Guild Wars 2

Cogbyrn.7283:

Kay.3718:

At risk of being swamped in the mass of elaborate replies:

My main concern with these balance changes is that I don’t think there is enough thorough thought being put into them. I’ll pick one example, but there’s are many, so don’t get bogged down on just this one:

• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.

This is one of the changes for warrior. Whoever came up with this at Arenanet, probably argued the following:

It’s too easy for flavour of the month stun-spam warriors to achieve 50% crit damage. bump up to master to make it harder for them to pick up, forcing more of a choice between damage and control.

That’s correct, no doubt about it. But what example Arenanet balance person X probably never realized, is that:

Moving this trait will unhinge a number of builds that rely on the synergy between this trait, the 20-point arms trait Opportunist, and for instance, leg specialist to maintain fury and guarantee 100% critical hit chance on Eviscerates after shieldbash.

To me, and likely others as well, a constructed synergy like that ^ is what making a great build is all about. A real work of art. And it just stopped being viable, because someone at Arenanet is unable or unwilling to look past the bend on these changes.

You could very simply preserve a synergy like that, by not moving Crack Shot, but moving Opportunist to the Adept tier. Your initial goal for the change will be intact, and you won’t have destroyed a number of builds in the process.

Intended or not, when you create a game that builds on synergies, you can’t just forget about those synergies because it’s more convenient when whipping up a quick rebalance. It’s taking the complexity and diversity out of the game.

So please, for the love of god, and for the good of the game, could you appoint or consult someone who plays GuildWars 2 before just putting these things on paper. Preferably someone with a decent grasp of the way different mechanics mesh together.

No offense or incitation intended. This is just something I feel passionately about. And I really really wish Arenanet would too.

I can understand your passion, but I don’t think you’re being particularly fair in your analysis. In short, just because you notice a synergy and appreciate its elegance doesn’t mean the synergy is balanced.

Taking your example, perhaps you should have to spend more than 30 trait points to guarantee an Eviscerate crit. I’ve seen how hard Eviscerate hits, and pressing something like 3, 4, F1 to do that much damage should be the focus of a build, not just 3/7ths of it. Instead of 0/20/0/10, you’ll just need to go 0/30/0/10. You lose something, yes. But have you stopped to think that maybe you should be losing something?

Personally, I think that’s a neat little synergy that I haven’t used myself, but there are still ways around it. Of course I’m sure it isn’t your only example, but when you find synergies that efficient that provide such good interaction at a cost of only 30 trait points with no real sacrifice, it’s probably time to stop and say “wait, should this be this easy?” I’ve often thought that my build was a little too clean, and now I’ll have to make a choice, and I think that’s a good thing.

There are strong arguments to be made about outlier builds that people run that hinge on these intensely powerful traits at low requirement levels. I get that it will be a bummer for those people, and I think they should be considered. However, it doesn’t affect the fact that traits like UF are quite strong and should probably be at a higher commitment level. If a bunker or support character relies on the 50% crit to do burst damage, there’s already something wrong with this sentence. Why is a bunker/support able to do burst? Because they want to 1v1 someone down? Why should they be able to put on that hat when they’re wearing another? That isn’t to say the support builds for Warriors couldn’t potentially use a bit of love, but is leaving damage potential in for these builds worth the ripple effect it has on other builds that are potentially dominating a meta?

Again, I respect the fact that you’re passionate about it, but sometimes passion can also cloud judgement.

Because most of the traits / skills are designed around bursting with a hammer. if you don’t want control linked to damage then don’t have so many increase damage on stunned opponents / increase crit rate to stunned opponents.

Butter.3024:

Oh god Warriors are no longer be able to do massive damage, massive CCs, massive tank, massive sustain, massive conditions removal all in one build anymore, oh god oh no Warriors are just like other class now oh god

Yes the Hammer build was OP, but for WvW, it’s basically the weapon. Without the hammer the warrior seems like it’s going to be pushed back to where it was for the first 9 months of this game, basically useless in any non-PvE environment.

PizzaSHARK.2741:

Julie Yann.5379:

This would pretty much render the hammer completely useless, especially if UF is moved to Master.

No; what it’s doing is making the Hammer a control-focused weapon, not a damage-focused one. With the current iteration, you get your cake and you’re eating it, too, and that’s why Hammer is currently overpowered.

• Earthshaker already takes a damage reduction if you don’t have UF. I fear that nerfing it even more would make it very weak for an F1 skill (even less if burst mastery is also nerfed.)

It doesn’t take a damage reduction if you don’t have UF; it just doesn’t get an obscene boost to its damage output. It’s possible that Earthshaker won’t need the damage reduction with UF no longer being automatically accessible, but I’d like to see how it plays out before we start saying the skill is useless.

Remember, it’s still an AOE stun with a short cooldown, huge area of effect, and long range. It could do 0 damage and it would still be a button very much worth pushing.

Personally I think it’d be more fun if it launched everyone it hits, since that seems more Hulk-like, but stunning is fine, too :p

• In order to get UF once it is moved to Master you need to sacrifice either Burst Mastery (extra damage), or Merciless Hammer (extrta control) or Cleansing Ire (extra survability).

