Guild Wars 2

Justine.6351:

Sykper.6583:

Justine.6351:

Sykper.6583:

Justine.6351:

um…except warriors don’t need to be rezed to access all their stuff if they can last long enough to vengeance.

If you are aiming to Vengeance all the time as a Warrior every time you get downed, you deserve to stay in Bronze. I’ve already made it painfully clear why the access to skills doesn’t matter, no other profession’s skill 3 makes them do worse in the long run like Warrior’s can.

so remove vengeance for something more basic like an unblockable, blind removing, stability stripping aoe kd.

Aftershock:
Remove stability from foes and cause knockdown.
targets:5
radius:450
knockdown: 2 sec
unblockable
removes:blind

Top troll 10/10.

Anyone else with obviously broken suggestions?

Or anyone with an actual good suggestion?

Mind explaining what is the problem with my suggestion?

Or explaining why you think the current 3 skill is fair compared to other professions?

You have simply dodged all of it at this point.

Justine.6351:

Sykper.6583:

Justine.6351:

um…except warriors don’t need to be rezed to access all their stuff if they can last long enough to vengeance.

If you are aiming to Vengeance all the time as a Warrior every time you get downed, you deserve to stay in Bronze. I’ve already made it painfully clear why the access to skills doesn’t matter, no other profession’s skill 3 makes them do worse in the long run like Warrior’s can.

so remove vengeance for something more basic like an unblockable, blind removing, stability stripping aoe kd.

Aftershock:
Remove stability from foes and cause knockdown.
targets:5
radius:450
knockdown: 2 sec
unblockable
removes:blind

Top troll 10/10.

Anyone else with obviously broken suggestions?

Justine.6351:

um…except warriors don’t need to be rezed to access all their stuff if they can last long enough to vengeance.

If you are aiming to Vengeance all the time as a Warrior every time you get downed, you deserve to stay in Bronze. I’ve already made it painfully clear why the access to skills doesn’t matter, no other profession’s skill 3 makes them do worse in the long run like Warrior’s can.

That same reasoning can be applied to any profession that is downed, with exception if I were to think about it certain builds that gain an effect or access to an ability while staying in a certain ‘state’ like Tempest’s Attunements for Overloads.

The only difference is, Vengeance is statistically likely to outright kill the Warrior and causes several disadvantaged cases. The closest related profession in terms of down-state inferiority is Rev as although the displacement with the 2 skill is slightly better than Warrior, the change to how slow and quickness affect stomps puts the 1 skill on Rev just as pointless as the Warrior’s Rocks. Vengeful Blast, the Rev Downed State 3, is an AoE nuke pure and simple, but that at least isn’t going to help the revenant kill his/herself or cause Point Cap Negation.

Bump….

…For Great Justice!

Gwaihir.1745:

You’re complaining about one of the most useful downstate skills? If you’re down you’re probably either dead or a burden to your team if it happens too often. So get up and drop all your skills on the enemy team and die. I see no problem here you can time it and change the fight for your team and get a full rally.

Oh yes, Vengeance is used all the time much like Symbol of Judgement or Lick Wounds. Clearly I missed the competitive level plays where every warrior was popping Vengeance when they could to turn around fights.

You do realize a Vengeanced Warrior doesn’t have point contestion with this skill right? If the Warrior downs first or even if the Warrior goes into downstate shortly after his opponent did, popping Vengeance actually hurts you because even if you stomp you will the majority of the time, not get the rally proc, and you effectively die on top of a point that you probably allowed the enemy to decap or full cap. And you spawn LATER, which is the in-game equivalent to downing yourself outside a point.

I want you to do me a favor, list at least one scenario where even if you pop Vengeance you are likely to make it useful for once whether you rally proc or not.

Back to Balian, sorry for not combining posts, but with all due respect if your solution was implemented Warriors would have even more 1v1 potential if they can pull off Vengeance. It would be easy for me to Vengeance and either stomp or cleave for the free rally with all that time, I think it needs to be shorter in order to make the Warrior carefully consider when and if to pop the skill.

Balian.5314:

I actually agree with OP… to a certain degree.

IMO an easier fix would be to simply make Vengeful Return baseline minus the increased HP and endurance gain on rally, then rework Vengeful Return.

I considered that, but it would be too strong. Currently Vengeance lasts 15 seconds. That’s way too long for something that mimics downstate, it would win a lot of scenarios with multiple downed folks.

My solution still gives enemies plenty of options, such as kiting the Warrior’s health out like before. I believe the health degen is particularly useful here.

I forgot to add, I chose my words carefully about this degen not being damage so the Warrior can’t immune the damage or a Rebound saving the Warrior. It’s strictly a ‘loss in health’.

Shadowstep.6049:

You forget that bringing warrior in downstate on first place takes like 3 years (due to all passives and utilities) and all resources and you suggest to prolong that time?….

Excusing your internal bias towards Warriors for a moment, is there any justification for a mechanic with an effect of rally or defeat, built around RNG rather than being controlled?

Made you click huh?

Baiting Title aside, I wanted to take a step back away from the current E-Drama around the vast majority of players having a reality crisis about where they actually stand in SPvP and talk about an actual issue that’s relevant to PvP and Balance as a whole.

If you couldn’t tell from the title, I want to talk to you guys about Vengeance and WHY IS THIS STILL A THING?

It’s been years, there have been slight changes to it to help ‘balance’ it here and there. But the skill itself is woefully outdated and awful right this second. The niche cases where it can be used will punish the Warrior 75% of the time, and the trait placement to only remove this penalty in these niche cases shares the same line as Warrior’s Sprint…which means nobody runs Vengeful Return.

From a Warrior Perspective, from a PvP balance perspective, from a down-state perspective this one skill manages to hit all the asinine design decisions from this game’s launch at the same time! It’ll be like if a Pro streamed Portal-playing his own lord at Foefire, it’s that stupid!

But, I believe the ‘spirit’ around the ability needs to stay intact. The skill itself can pull off some amazing upsets, but the RNG around the untraited skill makes the Warrior feel awful even if he killed the entire enemy team without a rally proc, it makes the enemy feel awful if it DOES proc because they lost against RNG, and it is used SO little compared to every other downstate skill. There are some pretty bad downstate skills out there, but every other profession has a theme to their downstate which requires a bit of thought and strategy. Warrior’s got a hammer it pulled from who knows where and a bunch of rocks.

