Guild Wars 2

This is disappointing. Why can’t we just have a guaranteed scrap from the chest?

Razor.9872:

I hope this won’t cause problems for DCers.

It did in GW1 but tbh, if you frequently DC, is dishonourable your biggest issue?

It worked fairly well in GW1. You get dishonourable if you score 10 dishonour points or more. Dishonour points expired I believe 10 mins after you received them. You got 5 points for leaving a match, so if you left two matches within 10 minutes you couldn’t join again for 10 more minutes. You could also get points for being AFK. If you were AFK the entire match you got at least 10 points, you would also get two points for every person who reported you as “leeching”. If more than 50% of your team reported you (GW1 had PvP maps with 4-12 people on a team) you got at least 10 points. If less than half of your team reports you, the people who did will also get 2 points each (to stop false reporting). If you accumulated more than 10 points your dishonour status became a lot longer and seemed to take longer to expire.

If you commonly disconnect more than once every 10 minutes, you are a burden on your team and not really helping them out like you should be. You are also probably not having a very enjoyable experience in general.

The CoF p2 exploit, is that the one where people are jumping over the gates?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Appreciate the kind words, but know that the other devs would post more if they had time! Technically it’s more of my job, being a community coordinator, to communicate with you guys. When the designers and programmers post on here, it means they are going out of their way to talk to you. Try to give them a little more credit.

I know you guys would like to hear more from them, but they really need to spend their time implementing. The truth is that I should be communicating with you guys like this on a more regular basis, which is what I’m trying to do.

Is there a PvE community co-ordinator? I know PvE is a huge part of the game and it’s very diverse, but I feel like there is a black hole in terms of communication when it comes to PvE skill/trait/class balance. These things are covered heavily in the PvP forums because they are so central to PvP, but it seems like there isn’t much in the way of communication or participation when it comes to PvE.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Then reveal could be a condition lol

I think that’d be funny simply to see P/D thieves kitten themselves by increasing reveal’s duration by pumping condition duration with their traits.

I don’t really see how this interacts well with much. Most boon removal is targeted I believe, so aside from the occasional necro skill (or the “lucky” blind shot), this would basically just make stealth benefit from boon duration and not have much else in the way of counter play unless you’re fighting a necro.

Allie Murdock.8152:

mordran.4750, I appreciate your feedback, and understand your feelings. While I’m not entirely happy with the sense of entitlement I’m getting from your post (I could be completely wrong about that – internet makes it hard to read people, so sorry if I am), I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. If you have any specific ideas as to how you would like to see this, I’m all ears. I will say that information on design philosophy with patch notes is something we have discussed internally, and something we do want to do eventually.

Thanks for the feedback!

Why didn’t/don’t you guys use the format you previously used from GW1?

http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/september_2012_skill_balances.php

It would help alleviate some of the frustration players feel when something is nerfed if they knew why (it’s not always going to be the case, a lot of people will be upset regardless of why, some might be even moreso when they find out why). It also brings the devs and players closer in terms of how they think about balance and the meta. I think players would probably give more constructive feedback if the devs gave critical explanations of buffs and nerfs.

Sorry to hijack Death Shrouds thread, but the general idea applies to that. Jon’s post about the necro changes (and how all classes shouldn’t have all tools equally) is the kind of thing that is helpful for players to hear. A common trend I see with class forums is sometimes players feel like their class role is poorly defined and they don’t see the same picture that the devs see.

Bismuth.3165:

Shiren.9532:

Bismuth.3165:

As someone mentioned though, if the fractal level is account wide then so should the fractal daily chest

I don’t see how that makes sense. I can (and did) fractal dailies on multiple characters already. Why do we need yet another attack on players with alts (and a need for multiple equipment sets) when the current system allows for players to obtain Pristine Relics multiple times a day already? Making the level account bound is just removing the grind redundancy before you can access the rewards you’ve already earned while also allowing you to access content on a greater variety of characters without punishing you with more grind “progression”.

The original levelling system makes sense to do it once because it eases players into learning fractals and their mechanics before upping the difficulty. Once it has been mastered once, it doesn’t need to be mastered a second time. Grinding Progressing another character through lower level fractals without any kind of reward is simply a time sink and it’s not fun or compelling gameplay. You learn how to play your class on your way to 80. You learn how to play fractals as you level it up. You learn how to play your class in high level fractals by playing high level fractals not by grinding low level fractals in the name of grind progression.

There is no need to make Pristine Relics account locks, in fact, it harms the game and players with multiple characters by doing so.

fine then, leave it as it is, it’s not like I have an alt, if anet makes it easier to get the better reward they should limit it, like in world bosses.

