Guild Wars 2

They’re not going to “fix” WvW because they dont think it’s broken.

In their eyes WvW is part of PvE, theyve made no secret of this. You need only look at the changes we’ve seen in WvW to see that it’s true.
They do not believe there are people who just play WvW, they believe everyone does pve and wvw is a side-activity. That’s why they removed the Applied-buffs but not ascended.
That’s why WvW is so unrewarding in terms of mats, gold and gear. That’s why WvW still has no unique skins that you can consistently work towards. That is why a lot of things are unavailable in WvW, despite being very relevant such as ascended gear, sigils and runes. Because anet assumed that everyone just plays pve, and thats where we get all those things that are (very) relevant in WvW, but not obtainable in or through WvW.

Now they came out with HoT and the mastery tracks, and locked/gated a lot of stuff behind these masteries. The same masteries we cannot progress for in WvW, agree with it or not, but that is atleast a contributing factor why people are avoiding WvW. It is a grind, a slog, people need to keep grinding those Masteries to unlock the goodies, going into WvW basicly means you stand still and don’t progress at all.

Which shows a lack of insight on anet’s part as well. They assume we’re all pve players, but then they disable the big “progression” gimmick of HoT when people go into WvW.

WvW has always been that thing you just play for fun, because it’s sure as hell never been rewarding.
But right now it isn’t fun, and it’s still as unrewarding as ever, and you don’t even earn any “progression”. So what’s the point? Well, it seems most people dont see the point anymore as demonstrated by their absence.

OneKlicKill.4285:

If you want to do raids, you better work to get the correct build, correct armor, and correct damage rotation for your role.

Sounds like fun.

Especially when anet then nerfs your build, because they balance for pvp, so you can start from scratch.

Minx.7521:

Join a guild that does raids!!! Condi engi is hotcakes right now o.o

Condi Engineer =/= Hammer Scrapper.

Revenants go around spraying 1200range, aoe, 6k+ crits. Chronomancers instagib you from stealth. DHs autoattack, with aoe+cripple for 3k and let’s not begin start on instant-5k traps.
Ow and the list goes on, i can delightfully report that yes indeed thieves are still backstabbing for 8k+ and HS spamming for 5k+. 8K+ Vaults on DD, and thats not even close to full zerker, i know because i’ve been playing that particular build for a few days now. 11k+ Gravediggers. And on, and on, and on…

Conditions are worthless in wvw, nothing lives long enough or lets you live long enough. It’s about power, just like it has been for the past 3+ years. But all means, preemptively begin insutling anyone who will point out just how utterly wrong you are, that is bound to help your case.

Ow, Bound, 3k damage by dodging unto someone.

It is telling that EB has a queue and the borderlands are empty.

People would rather sit in a queue to get into a lagfest like EB than play the new borderlands.

EotM is quite populated as well, maybe just because people are trying to get hero points. Whatever the reason is i get more good fights in an evening playing EotM than i have in the desert borderland since it’s launch.

I think it’s safe to state that some urgent intervention to drastically reshape the borderlands into something people actually would like to play is needed. This train has long since ran by Floptown and is scheduled to arrive on time at Disasterville.

It’s like you’re trying to sell the Scrapper, but it’s not very convincing. You’re not using the Hammer or any of the new skills.

So the message seems to be “Hey guys, you can technically play the Scrapper because the traitline is a valid third choice, but dont use the heal, the elite, the utility skills or the hammer.”

No, Scrapper is a wash in pve.

Nightcapping is a thing. It is where a small group of players takes points uncontested. You see, when a server wins against an equal opposition you can be fighting all day and etch out a 2k lead.
You wake up the following morning after a good night’s rest, and notice you are now 15k behind, and one server is ticking for 600+ with all t3 keeps. They did all that with no opposition.

We can bring down the stupid amount of points servers can gain unopposed during off-hours without turning off the servers, as if that is clearly a reasonable response, and have people who play at night still benefit their server. Just, not in such an extreme way anymore.

Which im sure will make all the people who play during these off-hours very sad that they cannot single-handedly (almost literally single-handedly) win their match-up anymore.

Chiccotot.7296:

OMG People… im not sure if you are sarcastic, trolling or just plain stupid.

