Guild Wars 2

Same here. I spent hours making my winters outfit look good. In the end, I found a color scheme to match Chauncey von Snuffles III. But of course, that’s no longer possible post-patch. So I returned my outfit, together with all my other town sets that now look uglier than a broken boot.

The global cooldown makes it useless yes.

I miss them too. I went from 4 town outfits to 0 in a single patch. Needless to say, I applied for a full refund of the items.

I miss my Chauncey von Snuffles III – matching outfit!

Just noticed that the Banker Golem that comes with the collector’s edition is now account bound. That means you can essentially make infinite golem bankers for your account to always have bank acces all the time.

What do you think? Bug? Exploit? Or should it just be turned into a permanent item to save us the hassle of creating new charcters (and Anet server usage)?

Seveer.6421:

Actual permanent content

No content was added. Everything was just quality of life stuff.

Sent a mail for a refund on all my town clothes and costumes because thanks to the new system, none of them can be dyed properly anymore.

Why didn’t Anet make the wintersday outfit into a individual item skins also? Why were regular town clothes turned into a frikkin’ tonic instead of skins for individual pieces? And why can outfits only by dyed as a whole instead of per piece like they used to?

I expected some changes, and some loss of items, sure. But this update made &all* of my many town outfits worthless. And it didn’t have to happen…

BlackBeard.2873:

ThiBash.5634:

So instead of balancing the elementalist, they made the balance between eles and thieves rest on a single skill. That’s just lazy, not good design.

I don’t think its lazy design, because it makes the fight much more involved.

No, it’s lazy design alright. Instead of actually rebalancing the elementalist, they just added a trait to cover the problem and shut us up. Instead of actually balancing the game, they can now point at the trait and say ‘but if you use that, you can survive it’. Never mind that it only works vs bursts and the rest of profession is still unplayable.

Balance for me would be elementalist being viable vs. burst/condition builds without being forced to use Stone Heart/Diamond Skin.

You know, actual balance, instead of mandatory hard counters?

Exedore.6320:

The Celestial change is a nerf compared to its pre-patch version

That’s only true if you look at damage (power/precision/crit). Add in defensive stats and condition damage, and it actually gets a buff.

but compared to post-patch berserker, the damage difference is smaller.

Agreed.

Did the changes for warrior’s healing signet take into account the ferocity nerf? Because if not, then maybe Anet’ll want to take it down a small bit more than just 8% after all.

Knighthonor.4061:

Has it ever been mentioned in a interview on what made Anet turn away from their new trinity mechanics?

They’re not trinity mechanics.

I’m curious about this ‘unique internet situation’ but I’m guessin I won’t get a reply due to the OP having to ration their bandwith…

I’ve had quite the opposite experience actually…teaching people, levelling them, helping them and in general trying to make their gameplay as enjoyable as possible…only to have them leave for a raiding guild a week after they dinged max level.

You can’t have a great guild without dedicated members, and I for one would rather have all the leechers and passives join some other guild instead of wasting my time.

doraemon.9170:

no dual legendary refunds ? So my dual incinerator didn’t have any refunds , i can’t get back anything ? good job , anet

That’s because legendaries are more than just a skin. They also offer you extra functionality, on top of the ‘never have to get another weapon again’ bonus.

Gandolfi.1507:

Just an idea. I did a quick search the forums for similar ideas but nothing came up. Any comments beyond the usual ’don’t waste resources on anything but bug fixes’ responses?

Don’t waste time on anything but guild halls and game balance?

No, I get your idea and it would be neat for eles and engis too. But quite frankly, I’m a little fed up with features being added that add nothing to gameplay. Where are the guild halls that were promised so much time ago? And even that I’d gladly delay some more if game balance were fixed instead of new traits added.

It’s quite smart actually. They both get to dissuade people from going to high population servers while at the same time getting lots of money from stubborn people that are willing to pay 10x what the actual transfer is worth.

Imagine the price drop if nobody transferred. Now imagine the price drop if people would leave instead of transferring if it weren’t free…

Is the wardrobe linked to a zone?

Astral Projections.7320:

Nope, it’s not tomorrow yet, it’s still today and will be today for another hour and a 15 minutes. After that THEN it will be today again.

Which means that it’ll never be tomorrow, and always today.

Except with countries in different timezones I suppose…it’ll be tomorrow there but from there perspective it’ll be today. And they can’t get their patch tomorrow because it’ll still be today in the USA, and when they finally get their patch it could very well be yesterday, so while some will get their patch tomorrow and others will get their patch yesterday, they’ll all get it today regardless…

I’m getting a bit confused now…

Nage.1520:

Many people felt, all along that town clothes are completely pointless because they can only be worn in town. For some people that’s the point but probably more people didn’t buy them at all because what is the point.