It’s not easier to get the reward. Well, technically it’s less of a grind (which you can argue makes it easier), but what is the purpose of the grind? Is it a gating mechanic intended to waste player’s time and slow them down or is it there for a good reason? Is it a good reason to have players grind 9 levels for no reward (and possibly no challenge assuming they don’t do higher levels for low rewards) before they can begin progressing towards ring acquisition? The dungeon is very unfriendly to alts, a common trend in the direction GW2 is moving in. The original progression made sense as people were learning the dungeon. Repeating this process doesn’t make sense because all it does is punish skilled and knowledgeable players from accessing a diverse range of characters.

Something unique to FotM and rings that doesn’t apply to most other ascended gear is that progression in the dungeon requires ring acquisition. The inability to gain rings at the same speed as someone who only uses a main, directly conflicts with the ability to play in the dungeon. Waiting longer to get ascended rings (because your entire account shares a single Pristine Relic each day across every character under your proposed change) means the worst case scenario would be players would take two weeks to max out rings on a single character. Random ring drops might help alleviate this (if you’re both lucky to get one and either lucky that you use it’s stats or willing to accept bad stats to progress) but I don’t see how it’s a good solution.

Part of my desire is to make ascended gear more alt friendly to obtain, but there’s also the core issue that the current “progression” system of FotM is very unfriendly to alts. It’s better than it was at launch, but it’s still unnecessarily restrictive.

Blame the guy who got out of the Skyhammer map and into the Crystal Desert.

Xsorus.2507:

Was zerging around with it

getting 25 Stacks of Might very quickly in Zerg Fights using Drakes and Horn is funny, Very Bag Licious.

I’m almost tempted to just use a second main hand axe over sword,

Are you running Rabid armour with rabid weapons and Rune of the Undead or bleed duration runes? I assume you are using sigil of earth to tick up horn bleeds (like the BWE bleed/spirit build).

I haven’t played a trap ranger since late last year (and that was only in PvE) so I’m not familiar with how they build (I’m assuming 0/30/30/0/0 with 10 wherever), but I do think it would be fun to run traps in a zerg build, especially now that the horn is a little bit better. I’ve been doing more open field combat and traps + healing spring and a warhorn blast finisher in a build with synergy seems like fun.

Zenith.7301:

Valkyrie is plenty viable. My DD ele runs it just fine and so can my guardian.

Toughness isn’t what saves you in a zerg. Blocks/immunities/evades/reflects and water fields do.

Whether you have 1.2 or 2k toughness doesn’t matter, I’ve tested my BM ranger and glass cannon ranger, and if you get rooted/stunned in a zerg and they turn their attention to you you’re dead in seconds regardless.

But you can’t block/evade/reflect and outheal everything in a zerg. You are going to take damage, that’s how it works. Looking at the builds some of the most successful open field combat guilds use in WvW, most of them (at least at what I perceive to be the top tier of play) are running P/V/T gear in addition to blocks/evades/reflects and precision use of water fields and boons.

Stice.5204:

Ok, so moving the 10 stacks of vulnerability from Hunter’s Shot to Rapid Fire means a full Rapid Fire channel early in a fight does a couple hundred less damage.

The burst potential of the longbow in many situations has just been boosted, though, because of the range increase for Point Blank Shot, which hits much harder than Hunter’s Shot and can now be used more offensively because it’s no longer the only defensive tool on the longbow. Your dungeon group might not appreciate you knocking targets away as part of your burst combo, but they probably don’t really like you using a longbow instead of a sword anyway most of the time.

Your dungeon group was probably also stacking vulnerability from other sources too, so they don’t care that you no longer apply it with Hunter’s Shot. If your group actually was relying on you to help stack vulnerability and keep it up, you actually do that better now because it’s been shifted to a skill with a shorter cooldown and higher DPS.

And that’s not even getting into the million different ways stealth is useful.

Basically, the benefit of these changes makes the loss of the 10 vulnerability on Hunter’s Shot look absolutely trivial. If you are complaining about this, you aren’t just looking for a reason to be unhappy, you’re looking hard.

I don’t buy the argument that “other classes can stack vulnerability thus making the ranger’s ability to do it worse doesn’t matter”. Reducing the ranger’s ability to participate in something that is desirable (even if it’s not rare or exclusive) is going to hurt the class. I haven’t tested the vulnerability potential of the longbow yet (Rapid Fire is worse than old Hunter’s Shot but Remorseless + Hunter’s Shot (and possible triggers from guard and jaguar stealth, assuming it works that way) might make longbow just as good if not better at vulnerability application. It doesn’t help that Remorseless uses the same real estate as one of the best dungeon utilities (Spotter) and an almost necessary longbow trait (Piercing Arrows) so even if Remorseless works well with Hunter’s Shot, it has a significant cost.

