Guild Wars 2

Calcifire.1864:

I thought with Zhaitan, we killed him with Death?

all of the energy weapons used against Zhaitan were based on Gorr’s vacumagic polarizers, which absorbed his energy, inverted the polarity, and shot it back. the result being that the two different polarities zero-summed and hurt zhaitan.

we were literally shooting Death (in the form of necromantic dragon energy) back at him to cancel out his own energy

Huh, do we have a confirmation his work carried over from ‘Magic Sucks’? Although his presence in the final battles facing Zhaitan might imply it does…

…Doesn’t quite help my theory though, unless it somehow extends to both spheres can be a weakness but that’s essentially ‘more than one weakness’.

Darn it.

Test.8734:

warbignime.4610:

Pretty well thought and insightful review

This one more is more insightful:

http://www.gamerevolution.com/review/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns

Although I think the game deserves a somewhat lower score than what they gave it.

Incredibly trashy review, this isn’t someone who played GW2 at all.

Be ready to dodge.

Oh, and have both a strong CC and a stunbreak with you.

The jungle isn’t nearly as friendly as Orr.

HtFde.3856:

Aenesthesia.1697:

Drivrius.6159:

I’m giving up, this is more like Dark Souls online then GW2, it’s a horrible experience to try and play this solo.

The shift in game style from the core game is like day and night, you go from a fun, solo casual, game to hardcore, group only in a second.

You go from a boring, mind-numbing 1 click autoattack fest to semi fun, active combat in which your enemies don’t all do the same attacks, and you have to take down the heavy hitters first.

And you’ve never played dark souls, it seems.

hint: if your character cannot survive a stun, then you are probably carrying the wrong gear?

Your hint isn’t quite helpful – even with full tough + vit gear you don’t stand a chance if things go wrong. There are TONS of mobs that kick you around and if you have a spawn with 3 of those you’ll run out of stunbreakers and dodges and as soon as you lie in the dirt for good you have 2 or 3 snipers fire their fiery line at you … dead.

It’s quite easy to avoid them in a group becvause they do not focus on the same player but when you play solo ALL enemies will lock target on YOU and 2 or 3 snipers + one stun/knockdown guy is a deadly combination – it’s not really a matter of the gear. When you get into one of those fights your gear only determines how fast you die.

Don’t just make this about gear, run different weapons, utilities, even traits. Prioritize survival before you start ramping up your personal damage.

In the instance of fighting 2-3 snipers, which can happen but not as often as typically Mordrem will only be in groups of 2+ at certain parts of the map otherwise they are all separated and its up to the player to ‘accidently’ aggro a bunch, Snipers start off either with their channeled snipe or they go into stealth. Good news is that either one of those has them sticking to the same spot. Either put up a block or dodge after…I say 2-3 seconds, you gotta get a rhythm for it.

Snipers blow up easily, they have only like 10k life for the normal ones, so if you can burst one down do so. If you can’t try to use terrain and LoS them. They have a single stunbreak they will use if they get CCed multiple times in succession. This will also kick you and they will roll back. They are one of the high priority targets that should die quickly in a skirmish.

Hope that helps!

We did it guys, Warrior is now being complained about for being UP.

Mission Accomplished.

Maybe this is why we Warriors are…

Always Angry.

….I’ll be playing with this stick in the corner now.

Valik Shin.9027:

Banners last 4o seconds have 30 sec cd and follow you . Add to banner trait : banners give a pulsing buff , Strength give 3 stacks of might , discipline give fury, tatics gives regen , defense give protection, battle standard give 3 stacks might and 2 stacks stability

Pfft, I got you beat.

Summoned Banners finish enemies in a 60 radius where they land. Warbanner AoE finishes at a 360 radius.

That’s right, Banners impale downed foes to finish!

Hello all!

Thought I would make something different than the normal here. Essentially let’s help each other out with what we know and go from there.

How this works in case the title is vague is that I will pose a question, and someone will answer and then pose their own question, then someone else will answer their question and post theirs. So on and so on. Right now in the early stages of HoT there is a lot of unknowns, lots of tips people do NOT know about certain small things.

I’ll start off with a few tips:

- Did you know that the Hero Points in the Magumma Jungle, at least those pertaining to a difficult Champion mob and their minions, can be repeated once a day for some of the map’s currency plus some EXP and loot? It’s not counter-productive to help those who ask in chat for help with these!
- Did you know that in the Auric Basin, there’s a Hero Point with a Single Champion Vinetooth in a cave at the eastern side? What’s so nice about this hero point is that although the room he is in spawns Bomb Mordrem, you can actually take him solo by moving him towards the tunnel you came in, the bombs rarely spawn on that end. He also locks himself in an autoattack chain of three long swings in front of him when in Melee Range, meaning you could either dodge or strafe alongside him and punish his AI. Actually if more players are fighting him, he will do more AoE attacks if even one of these players are not within his melee threshold, it can become HARDER to kill him with more!

So, now I’ll ask a question:

- In Verdant Brink, how exactly do you get the Bladed Chest? I been told from killing all the Nighttime Bosses or from doing T4 of either Daytime or Nighttime in the zone, I don’t know which!

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns is like a five star meals in France. It’s something special. Not you’re run of the mill trash, grind-fest MMO. There are a group of MMO gamers who move in swarms. They come into an new game devour it over the course of a month then they move on. We’re all glad you bought the game and look forward to seeing you again for Raids, but for many of us it’s a bit hard to respect someone who rushes though so quickly. It’s a bit like watching someone sit down and in your favorite upscale restaurant and play their own Man vs Food challenge, scarfing everything down.

Someone is sounding very conceited at this moment in time right now. Of course there’s a majority of players who don’t particularly like those other players who are pushing through, devouring the meal like pigs, and I hope they don’t ask for more when they should have taken their time with the meal. But don’t misrepresent the numbers here and what ground you stand on.

No it’s not quite the same, but it is int he same ballpark at least from the perspective of those who manage our time and have adult commitments. Why do we care? Well if you’re new to the game you should go back and watch ArenaNet’s manifesto behind the core game. They put out a vision with tenants of making an anti-grind MMO for everyone. At it’s very core GW2 is designed to be challenging but to never lose its casual and semi-casual appeal. Those of us who bought into the game on those merits hold GW2 to a higher standard because ArenaNet was brave and innovative enough to build something that didn’t appeal to the hardcore swarm.