If you can’t really wear them, why buy them? That’s an issue that’s fixed by this change.

If you’d have an option to automatically switch to townclothes while in a town, they’d have been a lot more popular.

Angelica Dream.7103:

12 characters are a lot when you add in town clothes that Anet really screwed up.

That’s actually quite a solid argument…

I’m using a different finisher on each of my characters. My main gets the guild finisher, my asuran ‘golemancer’ the golem, and so on.

Even so, I’ll never need more finishers than I have characters, and although the minstrel would have been awesome for my main, I’m not gonna buy it. The fact that it’s limited-time only won’t change that.

It’ll never be tomorrow. It’ll always be today.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

staff ele will not work without fire 30:

Guess I’ve been doing something wrong for the past 15 months then.

But seriously, it’s hard not to do well with staff in PvE.

Consider swapping your Sigil of Force with a Sigil of Battle, and try running Conjure Frost Bow for its nuke (skill 4). That’ll make you do a lot of AoE damage.

After watching that video, I’m inclined to agree. I’ve personally found the staff to be a great weapon (even in 1v1). It’s mostly the instant bursts from thieves or the perma cc from engineers that made me doubt myself as a player. But the weapon itself is great. Lots of fun, and it has a lot of different tricks.

I have no doubt that for those that don’t like the staff now, it won’t be viable after the patch either. But for the rare few that play staff on pro level (which I’m not yet at, mind you) the changes will make them a force to be reckoned with for sure. Even in sPvP.

Veril.9408:

I was referring to the ability to apply DPS while in motion and without cast time.

Skills without cast time are a rarity…but so are skills that require a player to stand still while using them. The elementalist has 2 attacks that require them to stand still. All the others can be used while moving. And eles have quite a few instant or near instant skills.

Again. Guild Wars 2 isn’t like other mmo’s. You’ll be moving a lot more, and you’ll be doing a lot of things other than dps.

After hearing these audio files, I couldn’t help but wonder what the content was supposed to be. I’d love to see it ingame…so I got thinking…maybe a fanciest cat fractal?

I don’t get why the engineer needs a ‘role’ do begin with. It’s the same with ele, people don’t seem to get that in order to play them well, you don’t need to focus on a single thing. In fact, like the ele, it’s probably best if you don’t focus everything on 1 tactic. Engineers aren’t warriors after all.

GoodWithGravy.8019:

Vapor blade does (assuming the blade hits on the way back as well…) 44% of the damage of Lightning whip. Even with the weakness trait it only does 50% of the damage (again assuming both passes hit).

But it also causes 2 stacks of vulnerability, something people often overlook. And it hits everything in a line, so in some occasions it’ll be more useful than Lightning Whip (and sometimes it won’t be).

And it’s still a spammable 600 range attack, something full melee weapons never have. Flamethrower is the only thing that comes close.

Veril.9408:

I’m new to this game but not new to MMO’s.
I’ve always liked to min-max builds including classes (in this case professions).

In no game has there ever been a proper balance and I doubt this game has it either. One class is always superior at DPS than others.

So my question is:
Is this class superior in AoE DPS? What about single target DPS? What about burst in PvP?

One thing you gotta keep in mind is that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t apply a tank-healer-dps combat setup. In practice this means actual dps is much less important than in games like World of Kittencraft. Dealing a lot of damage is fine, and certainly useful. But all professions are damage dealers. DPS is not done by carefully min/maxing your stats or spending hours on spreadsheets. It’s all about how you play your profession, and they can all deal tons of damage in their own ways.

Just a heads up.

tigirius.9014:

I’m curious genuinely of how you came to the conclusion that the nerfing of Zerker would boost the condi damage? I’m not in the loop about that one. Is there actually going to be an increase or will it just look better because burst is nerfed? oh and is this PVE we’re speaking of?

If everyone else’s damage is reduced by 10%, and yours remains the same, then relatively speaking, you deal more damage.

As for actual damage…one of the devs mentioned something in a Ready Up a while back about lowering the health of dungeon bosses but increasing their armor to make condition damage more effective (but keep normal damage the same, %-wise). So it’s not higher numbers, but you’ll be doing more damage there.

VitalSuit.1980:

My advice is to never RP in a pvp setting, ever. Seriously whenever I saw Celestial Hills in TERA during a battlegrounds match I would groan very loudly over the mic because 9 times out of 10 they would RP and our team would lose as a result due to them not actually playing competitively but rather from an RP standpoint.

