Things that we know are going to be added to the base game are:
The new WvW map (replacing the current one)
Stronghold
Core Specialisation system
Can you link me the article that says we are getting these core changes for free? Not to be sarcastic, I am genuinely curious.
Core Specialisations
The new system will come to the live game before the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, allowing players to experience the changes to core specializations and stockpile Hero Points for their elite specializations. While elite specializations will be available to everyone who purchases the expansion, the upcoming core specialization changes will affect the base game.
The Desert Borderlands Map will be replacing the old Borderlands map (Alpine Borderlands) when the expansion releases and we might reintroduce the old map in a rotation or tournament.
I think challenging content was the wyvern and similar bosses.
In the interview with MattVisual, CJ specifically said that the Wyvern wasn’t an example of the challenging content; just how world bosses would be like now:
…the Wyvern is just an example of a tough boss in the open world. It’s not a mega boss, it’s not some example of the challenging content we want you to do. It’s just an example of what world bosses are going to be like in HoT.
They literally said in the HoT trailer, as one of the main features of the expansions, that they’re adding “Challenging Group Content.” That’s the source.
You do realize, I hope, that as far as ArenaNet is concerned the wyvern fight we have seen in beta could be what they were talking about when they said “Challenging Group Content”, right?
Wrong.
In the interview with MattVisual, CJ specifically said that the Wyvern wasn’t an example of the challenging content; just how world bosses would be like now:
…the Wyvern is just an example of a tough boss in the open world. It’s not a mega boss, it’s not some example of the challenging content we want you to do. It’s just an example of what world bosses are going to be like in HoT.
A lot of these changes are not expansion-specific changes; they’re changes and additions to the base game.
For example, the new Specialisation system will be replacing the current trait system for all players. Only the Elite Specs will be exclusive to HoT players. Not to mention that this system will be coming in before HoT launches:
The new system will come to the live game before the launch of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, allowing players to experience the changes to core specializations and stockpile Hero Points for their elite specializations. While elite specializations will be available to everyone who purchases the expansion, the upcoming core specialization changes will affect the base game.
The things that we know are going to be exclusive to HoT so far are:
The HoT content (maps and any content in them maps)
Revenant
Elite Specializations
The PvE Mastery system
Things that we know are going to be added to the base game are:
The new WvW map (replacing the current one)
Stronghold
Core Specialisation system
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
I’m remaining pessimistic as I think the trickles of information are coming in quite slow… so I think this week we’ll just see some more details on the WvW beta (which ofc only 5% of us will get to play anyway).
Voted accordingly and feel that too many voted with their hearts, over their heads, because I doubt we get to see a reveal on guild halls or challenging group content, although I’d love if it was that.
I doubt it would be WvW details, since they’ve already revealed the WvW map and gone through it.
They did say that next week would be a big reveal, and from the sounds of it the PoI will be running for longer.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
I’m more concerned with it being so long that it’ll clip through the ground when you death’s charge.
My first impression of the scythe was that is wasn’t something material – as though they created it out of Life Force – so things like the ground wouldn’t impair it.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
I highly doubt there will be any defiance bar engraved into a Specialization traitline this would simply become a balance issue for any PvP mode. So, I wouldn’t want to spoil the hope about any defiance bar but… All profession will have the possibility to have access to it.
They mentioned this Trait in the Specialisation blog post:
New Traits
Last but not least, elite specializations will come with a full new set of traits, similar to what a core specialization provides. Equipping an elite specialization takes up one of your three specialization slots and grants you three minor traits and nine major traits for use. How does a trait that removes a condition every time you evade an attack sound? I’m personally excited about a grandmaster trait that has the power to grant my character a defiance bar!
Q. When will we get more dungeon and fractals, any kind of dungeon related changes? Another question is hard mode for dungeons or the setting of difficulty?
A.
Hard Mode is something they’re staying away from at that point.
Looked at ideas to improve longevity of dungeons.
TA was a serious amount of work, another rework like that is not something they want to commit to.
Fractals are a more flexible system that will hopefully allow them to add smaller chunks of content without the amount of work it takes to redo a dungeon.
Want to make smaller changes to dungeons rather than larger ones.
(22/08/2014)
Where in there does it say they’re never going to add more dungeons?
There is also the fact that they quite publically fired their entire dungeon team, which is why most people assume they won’t ever introduce new dungeons. There was a very involved and active dungeon team that brought us Molten Facility and Aetherblade (Not the TA one) Dungeons. They butted heads pretty badly with the higher ups and they ended up all getting let go.
I thought that it was only Robert that left and the team was disbanded and distributed into the Living Story teams?
