Guild Wars 2

@Godfat

I share very much of your experience. I’m no sPvP player, and I first set foot in WvW because of crafting tables. Then, I followed some comms, didn’t like it so much, so I started to get involved in “PPT business” : take camps, flip sentries, take towers, escort dollies, scout towers or keeps etc. And I honestly felt useful. To me, that’s a big incentive.

I had very nice times in WvW, but I’m getting bitter because of some things. Amongst them :

• Meta builds all around. Even if I can understand that, I think it’s stale.
• Commanders that don’t care : “Sorry, I’m doing GvG, I won’t help defend that T3 tower on the way to my next fight.”
• Commanders that don’t care bis : “Sorry, I said I began leading in 3mn32s, so I won’t help you defend your T3 tower next to spawn.”
• Population imbalance associated to 2-1-1 system : “OK, so we’re against name server here this week. They have 3 times our population, so they can run 2 omniblob on each map and they’ll be first whatever we do.” Another idea that could have been fine if there weren’t that nasty thing called reality to say it’s not.
• Lame rewards : “Oh great ! I spent the last hour scouting a keep, taking back camps, escorting dollies so that it reaches T3 for one new tome of knowledge !”
• No kind of winning : “Phew… Now home is all our colour. We worked nice, and thus we get… Well… Eternal satisfaction of having home our col… Whoops, there’s now a camp to take back.”

What the OP quotes sounds somehow like TESO bounty and duel system. Yet I’m not convinced with it (and unchecked it, as far as I’m concerned). PvE is not, and should not be the place for players to fight each other. Moreover, the overall lore and story leads the character to be good and true. So there’s no way ever the character could steal or randomly kill innocent people.

The only solution I see is to provide arenas that’d allow players to fight with a PvE build in a less structured fashion than sPvP. Aren’t Obsidian Sanctum or guild arenas supposed to fulfill that task ? (I honestly don’t know, I never set foot in any of those).

Anyway, all that PvP in open world thing makes me feel like some ppl just want “to be the bad guy”. Sorry ppl. In GW, you’ll never be the bad guy.

Hello folks,

I saw a post in the WvW forum that I’m quoting just here.

CHIPS.6018:

I can say so much more. I had been playing since the beta of GW1. So I was there when we had like 200 skills for each character to work with. And now we have like 10 skills in GW2, and everyone in WvW runs the same bar. Because there is only 1 skill bar that is effective. I know having 200 skills is hard to balance. But Anet has totally turn 180 degrees in GW2 and KILLED all creativity. It is almost like they are making a DOTA or LOL, which limit your character to 4 skills. This is one of the biggest reason that the game got boring for me. I honestly has been running the same skill bar (same 10 skills) for like the past 2 years. Buffing and nerfing skills DOESN’T fix anything. We just have 10 skills in GW2 compared to like 200 skills back in GW1.

Oh and back in GW1 the mobs (yes now I am getting into PvE) would actually try to fight the players on an even level. Mobs actually have unique skill bars that they know how to use to try to beat the players FAIR AND SQUARE. Now in GW2 we have mobs that is TOTALLY OPed stat wise but TOTALLY MINDLESS. Even the most regular mobs have like 10 times the health of the player, but they do not know how to play the game at all. The mobs just overwhelms the players by higher stats and numbers. Anet you honestly have no idea how disappointed I was, coming from GW1, when I walked into a GW2 dungeon for the first time. Honestly Anet you should have seen a problem with the game when the players feels like they are in a DIFFERENT UNIVERSE from the mobs. When the players have 20k hp, even the most regular mobs often have like 200k hp. When the players hit for 2k damage, the mobs hits for like 8k. etc

As a fellow GW1 player, I must say that I saw the light falling from the sky. Because there’re things that I find irritating, and I feel like there’s a trend in this that may be dangerous, because of design flaws :

• Roles vs. Professions : GW2 initial design was to remove the trinity. Why not ? Even if in GW1, every professions had at least one heal. In the beginning of GW2, mobs were flavoured, yet roles are now back in business (just think of mordrem menders). The issue is : players still don’t have role based professions. They have flavours with elite specs, but no roles.
• Design priorities : character skills have known ne “big” revamp, and tweaks here and there, but nothing new. Which means that if you’re running staff ele since beta, you’re still casting the 20 same spells ever since. Monster skills pool is swelling and swelling…
• Difficulty design : Back in GW1, monsters had their profession and skill bar, which led to think of team composition and learning to beat them. Now, it’s 1 – swarms of mobs 2 – insane amount of HP 3 – ridiculous damage output. Just think of that storm icebrood kodans can summon. Just think of how roughly every world bosses are.
• “Do as I say, not as I do” : Stealth gliding ? Let’s make a map where mobs can see through it. Interrupts ? Let’s make mobs insta re-cast their skills. Stun breakers ? Let’s make CC that work another way. The list could drag.
• Lore : people don’t feel involved in the story, because everything runs without them. They’re bare witness of events. Whatever the player think his character should do doesn’t matter because there’s no choice.

TL;DR : Conclusion :
I feel like the path GW2 is taking is dangerous. Because there’s a gap that’s getting bigger and bigger between what players options are (skills, lore choices) and what is given to them (lore, mobs with their new skills). as CHIPS stated, all points above makes me feel like my character lives in a different universe than the rest of Tyria : he doesn’t share the same skills, nor the same stats, and whatever he expects to do doesn’t really work because of… reasons. That leads to lots of frustration and helplessness. or now, players can still omniblob things so that the shift reduces… yet, it leads to HoT meta-events being impossible because maps are deserted. It also leads to bandit champions being nerfed because when the omniblob is not here, they shine for what they are : insane stats mobs with insane skills any player would dream of.

I strongly suggest the whole crew to get a closer look as these design flaws, otherwise, devs may some day raise their heads off their design circle, in which they were deafly talking lore and skills and “let’s create that mob that can do ….”, to realize that players don’t care anymore.

That may not be for GW2, not even for the next xPAC, but should there be a GW3 some day, better take tough designs ideas, and stick with them.

Thanks for reading.

The music is good indeed. Then, maybe the fight is a bit outdated.

To me, the first part is still fair : fear isn’t much of a problem, there’re different kind of attacks that require some attention. Maybe too much CC. Anyway, my regret is the mechanism leads to everyone packing in the “effective” spot, then run autoattack till burn phase. Maybe something should be thought about that.

