Guild Wars 2

I’m tired and may have jumped the gun. i’ll review it again with a more awake set of eyes and brain.

“When you unlock a dye after the feature pack is released, all characters on your account will have unlimited access to that color.”

key word above is after.

from minor to major things, you folks sure do know how to push players closer to the door 1 patch at a time. there’s always a caveat, and that caveat usually requires even more grind time, cash or gems.

you guys and gals better make a good impression of things to come for professions and combat in this patch as well or you are dooming yourselves to be stuck with only players who enjoy virtual dress up.

Allie Murdock.8152:

sPvP players don’t get experience by playing in it. In WvW, players gain experience from events and killing things.

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, just pointing out that the two don’t really compare.

comparatively, i assume that most players are spending more $ and gold on lvl 80 characters so more conveniences to level up would be a win-win situation.

I get the feeling that anet will get rid of the initiative mechanic and balance thieves differently soon.

Arken.3725:

Alright guys, I made a podcast with one of my friends (Swagg as known on the forums) about the recent proposed changes.

http://www.twitch.tv/bigheart_gamer/c/3935302

It’s quite long(2 1/2 hours) but luckily most of it you can just listen to while playing. However, I used props to describe each profession throughout the cast. Some of them may be appropriate…you decide.

my review of the podcast…

poorly presented. embarrassing to watch. both of you sound obnoxious, immature and used unnecessarily offensive speech at times. both you and swagg are like the guys who always come in last place at every marathon, who are now trying to lead and educate runners on how to be successful at marathons. I don’t know what’s worse, your presentation and attitude, or the fact that you had on a guest who spammed the forum with a bunch of poorly thought out gibberish that only sounded good on paper to you and a couple of other low quality gamers clinging to spvp while the overwhelming majority of veteran and top level players moved on.

Zaphir.7210:

Dungeoning in this game has been some of the worst / most unfun I’ve ever seen in any MMO… and the “every man for himself” aspect is part of the reason.

You don’t need a holy trinity to make dungeons fun — in City of Heroes, some of the most fun (and successful) groups I’ve been in didn’t have a tank or a healer. What they had were multiple buffers/debuffers/controllers that could deal with any combat situation from locking down zergs of weak mobs to handling strong bosses as well as enemy buffers/debuffers/controllers. On my defender I could nuke, I could support (healing was a tiny part of ‘support’ btw, sometimes omitted altogether), I could control… it worked great. If content was too easy for a group, just crank up the difficulty and have at it! Compared to that, my gw2 staff elementalist is supposed to have zero points in arcana, sit in fire attunement and press 2/5 on cooldown while pretending I’m playing an action game by using an invulnerability move based on metaknowledge of boss behaviors and/or muscle memory.

GW2 is far from the first mmo to try and break the mold of the trinity. AoC and Champions Online both boasted twitchy ‘skill-based’ action combat — and dungeoning was really, really unenjoyable in both games. TSW too, though it works slightly better there; there are so few buttons it’s easier to pretend I’m playing an action game (albeit one with considerable latency — how fun could it be to play Dark Souls with a 400ms delay on everything, for example?).

Nice post!

It’s both sad and funny that good old CoH was leagues beyond our current modern “aaa” game of the year. Unfortunately, because it was not your traditional sword and board fantasy dragon game, it didn’t get the respect it deserved. When I compare profession and combat between both games, gw2 has no soul. There has been more effort into the art and graphics, npcs and the economy as opposed to the most important elements.

Aedrion.6483:

Warrior / Necromancer — 18372 Base HP

Ranger/ Engineer / Mesmer — 15082 Base HP

Guardian / Elementalist / Thief — 10805 Base HP

Come somebody explain to me why there is such a huge difference between some classes? And before you say that some have better healing and/or defensive abilities: That is untrue, warriors have some of the best defensive abilities in the game and necromancers have Death Shroud. Whereas Elementalists have mist form, which completely disables them and doesn’t allow healing at all.

The differences are silly, even more so compared to certain burst capabilities and high damage attacks.

coglin.1867:

Or what is worse, they think they know what the community wants, or have this disillusion such as swagger there of what the players want or what we need. I mean he is justifying blind complaints about skills no one has used yet.

I love that the general population is grown and Anets profits are out pacing projections with this game. Yet clowns try to convince us it is broken.

There is nothing wrong with stealth, conditions, cc or what ever kb/kd is supposed to mean.

Players all seem to have some perceived reality of what needs to be done and makes post talking down to anyone who doesn’t think it is broken as they do.

I think oZii’s comments are fairly accurate as well, to the communities irrational behavior.

Yes, because the plethora of valid concerns about stealth mechanics, condition meta, nonexistent restrictions to crowd control effects such as immobilize, knock back, knock down, interrupts, over the top burst damage compared to hp, limited build variety, number of active roles to play, meta focused on dps, …, …, …, are all fictional. Also, the fact that many veterans and highly competitive teams are not involved in pvp because professions and combat sucks is also a figment of my imagination.

