Guild Wars 2

Increasing the cool down of abilities=/=increasing the cast/aftercast times of abilities
Chill=/=Slow

“…it will force the taunted player to run toward their target…”

Like Linken said, this is not the ‘taunt’ mechanic that you think it is. It will only be useful that way if you are already the enemy’s target. If you’re trying to roleplay a ‘tank’, chances are, you’re not gonna have the enemy’s aggro anyway b/c GW2 doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t matter how many games you’ve played or for how long you’ve played them. GW2 is not those games. This will be used for player disruption/control (as is stated) and not as a tank/aggro mechanic.

Is definitely gonna be interesting to see all the QQ threads about it’s synergy with chill, confusion, torment, and ground targeted AoE though.

Also, it states ‘using auto attack’. How in the world will that work with a ground targeted AA like Engi nades? Will Engi go into violent made tossing spasms hurling death all around them? O.o

Are you sure you didn’t try to use it from the bank panel only to redeposit it in the first open bank slot?

Bo Staff Legendary hammer confirmed…

What would be a better/cheaper way to appease the ‘we need a martial staff’ crowd than just slapping a staff model in and flagging it as a hammer. It would function identical and would only be cosmetic. Surely some others have noticed that the Slingshot isn’t really a shortbow?

I’ve had this same problem forever Cele. It sucks hard. S/p Thief and you get knocked back and stand up only to instantly launch into a Pistolwhip at the air. “Well, there went half of my initiative…” They really need to make this an option. As of yet, no there is no option to turn this off. The only workaround I’ve found that offers any consistent relief, without wasting dodges, is to deselect your target any time you are knocked back/down, etc.

No, he’s not referring to ‘autoattacking’. He’s referring to ‘skill queues’ like he said. The game will record a second input during a skill animation and fire the next queued skill after the first animation is over as long as there wasn’t a proper interrupt. This can be a HUGE pita sometimes. For instance, you start your might stacking rotation with your Ele in the middle of a fight. You get knocked back after casting Ring of Fire. Upon standing you launch into your last blast outside of the fire field (and/or are probably in the wrong Attunement by this time anyway) so the whole combo is resolved and you wasted 2-3 skills.

It’s not just about people logging in. The impact/implications on the economy are the primary reason. It encourages, both, short and longterm stability for buyers, sellers, and crafter’s alike. At least you can skip this, for a premium, and buy your base crafting mats from others on the tradepost though.

Not familiar with your skill level etc. Covering all the bases. Glad I could help.

If you’re having trouble staying alive here:

-get full Soldier’s stat gear (Tequatl can’t be Critically Attacked anyway)
-change your trait distribution to 6/0/X/X/0 and take traits in Earth/Water for survival (again, no Crits, so 6 into Power (Fire) is the way to go here) *exception: 2 into Air for Bolt to the Heart for last two ‘Burn Phases’…..maybe
-equip more survival friendly weapons/utilities, ie. Cantrips, Staff, Frostbow
-use your access to Boons (Protection/Vigor/Regen) and your Dodges to avoid large damage ticks (like those Claws)

These things should make it a breeze in unison. Good luck. Have fun.

@Olvendred: doesn’t matter the reason, I guess, but I’d assume he is an ‘archer’ :/

Also, I have yet to see/read/hear about any solutions to this ‘problem’ that wouldn’t actually increase the dominance of might/fury stacking, power builds. Apart, from just having forced roles or deleting all options. Removing everything but Celestial gear was suggested in a different PHIW thread, which I think would be an amazing experiment for a lot of people out there…

I like the idea of people using power/active defense when it’s most effective and using attrition/passive defenses when/where it performs better…in the context of ‘needing to be more efficient’, as this thread implies, anyway.

Indigo, I completely agree with your evaluation/implications of the mechanics. I choose my words with purpose (above posts.) The only thing I question is*PEOPLE’S* urges/needs/desires to force presuppositions and ideas (you HAVE to admit these are psychological, ‘roleplay’ abstractions here) where they don’t work instead of using what does work in the scenario. When hanging a picture you might use a hammer and nail b/c b/c you have you’re own time to achieve your own personal accuracy. If you were to build a house, with a group of carpenters, you’d use a nail gun instead b/c of timeliness vs. output desired, ie ‘get it done or you’re fired’. (The math has been done plenty of times to suggest the personal DPS nearly evens out for most maximized scenarios.)

