Guild Wars 2

osif.8673:

“Mindless zerg” is though.

And mindless zergs can already be slaughtered by groups a third their size. It takes organisation to do, but that’s your strength against the zerg.

simplesimon.2084:

Yeah I don’t know if it’s the scenery or the events, but people do seem to like the human area more.

Humans as a race are more popular, and tend to be people’s first choice when they enter the game. Queensdale becomes their most familiar zone, so they keep going back there to level. Plains of Ashford is probably the opposite.

I think it’d be a bad idea to change it. This gives these weapons distinct weaknesses which makes them more interesting to play against, and more rewarding to play properly. If you don’t like being ineffective at short range with these weapons, save your 2-5s or use your weapon-swap?

Fun read. Thanks for sharing, Burnhall. If Anet’s been operating under some of the principles outlined, it does help shed a bit of light on their patch schedule.

snizzle.6143:

Can we create a list of skills that get blocked an not ?

I think there might be some skills that werent proper discribed as projektiles but behave like that.

Maybe Meteor shower, dragons tooth, phoenix, comet to mention the ele skills.
What about Barrage ? and other skills from diffrent classes.

Ask the wiki people to copy the formatting that Bulbapedia has. Bulbapedia’s moves are listed with what affects them, so it’d be easy enough to list which projectiles are blocked/reflected and which aren’t.

TDC.1627:

[Sarcasm]New Gemstore Item – Earmuffs – for 800 gems you can wear these earmuffs and not hear any of the noses from the Bell or Horn.[/sarcasm]

There already are earmuffs! They came out in wintersday.

Rok.5260:

Would be funny if all they fixed was the health bug in downed mode :P

Yes.

Funny.

/sharpens axe

(seriously though high hopes low expectations)

ronpierce.2760:

I just want the two staff things to be merged, but also, I doubt they’d specifically call upon a specific weapon for a minor. I’m not sure they do that.

What’s more specific; a weapon that just about every necromancer has equipped, or a school of skills that are for the most part restricted to a specific build?

I have ideas!

-Reanimator tied into Minion Master to create;
Minion Master(Adept Major): Minion skills recharge 20% faster, and whenever you kill a foe, you will spawn a Jagged Horror. 30s CD.
Protection of the Horde tied into Flesh of the Master to create;
Flesh of the Master(Master Major): Minions have 50% more health, and you gain +20 toughness for each minion under your control.

Greater Marks is the new Adept Minor.
Staff Mastery is the new Mastery Minor.

Add a couple new traits to fill the holes and done.

Is the big trait overhaul they were talking about in the most recent State of the Game still on track?

There’s one outside the durmand priory who sells you a spoilt potion. Then you beat her up.

Dico.4815:

The orb was kicked from the WVW and we didn’t get anything back

if orbs were in wvwvw this matchup would be roughly 15% more kitten than it already is.

You could possibly have it automatically cast on the mouse location; kinda like quickcasting.

No thankyou. I don’t want to be forced to keep a mini out, and adding trivial benefits would just be a waste of time.

I wouldn’t mind a kind of ‘guild registry’ which you can see when looking at the server list, and servers can select what their guild is interested in, be it RP, PvE, sPvP, wPvP, etc. Then, depending on the influence of the guild as a portion of the server as a whole’s influence, and their listed interests, a pie chart’s generated to give a representation of what you’re likely to be able to find on the server. You can then fish through the registry to find out which guilds are getting the most influence per week, where they’re earning that influence and what their interests and timezones are, and possibly find a guild that fits into what you want to do in the game.

This’d be useful for RPers, as a new player interested in RP would be able to go “oh, this server has a lot of RP guilds listed, maybe I should go there”. It’s also useful for anyone else trying to find a guild for a particular avenue of play, as they can just bring up the guild registry and go “okay, this guild gets a lot of influence from WvWvW and is in my timezone, I like WvWvW, maybe I should send them a message”. I think that’s one of the big blocks to implementing RP-friendly features; that the developer has a difficult time justifying making content for 5% of the playerbase without it also having some application for the rest of the playerbase.

