Guild Wars 2

Xenesis.6389:

I assume standard majority means 75%?

That is a supermajority.

I am fairly confident that this means 50% majority decides, since the directional bias is not indicated. If it were a 66% majority they would say which side needs that majority.

BG conveniently seems to be on break whenever they lose. True or not, it’s a bit boring.

On the current discussion, this is entirely based in the people, not the system. There will ALWAYS be selection criteria to try to keep the quality of group applicants high. This is just how the PUG environment works.

Good video, though, raises a bunch of good points.

I hope that it isn’t nerfed into oblivion. Mortars/cannons/oilpots have such a hard time actually being useful that being able to toast people with incendiary shells is actually nice.

I don’t understand why this thread exists

ANet’s already said that they want to add a MF recipe for +7AR+5stat shouldn’t that be the end of it?

I think this could be interesting as a secondary mechanic but with Stronghold as it is I don’t think we need more maps with different primary mechanics.

Would love to know whether nu skyhammer/spirit watch will be joining the Ranked queue.

Maybe run a poll for it like the WvWers are getting.

OriOri.8724:

Oh so condi spam is a problem but boon spam isn’t? Both of them need to be toned down a lot in competitive game modes. In PvE they are fine as they don’t impact anyone else and allow less skilled players to still enjoy HoT maps. But in competitive modes both boon and condi spam need to be toned down massively

Boon spammers get eaten alive by a bunch of classes including necro and mallyx rev.

Astralporing.1957:

Not having 10 people that might want to do some specific ingame activity speaks nothing about guild’s success

No. No no no. No. We’re not talking about how many people in the guild actually want to raid.

The number of people who want to do raids in a 1000 active-member guild is possibly not 10. We don’t know how many it is. It could be 1, it could be 1000. (It can’t be 0 because we know the poster was interested in raids, but that’s not really relevant)

We could make the case that the number of people interested in raiding in this guild is <10, but that’s extremely unlikely to be the case. Guilds of that size are almost always PvX megaguilds; they are a general sample of the population. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that because of this, the guild experiences a similar uptake rate in raids as the rest of the game. The low figure for this is 5%.

Taking the assumptions that I’ve laid out above and extrapolating from that; assuming that a guild of 1000 members follows the general population (we have no information that would indicate otherwise), there are 5% of them interested in raiding (therefore 50 raiders) yet the poster could not find one other person to raid with. With these assumptions, how could that be?

1. The person is lazy.
2. The guild does not have the communication infrastructure to connect its raiders, either as a core communication system or piggybacking on other infrastructure.
3. The guild is an extreme statistical anomaly and has 81% less raiders than the general population.

Number 1 is rude, number 3 is unlikely, that leaves number 2. This is literally the entire thing. That’s all. We don’t care about how many people in the guild actually want to raid because we don’t have that much information, we can only assume it follows general population trends. The guild is failing to connect the players that are in what is a statistical extreme likelihood. That is why I’m happy to call it unsuccessful because connecting players to do content should be the goal of any guild; as a PvX guild, it should be connecting players for all forms of content.

Astralporing.1957:

That you yourself do not see how much that one quote says about your outlook about raids only shows how deep the problem is.

Personally I would rather you actually listen to what I explicitly say about my viewpoints on raids over the more than 50 pages that we’ve now had in discussions about easy modes in raids rather than your vague interpretations.

Like seriously, it’s all out there. There’s no need to read between the lines here, I’ve laid it all out pretty explicitly.

Ashen.2907:

It could be discovered that GW2 cures all known diseases, prolongs life, and makes one more attractive to the opposite sex and still people would find reasons to complain.

Well let’s be real, we all know this one’s true.

Astralporing.1957:

Oh, come on, you yourself were the one claiming that no guild that isn’t raiding can be called succesful. If this kind of attitude has now spread so much that they are even shared by some nonraiders, it reinforces my point even more.

Er, no. If a 1000 member guild couldn’t organize an RP pizza party I’d say they’re just as unsuccessful as the 1000 member guild that can’t organize a raid.

That you’ve begun to rely on these absurd misinterpretations speaks volumes to the strength of your arguments.

