Guild Wars 2

Ewon.5903:

wtb: new server

It happened in WvW and now it’s happening in PvE. Hopefully the situation gets better as the content is out longer, currently it feels like you’re kitten for being on the wrong server.

timidobserver.7925:

There isn’t really any reason to be standing there. Given that he pops on all overflows, you should go do whatever and then pop in when he spawns.

I don’t think you stand much of a chance in an overflow. The only way I see an overflow being viable is if you can get a big guild all to get into it and pull it off. That or wait a while for the average skill level to rise enough to pull it off (that may never happen).

Your best bet at beating Tequatl right now seems to be to get into an actual server map and do it there. That’s the place guaranteed to be full and have the most players working together. The overflows are full of refugees from multiple servers.

My overflow was full of people yelling at the people on the turrets, yelling at the people who died and wouldn’t WP and yelling at people who didn’t defend the turret or didn’t stand where someone else wanted them to stand. It’s like this content emphasises everything people hate about pugging and brings it to large scale open world events.

Right now it feels like to win you either need to be in a big guild capable of pulling it off on an overflow, or be lucky enough to be on the right server. I’d love to see an overflow full of randoms prove me wrong.

Beast Sos.1457:

Its the first day and he still hasnt been beat which is a good surprise imo. the challenge is on!

Has it not been beaten because the challenge is too high, or because the design can result in random people dragging you down?

I hope one day, every ArenaNet dev has a yellow post it on their monitor that says “don’t design a trap/aoe/mechanic which involves manual control of a character to avoid it and allow the same trap/aoe/mechanic to obliterate a pet”. It’s a problem in TA with the nightmare blossoms, it’s a problem in Canach’s layer where pets triggered the mines (and made the achievement much more difficult on a ranger), it’s a problem in the Aetherblade Retreat with the spinning electrical fields and it’s a problem in Sparkfly Fen where rangers have to have a very cautious radius around them because pets frequently blow up. They also have to micro the pet movement in combat to ensure they don’t walk into a random fish while fighting and initiate the cooldown rangers are intimately familiar with.

It’s been over a year guys. It’s time to start acting like pets matter to rangers and content design can’t just ignore them.

And how many people do you think are guesting on Blackgate right now thinking it’s their best chance to kill Tequatl?

Assuming crits don’t matter, berserker gear should do the same DPS as soldiers. Both have power as their primary stat and if power is all that matters, they should be equal on DPS. Condition caps have been in the game since launch, this is a drop in the bucket compared to what condition users deal with.

So I was waiting till I finished normal mode before I posted (I did them all on infantile first). I just finished world 2 zone 2 and I honestly have no desire to go further. I simply stopped having fun halfway through world 2 zone 2 so I personally don’t care if SAB doesn’t return, I’m not looking forward to any more and I would personally rather see it dropped in favour of producing more content for the rest of the game.

World 2 Zone 1:

• I actually enjoyed this zone. I played it after the patches to nerf it (unintentionally).
• Occasionally I ran into laggy/buggy bits where I would be on land but the water knockback triggered anyway.
• Personally I think knockback mechanics are obnoxious but it was manageable here, falling in the water wasn’t fun.
• Overall zone 1 had a similair vibe to world 1 for me.
• I felt like I could explore a bit in this world but some parts were so punishing I didn’t want to risk it.

World 2 Zone 2:

• Owls add pressure to move and are annoying if you don’t.
• Assassins add a lot of pressure, especially in large numbers. Managable but in combination with everything else happening in the level, the pressure just keeps adding up. The combat and targeting in SAB is very frustrating, the more difficult combat becomes, the more these issues bother me.
• Poison darts are one of the least fun things I’ve come across in gaming in the last few years. I could write an essay on why I hated these things. They added nothing to my experience (all they are is a memory/patience test and if you don’t “waste” time looking at every wall, the penalty is far too harsh). The tower with several levels and the rolling coin at the top was about three levels higher than it needed to be.
• It was far too long. I was wishing it would end halfway through. I wasn’t enjoying it, so “more content” didn’t matter to me.
• I liked the octopus and the fish mechanic.
• I like puzzle solving but not with instant death traps.
• I didn’t feel like I could explore I was spend far too much time just making it through the level. The pressure also made me feel locked into progressing the level instead of poking around.
• It didn’t feel like the same game as SAB world 1. The mood changed too much and it was generally a stressful and pressure filled experience.

World 2 Zone 3 (I only did this on Infantile):

• The torch upgrade moment frustrated me a great deal. Why is it important for my game experience for me to have 400 baubles at that point? As a general point I think bauble acquisition is an added value option for players wanting to go for the achievement or for people who want to farm it to make bubbles, not to progress or become more capable in the game. It shouldn’t be a progression mechanic. It’s just annoying and a waste of time to backtrack to farm so you can acquire an item needed to progress.
• All the upgrade shops are hidden. I don’t see why the upgrades aren’t just free. Finding them is generally hard enough, why do we need to farm baubles to acquire them? This is especially punishing with the number of deaths. I don’t want to farm to progress through a mini game or acquire the upgrades. I don’t remember doing that in any of the recent Zelda games, you acquire items in the areas they are needed for and those games are great.