Pretty straightforward question; do the two skills in the title(and presumably siege defense) affect ranger pets/skill-slot minions? I’ve been fishing around on the wiki but haven’t managed to find anything.

Um. What about the 500 badges that you need for the legendary, too?

I honestly don’t see a problem with the status quo, especially with next week’s patch randomising matchups, which’ll either randomise your color and thus start points, or potentially give your server the ability to dominate everything else, unless you’re at the very bottom of T8.

I think stealth is alright on its own, but I think when it’s traited, it might be too potent.

And Heartseeker into the pistol smoke field is dumb.

I think the status quo is pretty okay. I mean, if you’re going to address something along the thought train of “shouldn’t have to do specific content for completion”, then address Ascended gear first- Something which actually has real ramifications.

Drop it down from 80% boost to 30-40% and it should be fine, IMO. The change is okay with normal arrow carts but 2 superior ACs can completely shut down any kind of ram action, and I doubt the intent of the change was to make rams completely useless.

Also, $10 says next patch will introduce Ram and Cata skill trees with an active bubble ability that negates arrow cart damage. For extra tinfoil hat, WXP boosters will be available in the gem store.

JaredKincade.9761:

This actually encourages large zergs. You need MORE people to take objectives now that every before. Everyone who thinks “YAY the end of zerging” isn’t thinking this through.

people saying this kinda reminds me of the monobattles day9 daily

“vikings killing your broodlords?
well kitten
better build more broodlords”

Doing the sPvP dailies doesn’t give you anything that the regular dailies wouldn’t, if you’re doing the PvE dailies. If you’re a hotjoiny player(I only got home from work a bit ago so I haven’t checked out the new system) and you’re not getting 20 kills/at least 1 top stat/4 matches on unique maps, then you seem to be barely playing the game at all?…

Xillllix.3485:

Forzani.2584:

defrule.7236:

Do people not want resistance at all when taking towers?

No. It slows down the karma/xp train.

Perhaps that’s the real reason, they want people to get less rewards in game, to be more dependent on spending real cash on the TP.

Dunno about anyone else, but if people are trying to get xp/karma, a camp-farming cycle on a quiet enemy borderlands still offers very healthy rewards. If they offered a +wxp booster, I might be more willing to concede.

During active hours, it still seems as though the problem is the binary flip of rewards. You already can’t lolzerg your way through objectives during active hours.

Arrow cart buff seems fine for the open world, but could possibly be overdoing it in SM lord’s room.

Still would like it if wvwvw skills or levels were account-wide rather than character based.

I’d probably put my chips on Elona.

digiowl.9620:

I suspect that part comes out of race choices being pure cosmetics in SPVP, and ANet not wanting us to get too attached to our racial choice (or getting debates about the best race&profession combos). This because they cling to the idea that you should be able to jump between PVE and PVP with little disruption in build understanding. But if so they really need to beef up the AI smarts.

Fair enough, but there’s a difference between “this is more of a cosmetic choice, not quite as solid as the other elites” and “halves your damage for the duration with no appreciable benefit”.

Elites need a rethink. At the very least, we need more underwater ones. I can only use Plague Form underwater, while Mesmers still have Moa Morph(well, Bass Morph)? Why can’t I get a zombie shark or armorfish or something?

They also need that “disables your utilities” thing changed, because having all your zombies explode when you press Lich Form or Plague Form(your only underwater elite!) isn’t fun, and turning off Ranger pets with Racial elites isn’t so dandy either.

Also, tweaking up racial elites would be cool. Don’t see why nornforms shouldn’t be at least a damage increase when you use them.

Or you could carry one of your banners and use the 3 that that has, or you could carry your warbanner for permanent swiftness. This solution would just completely nuke the standing game.

Djemo.7153:

(since no other set shares this phenomenon).

Nope. Light WvWvW reward helm does it too.

whiran.1473:

Maybe there was a PvE reason behind the original decision? Like, to prevent someone from gathering up 20 NPCs and then AoEing them down? Hmm.. could be.

I still don’t like the decision.

