Guild Wars 2

Barrage cast time reduction.
Counter Attack cool down reduction
Greatsword AA dmg increase

Substance E.4852:

Eurantien.4632:

They will “buff” something, which won’t be the right thing then they will ninja nerf something good.

The song of our people…

Do you hear the rangers sing?
Singing the song of angry men!
It is the music of empty bowstrings,
And our bears in circles, dead.

May the leaping of our hearts,
match to the leaping of our sword!
And pray that our evade works
when the nerfbat comes!

GW1 is running on auto-pilot atm. There is no dev team.

I’d hope that they could both find a way to make a full-trait beastmaster viable AND find a way to make Sword & Support viable, without totally screwing the other.

I like playing both.

Healy Unit.1023:

Treise.6958:

Someone needs to make videos of these with the Dr Who Theme song, possibly just an endless loop of the beginning part of our chars floating~

Here ya go:
http://youtu.be/mWG-EwPwTg8

Disturbing how well that video matches up.

Jeyzer.1605:

Here’s my guess (Guess, based on what I sawe for now, since I’m not yet 80 on any of my chars).

-Dps :

Elem > War > Mesmer > Thief > Eng > Necro > Ranger > Guard.

As a ranger main, I’m offended.

Will the person who is so crappy at guardian that they rank worse than a bearbow, please get the kitten out of my spot?

Thanks.

It’s actually kinda odd that the vines aren’t destroying centaur forts as well.

The trait progression starting at 30 has me a bit thrown. I like the GW1 idea of getting the major mechanics of the character out of the way early – so unlock at 10 and fully unlocked by ~40/50 is more the expectation.

Also a lot of classes don’t really become viable until they start picking up some required trait skills. At the very least you don’t get the real flavor of the class until the traits are there.

The method of getting unlocks for trait skills also seems very tacked on, and not really well thought out. I’d like to see instead maybe a set of training missions with some logical sequence and supporting story-line in the journal, as a parallel to the personal story.

I’m sure it would be a writers nightmare… but imagine how cool it would be if the machine actually drove the player character to Fight Club levels of crazy.

Belzebu.3912:

Casino Brawl.1249:

There’s honestly nothing wrong with it. It’s actually helpful in some situations, Lupicus for example. Use off hand skills to interrupt the AA chain.

Can you give an example of where the sword mechanic is helpful, be able to use an off hand weapon isn’t a good example of how good the sword is.

Sword #1:
Sword Auto-Attack shines on moving targets, in that it’s very difficult to shake a Ranger once he’s locked on. In PvP/WvW, that would be pretty much everything. In PvE, that’s a fairly limit set, but not something that never happens.

Second big plus on sword AA is the rate of attack, plus it has a cleave-like effect. For RaO or sigil triggers on hit/crit, AA with QZ is usually the best option for a burst.

Though fairly minor, AA has the effect of placing might on your pet. While the might itself isn’t significant, this can be useful as part of a might-stacking build or as a continuous trigger for the +dmg on boon trait.

Sword 2:
This has three different applications that it is useful.

First, it’s a leap finisher. This combos will with torch, trap fields, and in particular healing spring. Consider dropping healing spring & a combo through GS3/Sw2 for a large burst heal on top of the regen.

Second, it can be used as an evade. Sw2 is sufficient to throw you outside of the AOE range of most attacks, even dungeon boss attacks. You can wait the split second for the AOE to clear, and then Sw2 again to instantly return into close combat.

Third, Sw2 is a mobility skill. If you clear your target you can use the direction you are facing to control the direction of leap. By mouse looking in 180’s while leaping you have a repeatable short burst of speed where you are faster than swiftness speed. Another method is to use Sw2 to disengage a target, select a new target of opportunity while in flight, and leap/AA lock the new target – easily and quickly crossing a battlefield to the target of your choice.

Sword 3:
Evade, poison, and flank. Possibly the least interesting of the sword skills because it’s straight forward in use. Dodge an attack and/or change your positioning to get your flanking bonus trait. This can also be used as a positioning skill for Sw2.

What is vaguely… neat… is as a part of an evade chain. Like consider, Dg4→Sw3→Sw2→GW3→GW4→SigStone… Evade, Evade, Evade, Out of Range, Blocked, 0 dmg… It has a decently fast recharge with martial mastery, which enables you to chain evade/dodge windows one right after another.

GuzziHero.5104:

facepalm
A tornado has sucked up chickens. How do we deal with this? HIT IT WITH OUR SWORDS!

