Guild Wars 2

Thotz.

You shouldn’t have to kick them. You should announce up front you don’t want MF gear.

However, nobodies perfect and maybe you forget once. Fine. Ask them to leave when you see that first stack of luck. I run a MF warrior for easy dungeons, and while I’d definitely question your judgement (to myself since I’m so not going to waste my playing time arguing with ya in game), I’d leave without any hassle. If they won’t leave, sure, kick away.

If on the other hand, you wait until the final boss and kick them so they don’t get any reward, then ya, you’re griefing. You’ll get reported. Based on ANet’s responses to kicking just before a boss, you have a very high chance of getting banned.

p.s. Exactly what content in this game do you think is hard enough that a player in exotic MF gear isn’t going to contribute? Other than high level fractals or a couple of Arah’s paths, I’m pretty sure you could wear white gear and still complete it.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Xavori.3768:

The only infinitely repeatable achievement I can think of is Agent of Entropy that you get for salvaging stuff. Playing normally (ie. never going out of my way to salvage stuff), I’ve gotten 140 points out of 4224 total points. I salvage everything that vendors for less than 90c.

If all I lose is those 140 points, I’d be okay with it. However, I’m not sure that I’d qualify as someone who went crazy. It’s 2 points per 200 salvages. So, I’m at about 14,000 items salvaged.

Also, based on the screenshot and the value of dailies (9) and monthlies (35), it looks like you can get a nice amount of stuff each month with the 305 points you’d get for completing 30 dailies and the monthly.

Really looking forward to this.

Just want to quickly point out to get out ahead of it since those numbers are wildly off. You receive 1 crown per daily, and 10 per monthly. (We’re also still tweaking the costs of the items shown in the screen shot, and will continue to adjust them until until the system is released.)

Gotcha. So not the same as the current points.

Thanks for clarifying.

40 points per month…two and half months to get kitten potion if that price stays the same. Hmm. Better be a really cool potion

You have entirely too much free time on your hands

Ya..ya…I know…pot…kettle…black…

The only infinitely repeatable achievement I can think of is Agent of Entropy that you get for salvaging stuff. Playing normally (ie. never going out of my way to salvage stuff), I’ve gotten 140 points out of 4224 total points. I salvage everything that vendors for less than 90c.

If all I lose is those 140 points, I’d be okay with it. However, I’m not sure that I’d qualify as someone who went crazy. It’s 2 points per 200 salvages. So, I’m at about 14,000 items salvaged.

Also, based on the screenshot and the value of dailies (9) and monthlies (35), it looks like you can get a nice amount of stuff each month with the 305 points you’d get for completing 30 dailies and the monthly.

Really looking forward to this.

Mirta.5029:

If all that I did would just get wiped it would kind of make me feel sad. I want to get those dyes for achievement points!

Heh. Seeing those dyes in the screenshot made me promptly go sell all my existing un-id’d dyes. I have a sneakin’ suspicious the price of dye is finally going to start going down.

I’m kinda diggin’ the announcement that achievements will have value, even if it ultimately ends up being nothing but cosmetic stuff. However, I’m a bit concerned that my 4200+ points will go -poof-.

So, do we get tokens for our existing points? Is the exchange going to be 1 to 1?

Inquiring kittens want to know!

p.s. Are there going to be a lot of new ways to get achievements added? I am kinda running out of them…

tigirius.9014:

Never seen any other class 2 shot anyone other then thief or warrior.

My ranger can one shot the thief in the video.

In fact, put 5 of those thieves in a bunch, and I’ll kill them all in one half of one barrage. Well, I would if the thieves would be kind enough to stand in the barrage long enough for half of the damage to hit them. I’m guessing they’ll move, tho

My warrior and thief can also one shot the thief. My mesmer would just laugh and laugh as the thief dealt with a never ending stream of clones while I ducked in and out of stealth (cuz hey, if stealth is good for the goose…). My elementalist…wait…no thief in their right mind fights a dagger/dagger elementalist, so that fight would never happen. My guardian can live through the burst, and hence, the thief will likely run away. My engineer would die because she used to be a grenade engy which meant she didn’t want to be in the open anyway, and post-nerf, she’s pretty much just parked at a nice chest for once a day goodies.

My necro, well, finally we get to a fight the thief might win. I say might as a bunker marks/wells necro can survive the burst, and since every attack is AoE, the thief is going to have to do some fancy stepping. Now, if the thief was pistol/dagger shadows, then sure, thief wins in a landslide since shadow thieves are impossible to stack conditions on. But that’s a burst thief, and hence, prolly not that interested in fighting things that might get to fight back.

