Guild Wars 2

I haven’t tested it lately, but doesn’t the red moa’s furious screech apply fury long before the animation ends.

I think you can hit F2, Fury is applied early in the animation, then command the moa to attack before the animation ends.

This reads like an sPvP list (why doesn’t GW2 have forums for PvE and PvP class discussions like GW2Guru does?) because devourers are useful when the pet is likely to take a hit, which sometimes gives them the edge over spiders in PvE.

Bears are probably the tankiest pets in the game and there are some things you can do with a bear that no other pets can do. Tanking champion mobs to solo group events easily (admittedly it takes a long time) is something a ranger can do with a bear.

I generally agree that pets are poorly designed and there are lots of problems with them but you wrote this list from a PvP perspective.

I just checked with Rampage as One. It appears that pets don’t get stability.

Just tested vigorous renewal, they do get vigour.

I’m going to lose my kitten if this has anything to do with she who shall not be named. This is a really interesting development, let’s not ruin a good thing by slapping it onto her resume.

I have slightly high hopes for some underwater combat.

This is also more in line with what I had in mind when they talked about a Living World. Changes to the geography, expansion on an existing conflict and characters in the world that are talking about the goings on.

Marjory and Kasmeer return which might bring back Mr E. The disappearing people question was never answered. This story could go somewhere exciting.

Bears are basically for when you want to solo a champion or snooze through open world PvE. I don’t think there’s much reason to bring them into dungeons or PvP but I wouldn’t be surprised if some weird meta popped up where they are OP in one of those metas.

At least they considered the ramifications of the protection on dodge roll change and accounted for the pet. We know they read the forums sometimes.

I maintain that Healing Spring is a PvE nerf. It’s sad to see such a great tool lost because of an sPvP meta. The vigor change seems unnecessary and mostly designed to force the pet swap trait instead. That’s so kittenty.

Token buffs on pet F2 skills shows a really shallow look at the class. I didn’t have high hopes for this patch but I was expecting something more than shaving a few seconds off of their cooldowns. I can’t express enough how disappointing the pet “support” changes are. The only one that looks halfway decent is the fern hound.

I flat out don’t understand the Juvenile Hawk change. What is that supposed to accomplish?

It’s hard to criticize or praise this patch because despite all the text in the ranger section, most of these changes seem trivial.

Another sPvP patch that sticks its head in the sand when it comes to ranger issues in PvE. Spirits need a redesign, not 71% more health.

I think you’re suppose to use it while the thief is visible. When fighting a thief they usually have a pattern of DPS before they feel the need to stealth heal. Depending on how reckless the thief is, sometimes they get a little low before they stealth. Usually you can predict when a thief is about to stealth and hit Rapid Fire to continue to hit them in stealth and track their location. Now you can hit Sick Em and follow up with Rapid Fire when Sick Em’s reveal is about to end.

Personally I still think it’s not worth a slot on the bar, but it’s still useful. It’s a proactive counter to stealth. Honestly I doubt it will make much of a difference in most fights so this is probably a weak buff, and if you had trouble with stealth before I doubt this will change much for you, but it’s basically four more seconds the thief is vulnerable.

It’s hard to say much about this patch. Underwhelming is an understatement.

Zaxares.5419:

Zhaitan has been stated by the devs to be certainly dead.

Can you cite that? I haven’t seen it yet.

There are plenty of servers without queues. You are free to join one of them.

Looks like FA are determined to tank their way into the top of the silver league. It’s disappointing to see such obvious match manipulation take place in the week’s preceding the beginning of leagues.

The current T1 and T2 matches are an example of what almost every week of the gold league will look like. You can’t really blame a server for tanking their way out of it.

Players that bandwagon to T1 servers don’t deserve match variety and players outside of T1 deserver better than seven weeks of garbage match ups.

I’m confident there would be blow outs if any of the current gold league contenders ended up in silver league, but I’m also confident there will be at least one or two match ups that are competitive. For any of the T2 servers in gold league that’s guaranteed not to happen.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Is it really too hard to get to level 450 in just one craft?

I have been turning them into bricks etc but I used up my stack of Obsidian Fragments (that I bought a year ago if I ever decided to make a legendary) and I value my karma too much to keep blowing it on something I have no need for – I have enough for several ascended weapons should I ever decide to level the last 25 levels and blow a tonne of gold refining the mithril etc. I think ascended crafting is an abomination and I have no desire to craft any weapons due to the tedium and cost built into this system (I’m confident armour will be the same). I keep getting more and more T7 mats and even if I were to craft ascended items, I need some way to use up the stuff I keep accumulating.

The game needs another outlet for the mass of raw materials being thrown at players. Let us turn them into consumables or something if we have no need or desire to acquire any ascended items.

They design their content updates to make you feel like you can’t take 10 months off without missing out. They don’t want you to leave for 10 months – that 10 months where the user base is down a players, it’s 10 months where they are receiving no money from microtransation sales.

They want to pressure you into staying, into jumping through the meta achievement hoops every two weeks, not because it’s fun, but because it’s gone forever if you don’t.

They want you to be unhappy that you took 10 months off. They hope that unhappiness will lead to you not taking another 10 months off and instead jumping through the meta achievement hoops like everyone else.

The fear of missing out is the replacement for fun as your motivation to play GW2 with the Living World’s current design.

I read the whole thing and I’m unclear how making content permanent would alter the quality of the content or the core experience when playing it. It makes no difference to me that I can do the Personal Story instances today as opposed to a year ago, why should the Living World content be any different? I could do FotM last year and I can do it today.

The Molten Facility would make sense in the world of GW2 today. It was supposed to represent the Molten Alliance and their building weapons and their army. Despite the Molten Facility going away, the Molten Alliance are still around – they attack Tyria every four hours or so. It actually makes more sense for us to still be able to invade their facilities today than it does to have them removed. Did we suddenly stop caring about them?

How are the Rox and Braham instances from Flame and Frost dramatically different from any of the Personal Story instances? How is the Aetherblade Retreat different from a dungeon story mode (or even a dungeon explorable mode)? Instanced content doesn’t need to be removed – it doesn’t conflict with the world around you.