Here’s my suggestion,

Vengeance: Rally and fighting for your life! Rapidly loses life over time until an enemy is killed. Healing received is drastically reduced.

Vengeance lasts until you defeat a foe, it is now a VERY PAINFUL DEBUFF that after 1 second while you rally, you lose a percentage of your health every second. Personally? 10% per second. Any Healing you receive as the Vengeance Warrior is cut in half, and stacks additively with poison (meaning 83% healing reduction, yep).

The current duration of the Vengeance is 15 seconds relying on an RNG rally proc. I’ve now turned it into around 6 seconds without support but ZERO rally RNG, any kill, debuff goes bye-bye.

Let’s take it a bit further, that trait about the rally chance? Garbage, we could look into tossing another trait in there or my rework would be:

Vengeful Return: Vengeance now recovers you for 100% of your life upon activation.

Untraited Vengeance has you around 50% life, a traited Vengeance has you come back at full to live longer and perhaps really turn the fight around. It’s probably not going to be the same as the current 15s duration, but it’ll be close.

So why are these changes cool? Because the Warrior already has perhaps one of the weakest 1 and 2 downstate skills in the game, and the profession 3 skills are at least potent. And this change would bring the Warrior 3 skill in line with others, likely giving you a few more seconds extra time, or in this case making players definitely finish the Warrior off before he gets a chance to activate it.

There’s also the possibility you can try supporting the Warrior’s rapidly diminishing health with healing, but that’s quite a lot with that debuff active. It creates more consistent scenarios for downstate with Warrior, and it doesn’t distract from how most players could handle one to begin with, kiting and CC!

Let me know what you think, but you can’t honestly tell me this relic of a skill isn’t in need of help.

Reaper Alim.4176:

I didn’t know League play meant casual play. But that’s ok, you can keep your pointless placement leader board position and farm easy sure wins at off hours every 3 days while people who are actually playing are getting punished for playing big time.

Oh and btw in this case. The cake is %99.9999999999 a big fat lie. Thank you k bye.

You know that’s a poor argument Reaper. The Decay isn’t meant to punish PvPers for not playing all the time, it is to prevent players from camping out at a certain rating and never playing the rest of the season. If I recall, the decay has a cap of seven days or 700 rating, of which 100 of the decay is removed per match played.

Maybe you should try asking for more matches to be played for the decay to full wear off, say maybe double the matches? So 50 decay removed per match instead?

Maybe, I’ll get around to it at some point. It’s actually a pretty interesting subject honestly, and with all the ‘test’ cases from other competitive games in a similar vein to GW2 SPvP, I believe it’s a worthwhile discourse.

But it’s late for me, holidays, stuff. I’ll mock up something eventually.

Ithilwen.1529:

This is the best season to date. remove class stacking and duo queue and it’d be golden.

The class stacking is an option that I can see implemented, but only when the SPvP population gets high enough to support. There also is plenty of debate needed for it, my personal experience is that stacking professions to excess never really works out unless it is used for pubstomping. However, there’s a competitive precedent for it from ESL so /shrug.

I can never agree to getting rid of Duo Queue though. If you want I can give you an essay of reasons why Duo Queue with Solo Queue is ultimately healthy for that particular game-mode despite the disadvantage for the solo queue.

Aside from the vague ‘How to figure out individual skill’ dilemma we have right now, the other perspective I’ve thought of is, to what extent that skill should affect your rating.

Saiyan brought up something like a flat number, but the rating gains and losses change at the extremes. You get higher in ranking and suddenly you are earning a few points per win, and lose 3x at least if you lose. Not that I think that’s too far off, if you are rank 1 you shouldn’t be able to pull away from those below you that easily…

So, I am going to assume Arenanet can eventually figure out a decent way to measure player skill, and determine the best players on each side of the match in a close game. Neat, so how do you reward the ‘losing player’ for trying his/her hardest for just barely losing by say a tick?

What about having the loss take a percentage hit? You performed the best of the losers in a 450-500 game, so maybe instead of losing 10 rating you lose 7? And that consolation applies to just you? I think a percent-based rating adjust might be best here.

If we can get the rating system to be a bit more complicated, such as promoting players who are losing to play their hardest to win in order to not take the biggest hit to their rating, that might promote better games.

Does anyone disagree? And yes, I do realize I dodged the whole ‘Player Skill’ measure here, with the changes to ‘Best Stats’ I assume Arenanet has concept going forward with this.

(cont)

Lastly, and after some consideration, I believe the current rating gain/loss is still too simple. Our resident SPvP Gameplay Programmer, who likely requires Salt to stay alive, Evan agreed in this thread about the concept of the current rating system being about how you win matches rather than your own skill. The idea that your effort to learn from your mistakes and win more matches than you lose will ultimately make you the better SPvPer.

That’s fine and dandy, but I believe we need to address the fact that since there are unwinnable games for these perfect players, based upon factors that are outside their control, that will still lose rating at the same pace as someone playing poorly.

In other words, I think there needs to be some special cases set in how rating is won or lost, based on the end score and player performance. …I am NOT advocating that the guy who thinks ‘GG’ once the score hits 50-300 and starts playing to get Best Stats across the board, to negate his rating loss all together. That’s a stupid kind of bad.

What I want to see though, is closer matches not punish the best performing losers as much as the worst performing. Right now there’s nothing that stops this, that keeps the extremely skilled player from losing the maximum rating compared to the tempest who had to briefly afk at spawn to answer the door.

We can always improve the rating system, as for what constitutes a ‘close’ game is up in the air, I’ve not decided quite yet. But you know kitten well the games that end 498-500 shouldn’t give the losers full rating loss, give them a rematch!

That’s all I had to say for now! Thanks for reading!

Howdy! NA Gold player here- Wait wait come back! I swear I got some decent feedback and hopefully some agreeable points players from all ranks can talk about.