Sorry to break the news to ya, but I’m not an idiot or blind to the fact that professions and combat in this game need serious help. I’m also not the only one who thinks that way. I actually want to see this game do well unlike people like you who post on this forum with a narrow minded fanaticism that think this game is almost perfect and can only improve by adding in more quaggan backpacks.

Wintel.4873:

I think people are focusing way too much on new GM traits with zero thought given to what trait-lines they are sitting in (what if that line is terrible for the build?), or what GM traits people have to lose to gain the new ones.

I know ANet has stretched the whole “wait for meta to settle yo” thing way beyond reason, but in this particular case it would really be quite wise to wait. Some of the traits may turn out to be horribly broken/OP/UP but only time will tell.

The justified negative reactions stem from the fact that they are yet again doing something related to traits and not core fundamental issues with professions. I know that I’d rather hear the team saying that they are reorganizing traits among professions and seriously tackling things like stealth, burst, conditions, cc/kb/kd, weapons, …, …., …., to lay the groundwork for major improvements and overhauls. Unfortunately, though, it looks like the same ol’ same ol’.

MrDmajor.7084:

Guys, please help me understand.

In a game where there is no “healers”, no tanking, no significant crowd control or positional control, what “different” types of builds is Arena Net trying to promote with the recent nerf to critical damage and castration of Celestial Gear?

In a game where conditional damage is an afterthought what other builds need to be promoted? Damage is king in GW2. That’s what they wanted right? I understand there is a build meta in PvP and WvWvW but can you guys explain to me what are these different builds that needed to be promoted for PvE?

Can anybody describe these builds, and how they benefit from this new change? Thanks.

the core designs of professions are basic, shallow and extremely limited. “builds” and “build diversity” come from grinding out, crafting or buying new sets of gear to support # and % changes. there is nothing special or notable to see here, this game is one big economic playground designed to drain gold from players so they buy gems from the cash shop.

lordhelmos.7623:

I’ve been away from Guildwars 2 for awhile now, although I barely log on to the game I do keep track of the changes to see if ranger is worth playing.

Looking at the new traits, I can see that the ranger is being shoe-horned into a defensive playstyle. It seems that the devs are terrified to give the class any kind of damage and through flawed design, damage is the gold source of Gw2.

Everything revolves around damage, from mob tagging, loot rewards, effectiveness, etc.

While the ranger is being developed as a defensive attrition class, the problem is that there is no reward for this kind of playstyle.

No players want defensive classes because you can just dodge most attacks and all the content is designed around max damage and 1 shot kills from boss mobs that none of the toughness in the world will save you against.

WvW contribution and player tagging is based on damage done and how much AE you can drop.

SPVP point holding is the only gametype that doesn’t punish defensive play but is only touched by a small community.

Based on the class description, I rolled my ranger as an archer. High ranged damage is something that really has no place in guildwars 2. Even if it was, the ranger is overshadowed by rifle warriors and burst killshot.

We have access to 3 different kinds of ranged weapons (axe, sbow, lbow) and there is absolute no appreciation in the game for the ranged damage dealer type.

To utilize the effectiveness of the longbow you have to plunge into a world filled with teleporting/Low-CD gap closer classes and permastealth backstab thieves while you sacrifice everything you have just to get decent damage out of the longbow (which requires just about all your traits).

I for one thought this would be a game with options and varying playstyles. But this seems far from the case with the ranger.

Everynow and then I check back to see if the stale playstyle of the ranger has changed, but it doesn’t seem to be going that way.

I’ve lost my interest on checking back on it anymore.

great post!

SonOfJacob.7396:

Delar.9456:

The only thing GW2 can pump out is mass Zerg content which requires no skill, minimal participation and extremely rudimentary team work.

I tried reading this entire thread, but it became tedious due to the endless beotching, so I started skimming and saw this part of a comment. I’m pretty sure that phrase “rudimentary team work” is highly dependent on WHAT you are doing in game and HOW you are doing it.

I totally get that you are referencing PvE, not WvW, but seriously – go play something that you find fun rather than complain on the forum (no offense meant to you, it’s just that a TON of people do this and all I can think is that the game is much larger than the PvE stuff). Here’s an example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlh-DBLjzYk

top level players and teams are not playing this game because professions and combat are shallow, and there has been very little improvement in these two areas for almost 2 years. also, the forums are here so we can share thoughts, opinions, info, ideas and concerns so i’ll turn this back around on you. if you don’t like reading criticism from players that hope to see improvements, then get off the forums and continue playing the game you are content with. no, not everyone is constructive with their feedback, but simply made (and more accurate in my opinion) general thoughts hardly deserve the white knight treatment.

