Guild Wars 2

What I would personally really like would be if the Outmanned pip were two buffs; one to say you’re currently outmanned, one to say you’ve been Outmanned at some point since the start of the tick. Attach the benefits & pips to the second. Flickering Outmanned is kind of annoying in the context of this system.

Horrible idea, and completely unneccessary.

It’s the first day of the patch.

If you are a ‘real’ WvWer on an overstacked server and you are getting blocked out by the people drawn in by this patch, move to an understacked server or a link server.

Def agree w/ both OP and Spurn; this is a good start, but it’s a start. If this momentum can be maintained with further additions then a lively WvW might be a big draw for GW2 again.

Speaking optimistically; there’s a new expac sniffing around, with new elite specs to go with it, as well as elite specs for F2P players. Very excited to see what sort of good that’ll do for WvW and whether momentum can be maintained.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

We need to update the loyalty pip description.

You need to earn at least 75 pips for 3 weeks in a row to earn the loyalty bonus. We wanted players to have to participate in skirmishes to be considered loyal.

Hello, I’m not quite clear on this.

So you need to get
75+ pips on week 1
75+ pips on week 2
75+ pips on week 3

And then so long as you remain on the server, you will get the loyalty bonus?
Or will the streak reset if you miss a week, and you need to do all 3 again?

Orangensaft.7139:

so the punishing for transfering to a stacked server for WvW is basically only 1 week ??

seems really low to me considering that everyone would rather be earning +3 pips for the many many many weeks needed to complete the backpiece instead of +1 pip for server placment

The punishment for transferring to a stacked server is that you get no pips at all for the week in which you transfer and if I’m reading this right, that your Loyalty flag will reset and you’ll need to do your 3 weeks again.

The pips that you get from winning, for an entrenched player, are actually fairly minimal and somewhat inconsistent. Even Blackgate doesn’t win every skirmish. Even then, if you are on an overstacked server, you can’t earn pips while you’re queued- and if you’re against an overstacked server, Outmanned is still the biggest individual pip contributor you can have until you hit Mithril ranks.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

there is no good reason not too, why make it so frustrating?

There is; it is a prestige reward for veteran players, and a long-term goal for players to target. Long-term goals are important for keeping players engaged in the long term. There are plenty of shorter-term milestones for you to instead target.

Honestly, if I were a Silver or less player, the level required for the prestige gear would be far from my mind compared to how clearing the Diamond box appears to be practically impossible if you’re not Bronze.

Honestly…

It’s prestige armor. It shouldn’t have a low rank. 2k is a reasonable target. It’s not like you don’t have stuff to work towards through the pip system without having the rank to target the prestige armor, including the Ascended armors, the associated skins (which you need for prestige armor anyway), and other goodies.

Pretty hype. Really looking forward to it.

Can we expect to see any other rewards added? I’ve already cleared all the good reward tracks!

I don’t believe yak speed is 100% by default. I’m fairly sure it’s something like 50%. Speedy Yaks doesn’t increase their speed by 50%; it increases it by 100%. Swiftness similarly increases their speed by 66%.

Read the subject and couldn’t decide if it was going to be a thief or a warrior.

Plaguelands seems half-cooked. It has no combo field, it doesn’t feel good played with CPC as Plaguelands is PBAOE rather than targeted AOE. I’m sure the damage is great on paper but actually trying to keep anyone in the target area is going to be hell.

Those axe changes are beefy.

Dagger changes, not a clue what’s going on there.

Find a consistent raidguild that runs at the times you’re available then.

GweenDwagon.6705:

New or better rewards wouldnt save the game at a competitive level in any way. Plenty of people mostly play pvp over other game types because they like the style better in which case rewards isnt the issue, balance and diversity of classes is.

I honestly don’t really care about the competitive level above the ranked seasons at the moment.

Plenty of people are perfectly happy to play any of two or three modes and if they’re trying to pick between modes they can and will pick whichever one gives them the most stuff. S7 rewards were very lean so I didn’t play it because I have limited playtime and would rather spend that elsewhere.