I always like how many times players will bring up the Manifesto, as if it were the literal law of the game rather than consistent guidelines around its decisions which they have done a remarkable job on following a vast majority of the time. That there could never be a progression of difficulty that started at an extremely attractable level for players of all skill levels, which in turn would steadily rise slowly over the years as quite a vocal amount from all these skill levels start to realize that they wanted more.

But go ahead and continue.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Getting back to the fine dining analogy. Hear reports of playing rushing the content and finishing 3 days in, 5 days in, etc.. I could be wrong, but I honestly don’t think most of the player base has envy for you’re “achievement” I think a good number of us are looking at you as a adult would glare at someone else’s child scarfing down a fine meal. Out of place for us to say anything to be rude but it’s annoying to watch no less and annoying not for the reasons you might have hopped it would be.

Can we step it back a bit? I think I only saw…one thread of someone that has actually completed the full content. Talking like 100+ level masteries here, and between the whole CoF ‘Grinding’ (ughhhhh) and HoT, I doubt the number of players you are implicating in this thread is as high as you are leading on…

Unless you are referring to some other lesser extent of content?

SamTheGuardian.2938:

The tuning/balancing they are doing now is because ArenaNet is a company that does actually care about their manifesto. I imagine they knew the hardcore swarm would stampede through the gates like cattle and go at it non-stop. I’m sure you had a blast doing that. While you were doing that no doubt ArenaNet was gathering all kinds of data. Data on how long events took to complete, what kind of parties were involved, armor sets on players. The deep analytic tools + machine learning data science offers now is incredibly. The tuning they are doing is a result of your hard work. They know where they want the game to be. You got your reward for staying up 48 hours+ just blast though the content. Now they are just getting the game where it needs to be.

Awesome, I hope they get it right as well and…don’t touch the following outside of debilitating game-breaking bugs:

- Mastery Experience Per Level
- Mob Density and Difficulty
- Hero Point Difficulty

It is still under a week, the biggest hurdle and fun factor for many players which were the extent of Hero Points to receive the full Elite Specialization has been properly adjusted given player feedback from both sides and Internal Team discussion.

The rest will take far longer to discuss, as unlike the quality of life change for the Hero Point Reduction, the three mentioned above correlate directly to the goals of what the Expansion would provide, long-lasting challenging end-game content. I wouldn’t want anything else changed for weeks.

It would be akin to customers complaining about a five-star meal not having four-star quality meat, something they prefer to have (for reasons of taste, smell, anything really) but demand the meal to be changed for everyone else as well going forward. As you can imagine not many people would be happy with this change, hence two large groups of people bicker and its difficult for the chefs to determine what to do, ergo for now they need to continue serving the five-star meal and get much, much more feedback.

Gustave.9170:

As a solo player of middling ability (former long time WoW player, got tired of the grind), everything I am reading tells me to wait to purchase HoT, which is a shame, as I am looking forward to it. I have a solo guild (none of my former WoW guild-mates made the transition) and would like to have a guild hall to park my toons (3 80s and another on the way). I think I get where Arena is going and hope they throw some bones out for a more or less casual player like me. I want the expansion to succeed, as GW2 has been, on the whole, an excellent experience for me and I want to both see it succeed and contribute financially by purchasing the expansion, but I don’t see anything that suits my style of play. I should note that I don’t want Nerf Central, but I also don’t want (yet another) more or less full time responsibility, which is the reason I left the other MMO that I won’t again mention. I hope that those who have suggested that Arena will adjust things to a more favorable balance are right. If so, then I’m all “shut up and take my money”. If not, well, I’ll figure something out. Thanks all for the comments. They help.

As a former long-term WoW player (End of Vanilla to very End of WotLK) I’ll give you as much of an…objective view of the current, right now HoT, excluding my feelings about various things.

As you walk into the new content fresh, the very map will be chaotic and extremely different than what you are used to. A lot of it, with special mention to the first map, is elevated at different heights and has death falls at explorable ends. Essentially, provided you do the introductionary prologue you will start ‘leveling again’ with masteries. Some masteries early on are required to progress your story, and for story purposes there are quite a few chapters they put into the expansion.

Aside from the maps being completely different than what you might be used to, the mobs are unique and rather deadly in comparision to normal Tyria. The weakest of mobs will likely have a mechanic that will do a lot of damage and require you to observe fast on how to avoid it, and deal damage appropriately to it/them. These mobs you give you the same amount of credit as normal level 80 mobs did in other parts of Tyria, which might seem off given that they are a better menace but there are reasons behind this.

Once you start ramping up your masteries, you gain perks which only contribute to how you approach fights and traverse the Magumma Jungle. Gliding is such a convenience you will likely attempt to glide at least once in the normal core game only to splat on the ground, gliding is just that good. Most encounters won’t require you to use these mechanics, but they can help you during the fight to make it more manageable but if you are very good you won’t need them.

Ultimately, what I can tell you is this:
- Forget anything you know about challenge in the core game right now, Magumma Mobs introduce so many new ways to fight you might end up revising what you were doing before in GW2 PvE.
- Massive Meta-Events and Regular events everywhere, Horizontal Progression-vendors add something to work towards for a long time.
- NO NEED for full-time responsibilities. Despite what everyone has said on these forums for the past few days, the Expansion is still GW2, meaning you can’t possibly fall behind, everything is open world and every person helps!

Lastly, I want to emphasize the fact that you will have to change your tactics if you hit a wall of a monster that reduces your typical Meta build to nothing. Pick up some CC, an ‘Endure Pain’ kinda skill, anything to keep yourself alive! As of right now, the Magumma Jungle is really dangerous!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

• If Mordremoth was able to hide his mind within Trahearne, does this mean Zhaitan could have as well? Is this why the risen in Arah act as if Zhaitan’s alive – he merely changed “bodies”? Is this why Tequatl got his power boost – he isn’t Tequatl any longer… he’s Zhaitan?

Just wanted to touch on this one as I thought about it today some more. The implication from Rata Novus that each Elder Dragon has a weakness and how we came to overcoming Mordremoth through his own element (Mind) has led me to thinking about how we broke Zhaitan.

First off, I want to say that I can accept how we were able to fell Mordremoth so quickly given that the Pact and us as a whole were in far better shape to fight Elder Dragons thanks to just ‘defeating Zhaitan’ in recent months (in game), AND that Mordremoth I believe had just woken up, his power that we saw in the Jungle was not at its peak, it was rising fast. We nipped it in the bud….Sorry.

Anyways, so the Elder Dragons have a weakness, and we spontaneously decided to fight the Plant Dragon in its own turf thanks to Proxy Traherne. Fair enough…but I believe this warrants another question:

Did we really fulfill that same requirement for Zhaitan?

