Guild Wars 2

I purposely made 4 male and 4 female characters, with at least one of each gender in each type of armor, so that I could make them stand out from one another.

Going back to the perception that female characters are more popular…it may not actually be the case. http://guildwars2viz.com/ seems to use the game’s API to chart data, since there’s no apparent way to input data. It also may come from the data flow chart ANet posted a long time ago, so take it for what it’s worth.

Look at the center of the circle, and you’ll see the gender proportion is apparently closer to 65% male: 35% female.

Admittedly, this is data for all five races, but it’s possible that the imbalance appearing to tip in the opposite direction may just be that you’re noticing the female characters more.

Mogar.9216:

I cry a little when I read post like this. Try some other weapon sets as ele and don’t stick with a zerg all the time.

If I wanted to play melee or mid-range, I wouldn’t play my Ele. For me, the only reason to play Ele is long range casting and control, for which staff is the only option. If ANet wants to give Eles another 1200-range weapon, I’ll gladly try it.

EDIT:

Your staff ele is great support. Most run 0/0/10/30/30 for support. The build is probably in the Ele section.

Along with Johje’s suggestion, you can get almost as much support out of a 0/30/0/20/20 build, and you’ll do noticeably more damage. Just another option, depending on what you’re looking for.

The league is no different than before, except now you have yet more temporary achievements affecting how people play.

WvW is still hugely imbalanced, and I will not be surprised at all if we see even more people jump ship to transfer to t1 after this league is over. The entire setup of the game mode caters to that mindset.

I still want to go back to the old matchmaking system. Those matches were consistently fun, regardless that it was always the same three servers.

I think the achievement objectives are fine, but the required numbers on those three in particular could be lowered, while compensating by increasing others, such as the players killed achievement (which is currently doable in one match).

snow.8097:

every armor u can see in the locker are also gettable in PvE.
There are more armor Skins then the few u know from Level 80.
The only armor sets u cant wear in PvE with one character are the two order Skins u didnt choosed and the other cultural armor Skins.
The rest is avaible via WvW (armor and Skins for badges), crafting, AH and the dungeon armors.

over and out expert

There is at least one set (called Tribal, I think) that is not available in PvE at all yet. There may be others. I haven’t looked through the PvP locker recently.

I’m grateful that each armor type does not count as unique, because then we’d have to purchase 54 unique armor pieces per race instead of 18.

As the Emperor achievement already costs somewhere around 700 gold, I wouldn’t want it tripled.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Jayce.5632:

Capture The Flag

Win Conditions:

• Capture 7/7 Enemy Flags (Includes 1 Hard Flag or flag located closest to spawn )
• Most Flags Captured When Timer Expires
• Most Flags Saved > Capture Draw
• Most Kills > Save Draw > Capture Draw

p.s. Map terrain and thoughtful flag placement makes all the difference. Can provide more details to the above if necessary.

So a few things on CTF:

We found that CTF works best as a “push” the flag, not “cap it by bringing it back to my base”. This means you have to push through the enemy team, and since you need to push it into their spawn, it means they can more easily defend a cap.

If it’s “cap” it by bringing it back to your base, there are often cases where the capturing team gets a flag past a certain point on the field, and no one on the defending team can catch up with them in order to prevent the cap.

We tried various mechanics, like making it so that the flag carrier couldn’t use skills, or they had to use “flag” skills, or they were just slowed down greatly, but in most of those instances, players didn’t have as much fun when carrying a flag. You can see some of this carried over to Spirit Watch and some of the issues it has.

Just some things to think about.

I don’t generally like PvP, but Capture the Flag actually sounds like a game mode I might participate in.

It seems to me that the mechanics of Lunatic Inquisition could be adapted and re-skinned to create a hide-and-seek version of capture the flag. I realize many people don’t like LI, but please hear me out (I didn’t like it at all at first, but it’s grown on me, despite the imbalances).

For example:

• With capture the flag, it makes sense for the available skills to favor the team trying to recapture the flag. Lunatic Inquisition is already balanced in favor of the Lunatic Court.
• The team holding the flag acts as the villagers, and the team chasing it acts as the Court. When the flag switches sides, so do the skills.
• When a team member is defeated on either side, they are sent back to a spawn point (middle for the Court, one of the four corners for the villagers, again dependent on which team has the flag).
• The flag-bearer’s skills could be treated similarly to the blunderbuss, with a limited number of charges per skill, but with a strategic way to recharge them.
• A labyrinthine map is ideal for capture the flag.
• Hidden weapons and items would make mechanics interesting, especially if they’re usable by both sides when skills swap.
• An idea you could adapt from Keg Brawl would be a skill that allows teammates to pass the flag within a limited range (keg brawl skill #1, not #2).
• Even Inquisition’s scoring breakdown could be used, except as a team, rather than on an individual basis.