That last bit’s the important part. That video was full of thief v squishy stuff and then run because that thief is really, really deadly for a few seconds, and then really, really vulnerable for the next 20-30.

Hello. My name is Xavori. I’m an altaholic.

I haz dem all, and am now working on a second of them all using wildly different builds. For example, my first ranger is a faberge cannon (level 80). My new ranger is going beastmaster tank (currently level 42). My first warrior was sword/axe DPS magic farmer (80). My second warrior is a hammer/shouts tank (80). My first engineer really, really wanted to be a combat medic but ended up grenades and is now benched while I figure out what do with her post-nade-nerf (80). My new engineer is a silly firecat tank which is not the most effective build, but running around with a flamethrower all the time is much funzorz.

And oh ya, most of them get logged in at least once a day.

Tolmos.8395:

Pet classes in a competitive MMO environment has to be difficult to design. Yes, 1 turret is worthless. If all I dropped was my 1 rifle turret I’d probably do just as well to not drop it at all- it won’t make a difference in their HP. But all 3 of my turrets at once, + my healing turret + me = equivalent or even mildly better than 1 opponent of any other type. Which, as far as I understand, is exactly how it should work.

No, not as epic as I would like, but it works and I get my turrets.

It’s more a problem for a turret-optional class. If you balance the class assuming turrets, you make them too weak for players who don’t want their engineer using turrets. If you balance the class assuming no turrets, then players who use them get too strong.

Balancing them to me would be getting out the spreadsheets and making sure turrets have the same DPS rate as any other utility skill. This isn’t hard work, but it is a lot of work, which is why I suspect it hasn’t happened.

What you’d want is say we have a utility direct damage spell that does 10000 damage with a 10 second recharge. Then we’d want to have a utility heal spell that can heal 1000 health per second. Then we’d want a defense buff designed to prevent about 1000 damage per second. Then we could have turrets that do 1000 damage. Then you start mixing and matching those features. Say a utility that does only 500 damage but also heals 500. Or a healing/defense buff that gives you 750 points of health and mitigates 250 points of damage per second.

You can create a whole pile of utilities that mix and match the exact ratios, but always work out to the same effective positive or negative DPS, and let players pick and choose how they want to put together their skills to match how they want to play….more damage, more tank, more support, etc.

No game has ever done this.

Devildoc.6721:

That’s funny, I thought this thread was going to be about Orr and Southsun, both 2 of the most anti-fun explorable zones I’ve ever had to go through, especially Orr with all the mobs with pulls and immobilizes, the sheer population of them, despite zhaitanbeing dead..

Then Karkas which take half your health away in a single spit, which is multiple hits so you can’t doge all of it (you’ll still get hit by it 2-3 times)

Orr sucks because the broken (and yes, it’s confirmed as broken and supposed to be getting fixes asap) mob spawn makes it impossible to clear a path through. Combine that with the fact that pretty much all the mobs have some type of movement interference, and the zone just gets annoying in a hurry. I’m interested to see if fixing the spawn is enough, or if we have to start a bazillion complaint threads about dead farmers and peasants being able to cripple heroes.

Southsun just screams half-kittened. Not a lot of variety. Not many points or vistas or anything. Not even map completion.

As for the baby karka…as a mezzie you just feedback ’em. Ranger, just pet flip between fights as your pet eats that damage. As other classes, any of your interrupts as soon as they start that machine gun animation. Baby karka are easy farming.

ALL armor has this problem. The sets don’t mix and match. They are all so specific to a style that you can’t replace one piece with a piece from another set without it looking obviously out of place.

I came up with an sPvP build using greatsword cuz Norn rangers should use greatsword given how cool those animations are and how they fit with the Norn animal spirits.

Anyway, I was taking two on one fights and winning, so I was happy.

The secret to the build is everyone ignores the pet. They do get caught up in AoE’s, but you want to rapid swap them anyway so who cares

Raine.1394:

Always good advice. You mentioned playing a ranger. On my ranger I went from shortbow/traps (condition build) to longbow power/crit as I noticed the RSI inducing aspects of the build given long-term play. Great build, just didn’t work for my body. I imagine I would have a problem with a grenades engi as well.

I run longbow axe/warhorn on my ranger. And really the axe/warhorn part is more about getting from point A to point B than any real fighting give just how much damage I can spit out with the longbow. The exception being mesmers for whom axe’s bouncy attack keeps illusions at bay.

Oh, and I have a grenades engineer. If Anet hadn’t nerfed it into the ground, I might very well have killed the 1 button on my Naga.