Well i am sure which one you are.

Chiccotot.7296:

As a game with global market, I am DISGUSTED by the fact that this came from an ANet guy. News Flash, USA is not the only country in the world.
It may be capping things at night for you, but for us in SEA/OCX we are doing things on our day/prime time.

I cannot express how outraged i am by this statement without getting the forum moderator whammy, but just to put it out there, think of the most horrible, atrocious and abhorrent insult you can think of, and that is pretty much how i feel..

Seriously.

Spare me the theatrics and feigned outrage.

Nightcapping is an issue and has been since before the game even came out. The problem is that few people during off-hours impact the outcome of a week far more than 3 borderlands with a queue could during prime time. That is something that should’ve been looked into asap, but wasn’t.

Your time is not anymore valueable than other people playing, but in scoring it most certainly is and that’s bad design. There are perfectly legitimate solutions that would ensure that capping undefended structures during off-hours, with zero opposition does not contribute as much as it currently does, where it descides matches. While also making sure that time spend by people during these hours isn’t worthless either. There are middle grounds here.

But i’ve seen this song and dance from anet about wvw far to many times. “We’ll talk about it later” “Big things comming” “Ow we just didnt have the time to do everything we wanted”, i’ve really heard it all before.
The “big” WvW patch we had gave us grindy wvw masteries that completely unbalanced siege, traps hardly anyone use, and feature even more pve stuff than wvw despite being the “big, long awaited, wvw patch”. It was disapointing then, and it will be disapointing in the future.

The aim is clear, WvW is part of PvE. You arent suppose to play just wvw because you are strongly disadvantaged as your gear will be worst, and you get less loot, and less gold, and completely miss out on all kinds of pve specific loot i.e. certain runes, sigils and stat-combinations.
It was more then clear with this pve centric wvw map, and the steps made to ensure you cannot get a stat advantage over other players by playing wvw (bye bye Applied F/S), but it was A-OK to get a stat advantage over other players by playing pve (hai there ascended everything).

From the complete desolate state that borderlands are in, even on a server that is touted as “Full”, i think we can safely assume that the descisions that let upto this point have been poor.

You only get one invisible mushroom per treasure mushroom per day. There are a total of 4 treasure mushrooms.

Each invisible mushroom you get applies to just one single collection. It is not random, there is an order in which they are applied.
I had all collections unlocked, and so did my gf, and when we did the treasure mushrooms on seperate occaisions and we both got the Torch for Berserker first, Shield for Chronomancer was second, the Staff for Daredevil was third, and the fourth was the Bow for Dragon Hunter.

We havent gotten further than that, but we both got the exact same order of unlocks from different mushrooms at seperate occaisions. So to me it seems there is a particular order, i can only assume that if you do not have a collection unlocked it will simply skip over it to the next in line.

edit:

We got the Druid’s Staff as 5th and Heral’s Shield 6th. It seems to unlock alphabetically.

Berserker, Chronomancer, Daredevil, Dragonhunter, Druid, Herald.

I predict Reaper, Scrapper, Tempest to follow in that order.

Kraggy.4169:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

This information has been available since Play4Free was first implemented. Check the Knowledge Base (‘Support’ link above/below) or the Wiki for more information.

Good luck.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can blame the victim and tell them it’s their fault for not ‘researching’ something .. just how much ‘research’ do you expect a brand new player to do before they actually BECOME a player?

I know why Anet implemented the restrictions they did for ‘free’ players and it’s a shame that the OP’s friend is in this position but sorry, expecting people to do serious ‘research’ before they begin to play something is ludicrous.

Hahaha, telling someone to at least read an FAQ or the terms and limitations of a f2p game is now victim blaming.

You are a joke. It’s called being an informed consumer, none of the relevant information is particularly difficult to find or would take any significant amount of time investment.

The term victim blaming is just invented by people who don’t want to accept any responsibilities and expect others to do it for them.

Dahkeus.8243:

ArchonWing.9480:

Nerfs are fine, but not splitting changes across the game modes isn’t very cool. And I was trying to unlock scrapper. :S

So, you’re not going to unlock scrapper based on this? This was a shave on a skill that’s still very strong. Seems a bit extreme to make a decision on unlocking the elite from this alone, lol.

