Warrior banners work, spirits do not work. Banners cannot be destroyed, can be moved, are reliable, and are fit for purpose without any trait support. Job done. Let’s all embrace our banners and leave the spirits alone.
They have done the same for thieves. The players don’t appreciate venoms so we will give them more venoms so they will appreciate them more.
I’m guessing this means that they don’t think a spirit/venom build does enough to make the traits worthwhile therefore adding more spirit/venom skills will make a build viable. It still leaves a whole load of skills that are poor without traits.
Instead of complaining to the Anet, why not complain about the people who buy gold from these companies? They’re the ones who encourage companies to spam every player in the game with unsolicited mail.
Nobody has mentioned it yet but in Diablo you can mash buttons and kill things. In GW2 you need to work out how to play quite quickly or you’ll get your butt kicked. Take your time and give it a chance.
There was at one stage a plan to revise all the dungeons and AC was the first. After seeing the AC revamp the plan was dropped and you probably know why. So yes you spotted the troll from the explorable mode who was inherited in story mode as well. A lot of the fights are no better or worse than the old AC but just different. The revised bosses were potentially more interesting but are beaten by stacking rather than skill. The NPCs are do have a better involvement but your reliance on them is exposed when they get bugged.
Overall it isn’t any more difficult for experienced players but it isn’t more fun either. New players get wiped harder and experienced players use dull stacking instead of skillful play.
“If I wanted a melee 1h weapon on my ranger I would use the sword.”
That’s a fair comment but I’m sure there is a large portion of ranger community who want to use a 1h melee weapon but the last thing they would use is that sword.
I’ll accept the view that a main hand ranged weapon is useful, but I just don’t see the main hand axe as having useful skills. Each skill individually looks reasonable but put together in a weapon set they add up to very little.
I personally don’t like the concept of an off hand sword. It doesn’t suit the body mechanics and balance needed for an agile fighter. A lot of what is wanted from an off hand weapon can come from a very short sword, i.e. a long dagger. The ranger having a muscled pull skill on an offhand axe is bad enough already. I find the thought of a dagger/sword thief or pistol/sword thief to be quite horrible.
(edited by Stooperdale.3560)
I agree with you Vex. Sometimes you can predict problems before a patch and the forums remain stubbornly blind to it until people see their own armor looking a mess.
At the moment the main hand axe is a medium range skirmish weapon and the off hand axe has the characteristics of a melee weapon. This makes no sense at all to me in terms of human physiology and neither hand seems to offer a clear purpose in game play. The axe off hand fits badly with both main hands.
Does anyone else think the the main hand axe should become a melee weapon and the off hand the ranged weapon :
- a basic auto-chain
- short range leap attack
- whirling defense
- path of scars
- winter’s bite (if anyone wants to keep it)
I think it might also make sense to make the main hand axe a condition friendly weapon but I’ll anyone else’s view on that.
(edited by Stooperdale.3560)
I think they could do with someone at the top who can give a really popular and clear direction to the game. Beef up the storylines. Give purpose to the world events with good scaling and well thought out rewards. Give some strategy to character progression rather than just grinding gear and gems bought cosmetics. Speed up the support cycle for game world bugs and exploits. Resolve long standing problems like targeting, instance closing, and graphic flare that continually ruin ambitious content.
At the moment the game direction seems ill thought out and hidden from the player base. Potentially popular content like Tequatl is bogged down by poor implementation rather than the limitations of the game engine. Better leadership can deliver more.
You can test it on the dummies in Lion’s arch and you’ll get a reasonable indication of where the daggers are flying.
I think they are taking longer now. It’s actually good to have to rethink your play to adapt to the fractal disturbance. If you wipe, then rethink tactics and wipe again, then refine the tactics and win, that’s ok. Well it is ok until you have multiple boss encounters in four successive fractals that all need a rethink for new tactics. Then it’s just far too long.
Steal is probably failing because the shadowstep portion of the skill is failing. This is generally due to uneven ground or floor textures. Steal does go on cooldown when it fails and it is probably a feature of the design despite other class skills performing better (warrior F1 has the same cooldown as failed melee skills).
What do want from new areas? Do you want another low level zone like Queensdale where low level characters can do quests, given there are five low level zones already? Do you want another beautiful zone like timberline falls, given that nobody will go to since the personal story will still players into timberline? Do you want another zone like Orr with end game event chains, and if so wouldn’t it just be better if Orr was revamped to give three better endgame zones? Do you want another island like Southsun with all that’s expected of a traditional zone except any players there? A zone has to have a purpose so just asking for zones for the sake of having zones is going to get nowhere.
Any pressure to do the content is unspoken, yes, but that is because the pressure is entirely within your imagination. If you choose to skip a month then you’ll see that you are no worse off. All your imagined problems will never materialize. That’s why nobody is speaking about it.
