Many players will already do events and get bored farming dungeons for empyreal. Many players will already do dungeons and get bored zerging down events for dragonite. Many players will struggle for some other resource whether it is gold, ectos, karma, whatever. The designed of ascended crafting seems determined to make you grind out something in GW2 that you really won’t enjoy.
I play and enjoy my ranger in dungeons but I know the limitations -
Pet dies too often in aoe fields etc. Losing or leashing pet is losing dps.
Really poor missile defense.
Too many static defense skills (spirits, traps) that get worse is mobile content.
Not enough options for condition cures.
A lot of weapon pairings are designed for PvP than PvE.
Assorted other pet problems.
Skilled rangers can get a lot done but probably not much more than a competent warrior.
What are the dragonite rewards for the invasion for full and partial success? My play style doesn’t suit 24/7 dragonite chasing and I’m personally finding it the biggest constraint on ascended weapons (and other people hit other constraints of course). How many other people would prefer the full dragonite reward for completing the event, rather than detouring for more champion loot bags?
Am I right in thinking the Aetherblade wave is completed by defeating a fixed number of captains whilst the minion waves are defeated by a total killing of minions? This would explain why so much of the player behavior leads to the failure of the overall event. If it’s the case, could Anet reverse those two counts and give the invasions a much higher chance of success?
I think most people would be happy if it was put back to as it was six months ago. Six months ago it still repeatedly killed group that couldn’t dodge and was very simple for groups that could dodge, even with rangers.
Many champions are designed to be group content, not zerg content. The champions have appropriate abilities for fighting a group and problem is the scaling of reward and effort for zergs tackling group content. If you have rewards that are sufficient incentive for five players to kill a champion for the time spent, the rewards are too much incentive for twenty players to kill the champion in a fraction of that time.
The game is specifically designed that players co-operate in killing creatures and finishing events, so the rewards do not diminish as more players get involved. That shouldn’t be changed but a perplexing problem remains. How do you balance loots mobs for five people or twenty people who are killing the same creatures but at vastly different speeds (and difficulty)? The designers still seem to stumble from one problem to another whenever they ‘fix’ loot rewards.
All ranger damage is scaled down from other classes on the basis that the pet will contribute as well. If you want to look further into this there are many previous posts on the forum.
All classes except the guardian have decent ranged damage and that ranged damage is typically less than melee damage (without dedicated traits). The guardian has missile reflections that give can act as ranged damage.
I would suggest that the camps do not get attacked for 25-30 minutes once the queen is spawned. It’s simple. It gives people time to buy from the merchants. It stops the attack on steampipe from messing up the queen fight. It lets people run from the other camps to the queen fight without meeting a karka army in Steampipe steading.
If players take out camp karka first then split up to do the other camps it shouldn’t be a problem to clear the other three in time. Steampipe steading should be the last one the moment since that respawn is just a pain in the neck.
Perhaps rangers can do it if they repeatedly tell their pet to guard the far end of the corridor?
“If you’re a casual player and can’t get an ascended weapon within 2 months then probably they need to reassess what kind of risk/time/reward they want from this game, and probably settle for rares/exotics. I quite frankly don’t like players who want all end-game content handed to them just for logging in.”
All players should have access to end content just by logging in. That’s exactly what SPvP delivers. The game is specifially designed so that players can start new characters in WvW and compete. The gap in WvW between experienced and new players is now bigger after ascended gear and that is a bad thing.
I quite frankly don’t like players who want a competitive advantage by sinking hours of play time into a game. Ascended gear is a time sink. It is not skill that collects empyreal and dragonite but sinking play time into activities that reward those trophies.
Other professions see his posts already as he asks for ridiculous changes on their boards as well.
Remember that ascended armor is not yet with us so we have another half tier of grind to come. With any luck ascended armor can be gained through a genuine alternative to crafting (pulling an ascended item from a lucky loot bag is not a genuine alternative).
It’s also worth remembering that if the level cap is raised then there could be a repeated grind for ascended weapons at the new cap, with no new crafting ‘tier’ being introduced.
