Guild Wars 2

In fractals you probably want to be a jack-of-all trades. Change weapons and utilities frequently. A lot of builds are viable and each will be stronger in some fractals than others. Anyway, I don’t think there is one stand out dungeoneering build and that’s possibly a good thing. A glass cannon backstab build will be too risky until you know the fights well enough to survive.

If you think is bad, we’ll have it all over again when they raise the level cap.

There may be more complex answers but just pressing shortbow evade twice will get your far enough back. It typically goes buggy and triggers 3 times anyway.

Yes some classes are gutted of skills underwater. Trait lines suffer with the skills. The sad answer is to just get used to it.

“I’m not sure what definition of ‘validity’ you are using, but validity in the logical sense preserves consistency. The way they are handling things invalidates the personal story as it creates inconsistencies with it. For example, someone not yet forming the Pact is inconsistent with the Living story arc with Aetherblades, who stole Pact airships..”

No, we don’t know what sense of ‘validity’ ANet are using except that they create that sort of plot hole and excuse it away. To be fair to them, MMOs have always made no sense when it comes to timelines and repeatable content. It’s futile to look for perfection in a game where players have the potential to play timelined stories together when they are at different points in a timeline.

Longbow works best at long range and controlling the range. In SPvP that isn’t going to happen. It doesn’t really matter that the longbow doesn’t work well in SPvP as plenty of other weapons are available, including some that don’t work well in PvE.

People selling paths and people buying paths reveal more about players than dungeons. Dungeons should be designed so that good players prosper and bad players fail. I’m guessing that if you want a solution to path selling, rather than just have a whinge, the solution would be to make the final boss fights the hardest in the dungeons. I don’t think it would make much difference though since the sellers will still be able to complete the whole dungeon with the buyers dead on the floor.

“There are too many plot holes introduced to the game if the Living story takes place at anytime during the personal story.”

Yes there are plot holes being introduced but that is the way ANet are doing it. The living story is restricted in order to keep the personal story valid. The living story uses no character history as anyone can join in at any stage regardless of anything they have done or have not done. You will presumably be able to fight Scarlet in the TA update irrespective of your anything you’ve done with the personal story, the living story, twilight arbor story, or twilight arbor explorable.

The game design has two stories in parallel. For each individual character, the living story may be taking place before, after, or during the personal story. The designers realized that the same characters cannot have active roles in both story lines so when you see Destiny’s Edge or Queen Jennah in the Living Story you know that they will essentially play their starting character and have no character development. Anything can happen to Rox, Braham, Kiel, and Scarlet since they were not in the personal story. This is exactly why those new characters were created.

If you want imbalance then compare the ranger tree to the warrior tree. Warriors do get it good.

Your alts can carry a stack of these and burn them to transfer cosmetics and runes for every new piece of armor you pick up. They’re not entirely useless considering they are a free bonus item. I’d prefer to have these than kill streak boosters.

I could be that staff within company hold differing opinions. If that’s so, then any posts on the forums by the employees could stir up politics within the company so they just don’t do it. Nobody wants to commit to saying “we see that problem, we’re going to fix it” until the boss authorizes a media release. The guy in charge of the SAB is probably on much safer ground when he posts on the forums.

“Am I the only one unclear about what needs “fixing” in TA?”

The nightmare tree is a disappointing boss even on the best path and they must have some ideas on how to make it seem more dangerous and more fun. If this tree is going to threaten the world it shouldn’t just wobble about in a hidden grotto spouting cutesie origami mortars. Any rework would conveniently fix the TAFU snafu as well.

I see a big divide in the GW2 writing. The elder dragons and their stories with the risen, icebrood, etc are all dark. The dragons are supposed to provide threat. Most of the stories involving the minor races like the quaggans, hylek, dredge, skritt, grawl, etc are lighthearted and there is no ultimate threat. The kodan are heavily tied into the Jormag stories though so there isn’t much fun there. The stories about the major races and their enemy counterparts are mixed. The nightmare court take their hedonism pretty seriously but Anet are suckers for asuran technology jokes.

In one of the hundred TA threads in the dungeon forums, one of the developers did hint that TA was top of a list of dungeons to be revamped and that it might happen when the living story passed by TA. That didn’t make much sense a month ago but we can now see hints of some TA fixes in the next release.

It’s the same answer in every thread. There’s no need for another thread. All content is open to casual players. They can even participate in guild missions if they are not in a guild. They don’t even need to level up a character or collect any gear if they want to play in SPvP.