Exactly! They’re forcing players to make choices, rather than being able to get pretty much everything with a single build. Now you have to choose if you want to be harder to kill, want better control, or want more damage. It’s basically pick two out of the three possible choices. I don’t see this as being bad.

I truly believe that all of this added together is overkill and will completely destroy the hammer warrior. Why not start with just the changes to UF and the longbow and see how it all evens out with other professions being buffed?

The Hammer will still be a useful weapon. You have a colossal AOE stun for an adrenaline dump, a conical knockback, and a single-target knockdown all on one weapon, plus an AOE cripple on a fairly brief cooldown.

It’s possible and maybe even likely that the Hammer will no longer be the one-stop shop for damage, control, and everything else… but that’s a good thing. Warriors can have two weapon sets equipped at any time and swap between them freely.

Hammer/Longbow will probably still be just fine and be viable, but it’s not going to give you the damage output, survivability, and control of an entire team anymore. Most likely, you will still be difficult to kill and exert a great amount of control over your enemies, but you’ll be needing someone else to kill them while you set them up.

Or you could swap out the Longbow for some damage, or vice-versa. Choices!

I would ask the question why is the hammer the one stop shop? Obviously it’s vastly superior to everything else. So what do you recommend now?

Give up on damage entirely? Go GS with good damage if you can put up with a 3 second root? (I know it’s not a true root as it can be canceled, but if you move you lose the damage)

Seems like a huge nerf to hammer warriors. Very out of character to nerf so many intersecting skills at the same time.

I know you are trying to tone down the tanky / damage / control builds. But AFAIK, Hammer is the only weapon that is actually useful in PvP/WvW. For many months, Warriors were kings in PvE and laughing stocks in PvP/WvW. Nerfing the hammer (moving unsuspecting foe, so no more crits, decreasing damage so base attacks hit for less, etc.) without buffing some other weapon (no, moving the useless rifle skill doesn’t count.) Is only going to remove Warriors from the PvP/WvW meta, again.

Most warriors use Hammer for combat and sword/wh for mobility. They isn’t even a weapon set to be worth it as an alternative. I imagine warriors won’t be very useful in WvW / PvP anymore.

Edit: Another reason ascended gear is terrible. Before you could roll with the punches, get new gear and try again. Now it’s just a gut punch up against a huge grind.

Yep. This was my bad. I didn’t realize there was any way other than killing champs / flowers to get it done.

What can I say, I’m a norn, I don’t wander Kryta.

Ok. Assuming you aren’t just trying to open up a can of worms again (for the record, I am extremely anti-ascended gear)…

I believe ascended gear is designed to get people out into the world and do things they weren’t doing very much before.

You need 500 dragonite ore to craft one weapon, that can be obtained from temples (30 per run), world bosses (3-30 per run), and WvW keep lords (about 10 each).

You need 500 emperyl fragments to craft one, that can be obtained from dungeon runs (20 per run), jumping puzzles (2-4 per puzzle), chests (umm. 4-8?), and towers and camps in WvW (4-8).

You need 500 bloodstone dust, that’s the red stuff you are probably already drowning in. You get it from champs.

The ridiculous ore / wood requirements are to get you to go into zones you otherwise wouldn’t visit. Basically anything from level 15-75.

The Obsidian Shard requirement is to give you a reason to have Karma, and to make it a little longer to get a legendary, especially with the karma nerf.

The need for separate recipes for the inscription and the weapon is to give you something to do with your laurels, because we all only play a single toon and are swimming in the things .. right?

The reason you need soo very much stuff to make one is so it will take you a long long time to get a full set, that way players won’t be qqing for another tier right away.

In response to Xae’s comment, 5% is a superior sigil of force which sells for over 2 gold. 5% is not insignificant.

Hmm… I don’t think we should beat this particular horse again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance

It only seems like all the heavy armors show skin because that’s what people use.

Just to add one more thought. I think all this grindy content burns goodwill.

My non-scientific anecdotal evidence suggests that when people quit the game because the goodwill is gone they really end up hating the game. The amount of venom I’ve heard from friends who left the game is unbelievable.

Neverwinter launched after GW2 with a traditional trinity system and it hasn’t really done well (I don’t think). So that I see no evidence that the trinity system would improve the game.

I play whoever is interesting me at the moment (I usually change every couple of months) with the exception of guild related missions, in which case I use my thief,, because he’s my only character with Map complete.

We’ve previously established that I am an atypical minority in how I play the game. If I know the reward, I evaluate whether the reward is worth the time spent. If I don’t know the reward I usually grind it out unless it’s really really bad. After missing the Karka event where so many precursors were handed out, I’m “afraid” to not complete the activity.

That said, I dislike every moment of it, and wish I could just focus on the parts of the game I enjoy.

In terms of sustainability, I don’t know. I agree that the beginning portion of this most recent story was one or the best ones so far. However, I feel like it’s very little content bookending a grind. I dread the next part of the living story a bit, because I feel like the grind gets worse, not better.

