Guild Wars 2

FrizzFreston.5290:

Urxx.6840:

They trashed the holy trinity so you could any dungeon without having the classic “LF tank” or “LF priest”.

Wait, now we have “LF full ascended player”. That’s much better.

I have yet to see LF full exotic player. So that argument doesn’t hold that much ground.
Though I guess you will see LF ascended player for deeper levels of the same dungeon.

You don’t see that because currently gear doesn’t have such a steep entry barrier.
In GW1 (where they took the whole agony / infusion idea) you could tell if someone was infused as soon as you were hit by agony. Those who weren’t would die in seconds.

Nobody in GW1 would have took a character in their group who wasn’t infused to do content which inflicted agony. The guy would have been kicked after the first fight against a mursaat.

Rhyaehar.9504:

Legendary will be upgraded to Ascended status.

But Loosifah is still wrong, again, in his post.
Ascended == Legendary
There is no progression between them because the stats stay the same.
Just more bling some people don’t care for at all.

Exactly. Ascended will be the new exotics and exotics will be only good in old content that doesn’t require infusions.

And to those who imply that if someone is unhappy with this new tier it must be because they haven’t read the dev’s post carefully: this is not speculation, it’s in Lindsay Murdock’s post.

tkalamba.2541:

It actually has been clear, and people are missing it. Agony is ONLY a factor in the new dungeon. No where else.

For now.

Lindsay Murdock:

As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.

They trashed the holy trinity so you could any dungeon without having the classic “LF tank” or “LF priest”.

Wait, now we have “LF full ascended player”. That’s much better.

Ganzo.5079:

Loosifah.4739:

From everything I’ve read the new ascended armor has higher base stats because you can’t rune/orb them up to give them a stat increase. Therefore they’re only really useful for the infusion slot to prevent agony in the dungeon.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infusion

Where is stated that infusion work only for dungeon? i see only that infuse an item give an innate agony resistance, but we don know if the infusion effect give us something like rune or sigils effects that can be used outside dungeons!
So we have all the right to enrage because the information we have are NOT CLEAR. Is useless to complain when the update its already UP… After an update you have only the option to rage quit!

Not only that.
It’s instead perfectly clear that exotic gear can’t be infused and therefore used in all the upcoming content (which will go well beyond this single patch) which will require infusions.

Loosifah.4739:

I personally played Guild Wars 1 from it’s release and loved it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to enjoy the hell out of some extra content and 2 new STEPS in the gear progression.

Content? Yes, please.
Gear progression in a game marketed to not have gear progression? No thanks. I prefer the companies I can trust.

Norida.8692:

Just wanted to say that on my server (Vizunah Square) you do not hear many whining about the Ascended gear in game, except for those who do nothing but WVW.

Also yeah, i hope the dev do not forget that those who are happy with the new content unfortunately do not post often (like me) we prefer to play which is i think one way to testify our love to your game so keep up the good work.

Yeah those who are always in-game and not in the forums probably don’t even know the details about the new ascended gear and don’t yet understand how they will be increasly cut out of new content if they don’t acquire it.

But sooner or later the consequences of this new wrong direction will hit them.

You know a lot of that kind of players quit a game wihtout ever wrinting a single word about it.

ANet will see they are gone when they start getting less and less money from the Gem Store.

If that will happen, and I really hope they understand that danger and do something about it now, the descending spiral will already be in place and it will be a lot more difficult to act.

Recklessone.7142:

Progression is necessary. If I ever feel that I’ve beaten this game then I will stop playing it.
Adding more rewards and goals for players is a great idea, and is expected from an mmo.

Plus… ITS FREE! Arena is giving us new content for no extra cost…

I see no reason to listen to the QQ from people who cry about getting free stuff. They should have just paid me the $60 and I would have handed them a crossword puzzle.

Why do you guys keep confusing progression with tiers? Has WoW and its many clones washed your brain so much that you can’t coinceive progression which doesn’t come in the shape of tiers of gear?

