Guild Wars 2

I can see the gap closing point, but almost all classes have gap closers (which have largely been repurposed as escapes)

Thieves have stealth, sword 2, short bow 5, dagger 2, shadow step
Warriors have sword 2, greatsword 3, greatsword 4, endure pain,
Elementalists have ride the lightning, lightning flash, burning speed, mist form
Mesmers have stealth, blink, feedback, mirror images, temporal curtain (traited)
Guardians have wall of reflection, aegis, sword 2, greatsword 3

I have no idea what engineers and necros have as I I don’t play them.

Usually, people save these skills as “escapes”. If something goes south for them they get to run away. However, there’s no reason these skills couldn’t be used to close the gap and get to the Ranger. It just requires a little thought and practice.

Fluffball.8307:

I have not been killed by 1 single longbow ranger yet, playing my normal melee ranger. Hopefully I’ll have better luck soon.

And the whole “omg 4 rangers are so strong because they called a target” is just… ridiculous. Are there not 4 people on the other team as well? Anyone want to eat 4 steal/pistol whips??

This. The problem isn’t that after the patch 4 rangers can burst down a single target, the problem was that before the patch they couldn’t.

While the OP may have a point (I don’t think so, but I’m not a master of balance), I hope ANet waits long enough for counterplay to develop. Already people have mentioned that dodging can mitigate the entire burst.

Also, the 15k bursts that people have been complaining about require triggering several different skills that each have a minute long cool down. In contrast, 100 blades can do 15k every 5 seconds.

For all the Rangers asking for self nerfs, please get a grip. Thieves never ask for nerfs to their class, they just take what they get and enjoy it. Look at what happened to mesmers. They asked for the torment on scepter autoattack to be nerfed, and they got a PU nerf instead.

The Spiral King.2483:

- when you’ve had guardians who have played this game for two years full on “hardcore” and have yet to unlock the skills on their sword, only to discover that zealot’s defense has a block projectile mechanic
- when you’ve had people with multiple legendaries, 12k cheevos, who still don’t know how to effectively stack might or use light projectile finishers to clear condis quickly, or blast anything else other than might
- when you’ve had people who think dealing with any sort of mechanics or bosses who have mechanics are too hard and annoying
- when you’ve had a full group of “elite” full ascended zerkers take more than 40 minutes in a single path in CM that have been playing this game since beta who are self proclaimed “speed runners”

This is a failure in the tutorial system which will not be fixed by slowing down progression. Slowing down progression will not magically teach people to stack might. Nor will it make people read tool tips. Nor will it make them experiment.

Today you complain that the guardian doesn’t know everything about sword 3. In six months you’ll complain that all people do is auto attack. They spent so much time with the 1 skill and it’s always worked well enough.

I disagree, mainly because you lumped too many things in together.

For Jormag, phase 1, you get your pea shooter, dodge falling rocks, dodge waves of ice, and get feared until you knock down the wall. That is the mechanic of the boss and everyone does it. For phase 2, you get your flamethrower run around and destroy ice crystals so the golems can get through and weaken Jormag. That is also the mechanic of the boss and most people do it.

We don’t need a “rework” that introduces ridiculous bullet sponges into the event.

I don’t think they are going to reduce the level cap. I think they reworked the traits, realized that there were a lot of dead zones, and spread everything else out so it felt like progress.

Now I just wish they would give us level 60 – 80 scrolls.

If torch 5 were anything other than utter garbage they would probably nerf torch 4. Although I don’t see that skill is so amazing, except that stealth is generally amazing.

The problem isn’t with the build, condition builds are generally not very good for PvE world bosses. The limit on condition damage (25 stacks) really prevents a condition build from working.

If you are just looking for a good dungeon build, you can try Brazil’s build. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZhKTy9b2w

For an all around build that’s lots of fun, check out the shattercat ghost. It’s not min/maxed for PvE, but you can use it everywhere. Just swap out the torch for a sword or pistol. (And the corresponding master trait in domination) http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAsfRl4zKqHTTkGb9ICqHYH49dkU0avWJF22FC-j0CBYgCiEEgkIBK1UaM7UItMsIasabYKXDqW/CxceY1G0JSKgRVGB-w

Even when we do provide information, many people are jerks about it.

So, Ithilwen, I recommend you read through ChoasAngel’s guide here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Guide-Lyssa-s-Grimoire-The-Mesmer-Handbook/first. It’s full of great information.

I also highly recommend Osicats videos for strategies. http://osicat.weebly.com/ Osicat uses terrain to gain an advantage like no one I’ve seen.

Supcutie has also posted a PvP guide that’s very good. http://bit.ly/mesmerguide and there’s a very nice video he did with the sittingonacouch people http://sittingonacouch.com/l2play-with-shawn-buell-ep-3-gw2-mesmer-with-supcutie/

I hate seeing a mesmer criticizing another mesmer because they chose to play builds that are too effective.

