Guild Wars 2

Shockwave.1230:

Magic find comes from consuming essences of luck. Lucky charms is a cereal people consume. Title could be ‘Magically Delicious’

not fancy enough i would prefer something like “mystical gluttony”.

Alugjen Darlas.5329:

Mine looks like this arma style

wow wurm gloves nice

ascalonian leader finisher was datamined some weeks ago.

wait people getting exited for wp, mat and blue, I hope you guys will watch and see that you should be shouting for caed and sup I fell like they will carry … a lot.

1. ranger
2. guardian
3. pets altogether

this made me laugh. Thank you kind sir.

Charak.9761:

Not like its actively creating more and more toxic players or anything…

This exact comment is the proof of it’s statement. Well not entirely, “Raids” don’t create it just manifest and from all sides, from the people blaming “bad” players to the people attacking players interested by this kind of content (looking at you OP).

This please. They could maybe even add something like the Character counter for the commander event in WVW.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

it only scales with crit damage, damage modifiers and crits based off your own precision. that’s why 10/30/0/20/10 mesmer and 30/30/0/0/10 mesmers hit equally hard with feedback

so if i get it well it takes the flat damage the boss should be outputting then it sends it’s back and apply you trait crits etc?

Ephemeral.5409:

Teckos.1305:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

castle.3689:

then likewise Anet must not have intended for a mesmer’s feedback to be able to reflect his projectiles back for half his health and trivializing the encounter.

Anet programs three types of projectiles. Reflectable, blockable, indestructable. The ones they use are intentionally chosen.

FWIW, when I sell arah paths I don’t use any reflects to kill Lupicus. Though my Sword #5 block does a lot of work.

these are the conclusion I have about the reflection mechanics, when reflecting you don’t just reflect the projectile, in fact you use the skill tied to it, but this is where it becomes interesting these skills were given insanely high scaling with power and that’s why we reflect for so much damages. But we can also conclude something new monters/bosses don’t have a lot of power ,I will give one example: the butcher this guys is hitting for around 230 with retaliation while a lv 80 guard would hit around 380, well an example is not a total proof to a statement(IE: quagans in HOTW can retaliate for 750 which mean they have a huge amount of power, but they are elite: read upscaled),
so my last statement would be that the guy who decided to create bosses for GW2 gave them a really low amount of power while giving them skills that scale ridiculously well with power. which could be interesting in the boss stacking might but is irellevant for anything else, in my example it just made retaliation(and even regeneration) pointless.

Except reflect damage doesn’t scale with power.

I would really like proof of this.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

castle.3689:

then likewise Anet must not have intended for a mesmer’s feedback to be able to reflect his projectiles back for half his health and trivializing the encounter.

Anet programs three types of projectiles. Reflectable, blockable, indestructable. The ones they use are intentionally chosen.

FWIW, when I sell arah paths I don’t use any reflects to kill Lupicus. Though my Sword #5 block does a lot of work.

these are the conclusion I have about the reflection mechanics, when reflecting you don’t just reflect the projectile, in fact you use the skill tied to it, but this is where it becomes interesting these skills were given insanely high scaling with power and that’s why we reflect for so much damages. But we can also conclude something new monters/bosses don’t have a lot of power ,I will give one example: the butcher this guys is hitting for around 230 with retaliation while a lv 80 guard would hit around 380, well an example is not a total proof to a statement(IE: quagans in HOTW can retaliate for 750 which mean they have a huge amount of power, but they are elite: read upscaled),
so my last statement would be that the guy who decided to create bosses for GW2 gave them a really low amount of power while giving them skills that scale ridiculously well with power. which could be interesting in the boss stacking might but is irellevant for anything else, in my example it just made retaliation(and even regeneration) pointless.

gebrechen.5643:

So warriors are a better ranged class compared to rangers?

A lot of people don’t know how much damages a ranger can deal at long range http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZyfEuzhufY
and for the “easy to counter” argument note that the quote is about rifle warrior.

Will you guys be streaming?

I wonder if anyone played intensively as 6 man teams in a custom arena. I would really like to know how the meta is and how the game is paced especially in maps like spirit/foefire and Khylo.

I really hope that they know what they are doing, I think berserker/full offense stats combination should be the best risk vs reward. Why do everyone play Zerk in pve, because the risk is nonexistent, and we will have the same problem if they just make another stat combo more efficient.
Instead they can make using offensive stats combo be more risky.

