Guild Wars 2

Doggie.3184:

Hope Trahearne and Canach get married afterwards.

Trahearne uses his necromancer powers to resurrect Scarlet and they retire to a nice beach side villa in Orr.

Canach moves back to South Sun to become King of the Karka and is never heard from again. Suspected to have been eaten by said Karka.

kolompi.1287:

maddoctor.2738:

Shoe.5821:

or some post by A-Net dev specifically stated that the whole “zerker meta” is a result of an overall design flaw within the game.

the design flaw is that zerker builds can evade damage with skilled use of dodge roll, not lack of trinity

Being skilled is a flaw?

Yes, because apparently it takes skill to stand in damage and live through it by having toughness or being healed by some druid spamming heals on you. Watching the boss and aoe circles and dodging… that’s a flaw.

I love people who kitten on trinity who clearly have never played a trinity based game or frankly any other MMO besides GW2.

Truly experts in your chosen field.

Using Ancestral Grace to jump to the commander and then faceroll CF 1-4 until the bar runs out is going to be much more use than water fields alone.

mistsim.2748:

every decent raid group has this coordination. not sure who’s left playing wvw right now, but certainly a year and a half ago, everyone and their grandmas were blasting water fields competently.

This was also back when stability was worth a kitten in WvW and things like venom-wells didn’t mean you got hit with double digit immobilize on a regular basis.

Re-stacking when the enemy is actively on top of you in a fight that isn’t going your way in the first place is a lot harder.

This goes doubly so in things like lord room fights where not only will squishy backline not be able to dive into the one spot for heals, they may mostly, or all, be dead leaving you with no ele’s to drop fields.

I think we’ll be pretty covered between Solar Beam and Astral wisp.

If wisp has no limit on the amount of allies that can proc it, the thing could keep us in near perma-mode all by itself in PvE world events and WvW.

Slamming that on a heavy diving into the center of your zerg will probably instantly fill the thing.

Shockwave.1230:

If Celestial Avatar behaves similarly to Elementalist attunements in that you can cast a skill then keep using the skill when changing your skillbar, then you’d want to Tidal Surge then immediately leave CA form.

I have a feeling that leaving the form will empty the bar. Otherwise, Druidic Clarity is just way too OP. CA mode would need a large cool down to keep it balanced if we could pop in and out like Death Shroud.

mistsim.2748:

I don’t think your healing/damage while in avatar counters the bar’s depletion. you build up the force, activate avatar, and then have a static 20 seconds to do your thing. rinse and repeat. the real question is how fast will force build up.

2.5% per heal and 0.25% per damage.

http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/gw2-druid-traits1.jpg

Considering Solar Ray is 3 heals on up to 3 targets every 1.25 seconds it’s not a bad rate.

Just a single auto attack into a group, hitting 3 allies for 3 heals is 22.5% of the bar.

In wvw or raids, Celestial form will be up a lot if you stay in staff as much as possible.

Aomine.5012:

Bran.7425:

Mcrocha.3891:

The drop-off of taking a class over the Ranger is not that bad unless you’re trying to run fully optimized world record breaking speedruns, which 99.99% of the community is not doing. Don’t exaggerate to make it appear that things are worse than they appear.

Here the thing even without being part of those speedruns, the ideas of effectiveness bleed over into the general game, so there is the problem of perception over reality.

Yeah, the reality is this game is easy enough that anything can work.

But it’s always better to pick the 4 top professions, assuming all of them have the same skill-level/ experience. This is fact.

But my point is not only does Druid not solve any of the ranger’s problem, it ultimately derails its theme entirely.

That’s not a bad thing.

It’s theme is that it has a pet.
The problem is that the best DPS pets are melee, effectively forcing them to clip into the ranger to maximize damage. This nullifies the benefit of sharing damage with a second entity.

As useful as the pet is in 5v5 pvp, it’s nearly pointless in PvE and virtually worthless in WvW/GvG.

We now have a completely different theme which is going to be useful in group pvp and probably useful to less skillful groups in raids.

They have struggled with the pet for three years and decided to finally throw in the towel and I’m happy for it.

Chrispy.5641:

Jeeze, everything in here sounds like a day one review to a hundred+ hour, giving judgement before anyone could have possibly played all hundred hours. I smell lots of disappointment in the near future. Because of this, I’m going to be one of the only semi-negative posts in this thread….

