Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the (thorough) explanation. I understand how it works now. Maybe I’ll try it out…it’d make immobilize a lot less potent and given that it’s the elementalist’s worst counter, it could be worth it.

Question: You mentioned a food/consumable buff that lowered condition duration. Is there a cap to that? Because I’m wondering wheter it would be possible to get immunity to Immobilize by combining said consumable, Melandru’s Rune and Geomancer’s Freedom. Or do they have stacking/cap issues?

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Hey, everyone. We’ve been reading all your feedback about the Flamekissed Armor Skin that was released into the Gem Store yesterday.

…

Thank you everyone for providing your feedback. We appreciate that you took the time to let us know how you feel about the new armor set.

+10 cool points for ArenaNet. This is very noble of you, admitting a mistake and offering a reasonable fix. Nice one! Much appreciated (and this doesn’t even affect me, but this has seriously restored some of my faith in Anet)

Lord Kuru.3685:

I think the complaint is that the Engineer is the only profession that is excluded from this rune. And that Anet could easily have had it proc on both signet use and elixirs — making it potentially useful for all professions — but didn’t (almost certainly because they didn’t bother to remember that Engies don’t have signets).

They probably knew, and they decided to go with it anyway. What I don’t understand is why you’re so upset about it though. Semantics? There are tons of runes my ele can techanically use but I wouldn’t ever equip because they’re simply worthless in practice. Would you rather have a rune that procced on say gadgets, and then never use it?

Strang.8170:

Because you have no control over when the skill comes, where it lands, and if the thing even stays alive. Unreliable in short.

True, but if the field pops up you might as well use it.

Terrahero.9358:

Why would a bunker warrior use Healing Signet?

Didn’t say it had to be bunker. I know little of warriors, but I can imagine a block being tied to your heals can be useful. If anything, it’d be more dependable than running it in a full ele signet build.

Also the outrage from engineer wasnt on the matter of it being great or not. It was simply a matter of principal that Engineers use unique mechanics and as a result are constantly simply forgotten.
I’ll bet you anything arenanet simply flat out forgot there was a profession that doesnt have signets when they came up with this. Just like they consistently forget about engineers with effects that trigger on-swap/on-heal. Forgetting that kits have a low swap cooldown and swapping to Medkit counts as a Heal for on-using-heal proc-effects.

These things are however hotfixed pretty fast as they are bugged in a favorable way for engineers.

You’re overreacting. Not every rune works well on every profession. You don’t see me crying over the Soldier rune not affecting attunement swaps do you? Or yelling at Anet that I don’t have poison to make use of sigils that increase poison duration?

And you can still make much better use out of stuff like Rune of Altruism than many other professions.

Just played through the Thuamanova Fractal for the first time and I pretty much enjoyed it. However, I did experience one issue at the final boss:

The groudn targetting circles don’t show up.

As you can imagine, for a staff ele that is pretty tricky. Especially since the gird also makes the cursor very hard to see.

Other than that, and the scarlet appearance, I very much enjoyed the fractal. Good work Anet!

My female elementalist would look awesome in Zojia-style armor!

Electro.4173:

An ice field, though? That I could get behind. A little extra damage mitigation through Frost Aura’s would be welcome.

Why not make use of your ice elemental’s combo fields then?

oZii.2864:

I don’t know if I’ll even throw the resistance rune on my warrior now. 5 secs is so

To be fair, warrior is probably the best choice for this rune atm. If the only signet active you use is healing signet, and the aegis procs on activation, you’d get your heal protected against interrupts. If not, it’d still compliment your heal by also protecting you for a hit.

In an ele signet build however, aegis would pretty much happen by chance because we use our actives way more than our passives. Rangers would have the same issue (pet is protecting you and you also get aegis yay!).

Electro.4173:

I don’t see the problem with it being “only” 5 seconds. 5 seconds is plenty to block a powerful attack coming at you.

The ‘problem’ is that as an ele, you’re constantly busy avoiding damage and you’re using your signets proactively, not responsively. With the rune working like this, you could end up using say, Signet of Earth on a warrior and have him not able to attack you for pretty much the duration of the Aegis. Or what if you have Magnetic Aura active while aegis triggers? What if you use Signet of Air, and then dodge an attack too? Wasted aegis, come back again 30 seconds later. Our profession’s signets are very active with short cooldowns and thus the chances of you getting aegis at the right moment are slim to none.

Like with the ranger example, 10 seconds would ensure you’d at least get to use it if if you trigger it.

