Guild Wars 2

Okay, so last weekend I finally took part in the beta for the first time, and I got to try out all the elite specs. I spent more time with some than others, but the ones I spent the most time with were the Daredevil and Dragon Hunter, mostly because Thief and Guardian are the two classes I play the most currently.

I have to say, after seeing all the feedback on Dragon Hunters over the past while, I fully expected that I’d hate the elite spec. I was preparing myself for a lot of groaning and disappointment, but after playing with the class, I actually feel the complete opposite…

Dragon Hunters are actually pretty cool!

Okay, so that’s the thought that came to mind when I played the elite spec. The reason I came to this conclusion was because I felt like the elite spec achieved what it was meant to, and that is to give the guardian an alternative way to play. I found it much more compelling than some of the other elite specs like the Berserker or the Tempest, which really felt like they were giving their respective base classes more of what they already had, rather than something truly new.

Here’s my breakdown on what I thought of each aspect of the Dragon Hunter’s skills:

Traps:

When people see “traps” they tend to immediately start comparing the Dragon Hunter to thieves and rangers and go on about how bad traps are. To be frank, in my opinion, Dragon Hunter traps are VASTLY SUPERIOR to both thief and ranger traps. They actually bring a lot of useful functionality and utility. I even had people complain in PvP about how “OP” they were. The amount of control they give you over a position is quite extreme.

Even in my time in WvW, I found that a lot of players would get downed really fast after setting off my traps. Thieves would use steal or shadow step to gap close and pretty much die on the spot (battles against thieves were basically auto-wins). And even when players expect the traps after falling prey to them once or twice, they’re still forced to carefully dance around or stay at range, under the fear of setting your traps off again.

I’ve heard people complain about a lack of ground targeting, but in my opinion that was a non-issue, and honestly, I feel like traps make a good alternative to meditations in PvP especially.

Longbow

Longbow was good in my opinion. It’s about what you’d expect from a ranged weapon. I did enjoy the burn on Symbol of Energy quite a bit, and even Hunter’s Ward was quite handy in PvP and WvW. I don’t expect it would see as much use in PvE though.

My only real issue was with True Shot, which roots you in place while charging. It really diminishes the guardian’s ability to kite while using the longbow, and I found I basically never used it at all. I think if they let it charge while you’re moving, or at least increase it’s damage to the point of justifying being rooted, then that would be better.

New Virtues

The new virtues were interesting. I actually found them quite useful, especially the directional shield on Shield of Courage, which was very handy in a lot of situations. I like that you can continue to use other skills or revive players while it’s up. I also like that guardians now have a (kinda) escape tool with Wings of Resolve.

My main suggestion for the virtues, however, would be to reduce their cooldowns. Dragon Hunter virtues tend to be a bit more selfish than base Guardian Virtues, so I think the cooldowns should allow for more frequent use to offset that. I’d say base cooldowns of 15, 30, and 45 seconds for Spear of Justice, Wings of Resolve and Shield of Courage respectively would be good, and would incentivize more active use for skills that are basically begging to be used quite actively.

Another useful feature would be to add an F4 skill for guardians that allows us to swap between the two types of virtues (base guardian virtues or dragon hunter virtues) when out of combat, so that those who want to use the longbow or traps without changing the functionality of their virtues can do so.

Closing Notes

At the end of the day, I don’t think Dragon Hunters are the disaster spec that a lot of players have made them out to be. I found them very fun, interesting and different. I know a lot of people ask about how certain Dragon Hunter skills or traits are meant to compete with existing ones, but I’d argue that they are not meant to compete or replace other traits/skills. It’s pointless if the guardian gets skills that fulfill similar roles or functions as the already existing skills we have. The point of an elite spec is to give us something new, that doesn’t clash with what we already have, and I think to some extent, that was achieved with the Dragon Hunter.

There’s certainly room for improvement, especially with some of the animations, but I actually think Dragon Hunters are one of the better elite classes in terms of overall feel. That’s just my opinion of course. XD

Celine.6857:

Wow

Thieves are NOT underpowered. A good thief should be able to have good sustainability and win most 1v1s on a point contest. I certainly can at least. And, read I said ‘most’ and not ‘all’.

They are indeed squishy in bigger fights but again with their stealth and tricks, mobility, should be able to withstand a short enough amount of time to assist their team in secure stealth stomps and secure rezzing.

Their POWER DOES NOT need a buff. I can get shot down with Basalisk venom without being able to do ONE skill to counteract it. Granted, these thieves MUST execute their opener perfectly, or THEY will get burst down, but no way do these skills need buffing, IMHO.

Thieves are not what I’d call underpowered as a class, but pistols were underpowered as a weapon set. Just because a class is decent in and of itself, that doesn’t mean that broken and useless weapon sets should remain broken and useless.

I don’t understand the logic here. Thief pistols were a very underwhelming, underutilized weapon set (main hand or dual wielding in particular, offhand had good utility). It needed a buff to be even considered viable and it got one.

Pistols STILL won’t out-damage thief back-stabs, so the thief isn’t getting any extra dps over what their top dps builds already provide. In fact, I doubt thieves will choose dual pistols over shortbow anyway, even with this buff, because the latter still provides more utility with spammable blast finishers.

What exactly is the problem here?

lordkrall.7241:

That is assuming you buy every single thing, rather than getting them yourself. Heck, even if you just get parts of it yourself you cut the price quite a bit.

I never really understood this kind of argument.