Personally, I think GW2 is very very lucky that this is a dry year for games and that there hasn’t been a compelling competitor. On the other hand, Neverwinter and FFIV both launched, so maybe there’s it’s harder to make a compelling MMO than I think.

How’s that for a long post with no conclusions?

Going further, and reading some other posts. Each team could have a natural advantage in it’s own borderlands or section of its keep. For example, free or instant upgrades. For example, let’s say red takes up one morning and discovers that green has taken Overlook.

When green takes overlook the keep is paper. When red takes it back it gets a free upgrade (reinforced walls).

This would help red slingshot back into the game.

Another idea is that the more you own the more expensive upgrades become. They require more supply (not $$/karma). Or maybe Dolyaks carry less supply the further you are from your base (kind of like straining supply routes.)

DevonCarver.5370:

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to provide a little direction here to the discussion. Firstly I want to reiterate Chris’ point in the original post: “2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.” I think there are a lot of really intriguing ideas to be found in this thread, but it’s not the purpose of this space for us to discuss what we are or aren’t doing to address the issue. More broadly speaking I wanted to clarify the types of things we take into consideration when we make large changes to WvW. One of the most important aspects of Guild Wars 2 is the spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players. It’s a core principle behind the event system, the skills in the game, the way we created gathering nodes, etc. Simply put, if a change will cause players to be less inclined to playing with other players, we won’t make it. Changes to WvW that incentivize players to avoid others on the map or that create incentives to have a smaller general population on the map create just that problem. When we look to make changes to WvW we look towards encouraging players to play together, finding ways to empower groups of skilled players to be able to make their mark even against superior numbers, etc. Solutions to the population imbalance would absolutely have to take that into account.

In addition, we don’t release specific numbers in terms of populations, queues, etc. and I can’t comment directly on those statistics. I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

Again, this is intended to be a discussion about the design principles, and not a forum for requests for information about current projects or to request specific changes.

Thanks again for the discussion, I hope it continues to progress positively.

You could having diminishing returns no points based on the number of items you own. For example, owning 2 keeps could give less than twice the number of points that holding 1 keep does. So that holding that last tower (while still a net gain) is not as important as holding the first one.

This would keep the score closer in tight matchups and encourage less populated servers to defend what they have.

RNG is by design. As long as you keep trying to get the precusor, ANet wins.

You are suppose to be frustrated. It’s fine and build into the system. As long as you don’t quit.

Personally, I think it’s a poor system, but whatever.

For me, the living content makes the game more boring rather than less.

Zerg trains, savanger hunts, and grindy achievements.

Zerg trains aren’t fun. Savanger hunts aren’t fun. Most of the achievements are dull as dirt to get done. Normally I would just ignore that stuff, but since the game is otherwise unrewarding, I have to do it if I want to keep up.

I recommend ignoring all that stuff as much as possible. WvW is what keeps me motivated. At least for now.

Small tip. Equip a minor sigil of bloodlust on each of your weapons. The extra power really helps the Mesmer.

Hmmm… If I were to tinfoil hat I would wonder whether elite’s were needed because Ascended gear made everyone stronger. I wonder if there’s a word for that?

MarzAttakz.9608:

So it’s fine to say “don’t overnerf them or they’ll go the path of the Ele” …

How do you think those of us who have chosen to play Elementalists since beta feel? We’ve always been seen as a joke barring those few months where a few usable builds were found and then nerfed into oblivion.

NO NO NO. I really don’t want warriors to feel like we (ele’s) do but something fundamental needs to change in the mindset of the balance team, every class needs equal representation and attention devoted.

Ele’s need help. I don’t want anyone to feel they way Ele players must feel. Not even warriors.

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Warriors are pretty strong right now, but will be seeing changes in an upcoming patch.

We like how they can be tanky, and we like how they can do DPS if they want. We also like the CC they can bring. We just don’t like them doing it all with 1 build.

they can do it all. warriors are ruining the game, you need to change them b4 people just stop playing because they already are.

I think more people quit the game because of the condi-meta rather than the warrior.

Collect harvest 20 spores. Yuck.

I spent my entire play time yesterday running with a zerg doing your boring stuff just to get it done.

Not a fan.

Kenmei.7138:

It is sad indeed that ppl playing warriors think everything is OK now

But it’s natural I believe. People just want everything that profits them that way or another or make their lives/games easier.

Sad But True.

I don’t know that everything is ok. But I know that warriors were massively craptastic in PvP and WvW for a long time. They may need an adjustment but you guys act like they’ve been top dog forever. They haven’t. If ANet does this wrong the Warriors will go back to being useless. Which may be what you want, it is natural, I believe.

Tequatl is a ridiculous joke to me. This big bad dragon that periodically sunbathes on the shore for 15 minutes and then leaves.

Part of the problem with having world bosses that no one fights is that they don’t reek the havoc you’d expect them to. I’d think that Teq would at least ravage the countryside if left unchecked. Instead he sits on the shore and then leaves.

