Guild Wars 2

Sunshine.5014:

Varonth.5830:

Sunshine.5014:

witcher.3197:

Ele was nerfed? Didn’t notice.

Before each game I’d get ~180-200k condition damage dealt in the summary.
Now it’s ~80-90k.
That’s a hard nerf, lol. That also means burning is way too strong compare to bleeding. 3 burn stacks 5s down to 1 stacks 2s, and almost half of the condi damage for Ele gone.
I’m not complaining, just stating fact. I think it’s a good nerf, and Ele should be nerfed. Just that the people who ask for more nerf, they need to l2p

If it shows less damage from condition damage you just die faster. Probably because you didn’t cross the RoF before. Now it applies burning even if you don’t pass through the ring, applying even more stacks making you die faster than before and in return showing less damage taken.

Dude, it’s damage dealt. I’m the Ele and I dealt much less condition damage according to the summary. Ele was nerfed.

That won’t change anything from my statement. If your enemies die faster to the controlled burning application of RoF you will of course deal less damage.

When you enemies are dead faster than before you will deal less damage, as they spent more time being dead.

Chokolata.1870:

So you would rather they nerf 10 things at once and ruin the spec. I agree that the class has been very OP and that it is now still OP quite possibly. But its an iterative process.

Yes. That is way better than 6+ months of the same groups running around. Since ANet is comically slow at balancing I would rather see them remove those kind of builds and add a balanced version later instead of leaving them in, ruining games for months or years at a time.

Sunshine.5014:

witcher.3197:

Ele was nerfed? Didn’t notice.

Before each game I’d get ~180-200k condition damage dealt in the summary.
Now it’s ~80-90k.
That’s a hard nerf, lol. That also means burning is way too strong compare to bleeding. 3 burn stacks 5s down to 1 stacks 2s, and almost half of the condi damage for Ele gone.
I’m not complaining, just stating fact. I think it’s a good nerf, and Ele should be nerfed. Just that the people who ask for more nerf, they need to l2p

If it shows less damage from condition damage you just die faster. Probably because you didn’t cross the RoF before. Now it applies burning even if you don’t pass through the ring, applying even more stacks making you die faster than before and in return showing less damage taken.

Raziel.8072:

Varonth.5830:

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Mesmer Greatsword #1 (also line AoE)
Ele Scepter Fire #1
Ele Scepter Air #1 (also line AoE)
Arguably Guardian Staff #1 (also massive AoE)
Mesmer Sword #3
Mesmer Scepter #3 (again line AoE)
Every single mesmer phantasm summon…

There are quite a few using the same, and basically all of them are better on multiple points compared to necro axe #1 and #2. Axe 3 is in a fairly good position now.

1.- does no damage if too many targets are in the way, requires range restrictions to reach max dmg, no additional built-in effects
2. The only competitor here and doesn’t “outshine” necro axe, just has burning which is op in itself
3. same target limitations as mesmer GS, and requires to line up targets for max dmg potential. Single target it sucks and hitbox for the electric beam is small
4. Better for loot tagging than killing anything, plus it has no other effects like vuln, burning (without virtue of justice) ect.
5. melee…not sure why this is even being compared here. Not the same thing at all. It does no massive damage, the clone can be buggy and not spawn, and it has a cooldown.
6. same as GS1, can be body blocked or terrain blocked easily
7. Phantasma attack slow, easily dodge or destroyed. Most serious mesmer builds don’t rely heavily on phantasms. The GS phant is about the best one they have and if you can distance yourself enough you can even sidestep it when it attacks from 1200 range away….

My point being your comparisons aren’t telling me that axe is bad and the changes don’t help it. In fact the only example you gave of a weapon that performs like axe is ele scepter 1, and it’s only good because burn spam and that is courtesy of the burn condition itself.

So your point is, if you hit more than 3 targets with the greatsword it becomes worse? Why because you dealt AoE damage? Also the range part… at 300-600 range with equal equipment the Mesmer Greatsword #1 deals 3% less damage than Axe #1. At 600+ it will outdamage it by 16% and 900+ it is 35% stronger per attack.

Scepter Fire #1 is really strong now due to burning stacking, as you said yourself

Scepter Air #1 is weaker over the 3s of damage duration (+ another 0.5s ramp up) as it does even less DPS. But still it is AoE.

Guardian Staff #1 deals just slightly less damage per hit than Axe #1 but on 5 targets with half the casttime. DPS is almost twice of Axe #1. That’s why it is so good at tagging mobs… it deals almost twice as much damage as a single target skill… just on AoE.

Sword #3… wouldn’t call 600 range melee.

Mesmer Scepter #3 deals a surprising amount of condition damage even without any might or condition damage. Even a berserker build scepter #3 will deal comparable damage to Necro Axe #2. With might stacks it far outdamages Axe #2.
Your idea that those thing can be terrain blocked… so can necro axe skills.

Why bring up the phantasms? Because report said that the axe mechanic is fairly unique. It just shows that it isn’t as unique. And there are plenty of good and mechanical unique skills using the same targeting mechanism. That mechanism should therefor not be an argument to keep a skill terrible.

