Guild Wars 2

I mean, I know why they don’t allow it. They don’t want people to buy a bunch of Karma gear or WvW gear, use BLKs on them, and sell the leftovers. But at this point, is that really going to screw up the economy? I’ve been sitting on between 3-4 million karma for the last year or so. I buy a few obsidian shards now and then. So what If I want to spend my karma to make a little gold. I mostly WvW, and trust me, we don’t get nearly enough badges to do any harm to the economy.

I sure as hell am not going to buy any runes that are 10+ gold because of this screw up. Hopefully Anet sees this as something to fix asap.

Yeah, um previously, I used to use transmutation stones to move an expensive rune to a new piece of gear. Now, I’m realizing, since most of my gear is WvW bought, I can’t do that anymore. I’m really kinda screwed. Fore example, I have an ascended headgear that I was about to use, but I want to get my Melandru rune out of my exotic and put it in the new Ascended piece. Can’t do that. I’d have to buy a new Melandru rune. They’re super expensive. I mean, was this a plan to get us to spend more gold?

OMG, I just realized I have 2 travelers runes in my ele gear I need to get. Like, I don’t even care if I destroy the gear, I just want the runes. They’re worth 13G.

Get my bloodlust sigils out of my WvW bought weapons? Apparently, not even black lion salvage kits won’t work. I also have a ton of armor that I bought using tokens and karma. Can’t salvage those either. I’m not going to buy one of those extractors as one cost 25G, way more than a bloodlust sigil.

But seriously, am I missing something? Are there ever going to be plans to change this in the future? I’m not kidding when I say almost everything I have has been bought with karma or WvW badges.

Hmmm. Interesting. I’ll have to check this out. Yeah. After you mentioned that program, I went to my card settings and controlled my computers color within my graphics card software and told it to override the application color. It was obviously doing this with windows. But when I stitched to GW2, none of the changes took effect. GW2 completely ignored it. The only way it worked is if I played in windowed mode. Very odd and explains a lot.

I’ll have to look more into that SweetFX program.

I recently got a new system. Running on Win 8.1. Ran a simple OS color calibration and took out some yellow. My desktop background is neutral 18% gray and looks good to me. Everything else looks fine, but when I run GW2, the game seems extremely warm to me, particularly, yellow/amber. I’m not super familiar with windows, but is there a way to change the color temperature more easily? It seems that GW2 needs to run at something much higher, like a D90. I can’t even tell if I’m currently running at D65 with windows. Is it just me, or is the game designed to be this warm?

Thanks.

The thing that’s really getting to me about this thread is all the PvPers complaining that they deserve a reward like this because of x, y, and z. They site how PvEers and WvWers go out and grind, get lucky, farm champs, play the TP, or whatever. Here’s the thing that kittenes me off. PvPers can do all that too. Just get the kitten out of PvP. We all did, so can you.

I do agree with the posters that have mentioned coming up with a completely unique skin. That would be pretty cool. I’ve also come around from my previous post. 5 legendaries isn’t too big of a deal, as long as it isn’t frequent. Putting 5 legendaries into the economy, plus the 2nd place rewards that will make it much easier to make legendaries will hurt the legendary economy.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Malediktus.9250:

Really? A legendary for winning a single tournament while others have to farm 100s of hours for one? Disgusting. Guess Anet only knows extremes with rewards, either almost nothing or precursors/legendaries lol.

The players who will win this tournament SURELY have spent 100s of hours perfecting their craft and strategies, without earning legendaries for it in the process.

We are tipping our hats to those that have put the time and dedication into PvP, and have earned this as a reward.

We’re not just handing them out.

Wrong, you are LITERALLY just handing them out. 5 of them. LITERALLY.

My biggest issue is that legendary weapons are supposed to reflect all aspects of the game to some extent. Now, I’m a WvWer. I’ve spent almost 6000 hours in this game, but I still have done my map completion in order to get the gift of exploration. I’ve still figured out ways to make money to buy a precursor. Not only that, I’ve bought other mats to supplement the ones I haven’t had. That’s a lot of work for someone who isn’t interested in these other aspects of the game. But I still did it because I wanted Juggernaut. Oh, and I’m also rank 40 in PvP.

So, just like me, people who primarily PvP should still go out there and do what is needed to get your legendary. But, I do feel PvPers pain. Like you, WvWers have gotten the short end of the stick. PvPers probably more so, because PvP is, essentially, a whole different game, with different rules and different equipment, etc. You don’t get loot drops, gold, and so on. On the other hand, you also don’t have to spend a but load of gold upgrading siege, structures, and so on, like you do in WvW. You don’t have to spend gold on, well, anything.

The other big issue I have is that this is hardly democratic. 1) You will have to be in one of the best PvP guilds because this is a team effort. That right there is going to eliminate a ton of people. 2) This will favor people with higher end systems. When competing at this high level, every millisecond counts.

