Guild Wars 2

Joining the club!

Let’s do this boiz!

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fivedawgs.4267:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Fivedawgs.4267:

Nova Stiker.8396:

suffish.4150:

Nova Stiker.8396:

suffish.4150:

I have no idea how you think it wasn’t great to watch. There were so many kills, there were actually some comebacks (including one absolutely incredible one that even if all other games were awful it would have made the finals worth watching), and there were close matches. I also loved seeing the search and rescue play in the second semi final(I really don’t want it nerfed now just because of how awesome it was to watch in the pro league even though I did before). I will admit that the first semi final could have been more exciting and close but the other 2 matches were awesome to watch. Maybe people say they don’t like it because they simply don’t like the concept of gw2 e-sports but as someone who does really like watching the e-sport events that are held, the finals were amazing and I quite literally can’t wait for season 2 which will use the same meta.

Question for you, what happened to that caused the come back?

The one on temple? Vermilion got a load of kills on abjured players and managed to decap all their points so with about 1 minute left it was 1 cap to 0 in favour of vermilion and they also got tranquility and held a 3 cap for the rest of the game to win 500-477.
In total it was about a 200 point comeback.

This is exactly what I mean, you have no idea what exactly caused the come back.

What skills did they use during that key moment? How much was the damage? How much was the sustain? Was it good positioning? Was it bad positioning? What mistakes were made?

Dumbest post NA!! Like was it supposed to know it after one watch? ? Get you asinine logic out of here. Like who has that great of attention span to know who what went wrong.

And I also agree with the OP the finals were awesome.

“It was awesome! I don’t even know what happened! Literally, I had no idea what was going on, some people where hit by something, some died, some didn’t die.”
~ Fivedawgs.4267

You see why so many people treat Guild Wars 2 Esport as a joke?

I can watch League of Legends or even Super Smash Brothers and can tell you what is skills and strategies are being used. Guild Wars 2 PvP is reduced to a spam-fest with 3-4 traits proc’ing every 10 seconds.

Who said I didn’t know what happen?? Abjured sent way too many people to tranquility and couldn’t keep their home point .. that’s what cost them the game. Wait, how long/often have you being playing smh bro and lol?? Anyone who has, at least, being playing gw2 for a year or two would have no problem knowing which skills were used etc… And also Lol esport camera doesn’t show which skills are being use, so I don’t know what you are getting that. And here are my suggestion to you: learn the game and learn the classes.

Learn the game, coming from a Ruby player? HAHAHAHA! Get on my level. You can get to legendary by grinding matches on a Dragonhunter, yet, you’re in Ruby?

Also, who went to tranq? How did they lose tranq? You don’t even know.

Do you want us to count every single AA here Nova?

I want to believe good SPvP players understand the mechanics and amount of damage different attacks do. It might be hard to pick off a signet of malice in the midst of a UA, Swirling Winds, Meteor Shower, Reaper Shroud skills with whirling finishers but as PvP players who can read the action we can know what happens when someone dips fast…if the camera is at the right location at the right time. (They gotta work on that…)

They need to do more to improve new player viewership, simply screaming out ‘Nos goes down! He’s getting Spiked!’ when a flurry of animations are going off is not helping.

I went on a bit of a tangent there, but back to your question of ‘What caused the comeback’? Abjured mishandled Tranquility twice, not just against Vermilion but 55 as well which boggles my mind. I know for a fact Abj is an absolute monster at rotation, which confuses me as to why when they had a slight edge at Tranquility in both instances that they never thought to send at least 1 player to at least decap their home node and slow Verm or 55’s point gain down. Actually further reflection here, Abjured had issues finishing either team off completely in the wide space of that Tranq room as compared to how well they do on points or in confined spaces or ledges. Distance is key here, Verm and 55 kept sending at least 1 live player to stall out 2 or more Abj at Tranq, and after rotating for a 2 cap at least (with Stillness 4 cap at times) they pressured Abj at Tranq, Abj got outplayed by being forced to commit.

spoj.9672:

That said. I will take back everything if anet manage to somehow make him intimidating. For example he morphs during the fight into a grotesque beast (angry quaggan type thing). Or Mordremoths corruption or other magic causes him to explode/mutate into something else. The adds however are a joke. I seriously hope those are not what we are going to see.

I was just talking about this with some friends of mine.

I mean, it is a sloth beast, but why does it have Slugminions?

I think it might phase into some more eldritch looking…Innocent at first but it gets ruthless as the fight progresses is my train of thought.

Swagger.1459:

fireflyry.7023:

maddoctor.2738:

Please post some more with that “etc etc” because the above are hardly any kind of problem.

Nah I’m done….being that this thread is 22 pages deep says it all and being it’s the same 5 dudes every friggin time…as in EVERY FRIGGIN TIME on this forum I’m done. Haven’t logged in here in months and what do you know….same group, same posters, running to the games defense.

If anyone has something other than praise for this game and how awesome HoT is for everyone look out. You defend the expac like it’s your first born child..and if it aint at fault it’s the player who has the problem.

kitten ….you guys just don’t give in.

All hail the White Knights.

Sorry casuals….HoT is amazing. My bad.

Funny thing is that they are going to make HoT much more casual friendly. Watch the latest episode of “whatever the name” chat.

