Guild Wars 2

The armor that you wear contributes to your total armor. Armor is the stat that reduces damage, not toughness. Toughness is a factor in calculating armor. Just as Precision contributes to your crit chance. Same concept.

So erm… not to burst any bubbles, but the primary source for the article that you posted, Dustfinger, did not say anything about every profession getting every weapon. Here is the primary source (a blog from Colin Johanson): https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

I read it several times and it says nothing about every profession getting every weapon.

I realize that this isn’t the original point of this thread, but I felt it was a hot topic and wanted to talk about it a bit more.

Dustfinger I’d like to see where you got that. I haven’t really heard Anet say that they’re getting ALL weapons to ALL classes, merely that they’re trying to expand weapon options for all classes. Could you provide a link please?

+1 I love this idea.

I really like your idea Kentaine. Allow people to do their skips, but make it worth less than what dungeons are currently worth, and make it so killing all mobs is worth two gold or so per dungeon.

1: QUESTS! I want to receive mail from my order/other affiliates (my college as an Asura, ex.) requesting me to do something in game. There are so many secret thing like hidden chests and environmental weapons, make it so that once I have this quest, a random chest has this special quest item in it in addition to its normal loot.

2: MOUNTS: Make it so we can only WP when near a WP, and give us mounts. This will create a lot of build diversity because people can stop stressing over swiftness or that 25% passive in their builds.

3: A MINIATURE SLOT: Give us a reason to collect the cuties.

The more I think about this the more I actually kind of appreciate your suggestion. I don’t necessarily think that we need scaling laurel gain because of trinkets (like I mentioned, once we are able to craft them things should be very different), but I do like the idea of getting a permanent “laurel-booster” at the big Achievement chest marks.

Just to point this out, I think that non-scaling laurel gain is fine, if laurels were not needed for character progression, but they are. In that case, I think that they should be treated more like karma and badges, as you mentioned, and we should get some sort of scale for them.

I think that the balance would have to be pretty thin, because I know that I (having not gotten the big 5000 point Achievement chest yet) would feel really bummed if people with way more Achievements were getting upwards of 4 or 5 laurels a day. However, I think even just the opportunity to get 2 laurels a day (from whatever means) would be great, as even that is double the rate we currently get.

If you only wish for level 80s, then create your own LFG listing and request only 80s.

I think you’re being pretty mean to the lower levels here, though I don’t necessarily disagree that there should be a way to get some additional info before you join a party.

I do agree that it’s really hard to get enough laurels (especially on alts) to get the ascended trinkets. But I believe that a big factor is the fact that we can’t yet craft ascended trinkets, though I feel like that step is coming. My suggestion for removing the ascended trinkets from laurel vendors is ONLY assuming that we may craft them. Before that update hits, I don’t propose that at all. Once that update hits, I think that for a lot of people (especially the alts that have such a laurel-based problem now) will be much more able to get the ascended trinkets from crafting sources.

I guess what I’m saying is that I think the laurels are alright the way they are, because I feel like the ascended trinkets were given to laurel vendors as a way to get them in game before they were ready to update crafting. I don’t know what Anet plan to do with the ascended trinkets that laurel vendors have once they give us level 500 Jewelcrafting, but I think that this conversation will be much more applicable then.

This idea is awesome! I would love to see it implemented because I know that a lot of people get frustrated when they miss Living Story elements!

I don’t agree with this idea for one main reason: ascended is the vertical progression for this game, and it should be difficult. The game can be played perfectly well with Rare and Exotic gear, so getting Ascended, currently best-in-slot should take time and effort.

As an aside, I’m actually an advocate for ascended trinkets being removed from all of the vendors we have now once we can craft them, as ascended weapons and armor are not available through means besides crafting.

Thanks for the comments guys, I really appreciate more feedback on this because I think that the Living story could be a great mechanic to add more real maps without an expansion, but if the new maps we get to explore don’t really mean much (because they don’t count for world completion, bad mob designs other things mentioned) then it’s almost as if we never got this new zone.