Which would probably mean hey had a lot more fun than you did though.

Sorry, I figured I’d make an attempt. I thought I was pretty clear in my explanation.

Ele/Engi: 1 stack sigil + 1 other.
Rest: 1 stack sigil + 3 other.

Can’t make it any clearer than that…

In my personal experience, the animation for Gust takes so long that the target can move all over the place in the meantime, and THEN it still has to travel to the target. It feels as if other, similar skills on different weapons have a much faster casting animation.

Swagg.9236:

The end of all this is that the decision to not use a signet active or to use a signet active for any given signet is made the second that the player slots it in. It’s an already-made decision. It’s not skillful or even conscious game-play. That’s what I’m trying to change.

In the past, a dev commented on that. He said that they want both simple and complex builds in the game, for those that enjoy it. A player that doesn’t want to make extensive combinations would go for builds like signets, turrets or minions. With the devs following that concept, I think it’ll be unlikely for this to change. Some builds just are simpler than others.

Swagg.9236:

Then get better at it. It’s a viable 1v1 spec in many situations if the pilot is actually thinking ahead. Remember that battles start at a distance of 3000 range.

If that’s your best argument then you’ve already lost the discussion. I do just about everything with staff, including duelling, roaming and sPvP. These suggestions come from over 1.5 years of playing experience on the staff and are intended as QoL changes rather than power creep.

You want to remove the idea of tracking a target or setting up a strike for damage. This is a simple skill that any ordinary human should be able to handle. Please don’t attempt to remove one of the few bastions of this skill that remains in the game.

Not at all. As I’ve said before, I’ve already removed the Lava Font due to better arguments than yours. The only thing I left was a placeholder so any replies to that would still make sense.

A non-reliance on an auto-attack is healthy of the game. Active, cool-down-balanced skill use that delivers well-cued attacks creates more legible combat for defenders and rewarding combat for attackers.

No argument there. Which is why I’m careful in my balancing of auto-attacks. I’m not calling for huge damage buffs. I’m not even touching Fireball or Stoning. All I’m suggesting is a slight change to Water Blast so that it won’t be a total waste in the rare cases that it is used.

In the end, here’s your problem: the majority of GW2 is broken/overpowered, so—instead of attempting to tone things down (the more difficult way because such efforts would need to incorporate the entire game)—you just want to buff the things that are actually well-balanced. Stop that.

A fix for gust going on cooldown without cast because your camera orientation was slightly off isn’t a buff. None of the changes proposed here are major buffs. They’re mostly aimed at making skills do what they’re supposed to.

Staff is in a decent place right now. But that doesn’t mean everything is working like it’s supposed to, and I’m asking for Anet to re-examine the things that in practice just don’t function.

Swagg.9236:

You’re further encouraging the development of spammy gameplay that is void of aiming, timing, positioning or thinking. Giving players the opportunity to dodge something is what is supposed to balance this game. Stop that.

My aim is to make staff slightly better at 1v1 duelling without adding anything that’ll make them more powerful in general. I’m fully aware of how the staff ele works, in fact I count myself among the biggest supporters. Staff doesn’t need huge changes or overhauls, just some tweaks. Any dot field already has the ‘move out of it’ balance option. What I’m asking for is to make the necro’s instant field damage apply to Lava Font too. And if you’d have read my post, you’d have seen I already ‘removed’ the suggestion anyway.

Build your combos and don’t auto-attack in water unless you’re fighting Mai Trin with max stacks. Stop being bad.

If you solution to a skill not working is “don’t use it” then you’ve effectively admitted that it’s in need of a change. So thanks for supporting my argument even if your intent was to talk me down.

My apologies, but I do not understand what you’re trying to achieve here. What’s the point of the skill? A super field that buffs and damages at the same time? How long will it last? Will it deal damage? It looks like a short duration Supply Drop without the supplies.

If it’s just a single field then I wouldn’t pick it over Glyph of Elementals. And 120s cooldown may be a bit low for an elite in general (the glyph has 120, but also gets 60 from its duration ofr a total of 180).

phaeris.7604:

Now can someone explain to me how the 20k number will actually occur. Because i’m pretty sure it’ll give about a 900 a tick burn, so how is the 20k relevant?

It’s the total damage dealt over the entire duration of burning. Drake’s Breath hits 4 times (if you’re lucky), meaning 6.5*4=26 seconds of burning. 26*900 =20k damage (give or take).

There are basically 2 reasons why zerker is optimal zerker:

-you don’t need much defense so you get as much attack as you can.
-the damage difference between zerker and non-zerker is so large that not going zerker loses you damage. It’s effectiveness increases exponentially.