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Mesmer Greatsword #1 (also line AoE)
Ele Scepter Fire #1
Ele Scepter Air #1 (also line AoE)
Arguably Guardian Staff #1 (also massive AoE)
Mesmer Sword #3
Mesmer Scepter #3 (again line AoE)
Every single mesmer phantasm summon…

There are quite a few using the same, and basically all of them are better on multiple points compared to necro axe #1 and #2. Axe 3 is in a fairly good position now.

The right direction is removing it… or atleast complying with local law.

In germany such things require to show the chances to get particular results.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Here’s the issue with the Axe autoattack: there’s very little counterplay to it, less so now that the range has been increased. This means the damage can’t be too high or it becomes incredibly obnoxious. Without having done extensive testing, I’d estimate 10% is probably on the high end of balance-able. If Anet wants to improve the Axe further (and I suspect they probably should), they’ll need to give it something other than just additional damage.

Mesmer greatsword autoattack would like to have a word with you.

If you played in the last few weeks your client already has a quite significant amount of content from HoT.

There is no extra client for the beta weekends. Todays patch for sure included tons of content including parts of not all of the raid which can be tested this comming weekend. Whenever you patched for the last several months you always got parts of HoT.

apharma.3741:

Um you do realise clones have about 2.5k health, even a bunker guard can kill them with their staff in a few hits never mind the DD else which are so prevalent killing them almost instantly.

You cannot compare paper thin clones with minions that have anywhere between two and five times more health and considerably more armour. Especially when in a minion build that gives them 50% more health, life siphoning and everything else as well as doing meaningful damage.

People don’t pick minion master because of the AoE limit, they pick it because its a great entry level build that allows you to focus on the fights, positioning etc while some measure of sustain, condi removal and damage are offloaded onto AI.

3 times 2.5k damage absorbed (not counting overdamage) is 7.5k damage not inflicted on your team. That’s more than your average healskill heals.

And that sort of defense is so easily replaceable, that mesmer can use it as means of damage ontop of having them as damage soakers on the field.

apharma.3741:

And what of our drawbacks we used to have to dissuade people from slaughtering our clones in seconds? Not that they needed to be put off as the amount of AoE effectively makes them dead half the time anyway.

At least when I had cripple on clone death I knew I’d be able to outrun them with my slow kitten mesmer if they kept mowing my burst down, no more.

You might love lugging boulders up hills just to be on par with what everyone else is doing while watching youtube and enjoying a walk in the park but I don’t. Especially when the reward was what? Feeling you beat that guy with skill because you’re class is so hilariously bad your only relevance in most metas is portal?

Complaining about AoE killing your clones, when in reality AoE hitting clones in teamfights in many cases actually meant 100% damage reduction on an actual teammember?

Ever wondered why minionmancer is so popular? It’s not just the obvious abilities and traits… it is that they like to absorb AoE hits from the 5 target limited AoEs.

Clones do the same.

But it doesn’t stop there. If you are using projectiles which don’t pierce, they are like a projectile destroying wall when they all stand in the way. That damage reduction is huge.

That’s one of the big reasons AoE target limit in PvP should be practially unlimited.

Nobody really knows what the balance patch brings. Yesterday’s reveal was almost pointless because we don’t know the whole picture, and ANet wouldn’t be ANet if they don’t find a way to not inform us about future updates.

Any other company would have released the full balancing notes after that “reveal” stream. Instead they choosed this half-way thingy and result is players speaking about the balancing updates without actually knowing what is coming.

style.6173:

Amante.8109:

Literally the only thing that makes Thief a staple in high-skill premade teams is Shortbow #5. Imagine, for a moment, that it were bugged and had to be disabled for a month. You would see Thieves disappear from all competitive teams overnight.

That’s not even addressing how miserable it is to play Thief in solo queue or lower brackets…

This ^^. The rest of the arguments in this thread miss the point. Shortbow #5 is the only thing that keeps thief from junk tier. It also only works in a well coordinated team. In any other game mode, play a different class.

And this will always be the case. Thief will never be bad because it has Shortbow #5 and it will never be good because of the same reason it isn’t bad. The thief mechanic does not work well for balancing.

You cannot make real defensive skills on weapons on the thief, because they can be spammed. You cannot make a high burst skill on a thief… because it could be spammed. You cannot give them a hard CC weaponskill… because it could be spammed.

Each weaponskill competes with the others for a limit ressource pool. If one of them is better you are harming yourself by using the other skills.

We can see that on skills that are being used. Nobody would ever in their right mind use for example Dancing Dagger. It uses the same ressource you could use on Heartseeker or Body Shoot. If you are a melee you want to close the distance fast, so you heartseeker after your target. If you are ranged, immobilizing your target is much better than crippling it, as immobilize will also disable dodges and leaps.

You could of course buff the damage on dancing dagger, but once the damage is so high that it becomes the alternative to jumping with heartseeker… well why not just keep throwing daggers for damage?

One skill will be better and when it is using the same ressource as the not so good skill the latter one will not be used at all.

No other class has the same problem. Even if an ability on your bar is worse than the others, there is no downside in using it as once you are done with your good skills that will be all you have left.

The current thief mechanic of initiative needs to be redone in order to actually be able to make thief a fun and engaging class.

Lawton Campbell.8517:

It’s not coming out before HoT, unfortunately.

So do we finally get official coefficient values?