The events on Southsun are harder to argue for permanency – the island before the Secret of Southsun is different from the island today. The open world content needed to change, but the Canach instance and probably even the Kiel mission could both have been left behind.

At a certain point it’s a choice. If they choose to preserve the content they can avoid having core plot points in the open world (like Kiel’s presence in Lion’s Arch during the Dragonbash) and make sure all the important plot points are delivered in instanced. Honestly the only time the story seems to come across well is when it’s instanced. A lot of the Southsun stuff was left for the open world and a lot of people seemed to miss most of it.

If ArenaNet wants to do what Blizzard did with Cataclysm and fundamentally alter the world of Tyria with the Living Story, I’m all for it as long as they pace it correctly. If they want to add things then take them away four weeks later leaving the world almost exactly as it was when the game launched… I’m sceptical of what they are even accomplishing with that.

I see very little value in temporary content in the form that they’ve done this last year (aside from the evolution of Southsun and appealing to some people’s desire to be elite because they were around when others weren’t). I see a whole bunch of reasons why temporary content in the form that we’ve seen this last year is a bad thing.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

“dead” was never used, technically. And yes, Mystic, it is semantics, but Anet always ensures they don’t lock themselves into a specific story path – so I’d be surprised if Angel said “Zhaitan is alive” rather than their current “it depends on where the players are in their own PS.”

While right now the Personal Story may be at one point or another in the timeline, the Living Story is happening now. So at this point in the Living Story, either the Personal Story is done or it isn’t. The Living Story isn’t mutable. It happens to everyone at the same time. It is a fixed time point.

As to whether or not she said it … well I heard it, but you can believe that or not if you wish. I do think it’d be nice to get an official answer, though, to confirm so everyone can be on the same page.

How many times do they have to say Zhaitan is “defeated” at this point in the Living Story before people stop bringing it up as if it’s unclear at this point? The post you linked says it, the Tower Talk interview says it, it’s clear now that the Personal Story has ended and the Living Story is a continuation of the plot, not something that takes place at the same time as the Personal Story.

Is it that difficult for people to use suspension of disbelief and recognise that if you create a new character today and partake in Living Story content while completing your Personal Story, the events of the Personal Story are “historical”? When I played GW1 and made a new character, I would often go to Nightfall and Eye of the North first because I could obtain heroes there. The events of Nightfall (as I understand them) take place after Prophecies and Factions (Shiro and the Khilbron are both present). The events of Eye of the North certainly take place after them. It’s possible to kill the Great Destroyer in EotN before taking down Shiro. It’s possible to complete the War in Kryta before defeating Abaddon. Just because you can do something in a different order in the game does not make them on the same time line. Why would that not apply to GW2?

I don’t understand how what Angel supposedly said at PAX could be seen as contradictory. I haven’t seen anyone say for certain that Zhaitan is “dead”. Don’t dismiss it as semantics – “dead” and “defeated” are two different words and they both have different meanings. Matthew writes defeated, in Tower Talk I think I remember Scott saying defeated and if Angel said he’s not dead she’s not contradicting that. What if they are simply leaving it open for Zhaitan to awaken 1,000 years from now? Isn’t that how the dragons are supposed to function in the first place, they sleep then wake then sleep again?

People have got to stop perpetuating the idea that the Living Story takes place at the same time as the Personal Story. This thread links to Matthew stating otherwise, past threads reference Tower Talk where Scott states otherwise. You guys are turning into global warming sceptics.

You can find lots of world boss mobs by getting outside of the map and swimming underneath it or beyond the edges of it.

This was raised in the past when someone found dragon models on/under/outside one of the Orr maps (I think it was Malchor’s Leap but it may have been Straights of Devastation). It was one of the dragons you see flying in the sky with the air ships.The general consensus was that the model is for some reason stored inside the map but outside of normal view and it exists there, out of sight, waiting for when the game needs to load the graphic or model somewhere else on the map (in the case of Zhaitan it would be during the boss fight and the “cinematic” of his body falling – it’s been a long time since I did Arah story mode).

I don’t spend my time getting outside/under the map (aside from when mesmer staff used to send you there all the time) but I know I’ve seen Shadow Behemoth’s “dead body, floating in the water” and I suspect other models are also doing the same. If you have to get outside/under the map and swim through “solid” structures to see it, I somehow doubt that could be considered canon.

This topic is basically being covered in the lore forum (and other places) already:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Important-Lore-question-regarding-Zhaitan
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/Zhaitan-is-still-alive
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lore/No-Risen-Karkas/first#post1156321

Lore in GW2 generally is left open ended. Very rarely will the writers commit to something, and it’s not uncommon to see them change something that was previously stated as fact in game and turn it into PoV history which was just wrong. Even if every racial leader in the game came out and said “Zhaitan is dead and gone forever” nothing is stopping the writers from saying two months later “we never said he was dead and gone, the characters did – and they were wrong” and just bring him back.

I was under the impression you can’t kill an elder dragon, only put it back to sleep (this is really old lore though, I think it goes back to pre-launch previews setting the scene for GW2 and the elder dragon threat). Maybe there was something in the Personal Story that stated they found a way to permanently stomp him (even then it is limited to their PoV – GW2 has a bad habit of undermining their lore this way), but I can’t remember it that much, but given how mixed people’s thoughts are on his dead or alive status, I suspect what happens to Zhaitan at the end of Arah Story Mode is unclear to a lot of people.

Zhaitan’s model stored underneath/outside the map is not the same thing as Zhaitan’s dead body.

nihavel.6592:

No, Zhaitan is dead, devs annunce his death in some interview.

If your talking about the Tower Talk interview I believe the word used is “defeated” not “dead”. Regardless of what it is, I don’t think Zhaitan will be featured in the story in the near future.

Why would anyone source WoodenPotatoes on this? Not only does he not work for ArenaNet but he’s been wrong in the past. This isn’t an attack on WoodenPotatoes more an issue of people putting him on some kind of pedestal simply because they are too lazy to read the text inside the game themselves.

Le Rooster.8715:

It’s strange, the only week our TS constantly crashes are the weeks against SoR. I smell fishy play here.

You think SoR would waste their time trolling SoS TS? They are going to stomp this match home. Half of their population could take the week off and they would still win.