Save? No. To save sPvP ranked seasons you just need to fix the rewards so people play again.

Elite specs will shake up the meta and give players more options. Certainly fun but not game-saving.

after six days of raiding my true love gave to me
noooo crystalline hearts

The Fate of Menzies

Legendary armor would be cool but honestly I think they need to get the other rewards down first. Stuff like Skirmish Rewards, a bit more parity between PvE and WvW farming.

If ANet thinks Deathly Chill is overpowered they should just rejigger the skillsplit so that it uses 1bleed/8s as it does in PvP instead of 3bleed/5s as it does in PvE. They think 1b/8s is fair in sPvP so that should be good enough for WvW. Nuking Deathly Chill in a non-split environment nukes the PvE viability that necros have wanted for a while.

Adding a cooldown to Deathly Chill is a horrible idea.

Take the doggy shoulderpad and vendor it for 2g50

Whoa, silverwastes farm is viable? I need to stock up on bloodstone dust, brt.

I hope they do plan to address this. Not sure what I’d prefer though.

1. Completely remove all of these ‘class buffs’ that just boost a base stat
2. Make the buffs exclusive and proliferate them (Banner of Strength gives +Power +CondiDamage; this doesn’t stack with Empower Allies or Pinpoint Distribution though)

GotL though I don’t understand why they added it as it is. Isn’t this exactly what Might is supposed to do?

jihm.2315:

yes you can say that you can avoid traps thats understood but if the group is focused elsewhere a dragon hunter can fry people in matter of seconds and it doesnt need any skill at all.

Specs based around dealing large amounts of damage quickly are very good at dealing large amounts of damage quickly? I should be taking notes…

iKeostuKen.2738:

Pretty cheesy when that damage is covered by loads of evade time lol. Hopefully when they ever decide to balance the game, thatl be toned down in the first wave.

It’s entirely a skill issue. You can interrupt the downward swing of the vault, you can dodge the vault. A guardian can use their elite skill, or poop out a ton of Aegis to block the Vaults, or they can use the Dragonhunter shield to protect themselves. They have some interrupt tools, but not many- of particular note is that greatsword pull and spear pull will both ignore whether the target is dodging or not so you can brainlessly interrupt the Vault so long as you attached the spear or greatsword. You can also soak the hits using the Focus block or you can use Shield or Longbow knockback to interrupt.

If you land the 5 on LB(probably not meta) or Hammer(lol) you create a zone that the thief can’t even dodge through and force them to pop steal or shadowstep.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

- I was on a heavy armor class “Dragonhunter”

Just targeting this point in particular; heavy armor class is trivial compared to having Toughness as a stat on your armor.

So there’s a bit of talk about hybrid reaper

Please don’t try to get hybrid reaper removed, a hybrid damage style with the greatsword is a lot of fun and it fits what I want to get out of the reaper. Try to get the other modes of damage better. There’s no reason we can’t have a viable Power Reaper and that mostly depends on making Reaper’s Onslaught a viable option.

No, transfer to a good server like Kaineng

IMO Claw Island would be a cool fractal. Fits into Fractal lore really easy. Dunno about a raid though.

Devils Toy.9205:

LMAO…this is their attempt to revive WvW?

It may imply that this isn’t an effort being made on its own and that ANet plans to make changes soon.

Or it may not. Time will tell.

I thought that the cadence was definitely a 2-month one, not a 2-3 month one. Oh well; thanks for the heads up either way.

Are we likely to see Black Lion Chests rotating with the release of the new patch, or will they retain their current contents?

Also, extending SAB seems to make sense.

Bit of a shame. Not exactly surprised.

Get rewards tuned, get combat tuned, get people playing sPvP first before trying to push the esports.

If they get rewards back up to the level of S5 and do a big advertising push with x2, and x2 is really good, they might be able to revive the game. Trying to force it now is a waste of effort.