In the end, I don’t see these as ‘the tools not working as they should’, but rather a general negligence/disregard for the best tools and even an insistence that people should be able to build skyscrapers with a hammer and nail in an efficient manner. :/ The tools aren’t the problem. Picking the wrong tools for the task at hand is the problem. Why should these people be placated in some convoluted, contrived manner that goes against the original design?

I have 13 Exo/Asc. geared 80s made efficient (built using logic/reasoning) for the things I want to do in game. I don’ take a bunker Guardian into a speed clear dungeon run, I don’t take my zerker d/d Ele to zerg Tequatl, and I certainly wouldn’t take my condi/shatter Mesmer into huge events with tons of other players and time constrained objectives.

Once again…this is a hair away from a ‘tank/healer’ thread. O.o

Example of removed condi cap: Might stacking, Berserker Engi now maintains 25+ Bleeds, 25+ Vulnerability, has access to nearly every condi option in the game, does huge amounts of AoE damage, and has access to (argueably) the most defensive options in a single Power build in the entire game. 3+ Zerker Engis becomes the new meta with with only Warrior and Ranger having anything unique to add to this build comp.

This idea would be totally sweet for maybe a day (for Power builds ironically) and then fail miserably with all the QQ threads about Engis doing 25k+ DPS…. (“Another Engi bursted me down before I even rendered him!”,etc)

@Myxam: In the ‘old system’ (I assume you’re referring to GW1), you either had Bleeding on you or you didn’t. There were no ‘bleed stacks’. The were only other diverse skill synergies (which is why it had worse balance problems than GW2.) It was actually a more limited system. To balance that some skills were made uberpowerful and others worthless which lead to other problems. (Think of some of the most powerful Elites here like SF, where one skill was a ‘build’, fundementally.) I’m sure you can see the benefit they envisioned the current system having given the new game architecture. Because power builds can easily stack conditions, how stacking Might works, AND the exponential scaling of power builds, I can’t think of a single scenario (outside of just implementing a new, tyrranical system of forced roles) that would make condi builds “more competitive” and not, even more dramatically, scale the damage output of power builds. This would only further alienate ppl and/or unbalance (unbridled) power builds more than is claimed they already are. (*Note: Everyone has access to the same tools to make a power build where a power build is clearly more efficient.)

One solution is to NOT build for ATTRITION when there are these 15-20 other players…
If you have a bunch of condi builds together, that want to do ‘damage over time’, then, collectively, you have a bunch of people that don’t mind taking a long time to kill things (and indeed they will.) The Power builds are more a part of the solution here than the problem. For other timed events, that depend on killing a lot of things in a limited amount of time, there is, again, NO reason to build for attrition. Power builds get the job done.

To me, this is just a hair away from sillies saying ‘I want to be tank/healer in dungeons’/etc. You should build for the content you’re doing, not ask to have content more favored toward a build.

I understand the frustration with thinking ‘X game mechanic is neat’ and building something up as ‘cool’ in your head and then it doesn’t work out. Is there ANY reason to make a ‘tank’ when the aggro system doesn’t support one? No not really. Is there ANY reason to build a ‘healer’ when everyone has their own heals and damage mitigation? No not really.

So then…is there ANY reason to make an ‘attrition expert’ for content that is required to be done in a timely manner AND there are 20-50+ other players around you responsible for the same objectives? I’d suggest….no not really.

Like I said, even though the idea is, ‘well I’m a type of DPS, at least’, this is still, fundamentally, the exact same thing as posting another ‘I want to be a tank/healer’ thread. Indeed, there are plenty of avenues to do all those things, but don’t expect it to be ‘efficient’ given the context.

I know I’m brash, but I’m not trying to be rude at all, just sensible. Soloing things or 1v1s in PvP/WvW are an excellent place for attrition builds to shine (even tanks/healers sometimes), but most for most GROUP oriented content, these ‘RP builds’ are gonna be mostly ‘in your head’ as the namesake would suggest. Our ‘option’ (logically) is to build efficiently for content if you want to be efficient at that content…

I wouldn’t take my WvW bunker/shout Guardian into a Speed clear Dungeon group any faster than I’d take my condi Mesmer to Tequatl for the burn zerg. Why? Because, even though these things are cool/great for what I built them for, the simple fact is, they NOT BUILT for these other areas of the game. In those places, I also run appropriate (contextuely) builds.

