3 seconds. PvE wise, I rarely notice skill lag so I can’t say much about it there. Good job on the changes so far.

Chopps.5047:

Dahkeus.8243:

Yea, I’be brought this up twice on the thread. This is one of the big reasons I re-rolled. I know they have a lot to respond to, but this has been an issue since day 1.

I mean, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s kinda frustrating since ANet has become so open on balance changes recently, yet still hasn’t addressed this.

Do you not acknowledge that many in the community like the sword? We’re not all 100% on board to want to change it. I think it works to be honest. It sucks to learn but you can.

I think most people like what it does, but not how it does it. People like that it allows the ranger to easily stick to their target (I do too). What they (I) don’t like is that in order to do that, they lose control of their character and have to micromanage their auto-attack. There are ways to keep the same functionality (sticking to the target) without sacrificing movement control and forcing auto-attack micromanagement.

Even though this is about PvE, I’m just gonna add a PvP perspective as well.

In a 1 vs 1 fight you can learn to deal with the rooting issues. However, when you enter into a fight that involves more than 4 people keeping track of what part of the chain your on can become impractical. There are to many other things you have to pay attention to worry about part of the chain your auto-attack is on: your position, your pet’s position, allies’ positions, enemies’ positions, who has left themselves vulnerable due to their position (overextension), your 9 other cooldowns, your weapon swap cooldown, your pet ability cooldown, allies’ health, enemies’ health, overall strategy depending on game mode and map, switching targets (tab or click), identifying what skills your allies and enemies use and their approximate cooldowns, etc… As your competition gets better and tougher, these things become more and more important, and is what separates the skill levels of players. As these things become more and more important, your auto-attack and basic movement are skills you need to be able to rely upon in battles, not constantly worry about; time spent focusing on what part of the chain your on takes time away from that and can cause you to miss important actions. Unfortunately with the sword you can’t always rely upon your auto-attack, and when I play my ranger I have to use the greatsword instead.

The technical problem with the sword is that the 2nd and 3rd skills are leaps, which can’t be broken by the player. My suggestion would be to remove the leap from the second skill, give the first skill a 1/2 second cripple, and reduce the cripple duration of the second skill by half a second. That way, the cripple duration of the chain stays the same and the ranger can still stick to the target. Surely people can stick close to a crippled target for 3/4 of a second, which is the time it would take to reach the leap in the chain.

Finally, working around design issues simply isn’t fun.

Some bugs I encountered while testing out engineer builds:

Slick Shoes can knock down some NPC allies. Can be replicated by running through allies while Slick Shoes effect is activated. More easily replicated while under the effects of a speed boost, like Super Speed (it’s utility skill). Also worked on profession trainer NPCs in Lion’s Arch in PvE. Did not work on SiegeRazer or the WvW instructor at the WvW borderlands spawn.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Slick_Shoes

Elixir S: Shows 2 duration skill facts. Most likely caused by a bugged Potent Elixirs skill fact.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir_S
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Potent_Elixirs

Super Elixir removes (at least 1?) conditions on impact, but this is not reflected in the ingame tooltip.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Super_Elixir

Air Blast on the flamethrower extends, but does not apply, burning. Rewording this tooltip is suggested.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Air_Blast

Drop Antidote on the Med kit only removes 1 condition, despite implying multiple. If the tooltip could be updated to say “Number of Conditions Removed: #”, that would be great.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Drop_Antidote

Deep Freeze on the Elementalist’s conjure frost bow skill is not broken by stun breakers.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deep_Freeze

My suggestion would be that, once the overflow WvW map has been implemented, reduce the per map cap (by around 15 players, +/- some depending on many factors).
Ideally, the existing WvW maps would undergo some changes (as well as some other components) in order to accomodate for the lesser number of players. However, seeing as how WvW already functions for a varying amount of players (i.e. when there are few players for each server), the necessity for those changes is low.

The idea is that the lesser number of players would help limit the severity of server imbalances. (Using hypothetical numbers here). Fighting 50 vs 125 will always be hard, but it will still be easier than 50 vs 140. The absence of those extra 15 players could mean less players are in the zerg since their roles need to be filled. Reducing the zerg size would reduce the rate at which objectives are captured, thus reducing the rate at which the score imbalance is accumulated. It would also make it easier for the outnumbered server to fight back and slow down the enemy zerg. And if those 15 players don’t leave the zerg, they may a price by losing a tower due to poor scouting. A change like this could also encourage players to spread out across other servers, could reduce the occurrences of map lag due to less players in the zerg, and increase the importance of each individual’s effort.

