Frankly, considering how poor the gem to gold conversion is, it would be very inefficient to convert real cash into gold.
Couple that with the general ease of earning gold in GW2, and I’d say that it errs more away from P2W, than it does towards it.
I’d honestly prefer to see less outfits and more armor. I’m not fond of having customization reduced, in favor of cloned looks shared by hundreds of players.
Firstly, I’m not complaining. Just pointing out what rangers can achieve in terms of stealth. I don’t see why stating facts is taken as complaining these days.
Secondly, I’ve seen plenty of longbow rangers using traps and runes of the trapper in WvWvW and PvP. Besides, longbow rangers using runes of the trapper aren’t necessarily aiming to do damage with their traps in the first place (because that would reveal them out of stealth). It would be used more for utility. Just because a stat on a rune might not be useful to a particular build, that doesn’t mean that the rune won’t be used, especially if it offers a utility that’s more valuable than the stat increase itself.
Well I can’t deny there might be people out there who want to make a build with longbow and a stunbreak, fury and condition removal from survival skills (and of course cooldowns on a healing skill too) for a limited amount of stealth and reduced amount of power or other stat combo available, but normally people would want their gear, weapon and runes to have a symbiosis. Let’s agree to that they exist
Yeah, they do exist. And yes, I do also agree that they’re not necessarily the best builds or combos. The main point I was actually getting at is that just because a class has access to long range and stealth, it doesn’t mean it’s going to end up being OP or anything, nor does it mean they are breaking some secret code of how ANet thinks people should play.
In the end, what I was getting at was that I don’t see how it can be so bad for pistol thieves to get a small range increase, just because they have stealth, when other classes can use stealth coupled with superior range. Rangers were just an example and the fact that you don’t see longbow stealth builds anywhere in their meta builds, is, I think, a good indication that range + stealth on its own does not automatically = epic or OP build. There are a lot of other factors involved beyond just that.
Thief pistol gets bleed on hit at 900 range
Ranger shortbow gets weaker bleed only on hits from behind or the side at 900 rangeObviously pistol is the weapon that needs a buff
/sarcasm
I think most people would agree that shortbow needs a buff for rangers. I don’t see what that has to do with the topic at hand though. Just because one weapon is kinda crappy, that doesn’t mean others have to be bought down to their level. XD
It would honestly be nice if ranger shortbows were a better alternative to the currently rather dominant longbow.
With runes of the trapper, a ranger using traps and hunter’s shot would easily be able to achieve stealth every 4 to 5 seconds, if traited, and if they cycle through their skills properly. That’s about as often as a thief would be able to achieve stealth in an ideal situation, given the revealed debuff lasts 4 seconds as well.
So, here we have a class with 1500 range, whose rapid fire can do as much damage as a backstab, and that can stealth just as often as a thief. So, tell me, what is the downside to thieves having 1050 range and stealth, when another class can already achieve the same situation, only with vastly superior range, and other advantages on top of it (for example, ranger pets can continue attacking even while they are stealthed).
The problem I have with the point you are trying to make, is that all you say is that the result will be bad without actually giving proper reasons as to why, aside from trying to dictate that thieves should be close combat classes (which you also don’t give proper reasoning for). Then when someone refutes your point you act as if they are simply not thinking things through, when it actually seems as though I am the one thinking this through much more than you are.
If I can’t see your point, perhaps it’s because you are failing to make one properly. O_o
Trapper runes and traps are condition damage, the Longbow is a power weapon… No Ranger going for trapper runes and traps will be doing any damage with longbow. You lack information about the subject you are complaining about.
Firstly, I’m not complaining. Just pointing out what rangers can achieve in terms of stealth. I don’t see why stating facts is taken as complaining these days.
Secondly, I’ve seen plenty of longbow rangers using traps and runes of the trapper in WvWvW and PvP. Besides, longbow rangers using runes of the trapper aren’t necessarily aiming to do damage with their traps in the first place (because that would reveal them out of stealth). It would be used more for utility. Just because a stat on a rune might not be useful to a particular build, that doesn’t mean that the rune won’t be used, especially if it offers a utility that’s more valuable than the stat increase itself.
(edited by Tenrai Senshi.2017)
To be fair, a pistol is not a long ranged weapon. And its not like thieves are lacking in damage. Stealth burst, stealth burst some more. Blind and stomp. Am I missing anything?
You are missing several things, yes.
Pistol is indeed a shorter ranged weapon, which is probably why it was designed as a 900/1050 weapon originally. At any rate, that is a question of theme, and has no place in a discussion about one profession out of nine being (unintentionally?) left out of what appears to be a game-wide shift in trait design.
The rest of your post seems to be bog standard complaints about a profession you don’t play doing things they were designed to do. Again, how does this relate to the core issue being discussed in this thread?
Wrong. My point is, why would a thief need a long range weapon when they excel in close range combat. A good thief will win a fight more often than they lose a fight. I don’t see the point.
Your point, regardless of whether it’s valid or not, still has nothing to do with the matter the OP is trying to address. That is that a thief still has to waste a trait on something that other classes are now getting as a baseline addition for free.