I ventured there for the first time to do the guild event because I missed the original living story. I have to say the guild event was great and I wish that more people were romping around the zone!

I don’t think that fostering an elitist community would be beneficial to anyone. I think a personal recount would be just fine, allowing people who wish to optimize to do so and allowing anyone else to play the game in a relatively safe environment.

In response to you, Ventrue, people can already easily recognize dead weight pretty easily I feel. I agree that all builds should be pretty successful, and I think that the majority of them are successful enough in the vast majority of content. The people that are dead weight are dead weight because they don’t understand mechanics or their skills well enough, not because of the builds themselves, in my humble opinion.

Sure, maybe some builds are “better” than others, and maybe some builds are similar, but if someone would rather be a Cleric Banner warrior than a Guardian then that’s their choice, and I don’t think it’s very nice of you to try and convince them that it’s a bad choice.

I really like the idea of the heavy armored mage. I do think it’s something this game is lacking, since the medium armor goes to Ranger, Engy, and Thief, none of which are mystical. It somewhat pigeon-holes casters who want to be offensive (typically more “magical” Guardians are support-based) into cloth armor, which some people may not like aesthetically.

As some have mentioned, I think the biggest challenge would be making it very unique and different from the Guardian.

To add to your idea of “linking” maybe that could be the class mechanic. Two or three skills that link you and your opponent on semi-long cooldowns would be incredible class mechanics, and they could theme them to be based around karma, like you said. For example the first class mechanic could be a simple “share all boons and conditions with your target”. Super situational, but also really freaking awesome for group play. The second class mechanic could be something like shadow tether where you both are immobilized or something (you take extra damage from other sources so it’s not too OP, makes it possible to counter play to target you). The third skill could be something like “Shadow Dance” where for a few seconds, your opponent mirrors your actions, so if you move left, so does he, and if you jump, so does he, but it would put you into a shadowy state and remove all skills from the skill bar.

Ventrue, I believe you have sufficiently illustrated why Public Recount would be a horrible idea. Thanks for pretending to be really elitist so everyone knows what we’re talking about.

So they added this nice place called Southsun during a part of the living story chain, but the thing is that it’s not really a part of the world. It doesn’t count for world completion, so a lot of people may not go there if they missed the original event.

This also doesn’t make sense to me because it detracts from the idea that they added a thing to the game. So make Southsun a real area, make it count for map completion, and maybe we’ll see more people exploring around, or at least appreciating that yes, we have gotten new maps.

I like the idea of it being a special bag, not the whole inventory.

Andele.1306:

You know we used to have a Phylactery when in lich form, it was about a 40k hp object with like no armor that would make you immortal in lich form (its still here http://www.guildhead.com/search/lich#traits)

Why would they remove that?! It’s so cool!! Such an awesome skill being tied to an Elite that didn’t last long enough for it to be OP…

I think we should get a “get-out-of-jail-free” card when we go Lich. It would make it easier to bear losing all our utilities.

These ideas are so awesome!! Anet needs to give you lots of money now.

I like Tainted Power too, from the second poster, and I actually really like the pulsing grabby Well idea. It would be pretty good for Dagger Power Necros it seems. I hope we get both that and the rezzy Well!!

Also, making Signet of Spite an Elite might be really good. Warriors have a good Elite Signet, so I don’t see a thematic problem with it. The only issue is that it would actually probably strengthen the condi burst of a Necro, since our current elites don’t seem to be down the bursty vein and we would then be allowed to get another cool utility. This seems to be what Anet don’t want!

Mostly PvE, though I would like for it to be somewhat viable in WvW (which I assume a baseline decency will come from Marks, correct me if I’m wrong).

Hi guys, I’ve been working on a Necro alt, and I have to go against the grain here and say how much I enjoy it! I know that I’m low level, but it’s a very different play style from my Ele. I just kind of pop condis on things and forget about them. With Ele I’m always doing so many buttony things that it tires out my hands!!