Supreme.3164:

One of the main benefits of the previous leaderboard system was the ability to keep the PvP forum under control , because it was possible to relate a forumer to its position on the leaderboard and from there to determine whether or not his/her complaint was worth listening; the lower you were on the leaderboard …the less credibility your claim had.

This is something currently missing and this something that would drastically reduce the number of OP threads popping out every day about any class or mechanic.

I really hope that the League system will bring back that sense of “elitism” that any PvP centered game really needs to grow and maintain any sort of order regardless of the scale.

Well good thing you aren’t working for them if you truly believe that being high on a leaderboard means knowing problems within gamedesign aswell as arguments having more credibility.

There is a reason why many big e-sports teams have coaches for their players.

Those coaches aren’t even close to the coached players skill. But they know far more about the game then their players. Hell this is the same reason why coaches exist in sports aswell.
Do you really believe that such a coach is a better player then the players he is coaching?

Zenith.7301:

Ara.4569:

Can we expect faster balance patch ? Too much manpower on PvE.

Oh please, shut up. Not a single balance pass has been done with PvE in mind.

Yeah… uhm… something something conditions…

Do you really believe the absolutely disgusting way conditions are right now is because conditions were weak before? Because they were already strong (in PvP) before ANet decided that stuff like burning should now stack in intensity.

The result is the current D/D ele who either massively limits your mobility or easily puts up 6+ stacks of burning with just 2 skills which can kill even a high health class like warrior or necro if they do not cleanse it. 2 skills worth of burning is enough to burn through 20k+ health. That change was hopefully not done with PvP in mind, because if it was, then there is absolutely no future for PvP.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Mh, cele ele = hybrid, cele necro = hybrid, settler/cleric shoutbow = support, bunker bunker guard = support, burn guard = condi, d/p thief = power, shatter mesmer = power, maraudeur engi = power …

Did i forget a meta build? Well, the majority seems to be power or hybrid (even if we count cele as condi, it would be only half of the meta builds) anyways, so where are all those meta condi builds?

Even if you are not going condition damage, players still throw around alot of conditions. They aren’t something you use once in a while on a powerbuild…

My power-well necro throws out vulnurability, chill, cripple, weakness, blind and immobilize as if he is giving out candy during halloween.

And once you run out of cleanse you are are sitting duck because I have some movement impairing condition ready on one of my skills.

And most powerbuilds are like that.

Gabriell.4856:

Atherakhia.4086:

Lets not forget chill should affect initiative regen!

Why stop there. Chill should affect necro LF regen, warrior adr, rev energy, and all movement abilities.

It already affects lifeforce and adrenaline regen. With skills being on cooldown for a longer period of time, you might generate less lifeforce and adrenaline.

circuitnerd.5863:

Ok, I don’t get it. Why is it sometimes when you get downed you can’t even use your #4 skill before you die due to the skill waiting to charge? Like you go down with so little health left. And no I didn’t have downed penalty.

You accumulate a stacking debuff each time you are downed which is shown as a small arrow pointing downwards in your healthbubble. It starts being grey after being downed once, turning yellow then red. The higher this debuff, the less initial health you will have when you get downed. If you are downed while the arrow is red, you will die immediatly and not go into downed state. This downed penalty recovers over time if you stay alive.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m going to make the guess that it will be moderately frequent. Let’s say an average of one a month per player.

Why? It ties in with the nerf to key farming. With one a month drop rate, people will now start to accumulate scraps. Once they get a few scraps they’ll start thinking about getting a ticket. Since they can no longer do a fast farm and get the remaining scraps, they’ll have to buy keys or wait however long it will take to finish the ticket.

With this new system ANet can get people who normally never buy keys to buy some to finish up their ticket.

It takes on average 2 boxes to get a single scrap.

At one key per month, you look at 6 scraps per year. You need 50 scraps for one of the more expensive weapon.

You are looking at a droprate which would require a player to play for 8 years for a single weapon. Such a vendor has 16 years. So to get every weapon from a single vendor → 133 years.

Legendaries are a joke compared to that.

Here is how many keys should drop right now: a few per day with averaging at about 2 per player per day. That would mean a player can choose one of the expnesive weapons about every two months. That some serious time commitment.

Or of course… they could up the item output of those boxes. Make them actually useful. More tickets (not scraps, tickets) and other actual useful stuff.

kitten instead of throwing out full tickets how about a good chance at a random Black Lion Skin. 20-25%.

Paulytnz.7619:

Zypher.7609:

Paulytnz.7619:

My fix:

1 – Remove chests/keys.
2 – Sell the skins or Tickets DIRECTLY.
3 – Add a TON more skins that people will actually want with no RNG behind it.
4 – Enjoy gem sales.

Gambling of this form has no place in this game at all. The game is a shining example of being great quality from makers with top notch integrity, well that’s what you think until you discover this part of the game.

You can already buy the weapon skins directly? I can open the trading post and buy the skins, there is no RNG involved.

I would prefer to buy from anet at a decent, fair price and not from some money hungry greedy player who bought it for cheaper and then bumped the price up to make a profit.

Say no to Trade Wars2!

Wait you don’t consider a skin with a real money value of 184€ a fair price?

Saiyan.1704:

Drakortha.6974:

Saiyan.1704:

No thank you. I don’t want the Devs to dumb down the game just because people don’t know how to use their mouse, Target key or Tab button.

okay ill just have to keep left clicking that thief over and over again about 10 times during a fight but they only had to target me one time at the start. that is really fair and balanced isnt it?