It was a shave on one of the very few things that was actually good for the Scrapper.

Hammer is okay, most traits are meh, gyro’s are garbage, profession mechanic is worthless.

The overall value of Scrapper is already abysmal, and it just got a little worst.

I don’t get it.

Orbital Strike was to “obfuscating”. Then i see the new animations and effects from specialisations, and some of them blow the old OS clean out of the water in terms of spectacle and “obfuscation”.

The road ahead

As we continue to monitor Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™ on live, we’ll keep pushing out bug fixes and polish and performance updates. We’ve reached a point where these will come bundled together in larger, less frequent updates as we prepare for the activation of additional expansion features.

This does not bode well. For many people GW2 has been broken since HoT launch, and anet is talking about slowing down and pacing out updates that also contain bug fixes and performance updates.

No. Your basics overshoot the 1200 range.

A lot of skills actually kind of overshoot their intented range. Trueshot however does not, and stops on the dot of 1200 range.

Just enjoy the fact your basics go a bit further than 1200.

Having read it, it is a pretty fair article if you take into consideration that he is writing atleast partially from personal preferences.

He mentions that things are pretty grindy, and that masteries require “a kitten load of events”, and he even touches on the community backlash.
Mentioned as well are frustrating enemy designs, and the complete mess to navigate that is Tangled Depths. And concerns are expressed about whether or not people will keep showing up for meta events.

Since he hasn’t had much succes completing them he probably isn’t aware of the really poor time-to-reward ration for these events.

All in all it’s a fair article that pays attention to both the good and the bad.

Doesn’t exp gained by members of a guild tie into how much influence or something a guild earns?

Dengar.1785:

Terrahero.9358:

It could do the same thing as it does in WvW. I don’t mean WXP, but character XP.

You don’t get character XP in WvW.

Yes you do. Even after hitting lv80.

Dengar.1785:

Okay then mister smart guy, what do you suggest we use exp for if not masteries?

It could do the same thing as it does in WvW. I don’t mean WXP, but character XP.

It’s not just nvidia. I see a reports from people with AMD, i myself have AMD and crash frequently. Especially in populated maps, so it’s virtualy impossible to do maguuma or wvw for me right now.

I got map completion on one character, and a bunch of random maps completed on other characters. I got a lot of alts.

I have never, ever, gotten a key for completing a map. I didn’t even know it was possible untill like a year ago when someone told me it was.

For a lot of people Guild Wars 2 is not stable and not fit for purpose.

People are getting crashes and disconnects all over the place. Some can play for an hour, some crash after a mere 10min.

Some had succes dialing down their graphics to non-existant, and it might have something to do with densely populated areas. But to avoid dense areas is to avoid WvW and Maguuma alltogether. For some even that isn’t enough.

And whatever system they claim should be in place to give people a grace period to log back in, is also broken.

I wish i could, but no.

The moment a map is remotely looking like it will be succesful it quickly fills to the brim and any crash or disconnect pretty much guarentees i end up in empty map. Despite being in a party.

It has done nothing but impede, and at no point have i managed to get back in on time for a big event, like Auric or Mordre, to still share in the reward. I’d just get Server is Full over and over, or have problems with the Login server where i cannot even log into a character at all.

It’s borked.

Music in Guild Wars 2 has always been excellent.

Beldin.5498:

Yeah .. bring back Culling .. since people are simply not able to turn down their
setting from everything max by themselfs

Really .. is it so hard to set character model limit and quality to medium ?

I’ve been running GW2 for years on similar settings that worked just fine before HoT. No issue’s, no crashing or any of that nonsense. Well, sure, once in a blue moon it would crash. Happens.

But since HoT i crash so often. I’ve dialed my graphics down significantly already and i still keep getting crashes. So shelve the attitude, if i have to turn down my graphics to the point i cannot distinguish my character from a kittening tree that is not an acceptable fix.
I’ve mostly played WvW, so i am used to large group fights and a lot of kitten going off at once. Only recently has this become a problem.

Yah lots of crashing or disconnects. Disconnects sometimes followed by inability to connect to login server.