So… why are we not cleaving chickens in two? Why are we not being sucked in also? Why does everything in this game boil down to HIT IT WITH YOUR SWORD!?

He has a point.

We should be using chainsaws.

Belinda. Not because she was an interesting character…. but because our hero rushed to the rescue and she died anyway.

A more natural transition would have been that being directly hooked up to the Eternal Alchemy knocked the player character out cold for 2 weeks.

Except, of course, that wouldn’t be much fun to play.

Blanger.3162:

Filaha.1678:

Warrior Rifle and Ranger Longbow (at least) allow you to max range AFK. You’re juuuuust out of reach of his roar.

Yeah agreed, tried last night to melee him on my warrior with sword, he just beat me into the ground every couple minuets, switched to the rifle and stayed back far enough so his conditions only hit me a few times, even with 30-40 people it was slow going he has a ton of HP.

His attacks have such a easy to see telegraph, and are exactly the same as the Risen Giants out in Orr. He lifts his leg up, you evade. He hits fear, you clear conditions. The only thing you’re doing with a rifle is antagonizing that boulder smash attack and getting people killed.

Civilis.2547:

There’s another interesting “Six” parallel that’s been running.
We have:
Red (fire) – Primordus
Black (death) – Zhaitan
Green (earth/plants) – Mordremoth
Purple (corruption/crystal) – Kralkatorrik
White (Ice) – Jormag
Blue (Water?) – “Bubbles”

We also have
Red (Fire/war) – Balthazar
Black (Death) – Grenth
Green (Nature) – Melandru
Purple (Chaos/Beauty) – Lyssa
White (Air/Healing) – Dwayna
???? – Abbadon or Kormir

And the original Bloodstone, was supposedly broken into 5 pieces and scattered through the world. How easy would it be to have forgotten another “God of Secrets” shard existed?

My personal wild theory is that Tyrians had created the Bloodstone in order to defeat the Elder Dragons long before. The Bloodstones are similar in that they absorb huge quantities of magical energy. The Bloodstone sucked the Dragons dry and they all went into a hibernation state while they waited for food to become plentiful again.

This stones power could be redirected to other purposes, which gave it’s keepers enormous power. They forget the original purpose and begin to war on each other, and then split the stone into pieces. These keepers become the first gods of Tyria, through power stolen from the dragons. The “mantle of the gods” such as transferred between Grenth/Dhuum or Abbadon/Kormir is essentially primary control over the stones power.

As the gods use the power, it remained ambient in the world. Eventually it reached a critical mass where magic returned to the people of Tyria. The gods create helper races such as the Mursaat to attempt to replenish the stones.

Eventually, heroes appear in Tyria that start directly meddling with the Bloodstones power, which hastens the original binding spell on the Dragons to eventually end. The gods vanish from the world, their power expended, and then the Dragons awake from hibernation as they reabsorb the magical energy.

Knowing that you are going to be ambushed… you could position yourself where there is minimal danger. “Bearbow” might only be a stones throw from “Kitten” around here, but at level 7 it isn’t that bad of an idea to try sending your pet in to tank, and kite while ranging down your attackers.

IIRC, once you get one or two down some friendly NPC’s join the fight and then it’s just a matter of assisting kills.

TylerWolff.7186:

Walk up, smash a button or two and you walk away with a mob kill and 90% health. Other classes need to bounce around, worry about placing skills or their health bar. In fact, I never even use my healing skill because the regeneration on it does the work for me.

You have to smash buttons AND you took damage? Talk about gimpy.

If you were on a Ranger with healing/toughness gear you could have AFK’d and just picked up the loot bags. Anything else is sub-par!

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Look at it from the other side. Removing the root and the timed dodge would just make this weapon op. With all the sources of vigor plus the evade on this weapon and the possible evade of the off-hand weapon set. Even without specing into vigor we are able to get the amount of dodge other class can if they spec into it. This allow us to traits for other things or we can go full blast with the vigor. It isn’t just the weapon. This weapon is already use in condi builds mainly for the evades. It has one skill that would benefit from condition damage.

So my question is what are you willing to give-up. Why do you have to give something up because that is anet pattern.

That wouldn’t be overpowered. That would be intentional balance, as defined by ANet’s balance philosophy statements. Our defined combat niche is a melee skirmisher, able to deal sustained melee pressure, with evade as our primary defensive mechanism.

Rangers are intended have more evade than other classes. The class is already balanced assuming we have access to vigor, stamina evades, plus additional weapon skill evades.