I also don’t believe old Hunter’s Shot was worse at applying vulnerability compared to the new Rapid Fire. Unless you’re in a close range, Rapid Fire is a DPS loss on the longbow. Long Range Shot does greater DPS at 1,200 range. Hunter’s Shot allowed you to trigger your vulnerability quickly without a long channel skill, allowing you to go back to spamming Long Range Shot. Now you need to wait out the full duration of Rapid Fire to gain the vulnerability stacks, which is time you are spending using a lower DPS skill than Long Range Shot (assuming you can utilise the longbow to it’s greatest strength and stay at 1,200 range, which in PvE, you should be able to do). I think people are being fair when they criticise this change in PvE.

I tried combining Opening Strike and Remorseless with Barrage in hopes that it has similair functionality to Sharpening Stone (turning the first wave of barrage into an AoE vulnerability skill, allowing you to follow with Hunter’s Shot turning another wave into a second application of vulnerability) but it appears that it doesn’t work that way. Barrage only applied vulnerability to one target. I don’t understand why that’s not the same as Sharpening Stone.

Probably because of the stability. They did a rework of signets not long ago so I’m guessing they played with it and are aware of it and are fine with it being that way. More than most skills, that cast time signifcantly limits the power of this skill. Stability is one of those reactionary mechanics which you often want to trigger in response to something. The cast time prevents you from doing that (a full second makes this a pre-emptive skill, not a reactive skill). Ranger versions of multi-class tools (signets, shouts) generally break the norm.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Oh, also, to the Op’s point (sorry, I’m about to present in China, my mind is elsewhere, didn’t mean to ignore the OP):

The reason we did a “big” change for the Necro, as I’ve stated before, is that we had the Pax tournament coming. We knew we wanted to get Necros and Warriors up with the other classes, and that’s why we had big changes.

Also, a lot of our changes happen VERY far ahead of what you guys see on live. What do I mean?

• It takes us time to get our changes to editors for writing (any text/trait change has to be edited). This can take a week or more.
• We have to then get changes to writers.
• We then have to make sure we work with artists for any visual changes
• We also have to work with sound to make sure we have sound for any changes
• We have to work with icon artists for icons if they’re needed (in the case of Death Shroud 5)
• We have to make sure the changes get through multiple stages of QA testing
• Then with the changes in, we get time to play them before we do final changes
• While doing all this, we have to take the current meta, be it in dungeons/wvw/pvp, and from that, try to extrapolate what we think needs to be done a few months in advance.

This process can take a LONG time, as you can imagine. It’s not as simple as, “Oh, let’s change this to a 2, and change that to a 7.”

I know the video game industry in general is not very transparent when it comes to how things actually work, but I wanted you guys to know that a lot of times, there is a LOT of process for even the SMALLEST balance/content changes.

We get to see how Ridley Scott made Blade Runner with a companion DVD special, but in video games, no one talks about all the complex processes that go into making and balancing a game as complex as GW2 (which is basically 3 games in 1, all using the same balance #’s).

Hope this makes sense.

_Also, keep in mind we’re trying to get 8 classes to fit into 5 slots, for PvE, Dungeons, and PvP. _

This is all high level, and I’m in a rush, but I just wanted to explain this real fast…..

It’s funny, being in China, I have more time to post on the forums than I do while in the office. That’s irony or something….like 10,000 spoons….

-Chap from China

I love how the prominence of PvE in your post is essentially the same as how I personally perceive the prominence of PvE in balance and class design (I realise this is a post in a PvP thread).

What I don’t understand is how you say you do all this testing, yet something as simply as the ranger Remorseless/Precise Strike bug gets through. If you tested this change to see if it wasn’t overpowered or even accomplished what you hoped it would, how did you miss something as obvious as Remorseless doesn’t actually reapply Precise Strike when in combat? I understand there are a lot of changes every month and some of them are complex (and if anything, this post argues against slower balance patches, which I’m not fond of) and some things will slip through the cracks, but I don’t see how you could have tested this trait and the build it would be used in without realising it doesn’t work.

I’m not unhappy the bug made it through, I just don’t understand how it happened when triggering it should have been central to testing the new trait.

How viable is a “glass” valkyrie build when zerging in WvW? Survival is key there, especially with a melee weapon. I know when it comes to open field battles, the zerg with the most glass cannons is usually the one that loses. Glass cannons are usually free rallies with the current meta.

McWolfy.5924:

only the oldest field count. btw its a wvw update on warhorn. befor the zerg roll, everybody use blasts to stack might and/or haste from static and fire field. so its perfect for it, but nothing extra.

A blast finisher on a ranger weapon is awesome and the warhorn was already good but some of the hype is a bit over the top when it comes to zerging in WvW. Guardians are the class to play in WvW and their hammer has a blast finisher on something like a 5 second cool down. A blast finisher on the warhorn is nice, but it’s no game changer especially when neither the sword nor the axe are ideal zerging weapons. Blast finishers in a zerg setting were never a problem (and the warhorn one has such a long cooldown that it’s not much of a difference) but blast finishers that the ranger controls will be incredibly powerful. Healing Spring and any combo field are much more interesting to a ranger. Guardians didn’t have an on demand water field, so pulling off an AoE heal is a built into combo for the ranger. Healing Spring is basically carrying the class at this point :P.