Overall I didn’t enjoy SAB this time around. I wasn’t the biggest fan of it back in April (I didn’t buy GW2 to play a platformer) but I did enjoy it. I’m no stranger to platform games from the 90s, so while I still think they are superior (and if I wanted a full dose of a platform I would play one of them) world 1 was a nice casual distraction, a novel April Fools joke. I was able to enjoy the joy of exploration and simple puzzle solving. World 2 takes a lot that joy and freedom away and replaces it with pressure, tension and stress. The controls of SAB and the mechanics aren’t as smooth as a true platformer, so when the challenge increases, the flaws of making a platformer within an MMO become more obvious.

I think Kristen said during the stream females would be getting something similair.

An elder dragon. I’m burnt out on festivals for the year.

So over the last year they have added a few unique hairstyles to the game. First Rox and Braham and more recently Scarlet and Yavvi (a female asura from the SAB update). Last week the Live Stream also previewed a new male sylvari hairstyle they’ve been working on. I think I’ve also seen a screen shot of someone who is not Braham with Braham’s hair style (I can’t remember where though – I think it was some kind of preview image).

Maybe they are going to add new hairstyles to the hairstyle and makeover kits?

I think you guys might be happy to see this…

Her name is Yavvi and she can be found near Research Waypoint in Rata Sum.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Josh Foreman.8250:

Rocky launch

Difficulty spikes

Inadequate rewards

Can’t farm

Also, I’m bad at the maths.

Time Spent Farming Ascended.

Seriously, I still haven’t touched SAB because I use my available time for ascended and for dailies. I feel this is the biggest problem with the return of sab: it came at the wrong time. It came at a time where the comunity is priotizing the new ascended shinies over anything else. But to be honest, I think it would greatly help if sab had a daily associated to it, like the last few patches, if the final acchievement award offered more acchiv. points, and maybe if it was a viable way to invest for ascended gear.

Ascended isn’t new content. I completed dungeons a year ago, I did world event a year ago, I killed champions a year ago. No new content was added with ascended, they just made old carrots redundant as BiS and upped stats on a new grind which involves all the same stuff we’ve been doing for a year already.

I hate that “can’t farm” is a stated flaw of the current SAB. I fully agree that rewards go hand in hand with content – this is an MMO, acquisition of shinies is an essential part of the game but I feel like farming is too often confused with adequate rewards. You shouldn’t feel like you have to repeat stuff in a farm like state to be adequately rewarded (shortest path to completion run over and over). I’m sure players running SAB world 1 12 times a day back in April looked good on ArenaNet’s metrics (“Wow look at all the people logging in every day and spending 2+ hours in SAB! This content is GREAT!”), but were people really enjoying themselves the 30th time through or were they enjoying acquiring the skins? Back in April Josh mentioned that he didn’t like people felt encouraged to grind (create and delete alts) to acquire rewards and I thought that might mean the rewards would be easier to get without grind as in, you would acquire the skins in the game from secret rooms or completing achievements. I should have known that it just meant a daily lock out (ArenaNet official policy now, not “Is it fun?” but “Is it a daily?”) without a reduction in the blue skin prices (which are going to be rarer than the green/gold ones which are less time consuming to “farm”).

The inability to farm like before might be a reason for why the number of hours spent in SAB is lower this time, but I don’t think it hurts how enjoyable the content is.

The most alarming thing to me is that leagues actually take a step in the wrong direction.

Server stacking was already a problem. It’s something that I thought needed work. Why do players feel the need to stack on a handful of servers and what can ArenaNet do to encourage players to move to or stay on lower ranked servers? Not only does the leagues model not encourage this, it actually gives players even more reason to stack.

Vaffelman.6954:

kazi.6438:

Easy workaround is to go back to LA for 1 second, request kick, go back to WvW.

you clearly don’t play WvW that much since you seem unfamiliar with 40 min ques

Bwuahahahah! You think everyone bandwagoned to a stacked server like you? Queues are almost non existent on the majority of servers.

Belzebu.3912:

So you want an elite that relies entirely on the pet death?
I’m not really sure if you are trolling or what …

The sad reality is that said elite would be the best PvE elite for rangers.

Bredin.5368:

…it will cause you to leap toward your target. In fact, it does the opposite of root you—it grants you automatic offensive mobility. The leap function coupled with the auto cripple means that you stick like glue to your target and can burn it down. I can see how it might be annoying if you are fighting a mindless PVE mob that just sits there, but it is a great boon to fighting a mobile opponent with human intelligence.

The sword #1 may be our best “autoattack” out of any weapon set, so long as you actually turn off autoattack.

The problem people have is that if you spam #1 mindlessly too many time, you must wait for the leap to finish before you are able to dodge. But this is sort of true for many attacks—Sword #2, GS #3 do not allow you to evade mid leap.