I’ve got to 500 crafting and I’ve looked at how fast I’m going to get Dragonite and Empyreal stuff. I’m fine for Empyreal but in my old playstyle I would get 500 Dragonite in about 12 weeks. To get more dragonite I would have to sink time into content I don’t particularly enjoy. Someone I’m sure will tell me to just read websites for times of world events and spend all day chasing them down, but that’s precisely what I would never enjoy. Spending some time in WvW isn’t so bad but spending all my online time in WvW would again be bad.
It just looks to me like grind.
I guess you’re talking about PvE dungeon type content rather than PvP. It is certainly possible to carry a second set of armor with different runes that can support a different play style. My second armor set is carrion with adventurer runes that works well his high dodge content (like Lupicus). Customizing your weapon change isn’t going to do much beyond the sigil benefit.
When you partially swap out of a zerker build you’ll probably have some residual + crit chance and + crit damage that becomes a lot worse in low numbers. You could see a big drop in performance in exchange for versatility.
I went back and looked at this for the first time in ages and it is more fierce than before. As I remembered, when the nightmare tree puts its fist down and shakes its back it sends clearly visible cloud of yellow spider eggs into the air. You can’t see individual eggs but you can certainly time a block or dodge based on the tree’s animation. When those eggs hit you they spawn spiders a few seconds later. Unfortunately I was playing a ranger and the pet cannot dodge so lots of spiders spawned whenever the eggs hit the pet or a spirit.
So my assessment is that the favored zerker classes have a variety of options to take the tree down. Rangers and necros have very few options to take this tree down. I also found out again that PuG players refuse to believe they are spawning spiders by their own personal failure to dodge.
Underwater combat is not in a suitable state for any major content. The weapon skills are broken in a variety of ways. Some classes have their utilities gutted out. Trait lines crash out with the utilities. There’s little balance in PvP or PvE. Rebreathers could be made purely cosmetic. And so on.
The major underwater fights in fractals and HoTW are not good and and not popular. Even well designed underwater bosses they are likely to fail again without a total revamp to water combat. They are right not to add any more right now.
(This is even without considering the long term underwater 3d problems that will persist after any skills revamp).
“Interrupt > channelled skill > stealth”
The only thing I find annoying is the channeller turning to face you while they fire, so you can’t get behind them in stealth for a sword strike!
There are two simple thief strategies for low level. The first is to use sword/pistol and with either pistol whip or black powder to keep yourself safe. The second is to use pistol/dagger with dancing daggers to keep an enemy crippled at distance. All the high level thief capability is already there in the weapon sets if you want to look for it but those are two simple tactics.
Other MMOs without active defense just seem stupid after playing GW2. You’re sequencing your character’s attacks and thinking “Do I really have to let that mob hit me, again and again, until I get a heal?”
The MMO Vanguard tried to create a crafting system that encouraged you to make decisions while crafting. People could build their own houses and so on. Even so it was essentially repetitive and ultimately dull. Crafting in all other games has been dull from start to finish and it shouldn’t be the only way to get top line gear.
There is no skill or capability involved in getting ascended gear. It is all about sinking time into collecting money, sinking time into farming events and dungeons, and sinking time into crafting.
The ranger is a strong class in open world PvE and until you get to level 80 you can just enjoy it. Experiment with skills and weapons and learn it for yourself. Once you start dungeons or PvP you can return to the boards and look for builds.
I think the dev’s have realized that pistol/pistol doesn’t have mobility. Although P/P is meant to be a thief’s single target range dps weapon it often isn’t even used for that since the shortbow has essential mobility.
The active effect of signet of malice doesn’t matter. If you activate it you are in trouble anyway.
Don’t underestimate the blind on signet of shadows. It is one of the best blinding skills we have since it affects multiple targets, at range, instantly, and can be activated even when knocked down. On its own it’s not great, but it’s on a signet.
Dodge the trees when it shakes. Bingo. I’m wondering if all the tactics with missile defense have just taught everyone to play this boss badly.
These are tough mobs but they are designed to take on large number of players. Enemies are meant to be dangerous and although these can be mown down with auto-attacks by a big force they are at least challenging for smallish groups. Ideally all content should have challenge and should require some learning of the mob abilities.
The aetherblades are actually far more dangerous because of the stun fields and even big player zergs take casualties against the aetherblades. Players fight them because of their loot not because of their triviality. They may seem easier to you but that’s probably just because you are in a bigger zerg.