Boon sharing is all gravy, but the primary reason to LoS/stack is to make the most of cleaving/AoE damage against trash mobs. Serious dungeon runners haven’t been doing this for much else since FGS was nerfed in September. Find a better group of people to run with.

The Whisperer’s Great sword is as close as you’ll get for now.

Dungeon speed clears hands down. Nothing else comes close.

Yeah its gonna take a while. I’m almost finished with all 3 colors of Dynamic Spinal Blades and haven’t forged a single shard. Just 300 more and I’ll be done with these thingsmforever.

Stealth you happy to others will grant them with might as well swap SoA for smokesdeen and use a short bow. Though blasting as Ele or Engines Fire with SB is much better.

Assassin’s/Opal gear+Runes of Strength+Sigil of Strength+Sigil of Bloodlust+0/0/5/3/6 build with HiS, Blinding Powder, Shadow of Refuge+Signet of Agility

There’s your solo Thief Might Stacking Build.

Good Luck.

Or…instead, ppl could learn to use active defended and not try to ‘tank’ in the first place since the fundamental design of the game is to do away with that concept…

It also means that people are hoarding the crafting mats, instead of crafting cheap ones now, which means Pres will go down but current Legendaries will increase a bit.

Use the pet attack command to have your pet attack first. If you attack first, then you will get the aggro.

Lazaar.9123:

“So on top of this, we’re also gonna be introducing brand new legendary weapons, and brand new legendary precursors” implies that before he was referring to the already existing precursors.

He’s saying that with this new way to obtain NEW PRES that they’re obviously introducig NEW LEGENEDARIES that can be made from the NEW PRES. The context is not a ‘catch-all’ in any way, shape, or form…

i doubt it’s the toughness that’s the source of your aggro. It’s your low health or high damage; tell all the other members in your group to quit wearing Nomad’s gear. agrro has very little to do with toughness.

When is supposed to be the release date for HoT?

Your ‘arguement’ is only to hide your first post here, ‘yeah we told them so didn’t we?’ after somebody pointed out how dishonest of a statement that is and called you out on it. Kudos to the convoluted series of contrived, back-peddling posts though. :/

Croc.5129:

Tman.6349:

Active Defenses already require proper timing for maximum gain. If you activate your dodge while no enemies are attacking, then you didn’t really gain much for the cost of your resources. If you cast a reflect while their are only melee enemies attacking you, then you didn’t really gain much for the cost of your resource. This is similar to using a big offensive attack while you’re blinded or using your blast finisher while a Light Field is still active instead of waiting for the Fire Field to take priority. Just b/c Active Defenses are 100% effective on their own doesn’t mean you just spam them willy nilly and all is well. O.o Once again, you’re trying to equate gear prefixes as some kind of ‘role’ or ‘play style’. They are not those things at all. Plz get this concept through your head. Passive, personal offense/defense slider scale. Nothing more…

And the purpose of this scaling offense/defense? Why not another system? Why tie it to the amount of difficulty you will experience in the content instead of alternative options to effectively challenge the content?

Well why tie any mechanics to gear at all? That’s what you propose and hasn’t been done before. Suggesting that ACTIVE Defenses should be tied to passive stats is silly. There isn’t isn’t a similar mechanic for passive offensive stats so why should there be for defensive stats? Why would a build that already stacks tons of passive defense stats need access to stronger Active Defenses? Active Defenses are only useful in Active Combat if they are 100% effective. If they were scaled with passive defensive stats, that would defeat their whole purpose.

Croc.5129:

Tman.6349:

Croc.5129:

Tman.6349:

You keep using a lot of different words as if they are synonymous for the one you’re implying. You can call it ‘play style’ or ‘role’ or ‘build’ or anything else but that won’t change the fact that you’re referring to gear stat prefixes as something they are not and never have been.

The gear you wear actively contributes to the whole of your character’s capabilities. Unless you are saying that the effects of the stats given are negligible, which we know is not true.