Use any 1-9 skills to automatically target a person.
Key bind your “Grab Nearest Enemy” key.
Use your Tab key.
Use Target key if that enemy is targeted.
Left click when needed.

It really isn’t difficult to do. Then again I come from a plethora of left clicking precision games so this stuff is cake. I have 0 issues with targeting a Thief in a Zerg.

He wrote that. You just didn’t read it. Nearest enemy and auto-targeting will most likely target a minion. Either a mesmer illusion or a necromancer minion… or a ranger pet.

Tman.6349:

Drakortha.6974:

so we have 2 options, autotargeting or no autotargeting.

With no auto targeting, its a kittening chore to keep target on foes such as thieves, mesmers, rangers.. pretty much anything that can go invisible. because when they become revealed again, your tab or click target you did is invalidated and you need to “re-engage” them again. This is stupid and slows down your attacks a ton, and feels like im fighting the UI just as much as the foe im facing!

The lesser of two evils is having autotargeting switched on. With this, a simple press of my autoattack or a skill will re-engage a foe who just become revealed, making it much less of an issue.

Now we have minion necros, and ive been seeing them more and more lately. With autotargeting on, i cant even keep target on the necro because he has like, 5 kittening minions surrounding him that keep getting targeted. And I can’t switch autotargeting off, because then i have to deal with invisible enemies. PLEASE FIX THIS!

Anet you touted guild wars 2 as being an action combat mmo. Well it is, but it still relies on targeting and I cannot even begin to damage an enemy unless i have them targeted, which is making these “targeting avoiding builds” an actual effective strategy for players.

SIMPLE SOLUTION: If I kittening “click” target an enemy, keep that enemy targeted until I MYSELF CHOOSE MY NEXT TARGET! Is this so kitten hard to implement or are we just going to allow these crappy cheating exploiting players to abuse targeting the way it is by using builds or playstyles that are anti targeting?

2-3 minion necros is a successful strategy and it’s plain sad to see! >:( im getting mad about this.

That’s the breaks and it’s part of their defense. You’ll get better with practice.

No it is a problem with UI design. Skills should not interfere with the enemies UI. And some skills do exactly that.Stealth should remove the target as long as the target is in stealth. And you should automatically retarget the enemy once he comes out of stealth.

Regarding AoE. Minions should not count against the target limit. Nothing is worse than throwing down a well of corruption on a point to pressure the guardians and eles on a point just to have the hit eaten by mesmer illusions.

They get hit by the AoE, but they don’t count against the AoE limit. So you can hit up to 5 players in WvW, even if they have minions within the AoE.

Abimes.9726:

Counters to condi damage : Vitality , Resistence , Condi cleanse , condi duration reduction , anti-condition mechs (diamond skin, zerker stances , etc ) , blinds / evades / invuln.

Playing Both, condi and zerker builds , i find both to be equaly difficult to play and they both have their counters.

What makes this game feel fustrating —> PASSIVE PROCS.

Vitality is not a counter to condition damage. Vitality overall isn’t a very good stat unless you can refill the healthpool.

There are like 3 classes that can make use of vitality: Ele, Guardian and Necro.

Necro only because his lifeforce pool is also affected by vitality and is recharged in relatives instead of absolutes. Without a way to refill the missing additional health from vitality there is no point in having a higher healthpool. 8k health without cleanses is like 2s of burning. That is not going to save you.

Behellagh.1468:

Aguri.2896:

You must have been playing SAB wrong. It took me around 15 mins or less for 250 bauble bubbles, just memorize all the locations and farm them… Also, for the last Halloween event you could get hundreds of candy corn every several minutes not to mention you could buy them from the TP.

Both of those were reasonable (except the ghost dog mini, which was RNG) this is event just insanity… I might not even bother with it.

Note, you said memorize all the locations, that requires you to play enough and note where the drops were. I went in and after a half an hour of play took my reward over to Moto and saw how much and simply chose to quit. Maybe you have greater fortitude to keep trying but I couldn’t even get to the end of the first level in that time.

And doing what on Halloween? And what’s 100s vs needing 1000s. And buying candy corn is sort of cheating and only doable if you aren’t strapped for in-game coin. When your net worth is under 100 gold, a couple of gold for a novelty item rather than useful gear is an extravagance.

Each completed level rewarded 2 Bauble Bubbles at the end, and each completed world added the bonus stage which gave another Bauble Bubble. The glorious chest could be looted once per day and even had a chance to give a skin itself ontop of the Bauble Bubbles. So one 1 hour run each day awarded you with 14 + whatever amount of Baubles you found in 1 hour.

brannigan.9831:

Jackalrat.5493:

About half the time I die, burning is my number one source of damage taken…usually in the 20-40k range, though I’ve seen it over 50k before.

Additionally, standing in a cluster of guardians popping their blocks while burning everything around them is a tad disheartening.

Because you cleanse the burn to quick. You have to wait till it builds up to a medium amount of stacks like 4-6 and then cleanse. And then cleanse again when it gets to about the same number. Noobs blow there cleanses as soon as they see a burn and then get walloped bu 10-15 stacks that come after. There are burning rotations. I am not saying that burns are 100% fine but if they get anything besides a very modest nerf there goes condition guardians again. They will be a joke again. Eles are the real problem with burns.