Finally, don’t bother disclosing the per map cap, because it would become very difficult to change it even slightly without massive amounts of complaining and would hinder experimentation to find the right number. Plus, it’s more of a curiosity thing than necessary information. Knowing the map cap isn’t going to change how players will play the game; we already have guestimations if it were indeed important, and I’ve never experienced a situation where knowing the map cap would change anything other than the amount of complaining.

Edited for clarity.

1. Server population imbalances (in terms of lowering map limits or anything else)
2. Scoring system adjustments (in terms of encouraging proper 2 vs 1)
3. Reward system upgrades (in terms of how you can get credit for an event, ie Dolyak escorts, defending an objective, etc)

I mentioned something like this a long time ago and henceforth agree with it. However, the point augmentations should probably incorporate the overall PPT of servers as well as their overall score. Some servers simply get massive numbers during a particular timezone, but die off during other hours. It wouldn’t be fun for players in the SEA timezone to be fighting off the others servers at once with a PPT of 25, just because their NA timezone gets 400+ PPT. So the rewards, etc. should also (or primarily) scale based off of the current PPT of the servers to promote healthy competition around the clock.

I thought about this as well a while back and wondered why they don’t just reduce the map limit. However, I think part of the problem is that even though it would make sense to do that, I don’t think the maps themselves are designed for small numbers of players, and it would affect the gameplay/feel of WvW. Currently, even if all servers have a queue on a map, I can still go quite a while without seeing an enemy player (let alone fight and kill one without me or them running off), and the map only feels cramped when I encounter a zerg. There are many underpopulated and unused areas of the maps already; reducing the number of players would increase that area and reduce the amount of enemies encountered, thus reducing the amount of pvp. That may be more desirable for those who like to sneak around the map or like that style of gameplay, but less desirable for those who like constant combat, so a balance has to be made. Players who want constant combat may choose higher tiers, while those who don’t may choose less populated tiers. Reducing the chances of pvp occuring by reducing the number of players may not be in the best interest of WvW at the moment.

The best example (really a counter-example) I can think of at the moment in the game is some sPvPers perspective of hotjoin. They think that 5v5 is fine, but that 8v8 is a zergfest. The extra 6 players make the map feel more cramped and affects the strategies you can use. Escaping a fight is a lot more difficult, you have to be more cautious of another player(s) entering the fight, your less likely to capture a point without fighting another player, the (based on some sPvPers’ perspective) skill of each individual player may become less important, some build types become unviable (glass cannon), strategy doesn’t matter, etc. Personally, I find 8v8 more entertaining because of some of those reasons (some of which are false) and would actually prefer WvW to feel a bit more populated by reducing some of the unused space. In WvW, reducing the numbers would have an affect and alter gameplay, although in different ways. Based on perspective some of those changes may be better and some may be worse, so ultimately it comes down to a design decision.

TLDR: In order to reduce the players per map, they would/should shave off some of the unused space by changing the map; a time consuming process.

Yes because it’s fun, encourages people to fight over them due to their value, and reduces/punishes zergers who leave locations vulnerable to capture an objective with massive numbers of people (whatever that objective may be).

But 2 things I would change would be:

1. Add some reward for capturing a point, even if it’s just a pitance. In its current implementation, character progression (in terms of karma, exp, wxp, badges, money, etc.) slows down to pretty much 0, which is the same problem sPvP is having and is trying to fix. Not enough to compete with other mechanics like capturing camps, killing large groups of players, or enough to encourage abuse; just enough to allow character progression to continue at a bare minimum pace. Maybe like 10 wxp, karma, exp, and coin per capture.

2. Make it affect only that individual map, not all maps. It’s annoying to have what is happening on 1 map affect the map you are on. Combined with the lack or rewards and progression, there is no incentive to be the person or team who goes to another borderland to disrupt the buff, so getting someone to do that task while outnumbered will be difficult once the initial excitement wears off.

The predominant reason is simply because the server wouldn’t be able to handle the number of calculations necessary in such a short amount of time. GW1 had body-blocking (aka collision detection) and it worked pretty well with no griefing. However, the most players involved in a single fight at a time were 24 in AB under rare circumstances (plus minions, etc; although I think HoH had a 36 person arena at some point). Expanded into GW2’s WvW and PvE with numbers in the 100’s, the game would be unplayable. It would also likely require all of the game’s AI to be modified and rewritten.