So the question, to me, is, do you a) make him wreck sparkly fly fen until he’s defeated. I’m talking, don’t go in there you’ll be crushed type of stuff. b) make him easier to beat so that people bother. or c) increase the rewards to make it worth while to organize a group to take him down.

Faowri.4159:

After yet another ‘alliance’ plot, I’d have to say we really need some diversity of plotlines in the Living World as well. It really is becoming a ‘team rocket’s blasting off agaaaaaaain’ scenario where every single release has exactly the same plot structure.

Add that to the fact that Scarlet doesn’t only violate common sense/lore in her own right with a really unconvincing backstory, but seems capable of making entire other factions/races behave contrary to their cultures as established in the lore, too (see: xenophobic krait suddenly allying with the NC, misogynist Sons of Svanir taking orders from a woman), and it’s becoming a real uninspiring mess that I really just can’t invest any interest in at this point.

I realise it’s now going to be a while before we move on from Scarlet, even if all the feedback about her is taken on board, but until she’s gone and we get back to the real lore, my interest in the LW is probably going to remain limited to ‘do I care about/want this release’s cosmetic reward or not?’.

Yes, it’s feeling a little bit like we’re fighting the Legion of Doom. Why would the Krait and the Nightmare Court work together, or work with Scarlet? From what little I know about the Krait it seems like they would be at cross purposes with everyone.

Put another way, there should really be a logic behind these alliances. A reason the Krait, who attack everyone on sight, would agree to this. A reason the nightmare court would agree to this. Other than a cackling evil supervillian, I’m evil because I’m evil motivation.

chemiclord.3978:

Rings and trinkets started as only a fractal reward. It eventually expanded to dailies and guild missions. I’m not sure if it was always possible as drops in higher level fractals.

There’s no reason to believe there won’t be other ways to gain weapons and armor… eventually.

And no reason to believe that the methods will be any better than what they did for rings & trinkets. No thanks.

If they make toxin a condition that players can inflict on other players (basically making your screen go black for a period of time) then the healing skill will be vital (and the game will be broken, so DON’T DO THIS).

Otherwise, meh.

I have two points I would like to make.

I would prefer it if you changed the structure of the living world “episodes” a bit. They all feel like they are a bunch of pointless grindy things that are bookended by nice instances.

Take the Halloween one for example, the bloody prince can only be hurt by candy corn. So we need a living candy corn elemental. So far I’m with you, it’s silly but it’s halloween so it’s okay to be kitchy.

Then we go do a lot of grindy things, that (and this is the important part) have nothing to do with creating a living candy corn elemental. At the end of doing a series of unrelated tasks, we get a candy corn elemental in an achievement chest.

And then we take the candy corn elemental into another instance.

Why??? There is no cause and effect there. At least provide the illusion that we’re creating the elemental.

Second, the incredible inflation in the cost of things in the living world. For example, 25 skill points for the anti-toxin. Are you really saying that this healing skill almost as good as Tome of Courage, Rampage, Spirit of Nature, Dagger Storm, etc… I feel like if the current team were part of the original development team it would take 100 enemy deaths to unlock the #2 skill on a weapon.

I do understand that ascended gear essentially destroyed the various in game sinks for karma and skill points and therefore you need some new sinks. But make spending my points useful and proportional to the cost of everything else, come up with useful things, don’t just inflate the price of the few items you have

While I feel your pain, I think they are never ever coming. At this point if they were coming they would be here.

Raine.1394:

Xae Isareth.1364:

TooBz.3065:

Xae Isareth.1364:

TooBz.3065:

Vayne.8563:

TooBz.3065:

Yaki.9563:

The weapon doesn’t make that much difference. The only reason you “need” one is for fractals, but they haven’t even opened 50+ yet.

We don’t Almost no one plays this game to feel mediocre. Everyone Almost everyone wants BiS gear. If they didn’t there would be no reason to add this stuff.

Edited: edit to avoid stupid pedantic arguments.

Stupid pedantic argument incoming. lol

I don’t disagree that no one plays this game to feel mediocre. I do disagree that most people feel mediocre if they don’t have an ascended weapon.

I don’t even think BIS gear is on most people’s radar. Most people are still trying to figure out how to dodge. lol

Ha. Just the person I edited to avoid (bait??? Sometimes I don’t know my own motivations). However, in this case, I don’t think that was either stupid or pedantic. Stupid and pedantic is “I like being mediocre, you don’t speak for all of us.”

You’re point, in contrast, is rather thought provoking. It’s possible that ascended gear is really only a problem for those of us who walk the line between casual and hardcore. Casual in time available but hardcore in drive. (As far as I can tell you are the opposite, hardcore in time casual in drive) Combine that with being an altoholic and you have even a smaller subset of people. most people would just play one character and stick with it.

Nevertheless I will continue to advocate for my particular brand of idiocy.

See, the problem is that by the same argument, no one plays this game to look bland. almost everyone wants expensive skins.

So, does that mean we should all get free Legendaries?

I said this a couple of weeks ago, but what the kitten, if people what to re-open an argument I will.