Anyways, I wasn’t going to rush my opinion on the current PvP Season 5 until enough time has past, dozens of games have been played across a few hundred rating that I have been messing around in, etc. Naturally I’ve also been keeping tabs on various PvP related threads. I was the guy who wanted people to not rage within 24 hours of the Season starting…I admit, underestimated the rage in these forums a bit.

But all that aside, I believe I have a very clear idea about how this Season is, compared to the previous Seasons, and what we should maybe focus on down the road. I think we all can understand the positives this season has brought out, I need not go into detail but between the reward split from prestige, actual rating progression with potential to drop across divisions, decay and uniquely interesting titles…

I believe I can say the integrity and authenticity of the current system in place is absurdly better than any previous season. This kind of system should have been in place Day 1 of Season 1, it’s late, but thank you Arenanet for giving us an actual ranking system based on merit.

Unfortunately, because nothing is ever perfect, I believe it is good to go over the problems we have right now. And some of what I want to talk about can get a bit high-level. Let’s start with the simple stuff first, ahem, first problem this season:

Placement Matches were bogus. From just about every single thread posted, to my own experiences, I ultimately have to say the placement matches were bad. There are very likely players that are divisions lower than they should be, unfortunately having the worst time possible and spending dozens of matches trying to climb to an acceptable rating, all because A) They might not have played the previous season and choose to skip thus giving them a ‘rating’ that was not averaged out correctly, or Just the worst kind of synergy in the world, they lost a lot of Placements.

Despite my qualms with the placements, I believe the placements for next season might be better, if they exist for players who played this season. Ideally, Placements would be best used for new players only, returning players shouldn’t have to go through the massive variance in skill ratings to find their approximate spot. But for now, I think the placements were poorly done, and part of it was the new rating system implementation.

Next is this whole chat about Solo Versus Duo Queue. Man I cannot imagine any other competitive game where this dilemma came up…

I am pretty sure League of Legends has the phrase ‘Solo/Duo Queue’ copyrighted because of the sheer number of complaint threads about the subject. And I got some news for you guys who are not aware of how League handled it. …They didn’t.

There’s exactly zero solutions other than wiping out another aspect of grouping up with someone to do Ranked together. Solo/Duo Queue have to remain as is, despite the advantages a duo-queue brought. LoL did try to inflate the duo queue’s average rating a bit, because that would face them against harder opponents, but that wasn’t a perfect solution. And I think for the sanctity of the gamemode, we need Duo Queue to exist with Solo Queue because ultimately SPvP is a team game. You naturally would want to group up with others who you can play well with, form teams and win all the money!

I mean, we are welcome to discuss it some more, but you need only put into the search bar ‘League of Legends Solo versus Duo Queue’ and you will get all the arguments over years about it. Go ahead, get informed! Or experience deja vu, cause some of the arguments already are giving me flashbacks.

cranos.5913:

sexuallegend.2153:

You talk big but I doubt you’d even last a minute versus a meta DH and a meta warrior.

You mean that axe/axe warrior and full trapper DH are actually meta in NA? lul ok…

Don’t…just don’t listen to him. Trust me, not all NA is like this guy.

Sins.4782:

I propose another 1 second duration shave off of Gear Shield, maybe with a slight direct damage buff to Rocket Boots to make up for it. Am I hired yet ANet?

Really man?

Nah, just kidding.

I was just trying to get Engineer mains happy that someone was complaining about them.

Did it help?

My average right now is the Brink of Mid/High Gold, dipped as low as Bottom Gold and I have been in Plat.

I am seeing just about every profession being played at different degrees. Guardian is stronger actually now, the daze nerf is nothing compared to the burn buffs both Power and Condi builds are rolling with. I would say it’s competitive-worthy, but it does have its weaknesses (A well-timed burst through the blocks on the low health pool does that).

Druid seems weaker but competent, Thief is slightly better, Mesmer is around the same. Necro never changes, Rev is still VERY strong given its toolset, all the bad revs have left the building leaving only the good ones. Engi is a solid pick as well as Tempest, and Warrior is still potent.

I think the changes overall will not adjust the High-end meta at all during Tournies, except during certain key line-ups. For instance, MaceBow Warrior is outstanding at 1v1 except against the current Sage Condi-Mesmer, I expect more representation therefore from Warriors and Guardians.

Now if you don’t mind, I need to win about 10 more times in a row to get back to plat, very fun!

Oh and fyi, the overall quality of the matches is much nicer. I get the feeling players at my level and above are playing harder than the previous seasons I have been in. I don’t want to take a dive into Silver and Bronze and see the states down there lol.

Tiefsee.3647:

Sykper.6583:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Tiefsee.3647:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I will wait a couple days before raging. I’ll be spending that time fixing bugs anyways.

Can’t you just say they would be features?

I’m actually getting nervous about the lack of bugs.

The bugs have gained sentience and are actively hiding from you.

…Ever see ‘Them!’? It’s gonna end up like that.

We need bug-themed skins, i beed to hide – maybe if they think i am one of them, they won’t harm me… i need my karaka helm skin!

You could have gotten it from a Halloween bag.

I got mine from it this year

Evan Lesh.3295:

Tiefsee.3647:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I will wait a couple days before raging. I’ll be spending that time fixing bugs anyways.

Can’t you just say they would be features?

I’m actually getting nervous about the lack of bugs.

The bugs have gained sentience and are actively hiding from you.

…Ever see ‘Them!’? It’s gonna end up like that.

Evan Lesh.3295:

What’s your sample set? 1 game?

Were you responsible for Burn Guard buffs?

I think you were.

Maybe I should have asked for a few hours without complaints instead…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

An in-game easter egg is anything that is hidden from accidental discovery, requiring clever reading of clues and/or some trial & hour. Once solved, it might be repeated more easily. It has nothing to do with lore.

Yes, ‘This rock is humming with magic’ screams throw me in a specific spot out of the way from any normal travel. Even by your standards this little easter egg fails at being something unique.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Easter eggs are meant as local color, not as something meant to have a bigger payout than anything else in the game.

They are also not meant to be a waste of time or worse, a detriment to your gameplay.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It only costs more than the same reward because people over-hyped the value of the strange rock based on speculation and scarcity of the item. Similarly, long before Sam became part of a collection, it easily cost 3-20 times as much as other items with identical stats simply because people loved the cute icon.