Anyway, on to the topic at hand, I’m working on a nice condi Necro build, so the gear is easily Rabid (Condi, Toughness, Precision) for simplicity’s sake. This build will be primarily for PvE. I’m not interested in really advanced builds or anything, so this is what I have so far:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQUQNArYWjMah7Zbeb87JCIFvHXRPEWwUGlC4lOA-jgCBYhERj0CJjqAkABiIAIHqIasVTFRjVdDTHjIq2crIa1A-e

Let me explain some of my choices, and then I’ll explain some of my tough decision that I want help with!

So I chose to go a spectral build for the utilities, because I read that Scepter/Dagger Staff builds have a hard time with Life Force, and it looked like I could augment Spectral skills to really help with that through traits like Spectral Attunement. If this isn’t really much help in actuality (due to not significant enough LF gain), please explain why!

I chose Scepter/Dagger and Staff because those seem like really solid choices first of all, but also because I personally like the feel of them together. I like that I can pretty easily transfer conditions with Dagger offhand, the Putrid Mark, and eat them with my heal. That’s definitely something I wanted to be strong at, since I didn’t bring along any basic condition removal. I also spent almost all my money getting a full set of the Dreamthistle weapons, which I think are absolutely beautiful. All this to say I am highly unlikely to change my weapon choices.

I didn’t want Dhuumfire for personal reasons. I really don’t like things that proc in a certain situation AND have a CD (proccing on crit and having a 10 second CD). Plus I also have read so much hate concerning Dhuumfire that I really wanted to make a Condi build that didn’t need it.

If anyone has any questions about my build, please just ask. I tried to think things through with my choices!

So now for my dilemma: It’s mostly about the Spite and Death Magic line. I wanted to go into the Spite line because I wanted the extra Condi Duration, but then I also wanted to go down the Death Magic line because of the nice staff traits (Reduction to CD on staff skills and Marks become unblockable is what I would probably take in the Death Magic line). Now I could just do both of these things if I gave up my points in the Soul Reaping line, but I really wanted to try and eek some more LF gain from my Spectral skills, because I heard it’s a challenge on Scepter/Dagger and Staff.

Please post your opinions and advice! Once again, I am a new Necro, so any advanced things might be over my head! And please be gentle if my build is really bad in the end.

TLDR: I linked my build. I’m uncertain if it’s good. Please post nice feedback. I do not want Dhuumfire. I am not planning on using different weapons for any reason. I am mostly interested in PvE.

I completely agree. I actually would love it if all skin items were put in a special wardrobe. This would include the meta event items that we want to keep but not just cool-looking in game armor.

I like the idea of the price being similar to that of the Grandmaster manual, and the cooldown, but I would probably make the CD longer, even up to 4 hours. After all, they can go swap the traits manually if they just NEED it before that CD is up.

I think that having the item to “unlock” the dual-trait should be in the gem store, to help alleviate some of the lost revenue that Anet might have due to this.

If you don’t want to go through the “grind” (honestly? Grind? Easiest leveling I’ve seen for a looooooong time in an MMO. The world is beautiful and well made and the events are fun and ever-changing) then you don’t deserve another level 80. Being 80 is a reward for the work it takes you to get to level 80.

There’s a group of us preparing to kill Lich on Blackgate. If anyone wants to come join us, now’s the time!

I did try a few times with my only 80, a Mesmer geared for melee…. but it went very poorly.

Tryden.6738:

Kilraq.4618:

Will you guys be doing another Zerg? I would really like to join one of these and gain the achievements. Just started last sunday to the game and I want to get done what I can. The Mad King Realm was quite epic, but as an Elementalist I feel the glass cannon effect oh so well there.

Hmm, I’d like to, but the next week is looking really busy for me. I might try and do another one on Saturday if I can squeeze in the time and there’s enough interest. Stay posted to this thread.

If you do it on Saturday, could it a be a bit earlier in the day? I work late nights, which is why I missed the group last night, and the darned Lich is the very last thing I need for the meta.