Phantax.1369:

I get breaks !

Every time I go downstairs to get another beer or some snacks. (well at least when the wife isnt downstairs anyway)

;)

Other than the wife part, that’s usually how I take my breaks except add in more stretching and stuffs. But I was just having so much fun turning Dragonbums into pincushions that I forgot about little things like food and drink.

Otherwise you’ll end up like me. I’m a sad panda cuz my arm hurts. A lot.

Last night I was running my faberge cannon ranger in WvW. We on Yak’s Bend were defending Stonemist from the unwashed hordes of Dragonbrand. Seriously, they have cooties for reals and stuff!

Anyway, I prolly spent 8 hours or so in the battlegrounds. And while I sorta took breaks by doing things like running supplies which lets you do a lot less mouse gymnastics while still being very useful to your server (and also while making snarky comments about my feet getting tired from all the running back and forth and wanting to change my name to Pack Dolyak), I didn’t do what I normally do when playing the game which is get up and walk around for a few minutes every hour or so.

So, totally my fault that I hurt now.

Anyway, just wanted to remind my fellow players to always take breaks. Sure, the icky tricksy hobbitses of Dragonbrand might end up taking Stonemist away from you, but you’ll be much healthier in the real world. And healthy in the real world is more betterer than having Stonemist but being all crippled.

Champ fights usually become repetitive and dull. They have far more hitpoints than they have variety of attacks which means you’re just cycling through the same attack/defense rotation for 10 minutes or so. Alternatively, they have damage set so high on enough attacks you can’t dodge/skill defeat them all and you just fall over dead.

Then, when you win, you get nothing for all that extra risk and effort. And no, satisfaction isn’t there because repetitive behavior isn’t that satisfying to me.

Contrast this with DE’s where unusual stuff could happen. Yes, some DE’s are pretty boring, but some have different mechanics and whatnot, and those are satisfying.

Or, WvW and sPvP where your enemies can do completely unpredictable things. Yes, you can run into the bad/boring players who just cycle their attacks as they come off cooldown, but you also end up in fights with high skill players where it usually comes down to one person or the other finally making a mistake. Those are satisfying.

But no. Champions. Not satisfying. Not challenging. Not rewarding.

Some more stuffs on aggro after experimenting with it quite a bit:

1) Different mobs can have different priorities. There is no rule that works 100% of the time.

2) Most mobs lock on to a target and don’t even consider changing until that target is able to break aggro or downs. I suspect this is why people feel like they are getting aggro all the time.

2a) It is possible to get mobs to break aggro via stuns or disables or something that makes the mob think for even a moment it can’t get to its current target. I use this trick all the time with my longbow ranger. If I need to lose aggro-longbow IV.

3) There are some big exceptions to rule 2. Trying to revive someone will get many mobs to ignore their current aggro table and beeline for the person trying to revive.

4) Proximity is likely the biggest source of aggro in the game. The closer you are to a mob, the more likely it is to want to beat on you instead of someone else. This also helps my ranger as longbow IV is a knockback.

5) Some mobs make a beeline for low toughness opponents. Ironically, this is a big part of what makes bears such great tanks for rangers. Bears have the minimum toughness for a pet. Add in that bears are melee pets and hence, get to minimum proximity, and it’s pretty obvious why they are great at pulling aggro. Once there, bears have tons o’ hit points and a self heal to keep themselves alive even though they have no armor.

6) Other mobs prefer high toughness opponents. I have no idea why as this makes no tactical sense. It’s just something I’ve observed by having both a DPS and a tank warrior. There are some mobs that lock onto my tank warrior even when every other member of my party is doing more than double the damage.

7) Guardians get a bonus to pulling aggro. Melee DPS guardians might as well be walking around with “Aggro me” taped to their backs.

8) Some mobs have special conditions for aggro. The champ karka guarding the rich ori vein is a great example. That thing WILL go after anyone that tries to mine if it’s within aggro range of the ori.

9) Aggro proximity doesn’t seem to care about vertical. It’s possible to get mobs to kite a very long ways from their ‘home’ as long as that distance is mostly vertical and doesn’t include any jumps or drops, and mobs can’t jump, and they’ll give up and go home at the point where they can’t pathfind to their target. (this is by far the easiest way to break aggro in dungeons as well…if a mob beelines for you, and you are too squishy to want that, jump onto something that makes it impossible for the mob to pathfind to you)

10) The higher up on the food chain a mob is (the circles around their portrait: none-bronze-silver-gold-purple) the more likely it is to have some quirk in its aggro table. If a higher strength mob is also an ‘always there’ kinda spawn, it’s almost a certainty to have some special aggro rules. Thankfully, it’s usually pretty easy to figure out what those are and adjust accordingly.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Thereon.3495:

3) Making me look up at my Blu Ray collection to see Sweeney Todd is up there. Not sure I want to watch it again though…

…That music is from Les Miserables, not Sweeney Todd…? And I don’t see much relation between both except that they’re both musicals… I guess.