Your opinion on whether or not thieves are meant to be close or long ranged is rather moot as far as the context of the discussion is concerned, and also very debatable at that. So far as I understood it, all classes were designed to have a variety of gameplay styles available to them that they could switch between.
The point is, the devs feel that thieves don’t need it to be base line as its not firing with the way the class plays, also balance. If a thief could attack al long range stealth move and attack again. It would be like a ranger having access to a bucket of stealth imagen the pew pew rangers with that much stealth. The game wold become, long range stealth shooting. I would guess ANet is not a fan of that idea.
If the devs believed that thieves didn’t need extra range on pistols because that is not the way they intended for them to be played, then why does the trait still exist at all? Why not replace it with another trait altogether, that might actually be more useful? The fact that the trait exists already discredits your point.
P.S. Rangers do have access to a lot of stealth. All they have to do is use rune of the trapper and they can stealth quite regularly. Worse still, mesmers can stealth pretty easily as well. I don’t see why those two classes can have 1200+ range + stealth + knockbacks + pets/clones and yet you somehow think for thieves it would be OP to have 1050 range + stealth. It’s actually very difficult for pistol/pistol thieves or even pistol/dagger thieves to enter stealth while remaining at range without resorting to long cooldown utility skills.
You don’t see my point, and all I see is that you want to have something you don’t have with out even trying to see the down side or why it’s not included. But hay you want what you want.
Actually, I haven’t said what I do or do not personally want. I’ve only iterated the point the original poster was trying to make, which you seem to be avoiding.
That being said, I don’t see the downsides to the trait being included that you seem to feel will exist. Allow me to give a case example…
Rangers
With runes of the trapper, a ranger using traps and hunter’s shot would easily be able to achieve stealth every 4 to 5 seconds, if traited, and if they cycle through their skills properly. That’s about as often as a thief would be able to achieve stealth in an ideal situation, given the revealed debuff lasts 4 seconds as well.
So, here we have a class with 1500 range, whose rapid fire can do as much damage as a backstab, and that can stealth just as often as a thief. So, tell me, what is the downside to thieves having 1050 range and stealth, when another class can already achieve the same situation, only with vastly superior range, and other advantages on top of it (for example, ranger pets can continue attacking even while they are stealthed).
The problem I have with the point you are trying to make, is that all you say is that the result will be bad without actually giving proper reasons as to why, aside from trying to dictate that thieves should be close combat classes (which you also don’t give proper reasoning for). Then when someone refutes your point you act as if they are simply not thinking things through, when it actually seems as though I am the one thinking this through much more than you are.
If I can’t see your point, perhaps it’s because you are failing to make one properly. O_o
Why would you need one for pve…? If you d/c during a dungeon/fractal you can just log back in and come back. If you d/c while in the open world, then the same thing.
If you are alone you can’t go back to the same map in the open world. It will be full
Even if you are in a group, there’s still a chance that you won’t get back onto a map if it is full after you DC. I’ve lost out on Tequatl a few times because I’ve DC-ed, and yet despite being in a party, I am unable to return to the map after logging back in. Often times you’re fighting with others for a place and you don’t always get lucky.
I think a grace period where it reserves your spot on the map, even if it’s just for two minutes (enough time to re-log), would be nice.
To be fair, a pistol is not a long ranged weapon. And its not like thieves are lacking in damage. Stealth burst, stealth burst some more. Blind and stomp. Am I missing anything?
You are missing several things, yes.
Pistol is indeed a shorter ranged weapon, which is probably why it was designed as a 900/1050 weapon originally. At any rate, that is a question of theme, and has no place in a discussion about one profession out of nine being (unintentionally?) left out of what appears to be a game-wide shift in trait design.
The rest of your post seems to be bog standard complaints about a profession you don’t play doing things they were designed to do. Again, how does this relate to the core issue being discussed in this thread?
Wrong. My point is, why would a thief need a long range weapon when they excel in close range combat. A good thief will win a fight more often than they lose a fight. I don’t see the point.
Your point, regardless of whether it’s valid or not, still has nothing to do with the matter the OP is trying to address. That is that a thief still has to waste a trait on something that other classes are now getting as a baseline addition for free.
Your opinion on whether or not thieves are meant to be close or long ranged is rather moot as far as the context of the discussion is concerned, and also very debatable at that. So far as I understood it, all classes were designed to have a variety of gameplay styles available to them that they could switch between.
The point is, the devs feel that thieves don’t need it to be base line as its not firing with the way the class plays, also balance. If a thief could attack al long range stealth move and attack again. It would be like a ranger having access to a bucket of stealth imagen the pew pew rangers with that much stealth. The game wold become, long range stealth shooting. I would guess ANet is not a fan of that idea.
If the devs believed that thieves didn’t need extra range on pistols because that is not the way they intended for them to be played, then why does the trait still exist at all? Why not replace it with another trait altogether, that might actually be more useful? The fact that the trait exists already discredits your point.