You can already feasibly gather 20 NPCs and then AOE them down. It just takes longer. Even with uncapped AOE, the main problem of pulling 20 NPCs is that unless you’re very careful with your play and mob choice, you’re going to die anyway.

Kaleban.9834:

Really wish I could hear the dev’s “vision” for what WvWvW is supposed to be. Do they really want it to be the equivalent of playing a zergling assaulting protoss bases? And are there any ideas for improvements/fixes on the horizon that will make WvWvW not lamesauce?

That implies that the defenders are Zealots.

Which would be awesome. My life for Tarnished Coast!

I think I’ll have a bath, and then maybe a nap.

And then command people to turn Southsun Cove into the next living story area! Wahaha!

I did this earlier, on my own. The other team’s guys spread out so I could only pin down one person at a time, but I almost killed them.

It’s a very powerful effect. I can see how it’d be very dangerous in the status quo environment of “lol stack up to avoid the AOE cap”, and it might even be OP outside of that, but it seems like a very strong way to discourage zerging. It’s an AOE; it’s supposed to destroy anything in its area of effect.

Less piddling 5-cap aoes that don’t end up doing squat to that stack of 40 people in one hitbox. More mass murder. Stacking up like that doesn’t encourage good play or make sense with regular world content in mind. Once tools proliferate enough to make this superdense stacks a losing strategy, then nerf it.

dank.3680:

Well I am ok with the whole Leg Specialist working for arrow carts (as well as all the other class interactions that happen with siege). I just want to point out that taking Leg Specialist is not really a “sacrifice” as I consider the trait a good pick for many of my Warrior builds.

Don’t forget to grab Opportunist as well for Fury every time you Immobilise someone with Leg Specialist!

This is where the Rtl argument gets really muddy. Many players claim Rtl is a virtual get-out-of-jail free card and provide anecdotal evidence, but I have heard and experienced myself many ways to stop it as an ele and against an ele. Even if the ele gets Rtl off successfully, professions equipped with mobility can close the gap, or conditions like cripple/chill that actually linger after using Rtl can still make the ele vulnerable. Rtl is a strong skill, but I don’t think it is as invincible as many players claim, and there are just as many players who say they have no trouble dealing with it. A lot of things can happen before, during, after Rtl/rush, and the variety makes the difficulty of using those skills subjective to what the player has experienced.

All those things you’ve listed that can hinder an otherwise successful escape with RTL do the exact same thing to a regular charge, or any teleport in the game. Unless your teleport (not to explicitly compare it to RTL, but as an escape tool in general; using a charge while slowed will make your escape very short lived w/o condition removal) has a condition removal effect I guess but if you want to make your RTL a flawless escape you could just sticky tape Cleansing Flame onto its butt.

As I see it, Ride the Lightning is for the most part a charge move, except just plain better. So much better, that its distinction over other charges can (though not always) dictate whether a fight ends with a successful retreat or a death, and the developers specifically noted that it was the kind of mobility that they intended for the Thief to have in the last SotG. Do elementalists really need to have that kind of special sauce for RTL to be a powerful move?

I think we seem to have gotten to the bottom of this, for the most part, so not really worth going on about it any more. It’s all pretty firmly out of our hands.

Cirax.9231:

You’re correct about teleports I did not cover, but you are well aware my main focus was to compare Rtl to movement skills because players use this premise to argue for Rtl being affected by chill/cripple. I didn’t make any direct examples comparing rtl to teleports to justify my argument. I used rush and swoop as examples. You don’t need to go off on a huge tangent on teleports – that is clearly not the main topic here.

If you’re going to make sweeping statements about abilities, it’s pretty important to make sure that your sweeping statements are actually correct. It might seem like an off-the-cuff remark to you, but it can seem like you’re practically shouting “I have no idea what I’m talking about!” to someone else.

As I said before and I will mention again: if you want to bring Rtl in line with other similar abilities, then make all aspects the same, and this includes the use of utilities during animation. I don’t understand why players are so inclined to categorize every “similar” skill to have exactly the same mechanics. Variety keeps things interesting.