It’s important to have rewards, and tornies like this are fun, but, in the end, I just feel that the reward for winning this is SEVERELY unbalanced.

Smokee.1754:

Having played games such as DAoC and WAR, I am used to a culture where groups and guilds dont add on each other if the fights seem even. This has been an unspoken rule amongst guilds that most if not all have agreed on. Same goes for killing groups smaller than yours / roamers.

However in GW2 it is rare to see this behavior from guilds. I wonder if its because we play on NA servers and NA dont have the same history in previous mmos, or its a general thing for GW2?

Its not a rant about other servers, cause guilds on my own server ( Blackgate ) is just as bad at doing this as others are. I am just wondering why people do this, and hopefully a discussion about this can lead to, what imo would be a better WvW enviroment.

First off, I myself never knew this was an unspoken rule. So, right there, I think it’s a culture clash of EU DAoC players vs. everyone else. Many of the other commanders that we both play with started commanding here in GW2. This is our first experience to an open world pvp environment. Please, keep in mind, Smokee, that very few guilds have been together for the 10+ years that HB has and haven’t had nearly that same amount of MMO experience as well.

We’re both on BG and we both know that BG usually runs multiple smaller groups. JQ and whoever else might be in T1 usually runs map zergs. I know if I see an enemy fighting an ally, I immediately want to help out because they are most likely facing much larger numbers and will probably immediately benefit from some water fields or war banners.

Even if I did know this was an unspoken rule, I probably wouldn’t adhere too closely with it. I’m not going to sit around for 10 seconds or whatever and try to figure out if it’s an even fight. By the time I’m done, and if I was wrong, my allies might be dead. Better to not hesitate and get in the fray to help.

This is WvW. I don’t see it as being fair. If I’m in a group of 20, I’m going to kill a group of 10. That group of 10 can easily take a camp, kill yaks, take a tower, or even a keep if the timing’s right. I want them dead.

Roamers of 1 or 2, I’ll generally skip because I want to keep people together and I usually have someplace better to be. Speed is a huge factor to winning. However, if I don’t want them following me at all, then I will run them over because I don’t want them reporting where I’m going. Also, If I think that they are a bloodlust group, I’ll run them over.

Since this is a concern of yours, maybe just say something in CC. Have your guildies keep an eye on the tags on the map so that is someone is approaching, you can say “Hey, don’t engage, we’re trying to see if we can win this fight ourselves.” The flip side is that if you see an even fight, ask in CC if they want help. I know it’s been really hard lately since our TS has been down so much due to attacks.

Anet. WTF? Common guys. PVE gets patches hours after something stupid, like too many monsters are spawning, that isn’t game breaking, but this goes on for 20 hours and nothing? Please. At least give a dev response so we know you guys are aware of the issue. You still need to fix it asap, though.

Guys, this thread is getting really off topic. We’re talking about listing game bugs. Please read the thread and try not to post bugs that have already been listed.

While there may be existing game mechanics that you may not like, they aren’t bugs. Please don’t list them here.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Nice thread. I don’t know how many of these issues we can feasibly tackle, but I’m sure you’ll see at least a few fixes come from this.

Nope, sorry, this is a terrible response.

Others have said it and so will I. We’ve reported, complained, and countless new people to the game have known about these bugs since launch. You should be actively working on these things. Instead, we feel like we are being undervalues. “Meh, they’ll just have to live with it.” attitude is unhealthy for you’re player base, especially when, like others have said many, many times, pve gets bugs fixed within hours. I would imagine that you guys are tired of hearing this all the time.

I really appreciate the new map. EotM is beautiful and really well designed. But seriously, you guys worked on that for a few months and came up with something beautiful. Why is it the game has been out for a year and a half, and beta before that, and some of these bugs still exist? Please, get on some of these. Y’all finally made it so we could kick people from party. ’Bout time. Keep up that sort of thing.

My addition: Fix temporal curtain so it will stack swiftness.

Straegen.2938:

• Rams deployed on outer double gates in EB can hit inner gate. IMO a bug.

Not a bug at all. Completely intentional and carefully planned.

I’m a huge WvWer. Amongst all my characters, I’m probably about rank 1000. I hardly PvE. Why do so many people say they need to do PvE for ascended gear? You get the mats from drops. Not getting enough? You can buy the middle stage stuff. Don’t get enough gold? Then spend a little bit of time crafting stuff that’s profitable. How on earth do you not have the laurels? I have them coming out of my butt. My daily is done everyday thanks to the expanded daily achievements. Monthly done within a week. I’ve got a ton of skill points.

In all, I’ve crafted a set of armor, and a bunch of weapons. I’m not going to craft any more armor, however, because I find the stat increase not worth the time, gold, laurels, and skill points. I’d rather spend that stuff on something else.