The reavers build turrets on cogs and it is those turrets that explode for the big damage. That’s one reason to finish off the cogs. It’s also a reason not to stand in the middle of a wave when it comes in. I can solo the veteran horrors and nightmares on both my main characters (ranger and thief) so they can certainly be dealt with. Instead of coming to the boards you could perhaps try to do the same?
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The short descriptions of the events were not clear enough. Stage progression was sometimes based on killing minions and sometimes based on completing events and there was no explanation of that difference.
This led to zergs rushing away when a portal spawned the last creatures when they could have killed them in 15 seconds, leaving handful of people struggling to deal with it. I’m guessing this is a major factor in the repeated failure of these invasions. A handful of people can clear a portal but not once it has spawned a zerg size army with the floor littered by cogs.
When you complete quest hearts a few unique vendor items can appear. I know there’s a whistle that can summon rock dogs for 30 seconds from one of the ogre quest hearts, for example.
A few races can summon allies with their racial elite skills so you could eventually look at that as well.
Zerker is where you want to be eventually but it might hurt until you get some experience. A compromise might be to use some defensive trait lines such as shadow arts and acrobatics. You can use any sensible build and weapons really so that’s why nothing is 100%.
Thieves are mid range for dungeons and fractals. Most groups want heavy armor classes but won’t turn a thief away (but may turn away a second).
Is this your third post about improving signet of malice? It doesn’t matter. It was a balanced heal then and it’s a balanced heal now. No change needed.
The open world is good. It has better stories and game immersion than any other content. The events are often fun. There are jumping puzzles, vistas, all sorts of stuff out there. The only things the open world events miss are high level rewards.
So should the events across the world all have high rewards? No. The content is too simple and it is there for players to learn to play while leveling up. So how do you get players back into open world PvE zones? That’s probably a problem for players to work out since they are personally putting loot grind ahead of some nice content (that they haven’t even done once). The designers are repeatedly taking players back into the open world with the living story.
You still seem to be under the impression that the ‘current meta’ dictates the best build for PvE. In fact the content you are facing dictates the best set-up for that content. This is true for weapon sets, heals, and utilities. Different trait lines provide different benefits for different set ups and players can pick the benefits they want to see most often. In this sense, the thief is moderately well balanced across the class despite the dominance of beserker builds.
I you fire a missile it can land after you apply stealth and reveal you. It’s a really annoying mechanic at times. The aoe field from stolen gunk and other oddities can deal damage for you and reveal you.
Dungeons are a method for PvE players to gain exotic items. This is what the barter currency is for. They are not necessarily meant to be a cash machine for exotic geared characters. It is only the player community that excludes new players with gear checks.
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Don’t even start thinking about a staff wielding elementalist.
As NinjaSonic said, swap stuff round all the time. Once you know what the fights are like there’s no point taking on the dredge, the cultists, and the fire shaman all with the same heals, utilities, and weapons. The early fractals are not particularly difficult so learn the fights and try a few things out.
Has anyone checked that these faces are not just representations of the design team?
“But I’ve found that pretty much anything that is difficult in GW2’s PvE involves either a lot of dodging or frantic jumping against a time limit.”
Going back to any MMO without active defenses (like dodge) feels really bad. Dodging is better than soaking damage with good armor and waiting for a heal from a priest.
“Not anymore, now if someone is defeated they will stop getting healed by the pet, but the pet will still sit there trying to Rez.”
Fortunately you can fix that with a keypress.
With various patches over the last 12 months the designers have added loot to some content. Players then move to the that content and then complain that all the other content doesn’t give enough reward. So the designers add loot elsewhere, the players move, and complain that everything apart from this content doesn’t give enough reward.
At some point this has to stop and loot rewards have to be balanced rather than added here, there, and everywhere. Jormag and world events have already had a guaranteed rare added in a silly dancing chest. Other events, such as champ bags, need scaling back.
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“The actual answer is simple, but Anet doesn’t get it—at all. Design the open world for the players you find there and create instances of tiered difficulty for players who desire more challenge. "
Not at all. Players will respond to the challenge to get loot if the rewards are right. Commanders were very quick to maximize the loot rewards in scarlet’s invasion events and if they applied the same leadership to other world events then they would succeed. However rewards have never been balanced in GW2 and are no closer now than before (champ farming). Anet shouldn’t discard their innovative ideas such as world events and fractals just because they can never balance loots.