Lahmia.2193:

That doesn’t address the main issue with Reaper Greatsword though, which is how slow it is.

A thing we have to keep in mind about reaper greatsword’s speed (or lack thereof) is that it isn’t an ‘issue’, it’s an explicit feature of the weapon. It’s supposed to be heavy and slow, and that has drawbacks and advantages. I’m somewhat disinclined to believe that ANet will really want to strip what is supposed to be the defining feature of the weapon.

So I’ll just type a super quick response here because this thread makes absolutely no sense. Your topic is elite specs but you never really speak about the system and you spend most of your post complaining about ranger AI.

Erasmus.1624:

we’re still nowhere near the point at which one’s utility skill type selection matters to anyone but that person who selected them.

Uh yeah sure. Hitting an Ele who just popped Armor of Earth with Corrupt Boon really doesn’t matter to them. They’re just fine they don’t care.

I mean come on this is absurd.

Offair.2563:

What’s up with all these people saying run away from it? People roam to find fights that they enjoy, not just cheese to constantly run away from.

1. If you want to fight it go right ahead, you have options. Just run a build with a stack of efficient condi clearing and high offensive power. If you can’t whip up a build that has a nice fat stack of condi cleansing and the damage output it needs to kill the condi class, you’re not trying.
2. If you want these elements pushed out of the meta and therefore have a WvW filled with fights that you enjoy you have to carry your weight personally and run the high condi-cleanse bunker busters. Depending on your tier and timezone you only need to convince a handful of people to run the builds that will completely stonewall these enemies.
3. Not everyone plays for the same reason. I like to solo/duo roam because solo sweeping camps and denying yak points does more for my server than blobbing does.
4. You’re assuming that you simply ignore them and you never fight them when a lot of builds massively benefit from using friendly or enemy camp NPCs to tip fights in your favor. My build is explicitly structured around exploiting camps full of mobs to turn every fight in my favor.

Astralporing.1957:

Haven’t you noticed, that everyone that does not raid now is either unskilled, or lazy, or both, and should feel bad for it, and “git gud”?

Nope. I don’t raid in GW2, or in any game at the moment, and nobody calls me unskilled or lazy. They don’t tell me that I should feel bad for not raiding and they don’t tell me to ‘git gud’.

If raids are toxic, why are they performing so well?

I don’t understand the fundamental arguments behind why this ‘toxicity’ exists. It’s an entirely optional social environment. If you know nine people who believe that the raid environment is toxic, form a regular raid group with them with the behavior that you prefer.

There are training groups, there are hardcore groups, there are casual groups. I don’t really get the arguments of toxicity preventing people from tackling the content.

Zenith.7301:

I’m complaining about your feedback because it is utterly clueless given the development practices.

Can we please just talk about GS and Reaper and not about this stuff?

Rashagar.8349:

So bowing over a corpse after stomping is seen as a bad/trolly thing by some people now? It used to just be a sign that a good fight was had.

Yeah this is what I usually assume. /bow and /salute are practically gg/gf.

Tekoneiric.6817:

Even using canned responses is at least a token acknowledgement that it was worth the effort to post.

Specific problem here is that you’re creating a slippery slope.

Today, silence isn’t enough. You want canned responses tomorrow.
Tomorrow, canned responses isn’t enough. You want proper community management team responses.
Then community manager responses aren’t enough. You want direct developer responses.

Tekoneiric.6817:

As someone who has a very good working knowledge of computers, their capabilities, games, having done some programming and even work on game maps for FPSs in my spare time; my suggestions don’t come without a lack of forethought.

…Perhaps proofread that again.

More seriously without going into quite what suggestions you’re speaking about it’s difficult to really make any kind of analysis of the merits of your suggestion and you seem to be laboring under the assumption that simply because ANet doesn’t respond to your suggestions that they aren’t reading the forums and taking notes.

We know they read the forums, they have a community management team and Gaile is actually a very frequent poster compared to competing MMO community managers. The last three WvW design polls were pulled very specifically from what people were calling for in the WvW forums. Simply with that in mind- that they’d even entertain the idea of permanently pulling DBL out of rotation- I find it extremely difficult to connect the idea of them not listening to the forums with their actions.