Helena Bonham Carter was in both

NetherDiver.6079:

Gather ori and ancient wood.
But yes, AC/CoF speed runs are a good way to make money.
Farming CS events are another way.

The markets for ori and ancient wood are tanking. I suspect most people have their exotic armor and/or are expecting ascended armor to be non-craftable and noticeably better than anything crafted.

An AC run is anywhere from 2-3g for all three paths and takes an hour to an hour and half. CoF speed runs are all over the place for everything. Cursed Shore is much more useful for farming karma than gold. You run into DR way too fast to make the kind of money you would doing fast dungeon runs.

Oh, and fractal 10 dailies. Easy 2-3g and takes less than an hour unless you get a borderline dysfunctional group. Make sure to clear all the mobs in the Jade Maw section (final map of evens) as those mobs have the best drop rates in the game.

This thread has made me lose all hope for humanity? How could you not recognize the song? And Anne Hathaway’s voice? She gave a brilliant performance and you have no idea who she played.

-sigh-

OP, maybe you should have just posted a picture of cat with the caption “U no can haz lewtz”

Best part of this suggestion…ANet already did it on the Jade Maw of even fractals.

Right now, players have every incentive in the world to skip as much of the fighting as possible in dungeons to get to the bosses. The bosses have the loot. The trash does not.

However, I’ve noticed the last few pugs I’ve done on Jade have wanted to clear it because the mobs there have some of the best loot chances in the game. I’ve actually gone through that fractal and gotten drops from every single mob, and inevitably, one or two are at least rare. It’s also by far the most likely place to get pink crafting mats.

I suspect this level is that way because the mobs were created specifically for it. Sure, they’re just reskins, but it doesn’t change the fact that nowhere else do you find those mobs. That means when the devs were making them, they also had to make loot tables specifically for them, and those loot tables are ever so much better than the normal ones.

If the goal is to reduce the incentive to just speed run through, mission accomplished.

So why not do the same thing to all the other dungeons? It seems like it’d be a lot easier to just bump up the loot tables for the otherwise ‘trash’ mobs than to create new systems designed to discourage speed runs. It’s also a lot less likely to produce the kinds of teeth gnashing and pulling of hair that things like the diminished returns system produces in players.

Players like being rewarded for their effort. Players do not like being punished for playing the game the way they want to. Better loot on ‘trash’ provides a good incentive to actually face all the content in a dungeon while not interfering with players who would still prefer speed runs.

Heh.

They’re a fancy skin with bad stats for most builds. And, since we can’t be sure how they’ll interact with the eventual inclusion of ascended weapons, you can’t even stick that skin on an exotic to get the stats you want because it might very well prevent the legendary from getting the promised upgrade to ascended stats.

Anyway, I like that they’re on the trading post. I think to all those poor players who’d rather chew their own arms off rather than WvW and how the trading post is a good solution for them. It means they can get their legendary without needing to collect all those WvW tokens (‘course, I’d rather tokens get account bound taken off them so I can sell mine…they’re taking up bank space)

Bloody Zac.8960:

I saw one suggestion about the Skritt being a playable race that was awesome – you would control three skritt. They would move in a mob, so as to keep the skritt mob mentality.

Not sure how that would work in the personal story, but it would be fun!

That’s actually kinda cool. Just adjust the signet to account for the always 3, and it could definitely work.

‘Course, the follow then is I want a bit of flexibility in picking what kinds of skritt I have in my minimob. Cuz I’d want a ranged skritt hiding behind two tank skritt (tank skritt…rofl). That’s likely be a problem balance wise, so it’d prolly just be three ranger skritt or three warrior skritt and I’d still be really happy with them.

Let’s be honest. There are a lot of players who play GW2 soley to acquire shinies. Well, why not just let play the way they want as the race that thinks like they do. Skritt.

Skritt are already one of the more interesting races to interact with, and like the other playable races, there are good and bad groups within them. It’d be easy-peasy to get them a home city, a newbie area, and even one of those unfinished gates in Lion’s Arch to link up.

As for the racial abilities, this is where Skritt could be really fun. Take the shouts they already have, and that sorta hidden ability network-mind ability they have, and build those into full blow racial abilities.