I really hope ANET doesn’t remove the leap-to-foe functionality for Sword #1. It is an advanced weapon that requires skill and practice to use, but it is also incredibly rewarding. It might be fine to allow evades priority in the action que.

I thought I would make this post because it seems like the Sword #1 skill is misunderstood and people are actually hoping that ANET is reworking it for the big October patch. I hope they do not.

It’s not misunderstood. It’s pointless in PvE and results in numerous deaths, not just from the inability to dodge but from leaping off of cliffs when mobs die.

It’s a terribly designed auto-attack.

If you have having trouble sticking to melee on your opponents, l2p like every other class that doesn’t have a leap in their melee auto attack doing the work for them. Sticking to the target as a function of an auto-attack is actually passive gameplay, ie the game is doing something for you. Generally that lowers the skill cap when sticking to a target is required. So to lower the skill bar for PvP play they raise the skill bar (and offer nothing in return) for PvE play.

I have no problem with other skills making a dodge difficult as long as they are not an auto-attack.

The first skill of a weapon set should never function the way the sword does.

Coldin.2840:

Most of the strategies around obtaining Empyreal Fragments tends to revolve around “If you have a lot of alts”, which is kind of frustrating.

That said, the fastest way to get the fragements does appear to be either running dungeons, or doing open world chests. Also make sure you hit the LA jumping puzzles, as those tend to give 10+ fragements total as well.

Dungeons. The Empyreal Fragments are very easy to acquire in dungeons.

Is there anything you can do with all the bloodstone the game throws at you?

Under normal circumstances this would more than likely be considered an exploit. Because it promotes multiple gem store transactions they have no problem leaving it alone.

So atm you’re actually losing money by buying the mats to craft the ascended mats and then sell them again? Is the daily crafting mat profitable to make?

Buy exotics with valuable runes in them. Use a Black Lion Salvage Kit and you will always get the rune back in addition to the crafting materials. Because you can always sell the rune and crafting materials, it’s not only possible to break even, but sometimes even make a profit. Be aware the TP tax will more often than not cause you to slightly lose money.

Still, it’s far better than buying cheap exotics with worthless runes and losing lots of money.

I miss gameplay mattering. I think the design of dungeon content doesn’t offer anything better than the trinity. For many encounters I am literally alt-tabbing out of the game to read something or do something else while I auto-attack a boss to death. That’s how tedious the no-trinity combat of GW2 has become in many cases.

Even the easiest dungeons with the trinity system required you to be there and do something. In GW2 it’s usually enough to auto-attack to beat most bosses.

I don’t mind if it slows down but I want more content with meat on it. I’m sick of running the same dungeons over and over. I want new dungeons with new stories. I want more instanced story content (think missions or some of the bigger quests from GW1) so the in game story is more satisfying.

Less mini-games, less grind achievements, less recycled achievements, less pumpkins to carve, less “kill 10 rats on this map” achievements (that’s not content), less “consume x of this new item” achievements. I want actual real content instead of all this filler designed to be a time sink. Most of the achievements don’t emphasise content, they are just tacked on grind to inflate how long it takes before you are done. The biggest offender is probably Southsun Survivor.

A lot of the “too much” complaints would go away if they dropped the temporary content, added more permanent content and scrapped the filler achievements. Focus on gameplay, not on grind.

The Living Story is already officially taking place after the personal story, so there’s not issue there.

Trahearne’s Wyld Hunt is to cleanse Orr, not lead the Pact. I would expect, regardless of how the character is received by players, that Trahearne would step down from his leadership position once the Pact is less focused on Orr. It’s still Trahearne’s role in the world to finish cleansing Orr (that was his dream) so he would want to stay there and work on that. If the Pact moved onto other dragons (while still retaining their presence in Orr) it would likely be under a new leader.

I think the story would be best served by either using Destiny’s Edge, establish characters relevant to new content, introducing new characters with the new content or a mixture of the above.

Taisia.2813:

DCUO has a very cool wardrobe system where every “look” you encountered or purchased etc. is stored forever for your character and you can mix and match infinately from the pool you have. I DO NOT find any plausible reason for ANET not to do the same in a game where cosmetics are as important as stats..

That will never happen. They just added a gem store item to untransmute. They have no intention of giving you easy access to skins you’ve earned once. Not when they can charge you to transmute and untransmute, and sell gold to you so you can acquire new versions.

If they ever cared about access to skins, cultural armour and weapons would be a skin item (the tech existed in the form of HoM skins) instead of rares which everyone is going to transmute right away.

Xsorus.2507:

I think the Pro’s Cancel out any Cons it gets this patch, so Its about even.

Unless you play PvE, in which case it’s worse. PvE mobs don’t stack conditions like they do in sPvP and if you are running away from mobs while using this skill in PvE you are doing something wrong. In PvE there is rarely a reason to run from mobs, in fact healing spring can easily make parties.