Irenio, I will jump on the bandwagon and give you my thanks after I play the Druid on the next beta weekend. All those pretty skill demonstration videos look great and the skill descriptions sound great on paper, but will they hold up when thousands of us are trying them out with every possible combination? We’ll see….

Druid will be great in WvW and possibly GvG’s just by virtue of the shear healing it can put out. Blasting Ele water fields has nothing on Lunar Impact, Cosmic Ray, and Ancestral Grace.

Where we’ll really be tested is whether the new Raids and future PvE content values dedicated healing builds enough to make slotting Druid and bringing a staff worthwhile.

I have no problem with Druid being the same as Nature Magic and Wilderness in that they never see play outside of PvP but it would be a terrible waste.

CETheLucid.3964:

MokahTGS.7850:

Is it just me or does the tiger just feel like the red-headed step child of the mix. It even got skipped in the reveal…

Personally I would have liked a raptor instead of a reskinned panther.

You’ll have one. A shadowstepping, smokefield making bundle of teeth and victory. Tiger was the first one revealed BTW.

Didn’t get the in depth treatment the other ones did, but Tiger was shown first.

Smokescale is a quadruped that looks like it uses the same rig and sound files as the rockhound.

Eponet.4829:

glenndevis.8327:

phys.7689:

glenndevis.8327:

To be fair I would LOVE some sort of trinity. Maybe not the old trinity everyone got bored of. But in an action combat based game like gw2 having a trinity-ish system would certainly be interesting.

i already tried it in tera.
playing solo was highly entertaining, playing in groups was boring and sleep inducing (comparitively) Because the amount of attention i had to pay to not getting hit, or mitigation was low (tank holds aggro) and i didnt really have to worry about my hp much even taking regular unavoidable type dmg, because the healer was healing it.

and that game was designed from the ground up to support a trinity. I dont think gw2 will implement a more compelling trinity style with a few tweaks.

To be fair, GW2 & tera combat are very diffirent.
And how much attention do you have to pay in GW2 to not getting hit if everyone just bursts everything down in a few seconds and if you down, you get back ressed up in less than 3seconds?

I’m not saying the whole tank, heal, dps trinity should come to GW2. But some sort of teamwork & roles would be really nice so not everyone is just another DPS.

Let’s say Druids become the meta healers. They can’t burst heals constantly to keep everyone alive, they can save people with some burst heals but once it runs out they won’t be able to keep up the idiots who just stand in aoes or just facetank bosses.

Support should be support and not babysit people who get caught by every single attack.

That’s going to be interesting if you have a druid and an offensive meditation guardian in the same party.

I’ll be interested to see how many burst heals get wasted on classes with yoyo like health pools right as they heal themselves.

The first three staff skills on the Druid are pretty spamable and I’d bet that Solar Beam counts as 3 heals when it comes to keeping the celestial bar filled.

The healing won’t be much more than what was shown to us unless Healing Power gets a rework, but the heals look pretty rapid.

PopeUrban.2578:

Substance E.4852:

It’d better not be…

I’ve been looking forward to this set since he revealed it back in January and we are supposedly going to get 2 new sets (I would assume this means 2 sets of H/M/L) in HoT.

If it requires a massive scavenger hunt or multiple Raid runs to get then that’s just depressing.

I’ll take you raiding for it and not yell and be rude like some people if it comes down to it

Oh I expect yelling. If someone’s not emulating “More Dot’s” guy then it’s just not a raid.

It’d better not be…

I’ve been looking forward to this set since he revealed it back in January and we are supposedly going to get 2 new sets (I would assume this means 2 sets of H/M/L) in HoT.

If it requires a massive scavenger hunt or multiple Raid runs to get then that’s just depressing.

CETheLucid.3964:

But I wish every other person that wants this would quit minimizing that some of us like the traditional look.

I think most of us just want more options, especially on males.

It’s not even close to the sexy/functional ratio of female heavy armor. On my male human ranger I have 3 armor sets that aren’t some kind of longcoat/buttcape, 2 of which are basically the same armor set with different levels of detail. (Scout/Duelist)

The upcoming, ‘upgradeable’, armor that Shaman datamined months and months ago looks incredible on the female human he rendered it on.

Form fitting leather armor that looks perfect on a Ranger or Thief. One can only hope the male version is basically the same.

http://imgur.com/qqevj6q
http://imgur.com/pYbRYMS

Uh, clearly Logan marries Ritlock.