Shinies! (1 point) – Shout. (10 second duration. 90 second cooldown. Radius 600) Gives a 10% magic find boon for 10 seconds. The long cooldown is specifically meant to limit to this to higher difficulty fights rather than every fight. Does not stack.

Skritt! I’m hit! (3 points) – Shout. (4 second duration. 35 second cooldown. Radius 600) Grants protection to nearby allies. This is basically a weaker version of the guardian’s “Hold the line.”

More come, ya? (6 points) – Shout. (20 second duration. 60 second cooldown) Summons a skritt that attacks nearby foes for 20 seconds. This is the thief’s Ambush but with a much longer cooldown.

You smell funny (10 points) – Shout. (90 second cooldown. Radius 600) Removes all conditions from nearby allies.

Signet of Higher Intelligence and Neural Yagis (30 points. Active Duration 30 seconds. Cooldown 180 seconds. Radius 600) Signet. (Passive: Get 5 points in all primary attributes -Power. Precision. Toughness. Vitality- for each Skritt in range. Active: Get 10 points in all primary attributes for 30 seconds) My thought on the balance was that most attribute signets give 90 points max, but this is a 30 point signet so it should usually be better. That usually is groups with a 5-man max which means usually works out to 100 points of attributes. The active doubles that but puts it on a fairly long cooldown. Oh, and yes, WvW would be hysterical if a world could field an army of Skritt

(if you want to ruin the fun, cap the bonus at say 10 skritt. I’d prefer the anarchy of a skritt army, but if it got out of hand, it could screw up WvW)

So much this. I hate finding my way out of Rata Sum because I rarely go there and always forget which gate gets me to Metrica and which gets me to Lion’s Arch and which gets me to some place I’d just walk to if the Asura didn’t believe in complexity for complexity’s sake.

There are tanks and healers in GW2, but they’re always tank+DPS and healer+DPS.

The easy obvious tank example is shout-hammer tank warriors. I have one of these. She can soak a whole lot more damage than any other toon I have. She also has two interrupts and a debuff amongst her five weapon attacks. Good stuff for a toon that wants to the enemy to always be focusing on them. However, even with all that tanky stuff, she still hits pretty solidly because hammer is actually a good high damage weapon, and she always has 3, and usually 6 stacks of might going…as do her teammates.

For a healer, you’d be looking at a staff water elementalist. I’ve run with one quite a bit and cannot begin to describe how awesomesauce it is. The staff healer has a pair of AoE heals which dramatically improve the survivability of their teammates, especially those in melee since they are an easy an obvious target for healing, and they are all close enough together to get hit by one AoE heal. However, it’s not just heal. While your heals are on cooldown, you need to flip to your other elements and bring some damage. Do that, and groups will love having you along for the ride.

These aren’t even the end of possibilities. An altruistic healing, boon spam guardian works great as a tank provided there are always going to be teammates around, and smart guardians usually mention to their teammates that hanging out next to them helps everyone. A support thief can give up some of their high DPS (not all tho or you become a drag on your team), pick up some healing, and make good use of shadow refuge for bailing your teammates out of bad spots. They are also the one class that can usually rez anyone in the middle of a fight.

Again, tank and healer might not have truly defined roles in GW2, but they can exist, and they are very popular to have in teams.

My ranger rocks in WvW. She’s a fabergé cannon who can bring down serious pain in a large area. She easily racks up more kills than any of my other toons because she’s every bit as good sitting far away raining down arrows on defenders who think they’re safe on theirs walls as she is being the one sitting safe on the walls.

She’s pretty good in PvE too. Her downside is sPvP where she just doesn’t have enough dumb meat shields to hide behind

Okay, let’s turn around and look at other classes from the thieves’ perspective:

1) Elementalist. If Staff = easy kill. If daggers = run the frak away before they see you.

2) Ranger. Lol it’s dead cuz all rangers are glass cannons (cuz why wouldn’t you build your ranger that way and rain death down on enemy zergs)

3) Necromancer. Maybe. Three bar bunker necros aren’t worth the time and effort to kill, and odds are they’ll have a friend come along and ruin your day while you’re whittling them down. Condition necros are no problem because they are limited to poison and bleeding, and thieves can shed those two.

4) Mesmer. Maybe. Condition build mesmers are a pain because thieves don’t have a lot of tools to deal with confusion. Shatter builds can be tricky because clone splodey is an AoE, and it really hurts. The rare bunker/stealth mesmer is unkillable so don’t bother.