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
They mentioned staff bounce effect in the core specializations livestream I believe, I’m much more focused on the core ones than Reaper,dagger still has higher dps and definitely higher LF gain, GS are usually used in rotation for benefits.
Yup. It was mentioned on the live stream but they didn’t spend any time on it.
I thought that was just a Mesmer thing, where all the bouncing attacks would gain an extra bounce baseline since they were removing Illusionary Elasticity?
Nope it will bounce.
It said nothing in the livestream about Necro Staff 1 bouncing, just that Illusionary Elasticity would become baseline for Mesmers.
Just that damage while downed will be reduced, minion recharge and focus range has been made baseline, Dark Armour and Spiteful Talisman were removed.
Q. When will we get more dungeon and fractals, any kind of dungeon related changes? Another question is hard mode for dungeons or the setting of difficulty?
A.
Hard Mode is something they’re staying away from at that point.
Looked at ideas to improve longevity of dungeons.
TA was a serious amount of work, another rework like that is not something they want to commit to.
Fractals are a more flexible system that will hopefully allow them to add smaller chunks of content without the amount of work it takes to redo a dungeon.
Want to make smaller changes to dungeons rather than larger ones.
(22/08/2014)
Where in there does it say they’re never going to add more dungeons?
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
They mentioned staff bounce effect in the core specializations livestream I believe, I’m much more focused on the core ones than Reaper,dagger still has higher dps and definitely higher LF gain, GS are usually used in rotation for benefits.
Yup. It was mentioned on the live stream but they didn’t spend any time on it.
I thought that was just a Mesmer thing, where all the bouncing attacks would gain an extra bounce baseline since they were removing Illusionary Elasticity?
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
1. They said the specialization scales in power as the number of foes you hit increases. None of necros current power weapons hit more than 2 targets. It is one of the biggest problems with necros right now. You will not be able to use the specialization well without being able to hit 5 targets, thus the need for the GS.
It’s actually the shouts that scale depending on how many enemies hit, rather than – what we know of at the moment – the weapon skills.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
This minor trait with chill on fear is kinda odd. Makes sense if it is adept or something. What if i want to fear someone off a cliff? My victim will have enough time to think and use condi removing thanks to walking speed my fear will give.
The other way of looking at it is that the chill on fear makes it easier to stick to them and use the moves that have a long windup time.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
1. Fractals of the Mist – Beyond 50 2. New Dungeons
They have already come out with all the major features coming with HoT; and before that more or less nailed the coffin on new updates to either Fractals or dungeons, so don’t get your hopes up on this.
One of the major features was ‘challenging group content’. Why couldn’t that include dungeons and Fractals?
Because they pretty much refuted it; and I rather believe it’s a matter of open world group/raid content they have in mind for new encounters. All speculation ofc, apart from the fact that they’re not working on new dungeons.
Where to did they say that the expac would have dungeons? I must have missed that one.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
1. Fractals of the Mist – Beyond 50 2. New Dungeons
They have already come out with all the major features coming with HoT; and before that more or less nailed the coffin on new updates to either Fractals or dungeons, so don’t get your hopes up on this.
One of the major features was ‘challenging group content’. Why couldn’t that include dungeons and Fractals?
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
Skill Set – Spirits (similar to offensive Ritualist spirits) or Consecrations (maybe, possibly but incredibly unlikely renamed to be Desecrations but functionally the same).
Mechanic Change – Orders. Instead of / in addition to DS, Necromancers will get Orders that they can cast on their F2 – F?. Life Force will be either used as a resource to cast these or Life Force gets consumed when the effect triggers. These Orders would provide unique buffs / debuffs – allies remove buff on attack, allies lifesteal on attack etc.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
Considering how easy it took out the whole Pact Airship-fleet it is unlikely that air-support would be possible.
Depends on how high them vines can reach and how fast they can react to threats. Modern aircraft can fly quite high and break the sound barrier after all.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
Them green beams could simply be a skill effect. Kind of like the slashes that happen during 100B.
You can see the Necro using the Mesmer auto animation (sword floating and rotating between his hands). That animation doesn’t really lend itself to melee attacks.
But you do see him autoattacking right after in melee range, so it’s a mixed weapon.
Ahh, I wasn’t watching the video. I took it from the image.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
That would be more akin to a Ranger. Well, he is a Ranger and befriended an army of ghosts he found in the wilderness.
In an alternate Tyria, while Aragorn was teaching Marjory how to use a greatsword, Marjory taught Aragorn how to summon shades, turning him into a Ranger / Necromancer.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
I thought with the Dragonhunter that the Spear replaces giving everyone Burning on next attack and the shield replaces giving everyone aegis?
I don’t know, since these mechanics do have counterplay to them:
A Chronomancer can be broken out of their Continuum Shift (attack the thing), as well as players will know exactly where they’ll return to so they can prepare.