Here ya go…

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/fun-on-a-time-budget-on-guild-chat-a-summary/

I doubt they might hit the underlying systems behind the maps, such as DS meta. They might impact the cost of certain currency items though as a start which likely won’t resolve the “issues” certain ‘casual’ players are having…

People hate change I guess.

I have fought a myriad of diabolical monstrosities and creatures. Everything from Giant Dragons from WoW to Hutt Mercenary Bosses and their droids in SWTOR. Titanic Beasts far and wide!

But I was certainly not prepared to see This as a possible raid encounter.

I have no words, I…I think this is one of those things you never wanted until it came into existence.

Well. Played.

kolompi.1287:

DaikonSamurai.6714:

And yeah a lot of people are waiting for SAB. That would bring people back.

SAB is not GW2 though. It’s a separate 3d platformer inside GW2. If people would come back just for that, that would be hilarious irony.

SAB was by far and large the best ‘activity’ they put into GW2, it is not so ironic at all especially when old players who do not need HoT can just hop into the box and play.

Is it so ironic when we have RP communities or PvE communities or PvX communities? Not to demean but GW2 has the Walmart ‘Bargain Bin’ of cultures, we have everyone!

Belenwyn.8674:

Obtena.7952:

I think I wasn’t too clear. I acknowledge there are clever ways to avoid direct enrage timers by the kinds of DPS checking mechanics you describe but make no mistake, whether it’s a number of DPS checks IN the encounter or one big final one on the boss with a timer, it’s still the same thing.

I’m looking for someone to suggest a way that is NOT a DPS check to ensure players don’t cheese encounters with ultratank/Heal builds.

One solution would be a reverse toughness/healing power check. A certain threshold triggers certain events. You are too heavy and break through the floor. Your weight triggers a trap that makes the boss invulnerable. Excessive healing power summons more adds.

Or the encounter scales upon a certain healing power and toughness level.

I hate to burst your bubble, but from a development and a player standpoint those kinds of checks you suggested would be a logistical nightmare.

Can you imagine how many times a group has to retry the encounter from scratch before they find the exact formula of toughness or healing power so they can actually attempt it?

Can you imagine the work involved to develop these limitations and compute calculations of the raid’s stats before and during combat where such values might vary thanks to buffs like Banners?

You could bring Blizzard Raid Devs over and they too would be scratching their heads. Those particular suggestions on making a tank/healing friendly encounter are Not the way to go.

If you want something of that nature, you instead create encounters made with those roles in mind to dominate. Create an encounter where you need to have different toughness players or tanks rotate between a boss and side-bosses while the DPS and heals run everywhere. Maybe create a healing based encounter where you need to upkeep regeneration and revive NPCs to survive. Things like that are better suited and more practical to balance.

Is S&R supposed to allow you to pop it without LoS to the target?

Ricky.4706:

it’s happening to others too, i kept asking in areas i was getting it. it seems to happen only when the server map is full. recently too, i haven’t seen it this bad since early wvw.

makes me wonder if we are sharing servers with blade and soul ?

Extremely doubt the B&S servers are anywhere near the GW2 ones.

I believe there might just be issues, could be environmental based on the server locations?

Hmm…

Nah, I still like GW2. Even while WvW a pretty big focus of mine, I will be eager to play more when the ‘revamp’ comes out.

What in the actual…

Alright, this thread now outright beats anything I have previously read on the forum as ‘out of left field’.

I don’t think this is reading too much into it at this point, that’s just obsessive…

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

You know very well what the player next to you did when they covered themselves in blades, even the Chest item.

Made a poor aesthetic choice (because that’s the main thing i care about)? But then, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if someone wants to dress certain way, and find it appealing, i’m definitely not going to tell them otherwise.

Given that Arenanet saw fit to release that ‘Slayer Outfit’, I am thinking there are some players who want to look like someone from Mad Max. I was still just making an example though, I want that Heavy Leystone Armor, that helm has got that imposing brutish look.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

The question we have to ask is if this is a GOOD thing? Because on that same token, there’s no rush for getting the full armor set, you can do so at your own pace! Bladed Armor or items of that nature will always be there for players to gain…

That is actually untrue. Bladed armor will be there only for as long, as there is enough players to kill all 5 night bosses and get the map to t4. And only if you manage to get on that map. Come next expansion, when still remaining players will move to new areas, and there might be a serious problem for those that didn’t manage to get chestpiece yet.

The idea behind Megaservers was I believe to address this.

Neither of us has the numbers, but I am willing to gamble there will still be at least 1 post for each map in HoT attempting to populate to get the currency done. And the currency has many uses, we only need to look at collections to figure out the different incentive paths.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

This game probably has the largest amount of individual game cultures in it of any MMO out there. Heck, when SAB comes back I bet we will see a massive influx just from that side-game. There are just so many cultures it becomes hard to please everyone.

Pleasing a single subculture is not something that an expansion should be doing, however. Definitely not when it is the first expansion to the game.

What would you say was the only subculture pleased by this expansion? I will say though that WvW is probably not the one you might list, I think everyone knows that ‘revamp’ isn’t out yet when it should be…

@Daikon,

Been thinking about it for a long time as well, and honestly? I think it might have something to do with just how well GW2 brought in players who would have never played MMOs before.

From my perspective as a Veteran MMO player, pre-HoT GW2 had zero challenge in getting any horizontial progression done, with Liquid Gold being a main driver behind earning the vast majority of items.

