Guild Wars 2

EXPLOSIVE Shot
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_Fire a shot that bleeds the impacted target and then EXPLODES, dealing damage to nearby enemies. _

This boggles my mind. Has there ever been any explanation as to why, when it comes to traits, these shots don’t count as explosions? >_>

I can’t believe how long it’s been since this thread first came about, and they still haven’t touched this.

In fact, besides a couple of nerfs, what changes have engies seen lately? Did someone in the engineer community do something to make Anet mad? >_>

Elmo Benchwarmer.3025:

Better: ban ascended gear to Fractals.

Love this idea.

Nekomi.9562:

Elbegast.6970:

The same amount I have spent in the cash shop…nothing. It’s called the ‘Mystic Toilet’ for a reason. You’ve just gotten lucky.

Mystic forge loves me I guess, I have only been playing for 56 days with 845 hours of gameplay, so maybe once I have 200 or so days my luck will be the same as most o.o…

Jesus. That’s 15 hours a day.

The idea of having extremely difficult to attain skins with similar stats to what you already have is the absolute essence of the Guild Wars franchise. This isn’t WoW, where you are playing to get arbitrarily bigger numbers on your gear so your damage can do some arbitrarily larger crit when you hit an enemy.

So it’s not a shame that it’s like that- it’s a wonderful part of what this series is.

Kaos.9162:

Fractals are still a thing. As long as the level of the fractal is above your personal fractal level, it will increase your level. Yes, there is an LFG tool. As for future plans, there are a few things they’re planning, I think, but I’m too lazy to look them up.

Awesome! Thank you for the response.

So if I’m at level 1 fractal, and do a level 9 fractal, do I go up to level 2 when I finish, or level 9?

They made vague mention 10 months ago to doing something about it, with a consideration of allowing Engineers to hide the hobosacks in lieu of an Elementalist style icon on their nameplates… but it appears turn around time on such things is > 10 months, so I’d get used to that hobosack in the meantime. =D

So I’ve been away from GW2 for a little bit and am coming back with one of my fresh 80s, to get a fresh new look on the game and see what has changed since mid last year.

Four main things stand out that I am curious about:

A) Are Fractals still the big thing?

B) In order to hit the current average group level in Fractals, do I have to do EVERY fractal level up that point? IE: If I’m a fresh 80, and most folks are hovering around Fractal level 30, do I have to do 1, 2, 3 – 30? I don’t mind the effort, but if my attempts to find a level 1 group are any indicator, I’m in for a very VERY long wait if I have to scream LFG for every single level. 0_o

C) Have they added an LFG tool that I’m missing so I don’t have to scream LFG anymore? =D As nostalgic as doing that is, my nostalgia goggles have worn off and I’m ready for some automation. hehe

D) Has Arenanet made mention of some 2014 plans? In particular, if there will be a level increase this year?

Thanks!

Up until now, the primary rationalization behind dual 1h weapons sometimes costing (together) twice as much as a single 2h weapon was that the 1h weapons gave dual sigils, while 2h did not. With this changing, does that mean we’ll also see a price reduction for 1h weapons to bring them more in line with where they should be?

tattoohead.3217:

For the love of… why has a mod not moved this post yet. Let it die guys.

You mean to tell me they implemented the hiding of hobosacks?! Because that’s the only legitimate reason someone could suggest that this thread be closed or moved.

I can’t wait to run around on my character without the hobosack! I’ve waited so long =D

I kinda was hoping, futilely, that there would be a Christmas day surprise patch that removed the hobosacks. Sadly, there was not

lakdav.3694:

Does anyone feel like this may be a ploy to move engineers out of the kit-using meta?

That would be some major mixed signals. Using hobosacks to make us not want to use kits, while nerfing one of the primary non-kit traits (Incendiary Powder) by moving it into a location that basically makes it only useful for kits.

It’s like you have 2 different groups of developers in Anet screaming “STOP USING KITS!!!” and “ONLY USE KITS!!!!”

Anymras.5729:

…They might take your builds, your diversity, and your nads.

And tape a hobosack to your back!

What really sucks is that they are shoving Incendiary Powder, which a lot of non-grenadiers use, down the grenadier tree. How awesome is that? I sure hope they put something worthwhile in the place of it on the first tier, or they will have completely ruined by build. My build is one of the few that is viable and doesn’t rely on a hobosack… it seems they want to bring that to an end. I’m guessing our Engineer community leader looked around and said “There aren’t enough hobosacks in the game… lets make more people run with them!”