Acquiring items or mats to craft something as opposed to buying them does not “cut the price”. If we’re talking about items that can be bought, then it goes without saying that those items still have a gold value and if you sell them instead of using them to craft, you’d obviously make gold. By using those items instead of selling them, you are essentially incurring a cost relative to the value of those items (If I use 200 gold worth of ectoplasms to craft an item instead of selling the ectoplasms, for example, I am essentially incurring a cost of 200 gold).

maddoctor.2738:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

I believe the point of precursor crafting was not to make precursors cheaper or easier to acquire, but rather to give an alternative means to acquiring them for those who wanted it.

Right now, getting precursors is an all or nothing affair. You either have to be lucky enough for a drop, or you have to spend a large sum of gold on it all at once. Crafting gives players a more step-by-step means of acquiring a precursor. It’s something they can work at on and off, without feeling as pressured about long-term price variations or with hoarding gold that they might prefer to spend on other items.

From my calculations it makes Colossus cost about 50% of the TP price in raw materials alone. If it requires all that adventuring and doing all those things, I think it’s only natural for the collection precursors to be cheaper. If they cost the same but also require loads of other things to do then what’s the point?

The question still stand about the cheaper / more expensive precursors out there, for the expensive ones, crafting will be extremely important, for the cheap ones it will be useless. We’ll see how that goes.

Well, you also have to take into account that time is money, so to speak. Every hour you spend doing a treasure hunt is an hour you could have spent farming gold. Just because there’s no literal or visible cost, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any cost at all, in some respect or another.

I do, however, think that the effort it takes to craft a precursor will have a direct impact on their price on the TP as well (assuming future precursor drops can actually be sold and won’t just become account bound on acquire). If it does work out to be cheaper to craft a precursor than it is to buy one (calculating in time spent vs average gold per hour farming rates), then I think the TP prices of precursors will reflect that as well and eventually balance out to some degree. This also goes for cheaper precursors. I think they’ll become more expensive if the crafting cost is higher. People don’t typically want to sell something for lower than its perceived value.

I believe the point of precursor crafting was not to make precursors cheaper or easier to acquire, but rather to give an alternative means to acquiring them for those who wanted it.

Right now, getting precursors is an all or nothing affair. You either have to be lucky enough for a drop, or you have to spend a large sum of gold on it all at once. Crafting gives players a more step-by-step means of acquiring a precursor. It’s something they can work at on and off, without feeling as pressured about long-term price variations or with hoarding gold that they might prefer to spend on other items.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

Jade Maw on a 50. Long, annoying, dull and there are tons of mobs who drop no loot (to prevent overfarming I imagine :| ).

I dunno who is the genius who had the Irukandji not drop loot, but I hope Santa brings you wet coals for every Christmas ever.

It’s funny because I actually prefer getting Mai to Jade Maw. The latter is just incredibly dull. Mai may be a bit harder but at least it’s fun and energetic.

I can’t give you too much of a breakdown on PvP or WvW because I’m not as experienced in those fields as other players, but here’s my opinion on PvE.

Most useful classes:

Elementalist: I’d say elementalists are typically seen as the best class in PvE. They have a ton of damage, lots of support, potential for group condition removal and can even heal when needed. And then they have ice bows, which speak for themselves.

Guardians: Guardians are also way up there thanks to active defenses, stability and projectile reflects/blocks. And thanks to their new elite shout, even their offensive support is much better now.

Thieves: I regard them as a great PvE class thanks to high damage, spam-able aoe blinds, the most spammable blast finisher in the game and group stealth, the last of which is very handy for skipping mobs or safe resurrections.

Warrior: Warriors have strong offensive support and the insta-party-res battle standard. They’re never out of place in any party.

Mid-tier classes:

Mesmers: Mesmers are in a strange place because outside of portals, anything they can do Guardians can basically do better. Guardians have more reliable projectile blocks and reflects, and thanks to their new shout, can even offer more up-time on quickness. Still, it’s never a bad thing to have a Mesmer in a party, and they are a decent alternative to Guardians if you don’t have one present.

Engineers: Engineers can do lots of damage, more so than a lot of non-engineer players realize, but they just fall behind a bit with regards to the utility and support that some other classes bring to the table.

Bottom-tier classes:

Unfortunately, this spot is relegated for Necros and Rangers. It’s not because they’re terrible (though some will try to convince you that they are), but rather because they don’t bring anything substantial to the table in group situations.

Rangers: Ranger support capabilities are really sub-par at the moment and their damage unfortunately doesn’t make up for the deficit. Unfortunately, they don’t bring anything unique to the table that makes them desirable in a party and what they do bring is typically done better by another class.

Necromancers: I’d say they have similar problems to rangers, but admittedly, I have little experience with them.

Note:

Keep in mind, a lot of these roles might change with the inclusion of elite specs in HoT’s. Rangers, for example, will become the ultimate healers. Mesmers will get a unique mechanic for reducing group cooldowns and Engineer drones look like they’d be very handy in group situations, etc. There’s no telling how the meta will change, especially with dev comments on how they intend to topple the zerker with raids.

You could just give the guild name change contract a 6 month cooldown if you want to avoid troublemakers.

It’s not like guilds that genuinely want to change their names for positive reasons intend to do it often anyway, because they typically want to build up familiarity with players and have others recognize their name, so it would be counterproductive to change it too regularly.

I would say it really depends on level and mistlock instability. Getting double damage from behind or the sides (Outflanked instability) when you’re stacking near a seal and being attacked from all sides on Cliffside Fractal, for example, is simply horrendous (which is why people generally just avoid the nasty instabilities).

If we’re just talking in general, without factoring in mistlock instabilities, then I’d say I’ve seen the most trouble with fire shaman with pug groups. Snowblind is also a real pain on higher levels during elemental. Dredge and Cliffside are long, but not particularly hard, unless you have really inexperienced players, in which case they can turn into nightmares. Mai is the hardest boss fractal, but not the hardest fractal in my opinion. Once you get to know the mechanics and learn to spread out during cannon phases, it’s really not so bad.