Fast-forward to HoT, now certain items are behind working on a map for a currency, and the crowd who originally could get a similar kind of progression anywhere else in Tyria, likely in a gold farming spot like Frostgourge train or World Bosses, find that they have to actually play a certain map for getting say the Bladed Armor.

Is this gating? Maybe, but it also creates a sort of scarcity for the items, which brings us back to the whole horizontial progression. You know very well what the player next to you did when they covered themselves in blades, even the Chest item. And all the players who were so accustomed to being able to do anything, even the most mundane or easy of tasks, find themselves being forced to do content that is a step up from Core, but its the fact that they are being forced that drives them away.

The question we have to ask is if this is a GOOD thing? Because on that same token, there’s no rush for getting the full armor set, you can do so at your own pace! Bladed Armor or items of that nature will always be there for players to gain…

This game probably has the largest amount of individual game cultures in it of any MMO out there. Heck, when SAB comes back I bet we will see a massive influx just from that side-game. There are just so many cultures it becomes hard to please everyone.

It may just be me, but I have noticed fairly consistent overestimates from anytime KDB analysises are brought up that lead me to believe they set a certain higher expectation than reality.

Are we thinking about their reports all wrong then?

It’s a good opinion Ricky, but as you said the game has many cultures, being strictly SPvP yourself you might find it hard to believe that some people just absolutely despise fighting other players. You can easily spot them never sporting a League rank while being a veteran player, they just aren’t interested.

I think one of the big things you pointed out that I agree with is the Viper’s or other unique stats more or less stuck in PvE, unable to be really obtained in WvW. In fact, I would argue that WvWers are having the absolute worst time of everyone, and with SPvP being popular (not balanced, oh hell no its not balanced) I would gamble that SPvP might be more populated than WvW…save Eotm, frigging Edge.

Harper.4173:

Sykper.6583:

Talyn.3295:

Personally I never look at the clock while I am raiding. But if the timer bothers you there was a great suggestion here while back as to how to fix it.

Step one: Find a piece of dark colored tape.
Step two: Put it over the clock in the corner of your screen.
Step three: Play and enjoy.

/thread.

This person gets it.

They should just remove the timer but keep the enrage.

Now no one knows the exact time the boss will go into raid-wipe mode!

Except I’ll just time it with a stopwatch. Why would I want less information?
People want to beat raids reliably – they want as much information and help that they can get.

I know that, heck by having an in-game enrage timer Arenanet gets ahead of WoW in terms of not needing a mod for that kind of information.

I suppose people want a more ‘authentic’ boss without having to see a static timer in the corner, but it helps so much more than it impacts how you view each boss with said timer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

Saved you guys a few more pages of bickering.

Talyn.3295:

Personally I never look at the clock while I am raiding. But if the timer bothers you there was a great suggestion here while back as to how to fix it.

Step one: Find a piece of dark colored tape.
Step two: Put it over the clock in the corner of your screen.
Step three: Play and enjoy.

/thread.

This person gets it.

They should just remove the timer but keep the enrage.

Now no one knows the exact time the boss will go into raid-wipe mode!

I am the best.

I am just always a drunk and disorderly norn, so I clumsily lose every fight!

Clearly.

This might sound really…really funny, but hear me out.

There is no glider, instead the player’s character has their arms out while gliding and making a ‘whooosing’ sound.

When they hit an updraft, their arms rapidly flap up and down and they sound distressed perhaps.

When they do a speed-boost forward, they intensify their ‘whoooosish’ sound they make from their mouth.

You can be creative with the stealth dodge, but that’s all I want.

Thanks!

Doesn’t need it for PvE, and it takes away a bit of the competitive nature of SPvP.

So no thank you.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Morwath.9817:

Fivedawgs.4267:

Morwath.9817:

Izanagi.9830:

I guess thats what you get if you play f2p games , poor support , no test servers….

BnS is pretty good (read: awesome compared to GW2).

Don’t promote that hentai game here… a game with a kittenty storyline,and kittenty pvp with no strategy at all. Come on calling that game crap is an insult to crap. That game is utter crap. Gw2 is light year ahead of BnS.

I guess balanced 1v1 PvP too hard for scrubs, so its equal to crap for them ;-)

It only goes up to 2v2 and no, it’s not real 3v3. It’s not bad, but I have more than 1 friend I like to PvP with. Being balanced is arguable, it feels like some classes are weaker or stronger against certain others, like when I play my Blade Dancer I always have more trouble going against Destroyers, yet when I’m against Assassins, I feel like I have a good advantage just because of the mechanics.

Oh, and KungkittenMasters can be completely broken in 2v2.

Besides, WvW was fun until ArenaNet completely gutted the rewards.

One of my biggest gripes with BnS PvP is that the game offers to bring you along mid-leveling, yet doesn’t give you all the trait perks to balance it out.

…Because being out-traited by your opponent is cool.

At least GW2 gives you an equal environment in that regard, and at a younger level.

Were you in my game? I was on the team that made the comeback when our mesmer came back while the other guys were under 100 points from winning a Foefire.

Honestly, even if unranked is a bit more casual you at least need to play a little bit more competitively than ‘honoring’ the other team out of pity and letting a 4v4 happen.

That will cost ya.

I think its just a disconnect really.