I would like to know this as well. I know Anet said they would happen occasionally, but I haven’t seen one in a few days. How random are they?

Edit:
Went back to check on some stuff. On the original patch notes from august 20:
After the Clockwork Chaos release, the invasions will continue at a less frequent pace.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-20-2013

On a different thread about another topic(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-80-players/page/2#post2755425), Colin Johansson states:

Will the system which allows the Scarlet Invasions to ‘echo’ in to overflow servers be applied to this and other current large-scale events?

During the release Tequatl will work this way yes, all overflows created within 10 mintues or so of Tequatl arriving will also inherent the event. We’re doing this manually right now while our engineering team works on the ability to have this handled automagically by the system, once that is completed we’d roll that concept out to other major encounters as the default behavior…forever. No ETA on this, but we’re working on it right now.
[/quote]

Not exactly the same scenario, but it makes me wonder if the Scarlett invasions are being triggered manually in order to control the generation of overflow servers.

I don’t think righteous indignation can be removed, because it is 1 of the main mechanics preventing zergs from being overly effective. RI prevents large forces from immediately recapping an objective like camps, making small teams that cut off zerg supply effective. It also allows groups that capture objectives time to potentially setup defensive positions, use up a locations resources, and allow supply dolyaks to start moving out of the camp before being taken down.

As for the points-per-tick changes that sounds like an interesting idea, although I’m not sure how changing how often points tick would affect things. Theoretically, it could encourage smaller teams to protect objectives like camps, since they’ll need to be held for more points and you may get a steady stream of action from teams trying to flip it more often. In practice however, I don’t think small teams or individuals would stick around to contest the point unless there was some sort of beneficial activity to be performed while potentially waiting around.

FA because you could run fun and unique builds that wouldn’t be viable or optimal anywhere else in pvp with great success. Grenth’s Balance spike necro, Symbols of Inspiration mesmer, paragons.

AB (prior to the period of time where it was on Grenz Frontier nearly 24/7 for months). Same reason as FA, large variety of fun and unique builds that could be run with success. But I think sPvP 8v8 hotjoin is pretty close to this format (with obvious differences).

Whatever system they use for capture point colors is probably related to the one used is sPvP. They changed the map colors in sPvP for clarity, so this could have been a side effect. Either way, not a big deal.

Although I agree with the problems, I don’t agree with all of the proposed solutions.

If you remove tower to tower siege the zergs will mostly sit in towers until one decides to come out to build an open field treb, at which point the defenders will rush/suicide the trebs and then return to turtling. Forcing an active defense reduces turtling. Also, most trebs in range of another tower can be countered from the outside or after breaching the outer walls, forcing defenders to engage instead of allowing them to turtle forever. Aside from 3rd floor SMC trebs, some of which are uncounterable without practically taking SMC, treb range is fine. As for the upcoming treb mastery, I interpreted the supply draining ability as only affecting players and not tower supply; I haven’t seen any official explanation on what it takes supply from.

As for actual defense, walls need to be thicker so that defenders can actually stand up there and defend without getting destroyed by zerg AoE, and there probably needs to be a counter to point-blank catapults so that a defender can get in more than 2 hits before getting nearly AoE’d to death by the zerg below.

Contesting and waypoints also needs to be worked on for multiple reasons (easily contested, waypoint rushing, etc). But I imagine those changes would require significant tampering with other systems in the game, so it would take a while to implement any changes.

From an offensive standpoint, increase the credit area for sieging a location, so that players don’t have to all stand and rush to the same location in order to get credit. That would encourage people to do other things during a siege besides being 1 of 30+ people standing around the catapult/ram. The size and location of the actual cap area remains the same.

I don’t think that they’ll add much to increase the golem’s power against structures seeing as how they are already powerful, especially in significant numbers . I imagine they’d focus on the golem’s utility and survivability. For instance, in no particular order:
Your rank 1 and 5 skill proposals (probably 10% speed boost).
Golems do 5% more damage.
Increased attack radius and number of targets that can be hit with the number 1 skill.
Bubble shield creates a combo field (light or water).
Golems takes 75% less falling damage.
Whirling attacks (#2 skill) act as a whirl finisher.