I never need to cleanse conditions faster in PvE. I exclusively run Healing Spring for it’s utility value and it’s primary use is as a long duration pulsing condition removal and for healing finishers. I don’t need spike condition removal in PvE, if I did I would bring a bear or Signet of Reneweal (also remember that you have a party of other people who can contribute to condition removal). A 33% nerf to its duration is going to be huge for fights where parties used it to blast for AoE healing, especially given how stacking is the primary PvE meta, stacking on a 15 second water field that cleansed a single condition (usually enough int PvE) consistently, it’s probably the best ranger skill for puging dungeons atm.

Anyone who thinks extra regeneration the change might provides will result in more healing in PvE is playing in bad parties. An additional five seconds on a water field allows for more blast finishers which are going to give you more healing than a few seconds of regen (which you still get from standing in the field, and if for some reason you spec into boon duration you can get a lot more).

I think people who think the pros cancel out the cons are thinking about their roaming rangers competing in a condition heavy meta. I don’t think these people care about how a dungeon ranger is taking a serious hit to one of it’s most important support tools.

As far as making healing spring a better self heal… if you want a self heal take one of the other two skills that are actually designed self heals. Healing Spring is designed as a party support heal. It’s so much more than just a self heal. When used correctly, healing spring has a lot of depth. This nerf is a knee jerk reaction to the condition heavy meta (I’m guessing the vigour change is because of spirit rangers) and that’s all. It’s not a buff, it’s class balance centred around sPvP issues regardless of the impact on PvE.

To argue vigorous renewal has nothing to do with this is just silly. It’s a core part of the power level of this skill. It’s one of the best combos the ranger has for party support and it has specific functionality with healing spring that completely altered how you played the skill.

My only hope for this change not making it through is the recent preview claimed they wanted to focus on boosting support. Hitting Healing Spring like this is the exact opposite of their stated intentions (unless you sPvP in which case spike condition removal is probably a priority for you).

showatt.9413:

You guys are assuming there’s something wrong with sword…according to a GS ranger.
Come on.

I’ve never seen any weapon get as much hate as the ranger sword. It’s kittening awful in PvE, even if you succeed with it, you’re fighting tooth and nail against its kittenty design. In PvP it might be great for players too lazy to melee like every other class (and maintain melee range without a cumbersome mechanic doing it for you) but in PvE it’s useless and seriously detracts from the viability of the weapon. Rangers already have to manage the kittentiest PvE class mechanic in the game, having to overcome the poor design of the sword is just one more thing the class doesn’t need.

If the sword was a low DPS weapon, no-one in PvE would care, but it’s the highest DPS weapon (and the only other melee weapon is a low DPS weapon, in a game where melee is the meta, this is a huge problem) and it’s unusable for a lot of players. Even if you can succeed with it, you are not hindered by it. It does actually force you to be vulnerable as part of its design. Learning the timing of the dodges doesn’t overcome the fact that there will be times that an axe warrior can dodge and a sword ranger won’t be able to.

It’s a joke to hear them talk about raising the skill requirement of PvE rangers in the game by giving more control over the pet when the sword is arguably one of the most difficult weapons in the game to use in dungeons.

Martheo.7215:

I still need to finish reading, but evading at the same time as the ranger does seems like big common sense to me. It’s not at all overrated, we should be able to make them dodge at least when we see a crucial need to, atm we’re powerless on keeping them alive even if we see a massive slow easily dodgeable hard hitting aoe that our pets will have to eat up, most we can do is call them back out of it and hope they catch up in time.

I honestly think the devs that designed dungeons and boss AI took the lazy way out and made the mobs target every ally instead of every player with their AoE without thinking of why the boss shouldn’t target AI that can’t dodge. Minions and pets can’t dodge, what dev thinks it’s a good idea to have a boss mob that throws out AoEs (that are designed to punish players multiple times if they are near each other and fail to dodge) and include pets and minions in that list?

Pets shouldn’t need a dodge when the ranger dodges functions, they shouldn’t be targeted by big dodge or die AoEs in the first place. It’s ridiculous fighting Tazza and seeing the pet targeted by her sword skill, or Jade Maw and staying out of combat because the pet slows the party down. Or fighting the Nightmare Tree on any path and because max range on a pet is 900, they can’t safely hit it (and won’t dodge the root spike which also targets them, quite often calling them back makes no difference and they die anyway). It’s just poor design in the first place that this is even a problem. The fact that your party has to worry about 6 AoEs instead of 5 is also unfair and causes pets to be a hindrance, not just disadvantaged. Pets shouldn’t be targeted by dodge or die AoEs.

Dream In A Dream.7213:

Skyllar.3562:

CC Danicia.1394:

Tellerion.8102:

Feedback, as long as it’s about butterflies, red roses and/or child birth.

But seriously, the team does watch this thread and does keep the feedback. And we also compile particularly good constructive feedback for the team, so they don’t miss it.

Too bad the “team” doesnt care, cause they see WvW as a casual’s area, which doesnt need any testing by more than 10 ppl.

10? are you mad? Its 1 man, 1 cat and 3 golems.

I think you are underestimating cats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_%28cat%29

Bloodlust buff isn’t technically power creep. It was in the game at launch in the form of orbs and was removed temporarily. Technically WvW was originally designed with orb buffs as part of the baseline power level.