GW2 did too good of a job making everything so…FREE to earn, that it set a precedent for 3 years of mindlessly easy content. We are starting to see it go in a direction that gives it a little bit of depth by adding at least some effort to pay attention to the screen, ala Shatterer Rework in which I am willing to bet some people find too difficult.

It’s unfortunate that A-Net did such a poor job attempting to scale up the difficulty steadily, you can see some failed attempts such as the Tower of Nightmares mobs requiring a ‘stomp’ but is that really difficult? Compared to normal HoT mobs they are still leagues away.

That being said, it is really just a disconnect of players with different MMO backgrounds, many of which probably had zero and some have been around the block to know certain nostalgically bad instances of just terrible…MMO times.

There is always room for improvement, but it has been a long time coming for GW2 to actually take off as an MMO and not just a social game with some lingering easy games that don’t require much thought, such as the majority of Core Tyria.

Outside of WvW being on hiatus, Pre-HoT you would:

- Grind Dungeons daily for liquid gold, running the same quick paths in the same identical movements due to ease of content not truly forcing you to use anything outside your DPS rotation.
- Grind World Boss Train, effective still for Rares and by approximation, Ectos
- Grind Silverwastes (We do it now still)
- Fractals were longer, albeit harder and some could argue it might have been better back then since you would spend more time in them.

And somehow HoT was MORE grindy than Core? Give me a break. There’s more variety in HoT PvE content, however many times you want to repeat it, than there was in Core, and in fact it layers on top of those old painful grinds.

If you ever participated in the first three options yet complain about HoT ‘Grind’ I believe you might be a hypocrite.

Manasa Devi.7958:

maddoctor.2738:

There are only 4 zones, with events on a constant, unchanging schedule. This gets old very fast.

And searching for an event and if you actually need it for a collection, praying that is on, is so much better? Ever tried doing a legendary precursor collection?

That’s absolutely not better. I did the tier 1 collection for Dawn. It was horrible, easily one of the most boring things I did in this game.

Another mark against HoT.

Because a feature years in the making is the fault of the expansion. Legendary Collections are independent of HoT with the exception of the actual HoT Legendaries.

- Revert Warhorn trait nerf back so it can convert conditions to boons, to help counter the condi-meta and ironically the boon corruption.
- Rev Shiro Heal will no longer pierce with its damage against Endure Pain, because no other power damage in the game does so yet Shiro heal does? Why?

Let’s go PvP forum! Help the Warrior become just a bit more viable!

What you got?

Have to say.

The more you guys look into the prospect and thought-experiment.

The more I wouldn’t mind a non-canon fictional novel of the Elder Dragons attacking Modern-Day Earth.

Do it.

Coulter.2315:

Wraith.3504:

Another point of contention is the grinding of materials, Mastery points, Hero points, sepcialization advancement, and other tedium.

You literally cannot grind the bolded things as you can only get them once… Where did you learn to use the word “grind?”

It gets worse when you realize that Hero Points and Specialization Advancement are the same thing. Unless he is referring to the Specialization collection for the unique piece of equipment, something that has been actually liked by many players for not being a ‘grind’ so to speak like earning ‘Golden Child’ Achievement or matters of that consequence.

The elaboration of the word ‘Grind’ for GW2 is almost comedic at this point. Any of the mandatory grinds in GW2, including ascended which carry on from now till the end of the game in general, pale in comparison to Grinds in any of the mandatory grinds in other MMOs which continue to grow as the gear increases in power. As long as Arenanet keeps their word that Ascended/Legendary will be the highest tier level, the grinding you will have to do at a mandatory level will remain stagnant while every other MMO that doesn’t follow the same process keeps increasing over weeks and months.

Seriously, I don’t mind if you hate how much of a “grind” GW2 has become, but even by relative standards it is still all a walk in the park. In fact, I encourage opponents to actually uninstall GW2, go play something else for months, realize how superior GW2 does even the smallest of things, and you will be back and will not miss out on much since your gear level never changes.

That’s how Casual-Friendly GW2 still is.

Kami Poi.4659:

what most people here are forgetting great players have no need to exclude anyone only bad leaders and bad groups do so.

great players teach and mentor others.

Ding ding ding, we have a Winner!

We are still seeing guilds having the first wing on farm bring along new guildies and friends and explaining the encounters to them. Right now with only one raid wing out there and the completion time of one-shotting all the bosses being under a half hour, raiders who routinely expect to raid for…well using my own preference of a 2-3 hour raid period in a day, are more than willing to spend time working on a boss with someone new.

At least in GW2 you get some form of reward for progressing in a fight in the form of tokens, which helps alleviate some of that stress and anger you might see in say WoW when the raid wipes and gets nothing but time wasted.

Hi Friends!

As a Warrior, GW2 SPvP isn’t dead yet!

After all, we ‘survived’ Season 1, nothing will be worse than that….

I like the patch overall.

I’ll go into a comprehensive feedback when I get a chance, but I will ask why people were expecting something more substantial? Were you guys expecting enough buffs to make us godlike?

Just curious.

It’s OK OP, you don’t need to try to make us Warriors feel better with this thread.

We already know we aren’t in a great place this season. Thanks for the thought though!

I really appreciate the Warrior Community for bringing about so many different ideas on how to make Warriors more viable or reworked to a common theme.