Xsorus.2507:

Spirit Builds aren’t bad in Dungeons, not great.. but not bad.

But yea, I could see where Signet of the Wild wouldn’t be amazing in PVE.

One of the problems with ranger builds in PvE is that what else would you bring? Signet builds in PvE are fantastic for their passive bonuses to pets. Pets have survivability issues but signets help mitigate this somewhat (not enough, but it is noticeable). The stability does come in handy (although it’s not optimal, it does let you cheese a lot of stuff) and the damage buff is nice. Having a reason to bring SotH never hurt either, the movement buff is primarily a quality of life thing rather than necessary or high value, but a signet build does make it easier to have it on the bar. The actives on signets still have painfully long cooldowns, but that plays alright with their power level and passive bonuses (unlike other classes, ranger signet passives have increased value when you have face tanking pets).

Look at the non-signet options. Shouts are kind of gimmicky and not particularly powerful (none of them are obvious inclusions like “For Great Justice!” or banners, they all are very niche tools aside from “Sick ’Em” which is a clunky and boring DPS skill designed for PvP with generic DPS use in PvE) and spirits are unreliable outside of optimised groups, and even then only Frost Spirit is worth bringing (it’s not significantly weaker or stronger than banners but it is significantly less reliable due to range limitations with careful placement, its fragility and the lack of a blast finisher). Wilderness survival gives CC which is almost useless for it’s primary use because line of sighting is far more powerful than CC in an optimised group (unless you are fighting someone like the Mossman) and Lightning Reflexes and Quickening Zephyr don’t really stand out compared to Signet of Stone and Signet of the Wild respectively (they both either provide an “Oh kitten” button or a DPS increase which different twists on them but signets benefit pets with both their actives and passives).

Fortifying Bond has always been one of the ranger traits with the most potential (it has clunky/buggy and hidden boon duration limitations which make it’s use very difficult to measure) but it was held back by pet survivability (which has gotten better) and a lack of reliable access to boons to pass on (which has evolved with the meta where a lot of players are bringing boons in their builds). It was also made significantly more important when they nerfed pet priority on boons.

There isn’t a lot of complexity to ranger DPS when it comes to utility skills. You either pick the passive DPS buffs which aren’t particularly interesting (“Sick ’Em”, Frost Spirit, Quickening Zephyr and to a lesser extent, untraited Signet of the Wild) or you settle for defensive mechanics. Signets are kind of a middle ground that might have a long cool down, but their passives are useful for pets and their actives are noticeably powerful. Ranger DPS utilities are far too passive. They basically read as “use this to do more DPS for a few seconds”. Signet of the Wild might not be great, but neither is its competition.

I’m not on board with spirits in dungeons. Until they compete with banners in terms of reliability, they aren’t good enough (in terms of design, not in terms of whether they contribute more than other utilities). Their survivability issue needs to be solved (not lessened) and their actives need to be reworked to be reliably used in PvE. Something like turning their actives into a ground targeted skill is basically needed for as long as getting close to their target means near certain death. The reality is, even rangers that do bring them are not utilising them for their 100% design potential because their survivability issues are direct counters to their actives. It certainly doesn’t help that their cool down is so long, with a shorter cooldown, shorter cast times and traited actives on deaths I could see them being fun with their current survivability (kind of like bombs).

I’m still on board with Remorseless being limited in its design with the longbow. It’s basically a longbow trait now, but it’s horribly placed to compete with every longbow trait other than Quick Draw. These issues aren’t so bad in PvP, but in PvE I suspect Spotter and Piercing Arrows edge out this trait in terms of how well they help the longbow builds without sacrificing other weapons to do so.

I don’t think there is a Condition Damage/Power/Toughness set. I also don’t think the Longbow should be brought on every build just for stealth. It’s still a power weapon, trap range is 900 so the longbow would probably still be weaker than shortbow in a trap build (especially when the shortbow has so much defensive utility, the same range as traps and also utilises condition damage).

How do you introduce a major change to the game like this without catching something as simple as this? Is it a case of it worked on the test server and something broke when they went live, or did they just not test it while paying attention to its full functionality?

Yeah, I didn’t realise it at first when reading the patch notes, but when altering my longbow build in the game I realised that longbow traits are all in the wrong place (aside from Quick Draw). You want Spotter for its group utility (especially in PvE) but Piercing Arrows is basically mandatory for any bow build in this game (in PvE anyway). This means you have to choose between Eagle Eye, Spotter and Piercing Arrows if you want to bring remorseless. As good as the new remorseless is, the cost of bringing it is incredibly high. I can live without Eagle Eye, but Spotter and Piercing Arrows are a huge loss (and this is after you already decide not to bring Signet of the Beast Master).