Forzani.2584:

blud.8174:

blud.8174:

This feels like I’m getting hustled.

At least make the thing a major trait. It would only make sense if they really buffed longbow’s damage because as it is, my autoattack pales in comparison to other classes’ autoattacks.

The most frustrating thing is that they could have discussed this in the CDI and received feedback or something (because I really wonder if any of the balance team seriously plays ranger enough to have an idea of what the player who mains ranger experiences.)

Okay so I’ve done some critical thinking and looked at the other profession forums and this is what I’ve found:

It must be awful to be a dev reading reactions after a release like this. Nearly every forum feels that their new GM trait is lackluster, that it’s in the wrong trait line, and that no one at anet must play their class.

The notable exceptions are thieves and mesmers who are more satisfied than the others with their new GM trait. Also found that 4 of the classes had jokes about the ranger on the first page.

How I feel now : Shooting projectiles from long range gives you some defense against harsh melee attacks, but that should come with a cost. Correct me if I’m wrong, but similar projectile attacks on other classes are also vulnerable to strafing. I still feel that it is too little for a GM trait (combine it with Eagle eye please) but here’s the thing: like Allie said, our thing should be masters of sustained damage (burst is dodgeable, but persistent attacks can wreak havoc).

So one scenario I think this would be useful is when you have an opponent that you’ve almost downed when they start to run away. Normally they’d be able to dodge through your rapid fire for example, but this way the foe will be increasing damage to themselves by adding range to our autoattack and he’ll more likely take that damage too.

I am being a positive optimist. Besides, you wouldn’t show your best hand first and then reveal the lesser ones so maybe it’s worth waiting to see.

P. S. Go watch the anet zerg in EOTM from two ready ups ago. There’s only one ranger amongst them and he’s running hyena.

Good post. anet is far from perfect, but people wonder why they don’t make more appearances in the cesspool that are the forums?

Also agree that plunking from 1800 units shouldn’t do as much consistent damage as compared to being in melee range…especially an auto attack

to be fair, anet dug the hole for the cesspool with their pr manifesto machine.

Avigrus.2871:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Maybe there’s never a good solution because the foundational design is flawed.

^ This. They really need to spend some time re-working the class.

Buff the survivability, buff the group utility, whatever… but thief stealth is currently the worst iteration of stealth that I’ve experienced in any MMO I’ve played. Of course, poorly skilled stealth spam thieves will defend this mechanikittenil they are blue in the face.

good posts y’all!

professions are full of fundamental design flaws, and I get the feeling that anet will compound those problems as opposed to fixing or reworking things.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ohoni.6057:

Looks like another low blow for rangers. I’m starting to think Anet really does hold something against them at this point.

Faster arrows? Yeah, ok, good luck finding anyone who will use that over another trait.

It really is a kitten move. That trait should be free for all players “your arrows will actually hit things and do damage now!,” not something that you have to trait into. At absolute maximum it should be a 25-point minor trait.

Seriously, 100g per trait…even suggesting that seems ludicrous to me. Maybe 10g a trait, max.

10g? What, are we rolling in money like TP farmers now? No, 1g, maximum, and that’s only for the GM ones. The master traits should be 25s, the Adept ones 1s. If they plan on charging more than that then they’ll need to overhaul the economy to be more rewarding for those that don’t play the markets.

I hope this is a joke… you can get 10g is like 45 minutes. If it is anything less than 20g there will be no point in doing the activities since it will be faster and cheaper to just buy it from the vendor.

Master traits can be 1g, those aren’t that important, but grandmaster need to be 20g minimum or the change is completely pointless.

I would say 50g puts it at a nice price point where most people will want to go out and hunt for them, but if you are lazy you can still save up for a week and buy it.

that’s pretty funny Zudet!

Fluffball.8307:

Swagger.1459:

Terravos.4059:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkmR2hv8koY

This is me playing a Backstab Thief

If you don’t have an invul…I will one shot you most likely

awesome! welp, guess it’s officially time to finish leveling and gearing up my thief.

Just to clarify, because swagger never does, he is being VERY sarcastic. This video is horrific.

(clearly working for me now, wish I could have responded to this myself.)

I wasn’t being sarcastic. watching videos like that reminds me of how poor the ranger performs in wvw and how fun it would be to own face and troll people.

Terravos.4059:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkmR2hv8koY

This is me playing a Backstab Thief

If you don’t have an invul…I will one shot you most likely

awesome! welp, guess it’s officially time to finish leveling and gearing up my thief.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

ipan.4356:

Unlocking traits through content is a great idea though.

I’d even remove the option to buy them from vendors.