P.S. Rangers do have access to a lot of stealth. All they have to do is use rune of the trapper and they can stealth quite regularly. Worse still, mesmers can stealth pretty easily as well. I don’t see why those two classes can have 1200+ range + stealth + knockbacks + pets/clones and yet you somehow think for thieves it would be OP to have 1050 range + stealth. It’s actually very difficult for pistol/pistol thieves or even pistol/dagger thieves to enter stealth while remaining at range without resorting to long cooldown utility skills.
(edited by Tenrai Senshi.2017)
To be fair, a pistol is not a long ranged weapon. And its not like thieves are lacking in damage. Stealth burst, stealth burst some more. Blind and stomp. Am I missing anything?
You are missing several things, yes.
Pistol is indeed a shorter ranged weapon, which is probably why it was designed as a 900/1050 weapon originally. At any rate, that is a question of theme, and has no place in a discussion about one profession out of nine being (unintentionally?) left out of what appears to be a game-wide shift in trait design.
The rest of your post seems to be bog standard complaints about a profession you don’t play doing things they were designed to do. Again, how does this relate to the core issue being discussed in this thread?
Wrong. My point is, why would a thief need a long range weapon when they excel in close range combat. A good thief will win a fight more often than they lose a fight. I don’t see the point.
Your point, regardless of whether it’s valid or not, still has nothing to do with the matter the OP is trying to address. That is that a thief still has to waste a trait on something that other classes are now getting as a baseline addition for free.
Your opinion on whether or not thieves are meant to be close or long ranged is rather moot as far as the context of the discussion is concerned, and also very debatable at that. So far as I understood it, all classes were designed to have a variety of gameplay styles available to them that they could switch between.
To be honest, I don’t see why guilds even feel the need to host or organize Tequatl anymore. Aside from being one big advertising campaign for the guild itself, it seems pretty pointless. People already know what to do during Tequatl, and, outside of empty maps, I just never see it fail these days.
I myself have been on a map just recently where guilds say they are organizing the event and then they pull people away from the map, and you end up sitting on an empty map 5 minutes before the event starts. It’s a big inconvenience because getting onto a more full map with that little time left is quite difficult. They really should just leave things be and stop trying to manipulate everything for their convenience all the time, especially when they end up wasting up to 45 minutes of other players’ time, who have all been patiently waiting on the map to secure their place. If they want to have a nice organized guild event, then they should do it outside of Tequatl’s spawn time and spawn him themselves.
While people can pull together quickly that is not guaranteed. The most painful part is getting people to join a defense team or run a turret. Between AFKers and people who are committed to zerging it takes a lot of cajoling to get the rest to do those specialized positions so teq can be a pretty much a guaranteed win. When Teq is done without all of the turrets full or turrets fall because of a small defense bone walls are practically guaranteed.
I have seen maps pull together pretty fast for Tequatl when people are arriving just a few minutes before it starts, but in the experience I described, people were leaving the map as they were arriving because of how empty it looked. My guildies and I ended up abandoning Tequatl for that attempt, simply because of a supposedly organized guild messing us around.
This is part of why when we do join Tequatl, we usually try to arrive 30 minutes before the event starts (sometimes more if we have nothing else we want to do in the interim). It’s to help secure a place on a full map, rather than coming late and risking a half empty map. You can imagine how frustrating it is to wait 30 or more minutes on a map to do an event, only to then be messed around by some random guild suddenly deserting the map just before the event is about to start.
Fortunately, this isn’t an experience I’ve suffered often. I think it was just a bit of an irony that this post appeared so soon after it happened to me, while the memory of it was still fresh.
Condition damage on its own will never, and should never, compete with zerker builds. It would be unfair for one stat on its own to give you the same kind of damage output others use three stats to get, while still giving you two extra stat slots for defensive stats.
That being said, if you go for gear like sinisters, which has power, precision, condition damage (three damage stats), then I can see some builds competing with the damage of zerker gear for certain classes. The lower physical damage from crit damage loss would be supplemented with higher condition damage.
The main difference now though, and the one that goes the most way to making condition builds more viable in all forms of content, is the removal of the condition cap limit. It means you can have two people spamming conditions in a dungeon without either of them suffering a dps loss because of a cap. That alone makes them much more viable now than they ever have been in the past as far as PvE is concerned.
They may some new stuff in HoT. >.> Also, the Carapace Leggings look good for Leon, but hard to get.
Carapace leggings are honestly very easy to get, assuming you have the Living Story S2 episodes available. If not, it may be worth getting, not just for carapace armor, but also for the other rewards you can get from them.
For me, mid-tier cloth is in a good place. I get gold — which I can use — for cloth which I have no interest in. Increasing supply on mid-tier cloth, for instance, would devalue it, which means I would get less gold, and would have to acquire more cloth to get what I get now. If his change were adopted, I would be in a worse place as far as return for selling cloth goes, precisely because I do not farm it, just get it in the course of play.
Mid tier cloth is in demand for the same reason silk now is, because of Ascended. I’m not sure if the OP wants the change to loot because he’s farming for Ascended and wants it faster, or whether he (likely, mistakenly) thinks increasing supply would lead to more profit for him from selling cloth. However, it seems to me that while my preference is no better than his, it certainly is no worse.