These would all be excellent changes.

At this point, I’m wondering wheter it’d be better to design a new trait…it’s obviously a complex issue, or they’d have fixed it properly by now.

To me it is as legendary as any other legendary. But if you don’t like the looks, then by all means don’t get it. Personally, I don’t really like those over-flashy legendaries anyway…the greatsword is awesome, but too many people are wielding it for the greatsword to truly feel epic.

Dessa. Her name is Dessa. Diessa is a region.

tweeve.3782:

Once the wp/respawning bug was taken care of I did the Thaumanova Reactor fractal again.
I found it really fun. Some of the Mechanics are tough but once you figure them out I had fun. It wasn’t overly simple, but not overly kittence you figure out the mechanics.

Sounds good. I’ve yet to try it but I’m glad the issue was fixed. Can’t wait.

As for Scarlet keep her coming, it is interesting. Its nice to have a constant villian. Batman has Joker, Superman has Lex. We have Scarlet. I am finding the story fun.

No offense, but that’s like saying: “The US has Obama, Russia has Poetin and we get Larry Snipsticks*, the only guy in our town to have finished highschool!”

* Disclaimer: any relation to another person, real or fictive, is purely coincidental.

It would be nice if they removed her from the non-story version of the fractal. But I doubt it’ll happen.

wookiee.4631:

And no, I’m not trying to say your opinion is wrong or anything, I just see no point in it being so long and it’s own thread.

He was obviously very passionate about it, taking the time to write such a long post with not flaming or yelling at Anet…I think the least the devs can do is read it. He’s taking time and effort to help them improve their product…it could be helpful to them. Even if it was said many times before.

I wouldn’t mind if they skipped a release. They deserve a break after all we’ve been throwing at them.

Rozbuska.5263:

My grandma is more interesting.

Could you make a Scarlet tribute video where your grandma re-voices all the lines Scarlet said? That way, we can see wheter what you say is true.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

•The Rune of Resistance grants bonus toughness, a reduction in condition duration, and aegis upon using a signet

Way to exclude Engineers once again.

Don’t worry, it’s got a 30 second cooldown so it’s useless to professions with signets too. The only place where it’ll be good is on a bunker warrior with healing signet.

PopeUrban.2578:

TBH, I think the point is that you get well-rounded defense and the ability to on-demand block.

That makes sense, but that doesn’t work for every profession. For professions like the Ranger, which basically have ‘panic button’ active for their signets, it works great. For Eles, that have proactive signets. Chances are huge you’ll end up wasting the Aegis effect and not getting it when you truly need it.

Which is why I feel the duration increase would be the best option. It’ll still only block 1 attack every 30 seconds but this way, it’ll be more useful to signet-active builds. The way it’s now, it’ll only work for builds that use say, a single signet as their healing skill.

BobbyStein.2315:

We look at as much feedback as we’re able and take it under consideration when planning our updates. Understand that what you’re seeing on live was under way four months prior.

Like I said, I understand what you meant (the first time too). If a release isn’t recieved well, you cannot make changes to the next release…it’ll be changes to the nextnextnext release at best.

What I was curious about is wheter or not the negative response of Scarlet has in any way affected your (far-)future plans (don’t need details because I know you’re not allowed/able to give them yet:) )

The worst part about this is that Scarlet is now a permanent part of your fractal ‘enjoyment’. You have a chance to see her again everytime you do a fractal, for years to come. A bad memory…for years to come…

Why not make a Library with books that have links to webpages with the actual stories on them?

BobbyStein.2315:

Fractal work started back in August, which is when players first encountered Scarlet and around when the votes were tallied.

That makes sense…I suppose the story is among the first things to be developed and once it gets underway, ít’s basically too late to change things.

I’m curious though…has the player feedback regarding Scarlet affected your upcoming lore?

Nikked.7365:

Pfft. I’m the guy that loves bringing noobs along. I play to win, but I’ve got something of a carebear in me, and helping people get through their first few runs makes me happy. So the leaderboard does nothing for me, but hopefully I’ll see one of my mentees on it

It can actually make the fractals more fun to do. If everything goes smoothly, there’s nowhere to show off your skills. Soling a boss, now that’s elite-worthy!

The developers stated that it wasn’t supposed to be a big reward/meta grind this time, but more of an ‘introduction to’ for the newer players.

Air has stun/blowout/blindness as control effects.