You add the infusion mechanic to the game and an infusion slot to all existing lvl 80 exotics and you have progression. But nobody complains about it because you don’t have to trash the hard work and money you put into your exotics.

Working hard to acquire something that becomes even only partially unusable is what makes WoW alienating.

And it’s one of the main reasons a lot of people is here playing GW2 instead of WoW and its several clones.

Mike o’Brien has told us that ArenaNet was founded to innovate, and now they are sneaking one of the most horrid WoW mechanics in GW2 trying to convince us that is not really a new tier of gear, just a way to fill a gap between exotics and legendaries.

Please.

tkalamba.2541:

Nothing i’ve seen says they werent planning anything new. All I’ve seen specifically stated that Legendary will always be = to the most powerful. That hasn’t changed. Just Exotic is no longer the best.

Ascended gear doesn’t even offer the same proportional increase that Rare – Exotic does. You can’t upgrade it aside from an infusion which adds no stat increase. It’s not even that useful to alot of custom tailored builds.

In GW1, 7 years after launch you still don’t have tiers. Any max lvl armor could be infused to withstand agony.

They have stated many times that they would do the same in GW2 and not have tiers. To prove that, they said “look, even legendaries, which are the most exclusive items in the game, stat wise are equivalent to exotics. So much so that they are even crafted from an exotic of which they retain the stats”.

You can play the semantics game as much as you want, but this is clearly a change in their design phylosophy. The community wouldn’t react like this if it was clear from the beginning that the introduction of new tiers was to be expected.

When they introduced greens (unique items) in GW1, with the furnace of sorrow patch, nobody complained.

Because they weren’t any more powerful than top gold items.

What irritates me the most is that I feel insulted because they treated us like we were dumb.

You can’t introduce a new tier of gear which cuts out whoever doesn’t own it from certain content, and then insult my intelligence trying to convince me it doesn’t go against 7 years of design phylosophy of GW1 and what you previously stated about GW2 itself.

“It’s just a way to fill a gap between exotics and legendaries”.

No, it’s not.
That would be something prettier than an exotic but less exclusive and hard to acquire thana a legendary. But with the same stats and slots.

We aren’t a bunch of idiots, you know.

tkalamba.2541:

Drunken Mad King.8193:

The point that they have to “BOOST” legendary weapons to a new stat level simply implies a new tier. The entire point was that exotic was the threshold. The fact that they are boosting the stats to one level of gear above exotics betrays the game.

They never said Exotic would be the final tier

Yes they did. They even underlined how legendaries weren’t any more powerful than exotics, just prettier.

RamzaBehoulve.5640:

You people complain about gear treadmill, yet they had to come up with a whole mechanic system to make you unable to damage the new mobs before doing specific tasks BECAUSE they cannot add a real gear treadmill. Add to that a specific condition to not to increase normal stats, again…

There aren’t many ways to make content harder and give you progression without lowering your character efficiency in some way. You can improve AI and make fights require better coordination, but then there is a clear limit to what you can ask from players again based on basic human limits.

You could have achieved the same thing without introducing a new tier of gear and without limiting infusions to that tier and legendaries.

I’m not upset about agony and infusions. It could actually prove to be a fun and interesting mechanic. What I don’t like is that first they say nothing will be more powerful than exotics and then they force you to thrash them if you want to experience new content.

That’s very disappointing. I thought ANet was another kind of company.

munkiman.3068:

Ultimately people will accept the change or move along.

Just hope this thread is not a hint on how many will move along. It’s not fun when servers are empty and game companies start to merge them.

ANet, this misstep has already damaged you.

For instance we are here talking about one single aspect of the patch, while there are many others that are ignored just because our concern about the new and wrong direction towards which you are steering the game has taken the stage.

Please act swiftly before more damage is done to your reputation and the hard work your teams have put into developing this patch, which has far more than just ascended gear in it.

If you will listen to our feedback like you did in the past, this time you need to do it quickly.