Do you even lore bro?????

Halan.7931:

It may be amazing, but it’s not what I expected. Those shoulders with animals and staff created some expectations about either plant-magic (like Entangle), or some animal forms/aspects/claw kits, but not about being a shiny transparent fairy. My ranger is Norn female, but now I’m thinking maybe I should make a sylvari… but I have a sylvari guardian.

Since I’ve done my share of healing in another game, I’m not opposed to healing, only to visual theme. At least it’s not clicking on green rectangles.

The leaked trait that referenced Aspects makes me think they ended up redoing the whole thing at the last moment and went with what fit the heal spam theme.

The shoulder pads and tree staff definitely do not match the celestial theme.

Pants Are Dangerous.2079:

I am however really worried about the healer meta that the druid is supposed to fulfill. Anet has tried to very hard to avoid “looking for healer” situation and the druid appears to a substitute for this (are we going to see “looking for druids” for raids now ?).

Probably.

Anet has directly stated that Raids will not be something that you can just up and pug with random strangers. They will require organized guild groups of people and advanced planning.

Any guild of sufficient size to do raids in the first place is likely going to have at least 1 person who will be happy to play healer.

It’s simply not going to be an issue.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Leo G.4501:

Nova Stiker.8396:

The only point you’ve made is how ignorant you are.

It possibly also has to do with the fact that we’ve only seen the trait line/skills and can’t make real judgement calls until we get our hands on it.

So the options are speak out of ignorance (because ignorance isn’t exactly a bad thing) or out of emotion (which is what you’re doing now). Your call.

Except, you CAN judge it. This isn’t an argument on how viable it is, no one can say that, this is an argument on how limiting it is.

How is it limiting? Ancient Seeds has direct synergy with both Great Sword and Shortbow along with the various pet knockdowns.

Druidic Clarity could be very good depending on how often we can bounce in and out of Celestial Mode.

And finally, all 3 Master level traits are universal in their uses.

None of the base versions of the non-heal skill Glyphs even heal. They are all offensive in nature and hit for a lot of damage in an AoE which is absolutely needed on the Ranger which has kitten poor AoE damage.

The Druid is not 100% healbot and implying so is simply demonstrably false.

Linken.6345:

Zoeynix.3795:

All these posts (especialy the negative ones) are just silly. What about waiting for beta (connected to possible changes at class after beta and before HoT) and raid mechanics. Then judge whether it´s useless or not.
Concept is awesome by the way, hopefuly it will be great to have druid in a party for raids and possibly higher fotm levels.

And you think they will be able to change anything 19 days before release.
They wont mate thats just the happy pills talking, it will be post release for sure.

Your flaw is that you think they need to change anything. The traits are plenty good and Ancient Seeds is probably going to be deemed OP and nerfed at some point.

Hell, we don’t even know what Raids will be like but I can guarantee that healbot Druid will be helpful if not downright necessary for most groups.

I’m also personally looking forward to the druid in WvW. Heal spam is going to be very, very good in zergs and Sublime Conversion looks amazing in the new choke point filled borderlands.

I’m sorry that Druid wasn’t the überbüff that you wanted it to be but it is solid and will be useful.

Ehecatl.9172:

The pet dying has been a big problem of rangers for a long time and now we have more tools to manage it.

That has always been on Anet to make the pet dodge when we dodge and to reduce their susceptibility to AoE’s.

All the healing in the world isn’t going to keep a Jaguar alive in a WvW zerg and Anet will have to probably code in strait up immunity to a lot of Raid AoE to make pets even remotely useful there.

We shouldn’t have to actively work to keep the pet alive when we have been balanced with the expectation of a 100% alive and functioning dps pet. If the pet + player = more than another single class then it would be warranted, but not as it currently is.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

lordkrall.7241:

ArenaNet have never been anti-trinity. They have been anti-forced holy trinity, which is rather different.

Healers have been in the game since release. They have simply made them better latety.

We know that you love the holy trinity and want ArenaNet to put it into the game, but this is not a step towards that. It is simply them going forward with what they have been doing since release.

They said you wont be able to avoid all damage. That means you need a healer. They also said you will need tanks some how.
Its trinity
Unavoidable damage
Healers
Tanks
Thats Trinity

Trinity requires three defined roles. I don’t see anyone actually tanking here. I don’t see any way to hold aggro. If you can’t hold aggro then it’s not a trinity. And that’s assuming that you must have a healer, which isn’t necessarily even proven yet.