However, I think the following from Lunatic Inquisition would not lend well to the new CTF game mode:

• Mad King Says should not force an item drop, especially the flag.
• The Court #3 skill should not perma-stun (I don’t think this is intended even in the Inquisition game).
• Since people are not switching teams during the match, it would make teamwork easier if both teams could see allied dots on the mini-map.

Just some ideas, but I think you’re already well on your way to a CTF game mode if you borrow from some mechanics you’re already using. I just don’t know if this would lend itself better to an activity or actual sPvP.

Azure Prower.8701:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that the music box will ever see production.

Can we has in-game music box similar to the SAB boombox?

If this happens, please please please give us a toggle to turn it off. The SAB music is fine for SAB, but it gets extremely old after a while.

Necro isn’t my main, but I’m going to be sad to see Necro condi burst reduced. Honestly, I think it’s more of an issue with Epidemic than it is with any other part of the build. That skill is a favorite of mine, but it really is very powerful. I would rather see a reduction in that skill’s effectiveness than changes to Dhuumfire, for example.

IMO, Dhuumfire isn’t OP for a GM trait. However, once you time it properly and spread the burn with Epidemic, then it becomes questionable. So again, it seems like the issue is with Epidemic.

I think a lot could be solved by changing Epidemic to only transfer specific conditions, as long as the specified conditions retain enough of the potential damage and control. That way, future conditions could be balanced by being included or excluded from the skill as the devs feel is appropriate.

Unfortunately, with skills with cast times, if you get interrupted in any way, even a micro-second before the cast time ends, the entire skill does nothing. The same thing happens with Eruption, Ice Spike, and other similar skills. It’ll also happen if you dodge or sometimes if you queue another skill too soon after the first.

No idea if it’s intended, but the result of interrupt or dodging seems like a legit consequence for being interrupted.

Queuing a second skill should not interrupt the one you’re currently casting. I think this may be a result of some of the cast and aftercast times ANet has tweaked.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Please don’t rip John. We actually love it when he goes ham on people.

You speak for the people that love it, and I’ll speak for the people who hate it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

But in regards to your desires to have more luxury items (aka Gem Shop). All these items are optional. They have no impact on the game itself. They are just for looks.

I see this subjective argument all the time. I’m not sure “no impact” is accurate in a game where the entire endgame is based around cosmetics. If they’re going to advertise a game based around horizontal progression…where is the horizontal progression outside the gem store lately? Or is this game buy-to-play, then buy-to-progress (or, if trading gold, grind-to-progress)? Again, I’d rather pay a subscription and have these rewards be part of the in-game content. I didn’t buy the Home Shopping Network MMO.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s fine that you want more “stuff”. Everyone does. But realize that if you want this “stuff”, you have the option of either paying real money for Gems, or using in game Gold to convert to Gems. There are players here who haven’t spent a single penny on Gems, yet use the exchange to buy what they want in the Gem Store.

Making items available outside the gem store rewards all players for being loyal, regardless of whether or not they’ve supported the gem store, since, as you said, the gem store is supposed to be optional. Those players who are not spending RL currency on gems are still contributing in other ways toward keeping the game and its economy alive.

However, my point was more that because of the seemingly insane gold>gem exchange, that option is becoming more and more of a joke. It’s there, but it’s more vestigial than feasible. And, IF players really have that much gold lying around that this exchange rate is somehow acceptable for the average player, then isn’t adding desirable non-gem-store items to the game a good way to drain some of that, too? We have an extensive system of gold sinks in-game, but the one I see being ignored is new in-game non-gem-store items that people would actually want to trade and/or spend gold for.

Also, if everything is for sale directly through the gem store, how is ANet going to offer incentive for new content? Back pieces and masks aren’t going to be acceptable placation rewards for long. Many of us already have piles of them.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

FYI – It’s fine that not everyone went to school for business, or has an understanding about how economies work. That’s why they hire people like John to make sure the in game market doesn’t die like in other games.