I hate seeing a mesmer asking for nerfs to the mesmer class.

I hate seeing mesmers calling other mesmers “fair weather” when they don’t continue to play the class after an endless stream of nerfs.

I hate seeing mesmers who say a nerf if fine because it doesn’t affect their build.

I hate seeing mesmers insist that you run a min/max build in dungeons instead of one that’s fun to play.

I hate seeing a mesmer claiming the mesmer is only a “veilbot”

WhiteRose.6934:

TooBz.3065:

No matter how much they nerf the PU build, as long as stealth is involved players will call it OP.

Also, I think it’s a huge mistake to listen to Helseth about anything. When they announced the change he immediately posted something like … Yes I am once again the only mesmer!

That doesn’t seem like someone who is interested in the health of the class.

I think that was meant to be a comment on how Mesmer became vastly more popular when PU was buffed and everyone started playing the spec. Now that PU is “nerfed” maybe they’ll all move on to the next flavor-of-the-month class.

Which, in my opinion, is good for the health of the class.

Maybe. It didn’t come across that way to me when I saw it.

Anyway, I also worry that they spent 4-6 months coming up with a buff to the scepter and 4-6 days coming up with a PU nerf to counterbalance it.

If they iterated on buffs / nerfs more often then it wouldn’t be a big deal, but we have to live with whatever they do for a long, long time.

I suspect that the idea is to spread things out so the things that you gain are clumped into groups, something like

Level 10 – Gain 1 trait point
Level 11 – Stat Increase
Level 12 – Weapon skill unlock
Level 13 – Ability to emote
Level 14 – Unlock Utility Skill
Level 15 – Gain 1 trait point.

Obviously I don’t know what will be unlocked at each level.

No matter how much they nerf the PU build, as long as stealth is involved players will call it OP.

Also, I think it’s a huge mistake to listen to Helseth about anything. When they announced the change he immediately posted something like … Yes I am once again the only mesmer!

That doesn’t seem like someone who is interested in the health of the class.

To the OP, I’m not unhappy, but I am underwhelmed.

Well, I am a little disappointed. For a minute it looked like mesmer may be fun again. Guess not.

I thought in the last patch they made it so clones no longer proced clone on death traits if the clone was replaced? Am I remembering that wrong?

I really never heard anyone complain about the old leveling process. The people I knew loved leveling and hated the end game (or lack thereof)

I don’t think it needed to change. And I really don’t think any of these changes are a good idea.

I have a hard time understanding how any of this is an improvement. Seems like you are just dragging out a boring process and adding the illusion of progress through clumping benefits together. The only thing that interests me in the slightest, so far, is some of the balance changes.

flaming bunny ears

unicorngirl.1487:

goldenwing.8473:

1. called “ban” bot.
2. has said “we’ve received reports.”
3.“we will be forced to investigate”
4. “we will be forced to take action against your account”

Combined, all of these are impersonating statements. Only ANet is capable of taking action against an account.

However, that’s not up to us to decide. Support needs to know.

Take action = report the OP to ANet for match manipulation.

“Impersonating statements” really? Impersonating someone = pretending to be them, e.g making a character called “Arena Net Staff” or saying “Hello, I am Jeff from Arena Net.” If someone chooses to infer something from something someone else says, that’s their problem. I’m guessing the OP inferred “we” to mean “Arena Net” because he’s broken the rules and is afraid of being caught. If he was innocent, he wouldn’t have made this thread, he’d have just replied “lol” or something.

This kind of “letter of the law” thinking won’t matter at all if they decide to ban. I

Yes. Any change to the scepter is better than none. This weapon was been terrible for a long time.

Dusty Moon.4382:

cesmode.4257:

Im sorry, I dont visit these forums every single day to make sure I keep up on every topic. Ad Nausem for you, new to me.

It is called SEARCH – pretty easy to use actually.

Please try searching before you post something like this. “Guild” turns up 0 results, “Interview” turns up 0 results, “Mesmer” turns up 1 result.

The search function does not work.

Edit: I searched this forum. Other forums return different results, but it’s clear that it isn’t returning even a fraction of what it should.

IMO, it’s not an event anyone ever cared about. It’s not something that’s necessary to complete.

Unless people were completing the event regularly before the farm, then really all they are doing by completing it now is trying to ruin the enjoyment of other players. Which to me is just trolling.

As long as the nerf are kept to fiery rush I don’t see a problem.

However, outside of that one mechanic and the general usefulness of fields, I don’t see elementalists as being in a great place for a meta perspective.