Are any groups still doing this? This is the last thing I need for my meta and I’m having a hard time getting a group together. If anyone else needs it, post here and maybe we can get a group together.

Please please please allow us to reset our story. I made so many bad decisions on my Mesmer because I played in pre-release and was SO pumped for the game. I zipped through the levels never really realizing how important some of these choices were.

Give me (and others like me) a second chance. And make it cost lots of gems.

Maybe it’s the dark color scheme, but I really don’t see a HUGE difference. I see a bit, but I don’t think it looks plastic. o.o Maybe someone can point out the exact differences in the screenies that were posted? I looked at them side by side and they just look really similar to me.

I really hope we get one soon, then!

I know that the story is meant to be significant, but I was wondering what some other people’s thoughts are on a complete reset, back to ground one (like re-choosing the things you chose about your character’s personality when you created it). Do you think this will ever be implemented?

I have a Mesmer that I made in pre-release and it’s very sentimental to me, but I made some very odd choices with her story as I ran through the game with my Warrior boyfriend. I wish I could reset her story, just once.

The main issue that I see with a full hard reset is honestly the rewards.

What do you guys think?

I’m just trying out a thief, even though I’ve heard a lot of bad things about the nerfs and everything, and I have to say that I’m really enjoying it. Here’s a few things that I find thieves really do very well compared to other classes (I have an 80 Mesmer and Guardian and a lower level Ele for comparison purposes):

Thieves have so much more sustainable mobility in and out of combat. Since my Mesmer is my main… this is such a stark difference. Yes I know Mesmer mobility isn’t fabulous, but playing a thief is so fun when every skill seems to make you hop and move around and you have tons of shadow-step abilities on command. I think people really underestimate this because it doesn’t do damage or anything, but it’s so critical even for combative things like chasing people down or escaping, which you mentioned. My boyfriend also plays a warrior, so yes I’ve seen the insane mobility they can get, but I feel like thieves get it almost naturally without having to use specific weapons or traits.

The blind spam build: This is honestly one thing that no other class can compare to, at all and I think people shouldn’t overlook this. In a group it’s so freaking insane. Thieves can trait to blind on stealth, and if you augment your stealthing abilities a bit and have a few dark fields thrown in there… you can massively AoE spam blind. The only other class that can even somewhat compare is maybe Necro? Haven’t played one so I’m not too sure. I’ve read about their condis, but I don’t want to speak from ignorance. Anyway, this is kind of a niche thing. I don’t run around all day using blind spam, but sometimes it’s insanely fun (and probably impossibly frustrating for the opponents). Did you know that Mesmer phantasms will not appear if they are blinded when they cast? Just a tidbit.

The toying: No other class has the ability to engage and disengage so smoothly and quickly, nor the ability to completely shut down or harass their opponents. This is just the way the thief design works. Because we use initiative, and not cooldowns, you can sit there and wait for your opponent to do something besides auto attack and head shot them, (or use your favorite thiefy daze) and that ability will be ready to go again instantly. This allows us to counter nearly anything, if we choose to. We’re the only class that can consistently always have one interrupt ready at any time we choose(granted we save the initiative). It’s very powerful in a fight, whereas other classes will eventually have a moment where they have no dodges or no more interrupts or stuns. That moment never happens for us. We never lose our momentum that way, and I love how that feels.

These are the things that I can think of right now, but my philosophy has always been this: if you really love a class, don’t let arbitrary things like balance or “OPness” turn you off of it. Those things can and will change, and to be fair, thieves were incredibly good for a long time, mostly because at least three of the classes were broken for a very long time, but hey. =P So if we have to go through a down period, well fine. That just means we have to adapt and learn, not jump on the warrior/guardian bandwagon.

Hope this helped. I love my thief.

Aza.2105:

CMF.5461:

This is the split personality from the mechanics of the game and the core of this profession at play here.