Then a big big big turn down to me : usually, after 2nd burn phase, he crashed. Yet, when the burn phase is very effective, Claw can be downed to like 30-40% HP. And then he crashes and…. heals ?

Second part of the part is the most boring to me, mostly because just stack and autoattack, which is not how it supposed to work, so it takes ages. The golem thing is a good idea, but maybe it takes too long too. The ledges are a scaling pain.

So, Claw of Jormag is not so bad, but clearly needs some cleaning, dusting and polishing, to become a better challenge.

Now, for specifics :

OriOri.8724:

• Dodge rolling resets bleed duration and also doubles the stacks? This is ridiculous. Either one would be OP. Bleeding is fine as it is

My idea on that one was one stack of bleed would deal insignificant damage, but stacks could raise very quickly.

OriOri.8724:

• Burning spreading to adjacent foes should absolutely be something you have to trait for, it should never, ever be a baseline or it shoots burning way higher than other condis in a condi build. Way too powerful to be baseline, and really its too powerful to even trait for unless its nerfed a bit along with this.

It actually depends on the condi duration. Burn should be a really quick condi. One or two ticks, no more.

OriOri.8724:

• Worry just sounds awful. Punishing players for literally doing nothing?

That’s the idea indeed. My idea was punishing player that, roughly, run away, or that cast everything they have. Yet, on second thought, correlating it with CD may not be the best way to do it.

OriOri.8724:

• Currently chill increases skill CD, why did you switch this to slow? Though I support reducing it to 50% increased CD duration

Mostly because it made more sense to impair endurance through “chill” than “slow”. But that’s mere words.

OriOri.8724:

• Cripple removing the ability to dodge would be OP. Sure, it would make fighting DD a kittenton easier, but its way too much. They already can barely move with cripple applied, why remove their ability to dodge as well? Just keep it as 50% reduction in moving speed.

On the dodge + endurance topic, I feel like it’s a key mechanism in fights, especially for DD indeed, yet there aren’t so many things that impair it. Weakness in its current state, and that’s all. I want some conditions to give a hard time to compulive dodgers. Hence, bleed and that new cripple effect. Another solution :

• Cripple : additionnal effect : 50% chance to be knockdown while dodging.

OriOri.8724:

• Clumsiness is just a nerfed form of Weakness. Why even add this to the game and change Weakness? Keep weakness as it is.

See below.

OriOri.8724:

• First off, Vuln should still affect both direct and condi damage, no need to change Weakness. Secondly, you just suggested making Vuln 10x more powerful. A full stack of Vuln would now mean that someone is taking 2.5x more damage. 250 damage instead of 100. That’s absolutely insane for PvP. I could get behind this in PvE (well maybe if it was nerfed to 5% instead of 10%), but it should never ever happen in PvP or WvW

I didn’t think much of figures. It’ll need tweaking.

OriOri.8724:

• Despair doesn’t even make any sense. This effect, if ever implemented, should be on a boon and affect the attacker, it shouldn’t be on the guy being attacked.

Not necessarily. Vulnerability has he same outcome than might, yet both exist. Why not the same about crits ?

OriOri.8724:

• Resilience sounds interesting, but shouldn’t it scale off of toughness if anything?

I hesitated for that one. The reason I chose the healing stat is Resilience can be considered an anticipated healing. Yet the true reason is I think the healing stat is underrated, and I think lots of player don’t invest in it. If Resilience had a formula like threshold = 500 + 5 times healing stat, than maybe people would invest more in it ! I acknowledge that’s a bit artificial.

OriOri.8724:

• The change to Retaliation is interesting. I wonder if this would be too much though.

It may be. I think retaliation should be a quick boon. Anyway, on its current status, unless you focus your build on it (there used to be a guardian build I think), it doesn’t have much effect.

Linken.6345:

If you want to mirror condi and direct damage like you have for almost all the other sub groups then clumsiness would deal half damage to the one dealing the blow.

I like this one. I’ll edit my post.

Thanks everyone for feedback.

As many stated, I was looking for more symmetry between direct and condi damage, so that a buid crafting would be neater.

The visual clutter put apart, I don’t think that system would be harder than the current one. At first, because of the categories system. It prevents the 1 boon = 1 category effect, and it’d allow traits and skills to work for several condis or boons at once. There’s already something similar for movement impairing conditions. I just generalized it.

Now, I actually browsed the GW1 enchantement and hexes system to see what the trends were. There’re some of them that now work as boons and condis, and some other that work as traits or skills now. Anyway, for those who remember it, there used to be far more hexes and enchantements than the 15+15 I wrote here ! It wasn’t more difficult because players only knew what was on them, and what they cast on others. About foes or friends, they only knew they were having hexes or enchantements. That can be thought of.

Last thing on that topic : skill access. I can’t envision (and don’t endorse) a way to be able to cast all the condis or boons. A class (and/or elite spec) should only be able to access some of them.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Why did you swap Swiftness and Quickness? Seems unnecessary.

Because I always confuse them… My bad. I edited it.

Orpheal : thanks about your post. I also had the idea of a condi revamp (+ boon and CC’s too) but never really had the courage to write it down. Now you gave me the incentive, even if I imagined more conditions than you did. You can find it here.

Crowd Controls:

A new system requires each character to get a breakbar, very similar to NPC’s :

• Blue breakbar would be filled an amount determined by toughness stat.
• A broken breakbar would place the character in stun status i.e. : immobilized, can’t use skills but stun breakers, incoming damage increased.
  The base stun duration is reduced by toughness stat.
• Once broken out of stun, breakbar turns ochre and character gets immune to any CC. The bar fills at constant pace, meaning that the bigger the bar is (toughness) the longer the immunity lasts.
• Stun breaker skills would either break a CC, or partially refill the blue breakbar. They won’t affect the ochre breakbar.

Now, there will be only 2 categories of crowd control skills. Both of these CC categories will trigger while “blue breakbar” is up and they’ll consume defiance as well.