KingClash.3186:

Woah.. This is the biggest crybaby thread for this game to date.
No one cares whatsoever if you leave the game so stop being attention w****s
Just be happy that something new is being introduced, that or just walk away; dont come to the forums and toss a mega hissy fit.
#Getoverit

YOU don’t care, which is perfectly fine.

But I can tell you, most people were attracted to GW2 because after getting the max stat gear (exotic) you could only improve looks and there was no power grind involved.

If Anet alienates that kind of players, those who pay their salary and dividends, you bet they will care.

Also about Chris Whiteside’s reply: it doesn’t address the community concerns about exotic gear being unable to support infusions and all the future content requiring them.

He talks about ascended gear as a mean to fill the gap between exotics and legendaries, but that doesn’t make any sense.

Since the gap between exotics and legendaries is purely cosmetic, if you want to fill it you need items that have an appearance that is between the average exotic and the average legendary.

You don’t fill a cosmetic gap adding a new kind of slot that only two tiers of gear can have. That’s the first step towards a threadmill.

You introduced a functional gap to fill a cosmetic gap… it doesn’t work that way Chris.

Ditton.3149:

Urxx.6840:

Ditton.3149:

Yeah…the entire dungeon is already made..that would mean major overhaul, extended time, more paid hours into the same project etc. Taking out the infusion means taking out Agony, Agony is already a built in set piece to the dungeon which would require alot of work to remove or like you said changing their stats..all of the above requires more time and effort in a project they thought they finished. Id be absolutely amazed if it changed in anyway, its just too late.

Make the new ascended gear exotic. Put an infusion slot in all existing lvl 80 exotics. Leave all the rest as it is.

Done. Adding new content and mechanics WITHOUT betraying anybody.

You honestly believe it would be that easy? I think that would entail quite a bit of work, again what Im saying is..they planned this release to coincide with this big event. To stop one is to stop the other, they cant stop going forward with the event and its already been made. Like I said..Id me absolutely amazed if anything changed before the patch goes live.

I never said it would be easy. I quoted you proposing to take out agony and all the related mechanics, I replied you didn’t have to trash everything to keep your word AND deliver the new mechanics.

Ditton.3149:

Urxx.6840:

Ditton.3149:

I cant see them retracting it all…thats alot of PR money, video production, programming…millions they would have to swallow with nothing to show for it except forum posts. Im not being negative, I just can not see them doing that from a business standpoint. They made a decision based on numbers, they are going to move forward with it.

They don’t need (nor I expect them) to trash the whole agony-infusion thing, which is where most of the programming went.

They just have to open up infusions to exotic gear. The skin they developed for the new ascended gear can still be used for new exotics.

And anyway, a company that isn’t willing to trash some work to keep their customers isn’t going very far.

eh..name me a company that changed its patch 2 days before the release based on public outcry. Im serious, if you can Id love to look at their games.

I don’t expect them to change the patch now. I would be fine if they said that due to technical reasons the patch will still go online as stated, but they have listened to feedback and will change things as soon as possible.

The reason I post is I’m worried for the future of a game I love, not to win a war against ANet.

Ditton.3149:

Yeah…the entire dungeon is already made..that would mean major overhaul, extended time, more paid hours into the same project etc. Taking out the infusion means taking out Agony, Agony is already a built in set piece to the dungeon which would require alot of work to remove or like you said changing their stats..all of the above requires more time and effort in a project they thought they finished. Id be absolutely amazed if it changed in anyway, its just too late.

Make the new ascended gear exotic. Put an infusion slot in all existing lvl 80 exotics. Leave all the rest as it is.

Done. Adding new content and mechanics WITHOUT betraying anybody.

Ditton.3149:

I cant see them retracting it all…thats alot of PR money, video production, programming…millions they would have to swallow with nothing to show for it except forum posts. Im not being negative, I just can not see them doing that from a business standpoint. They made a decision based on numbers, they are going to move forward with it.