Why are we operating under the assumption that I wouldn’t be okay with people using utilities while using RTL? Go nuts. If you can find synergies between a charge and an instant move, have at. That’ll add depth to the metagame, that’s good. Specifically on RTL+Signet of Earth→Updraft? That’s a very well telegraphed ability combo.

The flipside to “variety” is “what the hell are all the rules”. That’s why the distinction between a charge and a leap and a teleport is important. At the moment, the list of movement skill rulesets is limited to Charge/Leap(minor distinction between the two, that the player becomes airborne while leaping), Teleports, RTL, and you could make a case for Portal. You need to know, or you should need to know, how to deal with each of these. Is giving countering RTL its own strategy a reasonable distinction?

How would you go about making balance changes to increase the amount of skill invested? What makes something that takes skill in this game vs something that doesn’t? Let’s be honest, the technical aspect of this game isn’t rocket science – strategy and mind games are more important than worrying about how much skill a profession takes.

Strategy is an aspect of skill. Making intelligent(or unintelligent) decisions within the bounds of reaction time is what decides whether players are good or bad, before getting into physical training like APM. How many intelligent or unintelligent decisions decisions can you make with Ride the Lightning compared to a standard charge? How many intelligent or unintelligent decisions can a player make when trying to counter Ride the Lightning? What can a player do to deal with this, or make a hilarious miscalculation while trying to deal with this? How many “wrong times” are there to use RTL, and how many “wrong times” are there to use a charge skill?

Cirax.9231:

Read above for why Rtl is different, and what may happen if it were made similar to other movememt skills.

Another misconception: 0/10/0/30/30 build (+variations) & offhand dagger is OP. Eles have weak, underused trait lines.. like all the other professions.

You’ve listed a whole lot of, uh, things, which might involve skill to use. Which is a pretty important secondary objective when you’re making balance changes; to increase the amount of skill that can be invested.

My saying that “elementalists are OP” was a direct retort to the quoted post. Assuming that elementalists are indeed OP, would bringing into line one of their abilities which currently doesn’t operate under the same rules as other abilities in the same class be worthwhile?

Also, you’re completely wrong about the number of abilities that require a (hostile) target for you to use them as a teleport. Quickly reviewing the list on the wiki;

Flashing Blade
Judge’s Intervention
Infiltrator’s Signet
Infiltrator’s Strike
Shadow Shot
Shadow Strike
Shadow Pursuit
Steal
Dark Path

Tangentially, or requires a friendly target;
Illusionary Leap->Swap
Necrotic Traversal
Merciful Intervention

I’m sure I didn’t get them all, but you need to do your research. This is all meaningless, anyway; there’s a non-trivial distinction between a charge/rush attack and a teleport. Ride The Lightning is not a teleport. Do not compare it to a teleport. Do not think of it as a teleport. Compare it to Bull Rush. Dear Lord, think of the chaos you could do if Dark Path operated like Ride the Lightning.

Varyag.3751:

Elementalist is overpowered. RTL isn’t the reason for this, leave it as it is.

It certainly doesn’t help that an overpowered class has a charge which ignores most of the rules that the other charges in the game operate under.

Seems like a bit of a vitriolic response you’re getting, OP.

Guild Merits are supposed to be rewarded for doing organised activities with your guild, right? Doesn’t make sense for an organised task to not reward the currency you’re rewarded for an organised task.

I think that, while Bleeding and Poison don’t make much sense at all to be applicable to structures, that Burning should. Seems only natural to set things on fire. Besides, we do have Flesh Golems to slam structures down ASAP.

stof.9341:

I doubt in those big fights the guardians will be able to react fast enough to cast a 1.5s duration Sanctuary/Shield of Absorption spell. RtL takes 2s from start to finish.

Also, the RtL users can be stealthed or under Stability if needed.

It kinda sounds like RTL might be the problem. The list of charges which can’t be countered in this game is pretty short.

stof.9341:

Sarrs.4831:

Out of curiosity, what if there were a WvWvW ability that, when purchased, would raise the target cap for your abilities while in WvWvW?