To be honest, I’m not sure if this would work out how you’re thinking it does. If I get 50 of any mat a day because it has a low drop rate, and sell it for 4 silvers each, then I’m getting 2 gold per day (not taking fees into account). If supply increases and then I am selling 200 a day for 1 silver each, I’m still getting 2 gold. The increased supply does not necessarily translate into a direct loss of income per hour just because the price is lower per unit. It would only result in a direct loss on the mats that you’ve already stored up.
This is why trick or treat bag farming is such a fast source of gold, despite the bags only selling for between 4 – 5 silvers each, because they can be acquired very fast so the gold income vs time spent is high. I could of course try farm powerful blood which sells for 50 silvers each, much more than trick or treat bags, but because they are hard to acquire, trick or treat bags are pretty much guaranteed to net me more income per hour.
Take silk as another example. It is way easier to get than Linen, but I’d bet if I tried to farm silk to sell, and then tried to farm linen to sell, I’d probably make more per hour on silk, just because of how much easier it is to get.
Welcome. If you need any help or advice, give a shout. XD
I would rather they just changed the skies in game to something better, so we can actually see the sun when its out, and the moon and the stars when it is night. But right now it just feels like 90% of the maps are always overcast.
And, even when you can see the sun, it always seems to remain in the same place in the sky all the time. Natural light in GW2 always comes from the same direction and never changes throughout the day. I’d like them to change that and have a proper sun moving through the sky, with the direction of light changing as it passes overhead.
To be honest, I don’t see why guilds even feel the need to host or organize Tequatl anymore. Aside from being one big advertising campaign for the guild itself, it seems pretty pointless. People already know what to do during Tequatl, and, outside of empty maps, I just never see it fail these days.
I myself have been on a map just recently where guilds say they are organizing the event and then they pull people away from the map, and you end up sitting on an empty map 5 minutes before the event starts. It’s a big inconvenience because getting onto a more full map with that little time left is quite difficult. They really should just leave things be and stop trying to manipulate everything for their convenience all the time, especially when they end up wasting up to 45 minutes of other players’ time, who have all been patiently waiting on the map to secure their place. If they want to have a nice organized guild event, then they should do it outside of Tequatl’s spawn time and spawn him themselves.
(edited by Tenrai Senshi.2017)
I don’t mind double fractal dailies. It usually means I can kill two birds with one stone. But I say that as a regular fractal runner.
Usually if there’s a day I don’t feel like doing a fractal and there is a double daily fractal, I just go into another game mode and do dailies there quick. PvP is the easiest. 90% of the time, I can end up getting 3 PvP dailies in a single practice match that takes a few minutes at most.
I think this kind of feature would be good, as long as you can only see the names of the skins and not the stats or colour on the gear. They could, however, add an additional feature that lets you view the stats, but ONLY if it’s limited to viewing the gear of people we’ve added as friends, and even then, ONLY if they’ve ticked an option that allows it.
Mentor tags show that you are willing to help players. Commander tags are used for organization during events. They are two very different functions that, despite seeming similar in some ways, should not be confused for one another.
If you tag up during Tripple Wurm, for example, you don’t want players around the map messaging you to help them with a skill point or asking you about what build they should use for their class while you’re actually trying to communicate with others and direct a large scale offensive. You don’t want to create a situation where you’re rejecting new players who are asking for help thinking that your tag exists as an invitation for them to do so, only to then put other mentors in a bad light by creating a situation where players believe that you’re not actually there to help them and only there to organize some map event.
In addition to that, commanders in PvE often use different colours for different groups in events, so that they can coordinate more easily. They’ll say things like “only ranged at red tag”, etc, and during Tequatl, people also tend to follow different tag colours to their respective defensive positions during defensive phases. If everyone is just using mentor tags that all look the same, coordinating will become much more difficult.
In the end, the two features should remain separate, if only to avoid a lot of grief for those organizing events, and for those simply trying to look for help.
I would think it’s simply based on the quality of the games themselves, and not any dramatic shift against MMO’s in general.
Games like FF ARR and GW2 seem to be doing well enough, and I think it’s because they are, in general, good games (not taking into account personal taste). If they do start to falter it will be because the devs are no longer maintaining them properly over the course of years they run for. Other free to play MMO’s that you’ve made a case of just don’t seem to have hit the ground running, but the fact that they are still running at all means that money is still being made off them.
WoW is an example of an MMO that has done incredibly well, but that is now losing a lot of subs recently, and from what I’ve read, the reason is because most WoW players are unsatisfied with recent content and expansions. That being said, a lot of them say they’d continue if the next expansion ends up making up for it, so the interest is certainly still there. It seems to have less to do with a disinterest in MMO’s and more to do with a general interest in good content, which I think applies to any game genre.
Anyone who has 6k AP could have run hundreds of dungeons by now. Likewise, anyone with over 6k might have never run any. It’s a ludicrous method for trying to judge experience in specific kinds of content.
Ultimately, hiding AP will not solve the problem, because it sounds to me like the people kicking you for such a dumb reason aren’t the kind you’d want to play with either way and will probably end up kicking you for some other dumb reason even if you did end up joining their group. It’s better to avoid them altogether in that case and play with more friendly, open-minded players.