I’ve been kittening at my ISP thinking this is an issue with them, however, I was wondering if anyone else has been recently having frequent crashes to the character select screen. I’m able to immediately log back in to the game. Usually in WvW, I experience major lags and rubber banding before this happens. BTW, I live in New Orleans and use Cox.

Nope. Spirits are useless in WvW as they die in 1 second, unless you’re just roaming and plan on getting into 1v1 or 1v2 fights. Anything more, and you’re toast.

Season 1 is over, and I’m still waiting in que for EB at 4:30 AM. Been in que for a half an hour so I decided to check the forums while waiting.

Good riddance to all the people qqing greatly about the rewards. WvW existed for a year before leagues started. We play for the fun of it. The fact that we got achievement points and rewards for doing our normal gameplay was great and appreciated. The existing WvW achievements are impossible to get. But even still, we play for fun.

I personally got my key on week 4. I got them all from natural play except for the mercinary camp thing, which I never finished. I just had to go out of my way for the jumping puzzles.

As a commander, I can not tell you how frustrating it has been having to stop at every sentry because I will loose half my zerg If I don’t. I’m sick of not having people on my tag or people not in TS. From day 1, we had to argue with people in map chat about not letting the enemy flip objectives so we could flip them back. Good riddance to all of that. Forget about being a commander, as a follower, it’s just as frustrating.

I personally think the rewards are fine. Too great, and we will be flooded with even more PvEers who will clog up maps that are finite. Too little, and you will just upset even more people. Me, and everyone else though the rewards were going to be much less. I thought it was nice having scrolls and tomes of knowledge. My only gripe is that the dolyak finisher should be permanent untill the end of season 2. It’s a great trophy, and I want to be able to use it all the time, especially in season 2. I don’t see how that would be hard to do.

WvWers care about bragging rights, winning matches, fights, fun. We don’t need these rewards to play the game. They show appreciation for our participation, so Thanks.

Thank you for listening and understanding the concerns of many of the players. Please remember that this was a fiasco from the start and because a response took such a long time, you are still going to have many people unhappy who did purchase the Flamekissed armor. I think you came up with a fair and reasonable solution. Thanks again.

Get in front of this now. It has only been a few hours. Remove this from the gem store and give a refund to people who’ve already bought it. Do the right thing, please.

BladeBraverBureba.1052:

Spurnshadow.3678:

Part 2/2

Some traits, no matter how much you buff them or move them in the trait trees, will never be attractive. Some people brought up on down traits or falling damage traits. Just get rid of these completely.

The falling damage traits are designed to be swapped in during WvW. They do their job, and they do their job well.

Just because you don’t WvW doesn’t mean they should be removed.

If you read my posts, you will see that I have over 4000 hours in this game. Probably 90% of that is in WvW. I play 6 different classes. I’ve never used those traits. They are pointless and actually detrimental. How? If you fall and proc chaos storm, death from above, static field, or anything that can aggro monsters, then it puts you, your party, and anyone else that may be attacked into combat and slow down the group and spread them out. That is not desirable. The only trait worth anything is death from above, and that is only swapped into and out of for a warrior to jump onto enemies at a gate to knock them off rams. I never die from falling because I know where to run off cliffs. If I’m in a fight, I never run away. I fight until I die.

Part 2/2

Some traits, no matter how much you buff them or move them in the trait trees, will never be attractive. Some people brought up on down traits or falling damage traits. Just get rid of these completely. This is an opportunity to really come up with some good ideas.

Stop making such drastic changes so close to other changes you’ve already made. Not everyone in this game is rich. If someone sees a build they’d like to try or may think is better, they typically need to get a whole new set of armor, weapons, and trinkets. This can take weeks or longer, especially with the inflation in this game.

Make sentinels gear more available. Some builds, like elementalists would need this if you want them to spec into a more offensive build to make up for their low health pool. However, each piece can cost between 75 and 100 gold. Many are not even available on the trading post.

The flip side is you are going to really kitten people off who’ve already invested heavily in their gear. Like myself, I had a full condition set for my mesmer with all ascended trinkets. I never play it. I’m very angry at this and would love a way to get a refund for my laurels. These sort of things are what makes people quit the game and generate the buzz that these balance changes are just a way to generate money by making people buy gems for new gear.

Many of the “balance changes” seems to have been knee jerk reactions to qqers and people who are just bad at playing the game. These are people who seem to want to just stand in front of an enemy, tank the damage, and spam a few skills until the enemy is dead. Confusion is a great example of this, or this issue with earthshaker. A dodgeroll can solve most problems, or a cleanse. But so many people just want to run zerker and spam their rotation without thinking.

Along those lines, keep in mind you should not balance things too much. Not every build should be able to survive and kill every other build. There should always be a time when you run into a fight that should be a stalemate or that build should own you. A zerg build is different from a roaming build. If I’m tanky, I just may not have enough burst to kill another tanky build, but will have enough to survive and kill a glass build. It seems that you are trying to make every build survive and kill every other build. I think you may go insane trying to accomplish this.