Randulf.7614:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Quoting Colin from another thread on this matter:

ColinJohanson.2394:

The setting adjustments you can make currently will expand beyond just WvW, and simply be a game wide setting you apply for culling rules. For most folks, this means you can adjust the settings to actually improve your performance over current performance if you wish, since fallback models and name-tags are cheaper than full model renders.

If you do want to turn everything up to insane, you also now have that option to see an extremely large number of people in all their graphics glory. The choice is entirely yours!

In other words, yes you will be able to adjust culling levels the same as WvW.

I’m afraid some of this computer speak of “fallback models” is a little lost on me. Does this mean to play the game at our current performance, we would have to reduce our graphics settings?

Fallback models are also used for people who have hard drives that take a while to load model data, or lots of models very quickly. Below are images of them in WvW (with team colors on) before I got a solid state drive.

I agree with Deniara in that adding additional effects to the current combo fields would probably make them imbalanced, as well as increase skill lag due to the increased math involved. However adding the current finisher types to existing weapons could possibly make them imbalanced.

Perhaps a solution is to add new types of combo fields and finishers to the game that encourage other tactics. For example, a short duration, cone-shaped combo fields that results in a stronger effect when a projectile or leap finisher passes through it within the correct radius. Or adding a combo field type that inflicts torment. Or add some form of channeled finishers for skills such as kill-shot that provide a stronger effect than projectile finishers.

A while back I remember seeing a video on Twitch with Colin Johanson and someone from a german fansite in which they were talking about upcoming changes to PvE content and answering questions, and that he would expand on them later in a blog post, which he already did. Near the end of the show, he said there would be a similar discussion involving WvW later that week, but I can’t find the link to the WvW discussion (or the PvE discussion). Does anyone know if the WvW discussion happened, and if so can you post the link? Thanks.

It’s probably related to this. Apparently sometimes after a transformation, your character leaves behind a copy (not sure if it’s consistent). You may want to post a link to this thread in their too.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/My-character-split-into-two/first#post2396694

I am level 50, and the WvW karma armor vendor (on all maps) offers level 45 masterwork armor, while offering level 50 armor for Fine and Rare qualities. The level 45 masterwork armor should be level 50. The level requirement of the armor sold by this vendor increase by 5 every 5 levels, but the masterwork quality is consistently one tier behind.

The badges of honor vendor may need to be checked as well. I don’t recall the target level 60 moving, but it seems like an odd level choice instead of a max 80 or scaling value.

On another note, it would be a nice quality of life update if the icons above the NPC heads were updated , so that the karma vendor has a karma instead of the coin symbol on its icon. Same goes for the badges of honor vendor. That would help tell them apart quicker.

1st pic: Level 50 Fine quality.
2nd pic: Level 45 Masterwork quality.

Possibly a risen plague carrier?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Risen_Plague_Carrier

Or maybe the corpse of a risen chicken; even though that would be odd for that side of the map since I don’t recall ever seeing them over there.

Those are my guesses.

I’m just gonna reply to the Weapons and Utilities part:
Sword: Yes, this should be fixed. It would “improve the feel of the weapon”, to borrow the words one of the devs who talked about potential longbow changes in SOTG.
Longbow:
1. You bring up a good point about being out of range of buffs, but your compensated by being out of range of most danger. I’ll admit though I’d rather have it be a constant damage, but that would change the way the weapon is used. I’d wait to see what other changes could be made to the weapon’s before changing the numbers, so that it isn’t made overpowered.
2 & 3. Basically I agree. Also mentioned in SOTG.

Utilities
A. Signet of Renewal: Perhaps reduce slightly so that when traited the cooldown goes down to 40 seconds. One of the issues with this skill is that it is also a stun breaker, and you can’t have those on too low a recharge.
B. I’m fine with Protect Me transferring a condition or two, or perhaps some other additional effect. As for Guard, I think it needs a new functionality. The main reason people seem to use it is to get the buffs from nature’s voice. The protection for your pet is good , but the stealth is not so useful except in very specific situations. The functionality could be changed so thakittens more than a use-on-recharge skill and can be used tactically.
C. Lightning Reflexes: Could (and perhaps should) get a remove crippled, chilled, and immobilized like the thief’s Roll for Initiative. The vigor duration and damage would be reduced slightly to compensate.