Let’s keep away from the whole ‘scarcity’ argument, that’s one of the main blunders which caused all of this.

Sam as you mentioned had an appeal for its unique looking icon back in the day. It had an internal scarcity associated with a bugged Ogre Wars, but more than that it was a sought-after Berserker Stats Exotic Accessory of which you must know of the old Zerker days.

However, this ring is far different. The RNG in getting it is worse, and it costs you for trying to get it. Once you have the rock, you have no indications at all on what to do with it. ‘Humming with Magic’ is so unbelievably vague that all manner of possible theories came forth. Dozens if not hundreds of player hours were poured into the rock at release by only the select few folks who had the rock.

But there was nothing, and so the speculation came up with an unfinished product that would come about eventually from Current Events, since practically any other items like this one would lead into collections, special interactions, etc.

This was only resolved when Lindsey had mentioned that everything had come out about the rock with the release, our first REAL clue about the solution. She even followed up with keeping it in your inventory, and that’s a pretty nasty flaw for a secret scavenger hunt when you have to give hints out like that months later.

And ultimately, like you mentioned with Sam, the ring was the final reward which shared same stats as other rings of its caliber. But do you see the fatal difference between Sam and this Ring? Sam is actually something you can work towards, figure out on your own, doesn’t cost you anything per chance at RNG.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr it’s an easter egg; it needn’t be easily farmed.

Do you know what’s a cool easter egg?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gwen's_Grave

Hero Point tied to a nod at GW1.

Or, maybe something closer like:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Althea's_Ashes

Another nod, Accessory that is SHARED in cost with other accessories of its kind!

So please explain to me why this particular easter egg is destructive again?

Vayne’s correct.

Cash Shops or variants of ‘Paying for extra content’ are the future of current gaming. I would even extend it outside of MMOs or Mobile Games, some recent shooters have iterations like Loot Boxes that have a similar reward system. Currently playing Titanfall 2, I can get random cosmetic rewards on a whim, but they recently introduced new ‘Prime’ Titans that I can pay a bit of cash for that give me an alternative, different cosmetic look to my Titan which carries different voiceovers and executions.

We are getting away from Subs folks.

I get the feeling people who are arguing ‘Oh the rock is fine! It’s a neat scavenger hunt!’ likely haven’t done the hunt to begin with.

Actually, you should join us, pay 350g or open on average 1000 skritt stashes to get your own rock, walk to the unmarked points on the map and get your ascended ring, and come back here and tell us there’s nothing wrong with this particular process.

My only validation for why I am not really upset is because I bought mine back when it was sub-200g, and I hate berry farming with a passion. If this ring was aimed for people who want to buy it off the TP, they better hurry up as no one going forward will ever buy Skritt contracts and open stashes again with the item in its current iteration.

Actually the Skritt Contracts are toxic for the game given this, remove them from the Skritt Vendor or do something about the drop rate.

Sins.4782:

Guild Wars 2 broke into my house and shot my dog.

Admittedly I laughed.

But I suppose we will see how things play out.

So we are within a day of the newest Season of SPvP, perhaps the big first step towards a working competitive system not bound by reward but merit.

I think anyone who has touched on Ranked PvP understands that something like this has been a…long time coming. Slightly undercutting it, but I digress. That being said, it is extremely likely that tomorrow, there’s likely going to be problems. Heck, the latest Overwatch Ranked Season started bumpy with some matchmaking hi-jinx and confusion about personal ranking. It’ll be impressive if everything was better just in general.

But there’s one, single, tiny little thing I want to get off my chest. Something nagging at me at the start of every single season we’ve had so far. Would it be possible…

Would it be possible for us to maybe give it a day or two before we start posting the rage threads?

C’mon guys! We don’t have to be toxic after losing our first match due to a poor rotation, being ‘outcomped’, having someone afk because the other team paid him 50g, wondering how a hard counter lost 1v1 to the countered profession, wiping at a lord rush, getting condibombed, being stunlocked, being condibombed AND stunlocked…so on so forth.

We gonna be cool right? Staying positive right? Just 24 hours guys! That’s easy!

Just don’t get mad!

electricwater.1572:

I think no one of strange rock owners is really raging (like some people make it out to be). Except maybe for people who paid 600+g for this thing.

It’s what Malediktus said, total lack of logic in this case.

Think about it, an item has a low drop rate. So low that people (who did research on wiki) opened 5,8k skritt stashes and found ONLY 5 strange rocks. It makes you think it is something special.
Also when the exploit with skritt stashes was found, anet quickly went to fix it so you couldn’t abuse it. So they wanted the drop rate to stay low.

This ring has 4 stages of evolving. The only items in the game with a similar system are legendaries and few ascended backpacks (spinal blades, mawdrey), all of which have visual effects to them. So it is only logical to assume that something like that is more than just an ascended ring. (Also note that no one can see the ring but you, no visual effects whatsoever).

Also the text it came with. ‘This strange rock appears to be humming with magic’. How are you supposed to figure out you should throw it into lava? What does humming magic have to do with all of this?

No one figured it out because there are no clues, you should just stand in a small specific spot next to lava and hope the dialogue window will trigger. It also gives no indication where to go next. And if 4-stages pictures were not datamined, we would not even know there are 4 stages, so you could run around the map forever trying various things.

I still see no reason to lock a simple ascended ring behind all of this. It gives 0 ap (not even symbolic, like 1ap for example), doesn’t unlock any achievements, has no aura, you can only select stats once. If you salvage it, it only gives matrices back.
There are plenty of ascended rings in the game, they drop all the time in fractals. Pre-HoT people were asking to give them an opportunity to salvage ascended rings because it was getting too much. So there was clearly no supply shortage.

It just makes no sense. Yeah, you could say it’s a nod to GW1 lore, but the whole treasure hunt gives no additional lore, just you,rock, and lava. No dialogue, no story.

People got hyped because there were a lot of indications it is more than just an ascended ring. Even if it was not a legendary, they were at least expecting an aura, or SOMETHING.

And because of the low droprate, it is not smth everyone can make. Once the tp supply is gone, it wouldn’t be that easy to acquire strange rock anymore.