Overall, I’d say it really depends on group composition and skill. Even the seemingly hardest fractals can feel easy if you have the right party.

What I don’t get is why anyone would bother to buy fractal levels with gold. If you can’t do the higher levels, then just farm the lower ones to get what you need. It’s still more efficient than paying large sums of gold for what would more often than not amount to little return (the ironic part is that I’ve gotten most of my fractal weapon skins at lower/mid levels, like between 19 and 29 while higher levels often give me crap).

As for portal sellers at JP’s, in the past when I’ve seen them I just get a mesmer and go to the end of the same JP to let people up for free, just to annoy them. XD

At the end of the day, you can’t do much to stop these kinds of things from happening though. If people think it’s more efficient to spend 30 gold on a dungeon path, rather than just learning the path themselves and saving a lot of gold farming time, then that’s their issue. They’re actually losing out on more than they are gaining, especially when you consider how relatively straightforward most content is once you’ve learned it, and I think that’s enough self-inflicted punishment as it is.

I myself am not entirely against the idea of players not being able to pass through each other. However, unfortunately, a lot of the game’s mechanics or designs would render such a feature as more of a hindrance than a boon.

For example, can you imagine people trying to get through the harpy fractals or a JP with small surface areas with that kind of feature? You’d end up having to wait for the player in front of you to move on before you could progress, especially if they’re taking up all the space on a small platform. It could also lead to bottle-necking though many of the various small tunnels or walkways present in the game.

Or what about world bosses like Tequatl? How are you going to damage him in melee range during the DPS phases if 90% of the players present will not even be able to get close to him thanks to a few barring their way. What about other large scale events where you need to avoid enemy attacks, only for your path to be inexplicably blocked by another player passing by? Imagine all the deaths that would be caused by it.

Even in WvW, I can see it being a huge issue. Players won’t be able to get up onto walls because of other players standing in the way on stairs. Or they might not be able to get a hit in on a champ defender in a tower or keep because the rest of the zerg is blocking the path. Etc.

At the end of the day, a lot of the content in this game would simply become broken if this kind of change was implemented, regardless of how good the idea itself might be had it been used in any other situation or game. Any suggested fix for an issue that requires a redesign of a large portion of the game itself – which would require a lot of time and resources that would be pulled away from other projects or game content – is simply not viable. I’m afraid you’d have to come up with an alternative solution to the stacking issue.

I’m sure Anet is already aware of it though and although they might not have any plans to fix current content where stacking is prevalent (at least, not in the near future), I’m sure they’ve kept it in mind with regards to the designing of new content going forward. I guess we’ll have to wait and see though.

Good Tofu.9376:

Tuthan.3250:

Did you get a lot of T6 mats?

I think like 5 globs of dark matter. What a game, ANET.

Dark matter is a T7 mat and cannot be acquired from the recipe used to get mystic clovers. T6 mats are the ones that will drop. They sell for a reasonable amount, or can be used for legendary crafting (which I assume is what you’re going for if you care about clovers).

I’m going to assume you didn’t have 12 attempts at the forge where you didn’t get any T6 mats. You should actually be getting quite a lot of them if you’re not rolling clovers.

As for the cost, I’d be more worried about the amount of ectoplasms you used, and not the obsidian shards, which are incredibly easy to get.

If I were to rank classes by difficulty, from most to least difficult, this would be my list (Including reasoning):

1: Elementalist – To make the most of them you generally have to swap elements often and have good knowledge of combo fields and blast finishers. They have the most intricate skill rotations and require a lot of awareness regarding skill cooldowns across multiple elements.

2: Thief – Very squishy, so they die fast if you don’t play with them well. You have to make the most of stealth and evasion.

3: Engineer – Really depends on build but they are generally quite a complex class in my opinion.

4: Mesmer – Not actually a hard class to play from the offset, per say, but I’d say a hard class to master if you want to get the most out of them. I think most people struggle with timing on shatters.

5: Necromancer – Once you learn how to manage your death shroud use, I’d say they’re not too bad. A fairly easy class to play otherwise.

6: Guardian – Lots of active defense and pretty straight forward class mechanics make guardians pretty easy. But they still require some thought when it comes to placement of shield walls, or timing on active defenses.

7: Ranger – Pretty easy class. The only reason it isn’t at the bottom of the list is because some people still don’t seem to know how to play rangers properly. They sit at range when they should be cleaving in melee. Or they use less effective pets, etc. It strikes me as one of those classes where some people just choose not to play effectively.

8: Warrior – A very straight forward class. No particularly complex skill rotations. Banners can be dropped and then mostly forgotten about for reasonably long periods of time until you need to move to your next stack locations.

Well, that’s my opinion in any case. Please note, this is a list based on how easy or complex a classes mechanics are, and how much knowledge or skill it takes to bring the most out of them. It’s not based on how effective I believe they are overall. It goes without saying that with enough experience with a class, any of them can become “easy” to play. And some of the most difficult classes to learn can actually become some of the easiest to survive with once you know how their mechanics work (like thief and ele, for example).

IPhyton.2348:

Hall Monitor Alert!

I am amazed how some people have nothing better to do with their lives other than look for drama/attention.

I don’t see how noticing another logo looking the same as GW2’s logo and pointing it out makes someone an attention/drama seeker. Unless I am missing something here.

It’s a rather obvious rip-off. Wow. XD

Alternative name for thread:

Watch this giff if you want to feel nauseous. XD

In all honesty, this is one of the reasons I haven’t jumped into prepurchasing Heart of Thorns yet. I’m very disheartened by the direction this game is taking.