Exotic gear is accessible to casual players, even those with a limited play time. Ascended items are a time sink and if a casual player does not have the time to sink into the game then exotic items will have to do. Fortunately exotic items are good enough for almost all content. High level fractals are the only content that excludes players who do not have ascended items but casuals can still have fun in low level fractals.

Each time Tequatl wins the event it should drop one item somewhere randomly in the zone that needs finding. Collect 10 of them from 10 different overflows to complete your achievement.

If you were to design a 3 stage world boss, wouldn’t you

- make the first stage at the same difficulty as other world bosses
- open up the second stage once the first is complete, make it more difficult
- open up the hardest game content once the second stage is complete
- give progressively better loot rewards for each stage

This gives something to casual players and those in overflows, low pop servers, multi-language servers, etc. It provides a stepwise progression that will keep players returning to the fight. It gives time for players to organize. It keeps the challenge for ambitious players and guilds. So why has Tequatl been designed with all the problems front loaded, creating open access world event that is impossible with open participation?

The same answer suits a lot of these threads nowadays. GW2 has full access to content for casual players. Top tier rewards need time investment. As a casual you can participate in all aspects of the game. SPvP gives you standard gear. WvW promotes you level 80. Dungeons can be run with rare/exotic gear using well tested common knowledge tactics. All open world events and bosses can be beaten with more players rather than better equipped players. Activities, jumping puzzles, and living story are open to everyone. Guild missions can even be joined by anyone walking past.

The problem only comes from casual players wanting the same top tier rewards as players who sink massive amounts of time into the game. Players who previously said “I’ll never get a legendary weapon and I don’t care” can just as easily now say “I’ll never get a legendary or ascended weapon and I don’t care”. Laurels offer a reward system for players who do anything, so it is natural that laurels are also slow.

Wielding two swords is mostly a fantasy invention. There are a lot of problems when you consider the body mechanics, balance, how you leverage any power, and where you’d swing that sword (not thrust). If you want to keep balanced like a thief then the most appropriate off hand sword would be short, short enough to be considered a long dagger.

For open world PvE both classes are strong and you can have fun with the ranger pet. In hard content and WvW the warrior is strong and the ranger pet isn’t good enough. Don’t think of the ranger as a ranged class btw. All classes do more damage in melee and the warrior arguably has better ranged damage and ranged skills than the ranger.

Wouldn’t it be better if there were some Hylek wandering about the map and you could ask them if they’d seen a dragon clue? They would only need to give the vaguest clue to the nearest tooth and it would improve everything. I don’t see any need to defend very lazy game design that just puts ten items on a map and calls it an achievement.

Canach is the most likely Sylvari. The identikit asura scientist who made us run about for parts during the Queen’s Jubilee is the most likely asura adventurer so far. Kiel is almost certain to be the lead human character because she has the airship and she’s been leading all the story so far that doesn’t involve Braham and Rox.

I think I would be a bad mistake to create a Destiny’s Edge II though as all the old problems will resurface with the players getting jealous of other character’s story advancement. This is absolutely going to a problem if the players never get any story development for their own characters within the Living Story. With any luck there will be returning characters within the living story that develop personalities and drive the plot, but they don’t all need to be there doing the player character’s job (adventuring and dungeoneering), doing it worse, and getting their stories advanced instead of the player’s.

I don’t think we need to worry about Scarlet not being a villain though. There are a distinct shortage of named villains within the Living Story. I almost entirely missed the in game story about Canach and I’m guessing many others did too. Mai Lin is in jail. There could be someone fishy amongst Evon, Kasmeer, and co but it is unlikely. That just leaves Scarlet so she has to stay a villain for now. The molten alliance is totally nameless.

How many rangers wanted to shoot at Scarlet during the Queen’s Speech, only to have watch Rox do it instead?

Quick reminder, you have aegis and protection, thieves don’t. Warrior kill shot is pretty big too. It’s a tired old topic and nobody needs reminding about it at all, especially not the trolls. We knew ascended would give bigger damage spikes so nothing new to complain about when it happens.

All classes should melee when they can for extra damage. Thieves and rangers can both be squishy in dungeons so they both need to pick fights and position carefully. It’s probably helpful to think of them both as skirmish classes that move into and out of melee, although bad rangers can get stuck at range quite easily.

All the thief weapon sets can be useful in dungeons. Even though you’ll have a favorite weapon set, don’t be afraid to use something else if it suits a particular fight.

The ‘no clear purpose’ also means there is very little in the weapon skills to build around. Pistol/Pistol gives the smoke field from black powder but no way to convert that to stealth for stealth benefits. Stealing traits won’t help if you stay at range for pistol/pistol. And so on.