I secretly hope it’s just a hidden precursor for a future legendary ring, but no high expectations. Because if it isn’t, then it just makes no sense. You could easily buy an ascended ring for laurels or drop one in fractals, so why get it this way. Just because it says it belonged to Rurik? O_o

This guy’s more or less on the money.

The droprate doesn’t validate what the item turns into. For those who didn’t do the journey, there’s no open world indicators about where you need to stand for the locations to turn the rock into the ring. It’s legitimately a pop-up that triggers when you run across the location, no bigger than your player character.

Everything about the Rock was messy, all for a nod to GW1 which I do not personally mind.

However…

It feels like the Rock should have had at least 10x better drop rate or some minor aura as someone mentioned given what you had to do in order to get it. And the last thing that has to be mentioned is that because this is the main reward behind the skritt contracts which cost Ember Bay Currency and Karma, that it is behind such a massive RNG wall means that worker contract is actually destructive to player wallets.

My Feedback is that this is a big no no, especially given the Bitterfrost Ring is something you could earn in a day with a few level 80s. I know Bitterfrost came after, but even Arenanet has come around to fix past content. Please do something about this chain.

Oh god kitten Jerus! You had to say it!

Now we are going to have Rifle Engi Blunderbusses all S5. RIP META.

Edit: Rev will be fine, hell the DH change for Piercing Light probably worse overall, interrupts are gone!

Eleazar.9478:

bunker burn guards inc woooo…….

Just run Signet of Might Variant Condi War.

Kappa

Tarasicodissa.7084:

Edit: Also I’d like to add (because Sykper’s earlier comment might mislead you), that activating signet of fury during combat is a VERY bad idea. You should only do it when your group is absolutely desperate and you need every single bit of CC to be able to break the bar (at which point you’re not very likely to have a shot at beating VG anyway). Doing so makes you miss out on a significant chunk of your personal DPS as well as diminishing your ability to generate might because you’ll crit less often, lowering the group’s overall DPS even further.

The key here is that I was assuming the group is having problems all over the place.

Ensuring that VG’s P5 transition goes off without a hitch gives the group more time to practice their other issues. Warrior can still easily maintain 25 stacks might without Signet, group DPS won’t be an issue. And you know very well that Warrior Personal DPS doesn’t compare to the true DPS professions.

But yes, if you want to get technical, if he plays well enough he can avoid popping signet all together and be perfectly able to calculate when he will be out of Berserk, not popping Berserk while maintaining Berserker’s Power and still do the full powered Skull Crack after the split phases. I echo some of the statements made before that the group likely is very casual and hasn’t gotten adjusted to killing VG yet, hence my advice was set at such a level.

LoopySnoopy.7923:

I wonder why no warrior changes, they are pretty mediocre in PvP not great but not bad. Give us warriors something to look forward to at least in PvP.

We are looking pretty ok overall compared to some other professions. Besides, meta shifts on other professions affect us indirectly.

I am absolutely stoked though about more PvP split on abilities. Regardless of the changes, the fact that the devs are pushing for PvP abilities not being tied to the PvE meta will ultimately serve the SPvP community in the long run! And that applies vice-versa as well.

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I heard a rumor that someone tried updating the dummies with HoT AI as a test and they started shreking devs.

im fairly certain a regular smokescale would beat every dev

Savage.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

So let me add, I play Warrior, and I can only concentrate on my own DPS.

One question for any Warriors on here, in Stage 1 when we have pinned near the speed mushroom should I at any point use Bladetrail? I’m thinking no, but well I’m obviousily not sure. Also, someone explain to me what good the banners do after the split when we’re pulling him in a circle. Somehow chaos always ensues, so even the best laid plans (banners) are probably being missed by our party.

No to bladetrail in P1.

So here’s the general Warrior low-down for EZ VG funtimes:

P1: Blue Circles are the worst for you in this phase specifically because you are not kiting the boss around. This is also a really good time to practice the DPS rotation as you have to manage your dodges if you really want to escalate your DPS. Essentially, if you want to be a boss, you will want to never have 100% endurance, do your HB and AAs mixing in the Dodge for damage. GS3 I would recommend you use when you mess up only, asking you to tie that into your rotation here could be worse.

P2: My only recommendation for both of these phases is that if you are doing the cleaving strategy for blue and green guards, depending on how many other sources of CC there are, to flip over to Ma/Sh for Blue Guard CC and stay in that weaponset as you finish off Green guard. Do not use any major CCs like ShieldBash, Skullcrack or Headbutt on Green’s CC bar, you can use the Mace 3.

P3: As transition happens put your banners down in the exact center and continue to stay in this weapon, as what your biggest job is here is breaking the very first breakbar of VG in P3 and P5 literally as fast as you can. When VG summons the Green circle, pop your signet of fury for the full Adrenaline, and blow up that breakbar with MaceBurst, ShieldBash, Mace3 and Headbutt. Swap back to GS and continue your strat around the circle, building might, swapping for Breakbar etc.

P4: Same as P2 including transition.

P5: Crunch time, you are breaking that first bar super fast. If a melee gets down the priority is to ensure you are NOT IN BLUE CIRCLES when you REZ. Wait for circles to pass, they won’t nuke the downed but they can screw rezzers over in this phase, and get him up fast. Just keep it up, remember that you will have a breakbar every other section so have Adrenaline up for those sections. For clarity, P5 goes Red first, Blue, Green, and Red again. Should be dead at this point, and do NOT be afraid to follow your tank into the hotzone if they are pulling across to create a safe Green Circle, you are a warrior, you can take the heat with your health pool.

Does this help? This is just a broad terms for you only as a Warrior.

loseridoit.2756:

Sykper.6583:

My apologies for misreading.

However I will say the Nightmare bosses tend to be a bit more ‘balanced’ around the threat ranges of their skills. Molten Berserker for instance cleaves for fair damage, shadowsteps and does shockwaves. He’s melee unfriendly for the most part, all his attacks, even his shadowstep, are better for the ranged.