Anet just seems to be cutting too many corners lately. They give us a years worth of content drought with the excuse that they’re working on the expansion, and even then the content shown for the expansion so far seems very sparse. They give us lots of outfit releases in the gem store instead of armor that can be customized, because apparently outfits are cheaper and easier for them to create. And now when they do finally give us one new event, it’s very sub-par, with recycled rewards, enemies and mechanics from past events, only with less loot, exp, karma and gold earning capabilities.

I honestly see little reason to support a game that the developers themselves seem to show little interesting in supporting from their side. This is coming from someone who in the past would have prepurchased the expansion in a heartbeat without giving it two thoughts but who has, over this past year, lost a lot of faith in this game.

Wanze.8410:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Usually when determining the market price of an item, you would use the trade value of the resources needed to craft it, if it is craftable. If it isn’t, then it would be a case of supply vs demand. Right now, precursor values are purely based on that supply vs demand scenario, but once they become “craftable”, I think their prices will be determined by the amount of effort and resources required to craft them.

But precursors have an average forging value based on the average amount of rares/exos you throw into the forge. And the price of mithril, elder wood and t5 fine mats mostly determines the price of the popular pres.

Some events in the past awarded lots of these materials (halloween, wintersday, SW).
Most people claimed the price for pres went down earlier this year because of the announcement but it was mostly access to cheap t5 mats (snowflakes) from Wintersday, which let their prices drop. Thats why since then, prices have been rising continously, as no new content went live and mats for crafting rares went up in price, with elder wood the main culprit.

Supply and demand wont have that big of an influence because if demand goes down and prices with it, people will stop forging them and once a popular pre drops 100-200g in price, demand will rise again.

And as already mentioned, the mastery tracks for old precursors wont be the first choice of most people, they either will work on the new pres (which arent tradeable anyways) or the other Maguuma masteries.

So i guess wether the prices for old pres (at least the popular ones) will go down or not, will mostly be determined by the output of t5 common and fine mats once HoT goes live.

I understand how you’re trying to look at it, but it’s still ultimately built around supply and demand. There’s a reason why precursors like Rodgort’s flame had, until recently, only sold for up to 80 gold while others like dusk sold for up to 1300 + gold. It had very little to do with the cost of crafting items to throw in the forge, and more to do with demand (greatsword legendaries are far more popular than Rodgort).

If this was not the case, the price disparity would not have been so severe because the price difference between crafting a torch and a greatsword is not as proportionately severe as the difference in value of Rodgort’s flame and Dusk, respectively. In fact, just look at the price difference between Dusk and Dawn, both of which would have the same chance of dropping and require the same average cost (both requiring you to drop greatswords in the forge), yet because of differences in demand for each, have very different price ranges on the TP (Dusk costs around 50% more than Dawn).

I think prices will normalize across the board, in the case of current legendaries (assuming precursor drops will still be a thing).

Usually when determining the market price of an item, you would use the trade value of the resources needed to craft it, if it is craftable. If it isn’t, then it would be a case of supply vs demand. Right now, precursor values are purely based on that supply vs demand scenario, but once they become “craftable”, I think their prices will be determined by the amount of effort and resources required to craft them.

I personally think the most expensive precursors will come down in price, while some of the cheaper ones will go up, and they’ll end up hitting a relative middle ground, with some deviation based on the popularity of a legendary.

Of course, this is also assuming ANet have ensured that the crafting journeys for each precursor are balanced as much as possible relative to one another. If one precursor is notably harder to craft than another for some reason, or if they use more valuable mats (kinda like how some legendaries use the expensive charged lodestones while others use much cheaper alternatives), then that will factor into the prices as well.

Guys (reads Zaron), just because GW2 is not “That other game”, it doesn’t mean it cannot learn from “That other game”. I mean, I’m sure you’ve learned by now that GW2 is also adding raiding, which also happens to be in “That other game”, so let’s please not give the OP a hard time and pretend as if it’s somehow blasphemy for GW2 to be inspired by ideas used in other games. It seems rather childish to dismiss an idea, simply because of its source of inspiration.

I honestly don’t think level freezing is a bad idea personally. I don’t think it’s completely necessary either, of course, because it is faster to earn gold at level 80 and buy the mats than it is to farm the mats, even at the appropriate level, but even still, it’s not like it would hurt for those who want an alternative.

Oxidia.8103:

Most expensive drop i got in 3 years of playing was several months ago, torch presursor i sold for 85 gold. I gave up on hoping someday something expensive will drop. Ever. Since then i have lot more fun playing the game.

The funny part is that the price of the torch precursor (rodgort’s flame) went up quite a bit since torches were announced for warrior elite spec (berserker). XD

It can be funny under the right circumstances, but only if it isn’t used to the detriment of players during events. I’ve seen mesmers use portals to completely ruin Triple Trouble Wurm attempts on organized maps and all it does is make a lot of people upset and angry.

Zergs.9715:

Nike.2631:

Liewec.2896:

The Tribal set is one of the few things that i’m happy i have because of its scarcity.

“I take pleasure in other people not having things” is one of the most loathsome of all human traits.

You folks just want everything to be worthless and commonpool.

No, I want it’s value to come from people appreciating what it is, rather than how it promotes ‘special snowflake’ self-aggrandizement.

This. So much this. How are people able to go against interests of their fellow players even if it doesn’t affect them in any shape of form is beyond me. I have my hands on some of those armor sets and I’d like to get them all. I’d wish no less for the rest of the ppl.

I agree with all this. I have a few items that are no longer attainable that were acquired during past events (like early halloween or dragon bash, etc), and when new players ask me how to acquire them, I feel bad when I have to disappoint them and tell them that they are no longer available.