At the moment I can muster the necessary points for both HGH and grand master incendiary powder, but it won’t be worth the hit if I have to take a worthless trade in the first tier to do it

JonPeters.5630:

If all we do is take the worst traits and buff them, then every patch everything gets stronger and eventually the game is broken. The word balance literally means reaching an equilibrium which is in between two end points. This means that in order to reach it things must assuredly go up and down.

That equilibrium should NEVER involve reducing the number of viable builds on a class that is already suffering from a lack of them as it is. While it would make the job of balancing a whole lot easier if we were all funneled into being grenadiers, it would hardly make Engineer a fun class to play and definitely subvert a large part of what makes this class fun.

I truly hope that they reconsider the Incendiary Powder nerf. I’m a dual pistol alchemist and that trait is one of the my staples. Pushing it back to the master tier of EXPLOSIVES will basically limit it to grenadiers only, which would be a massive nerf to my already borderline subpar build. I honestly can’t see how this accomplishes much, at all…

Not like it’s been over a year since the game came out or anything… ;_;

Save the engineer. Remove the hobosack!

I used to play a game called Shadowbane that had a mechanic similar to retaliation on their Barbarian class. I made a high con Minotaur Barbwho had ridiculous amounts of health, and just left him out in dangerous places with that skill running constantly (with the help of a key macro). I would come back a couple hours later to find tons of dead rogue based characters around him =D

Ahlen.7591:

Onshidesigns.1069:

Ision.3207:

Ahlen.7591:

I really doubt the horizontal progress people are the ‘majority’ of the playerbase.

The majority of the playerbase is people who don’t fall into the hardcore OR horizontal groups.

Agreed, most people simply take the game as it comes. And there are casual players who prefer Vertical progression and there are casual players who prefer Horizontal progression. So there are 2 different preferences for how a game should handle progression. Likewise there are 2 different types of players that are hardcore; there are the hardcore grinders, and the hardcore skill players.

I don’t think most players have any concept of how to do horizontal progression and why it’s better.

Vertical progression to me leads to gated content and a slow death of a game.

Ya we saw how short WoW was am I right? That game died so fast because of Vertical progression.

You’re talking about two different types of players here. Statistically, the type of player who sticks to WoW is going to be someone whose first MMO was WoW, and generally are not the type to hop to other games. Its longevity cannot be measured in by whether their formula is any good for the current times. The formula, once upon a time, was great- in a time where grinding until your eyes bled was what MMOs were all about. Now, it’s about nostalgia and comfort in what you know.

Long story short, you won’t recreate WoW’s success in this day and age by copying WoW’s formula. If its empirical evidence you want, then compare the countless WoW clones that have released in the past decade and their “success”. Each and every one flounders.

WoW is WoW. Being WoW = being successful and wealthy. Trying to be like WoW = sure death for your game.

Ision.3207:

Tolmos.8395:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If they tailor content so that it’s of the correct difficulty for Exotics then it will be too easy with Ascended. Those with Ascended gear are Anet’s loyal and longtime customers (you wouldn’t have Ascended gear if this weren’t true). They will complain loudly.

tl;dr – the hardcores will cry if you don’t.

That sounds like an excellent reason to kamikaze your game by alienating the majority of your playerbase. Because it’s always an excellent idea to cater to the hardcores; that never backfires.

Tolmos, I get what you mean, and agree.

But let’s put these so-called “hardcores” in their proper category – they are hardcore “grinders”, not hardcore competitive players. A hardcore grinder is all about loot (gold), unique gear (posing) and having a stat advantage over others (an unfair edge). While a hardcore competitive player is all about skill and despises stat advantages because he wants level-playing field (or as close as you can get to it). The former is primarily only a measure of time spent in-game doing easy repetitive tasks (like farming the easiest path of the fastest dungeon or WvW 5 on 1 ganking), – while the latter purposefully seeks difficulty to test his skills.

Never confuse a hardcore grinder with a skilled competitive player – they are not one in the same.

Fair enough; I stand corrected. I shouldn’t have lumped all hardcores into the same boat.