Assuming the ranks hold true as they currently are (and I don’t see why this isn’t the most likely scenario) IoJ will come third in the silver league and Yak’s Bend will come first. They will be guaranteed never to fight against any server rank 12 or higher and will be guaranteed to fight the lowest ranked server in the game (so blow out basically). It’s not hard to see why they would be happy. Just hope YB doesn’t rise in rank before the the league starts otherwise the arbitrary rules take you from being the first place in the league (and the best rewards) to last place in the league (and everyone knows none of the 10-12 place servers stand a chance in the gold league).

My server is firmly in the middle of the gold league so we know before it even begins we have no chance of winning guild (or a top placement in gold) and we have no chance of dropping to silver league.

What exactly is it a league is supposed to do aside from arbitrarily reward silver league servers and give greater incentive to transfer to the most stacked servers?

If you’re looking at pet support options please swap the eagle/hawk’s F2 skill. Currently their F2 is a low cooldown, somewhat spammable bleed called Lacerating Slash (it has a 6 second cooldown). When I use a pet I don’t want to press F2 every 6 seconds, it’s a waste. I’d far rather have control of Quickening Screech (a 20 second cool down that applies a 10 second swiftness buff, you could even have it apply quickness to the pet if you’re feeling generous) which would allow me another support option for my pet. I could combine it with my warhorn to help maintain swiftness on my party for dungeon play and WvW small ops groups.

One of the flaws of the bird pets is that their attack rotation results in lower DPS than similair glass pets (like the spider or cat) because the animation on Quickening Screech is so long and it’s rarely useful in PvE combat and often a hindrance to the total DPS of the pet.

Also consider that by default, not even “healing” pets or “condition” pets have healing power or condition damage (both attributes are set at 0). It might be worth looking into these two things and maybe changing some attributes around so that they can more effectively use some of their tools without needing the 300 points from the traits.

Dillon.3821:

No! plz dont let the orbs affect stats! I dont care about Wxp or Karma, but dont let it affect other stats!

The fact that you don’t care about them, isn’t that why it has to be something else? The buff has to be something most players will care about. No-one cared about the quaggan and they only get captured as an afterthought. It also doesn’t make sense for someone to constantly fight over the ruins – which doesn’t award karma or exp – if the only buff was karma or Wxp because they themselves won’t benefit from it.

I don’t think points from stomps or reduced damage from siege would be enough for people to care about the ruins, especially on lower ranked servers where siege isn’t as big of an issue. A buff for points on stomp alone isn’t appealing to people because blow out matches are common and points don’t mean anything to a lot of people (even the serious people).

What kind of buff is honestly valuable enough that players will care about it as much as they care about the current suggestion, but one that people find acceptable? A celestial buff is something that every player will benefit from. Someone who’s stepping into WvW for the first time will understand it makes them better, zergs going to fight an enemy zerg will be glad they have it because it makes them better in combat. The buff needs to be important for people to care about the ruins. What alternative is there that is as universally attractive as a celestial buff?

DevonCarver.5370:

Shiren.9532:

I primarily PvE but I still don’t see the actions over the last year as reasonable attempts to make ascended items fairly available to WvW players. I don’t care what you’d like to do, I only care about what you actually do.

Speaking as someone who has only gotten Ascended gear via WvW vendors, I’d say that’s nonsense. Speaking as a developer, we are continuing to make this better, which is not to say perfect. There will be more ways to acquire the ascended mats as part of the season and we will look into adding yet additional ways after that.

I guess it will come down to fairly available vs better.

Ascended Rings:
PvE method:

• 10 Fractal dailies with frequent bonus rings from the daily chest.
• Possible to do multiple dailies in level brackets, on multiple characters.
• Implement righted from the get go.

WvW method:

• 250 badges + 25 laurels which can only be acquired once a day across an entire account. A bonus 10 each month for a maximum of roughly 38-41 a month.

Ascended Amulets:
PvE method:

• 30 laurels from dailies.

WvW method:

• 20 laurels + 250 badges. In a vacuum this is actually easier (I will get back to this).

Ascended Accessories:
PvE method:

• 5 gold + 12 Guild Commendations. A maximum of 6 commendations awarded a week per account.

WvW method:

• 40 laurels + 50 ecto (about 16g on the TP right now).

Ascended Back Items:
PvE method:

• You can buy one with fractal relics, upgrade the karka one with resources or craft one with a fractal exclusive drop.

WvE method:

• None that I’m aware of.

Now I know you personally see no problem with alt-unfriendly design in the form of WvW ranks so I can understand how your perception of this next problem would be different from my own but imagine if you want ascended items on more than one character.

To outfit a WvW character fully with ascended items (barring the back item) using the WvW acquisition method you will need:

• 150 laurels (roughly 4 months assuming you do complete every monthly and daily, not sure if all monthlies were possible in WvW alone).
• 750 badges of honour.
• 32g.