Anet isn’t going to make an entire specialization nothing but “Healing with a side of Healing” if it wasn’t going to be useful to the point that it’s wanted.

And you don’t need to tank a mob for tank roles to be needed. Raids will very likely be requiring things like someone standing on a switch to allow a mob to be killed or to keep a door open etc with the area being pummeled with too much damage for a character not speced for tank and survival to be able to stand on it.

neurosis.6350:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Druid
Show me a single freaking word about solar\lunar magick! We’re NOT speaking about real existed druids, we’re in the game where own lore exists.
So yes, ArenaNET broke the lore.

And?

The Druids basically disappeared from Tyria and when we do see them in GW1 they aren’t particularly talkative.

How would hundreds of Rangers suddenly even know how to become “Druids” regardless of what kind they are if it’s supposed to be the same kind of magic/methodology?

Did one of them just spawn in the event plaza of Lions Arch and preach the good word on the Druidism to all who would hear?

A member of an industrial race like the Charr or Asura don’t strike me as the kind of people a uberhippie would want to interact with, much less teach.

Holland.9351:

Substance E.4852:

According to dulfy, the damage/healing shown is with no stats factored in so while the radius’s may be small and have long cooldowns, they may very well end up hitting like a necro wells which is a reasonable tradeoff given the Ranger’s lack of power aoe skills.

I don’t think you can compare Glyphs with Necro Wells at all. Ranger Glyphs are instantly used in a direct radius around the player, Necro Wells can be placed 900 range away.

True, I meant the damage amount they will deliver. Allignment, Tides, and Equality all in the span of a second could be very hard hitting in a zerg. ~4k crit on each means you just downed any backline ele’s that got hit.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Ah darn. I had hopes lol

It’s certainly not ‘Pain Inverter 2.0’

Druid was obviously designed with Raids in mind. The only thing that minimizing pet interaction can tell us is that they weren’t very confident that pets would be of any use in raids.

It could also be that the Druid team is aware that the Ranger focusing support/team interaction on just it’s own pet instead of the party is bad design and are finally moving away from it.

Pet’s probably not going anywhere but we will be seeing a lot more party utility and/or things that buff the Ranger directly.

Something I think we can all agree has been a long time coming.

Holland.9351:

Glyph reference

Glyph of Rejuvenation (24s cooldown)

• 4860 heal to self
• 1300 heal to allies within 300 range

This just looks terrible. It heals for almost half of what Troll Unguent and Heal as One can do and has more cooldown on top of it. The radius is also tiny, 300 is nothing. Don’t see this being used at all. The traited version isn’t better than Healing Spring either, if it wasn’t still bugged.

Glyph of Alignment (20s cooldown)

• 300 radius 4s cripple, 4s weakness, 947 damage

Looks pretty bad. 300 radius is low. The conditions applied are weak and short. The damage and the short cooldown might save it though.

Glyph of Equality (40s cooldown)

• 300 radius 2s Daze, 947 damage

Extremely long cooldown for only a 2s daze with only 300 radius. I don’t see this being used, except with Moment of Clarity trait that makes it a 4s daze. Asura racial skill Technobabble outclasses it already, which is a 1200 range targetable 3s daze (6s traited). They might see some play combined together in some Asura daze cheese build in WvW.

Glyph of Equality (25s cooldown)

• 300 radius knockback, 947 damage

I’m starting to see a patern. radius is short. cooldown is good. Might see some play.

Glyph of Empowerment (20s cooldown)

• +10% damage for 5 seconds for up to 5 allies. 300 radius

Very underwhelming. 5s every 20s is almost no coverage and +10% damage is low. Probably worse than Frost Spirit. If it sees any play at all, it will be for zerg meta farming.

Glyph of Unity (20s cooldown)

• for 5 seconds deal damage dealt to you to foes within 300 radius

Very interesting, but again short radius. nice cooldown. Not boring like the others.

Overall, glyphs are very focussed on melee-range play. 300 radius max. So it has very little synergy with the 1200 range staff and other ranged weapons. Double melee Ranger might find some use for them. Most of their cooldowns are short and they can deal damage, which might make them good. Gives a high elementalist vibe, but elementalist will do it better.