• Avoid uninterrupted dps.
• Have monsters cleave, use Aoe.
• Make them apply conditions, especially poison, weakness and chill.
• Introduce multiphased encounters.
• Diversify the pve experience: zerker might be the best for killing but what about defending points/pnj, playing a large scale battle?
• Make generating high stack/duration of powerfull offensive/defensive boons only possible to builds/skills crafted around this kind of support (short duration→ everyone, long durations→specialized builds).

We don’t know what they mean by shifting the meta in pve, if by this statement implies add new gameplay mechanics and making Zerk harder to use but still efficient in the physical dps encounters, I all for this but if it means they are adding gimmicks, or even gear nerf that would be atrocious.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

SoPP.7034:

However, NPC AI is predictable yet some state that encountering a random player in PvP is less challenging? Perhaps it’s better to state ‘frustrating’.

Less challenging is the correct word. Predictable AI are less predictable and more challenging than 100% of WvW players and 99% of PvP’ers.

let us doubt your words.

JonPeters.5630:

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

I’ll copy one of my post to answer develop the signet problem.

The problem: Stat boost as a passive does not improve the gameplay, it does the total opposite.

My solution: I can’t give an universal solution but, I will give some principles and a few examples to accompany them.

• Make the bonus require some change in the gameplay: for example the guardian signet of judgement instead of reducing all incoming damages by 10%, reduce them by 15% but only if the guardian is facing the source of damages.

• Add/Improve a management system: Here an example is the thief’s infiltrator’s signet and the best instance of this in the game is the mesmer’s signet of ether. While the thief seems kind of weak, the mesmer’s passive adds a more depth to the gameplay, seriously this skill is well designed from the heals base to counterplay created by the 3 sec delay between each pulse (soooo much).

• A compromise between the passive and the active effect: the bad application but in a way which might not be expected: is the warriors signet of rage the management of adrenaline of the warrior has become such an anecdote that it is better to always have this skill of cooldown. The good example is again the signet of ether the active adds a good compromise: loosing the regenerative factor, and being able to create a huge burst through the phantasms.

On the other hand HS i really well countered with poison and burst, If you have a problem in spvp with warriors try a mesmer burst build, time your bust well and you will find out that there is not much a warrior can do apart from waiting, Yeah the heal is strong but definitely not out of control.

You want players to feel like playing full berserker is dangerous make them fight mobs that are found there http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fallen_Halls_of_Glory
scale the hp/damages up there you go, no stack , no facetank. Now will pve players not be QQ about it in the forums that’s the question.

This is a link to a post I made in gw2 discussion, where I look at combat/skill mechanics, comment on the positive and the negative aspect tied to then and give subjective solutions. With the creation of this new subforum I think that this thread could have its place here. I try to update the topic every time I feel inspired and put link to the relevant comment into the first one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-wars-2-combat-where-is-my-AI-at/first#post3457892

It would be really nice if a mod could move the topic this forum.

Zikory.6871:

Anet won’t punish players for playing close to each other. Just sayin’

Fixed.

TheMaskedParadigm.3629:

I suggest you ask Scion Storm Gaming and Nemesis or whatever his name is because they. Are good and really know how. To play

Hahahaha saw what you did there, nemesis’ smite guard new meta AHAHAH…

Junkpile.7439:

Have maximum stats.

Love this argument it’s like thing i cannot do with a thief…. use virtue of courage.

Jumper.9482:

Added new general change-

Dodge roll – Added a special ~0.10s aftercast which takes priority over all aftercast-ignoring skills such as dodge rolls. This encourages players to dodge reactively rather than proactively/randomly.
(Otherwise being punished for it by players that take advantage of it.)

This change would REALLY separate the good from the bad especially thieves.

I think this is incredible idea, Anet could really make the combat interesting, reactive and less forgiving toward bad decision making by toying with aftercast and this with pretty much all skills.

Bumping this it’s bronken since launch Anet fix it.

Time for another post. This time I will talk about the signets, especially about the passive bonuses .
Most classes in gw2 have these signets giving +X to a stat(kitten to be you engineers), and these are really popular in pve. But I feel like the design of these signets is pushing players toward power creep thus being a bad implantation of passive effect. This kind of passive effects adds nothing to the gameplay in fact the player decides to lose an active skill for stats.

The problem: Stat boost as a passive does not improve the gameplay, it does the total opposite.

My solution: I can’t give an universal solution but, I will give some principles and a few examples to accompany them.

• Make the bonus require some change in the gameplay: for example the guardian signet of judgement instead of reducing all incoming damages by 10%, reduce them by 15% but only if the guardian is facing the source of damages.