Lord Kuru.3685:

If they tailor content so that it’s of the correct difficulty for Exotics then it will be too easy with Ascended. Those with Ascended gear are Anet’s loyal and longtime customers (you wouldn’t have Ascended gear if this weren’t true). They will complain loudly.

tl;dr – the hardcore grinders will cry if you don’t.

That sounds like an excellent reason to kamikaze your game by alienating the majority of your playerbase. Because it’s always an excellent idea to cater to the hardcore grinders; that never backfires.

And what’s hilarious is that engineer with 25 stacks of might still does less damage than a thief with no stacks of might.

It’s obvious to any engineer that this player didn’t achieve the 25 on his own. It’s possible with certain HGH builds, but this player isn’t running one of those. Those stacks came from external sources.

Morrigan.2809:

While I feel for Engineers since one of my mains is one.
People have been literally begging for new hair since last year.
I think it is awesome that Anet just snuck it in on us.

People have been literally begging for engineer kit fixes since before the game released. The kits DESTROY any aesthetic you may create for your character.

Unless of course that aesthetic is being a hobo, in which case the hobosacks do a great job of supporting that desired look.

Are there images somewhere of what the new hairstyles will look like?

Quillionaire.1063:

Option 2: Bring down the stats to exotic levels AND add in instant stat switching in the style of legendaries. This simultaneously makes Ascended weapons desirable for their convenience and makes it immensely more convenient when acquiring Ascended gear on your alts, as you only need to create one weapon of that type on that character. This solves the issue of having to acquire multiple weapons across alts, or even multiple stat spreads on a single character. In addition, Ascended weapons are expensive to the point that it would actually be cheaper to purchase multiple variations of the same exotic weapon, so I don’t see this as being too severe of a reward.

This is exactly what Ascended gear should have been. Not only would I have not had any problems with the implementation of it, but I would have grinded my life away for every last piece of it. It would be something I would actually desire to have, rather than just some new piece of armor with arbitrarily bigger numbers on it for the sake of having arbitrarily bigger numbers.

I cannot express how much I wish someone on the Anet team had had this idea when they were implementing Ascended gear, thinking outside the box as opposed to following the same tired MMO trend of adding more stats, simply because they couldn’t think of anything better to do.

Of all of GW2, my least favorite content in the game is the underwater stuff. Orr second.

I would dislike this. lol

Of all of GW2, my least favorite content in the game is the underwater stuff. Orr second.

I would dislike this. lol

Yea, when the rest of ascended gear hits the game, I will likely call it quits on WvW. I’ll focus on sPvP and PvE, but I don’t feel like dealing with stat differences beyond what already exists in WvW.

/shrug. Fine by me, I guess. Just means I’ll need to find a second game for my PvP needs.

I agree with the overall sentiment that downscaled level 80s are so powerful that it removes the fun. When I go back and do lower level content, I faceroll through it on my engineer. Autoattack and the #2 skill over and over and over. No need for utilities. No need for heals. No need for anything but #2.

Tab → 2.

That’s all I have to press in lower level zones.

IMO, the less things bound to either character or account the better. I’ve always despised the bind system, and love seeing more and more items that are barterable.

It’s silly to think that just because I make something amazing, that it suddenly attaches itself to my body like superglue, unable to be removed by any means other than invasive surgery! :-P If I’m a crafter who takes pride in my craft, then I’m going to want to sell and/or give away to others that which I have made.

So many patches have come, and gone, since this post first hit the forums… and yet hobos we remain.

:(

IndigoSundown.5419:

Two gamers engage a piece of content. Both are killed in one shot. Gamer A gets frustrated, closes the client and complains on the forums. Gamer B gets frustrated, and asks, “What did that and how can I prevent it?” If you never frustrate people, you run the risk of never challenging them, especially when there is a wide range of ability and skill in a player base. What’s really frustrating is one-hit kills, or other failure mechanics with no counter-play.

Exactly.

Part of the fight is learning how to counter the things that take place. There is no expectation to beat it the first time. I know folks are upset that this isn’t a faceroll fight like others, but I personally love that.

ColinJohanson.2394:

This is totally our fault, we dropped the ball on this plain and simple. We planned to have this messaged ahead of time to be fair to everyone, communication broke down between those who knew it was supposed to be messaged, and those who were supposed to message it and it simply didn’t happen.