The spear tether can be broken, the leap can be dodged and the shield can be circumvented by flanking.
I agree that it gives a slight advantage, but not enough to consider it P2W.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
They still posted it in the morning over here last time. And wel morning is almost over. So i assume no reveal this week.
Well, according to my Facebook, the teaser pics were shown at 5pm British Time. That means if they follow that then the next one will be released in around 1/2 hour.
Patience is a virtue (though not one of the Guardians).
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
2) They trigger on activation but ranger traps keep pulses so you don’t want to lay them on foes(lol) on thief due to linear form the you have to place them by your foes’ sides or do a 90 degree and place it in front of them,misplacement will reveal you. Guardian will have same problem as ranger. You could actually attract them to it instead of laying at their sight or risking to get in melee range.
Ah, right. Thanks for explaining
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
As someone that doesn’t play a Ranger or Thief, could somone point out why you’d want to activate the trap manually? Does the cooldown start after the trap is activated or something?
They don’t. Pros I see is setting more enemies in them instead of 1 foes triggers it rest doesn’t get hit that would go better for thief traps because they are not really linear and don’t “pulse”,it would make Trapper Runes easier to use,it could possibly create more strategic placements.
1) Wouldn’t that also then require the traps to be modified firther to not go off when an enemy walkes over them?
2) How would it help Trapper rune use? Isn’t the super speed and stealth when you’re laying the trap as opposed to it going off?
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
As someone that doesn’t play a Ranger or Thief, could somone point out why you’d want to activate the trap manually? Does the cooldown start after the trap is activated or something?
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
Why would I replace my 100% block aegis virtue of courage with an inferior position dependent version of it?
Depends on the situation?
After all, Aegis only blocks one hit while the shield will block all attacks for the duration. Along with the leap, it could be useful for when your team is engaging an enemy.
Purely theoretical though until we see things like cool downs and durations.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
The Shield of Courage is a fitting skill for the guardian. The idea of shielding allies, and requiring some clever positioning. Only, this class seems to want to turn the guardian into a backline support class, which seems contradicting.
Not necessarily, if you consider you still have access to your other weapons and skills. after all, you don’t need to take the specialisation in its entirety.
Depending on the Traits of the specialisation, I can’t see why the specialisation couldn’t add to current front-line builds, which would be augmented with Wings of Virtue (an additional movement and support skill alongside meditations) and Shield of Courage.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
2) The Chronomancer gets new abilities, such as alacrity and the new F5 skill, but they don’t replace anything. The Chronomancer only adds abilities to the mesmers, instead of removing them.
Meanwhile, the Hunter’s virtues actually replace the existing ones. The passive effects will be kept the same, but a Hunter loses the Justice active effect Guardians have, with said effect being replaced by the new ones. Which means, the Hunter doesn’t really add anything to the Guardian, only replaces things.
We knew this would be the case with some professions:
You actually play the profession differently, not just in skills and traits, but in the core mechanics of those professions. Some of them will change an existing profession, some of them might give them entirely new profession abilities and remove other ones. It really varies specialisation to specialisation, but it really should feel like you are playing a new version of your old profession.
I’m personally not seeing the issue. You make a choice between passively activating your virtues an granting an effect without worrying about placement or choosing virtues that provide a stronger effect (continuous personal burning vs one application of burning for 5 others, perma shield for x seconds vs 1 application of Aegis, area heal vs movement ability and area heal).
As for not adding anything, you forgetting about the additional skills, weapon and traits that could potentially synergise with current builds?
3) The Chronomancer is not a necromancer. They get access to wells, sure, but a “well” is something very vaguely defined in the game. Is a well an area of effect skill that pulsates? Arguably, that would mean Null Field (which happens to be a Mesmer skill) is a well too.
Plus, the Chronomancer’s wells aren’t the same as the necromancer wells – they have been adapted into the Chronomancer’s theme, with unique effects that keep it obvious the specialization is its own entity.
Meanwhile, Hunters are just Rangers rip offs. The bow, by itself, doesn’t mean anything; but even the announcement video shows how the Hunter is similar to the Ranger, down to having a skill that looks almost exactly like Barrage. Traps also happen to be a Ranger skill type, and not only one that is far from being popular, but also one that is about to be nerfed (traps will need a delay after being placed before they trigger).
you seem to be forgetting traps aren’t exclusive to Rangers, since Thieves have them too.
We don’t know if trap effects are going to work after the arming times are added.