The price of our evade has already been paid. Rangers have limited burst potential compared to a thief, with the intent that we can outlive situations that they cannot. We also have caps on our stun-break potential, because a ranger is expected to dodge that stuff.

The fact that Sword AA interferes with dodge & free movement is a balance breaker away from the developer intent.

What I would like is the existing leash range applies to when a target is explicitly selected by F1. If a target is already selected while in-range, the pet will continue to engage regardless of leash until target is down, pet is recalled or killed, or a new F1 target is selected. F1 should have a range indicator to your target just like any other skill.

That fixes the issue of Beastmasters targeting from clip range and attacking, while also allowing for the pet to act autonomously once it is engaged on a target.

lol @ dual wielding torches…

but yes… Staff is a perfectly in-character weapon type for a Ranger and I’d love to see it. MH dagger would, hopefully, fill the PvE gap where MH sword isn’t quite the right tool.

Savoy.6824:

Sounds like I need an axe/longbow build that traits into damage, piercing, and traps. Is there such a thing?

Something like 6/6/0/0/2 would give you the point spread to trait your damage/crit, and have traited traps for AOE.

Probably Axe/WH & Longbow so you can splash the fields from your traps. Zerk is probably required, since ranged damage blows and AOE hybrid ranged damage is just terrible.

I’d suggest AOE on crit sigils (fire, torment), and maybe Bloodlust/Geomancy to get a few more tags in.

I don’t think that the criticism is ignored, actually. Just that it’s a bigger problem than the forum posts recognize.

We had release content, which was “too casual”
They gave us fractals, and ascended, and WvW ranks – and we called them “grindy”
They gave us non-repetitive content – and screamed “temporary?” when we couldn’t repeat it.
They made server space for permanent content – and we cursed the “Megaserver”
They give us permanent story content – and the forums act like this is the last chapter of a book, rather than the first.

I wont say the road wasn’t bumpy, but I do applaud the effort that ANet has made so far.

I’m not actually sure what Lock Auto-target is supposed to do, but I’ve been using it to clear target.

You wouldn’t get the Fern Hound regen since it doesn’t stack with the regen off of Natures Voice.

When I did it, I gave myself a minute worth of regen with natures voice / healing spring, swapped in Troll Ungent, with Signet, Healing Spirit, and Natural Healing.

Anyone know if Bark Skin makes a difference or not?

I just hit the little button that says “Advertise your group” and it usually fills up in a matter of seconds. If there are multiple rangers, I ask what they are running and adjust my build.

For every person that starts a group because the “EXP 80 ZERK WAR/GAR ONLY” tag is annoying, there are 10 who balk at the group description and pray someone else fixes it for them.

6 New audio uploads @ GW2 Soundcloud!!!!!

I’m in a “practice more” mode right now, as I did this almost by accident while dueling a warrior last week and now I’m hungry for more. At least it makes gathering mats more interesting by spin-dashing everywhere.

I’ve found that simply spinning in place isn’t quite good enough to set the direction if travel. On top of the spin you have to take a step forward or back to plant the direction of leap.

Can’t just type “cons” in the little “Search…” bar at the top of your inventory and do the exact same thing?

A-net made a calculator. You give it a character name and it tells you what you’ve finished / what’s left / how much you need for the next reward tier.

https://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=welcome

There is also a wiki guide to getting it done:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_earning_Hall_of_Monuments_rewards

I guess this is the announcement that the cliffs event wont be back next year then?

Wasted in the sense that as you level up the practicality of keeping that level 19 armor decreases. You absolutely wouldn’t want to keep wearing it at level 29, so if you still want to keep that look, then you must transmute again.

I personally solve the problem by looking like a patched together hobo on any non-80 character. This of course defeats the purpose of having a wardrobe system at all.

What would be nice IMO is a limitless transmutation charge, similar to the gathering tools. I can’t see myself more than very rarely buying/using a set of transmutations at the gem store. I could however see the value of spending a larger amount to never need to keep track of them again.

I love how our primary class mechanic is listed multiple times under weaknesses.

:(

Wouldn’t be an issue if it was trade-able. :/

Can’t you do those already though?

Kindled Arrow (Arrows with Fire/Burn damage) => Bonfire or Sun Spirit
Ignite Arrow (Arrows that AOE) => Superior Sigil of Fire
Poison Arrow (Arrows with poison) => Poison Volley

Since you’re mainly using it when you are trying to recover health, and I presume your melee set is your primary damage dealer…

How about Sigil of Water / Sigil of Renewal? or maybe Energy and Renewal? Heal up to full that much faster, then you can get back into melee.