They don’t need (nor I expect them) to trash the whole agony-infusion thing, which is where most of the programming went.

They just have to open up infusions to exotic gear. The skin they developed for the new ascended gear can still be used for new exotics.

And anyway, a company that isn’t willing to trash some work to keep their customers isn’t going very far.

Flynch.6034:

Anet need to release some details that are concrete and this thread can be put to sleep. Currently there are thousands of players commenting on something that they think will happen.

And that’s fair enough, as the details are far from refined. It’s very easy to read the blogs and then see what you want to see. It’s too ambiguous and frankly Anet need to sort it out. The forums are not a nice place to be at the moment.

I think they explained it pretty well.

FACT: Exotic gear won’t have infusion slots.
FACT: infusions are needed to counter agony and other conditions that will be introduced later.
FACT: in order to apply infusions to your gear, you need it to have infusion slots.
FACT: In many interviews ANet has stated that a player couldn’t acquire gear that was more powerful than exotics, at most better looking gear which had the same stats (legendaries).

So what exactly should ANet explain better?

What we need is not more explanation, but rather a statement from them saying: “we have listened to our community feedback and are removing ascended gear from the game. All existing lvl 80 exotic gear will receive an infusion slot.”

Shilian.5873:

Guys you forgot something essential:

The gap between exo/ascen is MINIMAL, so not a MUST for WvW or anything, just for the new dungeon, and guess what? you will get the gear while progressing trough it.

Too much fap guys, no reason to go mad.

This is a common misconception. The STAT gap is minimal. The exotic item’s impossibility to have infusions and counter agony is huge. The new dungeon is the only place where agony is incflicted FOR NOW, but things will change.

They haven’t developed a whole new system to use it only in the fractals. We’ll see agony in many upcoming patches.

Shayde.2564:

Let those of us that actually like GW2 as advertised buy this new puce gear on the trading post, in WvW, or for gems. We’ll go back to the product we loved, albeit a little wiser, and Anet can go back to the impossible task of pleasing wowkids.

It’s ironic you call people wowkids in the same post where you basically happily accept a threadmill.

Belenwyn.8674:

I see that many players are begging for a treadmill. Many player do not want to be annoyed by a treadmaill. The best solution would be to limit the functionality of ascended gear to this certain kind of dungeons. For all other rewards beside infusion and acended gear introduce alternatives on equal level in the world outside of the fractals.

This would satisfy both sides of players.

Since GW2 was advertised as a no-threadmill game, whoever came here looking for a threadmill is out of place, not those who hate threadmills and don’t want the game to go in that direction.

Loomii.6014:

Can people just stop complaining? Anet are busting their kitten giving us this great content and all you people do is moan, if you don’t like it play something else

Nobody is “moaning” as you say about the content. Everyobody is happy we get new content. I think it’s amazing that we get a patch per month.

Whats wrong is to cut out all existing lvl 80 exotic gear owners from new content involving agony unless they acquire new gear, after having said that exotics would be the most powerful items in the game and even legendaries had only a cosmetic advantage over them.

Now legendaries are upgraded to ascended level, and if you want to enjoy all the existing and future content you need to trash the gear you put time and money into to acquire ascended gear.

It’s plain wrong.

The clean way to do the same thing would be to add infusion slots to all existing lvl 80 exotics. That would be keeping your word AND adding new content which we all love and are grateful for.

Egger.2935:

Thanks for braking your promises and destroying a good game in under 3 months!

This alone doesn’t destroy the game, but it’s certainly a dangerous step in the wrong direction.

And yes, they did break promises.

vox.5019:

Content != stat treadmill. It’s a poor substitute for content.

also, the problem is not with the agony and infusion mechanic.

But they could (and should) have added the infusion slot to all the lvl 80 exotic gear instead of introducing a new rarity tier.

That would actually mimic what they had done in GW1, where any max level armor could be infused against agony.