• Add/Improve a management system: Here an example is the thief’s infiltrator’s signet and the best instance of this in the game is the mesmer’s signet of ether. While the thief seems kind of weak, the mesmer’s passive adds a more depth to the gameplay, seriously this skill is well designed from the heals base to counterplay created by the 3 sec delay between each pulse (soooo much).

• A compromise between the passive and the active effect: the bad application but in a way which might not be expected: is the warriors signet of rage the management of adrenaline of the warrior has become such an anecdote that it is better to always have this skill of cooldown. The good example is again the signet of ether the active adds a good compromise: loosing the regenerative factor, and being able to create a huge burst through the phantasms.

Jumper.9482:

As well as 1 mesmer player in particular who timed his bursts extremely well (instead of giving up at the first sign of difficulty and rerolling like some others).

Say the name of the lord so the plebs shall tremble in fear.

Saturn.6591:

Then you should know that if you use a sword, you will always have to use the sword for your attacks (obviously). However, you have 5 different attacks with that sword. Then you can also us another weapon and also, you’ve got 5 more exchangeable skills. I doubt that all you do is autoattacking without ever using any other skill.

Wow such knowledge, much meta, very useful. From what you write I can sense that the game knowledge flows trough you and also that you have played enough game/MMOrpgs to acknowledge that gw2 requires more than 3 skills to complete all content, seriously we are not worthy.

About the AI/mob design, I recently got something while trying some builds in heart of the mist, maybe Anet don’t want the game to be challenging or the pve mob designer aren’t that good because the profession specific monster players can fight in HOTM are much more challenging that any other monster in the game: they spike, dodge and even CC.
Take the warrior, engineer and thief put them in a circle arena with pillars, make them 33% bigger, have them deal 40% more damages , give them 150% more HP and get ready for the QQ threads on the forum (their tears are delicious).

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Elrey.5472:

i hope stacking gets fixed.

What other tactics would you like fixed? Should they remove the ability to melee bosses? How about reflecting projectiles? Maybe pre-stacking Might is too OP? What about removing OP stuff like dodging the one hit kill boss attacks rather than tanking them?

Well I don’t know how you people feel about it but IMO, we players having the ability to stack a group of monster in a corner not, by pulling but just by abusing the weak AI highligths the flaws of the game. But until the fix it (yeah fix by giving us a better AI thus a better experience and replayability) I would stack any day.

Hey guys pretty cool to see all you Ideas about AI, I decided to take a break from my skill analysis to give an AI suggestion.

I will divide the AI in 3 templates(starting structures): brute force, ruse and support. Every type of AI will be defined by the movement and skills used. There are 2 tricks here:
1.the AI assigned to a monster change dynamically.
2.movement is about getting away from the target, the action have 2 components: the range traveled and the interval between travels, so every time I will talk about movement I will mention a couple [range,timer].

The templates:

1. The brute force: [low,medium] movement, the skills used are primarily strong offensive abilities.
2. Ruse: [low-medium,low] movement, the abilities used are the ones with soft cc(cripples etc), condition application, with a lower priority ton high damages.
3. Support:[medium, medium] movement, use of hard cc, application of boons.

Now comes the fun part the group AI. with the system implemented all we need is a higher level manager which will set, target(zone or player) to each mob and also change the AI type used.

LittleLepton.8915:

Canach’s lair!

Hahaha.

But oh god a dungeon full of Karka elite trash mobs? Oh god oh god oh god.

Canach’s Noll edition was a really good encounter, one of the best imo.

After a few days of reflection I decided to post on Warriors banners, which would be a good way to discuss the support role in gw2.

The banners are placed by the warrior to give a buff to allies on a pretty wide range(up to 900 if traited), they can also be equipped by any player.
In the current state of the game, banners are just placed and that’s all no gameplay tied to them, they proposed skill are unattractive.

There, the banner problem: A equip-able tool is better left in a corner than used in a fight.
My solution:

1. The bonus: there this trait which is BAD and which could be replaced by another one, making the banner bonus much more potent when equipped by the warrior(or by someone). Now, there is a good reason to equip the banners.
2. the skills: most of the banner #2 skill is a channeled buff, and the buff is pretty much a lackluster (except for the banner of tactic), first of all if the warrior is using a banner he is probably trying to support: so he will need the ability to give boons, but also the ability to sustain through non damaging conditions, and spikes.
   The boons given duration might be too short compared to other means of acquirement. There is how i would see the skills being tweaked: the auto attack is fine the #2 skill should always be a team wide boon application+ support(boon coherent with the banner type), the #3 and 4 should be a mix of spike and and control, and finally the #5 should stay a stomp(blast finisher) but have more features added to it like for example, making the ground around the banner pulse cripple and damages during a few seconds for banner of defense.