To do the same in PvE you will need:

• 20 Pristine Relics (20 days).
• 22 Guild Commendations (4 weeks).
• 30 laurels (20 days + monthly or 30 days).
• 10g.
• None of these are mutually exclusive time dates, so you can do them all at the same time.

Pristine Relics, Guild Commendations and Laurels are all time gated resources but they are all used for separate things in PvE. In WvW you’ve used the one time gated resource and you’ve used it for almost every ascended item.

It’s possible to almost completely outfit a character with the WvW method but it will take far longer because the same time gated resource is used for the same item and no increased supply is given to offset this. Hopefully your build never changes and you need new gear, let alone you like to WvW on multiple characters because you can scrap your old items and start again. In my view, that’s not fair to a WvW player.

My intention is not to attack the efforts to make ascended gear available in WvW but rather the decision to make it all require large amounts of a single time gated resource while the PvE method has multiple different resources available, the core of my point centres around the idea of whether or not it is “fair”. Obviously the extent to which you are affected by this varies based on whether you PvE at all and whether you have a variety of characters or builds you like to play with.

Chokolata.1870:

ahem, sorry sorry …. yea, ill play …

What if they actually made rangers function properly ? gave us full control over pets ? and fixed the bugs ??

oh yea, not gonna happen

Why have a pet if you have full control over them? Why not just merge the pet’s tool box with the ranger? Controlling the AI companion defeats the purpose of having an AI companion. At best it’s the ability to have two actions at the same time (so you can command a wolf to knockdown while a warrior is stun locking you or you can leave a pet on a downed enemy while you swap to another target) and at its worst it would essentially just be more work to achieve the same level of play as another class which doesn’t have to control two things at once to reach maximum potential.

I doubt a spirit health buff will mean much. In some encounters it will keep them alive longer, but in others they are going to die just as quickly as they currently do, spirits die so fast when they get hit, they’d need a lot more health than just 71% to make a difference (especially in WvW – guardians running full PTV and protection are often destroyed, spirits don’t stand a chance when zergs clash with each other). I don’t think it will make them durable enough to use their actives. I don’t think a burning proc is going to mean much in PvE compositions – if you want burning you generally can already get it. I assume it uses the other player’s condition damage so a lot of people will be getting weak burning from it because even necros are running crit damage these days and if they wanted burning they can trait for it themselves (so can engineers). Swiftness isn’t particularly desirable in dungeons (unless you are skipping, in which case no-one will proc it anyway) so that leaves a 7% damage buff and the situations and party compositions where that’s useful people are already bringing it. Spirits are not as universally attractive and usable as banners. Banners provide easy to understand and always useful buffs and they don’t turn your class into a paranoid baby sitter anxiously keeping track of where all the health bars they are responsible for are standing and continuously suffering the disappointment of a dead spirit or pet from a stray AoE or boss cleave. Spirit power level in sPvP is largely based around the fact that their actives are useful and the sPvP fights aren’t as long as PvE ones. The spirit design is just not as attractive in PvE as it is in sPvP.

Being the most powerful heal in the game (I disagree) isn’t looking at the full picture. As you said, it depends on which class it’s on. The tool box of a ranger to support their party is incredibly small, this one tool (vigour applying, long duration water field that cleanses conditions) was pulling the weight of the rest of the ranger’s support options.

It matters that the support viablity of a ranger is less after this because dungeons are very much about support, even if you’re not the best class at it, you always want to have something your party wants. I play dungeons on every class in the game and I love pulling out a skill that I know that class has that really helps out the rest of my party. On a mesmer it’s reflections (focus skills, feedback) and condition removal (sometimes pulls), on a guardian it’s reflections, boons galore and especially aegis and stability. On my staff ele I can provide combo fields, control fields, blast finishers, low cooldown condition removal, two water fields and Glyph of Storms in earth attunement is an incredibly long AoE blind skill. My ranger was struggling very hard to keep up with what other classes can provide the group, all while struggling with the worst implemented class mechanic in the game for WvW and PvE. I can provide AoE fury (a desirable boon) and most importantly, a long duration water field and condition cleanser. During fights like the Nightmare Wurm in TA, the Spider Queen in AC or the Effigy in CoF I would drop Healing Spring knowing that the condition cleansing would help keep poison, weakness or burning off of my party and boost vigour for 15 seconds. This helped make up for the fact that the ranger provides very little else my party wanted. Five seconds less of condition cleansing means the conditions that are applied after the first 10 seconds are now going to be missed. In sPvP you might want to cleanse several conditions in a shorter duration, but in PvE you usually only need to cleanse one condition repeatedly. Mobs don’t stack condition on you like a necro or perplexity engineer, they usually have one or two conditions only one of which you are worried about.

In WvW the ability to drop the water field at range doesn’t really matter. If your zerg formation is tight the ranger should be stacked up with everyone else. Dropping it your location is where it should be dropped. Eles are more desired because all their other tools are better, and that’s why the power level of this support tool is justified (and most of the power from its duration is stuff that won’t matter in sPvP). Because the heal is on a ranger, it’s not OP.