Banewrath.5107:

Cause I spent 100 gold on the cultural set and transmuted it onto my exotic set. I don`t have the heart to destroy it.

That’s exatcly why this whole ascended thing is wrong.

MrLee.6892:

But once you hit 80 then get your Ascended gear (Or Legendary) then thats it!

They said the same about exotics, why do you think it will be different with ascended?

Banewrath.5107:

Well that don`t seem so bad. You would have your infused armor set in your bags for when you do these dungeons then. Sounds pretty cool to me actually. This is something they could take in a bunch of interesting different directions if they really wanted to. I can`t wait to see how it works out.

Why would you use an exotic armor after you have acquired an ascended armor anyway? It counters agony and has slightly higher stats, so no point in taking 6 inventory slots for carrying around an inferior exotic set.

MrLee.6892:

I know quite a few friends who have played Guild Wars 1 and are quite happy with this change. After all this is Guild Wars 2 not GW1. If they want that type of gameplay all they would do is go back go GW1.

You opinion is they are making the biggest mistake, our opinion is that they are making a great decision, going forward and changing with the times. They are adapting maybe you should too.

So before you go rudely opening your mouth and thinking it’s just “ex-wow players”, well it’s not.

Just because you don’t agree with something doesn’t give you the right to be a jerk and put people down.

It’s not about how many people like or dislike the new system. I could tell you I know a lot of pople from GW1 who arent’t happy at all about ascended gear, and none of us would prove anything.

The point is: if you as a company say your product has a feature, and then, after you have attracted a certain customer demographic based on that feature, you change things up, then it’s difficult to trust you as a company going forward.

Liking or disliking the idea of ascended gear is subjective, and all opinions deserve equal respect.

But the fact they said one thing and did another AFTER having taken our money is objective. The fact you don’t have a problem with that, doesn’t mean that that certain customer demographic hasn’t a clear right to be vocal about feeling betrayed.

Banewrath.5107:

I own the original game and have played it since 05 and have all the expansions for it . If they are adding an agonizing touch type damage to where you needed the armor upgrade,then I don`t know what to tell you. I didn`t see anything in the post mentioed about they were adding new effects that only this armor could counter.

Here it is:

Lindsay Murdock:

In the upcoming Fractals of the Mists dungeon, we’ll introduce a new monster condition called Agony.
This extremely dangerous condition ticks percentages of player health away and can’t be cleansed by normal means. Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must. The only way to mitigate Agony damage is by building up resistance through Infusions, a new type of upgrade component that can be acquired in the Mystic Forge.

And guess what? Contrarily to GW1, where any max level armor could be infused, here only ascended armor has infusion slots….

Eladriel.7295:

You all are bunch of ingrates.. You scream for challenging content then you complain about it.. Nope I will no be going back to gw1. I like the new content. If you don’t then you go back to gw1. There is nothing wrong where this game is going. Who are you to say you have a say so where it goes in the first place. You aren’t entitled to do that. You know they could be just like any other gaming company and not give you any new content at all except when they make new expansion packs.. Stop your freakin complaining… cry babies…

You can add new content without breaking what you promised: that exotics would be the most powerful gear in the game and there would be better looking items (legendaries) but not stronger items.

Why do you imply that adding new content requires necessarily to go against your own stated philosophy that attracted lots of customers?

If someone says one thing to me and then does another, you can bet I’ll make myself heard. If that makes me a crybaby, then I’m one and proud to be.

Banewrath.5107:

Nobody is telling you that you need to have these new armors in order to be able even survive the new content. You think a little bit of extra ac and stats are going to keep people from still getting rolled by mobs and bosses? A good player could probably do the new content in exotics and succeed, a bad player wouldn`t be able to and blame his gear for his failure. The new gear is just something that people can work towards if they choose to.

I can tell from your post you never played GW1 Prophecies.

There you had a race called Mursaat which inflicted a condition called agony. If you didn’t infuse your armor, you would die quickly. For an infused player, Mursaat were just another MOB and agony just another condition.