Buffing the banners in this may make them much more powerful because of they use and drop nature. Having a cooldown on equip may be a way to counter it.

Quick note one support: if a pure dps build is able to give as much if not more support to a group(through boons, condition removal, CC …) than a build “focused” on support,
well support simply wont be a part of the game.

The sigil of Demon Summoning would be good for my MM necro.

All is vain. /15 chars.

Pariah.8506:

Snip.

Even if i said I would focus on the player side problem, I have to admit that the artificial intelligence tied to most enemies is a pleague for the state of pve, making it more complex and decreasing the health pools would change the pve meta. But AI isn’t the only thing we can change on the game side: let’s make more enemy cleave in melee range, and reduce the cleave from some weapons: for example the warrior’s axe auto attack (vertical hits) is able to cleave on horizontal enemies, while dealing the greatest AA dps. Give boon steal to enemies, make them apply weakness, with just these few design ideas, a more engaging gameplay will be encouraged.

I created this thread because I wanted to discuss the state of the combat in guild wars 2,
it’s actual flaws, primarily in pve, from a player side (meaning that we’ll look at classes, skills and traits instead of the encounter provided in game).
The title imply that I’ll mostly be talking about meta builds (so a lot of melee zerk), but I also intend to base my analysis on a spike environment instead of the present constant dps one.

GW2 combat there we go:
In pve most of the “optimal build” for most classes expose several flaws in the combat system:
-Auto attacks driven gameplay.
-non impactfull skillset.
-access to boons and conditions.
-the condition removal mechanics.
There we have a pretty high level view of the problems highlighted by the actual state of pve and, face one of the biggest problem a lot of builds in gw2 aren’t enjoyable more precisely, they provide the kind of fun you get from finishing a rubik’s cube while knowing the algorithm(this cannot simply be solved by changing the way character are played ,it also involves a really engaging set of rules).

Now let’s get more specific, in the following post I’ll look at the classes’ skillsets and traits(primarly war,guard,ranger and thieves, then engineers and mesmers hope some people will join the game when it’ll be time for the necromancers and elementatilst since, I am not familiar with playing these classes.).

Easiest first, meet: the warriooooooooor (YEAH!!).
The warrior class mechanic is a resource called adrenaline, used to unleash burst skills. It is primarily granted by attacking the enemy and using some skills. A few traits make other use of adrenaline: one granting condition removal on a burst skill hit (used a lot in pvp), and the other (grandmaster traits)ones giving a buff depending on the adrenaline level, extremely popular in pve. There we find the first problem: adrenaline have a lot of way to be build but only a few reasons to be used, worse some traits encourages the player for sitting on adrenaline.

So the first warrior problem: How to make players use adrenaline.
My solution (the “my” imply that it’s subjective): The berserker’s power and heightened focus strait should instead of being permanent effects, would give other(better) ones for a set time on a internal cooldown(not too long) each time max adrenaline (or a adrenaline layer) is reached. Also making the adrenaline decay even in combat would promote the management of the resource.

So there is my first post on the matter, feel free to react and post your own solutions/problems, I’ll soon enough post about warriors’ weapon skill and utilities.

Reflexion on warrior Banners.
The AI problem enounced by Pariah.
Example of AI design.
Stats on signet and power creep.

there is actually no problem with the trinity the real problem we have In most trinity based mmorpg is the great number of awful strats, and there we have gw2 with no trinity (in fact with nothing) and with the same awful strats so we didn’t go anywhere.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Yea, that’s why I added the ‘ironically’ part. They might be done with the right mindset, but that alone sadly doesn’t make them balanced (anymore), and you nicely listed the reasons as to that.
Pity this game chose the ‘fight fire with fire’ style of balance, and rather than fixing cheese, new levels of cheese are added on top.

answered before the edit really sorry.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Gap closers done right = non-teleports (ironically, warrior gap closers come to mind).
Gap closers done (very) wrong = teleports (virtually everyone else).

Well in gw2 both are a problem their availability make a lot of specks unkitable. for example if i decide to play the meta sword/sword warrior I have one of the best gap closer in the game, a great swiftness up-time + a good stability up-time + lot of self cleanse + and condition immunity I pretty much have all the thing needed to be in your face during 70 percent of the confrontation. The abundance is the real problem here we can simply do to much.