5) Guardian. If they are running around with a greatsword, they’re likely glass and hence, a target. If they are holding a shield, don’t bother attacking. You can’t kill them.

6) Warrior. If they are using a greatsword, AND you can catch them unaware, go for it. Be ready to run if they survive the burst or seem to not mind being bled/poisoned. If they are shield offhand, just ignore them like all the other tanks. If they are axe offhand, and you’re really good, go for it otherwise ignore.

7) Engineer. Hahahahaha. No seriously. Hahahahaa. Okay, there are two exceptions to that. One is a bunker build engineer that like many other bunkers gives itself away with the off-hand shield. But even then, most engy bunkers aren’t bunker enough. The other is a bugzapper engineer that catches you unaware. In that case tho, you’re already dead so what’s to worry about?

8) Other thieves. Let them go as a professional courtesy. Maybe even point out the annoying necros who keep coming to the forums trying to get stealth nerfed because thieves own necros

Fiorrello.8126:

a lot of people seem to have a misconception that a terrible health pool is compensation for stealth, and this would be true if that was all the thief had.

in mmo’s and games focused on balance (tribes, tf2, ect) the main balance for having low speed is survivability and damage. that is the two of them togeather are used to counter balance the advantage that high speed can give you. thief being the fastest class in the game should not have the highest burst potential. (for you tf2 players, that would be like if the sniper could no scope and run as fast as the scout)

Fastest class in the game? Oh. You mean the dagger/dagger elementalist.

They’re also one of the tankiest classes in the game, and can still hit freakin’ hard while spec’d towards tank.

This thread (cuz we’ve had it repeatedly) always amuses me.

1) It’s never started by someone who has actually played a thief. If they had, they’d realize just how freakin’ hard the class is to keep alive even with stealth.

2) A well built warrior is vastly more dangerous than any thief. Not only do they have the same kind of burst damage, they can actually take a punch.

3) My ranger gets 10x more kills than my thief. After all, my ranger can dropped crit, might, fire sigil buffed barrage down on a zerg that racks up 20k+ damage ON EVERYTHING THAT DOESN’T GET OUT OF THE CIRCLE O’ DOOM IMMEDIATELY. My thief dreams of hitting more than one target at once with something stronger than the pea shooter that is a thief shortbow. (side note: my ranger is in full zerker gear with ruby orbs and has easily moved beyond glass into the fabergé cannon stage)

3) Mesmers make better use of stealth than thieves for completely frakkin’ with people’s ability to fight back. Unlike thieves where you just retarget, mesmers create their own target chaff. The game doesn’t really do a good job with targeting in the best of times. Even if you the player can figure out which mesmer is the real one when they come back out of stealth, it doesn’t mean the UI is going to make it all that easy to get them targeted again.

4) You really, really don’t want to encourage people to learn to play sword-dagger acrobatic thieves. You can see such thieves. You can just never hit them.

I already haz bad altaholicism problem. You’re just feeding it at this point.

But ya…already bought another character slot.

I promptly made a Norn female ranger. I named her Cher Stegalkin. She has a snow leopard named Sonny.

Cuz I’m weird.

Usability is a subject near and dear to my heart, so naturally I love these points.

More than that, two of of the big ones are social network related: looking for groups and guild functionality. MMO’s need that social aspect to survive, and a strong social network can actually keep players who would otherwise move on to the next big shiny thing from doing so. They give people a reason to want to keep playing.

So these are things ANet should look at doing not just because players want them, but because it will actually help ANet retain customers long term.

Ursan.7846:

Are you sure you’re interuppting the Scavengers? I did AC runs last night and I interrupts still worked on the Breeders and Scavengers. There’s one Scavenger, I believe, which is a gold and has defiant stacks. Maybe you tried interrupting him?

Also with Scavengers, they re-apply their KD when they damage. So use your stun breaker right after they damage, and roll away. You can observe this by simply walking into a Scavenger that’s doing their chompy thing. You will get KD’d and start get damaged.

On the runs we just did, the breeders ignored the interrupt the same way the scavengers did. I’d smash it over the head, it would sprawl on the ground, interrupt would show up on screen, then the thing would pop back up and start puking babies again. Sometimes. Like when I was babysitting our NPC versus the burrows, I smashed it over the head and it kept puking out its babies right on top of the 2nd stupidest NPC in the game (the glory stealing ‘supreme commander’ is worse).

Sometimes it worked just fine and they’d stop. I could not figure out a rhyme or reason to what was happening.

Lorana.2468:

behold an unhealthy gaming habit.
though im sure you’d agree, i’ve long got my money’s worth.