Not a lot of build variety. And while I don’t mind seeing outlying abilities nerfed, I feel the consistent nerfing of almost everything makes the game bland.

I think a level 80 scroll is good because after leveling up 8 characters to 80, leveling is boring. The new system is terribly tedious.

I think it’s bad because people will be screaming P2W, P2W!

I think people worry too much about fair.

Everyone tries to force everyone else to play the game their way. It’s because everyone thinks they are the best.

You can easily add anyone to a block list so you don’t have to see their rants. Odds are if someone says “F£$%^&G NOOBS, ARE YOU IDIOTS???!!” they will never have anything to say you want to read.

For me, it’s was just completeness. After almost two years, finally got lucky and a precursor dropped. But, now that I have one, I feel no need to ever get another one.

People should always be polite. There is no reason to be rude.

Unfortunately, ANets solution to world bosses is to use some gimicky mechanic combined with a large dps requirement. These events generally seem to require a map-full of people working together to bring down the boss.

I’ve been thinking about this, because it comes up all the time, what if each different stat set had it’s own sigil slots.

So if you are on berzerker stats and you but on a sigil of bloodlust then swapped to, say, soldier or rabid stats, the sigil would go away. And of course, return again when you swapped to berzerker stats.

If you are a power based character, for 99% of the content you will want either Berzerker gear (power, precision, or ferocity) (PvE) or Soldier’s gear (Power, Vitality, Toughness) (WvW , Tequatl, and Wurm).

In answer to your “what is the point.” The only point to the end game in GW2 is to have fun.

There is no meaningful progression to speak of. The best way to play GW2 at 80 is to decide what you are interested in and do that. What you are interested in can change from day to day.

The primary thing people tend to do is
a) living story for a couple of days when it comes out.
b) grind living story achievements
c) WvW
d) PvP
e) dungeons
f) fractals (which I distinguish from fractals because the groups don’t always overlap).
g) grind ascended gear (a full set will take a while).

Vayne.8563:

GavNation.4307:

Vayne.8563:

I’ll skip the economy question.

The living story is new content that comes out about every two weeks, sans breaks. If you’ve been logging in every two weeks, you have unlocked all the chapters and you can start them as soon as you’re level 80. Just go to the journal in your hero tab, click on the living world and start it.

What you’ve missed is Season 1 which was a mixed back anyway. The game will sort of assume you know what’s been happening. You can watch one of the youtube videos on it or look it up in the wiki to find out what happened if you care, or contact me in game and I’ll tell you all about it until you’re bored to death. lol

What’s what point?

Legendary and ascended have the same stats. Exotic is good enough to do 99% of the content in the game everything except the highest level fractals. Ascended weapons have to be crafted. Legendaries have the same stats, and are much harder to make but often have cooler skins (or overdone according to some people).

Legendaries take a long time to get and a lot of work/farming but don’t give you a stat advantage over ascended, which isn’t much better than exotic in the first place.

Exotics: Craft or buy? And why?

Me? I’d run dungeons and get them for free, because you not only save on the exotics, but dungeons are a pretty good way to make money. Unless you’re into WvW in which case you can farm badges to get exotics. You can also use karma and get exotic temple armor.

You might even get lucky and get a few exotic drops along the way. You can do all the content in rares too.

By free, Vayne means that when you run a dungeon you earn dungeon tokens. Once you get enough you can use the tokens to buy level 80 exotic weapons. It takes about 5 dungeon runes to get one weapon. Each dungeon offers a only weapons of a certain types. If you know what you want in your build you can look it up on the wiki, or ask here and we can tell you.

Are the times on your website EDT?

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

I say give these players a 1 year grace period. that is plenty of time.

Especially if there was an automated e-mail that went out at 6 months, 9 months, 11 months, and 1 day before the name is released.

But, I think that any policy would need to take into account military personnel or other people who may spend a long period of time without internet access.

If they aren’t grouping with you, why do you care?

If you are playing a Ranger, a Mesmer, a Necromancer, or an Engineer you aren’t being optimal anyway.

I have to agree with most of the other posters.

Dueling: I don’t care if it’s unobstrusive, but I understand why ANet doesn’t want it. It’s hard enough to simultaneously balance 5v5 and zerg v zerg without adding in the need to balance classes 1v1.

Gear Progression: Is it enough to say “oh NO?” I don’t play enough to keep up in a traditional MMO. I have a job and a life outside of the game. I’ve quit other MMOs when I get to the point where I get ROFLStomped by someone who isn’t better but has better gear. No thank you.

Inspect: I don’t like the idea. But I can understand the desire for some kind of DPS meter. For example, in the mists I can see that it may be nice to be able to measure your DPS against the golems.

Direct trading undermines the major gold sink in the game.