Is it normal to have pretty much all of a weapon’s traits loaded into one tier of the same tree? It does seem like they put a lot of thought into the kinds of traits longbow users want to use, they just buffed some bad ones but didn’t account for the losses. I’d like to see Piercing Arrows merged with Quick Draw so you can have functioning bows without losing a 20 point power trait. As much as I’d like to see Spotter (a precision trait) moved to the precision line, I don’t want it to compete with a 20% bow trait (especially if that trait gives Piercing Arrows in the future) so it probably works better in the Marksmanship line. You could always slot it in at 30 points in Skirmishing (cause the other 30 point traits are really not crit traits) but that would mean you are going 30/30.

Remorseless is basically designed around the Longbow now but unfortunately it doesn’t play well with important longbow traits so it’s kinda bad at it’s job (unless you PvP, in which case Spotter and Piercing Arrows are less necessary). Ranger traits always look like they are built around PvP with no concern for PvE.

Tadayoshi.2815:

darkace.8925:

Linguistically Inept.6583:

rapid fire is 10 vuln now… i think it sounds like a pretty good change

… gonna have some fun in wvw

It’s 1 vulnerability per shot. It’s 10 seconds of vulnerability spread out over 4.5 seconds. And that’s assuming all the shots hit. And even if they do, the first vulnerability is going to wear off before the last does, so it’s not a straight 10% damage increase like it was with Hunter’s Shot…my poor, dear Hunter’s Shot.

So your own build doesn’t work and you are to lazy to think of a new one adapting the crit chance, stealth and so one ? Well that’s bad for you, than you will never be good at this classl

Longbow rangers are terrible at the game if they needed combat stealth in PvE. For many PvE players this is now a nerf. It’s also weird because to get remorseless you have to choose between Piercing Arrows and Spotter, the former is basically necessary for any bow skill in the game and the latter is one of the best party buffs the class has.

This was a PvP change, it doesn’t really help many PvE builds, in some ways, it hurts them.

Einlanzer.1627:

The change is amazing. Anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong.

Or they play mainly PvE.

The shortbow got kitten on when it didn’t need to be for sure, but the longbow needed this stealth more.

Xsorus.2507:

Stealth is incredibly poweful.

Having Stealth is a direct damage increase for you on a Ranger

Because every second you’re not dead, the more damage you’ll end up doing.

He’s almost certainly talking about PvE. The honest truth is that if you had survival issues with the longbow prior to this change, you probably doing it wrong.

The stealth is incredibly awesome, but it’s primarily a PvP (aside from using it as a Remorseless engine).

Doe remorseless trigger with guard and jaguar stealth?

I thought the warrior healing buffs were going to be PvP only, you know, because warriors aren’t exactly a weak profession in PvE. What happened to the PvP only change?

The stealth will be a valuable tool in PvE simply as an engine to fuel Remorseless. I never would have considered putting stealth on the longbow (I honestly had no idea how to achieve what they wanted to with that weapon) but this seems like a great way to do it. I still don’t see why the shortbow needs a range nerf with this change. This change is probably enough to give the longbow its own place in the meta and be taken over the shortbow in many different situations.

So they will be found in BLCs as well as the dungeon and the chests now drop “tokens” that can be traded in addition to the old school rare chance lottery win. On top of that, scraps are a universal token for all coming weapon skins, so you can save them up over time (voting Evon in and stockpiling keys is actually tempting now, it’s barely RNG if you commonly get a token). The cherry on top of this is the weapons are available from PvE activities specific to new content so you can earn them in the game (unfortunately no token system is used for this so you are still relying on RNG for what is still limited time content, so they lose points on this one despite the good they’ve done) and the tokens are tradable, so you can buy them from the TP. They’ve advanced leaps and bounds from Dragon Bash/Sky Pirates and thank god they did it in time for the rapier. Obtaining one shouldn’t be a nightmare like the jade weapons or anything that came before that.

The system isn’t perfect (no PvE token system, still reliant on RNG) but tradable, tokens from BLCs in addition to rare chance and a shared token system are all leaps forward from the old system. On top of that, there is now something very valuable to be obtained by getting cheaper BLKs from Evon. Those chests are less RNG now. Still some bad here, but a whole lot of good (at least on the surface level).

Stealth is an insanely powerful defensive skill so having it on the longbow is probably going to be a huge bonus. Not only does it help avoid damage, it helps you reposition to make use of the longbow’s strengths. Unlike a thief, the ranger has a pet which can continue to DPS throughout the stealth’s duration, so the longbow might become much more viable in PvP with this change. In PvE it doesn’t hurt either.