Great fun… Seems to happen in populated maps especially. Some people had succes turning down their graphics. I’ve dialed down significantly from what worked just fine a month ago, even in heavily populated areas, and it’s still crashing.

Big events and a map like Dragon’s Stand are virtually impossible to do. A crash is bound to happen along the way. And if you are in anyway in a map thats organized/populated enough that it actually stood a good chance, you bet your kitten it will be full when you try to log in again.

And even if you get in again, another crash/dc is just a matter of time.

To many crashes and disconnects.

The only way to really play these maps is if they are well populated, but the moment they are a crash or disconnect (and subsequent inability to log in) are practically inevitable.

Narrrz.7532:

Luvok.5697:

Randulf.7614:

Unless something has changed in the last week, GW2 has never done that. It was always dumps you into a lower population map if you were in a full/high one

I did some googling and this was just posted on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3q71d0/crashing_loses_all_participation_progress_please/cwctc1k?context=3

“As long as you go back to the same instance of the same map, there is a long grace period you can return already built in. Mega servers attempt to save your slot as well so if you disconnect you can return in a reasonable window.
We don’t let you keep participation in other instances of the same map to prevent stuff like map hop farming with top participation.”

Okay, cool, so they just need to fix the system, not put an entirely new one in place.

I had noticed that i kept participation if i briefly hopped into pvp lobby to use bank or etc. At least i know now that will only work if i can get back into the same map.

This is blatantly false.

I’ve had many crashes or disconnects so far, horribly frustrating and it makes Dragon’s Stand-chain virtually impossible to do. This morning it looked like i might finally get it done, from start to finish, but i ended up crashing with Morde at around 20% hp. It’s unplayable.

My computer is fast enough that i will be logged in and loading into the character within a minute, and i typically end up in a new overflow.

The only time i do get back into the same overflow is when it doesn’t matter. No big event going on, no organized map, nothing full. And even then it seems random, it’ll just as happilly throw me into another overflow all the same.

So the claim that there are working systems in place to offer a grace period when you crash or disconnect is just not true.

WeedyZeGreedy.8635:

you cannot solo dry top or SW either which were the initial zones

But you dont have to in order to unlock traits, weapon skills and utility skills.

So there’s that.

A lot of people expressed they hated how many hp’s where required, and anet is changing it. 250 is better, altough i still insist that such a big grind for essential gameplay elements (skills, traits, etc) is absurd.
Grind like that is to be reserved for non-essential things, like skins, legendaries, fancy guild hall stuff.

Anyway, anet is following what a lot of people told them and now it’s just a vocal minority who is trying to stop this change.

Look at all you idiots gloating over the nerf to EotM.

For years you cried about how kittenty the rewards were in WvW, then comes along EotM and the rewards were better.
And now it’s been nerfed, and WvW’s rewards are still kitten.

They should’ve buffed WvW to be on par with EotM. But you spiteful little kids couldn’t see that. Good job, give yourself a round of applause.

“If i cant have fun, no one else should”

Think you can actually purchase it from a vendor…

…provided you have unlocked that vendor with a high enough mastery. Think it was Exhalted.

Sicarius.4639:

evilunderling.9265:

Tier one masteries take about 500k xp each.

Don’t all masteries take the same amount of xp?

I ask because their manifesto was based on no curve because they felt a fixed levelling journey was more fun.

It scales up with higher ranks in masteries.

Rank 1 is 500k, rank 2 is 1million, rank 3 is 1,7milion.

I havent seen what rank 4 looks like, but you get the picture.

jmoak.7821:

its the vocal minority again while the majority are having fun in the game. dust will settle in 2 weeks

Yah that majority is having so much fun ingame that maps are constantly dead and empty.

HenleyLegoMan.4987:

When the dust settles in 2 weeks? Have you not realised yet? That’s when all of you moaning about us complaining begin to ask anet why hot maps are empty and demand it sorted lol

You dont have to wait! The maps are already empty.

There are already population issues and dead maps. And with all content designed as if it’s getting zerged, goodluck completing anything when you’re stuck on a dead map.

Mobs are all very similar as well. Spam a lot of poorly telegraphed, hard to avoid CC or one-shot mechanics. So enjoy going from full health to dead a lot either very quickly, as in instantly, or while you go get a drink because you have zero control over your character.