One tiny thing I would argue, is that your Burst Precision change might be a bit too strong if it cannot be evaded. The blind immunity alone is enough to make it worthwhile over Sigil of Intelligence, but we are already seeing massive amounts of Berserkers with Rifles in WvW dealing substantial damage with Unblockable capabilities built-in ala Signet of Might and/or Signet Mastery.

At that point the only counter remaining for an opponent given your suggestion would be popping an invuln, that’s it. There’s nothing else.

I suggest keeping evasion in, it is something both sides of a conflict can manipulate and bait out, leading to constructively good fights.

HtFde.3856:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

There’s a part of me that is considering writing a guide for HoT. Not just for a map event, but HoT in general. It would be titled: How to survive in a H.O.T. climate, and the first section would be: Crap Happens, and how to handle loss. Then I would go over each enemy, what to watch out for, and how to beat them.

What is holding me back from writing such a guide is the fact that I’m not sure anyone would really benefit from it. The type of person who would go to the forums and complain for… is it months now? Yeah, the the type of person who would go to the forums and complain that the maps are too hard for months because they apparently always get jumped by a bazillion impossible enemies… they aren’t the kind of person who can be helped by a text guide on the web. They fight learning. In order to teach them anything you’d basically have to grind up books into a fine paste and hide it in their ketchup.

That book would – for most players – be worthless – and I’d suggest buying a “how to read book” first (for yourself). The problem is not surviving in HoT (at least for most players) but to have fun in HoT.

As things stand (from my point of view) there’s two scenarios in HoT I end up:

(a) The map is populated, metas are being done and you just follow one of the lamps. Skill required? None! If you die you get rezzed by the zerg after the fight and as long as you managed to get a few hits in you’ll even get a reward.

(b) The map is empty, no lamp on the map, no mata done. You can now either taxi out or hope that RL is not interrupting, fire up your own lamp and try to get things organized. You do not stand much of a chance (in AB or TD) to get something done all by yourself – VB you can drive most metas to the point where a legendary appears (or you have to plant the bombs) so you can make some progress all by yourself.

The question now is … is this fun? I have full map completition on every class, have all masteries (but raid) unlocked so I’d say it’s not really a l2p issue … the issue is that the maps suck.

Help me understand how any of this was different than before HoT. You can even say that the former case happened ALL the time on every map in Core Tyria. Yet people wanted more things to challenge the almighty zergs hence is what we have in HoT. Large groups of people are still failing Gerent and Mouth though at a far less capacity than previously.

Furthermore, you haven’t given any of us an indicator of what would be fun for you if neither underpopulated or overpopulated maps are going to entertain you…

…Yes, we know that having MMR influence our ranked matches for pip advancement, not a good idea.

Let’s assume they fix that, and now League matches are based more on current rank.

Let’s ALSO assume, big one here, they find a way to …discourage pairing up with your new amber pip-helper- Erm I mean ‘FRIEND’ and ultimately you are better off working with someone your rank instead, to keep matches not completely all over the place.

…Yes these are a lot of assumptions, but I am getting to the point here. I think we need to work on the League Pip System a bit more. It seems the intent of these various divisions were to be actual skill-based divides of the SPvP base. What we have instead, based on general observation and some scribbled math is that up to Ruby, playing enough games and a bit of luck will get you to the tiers to prevent degradation and start pushing players who just play a lot of games up instead of keeping them at a skill level more in line with what they can do.

What I am trying to get at is, the League Pip System right now needs some tuning still. Sapphire and even Ruby shouldn’t be this easy to get through. Diamond seems to be the only respectable Tier that forces players to really pull out all the stops, given you have to work around 35 pips worth of matches. But…as I have said, we have seen since the start of the League that the natural base of players that were trapped at say Emerald for the first few weeks have made the climb up through divisions, Diamond as a product of that has a few…rougher Diamonds that are getting hammered there.

So talking strictly how the League System Pips work, here are my suggestions on how going forward we make these divisions meaningful:

- Promotional/Demotion matches: This one I have been floating around my head for a while. So, how it will play out is that when you fill the pips out for the division you are currently in, the UI will indicate that you have entered a Promotional Series. What this means is that the next series of matches are a ‘best of’. Let’s say for the sake of the argument that it is a Best of Three. You play these matches out normally, but when you lose, you do not lose pips, you simply lose that match in the series. If you win the best of, you advance to the next division with a single pip into it, simple right? But if you lose the Series, you lose 5 pips to return back to that tier’s base and have to get pips to go back up to another series again.

Furthermore, the matches will be filtered specifically from your current division and the division above you, meaning you won’t get amber or diamond players when you are advancing from Emerald to Sapphire. Yes this introduces longer queues for the promotional series but these matches are literally Win or Lose, losing 499-501 is no different than a shutout in these matches for you. Finally, Demotion matches are a bit different, and can only occur when you have absolutely no pips in your division. There’s no indicator that you are in a demotion series, but there will be an invisible tally on your performance if you continue to lose without winning a pip in your division. Let’s just say players should be wary about dropping if they lose something like three times in a row at zero pips. And, much like losing a promotional, you will drop a division and be zero pips at the highest tier of the lower division. If you can’t handle the fire, stay out of it.

- Raising pips per tier, raising tiers per division – This is more of a band-aid fix, and would likely foster even MORE matches played rather than solve the issue. It seems like Diamond and by some extension Ruby have a decent amount of tiers already to keep players around, but that kind of ‘love’ should be given across the board.