I…want to believe so, as well as depriving him of sustenance (Magic items). Zhaitan’s Elements as I recall were (Un)Death and Darkness. Presuming that each Elder Dragon holds two elements such as a physical element (Natural Elements, Nature, Physics) and a metaphysical one (Mind, Strength/Power, Darkness) I am going on a HUGE leap here and postulating that…

We fought Zhaitan in his own element, Darkness, and brought Light. Not to be a coincidence with the Personal Story Quest “A Light in the Darkness” but rather we needed to twist Zhaitan’s influence over darkness against him. After all Darkness is the absence of Light. Ergo when we cleansed Orr, I don’t necessarily want to say ‘We brought light to Orr and diminished his power’ but rather we were countering Zhaitan at his own game. Not having Magical Artifacts will anger Zhaitan, but it won’t kill him.

If the conjecture is true, then I want to believe that all the Elder Dragons will have to be beaten in their Metaphysical Elements, diminishing what they hold so sacred in their instincts and personality.

…That was a ramble, back to Konig’s point, the possibility exists that maybe I was wrong and that we didn’t actually fight Zhaitan properly to kill him completely. Tequatl is a result of this juncture. Mordremoth is probably the only Elder Dragon at this point that is truly dead, beyond resurrection.

I don’t think ‘Hardcore’ players were the only group that might have hated the change or liked the change. It’s probably those with a strict sense of wanting progression in the game, which can hit a lot of catagories of players.

Honestly, HP acquisition just for the sake of reaching your full elite spec I am personally OK to lowering, at first I saw 250 and kinda wanted 300 just so players getting their elite specs won’t get it in the first 30 minutes of entering VB with masteries leveled…

But the more I thought about it, I felt 250 is right where it needs to be. Besides, we will all need map completion when the HoT Legendaries release, so we all still need to level to reach those few HPs for the completion bonus.

I will only have an issue if:

- They reduce the Experience for the Masteries as a whole.
- They touch ANY amount of difficulty in the region as a whole.

Give us a difficult region, give us an end-game with our 80s and cut us loose. We will be grateful.

Uh, I don’t see a lot of the playerbase really hating on the difficulty as a whole when I go in game. Most of the complaints in game were mainly about the HP issue but now that it has been made more convenient players will now be going into these maps with a small ceiling to reach for their elite spec.

People will adapt, especially since back then there were no megaservers so much of what was wrong with Orr at release won’t apply here. In fact, if they wanted to increase mob density in Orr again it might not be the worst idea…but that’s not going to happen. The content is the end-game for the core as it is.

Well, there will be far less complaints about the “Grindy” Mastery System since the amount of HPs required for Elite specs is drastically reduced.

I scarcely care now. Honestly there were valid points on the HP issue. And given that any HoT Legendary hunter will still need to get each one of them to do a HoT Legendary, we can now put that past us.

With the requirement for Elite Specializations drastically reduced, there should be no real complaints about spending time in the jungle leveling masteries right? Least we got some long term goals set now.

250 is like an hour in the jungle if you have full map completion.

Should be 300.

MoonRaiden.7423:

Asudementio.8526:

MoonRaiden.7423:

Asudementio.8526:

MoonRaiden.7423:

Crovean.7891:

10/10
Why?

1. Elite specs take some time to unlock. ( thats why they are called ELITE specs, you must work a bit for them).

2. You cant get all the masteries in 1 day which is awesome ( stop complaining about them, you couldnt level your character fast when Gw2 started also, but some ppl forgot about that).

3. Mobs are much harder all over the place, on all maps. Again great, now im using my brain in combat. ( And yes its SOLOABLE ).

4. Personal story is awesome PERIOD. ( yes it gated so WHAT ?)

5. Just exploring new maps is intresting and rewarding ( You can unlock home instance upgrades just form exploring).

6. Hero challenges give you 10 HP instead of 1. ( and thats why they are maybe 10 times harder —> which is great).

7. Seeing carebears on forums rating HoT with 3 out of 10 just because Itzel poison lore
(which got fixed) adds soo much fun to the game PRICELESS.

You my friends were used to just 1 2 3 every mob of every map for sooo long that you just cant get used to actually doing something which is not braindead content.

You forgot the feeling of finish cof p2 for the first time wiht blue eq back when game started. Some of you never had that feeling, dont know anything about the game other than pressing 1 2 3 on your keyboard and still you gave yourself a RIGHT to trash talk the half of features just because my 2 year old son cant finish it 1 day and max everything…. So0 sad…

2 days of reading this thread made me feel sorry for a lot of you….

Carebear Wars 2

Shut your trap and watch this video.
https://youtu.be/TrwtWAGGGB4?t=1m22s

Unlock home instance? Tell me where? Dam, post a guide.

Work for it? You mean grind the same events or different events over and over even though it is against their manifesto?

Soloable in event? Really? Please record a video of you doing an event by yourself.

Let me answer this question :
4. Personal story is awesome PERIOD. ( yes it gated so WHAT ?)

So what you ask? Why do I have to GRIND A MILLION EXP + just to play a story where I am supposedly to enjoy and where MY CHARACTER was supposed to rush to save people? IT BREAKS IMMERSION.

See bolded.

That is not a hill to die on- trust me.

I solo’d plenty of the hero points and events in both verdant and auric basin. Haven’t done much of tangled so can’t speak to that map. The content in this expansion is harder, but it quite legitimately reminds me of BWE2 for the original launch- which is the level of difficulty i wanted so dearly for GW2. It’s all doable but punishes sloppy play; you can make mistakes but the worse you are the more help you need to recruit. And frankly that’s how it should be. I have seen plenty of players rise to the challenges presented with this new content and i think that this is really a non issue long term.

People need to get over the fact that they will have to do more than stand still, not dodge, and ping their auto attack to flail down mobs now.

Please post a video of you doing a Maguuma hero challenge.

If i have time i will, i am not sure i can redo some of the more doable ones i am aware of though? Like can i redo hero challenges that i have completed, because i focus on a single toon.

But if you are seriously this kitten about this you are really showing the quality of player you are. There is no serious discussion to be had about the soloability of the content in maguuma, unless you are focusing on that ALL maguuma content is not soloable.

I am sorry, I asked for evidence, I am a skeptic yes, and my quality is how you based me so base what you want; I am just realistically pointing out the flaws that this expansion presents itself with, and even against its own manifesto which actually what got players into GW2 in the first place. Oh, and all Hero point events in Maguuma are repeatable, I will be waiting for a video from you.