To me, stats are fundamentally different than skins. This is for a couple of reasons (probably all related, but I see them as a little different)

a. Skins aren’t functional, stats are.,
b. You can have a skin that’s “good enough”, for many people the only good enough gear is “BIS”.
c. Skins aren’t time gated. If you gots the money you can buys the skin. However, if you want an ascended amulet you need to grind at least 20 laurels. Yes, I know dungeon tokens are time gated, but the gating isn’t that long.
d. Good looking skins are subjective, numerical stats are objective.
e. No one will kick you from a dungeon run for having ugly armor.

That’s probably enough for now. I realize that I’m overlapping and repeating myself.

a. Functionality of a stat only matters when it makes a materialistic and noticeable difference. In other games having higher tiers of gear allowed me to stomp players in PvP and destroy mobs like paper in PvE, I feel vastly more powerful. In Gw2 having Ascebded gear gives me no actual noticeable difference in in power.

then tell me, why isn’t exotics ‘good enough’? You can do everything just five with it, and see above comment. If you’re talking about personal satisfaction, I’m not satisfied until I get every Legendary in the game and enough gold for me to buy the entire TP. Greed is part if human nature, there is no satisfaction.

c. They aren’t time gated but often the ‘best’ skins are a lot harder to get than Ascended stuff. Would you want to switch the process of making Mjnor and the Ascended hammer around? Something which doesn’t have a time gate but requires you to grind for days on end to get enough cash to make is still effectively time gated.

d. I don’t see why this matters.

e. no one would kick you for not having ascended gear. Unless they’re that desperate to shave 1 min off a run.

I realize I’m not TooBz, but I seldom can resist such an invitation. Why does it matter? Because stats matter. As a recent thread with the math suggests, the first year of VP in the game has left us at around +10% to date. Is it significant? Of course +10% is significant, but even if you think not, consider this, vertical progression does not progress by stopping. A power curve describes a positive relationship between power and time. As time progresses, the power level of the game will increase.

I don’t know the intended nature of our low power curve, but let’s assume the first years increase describes the curve, i.e., 10% per year. In 5 years we’ll be at +50%. Five years is not a long time in the life of a successful MMO. Is +50% significant?

This is the problem with arguing about the significance of point 1 & point 2 on a power curve. It’s a curve. It will progress. If it’s not significant today, it will be tomorrow. This is why it matters.

Thanks. Well said.

Xae Isareth.1364:

TooBz.3065:

Xae Isareth.1364:

TooBz.3065:

Vayne.8563:

TooBz.3065:

Yaki.9563:

The weapon doesn’t make that much difference. The only reason you “need” one is for fractals, but they haven’t even opened 50+ yet.

We don’t Almost no one plays this game to feel mediocre. Everyone Almost everyone wants BiS gear. If they didn’t there would be no reason to add this stuff.

Edited: edit to avoid stupid pedantic arguments.

Stupid pedantic argument incoming. lol

I don’t disagree that no one plays this game to feel mediocre. I do disagree that most people feel mediocre if they don’t have an ascended weapon.

I don’t even think BIS gear is on most people’s radar. Most people are still trying to figure out how to dodge. lol

Ha. Just the person I edited to avoid (bait??? Sometimes I don’t know my own motivations). However, in this case, I don’t think that was either stupid or pedantic. Stupid and pedantic is “I like being mediocre, you don’t speak for all of us.”

You’re point, in contrast, is rather thought provoking. It’s possible that ascended gear is really only a problem for those of us who walk the line between casual and hardcore. Casual in time available but hardcore in drive. (As far as I can tell you are the opposite, hardcore in time casual in drive) Combine that with being an altoholic and you have even a smaller subset of people. most people would just play one character and stick with it.

Nevertheless I will continue to advocate for my particular brand of idiocy.

See, the problem is that by the same argument, no one plays this game to look bland. almost everyone wants expensive skins.

So, does that mean we should all get free Legendaries?

I said this a couple of weeks ago, but what the kitten, if people what to re-open an argument I will.

To me, stats are fundamentally different than skins. This is for a couple of reasons (probably all related, but I see them as a little different)

a. Skins aren’t functional, stats are.,
b. You can have a skin that’s “good enough”, for many people the only good enough gear is “BIS”.
c. Skins aren’t time gated. If you gots the money you can buys the skin. However, if you want an ascended amulet you need to grind at least 20 laurels. Yes, I know dungeon tokens are time gated, but the gating isn’t that long.
d. Good looking skins are subjective, numerical stats are objective.
e. No one will kick you from a dungeon run for having ugly armor.