For people who don’t like this match up, strap in. For seven weeks most matches in the gold league will look something like this.

If people get bored they might want to consider transferring off the stacked servers.

I suspect SBI will pull ahead and will be top 6 regardless of what their true strength is. I don’t know what their true strength is but it’s higher than their current rating says it is (thanks to DB’s implosion and FA’s tanking along with SBI’s recruitment drive). That means even with an equal performance they will take rating from SoS. DB still lost rating last week so SoS actually gained rating despite the haemorrhaging that DB had the week before.

Depending on how much rating FA loses this week, Maguuma could take the 6th spot.

SBI won the golden ticket. Getting matched with SoR means not only did they have the most rating to gain prior to this (so an even match with SBI, SoS and Maguuma would have resulted in a rating drop for SoS and Maguuma and a rating gain for SBI) but they have the most rating to eat from SoR. SoS might also gain rating but it will partially be countered by rating loss to SBI as their current rating is still lower than it should be.

My guess would be SBI will glide into gold league on the rating boost they will get from SoR this week (I assume they will perform decently during the week, it’s going to be hard to keep up a weekend performance compared to T1 weekday coverage though). The final spot will go to either SoS or FA, but any combination of those three is possible. I think Maguuma drew the short straw this week (from the perspective of people who wanted to get into gold league), if they knock FA out of gold it will likely only be to keep SoS and SBI there.

I don’t understand why people keep going on about Fractals and lore. Is there something huge I’m missing here? What lore or story was put forward by any of the existing fractals? Dulfy was never in Ascalon and as far as I know neither was Ashym. Why would anyone think fractals are for lore or story? How could we play through all of GW1 and never come across either of these characters if they were in any way important?

What did we learn about Tyria with the Aquatic fractal? That krait sacrifice people and that giant jellyfish exist?

What do we learn about Canthan history with the Solid Ocean fractal? It doesn’t depict any significant historical events or have any real consequences for the world.

Where in Tyria does the Mossman exist? I don’t immerse myself in norn culture very much but I don’t recall anything like him ever, even if I did, what makes him any different from a grumpy old man of the wild who hates trespassers and ends up getting killed by them when they don’t get off his front lawn?

Is everyone else playing a different version of the game from me? Fractals are non-canon scenarios without any stories or story consequences, kind of like art (make this cool looking thing) meets game design (these are cool mechanics we can try) without the limitations of needing to tie it into the story.

As much as I dislike Scarlet, adding her to the fractal would actually add a story to something that doesn’t really have one.

Playing Devil’s advocate here (I too strongly dislike Scarlet’s presence in GW2) it would make a lot of sense to include her in the Thaumanova fractal update. The other two fractals being added are Molten Facility and Aetherblade Retreat, but they likely won’t be identical to their first incarnations. Both of these dungeons are linked to Scarlet but we never saw her side of those scenarios. We never saw how she manipulated the Molten Alliance and we never saw her interactions or involvement with the Aetherblades. Maybe the general theme for the entire fractal update will finally show case some of the hidden plot points which helps tie everything together. Scarlet is worried players might discover some things about her by playing through these fractal scenarios so she interferes with the fractal to keep her secrets hidden. Maybe Scarlet’s future involves the Crucible of Eternity (the Living Story is being used to revamp dungeons and Scarlet is known to already be working with the Inquest) and she was previously involved in the Thaumanova Reactor and she wants to hide something, or her current involvement with the Crucible of Eternity means she needs to obtain something from the Reactor before it exploded.

I don’t like Scarlet but I would experience petty glee if she disappointed some of the blind fanboyish love the Thaumanova fractal has as some important event in Tyria. On the less petty side, fleshing out past events is something that Fractals have the unique ability to do. Some of the issues I have with Scarlet could be alleviated if they take this opportunity to tell her side of the story in the past.

Yeah voluntary gear checks for CoF became mandatory gear checks. Fine, it was only speed clear groups which only affected warriors. Then there were UW checks for the summoning stones, an arbitrary check but one people did anyway. Generally most high end content had people pinging a build, and to a certain extent in GW1 this was justified – end game groups played build wars and required specific rolls and advertised as such when forming a group. Guild Wars 2 is less like this. I don’t think the party combos you can do in GW2 come close to what you could do in GW1 so it makes less sense to create a tool for discrimination.

As far as the melee meta of GW2 goes I think it’s an example of how broken GW2 combat has become. Berserker builds break encounters, AI is exploited to the point that combat no longer has depth – it’s just stack and cleave. I will stack in AC for the spider boss. As dumb as it is, it’s not my responsibility to stop the exploit. Someone at ArenaNet should have changed the Queen’s AI so she used the AoE poison field in melee range killing off this strategy long ago. I think AI and mechanics need an overhaul. Mobs need to stop running around a corner and stacking up because of LoS. It removes the value of control and pull skills and further enhances the broken state of melee cleaves. More boss mobs need ways to punish melee stacked parties. In GW2 stacking in melee is becoming the best way to beat most content. If the mobs have skills that they only use on ranged groups, they need skills that they only use on melee groups. Ones that matter.

Until that happens it’s fair for players to play how they want in a casual pug. If you want a speed clear that only does melee stacking, advertise as such or bring your guild. A berserker longbow ranger at 1500 range is actually doing very good damage. They might miss out on melee buffs (in many pugs that’s not a huge loss) but they are safely putting out high DPS (longbow at max range is good DPS). As far as the average pug goes, I’d be more than happy to take that person.

Posted on reddit 11 hours ago by the same guy who altered someone else’s build and posted the video swiftpaw just linked:

BrazilDnT

Gameplay with Sword is that farthest thing from boring I could possibly imagine, because you have to queue up attacks ahead of time, know what attacks bosses are going to do, break your autoattack chain if you make a mistake, and do all of that while managing a pet. It’s not boring, it’s not lazy, it’s very difficult. You lack understanding of how Ranger actually works. Greatsword will also get you killed a lot if you break the autoattack chain or don’t time evades correctly.

The downside of the class is that more people can’t play it effectively because of the challenge it brings. I don’t play mine as often anymore because I can’t relax while playing it. It’s difficult and rage inducing when you make a mistake.