There are no “healers”. The group oriented healing will be weak, and you are better off with self oriented healing, stated so in their own interviews and game descriptions.

That said, we are supposed to be support/defensive, and since a lot of our abilities become group oriented, they are reduced in effect in order to not create the “healer” role.

So fine, we can support a little bit in the healing aspect, but for the most part everyone should worry about their own health….but then things like healing breeze never see use.

So how do they try to fix it? They make it heal allies more……….but we shouldn’t be healers?

So beyond the fact that the mechanics are backwards, and we should be upfront fighting and not behind our allies healing, it is also fulfilling a role that no one is supposed to take, and that is to pretend to be a dedicated healer.

Devil’s advocate here….we “could” use this ability while everyone in melee range is on one side of the fight, and we are on the other side of the target, thus healing through the target being hit….ok PvE maybe this works, PvP of course it ends up being pointless due to mobile fighting…among other things.

Clearly Guardian is a healer or can be. Orb of light (detonate), Empower, Healing Breeze, Virtue of Resolve, Battle Presence (for heals over time), Writ of the Merciful, Tome of Courage and Shield of Absorption (detonate). All of those heal allies substantially. How isn’t that considered being a healer? Support would be skills that reinforce allies like aoe stability, wall of reflection, shield of absorption etc.

Anet even said recently that they didn’t want a dedicated healer. But what do we have here? A dedicated healer, the only difference is the game mechanics do not require them.

I have a different view on this. Yeah, we can take skills that make us more healy, but I don’t think it can ever be enough to heal through damage output of bosses or other players. In this sense, I don’t consider it a true healing spec at all.

The way that I roll with my Guardian is usually with my Warrior boyfriend, who really isn’t spec’d for tanking much at all. But even in fractals (up to a point) we can do just fine with him “tanking” and me “healing”. I love the idea that a Warrior tank can work with my build that is more focused on healing.

Actually, I do use this build, and it is effective. I play a healing (not a tanking) guardian with full support shouts and symbols. I use Magi/Cleric Gear so I don’t overwhelm the tank with my toughness from pure cleric. This allows for Vigor on crit and lots of healing dodge rolls.

It’s not standard, and maybe it isn’t “optimal” but I don’t really care. I like it and it’s fun. I like Healing Breeze the way it is. Not every heal has to be viable for every build, though I do think that some of the ideas posted here are really cool and could perhaps be implemented as more heal options.

Create an item in the gem store that allows us to completely reset our story, as in back to the little choices we made when we created our character.

A lot of people want to switch to a different order, or get a different race in their house, things like that, and I understand why we aren’t allowed to simply change those singular decisions. I think that a total story reset would be more fair though, because it would be a lot of work to redo it and get to where we want to be.

I created my Mesmer in pre-launch. I took time off of work and played about 16 hours a day for a while, and loved every minute of it. However, over the course of that playing I made some choices I would really rather undo, such as joining the Vigil. My boyfriend (whom I was playing with) made a Guardian, then a Warrior, so being Vigil absolutely made sense for his roleplay and his style, but it just doesn’t work for my Mesmer, and the fact that my story doesn’t really make sense at all bothers me. However I feel really attached to this character because it’s the first one I ever made, before the game even released. I bought her bag space, I have tons of dyes, etc… I feel like I simply can’t delete her.

I think giving us this all-or-nothing option to reset story would be a great option for a lot of people.

Nothing to add, great idea. +1

So it’s fine the way that it was brought into Tyria through the Living Story. I’m totally fine with that part. But now that the Living STory chapter involving Southsun is over, it’s just ignored for the most part.

So once the Living Story chapter that introduced it concluded, it should have been transitioned into a real zone. A zone with hearts, and a deep backstory that explained what Southsun Cove was for those who weren’t around during the Living Story.

This would help to teach players about the Living Story that has already passed, and it would also make it actually worth while for people to go to this zone, since they would have to for Map Completion if it had hearts and actually counted.