Andovar Edoras.2143:

TLDR; Raids need an ez-mode for noobs who dont want good loot but want story immersion.

The difficulty is story immersion. A character which the story tells you is supposed to be incredibly powerful and difficult to kill, which then in gameplay falls over when it’s subjected to all the force of a wet fart, is immersion breaking.

Adding Celestial is not the solution. Elementalist needs core trait redesigns so that you are not automatically picking Earth Water Tempest or otherwise being trash.

Suppressing movement-impairing effects over the duration is not unreasonable.

Elite spec, sure.

Core, no.

Plastazote.7914:

I’m going to over simplify the purpose of this thread and say I want the necromancer to have high DPS (similar to elementalist.) Is it fair to give necromancer equal DPS in PVP given how tanky they are because of the second HP bar?

Elementalists do not have high DPS in spvp, that is not their role. Necromancers do fill a DPS role, and their mix of tools allow them to fill their heavy offensive role very well. They aren’t even particularly tanky, and it’s reasonable to argue that they are the least tanky- there is a reason they are the class most dependent on team support.

Plastazote.7914:

Can you justify it? If you can, my suggestion to trade is moot. If not, what are you willing to compromise? I feel that the tanky theme holds us back.

As I read, your argument is basically this:

-Necromancers are tanky, other classes are not tanky.
-Necromancers cannot deal the same damage than other classes, because they have that tankiness.
-Necromancers should therefore be changed so that they can be premium DPS.

This chain of logic is flawed;
-Necromancers are not especially tanky compared to other classes and if they want to really abuse Death Shroud, they need to give up damage to be able to do so.
-Even if Necromancers were exceptionally tanky compared to other classes, that does not mean that they should not deal similar DPS. Other classes can fill other ‘fuzzy’ roles that Necromancers cannot.

Honestly I’d rather major prunes to the other classes’ damage ouputs.

In particular, Thief having 10+10+7% modifiers in Daredevil is ridiculous, for what is ostensibly a defense-oriented spec. It’s going to cause serious issues for second ES.

These are both good changes.

Traps should have a 1 second arming time across the board and generally should not be something that you can reliably point-blank someone with.

They should have said that they added the strike so that your Venoms could be applied by traps ;^)

Would love to see combo finishers preferring your own fields. This will help Reaper a lot, especially if they get more frequent access to Chill fields somehow- I’m partial to putting it on the AA-3.

I think they actually found the answer to this quite a while ago. I think it was midway through last year one of the developers floated the idea on the forum that servers should be smaller and that there should be more of them, as this would make it easier to create linksets that are healthy for balance. They abandoned the idea because of a lack of interest.

I’m fairly certain that if they used that idea and pushed it a little harder, they would actually have what they need to create an environment in which populations can be balanced. With that in mind:

- Permanently close ‘core’ servers; the servers which are linked to rather than linking to other servers. This immediately creates incentive for players to reshuffle; if you are on a major server and are asking for it to be opened so that you can play with friends, you have a definitive answer- you must move to a link server.
- Free server transfers from core servers to link servers. There is no longer a monetary penalty for moving from a core server to a link server. Link servers are a good thing for balance and there should be every incentive to move there.
- Smaller link servers. Smaller servers mean more varied configurations for better balanced matchups.
- More link servers. Necessary with smaller link servers.

Optionally;

- Higher rewards for ‘outmanned’ servers in a match, and higher rewards for all players in a ‘fair’ match. If skirmish rewards are going to have meat on them they cannot incentivize stacking.
- Shorter linksets. Servers will be more readily reshuffled to account for playercount changes.
- Limited time windows for server transfers and increased glicko volatility during this window.

Matters of good sense:

- WvW needs relevant rewards to support its playerbase.
- Power of the Mists is an incentive for stacking and should be revised.

Surely it’d be more productive to go to your class forums and ask for changes there. You’ve made posts in every class forum.