That’s probably enough for now. I realize that I’m overlapping and repeating myself.

a. Functionality of a stat only matters when it makes a materialistic and noticeable difference. In other games having higher tiers of gear allowed me to stomp players in PvP and destroy mobs like paper in PvE, I feel vastly more powerful. In Gw2 having Ascebded gear gives me no actual noticeable difference in in power.

then tell me, why isn’t exotics ‘good enough’? You can do everything just five with it, and see above comment. If you’re talking about personal satisfaction, I’m not satisfied until I get every Legendary in the game and enough gold for me to buy the entire TP. Greed is part if human nature, there is no satisfaction.

c. They aren’t time gated but often the ‘best’ skins are a lot harder to get than Ascended stuff. Would you want to switch the process of making Mjnor and the Ascended hammer around? Something which doesn’t have a time gate but requires you to grind for days on end to get enough cash to make is still effectively time gated.

d. I don’t see why this matters.

e. no one would kick you for not having ascended gear. Unless they’re that desperate to shave 1 min off a run.

No need to get all boldy on me. Geeze.

To me, saying that something is objectively better only counts if the differences meets your standard of material is ridiculous.. Better is better.

Anyway, don’t want to talk about it anymore. For the moment I’m fed up with this game and have no interest in trying to improve it.

You can’t sell exotic armor once you’ve worn it. You can either salvage it for parts or throw 4 pieces into the mystic forge to get 1 sellable item out of it.

Will not buy. I’m hooked on this game in some ridiculous lizard brain way, but I’m not dumb enough to do it again.

Xae Isareth.1364:

TooBz.3065:

Vayne.8563:

TooBz.3065:

Yaki.9563:

The weapon doesn’t make that much difference. The only reason you “need” one is for fractals, but they haven’t even opened 50+ yet.

We don’t Almost no one plays this game to feel mediocre. Everyone Almost everyone wants BiS gear. If they didn’t there would be no reason to add this stuff.

Edited: edit to avoid stupid pedantic arguments.

Stupid pedantic argument incoming. lol

I don’t disagree that no one plays this game to feel mediocre. I do disagree that most people feel mediocre if they don’t have an ascended weapon.

I don’t even think BIS gear is on most people’s radar. Most people are still trying to figure out how to dodge. lol

Ha. Just the person I edited to avoid (bait??? Sometimes I don’t know my own motivations). However, in this case, I don’t think that was either stupid or pedantic. Stupid and pedantic is “I like being mediocre, you don’t speak for all of us.”

You’re point, in contrast, is rather thought provoking. It’s possible that ascended gear is really only a problem for those of us who walk the line between casual and hardcore. Casual in time available but hardcore in drive. (As far as I can tell you are the opposite, hardcore in time casual in drive) Combine that with being an altoholic and you have even a smaller subset of people. most people would just play one character and stick with it.

Nevertheless I will continue to advocate for my particular brand of idiocy.

See, the problem is that by the same argument, no one plays this game to look bland. almost everyone wants expensive skins.

So, does that mean we should all get free Legendaries?

I said this a couple of weeks ago, but what the kitten, if people what to re-open an argument I will.

To me, stats are fundamentally different than skins. This is for a couple of reasons (probably all related, but I see them as a little different)

a. Skins aren’t functional, stats are.,
b. You can have a skin that’s “good enough”, for many people the only good enough gear is “BIS”.
c. Skins aren’t time gated. If you gots the money you can buys the skin. However, if you want an ascended amulet you need to grind at least 20 laurels. Yes, I know dungeon tokens are time gated, but the gating isn’t that long.
d. Good looking skins are subjective, numerical stats are objective.
e. No one will kick you from a dungeon run for having ugly armor.

That’s probably enough for now. I realize that I’m overlapping and repeating myself.

Xae Isareth.1364:

The wider MMO community commented that there’s nothing to do at level 80 despite there being a ton of expensive cosmetics to work for and WvW/PvP.

Players complained world bosses was not worth the effort and no one did them.

Players commented crafting had no purpose.

Ok. But here’s another comment. I recently started playing with a level 80, but mostly abandoned alt. Had a lot of fun. Got a little bit of ascended gear, then someone made a comment that made me think “hmm… that’s a really good idea, I should try that”. But it’s going to take me more than a month to get the stuff I need to do it.

That is a pain. I shouldn’t have to grind stuff for a month just to try out a build. And no, I can’t use exotics because, in this case, exotics are limited in the stat combinations you can get, and they nerfed the kitten out of karma acquisition.

Edit: and saying it gives me something to work for doesn’t work for me, because I don’t need something to work for. I need a fun game to play to blow of steam after work.

Jharkin.9357:

Changing the cap is a ridiculous idea. To make it “balanced” the cap would need to be dynamic based on the lowest pop server. Are you going penalize servers with a guild that plays in NA mornings due to the fact that their opponent can only field 10 people on a map?

That’s a very good point. There are definitely problems with the idea.

Not going to be popular but one solution to the WvW imbalance is to cap the number of players who can enter WvW so that WvW is always balanced. With a minimum of say 20% of the maximum population, just to get things started.

No one can leave the queue until a slot is available. The number of slots would be the number of people active in the least active server + 10 (subject to the above described 20% minimum).

This ensures that the population in WvW is more or less balanced while encouraging people to move to less populated servers. Make transfer cost proportional to normal WvW activity.

There’s really no reason to ridicule. I would view this as a call from an economically ignorant person to increase the drop rate.