As an elementalist, I’ve been hooked on my Evasive Arcana build ever since I first learned to play it. Rune of Resistance however got me really excited and I was planning, for the first time in nearly a year, to run a different build. However, the actual version seems somewhat unplayable to me. If you run a signet build, chances are you’ll run multiple signets. With a cooldown so high and a duration that low, I fear I’ll end up wasting the aegis because it triggers when I’m dodging or something.

I’d probably use the rune if either:
a) the duration of the aegis effect was increased to 10 seconds (it’s just the next hit anyway).
b) the cooldown was lowered to 15 seconds (might be trouble on guardians, I get that).
c) the anti-condition effect was closer to Rune of Melandru’s (i.e. also worked on stuns, making the rune worth bringing for other reasons than the aegis effect).

Link: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Resistance

P.S. I know it’s comparing apples to oranges, but when a powerful rune like perplexity gets a cooldown of only 8 seconds, I wonder why a rune like this gets a cooldown of 30 seconds.

Scarlet 5 times.

Can I recall my votes to Kiel?

Seriosuly, this is just like real world politics: you vote for someone and they end up delivering the one thing you do not want (and hoped would be prevented by voting for them).

Moshari.8570:

NOW, try explaining how the backpiece works…. lol

So true…that is eaxactly my point. The new system isn’t complicated, if you were used to the old system. If you look at the whole thing combined, it’s a big mess.

There would be some damage loss, but overall the signet build would still have plenty of offensive traits. The main advantage I see is that you trade in a little bit of damage for a LOT of control and defense.

EDIT: Just read that the aegis has a 30 seconds cooldown and a 5 seconds duration. That makes it pretty much worthless because of its unreliability. It’d have to get its duration increased to 10 seconds or the cooldown to 15 seconds before I’d use it. The way it is now, you’d likely end up wasting it while you’re dodging.

If you really want poison, you can use the weapon swap sigil that causes poison…and have 50% uptime without gear or traits.

The main thing however is that eles aren’t supposed to be condition spammers. They’re doing a bit of everything, and if you specialize them, they become less powerful overall. That’s the design philosophy and I doubt it’ll change. IMHO of course.

Dafomen.7892:

How dare they encountering bugs during development!!!!

adrianz.9672:

That’s like saying: “This software is still in development and it’s not even finished?” Keep your ill thought out sensationalist bs to yourself.

The content was already done, it’s not like they were playing something while behind the scenes people were still working on it. That’s not how software development works. This was either live or a test setup identical to live.

lordkrall.7241:

The bugs we see are still quite minor, not really anything game-breaking. Sure they are annoying, but in most cases not worth pushing a release back for.

They at least feel symptomatic of the larger issues. Sure, it’s not a problem that the quaggans ignore the large structure 5ft from their homes in Kessex Hills…but it breaks immersion if it happens on a regular basis. Which it does, because I saw seraph all over Tyria weeks after the jubilee.

Also, it’s not a problem that you cannot complete said quaggans renown heart…but it’s annoying.

And it’s REALLY frustrating if you get punished with a repair bill because of a bug. Feels like you’re being punished for lack of polished content. I’d rather not have the harpie annoyance traded for an aetherblade annoyance for example.

What Anet does with my feedback is up to them. I’m just one of many, many customers. But for me, these supposedly minor things can become a dealbreaker if they persist.

lordkrall.7241:

So what should they do?
Push every single release back several years in order to find every possible issue that might turn up?

No, but it would be nice if they took a breather and fixed some of the more annoying issues. Like they did with the current fractals. Only then they introduced new ones again.

I wouldn’t say that 4 months is rushed either tbh.

Judging from what happens at 30:50 (bosses in the cinematic also appear AGAIN when the fight actually starts) I’d say 4 months was too little. It’s working, but still much unpolished.

There’s just so many things that feel…unfinished or not thought-through enough. Like with ascended gear uniqueness and infusions. A little more thought into the process and they’d realized that by making ascended gear unique AND include the upgrades in the stats, they made that much extra work for themselves because they now have to add each combination by hand…twice.

While watching the TwitchTV preview at:

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3299578

at around 7:14, the developer gets hit by a trap and the game teleports him to the start downed. He then continues to get hit by the traps he’s no longer in until he is defeated.

This pretty much confirms that the current releases are too rushed. Please take more care with stuff like this Anet, because if there’s anything that’s frustrating and making people quit the game, it’s being punished for (getting repair bills from) game bugs.