It feels that the people responsible for balancing are just tinkering because it’s your job. Maybe you need to talk to the other people you work with and address these other issues that affect classes first. Keep these in mind when you address balancing.

Part 1/2

I’ve written many posts so far relating to each class I play. I’ve played well over 4000 hours in this game. Most of this time has been spent in WvW, but have spent some time in sPvP and completed most PvE content. I have over 10K achievment points. Most of my perspective will be from WvW. PvE is a joke and it doesn’t really matter what your build is.

I really appreciate the devs creating this thread. While I’ve addressed the class issues that the devs are proposing, I reject this exercise as a whole. The whole point of this is to address build diversity and balancing. This can not be accomplished by moving around some traits and tweaking others. The classes need to be looked at from the ground up. It seams like you are going that way with the thief by upping its initiative regeneration. That is the direction you need to go with the other classes.

For example, the elementalist fundamentally lacks survivability due to its very low health pool and armor co-efficient. Due to this, almost every build needs to spec high into water and arcana and run boon duration runes. Untill this is addressed, no one will spec high into more than one line of fire, air, or earth.

The guardian has the same issue as the elementalist.

The warrior is almost the opposite of the other two. I struggle to get my health below 25K. But part of this issue is that there is only one good group build: shout heal / warhorn trait spec with runes of the soldier. Everything else is cool and does good dps, but are selfish and do nothing for the group. There are banners, but they are super annoying as people accidentally pick them up all the time and they are static, whereas fights are mobile. Even one on one, all the enemy has to do is kite the warrior away from the banner. One nice suggestion someone had once is to make the banner part of the warrior, like a Japanese battle standard they wear on their back. They could have only one active at a time.

Bring back confusion and rework clones. I made the suggestion that clones should be invulnerable if one hits an F key. When was the last time anyone has run through a glamour field and had confusion applied to them? No joke, confusion is dead on the mesmer.

Along the lines of confusion, another problem with this threads premise is that there are still bugs that exist in this game that are keeping skills, weapons, and traits from reaching their potential. Instead of fixing the issue where people would take confusion damage from dodging or when their health reaches a certain point and trigger a skill, thereby taking confusion damage, you just flat out nerfed it by 50%. I don’t play ever profession, and I have more experience with some professions more than others. I think these bugs that still exist since launch are well known. Fix these bugs first, then re-look at balancing and build diversity.

This tread has become super long and I’m getting tired of spending so much time reading it. I have a few more classes I play, but don’t want to be as detailed as before. My caveats: I’ve played over 4000 hours. I mostly WvW, so most of my critique will come from that perspective but have done most PvE contentent. I have over 10K achievement points.

Thief: The initiative changes could be great, as long as the initiative regen would even things out. The thief class had a ton of build diversity already. I was always surprised when I asked fellow thieves what they ran and thing s were totally different that what I ran or the standard thief builds. Unfortunately, nerfing vigor isn’t going to help. The thief has a super low health pool and armor co-efficient that the thief relies on stealth, evades, and dodging for survivability. Considering that they have very few cleanses, and you already nerfed that, I don’t see much diversity because we will still need to run stealth, signet of agility, blinding powder, shadow refuge for cleanse and emergency healing / repositioning. In WvW, signet of malice is a must.

Warrior: I’ve only recently played a warrior, so I don’t have as much insight as others, but this whole talk about nerfing earthshaker seems silly. It doen’t do crazy damage like meter shower, churning earth, life transfer, well of suffering, etc. Also, it has such a long cast time that I’m often inturrupted. If I’m blinded, it doesn’t connect. On average, I miss the attack over half the time. That doesn’t equate to a lot of dps. I do feel that signet of healing is overpowered.

Necro: Another class that I’m not super familiar with. One thing I know is that in WvW, and most situations, direct damage trumps condition damage every time. I created a calculator to see exactly what the difference is. It boils down to this: A condi build will have 3 times the condition damage as a direct damage build. A direct damage build will have twice as much direct damage as a condition damage build. Granted, a condition damage necro does more overall dps, but cleanses ruin this. In WvW and sPvP, cleanses can negate much of a condition necros overall dps. Now, I can say in sPvP, I’ve just gotten owned by necros running a fear well build. Crazy. They down me in a few seconds. Good luck trying to find a target in WvW that has enough conditions on them to utilize epidemic. By the time the skill actually goes off, they may not even have any left on them. I have builds and exotics for both. I’ve read through a lot of the posts here and agree with most of them regarding necros.

selan.8354:

well, anet i think buffing mantras is nothing we need as mantras as they are atm are not very useful. especially in a zerg…

i mean do u think i can charge my mantras(which btw decharge when in water o.0), then run in the middle of a zerg, attack a little bit(hitting barely anything, and then in that massive chaos of aoe and perma cc u go ahead and recharge that mantra……o.0

mantras are barely used as the way they work is not really ideal for a spam and aoe kinda meta or a fast speed combat game anyways.

id rather see a complete rework of mantras and turning them into aoe that dont require a clone/phantasm or for us to have to go close in order for it to hit…

mesmers are a light armor class that lack aoe which is bad and no ai is terrible in wvw.