What makes ascended armor needed in the new dungeon (and likely future content) is not the extra 5% in the stats, it’s the unique possibility to have infusions. All other rarity levels below ascended don’t have infusion slots.

TL;DR Agony will kill you in the new dungeon, not MOBs.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

well considering the only content that use’s that is some endless dungeon with the entire point to grinde out said gear to make it further into said endless dungeon i don’t really consider that being locked out.

more like Working as intended. Now if that Dungeon had some meaningful story ark and an end than i would have a problem with it.

who is to say that the next set of story/explorable ark Dungeons will need infusions in order to smash your way through them?

they probably wont

For now it’s just that dungeon, but it’s likely a lot of future content will involve agony. I don’t see them developing a whole new system and then using it just in one place.

And, anyway: they said exotics would always be max level gear, and even legendaries were just prettier than exotics, not stronger.

Because of that philosophy, people invested time and money in exotics, knowing that their toon(s) would have been geared up for any kind of content from then on.

Now all of a sudden exotic gear cuts you off from one dungeon and who knows after more expansions go online.

Sorry, but I feel betrayed. Everyone will take the impact of ascended armor differently, but they still said one thing and did another. That for me creates a problem of trust towards them.

Celle.2716:

You can´t run level 80 Dungeons with Level 60 neither.

True, but you know from the beginning that you have to be max level to do max level content. Here, they are suddenly making obsolete all max level gear a lot of people have put time and money to acquire for any content involving agony.

It’s totally different.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

who say’s your going to be locked out of content do to this???

if players lock you out thats because there Dicks thats not the game’s falt player’s are Kittens.

You are going to be locked out of content where the condition “agony” is inflicted, since the only counter to agony are infusions, and you don’t have an infusion slot on gear that is below ascended level of rarity.

Nobody wants someone who’s constantly dead in their party, especially if the content is getting harder as you progress.

Anet, you are trying to sell the idea of ascended gear to us thru the concept “it’s not a gear threadmill, we already did the infusion thing in GW1 and nobody complained about it”.

But it’s not the same thing.

Sure, there is one similarity: ascended gear is necessary only to progress in one specific instance, the new dungeon, just like in GW1 infusion was necessary just with content involving mursaat.

But there’s also a fundamental difference: in GW1 any kind of max level armor could be infused, whereas here only ascended gear can receive infusions.

I think you should remove the idea of ascended gear entirely, add an infusion slot to all lvl 80 exotics, and make the new fractal rewards exotic.

This way who spent time / money on lvl 80 exotics won’t see their set suddenly become sub-par and cut them off from facing content that inflicts agony.

I understand it’s a huge amount of work, since at this point all the changes about ascended gear are certainly finalized in your internal build, but I think the future success of GW2 is at stake, and this time you made a severe mistake, a dangerous step in the wrong direction.

If you want to become the new WoW in terms of following and commercial success, you need to stay away from what they did wrong. Gear grind is one of the main things IMO.

OP is right. We are close to the three months mark and this is still totally unreliable.
I love ANet to death, but this is really getting embarassing. And annoying. Please fix Arah permanently and let us enjoy the whole game we have purchased.

I play on a 24" monitor with a 16:10 resolution of 1920×1200.

To be honest I wasn’t one of the unlucky people who got sick playing with the old setting, but I have to say the new one feels more natural.

Unless you provide some way to choose between old and new angle (toggle or slider), I vote to keep the new FOV.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Yeah, pretty sure they’re just waiting for it to die off. It’s not like they bothered to take action against the Godskull cheaters, after all, so they’re clearly fine with some people having dozens of precursors while normal, non-cheating players will never see one due to the nerf.

That wasn’t a nerf, it was a bug fix.
A nerf is when you reduce the effect of something that was intended but turned out to be too powerful. In this case it wasn’t intended that lower level rares could drop a precursor so they just restored the intended behavior.