The first reason will likely always exist for at least some players, regardless of how tough you make npcs. The second reason however, was adressed slightly. It’s not that anyone opposes people going zerker if they’re good enough. What people object to is that zerker was (is?) so strong that it makes all other gear useless in PvE. As some people have argued, going full zerker makes defending easier instead of harder because the fight is that much shorter.

Of course there’ll have to be some changes to make defense and healing desirable. I know of at least 1 planned change to make conditions more powerful in PvE. But closing the relative gap is a step in the right direction. Not the ultimate solution, but a step.

Tactu.4867:

Gust -> Why isn’t this skill behaving like mesmer’s Ilussionary wave ?

No idea. I’d be ok with a single target skill if it would actually hit something.

• Why only 1 blast finisher on staff ? why isn’t Ice spike a blast finisher ?
  (don’t tell me it would be too much . Look at Pistol whip (stun + evade + instagib damage + spammable) , or mesmer’s mostly skills that do more than 2 things at once)

My guess would be because of our great variety of combo fields. Since we also have utilities and traits for blast finishers, it might be a bit much if we get extra blast finishers on the staff.

If anything, Anet has said in the past that they didn’t want finishers and fields in the same attunement for staff. Maybe it’s time to change that, but I’d like to get the minor stuff in first.

• why our skills enter on short cooldown, without actually firing, if the target moved besides us , or behind .
  ( the other classes , their character automatically turns to face the opponent and fires the ability )

This seems like a major bug…which could mean it’ll get fixed on the 15th…here’s to hoping it will!

Fade.7658:

lol, a warrior asking for nerfs for another profession.

Pot and kettle, and all that.

True, but then again, you know it’s a problem if a warrior can’t even handle it.

cheese.4739:

Most of our +%dmg traits don’t work with LE, as has been said – I personally don’t see how making them do so would be OP, since to make use of several you’d need to burn through several attunement cooldowns (and not have any Arcana investment, since you’d spent points on the traits…) while only getting 1-2 seconds of the increased damage.

My guess is that it would lead to some crazy Arcane-based spike builds. Or just imagine casting a meteor shower and switching through a few attunements to empower it.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

interesting ideas, ThiBash.

for sake of discussion / collection of staff ideas:

Forgotten Legend.9281:

a little bit of a dream sheet of mine for staff skills:

Your ideas are a bit more…changing than mine. I kept mine close to the originals to avoid power creep as much as possible. In the hope that by doing so, they would be more likely to be implemented of course. Overall, I like staff. It’s just the little things that irk me.

cheese.4739:

Lava Font:
I’m pretty sure this skill should stay as it is – it’s got a very short cast time, which would need to be increased if it did damage instantly. It’s a powerful area-denial spell, since it can do so much damage – getting someone to waste their dodges getting out of it, or give away the positional advantage, is fine by me.
Super quick cast fire field, easy to chain into/from other skills, yes please. Slow cast but instant-ticking? Ew. We have enough easy-to-rupt skills on Staff as it is.

Good point. I suppose if other changes were implemented, Lava Font would be fine. I’ll cross it off the list.

BlackBeard.2873

Yea, now the thief will have to actually pay attention to their opponent rather than just attacking mindlessly into a strong defense.

Good thieves will find a way to play around it, but it will make the fight between ele and thief much more even.

I just trust myself to be better than most thieves, who are pretty predictable.

So instead of balancing the elementalist, they made the balance between eles and thieves rest on a single skill. That’s just lazy, not good design.

a t s e.9614:

I think they will end up nerfing it pretty hard due to the player anger, even though the thief is not OP but its frustrating to get ganked by a thief.

Depends on your point of view. If you’re a light armor wearing elementalist with health less than a thief’s intial burst, then I’d say the complaints are valid. Especially since even IF said elementalist somehow survives this attack, the thief can stealth and redo the same trick a few seconds later, while said elementalist still has 50 seconds cooldown left on their defensive skills and had zero chance to return a hit.

The problem could be fixed by just giving eles 5k more health. But that’s too simple for Anet.

I actually prefer having a cap. Makes it less of a race, less of a ‘MUST GET OR WILL LOSE OUT FOREVER!’ thing.

Wanderer.3248:

Chuck Norris would kick both their kitten s.

Chuck Norris got beaten senseless by Bruce Lee.

It would make discussion harder…but I’ve done as you suggested and made a condensed post on the ele forums.

Someone on the balance forums asked me to put all these changes in a single post so here it is. This of course is just my opinion and not those of the full forums. So feel free to discuss.