20 in inspiration + Mantra of Recovery + Mantra of Pain = 2750 aoe healing every 3.5 seconds. Other mantras grant aoe stability and 2 cleanses. Granted, the AoE should be larger to be really effective, but those are good zerg skills.

I’m really getting a bit tired of everyone saying that they are just veil bots. That’s not the problem with the class, that is an issue with your group comp and how your guild runs.

BTW, in order to keep your mantras when entering or exiting water, they just need to be in the same skill slot. Granted, this seems lame as I should be able to have different underwater skills and still have my mantra’s charged when I exit water.

BlackDevil.9268:

Great changes!

Though 1 thing I would hope to see changed is:
Mesmer
‘’ Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to increase daze duration by 25%. ’’

I’d love to see this trait totally different, which is:
‘’ Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. This trait has a new effect. Makes Mantra of Distraction area of effect with a radius of 300 around the selected target. Dazes up to 5 targets. ’’

The reason I would think this is good, is because mesmer is lacking WvW builds, especially on bigger scale such as raids up to 30man.
Even though mesmer got a lot support, they’re still mainly chosen to be veilbots. While as I would love to see mesmer becoming a much more useful class. Giving the ability to ‘’aoe interrupt’’, will help this concept a lot.

Wow, this is comming from a Redguard player? I don’t think you know the class very well. While I do agree with your suggestion, GS 5, focus 4, F3, staff 5, and you can be traited for more, are all inturrupts. There are a lot of good mesmer builds for WvW. If you feel that you’re a veil bot, it may be because Red Guard runs a very tight ship and that’s all they want their mesmers to do. My last mesmer build: 3600 attack, 2K toughness, 20K health, 44% CC, 42% CD, aoe healing, aoe stability, aoe cleanses, null field, time warp.

Part 2/2

Chaotic Transference: Huge buff, but not really needed. Yes, in PvE, condi builds will kill faster. PvP, condi builds will be more powerful. Maybe this is to make up for the confusion nerf. But in WvW, condi builds are, for the most part, not used due to the plethora of cleanses. Also, there are only 2 weapons designed for condition damage, the scepter/torch and staff. However, the staff’s damage relies on clones. Clones die instantly in WvW unless you are fighting 1v1 or very small groups.

Mirror of Anguish: A much needed cooldown reduction. It still may not be enough for people to use this in favor of other traits, such as Master of Manipulation, Illusionary Defense, Debilitating Dissipation, or Chaotic Dapening.

Mender’s Purity: This is a huge buff. I already tried to work this into most of my builds unless I was a clone generating, small op build. Between this and Mantra of Resolve and Harmonious Mantras, mesmers will be OP. I’m already running with 9 cleanses. Hey, if you want to bump it up to 12, fine.

Shattered Conditions: Huge buff. Again, useless in WvW with the clone life thing unless roaming, etc.

Illusion Traits: 15 and 25. I don’t think this really will have a big impact as people mostly go for the actual traits they can choose. With the other moves, you’ve basically made it so that confusion glamour specs can be build by not having 30 in illusions. Before, a glamour spec would provide only 10 extra trait points. Now there would be 20. However, with the confusion nerf, this build just isn’t viable anymore.

In Closing:

The mesmer is already a very diverse class. I don’t think you’ve given people enough time to really try some of the newer changes you’ve made. Keep in mind that many of the reasons people don’t build the way the class obviously wants you to is because it just isn’t viable. For example, there are great builds around interruptions. However, interrupts are unreliable and therefore a waste of traits and a loss of dps.

Mantras are already very powerful with the changes you’ve made already. If you buff them to the extent that you are proposing, then I see most mesmers going this route. This will only decrease the build diversity you want. Give people time to play with these changes and discover them for themselves rather than beat them over the head by saying “Hey, we love mantras! You should, too!”

For the love of God, please, please, please fix Temporal Curtain’s swiftness.

Instead of buffing or nerfing clone life, why not make them invulnerable when the player hits an F1-4 skill, thereby guaranteeing that skill will actually do something, rather than be nullified by a well, mark, lava font, or any ranged skill. I think that is an excellent suggestion. Because clones die instantly, I almost never ever hit these skills (unless i’m shatter specish doing small ops stuff). That seems like a flaw inherent in the mechanics of shattering itself and the class.

Part 1/2

I thank you for taking the time to get feedback from the community on changes before they happen. Hopefully, there will be ideas exchanged here that may be constructive and of benefit that, perhaps, you hadn’t thought of previously.

I will address each point as I see concerns. First, let me say that I have over 4000 hours in this game, have been on Blackgate since launch, and mostly WvW, so most of my insites will be from a WvW perspective.