Yes, I’m aware. My plea was just for less cryptic responses. If I’m already not understanding something or am already frustrated about how the game economy works, having dev responses that make the confusion worse…has a tendency to incite rage. lol

@Mal: The quote is surprisingly apt, considering that its source is highly academic for this type of forum. (o.O) However, even if you don’t like the quote, read the last paragraph, which expresses Buttercup’s stance, and really couldn’t be stated any more clearly.

Kudos, Buttercup, and I agree that hopefully this recipe will be added/fixed, as I can’t see any good reason why it shouldn’t be.

Those two reasons are honestly why your posts often come across as condescending. Just honest feedback on my part, although I’ll likely get infracted for it.

Besides, if you’re going to let your fellow forum-dwelling economists supply the answers, the rest of us who may or may not know anything about economics have no idea which answer to reference unless you chime in.

And, if you’re going to nod at Azurrei, then please read the second half of his/her post and act on it. I think it’s more than obvious how the pendulum has become stuck in drastic favor of the gem store with regard to any balance between in-game item releases vs items released through the gem store.

The over-arching problem may not be the game’s economics, but a problem arises when ANet’s pursuit of real life economics starts to impact its customers negatively.

I don’t begrudge you your profits. I think you have a good product, despite its issues, and you deserve to reap the rewards. But, at this point, I’m starting to wish you had gone with a subscription model so we never had to deal with the gem store.

If you want horizontal (cosmetic) progression, make it balanced between the gem store and the rest of the game. That’s all anyone’s asking for.

Ellewind.9640:

My bet!

Q-Q

don’t tease!

For general PvE, it really doesn’t matter what class or weapon set you run. You could easily create an effective ranged DPS character with Mesmer, Elementalist, Engineer, Necro, or Ranger. The other three professions have ranged options, but might be less than ideal as pure ranged DPS.

That said, with the things you mentioned, my recommendation is an Elementalist.

Staff Elementalist is great in dungeons, and it is good in WvW as long as you stay with a group. Staff can be very disruptive against large enemy groups, but obviously you’d need a group of your own to help you stay alive.

You’re going to have a hard time, though, if you like to solo roam in WvW. Unfortunately, for solo roaming, you’d want to switch to a mid-range or melee weapon set, as staff is not tailored for 1v1 encounters at all, and the Elementalist’s squishiness makes it unforgiving.

Even if you spec for pure DPS on your Ele, you’ll still be able to provide a bit of group support through CC, water fields, and boons. Just be aware that traiting for pure DPS easily makes an Ele the squishiest class in the game.

Trait synergy isn’t great right now, but it sounds like the devs are working on making improvements next month, so those of us who play Ele on a regular basis have our fingers crossed.

Have fun.

Khisanth.2948:

Astral Projections.7320:

It’s a shame you have to buy a gem store outfit just to get a pair of pants for light armor that doesn’t have a buttcape attached.

You consider those pants? O_o

A belt with really high socks?

The achievement is still bugged for some people, too, so if the Aetherblade puzzle isn’t the one you’re missing, do a bug report.

callidus.7085:

Vick.6805:

The other alternative is to scrap the leagues, which many people said they didn’t want in the first place, and go back to stable match-making like we had at launch.

This won’t discourage people from all trying to be on a T1 server though… I know that isn’t exactly the true intent behind all this, but personally I’d love to see the population more evenly spread out.

Honestly, if people want to be on T1 servers, deal with queues, and zerg day in and day out, they’re welcome to it. I’ve been there, and I honestly didn’t think it was that great. My concern is that smaller servers should actually be able to play WvW effectively at whatever level they’re at, instead of having matches that are decided in the first few hours.

John Smith.4610:

The gold to gem rate on the exchange is not a measure of inflation. If you consider how the exchange works and interacts with players you’ll realize that it’s a great measure of only one thing…

Greed.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Another food for thought: Back when we invaded Southsun, we did a lot of “one time” events with the story content. Folks complained that one time wasn’t fair because they would miss it, so we extended the “story” style content so you now have 2-4 weeks to experience it. Does having it around this long take away from the sense of story progression, and make it feel like it should be permanent when it’s taken away? Or would simply having (using the TV analogy) something like TiVo that allows you to see the story you missed balance out this issue?

I still agree with the consensus that one-time events are not a good idea, for all of the reasons that made y’all move away from them months back.

I also think that you guys are the only ones who can determine what content should or shouldn’t remain permanent, as you know how it could affect future story arcs. But, my opinion is that as much content as possible should remain permanent so that the world does change, and that future story arcs should be what removes content, rather than it simply disappearing as a new patch arrives.