Your car anology is just ridiculous. Nobody has taken the ring away from you. You still have the fully functional ring. Your account based magic find is more than amount lost on the ring. Your combat level is no worse than before.
I’ll give a hint here. When someone posts on a forum looking for sympathy and doesn’t get any, there’s no point arguing. That someone will get even less sympathy when they say they want more mf than other players (other forum readers) because they see the game as an adversarial rush for gold and loot.
The three stone heads are definitely the same style. The eyes seems more than narrow, they seem closed. This is unusual since sculpted statues usually look boldly outwards. Perhaps this indicates that the faces were more than simple sculptures, or perhaps the faces represent dead people?
It’s possible that the Hoelbrek and Nolan heads are not in their original locations. The Norn could have removed an old statue from an overlook before carving their own statue, and taken the head to a lodge as a trophy. The Nolan head appears to be in the middle of an old ascalonian machine room full of clockwork parts. It makes little sense for the humans to have kept a pagan statue in their town or built complex engineering around it. It seems more likely that the head was moved when Nolan was built by the humans or destroyed by the charr.
You’re still looking at these rings as an expensive 110 laurels when actually they are drops that I sell to vendors for a few silver since I get infused rings as well in fractals. From your perspective they seem expensive but from many players perspective they are not. I am wearing celestial jewelry, their stats are no better or worse than your celestial items, and I think they’re still ok.
So is your rant justified? If you’re in combat then your combat capability has not gone down since you can wear your celestial or anything else just the same as before. If you want magic find then the magic lost on celestial is now shared across the whole account. If you’re complaining because you previously lowered your combat capability to get +8% magic find, and now you don’t have to lower your combat capability as you have over +8% magic find from the account, then perhaps the change is actually good?
I think they came from the Flame & Frost molten test facility dungeon. Look on the trading post for them perhaps.
I salvaged a soldier’s weapon the other day and received a different sort of soldier’s inscription. This inscription could be used with 5 ectos and the normal components to make an exotic weapon. I’m guessing that would not fit the ascended recipe but perhaps you could check it out.
All the weapon sets have mobility except pistol/pistol. I think this was talked about the last time dev’s mentioned thief mobility and that’s probably the only upgrade we might get.
I use it. It’s fine. In a PUG dungeon group I often suspect players will fall over and when they do it’s good to have search and rescue. It’s better now that it only revives downed players as it picks better targets. Despite the cool down, etc, it is still far better than sitting down in a big aoe field and reviving someone yourself. Downed pets can search and rescue.
The last ranger to tell me it was rubbish was in the molten test facility. Somehow I was the only person in the group who could stay on my feet, with the pet and spirit of nature doing my revives, whilst everyone else got downed trying to revive other people.
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A 5 ranger fractal group seems like unnecessary punishment.
If you’re talking about fractal rings they don’t come at a huge price. They’re easy to buy with pristine fractals and are uncommon fractal completion rewards. I’m guessing you’re not talking about infused rings. Lunaria and Solaria are the ascended rings with celestial stats and they have hardly changed. After the patch your combat abilities are unchanged and those two rings are more than compensated for by account wide magic find. I have plenty of ascended celestial jewelry and I’ll be keeping it all thank you.
The game mechanics have been changed to remove big magic find bonuses from armor for improved balance. Good. You still seem to want big magic find on armor and that isn’t going to happen. You seem to want bigger magic find than other players with the similar game history just because your old armor used to have magic find and that certainly isn’t going to happen either.
As another pre-kunark eq player I agree with Niobeth. I’ve got one crafting skill to 450, looked at my remaining bank assets, looked at the crafting requirements, and just seen grind. I can throw gold at the problem but I don’t like playing MMOs as one big balance sheet of income and trading. For all the reasons other people have mentioned, I don’t see the game improving through ascended weapons. The only people who like ascended seem to be people who can’t enjoy themselves without a desire for gold and top line items, when in fact we all had top line items last week.
The designers are putting new players at a disadvantage with luck accumulation and ascended weapons but for none of the reasons you mentioned All the changes you mentioned seem like necessary balancing of broken features that continued to undermine the reward system the longer they persisted. XP reward for crafting should balance other xp rewards in the game rather than balance xp gained by players six months ago.