Mesmer:

I’ve played mesmer most out of all my classes. @ 1800 hours so far. It is probably my favorite, but it seems like Anet hates them. There have been so many nerfs over time, and so many issues not addressed. We’ve gotten a few buffs, and some of the “balancing” have been just outright ridiculous.

Here are a few examples:

Decreasing the health of clones in WvW. Are you kidding? Clones died instantly in the past, now they die even faster. This basically means that every trait and build that depends on shattering is useless as the clone needs to be a) near the enemy and b) not die when getting to the enemy. Granted, shatter specs are still viable for roaming, small party combat, but anything larger is just pointless.

Confusion is too powerful, lets cut the damage by 50%. I’m sure you’ve heard enough complaints about this move. This is a condition that does 0 damage if you don’t do anything, whereas a condi-necro can do hundreds of damage/second in bleeds. Because it requires player action, it should do more damage than regular conditions, like bleeds or poison. Some of the biggest issues were the fact that it procced off things the player couldn’t control, like dodging skills, health drop traits, etc. These were fixed, so why the need to keep the 50% confusion nerf? This basically killed any build around confusion.

" Before this change mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds."

I find this silly. I have come up with so many great builds that don’t rely on this. Before, it was almost always a must because it only cost 5 trait points. Like every other nerf to this class, it seamed extreme. Now you’re bringing it back to where it should have been to begin with, in the master line.

“Finally, we felt that the Mantra traits were fairly difficult to collect.”

How so? Mantra build: 30/20/0/20/0 or 20/30/0/20/0 or 30/30/0/10/0 Those are some great mantra builds. Of course, if you want to make it easier, great! But it doesn’t seem that way. You just swapped a few of the traits.

“The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things. 1) Bringing up some of the mesmer support traits and condition removal traits.”

You just did this in the last patch with Mantra of Concentration and Mantra of Resolve. That was a HUGE buff. Also, mesmer mantra healing is one of the best in the game considering how much it heals with nothing put into healing power except for the 20 points in inspiration. That trait line also grants regeneration to allies with phantasms. But hey, if you want to be able to make them even more supportive, great. Just as long as you don’t screw up my great mantra build of 30/20/0/20/0.

Proposed changes:

Confounding Suggestions: I admit, as much as I’ve played this game, and the mesmer, I’ve never traited into this. Probably because the description is really confusing. If an enemy is dazed, who cares if they are stunned too? Is the stun applied after they are dazed? Does a stun breaker cancel both? Too much to test, and there are better things to trait into in this line anyway that provide guaranteed damage.

Protected Mantras and Mantra Mastery: Um, ??? Who cares if you switched these? If someone is going for a pure mantra build, they might want to still trait into both of these. Granted, I may rather have the higher dps from Mantra Mastery than the defense from Protected Mantras, but in WvW, having that higher toughness when channeling is a life saver. I may have to go for it anyway and drop Harmonious Mantras, which I really don’t want to do. Before, it was a no brainer for me. Harmonious Mantras trumped mantra mastery every time.

I thank you for taking the time to get feedback from the community on changes before they happen. Hopefully, there will be ideas exchanged here that may be constructive and of benefit that, perhaps, you hadn’t thought of previously.

I will address each point as I see concerns. First, let me say that I have over 4000 hours in this game, have been on Blackgate since launch, and mostly WvW, so most of my insites will be from a WvW perspective.

Guardian:

Shattered Aegis: seems like a nice little buff.

Zelous Blade: This could be very nice.

Kindled Zeal: Most guardians don’t care bout condition damage in WvW due to cleanses. I haven’t seen any viable condition builds anyway. I don’t see this having any kind of impact. There are so many good, high dps guardian builds, I just don’t see a condition build competing with it.

Seering Flame: This sounds great, but looses the synergy with Shattered Aegis. Not too important because there are many other ways to apply burning.

Powerful Blades: good buff. Might provide an incentive to use sword.

Retributive Armor: This didn’t need a buff. Now it is even more important to spec into this.

Pure of Heart: Most people don’t spec into this in favor of other traits. Might make this more viable.

Supreme Justice: This is a nice boon, especially when synergized with other traits.

Symbol of Swiftness: Whatever. Rather minor thing that seems to be an improvement. Something like this should be done no matter what.

Conclusion: The issue with the guardian is that the health pool is so low. The guardian must spec into things that grant it survivablility. As such, almost every guardian build is a 0/0/30/30/10 or something similar to that. There are certain traits that are just too valuable to give up: Strength in Numbers, Purity, Retributive Armor, Mace of Justice, Altruistic Healing, Two Handed Mastery, Superior Aria, Empowering Might, Pure of Voice, Concecrated Ground.

