Guild Wars 2

I feel very sad for Arenanet and the amount of complaints directed at them. Go into the game and ask the people what they think, most of us loved the Lost Shore weekend, it had it’s good bad and ugly but overall it was a great success

I hope arenanet realises the vocal minority is just incredibly vocal and don’t represent the majority.

Have you tried relogging?

90% of TP issues can be solved by coming out of GW2 entirely and logging back in again.

Engineer is probably the best for puzzles, there is an exlir that grants stability (Which makes you immune to most knockdown/blow out traps), several ways to obtain swiftness and the delightfully precise and long ranged jump shot on rifle.

Mesmer has a stability mantra, but only a single speed buff, no (gap crossing) teleport. It does however have portal which is fantastic for helping friends or working as a checkpoint in case of a mistake, but you will have to do the puzzles themselves with skill

Asura have fantastic animation. Animations vary by race to quite an extent, the asura though are just perfect, it totally sells the fact their head is about half their body mass.

It feels like their body exists to propel their head in the desired direction. While an asura with a greatsword looks like they’re eternally on the verge of wobbling over

This guy for those who havn’t seen it

Drakenvold.9761:

Tyria the world i think,thats what he meant,is Shiro undisputed in this claim?

Considering he’s dead it’s pretty hard for anyone to actually challenge his claim. Trouble with these proverbial pissing contests of “skill” :p

Danikat.8537:

Even outside of lore it takes a minimum of 2 people to bring him down

Even in lore it did. And the Luxons and Kurzicks were fighting over it hundreds of years later

LoreChief.8391:

Did anyone else notice that the Karka can’t swim? They won’t chase you in the water if you jump into it!

Young karka definitely swim, I actually found one swimming and decided to intercept it just to see if they had any unique underwater combat behaviour (Nothing special just swim about and bite me.)

I also saw an egg-layer leap out the water in front of me wayyyy into the air and land atop a 60ft tall cliff, I didn’t catch a glimpse while it was submerged, but it seemed like a scripted event more than an AI behaviour

Ditto with other peoples experiences. One of my exotics with a worthless level 76 ring (about 30 silver on TP) even though I myself am level 80.

I’m not too bothered though, as a trader I recognise the importance of getting more precursors into the market and not getting one is just a matter of bad luck, and getting 1g worth of exotics as opposed to like 2g which is about average isn’t a big enough dip for me to care about.

I still think the people who quickly switched toons to run it multiple times though need to be penalised, besides being tantamount to an exploit, they also adversly affect the game’s fragile economy by flooding the market with exotics and precursors

In terms of % they are the same. But in terms of cost-per-use, mystic kits are cheaper per-use, and of course, the less gold spent on the actual salvage process, the more gold stays in your pocket.

War Siren.2346:

This isn’t life, this is a video game one in which I paid for. It’s kind of messed up that my recreational activity is now causing me more stress than my actual job.

If this is the case I’d advise you find a new game.

You have to understand these events are genuinely world changing. Go to Sunwhatever cove, and look around, talk to the NPCs of lions arch. Compare it to what it looked like 2 days ago – the events actually reshaped the landscape and it’s characters.

This kind’ve permanence and feeling that the players participated in something that had an impact in the history of Tyria isn’t possible in a repeating event. Other MMO’s don’t have any meaning when they’re like “congratulations you beat some random evil”… 20 minutes til story arc resets and you can all go and beat some random evil… again.

As for saying you paid and thus deserve it, that isn’t true in ANY business in the world. If you pay money but there is a schedule and you miss the schedule, you miss out.

I’m surprised nobody has brought up what the mists reveal to us in this glimpses. As you said yourself:

Quote: " … These fractals are slices of the Mists, fragments of time that have been stabilized by the intrepid asura researcher Dessa. Some of these vignettes from history may be familiar to original Guild Wars players, while others will represent previously unseen events. … " – Leah Rivera

If some of these are glimpses of the past and future…

…am I not the only one bothered by the fact one of the fractals is the shattered remains of Rata Sum? and not too distant in the future either… that poor chicken is still in containment xD

Is the destruction of rata Sum a possible event tabled in some future expansion (That’d be awesome yet horrifying if it is).

In case you had missed that that scene is Rata Sum, a quick tour:

MosesZD.7428:

Ryuujin.8236:

MidgeisGood.2153:

Ok im sorry, have you read the patch notes for the other classes??? Mesmers are still in a very good spot and ANET is not screwing u guys more than any other. Just look at engineers, elem, who got jack kitten this patch.