• Movement CC : fear, taunt (remove the attack thing), float, sink etc. The character moves uncontrollably yet every skill remain available. Should several movement CC be up, only the most defiance-consuming will have an effect.
• Disrupting CC : daze, knockdown, push, pull etc. The purpose of these is, as their name says, to disrupt the pace of a fight. Their immediate effect would be to put any skill that is not on CD, in a 0,25s CD state. They can have a “fast” displacement effect as well. If a disrupting CC is put on an enemy already under a movement CC, then the defiance he already lost because of the movement CC will be removed from the cost of the disrupting CC.

Conlusion :

I hope such a clean up would allow to bring more balance between condi and direct damage, as well as shed more light to the healing stat. I also hope it’ll prevent stunlock builds.
In a more distant future, I hope such changes will allow neater combinaisons and more build diversity.
Thanks for attention !

Boons :

• Damage mitigation : these reduce the incoming damage. They last “long”.
  • Protection : reduce direct damage of 33%
  • Resistance : reduce condi damage of 33%
  • Purity : condis expire 33% faster
• Damage cancellation : these cancel some damages. Their duration is shorter and they self-expire when condition is met.
  • Aegis : next attack is cancelled
  • Resilience : all damage (condi+direct) taken during uptime is cancelled. Resilience has a cancellation threshold, based on healing stat.
  • Retaliation : incoming damage is mirrored to the enemy 1 for 1. No stat involved.
• Outgoing damage : these focus on increasing outgoing damage
  • Might : increase power stat
  • Fury : increase precision stat
  • Malice : increase condi dmg. stat
• Speed-related : these focus on making things faster.
  • Swiftness : increase movement speed
  • Quickness : increase attacks speed
  • Alacrity : reduces skills CD
• Gain over time : these provide continuous gains.
  • Regeneration : health gains, based on healing stat
  • Vigor : endurance gains, based on vitality
  • Stability : defiance gains, based on toughness

Hello folks,

I’ve been thinking about a way to clean things up for a new condi + boon + CC system that’d mostly allow more lisibility. It involves a splitting in categories that’d allow traits or skill to focus at a definite kind of condis or boons, hence, more diversity and refinement possibilities.

All this will require a re-work of some traits and skills, but I think it’s worth it.

Conditions :

• Damage conditions : these do damages at each tick plus an additionnal effect. They rely on condi damage and expertise stat. They can stack intensity (for damage only) and duration :
  • Bleeding : lowest damage output. Each dodge roll (success ful or not) doubles th bleeding stacks and reset the bleeding CD.
  • Poison : intermediate damage output. Halves healing stat efficiency.
  • Burning : highest damage output. Burning spreads to adjacent foes.
• Punishment conditions : these only deal damage when a specific condition is met. They rely on condi damage and expertise stat. They can stack intensity and duration :
  • Confusion : damage on skill activation (whatever the outcome of that skill is)
  • Torment : damage on movement
  • Worry : damage each time a skill CD expires
• Movement conditions : whatever happens, they provide a 33% speed reduction. Each has an additionnal effect. They can only stack duration, and hence rely only on expertise.
  • Chilled : additionnal effect : -50% endurance regeneration
  • Slow : additionnal effect : +50% skills CD
  • Crippled : additionnal effect : 50% chance to get knockdowned at dodge roll.
• Outgoing damage : these affect the ability of the victim to deal damage. They only stack duration and rely on expertise only.
  • Blind : next attack misses
  • Clumsiness : next attack has 50% chance to deal half damage to caster and half to victim.
  • Distraction : condis applied have 50% chance to be self-applied
• Incoming damage : these increase damage recieved by the victim. They stack intensity and duraction ; they rely on expertise only.
  • Vulnerability : +10% direct damage recieved. Formula is : incoming damage*1.1^k k = number of stacks
  • Weakness : +10% condi damage recieved. Same formula
  • Despair : +2% chance to be critted. Formula is : initial chance + 2%*k. k = number of stacks

BlaqueFyre.5678:

ThomasC.1056:

The idea may be interesting, but there’s already a stat that governs condition duration. Moreover, your point has a major flaw : condition do damage over time, and their efficiency lessens should they be cleansed (or resistance up).

Just imagine it the other way : you just got, let’s say, a zerk rev hammer CoR crit you for 5k HP. And now, you use utility skill #7, and voilà, damage nullified. That makes no sense.

To me, and as I stated in another thread, condi dire and trailblazer are not “meta”. They’re as should be. The issue is power builds don’t have enough access to vitality stat that’d allow them to handle both direct and condi damage.

Only referencing the the Bolded.
You mean like popping a heal skill??voila damage completely nullified! Bahahaha jokes aside conditions wouldn’t be too bad if they couldn’t do massive spike damage on some classes, if they were solely just DoT then they wouldn’t be an issue but they are not solely DoT when you have classes that can almost instantly pop 12-15 stack of multiple conditions on you in a very short time period that’s no longer DoT. They need to address those cases.

Of course there’re healing skills. And to me, the whole healing stat is underrated. Mostly because fights tend to be too quick to make heal useful. This said, heal restores health however you lost it. It works the same for direct and condi damage, that’s why what you says is irrelevant. A condi cleanse is the bare nullification of incoming damage. This is the reason why condis should take more time to kill and thus, why dire or trailblazer stat makes sense.

Then again, one side of the issue is condis kills too fast, I agree on that point. This comes from the amount of cleanse and the resistance thing. The other side is direct damage is not effective enough. In itself, it works, but I feel like there’re too many ways to mitigate it.

The idea may be interesting, but there’s already a stat that governs condition duration. Moreover, your point has a major flaw : condition do damage over time, and their efficiency lessens should they be cleansed (or resistance up).

Just imagine it the other way : you just got, let’s say, a zerk rev hammer CoR crit you for 5k HP. And now, you use utility skill #7, and voilà, damage nullified. That makes no sense.

To me, and as I stated in another thread, condi dire and trailblazer are not “meta”. They’re as should be. The issue is power builds don’t have enough access to vitality stat that’d allow them to handle both direct and condi damage.

In my opinion, that system could be interesting, providing the population balance is good. In this way, the “3rd” may not lose all hope to do a come back.

Yet, look at EU T1 matchup : on 39 skirmishes, the leading server won 35 of them. That server is able to cover all maps with trains and barely went below half possession. It’s been the same for weeks. With that new system, the 2 non-leading servers are actually shrugging and saying “ok, they’re first, and we’ll have the chocolate medal”. At least, when it was 3-2-1, it made sense to fight for 2nd place.