No. I’m saying that gearstats are nothing more than a passive, personal offense/defense slider scale and have never been anything more. The “thought” that you suggest should be implemented when picking ‘playstyle’ (lol, you really mean gearstats here again; passive facetanking is hardly considered a ‘playstyle’) are already there: “Do I want to do Condition Damage or Direct Damage?” and “Does my build have enough Active Defenses taken into account and how well do I keep myself alive using those Active Defenses?”. Those are the only two questions you need to ask yourself concerning gear. EVERYTHING else reguarding your build’s team support, control ability, etc are all reliant on your selection of weapons, utilities, and traits. That is how the game is designed. You’re just looking in the wrong place to establish your ‘role’ that you desire so much. It has nothing to do with gearstats. Those are personal and have nothing to do with what you perform as a party member. Well, unless you’re trying to force a ‘trinity roles’ system into the game anyway.

No. We have already discussed that we are looking for ways to have the stats be useful without implementing roles. I do not want hard roles. I have said this repeatedly.

And my damage does suffer when I opt not to wear offensive gear, making me less useful to the team, and my defensive gear does nothing of value to contribute to my ability to offer control and support, so where is its place in the grand scheme of things?

It’s place in the grand scheme of things is to passively keep those players alive that otherwise couldn’t survive encounters due to mistiming/misuse of Active Defenses, latency, or whatever reason they might have. If it helps keep you stay alive and fighting to see another day, well then that’s how it’s useful to your team. They have a 5th member that they don’t have to keep rezzing and wasting their own stats/time. If you are already capable of using Active Defenses to stay alive and still chose to stack defensive stats, well then you’re just a stubborn kitten and I don’t think ‘team dynamics’ is your primary concern anyway…

Croc.5129:

Spoj The Second.7680:

Actually offensive stats increase the effectiveness of your base damage.

And defensive stats increase the effectiveness of your base defence.

It just so happens that damage cannot be passive. But defence can. Your offensive stats arent increasing the number of ticks on a lava font or adding additional effects. Or reducing your ability cooldowns. Your base stats have changed. But the things which use those particular stats are offensive abilities. Defensive abilities are already at maximum effectiveness so you could argue that defensive gear stats have a far superior advantage. And they do considering how a nomads warrior can face tank mossman just healing signet.

So why not implement defense strictly through modifying the effectiveness of abilities rather than health and armor?

It seems like it would be more consistant and interesting a choice to focus on modifying your active abilities in all aspects of the game.

Its not as if auto-attack is the only thing affected by offensive stats. It still affects damaging utilities. Why not afford the same opportunity for active use in defensive gear? Make them all require more proper timing of abilities for maximum gain.

Active Defenses already require proper timing for maximum gain. If you activate your dodge while no enemies are attacking, then you didn’t really gain much for the cost of your resources. If you cast a reflect while their are only melee enemies attacking you, then you didn’t really gain much for the cost of your resource. This is similar to using a big offensive attack while you’re blinded or using your blast finisher while a Light Field is still active instead of waiting for the Fire Field to take priority. Just b/c Active Defenses are 100% effective on their own doesn’t mean you just spam them willy nilly and all is well. O.o Once again, you’re trying to equate gear prefixes as some kind of ‘role’ or ‘play style’. They are not those things at all. Plz get this concept through your head. Passive, personal offense/defense slider scale. Nothing more…

Croc.5129:

Tman.6349:

You keep using a lot of different words as if they are synonymous for the one you’re implying. You can call it ‘play style’ or ‘role’ or ‘build’ or anything else but that won’t change the fact that you’re referring to gear stat prefixes as something they are not and never have been.

The gear you wear actively contributes to the whole of your character’s capabilities. Unless you are saying that the effects of the stats given are negligible, which we know is not true.

No. I’m saying that gearstats are nothing more than a passive, personal offense/defense slider scale and have never been anything more. The “thought” that you suggest should be implemented when picking ‘playstyle’ (lol, you really mean gearstats here again; passive facetanking is hardly considered a ‘playstyle’) are already there: “Do I want to do Condition Damage or Direct Damage?” and “Does my build have enough Active Defenses taken into account and how well do I keep myself alive using those Active Defenses?”. Those are the only two questions you need to ask yourself concerning gear. EVERYTHING else reguarding your build’s team support, control ability, etc are all reliant on your selection of weapons, utilities, and traits. That is how the game is designed. You’re just looking in the wrong place to establish your ‘role’ that you desire so much. It has nothing to do with gearstats. Those are personal and have nothing to do with what you perform as a party member. Well, unless you’re trying to force a ‘trinity roles’ system into the game anyway.