What do you guys think- Well, I know, there’s a LOT going on right now, but it doesn’t hurt to at least try a ball rolling here.

PvE:
- Raise the ‘soft cap’ population on all 4 HoT maps, for fewer yet more populated instances. Create an environment where players aren’t artificially making successful open-world map metas through the LFG especially considering the rewards from these metas are not in the same catagory as Tequatl or Triple Wurm.
- For future maps, add more ‘ambient events’, unrelated to the meta as to keep players sticking around. Verdant Brink is fair as each of its meta events are spread about enough to go into night cycle not too long after, but it would not hurt at all if extra events unrelated to the metas spawned during, before or after metas were being done. Keep players busy.
- ‘Progressive Hero Points’, a novel concept I have been thinking about for some time but set up future Hero points where the difficulty and points rewarded can be changed. Something like ‘Easy – 1 Hero Point, no Exp/loot or world completion, Medium – 5 Hero Points, no Exp/loot or world completion, Hard – What we have now.’ Flexibility in earning Hero Points, yet you still need to do the ‘current’ version to gain the map completion reward plus daily stuff. Adjusting a champion mob down to 2 vets and a few mobs, changing the flavor text for the objective will take time, but it might be something to consider.

Aside from these, things like appending Raid to LFG should be a given, heck, getting rid of that first tab so people are forced to look in the different tabs might be better when you do so. I do not have too many grievances towards the enemy difficulty in the open world, people seem to forget often to check the level of the mob they are about to engage to see if it is being upscaled due to an event nearby, or even turned ‘Elite’ by it. There’s a certain limit on what you can and cannot engage, learn to survive.

WvW (Ugh):
- …..I just want it to be revived, I want it back. There’s a void here for me right now and it saddens me. I almost guarantee that the solution will involve not just mechanical changes but reward changes as well to WvW. Please bring it back

SPvP:
- As a Warrior, I had to adapt fast to something more viable. I actually do appreciate that something like Leagues came out, but there’s work to be done.
- With how the current system is set-up, you can actually play enough games to break through nearly all the divisions, Obsidian seems to be where you can actually increase or decrease your division within that spectrum, but there definitely needs to be more balancing of the system, just a bit more. A ‘Promotional Series’ where you need to win more of your games than lose as you hit the last pip in say Ruby to go into Diamond, for instance, would add just a few more walls between divisions to filter out the best players from the pip grinders. Just a thought, there are other avenues…
- Successful Metas for Competitive Play come from TWO aspects: Is it Skillful and is it Fun? Skillful implies that although builds have some value, a player’s skill versus another player’s skill with the same build will be incredibly impactful during play. It creates a variance in competitive tourney that will foster the sport further. ‘Fun’ is not as subjective as you think when you consider the second point. This correlates to at the minimum, two players of whatever skills with whatever builds facing off, and if they are entertained and motivated to fight more. The worst case happens when both the aggressor hates the defender for its defenses, and the defender hates how easy it is to fight the aggressor, or vice versa. You will not keep players attempting to have competitive fun around if in order to be competitive you have to play something OP enough to be boring.

Thank you for reading this, fellow players and devs. It has been a very…interesting few months, let us all see what 2016 has to offer. I expect many things given the expansion has released finally, and everyone can start FRESH.

Cheers all!

IndigoSundown.5419:

PopeUrban.2578:

HtFde.3856:

PopeUrban.2578:

Thought experiment:

What would you have done to make the pve content in these maps challenging, without actually giving the mobs the abilities you find annoying?

Given the GW2 conbat system the only things I can think of are more telegraphed OHKO abilities, or turning them all in to massive HP sponges. I don’t know if I can think of too many ways to add challenge that aren’t “force you to evade, have cleanses, and position properly” given the way GW2’s combat works.

Any ideas?

Um, NOT spawning 10+ mobs when there’s only one player around? Limiting the duration of the effect for normal mobs, adding duration for vets, more for elites and champs and make them spawn when x players are around? Cooldown of said skills dependent on number of players?

Better scaling then? Makes sense I guess. I’m also not thrilled with normal mobs with break bars TBH. Feels like those should be limited to vet+ mobs. It completely screws over any build that tends to rely on cc for defense and kills some build diversity. I always thought CC was a more fun way to mitigate damage than invulns/blocks/etc.

The above x 1k. It certainly feels like event scaling needs work, and normal mobs should not have break bars.

I am more or less OK with certain mobs having breakbars (Hammer Mordrem take a single 1s CC at a right time to stun them for 5s).

Bristlebacks though? You need so much more CC, it is often better to damage those ones down…

GreyWolf.8670:

Coulter.2315:

These people wanting the auto group for “casual” play are insane – using LFG you can ask for casual friendly or everyone is welcome but with an automated system you will bve expected to run a meta build and people will shout at you for phiwing.

You have the best tools to create casual friendly groups, automated grouping is not casual friendly.

Sorry, ad hominems will get you zero response from me.