Jabberwock.9014:

Ele’s mechanic is worse designed than engi’s, no doubt about it.

I doubt it. The design is right for me, giving me many options based on the order in which I use my skills. Can change it on the fly. The engineer on other hand, has to give up a utility skill slot and a few traits just to get a viable second set. For eles however, all our skills are decent from the getgo.

oZii.2864:

The Rune of Resistance grants bonus toughness, a reduction in condition duration, and aegis upon using a signet is also coming tomorrow but it sounds like 5/6 would be good but the 6th is meh for ele’s unless it gives you that clutch aegis when you pop SOR. I’ll need to see the numbers on it though.

Sorry, but I don’t understand. If anything, it would work best on eles because we don’t have to choose between our signet’s passives and active abilities. Having 4 aegis skills ready for use in addition to the many other things they do sounds like a very good deal to me.

Signet of Air has a blind…now, if you add an aegis to that, you can stop 2 hits…that’s alsmost as much as Arcane Shield, but on a much lower cooldown and with much better traits.

I’m definitively gonna try a signet build with this rune after it comes out.

How about just 5 of each?

Kal Spiro.9745:

I would like to think it’s pretty self evident. You’re going to get an AR only upgrade item. If you have the slot it goes into you can put it there. The value is infinitely upgradable, but it is mind meltingly awful to actually do it past a certain point, and requires Artifice to do at all.

What else is needed.

Tell that to people that never did fractals and never had ascended gear before.

Imagine you know nothing of how to get agony resistance.

Now, in order to survive agony resistance, you have to:

-Get your personal fractal level to 10 or higher.
-You only get that by doing a fractal level equal to or higher than your personal level.
-Fractal level isn’t the same as character level.
-You can get the ring as a drop but you can also get pristine fractal relics to buy them at a vendor at 10 relics each.
-No, pristine fractal relics.
-You can then upgrade those rings to an infused version.
-Yours already has an infusion slot, true, but this is a new slot.
-To do so you need to gather vials, globs and shards of mists essence.
-You get them as random drops but you can also convert them to the other types in the Mystic Forge.
-You then upgrade the ring to an infused version.
-You also get agony resist drops that were worthless up and until then, but now can be combined by artificers only, starting at level 100.
-By combining 2 of the same level you can get an upgraded version of the same resistance.
-Now put that in the special infusion slot, and you’re done!

Yes, not complicated at all!

The achievement grind probably influenced the outcome of some matchups, especially during the first two weeks. It could have been benefical if at least the achievements hadn’t appeared so grindy.

I’d second that decision. There are Living Story seraph guards that are still ‘preparing for the closing ceremony’.

Living Story is too rushed and breaks more than it adds.

There are also still Seraph preparing for the Jubilee’s closing ceremony.

When they said the Living Story would make changes to the world to make the players feel ‘they were there when it happened’ I surely didn’t expect it to be mostly bugged remains.

ArenaNet, if you want to know why the Living Story doesn’t feel alive it’s simply because it doesn’t matter to the NPCs what happens. Start removing event related npcs when the event is over, and make NPCs react to actual events.

Like thos quaggans in Kessex Hills: there’s a HUGE tower 5ft from their village and the still blabber about opening crab traps…which aren’t there.

Or are they ‘delusional’?

All of these changes could have been made without the clunky agony mechanics, the level reset or the leaderboards that nobody wanted.

Then again, we said the same when ascended gear was released and we were ignored back then. Why will it be different this time?

Don’t like the leaderboard anymore than I do the new agony mechanics. It sounds like it was designed by a 10 yeard old.

‘And the you get ranking, and you can get INFINITE agony resistance! AWESWOME!’

Not.

judging by the panic and confusion on the forums, I’d say it’s a safe bet that this change is even more ill concieved than the initial implementation of ascended gear. I remember having to explain over and over again to guildies that they needed an additional upgrade for their gear to actually get agony resistance. I have no idea how I’m gonna explain THIS to them…

Gallrvaghn.4921:

I just would like zerker staff eles to experience a little limelight in tPVP because as it stands now, it’s just pure bunker/support builds or reroll a heavy class.

Agreed,‘some variety would be nice though the meta will always be the meta, and the meta is pretty much set in its ways when it comes to eles. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with a signet build for staff ele and I’ve found it to be pretty strong. The signet’s immobilize and chill compliment the staff’s plethora of cc rather well.

Disagree. With the amount of finishers d/d has, it would be a little overpowered.