From this reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1o80i5/should_i_reroll_from_ranger/

That’s the state of the DPS ranger in dungeons from one of the more elitist members of the dungeon community. The guy who many people copy (he himself slightly altered a build from Gunagali) said that the sword is “difficult and rage inducing when you make a mistake” and he “can’t relax while playing it.”. Now if the developers intended to create a class that was difficult and rage inducing and didn’t allow people to relax during a casual dungeon run, what audience did they make the game for? This is a guy who runs the build in optimised parties of skilled and experienced players that can support the build with the DPS it needs to work. What do you think the experience is like for random pugs or more casual players?

The skill cap on an engineer or an elementalist allows you to do some crazy stuff, combo fields, blast finishers, 25+ skills and combos. There is a tool for almost every situation and when you master those classes there is so much you can do. When you master the ranger you can stop your pet from being a hindrance (either causing harm to your party somehow or simply keeping it alive) and stay alive while using the sword. There is a bunch of other things you can do (probably less than an ele or engineer), but are you going to have the resources/skill for that when you are constantly micromanaging the pet and micromanaging the sword?

It’s always a DPS race, just in this DPS race you have additional mechanics to tank your time. A team with higher DPS is going to have to repeat the mechanics far less times than a team with low DPS.

It’s like the destroyer in CoE or the Ghost Eater in AC. It’s possible to kill them in one phase preventing the need to repeat the encounter’s mechanics.

When GW2 killed the trinity and refused to put a hard cap on crit damage they turned boss fights into DPS races. The addition of other mechanics doesn’t change that.

ColinJohanson.2394:

apt.9184:

How hard is it to make rewards for pvp? Just add few exclusive skins we can buy with glory since thats good for nothing right now why do we have to wait a months for rewards when pve gets it every 2 weeks…. You are not going to have any pvp players left by then. Just saying…..

We want to totally revamp the way rewards and PvP interact with the entire game, what you’re suggesting is relatively easy, but in the long run not what we think fundamentally will solve the core issue with PvP. We’re working on comprehensive fixes to help bring PvP and the sense of more reward more in with the rest of the game, rather than apply band-aids on a system we don’t really like anyway.

As for the skins, absolutely that’s one of things we’re discussing.

Why should a PvE player have to play in PvP to earn a PvE skin? If someone doesn’t want to PvP, why would you make them do it to obtain a PvE skin?

What are we supposed to do will the extra resources we have? I’m getting way too much of this stuff and I can’t be bothered to make ascended weapons (even if I could I’ve got too much of the other components).

Can we get a recipe for consumables that use the raw materials so I don’t have to blow all my karma just to store it in the bank?

Ascended weapons and armour should have the default option to use them like a skin option. Double to apply the stats to the look of your choice. Better yet, don’t make ascended armour in the first place.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

It’s hard to tell what the functionality of the item is from just a screen shot, so I’m here to clarify. This screen shot actually shows the Bloody Prince Thorn costume and not an armor skin, so it is not usable in combat.

Why do this?

The Mad King Thorn armor and the Bloody Prince Thorn armor are both awesome. I really wish they and other town clothing were able to be used in combat… GW1 did their costumes right, why do worse wit GW2? :/

I think there is an issue or immersion here. Costumes are not armour class specific and so you can have a warrior running around in a silly looking costume. In GW1 costumes were added late in the game’s life and the rules of what was immersion breaking vs what would increase revenue from the game were relaxed. It didn’t matter as much that female warriors could be on the front lines in Gwen’s wedding outfit or the Dwayna costume.

In GW2 I guess we are still in a situation where the immersion of the game outweighs the ability to wear novelty costumes in combat.

Still, I find it confusing this particular item is a costume and not a light armour. There is nothing about this that looks like it shouldn’t be armour for a light class.

I’m sceptical of what this will accomplish. I have been posting on the forum for over a year now under the impression that what I write (provided it was constructive and respectful, which it isn’t always) had a good chance of being read by someone it was relevant to. I still assume that’s the case – that forums are read just not frequently commented on.

What exactly is the goal of all these threads and polls etc? I don’t see how they would appease people or lead to more satisfaction unless actual actions in game followed (which my understand is that won’t happen for 3-4 months in the best of cases). If a thread is created in the ranger forum asking what issues ranger players are most concerned about, what would happen if 90% of the posts talked about pet AI or pet survivability in challenging content (WvW, dungeons, World Bosses etc)? This is already a known issue and has been well documented since the beta yet it becomes worse and worse with each content patch (most of the dungeons this year kill the pet with certain mechanics – electric fields in Aetherblade Retreat, everything in the Tequatl Encounter etc). Devs talking about it in a forum thread isn’t going to change anything in game. What if rangers raise issue with the main hand sword auto-attack leap chain and the character control issues it causes? What if the thread becomes split between PvP rangers that love the cruise control to stick on their target and PvE players who hate the inability to dodge DoD (dodge or die) attacks because of a useless (to them) leap function?

What happens if players themselves aren’t clear on what they enjoy? The Crown Pavilion and Scarlet’s Invasions were very popular content. Is it because they demonstrate the best gameplay experience in the game or is it because they gave out large and imbalanced amounts of loot compared to the rest of the game? What if you get a lot of praise about the mechanics of Tequatl and Twilight Assault but a month later people only run the other two TA paths because they are easier and faster despite the new path being more “fun”?

What if you get a lot of negative feedback about Ascended tier equipment? What if the company has a hard stance supporting ascended regardless of what the feedback says (as long as the metrics are fine)? What about Scarlet? If there is a lot of negative feedback to her as a character and her central role to the stories being told (and how poorly received they are by many people) we know you can’t just kill her off – the story has been building up to her and stuff down the pipe line will involve her so until that’s resolved she’s here for better or worse regardless of what the feedback says (the Living Story has gone all in on Scarlet at this point). Then we have the issue of forums representing the vocal minority and only a small subset of the community. It’s easy to dismiss or devalue forum criticism on the grounds that it doesn’t represent everyone.