According to dulfy, the damage/healing shown is with no stats factored in so while the radius’s may be small and have long cooldowns, they may very well end up hitting like a necro wells which is a reasonable tradeoff given the Ranger’s lack of power aoe skills.

Eponet.4829:

Substance E.4852:

Eponet.4829:

Clearly there’s a reason that they called it a celestial transformation. You’re not meant to invest everything into healing, you’re meant to use celestial stats. Don’t think of yourself as a healer, think of yourself as a jack of all trades. Just ask the elementalists.

The entire staff and nearly all the traits are meant as active defensive support.

Krall is right. Anet’s goal was never to have classes that could only do X, no more Monks only healing or Warriors only DPS’ing.

3 years of kittenty healing power scaling and no need for dedicated defensive support builds has made people think Anet never wanted these kinds of play styles which was never the case. If it were, thing like the Guardian Mace would have never passed muster.

They are simply moving toward making party member roles more specialized which is a good thing in a game where stats are fluid and builds can be changed in a matter of minutes.

On the other hand, none of the other ranger weapons are healing oriented (Except potentially the sole blast finisher of the warhorn which can be used in a water field, which leaves you with an offensive main hand weapon), and you have two weapon slots, meanwhile, healing power is just a single stat to invest in.

I wouldn’t call celestial elementalists dedicated healers, despite their ability to enter water attunement and heal an entire health bar, because that’s only one part of their kit.

Personally, we don’t know how things have been tuned. I’m personally going to be testing out a celestial skirmishing/beastmastery/druid shortbow/staff.

Intuition tells me that zealot’s would be the best, but, I don’t believe the beta gear gives you that option.

I’m seeing Great Sword as the best sidearm for a clerics/zealots Druid. The damage is decent, 1hs glue will be suicide in raids, and the GS has movement and block/evades on it.

It won;t benefit from healing power at all but it will be of other good use.

phys.7689:

Substance E.4852:

phys.7689:

They basically slapped the trinity on gw2

Trinity’s always been here. This is just the first time it’s ever been relevant.

You could always go cleric’s Guardian with a mace and shield. The only thing stopping you was that it had no use in pve (and limited to no use in pvp).

Stat’s and tactics that really only ever see use in WvW zerg combat are finally going to be utilized in other areas of the game.

Trinity isnt so much about the idea that you can build that way, but rather encounters that require you to use them

This is done mostly through unavoidable damage. The biggest tell was them saying you wont be able to avoid all damage any more.

Thats the thing that requires healers and makes mitigation required.

Except this isn’t remotely the same as requiring healers for all content.

Raids are touted as basically un-pug’able at release and are intended for guild groups of 10 people to do.

What guild out there has 10+ people but not one person who has a ranger at 80 or is willing to play healbot and has a stack of tomes? Probably not many and most of the guilds who are looking at Raiding have many more people.

Raids are clearly meant as a completely different kind of PvE experience from the rest of the game and one that isn’t going to spill over into the rest of the game until we get new fractals or new dungeons.

phys.7689:

They basically slapped the trinity on gw2

Trinity’s always been here. This is just the first time it’s ever been relevant.

You could always go cleric’s Guardian with a mace and shield. The only thing stopping you was that it had no use in pve (and limited to no use in pvp).

Stat’s and tactics that really only ever see use in WvW zerg combat are finally going to be utilized in other areas of the game.

Eponet.4829:

Clearly there’s a reason that they called it a celestial transformation. You’re not meant to invest everything into healing, you’re meant to use celestial stats. Don’t think of yourself as a healer, think of yourself as a jack of all trades. Just ask the elementalists.

The entire staff and nearly all the traits are meant as active defensive support.

Krall is right. Anet’s goal was never to have classes that could only do X, no more Monks only healing or Warriors only DPS’ing.

3 years of kittenty healing power scaling and no need for dedicated defensive support builds has made people think Anet never wanted these kinds of play styles which was never the case. If it were, thing like the Guardian Mace would have never passed muster.

They are simply moving toward making party member roles more specialized which is a good thing in a game where stats are fluid and builds can be changed in a matter of minutes.

According to Dulfy these are without any stats so the skills may end up doing respectable damage in the live environment.

mtpelion.4562:

So our Elite spec will be designed for raids, which are participated in by about 5% of a game’s playerbase (based on stats from other MMOs).

I knew bringing raids to GW2 was a bad idea, but I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad.