And I thought was bad with my 1100+ hours and all classes at 80 at least once

luckyguse.2674:

You you can!

—you have been playing for 1 hour; diminishing returns have kicked in. Please take a break.

Except that diminishing returns kick in after 15 minutes now

Or five minutes if you have the unmitigated gall to try using magic find gear

Or more specifically, why don’t interrupts and stun breakers seem to matter to them anymore?

Was just running my hammer/shouts tank warrior in AC. This is a great build for AC as graveling scavengers can be interrupted before they do their knockdown-chomp-o-doom as well as interrupting and recovering from many of the boss big attacks.

Only problem is the mobs are ignoring the interrupts on both hammer 4 and hammer 5. See mob start big hit animation. Fire off interrupt. Mob goes splat to the ground. Interrupt gets written over their head. And then they do whatever they were going to do anyway. This happened with all ranks of mobs (no circle, silver, gold, and purple), and with Kholer, the Spider Queen, and all the various gravelings. Mobs are just flat out ignoring interrupts.

Perhaps worse, they’re also ignoring stun breakers. Since you can interrupt a graveling scavenger from going chompy, you can try hitting your stun breaker. You’ll pop up, get to do one action, and then the next tic of the graveling chomp puts you right back on the ground taking big damage. I actually died at the spike trap on path 2 for the first time ever because a scavenger went om-nom-nom on me and none of my usual tricks worked.

Now, knockbacks sometimes work provided the mob actually gets knock backed. The fact that knockback is a sometimes only thing has been a bug for a while. If the mob should get knockbacked but only says interrupted, you end up eating whatever it was you were trying to interrupt. If the mob actually gets knockbacked, then it really is interrupted. Annoyingly, you’ll have both happen during the same fight against the same mob.

Anyway, can we pretty please make the mobs play by the rules? Or better yet, can you start mass banning the gravelings for exploiting?

Uh, dear Op, elementalists can be some of the tankiest characters in the game. Perhaps the single most-tankifiable class is necro which is light armor. Even mesmer, the last light armor class, can be made to tank very well, and in fact, can prolly hold aggro off of teammates better than most other tanks.

Guardians and warriors can be squishy. Heck, guardians can become a classic glass cannon finger waggler if you so desired. Warriors can be spec’d into respectable battlefield medics.

The classes have almost no real effect on what role or how many they can fit in. Except engineer. The only role they’re allowed to play is corpse. Gives the medic warriors someone to practice their buffed rezzes on

You get blueprints out of that chest. Blueprints help you and hurt your enemy. Hence, it’s a valid tactic to deny you that chest.

You should actually be organizing attacks and defenses of the jumping puzzles. They’re a very valuable resource to anyone that can get through. This is especially true in EB as you can get high level blueprints out of that one with a bit of luck.

On Yak’s Bend in Sparkfly…

At the Ancient Shark Pistrix skill challenge, one of his three (and really, three minions in a skill challenge is a bit much, but anyway) is stuck inside the rocks on the top of the cave. This makes it impossible to target or kill, and hence, the skill point is impossible to complete. It apparently also makes it the challenge not reset properly as the sharks never really despawn even when killed so it stays stuck there.

Can one of the kind, sweet, loving, and awesome devs pretty please rescue the poor sharkie?

Once upon a time, you could just jump servers, find a good point, and jump back. However, I’m not banishing myself for a week just to get this one point.

Nate Rush.6970:

You’re getting off topic. This is about stealth being broken, which can only relate to thieves. Vigor and things of that nature should be left to the big boys that have to manage more than one thing at a time.

My stealth mesmer would like a word with you. And if you think stealth is bad with just culling, imagine it with culling and clone spam.

‘For free’ runs into a host of problems, not the least of which is that quality of submissions drops precipitously over time, especially if ANet is going to turn around and sell the submissions for money.

Contrast that with companies that pay a small royalty for content who maintain a significantly high quality of content over the life of the product. And even paying that royalty, ANet generates a huge new revenue stream at the cost of only one or two new hires who screen the submissions to make sure they’re of decent quality and not obscene.

Yes. The best time to level alts via crafting is Thurs nite-Fri morning. Add a crafting booster in there as well and you can cut a gold or more per profession out of the cost of the project

tl;dr – Account wide costumes would sell well, and independent artists could produce way more of them for less coss to ANet than hiring a bunch of artists.
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When I look at the gem store, I find nothing I want. I bought a couple extra character slots, and am pretty much done. At the same time, I’d be okay with paying ANet more money to support a game I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of.