I’m not looking for a specific reply on any of the issues I raised above, they are just examples of the scenarios that will be raised and I can’t see how threads on the forum are going to change these situations or appease the people they are important to. Is the goal simply to raise the visibility of developer consumption of the forums, or is the goal to create a new paradigm which will give player feedback more power to influence the future of the game’s development? I am under the impression the later already happens with the forum and I don’t believe the former is likely to result in any real changes in the game, just player perception of the forums.

TL;DR What does all this hope to accomplish? Is this going to have any real potential to change the direction of the game differently from how the forums currently work? How is a new way of handling forum feedback going to impact on the content releases for GW2?

GoldenTruth.2853:

TLDR for the OP: I had a bad experience with one person from a Tequatl killing guild (TTS). Therefore, all members of that guild are scumbags and I decided to join the guild simply to sabotage their efforts by trying to get as many pugs in as possible preventing actual members from entering.

In my mind you are just as bad, if not worse than the person who disrespectfully asked you to leave the overflow.

He didn’t say TTS he said TSS. Even if it was TTS I know that’s not the official stance or even the dominant stance of the guild. While it’s true that the guild will aim to find an overflow with as few random pugs as possible so they can fit the maximum number of guildies in and ensure success, the most I’ve seen them do is politely ask turret users to allow a TTS member on TS to take over, or at the very least respond and hopefully know what they are doing.

As far as Tequatl goes, aside from the few dedicated guilds and chosen servers, hasn’t everyone pretty much given up on it by now? Most servers couldn’t reliably break phase one and so the event turned into a ghost town. Now that boss week is over and his loot is certifiably terrible given the organisation and overflow camping required (up to an hour or more just to ensure a spot in an overflow), is anyone even bothering aside from a handful of players?

nethykins.7986:

Kuzzi.2198:

@Chris Whiteside

As an active player and forum reader/contributor since Beta, I have definitely noticed the many improvements to the game that originated from the community and ended up being implemented. I respect Anet for seriously taking player suggestions and shaping their game in the direction that the community wants to see it go.

However, I think the turn-around time from when suggestions are made to when they are released (if they are released) is something that needs serious improvement. A couple examples that come to mind are Edit Guild Message of the Day and Targeting without a party. Both are great quality of life improvements and I’m very glad that they are now part of the game, but I’m disappointed that it took over a year for them to be implemented even though they were constantly being suggested since day 1.

There are still many similar things for which the community has asked over and over, but have not even received an official response. Two which are in my opinion most important and most frequently suggested are Guild Features and TP Search Options. I feel that after one year, Anet has no excuse for not at the very least addressing these issues. Is that something we can ask for right now?

As for continual improvements, I think a good way to get a feel for what the community really wants is to monitor Reddit, as quality of life game improvement suggestions usually surface to the front page every couple days. Seeing a greater percentage of them come to life would really solidify this Dev-Community bond that you are describing.

While they’re at it, it’d be awesome if those people who contributed got a little shout out (not everyone, but ya know…highlighting the MAIN reddit post that caused the shift or gave the most valuable feedback) and saying “This -Link- was asked of us XX months ago. We kept an eye on it and thought we’d share our progress”

The problem with ANet is that, the secrecy for things that we are really eager to see, is not working in their favour. They’re attempting to create suspense.

You can’t be excited for something you know nothing about.

They can’t use suggestions from third party sites because they don’t have permission to do so. The official forums however require you to accept an agreement which allows them to harvest ideas from it.

I’m sure third party sites are great for gauging the temperature of the community and judging how content is received by different communities, but they can’t take suggestions from it. That’s part of the reason why GW2 has official forums.

zero.5316:

Shiren.9532:

I do find it ironic that this patch is supposed to be about support options but the nerf to Healing Spring would means it hits hardest at the ranger’s most powerful support skill.

If im not mistaken, the healing Healing Spring does will be buffed. So in a sense, Healing Spring will heal the same amount, shorter time

With five seconds less of blast finishers and front loading all the condition removal in 10 seconds instead of spreading them out across 15 (in PvE this will usually be a nerf as conditions are usually inflicted in small numbers repeatedly like poison, burning or weakness unlike sPvP where conditions are like spikes, they are thrown on all at once and need to be cleansed multiples at a time).

They are also removing the pulsing vigour when traited which made Healing Spring a great tool to drop on the front line to relieve multiple kinds of pressure on melee (condition removal, blast healing, endurance up time).

Pet support skills have a lot to make up for with a Healing Spring nerf.

BAITness.1083:

I am glad you posted this. Having played in tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3, I can say the biggest difference is definitely our commanders. Our commanders are the best of the best.

The lower tiers like to claim they have better roamers, but I have played against them and they are simply incorrect. In the lower tiers being a “skilled roamer” counts as being a person in a 1v1 build trying to hunt down someone in a team build en route to their group. In T1 we have roamers that can smash entire small groups by themselves, and survive encounters with the mega blobs we have here. When I played on JQ there was a thief who would flip all the camps on the map right before the tick… I don’t recall anybody ever stopping him. I ran into him a few times when groups of players were trying to chase him down, but he either won the fight or chased them off every time. There used to be a few groups completely dedicated to fighting drastically larger numbers, and they were successful – not because the larger number groups were playing very poorly, but rather because the small groups played very well.

It’s true that lower ranked servers don’t play as well with large numbers as higher ranked servers with large numbers. That’s because WvW is a different game outside of the top ranks. You cap towers without a zerg, you siege keeps without a zerg. The groups that cap supply camps in high tier servers are the size of the zergs in lower tier servers. You need to be far more self sufficient in lower tier servers. Individual actions will matter a lot more when you don’t have a massive zerg of people carrying supply or bashing down a door. Smallers guilds and invididuals matter a lot more in lower ranked gameplay and commanders don’t command giant zergs, they command small to moderate zergs that all have to carry their own weight. Giant zerg combat doesn’t matter as much in the lower ranks, it’s a different meta (one that I’ve seen giant zerg commanders that used to play in T1 suddenly fail at when they dropped to lower tiers). The zerg meta is dominant in T1 and to a lesser extent in T2, outside of that the zerg meta isn’t viable because there isn’t a consistently large enough group of people online to zerg all the time. You gotta be more self reliant and can’t rely on a zerg to get things done.

Giant zergs bashing into each other is about the only thing that top ranked servers can consistently provide that can’t be found as easily elsewhere.