I honestly feel that the major issue with the two-week cycle is the pressure that the constant influx of achievements adds to the mix. Players feel like they need to get them all done before the content disappears, which can be psychologically painful.

So, my proposed solution would be for each two-week release to offer a limited number of achievements aligned to experiencing the story aspect of that release. An example of this would be the achievements we had for the intro and concluding Bloody Prince instances. At this point, there shouldn’t be any achievements requiring repeated participation whatsoever. For festivals, you might be able to make exceptions, but you need to find ways to present the achievement other than “carve X# pumpkins”. More on the repetitive achievements later.

Then, once that LS arc is done, and we see what content is going to remain in-game long term, give us non-time-gated achievements related to the content that is staying in the game to work toward at our own pace. This would be similar to the way Belcher’s Bluff was done. We had a few initial achievements during the arc itself, and then we got a set of permanent ones that people can now work through over the long term.

This gives people a few achievements that are time gated and related to participating in the actual LS release, but not enough to cause pressure. Then, it gives them total freedom with pursuing the permanent achievements as part of the overall game experience afterward. It also creates an immediate connection between the previous LS and the future game world.

Now, with regard to repetitive achievements, they need to be presented differently. There is a huge difference, for example, between the Marriner’s Plaques and the Master Carver achievement. One is grinding, and one is a scavenger hunt. If you put one carve-able pumpkin in each zone in the game and created a chain of clues (or bad jokes) leading the player to all of them, this would immediately reduce the feel of it being a grind. That’s just one idea. I’m sure there are lots of ways to reinvent this type of achievement.

Regarding reliving past LS content, I think you could create instance entrances where the temporary LS story content took place. These could be used for the cinematics, which I think some people would enjoy being able to re-live, they could be used for short dungeon instances like Canach’s Lair, and they could even be used for fractal-style small-scale recreations of whatever content the Living Story arc contained, in a location appropriate for that particular arc. For Tower of Nightmares, for example, there could be an instance entrance that allows a new player to participate in a flashback of a spore event. The instances would just need a banner saying “You are now reliving events as they previously occurred” (like we had in Nightfall’s initial missions) or something similar to make sure the player knows it is not current content. You could even reword the instance entry prompt to say “You are about to enter a flashback instance. Proceed?”

TL;DR: Time-gated achievements create “pressure.” The two-week LS arcs should only include a limited number of story-related achievements. More achievements can be added later based on what part of the LS arc is to remain permanent, so that players can work on the long-term achievements at their own pace. Repetitive achievements need to be presented in such a way that they are not perceived as grindy, such as scavenger hunts. Reliving past LS arcs should be possible through small-scale flashback instances located out in the game world where the LS arc actually took place.

The other alternative is to scrap the leagues, which many people said they didn’t want in the first place, and go back to stable match-making like we had at launch.

Rym.1469:

Currently it’s like “C’mon, where’s the wallet? Where did you put this, you kitten? C’mon!….Oh, he woke up. Nevermind, here Healing Spring for you and didn’t happen”

+1 made me chuckle

The primary difference that I see between the Elementalist’s damage modifying traits and other classes’ traits is that the Elementalist traits are impossible to maintain reliably.

Warrior example: Berserker’s Might…15% damage increase across the board for being limited on using the warrior’s burst skills. Also, the 15% buffs the burst skill itself when the warrior chooses to use it.

Elementalist example: As currently stands, Piercing Shards is one of two traits we have that even comes close by increasing damage by 20% vs vulnerable foes. In order to maintain vulnerability, we have to hit reliably with Ice Spike, stay in water attunement for Vapor Blade, or rely on Shatterstone. So, in short, we have to stay in water attunement to keep vulnerability applied. Other than that, we can just hope that our teammates are applying vulnerability, I guess. Solo, it’s highly unlikely.

The other trait is Bolt to the Heart, which increases damage by 20% when our enemy is at less than 33% health. This trait isn’t bad, but again, the Ele has to get the enemy down to 33% health for it to even impact the fight.

It would be really nice if some of our damage modifying traits were stackable and not dependent on one attunement and conditions we can’t reliably apply.

shimmerless.4560:

And these are Eles we’re talking about… even one or two of your limp-wristed Marks or Scepter autos’ll bring them under 90.

As an ele, this made me laugh, cuz it’s so true.

Diamond Skin is still not enough incentive to trait into Earth.