Maybe they’re better and maybe there’re more of them, but for that kind of situation, 2-1-1 is plain stupid.

That tablecloth on the female version seems totally awkward and out of topic. This outfit would have been great without it.
Likewise, I’m still wondering while they felt the urge to put pajamas below the armor in the male version, while the female’s goes naked under the ice. Just get rid of pajamas, and show some muscle !

Too bad ANet. I liked this one, the icy part is nice, and I’d totally have bought it, if it hadn’t been for all that unnecessary clothing.

I’d actually enjoy that system. Here’re the points I see for such a device :

• Heroes would only join you in instanced content : story, dungeons, raids etc.
• You unlock heroes through exploring, meetings, choices, and maybe the crown/fist/heart dialogue system to “persuade” them to join you. It could imply doing some quest too. You’d such be able to unlock more or less iconic NPC’s like Occam, Beigarth, Malyck ?, Almorra, Master of Whispers, and why not Destiny’s Edge or Marjory, Kasmeer and whatever name this guild got.
• Second option : through another quest system, you’d unlock other characters of your account.
• Once unlocked, your heroes live in your home instance.
• You can customize skills, traits and gear of your heroes in home instance.
• You hire heroes from your home instance in a “Please follow me in my next quest” dialogue thing.
• In the instance, you can control your heroes very much like you did in GW1. I liked this system of flags and roles, and ability to manually trigger skills.

Defender is terrible. Sometimes, you’re here, you do thngs, you kill PC, you get credit for event, you don’t get daily. Sometimes, you do all of the above, you don’t get credit. Sometimes, you stomp PC right after event expires and before it starts back and you don’t get credit.

Sometimes you just walk there minding your business, and you get the achievement.

Defending a tower or a keep by standing on wall and trying to shoot whatever is below. “Out of sight” “You’re dead.”

That is really frustrating, and really hard to stand.

You may be right, but in the current status, it has to be done carefully.

Indeed, one thing you forgot about the frequency is balance fixes lead to a quick discover of “meta/cheese” builds that use synergies in the new set of skills/traits etc. which eventually makes them better than current “meta/cheese” builds that will be nerfed.

So, you can be sure that as soon as a balance patch is out, there’s a wall of “plz nerf this !” from people who have been nerfed and are failing against builds that have been bossted. Or threads “okay, ANet decided to kill put profession or meta here”.

In a nutshell : there’s an adaptation time so that people will get the fixes, agree they’ll have to deal with it, may think of new builds if they want to change, test them and get used to them. And this is how a new meta blooms.
On another hand, increasing the frequency may be a way to “keep things blurred”, hence prevent the meta/cheese trend. And so, work for diversity.

It has to be thought of.

Dawdler.8521:

Is it really so hard to understand the concept of endgame zones? Its supposed to be high level! Its supposed to be harder than running around on a farm outside DR!

But even so and even with the massive boost of elites and veterans in the instanced story mission, the new zone itself is… meh. I really dont see the difficulty. I can run in and farm berries in the forrest just fine without even attacking the mobs. Are the Svanir trickier? Sure they are. That massive attack killed me the first time as it completely caught me by surprise. But again… its a freaking endgame zone thats supposed to be hard.

Its not even going to be a challenge in a couple of months anyway, when people have adjusted. Hell I remember the first time I went into Arah. It was guild run and it took us 2 godkitten hours to give up and fail the path. Thats godkitten right. We failed it and I’m proud to say that. Nowadays a freaking thief can solo that kitten.

You are right on this topic : it’s endgame zone. Or high level, whatever… But the map has got a big grind taste as well. So it leads to the current frustration : you want to grind but mobs are swarming so it makes the grind tedious. They’re indeed not so hard (some details like big storm put aside), you can manage them, so it doesn’t feel like they’re endgame content (like dungeons, bosses etc.).

I like the new maps, yet I feel like something needs more balance.

I must agree with the fact that walking in bitterfrost is a real pain. Well, of course, we’re near Jormag, so there’re Svanir and icebroods everywhere. But you’re attacked at each step. And frozen. And elementals turn you into a frozen popsicle at 5000 range. And foes pop almost as soon as they’re dead ! Sure it’s no quiet place !

By the way, there’s a painful issue in bloodstone fen, near Hablion’s place. Ghosts pop and you can have like 10 ghosts at the same place pixelwise. I’m not sure it’s normal.

I suppose this topic would have been better in the lore section… Whatever…

I empathize with what the OP says. HoT and LWS3 feel staler than the rest. We only got 3 episodes so far. 3 new maps with a nice flavour, sure, but on the story topic, it’s poor. First : each story is finished very fast. First one was ok, and led to interesting questions (Lazarus, Caudecus, what exactly happened…). Second and third one are more of a disappointment : the most part of the “story” is “the map tour and how to do hearts”. Moreover, side characters are behaving in a frustrating way (Braham and Marjory…), and the overall dragon plot seems too obvious.

What feels disappointing in that is I don’t feel involved. I can’t possibly want more than “see what happens next”, because I don’t have any choice. In GW2 core story, there were choices : character creation choices, and orders choices (2 for each missions !). Currently, there’s no such thing. There used to be a “crown/heart/fist” dialog system, that was let down. I’d have been happy to have various answers for Braham or Marjory with “crown/heart/fist”. Even if it’s cosmetic ! Even if it doesn’t change the outcome… Of course, I understand that the “tree of possibles” grows exponentially with each choice.

Like someone above said, I’d also enjoy NPC’s to have more dialogs, and maybe dialogs that change with the episode you are in (and the exact place in episode). That’d give the feeling the world evolves as the player gets farther in the story.

Last thing about LSW3 : there’re too many pending questions (pale tree, Caudecus, Malyck, Kasmeer, just to quote these ones). Of course, some will have answers in the upcoming updates, but maybe this feels too messy. Likewise, the overall plot seems too obvious, even if I anticipate Braham or Marjory to do something silly that’ll require the player to get things fixed.