IDK, I think that you got to have two legendaries at a time when nobody else did. You still have two weapons which are guaranteed to remain BiS…

I have difficulty understanding why you need compensation.

This was a tough fight. You can’t let it hit you from the side or back or you are instantly downed (or at least I was).

If you select it, as you can see in the picture, it says “deadly while flanking”.

I play for however long it takes to do the story quests once every two weeks. Other than that I don’t play.

Hi John,

How does wealth / material distribution affect how you think about sinks?

For example, I imagine that gaining wealth for the sake of gaining wealth could be, under some circumstances, be very similar to a sink – as wealth and materials are held outside the market. The problem being that at anytime those materials and gold could flood back in. Or is this a self-correcting problem that you don’t need to worry about?

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

As long as the wealth disparity grows, and high end items can only reliably be obtained through gold earning, its basically a done deal that items will continue to go further and further out of reach

If only there were a way the devs could change the game in some small way. Such as increasing the drop rate of items that are very rare, or reintroducing discontinued items that are very very expensive on the TP.

I know this just isn’t possible, but it’s fun to dream…

Well, regarding the rare drop, they generally don’t, even though they could. Instead, they do things like this geode nonsense and festival token grind.

I think celestial gear was the test case for the ascended crafting.

I get that flipping can increase velocity and liquidity, but I wonder how flipping influences the consolidation of wealth and what impact that consolidation has on the game.

Of course, John is in a better position to know this that I am, but I whenever I get these explanations I always feel like there are some moving pieces missing.

John said that velocity and liquidity often lowers prices, in an economics 101 kind of way (thanks for that BTW), but he has also said that virtual economies behave differently than non-virtual ones, for example, increasing the precursor drop rate can, counter intuitively, cause an increase in the price. Are we confident that flippers actually lower prices in a virtual economy?

Gewd.8125:

TooBz.3065:

The price of precursors suggests that there are items that people want that require a lot of gold.

It’s just that it’s not worth it for people to exchange their gems for gold.

Tell me, without thinking about the reverse transaction, how much gold would you like to get for a dollar?

This is the wrong way to think about it.

If the price of a precursor is sky high, that doesn’t mean that gold is worth a lot.

In our case it only means that it is too easy to farm for and there’s nothing else people want to spend it on. There’s a lack of gold sinks and too many gem sinks.

I think I misunderstood your argument. Mostly because when I think of a “gold sink” I think of the taxes that are imposed on playing. For example, waypoint costs, BLTP fees, etc… I think the last thing we need is more of these. If I, for example, couldn’t afford to port around without selling gems for gold I’d probably quitthe game.

Personally, I avoid the optional gold sinks in the game. For example, I wanted the T3 cultural armor for a long time, but now that I have the gold, I’m holding on to it for the precursor.

Bottom line, I think that precursors being so expensive messes everything else up. I don’t spend money on the available gold sinks because I’m saving for the precursor. I don’t buy gold with gems because I’m not spending $100 dollars on a virtual item.

So I have no reason to buy gold. If most people feel like me, the price of gold is going to continue to rise.

The price of precursors suggests that there are items that people want that require a lot of gold.

It’s just that it’s not worth it for people to exchange their gems for gold.

Tell me, without thinking about the reverse transaction, how much gold would you like to get for a dollar?

Th gem store is a cash shop. The intent is that people will pay real money for the items they want. ANet was nice enough to provide a mechanism to allow you to do spend in game currency. However, that mechanism requires that someone else want to turn their cash into gold. The market will settle on a price where some people use gems for gold and others use gold to get gems.

Currently, more people want gems than gold. So the price is going to rise.

Look at it this way. Would you pay a dollar for 7.5 gold? If not then don’t be surprised that other people won’t either.

This could be a really good change or could be a complete no-op. Without this information its impossible to tell.

All my opinion:

From an economic standpoint the game is fine. From a fun standpoint the economy is terrible. The fact that a care about how much fun the economy is means the game is in trouble.

To me it all depends on what you mean.

Do you think that $10 is too much for an armor skin, or do you think that 100g is too much for the skin?

If you think that $10 is unreasonable, then yes, you can argue that they should reduce the gem store price.

If $10 is reasonable but 100g is not, then the problem is the gold / gems conversion. Assuming the current price is at equilibrium (which it probably isn’t since the amount of gold you get for a gem keeps increasing) the only way to reduce the cost of the gem store items in terms of gold is:

1. Reduce the cost in $ (which we already said is reasonable)
2. Reduce the gem to gold ratio, which will result in less people trading gems for gold and ergo will cause it to quickly rise up again.
3. Provide an additional incentive to trade gems to gold.
4. Bifurcate the cost, so a gem store items costs $10 dollars but only 50 gold. I can’t see why they would do this. But it is a possible “solution.”