Elementalists and engineers can still hit people standing at higher elevations – mesmers in an assault on a keep (ie. 90)% of WvW are about as much use as a screen door on a submarine. Basiclly they’ve been reduced to portal bots

Not every class should be good at everything. I don’t understand why people can’t understand this and rant-and-rave about it on the forums.

This isn’t a case of mesmer’s not being good at something, this is a case of mesmers can’t do something fundamental (Shoot back at people on a wall)

GW2 manifesto specified that there was no fixed class roles; no tank, no healer etc. But what we have here is exactly that – Mesmers are scissors to wall defenders rock. Our role in a siege is to sit about and wait for the other classes to do their job, so I can get inside and do “mine” (by mine i mean, “the job every class can do – attack things on the ground”)

SteepledHat.1345:

I’m surprised they aren’t calling for our shatters to be nerfed too.

They are in the sPvP forum.

The few armour and weapons skins they’ve released have been locked inside those stupid RNG boxes too.

When i go into a store, i buy the stuff I want, I don’t buy raffle tickets.

Imagine this in real life.. walk into a corner shop and buy 5 “random item” coupons. “Man I do hope i get bread and milk!” “Hmm, nope. Washing up powder and cat food”

The asura seem to have originally been planned to be a human faction back in GW1: Eutopia as seen by this concept art:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:%22Native_Architecture%22_concept_art.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:%22Summoner%22_concept_art.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:%22Andes_Temple%22_concept_art_2.jpg
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:Golem_concept_art_4.jpg

There’s been quite a lot of patches lately, there was the big weekly update, plus the new weekend content there’s been a couple maintenance mini patches.

Typically though (As is the case with most MMOs) there’s 1 fairly large content patch and one smaller maintenance patch a week. You can’t “opt out” of patches in an MMO because obviously in order for everyone to be on the same page every has to be running the exact same version of the game.

I’m not convinced the karka are draconic minions. Their nest and bodies don’t display obvious signs of draconic corruption (Pretty sure the mess is simply secretions)

The perspective of 2/3 of our raid at the end… never seen the framerate jump back up so fast. Lava is great at “culling” excess characters >:D

I think we could afford to learn from the cathedral of lyssa, by splitting players up to multiple sub-events we could reduce the number on screen without scaling down the epicness.

When the road forked in securing the island on day I actually that that was going to happen and we’d split into sub-groups, but instead the lionguard lady just dragged us along with her and i know now that chain of events isn’t even unique.

I loved the finale event, thought it was fantastic – it was however, like always a bit too many people and mobs on screen at once.

Later on I helped in a far quieter overflow and it was way more fun due to the fact we had room and fps spare to actually perform proper combat strategy instead of just mashing 1 and hoping you hit something in the chaos.

But that is just nitpicking, I’m very happy with the content.

So I’m not the only one who thought it felt a little like that, I was half tempted to summon my power armour just for the lulz if it wouldn’t been such a liability to my survival

Looks pretty close, maybe a bit lighter skin tone.

A problem you’d find if you tried make him properly is that the T3 light armour, the gems share the dye with the tunic, whereas in the art Snaff’s gems are sort’ve red, when his tunic is more purple.

He’s also wearing two armbraces but, that’s artistic license for you

They look cute and have hilarious (and incredibly well made) animations compared to the other classes, all of which contrasts wonderfully with their massive egos, immense capability, high technology and the fact none of the races can take them seriously due to their stature while their faction brings a much needed breath of technology to the setting (Why do worlds where magic exist never utilise magic with science?)

They are bit of a comic foil in the game so I get why some people hate on them (This game isn’t dark and edgy enough with Asura in it!)

MisterEction.9382:

Female Asura have the best voice acting and script in the game IMO. By far. I was actually thinking of filling all my slots with female Asura of different professions.

I actually like the male asura’s dialogue more, more intellectual and less snarky.

ie. Retaliation: “Feedback loop initiated!” Vs “C’mon try and hit me!”

Of course, female has one of the best random combat ready quotes of any race:
“You’re dumb. You’re gonna die and you’ll leave a dumb corpse!”

On a different note though, Jennifer Hale (Commander Shepard!) is listed as having done “female Sylvari” voiceovers, dunno if thats the female player character or some NPC but… Commander Shepard is a sylvari :p

I suggest you gather the opinion of Sylvari and Asura alike.

As an asura I would like to point out our intellect, good looks (observe these luxurious ears!), our high technology and mod cons in what is a backwater cesspit of a world (We built our city in the air so it doesn’t have to sit amongst the filth and grime) – we have golem servants and workers so we may follow intellectual and private pursuits, etheric entertainment such as television and radio.