Burn is just too easy applied in big stacks.

Bleeding and Burning are basically the same mechanic, one just deals more damage.
One would assume that you woud be able to stack more stacks of bleeding. I saw world bosses in PvE having more Burning stacks than Bleeding stacks.

This is wrong on so many levels, yet it happens.
Burning deals more damage per stacks and is easier to stack than bleeding. That needs to be nerfed. And no we should not have bleeding be buffed to burning like levels. A slight buff maybe. But not a second type of burning.

Ticky.5831:

Ok, but do you folks realize that since these are the weeks preparing specialization reveal, followed closely by a beta weekend, and then closely by the release of the expansion; it’s probably the busiest time during the lifespan and development of the game for the people working on ranger, and therefore the least likely to get communication from them?

As always we can look back at how they handled Guild Wars.

These are the updates for Guild Wars in march 2006: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Game_updates:March_2006

In april 2006 (28th) they released Guild Wars: Factions. That game included 240 new skills with 2 completely new classes which used new mechanics like hold spells, weapon spells and the, assassin combo system.

The thing is, Guild Wars 1 got more balancing update in the months leading up to major standalone expansions than Gw2 gets in years of development time.

Ravezaar.4951:

Burn will get a nerf, think Anet already confirmed this somewhere, but most likely not pre-HoT so just hang in there

Which shows the next problem this game has. Way too slow balancing.

Sorry other games throw minor balancing changes for completely broken stuff out like bi-weekly. ANet requires 6+ months.

A balancing patch every 2 weeks… so rapid iteration on balancing is required for 3 years now, but they just don’t do it.

Ticky.5831:

That’s a whole lot of assumptions Doogy.

Varonth.5830:

Ticky.5831:

Frankly, I don’t know anything technical about databases, so you can take what I say at face value.

Ok to give you an idea. PostgreSQL is a well known, open-source database management system.

Ok, all I’m saying is that perhaps relying on another program to access a database brings up more potential problems than it’s worth when there’s an internal solution present that, albeit less popular, is more practical.

They already have a DBMS running. They don’t have to rely on another program. That thing is already running regardless. Which one they use, I don’t know. Probably some sort of enterprise solution from Oracle or Microsoft but those have similar or better statistics when it comes to the underlying database (why would someone pay a company lots of money for a product inferior to free open source software?).

Does it require some coding time? Yes, as you have to alter some tables within the database aswell as having the client and server be able to handle the new data. But any QoL feature needs work, and unless they have a really convoluted way to accessing database data, it should not require significantly more time to implment than any other QoL feature.

Ticky.5831:

Frankly, I don’t know anything technical about databases, so you can take what I say at face value.

Ok to give you an idea. PostgreSQL is a well known, open-source database management system. The maximum database size is unlimited, with the underlying operating system being the limit. A single table (thing of an excel table for example) can store up to 32 terabytes of data. A single row in a table can store up to 1.6 terabytes of data. And a single field can store up to 1 gigabyte.

The number of rows a single table can have is also unlimited (as long as you don’t exceed the 32 terabyte limit of the table itself).

So not even 3gb of additional data in a seperate table is peanuts for a database.

Ticky.5831:

Perhaps using a database would cause problems you aren’t anticipating.

What do you mean with that? Are you suggesting that they don’t use databases right now?

Ticky.5831:

Ardid.7203:

The name of the pet for a class that is forced to use them, while not mechanicaly broken, IS something huge. And if it is working as intended, as some dare to say, then it is worse, because, while a bug can be understandable, intentionally poor design is simply insulting.

I don’t think it’s poor design, I think it’s a pragmatic compromise to save space.

Think about it; at over 5 million copies sold, assuming half of the player population has a ranger(pet classes are popular), that would be 10 million names that have to be stored somewhere on Anet’s servers. Now imagine that it let you name every individual pet, and all those players named all their pets(there’s 61, including amphibious ones twice); that would be 152.5 million names would have to be saved somewhere.

Hmm yeah, that would be 152.5m names at 19 characters per name. You can only use english letters so normal ASCII with 8 bit could be used for encoding a single character.

That would cause those names to use ~2.7gb of space.

That would be if you store petnames for each players pet. With the amount of names used chances are that there will be alot of dublicate names. Using database normalisation you could throw pet names into their own table and just reference the names when querying the rangers data.

In that case you could easily further cut down the data. Not that less than 3gb of additional data would make a huge dent.

AmberUK.5380:

Varonth.5830:

How about this:

Walls apply a buff to anyone standing at the top of a wall called ‘High Ground’. Players affected will takes 20% less projectile damage, 40% less AoE damage and 75% less PBAoE damage from any source that does not have the ‘High Ground’ buff themself.

That way you could fight back if enemies attack your keep, and if fights between groups happen ontop of the walls everyone will deal damage as if it is plain ground.

Great idea except that in the garri there are some points where an enemy on the outer wall can hit you on the inner wall.
Defending should be worth it and possible. Its just a joke atm that someone on the ground can hit me but I cannot hit him.

I also wonder if there should be some kinda ‘over confidence’ debuff – ie u are a small group defending a tower and the large group come at you – they are over confident as they are large numbers compared to your smaller numbers.