As game director this is ultimately my fault first and foremost, and I’m sorry for those who potentially lost some karma as a result. It is our policy to message these kind of changes ahead of time with lots of warning, I’ll do everything possible to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future.

I’d recommend not using your karma consumables yet, give us a day or two to try and see what options we have available to help mitigate the issue.

Impressive reply. This is why I love GW2.

My brutally honest answer?

I like limited content when I have the limited content item that I want.

I hate limited content and think its bad for MMOs when I can’t get the limited content item that I want.

=D

Earlier, on this forum, someone had mentioned that starting on August 20th, some of the previously temporary BLT items that are no longer available would see a short return for those who wanted to buy them. Does anyone know if this is true or not?

These items would include the infinite pickaxe, axe, and sickles.

Honestly, I’m happy either way. I was prepared to drop $50-60 on the BLT this week, so if it turns out to be false then yay, I save some money. On the other hand, it would have been nice to get a second shot at getting those items.

Anyone know if this was just a false forum rumor or not?

Zepidel.5349:

From Future Update Notes:

This will allow you to get all Gw2 crafting professions Armorsmith, Artificer, Chef, Huntsman, Jeweler, Leatherworker,Tailor and Weaponsmith to level 500. When you reach 500 points you will be able to make a new tier of crafting materials. These new crafting materials will be made by combining lower tier materials. You will be able to make each of these new tier crafting materials once per day.

These new crafting materials will be used to craft account-bound ascended armour and weapons. So we will finally get to craft ascended gear, but it will take some time to make a full set as the required materials will be time-constrained.
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lol they took a page straight out of WoW’s book for this one. I remember logging in to do my daily crafting mat each day.

Titansteel bar, anyone? =D

Saelune.5316:

As a WvWer, Commander Tags in PvE just come off as vanity tags. Not that Id be rude to them, but it just seems pointless since few ever actually command anything. Though if I saw a WvW commander I respected in PvE, Id be keen to following them, but I already know who they are. Plus as WvW will teach, having the gold doesnt mean you have the skill. Ive seen good tagless commanders, and horrible tagged commanders.

This is why I think they should come out with a RED PvP commander tag, attainable only through PvP means. At the moment, it seems silly to me that the commanders in PvP are determined by their PvE ability only (aka- ability to make 100g). That doesn’t mean there aren’t good blue commanders, but a red commander would be far more likely to… “inspire” me to follow them around and actually listen to their strategies.

Vol.5241:

You guys are real naive to not expect a nerf to gauntlet farming.

And if I recall, players have been clamoring for challenging content.

You got it! And now they give you daily rewards for completing the gauntlet on each boss.

So what more do you guys want?

For them to either hotfix a patch ASAP or not patch it at all, but don’t leave it for 2 weeks so that only a portion of the playerbase gets TONS of money, and then remove it so no one else can. This whole “first come, first exploit” mentality is a little outdated.

I love how they don’t nerf this stuff quickly, either. They give just enough time for the hardcore players to get a massive amount of farming in, make hundreds of gold, and THEN nerf it.

Poor form, Anet. Very poor form.

Vael Victus.2654:

. Liadri is not a fun fight. That is undeniable, even if you had fun fighting her.

This is one of the silliest sentences I have ever read, to the point where Im not sure if you are serious. =D

More weapon skills would be nice. Perhaps some high skill point cost ones that you work towards. More utilities, too.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Only 15? You sure do give up easily.

This pretty much sums up RNG loot in an MMO perfectly, and is the reason why I really hoped this system had seen its final days back in Vanilla WoW.

If you aren’t prepared to do the same thing so many times that you literally HATE the content and its developers, you aren’t going to get the items you want.

When it comes to games, you quickly find that design and implementation are 2 different things.

GW2 was designed to have multiple useful builds which would allow people to be creative and have diverse teams. GW2 was implemented so that everyone should run zerker gear with builds that compliment that gear at all times.

I think that it’s not that the devs intended it to be this way… it’s just how it happened :-\

It took World of Warcraft’s developers nearly 4 years to implement a 15 minute refund option on items. Anet will still be ahead of the curve if they suddenly gain the insight to implement one within 2 years :-P

Sometimes, though, I do wonder whether game devs are gamers at all…

I’m at work so I don’t remember my exact trait setup but:

Beat Liadri using condition engineer- dual pistol, full bar of elixirs + supply crate

Hrm… so many people who already made their money from deadeye suddenly wanting it nerfed so no one else can make that money as well. Nice.