There are no dungeons in HoT. If all you want to do is kill over world mobs then you can play whatever and do it. You could probably play a zerk Druid and do fine.

This was clearly made for large group content and will be wanted in Raids and WvW/GvG.

The only place this is suspect is in spvp but that is a much bigger issue than just the Ranger’s capabilities.

While I agree that we should wait and see what the new content brings before really getting upset I do worry that the spec will be useless on anything but a full Cleric’s Ranger.

(No you aren’t going to be able to spam Druidic Clarity at will guys. Wake the kitten up.)

I’m also rather disappointed in the dropping of the Aspects for what sounds like a copy/pasta of the Life Force Necro mechanic. It just feel a lot more one dimensional than I expected.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Cantha wasn’t removed from Tyrian lore — the entire continent isolated itself and with no news leaving their shores, there just isn’t much to say.

It’s the same thing. Cantha’s isolation and Palwala Joko/Krahlkawhatever sitting in the desert linking Tyria and Elona are both plot devices specifically intended to signify why they have no bearing on the events of the game.

No new news has come out of either area and so much time has passed that both the cultures and landscapes are no longer even remotely close to the Elona and Cantha of GW1. The Luxons and Kurzicks don’t even exist anymore as vassal states and most of Elona is now a desert filled with undead with Vabbi and Kourna likely in ruins.

Until the barriers are lifted, they can both be considered to have floated off the ground and into space for all the difference it makes.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

DR never had a Canthan district. The early design included one, but the actual game that launched on 28 August 2012 did not; within the game, it was always the Great Collapse (and now, the Crown Pavilion).

Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Crown_Pavilion

There were demo shots of the Canthan district that got released before the game launched. It did exist in a real form but not in the live game.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/4/47/2010_May_Divinity's_Reach_Canthan_district_Polished.jpg

Ehecatl.9172:

Substance E.4852:

That was my point. The very little we do know is basic stuff. There’s virtually no hard details just as there’s very little of any had details on any of the British Isle cultures prior to the Roman arrival.

Pretty much anytime someone says “Druids were/did ____” it’s something that got tacked on, most likely in the modern era.

Sorry, I wasn’t responding to you. I was responding to Durzlla’s response to me and didn’t see your post until I sent mine!

I agree with you on what you said.

lol funny how these forums work sometimes.

That was my point. The very little we do know is basic stuff. There’s virtually no hard details just as there’s very little of any had details on any of the British Isle cultures prior to the Roman arrival.

Pretty much anytime someone says “Druids were/did ____” it’s something that got tacked on, most likely in the modern era.

Knighthonor.4061:

Well spiritually, real life Druids use the Animal skin to become one with the animals.

this is where fantasy rpg get the concept of Druids shapeshifting into Animals. Because thats what the Druid priest would do, spiritually using the animal’s skin and wearing it over their body like a cloak.

Citation needed?

The only natural affinity Druids had was the general reverence for the natural world held by they Celts and the Druids were simply the priests of those faiths and frankly that’s about the limit of what is known about them.

All this shape shifting and animal bonding stuff is things that got tacked on in fantasy novels and games.

“A druid (Irish: druí; Welsh: derwydd) was a member of the educated, professional class among the Celtic peoples of Gaul, Britain, Ireland, and possibly elsewhere during the Iron Age. The druid class included law-speakers, poets and doctors, among other learned professions, although the best known among the druids were the religious leaders.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druid

Bran.7425:

If was during the preview video when Most Dangerous Game was slotted as an adept trait.

lol it’d still not worth it.

webtoehobbit.4201:

So could “ascended” food give buffs party wide? Could this be a useful thing for raids?

Unlikely.

It’s more probable that 500 cooking will be used for the new precursor/Legendary crafting or other non-consumable purpose.

Higher level food is just basic power creep and we already have feast items.
Creating party food will be hard to pull off because either they use less ingredients than 5x of the original food and impact the ingredient prices or they use the same or more and people don’t bother with them.

Dradiin.8935:

wolfpaq.7354:

imsoenthused.1634:

I find it distasteful in the extreme, but arena.net hasn’t declared it verboten, so this is what we get. Personally, I wish they’d make an official statement forbidding it, an then actively ban anyone who tried to do it. Of course, the kind of people who buy and sell these services are hugely offended about anyone who feels this way. They always immediately start screaming “How are they hurting you?” “shouldn’t they be paid for their skill?” etc. I could care less about their arguments though, it’s just tacky and sad, exploitative on the sellers side and pathetic on the buyers. At the very least if Anet banned it they’d have to make shady backroom deals on 3rd party forums and such, and you wouldn’t see it in the LFG tool anymore, and that would be much better. They could hang out in the dark alleys of the internet making shady, shameful deals all they want, always fearful that their dirty secret would come out and their account would be properly banned.