You could always just sign up, to stop the messages? O_o
Thieves would be crescents since no one including A-net likes them
I love thieves.
That being said, thieves can relate to most good biscuits. One second they’re there, and the next they’re all gone.
Hm. I can actually see a benefit to having a solo option for story modes in dungeons, much like the Arah story mode. I did a story mode recent in Caudecus Manner to help some new players, but one player kept complaining that the others were watching all the cutscenes. Some people just want to skip them all and have zero patience.
A solo mode would allow players to play the story in their own pace, and watch all the cutscenes if they want to. And there would still be explore mode as group content.
This game has no trinity, so every class does everything…and cele gear supports everything so it’s kinda a no-brainer why it’s so good.
To be honest, celestial gear only truly shines on specific build with specific classes. Sure, all classes can do everything for the most part, but not all classes can do them all at once. Elementalist is one of the exceptions, because their elemental swapping gives them a good mix of damage, healing and conditions, all at once, without the need to swap out weapons. Celestial gear is good for them because of that.
In most other cases, it’s better to focus on fewer stats and max them out. If you’re using a weapon or build that has little or no condition damage like longbow ranger, for example, then it seems rather pointless to stack condition damage on gear.
If anything, the fact that anyone bothered to put one or two points into multiple trait lines in the first place, rather than putting more into one line, was a clear indication of how useless some master and grandmaster traits were, to the extent that they were not worth the investment into a specific trait line to get. Even when people did invest fully into a trait line, it wasn’t uncommon for them to only choose multiple adept or master traits, simply because they were better.
As things are right now, traits feel much more balanced. I’m liking that I can max out three lines instead of two because it actually lets me complete builds I only dreamed of being able to make before. Also, traits feel more appropriately balanced as far as the difference between adept, master and grandmaster traits are concerned (at least, that’s how it feels to me right now). There are probably a few that could still use some work, but as a whole I have personally found that there are a lot more useful traits to choose from now than there were before.
Most of all, I am VERY happy that they removed stats from trait lines and redistributed them in gear and the base stats of the character. It was really annoying putting points into a trait like with a valuable trait you needed, but that gave stats that were completely pointless for your build.
I wouldn’t mind having the option of moving a craft from a character you want to delete, to another character you own.
Frankly, there’s a lot of gear that NPC’s wear that are not available to players that I’d like to see introduced as armor sets (preferably).
I’m OK with it being available from the laurel merchant for 150-200 laurels after you’ve cleared the maps the first time.
You’re okay with losing out on 450 – 600 T6 mats? O_o
Celestial does what it was intended to do. It makes anyone wearing it a jack of all trades and a master of none. I wouldn’t say it’s overpowered, but I would say some classes can make much better use of it than others. The same can be said for any stat combo really.
Your suggestion for a nerf would really just bury celestial gear altogether. If it had the same total stats as any other stat combo, it would be far beyond useless.
If I had one complaint about achievements, it is only that they amount of achievement points you get for them often do not reflect the challenge involved. Some of the easiest achievements offer more AP’s than some of the most challenging, which makes things feel a bit lopsided.
Aside from that, I have no real issues with them beyond the ludicrous requirements for Hellfire and Radiant armor sets (which I think ANet could easily fix if they choose to).
I half agree with this, but as I am helping my gaming partner earn achievements that I already earn, I see it as progression too. She getting closer to the amount I already earned, since points are a total, even if some easy or kittene reward the same points, in the end, the total help count towards that next chest.
Yeah, I get that as well, but in the context of my point, I was thinking more of the motivation that goes behind trying to earn an achievement. Some achievements require a great deal of work and yet offer very little in the way of AP, so people might avoid attempting them altogether because the reward simply doesn’t reflect the effort involved.
Take wvw achievements for example. Unless you avidly play wvw every day, chances are you’re never going to go out of your way to earn some of those wvw achievements. Can you imagine how long it would take to kill 1000 000 dolyaks, just so you can get 25AP? It could take years of playing wvw before you’d get that far. On the flipside, a wvw player can come into PvE and do all the JP’s in one afternoon, and get themselves 450 achievement points. This is the kind of lopsidedness I’m referring to.
Think of it as buying a name brand. When you buy Nike shoes or Ray-Ban shades, or an iPhone, the name doesn’t change just because you spent your hard earned cash on them. The brand name itself is part of the apparent prestige of the item which you would potentially show off to others.
So think of it as a brand made by Lord Faren that he is selling and that is named after him. Or, if you prefer, you can simply smile knowing you’re penetrating your enemies with Lord Faren’s pointy sword… what a way to go… O_o
@OP
It might be better if you elaborate on your original post more, because most people aren’t too sure about what you’re getting at. I myself am not particularly fond of posts that involve vague statements with no context.
If I had one complaint about achievements, it is only that they amount of achievement points you get for them often do not reflect the challenge involved. Some of the easiest achievements offer more AP’s than some of the most challenging, which makes things feel a bit lopsided.