Serophous.9085:

rapthorne.7345:

X T D.6458:

I dont understand why zerker is the problem its just one of many available stats. If you or someone want to run a party full of clerics or condi builds nothing stopping you. Whats wrong with people running whatever they want, how would you feel if people were telling you what to run, and that what your running is wrong, chances are you have heard that so why go ahead and do the same exact thing to others? Let people run whatever the heck they want, dont like it, dont party up with them, dont run with them simple as that. People will always find the fastest way to do something. Get over it.

I will say that condition builds do need a long overdue buff for pve.

Berserker isn’t the problem, the fact that berserker is the only efficient way to PvE is. Something needs to be done to make things other than pure dps decent options

Actually, the problem is the dodge mechanic. Remove the 100% dmg free, and suddenly people will all have to wear some sort of toughness or vitality to survive some attacks.

Or…the meta would still stay full Berserker’s and teams would just stack more active defenses (ie. 2-3 Guardians) and even MORE professions/builds/gearsets would get shut out of the meta and excluded from dungeons. Most likely, this new meta would become more adamantly enforced than what we have now.

#contrivedfailideawithnothoughtofreprecussions

Croc.5129:

Tman.6349:

There doesn’t need to be “stats that effect our defensive tool”. Our Active Defenses are already at 100% effectiveness. That’s the point of active combat. Passive defense stats provide a buffer against mistiming/misusing those active defenses. The gear set stats only act as ‘role definition’ if you are wearing your ‘typical MMO’ blinders. Try getting rid of all of your preconceptions about how MMOs work or should be designed and accept GW2 on it’s own terms and all of these complaints will have proved themselves to be a figment of your imagination.

Offensive stats increase the effectiveness of offensive abilities.

And? What’s your point?

Offensive stats passively increase your ability to do damage and defensive stats passively increase your ability to facetank damage? That seems pretty straightforward to me…

What is the difference between wearing Soldier’s gearing and using a well timed ‘parry’ mechanic to stay alive and do significant damage vs. wearing Berserker’s gear and using well timed dodges to stay alive and do significant damage? The answer is Berserker’s+Active Defenses adheres to the games current design and isn’t a completely contrived idea to force homogenization. If the people that need to wear Soldier’s gear had the skill to time this parry mechanic then they would have already switched to Berserker’s+Active Defenses. This really just seems like a bunch of non-conformist hipster babble to me. Using Soldier’s gear, not because you need it, but only for the sake of Bering a speshul snowflake and then wishing for it to be changed to produce the same results of the same gearset you despise sounds completely disengenuine to me.

You keep using a lot of different words as if they are synonymous for the one you’re implying. You can call it ‘play style’ or ‘role’ or ‘build’ or anything else but that won’t change the fact that you’re referring to gear stat prefixes as something they are not and never have been.

There doesn’t need to be “stats that effect our defensive tool”. Our Active Defenses are already at 100% effectiveness. That’s the point of active combat. Passive defense stats provide a buffer against mistiming/misusing those active defenses. The gear set stats only act as ‘role definition’ if you are wearing your ‘typical MMO’ blinders. Try getting rid of all of your preconceptions about how MMOs work or should be designed and accept GW2 on it’s own terms and all of these complaints will have proved themselves to be a figment of your imagination.

So what you want is a way to be able to do more damage and be able to sustain yourself using the skillfully timed use of game mechanics?

That is a perfect description of Berserker’s/Assassin’s gear+Active Defenses…

The Deb’s could literally change Power to be called Toughness, Precision to be called Vitality, Ferocity to be called Healing Power, and call this gear set Nomad’s/Cleric’s/etc and it would perfectly fit what you are describing.

These ‘options’ and ‘mechanics’ you’re asking for sound like something completely contrived for nothing more than ‘roleplaying’ reason.