When it comes to PvE you don’t build to support, you build to kill. It’s the utility you can provide after that (feedback, wall of reflection, aegis, banners) while still running a berzerker build, that’s the stuff that matters in PvE. You don’t need to build to make Healing Spring useful (aside from 10 points in Wilderness Survival if you really want the vigour – unecessary though) it’s good without healing power.

But not rune of perplexity. They want players to blow a tonne of resources by acquiring a gear set to run the most OP rune in the game before they nerf it into the ground. Kinda like how the BM bunker build was nerfed after the Southsun Cove patch made apothecary and settler’s gear sets easier to acquire.

SynfulChaot.3169:

The duration of the water field was long. The heal will be the same, as will the regen and the condi clearing. Just the duration will decrease. Please note that Healing Spring, even after the possible change, will still be the longest duration water field in the game. A 1/3 reduction in duration and it will still be the longest duration water field.

Now the nerf to melee vigor is a bit much, unless of course the duration of the the vigor provided by the trait is increased. If it isn’t then I predict that that trait will become unused, like most ranger traits are.

It’s the longest duration water field in the game now and it’s still not enough to make rangers stand out when water fields are asked for. The WvW meta is still favouring eles for water fields over rangers (they aren’t rejecting rangers, but they’d favour them over rangers) because overall an ele will offer a lot more than the ranger does. The decreased duration (a full 5 seconds is massive) is going to hurt a lot and it’s already not in a great place. It doesn’t matter that it retains the title of the longest water field in the game, it’s significantly less potent after this nerf and the overall tool box of a ranger doesn’t fill out the power level unlike what an elementalist can bring. It’s just another thing ranger players can feel kittenty about because they are contributing less and less.

I pretty much agree about the vigour trait. It’s only really used with the Healing Spring combo and nerfing it is hitting at one of the few powerful support options rangers have in PvE and WvW. The extra vigour certainly doesn’t break anything in WvW or PvE but it does add a layer of complexity to build options and small scale combat where you can help out your party and choose to fight inside the field to reap the benefits.

Ranger support options tied to health bars (yay 71% of 5 seconds being alive is a few more seconds my spirit isn’t useless compared a warrior banner or guardian shouts which will never be hard countered by a zerg or dungeon boss) so aside from Healing Spring rangers are becoming more marginalised in how they can help groups, and outside of sPvP their support options were already some of the worst in the game.

Protection on dodge roll is ironically going to be worse for pet survivability. Previously you could sometimes pseudo evade a boss AoE on a pet with this trait. The protection sometimes kept the pet alive when the AoE landed (during the evade). Now that pets will receive protection after the evade (after the AoE lands, unless you time your evasion wrong) the pet will more than likely be dead. It wasn’t really that big of a deal (33% damage reduction rarely kept the pet alive from a must-evade boss ability) but it’s just another incidental nerf to ranger gameplay.

It’s just another case of sPvP balance destroying the experience of the ranger in every other format.

Those nerfs to Healing Spring are both unnecessary and very damaging to ranger support in dungeon teams. The long duration water field and the ability to boost melee vigour was one of the best tools a ranger could bring to get players to want them in a party.

Rangers so starved of desirable support options, hitting two of their bigger ones in PvE (and WvW) is such a stupid move. It won’t kill rangers in dungeons but a ranger are just getting further away from that slot in the party.

My staff ele has so much complexity in the boons it offers, the utility it offers and the support it can provide (water fields, blast finishers, control skills, condition removal) it was really nice for the ranger to boast the longest lasting water field in the game and be able to trait for vigour to prove that small bonus to the party to make the warriors happy the ranger dropped it. That really sucks if it makes it through.

Water fields are central to how the WvW meta works, zerg combat revolves around dropping water fields and using blast finishers. A 33% duration nerf to the best tool rangers brought to the WvW meta is going to lead to even more rangers desperately searching for a way to contribute to their server and coming up a full 5 seconds shorter.

JayMack.8295:

Well, I’m hoping there’s some story involved.

Why is he stronger? Especially post-Zhaitan’s ‘death’ (if this particular release is still following the timeline of the others).

I wasn’t expecting any for SAB and they snuck some into there, so I’m hoping there’ll be at least some story involved with him, rather than just “AAAH, he’s stronger!!”.

After watching the final cinematic for the recent WoW patch dealing with the year long story arc of for MoP, I’m so freaking jealous of that game. Say what you want about WoW, their storytelling is light years better than what we get with the Living World. A five minute cinematic was more interesting than everything that happened all year in GW2.

I really wish the GW2 story would settle on a core cast of characters that leverage the backstories of the races in the world, some big and meaningful conflicts that I can actually care about (dragons… dragons… dragons…) and a villain that wasn’t wedged into the story once she finished up her stint as a villain on an 80s cartoon show.

After the disappointment that came with Scarlet and the “Queen’s Speech” and two weeks of SAB I’d be really disappointed if Tequatl was just a mechanics revamp… then again nothing else would make sense.

I feel like people who want a good story to entertain them in GW2 are flailing around hoping for something, anything worth latching onto yet the world is almost the same as it was a year ago. There’s only so many times I can help Hodgins recover the Flaming Sceptres or help Eir acquire that sword she seems to have lost before I lose all interest in the stories of GW2.