I also disagree with the roamers in T1, you talk about lower ranked roamers picking on people built for zergs, that’s far more likely to happen in T1. Most people in T1 are bandwagoners and they moved their to zerg, not to roam. The thing T1 is most known for is the constant blobs bashing into each other. Most of the random people running around are doing so to join the commander on the map or to protect a dolyak/stop someone from contesting a WP, not because they are looking for a duel – it doesn’t surprise me that a roamer can kill a bunch of randoms that are not built for dueling.

On the lower ranked servers you’re far more likely to find players built for small team fights or 1v1 simply because quite often there is no allied zerg for them to join on the map. The only reason a T1 server could compete with this is simply because they have more people total.

It’s also a myth that there are consistently times when nothing happens in WvW outside of T1. The only time I see this is when a horrible match up happens and it’s a complete blowout to the point that an otherwise populated server is being spawn camped. The vast majority of the time there are healthy populations consistently on EB and there is almost always a fight to be found on an enemy borderland. Coverage differences aren’t as dramatic on lower ranked servers and even when a server has better coverage it’s usually nothing like the differences in T1.

The one thing that is almost exclusive to T1 servers than can’t be found in abundance anywhere else in the game is giant egos. The same egos that cause T1 guilds to abandon ship when their server looks like it might drop, the same egos that make T1 servers claim T1 is the best place to be or that lower ranked servers are just PvDoor.

tl;dr if you want giant blobs of people and everything that goes with that, go to T1. Everything else they say is just ignorance or a recruitment tactic to cannibalise other servers and continue the top heavy stacking that prevents them from having to transfer to remain in T1.

Fuzzion.2504:

Tietus.8013:

This is what I don’t understand about the T1 servers recent recruitment drives for more people. You’ll spend 4-6 out of the 7 weeks in the league being bored kittenless. People really transfer for some poxy finisher??? Amazing!

Not really true. T1 and T2 can be fun. Its just that fighting a t3 server like SoS is utterly boring.

Also Mag stands to gain from potential recruitment drives if they get into the gold league.

SoS is T2. It’s currently ranked 6th (was ranked 5th yesterday). It’s still unclear what happened with SBI (my current pick for the most volatile server in NA unless a current T1 drops to T2) but the last time Maguuma fought SoS (which wasn’t that long ago) they lost by a not insignificant amount. For some reason this week FA seems to be performing really badly, I don’t know if that’s because Maguuma and SBI got in a tonne of recruits (we know SBI did) or if FA just doesn’t care as much as their competition this week (or lost a lot players) or a combination of the two. Even if there was a match with SBI, Maguuma and SoS there is still too much rating instability caused by SBI recruitment and DB implosion for a single match to accurately place the three servers.

SBI will gain rating the easiest as theirs is lower than it should be due to bandwagons. The 6th (and maybe 5th) spot in the gold league will be determined not by server strength but by the match up next week. I suspect if SoS, FA, Maguuma or SBI (possibly even DB) get a T1 server next week along with TC, that will secure their spot in gold league (lots of rating to eat and TC likely won’t take it). If the same servers get matched with a T4 or lower server next week that will likely secure their spot in silver league. If three are matched together I suspect SBI will take it, they will gain rating easier (so the other servers will have to outperform them to stay neutral let alone gain rating) and they are still on the honeymoon period from their transfers so their players currently care a lot more than established higher ranked servers.

It’s hilarious to read T1 players complain about boring matches against lower ranked servers. Why do these players think DB imploded the way it did? Where do they think the DB guilds went? The WvW forums are full of T1 players complaining about T1 problems that they create for themselves. It’s like reaching a bunch of posts written by a woman crying into the palm of her hand.

It’s hard to tell, usually the meta achievement is part of a month’s worth of content so the first update lasted four weeks while the second lasted two. Then we had SAB which had nothing to do with Boss Week but it still stuck around for four weeks while Boss Week was gone after two.

Given that TA has nothing to do with Halloween and it’s relatively easy to get the meta achievement done in a single dungeon run, I expect it will be gone when the next patch hits.

I suspect the preview won’t really be a class balance discussion etc but rather outlining the changes they made to tool tips, the UI and things like that. I doubt you will get much discussion of the ranger specifically unless it’s a brief overview of what they hope to accomplish with the changes to certain pet support options. As far as the twitch chat goes, the TA preview was filled with questions about the removal of F/U path and Rubi completely ignored them. The way they select questions, they may as well have pre-written ones rather than let players ask them. The community managers field all the questions they don’t want to answer and instead choose ones that are on message.

I do find it ironic that this patch is supposed to be about support options but the nerf to Healing Spring would means it hits hardest at the ranger’s most powerful support skill.

I expect it will be a mixed bag. Some big nerfs (like Healing Spring and vigour combo) with enough scattered buffs (apparently pets will become more viable as support) to hold off the criticism. The HP buff to pets and minions in PvE is a band aid and won’t solve any issues but it will be popular because it will certainly help.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Short bow’s range is fine at its current default…but it DOES need the boost in range from the same trait that does it to LB. One of the main problems with short bow’s range originally was that it had the same range as the longbow unless traited, so it outshined the LB just due to the fact that it could DPS faster and outdo the longbow’s damage easily originally. I have a feeling they changed the range so that wouldn’t happen again when they also buffed the LB, and so the bows don’t seem as similar as they were before, at least in range. I do believe that the trait that increases the LB’s range DOES need to effect the SB as well, though.

The long bow does more DPS than the shortbow if you discount bleeds.

I think eagle eye is a horrible trait. The increased range on the shortbow definitely matters but on the longbow it hard marginal use in WvW and doesn’t really matter in PvE unless you want to lame world bosses by standing outside their maximum range. Currently Eagle Eye competes with both piercing arrows (fundamental for effective bow use in PvE) and Spotter (the most useful tool a ranger has to contribute to a group). It has even more competition if you use signets, one of the few viable power builds.

Allowing eagle eye to boost the shortbow range to it’s former not OP state would solve nothing because the 20 and 30 point traits in marksmanship are already loaded with some of the most important DPS traits a bow ranger has. Eagle Eye needs to be merged with Piercing Arrows or Quick Draw (or both) in addition working with a shortbow. All three combined would probably be too powerful, but all three on their own is underwhelming and bloats rangers with weak trait choices.