Auric Basin, far eastern side with the Champion Vinetooth in the room with the exploding mordrem. You can solo it, it’s health pool is capable of being dealt with one person in full DPS gear in about half the time limit.

You need to be in melee range of it always, and dodge through it or strafe along its side when it begins its melee chain. It stays locked in place attacking nothing for a bit before returning to face you. Easy to damage.

The hardest part is the bombs, but that gets trivialized when you realize you can bring the mob to the entrance of the tunnel from where the room is, the bombs MAY spawn there, but rarely (had 1 on my kill). Furthermore, the challenge actually gets harder with more people, even with its low health pool, as A) Bombs could aggro to other players, and Vinetooth’s have AI that likes to do AoE moves on alternative targets attacking it while its focusing one person.

Can I record? No, I don’t have the Software. Will this info let you kill a hero point solo? Absolutely.

bliss.4305:

Pimsley.3681:

They seem to become less revenant with each update…blablabla….

^ Fixed it for ya.

Don’t worry though, join us thieves in the guild hall tavern. I actually believe Anet designed that place for this particular reason. For classes like Thieves and Warriors who’re made irrelevant with HoT drink their problems away

Upside? I do get more time in the guild hall bar.

Downside? I miss being competitive. Wouldn’t even take too much to make us viable again, doesn’t have to be a numbers thing.

Also, I have to give it up for some funny moments in general:

- Norn Savage’s comments when directing you to Taimi were just great.
- If you take the two sylvari with you to the final confrontation, well Rytlock makes a funny ‘practical comment’ about it.

Aye, I choose to try to save her first, got the same thing for Logan.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

People. Want. To. Play. The. New. Content. With. The. Elite. Specs. They’ve. Been. Anticpating. For. Months. This is not a difficult concept to comprehend!

You. Can. Play. The. New. Content. With. Elite. Specs. When. You. Get. Them.

It’s a matter of how soon really, I had zero issues unlocking my first elite spec fully last night, it took me under a full day essentially to do so, and that was without the full Masteries required for some of them unlocked. Dragonhunter will be easier on my second run.

Furthermore, some elite specializations depending on what you really want don’t require the full 400, I didn’t need the last 60 points in my Berserker Specialization Tree to play what I wanted for instance.

It’ll be one way to bring players to WvW lol.

First impressions? Like, just because it is different and offers new fields to fight players in.

I like change, but as for whether it is balanced I can’t say one way or another.

hurrado.2346:

Sykper.6583:

hurrado.2346:

Chrono.6928:

Go play other mmo’s then come back and say this game has “grind” lol. You have no idea what grind really is.

Heck you can even play alts and get mastery points b/c its account bound. Real grind would be doing it all over again on all of them rofl.

I had played a korean MMO that was literally all kill mobs to level, then kill more, and you know what, this grind feels exactly like that if not worse.

It is real grind, we have to get the specs over and over again, in repetitive content.

Which one, pray tell, is a more enjoyable experience just straight up killing mobs than doing practically anything that creates experience in the Magumma Jungle?

I want to know, let me know what was ‘less grindy’.

Actually the Korean MMO, because I would get reasonably things that I wanted in a decent amount of time, and I played that content with my friends, at a decently casual pace.

HoT I just want to get out of the zone as soon as possible to play my spec in the game content I like playing, making it a much more painful grind.

Edit: also when new classes came out they were immediately accessible… so that kind of kept it fresh to me.

Sorry I meant to ask which Korean MMO were you referring to. Name please. Blargh, silly word phrasing.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Electro.4173:

What I don’t understand is why the expectations are what they are.

For almost the entire nine months between announcement and release, the only info available about what it would take to unlock an Elite Spec was: the cost to unlock a core spec and a data-mined amount which was still within the amount of HP gained via core world exploration.

What this led to was a long-held expectation to immediately jump into play on the new spec on the part of people who’ve waited as much as three years for something new. The reaction you’re seeing is called disappointment, fueled by ANet’s last minute reveal. This reaction was inevitable with the way it was handled, and avoidable with up-front communication about the intention to make players progress in HoT to gain access. Anet continues to demonstrate that its management does not understand people.

I…have to agree with this. I believe I read during their extremely earlier reveals about elite specializations that they would require some effort to unlock, so I assumed in my own mind that we might not likely get the entire thing until we participated in Heart of Thorns some more.

They never clearly established how much work would be involved until days before the reveal, and as much datamining as there was, a lot of players don’t look at that and so their judgment was thus presumed “We will get sub-classes going straight into the first area! Woohoo!”.

Hence, the forum debacle.

I suppose it was just a miscommunication, I personally expected this kind of thing before launch, my mind was braced for attempting the hero points to fully access my specialization which I have. I guess it just wasn’t clear enough…

I am just shocked at the utterly shameful display by the playerbase over this. There are plenty of veterans who have been through the stagnation we have had for years, yet they feel so opposed to what Heart of Thorns is, which is essentially ‘Orr at Launch 2.0 with actual difficulty’, and demand certain things they know kill the answers to their woes:

- ‘Can we have Masteries not be tied to accessing certain content?’ Masteries are Arenanet’s answer to raising the level cap. You earn experience as a level 80 to give you practical capabilities in certain regions. If you don’t want VERTICAL progression to happen, this is how GW2 should move forward.
- ‘Hero Points are just too difficult, reduce their difficulty, they should be soloable!’ I actually agree to this at a point. Given a 5 minute timer, the encounter seems catered to be soloable however the health pool is just too high for even the most experienced players, hence they call for help. I don’t think it would be wrong to make some of these high health hero point bosses have less health to make it feasible to win on its own. But it’s also clear to see that given the ‘repeatable HP system’ they have to reward players for contributing to a hero point they already done, they want these to be tackled by more than one player.

There are some valid arguments, but I am more saddened by our community than the devs. Players are doing quite well despite these grievances and want to raise a stink just to get what they want without effort rather than work on it. It depresses me to even consider that the average GW2 player thinks that an entire launch weekend if dedicated to playing the game, should give an expansion’s worth of full content before the weekdays as to not have things to do at that point forward.

hurrado.2346:

Chrono.6928:

Go play other mmo’s then come back and say this game has “grind” lol. You have no idea what grind really is.

Heck you can even play alts and get mastery points b/c its account bound. Real grind would be doing it all over again on all of them rofl.

I had played a korean MMO that was literally all kill mobs to level, then kill more, and you know what, this grind feels exactly like that if not worse.

It is real grind, we have to get the specs over and over again, in repetitive content.