Electro.4173:

I don’t really see the harm in the TM weapons being quick to get once you get good with TM either. The individuals that can quickly beat TM may have dozens of TM skins, sure. It doesn’t mean that every individual suddenly has access to them and they’re meaningless, it just means those who can do TM well can have access to a number of the weapons. And those who struggle through TM probably won’t bother to get multiple skins either, its only the ones who get really good akitten.

Nothing else in the game functions like this. No matter how good you get at CoF or AC you still need to grind to get the skins. I personally don’t really care, I think the SAB rewards are all over the place. For some reason they are priviledged and not tied to the cash shop unlike almost every other weapon set added to the game (as someone who might have used sclerite skins and who thinks the SAB ones don’t belong in the game, it sucks the latter are far easier to obtain than the former and the cash shop option was the only one I was given). Now they are just handing them out for anyone who solves the puzzle (and can do so repeatedly). Then consider the arbitrary decision to remove the original skins from the returning rotation but making green versions available from tribulation… what are they thinking? SAB seems like one of the least consistently designed pieces of content in the game when it comes to rewards. The regular skins require more work to acquire than the prestige ones (grinding either mode of the mini-game is a bad idea in my mind).

For the most part ranged damage in GW2 is inferior to melee with specific exceptions. The reality is, the vast majority of content is not only possible in melee, it’s usually easier because you kill things faster.

Rangers are in a kittenty spot in this meta because the only DPS melee weapon is the sword (the greatsword is more defensive and has low damage). Unfortunately the sword has an auto-attack leap which causes the ranger to be rooted in place and unable to move or dodge. As you can understand (but apparently the devs don’t) this becomes a serious hindrance when full unhindered control of your character is desired.

Long story short, if you want ranged DPS with the ranger go for a berserker build with the longbow. You won’t do as much damage as a ranger with a sword but you won’t have to deal with that weapon’s poor design.

Honestly I suspect you’d be happiest with a staff elementalist. They do ranged AoE damage which is pretty ordinary against single targets but make up for it with a large complexity of support options. How you utilise your combo fields, attunement swaps, blast finishers and which utility skills you bring, all these things will be useful for your party and help make up for your slightly lower DPS. Water attunement can help with some healing but primarily condition removal and there are lots of boons you can give out and share with a staff build. The conjure weapons are some of the most powerful utility skills in the game in the right situation.

The best ranged DPS would probably be a warrior, but I don’t think any “good” players use them for ranged DPS because their melee options are so much better and are fairly reliable (unlike the ranger sword).

Rangers… well they can contribute and pull their weight but they also have to pull the weight of the pet, cause it sure as hell ain’t doing it itself.

Condition users are second class citizens in PvE. Get used to it cause it’s not going to change.

My understanding is that anything that awards ascended crafting mats can award an ascended weapon.

Off the top of my head, that’s the chest from killing the claimer at any WvW objective (it’s in the big chest). In dungeons it would be the end dungeon reward with the Empyrial Stars and any any champion loot bags. In open world it would be jumping puzzle and mini dungeon chests as well as word event loot chests (and champion bags).

Dmzsfx.8103:

It appears no one in your group knew to stack behind the stairs :/
Doing so would have made quick work of those dogs.
(and I agree, a smarter man would have quit. A 15 min run should never take 3 hours).

The guardian was running a healing spec and the ranger was using shortbow in melee range. I seriously doubt stacking behind the stairs was going to be helpful. A lot of stacking strategies rely on high DPS and temporary immunity skills to succeed. In that sense, glass cannon is often the easiest build to run because Glyph of Storms in earth attunement is going to do more for your survivability than soldier’s gear, and when it ends you best hope the mob is taking a lot of damage or you might actually have to try.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

devs who are in charge of pve balance.

In related news, a yeti was seen riding the loch ness monster into battle with godzilla.

I think the OP is talking about healing power and tanking specs. Not banners.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

An event of this size will attract PVE commanders, and that means it will probably be more organized (depending on the quality of those commanders).

In my experience, the only good thing a PvE commander ever brings to the table is a rallying point (and more often than not, their rally point is a hindrance). The vast majority of the time PvE commanders are terrible, what’s worse is that a clueless commander can actually hinder you if they are doing the wrong thing or are in a bad location and attracting more people to that location.

The Tequatl fight will probably be best tailored to large organised guilds that can accomplish different objectives at the same time even if there aren’t 8 Aetherblade champions dropping loot bags to attract the farmers.

Aberrant.6749:

Ascended weapons + SAB + New Teq =’s enough for one month. If they put in any more they would just burn out more players.

Don’t confuse ascended weapons with new content. It’s one new skin set (with colour variations) and a bunch of crafting materials added to content people have been playing for over a year now. Ascended gear added the illusion of something new, but it’s just the same old stuff you’ve been doing for the last 12 months.

I’d rather quality content over quantity. There has been a lot of garbage “content” this year.