While we think going out into the world to unlock traits is a cool reward for completing specific content, we wanted to have an alternative option in case that wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. There are many different kinds of players. =)

Awesome! This game would definitely benefit from a healthy dose of alternative options when it comes to rewards, progression, profession roles, build diversity, etc, etc. Also, it would be great to have different methods of obtaining ascended gear because crafting and relying on RNG are not everyone’s cup of tea.

Before the trait changes… The unparalleled archer and attrition master Ranger, along with his trusty and useless pet, are being laughed at by the Warrior standing still absorbing arrow attacks while his buddy the Thief does the Nightcrawler act and bursts you down in seconds.

After the trait changes… The unparalleled archer and attrition master Ranger, along with his/her trusty and useless pet, are still being laughed at by the Warrior standing still absorbing arrow attacks while his buddy the Thief does the Nightcrawler act and bursts you down in seconds.

Bryzy.2719:

EDIT: to be clear, this isn’t a thread “picking on” mesmers. This is a thread criticising Anet’s ability to balance and introduce fair traits given the sheer volumes of feedback they’ve been getting.

Doubling the enemy’s cooldowns on interrupt? I…I just can’t.

It hasn’t even been implemented yet and everyone can already see it’s going to be overpowered. Mesmers don’t NEED such an unnecessarily powerful buff – they’re one of the top classes right now with the utility, sheer amount of stealth and frankly frustrating amount of clones they have making them one of the worst professions to 1v1 with. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they are overpowered as things currently stand.

But it’s not just the mesmer trait either…. Guardians getting THREE THOUSAND more HP at level 80?

What do Rangers get? 2x faster arrows. Something so simple that should be implemented as standard, and not brought in as a Grandmaster trait. I know these are just 1 of several new traits, but it just goes to show Rangers are on the verge of being shafted once again. It also shows that little attention has been paid to the discussion of Ranger bows in the CDI.

I’m trying to reserve judgment, but I have a feeling that professions, combat, conditions, cc, burst mechanics, stealth, …, …, … are going to get much worse before they get better.

Kanenas.4906:

Make all Stealth Attacks (Backstab, Tactical Strike, Sneak Attack, etc) cost 2 initiative.
If the attack hits, the thief will take back 2 initiative.
If the attack does not hit due to block, immunity, dodge, blind etc no initiative is returned.

This change will promote skillful play from thieves (not spam 111 for 4 seconds until it hits), it will bring the D/P closer to balance vs D/D, and will also reward the thief’s opponents for dodging or blocking the right time (this is a huge one).

This comes from a thief player. I hope this change will be enough to stop all this “thief is OP” meta, and will make fighting a thief more fair for defensive classes and also more enjoyable.

that’s worse than the current thief initiative mechanics.

what thieves really need (yes, all professions need work because they are terrible)…
-attacks on cool down like everyone else.
-better base hp.
-opening attack and long cool down emergency escape only stealth mechanics. so no stealth while actively in combat.
-burst toned down (applies to all profession attacks that have ridiculous damage numbers).

this is coming from a thief and someone who played a much faster paced game where everyone in pvp had access to abilities like stealth, invisibility and an invulnerability state called phase.

Charak.9761:

Wouldn’t you think? Really nothing for us to do at the moment… I mean really you could of had that bar scene in-game during the battle anyways.

no counter looter events maybe?

No, more downtime like this will serve anet as a reminder that they need to step up to the plate and make professions and regular gameplay better if they want to keep players interested for the long run.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Slowpoke.2749:

“Dye unlocks now come only from crafting and from the gem store.”

One pack is two and a half euros. A subscription is around thirteen euros, give or take a few euros depending on the game and possible discount for making a bulk purchase. So for that amount I can choose to obtain five packs (adding up to 25 common and 10 uncommon or rare) in GW2 or get full access to all items in another game for a month.

Uh-huh.

Wildstar offers 250+ account bound dyes and you only have to pay $15 a month and that includes all the features not just the dyes (such as teleport your whole party to you every 60 minutes ($15 for a single person on an 8 hour CD in GW2 China)).

You would need to play Wildstar a full year in order to spend the same amount of money just to use all the dyes in this new dye system in GW2…

Cool, but do you think WS will have an intensive pace of profession balance and improvement patches like GW2?

Feature patch April 15th.

Balance patch June iirc.

Also, I know the balance patch had been delayed until summer, but it will be at least October by the time the profession CDI are done so don’t expect anything meaningful to come to fruition until 2015.

Sanduskel.1850:

What I took away:
1. There is no compromise to be made on removing pets from rangers or giving rangers an option to trade higher dps for no pets.

2. Pet AI is tied to mob AI animation. As a result, the broken pet skills and inability to hit moving targets cannot or will not be fixed (because it’s too expensive to fix)

So since neither 2 nor 1 can be addressed, I am puzzled as to what else is there to discuss? We all agree that broken pets are the problem, yet no quarter will be given to address the root cause. It seems as though any other changes are pointless without these being addressed. What am I missing?

they will probably move around traits, have pets take less damage from aoe and make traps combo fields then call it a done deal.

also, lesson to be learned from the cdi… anything requiring a real effort and resources will not be done because they will take the path of least coding and cash resistance. all while waving the AAA flag and putting more effort into generating gems sales.