Also, suggesting that closing the gap of efficiency between the gearsets would somehow promote more options is completely illogical and sounds like a ‘solution’ to a ‘problem’ that is in somebody’s head. Why not just make everyone use Celestial gear as was mentioned earlier then? If I want to have a snack and my ‘options’ are an apple or an apple or an apple, then those aren’t really options are they?

Anything outside of “Change encounter designs” will be contrived and silly.

This was done with to prevent selling to the wrong player (map chat moving to fast) and to try to prevent gold sellers spamming mass in game mails. The right click>send mail will only work for people in your party, guild, or friends list. If you need to mail someone, add friend>send mail>remove friend. Yes, it’s extra steps but it’s what we have.

*Hint: it doesn’t just hit 5 times

Axe #5 can/does hit for 15,000ish damage though…

To be fair, longbow is pretty lame in general…

It seemed like the story was his primary concern when he mentioned resetting the storyline. I didn’t notice any references to gear skins and figured those weren’t a priority seeing as he’s invested a lot of time into his Guard. I have an 80 alt warrior still at PS lvl 30 (Warrior so boring to me) and was just gonna take him through myself since the thread was only a few minutes old but he had logged out anyway. He must’ve got click happy though to skip the several ‘are you sure’ type dialogues.

Season 1 was literally part of the Living World…that’s where the term comes from. Non of it was instanced content like S2 is. It wouldn’t make sense for us to just be meeting Scarlet, her waking up Mordremoth, and us fighting against Mordremth to all be happening at the same time in the open world. They had to remove it for the story to make any sense and that was also a part of the original intention of the whole Living World content release system, ‘You are a part of it in real time and it is epic’. There was a lot of QQ about entitlement to rewards and past events, so they dumbed the entire thing down into an instanced snooze fest and sucked the ‘living’ right out of it. S2 is just sad in comparison to the first IMO. At least you can just buy all the rewards, that everyone grinded Metas to get, for just a few gold and pretend like you were there.

Mhmm.

@DSavant: No offense to Gaile, but that advice is wrong. There is definitely a work around to joining the wrong order. Feel free to whisper me or mail me ingame and I’ll tell you exactly what you need to do to change over to The Vigil. It’s pretty simple really and shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. Maybe only a couple of minutes depending on a few factors.

30 Gems equals about 4.5 gold. You realize that’s silly right? They would never do that b/c economy and the mass PvE exodus as they scramble to PvP trying to earn a meager 30g/hr. That’s about what the best farm ever in GW2 gave and it was nerfed within a week. I do think they need to get more creative with the ‘reward’ tracks though. The way they’re setup now is OK but I find some of the stuff really redundant. I’d like to see more variety in the track themes themselves. Perhaps they could make a 1-time Black Lion track (it would have to be one time only so they could make the rewards valuable but maybe they could reset it every few months or add another). There are AP rewards that give Gems, but the AP req. is high enough they can’t be farmed and they’re spread out enough that they take a long time to get and thousands of people won’t be cashing them in at once (a huge part of the GW2 economy revolves around Gems). the problem is, for dedicated PvPers, the high AP chests just aren’t accessible. Perhaps some suggestions for more reward tracks and/or how to improve the existing ones would be more likely to have an impact on rewards than asking for farmable Gems.

I definitely agree with Jerus here…

Favorite: enjoy all professions except Warrior
Least Favorite: Warrior; any profession rolled as a Charr

All the professions are fun and have their own bit of unique flavor. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses in different game modes, but this adds a bit of diversity in my gameplay. With 13 exo/asc geared 80s, I have different toons for different dungeons, PvP, WvW, and even one just for WB train. Maintaining a good bit of variety is the best way to keep from ever feeling ‘burned out’ imo. I do get stumped when someone asks “What is your ‘main’?” though. However, that term isn’t really used in it’s original context anymore, in GW2 anyway.

Fortunately for me, there are plenty of people in the dungeon scene that enjoy playing Warrior that I can benefit from their excellent, unique party buffs without actually having to play mine .

Charr are just…the worst imo. Clunky, clumsy, awkward, and most armors look bad on them. The one exception to this is, ironically, Charr Warrior. :\

Also, not all of them are used passively. Ranger Gs with Intelligence comes to mind as an example.