Aside from that, I have no real issues with them beyond the ludicrous requirements for Hellfire and Radiant armor sets (which I think ANet could easily fix if they choose to).
Not being to land your damage really sounds like a personal problem. Guess melee damage and skills with long cast times are not the best for open world.
This problem doesn’t only exist in open world, nor does it only affect melee players. Eles using ice storm/lava font, rangers using barrage and even guardians using smite/symbols can be hindered by badly timed knockbacks, to give but a few examples.
This problem is frequent in fractals and dungeons as well. I’ve seen entire mobs pulled out of an ice storm by a mesmer or guardian. I’ve seen bosses get hit out of melee range by knockbacks while other characters are stacking on them to maximise dps during a time warp. Do you know how frustrating it is to be stacking next to a seal on Cliffside fractal only to have the mobs you’re meant to be killing with the hammer in melee range, be feared/knocked back out of yours and your allies’ range? It’s very counter productive.
It also affects fast casting skills just as much as it affects slow casting or channeled skills. Take the elementalist fire grab skill for example. It casts very fast but has a very narrow cone shaped area of effect. Suffice to say, it can miss easily if another player just spams knockbacks and hits enemies out of your range. In those cases the elementalist has to suffer a 45 second cooldown on a high damage skill with no pay-off just because of other players being inconsiderate.
I don’t see why you’d want to put the onus on players affected by the knockbacks and not on the players who are performing the knockbacks without thinking.
(edited by Tenrai Senshi.2017)
You think knockbacks are bad now wait till the dawn of the Revenant.
I’m honestly more worried about the new guardian trait for longbow which causes it to automatically knockback enemies. I really hope they adjust or remove it. At least rangers and other classes can choose when to knockback enemies, but having it happen automatically with a short cooldown will just be a nightmare. X___X
Indeed. All Rangers should fight with one hand tied behind their backs and take their medium level armor right up where close where their weapons are less effective. Heaven forbid they should fight in the way their skills force them. And those annoying pets they are forced to drag around just get in the way. They are almost as annoying as those silly cosmetic wings some people insist on wearing that constantly block everyone’s view. Perhaps Anet should consider removing the Ranger profession from the game because it annoys the glass tanks and AoE bombers who bring a nuke to a knife fight.
It might amaze you to learn this, but rangers can fight from a distance without having to spam knockbacks, you know. In most group battles, rangers that are max ranging will usually not pull agro and can happily snipe from a distance without having to resort to knockbacks. And if they do pull agro, longbow offers a stealth skill that allows them to lose aggro without having to resort to knockbacks either.
No-one’s telling you not to fight at range. They’re just telling you not to knockback enemies in situations where it is unnecessary, or in particular, in situations where it actually hurts group dps. If you’re solo roaming then sure, go ahead and spam knockbacks to your hearts content. Just learn to be a bit more careful with certain skills in group content, that’s all.
I just find it kinda sad that rangers who do use their skills smartly and who can adapt to different situations, are put in a bad light by other rangers who simply hit 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 whenever they are on cooldown without thought.
(edited by Tenrai Senshi.2017)
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started an ice storm with frost bow, or am about to do a backstab with thief, only to have some other player knock them out of the area and nullify most or all of the damage.
It doesn’t just happen with rangers either. Even greatsword mesmers for some reason feel the need to hit skill 5 every time they see five enemies clumped together, or necros will sometimes randomly fear enemies out of damage zones, etc. It’s just that ranger knockbacks are on a shorter cooldown, so they tend to use them more often, but a lot of players are guilty of spamming knockback skills when they’re off cooldown.
To be honest, I think ANet can learn a lot from how well received this mini is. It looks high quality, has cool animations and is generally very likeable. Much better than the low-polygon, poor-looking ferret they introduced not too long ago.
I’d like to hope that the appeal of this dragon sets a precedent for all future minis, in terms of overall quality.
I think my favorite is Scholar Magg (you see him in Citadel of Flame).
I just love the way he talks, and his love of explosives has a certain… charm to it. XD
In general I just like a few of the Asura characters you see around. They tend to have the most crazy, mad scientist type personalities.
Sad state, but the expansion crowd asked for this drought. And now it’s here until the expansion is done. Let’s not even discuss the multitude of game-breaking bugs the recent patch introduced. . . .
I don’t think the expansion crowd asked for a content drought. Nor do I think they believed that having ANet work on an expansion would suddenly lead to a complete lack of content updates in game for the good part of a year.
And even then, I don’t think people would mind it as much if the content in the expansion was worth the wait. But from what we’ve seen so far, even the expansion seems quite scarce in terms of content so far, which perpetuates that feeling of dissatisfaction.
In the real world 50$ is worth 1 hour and 15 minutes of my time as a mason, 7 minutes of time to a lawyer, 30 minutes to an electrician , would pay for half an evening out on a date etc.
I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. When it comes to MMO, longevity is is key to the financial success of the company developing that MMO.
ANet isn’t going to care if you got what you feel is your moneys worth out of the game or how it compares to other forms of entertainment or worldly costs. What they WANT is for you to stick around and keep playing, which in turn increases your chances of spending more money on the game, which also subsequently equates to more income for them.