Overall, the big problem is that professions have a severe lack of options and play styles. The main roles for classes are damage with a bit of control and support and that is not enough to sustain player interest or retention for the long run.

Orpheal.8263:

RoyalPredator.9163:

To be honest, TORMENT is one if not the best “Hunter condition” available.
If it not stops/slows down the target, it bleeds him out. So LB/GS shall have it.

What about moving all the pet-shouts to the Pet Control Bar?
Is it really reasonable to put them into the ultility slots? I don’t think so.
I’ts like I can’t start the car engine in the morning because I’ve already used

1. Wake Up!
2. Flush-da-Poop
3. Boilin’ Coffee
   and then the only elite remain
4. [MONDAY]

One might look again into my Skill Suggestions on the early pages….

I find it funny, how tons of pages later a discussion arises arount longbows + torment, when I suggested lots of pages earlier already with my skill suggestions to give Rangers more Torment – especially with a redesign of the Hunter’s Shot by removign the stealth effect and adding torment to it, making Rangers more like the toxic alliance rangers in regard of their skills, which spam you literally full with poison, bleeds and torment.

This shows me again, how many people don’t really read skill suggestions and don’t really think things well through, that something that someone suggests really might be better, than they personally think, cause of them self reviewing the made ideas from a different viewpoint perhaps, than the person, who has written the idea…

As a reminder:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/3#post3683330

Well, most of us did not read every suggestion so don’t let it bother you . Besides, the past track record and developer comments indicates that nothing of lasting value will be done anytime soon so don’t get yer pants in a bunch with the players. Most of us are frustrated as well so take it out on the people who put more resources and effort into the art and graphics, npcs and game economy as opposed to professions.

Hawke.9013:

It works. I don’t mean to burst A-Net’s bubble with the whole, “ground shaking” idea of removing the trinity, but there’s a reason why every MMO uses it. It’s not as frustrating as every mob being uncontrollable; since, with no tank I guess that’s what A-Net wants. As a thief, it is very frustrating to have a boss turn around and one shot you in a split second. Everything PvE oriented is uncontrolled, and very badly structured.

This lack of holy trinity accounts for the reason why the endgame of GW2 is so bad. Raids for example are not feasible since it would be too hectic, and not very fun. Dungeons are the farthest you get, even then as a melee you’d be constantly hopping back to dodge a backswing, that you might as well re-roll Mesmer.

I don’t know about others, but while forming groups for dungeons there is always a need of a tank, A-Net will never officially take away the trinity anyways, guardians will always be there for tanking. As a thief, will always NOT tank.

With the holy trinity everything is controlled and theres no “WTF” unless it’s your fault because you didn’t move out of the bad. WoW’s endgame is very much so superior to GW2’s, and will forever be, unless some sort of trinity is occurring. And GW2 will always be inferior for this reason.

anet could have been much more creative with professions (see games like gw1 and coh), but they chose to go the cheap route and will continue to do so.

Lily.1935:

You know, this has been bugging me for a while. And I just feel cheated. I really don’t like the fact that professions are now going to be balanced based on popularity. Which profession deserves the most help right now? Well. The Engineer needs some skill and trait tweaks, the Ranger needs some skill and trait tweaks and their pet needs a little bit of help. The Elementalist needs some skill and trait tweaks. And the necromancer needs skill and trait tweaks and a complete overhaul of death shroud and their life stealing and their minion AI to be fixed. Not to mention their inability to escape combat.

I’ve also been looking at what the statistics are for the most popular professions are and most of what I’ve found puts Warrior at the top, followed closely by Elementalist and Ranger. And Mesmer, Engineer and Necromancer at the bottom. I see this as a major problem considering that, excluding mesmer because that’s Anet’s baby, because these professions are not getting the attention they really deserve.

Back in GW1 we had useless professions. Some as bad as the necro or engi are now and some worse. The Ritualist being in a worse position was stuck being unusable in PvE for years before they finally got a complete overhaul. While the Dervish, which was closer in usability to the necro or engi now, had to wait years before they got a complete overhaul. And those professions were extremely unpopular for a long long time before a well needed buff.

I’m going to compare the dervish to the necromancer of GW2 really quick because I feel their stories are rather similar. The Dervish was broken when it first came out. It could run around with no armor and never die. But after it got nerfed into the ground, it was nearly unusable. And this was only a short duration after it came out. Necromancer in Beta was nearly unkillable. And then it got nerfed(and is still getting nerfed) into the ground. What ended up helping the dervish was a complete overhaul. And it was needed. The nature of the beast was changed, but the heart of the profession stayed the same. I feel a sense of Déjà vu when I see whats going on with the necromancer in GW2 because we have seen this before.