I am losing targets very very frequently after the last update. The worst offenders now are portals. I lose target on portals almost every time I melee them. Really almost every time! I’m guessing that when I get close enough to do melee damage a portion of the portal goes off screen slightly and target is lost.
This is on top of the problems of losing target anyway. It’s really embarrassing to mark a target only to find that the lousy target has mysteriously vanished anyway and I’ve marked some random mob. I just don’t understand how these targeting problems have persisted for long because they are infuriating.
The risk of higher mobility is that the ranger kites with no effort while the pet attacks . It sounds unlikely given the state of pets but it has to be an influence in the design.
“This is a politically motivated nerf, motivated by false pretenses and data. "
False data like everyone dropping their old class and starting a new heavy? Don’t tell me it’s not happening since I’m one of the people who’s done it. There is no reason to work hard at a thief or ranger to get maximum output when you can play a warrior and get similar results for far less effort.
Top down design – we’re giving every class a heal so lets give thieves a venom heal
Bottom up design – thieves need a new heal because …., need more venoms because ….
Blind. Smokescreen. Stealthy revival. Caltrops for area cripple. Weakness from poison and poison fields. Blast finishers. Group stealth. Boon stripping. Permanent cripple on mobs. Repeated dazes on mobs. Unique interrupts with basilisk venom. That’s all some form of support or another.
Most builds won’t enhance that. 10 points in trickery give you some handy support options though, as might venom share. Try out a completely different build and see how it goes.
The next step is to turn the gear grind into a gear treadmill by raising the level cap. We can all hope otherwise.
Malyck is one of the largely unexplained mysteries from the personal story. Lots of players want to know more but there is no information outside those personal story chapters, so you can start another character and replay it to see all the detail. I don’t remember there being any suggestion of other races being involved. I seem to remember one of the characters suggesting that the pod(s) was carried into Brisban by winds and or the river. This is no less believable than the massive pods launched by the nightmare tower that grow into the offshoots around Tyria.
Not elder dragons – was good after the personal story but wearing thin now
Voice acting – fine
Image – looks peculiar rather than threatening,
Dialog – humorous enough but inconsistent with her supposed persuasiveness
Backstory – utterly unbelievable
Realism – things we’re told she done seem impossible given how she’s shown in game
Storytelling – always tells us the plot, a sign of really bad writing
Nemesisness – she tells us the plot before vanishing while while we stand around idly
Technobabble – miraculous technology solves everything but then forgotten forever
Lack of Threat – we don’t know what happens if we just ignore Scarlet
Progression – players characters act as unnamed extras in Scarlet’s story
Cast – no supporting villains
Variety – there is no variety, it’s always Scarlet
In terms of good players managing the defiant stack, I guess the better PUG players know not to use poor CC when the defiant is gone. They let someone with a strong CC skill use it at the right time. That can work even in a speed clear group with zero communication.
I don’t see new characters going straight for ascended armor. That should be way down their shopping list after exotic weapons, exotic armor, and ascended weapons. If the vast majority of new characters are still going to need a set of exotic armor, even if only temporarily, then dungeons tokens are still viable for now.
Cooking creates consumable items that are useful. Nothing has changed there. Even after ascended players can eat a good pie and be happy without any grind. Move along, nothing to see here.
Yes I can confirm that all the enchanters stay alive if you wipe on the arm seals. I cannot believe my group today managed to fail to get the last slither of the last seal from the two chanters still alive on the last side! Disaster and group disband as usual.
You’ve got it completely the wrong way round. It’s tempting to fix the venoms by beefing up the traits. However the venoms should be worth a slot on the bar without any trait support, just like all the really useful warrior utilities for example. The incredible strength of the venom sharing trait is already what is holding venoms back, as they have to be balanced for potentially 5x or even 10x (basilisk venom) power after traits. Anything that is reasonable at 10x strength is typically weak at 1x strength. So the solution is to tone down shared venoms and make the existing venoms 50% or even 100% stronger with no traits.
“If we ever get offhand sword a parry/block would be a perfect candidate for one of the skills.”
Dagger/sword would be a ridiculous combination but a crossed swords parry would be a good dual skill animation for sword/sword.
First problem with 1 hand only is the lack of stats, infusion, and a sigil from the off hand. This is the main problem and if you just double the bonus from the main hand then most players would consider it an advantage to need only one good weapon. Most sigils will not double up anyway.
However you also need to add two skills for the free hand then the initial thought is that they should be balanced. But if these skills are balanced why would anyone bother putting time into getting a good off hand weapon when it’s not needed? But if you make the single hand skills a little weaker then why would anyone bother using them at all?
Finishers in light fields can give you retaliation.