We don’t know the Dragonhunter’s trap effects at the moment. Much like how Wells were adapted to fit the Chronomancer, these traps could quite easily be adapted to fit the Guardian theme.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
For example, an official P2P trading would see the use of the TP drop for things like Legendary weapons and the more expensive items (which is currently a massive gold sink). In order to facilitate this they’d also either a) have to implement a system where players can see what players have for sale (so something like the TP but not the TP) or b) remove the chat restriction timer resulting in a lot of spamming in chat.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
The only information related to group content I’ve seen so far is the Wyvern and Fractal Masteries.
The only info that we know regarding the Legendary crafting process so far is:
The methods by which you’ll craft these legendary weapons are similar to the existing system, but we’ve refined it into more of a journey, similar to precursor crafting.
Personally, I read that as the different gifts will be got at different stages in a way that fits them thematically, as opposed to now where you can work towards all gifts at any point.
That’s pure conjecture on my part, though.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
Necromancer Specialization: Hexer (anyone got a better name, answers on a postcard please)
New Weapon: Off-Hand Sword New Trait Line: Hexes New Skill Type: Desecration (simply a renamed Consecration to fit thematically, and provide a Dark field)
Description
The Hexer is a Necromancer that focuses manipulating the conditions and beneficial effects of their foes to devastate them.
New Profession Mechanic: Hex (F1 – F5)
Death Shroud is replaced with 5 unique negative effects called Hexes. (possible adjustments: remove 1 Hex and re-introduce DS; have hexes available in a transfromation skill that functions as DS does).
Casting these Hexes costs 10 – 30% of the Hexer’s Life Force. Hexes cannot be removed through Condition Removal but have their duration reduced by it by x seconds (x second icd).
Fragility (x seconds, y second cooldown) – Target gets afflicted with Fragility. Whenever the Target gains or loses a condition, they take damage.
Cursed (x seconds, y second cooldown) – Target is Cursed, reducing boon duration on target by 66%.
Corrupted (x Seconds, y second cooldown) – Targets that are afflicted with Corrupted have all self-applied boons are automatically converted into conditions.
Diseased (x Seconds, y second cooldown) – Every x seconds, the afflicted target draws conditions from nearby allies.
Scrouge (x Seconds, y second cooldown) – Incoming healing and boons is converted into damage.
Weapon Skills
Skill 4: Reap Impurity – Charge the skill for up to 2 seconds to increase it’s effectiveness. Spin around, hitting all enemies around you and removing up to 2 conditions from them and any allies nearby. Increases damage and Life Force gained for each condition removed.
Skill 5: Soul Barb > Rend Soul – First part of the skill – Impale Spirit – impales the target, dealing damage. The second part of the skill – Rend Spirit – deals damage to nearby enemies and removes up to 3 boons on everyone affected. Increases AoE for each boon removed.
Heal Skill
Hexer’s Vigor – Heal and gain Endurance based on how many Hexes are off of cooldown; the more Hexes off of cooldown, the higher the heal and Endurance gain.
Utility Skills
Desecrate Defenses – Desecrate an area of ground, causing enemies that block attacks to still take x% of the damage.
Punish Failure – Desecrate an area of ground, causing all enemies inside to take damage if they miss an attack.
Punish Benevolence – Desecrate an area of ground, dealing damage to enemies who are applying boons to others.
Desecrate Victory – Desecrate an area of ground, causing enemies to take damage when they deal damage to a foe with less health than them.
Elite Skill
Unhallowed Ground – Desecrate an area of ground, causing any Hexes applied in this area to be continuously refreshed every second.
Minor Traits
Adept: Hexer’s Fervour – Gain swiftness (10 seconds) and Quickness (1 second) when Hexing a target.
Master: Laugh at their Plight – Take reduced damage from enemies with Hexes on them (2 – 5% per hex).
Grandmaster: Neverending Torment – When a hex expires, the target is afflicted with Torment (3 stacks, 5 seconds).
Adept
Twisted Allies – Allies in desecrated ground gain Might (1 stack, 6 seconds) every second they’re in the area.
Far-reaching Desecration – Desecration area size is larger (20%) and lasts longer (2 secs).
Hex Mastery – Hexes cost less to cast (20%) and last longer (20%).
Revel in Corruption – Casting a Corruption effect inside Desecrated ground applies a boon to you instead of a condition. Reduces Corruption recharge by 20%.
Grandmaster
Lingering Desecration – Desecration effects linger on for 2 seconds after leaving the area. Desecration recharge reduced by 20%.
Hexer’s Domain – Hexes also apply their effects in an area around the target. Hex recharge reduced by 20%.
Mark of the Cursed – Hexed foes produce a Mark of Death (reduced version of Marked for Death, 3 stacks of Vulnerability, 10 sec duration) at their location every 5 seconds.
Life is a journey.
Time is a river.
The door is ajar.
.