Vigourous recovery seems most suited to withdraw, allowing continuous dodge and evade. It probably suits pistol/pistol too.

I think it would sit quite well as a guild activity, along the lines of the guild challenge, with good rewards awarded once per week per account. Whether it is open world or instanced there should be an easy way for non-guild players to join for full reward once it is started, even if they are not allowed to use the turrets!

Some MMOs actually have achievements and better rewards for speed clearance, really fast speed clearance. They were quite fun actually. I bet the OP thinks those must be even worse than the worst MMO dungeons he’s ever played.

Daily laurels are mainly an alternative reward system to suit people who are not in guilds and are not interested in fractals. If you don’t want ascended jewelry then you’re not missing out if you don’t complete dailies. If you need laurels for ascended weapons recipes then you are probably not casual. So players have essentially two paths to get ascended jewelry. They can manage their time to be involved in guilds and fractals or they can manage their time to complete a few tasks in a day in their choice of PvP or PvE. That’s reasonable.

My advice would be to lose the attitude that if you’re missing a day you are falling behind. It is a false premise of your own making that is causing you grief. Instead manage your real life time and be happy that you can make incremental progress during your limited playtime without joining a guild or completing fractals. If it is going to take a long time then just cut down your expectations and be happy with what you can realistically get. If you really want to burn through content when you do have some free time then go the guild and fractal route.

It is absolutely viable. Some loot items will be scaled up to your level and some will stay at the zone level but experience and karma will be fine. You might as well follow the personal story though, complete zones at your level, and have access to heart vendors at your level.

Southsun isn’t far off where it needs to be. I don’t think it is a problem if Southsun has a low population most of the time as Cursed Shore is meant to be the high population end game zone and the numbers are needed there. The Karka queen does need to be more viable but the first step to that is fixing the event timers on the settlements.

The mobs are fine actually. They just don’t fit into balance with the rest of the game and they’re not trivial fodder. With a bit of work I can solo the vets on all my characters (warrior, ele, thief, ranger) and a bit of work killing big mobs is ok surely? If you learn to play you can deal straightforwardly with the regular mobs so gathering isn’t actually any harder on Southsun than anywhere else. I can solo at least 3 group events there and I’m not a super elite player. A lot of players are unnecessarily annoyed by Southsun mobs just because they’ve never taken time to work them out.

The Southsun vets are tougher than the veterans found in the open world so do they need more rewards than the karka shells? I don’t think they need much more since we don’t want zerg trains going round Sousthsun killing the vets for purses. Do mobs need to be toned down? Not really, they’re fun even if they take more time to kill than veterans elsewhere and you can avoid the vets if you don’t like fighting them. Do the events need tuning down? Yes a few need rebalancing but the same can be said of the other level 80 zones too.

If I could give that post +100 I would do so.

Many players cannot tell how hard it is since the hotjoin access means the event is always overpopulated, underpopulated, and wrongly populated. That excludes many players from completing the event regardless of difficulty. Hotjoin is a good word is it not?

Dropping the target when you click somewhere else is actually a good thing. Until the command to draw/sheathe weapons is more than cosmetic and actually puts your weapons away in combat, even facing the enemy, there needs to be some way of losing targets.

Content is not time gated. You have access to all content with very few requirements. You can even go into PvP on day 1 and play against anyone.

Rewards are time gated. It is bad. It is perhaps a consequence of the content being so accessible. MMOs need some way of keeping everyone from completing everything immediately.

Karka Queen was taken down twice on Gandara when SAB came out. I guess the people who did that are now working on Tequatl.

I don’t think it needs much change. The Camp Karka group event needs to be scaled down so that it is a group event rather than a raid event. The champion there just has bloated health and takes too long to kill. The other camps can be cleared with a few people at each after that. If all the camp respawns were suspended for half an hour after you reached 4/4 then extra people could safely get into the area to reach the event, as happens at Grenth etc. The queen can already be taken down by a zerg with no more complicated tactics than just throwing eggs.

“But what is even more important for me is that so far I’m yet to see any suggestion that would actually acknowledge that introducing perma-stow is not a simple case of solving all the problems by adding one button to the game.”

Whoa! Perma stow isn’t good because it doesn’t solve every problem in the game? Perma stow solves a number of problems even if rangers have ineffective traits and utilities, even if rangers have no extra bonuses while the pet is stowed.

Spell effects, specifically burning, are big and bright and make the game hard for me to watch at times. Spell effects frequently hide mob animations. Sometimes I can’t even see what way a mob is facing since they’re just a blur of flame.

Is there an easy way to turn them down in the graphics options? They’re plagued me for a long time now and I’m sick of them.