We also have robotic assault armour, kinetic shielding and energy weapons, and some of the best cultural fashions, and Rata Sum is the epitomy of convenience in terms of layout of important facilities,

As for whatever my esteemed sylvari collegues may tell you in favour of his… her… IT’S own race, might I remind you: Do you value the opinion of a houseplant?

3 words.
Supply and Demand.

First is the supply of ecto; the supply of ecto dropped, so the price of ecto has risen. As a crafter it’s up to you to pass that change on to the consumer.

Secondly is the supply of goods to the consumer. If there are too many crafters trying to sell to too few consumers, the price will be pushed down to the point you can’t make money.

Solution? – Find ways to make a deeper margin or to maximise sales, get creative. The economy is dictated entirely organically by the players themselves, there is little arenanet can do to fix that. If they made ecto more common the value of the crafted goods would go down but your margin would probably stay just as tight at the end of the day.

As the saying goes, if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.

Ecto’s price is bound to the availability of rares and the price of salvage kits

The availability of rares is determined by the amount found in the world, and the amount crafted for the express purpose of salvage. The craft rares in turn are dictated by the price of T5 crafting materials (large fangs, claws, potent blood etc), and those prices are still elevated but slowly dropping again. Likewise, fractals are churning out a lot of rares.

So the value of ecto may well drop, but I’m not sure we’ll see it get anywhere near as low as the 12s mark we saw over Halloween, especially if the cost of gems continues to rise over time as the cost of salvage kits will go with it.

If I valued my time by how much gold i made, I’d never leave the Rata Sum trade floor

I trade for gold and do content for fun, so I’m glad to hear Barney’s beefier now; he was just too soft on the old knuckles before

RhysSebastian.7651:

Your LOS issue isnt a nerf, its what every ranged class in the game has to deal with. Us poor necros had our plague signet hit the same way you did. I mean at first its a little jarring, but it kind of makes sense y’know?

And there you go again you’re not listening to a word any of us have said.

Since when does Shadow Refuge fail because there is no LoS between the caster and their nearest opponent. Since when can you not summon a war banner if your nearest opponent executes a dodge roll, a Guardian can use Shield of Absorption even when he is all alone and no enemies are near.

For the 50th time, nobody seriously thinks offensive phantasms should be usable outside of LoS, but mesmer’s have utility phantasms that don’t attack yet these changes effect them too – this is not the definition of fixed.

They fixed one skill, and broke several.

RhysSebastian.7651:

How did you defeat skilled mesmers who abused LOS in the map forest of niflhel, at the henge?

I didn’t. I don’t play sPvP. Neither do most the players. We have PvP/PvE split skills now, if there is a balance problem in PvP then they can fix it in PvP without kicking PvE and WvW in the head

RhysSebastian.7651:

Not saying that mesmer doesn’t take skill to play, but the phantasm spam out of LOS was pretty attrocious in SPVP. I felt like i was playing WOW Tourny again, vs droods.

Now the good Mesmers will shine ever brighter, as the mediocres become even more dull.

What isnt there to like?

Perhaps you need to read the forum more. You’re jsut like every other non-mesmer tourist. Thinking that a broken skill that we all agree needed fixing justifies carte blanche breaking every phantasm in the game (Seriously, explain to me why I can’t cast disenchanter to remove a condition from myself if the nearest enemy to be happens to have aegis?)

Today we got a whole party up to the edn of the new jumping puzzle, made our way to the champion wind rider…

…killed it.

You have recieved [Dagger]

Not a blue dagger, or a green dagger… certainly not a rare dagger – jsut a white, trash dagger. Not even any coins, and no mini event, just. XP and a white level 79 dagger

Sorry, but we don’t take orders from thieves. Go back to your own forum.

kthnxbai

Peetee.9406:

Sorry, I did not understand his point. Could you explain it in dumb-dumb words for stupid people like me?

If people were taken aside and asked to agreed on a system in the absence of knowledge of which group they’ll fall into (And it had to be a one-shot event) they would likely agree to “pick the time when the most people are online”, because it is the optimum choice, only a minority can’t attend the event.

It’s only in context people feel it’s unfair because they ended up in that minority

Also, OP was reminding you about the importance of a social contract. Which is to say in simple terms “For everyone to have nice things there has to be a system and you have to be willing to obey that system even when you end up getting the rough end of it”

I’ve been trying get a precursor and I still havn’t obtained one in the last 100 attempts, that doesn’t mean anything 100 attempts is a statistical drop in the ocean, but it does mean that precursor drop rate probably hasn’t been raised THAT significantly

The drop rate appears to be about 1 in 1000 prior to the patch so even doubling the chance is still only 1 in 500. Combined with the fractal dungeon farming and additional level 80 zones, and the improvement in the T5 and T6 market more people can afford them too which has increased demand relative to supply.