Death shroud’s design is flawed. The Concept is something that I really like. However, Any one who plays the profession knows just how flawed the mechanic is. And how detrimental to play it can be. And this counter intuitive design that it has with the other major defensive thing the necromancer does, life stealing.

But that’s my opinion.

we were all cheated because profession designs are subpar.

don’t worry, these cdi threads will amount to very little in the end anyway.

Palador.2170:

We’ll actually find out that while that was the “real” Scarlet, it wasn’t the only Scarlet. Trying to escape the voices in her head, she tried to copy her mind into a new body, only to wind up in two.

The second body is a mix of golem, twisted watchwork, and toxic hybrid. Get ready for Scarlet Briar ver 2.0: Scarlet Wire.

very interesting.

spiritus.7983:

Swagger.1459:

OmaiGodman.2098:

I have just two questions:

1. What have you been smoking?
2. Where can I get some?

:D

It’s called Toxic Alliance Chronic and can be found all over Maguuma Jungle.

I’m not sure my dealer have this, give me your dealer contacts ^^

you and your dealer can collect it yourselves by using the unlimited harvesting sickle

Kraljevo.2801:

Impossible! I mean… I mean…, I finished her with a cow on her face. She can’t be alive!

Right…. Right???

guess we will have to wait to find out.

OmaiGodman.2098:

I have just two questions:

1. What have you been smoking?
2. Where can I get some?

:D

It’s called Toxic Alliance Chronic and can be found all over Maguuma Jungle.

Somehow, I get the feeling Scarlet and Taimi are in cahoots and that Taimi rezzes her after we escape the ship. Also, with the dragon finally awake to cause mayhem, Scarlet will regroup her alliances while Taimi enslaves the Asuran race and traps them in golem suits. Players will then have to face off against a formidable triple threat while helping Rox and Braham form a relationship.

I hope the above theory to be true because that would make for a great plot line and story.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Do keep in mind though, I am not a designer. I am a community coordinator. It is my job to help promote constructive discussion and make sure the devs know about how the community is feeling.

Please pass this along.

*I’m going to use “we” below because I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Despite the negative feedback and hard time we give you folks, we like you all and the game you have created. You are a creative bunch of hard working people and that is clear by what you have produced so far. Yes, this game is still growing and changing, but the most important thing right now is to seriously work on the weakest area. That area happens to be profession development.

I came from an ncsoft game where the development team poured their heart and soul into professions, but sadly I don’t see that here. I do see, though, very little investment of time and resources going to the most important aspect of this game. It’s disappointing to see what appears to be a “professions are good enough” attitude from the team through patch notes and forum comments. I know this game is still young and that development takes time, trial and error, but during the ongoing process of managing and improving every aspect of the game you all need to remember that professions are always #1. Your team is failing to put professions first and that’s a big problem because it affects every part of gameplay. Do you guys and gals want to improve pve, pvp, wvw, eotm, dungeons, fractals, ls content, personal story, leveling, player retention…, …, …? Of course you do, so reinvest resources, time, blood, sweat and tears to make professions cause a positive ripple effect throughout the entire game. Anything short of a strong investment at this point would be a foolish mistake.

Flytrap.8075:

The gulf between Warrior’s and Ranger’s gameplay is so staggering that I’m shocked you decided to compare the two.

Even if you just look at the infamous Hambow build, you can see that the synergy between the two weapon sets vastly outweighs those available to Ranger. There are numerous combos that you can pull off with Longbow/Hammer, and both weapons offer a visual impact that Ranger noticeably lacks (aside from the animal overlays on some weapon skills which I think are pretty neat). Whereas Warrior gives me a powerful, fluid vibe, Ranger just feels spammy and clunky.

When you throw traits into the mix, the difference becomes even more noticeable; Warrior has a lot of options available to them that work well with numerous builds (Dogged March, Cleansing Ire) and noticeably enhance their class mechanic, while Ranger traits tend to be more static and have this all-or-nothing mentality behind them (traps, signets, spirits).

There is a stark difference between “gimmicky” combat elements (pistol whip spam on Thief) and synergistic combos (D/D Elementalist flow), and I’m not sure why you chose to throw the two in the same boat.

“When you play a condi-necro and can dance through your buttons to put a bleed on the target & yourself with utility, then use your off-hand to move your bleed to them, then use a utility to copy all those bleed to all enemies in the area while putting conditions on yourself, then use your heal to cleanse those conditions and gain bonus healing for doing so… you know that playing those out of order or having to respond to changing circumstances will affect your performance.”