Alright, ANet, I agree: go ahead and nerf him… but decide on a gold limit for what should be considered an “exploit” and perm ban anyone who made more than that limit from beating him

Time to watch the selfish people wallow in regret!

daimasei.4091:

Yeah, because running in circles require so many skills -_-

Liadri isn’t hard, it’s just discriminating. If you have a physical/mental problems (like colorblind people or not so-sharp reflex like me) or get easily dizzy for running in circles with the kittenty camera ever conceived by game developers (again, like me) then, she is hard. Other ways, she is just another spam #1 mob.

Strategy? New builds? Are you kittening serious?

I killed her with full soldier gear (rare quality with soldier crest in every single piece) and Lich auto-attack. No food, no buffs, no special build. You don’t even have to dodge a single time. Once you know how the AoE works and where the clones/rifts spawn, it’s done (jeez, even Horace or the Krait Witch in starting zones are way harder to solo).

So no, game devs can’t make hardcore content, they just have the choise to discriminate people (which in theory is illegal but well, who cares).

How did you even dps her down in full soldier only doing auto attack before the timer ran out?

IndigoSundown.5419:

arjeidi.2690:

Tolmos.8395:

Since I started MMOing in 1997, I have found very VERY few PvE encounters that I considered to require any level of “skill”.

There’s your problem. You’re playing the wrong type of games. Not every game has to be about “How elite are YOU?” to be good or fun.

Maybe you should devote your time to Shooters. Or fighting games. or Mobas. Or RTS. Perhaps you do, but then… if you really want to be challenged and prove how skillful you are… why do you play this instead of those? Lack of skill perhaps?

Cheap shot, and totally unnecessary.

I find that much of MMO design is not to my tastes. However, what an MMO usually provides is a large world, a lot of content, and new content on a more or less regular basis. SP games don’t (or don’t often) offer any of that. So, I also play MMO’s to scratch certain itches.

Absolutely agree with this.

arjeidi.2690:

Tolmos.8395:

Since I started MMOing in 1997, I have found very VERY few PvE encounters that I considered to require any level of “skill”.

There’s your problem. You’re playing the wrong type of games. Not every game has to be about “How elite are YOU?” to be good or fun.

Maybe you should devote your time to Shooters. Or fighting games. or Mobas. Or RTS. Perhaps you do, but then… if you really want to be challenged and prove how skillful you are… why do you play this instead of those? Lack of skill perhaps?

With the exception of mobas, I play all of those regularly. But minus a few exceptions like Planetside 2, none offer a persistent world in which I can regularly play with friends. I play MMOs accepting that I won’t be challenged, but that’s not why I play them.

It has nothing to do with proving how skillful I am. I could give 2 craps if anyone outside of those I’m beating know how good I am. What I care about is personal enjoyment and betterment through high skill challenges. If I can get that in an MMO, then outstanding.

Karizee.8076:

Valenthor.4052:

Most GW2 boss encounters can’t hold a candle to WoW’s finer boss fights

Hahaha. As an ex-WoW hardcore raider, those “finer fights” boil down to gear checks with trinity training wheels. Tank takes aggro, healers play whackamole, Dps autopilot rotations and every now and then you stack or spread out and get out of the fire. Addons tell you what to do when and the fights are tuned so they cannot be completed with current gear thus giving the illusion of ‘progressing’.

I agree with this. After 4 years of hardcore WoW raiding, starting in 40 mans and ending in 20-25 mans, it pretty much comes down to trinity basics + simon says. The only job that could maybe be remotely difficult is the healer. I main tanked and was one of the main healers (there is no single “main healer” in a 40 or 20 man raid) for the majority of those 4 years. We were always on the cutting edge, and competing with world firsts on each of those raids. I never once felt like it required actual skill on my part, or really the part of anyone else in the group. It just required a basic game of simon says and for me not to mess up my rotation. Every once in a while a boss would have a strange mechanic that required me to not hit them at a specific time, to stand in a specific spot… simon says, basically.

So it’s not a matter of preferring individual skill over group skill… it’s a matter of preferring to be challenged myself, as opposed to standing around being bored and pretending like I’m supposed to be challenged, when in fact I am not.