Obviously, we can’t ask players to stop wanting things, all we can do is ask ANet to supply more of the things we want.

I’m level 5 in Fractals (so nothing has come from there), but so far I have earned.

6 Amulets, 5 Rings, 5 Accessors, 1 back piece, 2 ascended weapons. I am trying to gear up another toon and I am SOOOOO sick and tired of waiting to do what I want to do. I think the old system was so much better where I could just spend some gold and regear.

tl;dr: Whaaaaaa. QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ.

tl;dr 2: constructively, ANet you are exhausting my patience and willingness to play your game and consequently risking the revenue stream that I have provided up until now. Please stop the grind!

Behellagh.1468:

TooBz.3065:

The rules about what you can and cannot salvage are ridiculous.

You can’t salvage armor or trinkets from temples.
You can salvage armor, but not weapons, from dungeons.
You can’t salvage anything from the WvW vendor.

Really? Is this necessary. Why make everything so throwaway?

Why are you buying all this Karma/Dungeon/WvW Currency gear and then not using it? For the most part people buy it for the looks and use them as skins.

For the most part if you paid coin for it or it was dropped, you can salvage it.

Because I change my mind and the rune is more valuable than the armor.

Edit: Also, my complaint is that is incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes you can salvage things sometimes you can’t and there is very little rhyme or reason (collectively, I understand why each change was made, but unfortunately it makes things weird)

I think, celestial gear was an experiment to to see if people would put up with a) time gating crafting and b) additional recipes instead of discoveries. As you can see from ascended weapons the answer for both is “yes”.

Having discovered that we will put up with it, and since the primary goal of the game is to make you log in everyday (and not to provide enjoyment or “fun” as claimed), they won’t change it.

Personally, I think this will backfire in the long run (specifically because time gated rewards are not fun).

The rules about what you can and cannot salvage are ridiculous.

You can’t salvage armor or trinkets from temples.
You can salvage armor, but not weapons, from dungeons.
You can’t salvage anything from the WvW vendor.

Really? Is this necessary. Why make everything so throwaway?

eithinan.9841:

Victoitor.2917:

Players want Account bound ranks. Anet has some reasons not to do so. Why not come with alternate solutions then? OP at least tried to give an alternate solution. I did not like it too much, so I’ll post another one.

Half of the wxp earned by any character is also given to alts.

So if I gain 100wxp, the character I’m playing gains those 100wxp and all my alts gain 50wxp. This way, when you level an alt, you will also be helping your main and other alts. Also, when leveling your main, your alts will not be so far behind. Players can feel like they are progressing their account while making all characters progress a bit. For Anet, characters will still be differentiated by the ones who are played the most.

interesting, What about all those free chests that alts would get?

1) Everyone can create 5 toons. So just create a dummy character and get the chests on them.

2) Almost every chest I have received had 2 greens, 1 blueprint, and 10 badges of honor. To me, the greens and blueprint is no big deal. The badges would further help alt-unfriendliness because it would make sure that people with alts could spend the 10 less laurel price for amulets and rings. (assuming you don’t run fractals).

Hammers, axes, maces, swords, daggers, greatswords, longbows, rifles, pistols, staff, scepters, and shortbows should be removed from the game.

This game is suppose to be about the judicious use of skills, not swing around big weapons. Look at the manifesto video, Colin Johanson makes it clear that combat is inherently boring “I swung a sword, I swung a sword again”.

It’s only because ANet gave into the vocal minority that we have these “weapons” to begin with.

</troll>

The thing that really frustrates me is how readily you can get rings from fractals and what a total pain it is to get them any other way. I never have the time to dedicate to a fractal (I play a lot but with frequent interruption).

I wish they would make them tradeable.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

The anti-ascended argument boils down to two camps.

1. Crafting to 500 is too expensive and doing three dynamic events per day is too much of a grind!

2. It imbalances WvW by potentially giving someone have a 5% statistical advantage over… hold on I have to kill this solo upleveled guy with my 5 man VOIP coordinated “havok team.”

What others am I missing?

Pretty much that, if you edit out the obvious sarcasm / bias and throw in some alt / build variety qq’ing.

Oh and one question for you:

Galen Grey.4709:

I only arguing the difference in stats is small and 8% is small.

Does DnT consider an 8% change in damage to be “small”?

Omne.4603:

Bastien.1645:

I believe Ascended gear should be removed from PvP. It creates the typical “Grind to Win” scenario that is so common in other MMO/Games.

I feel that Arena Net created an amazing PvP game with Guild Wars 1 and they should stick to how things were run. I also predict a very certain power creep for Melee classes like Warriors/Thiefs who benefit so much from weapon power as opposed to classes like Mesmers/Necromancers, this will create a distinct imbalance between these classes that will be compensated by 1) Nerfing the Warrior/Thief/Guardian/Ranger and effectively screwing players who don’t have Ascended armor on these characters; OR 2) Not nerfing them and creating a huge gap in power between “Physical DPS” classes and “Magic” users.