Antara.3189:

Mad King’s Son, Prince Oswald Thorn.

Taking bets now.

Yeah, more than likely it will be plot related and involve the Prince.

I may have gotten this but 800 gems is far too much for this kind of content. That’s like a monthly subscription and I don’t think that’s worth a month in subscription fees.

I want to see the old content. It’s temporary so it doesn’t wear out like permanent content and to have it return reduces the pressure to get it done because there is always next year (the psychological pressure of temporary content hinders my gaming experience).

It seems like the story elements of Halloween are going to be new (the Prince plot) but the other festival stuff will largely be the same. I am perfectly fine with this. It gives them more time to work on a more robust story for Halloween or a more robust content patch after Halloween (remember that Tequatl was done by a feature team not a Living Story team so the resources for Boss week could have gone somewhere else, if Halloween is light on new content we might see a bigger update soon to come).

I want the festivals to return mostly intact.

papryk.6273:

like this game need more backpack… -_-

There are still less backpacks than there are weapon skins. I don’t think players truly think there is an over-abundance of backback skins, I think players are getting tired of the only souvenir from the Living World patches are either backpacks or minis and feel compelled to keep the skins they don’t use because they can never be obtained again.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

No offense but I hope to god they do NOT come back EVER… These should be something that people who have been around since the beginning have a priviledge of owning. They can go ahead and make new weapons but I will be EXTREMELY kittened off if they bring these back…

You can buy them today on the TP. I can make an account today and have one. I’m not sure what you are getting at.

Personally I hate time exclusive content in MMOs. As someone who has played since the first BWE they still kitten me off.

Cynz.9437:

pretty sure sbi gathered entire bandwagon population..

The bandwagon population is still on BG, JQ and SoR. At the end of free transfers most of them went to JQ and SoR. As time went on JQ slowly faded and BG poached some guilds from other servers (including SoS as the bandwagons jumped ship once it stopped being first place – it didn’t even need to drop out of T1 before some of the big guilds still currently in T1 left the place for the next WvW easy wins server). SoR and BG continued to get bandwagons in and eventually JQ toppled, but without free transfers not enough people could leave their comfortable first place server (but many of them did) and they took a distant third. More transfers, some from BG to JQ, more cannibalising of lower ranked servers to sustain the top tier position blah blah.

tl;dr the bandwagon population is in T1 already. Whatever is happening on SBI doesn’t come close to what happened and continues to happen every week on T1 servers. The score difference between SBI, Maguuma and FA is nothing compared the score difference between any T1 server or TC when they play against those servers.

Honestly DB is doing well in the current match (it’s only 30k poins below the 5th ranked server). It will likely do well in the silver league. Why would you leave a server in that position?

I thought it might be Cannach as well but he’s not wearing the molten gloves and that looks like medium armour, Cannach wears heavy armour. He’s supposed to be some kind of guerrilla fighter, so maybe they changed his look to accommodate that. His redesign was kind of awful (I’ve never liked the heavy tier 3 armour) so maybe his return to the story has him in less dire circumstances and he can afford to buy a new wardrobe instead of wearing one he grew himself.

I think the next update is Halloween so I expect it might be the Prince. I think I would like it better if it was Cannach, but a Halloween specific character seems more likely. They previewed a new light armour set in one of the screen shots and armour sets come in threes (as gem store purchases) so that artwork might be the new medium armour.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Just wait, within the next 3 months – give or take – the playerbase will begin dropping…

GL ArenaNet, getting them back.

I truly hope that they don’t make GW2 flop with this “Living World” story.

Excuse my cynicism. But the LS is proving to be a larger and larger disappointment, only providing grind to a game where we were promised no grind.

Raziel.4216:

Jenny needs money to survive, this is not optional
Players dont need to play, it’s optional
False analogy.

Players are conditioned into enjoying rewards. (A good explanation of what I mean)
ArenaNet added rewards to achievement points.
Living Story retains players not by story or content, but by all the many new achievement points (it is the easiest way to get more AP).

The next three months hold the most popular festivals in Guild Wars history. They could have released nothing all year and players would return for Halloween and Wintersday. Let’s not forget that Wintersday also coincides with holidays.

I agree that lately GW2 feels more like quantity rather than quality and the design philosphy has shifted to rewards driving content rather than a satisfying experience driving content. ArenaNet wants players logging in every day so instead of creating content that makes players want to log in every day because the experience is fun, they create content that makes players log in every day because they need to do their dailies. The Living Story content is full of limited time achievements and temporary content because it forces you to do it when it’s available or miss out forever. It’s so heavily rooted into their design structure now I don’t think ArenaNet or GW2 will ever recover unless they can change direction with an expansion.

The question they ask is no longer “Is it fun?” but rather “Is it keeping players logged in daily?”. The mistake would be to think that those are both the same thing.

Cowrex.9564:

I can’t agree more with you OP. Scarlet really IS the best villain I’ve seen so far in GW2. I was amazed at her story I have a feeling she’ll be the one to bring the world down to it’s knees.

Plus I kinda liked how she is tied to the Flame and Frost arc

She is said to be tied to the Flame and Frost arc (apparently she was the one that manipulated the Molten Alliance although this was stated outside the game, inside the game it was never officially confirmed or stated, simply implied by their presence during her invasions).

Here is my problem with that:

The Flame Legion don’t have a great deal of respect for females. In charr culture they are the ones framed as the reason why the females weren’t present in GW1. It’s difficult to believe that such an organisation would listen to a female sylvari. To do so you would have to disregard an established theme for their faction simply to accommodate Scarlet as a villain.

The dredge are a xenophobic race. They have a history of slavery and despise other races as a result of it. Why on earth would they work for (or listen to) Scarlet when she is from another race and she also personally uses threats of violence to control and subjugate her armies (“Have you met my Aetherblades? They work for me, you know, because they like living.")? This portrays the Aetherblades similair to slaves. Why would the dredge work with someone who enslaves people?