I realize this thread is relatively old, but I just happened to find it again.

Awesome! The chest piece blends perfectly now.

Legs next! Legs next!

EDIT: I’m dubbing this the Charrborg armor.

juno.1840:

The problem is the skill should be used preemptively for the effect (i.e. the add XXX when using skills effect). This contradicts the use of the skill as a stun breaker.

^ This. The active effect does not mesh well with reactive stun-break. Unfortunately, the only two reactive signets are Glyph of Elemental Harmony and Glyph of Renewal.

Glyph of Elemental Harmony would undoubtedly have its cooldown increased dramatically to not have an OP stun-break, which would negate its usefulness as a heal. I honestly like this skill a lot as-is, so I’d rather not see it changed.

Glyph of Renewal’s cast time would negate the whole purpose of a stun break right off the bat, and the revive aspect of this skill makes it difficult enough to use effectively without a stun-break consideration.

Honestly, I’d prefer that Glyph of Renewal got an overhaul to make it a more useful skill that included a reactive function and the stun-break. As its name implies, it could be something to do with resetting skill or attunement recharges.

I have no problem with the Elementalist being decent at everything. That concept has been part of the appeal of the class since beta (IMO).

The problem enters in when you realize that an Elementalist is not inherently decent at everything. With the exception of CC, any aspect of the class needs the associated traits to become decent.

So, the reality is that the Elementalist is not decent at everything. It is mediocre at everything, and it has the potential to become decent at a limited number of attributes its player decides to trait for.

The point that those of us who post criticism on the Elementalist forums are trying to get across is the following:

TL;DR: Elementalist needs to be brought up to the point where it lives up to its Jack-of-all-trades title and actually IS inherently decent at everything, and maybe slightly better than decent at one thing in particular that the player has decided to trait for.

No one is asking for a King-of-all-trades.

Obsidian.1328:

Not because I don’t like it mind you, but rather because it absolutely kills any notion of taking this game-world seriously. If they don’t want us to take it seriously, then ANet shouldn’t complain when we don’t give one iota about the Living Story.

They can’t have it both ways.

In addition to humans, we have a sabertooth feline bipedal race with severe predatory aggression issues, a race of dwarf-sized parachute-eared goblins with oversized ego complexes, sentient and ambulatory shrubs, and humans with growth hormone addictions and polar-bear-club tendencies.

When you decide to think about game lore too long, anything can become immersion breaking. Taking a game “seriously” is just a matter of perspective, and deciding to do so is at one’s own risk.

That said, I think many of the suggestions here would not be immersion breaking at all, as many of them fit quite easily into the medieval/steampunk/fantasy hybrid setting this game is based in. Heck, they excused away mini-pets by saying they’re toys made by Asura craftsmen. I’d rather ANet offer options beyond armor for visual customization since so much of this game is cosmetic.

Yes, vibrant colors are intended for cloth, but that just means they create slightly different colors on leather and metal. Same concept for the other two types.

As for HSV codes, you can take the RGB codes and convert them online. This is a converter that came up as one of the first options on Google.

I don’t know that you can say one type of color combo is “better” than another, as it’s all up to taste, but one thing that I don’t think Serisho’s mentioned so far is that your character’s skin color (especially for Sylvari, but also the human and norn skin colors) can affect which colors look good, just like they do for everyone IRL.

The gem store is handled tolerably well, except for the part where the gold>gem conversion rate is on a severe inflationary track with no end in sight.

I think it’d be fun to have an account profile, where all of your characters are shown in their gear and you can select things you do/don’t want visible, like a short bio, progress on personal story, titles, etc.

The toggle on/off option is important, though, for the griefing reasons people have posted above.

@Vayne and others – Elitists already “force” prospective party members to do a gear check by making them ping gear. This wouldn’t be any worse than what’s already in the game, IMO.

The fact that ANet made the Toxic enemies contribute to hearts indicates to me that the enemies may be a permanent feature of Kessex Hills, even after this month’s LS is done.

Which means you’ll probably have to take Vas’s suggestion and fit the krait into the RP’ing.

Cierdwyn.4675:

Zayd Akira.1942:

… didn’t abbadon originally get his godly powers from an old spider-god? …

Thalador.4218:

Yes, it’s highly suspected it was some spider-related deity that Abaddon supplanted, called Arachnia. Problem is, knowledge of Arachnia currently only comes from unused GW1 PoI locations found in the gw.dat – so it’s not confirmed to be canon. However, there was a server named Arachnia in one of the very early BWEs… very interesting.