The ability to renew remorseless while in combat without relying on a kill is something this mechanic needed to prevent it from being almost pointless 95% of the time. It’s weapon specific so it’s not that big a change, still, longbow contributes to a group better than before and it has more survivability. This should have come before the shortbow nerf, the shortbow wouldn’t have needed the nerf if they were actively fixing the longbow.

Blast finishers are awesome. Having one on the warhorn is really nice. I can see this fitting into the meta nicely (especially given the strengths of the warhorn as a buffing tool already).

They finally removed that kittenty bleed from maul. The great sword is a power weapon, I’m glad ArenaNet realised that. I would have prefered a blast finisher, but vulnerability is still good (especially with its short cooldowns). Vulnerability is a great way to help your group.

I’m still not a fan of off-hand axe, especially now that it competes with a blast finisher. If my group needs reflection, I’d be amazed if we didn’t have a guardian or a mesmer, two classes that do it better. If I need the reflection it’s there, but I doubt I will be running axe with this change.

What happened the PvE spirit and pet survivability buffs they talked about in the lat SotG?

This is a good patch for ranger, but it follows on the heals of the abomination that was pet DPS and shortbow range nerfs. Still, they delivered on power weapons and stealth rangers are going to be a lot of fun to play with.

Someone did mine some from the dat (including bundle icons which imply they are gem store purchased) but none of the screen shots from the promotion from the new content shows them and they aren’t mentioned anywhere (unlike the Aetherblade stuff) so I suspect they will come in a later update.

Vahkris.6847:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

1) I don’t see how the mechanics of playing as a god is hard. The player’s skill bar would simply be replaced with unique skills, and the avatar is easily changed. In GW1, there were god-mode forms that players could transform into. Anet could simply take that look, and re-work it into GW2

I should point out that the developers do not like replacing the profession skills from the player (apparently a lot of players hate this). They may make an exception for some things, but I think they might want to allow the players to keep their skills for the profession they chose.

You should also note that FotM is one of the few places in GW2 where they do exactly this. The water fractal has the dolphin phase (although it isn’t a combat phase).

Lil Deviant.9218:

Stand against the smelly Charr and vote for someone that has your back as well as your best interests and Tyrias at heart ! Vote for Kiel!!!

Thieves never have your back. They stealth out as soon as the fight turns south.

The paranoia theory about the Consortium and the original Southsun update being hidden messages about ArenaNet and Nexon was much better than this one. I can only hope you are joking about this, because this is insane.

Does anyone actually think this election has anything to do with RNG boxes and their place in the game or the store? The only data ArenaNet needs to determine their approach to RNG boxes is the real world sale figures of the RNG boxes. If ArenaNet was making a boat load of cash off of the boxes and Kiel won by a landslide, do you really think they would say “hey, Kiel won because players don’t like RNG boxes, lets kill off our money printing design because of an in-game lore event”? The election hyperbole and tongue in cheek (by some people) is making people stupid.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Nick.6972:

Yeah, I wonder, which is better, a dungeon about silly Asuras or a god kitten GOD?

The one that could turn space/time inside out and possibly affect other aspects of the game.

Space and time look perfectly normal to me. I was on Tyria 250 years ago and I can see it today. I’ve even been to the reactor, everything looks normal to me.

Onshidesigns.1069:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Onshidesigns.1069:

Skins are $5-$10, if you buy them outright.
With RNG skins you could spend $100 or more to get the skin.

Stop legitimizing this SCAM!

To answer this…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The fact that people WANT things only offered as a chance from a chest, and the fact that they’re WILLING to take that chance, they give up all rights to complain once they click that button. Knowing full well of what you’re getting into, and still doing it, speaks volumes.

Sorry my friend, your “scam” argument holds no water.

Smart players will vote Evon for Council!

Smart players know the Thaumanova Reactor fractal will mix chaos energy with the Mists. Creating unstable space time that would have effects outside FOTM.

It’s already happened. We know what Tyria looks like after this “world altering event” – we play in that world every day!

Why does the website say both Evon and Kiel will bring back Crab Toss and Southsun Survival? Was that a mistake on the web team’s part and it’s supposed to say Southsun Survival for Evon and Aspect Arena for Kiel? Currently it says they will both bring back the exact same thing, but in the new content update Evon is the one hosting Southsun Survival while Kiel is hosting Aspect Arena.

penatbater.4710:

Hunzo.4509:

Forestnator.6298:

a) cof is no pve – it’s a kitten d dungon. Plus, I got 2 legendarys and enougth gold for one more but not even one stack cof tokens. So this is not a problem of the game – it’s problem of simpleton community.

b) engineers are right behind warriors dps with zerker hgh grenades.

c) so much more to say, but to keep it short: your field of vision seems very limited – maybe you should not judge about any class so naive. Every class has some guys who realy mastered their clas and who are able to be very very effective in pve content also. Again, cof is no pve – it’s a kitten d dungon.

d) PvE does not have to be balanced.