What happened the leaders of the dredge and the Flame Legion? One of the themes of groups is that when one leader dies, another takes over. I was under the impression the dredge had a military dictatorship in place. I don’t think a new Imperator (leader) of the Flame Legion was officially established but the organisation has been around for hundreds of years, Gaheron can’t be the first leader to die and he likely isn’t the last. They aren’t just laying around waiting for Scarlet to come harness their unused forces, they are an entities in their own right but the story ignores that simply to use them as tools for Scarlet to be a villain.

What exactly is it about her involvement in Flame and Frost that you like? The story’s complete disregard of the Flame Legion and the dredge as autonomous factions in Tyria with their own identities? The apparent lack of a motive or story behind what Flame and Frost was all about? Not even an attempt to explain why two different factions were easily controlled by a single person neither of them would likely deal with simply to accomplish very little?

The way the story is currently being written, established lore is just a tool box for the writers to pillage when they want to make Scarlet seem more threatening. Now she’s making a conveniently vague deal with the Nightmare Court to infest another part of Tyria. It’s like the writers think “let’s take two aesthetically different things and put them together with total disregard of lore and racial culture because that establishes Scarlet as craft and inventive” regardless of what it does to established lore.

The world of Tyria is already on its knees. Humans used to be the most powerful faction in Tyria, now they are on their last legs. The asura have been pushed out of their old homes and forced to run away. The same for the norn who were forced to move south (who are also plagued by the cancer of a dragon worshipping faction). The charr are sieged on all fronts by ghosts, branded minions and the Flame Legion and the sylvari are dealing with the Nightmare Court and whatever dragon is most threatening at the time. If you think Scarlet is the biggest threat in Tyria you haven’t been paying attention, the small number of refugees caused by Flame and Frost is nothing compared to the migration of entire races that Primordius and Jormag caused. Zhaitan caused the destruction of Old Lion’s Arch and reshaped the land just by getting out of bed, Kralkatorrik branded a good chunk of Ascalon by simply taking a morning stroll. The final fight of the Personal Story may have presented an underwhelming experience when it comes to Elder Dragons, but Scarlet is a drop in the bucket compared to them.

I don’t know what criteria the OP is using for best, but it can’t be one that involved respectfully treating the existing lore like ti matters and doing justice to the stories that came before it, because Scarlet is like a wrecking ball.

Anubarak.3012:

Flissy.4093:

How has this gone unnoticed for over a year?

Maybe we should test if our healing skills heals our enemy’s too O.O
Healway guards would die out

There used to be a ranger drake skill that healed the enemy so it’s happened before.

More RNG nonsense with incredibly low drop rates. Stuff like this turns item acquisition into the lotto. You don’t run TA in hopes of acquiring the weapons for yourself, you run it in hopes of winning the lotto. Everyone else has to grind out tonnes of gold so the lotto winners can cash their ticket in. I’m so sick of this kind of RNG.

Sola.7250:

Ellen Kiel wins the election

When FotM comes out with the new fractals they are going to say we permanently impacted Tyria… which is true. A large number of players chose Ellen and that leads to the fractal. A large number didn’t and they didn’t impact Tyria at all.

The way they went about it, it’s not much different from a poll on the website. They said they had two fractal ideas and presented them to players. The story doesn’t actually care which candidate represents which fractal – Ellen isn’t an asura or Priory member trying to figure out some Thaumanova mystery and Evon isn’t interested in Abbadon. The story itself didn’t care about the candidate and their respective fractal, it was just a transparent poll pushed into the game with a bunch of unnecessary baggage (WP costs, reduced keys, black and white characterisations).

Southsun gave players a way to impact the world twice and neither time was it a choice. Players helped first colonise the island and take out the threat and then players later returned to clear up the contracts issue and reinforce the colonies. It’s just a shame the story delivery was so weak.

Einlanzer.1627:

It seems the majority of players are either ambivalent about it or outright dislike it. There are many good reasons why, too, the biggest ones being:

a.) continuously being thrown on time-gated achievement cycles starts feeling like a chore very quickly and both the achievements and the rewards become very trite.

b.) It’s a gimmick that very obviously revolves around the gem shop and results in very little world-building.

c.) temporary content is a waste of development time and hurts the game more and more the longer it remains the primary focus

d.) the overarching narrative is totally broken by the ‘flavor-of-the-month’ style of the LS and results in a world and gameplay experience that feels very shallow and fragmented.

That’s a very succinct and accurate list. I think you are spot on with all of those.

Personally I’m very glad that the TA update is light on APs. I did the dungeon the first day and I completed the whole meta achievement in one run. I felt relieved when I noticed that the only things I had left to do were permanent dungeon achievements that probably won’t take me long to do if I choose to do them a few months from now or today. It’s depressing that I was relieved that I finished the temporary meta achievement so quickly, it makes me dislike the idea of the next patch returning to the old check list style that soaks up time and takes you away from other content you might like to play.

I didn’t think boon duration worked on spirits?

I don’t remember the pet ever attacking without being commanded or hit. There has always been the ability to tell the pet to stay unless commanded, players just don’t use it because it’s another level of micro. It’s more efficient, in most cases, to simply tell the pet to stay if it moves towards something you don’t want it to.

Xsorus.2507:

Yea same Jcbroe, I actually has Superior Rune of Speed, but I waited like a month to have them fix it, but despite them knowing about it, they never bothered fixing it in the past 2 patches so I just decided to spend the gold

I would like to get it for my Dazer set… but I’d need money, and I spend more time playing FFXIV right now then GW2.

They are fixing runes of speed in the next patch. They are also going to buff them somehow (maybe not in the next patch) along with a lot of other runes. That’s why the run of speed is steadily increasing in price, market speculators know the fix is coming.

It’s embarrassing that the warrior has two ranged weapons that shoot further than the ranger.

Short bow never should have been nerfed. They failed in longbow design so they made the shortbow worse to force the longbow. That’s actually what they said. Since then the longbow got more buffs (it fires faster and now has stealth) but the shortbow was left in limbo. In sPvP it’s not that much of an issue and that’s why you will likely never see action on this. The game is balanced around sPvP and PvE game balance is the lowest priority. Don’t expect the shortbow to get 1,200 range unless the sPvP side of the game needs it.