Oh really? I have either forgotten this or never knew it.

Now THAT would make for an interesting storyline for the Scarlet character. Not that she came upon Abaddon but that she came upon whatever was left of the spider-god, seeking revenge or rebirth through this creature that had pierced the veil to where this dethroned ‘god’ had been in ‘stasis’ .. waiting … for the right vessel to come along.

That type of tie-in would do a lot to redeem the Living Story and also Scarlet as a character, at least in my opinion.

If she’s channeling some old deity, that’d explain a lot of her beyond-believable character elements.

It is lopsided, but I think it could be improved with some tweaking.

The radar on the teleport pads reduces the viable hiding places to the four corners of the map and the very center, which is extremely limited and makes searching out villagers very easy. Some of the best hiding spots are well within the radar’s range, and thereby useless. This could be fixed by gradually reducing the range on the radar proportionately to the number of villagers alive. By the time the villager team is down to one person, the radar should be entirely disabled.

To assist with hiding, enemy nameplates could be disabled by default, and just give the players a red outline (as if you’re hovering the mouse over them). The nameplates are often what gives away a villager’s hiding spot, as the nameplate often penetrates walls and sticks out well beyond the character model.

The villager’s treasure hunting events need to be ramped up. The fire imp patrol, for instance, does poor damage and is easily destroyed by two ghosts. If the villagers take the time to do these events, the events should truly help the villagers for the remainder of the match. The patrol NPCs should respawn (somehow so the ghosts can’t prevent the respawn by leaving one imp alive) every two minutes or so once destroyed, and they should do a decent amount of damage so that the ghosts have to work as a group to counter them.

The fear cone should not stun, although I think this has been acknowledged as a bug.

The Mad King Says skill should be on a global cooldown (the full cooldown across all five), and should not result in the villager dropping their held item unless the villager chooses to.

I don’t know if it’s possible, but I also think the fear cone and AoE should not penetrate walls.

Just some ideas to make it better for next year, if this activity is going to become an annual tradition.

I didn’t have this issue until I reduced my PC’s settings lower for WvW (since zergs kill the game).

The bug seems to be related to one of the graphics settings, because as soon as I lowered them, her eyes turned black (noticed it on the character select screen). When I put the settings back up, they were fine. I honestly didn’t take the time to determine which setting it is.

JonPeters.5630:

Of course if you are just an elementalist you just want us to raise these, but balance must work around some fixed things and profession health and armor are an important part of defining what a profession is so that we can create powerful tools that players can actively use to circumvent these weaknesses.

I have yet to hear a coherent justification for variable base HP and armor values across classes. IMO, it is simply a trumped-up, inexplicable, meaningless, and ultimately futile attempt to add “definition” to classes that already HAVE identities. Don’t keep spewing the same nonsense. You guys keep saying you’re designing GW2 to think outside the MMO box, and yet now you’re stuck thinking inside your own ruts. Equalize HP across the board. Armor can stay as it is, if you need something to add extra “definition” to the classes.

I really don’t even know how to respond to Diamond Skin. The only incentive I’ve ever had to spend any points in Earth was for Written in Stone and the signet traits, which means I have absolutely no incentive to take Diamond Skin. Honestly, even the signet traits are mediocre because the signets’ active abilities themselves are mediocre, and everything you’re proposing is STILL ultimately going to force us to rely on cantrips for survival.

JonPeters.5630:

…I would rather increase the cooldown to 25% to get people to consider them than to have them be adept tier and allow elementalists to run all four of them.

I would rather see them stay at 20% skill CD reduction and add a small additional reduction to that particular attunement’s swap recharge.

JonPeters.5630:

Cleansing Wave
This is the one I am most on the fence about of all of the elementalist changes. It is a borderline master level trait and I think a better solution would be to leave it at adept tier and instead of moving Soothing Wave (which is only moving because it is better to have a 100% worthless trait at adept tier rather than master tier) we would redesign Soothing Wave into something worthy of master level.

I think your statement here would be the way to go. Moving it up would be an unnecessary nerf, considering that the Elementalist’s survivability options are still terrible, even with these proposed trait changes.

JonPeters.5630:

Soothing Disruption vs Cantrip Mastery
This one was debated internally for a while as well. I think swapping these traits would also help build diversity as it would let you splash 10 points in water to get Cantrip recharge, but would make you really consider going into water magic for the Regen and Vigor which is much more flavorful. I would love to hear some elementalist thoughts on that potential change.