Hmm yes I have this problem with a logitech mouse as well. I was thinking it was related to holding down the right mouse button to scroll, with inadvertent right-click selection at the time. Maybe it’s just buggy instead.

“Warrior can take a group, but if they get overwhelmed with healing signet they are likely to fall.”

Not really. There’s a signet that can be pressed for cure all conditions. There’s a signet that can be pressed for stabilty. If 100 blades doesn’t smash up the group of mobs there are still two big mobility skills left on the greatsword to get out of trouble.

You can scrape around discovering potion recipes and 80 rares and so on but you might as well bite the bullet and discover the exotic weapons. If you’re in the business of making ascended weapons then you should have the means to buy exotic components. You’ll need to salvage ten exotic items for one of the ascended components anyway so if your crafted exotics have no TP value you can salvage those.

You will probably only get to 460 at most from crafting the T7 materials. They just don’t give enough crafting xp each time. Plan to get from 460 to 500 with exotics and if you need less then it’s a bonus.

Actually, a lot of dungeon tactics are based on warriors on guardians and this makes groups full of heavy classes work really well. Stacking around a corner so a pile of mobs run into your dpszone, even if they do severe aoe damage back on the group, is a strategy created by heavy classes for heavy classes.

The mobs do have some skill variety and they do use those attacks. I’m guessing they have a set of about four skills, the same as ranger pets. Mobs of the same type seem to share three of those four skills. New players can’t recognize the animations of these mob types and get beaten up. Experienced players know the skills, know the animations, and deal with them easily.

The monsters mainly seem to use class skills in some form. I wonder if the developers feel that by actively balancing PvP they can put the skills in PvE and inherit balance there too.

Moving monsters are a real pain in the neck and not fun to play against. Really. The most annoying ones for me at the moment are the krait. If I use one of my thief skills underwater it swings me round the side of the krait for an attack. Whenever I do it the krait swings off in response and out of melee range. It is effectively giving the krait an automatic dodge, perfectly timed based on server calculations. That’s not fun. It feels like the AI is cheating. It is effectively stopping me playing my class by denying me skills and I’ve only got five melee weapon skills to start with.

Also if mobs are too mobile you tend to get mobs moving perfectly into and around melee range (based on server calculations) and players always struggling to turn and move in range. Mobs have 360 sensing and players often don’t. Players already struggle to gauge the engagement point when moving towards a frenzied/swift mob so the mob and the player cross and finish behind each other. It might be a misjudgement of the player but it feels like bad AI, bad game mechanics, and no fun.

Shadow rejuventaion doesn’t scale correctly with level compared to regeneration. I went into few zones to test it and and seemed to go from 60% of regeneration at level 2 up to 170% of regeneration at level 80. I’m guessing this is a bug rather than something peculiar with stat scaling. I’m guessing you shouldn’t use shadow rejuventaion in ascalonian catacombs.

“Just curious, and I brought this up a little earlier in the thread, but who do you think is more to blame for this sense of entitlement?”

GW2 has easy access to content for players, which is generally a good thing. Very little is gated behind keying or questing or any other restrictions. However there is no character advancement for the same reasons meaning that players spend their time advancing their loot. That’s a design issue.

MMO players have developed a culture where they maximize rewards for time spent. It does tie into a culture where players endure the game rather than enjoy it, just for virtual rewards that only have value amongst peers. They would rather endure less for more gains. This is a player issue. However if the best rewards come with the best content the player attitudes become irrelevant.

For a new player to the game a warrior is easy mode. Thieves are really difficult for new players and there’s no point recommending a level 80 fully traited build with runes and sigils and high initiative and fast endurance regen that can do fancy things with skilled play. As much as I like my thief, thieves are clearly not the ‘best’ class with the most sustainability that won’t die fast. They are in fact the exact opposite of the original poster’s request.

I’ll agree with the OP here. If you are manning the turrets you need nothing but a high health pool, so presumably not a thief. Standing in the waves fighting Tequatl seems a poor role for a thief. Defending the cannons is viable but there are so many mobs that explode for area damage (the kraits explode with little or no animation) that thieves are even poorly suited to that.

When opening up skills and traits from the hero panel the default view should be “traits” for level 80 characters and not “slot skills”. Whilst this seems like a small change it will save me and a lot of other experienced players a mouse click every time we want to change traits. Some of us change traits frequently, sometimes in a hurry, and almost nobody wants to read up on their slot skills.

Join a PvE guild that calls out boss events in guild chat. All you have to do then is follow the zerg train. You can check out the preliminary events for the Orrian temple in between times if you feel really dedicated.