What if there were a WvWvW ability that reduced damage and conditions and CC received specifically from AoE skills?

I’d be skeptical about it because plenty of abilities are TECHNICALLY AOEs, but not actually used as them. See: just about every melee weapon.

If it were “reduced damage from AOE effects when 5 or more players are effected, not counting siege weapons”, maybe.

There are a large number of techniques which a player could use while being AOEd to mitigate the amount of damage taken.

- Stop standing in the fire
- Counter with your own healing AOEs, which would hopefully also benefit from a raised cap
- Attack fortified locations from the comfort of a Trebuchet
- Use blocking abilities to prevent projectile-based AOEs from hitting you
- Retaliation
- Use ranged weapons rather than melee weapons to allow your group to spread out and reduce the number of players hit with an AOE at a time

An intelligent group of players will still be able to overcome enemy defenses, despite the potential power of these AOEs, and might even be able to seriously exploit them for themselves. At the end of the day, the goal should ultimately be to make play more interesting for both parties, and I think at least raising the possible power an AOE-based character could put out would make it more interesting.

Also, to the people saying “Lol, everyone will just take an AOE build!”; sure, more people will take an AOE build. But there are still plenty of different roles which necessitate different specs, and small-group raiders wouldn’t be significantly affected. Right now, the best way to beat a zerg is to disperse and backcap, and what would really change after an AOE cap removal?

Out of curiosity, what if there were a WvWvW ability that, when purchased, would raise the target cap for your abilities while in WvWvW?

Reize.2176:

Just avoid making an Engineer,Ranger or a Necromancer. Thats all.

What’s wrong with Necromancers? ;(

Honestly, PvE doesn’t really need specific classes unless you’re doing high level fractals, the traditionally weak sPvP classes have some very good niche roles in WvWvW, and you don’t need to invest any time into sPvP levelling on one character so you can play around to your heart’s content there and the MMO buff/nerf cycle is an MMO buff/nerf cycle so the best policy there is to be flexible.

DevonCarver.5370:

2. I just checked in a change to give this to you. But it won’t activate until you run into the next group of 5+ enemies you see and /dance. If it doesn’t work the first time you do that, it’s probably because the group wasn’t large enough, so try with another group until you are invulnerable.

Works in SWTOR, should work here? /cheapshot

Likely to see any more siege weapons/building upgrades at all, or any time soon?

This… Really doesn’t seem good. It’s an unnatural, counterintuitive way of disincentivising zerging. It doesn’t flow well with the rest of the game at all.

Want to disincentivise zerging? Get rid of the other things that don’t fit well, like the AOE cap, and turn siege weapons from minor nuisances into killing machines like they should be.

I think we should be able to put bombs on the unused Dolyaks in supply camps and send them at enemy bases.

Preferably without harming the Dolyak.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Sarrs.4831:

1. Will a character in full Exotics be at a disadvantage to a player decked out head to toe in Ascended gear in WvWvW?

That depends, are they an Engineer, Necromancer, or Ranger? If so why are you in WvW? RUN! RUN AND NEVER LOOK BACK!

Ahem.

The bigger question is why on earth are you attempting to solo-take someone in WvW?

Necromancers are pretty good in WvWvW. They’ve got a button that makes conditions go everywhere, they’ve got an entire weapon’s worth of high-range, good width area of effect attacks, they’ve got a school of spells which can put some significant hurt on anyone dumb enough to stand in them, and one of the best scaling AOE heals in the game.

I’m sure Engis and Rangers have nice things too. I wonder if dropping a Thumper on a ram and using the overcharge would be hilarious enough to validate speccing into it?

Also solo roamers are pretty useful. I can cap unupgraded camps and everything lower on my own. Don’t need to roll with the zerg for that, but I do need to kill enemy roamers and counter-roamers.

2. I don’t recall actually saying Ascended gear was needed to complete content; I said that your character used to feel ‘complete’ when you had full Exotic gear, and now it doesn’t feel complete because Ascended. I don’t think this is an MMO thing, but a general hobby thing; alts are projects which I like to complete, and the standing means by which to get Ascended gear feels like a cheap kitten-block to finishing that project. I hope we can at the very least agree on that.