ExaFlare.1390:

Teckos.1305:

the loss is a long term effect of the accumulation of errors

Well that’s how it’s supposed to work. Also, all teams arent heavy condi, the game is not just about putting conditions on the others.

A mistake often means you’ll lose instantly.

Look at my comment above. I don’t know why peoples seem to miss that it I am talking about a teamfight not a full game. And teamfights should not be that long.

ryston.7640:

your whining about how the game is decided by the accumulation of errors on one side or the other…

is the most convincing evidince ive heard to date I should try gw2 again w/ a team because anet has started fixing things.

but has little to do with gap closer spam.

I doubt we have the same definition of whining as i doubt of you ability to understand a simple text. I explicitly pointed that the fact that team fights (not a game) in gw2 let players pile-up a number of errors (often big) before receiving the consequences of their act, when in almost all small team based competitive pvp games the sightliest mistake is automatically punished. this is why gw2 team fights feels so slow paced.

well that thing that pulls me off the most from gw2 pvp. Its all macro the current meta is pretty much about evade, condition, cleanse spam making fights really slow paced, the team loosing the fight is the one which will mess up its cleanse/condition application rotation, but the loss is a long term effect of the accumulation of errors, the is no way to totally switch the issue of a teamfigth nothing you do will have a direct impact. Don’t get me wrong macro gaming is good but it take skills in only a few kind of games, and most of the time it is one person managing many aspect of the game.

Bezagron.7352:

Horizontal progression page summary
Lets me know if you think I’ve missed something

Character progression

New Build: This includes;

• New weapons
• New skills including expansion of weapons skills
• New traits
• New stat combinations
• Sub-classes [url]https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/page/2#post3406543[

hum what about the runes and sigils.

Hey there ill link 2 of of my thread on the matter feel free to read:
About the encounters:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-good-boss-encounter-design-for-players/first#post3218836

About the Explorable dungeons:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/how-would-you-rework-the-explorable-dungeons/first#post2213870

Nike.2631:

Woohoo!

Just wanted to share my first test for “Is it vertical or horizontal?”

If it will let an 80th level character come back to Queensdale and kill a plainswurm one-tenth of a seconds faster than they can now… it ain’t horizontal!

Looking forward to seeing people’s ideas!!

I have the same feeling about downscaling in gw2 and even made a post about it
“https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Are-players-downscaled-enough/first#post3382057”
and it seems like players enjoy this kind of gameplay (pretty sad Y_Y).

Orders:
Orders specific ranks, titles and currency:
-armors tied to ranks
-dyes, bundles(Ex:a dropable jump pad), food etc to buy with currency.
-scavengers hunts tied to the order.
-open world content:
* Dynamic events engaged by members of a specific orders.
* Elements which interact only with members of a specific order.

Signet:
Signet with more specific affinity: to weapons, skills, boons, dropping interactive bundles, etc.
Signets opening new ways to play a character out of combat, like faster gathering, higher jumps (out of combat), etc.
Skills: before adding new skill the available skills should be re-balanced:
As an example the new warrior stance is a great reward/risk skill, but when you have existent skills with a better reward/risk ratio it simply won’t be that appealing.
Also if you intend to add new weapons skills think about giving these skills some kind of synergy and the best examples would be greatswod on guardians and main hand sword on mesmer.

just make legendary mobs drop it and we will all be good.

Hum you guys know spirit ranger isn’t proper Ai build right?

WRay.2391:

Teckos.1305:

Also the champions should be considered as DE, maybe still have their boxes, but have the even reward scaled in function of the champ toughness, and even the number of players participation( for examples if 50 peeps are on one champion the gold tier of reward is unobtainable), this would push people into playing in small to medium size groups, and even have people organizing “hard to do good” events with rewards worth the effort.

Ok, so you have 50 ppl. But gold reward cannot be achieved in this case. You opinion how to split these 50 ppl in smaller groups without conflict ? Do you this that let’s say 20 guys will tell “Oh, nevermind, I will go somewhere else ..” ? Create instances ? Not open world anymore.
Scaling can help probably, not limiting number of ppl.

Well you hate 2 choices to spread the players and avoid the formation of zergs:
1- The hard cap i am talking about ,but it should be case specific(for example 50 people on a 1 champ event with the actual scaling aren’t really worthy of max tier reward).
2- Have events in each areas (ascalon, shiverpeaks, krytia etc ) give a zone specific currency, to get zone specifics rewards.