CoF is pve… And it’s just an element of PvE i used an example as most people can relate to it, i also don’t have a clue what you’re saying throughout half you post, as well it simply doesn’t make sense.

His point was that you shouldn’t use CoF as an example for PvE, mainly because CoF is so streamlined it’s a terrible example for PvE content, mainly because everyone already knows that 4war1mes zerk team is gonna be the most efficient team for that. Use other examples like other dungeons, maybe, then people can relate better.

The argument doesn’t change. The holy trinity is the same in all of PvE. Marginal changes can be made for DPS roles in optimised groups, but for the most part the trinity is fairly solid in all group content.

Iloce.1392:

I agree with you Dan. If there is min/maxing to be done, elitists will be choosing their groups carefully. Because I can not get into that group, I should not be upset as they are not the kind of people I want to run with anyway, because I make mistakes A LOT and am ok with it. =P Just know that if you pick the class you have most fun with, that you will get looked over. No matter how good you get? Wait….

At what point do the elitists become the mainstream?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Would it be wrong of the developers to encourage people to play their game every day?

From a developer-viewpoint, of course.

Should the goal be to have players playing every day or making your content so enjoyable they want to play every day regardless of whether there is another time gated mechanic they will miss out on if they don’t? League of Legends is vastly more popular than GW2 (lets ignore that they are different genres) and while there is a daily mechanic (first win) it’s nothing compared to the levels GW2 takes it, yet League of Legends has no problems getting players to log in every day. It’s because players actually enjoy playing the game every day, not because they feel pressured to log in or lose their bonus points.

So yes, when the developer starts using limited time content and time gates as the primary (or anything other than incidental) motivator to play every day, something is seriously wrong. Wanting players to play every day is fine. Using time gates and temporary content instead of truly enjoyable and compelling gameplay is an abomination. Last time I played League of Legends, Halo, Mario Brothers, Pokemon or any other truly great game I didn’t have less fun because it wasn’t time gated.

Time gating is old school MMO design which should be abolished back to the dark ages of MMOs. Unfortunately ArenaNet isn’t as “progressive” as they wanted us to believe and are more than willing to compromise on good game design to promote daily log in metrics.

The WvW achievement isn’t hard, it’s just a grind. You can get more kills on a level 2 staff guardian running around WvW with the zerg than a level 80 dagger thief accomplishing a lot more.

Achievement points are a grind mechanic, not a gameplay one. They don’t represent skill, accomplishment or anything else of objective value. All they represent is grind.

Serious.4839:

During the Cutthroat Politics preview on Twitch, the demonstrator talks to a vendor that is selling 1 support token for 14 silver and 10 support tokens for 1 gold.

I’ll probably be sinking a lot of gold into Evon.

EDIT: Upon further thought, buying support tokens is probably an even better thing for the Evon campaign, because the people who would vote for Kiel for the WP cost reduction probably don’t have much gold to spare.

You can straight up buy the election? WoW! That’s a new low even for ArenaNet. How kitten ed would you be if you sank 100+G into supporting Kiel only to see Evon win in the end? ArenaNet is obsessed with this idea that people need to lose (RNG) for players to have nice things. This is probably the dumbest gold sink to date.

Bismuth.3165:

As someone mentioned though, if the fractal level is account wide then so should the fractal daily chest

I don’t see how that makes sense. I can (and did) fractal dailies on multiple characters already. Why do we need yet another attack on players with alts (and a need for multiple equipment sets) when the current system allows for players to obtain Pristine Relics multiple times a day already? Making the level account bound is just removing the grind redundancy before you can access the rewards you’ve already earned while also allowing you to access content on a greater variety of characters without punishing you with more grind “progression”.

The original levelling system makes sense to do it once because it eases players into learning fractals and their mechanics before upping the difficulty. Once it has been mastered once, it doesn’t need to be mastered a second time. Grinding Progressing another character through lower level fractals without any kind of reward is simply a time sink and it’s not fun or compelling gameplay. You learn how to play your class on your way to 80. You learn how to play fractals as you level it up. You learn how to play your class in high level fractals by playing high level fractals not by grinding low level fractals in the name of grind progression.

There is no need to make Pristine Relics account locks, in fact, it harms the game and players with multiple characters by doing so.

Why is this in the ranger forum?

Yeah if supporting the game is the issue, add new weapon sets. They have far greater appeal than pets (they are used by every class, a pet is specific to the ranger). If adding new pets to the class is the issue (even if it’s just skins) then it should be part of an expansion or content update. I’d love to see pets added for completing challenging content (like the phoenix could only be tamed after defeating Shiro or the black widow could only be tamed by completing an Underworld quest) but I’m against gem store pet skins.