I would love to see the cantrip traits swapped with either the glyph or signet traits so that we have survivability options spread between multiple trait lines, instead of having the vast majority of them in Water Magic, which is extremely limiting. Right now, there are too many good traits in Water, and very limited options elsewhere.

JonPeters.5630:

Arcana
I see the logic in not wanting the two changes in this line to counter each other. Moving good adept traits to master level is contrary to reducing the need to spec into this line. That being said, Elemental Attunement is just a beast of a trait and could honestly be compared with most grandmaster traits.

Equivalent to a Grandmaster trait? Really? For a single boon stack every 13-16 seconds? I think you need to reconsider that statement considering how easily other professions come by their class’s passive benefits that rival or surpass this trait and don’t have to trait for those benefits at all.

JonPeters.5630:

I think a good compromise would be…

…keeping Renewing Stamina and Elemental Attunement exactly where the are right now.

Vigor and boons are the only options Elementalists have if they don’t want to be chained hand and foot to the cantrips for survival. Changing the arrangement of either of those two traits has the potential to be a gigantic nerf to the class.

I apologize for the heat in some of these responses, but I’m tired of seeing this class continually kitten.

Yes, people, including myself, complained about over-reliance on water and arcana.

NO, the answer is NOT nerfing water and arcana.

YES, the answer IS giving us viable traits in the other three trait lines so that we have OPTIONS.

Why does ANet not understand that having FIVE VIABLE trait lines is not inherently OP?

It’s not as if we have 150 trait points…

Ehmry Bay can hold its own in WvW against servers that are much larger than ours, but that very good presence in WvW only really happens on weekends. Our presence in WvW is much lower during the week. That said, there are some very skilled guilds that are in WvW every night, and there are definitely die-hard WvW players who are in there constantly.

EBay’s population responds very positively to even match-ups, but loses interest very quickly when the match is imbalanced (either us getting steamrolled or doing the steamrolling). Unfortunately, totally imbalanced matches have been more and more common with the randomized match-ups.

The PvE community is strong, with both new and established guilds to choose from, and I regularly see people out and about, even when I’m exploring random zones.

I used to enjoy being an achievement hunter, but ANet assigns achievement points to things that are tedious, repetitive, and poorly designed. The best example in memory: Lunatic Inquisition Regular being worth up to 50 points…? 80 games at up to 15 minutes per game? Absurd. The most continuous example is the heavy loading of achievement points on dailies. This is also absurd; they’re not achievements in any sense of the word.

I used to enjoy crafting, but then ANet introduced time gating and account-binding to high-end crafting. Even though I’m extremely frustrated with it, I still craft in the few instances where it’s cost effective or necessary.

There are more examples, but the short answer is that people absolutely do play content they don’t like, for various reasons.

John, can you please also look into the various loot bags that champs are dropping?

I used to get exotic bags from champions every time, and now I’m getting anywhere from white to exotic ones, with no apparent rhyme or reason to it.

EDIT: All eight of my characters are level 80, so it’s not a level issue.

nethykins.7986:

I find such a disconnect with:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

…And…

BobbyStein.2315:

That’s not my decision to make. That stated, feedback regarding the cadence is useful and constructive to others so I think it’s good for people to tell us how they feel about the release schedule.

You think our feedback on that is necessary, but there’s no point, because it’s ultimately futile?

Just a shot in the dark, but my hunch is that perhaps what he’s hinting at and can’t say is that it has been mandated from on high at ANet that the head honchos don’t want to change the two-week timing. However, the community relations folks like Chris want us to be able to state our perspective in the hopes that our arguments as customers might get the head honchos to reconsider.

Customer relations folks are never allowed to indicate that there’s any sort of disagreement inside their company, even though we all know that no group of people always gets along seamlessly.

As I said, it’s just my gut reaction to something that appears contradictory.

I hope they come back, as I think it’s one of the more useful sigils for high precision builds.

Cierdwyn.4675:

Actually, to me, it reminds me a LOT of Abaddon.

Every time I see something in the GW universe that has six eyes, it reminds me of Abaddon. :P It’s interesting that ANet has continued the six-eye theme through parts of GW2, but unfortunately, I doubt this particular monster is anything related to him.

The link that SkipOne posted for the Jungle Minion concept art seems to fit, and Toxic Hybrid would be an appropriate name for it (albeit not very creative).