There’s really no value in removing items from the game, even if it’s to increase their prestige (which I find to be quite a shallow reason). Even if the items are seasonal, and only available at certain times of the year during special events, it would still be nice for players to know that if they didn’t get it before, they’d have a chance to acquire it again at some point in the future.

My list of most annoying sounds.

- Bolt: I wish they’d make the animation sounds a bit more subtle. Hearing that sharp piercing electric sound every time I swing my sword is the one factor that mars an otherwise great legendary for me.
- Guardian scepter auto attack: It makes a very sharp rasping sound, which gets irritating after a while. Even rifles and pistols are much more subtle, and they are firearms. <_<
- Elementalist air dagger auto attack: Also a bit too loud and overbearing for an auto attack.

Generally speaking, I’m of the opinion that auto attack sounds should always be more subtle. I don’t mind loud noises for spells with longer cooldowns, and where you only hear the sound now and then. But to hear it on every single attack is just overbearing.

kolompi.1287:

I think there should be an NPC vendor somewhere in LA that sells every possible skin for ANYTHING that you choose to pay for them. That way people could comfortably unlock every skin on their account without having to think, research, do something… for it.

This would make collections so much easier and less of a hassle.

I sense the sarcasm in this post, but to be clear, the OP just asked for currently unattainable skins to be reintroduced to the game. The OP never asked for them to be easy to acquire though, so I’m not sure why everyone seems to have jumped onto that train of thought. O_o

Liewec.2896:

its a little unfair that i earned tribal set and you didn’t?
while i was pvping you were pveing and earned your Wings of the Sunless,
i guess its a little unfair that i wasn’t given that, Anet should mail me it…

please folks stop trying to get the very few old rare heirloom items made commonplace.
there isn’t much of value in this game, legendaries are all over the place, go to lions arch you’ll see 20 people with Twilight.
the Tribal set is one of the few things that i’m happy i have because of its scarcity.
you folks just want everything to be worthless and commonpool.

I never get people like you, who seem to feel the need to assign values to virtual items.

At the end of the day, this is just a game and people simply want to have fun. Some might have arrived in the game late, and were unable to acquire certain armor sets that have now been removed (like tribal armor). It has nothing to do with who earned it or not, because it’s not like they won’t have to still earn it if it’s reintroduced to the game. Is it such a bad thing to make them available again so that people can just get what they want and have fun? Or must everything be determined by your shallow sense of virtual prestige?

You don’t want it to become available again, just so you can feel good about having something others do not. That’s just a really poor reason, to be honest.

Mor The Thief.9135:

serenke.4806:

Elementalist and engineer are the only two that cannot use greatswords.

Illuminati at work?

Thieves can’t use greatswords too.

And eles can use fiery greatsword. Though I,m not sure if it counts. XD

I’m assuming that new dyes will be added to the kit retroactively as they come out. The reason I believe this is because although some of us veteran players will be getting this reward now, there are other newer players who might only get it in a year or two’s time. It would be odd for some players to get a reward that says “get any dye” a year down the line, only to find out that it only gives you half of the available dyes because a whole lot of new ones have been introduced since.

Stuff like this happens. Prices rise dramatically, and fall dramatically. Or items that are no longer available suddenly become much more available. So what? That’s the gamble you make when you spend lots of gold.

The same thing will probably happen with precursors once precursor crafting comes out, but as someone who spent over 1000 gold on Zap, I can assure you I won’t complain about it. It’s just how the cookie crumbles, and frankly I’d be happy that other players are able to acquire something through alternative means, as opposed to sacrificing baby Quaggans to the RNGods. I hope they do this with more items in game, so everyone can just have fun rather than play economy wars and stress about whether they’ll ever be able to acquire a specific item or not.

Batelle.1680:

Personally I think it would be a nightmare to make thief rifle balanced for PvP without making it shortbow 2.0 or a slightly watered-down version of warrior rifle, to offset the advantage stealth would give.

To be fair, rangers can achieve stealth with a 1500 range weapon, and mesmers can also use it as well, so I don’t see why stealth + long range is seen as something that would be out of the question when it’s already present as an option on some classes.

Hell, even guardians will be able to use stealth + long range in the expansion, technically speaking.

Metasynaptic.1093:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

Ranged: Longbow. Pistol main hand. Pistol offhand. Harpoon gun(underwater).

Please show me where in the gem shop that I can buy access to longbows for my thief.

Sorry, meant to type shortbow. I will correct my post. XD

I always wonder why people resort to sensationalism in their posts, by making purely false statements like “Thief has no range” or such.

We actually have a perfect split between ranged and melee options.

Ranged: Shortbow. Pistol main hand. Pistol offhand. Harpoon gun(underwater).
Melee: Sword main hand. Dagger Main hand. Dagger offhand. Spear (underwater).

The only issue is that one of our ranged options (pistol) could really use a buff. But that’s a balance issue, more than a “we need a new ranged weapon!” issue.

I do however, agree on the point that the rifle is very underutilized as a weapon in this game. It would be nice if they gave it to some class as an extra weapon. I am, however, happier as a thief to get a staff than a rifle. I think a melee staff could be a cool addition and I can see how it would thematically fit the class. I’d rather have a staff with flashy looking acrobatic skills that might actually give us a new way to play in melee that might not be so reliant on stealth than just another pew, pew, pew weapon.

Honestly, the entire conjure line just needs to be rebalanced . There are too many pointless skills, with only one really strong skill in the middle of it all that is actually viable to use.