Which one, pray tell, is a more enjoyable experience just straight up killing mobs than doing practically anything that creates experience in the Magumma Jungle?

I want to know, let me know what was ‘less grindy’.

Fox.3469:

Op,
It’s your error mate, hate to say it, if you let her stack to over 5 she will heal up, she stacks up by absorbing firstborn, so your job is to kill the firstborn asap as they spawn. Save your big aoe’s, they die really fast but you need to focus them with aoe. If she doesn’t stack up to firstborn stacks to high, she won’t heal. Really just any aoe on them and they drop like flies.

If she stacks a culmative 5 firstborn before her first death, she will recover health depending on how many she absorbed. After her first death if this occurred, she will instead spawn more minions to absorb during her last phase to enhance her abilities and spam. It’s a race against the clock and her abilities, she’s very difficult.

For those having issues getting Chapter 14 to work with the markings, read:

I, with some in-game assistance from fellow players, worked out a solution for the rocks.

I don’t know if it’s intended, but the mechanism behind the progression for Chapter 14 on each rock to investigate relies on whether or not your character actively searches and spends time within the area.

In other words, if you want the toggle for examining each rock to appear, have the bar shrink and expand as you search the entire area, even if you know where you need to go.

I don’t know what sort of back-end mechanics it was, but people were having success with it.

So at each rock, spend a bit more time ‘looking’ around for the markings letting the meter fill bit by bit, with it frequently shrinking back, and it will progress you to the next rock.

This is how myself and a couple confirmed others made it through the Chapter.

Thank you.

I saw the Chak Gerent.

And here I thought there wouldn’t be ‘Nightmare Fuel’ in GW2.

It’s Terrifying, and its hard. Well played A-Net. I love the alien-like design of the Chak.

nobleroar.2078:

Sykper.6583:

Lilly Satou.1482:

Mahou.3924:

FOX.3582:

Boy oh boy I’ve never seen so much cry babys. So what a lot of you saying is: We wanna play an MMO, we buy an MMO, but we don’t like this game to be so much MMO’ish… Maybe a lot of you forget that masteries are acount wide? So when you have them all unlocked you don’t have to do it anymore on other characters, never again… After that you may come back here to cry about how you all have nothing to do etc… Common guys, enjoy the game, or go play some other crap game like WOW… -.-

Okay, now here is my comment/rating:

10/10. There is no better MMO then GW2… Period…

(I’m not even starting on those sour people who wanted their elite spec on log-in).

Ouchy, you are really not brightest bulb in the room, aren’t you.

GEE DUB TUU BEST GAEM EVAR U HATERZ SUX
these are the people that need to stop riding anets kitten and actually look at the game from a critics point of view.

We are. After getting all the hero points required to get Berserker on my main last night without actively going for said points, I think it is an acceptable time investment, especially since said masteries I earned while doing so help speed up future HP runs.

There are a lot of complainers not giving constructive feedback other than ‘WANT IT RIGHT NOW’. How do you go months without expecting some effort to be put into getting the Specializations for your characters?

And here I thought Elitists were the worst thing to run into GW2.

I think most of them are just having difficulties expressing themselves or rather they only know how to QQ.

But I will just take reference to FF14 because it is one of the most well designed MMO I ever played. Job advancement is done usually thru’ questing/storyline and then ding, you advanced, then you proceed to learning skills/gearing your toon which can take quite a number of hours but still acceptable because the progression is linear.

However, what HoT had is something not of a norm which is getting hero points and for some of those points in the jungle are locked behind mastery and to level up mastery is yet another grind, progression is hindered by another progression. Not a very popular mechanic here. (at least based from the raging forum threaders).

I don’t hate HoT but I am a tad disappointed with the design choices. If the intention is for players to unlock elite spec while in the jungle, I think it would be better that the acquisition of traits to be more direct (i.e. reward from an event) so player will really roam around, have a couple of traits behind another progression but just make sure the progression does not require a tonnes of exp gain to unlock. (balance ~) and not collecting points to unlock….. :/

That’s a much better set of feedback. But the thing is they designed the Hero Points to be replayable for those who already completed them by offering the map currency (Wanted heavily) plus some extra loot. Although I am of the sound mind that if one were skilled enough to mitigate the damage the hero point boss puts out and do the mechanics properly, they should be able to kill it in 5 minutes and not have the mob have too much health.

The issue I have with the traits being locked behind certain content or events is that those could be considered worse, especially if the event for weeks was practically impossible. For instance, say a GM trait for all the elite specializations were locked behind the main Meta Event completion in the 2nd map, if you have progressed that far in, you know how challenging it is and how no one has done it yet. Certainly would be a big incentive to have players start actually getting their heads in the game and have a map-wide attempt at it, but how frustrating would it be?

I don’t think locking traits and skills behind those certain events is all that good, especially if some events were part of a chain and the earlier event gets bugged out…

Lilly Satou.1482:

Mahou.3924:

FOX.3582:

Boy oh boy I’ve never seen so much cry babys. So what a lot of you saying is: We wanna play an MMO, we buy an MMO, but we don’t like this game to be so much MMO’ish… Maybe a lot of you forget that masteries are acount wide? So when you have them all unlocked you don’t have to do it anymore on other characters, never again… After that you may come back here to cry about how you all have nothing to do etc… Common guys, enjoy the game, or go play some other crap game like WOW… -.-

Okay, now here is my comment/rating:

10/10. There is no better MMO then GW2… Period…

(I’m not even starting on those sour people who wanted their elite spec on log-in).

Ouchy, you are really not brightest bulb in the room, aren’t you.

GEE DUB TUU BEST GAEM EVAR U HATERZ SUX
these are the people that need to stop riding anets kitten and actually look at the game from a critics point of view.

We are. After getting all the hero points required to get Berserker on my main last night without actively going for said points, I think it is an acceptable time investment, especially since said masteries I earned while doing so help speed up future HP runs.

There are a lot of complainers not giving constructive feedback other than ‘WANT IT RIGHT NOW’. How do you go months without expecting some effort to be put into getting the Specializations for your characters?

And here I thought Elitists were the worst thing to run into GW2.

9/10

There are a couple of small things that bother me, but nothing is totally making this a bad experience.

Special mentions:

Can I say this? I absolutely love the music in the jungle, all of it. The atmospheric tunes, the differences in battles…I almost didn’t want some of it to stop, ESPECIALLY the Tanir theme…I thank you for that.

Outside of Hero Points, the enemies in the jungle I feel so far are fairly balanced. By that I mean I love them for being complex and difficult, each with its own personality. Magnificent.