If you were to compare him to say, MAMA, the attack patterns are threatening to all ranges, where the she-bot will add a melee unfriendly attack on a long CD if people are attacking her at that range that’s an easy dodge. Otherwise, I would dare say MAMA has more anti-ranged tools.

The types of skills matter a lot, bosses in the Nightmare Fractal seem dynamic and threatening enough from any composition whereas Molten Duo (Berserker First is the common kill) is effectively anti-melee the entire time.

You are missing something more fundamental. Bosses renders all CC/Blinds near useless. Players barely control the boss at all. This game have a wealth of skills and abilities to kite control etc, but bosses are basically statues that dances around in the room.

I kinda want CC to be a first class citizen.

Just want to snip some parts here, because you have a point that I slightly agree with but are wary of. Specifically Breakbars are a step forward in allowing groups to control if applicable when they could rapidly CC the boss to stop the pressure or go in for damage.

Blind itself, or even Weakness (might as well bring that one up too) are outright insane conditions to apply if they worked to the fullest extent. But, I don’t think it would hurt to perhaps come up with some specific mechanic on each boss where you can temporarily ‘Weaken’ or ‘Blind’ the boss who then is immune for a period of time afterwards from those effects.

I am always ok with having more variety in which the group can control the boss, and bringing in those classes and builds that serve a greater purpose during encounters if the group so chooses. As for things like ‘Aggro’, that’s a bit harder…

My apologies for misreading.

However I will say the Nightmare bosses tend to be a bit more ‘balanced’ around the threat ranges of their skills. Molten Berserker for instance cleaves for fair damage, shadowsteps and does shockwaves. He’s melee unfriendly for the most part, all his attacks, even his shadowstep, are better for the ranged.

If you were to compare him to say, MAMA, the attack patterns are threatening to all ranges, where the she-bot will add a melee unfriendly attack on a long CD if people are attacking her at that range that’s an easy dodge. Otherwise, I would dare say MAMA has more anti-ranged tools.

The types of skills matter a lot, bosses in the Nightmare Fractal seem dynamic and threatening enough from any composition whereas Molten Duo (Berserker First is the common kill) is effectively anti-melee the entire time.

loseridoit.2756:

Sykper.6583:

loseridoit.2756:

King Cephalopod.7942:

loseridoit.2756:

you know. some of us hated the new fractal.

The way I see it. There are two camps for hard mode in dungeons

overgrowth vs wildstar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaxiKobmAR8

I am in the overgrowth group for ai

But none of the ai in gw2 went anywhere near as deep as that seems. They’re just meatsacks with 1-3 attacks (more for bosses) on long intervals and high stats. I agree that player-like ai can be more fun to fight than unique-mechanics-based encounters (and would make far more game mechanics/playstyles usefully applicable across game modes so maybe they’d actually have balance) but it isn’t a step back compared to what existed before.

i was hoping that anet slowly add diversity to living story creatures. Unfortunately, Anet seems to went the other way. Enemies are one strategy encounters.

I would say mob AI has substantially improved since launch, the last boss in Nightmare Fractal does routinely shift a few of his attacks around and detects players at range to shadowstep to for instance.

Who knows how far they will go? Give it more time.

Actually I would say no because these elements are already present in the Molten Duo years ago. All Anet did recently was add more skills to give a illusion of strategy but enemies are still one trick ponies.

Explain exactly how Molten Duo behaves differently compared to Nightmare Fractal.

If you are referring to the party’s choice on which boss to kill second, that’s not as trans-formative as you believe it to be, either bosses have the same exact AI as all the Nightmare ones do.

Linken.6345:

Sykper.6583:

They never knew he made the decision, there’s no indicator for it for the entire fractal.

Only when the boss is fought does the debuff show as far as I know (80% reduced healing for the whole fight).

The group opener is shady as heck in this. ‘Kicking’ the person is no different than all members leaving the group, in fact one could even say it is more practical not to waste everyone’s time. Though from the sounds of it the group likely either finished the fractal at that level or redid the whole thing.

it do make a dif mate, if they had simply left the guy could have done a new lfg challenge mote last boss 65 but since they kicked he lost his progress to.

I don’t disagree that the party was being spiteful in this, but the opener was exploiting the group in this regard.

It’s kind of a morals thing, if they had just pressed forward, the opener completely wins and gets what he wants at the expense of others. If they left, the opener still technically wins since he wasted their time by carrying him to the start of the boss fight, through the “fun” parts of the instance and the opener as you said gets to find like-minded folks. So, ultimately the only way the group likely saw an apt punishment for the opener was to deny him the fractal overall.

The best solution that removes this kind of toxicity, is for Arenanet to move the mote to just before the encounter.

They never knew he made the decision, there’s no indicator for it for the entire fractal.

Only when the boss is fought does the debuff show as far as I know (80% reduced healing for the whole fight).

The group opener is shady as heck in this. ‘Kicking’ the person is no different than all members leaving the group, in fact one could even say it is more practical not to waste everyone’s time. Though from the sounds of it the group likely either finished the fractal at that level or redid the whole thing.

loseridoit.2756:

King Cephalopod.7942:

loseridoit.2756:

you know. some of us hated the new fractal.

The way I see it. There are two camps for hard mode in dungeons

overgrowth vs wildstar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaxiKobmAR8

I am in the overgrowth group for ai

But none of the ai in gw2 went anywhere near as deep as that seems. They’re just meatsacks with 1-3 attacks (more for bosses) on long intervals and high stats. I agree that player-like ai can be more fun to fight than unique-mechanics-based encounters (and would make far more game mechanics/playstyles usefully applicable across game modes so maybe they’d actually have balance) but it isn’t a step back compared to what existed before.

i was hoping that anet slowly add diversity to living story creatures. Unfortunately, Anet seems to went the other way. Enemies are one strategy encounters.

I would say mob AI has substantially improved since launch, the last boss in Nightmare Fractal does routinely shift a few of his attacks around and detects players at range to shadowstep to for instance.

Who knows how far they will go? Give it more time.

Sarahfull.4930:

O.o oh wow you all kick him?

Think about it, the mote requires a party vote.

As the OP stated, the guy starts the fractal solo, triggers the mote and gets through the vote. Then invites the rest of the group…

The only possible way a group is supposed to know something is up is to notice the Mote being missing from the start, which I expect the majority of players aren’t looking for.