Would be nice if there were some map changes to the lower tiers that took lower overall numbers into account.

If both sides are on a wall they both have the same disadvantage: Less space to naviagate on and less spaces to attack from.

How about this:

Walls apply a buff to anyone standing at the top of a wall called ‘High Ground’. Players affected will takes 20% less projectile damage, 40% less AoE damage and 75% less PBAoE damage from any source that does not have the ‘High Ground’ buff themself.

That way you could fight back if enemies attack your keep, and if fights between groups happen ontop of the walls everyone will deal damage as if it is plain ground.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Celtus.8456:

Nova Stiker.8396:

Konfu Schnibli.9807:

Bye Guild Wars.

I am an adult now, that just recently bought HoT, to revive the good old GW1 PvP-glory.
My nostalgia and the similar names raised my expectation, that there was a chance for that but Anet flipped its design priorities.

Ah yes, nostalgia.

Let us forget Sway, Smiteway, RoJ Spike, ranger spike, palm strike, RoA way, spiritway, shoutway, signet assassins, hero battles, ele ball, discord spike, spamming /stuck, body blocking under bridges and the 90% skills in the game that are completely and utterly worthless. So worthless you even forget their entire existence.

Hell, here is a test for you GW1 vets, tell me ANYTHING you remember (without googling it) about the skill Spoil Victor. It can be anything from it’s skill type or what profession even had it.

---

Yeah, lets just forget ALL of those yeah? Clearly, GW1 PvP did a lot right?

Necromancer blood magic hex to make target take damage whenever attacking someone with less hp. Pretty sure Green People Eater used it to farm random arena with a low hp build before being banned over and over for language. At least that is the iteration I remember.

On topic, yes Gw1 had a lot of problems, but it was still a unique game and pvp experience and many are still looking for a successor.

You can take solace at the fact that Arena net wasn’t trying to remake a CRPG that was/is still around. I mean why remake guild wars 1?

If they would just make GW1 core games free 2 play as they just did with GW2 :/

I don’t thing that they sell that many copies anymore.

No Pulse.2967:

Maybe you should stop playing hotjoins, because actual games are full of eles/guards/wars/necros/rangers that just spam condi cleanse after condi cleanse after condi cleanse after condi cleanse…

I wonder why… like why would a necro spam condi cleanse when they have 40k+ health with Death Shroud? Oh yeah… my 40k rampage healthpool was depleted in 6s by burning.

Xillllix.3485:

FranzM.1298:

I don’t think they should nerf Elementalist just because one 4 ele team won a match, that is highly unfair. Also if the Elementalist is nerfed anymore they will not be playable at all :/ cause why put so much effort into damage when other classes can get the job done faster and easier. If people think elementalist are a faceroll class then they have not tried the new burn guardian builds have they. Actually burn anything! Burn builds are broken right.

By adjusting the burn damage and scaling itself everyone’s D/D Ele complaints would be answered drops mic

If they nerf the only build that doesn’t get you 1-shot by someone without buffing other builds I swear I’m never touching this game again. I mean come on, we get shattered from stealth for 16k+ damage, pewpew rangers do over 20k damage with quickness from 1500 range, burn guards have 6k burning ticks, yet again it’s the ele getting the nerf as usual.

Damage (and therefor sustained healing aswell) must be nerfed across the board to be honest.

loseridoit.2756:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

What Theordin said.

Also, Damask (and thus silk) has a much higher demand than Elonain Leather or Deldrimor because Damask is required in reasonably large quantities for all 3 ascended armours.

So it’s not just Tailor that struggles.

well, if anet fix the drop system so that light armor will have a larger advantage of drops to even out the loot among classes. Less people will be complaining about tailoring.

Or just make it logical. Salvaging armors will give it’s type of material + scraps since it is made of scraps aswell. So a heavy armor will give some metal and some scraps. Light armor will give increased scraps.

zapv.8051:

philheat.3956:

zapv.8051:

Phil.8901:

With more than 3 burning stacks you have spike damage, not condi damage. This breaks the intial design for conditions. Not other condis in the game can reach the burning damage with only 3+ stacks (luckily)

With 3 burning stacks a condi build can deal more than 850 damage, is more than the old value (with the old unique stack) with 1000 condi damage.

If you want to do more damage in 1-2 sec with a single spell, use a power build, not burning build.

First 2 sentences, false assumption. They’ve never stated the design of conditions isn’t supposed to be bursty. In fact, ability to apply conditions from multiple sources to eventually get to high dps means they want conditions to be bursty if speced for it.

Yes, it deals more damage. That was the actual point of the changes they made and enforces my point above ^.

The last sentence is the kind of bias towards condition builds people who play conditions builds hate, while also being outright false in that no condition build can use 1 skill to do comparable damage to a power build in the first 1-2 seconds. Multiple skills are needed for high stacks of conditions in the overwhelming majority of scenarios.

We are talking about burning.

No other condis can deal the same burning damage with few stacks.

It’s not a damage over time, you receive a really high spike damage for few sec.. And after the burning application is all passive damage. And with some build the burning application is constant during the fight

Ofc multiple condis on u deal high damage, but we are talking about only 1 condi Who doesn’t scale well with stacks and damage in relation to other condis.

It’s a problem and needs a solution.