People who regularly give ANet money already get VIP treatment. They just pay for what VIP skins and services they would like to have, rather than paying a subscription and accepting whatever ANet feels you are worthy of.

Living Story Season 1 (everything up to now), wasn’t implemented with this unlock system in mind. If you’ve missed something in the past year, it’s gone and lost forever, excepting those events like Dragon Bash, Halloween, Four Winds… etc, that are an annual thing.

ArchonWing.9480:

Taygus.4571:

Xenon.4537:

Why do people do this in groups? Can’t you solo it just as easily?

because if 5 people are going to key farm.. why not do it together?

its not hard by any means, but its an mmo, and people like to do things together

Ah, sharing the pain. Actually, that’s quite prudent.

It’s a little faster in a group, since you can run a split to kill multiple targets during the storyline parts.

The only thing about the F1 toggle is the button mash effect.

Hit F1 – Pet replies “I have better things to do right now”
Hit F1 again – “Sorry, what was that? There was a half second lag with the zerg and all”
Smash F1 over and over – “Wait, I’m confused – do I attack or return?”
Player Alt Tabs to complain on forum – “OH! ATTACK NEAREST AND AGGRO EVERYTHING!!!!”

To take the “insect vs human” thing just a tiny bit farther – what would we do if a particular species of insects swarmed together and started attacking people? Humans who have incomprehensible purpose from an insect point of view, now have a common identified threat. The humans would suddenly shift from incidentally killing off insects, to wiping them off the face of the earth.

What are all the other Elder Dragons going to do if they now know the Pact is capable of taking down another Dragon?

I was having fun yesterday with a pet-might stacking build.

0/5/0/3/6 – Companions Might, Fortifying Bond, Masters Bond
Jungle Stalker, Flame Trap, Warhorn

Fortifying Bond doubles all of the might that the pet gets, provided you’re in the AOE. So Mighty Roar grants 10 stacks, Warhorn#5 – another 2 stacks, Fire Blast Finisher +6, +3 Sig Battle & Fury = 21 stacks of might * Master Bond stacks + Maxed stat beast mastery. Top it off w/ sword auto-attack and QZ/SicEm for burst.

Obviously not “optimal” on a number of levels, but good for a laugh.

I’d like to think of Season 1 as the pilot to a TV series. Some things work, some things don’t, and some things they have to do because they will never have the budget to do it later.

I wouldn’t mind if hearts could be repeated on a timer basis, probably for a different (read: smaller) reward than finishing it for the first time. I frankly hate zerg content, and now that GW-API’s are kaput, finding something interesting to do solo has been getting more challenging. Having hearts act as a holding area absolutely beats periodically spamming /m with “Any events up?”.

Incomplete without touch-range life steal skills!

and Shadowform Trapper!

Oh hell… give me Shatter Barrage!

Pretty much I only use this skill in the Lions Arch pirate JP.

Which other classes get any benefit for refusing to use the class active abilities?

At normal power, no one would consider running anything else…

This actually is “fixed”. Now it has an actual enforced casting delay, where before the delay as defined as “whenever the kitten the pet gets around to it”.

GW1 had Challenge missions with posted scores and leader boards. So why not?

…

Oh yeah… because no one actually looked at the leader boards other than to know the exact minimum number of points needed for the gold bonus. >.<

The Pointless.3869:

Sorry but just no. He doesn’t have to “prove” anything. The gear is out there, it gives better stats, period. Unless you want to debate that “fact,” prove to my satisfaction that stats don’t matter.

That’s not the point. The point is this: is the difference between Ascended and Exotic really worth the effort? Does the end justify the means? Nobody’s denying that Ascended offers better stats, but are the stats even that much of an improvement to strive for?

Think of it like car selection in a racer. One of those cars will be the fastest, and can outrun everything else on a straightforward sprint, but all that speed isn’t much good on a winding loop. In much a similar way, that edge you’ve got from your Ascended armour might not make a jot of difference when every factor comes into play.

If it required zero effort either way, which one would you pick? If you would pick the higher stats, then what you are saying is that the amount of effort to obtain (i.e. grind) is a gating factor.

Your analogy is a bad one, because there is no balancing performance advantage to taking Exotics over Ascended. Try two cars with absolutely equivalent handling, on the same track conditions, except one has 10% more horsepower, for $50k more cost. Is it worth it? Maybe… maybe not. It depends on if you plan on winning the race or not.