It’s definitely deceitful, and groups are made of 5 individual players who can make their own decisions, the majority of the group found fault with what the Fractal opener did.

I had to look up the particular challenge mote for this fractal, since I never crafted the backpiece. I agree with this, the mote alters nothing else in the fractal other than the final encounter. Makes a lot of sense and the mote can’t be abused since it requires a party vote (which if you are that far along in the fractal solo, kudos to you).

Rising Dusk.2408:

DPS meters should just be personal only, as-in only I can see my own DPS and get my own readouts. You can never find out someone else’s DPS unless they give you the numbers. Honest players looking to improve will work together with the meter, and dishonest people looking to put others down won’t have access to the information. I realize part of the value some would claim is being able to see who the weak link is, but any good raid leader can already tell so I don’t think it’s worth it.

This is true, however the preface behind my proposal and why it will shine is that it is operating within a guild environment. Almost always there will be a lot of ‘Honesty’ going on with a guild working together. Attempting to lie to your raid leader and very likely a friend/guildmate is not something being abused. Also Nike’s video did address how difficult it can be for any raid leader to find where the issue in their group is with what we have now. The upgrade can provide experimentation and composition creations, ease of training, and if possible I would not mind seeing a sort of Spectator area to stand from and watch your guildmates fight a particular boss.

Furthermore, I forgot to add this in my OP. These raid boss unlocks for the guild hall are content that Arenanet has 100% control over when they decide raiding guilds should have access to do. They could very well set it up so a wing is untrainable in a guild hall environment for a Year after its release, then pop the unlock in a patch.

I see a lot of benefits for this proposal for raiding guilds to bring in like-minded newbies, providing a backend to raiding guilds to work with.

Ouch, so the past few days have been fairly fun to observe. Ever since we had that colorful video about DPS Meters, everyone went bonkers, posting arguments looking at DPS Meters in a black/white setting. When this much talk occurs about potential feature, it might help to take a step back and see the pros and cons. For summation, I’ll blanket both sides to an argument:

- DPS Meters give quality information about individual player performance in a raid setting on a given encounter, and help immensely remove any unknowns about how well a given group is performing.

- DPS Meters are also well known to be abused. This isn’t a fringe case, it’ll happen, players can misuse DPS numbers without looking at the big picture.

There’s a big benefit and a big downside. Fair enough, the question is how do we eliminate the downside to reap the benefit? The opinion is that DPS meters shouldn’t be accessible in raids, which defeats the purpose of the benefit then…

So…I ask this then. Why do DPS Meters have to be in raids? Why not set up something technically outside of raiding, a place where pugs are likely not to have the kind of access, where dedicated raiders can use them to their benefit? “Well there’s no possible place…”

Guild Halls. Implement another Guild Progression tree for dedicated raiding where you can unlock fake versions of the raid bosses, which provide the DPS numbers you get from the Training Golem in the Special Training Area.

Here’s my proposal:

- Raiding Based Guild Hall Upgrade where guild members unlock ‘Fake Versions’ of the Raid encounters, which incorporate the Training Golem DPS numbers and allow Guilds to repeat encounters to their heart’s desire.
- The unlocks naturally require the usual guild currency, but they come with Raid Specific Rewards as a requirement to turn in to unlock as well.
- The unlocks go in order per wing, gotta unlock the Fake Vale Guardian before you can unlock Fake Gorseval, and so on.
- The bosses ‘being fake’ aesthetically can be holograms, from the mists, whatever, it brings you to the normal fake arena you fight the boss in.

The above addresses the problem with applying DPS Meters to Raids, because the DPS meters are not in raids. They are in an environment that is isolated from the general population with a specific group in mind. AND, dedicated raid guilds have a location where they can train on any bosses they have exceptional mastery for, which also provides an environment for NEW raiding members to train.

“Well anyone can just unlock it then, pug leaders will still discriminate and have you come in-”

Alright here’s my vision for unlocking the Fake Vale Guardian fight for your guild hall:

- 1 Gold Vale Guardian Trophy
- 1000 LIs
- 100 of an item purchased with 50 Raid Shards that is TRADABLE on the TP.
- <Insert general amounts of whatever gold sink items here, A TRILLION ECTOS lol who knows>

You see some of the checks here? You are going to be hard pressed to find any random pug leader doing DPS meter testing when he has to sacrifice the ABOVE to unlock just one fight.

The above requirements are likely not easy to get even for a regular 10 man guild, but it does offer a sort of Guild Goal when you can brag or recruit to others that you can train on any boss any time.

My proposal here is fairly simple, to create an environment for raiding guilds to progress their guild hall for the express purpose of improving their own performance without having DPS Meters in every single raid. Furthermore I included assets we already have live in game and bundled them together, hopefully to reduce the potential work on this solution.

Finally, and it goes without saying. These fake bosses might be just as painful as the real deal, but they offer no rewards for killing them, maybe you get a guild anthem to play and the raid leader can have everyone relay DPS numbers.

I could probably elaborate more, but I think I prefer this gray solution.

BobbyStein.2315:

Obtena.7952:

Hold on people … don’t get too excited over what Bobby said there. It was a little vague but you can see a big diversion from anything raid-like in that statement.

They are investigating DIFFERENT METHODS to make the story more ACCESSIBLE. That tells me it’s not raid, as we know it in GW2.

Yeah, people should hold their panic and speculation. I haven’t said anything other than we’re looking at ways to make the story accessible. That could take any number of forms.

;)

Oh Bobby, you know these forums are a powderkeg.

…Speaking of which, will there be explosions in the next wing? We could use more explosions.

What the-

Stack and burn tactics? For Nightmare 100 Normal?

…Last I checked, the only boss that comes close to this is Siax, MAMA and Endowhatshisface go pretty nasty with near permaAoEs and movement.

Hell, Archdiviner revamp is more stacking imo.

Ohoni.6057:

I have noticed this, but what I’m asking for is change, so of course I would expect things to be different afterwards. That’s the entire point.

The request isn’t a mild QoL change, try a complete and utter rework of the entire game reward system from the ground up, everything from the past few years and the future considerations.