“Compared to that, ranger gameplay is just dull.”

the bolded above is what I was responding to.

having professions that require more tapping, swapping, cool down managing, positioning, press this-after this-after this-after this to do this and specific set ups to produce certain or similar results in this game translates to being gimmicky and not synergistic. some professions controls are designed to be more straight forward and streamlined, hence why certain professions are played more than others. the difference in profession mechanics and controls created an unnecessary difficulty curve, and that is part of the core problem I mentioned in a bunch of my posts on the forum. I understand that they wanted to make professions as unique as possible, but there are better ways to do it than requiring less or more swap and combo managing. this game would best be served by having more buttons on the bar to handle situations that have straight forward effects and results.

to put where I’m coming from into perspective…

i use to play city of heroes with 20+ alts. some were similar archetypes and some were not, but all of them were familiar to pick up and play. for the most part, controls and the way powers worked were much more straight forward. when i pressed a button it had and immediate effect and result, i didn’t have to jump through hoops to get the desired outcome, unlike here with certain profession mechanics. i had my options laid out on the combat bar at the ready and not hidden behind swaps and favorable weather conditions.

Nike.2631:

Allie Murdock.8152:

I get the biggest issue seems to revolve around pets. I’ve also seen a couple others (utilities not being viable unless spec’d into them, burst vs sustain, traps, spirit clutter, etc.).

I get frustrated by the simple lack of synergy between skills. When you play a condi-necro and can dance through your buttons to put a bleed on the target & yourself with utility, then use your off-hand to move your bleed to them, then use a utility to copy all those bleed to all enemies in the area while putting conditions on yourself, then use your heal to cleanse those conditions and gain bonus healing for doing so… you know that playing those out of order or having to respond to changing circumstances will affect your performance.

Compared to that, ranger gameplay is just dull. You occasionally can stack up a few ‘on next hit’ buffs to pump a single maul, but their weapon skills and utilities mostly feel like oatmeal. There is no difference in what happens if I cast my traps in different orders. there’s no combos, no special order or special timing for many, many Ranger skills.

As a general statement there are also far too many ranger traits that reduce cooldown and nothing else – in other professions we’ve seen a steady march towards combing the 20% cooldown with a secondary flavorful effect. Rangers have good effects but they are spread out across too many traits. A little combining or making certain effcts default behavior of the class would go a long way towards injecting not just raw power, but some cool into a class that sorely needs it.

I like you nike, but part of the problem with professions is that there are too many gimmicky and situational mechanics stuffed into a too few buttons on the bar. there are reasons why warrior and ranger are the most played class, and part of that reason is that they are more straight forward compared. this is not a console game, despite having professions, the ui and controls being built similar to one, and the majority of players don’t want to have to jump through hoops in a circus act to perform certain things. this game needs less situational and combo mechanics because these gameplay gimmicks would not be labeled fun, considered deep or would be described as synergy by most. this game will continue to go sour if they give all classes the thiefish and elementalistish treatments. anet and the playerbase would best be served by adding more weapon, skill and ultility slots on the combat bar so options, choices and effects are up front and not hidden behind swaps and perfect set ups.

Svarty.8019:

I think it would help the community to understand, in order to provide the community with a better understanding, what the logic behind the trait lines is. This will give us the ability to provide much more useful feedback in the Collaborative Development Initiative.

It appears, from my non-developer perspective, that the traits for all classes are randomly distributed around the lines, without rhyme nor reason.

Could someone please illustrate a train of thought behind some of these lines, as in most cases they don’t seem to synergise in any way whatsoever?

Professions were poorly thought out and implemented.

/thread

Allie Murdock.8152:

I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

The core problems are that professions and the UI are overly limited in design. I understand you wanted to avoid balancing nightmares, and to stay away from the WoW UI clutter, but you went to the extreme and shot yourselves in the foot in the process. GW1 had a great amount of build options while having a limited UI, and that seemed to work out better, but I’d argue that if you were to design professions, power/ability options and a UI similar to what City of Heroes offered, it would put professions and combat in a much better place overall. Not only would you be able offer players a ton more build options, but you would tremendously increase content replay value.

In addition to the above, profession controls and mechanics are not streamlined so it does not feel familiar or easy to pick up and play any profession. For example, compare warrior controls and mechanics vs an elementalist. One is designed to be straight forward, while the other is all about being a twitch and swap pro. Fundamentally, that is a problem because it alienates players from certain professions. Profession choice should be more about taste as opposed to preferred or easier controls.

While we can argue about what classes should or could look like, and how to work on things like conditions, burst, stealth, counter stealth, pets…, I believe the first step to improving professions and combat are by creating more skills, abilities, weapons… and to have more options up front on the UI as opposed to hidden behind swaps and long cool downs.