Just because they are not actively participating in every single suggestion thread doesn’t mean that they’re not paying attention to suggestions. It’s simply a matter of manpower and effective application of their time.

these builds are instantly countered when you run appropriate condi removal builds, you can literally ignore them because they have no pressure

EremiteAngel.9765:

Isn’t it commonly understood that a bow preceding a fight meant that it was going to be a no-stomp duel

no

the only assumption you can ever make in wvw is that people on the other teams will try to attack you, try to down you, and try to stomp you

also on the whole four tempests thing

are people bringing 4 tempests because they need 4 tempests?
are people bringing 4 tempests because they want 4 tempests?
are people bringing 4 tempests because they have fun playing tempests?
are people bringing 4 tempests because they perform the best DPS and they enjoying topping the dps meters?

frankly it reminds me of iron reaver parses with 10 arcane mages. you can do the fight with any combination of classes, it’s just funny watching iron reaver blow up in <30 seconds.

idc about the other backpieces but i think it’d be really cool if Ad Infinitum/Ascension had unique animations for deathshroud and maybe for other class mechanics

To be quite frank I’ve made multiple suggestions which have been implemented in some variety later. I’d be very surprised if suggestions were truly pointless with that in mind.

if you don’t want to get stomped, don’t get downed

more mlg strats after the break

last balance patch was prior to the current season

next balance patch will be once the season ends

Ario.8964:

I don’t think you got my post at all. I’m not asking for more amulets, I’m asking for the removal of all amulets and have the ability to select gear stats from the stats currently in the game be implemented instead. The amulet system is trash imo and too narrow in what is able to be used competitively. Out of all the amulets in the game about 4 are being used in the current meta. I’d rather see people be able to select their stats freely from their gear with some caps on the max vit, tough, healing and that sort of stuff to prevent god mode builds and then you end up with a more diverse system because every build will be different as people take what they believe will be better suited to their playstyle.

Then it seems you’re not getting my post either.

I’m not saying your idea is bad, good, or anything in between. I’m saying it doesn’t make a difference because stats are the lowest element in building.

First you pick your role.
Then you pick weapons and key utilities that fit that role.
Then you pick traits and traitlines that fit those weapons, your utilities, and your role.
Then you pick runes and sigils that synergize with those weapons, traitlines and traits.
Then you pick stats.

Sometimes it changes around (usually around how Precision interacts with your build), usually this is a rough idea of how it works. But it illustrates the point

If your build is not viable, it is more likely to be because you’ve picked the wrong weapon, you’ve picked the wrong utilities, you’ve picked the wrong traits, you’ve picked the wrong traitlines, you’ve picked the wrong runes, you’ve picked the wrong sigils

THEN

you worry about whether you’ve picked the wrong stats.

Trying to create build diversity through creating stat diversity is either:
A. A gross misunderstanding of effective build strategy
B. Trying to trick your way into getting banned statspreads back

If this were not the case, you would have absolutely no trouble giving me the name of a build that isn’t catered to by the amulets which would be viable with a new amulet that weren’t tanky enough to get instantly banned. But it is the case.

on the other hand it gives new/returning players something to do

if you ask me, ‘something to do’ always trumps vague prestige from deleted items

RedZebra.2345:

sry sarss, just a question wouldn’t this tread be more fun if we had interaction with Anet. Everyone is reffering to Anet to do some but they are silent???

Developer participation doesn’t encourage discussion. At best, it shapes it in a certain way; at worst, it cuts it short. So no, it wouldn’t be more fun.

Ario.8964:

The first request you have is loaded since that is not the point I’m making (also, pretty much every stat combo has been hit that only has 1 defensive option and that’s the problem. Some builds like dps guard need defense and vitality but then need the 3 power buff stats which is why paladin is not optimal). But I will provide an example and give some reasoning behind it it just doesn’t fit all your criteria and won’t use an amulet.

It’s not loaded. The topic of the thread is increasing build diversity. If you think increasing the variety of stat amulets will help build diversity then surely you can think of a stat/build combination that will be brought into relevance through your technique.

I know every stat spread has, at most, one defensive stat (except for healing power, which seems to be internally considered as a half-and-half stat). That’s why I make that distinction, because it’s the internal ruleset.