Just want to point out that technically using some of these macros (like a repeated loop) is a bannable offense. Are you likely to be banned for it? Probably not. But its still worth mentioning in case some people reading this think they are 100% acceptable.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Policy-3rd-Party-Programs-Multi-Boxing-Macros

And yes, I think this is a bug.

It would be kind of cool if they could route you to a district based on who you are facing that week in WvW or server rank, while allowing people to choose their district as well. Something like “Enter Heart of the Mists” with options: Auto, District 1 (Ranks 1-6), District 2 (Ranks 7-12), District 3 (13-18), District 4 (the rest). Where auto takes you to the appropriate district if there is space available. As a way to get know the folks you are killing in WvW, and there are a lot of people who play both sPvP and WvW. But I’m fine with any solution; I just hope the WvW borderland selection would work properly if its treated as an overflow, instead of Unknown Borderlands.

Happened to me after using the cauldron and turning into a costume brawl character (pink moa). I’m not sure when it ran out but when I switched back to the GW window, the copy was gone and the cauldron had expired. It was there for around 5 minutes.

I had been out of combat for about 10 seconds and use Best Performance graphics settings with:
Render Sampling at native.
All checkboxes off.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’d advise against splitting the skills up too much. Skill dissonance is what killed PVP in City of Heroes many years ago.

Agreed. I never played City of Heroes, but my experience from GW1 was that there were way too many differences between skills in PvE and PvP, especially if you liked to play all the professions. Too many important skills had vastly different effects and usages between the 2 modes, which likely hurt new player participation in PvP.

Also, as the PvE-only and PvE versions of skills got less and less balanced, harder content was created to match them which further reduced the viability of the more balanced skills and builds. The PvE ‘meta’ devolved into practically requiring specific PvE builds (Ursan, Shadow Form, Signet of Spirits, etc) for harder content (Domain of Anguish, Underworld, etc), which reduced build variety far worse than most of the PvP changes.

To answer the original question, micromanaging all skills would be too difficult for most players to you use since you would have to add more F-buttons (F5, F6, F7). For a few players this would be fine, but when in a large fight most players would not be able to keep with micromanaging their pet along with all the AoE, other players, minions/clones, positioning, cooldowns, etc. I would like the #3 skills for pets to be able to be micromanaged, since they tend to be the most useful of the 3; but the auto-attack and #2 would be too much for most players. For example, controlling the drake blast finisher would be helpful, but it’s Bite skill and auto-attack should typically be used as often possible.

One of the best improvements that can be made to pets still involve AI improvements instead of micromanagement. The bigger issue that someone pointed out a while back was the reliability of the pet. The reason most people would want to be able to micromanage or stow their pet is because it is often doing something unhelpful or not using their skills effectively. I’d rather have the pet act smarter on its own instead of having to micromanage its skills.

That said, there are improvements that could be made to the pet interface. Robert Hrouda posted multiple times in a long thread a few months ago that had some good ideas in it, and there was the idea that the current F-skills bar could be possibly be compressed to open up space for a new function. I think it went something like:
F1: Tells your pet to attack your target and changes it to aggressive. Pressing it again with no target selected causes it to return to you, thus combining the current F1 and F3 actions.
F2: Pet special (same as current functionality).
F3: New ability, like the pet’s #3 skill.
F4: Swap pet (same as current functionality).

Thus the number of buttons doesn’t increase, the current functionality stays nearly the same, and a new function could be added. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard much about those ideas in a while.

Edit: Found the thread from 3 months ago. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Robert-Hrouda-on-pets-in-dungeons/first

I think they need a filter option for showing custom arenas / default rooms. I personally prefer the default settings over the settings most people put on their arenas, so I would find the custom arenas at the top annoying.

Also, depending on how you spend your game time, 1600 gems isn’t really that much (like 55 in-game gold?). If you are the only person funding it and only do sPvP, then yes it can be expensive; but if you have guild members that pitch in and that do PvE it can be quite easy to fund.

And as for arena promotion, the suggestions said obverkid should help.

Snowreap.5174:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet has addressed the wrong issue. The true issue is WvW coverage/population.
Coverage/population needs to be evened out among the servers.

This is a valid argument.

I propose an easy fix: Arenanet needs to force you to move to a different server, and they need to lock your account so that you can only play during periods of the day when your new server has low coverage.

If Arenanet does this for enough players, the problem will be solved.