Hero Points:

These deserve a special mention and are perhaps the most discussed.

If I were given one of two extreme choices in that either the Magumma Hero Points were complete and utter disasters or they were the best Hero Points ever made…

I would go with the latter, but reluctantly.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully expected these hero points to be more difficult than the already challenging enemies in the jungle. But some of these challenges are…by design a bit flawed in my opinion. I will be blunt.

No Hero Point should be impossible for a single character from any profession.

Champion Vinetooth in Auric Basin was one of the few Hero Points I felt was actually in line with a feasibly difficult yet soloable mob that granted the appropriate 10 hero points. Yet time after time again things like the Mk 1 Golem in Verdant Brink remind me that some points enforces a party of 3 or more to beat. The damage of the mobs was hardly the issue in these cases, it was their HEALTH. The health scaling was atrocious, expecting DPS geared characters in raw health yet the pure mechanics of the mob (Hylek Bladedancers) made that akin to something just painfully bad.

Please, I implore that you refrain from making encounters that advance mechanically the single hero that take up the challenge, to require more than one hero to do so. I felt that the Auric Basin Vinetooth was a beautiful example given how it was designed in an AI standpoint, but other mobs aren’t so kind. I also don’t mind if players casually ignore high-damage moves when they should dodge, obviously I don’t expect these to be faceroll, just make them feasible.

Lastly, I am aware that players will get a daily bonus from repeating some of these Hero Points, but that won’t be enough incentive for one player to WP and migrate for a few moments just for a daily chest (blues and greens lol) and to assist the newcomer. It might be too much work, and that leads to a bad experience for everyone…

The Mastery System:

After looking about just how much I wrote about the maps, I’ll be more concise with this one. Masteries…work perfectly well with what we have been doing until till the release. Think about all the extra levels we converted into currency. These mastery levels fill that void in progression for not just our main characters but our entire account. They are meaningful, and there are choices at a point between what to level next. Ultimately, if the Mastery System is the way for GW2 to provide a means of growing your character at level 80 to have more ‘capabilities’ in the open world than other fresh 80s, they nailed it.

But, it can be improved further. Right now, each Mastery Line regardless of the content has a set order to go through before you unlock a particular capability. Some of these tracks make little sense however. For instance, Itzel Mastery has masteries in language and environment (mushrooms). These masteries are jumbled together and force the player to go through a lot of the line to reach a certain mastery acquisition to continue their journey. It would be fine if the mastery in question were early-on, but its very late instead, the experience required is rather vast…

To improve the mastery system, I propose catagories of masteries gain subcatagories or advanced catagories if you meet the prerequisite first.

So for instance, say you have the previous example of Itzel masteries being split between Language and Environment (mushrooms). The language catagory would have you unlock the initial catagory, the language, followed by Vendor access. The Environment catagory, immediately accessible regardless of Itzel Language, can see the bouncing Shrooms and Adrenal Shrooms in that order.

Make more choices for the player and with the appropriate experience balance in play and they will love you for it. And yes, this was brought about due to the ‘Itzel Poison’ mastery requirement, we can do better.

There is another thing I like to address though. There have been mentions of having Collections fill the void where Masteries were. Things like ‘Find 10 of these explorers to meet a language quota’. The issue with that solution is fluidity and growth on a daily basis. On fluidity, experience towards a certain Magumma mastery can come from any activity whether it be someone out of the blue asking for help with a challenging hero point or the ambient point of interest. Collections can’t provide this, you have no need to help others to achieve a goal in mind, if you wanted to find a doctor in the middle of the jungle and you do so, but a nearby player Tag is struggling with a mob, what purpose would it serve to assist? Experience is universal and it makes a more practical and entertaining sense. You would be encouraged to help others for the event credit to progress your current mastery. Experience is the right way to go, the Mastery system can be refined however…

Hey all.

It’s a bit late for me, but I thought it would be a good time to get a lot off my mind with concern to HoT up to right now, just as I logged off for the 2nd day. I am going to cover a lot of different things, I may miss some stuff or perhaps not elaborate on some things but I personally feel like I have enough experience to be able to provide adequate feedback on what I have experienced in the Magumma Jungle.

Warning: These are unfiltered thoughts, meaning I won’t misrepresent or hide any content at my whim even if it comes later in the story or content path. The spoilers however end at most of the 3rd map’s exploration and story, meaning I haven’t fully finished everything yet.

Let’s start with something simple.

The Maps:

These…maps were designed with a thought in mind for each one. I don’t doubt many of you were bewildered by the look of Verdant Brink. Compared to the rest of Tyria which we know very well, the first zone we come into makes Orr look like a cakewalk. Everything, even the earth itself is run asunder and made into a complex and unfriendly maze. As much as I want to see this being perhaps too intimidating to the fresh players who enter the new territory for the first time, eventually you start to adapt quickly.

The chaos of this map starting to become under your own control as you progress through the mastery system to gain some essential perks, well, it’s extremely similar to the experience of actually leveling beyond the level cap in the core expansion. Certainly you aren’t stronger than anyone who comes in, but perks like gliding and mushroom jumps are so useful on these maps you actually think you are getting better overall. The experience of progression is there, without a level gate at all. Things get easier sure, but they aren’t impossible without the perks.

That’s the beauty of it all really, there is difficulty first in navigating the jungle rather than the encounters which you work towards. Verdant Brink was a harsh and unforgiving first map that had you pick up the pace quickly so you can keep that same pace going through places like Auric Basic or Tangled Depths. It immediately rose the gauge for you, and that’s rather generous considering the hosts that inhibit the jungle.

So what of the complaints about it being too confusing? Well, it is the intent of the map first-off, however these same reactions were mentioned way back when players started going into Orr, an all too familiar landmass with, even now, slightly challenging/annoying mechanics behind their undead denizens and attempt at complicated AI. Straits of Devastation for instance, how many of you off the top of your head can inform me of the differences between a Meta-Event with one route cleared versus three cleared? There was a massive difficulty spike to complete the meta, but in reality it wasn’t just that. We as new players didn’t know any of the tricks or nuances to do the Temple of Baltazar successfully and very often.

This same exact thing is happening now, all of us veterans are in new content, we are all suffering the same anxiety of unknown territory. We can’t establish if something is unfeasible unless it is actually impossible to do, mainly due to some debilitating bug.