LWS1, to me, had two major qualities :

• The plot was somehow more appealing. I mean : there were the obvious things, and at the same time, everyone was positive there was a bigger scheme, that was later unveiled. LWS2 didn’t have that feeling, because it was an in-between. LWS3 doesn’t have that feeling either for now, partly because of the “too many pending topics” issue.
• The plot took place in existing maps. Don’t get me wrong : I like new maps, and I like these ones. Yet, bloodstone fen is now mostly empty (hard to do Jade events here), ember bay is a big grindfest, as bitterfrost frontier is. And I bet those maps will eventually become empty when everyone will have ascended trinkets. Now, think about LWS1 : just 2 things : twisted marionette and kessex hills. (I’m not even mentionning Lion’s Arch !). To me, these were real success.

As a conclusion, I’ll add that we only got 3 episodes, so I suppose the dust will settle, and the fog will cleanse. Yet, I’d really appreciate to be more involved into the story, get more choices, and less grind.

Mixing and matching armors are the reason why they’ll always be better than outfits. They allow more creativity. Here’s my favorite one : my revenant.

Xillllix.3485:

Remember how the game was about 3 months after launch?

WvW fights were so engaging. There was literally no skill spam at all.

Actually, I’ve seen that again during HoT beta, when they were releasing the elite specs. There were lots of fights around spawn camps that took some time because both fighters :

1. were testing the build
2. didn’t really know what they were doing
3. didn’t run an optimized build.

In my opinion, these weren’t the less enjoyable fights

Exciton.8942:

I don’t understand where this condition meta is.
The only meta condition damage dealer is reaper and that is it.
All other profession meta are power. So your criteria is that not even one profession is allowed to play condition as an optimal build?

Even in PvP, you have about 50-50 split on condition and power. How does that make condition overpowered?

I’m not talking about PvP, as stats are given from another mechanic. I was mostly sharing thoughts about the so-called condi meta that some people here are complaining about.

I mostly play condi, and I enjoy it. Matter of taste. My wish is everyone should be able to play the fashion he likes, and enjoy it too.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Ways to mitigate power damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Protection, Aegis, Toughness

Ways to mitigate condition damage:
Dodge, block, invulnerability, Resistance, cleanse, Vitality

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with power:
Between 1 and 10 seconds

Time it takes to deal 10 – 20k damage with conditions:
Between 15 and 30 seconds

After your health has disappeared from a large critical hit from power, that’s it. Your health is gone. You can heal, if your heal is available, or it’s gone forever.

After enough conditions are applied to you that they could potentially deal a massive amount of damage (eg. having 15 stacks of Bleed transferred to you from a Necromancer), your health is still there but going down quickly. You can remove the Bleeds or apply Resistance if you have access to it negating the damage completely. Imagine if you landed a 20k Gunflame (Berserker F1 burst skill) and someone “cleansed” the damage and went back to full health. That would be pretty annoying, don’t you think?

Conditions are fine. Players are just moronic.

You’re right to talk about dodge and blocks. I didn’t mention them because I wanted to keep it only about “passive” mitigation (even if heal is not so passive…) and whatever, it works for both.

I agree aconditions are fine, and this was my conclusion. I mostly play conditions so I won’t get angry against them

The Game Slayer.7632:

I lol’d. How is it that you don’t understand that a condi class can stack mitigation + damage so much more effectively than a power class?

This is where there’s unbalance. Condi damage (and condi duration) determine how effective you are at dealing damage. Power + Precision + Ferocity are required for direct damage builds.
Now, if you want to mitigate whatever damage, you’ll need tons of vitality, and you can add toughness if you want to be more effective against direct damage.

So, you actually need less stats when you play condi damage, and this is why dire is so effective. Condi damage + Mitigation against both damages.

To me, the issue is power damage hasn’t enough access to vitality stats. Considering power builds need 3 stats for the damage part, it’d be logical they rely mostly on vitality to mitigate both kinds of damages. Yet, there aren’t many options for that…

I totally agree with the skritt tunnel suggestion, and I will do it every time it pops again.

I’d go farther : keep your options, and add a tunnel network between all 4 towers (have the tunnel make a square. No diagonals). That’d improve greatly mobility, and give a strong incentive to hold towers.

When you look at what’s the most effective for the least efforts, you can see that it’s roughly the same for every classes : hit hard and fast.

In PvE, you can roughly play whatever style suits you ; it’ll only take more time to get the foe down. In WvW, it’s critical and leads to trends and meta that end up being toxic. I’m not talking about PvP, being unfamiliar with it.

Specifically for PvE, there’s a huge need for utilities and traits rework so that the gap between “what works” and “what I enjoy” becomes the narrowest with any playstyle.
WvW additionnaly needs an increase of base HP in every professions so that fights would last longer, hence allowing profession mechanics to start and work. If the fight finishes at first strike, then it only favors “hit hard and run” tactics.

Ho-Ho-Tron vs. Marcello was a great moment in GW2 history. Yet, all those Thing-O-Tron are an absolute pain indeed.

They’re talking all the time and are note remotely fun at all. Moreover, the french voice for them is catastrophic.

I totally endorse a way to shut other characters noisy devices up.

Hello folks,

I’m opening this thread in WvW forum because I feel like it’s where it belongs : PvP uses different mechanics, and PvE is less critical on this matter. I want here to share some thoughts abot balance, diversity, the condi meta, and the fights in general. I don’t want to rant or ask for nerfs or say whatever way of playing is lame. I’ll focus mainly on small scale. Zergs work because of numbers.

There’re mainly two ways of dealing damage : direct damage and condi damage. From my point of view, I’m seeing two main trends :

1. Use of condi damage ; it has not always been.
2. Fast paced fight, and/or “one-way fights”, i.e. long range kiting or stunlock. Hence “one-way”, because the other protagonist can’t really take part.

Why condi damage ?
It’s a matter of effectiveness, so, how are damages mitigated ? Through stats and boons. Vitality, healing and regeneration provide broad sustain. Toughness and protection are specific to direct damage, while resistance is specific to condi damage. As a result (or is it just a coincidence ?), access to vitality is harder :

• 4 stats gear : major in one, minor in 3 ; toughness is major in 4, and minor in 2
• 3 stats gear : major in 2, minor in 6 ; toughness is major in 5, and minor in 6.

I didn’t quote them all, yet vitality stats don’t seem to be the most popular ones, dire put apart. Adding to the boonshare effect, and liberal access to protection, it leaves most classes more vulnerable to conditions than direct damage.