Darknicrofia.2604:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

For me, the main issue with virtues is that their cooldowns are a bit high for their active skills, and they also have the disadvantage of removing the passive effects in the process. Even when you compare virtues to other class mechanic skills, the cooldowns are quite long. I don’t really understand why they are so long, but it just seems a bit overkill to me.

I think the best way to give dragon hunters more options when it comes to their virtues, is to add a grandmaster spec that causes virtues to retain their passive effects when you activate them (kinda like the elementalist grandmaster trait that causes signets to retain their passive effects). This would promote the use of active skills for guardians without making them feel like their suffering a big loss for it.

They can honestly remove that knockback bow grandmaster trait and replace it with the suggestion above. It is, quite honestly, the worst idea for a trait I have ever seen in this game yet. If ranger longbow knockbacks weren’t bad enough already, given all the complaints about them on these forums, imagine something similar, but automatic. It would be a disaster waiting to happen.

the longbow KB is the only shred of reliable CC dragonhunters have in spvp, if you want them to remove that, Anet better be adding a KB to deflecting shot to compensate.

Well, to be fair, you do have traps to punish or restrict movement. However, if more control is needed, I’d rather it be in the form of a cripple or immobilize if it were an automatic skill based on a trait. At least that way you won’t accidentally knock back enemies out of damage zones when in team battles. In my opinion, knockbacks should always be manual, and always be under the control of the player, never automatic.

For me, the main issue with virtues is that their cooldowns are a bit high for their active skills, and they also have the disadvantage of removing the passive effects in the process. Even when you compare virtues to other class mechanic skills, the cooldowns are quite long. I don’t really understand why they are so long, but it just seems a bit overkill to me.

I think the best way to give dragon hunters more options when it comes to their virtues, is to add a grandmaster spec that causes virtues to retain their passive effects when you activate them (kinda like the elementalist grandmaster trait that causes signets to retain their passive effects). This would promote the use of active skills for guardians without making them feel like their suffering a big loss for it.

They can honestly remove that knockback bow grandmaster trait and replace it with the suggestion above. It is, quite honestly, the worst idea for a trait I have ever seen in this game yet. If ranger longbow knockbacks weren’t bad enough already, given all the complaints about them on these forums, imagine something similar, but automatic. It would be a disaster waiting to happen.

I’m just curious, but why do you want champ trains in low level areas anyway? If it’s for farming, Silverwastes is the superior option now. If it’s for leveling, then I’d say the vast abundance of tomes of power more than makes up for it. Leveling new toons is easier than it has ever been before.

Personally, I’m against the idea of having brain-dead content that is vastly more rewarding than the more challenging content in the game. I’m glad that champ trains are gone. I wouldn’t even mind if chest farms in Silverwastes were nerfed as well. In turn, I think challenging content rewards should be buffed a lot to compensate.

Guild Wars 2 is the only game I can think of where the level of reward is indirectly proportional to the difficulty of the content. You can farm chests in silverwastes and avoid combat and be rich, or you can attempt tripple wurm over and over and get nothing of real value, if you’re lucky enough to succeed with a super organized map.

Blude.6812:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

ShelBlackblood.7826:

I don’t want to share my phone number with any random company neither. That “mini” won’t change my mind as well since I find it rather annoying and ugly (it’s even bigger than ranger pets and it moves way too much). But be assured OP, another big MMO also added the SMS security layer some years ago, also with a free mini (very creative, Anet) and they stopped asking players to give them their numbers after some time because players also made posts like this in their official forum.

oh btw. ignore my grammar, my english is horrible today~

Just to be clear for anyone who may not realize this, but you can use the PC App for authentication as well. You don’t have to use SMS authentication if you are uncomfortable with giving out your number.

That’s not the point, it doesn’t matter. The point is there should be another option that stops the reminders if one chooses NOT to participate for what every reason.

I get the point. However, some people seem to only focus on the SMS side of it, saying they don’t want to give their number. I was just making a statement to ensure people knew that they could also use the desktop app as well. Is informing people a crime?

For me personally, I’d like them to remove the “Detonate Cluster” ability on Cluster Bomb for Shortbow (Skill 2).

There is really no benefit at all to detonating the Cluster Bomb, and in many ways it actually makes the skill weaker. The three smaller bombs, even if they all hit the same target, only amount to the same damage that the larger, un-detonated bomb would do if it just hit normally, only in a smaller area of effect. In addition to that, detonating the bomb causes it to lose its blast finisher effect, which is super important for blasting combo fields.

Lastly, it really impedes our ability to fire the “Cluster Bomb” skill more rapidly, for some more burst dps at range. You have to wait for the skill to land before you can fire the next one, otherwise you’d detonate it prematurely and miss your target altogether.

Unless they rework the detonation and make it so that detonating the bomb is actually worthwile, I really think it should just be removed altogether, because it’s a massive hindrance.

ShelBlackblood.7826:

I don’t want to share my phone number with any random company neither. That “mini” won’t change my mind as well since I find it rather annoying and ugly (it’s even bigger than ranger pets and it moves way too much). But be assured OP, another big MMO also added the SMS security layer some years ago, also with a free mini (very creative, Anet) and they stopped asking players to give them their numbers after some time because players also made posts like this in their official forum.

oh btw. ignore my grammar, my english is horrible today~

Just to be clear for anyone who may not realize this, but you can use the PC App for authentication as well. You don’t have to use SMS authentication if you are uncomfortable with giving out your number.

I do agree on your point whereby you state that you are a consumer and thus, you also have a right to discuss your feelings on the game, but the main issue I find with your post is that while you state what problems you have with the game, you don’t make any reasonable suggestions on how you think those issues can be improved. You say spells are boring, but you don’t suggest how you think they could be made better. You complain about cooldowns in combat or mention how the combat is sluggish, but you don’t suggest an alternative mechanic that will still retain balance. Etc.