Laiboch.4380:

I really like being able to plant them instead of have them follow me around. They just die way to easy if you have them following you around.

So blowing a grandmaster trait to make your spirits functionally worse is a good idea? The problem here is still spirit survivability. If spirits weren’t auto dead when traited to move it wouldn’t be as big of a problem to have them move, in fact, it might be a good idea.

Stashing a spirit behind a wall or around a corner before a fight isn’t my idea of compelling combat. They sold GW2 on active combat. The game is rapidly evolving into very static and boring combat and +% damage passive buffs from a stationary summon isn’t helping that.

If you like taking the path of least resistance, yes, rangers are in THAT BAD a place. If you want an uphill battle to reach the same or lesser value of another profession, then enjoy the class for all that it isn’t.

The sword probably has the worst survivability of any weapon in the game. The most powerful survival tool in the game is the dodge mechanic. The sword has parts of its auto attack chain which disable the ability to access the dodge mechanic. It also makes positioning much harder (any other melee weapon can walk circles around the target to avoid cleave range, the sword disables control of your character during the leap animation and thus roots it in place, preventing you from circling your character during those moments).

Full condition rangers will probably be bringing traps but they are subpar in PvE (and even worse compared to a full condition necro who can put out the same amount of bleeds or more, plus more conditions).

Sword is primarily a direct damage weapon, so is the longbow.

The shortbow is actually a hybrid weapon (it only has two DPS conditions and the poison is unreliable at range) so unless you are running traps, building pure conditions on a shortbow isn’t going to be very powerful. It actually does well as a power weapon, although the recent nerf has made the weapon lose a lot of its lustre in PvE.

The axe is a weak single target weapon but decent at AoE. It can be built as a condition or power weapon (Split Blade is decent bleeds at point blank range) especially if you combine it with the torch or warhorn respectively.

The greatsword is a low-medium damage melee power weapon but it has a decent amount of survival built in. Evasion on the auto-attack, block on another skill, a long range leap and a stun. Maul is where a lot of the DPS comes from but it’s has a baffling inclusion of bleeds (but the weapon doesn’t support power builds).

Off hand torch is a fire combo field and powerful burning, off hand dagger has poison and another evade,off hand axe has a rooted reflection skill and a high DPS pull skill and warhorn has a single target DPS skill combined with a party wide fury, swiftness and weak might buff so combine that with your sword or axe however you want.

They won’t succeed. At best they will spread the farmers out across multiple dungeon paths. They will give a handful of dungeon paths an inappropriate amount of coins based on its normal difficulty (which doesn’t match up with its exploit difficulty) and they will be farmed. Bonus points if they make the daily limit character bound and not account bound (god forbid people not enjoy the grind progression of account based lock outs). A marginal increase in the number of paths farmed will result, but the biggest hit will be people who chain farm CoF.

This will result in gold becoming harder to obtain for pugs, but easier to obtain for groups that know how to cheese through content by using exploits.

Yenn.9185:

Only problem is no one would wanna do low levels. New players would have a harder time pugging.

Other than that, I’m all for it.

You can still level up in a higher level fractal (but you would only need to do it once). Honestly, a good lfg tool would solve so many problems, but even without it, doing level 10 isn’t that hard and there are plenty of people who only run that to get their dailies done.

Solution? Change the name from Explorable to Token.

Player Character.9467:

OP: I hate people who use exploits.
Following posts: omg why you hate stacking, los’ing, etc nub??

o.O those aren’t exploits guys, going outside the map, skipping everything, and killing the last boss of each path in 1 run is…

Actually those are exploits. The difference is what you are exploiting, such as terrible AI (Line of Sight) and oversights in combat mechanics and design (which have existed since the beginning of GW1) to cheese content by removing the intended challenge. Do you honestly think the developers intended for every group to run around a corner and face tank mobs that die in AoE and cleaves in seconds, removing the need to deal with 95% of the challenging combat mechanics? It’s made worse by ArenaNet’s stance of inaction when it comes to acting on PvE meta (which is why a single Feedback is still the most powerful offensive tool being used to kill Lupicus, while at the same time being the most powerful defensive tool).

Afya.5842:

I’m starting to think it’s more of a technical problem. It’s quite a serious problem that even base on how “efficient” Anet usually is solving problem like this, it should be done by now. Or I really underestimate their “efficiency”.

It is. They posted on this issue back last year when it was first raised. It’s something to do with how instances are structured.

jwaz.1908:

An easy solution to your problem is starting your own group, and advertising that it’ll be a non-glitch run.

Use http://gw2lfg.net/ if you don’t already.

Or for glitchers to advertise that their run will be a glitch run. Why does the burden of glitching content fall on people who want to play normally?