Peetee.9406:

This is a video game’s forum, not a college psych class.

Doesn’t make his point any less valid. Ignorance isn’t a substitute

Golems don’t actually contain spirits; not normally anyway, the inquest often bind sentient creatures (often asura) to golems but a typical golem is non-sentient, just a robot running on it’s programming.

Most asura are tech reliant and often proficient in modifying it – elementalists with devices for manipulating elemental energies, guardians with kinetic barriers or warriors in power armour but in the context of asura that doesn’t make them engineers. “Golemancer” is not a profession as in a class so much as a craft skill like weapon smithing or armour craft, albeit one you can’t learn as a trade profession.

The other misconception about golemancy is that it’s a dynamics field, while dynamics specialises in golems we do have known examples from other colleges – Snaff and Zojja are both from synergetics

Just popping in to give my thumbs up to the devs on this one too

@OP: And what would you know about how interesting it is to play mesmer. According to your forum posting you’re a necromancer.

Hyena.2037:

There’s also a memorial statue of him outside Eir’s house in game.

As for class… well one could make the argument for elementalist but he and zojja (who was an elementalist) bicker over the use of elemental magic in golomancy in the book, so that’s probably not it, so maybe an engineer?

Snaff was a mesmer.

Note that his specialty was mind magic and mind-tech interfacing. It underpinned Destiny’s Edge’s entire strategy against kralky

You don’t think the spike in demand might be short lived?

The content has jsut come out and everyone is like “ZOMGNEWTOYSMUSTHAVETHEMNOOOOOOOOW” – in a weeks time the initial rush will’ve gone through.

Also, powerful blood and armoured scale have had elevated prices for months; now theres a demand for fangs and the price has jumped up it’s a bad thing?

shrug

Personally I’m loving the new economy, lots more opportunities

Asum.4960:

While i agree with you, whats your conclusion on this?
Whats the message?

The message every forum ever has to say about us. “Nerf them” ¬_¬ – the reason we can’t have nice things, is that if they can’t have the nice thing, they’ll cry for it to be removed. Even though we share our nice things with our parties.

SonicTHI.3217:

Well this is what you get once you start catering to the WoW babies.
I guess its time for a server merge. Which wouldnt be a bad thing considering sharding the servers into worlds was a stupid idea to begin with anyway.

Except half the worlds are already full; the disparity is where the server’s population ends up. If you merge servers rather than making fringe areas busier, you’ll just end up forcing the few populous areas into overflow more frequently.

There needs to be more reward for spreading out and exploring the world. karma equality on events, loot scaling based on player, and downscaling being a bit more vicious on players in exotics would all help.

MajorShock.4023:

But I wondered “What if they unified under one banner and formed a larger more cohesive group?” and that led to “What if they then decided to declare war on the others races?”

If you’ve played the infintiy ball story arc:
You'd know that based on analysis of alternative future timelines, in 3 out of 5 of the timelines, the dragons won. In 2 out of the 5 timelines the Asuran player character formed a meta krewe to rival the inquest, invented steam golem technology and conquered all of tyria (Some of which can be seen leaking out of temporal rifts in metrica and lornar's pass)

The original anet team members from that other company are as far back as Diablo 2, the purple kitty mount came out rather a lot later

Ok let me explain in greater deal so all the non mesmers can understand, and hopefully the devs can understand what has gone wrong here in clean concise terms; so cast aside your preconceptions about this being a DPS arguement or just mesmers whining.

Class mechanic resource
All classes have a resource that is associated with their class mechanic. Rangers have a pet they double team with and the pet is traited and controleld to further boost the effectiveness of the pair, warrior build adrenaline and there are traits that give additional benefits such as high defence when adrenaline is high. Thieves are based on initiative and their traits and skills revolve heavily around it.

Mesmer’s class abilities use illusions as their resource. Mesmers are semi unique (along with rangers) in that their “resource” can be directly attacked by an opponent to deny them access to it. The problem with the nerfs is that now not only can you destroy teh resource, but you can deny the mesmer even generating it, simply by having aegis up or blinding them.

Phantasms as attacks, not pets
The next thing is the common misconception of phantasms being “pets”. Mesmers do not summon illusions like minions, they are an exotic single target attack, they deal damage comparable to any other classes heavy hitting primary attack and most mesmers don’t expect a phantasm to live long enough to hit twice, to all intents and purposes a phantasm is foremost an attack and secondly it generates a point of their class resource to then convert into a shatter or defensive ability.