Lol someone is seriously overreacting to people who sell dungeon runs.

I think this is a low point in GW2, the bar is set by WoW players who proliferate this mentality. I specifically started playing GW2 because of the developers wanting to move away from this mentality.

Support it all you want but it is a slippery slope, once this is considered “Normal” then the WoWification of yet another game is not far behind.

The “WoWification”?

Pff lulwut?

Like Gw2 is going to suddenly become a mainstream household name and go strong for 10 years defining a game genre? That’d be terrible indeed…

Sorry to kitten on your parade but Anet has been okay with people selling runs since the GW1 Prophecies days.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide_to_Drok's_run

Clearly the metamorphosis into a perfect facsimile of WoW is a very slow process.

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Not to be greedy, but I’m hoping the reason it’s being presented at twitch-con is because it will introduce a new fundamental change, for the whole game or even if only for the ranger. Otherwise I fear that they are showing it there because they didn’t have time to fit it in anywhere else so they’re tossing it on, or they’re being rushed and it might not be well balanced or designed.
Of course, we’ll have to wait next weekend to see. I still have high hopes for druid being something I’ll love.

Time crunch and what I’m going to assume is some kind of “come full circle” jazz where they finally reveal the Druid after the tease months and months ago at PAX.

Druid isn’t even going to be the main point of the stream. Anet’s not dumb. They know most players don’t care about what the Druid can do and will tune out if it’s just going to be a big show for a class they don’t even play/main.

The show’s likely going to be some time for the Druid reveal and a lot more for last minute HoT hype and teasers.

I’m expecting some more news about Raids and a hefty chunk of nebulous “this is where we are headed in the future” type of stuff.

ozzy.8059:

Draeyon.4392:

3 questions.
What build do you run?
What game mode, WvW or PvP?
What type of D/P thief, the normal power build or that cheese perma stealth?

Typically, a condi trap ranger or a power longbow ranger are hard counters to a zerk d/p thief.

pvp

Just run a condition build. You will have enough tank to survive the burst and they will melt in your conditions.

It sounds like you are eating a lot of damage because you are standing still too much.

You will want to move around as much as possible. The less chances they get to pull off Backstabs, the better the fight will go for you. You will need to slot at least 1 stun break, usually Lighting Reflexes, if they are hitting you with Basilisk Venom a lot.

Know that they will often only have about 3 seconds of stealth each time they go invisible and if you are still in combat several seconds after they use Shadow Refuge, that means they didn’t run away and you need to keep moving to avoid BS.

Nike.2631:

Substance E.4852:

The one leaked trait specifically uses the word “Aspect” to describe the new class mechanic feature.

Well ‘aspect’ had a very specific meaning in the Ranger CDI — a bonus for not having a pet out. We’ll have to see. Whatever it does, it has to work with~

http://i.imgur.com/IcGtSWn.png

Whatever they do, it’s a swap mechanic.

Is it like Elementalist attunements? Possibly, as the glyphs would make it lean that way.

It may also be based on what pet type is out. Hopefully this is not the case due to the long pet swap timer and the fact that some pet types are just plain bad in most modes (bears, devourers, pigs). It’s also somewhat unlikely as they would need several different effects which is difficult to keep good but balanced. A smaller pool, say 3 like the leaked art featuring a bird, wolf, and bear, would be much better.

Basically, this isn’t replacing our pet swap. No other class lost it’s mechanic completely. They either got additional functionality added to it (berserker, tempest) or got it changed to a different combat type that worked the same way (dragon hunter, reaper).

The most likely option is that we will have to stick with one pet but will instead get to swap around in aspects for the different effects while keeping access to pet swap trait effects.

Imagine the pet menu redone so you slot only one pet but then slot 2 aspects that you toggle with the new F4 key.

I just can’t see them giving us 3-4 new F skills.