How can balance and diversity be brought ?
Here’s my suggestion. Make fights longer by strongly increasing base HP in every classes. The outcome of a fight will then be determined by whom can have the better sustain. And thus, allow class-gimmicks. They’re not hard to find, here’re some examples :

• Warrior : high baseline stats
• Ranger : long-range, pets, access to boons
• Mesmer : use of decoys
• Guardian : high heal, condi cleanse, access to boons
• Elementalist/Revenant : jack of all trade, switch between mechanics
• Thief : hit and run tactics, stealth and disengage.

I’m mentionning here ways of dealing with a long fight, not ways of dealing damage on purpose.
Currently, I feel like the most unbalanced thing is the ability for direct damage to kill in roughly one spike, meaning the other one won’t be able to activate its own mechanics. It’s “thief tactics” (no offense here), not suited to every class.

Condi system may be slightly better on this topic, because it takes time to work, so the fight can linger. Yet, the “dire” stats makes it really hard for the victim to do a comeback, usually because of its lower HP pool.

Last but not least, having a higher HP pool would prevent stunlock tactics because once all the CC are cleared or expire, the victim still has enough HP to hold its land.

TL;DR
Condi currently works better because there’re more ways to mitigate direct damage than condis. Access to vitality stat thus becomes critical.
The best way to bring more balanced fights and diversity would be to increase base HP in every classes. As the fight wouldn’t end at first strike, it’d allow profession specific mechanics to become efficient in sustain management.

Some attack skills (ranger longbow or mesmer GS autoattack) are distance-dependant. Yet, there’s no way to know accurately the distance of target opponent.

My suggestion : add somehow a symbol over the icon like :

• No symbol : medium range, medium damage
• One down arrow : shortest range, least damage
• One up arrow : highest range, highest damage

Vermignus could actually be an interesting world boss if there were any challenge in it. For now, even when the scaling is so high that 2-3 champion wurm pop at the same time, the golem in itself isn’t remotely damaged.

I’d love to have the event require a bunch of healers to take care of the golem. I’d love the event require additionnal DPS, and not “just let the golem do its job” to be done.

Yet, it’s ember bay, so it has to be easy… Too bad. The idea was interesting. Maybe some day, we’ll get a twisted marionette-level thing.

Still, I love Vermignus because of the wicked asura Ahadd. “Yes ! More pawa ! Ha ha ha !” The french dubbing on this one is excellent.

I agree about the “more small group content”. Fractals are a thing (even if I’m truly not convinced by the agony system) but more dungeons with sub-stories would definitely be a plus.

As for the roles… I think if was a good idea to get rid of trinity. Yet, I’m somehow not so happy about the way it’s done. Some classes have a feeling of “good for everything = good for nothing”. And it leads to the DPS only meta as the most effective way to have things done.

The only solution I can see is designing class so that they could run and be effective in, say, 3 of the roles you’re stating (3 as in 3 traits lines). That requires a deep revamp of mechanics of a huge bunch of utilities in roughly every classes. Good luck.

Danikat.8537:

I agree it would be helpful if they would add storage in the wallet or something similar for all the different keys, but Anet have said several times it’s not going to happen. I have no idea why, and as far as I know they haven’t elaborated on it but it seemed pretty definite.

Blood rubies, petrified wood and winterberries are tricky because they’re not just a currency, they’re also salvageable and I think they can be used in crafting recipes too. As long as there’s not too many of them I don’t mind them staying in the inventory.

I’m not sure what you mean by tokens and wardrobe skins already do go straight into the wardrobe. If it’s an item then it’s equipment (even if it also unlocks the skin in the wardrobe) and needs to go in your inventory.

There’re specific items that “only have value if they belong to a collection” which stack in the inventory.

As for wardrobe skins, I remember some masks or luminescent skins or others that you get, can unlock, but still remain in your inventory as a “free of charge skin”. It would indeed be better to be able to cast them to wardrobe. The easiest way of doing so is to allow the skin to be consumed when unlocked, and add 1 transmutation charge in the process.

To me, it’s always been the grove. The overall landscape, and the lights. And the little “fear not this night” piano theme you get in Vistas, as well as the music.
Pure peace.

Problem is solved. Thanks for attention.

Hello,

My guild Lil Helin Mis Ormë [VV] used to have a nice guild bank for years (before HoT) filled with lots of nice stuff like runes, sigils, insignias, inscriptions. Most of them exotics, and some of them of great value.

Yet, when I talk to a guild banker or a guild registar, he just says the line :

“Your guild hasn’t built any sort of storage yet. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you.”

Everything vanished into the Mists, and I’m really unhappy about it, so I’d be more than happy to have my guild bank restored to, say, last week’s status.

I registered #2439632 ticket about this issue.

Thanks for attention.

Population in general, as well as bringing new blood in is indeed an issue. Of course, there should be incentives, and that “WvW should bring a good experience to player” is a thing.

Yet…. Halloween is over, and for some strange reason, population suddently raised. I’m asking my guildies and friends, spread on several servers, and across several game modes, and… They were lacking ppl for everything from PvE to WvW. The issue is a single word : labyrinth.

Easy blobbing, lootsticks shining, money making.

Don’t trick yourself into thinking elaborate tactics. What most players want is easy grind and loot. It saddens me, and I don’t have any solution at the moment.

I’m not so fond of outfits either, because I usually think they’re dull or just not worth it, compared to the possibilities given by armor set, mix and matching and colour playing.

Of course, I’d love to be able to use only one part of outfits in an armor set, and I understand it’s easier to make, hence easier to get a steady flow of money. So, they should have a bigger staff dedicated to skins ; they just won’t hire anyone.

A possible solution for more money would be to use the wardrobe tab :

• For each of the icons in it (weapons skins, amor skins, outfits, gliders, as well as dyes), add a right-click option “buy for x gems”.
• Prices would depend on given item : droppable, craftable, dungeon, PvP WvW, racial, BLTC only etc.
• BLTC would provide discounts : specific sylvari bundle : 10% off !
• Incentive would be more collections.