I do agree that Toughness could be buffed up a bit. Right now it feels very sub-standard to the other stats. Toughness just doesn’t seem to mitigate enough damage to be worth getting. Protection is just so much better than Toughness, and even Vitality feels like it means more than armor/Toughness.

I would like to see Toughness do a bit more for us.

Yes!! This armor is so beautiful! /signed

He’s not making a point about the dailies, if you read. He’s saying that dailies should not be worth Achievement points, which I fully agree with.

Achievement points are a fun way to compare completion with friends. But it’s impossible to have any sort of game or contest when the people with the most Achievement points are simply the ones who do their dailies more often. I took a break from the game for a bit and just came back last week and I know I’ll never catch up to people who did not take that break. It’s frustrating.

While I agree that it is possible to make money if you try, I also agree that we shouldn’t have to try quite so hard.

I don’t enjoy farming/grinding either, and all the posts explaining intelligent ways to get money have included farming and grinding. I simply don’t like doing those things. That isn’t fun. While I realize that I willingly choose to not do something to get the income I want, I do think there should be other methods.

Maybe if the rewards for zones scaled with level? Only slightly of course, or the incentive to just craft to 80 and farm the zones for tons of money would be too great! But zone completion is really quite a task. I think it should be worth a bit more, especially for the level 60ish zones that are still fairly challenging even at 80, yet don’t reward exotics like some zones do.

Or maybe if Diminishing returns had an inverse, so if you went to a dungeon or zone that you had never been to, or only been to long ago, your drop rates would increase for a period of time, or maybe until you got your first exotic drop.

These are just some suggestions to help more casual players (or players who simply hate grinding) get some cash.

They’re a lot of work.. so people should have to work for them, not just grind up some money and buy it off the TP. It really bothers me that these aren’t account bound.

I actually like the idea of being able to carry one other person on certain mounts. That’s cute. I also agree that the mounts need to stand out.. the problem with that is that WoW has so many mounts these days that it’s hard to find something that doesn’t look somehow similar to WoW mounts and still look respectable.

The pulsing turret is ridiculously OP. Stealth lasts for 3 seconds, 4 at the very most. You want to reveal them for 2 seconds, and they can’t do anything to block it? That’s not fair.

A revealed thief is a dead thief. Hard counters are never fun. I’d rather win by skill, not spec.

Krispera.5087:

Put Torment on Counterspell. Put AoE Blind on iCounter.

Fixed Torment and Scepter for you Anet.

I love you.

Just like the title says, I really dislike it when I walk into a camp and everything is so… dead. Please give us a few champions that can at least survive a bit longer. Just increase the chances of us walking in on a struggle instead of a massacre. Let most of the NPCs die, but make the named ones a bit cooler, you know? Make it so they can survive one or two waves of attack, but will typically fall after that.

Maybe even give the champions a rallying shout type ability so that when they see the hero they get so excited that they can shout out and revive their comrades, at least a few of them.

I totally agree with the AoE thing. Take it on a case-by-case basis. A lot of skills (like simple direct damage ones) could hit every target in the area, but scale down the damage depending on how many targets there are. Other AoEs (like Chaos Storm) definitely should not be able to tick on more than 5 people at once. It’s way too good.

As for unshakable/defiant… I’m fine with it being in the game.. but tone it down! double digits of stacks that deny you from doing any sort of strategic play? Really? Give the boss a few stacks, maybe 2-5, just to create a sort of CC cooldown after you knock him back. I also really like the idea of giving them stability as well, since stability can be cleansed.

I absolutely agree about the condition stack thing. It seems like with this new patch Anet are trying to make condition builds more viable, which I love! Yes give us variety!! I don’t want people telling me I can only be one of two builds as a Mesmer. But… the game’s inherent mechanics kitten our ability to play with conditions. I’m trying to understand why they did this. It seems counter-intuitive. The main suggestion I have to fix this is to re-consider conditions. Make some of them do more damage, but make it harder to stack maybe? They would have to balance conditions to not lose any overall damage, but maybe each person would be able to afflict fewer stacks. This way at least, condition is more viable in groups, though not ideal. I’m not sure what a long term fix would be. I don’t really like your direct damage idea though. Maybe if a lot of conditions were stacks, they ticked faster and faster scaling with the number of stacks, which would also make the stacks go away faster, which would make it viable for more condition people to keep doing it, since the increasing stacks would make it tick faster.