Typically speaking, when people do want to make suggestions for this game or offer constructive criticism, they give more details and ideas that can be built upon or discussed properly. Then people can either add to that idea, or argue against it if they feel it won’t work for whatever reason. Your post, however, might just come across as a rant and nothing more, and so people will respond accordingly (hence why some people may have gotten the impression that this is a departure thread).

MauricioCezar.2673:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

You could always just sign up, to stop the messages? O_o

Except that signing up makes thing even worse.

For serious, no matter that I choosed to “Remember this network”, every 4-5 days it asks me to re-input the code.

In the foruns it just don’t remember ever, and every time I need to log-in, I need to check my phone the new code.

I’ve never had to put in a code to login to the forums. I’ve only ever had to put it in when I launch the game client and even then, I only ever have to redo it if I reset my modem or the internet went down for whatever reason (where it forgets the network you are on).

That being said, I’ve had to reinsert the code a grand total of three times since going onto the new system. It’s hardly what I’d call an inconvenience and, in my opinion, it is rather trifle compared to the potential inconvenience of having your account hacked into. I’m glad they added an authentication process, and while I do agree that opting out should be an option, I would personally recommend that players use authentication regardless.

There are a few benefits. Firstly, you’d secure your own account (obviously). But in addition to that, you’d also help reduce the potential amount of gold sellers in game by making your account harder to hack. Thus, you potentially remove the inconvenience of having to block and report every time you get spammed, or save yourself having to read or delete pointless scam mails in game. The more people secure their accounts, the less issues you have to deal with, with regards to spam and botting in game.

Of course, all of this probably wouldn’t be as necessary if people knew how to properly secure their accounts in the first place (e.g. not using their username +123! as their password). But yeah, I guess that’s not going to happen. >_>

Vavume.8065:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

You could always just sign up, to stop the messages? O_o

Learn to read, I said I don’t want to sign up…

I did read, but it just seems more convenient to sign up either for the SMS alert or the PC app to just get rid of the messages, than it is to complain on a forum and hope the issue goes away.

And you get a free dragon mini in the process. XD

Kain Francois.4328:

I kind of want enemies like Mai Trin and the Aetherblades to make a return in Living World Season 3.

The Aetherblades were really cool.

Heck, I want Tower of Nightmares and the Toxic Alliance to return, too! Just make a copy of the Tower somewhere in the Heart of Maguuma, and I’m sure no one will complain.

Expanding on this idea, when we take into consideration that the main thing keeping these three groups together (the Toxic Alliance, Molten Alliance and Aetherblades) was Scarlet herself, with her being gone, it’s only natural that the three factions would eventually splinter without their leader. They don’t exactly have matching agendas in the first place, and were only united in their efforts when Scarlet gave them a common goal to work towards.

With that gone, I could see the three groups going to war with each other. Perhaps they could have that in a living story event and we, as the players, have to try diffuse the situation.

They could do something similar to the Scarlet invasions. Battles would break out on certain maps every few hours between the three factions, and players would have to enter the maps and defeat them to stop the fighting. If we manage to defeat enough enemy groups in time, three generals would appear representing the three factions, and players would split up to defeat them within a certain amount of time.

I think it would be quite fun. XD

An example of what a fist weapon skill set could look like (all skill names are just placeholders):

1) Auto attack chain

Auto Attack Chain 1: Jab (Combo Starter) – Hit an enemy with a fast jab.
Auto attack chain 2: Right hook (Chain Skill) – Follow up with a heavy right hook. Applies weakness on enemies with “Combo Starter” debuff.
Auto attack chain 3: Uppercut (Combo Finisher) – Finish with a high damage uppercut. Deals 50% extra damage to targets with “Chain Skill” debuff.

2) Swallow Strike (Combo Starter) | 900 range (gap closer) | 15 second cooldown – Deliver a flying kick to your enemy, stunning them for 1 second.

3) Tempest Fist (Chain skill) | melee range | 8 second cooldown – Deliver a flurry of rapid blows to a target, dealing high damage. Grants 1 second of evasion if you hit an enemy with the “Combo Starter” debuff.

4) Roundhouse Kick (Chain skill) | Melee range | 180 Degree Cleaving | 15 second cooldown – Hit enemies in an area with a sweeping aerial kick that deals moderate damage. Knocks down enemies with the “Combo Starter” debuff.

• 4 chain) Whirlwind kick (Combo Finisher) | Can be used during Roundhouse kick by pushing 4 again before the skill finishes, but increases the cooldown by 50% | Melee Range | 360 degree cleaving | Whirl Finisher – Deliver multiple aerial spinning kicks, dealing damage in an area. Deals 30% extra damage and applies bleeding to enemies with the “Chain Skill” debuff.

5) Rising Dragon (Combo Finisher) | Melee Range | 360 degree cleaving | 20 second cooldown | Blast Finisher – Deliver a powerful rising uppercut, dealing damage in an area. Launches foes and applies 3 stacks of burning if used on enemies with a “Chain Skill” debuff.

How skills can be combo-ed.

If you take the example of the skills I showed above, there are many ways to combo them into each other. Rather than just being stuck in one type of damage rotation, the existence of multiple Starter, Chain and Finisher skills allows for variations on damage rotations depending on the circumstances, or what skills are on cooldown.

For example, a player could open up with a Swallow Strike (Combo Starter) follow up with a Roundhouse Kick (Chain Skill) and then finish with a whirlwind kick (Combo Finisher).