Granted, there are some pretty nifty roaming specs and pve specs, but for group play, most of the above traits are a must. Until something is done about the health pool, guardians will aways need these traits and the extra toughness, vitality, and healing power. The other issue is that there just isn’t a good armor choice to make up for this if one chooses to spec heavily into the first two trait lines.

I thank you for taking the time to get feedback from the community on changes before they happen. Hopefully, there will be ideas exchanged here that may be constructive and of benefit that, perhaps, you hadn’t thought of previously.

I will address each point as I see concerns. First, let me say that I have over 4000 hours in this game, have been on Blackgate since launch, and mostly WvW, so most of my insites will be from a WvW perspective.

Elementalist:

Burning Fire: rather lackluster before, and even more so now that it has been moved to grandmaster. What will you be getting rid of here?

Conjurer: rather lackluster. Good for PvE. Pretty useless for WvW

Embers Might: I think you guys got these backwards. Increase condition duration is relatively uselsess in WvW as there are so many cleanses. Everyone who runs condition builds will go for increased condition damage, or just not even bother with condition builds in the first place. The only exception is for the solo or small group roamer who looks for other small fights. Enemies not with a large group will be short on cleanses. These are exceptions to WvW, however.

Soothing Winds: Nice little buff. Might help to pull some traits out of water.

Tempest Defense: Lame trait to begin with and still lame. Both of the air grandmaster traits are lackluster and would be a waste of precious trait points. There’s pretty much no reason to go beyond 25 in air. People are almost always going to want guaranteed damage or defense instead of if this happens then you will get extra damage, oh, and there’s a cooldown, oh, and the enemey can negate it with a stun breaker or stability.

Stone Flesh: I think many eles spec into earth, so this is an automatic boost.

Strength of Stone: Another nice boost, but again, note the issues with condition damage in WvW. Probably good for PvE.

Diamond Skin: This is very interesting and may be a good incentive to spec 30 into earth. It would have to be played out to test just how feasible it would be to maintain over 90% health.

Aquamancer’s Alacrity: No one cares about this trait.

Cleansing Wave: In WvW, every ele needs this, so we will all have to spec at least 20 into water.

Arcane Abatement: Almost no one uses this. Those who do, just don’t know the safe distances to jump. Better to trait into something more useful. This goes for almost all falling damage traits.

Soothing Wave: Some people use this. No big deal that it was changed. Might encourage more people to spec into this.

Arcane Retribution: The insane cd kept a lot of people out of this trait. Might be more viable now.

The issue that lays here is that every staff user must spec into Blasting Staff. So you moved that to Adept. If people are still going to spec into arcana, they will most likely spec into Renewing Stamina. So you just switched these two around. People might spec into Arcane Retribution, but unlikely since if people are going to spec 30 for evasive arcana, they will want the vigor.

Elementalist Conclusion: I don’t see any of these changes having much of an impact on the elementalist. The problem is inherent in the class itself. Because the health pool is so low and it is a light armor class, it depends on high healing power, boon duration, and cleanses for it’s survival. Because of this, it just isn’t viable to get rid of 30 points in Water. While it is true that being able to swap attunements quickly is very important, the boon duration goes hand in hand in hand with this. The ele depends on protection, regen, fury, might, and for these boons to last the swapping cylcle. This is part of the trait bonus of arcana. If you don’t address the boon duration issue, then it doens’t matter that we can swap attunements faster. Also, the end result of speccing into 30 into arcana is the same as before regarding attunemt swapping speed and cooldown. We might be able to get away with 10 in arcana, but I don’t forsee anything less. Considering that lingering attunements is so essential, maybe we will be able to get away with 15. Then again, having perma vigor is so important, especially for DD eles. Unless you buff the health pool and armor co-efficient, there will never be a reason to spec deep into fire, air, and earth.

Le Rooster.8715:

Great job with the update Anet, will people not be happy with anything gosh.
I recommend these people who are complaining about the nerf to go to a server which will be severely outmanned for 7 weeks in the league and continue to say that bloodlust was fine as it was.

If your server is outmanned, then THAT IS THE ISSUE, NOT BLOODLUST. You should be beseeching Anet to fix population issues. If you’re server is in a very unbalanced match, then IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT BLOODLUST GIVES 1 POINT OR 3. You are going to loose. Transfer servers, or blow up the forums asking them to come up with a solution for population balance. Screwing up bloodlust for even population server matches is not how you fix things.

Either way, it’s been over a year! A friggin year! Common!

It seems to be doing much less passive healing. Am I imagining things?

The cooldown is still there even though they removed the CD from the tooltip

So, Selfless Daring, the skill that heals on dodge roll, only heals if the guardian is not at full health. Was it always that way or did they break it on this patch?

Mesmers have always been good at healing. Maybe the best in the game. Sorry you didn’t know that before.

With 0 healing power, we can out-heal guardians, elementalists, and warriors. If you didn’t know the build, I’m not gonna tell you, but it’s been there since day 1.