If you don’t think this is a good solution, I invite you to propose an alternative that doesn’t involve forcing players to switch servers or what time of day they want to play.

-ken

Forcing players apart could split friends, guilds, communities, and cause numerous other problems.

A better solution would be to give a scaling amount of extra points for capturing a location belonging to:

A) The server with the highest Points-Per-Tick, with a minimum difference of X PPT in order to get the extra points.

and/or

B) The server with the highest overall score, with a minimum difference of X points (10,000?) in order to get the extra points.

If the matchup was between SoR, DB, and Mag, it is quite obvious who would win. Neither DB or Mag would be able to compete on their own, or perhaps even together. However, giving them an incentive to attack the higher PPT server SoR would hopefully lessen the severity of the blowout while keeping all sides engaged in a more even 1st vs (2nd & 3rd). And DB and Mag could always just fight for second place if they don’t care about first, which is what currently happens in most matchups anyways.

Players themselves have to figure out the population issues, but changes to the match scoring system could help lessen the impact of coverage gaps.

Pat Cavit.9234:

Looked into this a bit, I’m not seeing these issues in Firefox/Chrome/IE10.

Since I’m at home I’m running beta versions of Firefox & Chrome though, I’ll take a look tomorrow when I get in & see if I can reproduce this.

Opera’s being wonky is a known thing, it’s not a priority because we get so little Opera traffic.

Ashley Segovia addressed the problem in this post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/HoM-Calculator-Website-not-working/first#post1945825

You forgot to mention that he does things that are not technologically possible:

Made blueprints account bound after Anet said they tried and it couldn’t be done.
Split EU and NA reset times, after saying it simply wasn’t possible.
Added a despawn timer to siege, after another employee said it couldn’t be done.

And probably a few other things I have forgotten about.

You’ll want to see Anet’s response/solution in this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/HoM-Calculator-Website-not-working/first#post1945825

The second Anet post is probably the one you want.

This bug doesn’t consistently occur across the world, or even a map. For example, it tends to happen in Eternal Battlegrounds but I’ve never had it happen in the Heart of the Mists. Even in EB, there are some areas where it will occur and others it won’t.

The fastest way to check if you (or the area) is bugged is to:

Jump from one spot to another (flat ground is fine) and do not be attempting to move upon landing. After landing, if you can’t activate your auto-attack or any skills, then you’re in an area where the jumping bug will occur. Taking a step will allow you to use your skills again.

I also have this happen occasionally, but it could be for a couple of reasons.

1. Right-clicking with the mouse is identical to the F-key. So if you are rotating the camera and accidentally right-click something your target will change; and if you are within range your character will try to attack it or interact with it. There is currently no option to disable this. This is probably what is happening for you.

2. You may also want to check your “Combat/Movement” settings under the Options->General Options tab.

To put it simply:
When jumping to a new location (even on flat ground) and not attempting to move when you land, you cannot use skills, place siege, etc.. Upon moving, you can use skills again.

On another note, does anyone know what happens if you get hit with immobilize while in the air? Does it become a super stun since you can’t use stun breakers?

Edit: It seems that after being in a zone for a varying amount time, everything seems to start working again. Entering a different zone or relogging causes the bug to reappear. Also, you cannot interact (F key) before taking the falling damage: So if you and an enemy jump off a cliff, you can’t collect your loot bag if they move first; although you can trick them into following you and be entertained.

Edit 2: The “put simply” example only seems to work in population heavy zones like WvW Eternal Battlegrounds; it doesn’t occur in the Heart of the Mists.

Thanks. It doesn’t seem it is possible then.

In sPvP the Knight’s amulet grants Vitality (major), Precision, and Power stats. In PvE, vitality is replaced with toughness in the Knight’s insignia and dungeon armor.

Has anyone found a way to get those 3 stats together in PvE/WvW? The closest I have been able to find is to where full Magi gear from the Temples in Orr with Healing Power (major), Vitality (minor), Precision (minor); but this is not optimal since I lose a lot of power.

I want to focus on the Power, Precision, and Vitality stats (for my thief), although I don’t care which is the major stat all too much (preferably Vitality).

Picture 1 is what I have in PvE using basically Knight’s armor with Magi accessories, note the health difference that is my issue.
Picture 2 is with the sPvP Knight’s amulet, with the focus on Vitality. The same build and runes are used.