…My apologies, I went on a rant, I’ll close with this. The maps have an intent behind them, as intimidating as Verdant Brink is, there is a lot of thought put behind it to keep both veteran players working on it and new players to go through it to newer lands. The very ‘level’ plains of Auric Basin are a godsend back to the normal Tyria mixed with a beautiful city, and the Tangled Depths are what happens when you really get into the Jungle, when things get really difficult to navigate.

…If I may, I will say these maps are by far some of the most beautiful maps I have seen in my MMO gaming career. Take a moment to look at the attractive flora when you catch a break people, despite the monstrosities that lurk in these maps you almost want to think they belong here, that’s an impressive feat to do.

Schtizzel.5497:

Andred.1087:

Hilarious. There are people who have already unlocked elite specs, THE FIRST DAY, and still others are complaining it will take way too long… news flash guys, if people have done it in 16 hours, you can do it in little more than a week by putting in a measly 2 hours a day… Not shocked that people are whining though, it’s as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning.

I have to sacrifice my 2 daily hours i leave myself for gaming for a whole week to get 1 elite spec on 1 character? Sounds nice for a non grindy game like GW2.

Wait is that you only have 2 hours a week to spend on gaming or you can spend only 2 hours a day each week to game?

If its the former, I feel bad but you are an outlier and unfortunately the tuning for making the progression meaningful isn’t catered to something like 2 hours a week.

If its the latter, I don’t see how you wouldn’t be able to get the elite in a week or two if you put your mind into it. The hardest part is getting the masteries leveled which will allow future alts to have a better time in the jungle, since you know Masteries are Account-Bound.

3 years of having things handed on a silver platter causes this.

At this point the comforting blanket is torn off.

I consider myself somewhat of a decent gamer, and the anticipation to play and grow my characters and my account tomorrow with what the expansion has provided…has been nothing but a blessing.

Andred.1087:

What on Earth are you on about? You haven’t even presented any form of argument.

Are you suggesting the expansion is a failure because you have to play it for more than a couple weeks to get something you want from it? How dare ANet give you a reason to keep coming back!

They’re not joking around when they say “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” If you can’t appreciate that philosophy, then you’re on a completely different page than ANet is.

^^

I couldn’t ask for a better experience Arenanet. This is exactly the kind of content we needed to bring actual progression into our 80s.

Thanks!

Ohoni.6057:

Nope. Raiding engages you always.

Nope, that’s entirely subjective.

It’s not. Rather it can’t be if the Raid is designed to be difficult and offer a serious prospect of deaths/wiping. By design Raids are engaging, they cannot be a grind.

Grinding doesn’t. You kill 100 enemies and you know something isn’t going to happen, no suddenly new and difficult attacks will result from these mobs. It’s to the point where it numbs you completely.

As for whether or not Raids will turn into a grind after say the 10th/50th/100th time running through the encounters, that won’t happen. But what you can say is if the raid starts becoming boring. That depends entirely on how fluid and fun each encounter is. There are sound cases where some bosses are just more entertaining to do than others, which never really dry up. Others can feel like a chore, but you know you rather just get through it once and play committed to not messing up your assignment.

But no, by design Raids will never be a grind.

Ohoni.6057:

You took the Wikipedia article out of its context. Original Grinding was not just repetitive tasks, it was singular, you did one thing all the time for what you wanted to get. There were no alternatives, no different other methods, no flexibility other than kill this particularly named mob for a very rare drop for hours or take this item and walk with a speed debuff for 15 minutes to the repeatable quest turn-in vendor.

The absolute worst part of Grinding was that it was monotonous and not-engaging. There was ZERO enjoyment in it, but if you wanted something special or worse, something REQUIRED for other content in the game, you HAD TO DO IT.

So, like raiding?

Nope. Raiding engages you always.

Congrats, you have said it four times clearly since your last post that HPs do not make you any better. Since that is your only point, which I am ok with you making, it has no substantial value other than just being a opinionated statement on its own.

Good news about your final point is that you don’t just HAVE to run around the PvE map doing the HPs, you can earn them in WvW as well, and SPvP has them automatically unlocked!

Which is why I feel justified in saying that people need to stop being lazy bums and get ready to burn some calories in the jungle or WvW.

Laraley.7695:

Sykper.6583:

Laraley.7695:

Sykper.6583:

Laraley.7695:

mXz.4512:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

gems to unlock all waypoints (requested today)
gems for immediate level 80 (requested yesterday)
gems for mounts with 100-300% speed boost (frequent)
gems to convert PvE maps to PvE/PvP (frequent)
gems to unlock all hero points (requested today)

Just because someone wants it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. It may benefit you and other players yet be bad for the game as a whole.

It really makes me wonder why such people play games at all if they can’t put any effort in anything ingame and have to rely on $ to get good. Really quite sad.

Because farming to unlock a spec will make you good ^^

And because if the option existed to buy out certain pieces of content with gems, it devalues the effort everyone else put in to get those hero points the normal way. This on top of setting up a dangerous precedent in the future for trivializing content with the Gemstore.

Stop trying to buy shortcuts through content, and realize Elite Specializations are not the same as Core lines, they are character progression. I am extremely certain future specialization lines will follow this pattern of earning hero points to unlock them as well.

Oh, I’m not getting the spec for my main since it’s trash. I’m just saying that farming HP to unlock it won’t make you good. Another player could be using that time to get better a different way and you do not get to say what works out better for him.

Never implied that getting the hero points normally would bestow great PvE prowess. And I do get a say on what works out better because it directly correlates to how not just myself but everyone else feels with concern to character progression. Having the elite specializations behind Hero Points is one of the ways Arenanet could have had new lines come into the game since increasing the level cap was out of the option.

Elite Specializations are what leveling 1-80 was to the original core Specializations where you gained hero points often to continue improving your current character. It’s similar to asking to buy character levels with gems. Do you understand now why it would be bad to set a gem price?

Did you even read my post? Did I ever say anything about the idea of buying the spec? No. I replied to a comment who said people want to rely on money to get good. Farming HP won’t make you good. Period.

No, you don’t get to say if someone feels he’ll get better by actually practicing his class rather than farming, sorry.

And it’s not really, I’ve leveled most of my characters without doing any levelling. There is no other option than actually go and get the HP.

“Another player could be using that time to get better a different way…” is where I drew the conclusion that you agree with the opportunity of the spec being purchasable since you correlate the entirety of earning the HPs as a lesser learning experience or waste of time. Perhaps that wasn’t your intent but you came off as justifying to me as making the gems an option to pay for free HPs since it was a waste of time to ‘farm them’ for some people. I apologize if that wasn’t what you meant.