Nike.2631:

Kailee.8790:

Agree with Sina, if any of this is close to being relatively accurate… ranger and even druid is dead on arrival…

Ranger’s needed changes are Ranger’s needed changes — and no Espec can address that. Druid is built on Ranger and it has to NOT crash any existing Ranger traits, which means we’ll see a pet and either pet swapping or something that triggers pet-swap procs. The apple cannot fall far from the tree, so set your expectations accordingly. Data-mining suggests Druids get glyphs. The defining characteristic of glyphs is variable effect or secondary effect based on attunement. “Attunement” for Rangers is “what family is your pet?”.

Plus Fido was right there in the Druid video clip.

The one leaked trait specifically uses the word “Aspect” to describe the new class mechanic feature.

It may be tied into what pet we bring but it sounds like an independent system.

Speed boosts do not stack. You default to the highest one.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_speed

Nicknobreak.7543:

This skill is infinitely better than swoop. Did anyone else just watch POI? How the hell is Ranger ever going to be able to compete with that?

lol I’m imagining an Engi Rocket Jumping into a GS4 block, triggering the block on 1/3 hit, evading the counter strike on 2/3 hit and landing hit 3/3.

Good luck trying to use Longbow with the 6s cooldown of Electro-whirl.

Behellagh.1468:

Fine, value in gems.

Irrelevant. I have no need for repair canisters (no one really does) and revive orbs are a joke in pve and can’t be used in wvw where they might be of use.

I can’t even sell them to other players to offset the cost of gold or the otherwise gold value of the gems I purchased with $.

A chest that contains a booster, powder, and repair canister isn’t remotely worth the gold or cash cost the key represented especially when you take into account the fact that you can’t buy gems in smaller increments than $10 at a time.

wolfyrik.2017:

mtpelion.4562:

2. They couldn’t come up with anything so they saved it for last and will tack it on at the end and hope everyone is so busy with the other builds that they don’t bother trying it.

You laugh but that’s precisely how Ranger came to be in the game.

Technically it was because Anet had like 2-3 ideas for one trick pony classes (Marksman, Warden, Beastmaster) that obviously couldn’t amount to more than “uses X to attack things” and just mushed them together and slapped Ranger on it for old time’s sake knowing a massive chunk of people out of the gate were going to be GW2 oldbies.

It’s all pretty obvious when you split the class into the major components.

1. Nature ninja that uses tricks and traps.
2. Long range bowman.
3. Fights along side an animal.

Kodiak.3281:

I figure it’s one of two things.

1. They didn’t meet their key sales numbers when Keys were on sale during the anniversary sale and they’re blaming Key farming.

2. The F2P people figured out you can farm Black Lion keys and Anet is putting the pinch on lower level keys to prevent it cause it’s a decent source of income with the skins (decent, not the best).

Either scenario not happy. This was pretty much the only way I bothered with keys. In every scenario its’ better to buy what you want out of the chest by buying gems, selling gold, then buying the item because of how crappy the drop rates are of useless garbage in the chests. No one wants an armor booster Anet. When we get Booster, Booster, Repair Cannister it’s a kick in the balls.

No the real kick to the balls is when it drops a booster enhancing powder.

CandyHearts.6025:

Substance E.4852:

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

Like ScribeTheMad above, I too have only seen 2 drop in 3 years of play. Both times in WvW oddly enough.

Unless they increased it by several thousands of percent, it wont be anywhere near a noticeable amount.

Even the old drop rate of chests was fairly uncommon.

Welp I’m going to spend my day fighting trash mobs and uncovering maps to see if I get anything. Seeing as RNG hates me. . . If I get one then the odds were increased by a large amount. XD

More power to ya but I suspect you will end up earning enough gold to just buy a key before one ever drops.

Varonth.5830:

kitten instead of throwing out full tickets how about a good chance at a random Black Lion Skin. 20-25%.

It should just be a guarantee of a scrap per box if a whole ticket isn’t spawned.

People already would just convert 800gems to buy a single skin. This would be more expensive but it would at least feel like the boxes got you somewhere. I’ve opened 5 in a row before and gotten no scraps at all.

CandyHearts.6025:

Guys it’s been changed for a day. I’m 100% you didn’t test enough to know the exact odds. Don’t be so down. We can make this work!

Like ScribeTheMad above, I too have only seen 2 drop in 3 years of play. Both times in WvW oddly enough.

Unless they increased it by several thousands of percent, it wont be anywhere near a noticeable amount.

Even the old drop rate of chests was fairly uncommon.