Specifically on DPS guard, they are not unviable because they have a lack of defense and do not have access to the defenses that would make them viable; on the contrary they have a fairly decent set of defenses in Shield of Courage, Renewed Focus and their healing options. They are not considered meta because the tools they have access to are not relevant against skilled players. Traps get played around and meditations can’t carry the weight.

Ario.8964:

Example: Bruiser type eles (Things like classic d/d ele). They don’t work with the amulet system because they need pretty much every stat for it. The amulet system limits them too much because they can’t take all their essential stats and then you have HoT powercreep but that’s for another thread. With the proposed system d/d ele could become meta again due to the amount of stats it would have to choose from and celestial being available in gear selection. With the current system, the closest you can get to a decent version of that is something like mender’s or sage’s. Both lacking significantly in areas necessary to the performance of a d/d ele.

I’d love it if ANet built up core elementalists to fill their old fire blasting playstyle and role. It was a lot of fun.

But you don’t need to fix them by giving them an amulet that any number of other builds could use, absue, and dominate the meta. You fix Fire and Arcane.

joneirikb.7506:

Personally I would like to see the Bloodlust to stay only on the 2 Alpine maps, so there isn’t 1 for each team. That way perhaps there would be some fight over it, one server is going to be without the bloodlust so perhaps roamers etc might be more interested in fighting to keep it. Want to see how that works.

This is what I was thinking, they’re better for the game when servers have to fight over them rather than each having one and being relatively safe

shagwell.1349:

Someone will say “but you can block and reflect” ..

…Well, you can

Basilisk venom is a stun. Pretty much every guardian on the planet traits to give themselves stunbreak on f3. If a Guardian got in that position and had no recourse then they either got ganked or they’re playing extremely poorly.

Ario.8964:

I’ve described what the amulet system was intended to do but failed to do. Using my system instead promotes more diversity because it provides other options for many classes for builds instead of limiting them to having to “settle” for a stat amulet.

Provide a specific example of a build that will not work with a current stat amulet yet would be viable with another amulet which has at most one defensive stat, which has not already been banned.

It’s very rare that a stat spread is what makes or breaks a build. The entire thesis makes no sense because this is not how you write effective builds. Stats are, in almost all cases, the absolute last thing you consider while building, and in almost all cases there are good-enough stat spreads. If your build doesn’t work, it’s either because it’s a bad build from the get-go or its optimal amulet is one that’s already been banned.

If you think I’m wrong, present a build that doesn’t use a banned statlist, would be viable with that statlist, and which doesn’t have a reasonable alternative.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s highly dubious thing to state as a fact.

nah its a direct quote from mvps and the devs.

Ohoni.6057:

Well if you mean “contributing to player retention” as in “there is a player, and he is retained because of it” then I suppose that’s fair enough, I mean I’m sure there is a player who is retained by doing the Kessex centaur chain every day, that’s no great claim. I typically take “contributing to player retention” to mean an actual net positive though, that it’s causing more players to have a positive view of the game (making them more likely to be retained) than it is causing a negative view of the game (making them less likely to be retained), and I think the numbers are still out on that one.

creative interpretations of developer claims just undermine your argument

It’s a better option than most of what people throw out here. I’d prefer raids remain as they are but if they have to change I would prefer this mode.

Deliberately miss the point all you like it doesn’t change the fact that raids are a successful feature in GW2 which are contributing to player retention.

Ario.8964:

Some of these builds work when the stat system is fully customizeable because they can take just the amount of defensive stats they need to survive long enough to dish out their damage. Ofc to avoid the “condipocalypse” (love the term btw) there would need to be hard and soft caps on stats and diminished returns on some stats to avoid full on arms race power creep. Like setting toughness, vitality, and healing stat limits to avoid immortal bunkers. Or implementing diminished returns onto condi damage and power damage to avoid a tidal wave of power creep.

…But you’ve basically just described the amulet system.

How to increase build diversity:

Buff weapons, utilities and trait trees that aren’t currently taken.

Mandatory stealth for an encounter is a bad idea

BlaqueFyre.5678:

High ping is not a problem with the build in general, and not something Anet should balance around, that is a limitation on you and your decision to enter pvp game modes with this latency issue.