And finally… stealth. I honestly think a few relatively simple fixes could help this situation a lot, though I think more is needed to truly balance it. Here’re my thoughts: I don’t think stealth is inherently OP. It’s kind of the thief’s thing, you know? I think the reason that it’s so godkitten ed horrible is that it’s the single most frustrating mechanic to fight against. We spend so much time learning visual clues to protect ourselves from things like quickness bursts, and stun locks… and then with stealth.. we can’t see them. Stealth makes the person fighting it feel very helpless, and as a player, we hate that. I think to help this a bit, Anet should implement some sort of reward system consisting of two things: make stealth cause you to take more damage (not much, maybe 10-20% more) and give the attacker some sort of notification when they hit someone in stealth. Maybe if we hit someone while they’re in stealth, briefly flash the “invisible” skin that stealthy NPCs get. That way we can try to actually chase them down a bit. Maybe just show us numbers if we hit them, just like a normal attack would.

I agree that some classes should be able to reveal stealth, but I think they should have to really spec into it. For example, maybe the hawk or eagle pets could, instead of their normal special attack, use their incredible vision (these birds really do have incredible eyesight) to locate a stealthed target. Don’t give this ability to Mesmers though, we’re already too good at 1v1, and since thief is our main competitor, we don’t need this advantage over them.

I wish I could agree with your idea, but I can’t.

I main a Mesmer, and I can honestly say that I completely understand the frustration, especially during earlier/undergeared times…but this suggestion would be very unbalanced in a lot of ways. It also becomes less of an issue later one.

So to address my first point, this would be unbalanced in a lot of situations, such as big group events or intelligent farming. In the former case, the group could keep running and stay in combat for quite some time, which would make phantasms almost like an ongoing buff, not a cool ability to use strategically/for burst. This type of playstyle seems to be something Anet are avoiding. They don’t want toggle buffs or long-lasting buffs. In the latter case, if you pull mobs carefully and stay moving, you can easily stay in combat for minutes on end, once again presenting the same problem.

To my other point: it’s not so bad once you hit 80 and gear up. Just do a pull, get some illusions out, and make sure to shatter them before the mobs die so you aren’t wasting that burst. Depending on your build, you’ll have reductions on weapon CDs or reductions on illusion generation or even clone generation on dodge. I feel like Anet balanced the Mesmer’s ability to create illusions very well. We don’t need them to last forever since we can create them pretty easily.

I whole-heartedly agree with everyone who strongly resents the idea of deleting down-scaling. I feel like it’s a core part of GW2’s immersion. I would be very upset if it was removed in any form.

Also, an idea that no one has suggested yet is this: Even CoF (an end-game dungeon) is only level 75 for explorable mode. Being able to do this as a non down-scaled level 80 would make it even easier than it already is. If someone from this non-scaled server decided to transfer back to a server with downscaling.. this could cause a lot of economic upset, especially if the person were trying to manipulate the market.

Go to non scaled server —> get a ton of loot by doing high level content far quickly due to not scaling down —> transfer back to a regular server —> disrupt the economy by having large supplies of goods that are considered expensive.

I also think that the downscaling system keeps things interesting and keeps people playing. Most of the ideas I have have already been posted, so I shall digress. Needless to say, I believe that even introducing non downscaled servers could disrupt the game for others.

Thinking that your ideas could never possibly disrupt anyone else is a little nearsighted.

Also, while I agree that harassing someone for their opinion is inappropriate, you should also consider that threats are just as inappropriate. You have the ability to ignore people’s rude comments and report them if you feel justified, but threats (especially on an online medium) just seem immature to me.