They DO NOT want you to stop playing, for whatever reason. Even if you’re satisfied they’d obviously want you to stick around for longer if they can help it. It has nothing to do with what they feel they owe you, it is simply business, and any competent business owner would understand the importance of customer retention.
So, what’s the best way to keep players playing, and thus increase income? Well, it’s simple. Keep players happy.
If players become bored of your game for whatever reason, that means they stop playing. If they stop playing, they stop spending money on the game. If they stop spending money on the game, ANet stops earning income, which is used to pay staff and keep the servers running. It’s not the same as a lawyer which offers a one time service for a one time fee and then moves onto the next client. ANet is dependent on consistent customer satisfaction and retention in order for their continued, long-term financial success.
So when players give feedback about matters that they are displeased with, or about why the game might be boring for them, it is, in fact, IN ANET’S BEST INTEREST TO LISTEN and regard that feedback, whether it’s good or bad. That doesn’t mean they have to act on all of it, and certainly some complaints can be regarded as trivial or simply as flaming, but they certainly should not ignore it.
The bottom line is this. Usually when people complain or get upset, it’s because they are passionate about the game and want it to be good. They want it to be good so they can keep playing. Hell, they even want to spend money on it if they feel it’s worthwhile for them to do so (hence why so many people asked for a pay for expansion so they could get more content. They were ready and WILLING to pay for that content).
(edited by Tenrai Senshi.2017)
The underlying problem with Frost Bow is that it is validating the Conjure category almost on its own. Once, long ago, and possibly now in some niche roles, the Lightning Hammer would be conjured. Not so much now. Earth Shield? Hah! Lava Axe? Shadap! Bring Frost Bow #4 into line? RIP conjures.
Why has it taken this long for ANet to publicly aknowledge (then backtrack) on the frost bow? Well, track record. It took them 2 years to fix FGS. It wasn’t (just) imbalanced, it was demonstrably broken.
Why will Frost Bow be much longer to fix it? Much like FGS, trying to fix the bow has exposed underlying weaknesses inherent in the conjure category. The thing needs more than a few tweaks to damage/projectile count, almost every skill on it would probably need to be looked at to compensate. Then this opens the can of worms labelled “What about the rest of the conjures that almost nobody uses?”. Bam! 4x the work. Cue someone in management at ANet shaking their head and shuffling this to the bottom of the pile.
I think the biggest problem with conjures is that you simply cannot build around them. That mostly comes down to what amounts to practically nonexistent trait synergy with conjured weapons. Aside from being able to increase the amount of charges, there are literally no traits that benefit conjures directly at all.
When you summon a conjured weapon, you are basically giving up a lot of versatility and gaining practically nothing for it. The only reason frost bow is used at all is because you can pop it, fire ice storm and then drop it just as fast, so you can go back to your regular skills. The only reason FGS was used back in the day was because its sheer, ludicrous damage numbers were enough to offset the disadvantages of holding a conjured weapon.
What surprises me the most in all this, however, is that ANet had the opportunity to fix this situation and add more traits that synergised with conjures when they replaced the old trait system with specializations. I’m rather surprised they didn’t capitalize on that opportunity and chose to leave conjures in their currently broken state.
I’m glad I kept all three colour cores (roughly 10 of each). The price keeps going up and up. Seems like a very good long-term investment. XD
That being said, the price of those cores is still quite insignificant compared to the costs of some of the other, more rare items that haven’t been widely available for quite some time now, such as aetherised weapons or the Molten Jetpack skin, all of which go up to and over 3000 gold.
If they didn’t bring those back, I doubt they’ll bring the cores back either, so if I were you, I’d just buy them while they’re still relatively cheap. That 180 gold may eventually become 1800 gold, or even 3000+ gold. It’s better to just get them now rather than hope and pray they become attainable again through an event, only to regret not buying them while the price was still within the reasonable 3 digit range.
Why would you want to nerf the only conjured weapon that’s actually worth using anymore? O_o
I’d rather they buffed the other ones and made them more viable.
Also, ele doesn’t need more group heals. They already get plenty of that with water attunement. No class will ever use a weapon that’s dedicated solely for healing anyway because it isn’t important enough in the current game meta. Maximizing damage is the current meta which is why Ice Bow, the only conjure weapon with decent burst damage right now, also happens to be the only conjured weapon currently being used.
Just look at what happened to FGS after its damage was nerfed, and you can easily foretell the fate of Ice Bow if the same were to happen to it. I can assure you that if they replace the damage of ice storm with a healing function, it will literally be dropped faster than a recently filled nappy. You will simply never see it being used for that kind of function, for the exact same reason you never see guardians bother to use Bow of Truth. No-one is going to take up a spot on their utility bar just for a bit of burst healing, unless the game meta itself changed drastically.
Usually when I create a group, I just put the path or level fractal I am doing and that’s it. I’m not too particular to specific amounts of AP or build metas. I don’t even mind lower level characters in dungeons so long as they are at the level required for that specific explore mode.