If this is a response to me I’m not trying to make an excuse, just make the case against that specific point. Even with a high latency the abilities are usually easy to tell and you can internally pick to dodge/counter say, 200ms before the ability actually lands server-side.

babazhook.6805:

High ping works both ways. The Thief is one of the classes most reliant on ping as when they are dodging an attack it has to be done now. They do not get blocks that last rhree seconds. The thief doing the dodging is as likely to have high ping.

When for whatever reasons my ping gets too high, I tend to shelf my thief and bring in a class that is more forgiving when it misses a dodge, such as a warrior or Necro.

If you’re American, sure, I’m not American and I run a constant 250+

Fiennis.4387:

Why is it a bad compromise? WvW and Tyria are two different things.

It has always been expected that you participate in WvW in order to complete the Gift of Mastery. This is why the Gift of Battle exists at all. If you want it deleted, changing how the tracks work or the badges work is just beating around the bush- if it shouldn’t be part of the gift, it should be deleted, period.

Fiennis.4387:

I mean, they took out map completion in WvW for Gifts of Exploration, so now they’re adding the same general idea to bridge these two game modes?

Gift of Exploration requiring WvW was removed for a specific reason: Players on Blackgate would never change color from Green and would very rarely have opportunities to get completion on objectives deep in enemy borderlands, while other servers would change color and easily get those objectives. It’s a server-specific punishment which doesn’t make any sense unless you have an extremely malicious view against Blackgate players.

Fiennis.4387:

It comes back down to, “why are you making stuff more tedious when the original idea for Guild Wars in general was to take out the grind?”.

Because you’re taking the ‘original idea’ out of context. In context, the idea is that you shouldn’t need to grind to reach statcap which is broadly true. Legendaries are skins and are therefore not subject to the “no grind” rule.

There are also etymological distinctions between “grind” and “farm” but let’s leave that for now.

For WvW I’ll build to countercomp if I find a DD roamer is regularly interrupting me. Dodge skills won’t protect the thief against wall effects such as Spectral Wall, which will waste their energy/initiative and possibly open up an opportunity for you to CC chain them.

This won’t help very much in sPvP though sadly. Not many meta builds run line effects. However I think that the standard Chill necro may have space on its bar for Spectral Wall if you are finding yourself against thieves who you know are running these dodgespam builds.

It’s the bad kind of compromise.

The point of the track is so that you don’t have to finish it once and then never return like the rank 14 did. You’re supposed to do the track once for each gift.

Ohoni.6057:

So you would agree that a bit more goes into it than “If you want a ‘non-toxic’ raiding environment all you have to do is get nine friends.”

no, i wouldn’t.

i said i wasn’t going to get bogged down here so i am outy. enjoy your brick walls guys

Harper.4173:

If your friends aren’t willing to do this and you’ll “lose them” because of a few wipes – I suggest finding better “friends”.

yeah that’s more or less it

if your friends are willing to stop being your friends because you give them a bit of criticism or because you can’t clear a raid together you need better taste in people

I’m not gonna get bogged down in this thread. I’m just gonna respond to this one.

Astralporing.1957:

Good. For the most part, those are damaging to the game.

If you want a ‘non-toxic’ raiding environment all you have to do is get nine friends.

I was gonna say you can be a casual and a raider at the same time but I got beaten to the punch.

Do you want the raids? Then meet the challenge. A raid with no challenge is not a raid. It doesn’t create the social environment that raids are supposed to create.
Do you want the gear (stats)? You already have ways to get Ascended stat gear.
Do you want the gear (stat swapping)? Stat swapping is a luxury.
Do you want the gear (appearance)? Do the content. Skins have prestige; earn that prestige.

The raids are, by no stretch of the imagination, particularly hard. Progression races do not last long and everyone knows the raids already. Theorycrafting is broadly complete and rather simple. Most every class has a place in the raids. There are training guilds all over the place. The only person preventing you from raiding is you.

1. No. WvW is not competitive in the current state of the game and it is unlikely it ever will be simply because of population imbalances.
2. Not really. WvW being competitive is completely unimportant to me. I want it to be fun first and foremost.
3. Not without drastic changes.