I had a topic some months ago about a new revenant elite spec. Here’re the main trends :

• The name is the prodigy and the legend is Scarlet Briar ;
  Lots of players know of Scarlet and remember her in good or bad. She’s no unknown obscure character, and she’s got actual lore and gimmicks, as well as a sharp tongue.
• Scarlet Legend is a troll legend, focused on energy management and CC ; Her main function is support, through foes’ impairing ; it should work better when foes are packed ;
  Rev’s legends are mostly focused in one or two specific game mechanic. Yet no legend uses theses two.
• The new weapon is the rifle ; it’s damage output is low to moderate and includes some CC ;
  Rifle is Scarlet’s iconic weapon. Moreover, it’s quite an unused weapon (only war and engis have it) so it’d give it more spotlight. Also, rev can use a little more long range.
• The utilities revolve around holograms ;
  Holograms are designed more or less like ranger’s spirits, or GW1 ritualist’s ones.

Detailed data about rifle skills, utilities and traits are to be found in the original topic

Hi again,

Bug was solved, but now it’s back. Still Norn revenant lvl. 80, mostly playing in Ember Bay. Identified problems are :

1. Embrace the darkness doesn’t work underwater.
2. When going from underwater to “on the ground”, embrace the darkness cease to work properly.
3. Sometimes happens too after having used a thermal tube.
4. Switching legends back and forth solves the issue.

More specifically : when clicking, the button clicks, I get the sound and animation, I get resistance from the trait, but I don’t get the status and effect, the button doesn’t switch to resist the darkness and it instead goes to fast CD.

Thanks for attention.

(Edit : typos)

Option 1 :
Advantages : leads towards server merging. Easy to read. Guest server wouldn’t feel neutered.
Drawbacks : new names might not be so good. Potentially new names at each linking make anticipation harder.

Option 2:
Advantage : maps named by colour makes things easy to read. Guilds gain acknowledgement.
Drawbacks : who knows which server holds what guild ? (-> the info should be coloured as in the current system).

Option 3 :
Advantage : acknowledges guest worlds
Drawbacks : lack of lisibility.

1. Option 1 or option 2 have my vote, some changes are to be made (see below)

2. Whatever solution is taken, lisibility needs the messages to be written on a coloured background as it is now, so that the colour itself retains the information of who took the objective.

3. System between 2 and 3.

• Guilds should “buy” the right to have its name displayed in WvW, through a guild hall mechanic somehow in a “guild tactics” fashion. If the players who contributed most when capturing don’t belong to such a guild, then default would be their server’s name.
• Alliance name could be colours (meh…) or new names (careful…)

1. I don’t feel so good about this idea because it’ll end up in diluting the population amongst several maps.
I used to be in a kinda small server, with a “small” linking, and now I’m with a bigger server, and the difference is obvious. When there’s a “random tower is under attack” call, people come and defend. Previously, nobody came, because nobody cared. Most ppl were in EBG, or defending home BL. Of course, now, there’s like 10-20 ppl queue at prime time. But I’m sincerly wondering what’s best : 10-20ppl queue, and ppl actually playing a disputed fight, or no queue at all, and BL mostly empty with some random roamers flipping camps, and sometimes towers, because that’s all the population a server can afford.
I understand having more figures make things easier to sort, link etc. But players aren’t figures, and neither is WvW. Maps are still a big thing, and to me, they’re designed to be ran by a specific amount of ppl at the same time.

2. If new worlds were te be created, the number of tiers should remain the same to prevent the issue I’m quoting in 1. Random idea : big identified guilds should be asked whether they agree to be moved from a server from another as a tweaking convenience. May not be such a good idea.

3. No

Hello, here’s my suggestions :

1. Add a mark as junk option in the right-click menu of items, essentially downgrading them to grey rarity, to help inventory cleaning :

• Allows various items to be sold with the “sell all junk” button ;
• Allows mass-salvage with the right-click menu of salvage kits.

2. Allow some right-click menu options from BLTC sell tab, namely : mark as junk and sell (supposing a seller window is opened).

Actually, that trait would be terribly effective if each of Mallyx’s skills would auto-inflict a condition. That way, you’d have the elite transfer much more conditions, and pulsatile pestilence would be relevant, because you’d have some condis on yourself at any time.

Oh, wait…

Hello,

Whenever I play my revenant (Norn lvl 80), Mallyx’s elite skill embrace the darkness gets jammed. When I try to use it, the icon clicks, the sound plays, my character animates, then the little “not enough energy” lightning appears on its icon (and only this one) and nothing happens. I don’t get the status, aura, effect etc. and the icon doesn’t switch to Resist the darkness. It happens in or out of combat, regardless of my amount of energy.

The only way I found to solve this is to switch legend (F1 key), then switch back to Mallyx. Then it works properly.

I found out that issue was happening whenever I was going out of water, or using a thermal tube.

Thanks for attention !

Thanks for positive feedback !

fluidmonolith.3584:

I’m not sure about Rifle #5 – that sounds very hard to code, and confusing for players especially in a large-scale battle like a WvW zerg.

Somehow, that’s more or less the point. Yet, it can be frustrating. Maybe limiting to 5 foes taunted could do better.

fluidmonolith.3584:

About holograms – if they can only be dismissed within a 1200 range, then if you move further away, do they auto-dismiss or do you have no way to dismiss them? For example, imagine Engineer turrets if you couldn’t detonate the turret from any range. What happens if you have a hologram draining your energy and it’s too far away for you to dismiss it?

Good point. I didn’t think about that one ! Considering dismiss has a range, it’d be logical for holograms to auto-dismiss when out of range.

fluidmonolith.3584:

Regarding some of the traits dealing with energy management – I believe ANet wanted to not have any traits that boosted energy as these could become almost mandatory. As such, I think Major traits 1-3 might be problematic. For example, Major 2 would need an internal cooldown. Major 3 would require a redesign of the energy graphic, since there is only space for +5 pips of energy regen, whereas this trait would permit up to +7 at times. Major 1 could be abused by, for example, toggling upkeep skills on and off, unless it had a significant internal cooldown.

Energy management is indeed a big deal for revenants, and there’s a true risk to have that spec compulsory…
Concerning the redesign, I’m not sure : impossible odds is -10 pips and it’s effectively counted at -10 (hardening persistance has 10 stacks when impossible odds is up).
Concerning the Differential Equations trait (energy gain for pips loss/gain), supposing it doesn’t have a CD, it’d be extremely potent with Glint. Yet, as both Scarlet and Glint are elite specs, they can’t be used together. All other legends only have 1 skill with an energy sustain (vengeful hammers, embrace the darkness, protective solace and impossible odds) : it wouldn’t actually trigger that often.

fluidmonolith.3584:

The effect ‘bewildered’ sounds pretty cool, but also exceptionally powerful (in PvP / WvW) so it would need to be heavily regulated.