He could leave out the ‘insane’ comment for something nicer but the point stands, automated LFG would actually encourage more outcry against non-meta play than now. Everyone would take the path of least resistance to form a group, and expect the absolute best from their party members…which leads to a toxic environment on a level GW2 hasn’t seen yet. SPvP would have some serious competition in that department…

Ikrekot.8357:

I don’t agree and agree with you. Most of WoW Bosses are simple but they are harder than Bosses in GW2. You see them simple and easy because most players of WoW are much more exp in doing raids. In GW2 no one know what it is even CLEAVE???!!! Bring one semi-hardcore guild to GW2 give them 2-3 days to lvl up characters for raid and then give them 2-3 h to kill all 3 bosses. I would even tell give them 1h to kill all bosses.

If player died and if he was dps and not doing smth important raid could still kill boss in WoW. I agree with you in that. I would like to see harder tactics in GW2 and more time to enrage.

We have literally had a guild known for raiding go do the ‘testing’ for the Raid content we see now (Death and Taxes, Pre-Cthun kill, etc). The whole debacle where they ‘cleared’ Spirit Vale in an hour was after painful weeks of testing strats and builds, WoW bosses are simple which makes them easy, things like having a single phase throughout the fight which is boring. Threatening mechanics being outgeared once you have it on farm.

Managing ‘cleaving’ is a simple mechanic, and not every boss needs it if they have a plethora of other capabilities that threaten the raid instead. VG certainly doesn’t need to do 20k damage to anyone other than his focused target, especially when it has enough stuff going on to keep the raid on their toes while attempting to DPS him. Gorseval has an alternative cleave in the form of a slam that hits around him, he certainly doesn’t need to do much more damage to players in front when knowing full well that failing to learn how to handle his slam attack will have you all die to this enrage…

GW2 raid bosses are nothing to snuff at right now, and I do expect bosses to go up and down in difficulty depending on where they are in the wing (at least that’s what I interpreted from Arenanet’s discussion for the first raid). Who knows? Maybe they do have some extremely difficult boss encounter requiring even more positioning than we have now. …Actually FF14 does this a lot (Ravana Extreme is Sabetha on steroids).

Rising Dusk.2408:

They made the F1 create multiple fire fields because it was an easy fix at the time with limited repercussions that they could see. The goal was to make it a square AOE instead of a circular AOE. I think, ultimately, what they’ll do is make it one long AOE like Wildfire or make all fields have the same AOE limit tracking (so it can’t hit the same target multiple times).

I’ll be sure to include this in my next report anyway.

I think they originally wanted Scorched Earth to be multiple fire fields for extra combo fields to work with.

If they wanted to hit the burning on the move, they could reduce the fields from 5 to 3 while expanding the fields so you can’t get say Gorseval into 3 fields at the same time and/or reduce the base burning duration on Scorched by a small amount which will scale back each field’s tick. Both might make the damage in-line with everyone else.

The tactics might be simple, but WoW bosses typically have quite a bit more forgiveness if you mess up a mechanic.

None of the bosses in GW2 allow for too many mistakes, getting harder down the road. Until recently where people were finding out how to ‘out-mechanic’ VG’s lightning, that was something you HAD to do less you have everyone go critical or down. A Normal WoW boss that had a mechanic like that? Probably half-life the raid maybe, get healed up casually and move on. Heck you could outgear the encounters through tiering up your gear, but GW2 won’t have that.

I don’t expect raids to start hitting ‘Mythic’ Difficulty yet, but so far this raid wing isn’t anything to scoff at.

You weren’t joking! Warriors are serious business! I ran into one running some funky Banner Support build, could have sworn he was running Nomad’s but that’s been removed. Reason being? NEVER DIED. Just sat mid, and lived constantly with a point under his control.

We should nerf Warrior sustain more, Remove Healing Signet all together, and force other heals like Defiant Stance to work optimally under full adrenaline.

So OP.

Hmm…

As a former raider from vanilla to WotLK end in WoW, I can say for Spirit Vale, VG is in line with a moderately difficult normal boss, whereas the difficulty starts taking a hike there. Gorseval might be slightly under Hard-Mode, and Sabetha is more in line with a Hard-Mode if not everyone is at the top of their game.

What I wouldn’t mind seeing is a series of raids with a single difficulty, however different raids might be easier or more difficult that what we have so far. Different levels of prestige, and easier ‘raids’ along the lines of say Karazhan would do wonders to introducing very noobish would-be raiders to raiding.

That MIGHT mean those easier raids are scaled for Exotic, naturally with unique skins but I think that would be the best approach for GW2 raiding.

Double Healing Signet passive healing.

Pulse 1 second resistance every 3 seconds.

BOOM. #fixed #balanced

Got you Juba.

I would have applied as well, but I think I have gotten a bit too bitter recently so my forum presence would have reflected poorly.

That being said, I am more than happy to support Burr in creating discussions on how to further our profession towards balance.

No Walking.6349:

Browrain.7346:

Love how you completely abandoned your personal score thread because you realized you were wrong.

I stopped posting there because there’s over 100 replies and I don’t want to sift through all that, I’m definitely not wrong though. If you have a fraction of the score the rest of your team has you’re playing horribly.

You won’t read through all the counter-points and reassure yourself you aren’t wrong? Thank you for sticking to unranked, don’t ever leave it until you educate yourself.

No Walking.6349:

Pyriall.1683:

Everyone acts like they’re legendary league level players. Is the match making any good? No, but everyone needs to stop acting like they’re good enough to play against the top tier players. If you are, then put a full 5 man together and go out there and grab the status you crave.

As an fyi, I’ll buy double the gems to cover for the OP not purchasing any.