Anyway, I’m trying to condense my thoughts for your sanity and because I’m typing from a phone so I hope I made myself clear enough and understandable. Also, if you are not familiar with City of Heroes, I’d suggest you visit the wiki and download mid’s hero designer so you can gain a much better insight on far superior profession systems, combat mechanics and UI.

Big Tower.5423:

I just did a 97000 crit to the scarlet hologram! 97 K! no might or bloodlust involved….

Nerf Thieves!

Noodle.1752:

Swagger.1459:

Thanks for bringing this up. I’ve mentioned it a couple of times already, but we need an option to increase the field of view and to be able to disable or reduce particle effect as well. Implementing these options needs to be treated as a priority period.

An option for this would be outstanding, and I agree it is needed. Way way too much going on, that it becomes hard to focus or see anything in the battles besides a mash of color on my screen.

This issue has been raised many times before and I’m disappointed that it has not become a priority issue for anet. I think we should send some pms to the dev team requesting these improvements.

Thanks for bringing this up. I’ve mentioned it a couple of times already, but we need an option to increase the field of view and to be able to disable or reduce particle effect as well. Implementing these options needs to be treated as a priority period.

Scarlet was driven mad by a broken heart because she was not able to find anything she loved from GW1. That big drill in LA is her last effort to find something.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Apart from competition and prestige, what kind of things are most attractive to the high-level players?

below answer applies to all game modes…

an above average class and combat system that is backed by a game company who does not settle for mediocrity.

Chrispy.5641:

The thread was dead to me at about the point where I was clicking on the names of 90% of those posters in that thread, and realizing that most of them have never made a Ranger related post before.

I’m not saying thats bad, I’m just asking, “why did 50 + of you suddenly and finally pick this week to voice your concerns for the Ranger profession and finally post ideas?”

I assume most of them were former Ranger players that learned their lesson early and rerolled, but had a shred of hope left. I’m also assuming that their hope is fully gone by now after reading the feedback.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Yeah. The CDI sparked some hope for me when it was announced. But whatever, I hope they can at least change the description on the profession selection menu so new players won’t be steered to some misconception of the class.

awesome pic!

Great posts! Thanks MonMalthias!

“General” Profession and Combat Notes
-Professions and combat need a huge reinvestment. I’m sure out of the $100,000,000 earned over the past year you all could negotiate to get some resources and fix the most important aspects of this game.
-The slower than a turtle paced profession development philosophy and continued trait number reshuffling are not healthy for the game. Time to shift philosophy gears and speed up implementation.
-Condition/CC/KB/KD stacking needs stricter limits and timers between reapplication after being cleansed should be introduced.
-High burst and damage attacks need to be toned down period. 1 or 2 hit kills from players or “normalish” npcs should not exist.
-HP disparities between professions should be reduced.
-Thief weapons should be on timers like everyone else.
-Stealth rules and counter stealth need a major rework.
-Each profession needs equality in condition removal and movement.
-Research City of Heroes for major tips and inspiration on how to improve professions, weapons, weapon customization, build diversity and options, combat, conditions/cc, kb/kd, stealth, …, …, …, everything.

Ranger specific stuff below…

PvX Ranger Proposal Overview
-Less DoT/Condition damage and more “raw” damage across the weapon board.
-If you are not willing to make the damage changes suggested above, then you should increase attack speed for all ranger weapon attacks.
-Traits are all over and placement on many does not make sense. Neither does bleeding more only from the side or back, but that’s another story.
-Petless ranger option. Sorry, I know it will take work and resources, but it needs to happen.
-Idea while typing… Reorganize and fix traits. Choosing or not choosing Beastmaster Trait line becomes the pet/petless ranger option. Pet out provides whatever % damage debuff to Ranger but acts as an aoe buff for self and team. Idk, but better than what is going on now.
-Fix sword attacks finally by cutting out the gimmicky movements. Think about Thief dagger #2 inspired clean attacks and evasions.
-After you rework stealth, Rangers need more. Call it camouflage or whatever, but it’s fitting for this profession.

Goal of Proposal
To improve professions and combat in this game.

Proposal Functionality
My general suggestions proposal works fantastically awesome in relation to the current design of GW2 and increases player retention and game revenue.

Associated Risks
There are no risks or problems with my proposal. I do not need assistance from other members of the CDI.

Associated Rewards
Devs are happy because ncsoft is happy because players are happily spending their money and referring their friends to play.

Thank you!

P.S. Logging in to do my daily soon so I can earn my laurel for possible future use on Ascended weapons and armor. Be back soon to read more of this thread and provide more great ideas.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Still better than my experience. I put around 800 hours into this awful game and could count the number of rares I got on one hand. Oh and I got zero exotics, of course zero ascended, and no precursors. No minis either. This is the most unrewarding garbage I’ve ever played.

that’s what happens when an entire reward system is designed around getting players to use the trading post as a gold sink and to encourage gem purchases and conversions.