And you still haven’t fixed temporal curtain’s swiftness buff. Seriously?

I understand it’s about point denial, but in the past, we had to make tough decisions about whether to sacrifice structures for fights. Decide when is the good time to stomp in the middle of a battle. Now, structures will regain their point value and we will go back to the strategy of prioritizing structures than fights. Previously, the orb buff from stomps got us out of the structures and into the field.

If you’ve done this because all the lower population servers kittening and complaining, then fix the population issue.

Sorry guys, but you got this totally backwards. The trait bonuses were nice, but we fight to win. We fight for points. The fact that there is no point difference between 1 orb and 3 means we will not care about them. There is almost no benefit from trying to obtain and maintain 3 orbs for an extra 30 stat points. 1 orb will be fine and that will be all we care about.

ITS ABOUT WINNING. STOMPS WIN, NOT EXTRA STATS.

How ever many they want. All we ask is that if you are on during our prime time hours during the days we require it, that you be in WvW. Check out the website for more details. www.legendofthejinx.enjin.com

Warriors especially please.

Orbs add such a great new dynamic to WvW. They empower smaller groups and even smaller servers. It only takes 3 people to grant a buff to the entire server. I don’t understand the smaller servers complaining because all the lower tier servers don’t have enough people to cover each map, so this is a very realistic possiblility to accomplish. They are no longer held behind a keep protected by a zillion arrow carts and ballistae, but rather out in the open, up for grabs, keeping the tides turning.

It helps to eliminate zerging.

It forces one to make difficult choices between bloodlust and structures.

WvW was so stale before. Hold keeps, set up a ton of siege.

It gives smaller guilds something else to do that has a great impact on WvW.

If you are on a lower population server, and you would have most likely lost the match before, it makes no difference that orbs exist. If anything, it can only help your situation by outplaying a larger population server.

It makes different builds viable. Now that there’s more importance put on small group play, different builds are more viable. I’ve noticed a lot of PvP builds out there that I’ve fought.

It rewards actual fighting skill rather than who can protect a structure best. The largest zerg does not always win. The more skilled zerg wins, even if they are outnumbered 2:1. Now they are being rewarded for better builds, better teamwork, and better skill. Thanks.

There are lots of people that love the orb change, but because they are satisfied, they have no reason to take the time to sit down and write something well thought out. I am passionate about WvW and love the map changes and the added orb aspect. Everyone in my guild loves it and I haven’t heard one person on my server say it should be eliminated. Please don’t let other players drown out the people who are not represented on the forums and please don’t eliminate this great change just because there are so many people complaining. I assure you they are not representative of WvW.

Thank you for putting so much thought and time into the new maps and orb changes.

Please don’t guest to Blackgate. There are so many people doing that now that it’s impossible for the WvW guilds who’ve beaten him to co-ordinate on the same map due to all the guesters. That’s why we’ve been going to lower population servers. Just keep trying on your own server. Wouldn’t you be more proud that your server did it rather than TC or Blackgate doing it there?

Do you guys forget what MMO stands for? God forbid there’s content out there that is challenging and requires teamwork. If you want to beat everything by yourself, then play a FPS or console game.

So, since there are so many guesting to Blackgate, we decided to go to Furegeson’s Crossing. Beat Teq with over 5 minutes remaining.

Very doable. GL!

Also, have the map dots change to the respective color of the squad they are following. All this stuff doesn’t seem very hard to do. But, we’ve been asking for this since launch. Remember, temporal curtain still doesn’t stack swiftness unless it is the first swiftness buff you receive.

You need to change your group comp. A guild of 30 should survive just about anything. Waterfields, blast finishers, guardians dodging, guardian mace auto attack, shout heal warriors, etc. I’ve pvdoored reinforced gates down from 50% under 3 sup arrow carts + enemy fire with less than 30 and the right group comp. Now, with ram mastery, this should be even easier. I do, agree, however that sup ACs do too much damage.

I have played this game a ridiculous amount of hours, most of which has been in WvW. I think the borderland map changes are fantastic. I play on BG (have been there since launch) and in a relatively even match-up, the stat bonuses are no big deal. This may turn into a long thread, and I hope my appreciation for these changes are not lost in the discussion. There are bugs that need to be fixed, and hopefully they won’t take a year to get to. These changes add so much more dynamicism to the game and break up zerg tactics well.

My only concern is the imbalance between the bay side and the 2 western nodes and the hills side and the 2 eastern nodes. It’s still too early for us to determine this yet, but considering that each server has the same issue on their respective map, this may not be a big deal.

It does a body good!

What I’d like to know is who’s brilliant idea was it to make blue into cyan? Now its value and hue are very close to green. Are you kidding? The colors before were your typical RGB, like on a monitor. Those colors represented the spectrum. Now, you put cyan in which is a huge shift. If you’re gonna do that, then make the colors cyan, magenta, and yellow, otherwise, stick with red, green, blue.