How is the in-game activity to reach and complete Magumma HPs not practicing his profession if he’s going into the jungle with it? We can’t even compare the difficulties of HPs in the core with what is coming out in HoT but it looks to be a bit more of a trial than aimlessly killing the normal ‘Bandit Leader and 2 cohorts’ HP we get in Queensdale. I would hate it if the Magumma HPs turned into ‘Farm level’ content too, but I highly doubt that is what they will be even if doing Magumma completion for the 3rd or 4th time.

…And I presume by your last comment you are referring to craft-leveling, tomes, ‘Not leaving LA’ activities to level? Everything has upsides and downsides, although you achieved level 80 quickly you did not go to the Core game and get HPs, ergo you have more to do on those insta-level characters than your veteran ones.

Thuggernaut.1250:

Wanze.8410:

I just run to the next water, jump in and wait for thief to follow, then i burst him down.

That works in WvW, but there are no more water maps in sPvP after they got rid of Capricorn.

The first real nerf to Warrior.

:P

Selwynn.2758:

Fortunately for me there are enough fun things to do in GW2 that I can ignore the ones that aren’t.

So, just like I did with old legendaries, I look at the requirements for HOT legendaries and simply say, “nope.”

I won’t have legendaries, because the grind to get them is not what I consider fun. But I’m OK with that, and happy to let people who do want that sort of thing to have at it.

Although I am sorry to hear that you don’t like the path towards Legendaries, it is very refreshing to hear someone not complain since yes, there will be quite a lot of other content that can deliver fruitful rewards for those invested into it.

I sincerely hope there is plenty of worthy skins from HoT we can all appreciate and participate in.

Laraley.7695:

Sykper.6583:

Laraley.7695:

mXz.4512:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

gems to unlock all waypoints (requested today)
gems for immediate level 80 (requested yesterday)
gems for mounts with 100-300% speed boost (frequent)
gems to convert PvE maps to PvE/PvP (frequent)
gems to unlock all hero points (requested today)

Just because someone wants it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. It may benefit you and other players yet be bad for the game as a whole.

It really makes me wonder why such people play games at all if they can’t put any effort in anything ingame and have to rely on $ to get good. Really quite sad.

Because farming to unlock a spec will make you good ^^

And because if the option existed to buy out certain pieces of content with gems, it devalues the effort everyone else put in to get those hero points the normal way. This on top of setting up a dangerous precedent in the future for trivializing content with the Gemstore.

Stop trying to buy shortcuts through content, and realize Elite Specializations are not the same as Core lines, they are character progression. I am extremely certain future specialization lines will follow this pattern of earning hero points to unlock them as well.

Oh, I’m not getting the spec for my main since it’s trash. I’m just saying that farming HP to unlock it won’t make you good. Another player could be using that time to get better a different way and you do not get to say what works out better for him.

Never implied that getting the hero points normally would bestow great PvE prowess. And I do get a say on what works out better because it directly correlates to how not just myself but everyone else feels with concern to character progression. Having the elite specializations behind Hero Points is one of the ways Arenanet could have had new lines come into the game since increasing the level cap was out of the option.

Elite Specializations are what leveling 1-80 was to the original core Specializations where you gained hero points often to continue improving your current character. It’s similar to asking to buy character levels with gems. Do you understand now why it would be bad to set a gem price?

Kevan.8912:

…

You took the Wikipedia article out of its context. Original Grinding was not just repetitive tasks, it was singular, you did one thing all the time for what you wanted to get. There were no alternatives, no different other methods, no flexibility other than kill this particularly named mob for a very rare drop for hours or take this item and walk with a speed debuff for 15 minutes to the repeatable quest turn-in vendor.

The absolute worst part of Grinding was that it was monotonous and not-engaging. There was ZERO enjoyment in it, but if you wanted something special or worse, something REQUIRED for other content in the game, you HAD TO DO IT.

So when you say things like GW2 is too grindy, I cannot understand. There are almost nil instances where you had to do one task to reach an objective in this MMO. Everything is nicely wrapped into different things, you progress at your own speed however you wish. And once again, there’s no pressure on you as a player to keep up with everyone else, there’s no true vertical progression where you will fall behind on if you skip a few weeks of the game. I can’t think of another MMO that has done such a good job on not letting players fall behind on content.

So no, this game isn’t a grind. If this game was a grind, Heart quests wouldn’t have many tasks to do, just one, and there would be more of them to split the hearts out, and there would be kill only quests, fetch this stick quests, etc. If this game was a grind, there would be much rarer drop rates than now with any kind of gear, Precursor drops would be almost mythical and certain precursors would ONLY have a chance to drop from very FEW mobs which would be camped everyday. Even with the shared loot system, getting a tag would be a hell of a challenge, oh and the mob would spawn every hour or so…

There is no Grind unless it repeats ONE task and the task is NOT-ENGAGING. If there are other ways to work on something, it is not a grind, its a goal.

Laraley.7695:

mXz.4512:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

gems to unlock all waypoints (requested today)
gems for immediate level 80 (requested yesterday)
gems for mounts with 100-300% speed boost (frequent)
gems to convert PvE maps to PvE/PvP (frequent)
gems to unlock all hero points (requested today)

Just because someone wants it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. It may benefit you and other players yet be bad for the game as a whole.

It really makes me wonder why such people play games at all if they can’t put any effort in anything ingame and have to rely on $ to get good. Really quite sad.

Because farming to unlock a spec will make you good ^^

And because if the option existed to buy out certain pieces of content with gems, it devalues the effort everyone else put in to get those hero points the normal way. This on top of setting up a dangerous precedent in the future for trivializing content with the Gemstore.

Stop trying to buy shortcuts through content, and realize Elite Specializations are not the same as Core lines, they are character progression. I am extremely certain future specialization lines will follow this pattern of earning hero points to unlock them as well.

Jahroots.6791:

I don’t get the outrage at the game becoming pay2win. It’s always been pay to win. They literally sell us gold. Dropping enough money allows one to bypass a ton of drudgery, and look cool while doing it. If someone wants to buy their Elite spec, kittening let ’em.

Not that this is a major problem anyway. Everything we can spend real money on can also be earned by playing the game, and in a reasonable amount of time (for now, anyway. The gold -> gem exchange might skyrocket after HoT is released)

Never pay to win. Pay to win entails you can skip past practically all content required for certain items. It’s a ‘Pay for Advantage’ which is different, and does not influence the gameplay of other individuals.

What you propose for Hero Point acquisition through Gems is actually pay to win as those who get their elite specs through this method have an inherit advantage in the gameplay over their fellow players.

So no, absolutely not.