“They already said that the armour won’t have agony slots at launch, maybe sometime next year it’ll be adjusted.”
Probably meaning you can infuse them at high cost in the magic forge to get a slot for your megagrind infusions.
It depends upon your group really. With 2 guardians you can often stand toe to toe with anything and kick out the dps. With one guardian you should be ok with sensible play. Groups with three or four warriors but no guardians seem to fall over like flies. Anyway, nothing wrong with picking the right time to go range if you need some cooldowns to come back.
Ascended armor is gear grind for the sake of gear grind and it is bad for the game. On the hand, if players actually need ascended armor for any content then it will exclude players who don’t have it, which is again bad for the game.
Venoms will always be dysfunctional while shared venoms needs to be balanced with 5x strength so anything they do with venoms in the meantime is meaningless.
Yes thieves should get a parry move but it fits badly into the initiative system. The underwater block is situationally perfect or quite useless (multiple enemies hit through the block response) which is a classic broken skill.
Quite typically I finally get into this chamber and lose connection inside. I find myself outside after logging on, the chamber is still active, but I can’t get inside again because the timer is back. Great design! If you’re going to use a timer how about starting it when the chamber is finished rather than when it is started?
I’ve just logged onto my character in the tower, walked up to active nightmare chamber, and seen a timer symbol on it. The timer symbol is there because yesterday or the day before I had done the chamber then logged out. So I waited for the timer to finish and the star moved from that chamber to another one, so the time I waited was wasted.
This is just an annoying design. Players want to log on and play. They don’t want to be waiting around on timers held over from another day, especially when it gets them nowhere. Sure, we can run around the tower going from chamber to chamber but only when there are sufficient people in the tower to make it vaguely safe. When there are almost no people in the tower it becomes dangerous to chase from one chamber to another just to do a five minute instance.
Greatsword/longbow. To be honest the warrior can be easy once you’ve mastered a weapon set so you have to force yourself to experiment and learn the other weapons. Going for the fastest route is a bit pointless since it should be fast anyway and you won’t learn as much.
Open world PvE is fine for a new ranger. The pet is your friend and will soak a lot of damage for you. You can play ranged or melee. You can use any pet. My advice would be to find some weapon sets you understand and can rely on, then branch out and test the others. Try the sword out last as it is the most difficult.
Come back to the forums at 80 once you’ve found what goes wrong with the ranger at 80 in more challenging content.
The old Everquest I pets were quite funny because the pathing was bad and they wandered all over the place. They also picked up aggro on every monster that saw them, and I seem to remember the master inheriting the aggro once the pet died. Quite literally 40 monsters including named bosses could turn up at once and murder everything.
I guess you don’t remember some other games.
“Ok raid, we’ve going to have a happy Paladin tonight because Foehammer, the best Paladin weapon ever has dropped. Woohoo.”
“I don’t want it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got two last week and threw one away”
“What about SirLoL, do you want it?”
“You told me to play my cleric as paladins are rubbish.”
“Oh, sorry about that, anyone else?”
“Can I have it for my Druid just to annoy my cousin who wants it real bad?”
“Sure, it’s yours. I’m glad its going to make someone happy!”
They could just even sell infusions to go in the infusion slot for our fractal relics. We wouldn’t have to grind and craft infusions then and …. that’s why it would never happen.
What: Steal
Why: A thief steals my axe but I still have my axe as well. It’s nonsense. I should lose my weapon when a thief steals it from me so that I can punch him hard.
I don’t know what to buy Scarlet for Christmas. What do buy for a woman who has everything and can do everything?
If you use a greatsword you’ve got a daze on skill 5 and block on 4 to help survivability. Always melee in the healing spring. The leap finisher can be used in a healing spring or field from a trap. A drake pet can give you more blast finishers as can a warhorn. Like a thief you can go on the edge of melee and try to avoid the frontal cleave damage from the melee enemies. A sword has defensive skills as well but it’s just a pain to use and I won’t recommend it to someone who has asked for extra survivability.
Also you can pick your melee fights and go to an axe or bow when it is properly dangerous.
Thief heals are about the only thing balanced in the class.
I’m guessing it depends what fractals you get. My first instability was the 31 Mossman in the underwater fractals and he was essentially taking people down with multiple 5k hit dart attacks from nowhere. It was not fun and it made me wonder if I was ever going to bother with fractals again. As soon as we were onto the land fractals he was really easy to kite and dodge.
This isn’t new. The labyrinth had the same problems but people would just leave if they didn’t like it since there was pretty much no reason to be there.
The Pact tanks in the invasion of Orr are more like mobile artillery. Considering the Pact can make a mobile battlesuit that provides plenty of mobility, armor, and firepower there isn’t much need for a conventional tank.