Op suggestion is good if you want an easy fix or you need to correct many burning stacks application of some builds or change the burning value.

It is damage over time, no skill applies 20 stacks of burning for 1 second. That’s damage over time, just because plebs can’t remove or avoid the condition application does not make it instant burst. Every condition build has build up time, since you don’t know this your knowledge on the subject comes into question.

It takes multiple skills applying just burning to deal high damage per second, giving you multiple opportunities to use condi removal to mitigate any kind of burst that would be attained from multiple stacks. 3 stacks of burning is not burst, 1k damage ticks aren’t burst, 10k mesmer combos in an instant, 20 stacks of burning on you at once, that is burst. Difference is, you have an instant to avoid the mesmer burst, but the burn burst had to be built up over time.

Overtime? My engineer Poison Dart Volley applies 25k damage to a target if it cannot cleanse the conditions.

You don’t see a problem with 25k damage from a single ability? That stuff reduces build diversity by alot. You must build condition cleanse which can handle condition spam. It is not that you can… you must build that kind of defense. Just as you must build stunbreakers. Every must have reduces build diversity.

Caedmon.6798:

If you run rifle you run power,theres no point for a bleed that will tick for 50dmg/sec.Cripple would make more sense,aka sword autoattack.

Any hybrid weapon is kind bad unless you can stack 25 might (and even then pure damage weapon will still outshine them). The reason is quite simple: Ferocity.

If power damage wouldn’t scale with power times precision times ferocity, you would see much more build variety. Hybrid weapon and you want to go full glass cannon? Get Power + Precision + Condition Damage.

Right now it is: Hybrid weapon and you want to go full glass cannon? Well just like any other weapon Power + Precision + Ferocity.

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. This has multiple reasons, some can be fixed others cannot. The camera and information shows in spectator mode is one of those parts that can be fixed.

The biggest problem is the gamedesign itself, which probably cannot be fixed.

The inclusion of crit bonus damage should have never happened. It’s a problem in PvE and it is one in PvP. Ferocity is a terrible stat, which add way too much damage.

But it doesn’t end there. Since that damage is so high they added the incredible sustain of other classes. Things just get jumpy here. Healbars just jump all other the place. Like in that video that was linked when the thief looses 80% of his health in like 1s, and a second later he is back to full health. It takes minutes to analyse what skills caused those jumps. It is almost impossible to visually track that much stuff if you are not directly involved in it (and it is also hard if you are involved).

That whole design philosophy is also the reason downed state is needed. If two glasscannons collide the fight is over in about 1~2 seconds. So teamfights looks like this… the DDs go in, and the one DD that gets focused better runs away as fast as possible.

Now if you watch the GW1 sample, you can see that kills aren’t just everyone collapsing on a single target. Everyone in the team has a different role. You need players to damage the target, but you also need someone to distract/disturb the monks and other support, aswell as healing through the damage your DDs take. Maybe even interrupt the DD from CCing you DDs. At the same time everyone on the enemy team has some way to help the focused target.

And while there is also jumpy healthbars, you can a follow the incoming damage abilities because they are shown at the side and it are far less. And the only two high value heals are either the extremly visible Word of Healing or Infusion of Life, which while not having a massive visual effect causes the infusion monk to loose half his health. Nothing short of the old Vow of Strength + Unsuspecting Strike assassin could cause that much damage to an infusion monk. So you immediatly know what caused that health spike.

Damage across the board is too high and with that comes too high damage. An engineer who can deal 7k damage from a simple pistol shot because of the conditions he applies does not make for a nice viewable experience. People want group fights that last a while in which they can follow what is going on.

And sadly that will not happen with the current design.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. The end of the ‘free’ period happens at reset of the beginning of the day of the next patch. Just like Monthlies. Any time after 00:00 UTC of patch day will be past the ‘free’ period.

This makes sense as the servers can’t know when the next patch will go live. It could be any time during that 24-hour period.

Sorry, it does not make sense. You can patch out the free episode when you patch the game. You patch it anyway, so that patch should also be the moment when the free episode changes.

Same here. Story did not unlock.

The idea was that if you lock in within the 2 weeks of a living story part you unlock it for free. Those 2 weeks aren’t over yet, as Tangled Paths is still the current living story part.

So it should unlock for free until the patch later this day.

Quote from another thread which was closed because we should use already existing threads instead: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-Case-Study-in-ANet-Communication/first#post4513095

It’s almost like Anet needs someone to ask the question, “what will Reddit think?”.

Reddit is the home to hive-mind fanboys for almost every online game. The power of that downboat button ensures that anything critical of a company or game will never be seen by large numbers of people, and the fanboys use it.

When Reddit goes ballistic it’s obvious that Houston didn’t know there is a problem, but needs to be told, and that has happened three times in recent weeks.

Commander tags for 300g?
Removing crossed sword indicators when a WvW objective is attacked?
Gem/Gold conversion changed, not for the better, with a lousy excuse?

Yeah, what will Reddit think?

By the way, I’m posting this here because if I posted this on Reddit it would downboated to the bottom of the lake, immediately.

That might be the case for game specific subreddits like /r/guildwars2 , but with the latest gemstore change they made it under the top 3 threads on /r/games aswell.