What annoys me is when players join my group and then complain about specific things like “why didn’t you choose swamp first? (in a fractal)” or “why isn’t everyone in zerker gear?”, or they’ll just try to kick another player who joined that is not level 80, even if they are at a suitable level for that specific dungeon. I usually tell those people that if they wanted a group with specific parameters, then they should have looked for a party advertising those parameters (or created one themselves), rather than joining a party open to all and then complaining.
People do become very abusive though, even when there’s no justification to do so (not that there ever really is justification to verbally abuse someone). I’d blame the meta for that, but really, the truth is it’s the players who choose how to behave and they have to take responsibility for it. I’m tired of people making excuses or using scapegoats for their own crappy behavior.
With all that said, nowadays when I do dungeons or fractals, I tend to do them with at least two friends (guildies) in my party. That way if anyone joins the party and tries to kick us, or anyone else who they believe doesn’t suit their specific parameters for a dungeon, they have no hope of succeeding because my guildies and I hold the majority voting power. I’ve had random players try to kick one of my guildies late into a fractal run, only to realise their folly after noticing that there are three of us from the same guild.
The swearing in the PM’s I receive after they get subsequently kicked is usually quite colorful and amusing. XD
P.S. I never kick players for being inexperienced or for making mistakes. As long as they are willing to listen to advice, I’m more than happy to have them along. I’ll only kick a player if they become abusive to other party members, make threats or if they try to kick another player, or one of my guildies, without good reason for doing so. There are many other players out there who are like-minded, you just have to find them and associate yourselves with them.
Hm. I think this idea is interesting, but it comes with it’s fair share of potential issues as well, as some others have mentioned.
As a possible alternative that still plays on this idea though, I think it would be cool if ANet perhaps used some of the community creations – such as art or stories created by users – in the game where appropriate. They should have a section on the site where people can upload their creations and then from there, ANet can choose what is appropriate for inclusion in the game.
Your artwork could appear on the wall of some structure, or your story could appear on a bookshelf somewhere, or perhaps even told by an NPC as a legend being passed on.
Either way, I do believe that this kind of material needs to be moderated. Not just for the possible obscenities though, but also to ensure that any additions to the game itself are inclined to add to the lore and immersion of the game, rather than breaking it.
Hey.
I was looking into the GW2 Emblem Contest, and reading through the rules, and I was very disheartened to see the regional restrictions for entries. Anyone not living in one of the countries or areas listed in the rules is apparently not eligible to enter the contest.
https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/contests/Guild-Emblem-Contest-2015-Rules-EN.pdf
I’m from South Africa, and we’re not listed, which is surprising considering the sheer amount of South African players I see playing GW2. It’s a pity because I had a really good design idea for a guild emblem that I wanted to submit, but now I am apparently not allowed to do so. I could, of course, give it to a friend in my guild to submit on my behalf, but then he gets the rewards and the credit associated with the design if it somehow happens to make it into the top five.
I just wanted to know why there are these limitations, and why some players get penalized simply for their country of residence. Even if prizes cannot be delivered to everyone it would still be nice to simply be able to take part for fun, or even just for the digital rewards, etc.
Signed: Disgruntled player.
Did ANET know about the quickness duration?
One thing I am worried about is that ANET will not read everything that the players about complaining about and go for the jugular before identifying the victim first. Hence, after balancing everything, only then they realized they missed the small details that is the real cause of the issue and not the noise that is overshadowing it.
Yes, this is my worry as well. Everyone is blaming conditions without actually thinking or observing the situation properly. During Tequatl I think I saw bleeds and burns average at about 50 stacks each (it seems to peak and drop a lot but only for short durations). At most it’s probably only amounting to a 2% damage increase in a crowd of 150 players. Compared to the 50% damage increase quickness is giving, it’s like a drop in the pond.
Yeah I noticed that too, however there IS a small problem with conditions : There were constantly around 10-15 burning stacks MORE on the boss than bleed. Since Anets reasoning for burn being way stronger than bleed damage per tick wise is “but burn isn’t as readily avaiable”, it looks like they freaking failed, and all it does is making classes that rely mostly on bleeding (eg. Necro) useless in Condition specs.
Also currently boonsharing is broken to not be limited to 5 players. Which means if some guy in a Worldboss fight shares 10 might the whole kitten 100+ players fighting said boss get the 10 stacks, meaning every boon that can be shared is always capped out. That is most likely also the reason for the insane quickness durations.
Yeah, I thought something seemed odd with boons. I basically had 25 stacks of might and other boons maxed out through the whole boss battle. I guess now that explains what the issue was.
I’m surprised no players were blaming that and instead used conditions as the scapegoat. Lol. XD
However, I do agree with you on the point about burning. If it’s a stronger condition than bleeding, then obviously it should be harder to apply. That’s just basic, common sense. I would recommend that ANet don’t nerf the damage, but do nerf the ability to apply burning for some classes. Bleeds should be easier to apply faster than burns in just about every case.
The only exception to this rule should be guardians. Because burning is their ONLY damage condition right now, they should be able to apply it a bit more easily than other classes. Not necessarily as much as right now, but they can’t over-nerf guardians to the extent that they no longer have a viable condition build option.