With that in mind, I gave serious thought to what I would buy. Turns out it’s the same stuff I bought lots of in the last MMO I spent this much time with, Champions Online. There I bought tons of costumes. Often times, I’d buy costumes for a single character concept I had, or I’d buy a full set for a single piece that I knew I’d use with multiple characters. And in talking to other players, I know I wasn’t alone. Cosmetics are a huge deal to making your character your own versus just another generic looking thing like all the other avatars.

However, making costumes is time consuming. Even though the devs acknowledged that cosmetics were huge sellers and actively pushed creating more and more, it was barely a trickle of new stuff every month. I suspect ANet would have the same problem. The solution is easy. Just do what Valve does and let independents have the tools they need to make the content for you and give them a cut of the sales.

There are good open source tools for creating characters. Things like Blender and MakeHuman pretty much open the door wide for anyone that wants to get into it. If ANet would create a tool or the design specs needed for independent artists to create costumes, I suspect they’d have a whole lot of takers as it is just that easy to get into.

ANet could then take these costumes, and after screening, put them up for sale on the gem store for say 400 gems ($5) or so. Split the money with the artists $3 for creator $2 for ANet, and they’d have a nice new source of income that would cost ANet only a couple of people to screen submissions (cuz ya, you’d want that) versus hiring the hundreds of artists that’d be necessary to come close to the output of opening up costume design to the community.

As for the costumes, they’d need to be account wide and multiple use. Just sell a transmute token that doesn’t get consumed on use. This creates a real value to players. Like me, they could buy a costume for a character concept they have, or they could buy a costume just for one piece that they want to use on multiple characters.

This suggestion gives ANet an opportunity for a nice revenue stream at minimal cost and effort while at the same time providing items that players would see real entertainment value in and give artists an outlet to make some extra cash. Pretty much win-win-win.

It’s my awesome new Asuran tank warrior with her mighty candy cane of justice!

If we do Hunger Royale again, slow down the starving to death and get rid of teams. I’d love an sPvP type game that is all about individuals and strategy, and that game definitely could do that.

I’m an altaholic who has totally given in to his problem, so I don’t really have a playstyle. I’m as comfortable playing a tanky warrior as a DPSy warrior (and I haz both). I’m cool playing support-ish or sneaky-ish or silly-ish or f-ish.

The only thing I tend not to be good at is playing a merchant type. Then again, this game doesn’t really allow for that so I’m fine.

@SneakyErvin

I’ve tried lots of engy builds. The bugzapper build is fun, but thieves, warriors, and elementalists can all blow it out of the water in terms of burst and sustained DPS. Thieves then get the advantage of stealth if something goes wrong. Ele’s can run and heal. Warriors can go invuln. A DPS engy that has a target survive its burst is just a target.

More than that, you don’t have any other real options for a good DPS build. Elementalists can go staff and ranged AoE awesomeness or daggers and just all around awesomeness. Warriors can work with any of their weapons. Thieves can be burst or condition, and can reach a point on condition/stealth where fighting them 1v1 is an exercise in slow, certain death (except for elementalists, necros, and shout warriors for whom conditions are barely an annoyance).

That said, I’m going to make my 11th toon a flamethrower engy. Not because it’s going to be awesomesauce, but because I’m amused by the idea of a flame spitting almost tank. I have a few ideas on the kind of equipment and runes I’m going to need to be effective, and I’m okay with knowing my necro and shout warrior are both better at dealing damage while tanking. It’s just going to be for fun.

It’s the 15 enemy types that gets me. If I’m playing a toon in Orr, well, you have to leave. The vast majority of the enemies there are type “Risen”.

Dynamic events are pretty easy. WvW makes it almost automatic as everything involving capturing or defending points counts. In most zones, there are way more dynamic events going on at once than you need to actually complete that part. Even some of the stuff that happens in dungeons counts as an event.

The biggest problem I have with dailies is that I’m now at 50+ karma jugs in my bank, and that’s after outfitting a couple toons in head to toe exotic karma armor and making it a point to buy stuff from karma vendors all the time. I also have drops, gulps, etc of karma from dungeons and running Winter Wonderland daily, and yet, nothing I actually want to buy with all that.

Pretty sure if I was willing to dump the gold into it (and skip all the stuffs you get playing new toons via map completions), I could hit the 6 hour mark pretty easily. You can level up quite a few crafting professions via mass production (artificer and cooking are the best for that) and jewelcrafting is so incredibly straightforward it’s a breeze.

Of course, even playing alts and goofing around a bit with them, I’ve got it down around 30 hours. Pretty sure if I skipped the goofing around part, I could take 5-6 hours off that easy.

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