Rink.6108:

What do you think about the rewards in WvW? And what rewards would you like to see changed and how?

Skirmishes should grant Ascended Memories of Battle.
You should be able to spend Ascended Memories of Battle on the T2 Triumphant gear.

Other than that, it would be super neat if we had some kind of timetable for the Skirmish Rewards patch.

Evan Lesh.3295:

• NEW: Sigil of Absorption: Steal a boon when interruption a foe.

Does stealing a boon activate Blighter’s Boon?

Iridi.8473:

Funny you say that because its like you didnt finish reading my post.

Iridi.8473:

So while you conveniently brought up boon corrupts, lets look at focus skill “Spinal Shivers”.

I didn’t bring up boon corrupts. I brought up Corrupt Boon.

Please, I understand how the game works, you don’t have to tell me about what skills will grant you LF and what won’t. These skills which grant block or immune and halt your LF are not imbalanced and they aren’t broken. If you learn how to play, you will be able to play around them.

1. Maybe. But it isn’t a suitable substitute for a standing Borderlands. It doesn’t have the same point total and it doesn’t have the same balance.

2. No.

3. Massive advantage? No.

Exciton.8942:

543 point system is the culprit.

No. This isn’t the issue. It may be the reason for this purported ‘maguuma strike’ but it’s not the issue with BG.

Mass stacking to jack up one server (Maguuma) has always been an issue.
Blackgate overstacking has always been an issue.

Unless ANet puts in serious work to limit servers’ ability to overstack the problem won’t be fixed.

Core servers need to be permanently closed.
Population caps for link servers need to be very low. Link servers need to be easy for ANet to spin up.

Aerwyna.2541:

I am only sad because I am on a full server and my friend just got the game being interested in the WvW and he cant join me :/ So we are waiting to see if it will ever open lol

I was also surprised by the underlined part lol

Why don’t you move to another server? I moved to Kaineng for exactly this reason.

Sigil of Stagnation seems pointless. It is Hydromancy but 3s cripple is not as good as 2s chill.

I think if you want a sigil that applies cripple it should be fundamentally different from Hydromancy. Maybe Chance on Hit/Chance on Crit like Superior Sigil of Incapacitation. If you are set on having it be an on-swap effect, increase the duration to maybe 5s.

For PvE? Destroyer’s gear would be great. I’m inclined to say it would make hybrid greatsword viable on its own.

For sPvP? A Power/Precision/Condition Damage/Toughness amulet would be great, but it’s very difficult for such a build to get all the stats it needs with the amulet system.

For WvW? Nothing’s holding it back; Celestial Hybrid Greatsword is a great build.

Necromancer has many excellent tools to get around blocks. Warhorn 4, Soul Marks, NCSY, unblockable Corrupt Boon. If there is a problem with Necromancer, it is not enemy blocks.

I would absolutely recommend getting everything you can from Bitterfrost Frontier. It’s easy to get around 80-90 berries per day. That’s a ring and an earring which if you do full farms, will only take you about a week to earn.

I’d recommend getting your second earring from Ember Bay. You can also get this with decent pacing by relying on the daily hearts and daily quests to give you Petrified wood, and the actual nodes will help.

The second ring is the tricky one, trying to farm Bloodstone Fen is a pain. I would, however, strongly recommend at least clearing your dailies on Bloodstone Fen regularly and working towards it over time. If you have the gold it may be worth considering buying the Strange Rock and getting yourself Rurik’s Engagement Ring.

I would not recommend Ascended Shards of Glory on items other than armor pieces because unique skins. PvP and WvW tracks are a very reliable source of Blood Rubies, however.

IMO anything that pushes up the price of Mithril and Silk is good. These changes may hurt a bit, but fractals undermining the economy hurts a lot.

Yeah.

I hope we can find a better long-term solution because T1 is just hell at the moment. Can I go back to 3-4 please

More healing boons is kinda pointless.

Just make Regeneration stack in intensity.