WvWvW players like to PvP, but any PvP’er will do everything in their power to achieve an advantage over the enemy, the important thing for most PvP players is winning (yes they have fun too but winning is the most important), pretty soon we will have fully ascended players in WvWvW which will make it unplayable for people who don’t have hundreds of hours to dedicate to a single character in order to equip them with full ascended armor, I believe the weapons cost 200g each, the trinkets/accessories using Laurels would take almost a year to get and the back piece is not even available, and that’s assuming you do your daily every single day. Fractals should not be required to play PvP competitively.

WvWvW players already have to spend ~50+g on Runes + exotics to remain competitive, I believe that’s enough as you should naturally accumulate that gold levelling your character and doing a few dungeons along the way, a lot of people will say ascended armour makes no difference but if we assume both zergs are of equal skill, the zerg that is fully ascended will always beat the non ascended zerg that has 5-10% less stats, it’s the same thing as putting a level 80 zerg vs a upleveled zerg, which zerg do you think will win? And don’t get me started on roaming/sniping groups fully ascended vs non ascended people, in the law of averages, we have to assume everyone is at the same skill level so the person who is better geared will win. Could a pro player beat a fully ascended “newb”? Of course, but pro players a very rare and they don’t make up the average WvWvW in our realm. Heck, my realm is full of PvE players (Desolation) so if anything Ascended gear is awesome as the sheer power of these people will carry me but I still believe these items should not be implemented in this game mode.

Solution: It’s simple, just scale Ascended gear to Exotic stat level upon entering a Borderland. I believe fair play should be encouraged and “grind to win/pay to win” (crafting) should not be encourage or allowed in PvP, this is not World of Warcraft and I believe the fair play/balanced gear model from Guild Wars 1 was perfect and it should be encouraged not scrapped. If I wanted to go “3 Shot noobs with overpowered gear” I’d go back to WoW and grind RBGs to 2200.

Regards,
Bastien

If you lose any fight, ever, and blame ascended, YOU are terrible at this game.

Granted, I am terrible at this game, and YOU are adding nothing of substance.

Now, let’s remove ascended from WvW.

Galen Grey.4709:

Vanthian.9267:

logosloki.3958:

Did you miss some exotic gear for your exotic dummy? Because I get 104% crit damage not 86% crit damage.

edit: In fact you must of missed something since even without food buffs, bloodlust or might, with d/p I get 2239 base power for exotic zerk/zerk orb/ruby dummy not the 2089 you list.

Check your trinkets and rings and such for the extra jewel. The calculation I used were for the base item only. …

Isnt that cheating though? There is no reason why anyone wouldnt use a jewel with their trinkets. That changes things quite a bit. by adding jewels power goes up to 2239.

Ergo going with basic damage no buffs etc…

(981×2239×2.4) / 1836 = 2871 vs 3108 which means increase in damage is actually 8%

going with the max damage, food buffs, critical whatevers

(981x 3306×2.4) / 1836 = 4239

4239 × 257% = 10,894 vs 11909 = 8.6%

none of it is close to the 24% you calculated.

If you have a good reason why you think adding jewerly to the trinkets in exotics is not fair feel free to share but personally I think they should be there considering those stats are build in ascended gear anyway.

Even at 8.6% damage it’s still more than a sigil of force on which people are currently willing to spend 2g 36s . If 5% isn’t meaningless neither is 8.6%.

Is your problem the reduction? Would it make a different to ask that scaling automatically scales everyone up level 80 with full ascended gear?

I love how everyone says skill > gear until you try to take theirs away.

Gear > skill.

Just take on any uplevel ever.

tom.7468:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Aphix.9846:

Ascended items have such a little effect in wvw lol, if you lose a 1v1 or whatever it’s because you messed up or you’re just bad. The chances that the few extra stats could have made a difference is really kittening low lol, be realistic here, also they’re pretty easy to get anyway, trinkets especially.

Really ?

If it doesn’t make a difference then why are people wasting their lives grinding away for it?

You do realize ascended tier have been here since November 16th, 2012 right?
Thats almost 1 year. While were at it why not just delete all but white gear?
Its unfair to new players right? so lets just delete that and wvw ranks too.
See how stupid that sounds?
It doesn’t matter if you agree or not ascended is here to stay. I just hope this is it. No more tiers and no legendary trinket/armor.
When colin were asked if there was going to be more tier he just said “I really hope not”. If they do that i will quit gw2 forever. Just like 90% of my in-game friends did.

That’s not what people asked for.

Instead, they are looking for ways to minimize the impact of the awful ascended gear in a way that doesn’t entirely eliminate it from play because, no matter how terrible the decision to introduce it in the first place, it’s “here to stay”.

Buzzcrave.6197:

He should be running 0/10/30/0/30 with knight armor and mixture of zerk/cavalier trinkets. You can get 3.8k armor easily with those set up.

Can I ask how? I just did a build with full toughness gear, 0/10/30/0/30 runes of Melandru and only ended up with 3765.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQJASBGQQP0wqgLOFUC1j5oOiDA-jUBBYgBKBqIaslRFRjVbDTFjIqOKgKC-w