Hmmm, sort of. I’ve rarely had alts which I’ve felt the desire to polish up to “full spec”. I think the last one was my cleric in EverQuest because he was more in demand than a ranger. Also because I could read Game of Thrones books and heal at the same time.

Really, the only thing really in my way when it comes to getting my alts up to snuff is laurels choking amulets and those guild thingos. Get rid of the timegate and I’m happy; laurels should just be throttling fun toys.

Vayne.8563:

I have characters that have no ascended gear and again, they can do everything in the game. Even if I wanted to do high level fractals, I never need an amulet or earrings to do that. It’s just not necessary. You’re making a need that doesn’t exist.

Anet made a compromise, giving some people something to grind for without gating the content for everyone else. Do this. Take one character, get no ascended gear on him and run the game. Do everything. Then tell me you need that.

More than anything, you’re talking about a mindset. People thinking they need BIS gear on every character. A lot of this is a holdover from other games where content is gated because of gear.

That’s simply not the case here.

1. Will a character in full Exotics be at a disadvantage to a player decked out head to toe in Ascended gear in WvWvW?
2. I don’t recall actually saying Ascended gear was needed to complete content; I said that your character used to feel ‘complete’ when you had full Exotic gear, and now it doesn’t feel complete because Ascended. I don’t think this is an MMO thing, but a general hobby thing; alts are projects which I like to complete, and the standing means by which to get Ascended gear feels like a cheap kitten-block to finishing that project. I hope we can at the very least agree on that.

Out of curiosity, how many people -do- buy dyes with their laurels?

Vayne.8563:

So if you liked the original content, why do you feel you need ascended gear now. Most of my characters don’t have ascended gear and I do all the content in the game on them. The only thing you’d need ascended gear for, certainly at this point, is the higher levels of the fractals, and the fractals give you the gear you need to do them if you do them.

If you like the base game and you’re playing the base game, why do you insist you need to get ascended gear? Do you know how many people get laurels and just buy dye packs with them?

Three main reasons;
1. The stat hump between people starting to play today and people starting to gather Ascended gear from the day FotM was introduced to the game is only going to get bigger.
2. Getting a character into the best of the best gear carries with it a sense of finality; you’ve -finally- filled out everything, except perhaps a Legendary, which only increases your Swag stat. Getting to the top of that mountain now takes, at the very least, a very diligent 30 days.
3. Punishes alts. Vanilla GW2 was a very alt-friendly game. Now you have to get one Ascended amulet at a time.

Why don’t they like.

Reduce boss health.

Across the board.

And maybe make fights more interesting.

But yeah reduce boss health.

I don’t know if I’d say the game’s degraded, but I’d definitely say that Anet seems to be moving out of the park of what the game originally was. There are only a few pieces of content that they’ve put out since release that I can definitely say have improved the game, those being FotM and the holiday events, and even then FotM needed some iteration to get right.

On the other hand, the new patches seem very interested in forcing you to do what they’re bringing, with Ascended gear, despite the fact that a lot of people enjoyed the base game’s content for what it was. What content are you ‘forced’ into to gear up a character? You’re at the very least forced to do your dailies and monthlies (kitten timegating), you have to do guild missions, the minimum size of which is pretty dang restrictive, and you have to do FotM; personally, I’m okay with FotM, but plenty of people are getting cranky over having to do it instead of playing in wuvwuv.

To me, it looks like ANet’s thinking “what patch feature can we slap ascended gear onto this time?” with every second patch, occasionally mixing it up with “let’s put in a timegate lol”. Admittedly, I’ve got a very limited data set, but you need to look at what they do, not what they say. What they’re doing?… Well, they added new weapon prefixes to the wuvwuv vendors, so I guess that’s a nice start, but no armors or Ascended gear. They changed the icons for light gear?… /shrug

Also maybe they should vet some of their bigger changes like the Quickness change before implementing them. A 50% nerf to the most popular elite in the game out of nowhere isn’t very nice.