I think it should be countered by stability. The overall design of the legend has indeed been made with PvP/WvW in thought more than PvE.

Traits

• Minor 1 : ability to use aethercannon and rifle.
• Major 1 : Differental Equations : Gain 10 energy every time your energy sustain change
  (i.e. every time you lose or gain energy pips)
• Major 2 : Entropy management : Gain 10 energy every time something is summonned, killed or dismissed in a 600 range around self.
  Includes : conjured weapons, holograms, pet change, gyros and turrets, thieve’s guild, conjured weapons, elementals, minions, clones and phantasms.
• Major 3 : Damping factor : When your energy drops below 50%, gain 1 pip of energy for 5 sec. Gain 1 additionnal pip below 10%.
• Minor 2 : Supercapacitor : Gain 2s quickness and swiftness when energy reaches 100%.
• Major 4 : Referential change : Hitting an immobile foe gives you quickness and slows him.
• Major 5 : Casimir effect : When one of your skill is disabled (interrupted, blocked or evaded), gain one random boon and inflict the associated condition to target foe.
• Major 6 : Equilibrium state : When hit foe has more boons than you, turns one of his boons into a condition. When hit foe has less conditions than you, turns one of your conditions into a boon.
• Minor 3 : Second order kinetics : CC last longer on foes, and less on you.
• Major 7 : Resonant disruption : Interrupting a foe inflicts bewildered status to adjacent foes (up to 5, radius 240)
  Bewildered status : foe’s next action fails and inflicts hard damages. If foe doesn’t do anything till bewildered expires, all its skills that are not on CD get 0,25s CD.
• Major 8 : Non-linear optics : rifle shots now splash small static fields when they hit. Rifle CD reduced.
• Major 9 : Inertia transfer : interrupting a foe gives stability to player and adjacent allies.

Sorry for wall of text !

Holograms

General data

• Holograms work much like most summons : summon utility skill that turns into a specific skill on activation ;
• Summon skill is an 900 range AoE of 360 radius ;
• Hologram only acts in its radius and ignores whatever isn’t in it or gets out of it.
• They don’t have a timer, but they can be killed (or dismissed with F-skill) ;
• The passive effect of holograms doesn’t occur while the active effect is triggered and in progress ;
• Holograms have an energy cost and a sustain cost. Things should be tweaked so that a prodigy couldn’t hold and use 2 holograms without it taking a huge energy toll.

Skills
7. Summon static hologram : Summons a static hologram. Hologram works as a deny field. Whithin static hologram’s radius, small static fields, frozen ground, unsteady grounds or earthquakes randomly pop.
7bis. Selfie ! : Hologram raises up to 5 foes in the radius for 0,5s and shoots them one after the other for moderate damage and radial launch out of its area.
8. Summon dynamic hologram : Summons a dynamic hologram that attacks the first foe that enters its zone (if foes are already within radius when summonned, attacks the closest one). Very much like its original counterpart, the dynamic hologram uses a hammer to inflict high to heavy damage with a 3 skills cleaving chain : 1 skill cripples, 2nd gives vulnerability, 3rd gives the hologram quickness.
8bis. Dynamic boost : Holograms teleports in the center, then spins to attract foes in the circle, and then takes off to slam its hammer for massive damage and stun.
9. Summon synergetic hologram : Summons the synergetic hologram in the center, that stands and acts within its radius. Each second, the synergetic hologram pulses within its radius, and transfers friends’ conditions and foes’ boons to itself. (therefore, it can kill itself.)
9bis. Draw ! : Synergetic hologram pulses onces, then randomly transfers its conditions to foes, and its boons to friends. Foes are randomly teleported within hologram’s radius. If there aren’t any foes in area, hologram’s conditions are cleared.

F-skill
Dismiss hologram : just dismiss a hologram and trigger any effet that it would cause. Aimed F-skill allows to dismiss selected hologram (1200 range) ; otherwise, it’s a PbAoE that dismisses any holograms in a 600 radius.

Healing skill
6. Summon ultraviolet holograms : moderate healing + summon 3 utraviolet holograms. One inflicts slow, one inflicts freeze, one inflicts weakness. Upon summon, they begin stacking resonance charges. Upon dismissal (or killing), each charge generates a given healing to the prodigy. Holograms auto-dismiss after a given amount of charges.

Elite skill
10. Prime hologram form : dismiss all your holograms, and root to be infused with prime light. Turns into an invulnerable prime hologram whose only skill is a weaker version of prime light beam. Prime light beam is an AoE attack shot from prime light hologram and that deals heavy damage and dazes foes in area.
“One of my best toys. You like it, don’t you ?”

F2-skill
F2 : Aethercannon : PBAoE slow skill that deals hard damages and dazes.
“I’ve brought a little souvenir from the Mists”.

Rifle
These are the main ideas. Order may change. I didn’t think about energy costs.
1. Awesome shot : 1200 range. Shoot a single foe for moderate damage. Splashing effect, radius 240, inflict cripple/vulnerability/weakness/slow/freeze (random) to other foes.
2. Bless you ! : 900 range. Shoot a single foe for moderate damage. Foe gets a “bewildered” status for 2s. If foe tries to use a skill while being bewildered, skill fails and foe gets heavy damage. If not, all foe’s skills that are not on cooldown disable for 0,25s.
3. Take to the sky : 900 ranged AoE (180 radius). Shoots a slow projectile up in the sky. When it lands, inflicts launch 0 range and moderate damage.
3 bis. Finale : detonate mid-air and inflicts bewildered to foes (240 radius, where it was used).
4. Catch you, catch me ! : 1200 range. Shoot a single foe for low damage. If it hits, switch places with that foe. If foe blocks or evades, teleport to that foe and taunt him.
“Don’t you dare ignore Scarlet Briar !”
5. Tag ! : 900 range. Shoot a single foe and tag him (1,5 sec). Any projectile in a 300 range of tagged foe now aims at it. Tagged foe inflicts taunt to his allies in a 300 radius.