Empty words of course, but check those rose tinted goggles, you’re doing nothing but supporting terrible game balance. I’m sure you’ve QQ’d about players not playing the 4 ‘optimal builds’ all the time. Gross that you can support that, and as you can tell most people here agree with me.

Metas change all the time even in competitive MOBAs. What might be OP now very likely won’t be in the next season. Good players will rise above and progress and the rest fall to the side. I’ll also support Arenanet by buying gems in the hopes their efforts bring about better and better SPvP.

ulchanar.4309:

Sykper.6583:

Here’s something to assist:

What you do well against:
…
- PowerShiro -> Unlike the MalShiro, your shield block literally lasts their entire UA, their shield is useless against your Signet of Might, and revs have a hard time with Stability uptime, you have about 5 different CCs and they can’t deal with a condi-bomb too well without popping Infuse Light. Go ham.
…

Revs have 2 stacks of stability for 6-9 seconds after dodge, so almost perma stability during the fight. I know many Revs pick the auto shield block trait instead but any half experienced PvP player uses the stability trait. Shiro also has Unblockable for 5s after Phase Traversal and a trait to give it after a blocked attack, too. So your shield is just as useless against them as is theirs against you.

This is actually true, started to notice the impact given I know what Unblockable means and seeing better revs come forward. But there are still an excess of bad Revs not taking the Stability for some reason, albeit you will strip through those stability stacks like they were nothing with this build.

I still hold this build in a better regard than most, especially given our current state, with what we have to work with.

Labjax.2465:

Sykper.6583:

Couple dozen- Where have you been? Since a little after launch the playerbase that wanted harder challenges grew quite a bit, which prompted the launches of such things like Marionette, Revamped Tequatl and Triple Trouble. Yet we still heard thread after thread of criticisms about how easy the content was for years. Don’t pretend that it was just a minority, there was a massive amount of players that wanted GW2 to push the difficulty higher in its content.

I don’t think most who asked for that envisioned centering most new content around increased difficulty though, which is one of the major complaints surrounding HoT.

I’m sure there were loads who asked for stuff along the lines of Teq, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they wanted the whole game to be Teq.

It’s also rather messy (and I say this both to you and anyone who does it on the other end) to throw numbers around like “minority,” “massive,” “majority.” It’s all BS. Even my use of “loads” is kind of silly.

None of us really know what the numbers are like. Even Anet, who no doubt tries to watch metrics, probably doesn’t have the greatest clarity in what the spread is like. Any group can seem loud when it isn’t getting what it wants and other groups are – the contrast creates the illusion of size, due to the disparity in how many from different groups are speaking up.

I would say the few clear instances of agreement have come in the form of mega threads that go on and on and on, such as the one about traits back when they were in need of a revamp. Beyond that, it’s mostly blips of complaining and for us (especially since we’re usually biased to one side) it’s all but impossible to gauge just how many are speaking up. Even account numbers can be skewed because of the possibility of posts from multiple accounts by the same person – Anet can check that sort of thing, but we can’t.

I agree that no one here can claim the actual numbers, I did not want to play the ‘massive number’ card without any specific proof if I wasn’t sure.

But just as we had, as you said, the consistently popping up threads about the GW2 challenge as a whole, we had dedicated ’CDI’s for suggestions like Raiding, Fractals, Guild Halls, etc. These massive megathreads took feedback that varied heavily, from dozens if not hundreds of forum accounts putting their perspective on how to improve the progression in those fields. Even going off Guild Halls, Raiding and Fractals, there were subtle indicators that the systems at the time needed to improve, and Raiding itself was overwhelmingly requested to be much more difficult.

We can play the argument back and forth on what the forum posters mean as a sample size of the population, but you and I both know how dedicated posters are to the game, considering most of their suggestions as healthy improvements in the long run. Guild Leaders, Important individuals in various communities, friends, etc all spoke out for all these changes we have seen now.

And truthfully, although I stand on the side of this kind of difficult content, I still want easier content to be the majority. It is a good thing we have a focus on where to put the ‘End-Game’ for GW2 now, should ANYONE go for it.

Daddicus.6128:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Years of disdain in the many “face-roll easy” posts about the game had to sting.

So, they should listen to the couple dozen loud voices and ignore millions of their other players?

Couple dozen- Where have you been? Since a little after launch the playerbase that wanted harder challenges grew quite a bit, which prompted the launches of such things like Marionette, Revamped Tequatl and Triple Trouble. Yet we still heard thread after thread of criticisms about how easy the content was for years. Don’t pretend that it was just a minority, there was a massive amount of players that wanted GW2 to push the difficulty higher in its content.

Daddicus.6128:

Ayrilana.1396:

Because if the meta were to be that players needed to wear pink armor to do raids, that would not mean that they could not be completed without that. It’s a player made restriction that has nothing to do with the design of the raids.

And it’s the GAME that allows people to demand this. If the game were designed correctly (IMO), there would be a lobby for hardcore gamers, which prevents non-pink gear (or some such mechanic), and non-lobby players would be disciplined for asking.

The game exists as it is, there is zero reason to create such proposals that are ultimately player-driven. Stop blaming the game for the community, rather you should do something about it as a player, and provide a player-made solution like creating your own ‘pink not required’ group. Yes, you have to do Social things in an MMO to get social-related things done go figure.