HoT is mostly doing the same events over and over to grind out Mastery points. Which you need because parts of the content are arbitrarily locked behind requiring certain masteries, such as vendors, gathering nodes, events, Hero challenges. Not that it tells you untill after you waste your time trying and come to the conclusion it is impossible.
And there are quite a few bugs with events getting stuck, or crashing, or server disconnects. That sort of fun thing.

Map design itself is a erradic mess. Its often very unclear how you need to get somewhere, and with the knowledge of how content gets gated behind Masteries you’re just left to wonder if maybe you cannot figure it out, or if you are just not allowed to do it yet.

If you have other things to still do in GW2, do those first and wait and see how HoT develops.

Maps ARE empty. Been unable to do anything all morning, every event just fails simply because there are not enough people. Events are to punishing for the very few people that were playing on the map. Same issue yesterday all afternoon and evening.

So now we have to deal with the same kitten as we had to with Tequatl. If you dont get on a good map you’re kitten out of luck and wasting your time because you’re going nowhere. Waypoints constantly contested, parts of the map locked off, and the events that do spawn are undoable because they assume a minimal contribution far greater than the 3 people that show up in total.

For kitten sake we’re in the launch weekend and content is already undoable due to lack of population… This does not bode well.

Jocksy.3415:

Guys, take a deep breath and re-read the announcements and related dev posts…

What we get in WvW is a random PvE hero challenge unlock.

The current hero challenge give one HP.

The new hero challenge give 10 hp.

So that means it is possible to unlock it all with less than 40 levels per character.

Though someone having the bare minimum of Hero challenges done might need somewhat 200 and some levels. If they are unlucky and only randomly unlock the current hero challenge….

To unlock random Maguuma challenges worth 10 points you spend 5 notarized scrolls, not 1.
So multiply 40 with 5. That’s 200 ranks.

Cecilia.5179:

So, I’m going to have to grind a ton of hero points for each character instead of enjoying HoT?

No. You see, you grinding those hero points is the enjoyment. Even when it’s not.

And since you can choose to either grind enjoy hero challenges or grind enjoy wvw 10x harder than that, you technically have a choice so it doesn’t even count as a grind anymore because of reasons.

lorddarkflare.9186:

Manuhell.2759:

Mh, this could make gyros indeed more reliable, at least in PvE. Gotta see how often they happen to get aggroed, though. And how cleaving attacks work against them.

Edit: ok, cleaving attacks that don’t target them directly have their damage reduced. Fine. Gotta test about the aggro when the changes go live then.

Edit 2: I missed the line about minions being in a good place for PvP. Guess they forgot already what they did to turrets. Or just never tried them after that change.

They do not want minions to be effective in PvP. That has been obvious for years.

Short of a complete re-work, I think turrets are mostly dead in PvP.

Truth be told, I can live with this.

Good thing they gave us another brand new line with more minions then…

We asked them to fix the kits backpacks overwriting our equiped back item, and their solution was to flat out remove them. So be careful what you ask for…

They are changing liquid karma because they are afraid people who stocked those might get a few notarizaed scrolls headstart.

How large do you estimate the chances are they will retroactively give you 2800 notarized scrolls?

Yeah, wouldn’t count on it. And this close to launch, forget about even getting this changed.

We’re doing this because we want WvW players to have the opportunity to earn their profession’s elite specialization entirely by playing WvW.

Ha! Yah, just 200 ranks per character per elite specialization.

I’m going to guess that you dont retroactively get those commendation whateveries for your wvw ranks. Because they are afraid wvw players might get a head start.

Most efficiently is by spending them on Maguuma Jungle challenges. You need to do this 40x to get the 400points needed for 1 elite specialization. (assuming there even are 40 challenges)

There are 9 elite specialisations, so thats 360x those MJ things. You need 5 ranks to have enough to buy one.
So enjoy 1800 WvW rank ups to get them.

“Gee guys we’re making it available for wvw!”. The hell you are.

Have Trapper runes apply a small bit of damage to all trap abilities. Like 10 or so damage.

Ranger and Dragon Hunter traps already apply damage that will reveal them. So this change would only affect Trapper runes Trap Thieves.

I’m reading just fine.