When a warrior drops his hundreds blades, or a thief drops unload blind or aegis only blocks the first hit. But when a mesmer uses a multi-hit phantasm, say iWarden or iZerker, if he is blinded all the damage from the phantasm is mitigated and he also loses his class resource. it’s like blind stopping an entire HB barrage and then killing his adrenaline.

Not only this, but the failed attack goes onto a full cooldown cycle afterward!

Illusions as utilities
Not all illusion spells are offensive. iWarden can be traited to behave as a missile shield, iDefender provides AoE damage mitigation, iDisenchanter provides anti-boon/anti-condition support.

However since these require a target to be summoned, blinds and blocks prevent the mesmer using an on self utility spell (imagine thieves reaction if they wern’t allowed to use shadow refuge while blinded xD). Furthermore many illusions can be traited to provide additional benefits to the mesmer like regeneration and protection when in close proximity, in much the same way engineers can be traited for regen and swiftness while using a kit, again these on-self traits can be blocked with obscure things like blind, block or even a dodge roll.

Very unpredictable.

In summary
The nerfs however well intentioned have ended up being farther reaching than I think arenanet intended. Mesmers are punished to an extreme degree by conditions that do not affect any other class nearly as harshly; to compare it to another classes mechanics, it’d be like making a warrior lose all adrenaline, and completely interuppt his entire next skill, (even if it was a multi-strike skill like HB), AND deny him the ability to use his warbanners simply because his current target has aegis up.

My suggestion
Make blind/block/daze/dodge etc affect both mesmer and phantasms. If the mesmer is blinded, his phantasms are blinded; in the same way a ranger blinded can’t shoot you, a mesmer blinded can’t “shoot” you with his illusory ranged attacks, while at the same time not taking away their ability to build resource points or cast utilities

Parthis.2091:

It’s not a parity issue. It’s not a question of fairness. Step back and think about it for a second; can a thief steal from you if you’re invisible?

Can a ranger snare you if you’re Los? Can a warrior knock you down if you have aegis? Eviserate you if he’s blinded? Hundred Blades you if you’re immune?.

Way to cherry pick your examples. Hundred blades might not work if you’re immune, but it’ll wreck aegis, blind or one-shot blocks. Contrast to iWarden which is also a high yield multi-hit phanty; whereas any kind’ve one shot counter negates all 12 potential hits. A thief might not be able to hit you while invis with steal, but thieves can steal while blinded – and no class can hit you while out of LoS, but I’m not contesting that, iZerker’s out-of-LoS attacks were mechanically broken and needed addressing, this is an entirely different arguement.

And where do we stand with utility phantys like defender and disenchanter. Blind doesn’t prevent a guardian using symbol of protection or whatever it’s called.

Parthis.2091:

All of those traits state Illusions. All of those shatters require Illusions.

Now you’re just grasping at straws; did he really need to individually list every clone and phantasam related skill icon…

cough might I also point you to the entire mesmer forum? – This last patch took a single broken phantasm and used it ans an excuse to take a wrecking ball to the entire class mechanic

You’ve got people quitting the game left right and centre and not for a trivial reason either (Imagine if warriors or thieves lose their adrenaline/init on being blinded, or ranger’s pets could be unsummoned if the target has aegis. Now you know what mesmer’s got last patch)

A good raid leader should still be able to work around it too. Such as having a written cue (such as calling a number or letter very quickly in chat signalling to execute a strategy they discussed in advance. Or maybe a couple of macro binds), and/or putting them on duties in the instance that don’t require sudden changes in strategy.

Just being honest about the situation should be sufficient, anyone who can’t accept and work around that is a massive kitten to begin with and doesn’tdeserve his guild membership.

I can’t think of many situations where vent is essential. The handy thing about vent is you can bark orders to people on the fly, but forward preperation by typing out what’s about to happen beforehand works just as well it just requires a little more patience to explain things

Pointing out parity issues != Being unable to play.

I know how to play a mesmer and have no trouble curb stomping people and mob alike. But it doesn’t change the fact mesmer’s class ability is infinitely more counterable than any other classes.

In order to “balance” it, what they SHOULD do, is cause the phantasm’s attacks to not land if the mesmer is blinded/stunned/whatever; since that is functionally what a phantasm or clone is, a mesmer’s primary ranged attack (it also blocks several utility phantys). The problem with the new implementation is that it also denies us our class mechanic resource. Imagine the uproar if warriors or thieves lost their adrenaline/initiative whenever they got blinded