Or, if they want, they can follow up with the first two attacks of the auto attack chain (which are Combo Starters and Chain Skills respectively) and then finish with a Rising Dragon (Combo Finisher). Likewise, they can just use the first attack in the auto chain as a starter, follow up with a Tempest Fist (Chain Skill) and then use a Rising Dragon (Combo Finisher). There are a lot of options.

Of course, you can use chain skills or finishers outside of a combo chain if you want to get off a quick hit, but they just won’t apply their bonus effects if they aren’t used in the correct order in a Combo Chain.

I thought this was a really cool type of weapon mechanic that’s very different from anything else we have right now. Whether it’s just implemented in an elite specialization, or is a weapon wide mechanic for all classes that get fist weapons is up to the Devs to decide, but I do think it gives a new gameplay style for players who would enjoy chaining together combos.

Hey guys!

I know a number of people have probably already suggested fist weapons as a new weapon idea in various threads, but I wanted to create a thread that proposes the idea of the weapon itself, while also proposing an idea for a unique weapon mechanic that revolves around fist weapons.

What role would fist weapons fill?

Fist weapons would have fast attacks and animations and an emphasis on evasion and mobility. Unlike daggers, which now cleave, fist weapons will only hit one target on their auto attack. Some of their other skills can cleave though.

They’d also have a new, unique weapon mechanic that makes them stand out from other melee weapons, and that is…

New weapon mechanic: Combo Chains.

This idea was inspired by the combo field and finisher effects we already have in game. All fist weapon skills would fall under three unique categories that can make up combo chain effects and would get specific bonuses depending on what part of a chain they are used in.

The chain effects are categorized as follows:

Combo Starter:

These are opening skills, and are used at the beginning of a chain effect. When a Combo Starter is used on an enemy, it applies a brief debuff that shows that the enemy is now open to “Chain Skills”. It’s up to the player to capitalize on this brief window as much as possible.

Chain Skill:

These skills generally follow a “Combo Starter”, and when they are successfully used on an enemy with a “Combo Starter” debuff already applied to them, they apply bonus effects and replace the “Combo Starter” debuff with a “Combo Chain” debuff.

Combo Finisher:

Combo Finishers are skills that are generally used at the end of a combo chain. They inflict high damage and gain special bonuses if used on an enemy that has a “Combo Chain” debuff.

The problem with this idea is that it simply will not work in this kind of game. It might work in an ARPG like Diablo where single player exists and you can slowly scale difficulty to reduce the risk of dying, and where even legendaries now drop very often. But it just won’t work in a game that requires group play for a lot of content, has no scaleable difficulty outside of fractals, and has more grind for higher level gear.

What are you going to do if your non-hardcore party wipes during a fractal and you’re left alone in an arena with a boss that you might not be capable of killing on your own? Considering as a hardcore player, you’ll mostly be using defensive gear, chances are you won’t do enough damage to kill the boss within any reasonable amount of time on your own.

Or what if you’re doing scarlet fractal and, heaven forbid, you fall through the floor during the boss phase, resulting in instant death? What if you get knocked off a cliff during harpies to your immediate death (it does happen)? What if you swim into a mine during aetherblade fractal or your party fails at protecting the villagers in grawl fractal (which also results in instant death for everyone). What if you get zerged in WvWvW? What if you die during a JP? What if you get latency during Tequatl and get killed while lying in a damage field? Etc, etc.

This game really just isn’t something that was catered around a mechanic like hardcore mode or permanent deaths. They’d have to rework a lot of mechanics for it to even have a remote chance of being a viable form of play.

GummiBear.2756:

considering you can buy gems for ingame gold, there is no way you could ever define GW2 as a P2W as there is not a single item you can’t get without spending any cash on the game (beside the obvious initial purchase of the game)

Usually, people consider a game pay to win when one player can get an advantage over another, simply by spending real cash. It doesn’t necessarily mean that something is available to one group of players, and not to another. It just means that one group has a definitive advantage over another, relative to how much money they can spend.

So, depending on how you look at it, you could actually see GW2 as a pay-to-win game, because if someone has money to spend, they can get some advantages over players who don’t have money to spend. For example, I could pump a load of cash into the game and buy a legendary straight up, just by converting gold to gems while another player who cannot do that, might have to work months on acquiring the same item. In a way, it does diminish the prestige of the legendaries themselves because people can acquire them with zero gameplay effort under the right circumstances.

One of the two players in this example has a clear, albeit rather expensive advantage over the other as far as acquiring items is concerned.

Now, the real question here is whether you see cosmetic items as something worth stressing over as far as player advantages are concerned. Another player with ascended gear would have the same kinds of stats as someone with a legendary, so the disparity is less obvious than it would be in any other game where a player might get an actual stat or gameplay advantage for spending money.

Some people will consider it pay-to-win, because the prestige for players in GW2 is in cosmetics rather than stats. Others won’t consider it pay-to-win because cosmetics don’t give you any actual gameplay advantage. It’s all about perspective.

For me personally, this is how I see it. If ANet didn’t have the option to convert gems to gold, then people would look for other avenues to buy gold, such as gold sellers. If they really wanted to buy in game items with real cash, they’d find a way no matter what, unless ANet removed the option to send other players gold or items altogether (which would cause other bigger issues). The gem conversion is a small, necessary evil to help reduce the use of gold sellers and thus diminish their presence in game.

Draknar.5748:

You can get Ascended gear with gold now?

Well, technically speaking, you can buy most of the mats you need to craft ascended gear with gold, aside from the bloodstone dust, etc, but that stuff drops like rainwater in a monsoon anyway, so it’s a bit of a moot point.

Yeah, I personally think birthday rewards should be account bound, including the cake gun.

At the moment, it’s rather inconvenient if the character that has the birthday gun is one you really don’t play anymore, while your new main now has to wait up to two years before he/she can access it.