You want to change not canceling a skill in use when using Stow, to canceling a skill in use when using Stow.
Using Stow also makes you drop out of a kit, thats literally what it is designed to do. The difference is using Drop Bundle cancel a skill in action and drops a kit, Stow does not cancel a skill in action and drops a kit.

So when you say you cannot cancel spells in cast on kits you are wrong. When you say that Stow should cancel cast just as Drop you are asking to remove a handy function.

Maybe you need to learn to write better if that is not what you mean, because that is what you’re saying.

After every single BWE they had a big list of changes based on feedback on every specialization that was available.

Some specializations will have had three itterations before launch, others only one. Can’t see in what possible universe it would be fair that:
Profession A has had a test, feedback, change, test of change, feedback, change, test of change, feedback, change.
And profession B had test, feedback, change.

Gee i wonder which profession is probably more polished.

Drop Bundle will cancel your cast. Stow does not.

Use Drop if you want to cancel, instead of argueing to remove a handy function.

LunacyPolish.4602:

Terrahero.9358:

LunacyPolish.4602:

Ederyn.3107:

is better how it is now. When you use it is because it’s supposed yuou’re in danger…and when you are in danger probably you have some CC condition on you..

so many times i was Chilled or Crippled in WWW hopeing to reach the door against many and the leap was too short as intended…

If you use it just to run fast (turning you’re self) is another story…

This guy gets it. Definitely much better now. I can use it on a point and know if I position myself correctly I won’t go (too far) off point now.

If you hit your drop bundle button just after using Acid Bomb you cancel the leap, but still do the acid pool and blast. You don’t move back at all.

So what you’re looking for is already possible, no need to nerf Acid Bomb’s range.

What if I don’t want to drop bundle? What if I still want to leap? If I’m going to use that combination, I’m probably going to immediately follow it with EG 3, then possibly 2 and/or even a couple of auto attacks depending on the situation.

Granted there are also times I wouldn’t, but I prefer to have the choice.

You dont drop your bundle because you’re in the air.

It will simply prompt with a “Cannot switch weapon” or something like that. You will stay in Elixirgun, but you cancel the jump nonetheless.

Look just try instead of trying to punch holes in this, it works great and does exactly what you say you want.

Simple solution would be to simply put a cap on how much a server can tick more than other servers.

The problem is that you could win during prime time, but that’s like 100, +200 at the most, over the 2nd highest ppt server. At night this can run away upto 600, so even if you do really well during prime time with highest active players, at night you lose 3x as hard as what you gained.

If however we put a cap on how much more server with the highest ppt can tick over for example just the next highest, the scores wouldn’t run away so stupidly fast. But players at night will of course still be able to contribute to their server, just not to such a stupidly effective degree that playing during peak times is meaningless to the overall score.

So running at 500ppt, when the next highest server has only 150ppt, will put a strain on that 500. Bringing it down to f.e. 350 of what is actually gained.

Azure.8670:

nah it needs a solid 15-20% damage buff. if rev sword can get it, why not a 2 HANDED HAMMER

Because Engineers need to use their kits.

That’s why all our #1 skills are kinda kitten, by comparison Hammer is probably already the best one Engineer can get.

LunacyPolish.4602:

Ederyn.3107:

is better how it is now. When you use it is because it’s supposed yuou’re in danger…and when you are in danger probably you have some CC condition on you..

so many times i was Chilled or Crippled in WWW hopeing to reach the door against many and the leap was too short as intended…

If you use it just to run fast (turning you’re self) is another story…

This guy gets it. Definitely much better now. I can use it on a point and know if I position myself correctly I won’t go (too far) off point now.

If you hit your drop bundle button just after using Acid Bomb you cancel the leap, but still do the acid pool and blast. You don’t move back at all.

So what you’re looking for is already possible, no need to nerf Acid Bomb’s range.

I think the OP fought a Mesmer and got the two professions somehow confused.

You should know better than to expect strong AA on Engineer. Engineer’s nr1 skills suck across the board. If you want to AA something for 3k roll a ranger, or a necro, or a warrior, or a thief, or just about anything other than Engineer and Ele.

For Engineer standards the Hammer AA is good, it has the Rifle beat.