Good luck with that.

Ohoni.6057:

Sure, but neither does the player change his mind later about doing that content. In most cases, if they don’t want to do it today, they aren’t going to want to do it tomorrow, or a year from now, unless the actual conditions of that content change in some significant way.

A player choosing that he’d rather give up on his goal because he’s prefer to do something else is not a happy ending.

Never know, and still up to them. They don’t need to have everything, and something better looking can come up in the future. They never set a goal if they never try.

Ohoni.6057:

You’re making my case for me. The “time” aspect for the hard mode raiding would always be significantly shorter for people that can raid than any alternative method would be. The balance goal would be that anyone who enjoys raiding would see raiding as just an obvious a choice to reach the goal as you see the stairs, but for people who struggle with raiding, they would have other options.

To what degree? Subjectivity also plays a part here, how much easier is earning the HoT currencies to raiding? Is that even measurable? What if it’s too easy to earn in the open world that raiding becomes pointless? Oh no we are back to the single biggest problem with your idea, that the reward system would be the biggest nightmare to balance in a MMO to date!

Ohoni.6057:

But nobody should WANT players who aren’t interested in raiding to raid. Those players don’t benefit, ANet doesn’t benefit, even you don’t really benefit from that, since they’re likely to be the more toxic people to play with, since they don’t actually want to be there. It’s in everyone’s long term interests for people who don’t want to raid to never raid.

You can never know until they complete the content fully. There’s zero possible way you can know, it’s about the same as a player going into a jumping puzzle, missing the first jump and calling the entire thing pointless and unfun. Arenanet has everything to benefit from uninterested players to get interested in raiding once they figure out accessibility, and they are looking at Fractals for this.

Ohoni.6057:

The “carrot” analogy is actually a really good one, because you want to dangle that carrot relatively close to the mule, just out of reach, and eventually you’ll need to let him have the carrot or he’ll starve. If you dangle the carrot 50ft in front of the mule, where he sees no reasonable expectation of getting it, then you can’t expect that to have a positive result. I mean look at me, I clearly am interested in the Envoy armor, and I’ve tried raiding for it, but clearly it’s not a strong enough carrot to get me to keep doing it, because from my perspective it’s being dangled so far out from me that there’s just no point.

Everyone is interested in the next shiny thing, they see what it takes to get it, and they decide if it is worth their time. You felt that Envoy Armor was not worth the time to get it, that’s fine, you made a choice. At some point in the future you might change your mind…also new Elite Specs could drastically alter how Forsaken Thicket is played, but nevertheless the carrot will still be there for you to come for.

Ohoni.6057:

Nobody benefits from players playing content that they dislike. I have no idea why I even need to explain that to anyone.

The devs do, and players who like the content do as well if the ‘uninterested’ players come around to actually like the content to repeat.

Astralporing.1957:

…oh, really? Good to know. Then i can ignore BlaqueFyre comments about legendaries in WvW, right? Since, as you say, nobody really cares about them anyway…

The guy who wants to make a point about WvWers needing more from the stat-changing than General PvE? Go for it, I don’t care, that’s an entirely different discussion. Hell, even the SPvP Legendary Backpiece doesn’t make much sense either when you think about it, but since there’s a Fractal Legendary Backpiece notice how no one seems to care about it huh?

Astralporing.1957:

And? Are they the majority of players in WvW?

No? What’s your point? I was driving the idea that WvW is still a path of least resistance for a valuable currency that’s a pain to get normally.

Astralporing.1957:

Crafting itself isn’t. Obtaining mats (or gold to buy them) to craft with however is.

That’s a large amount of time though. I don’t diminish how much time is invested into Legendary items, I’ve got multiple myself. But it’s not a high effort, which I believe is where we might be having our confusion. You understand that effort implies the degree of difficulty of the task right? The difference between cleaving down mobs for Vicious Claws versus doing Nightmare Fractal 100 as an example.

Ohoni.6057:

No, you can’t. And yet ANet does try to provide a balance of rewards across multiple modes, and where they miss, they usually try to correct it. I fully expect them to err on the side of caution, making the “easy mode” route to the rewards considerably less efficient than the current methods, and maybe if that proves too much, they could even scale it back a bit.

They can’t make it perfect, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it at all.

They balance the reward levels, not the skins though. You are 100% welcome to demand Legendary Armor acquisition outside of Forsaken Thicket, that’s a valid perspective we see in GW2. The demand deviates from what Arenanet has done when you demand that Envoy Legendary Armor is made available elsewhere. You have to have noticed this.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here, because it sounds like you agree with me completely, which seems out of character. But yes, players should be able to choose which activities they want to do, and not have those activities decided for them by the type of reward they’re looking for.

You misunderstood me, I was speaking from a player perspective where the player chooses if they really want the reward or they give it up at that point and come back to it later. The reward never leaves the location where it is earned.

Ohoni.6057:

It excludes them from a positive choice in the matter.

Wrong. You can stop this right now, the game is too diverse in what content it provides to have content that appeases everyone. Your response that everyone should be able to win/win is a non-starter.

Ohoni.6057:

Have you ever been to a modern building in which the entrance is several feet off the ground?

I thought that the word ‘Players’ would have tipped you off to find a gaming example. And the example is poor one at best, because the stairs are still the path of least resistance since the time aspect is far, far shorter than the ramp. The legitimately handicapped take a far longer time to go through the ramp, which I don’t believe you would want anyways for your example.

Ohoni.6057:

And yet, those rewards APPLY to the rest of the game.

That’s true, but those dedicated for WvW did not require such rewards for their gameplay, until it directly interfered with the balance of WvW as a whole. Much like why SPvP had to be changed when Elite Specs were introduced.

Ohoni.6057:

Nobody is saying that it should be removed form there, just that there should be other paths that also take massive time and effort to achieve the same goal.

I never it was being removed, I was elaborating the point that keeping the Envoy Armor in raids serves as one of the best carrots to get even those not terribly interested in raids, to raid.

Carrots on sticks aren’t put into place to get the willing players to tag along, they would have regardless. Carrots, or incentives in this matter, are put into place to get players who are uninterested or even dislike the content to play the content.