/r/games has the tendency to upvote such changes which do more harm than good to the players, mostly because they like drama. The thing is, once it got highly upvoted, other mainstream gaming media will pick the story up because there are obviously views to be found in that subject.

And that is the point where things get bad for ANets publicity. So you better start reacting on this.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Simzani.4318:

Excuse for new player (you take months old players for new player it seems but whatever) is just a lie. If a player couldn’t make the old gem store work, it means he couldn’t even power on his computer, and less use it, or use a mouse or a keyboard. He couldn’t even eat or drink alone.

There are parents to do that.

Proposition: Tickets are coming in by children who got GW2 as a gift and have a problem with basic math.

[/harshmode]

You mean like they cannot multiply? For example they have 100 times 9 and it equals 733?

On a serious note, the idea behind the system is to be less confusing. Why is it more confusing then? I certainly have no idea why, as the screenshot shows, I would get 100 gold for 733 gems if 1 gold cost 9 gems.

That is confusing as kitten as each option offers different amounts of gold per gem.

Well maybe they are the worst elites in the game. That still does not make most elites good.

Elite skills in this game are mostly bad. I would in 99% take another utility rather than an elite.

Steam and SteamOS are two completely different things.
One of them is a program and distribution platoform for game which is basically known by any gamer at this point.

The other is a Linux based (Debian to be specific) operation system (like Windows is an OS) which is also developed by Valve, the developer of Steam.

While Steam is part of SteamOS you should still be able to install any other application including games, without using the program Steam.

What OP asked for is a native port to SteamOS/Linux so that the game runs on Linux and SteamOS instead of just Windows and barely MacOS.

But as the second poster already pointed out, it is very unlikely to happen, as fundamental systems of the game engine have to be rewritten for this.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Steam wants a cut of any ingame percheses and DLC. That’s why EA made Origin, so they would not have to give Valve more money. I don’t see ANet wanted to split the money they make from gem sales with Valve, so not going to happen.

Guild Wars can be bought via Steam.

zaxon.6819:

the difference between mesmer and another ai spec. is clones are all mesmer has. and they have 0 health any bunker can one shot almost all of the mesmer clones. and they fall over in the face of the enemy ai.. if a mesmer could have phantasms that followed you around like a minion master there would be an issue. go summon 3 clones and see how good they are at killing turrets. i understand that they are easier to bring back but any way you bring them back is using resources and the next batch die the same.

3200 base health on 80 isn’t 0.
That is about 30% of the low health classes: Ele, Thief and Guardian.

coglin.1867:

Pets have been an integral part of MMOs for a very long time. Many players, including myself enjoy them greatly. They have been in the game and promoted since before release. It is not like they magically added them in out of no where after 2 years.

You are free to search out and move to a MMO that has no AI what so ever. Good luck.

Unlike most other MMOs with bigger numbers of minions, GW2 minions always take part in the fight, even if they don’t attack. The clutter the battlefield.

Look at how they want to buff bows on ranger. Well, it will still not work in PvP without piercing arrows. Piercing arrows is no choice it is a requirement… because of AI minions. When a mesmer just keeps spamming clones on a point, it does not matter if you can track the mesmer or not. You might not even want to attack the mesmer. Still the clones just passively sitting there will eat alot of your arrows.

They also eat away damage from AoE thanks to AoE caps.

Michael Henninger.7451:

Hey everyone,

I want to clarify a couple of points for you that I feel are important.

1. ArenaNet GMs very rarely send unsolicited whispers.

2. ArenaNet Senior GMs all have character names akin to GM Madi Walker and have the ArenaNet Guild Tag.

3. All ArenaNet GMs have GM ‘Hopefully Cool Alias’.#### for a display name.

4. GM whisper text is golden; not purple.

5. Impersonating a employee or agent of ArenaNet will result in an immediate suspension or termination of your account.

Hope this helps you identify real GMs versus the imposters out there.

Hunt safe.

How about an automated system message that can be displayed once per gamesession, based on your spam filter. If it detects certain words, like GM, Game Master etc. it will print a system message saying how GM messages look like?

Might help you on that front.

hackks.3687:

Varonth.5830:

hackks.3687:

lilz shorty.1879:

hackks.3687:

I will likely never own a Lamborghini or Ferrari in my lifetime. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop working hard at my job, or write the CEOs of each company to complain about that fact…

Your comparison is terrible. Pvp is a competition in order achieve something whether that be prestige, items, etc…for being good at it.. But there is nothin to work for unless you are the top, and this is only when tournies are around, which is so stupid. This is an MMO and not the NBA playoffs. You rely on people to play your game as an MMO developer, so you need to give them reason to. They don’t have a community therefore they need to work on getting one by also catering, but I’m a competitive way, to casual, semi competitive, and hardcore.

The analogy was in reference to the OP, where they essentially asked that the most exclusive reward PvP is going to offer to be made available simply for showing up – which is, as I see it, exactly why this game doesn’t have a lot of competitive play at the moment. None of the rewards actually require winning or playing well.

my apologies for not making that more clear

Where did I write this? Please quote where I wrote that you should just show up to obtain that armor.

Varonth.5830:

Or are there plans to actually make really big open tournaments. And with big I mean in the 100k+ participants, and everyone gets the armor regardless of whether they came far or not.

And everyone can see that this was exaggeration as a 100k participants tournament would never work… well except you.