The Nightmare light armor chest has always limited the portion of the gloves that is visible to the hands. The portion of the glove on the forearm is not visible. It’s also not the only chest piece that functions this way.

Honestly, that’s part of the reason I like it, so I hope it doesn’t change.

@OP

I think I’ve had that happen. If it’s the same issue, you’re talking about the mini-map when you first load into a zone, right? Mine stays all pixellated for a good 10-15 seconds after loading in, when before this patch it loaded as soon as the loading screen dropped. But then, server-side lag seems to be a huge issue lately, too, so it may be affecting the mini-map as well.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Some of you posted about your favorite releases and least favorite. It would be really cool if you have the time to post your single favorite and least favorite and the reasons why for each. This would help a lot and I will share my learning with you etc. from the posts.

My favorite and least favorite releases are actually one and the same: Bazaar of the Four Winds. Contrary as that sounds:

The motion abilities were and are some of my favorite things that have been added to the game, and I’ve seen you guys use the same concepts in your content releases since then (like the jump pads in the new Teq fight), which is awesome, because it makes parts of the new content more intuitive. The PvP mini-game and Sanctum Sprint were both really well done. The non-combat content was amazing, and actually got some of my friends who hate jumping puzzles to have a blast jumping all the way up the Labyrinthine Cliffs. The rewards were good, as well, but balanced and not over the top.

However, Bazaar of the Four Winds also was the start of forced time gating on crafting materials and making high-end craftables and materials account bound. These two concepts are totally inexplicable to me. You’re forcing people to craft who don’t like to, and putting limiters on those of us who do like crafting. Not only that, but you’re also forcing a daily routine, which is becoming more tedious every time you add something that’s once-per-day.

BTW, there was a thread about this same topic a little while ago that would probably be worth your time, if you haven’t already read it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/lwd/Best-and-Worst-of-GW2-Releases-Year-1/first

SIDE NOTE: We now have 50% more daily achievements than we did at launch (IIRC we used to have eight, now we have 11-12), we have daily crafting materials, and we have meta achievements and monthlies that try to force daily participation. Please stop adding daily stuff. The more content you add that is limited to a daily timeframe, the less you’re going to see people out in the world, because they simply don’t have time play the actual game. The intent behind the dailies was to get people to explore…but that isn’t happening, unless you consider circling the starter zones “exploring”.

Please also consider limiting daily achievement points to the five that count toward the daily reward chest. Allow people to complete the rest of them for the exp if they want (I found that they are good bonus exp for leveling), but achievement scores are ridiculously inflated with daily achievement points. Honestly, I’m guilty of it, too. Why should anyone pursue the more difficult or time-consuming achievements when they get more points for farming daily achievements? These dailies aren’t “achievements” in any definition of the word.

Mesket, I don’t disagree with you, but I might be able to take that more seriously if we didn’t have plush quaggan backpacks all over the place.

As to the topic: I wouldn’t mind more wings if they were done tastefully and were not animated. They should move according to the character model’s motion physics. They should not have their own independent animation.

However, I would love to see other types of back pieces, too. Such as:

Guild Capes
Orbs
Cosmetic Weapons like Anton’s swords
Auras
Scarves

There’s lots of cool stuff that could be done with back pieces, rather than repeating the same ones.

EDIT: Isn’t this more of a Suggestions forum kind of thread?

Mine advanced even when gathering mushed samples.

It made me chuckle, but then I realized…

…wouldn’t the Norn just laugh and turn it into a fart contest? They don’t seem like the prudish types to turn up their noses ( ) at crude behavior.

UmbraVictor.9842:

Worst players IMO have high achievement points and they only do repetitive tasks that does not help them in their skills.

I don’t know that I can argue with the opinion that achievement points are mostly meaningless (besides the nice rewards from the AP chests), because for the most part, they are. I rarely hear anyone say otherwise.

However, please avoid insulting a section of the player base when you know little or nothing about us and/or how we play the game, especially when said insult describes the vast majority of content any player (regardless of AP) participates in on a daily basis.

@OP Try exploring more areas. Running around the same map over and over again for your dailies does become tiresome very quickly. Players in general have a tendency to stay in the starter zones for dailies because they’re quick and easy. Try venturing into mid-tier zones or even high-level zones once in a while to switch it up. Believe it or not, it makes a huge difference, at least it did for me. Looking for alternate ways to get the ascended materials will also relieve some of the tedium (maybe WvW?). Hope you can get yourself back into the game!