I’m not trying to nitpick, but I think the difference is relevant. Your wording sounds like they somewhat “punished” those who didn’t get a precursor by making them rarer, while they just restored the intended rarity.

Now, I find it distubing as well that some people exploited and got away with it. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of the exploiters are just that: exploiters, and when they started getting precursors easily they thought something like “it can’t be this easy to get a precursor, there must be something wrong”, but they still took advantage of the situation without reporting it. On the other hand, I understand the aleatory nature of the Mistic Forge makes it rather difficult to tell those who were aware of the oddness of the thing from those who felt they were just taking advantage of a feature of the Mystic Forge they discovered before the masses, and stockpiled precursors in good faith, to make what they felt was a legitimate profit.

Still, while their wealth and the way they amassed it shouldn’t affect other players, it actually does if they use the wealth they got from an exploit to manipulate the precursors market, effectively making those items more inaccessible than originally planned.

Could we please get some official word on how this problem is seen internally? Game status doesn’t mention it, but from the outside it looks like there’s some unique underlying bug that is causing all or at least a lot of skill challenge NPCs to disappear at some point after server reset.

Knowing something more would be helpful to keep frustration in check. Also, if you guys already know the cause and are working on a solution, it doesn’t make sense for us to keep posting details like lemmings.

This isn’t some secondary aesthetic glitch, this is impacting gameplay in a major way, and personally taking fun away from completing areas, since the probability of ending up with yet another 99% zone is very high at this point.

So high, in fact, that sadly a 100% working zone is the exception and not the rule.

I love ANet to death (for several reasons) but I agree this is getting frustrating as hell. It should be given top priority IMO since it impacts several zones and prevents that sensation of progression that is so important in all kind of RPGs.

Do you have by any chance the same rune set on your PVP armor? I think the game counts both whether you are in PVE or PVP (and I don’t think it should)

Issue: portraits become dark and dots on map disappear unless very close to each other; calling targets doesn’t work and each member of the party only sees his/her own called target and not other party members’.
Server: Whiteside Ridge
Map: Ascalonian Catacombs Explorable Mode.
Players: 5 including myself.
Time: about 12 hours ago

We were able to join the same instance so it seems the social server bugged out after we got in.

I have to agree with those who find the underwater necro to be lacking, especially the trident and death shroud.

I’m one of the few that don’t think death shroud is meh on land. It surely isn’t overpowered, but if used well and traited right for your playstile it can be more than just a panic button.

Underwater death shroud, however, is a completely different beast. Most noticeable is the sloooooooooow life blast, which makes it useless as DPS is laughable, and skill 4.

Skill 4 on land is just right: you use death shroud for survivability and it just makes sense to drain life force from surrounding enemies to make it last a little longer while inflicting damage. Also, it’s a nice AOE, but it’s balanced around the fact it generates a lot of aggro, and therefore if you don’t use it right you get a lot of mob attention that can kill you very quickly.

But underwater DS 4? I’m trying to survive and what I get is to make my situation worse by taking conditions on myself? Are you kidding me? The very soul of the necromancer profession lies in support and survivability and both things lack greatly while underwater.

It needs a serious rework IMO. Please make at least underwater DS 1 and 4 identical to their land counterparts, if not the whole DS.

It’s a shame as a necromancer I can’t enjoy the spectacular underwater content and combat system ANet has put in the game.

Plase give us necros the feeling of having always a plan B when things get tricky underwater. It’s the feeling that makes me love my necro so much on land.

Edit: another thing: as a support necro I love the blood trait “transfusion” which allows me to heal allies around me while using life transfer. Tha fact life transfer isn’t available underwater, however, makes this otherwise nice trait completely useless in that environment. It’s just another example of how our support role is greatly crippled when we are not on land.

Not seeing other party member’s portrait / dot on map unless we are very close. I thought this issue was fixed.

Server: Whiteside Ridge
Party size: 2 (including myself)
Maps: Sparkfly Fen, Bloodtide Coast