Guild Wars 2

Currently there is little or no synergy between Jalis and Mallyx, or between Mallyx and Ventari. There is some between Jalis and Ventari because they both offer defense and sustain. Mallyx is left out because his conditions don’t stack high enough or fast enough. Maybe Mallyx will work with Shiro, but there’s no way to tell at this point. Synergy between defensive legends and offensive ones is little or none. Weapons are too focused on their specific legend to be of use to another legend (staff and hammer are useless to Mallyx). I hope these suggestions give the devs some ideas that may help the class.

1. Remove weapon effects and make weapons a “blank slate”. This means make each weapon have a standard base damage and little or no condition application on its own. Make every weapon have roughly the same number of Control skills.

2. Take those effects and add them to specific traits. Make Mallyx traits add conditions to weapon slot skills. Make Ventari traits add healing to weapon slots. This would have the effect of applying the legend you choose to any weapon. The difference in weapon would come from it’s attack animation speed and range. This would allow the Revenant to use any two legends without the weapon being useless to one legend. So for example, make a Mallyx trait add burning to weapon slot #2 regardless of weapon. Make a Ventari trait add healing to #3.

3. Change the energy cost and cooldowns of all Revenant skills. Every skill right now costs BOTH energy and has a cooldown. This is somewhat nonsensical and redundant. Either make the weapon skills cost no energy with cooldown, or the utility skills cost no energy with cooldown. Personally I think the weapon skills should have basic cooldowns with no energy cost, and the utility skills should have no cooldown (or very low, 3-5 seconds) with high energy cost.

4. There should be weapon skills which boost energy gain when used properly. There should also be traits in Invocation which enhance energy gain conditionally.

Example traits:

• Gain +40 energy at 25% health. 30s cooldown
• Sacrifice and extra 25 energy when activating an elite skill. Gain +40 energy after 30 seconds.
• Gain +1 energy for each enemy you strike. 1s cooldown per target.
• Lose up to 50 energy when you begin reviving an ally. You revive 1% faster per point of energy spent in this way.
• Gain +5 energy per nearby ally (360 radius) when you use your healing skill (#6).

Example skills:

• Strike up to 5 nearby enemies (360 radius) gain +10 energy per hit.
• Lose 10 energy per second and gain 150 Ferocity for 5 seconds. If you took no damage during this time, you gain full energy.
• Gain +20 energy per nearby dead ally.
• Lose 5 energy per second and gain +20% outgoing healing for 10 seconds. When this ends gain energy based on the amount of healing done to allies.

If each trait specialization is going to be tied to one legend, then Invocation (which has no legend) should be about energy gain and expenditure. Also, there needs to be a reason to take a trait line without taking the legend associated with it. Otherwise there would be no reason to pick 3 legend lines. Every build would take 2 legends + Invocation. The traits in legend lines need to affect skill slots and other non-legend actions (such as dodging, blocking, healing, etc.)

For example, you need to be able to make a choice in your build. Do you take 2 legends + Invocation to boost those 2 legends? Or do you take 3 legend-specific trait lines, ignore Invocation, and gain the passive trait effects of a 3rd legend while having access to only 2 on your F1/F2 bar?

Edit/Followup:

Currently as I see it, if Revenant build systems and skill balance isn’t significantly changed, Every Revenant in PvE will run roughly the same build:

• Take Shiro (the dps spec)
• Take Invocation for fury, stun break, and faster swap
• Take Glint (elite spec) for whatever it does, OR take Mallyx for some condition damage.

They might take Jalis over Glint/Mallyx for some defense, but given the nature of PvE, Shiro and Invocation will be required no matter what. Unless of course HoT requires pure tanks and healers…

I super agree with all of these!

1. Charr foot armor is woefully homogenized and boring. Needs more coverage options.

2. Flesh golem from GW1 was far superior in appearance. It had a lower res texture and model, but the details popped out more. He had a far more impressive horn, head plate, and spine spikes. The axe-claw was more spiky and impressive. He had talons on his feet. The GW2 golem looks soft and squishy. The detail in the texture is lost due to lighting and overall softness in the shader. His horn is small and boring, and he has no spikes or talons to make him more threatening.

3. Minion size should be addressed especially in the case of Bone Minions. My suggestion is make minion traits have a cosmetic affect on minions in addition to original effect:

• Armored Shroud: makes all minions 20% larger
• Flesh of the Master: makes Bone Minions and Flesh Golem an additional 50% larger
• Necromantic Corruption: Bone Minions use GW1 model, and Bone Fiend uses GW1 model (updated textures and shaders of course)
• Death Nova: Jagged Horrors you summon are transformed into Jagged Fiends (uses model similar to GW1 Jagged Horror)

Those are all cosmetic effects, but I’d also like to see some QoL buffs added…

• Make Bone Minions run toward YOUR target before exploding when commanded.
• Make Shadow Fiend Haunt faster and more responsive.
• Make Bone Fiend Rigor Mortis faster and more responsive.
• Make Flesh Golem’s Charge check for LOS before initiating, or change it to a leap skill with aoe, similar to Warrior Earthshaker.
• Buff Blood Fiend health and toughness so it won’t die so easily, and make it attempt to stay out of melee range. Buff it’s healing to be in line with other heals.
• Make Beyond the Veil give swiftness to minions when commanded.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

It was a reference to short conversation that I had by PM where someone said another person followed them around the map to jump repeatedly on top of them, even tracking them down after waypointing and hanging around when they went afk. The harrasement allegedly came out out of the blue and my response at that time was to acknowledge that that would be annoying.

It was after thinking it over for a while that I realized that the guy who messaged me had run from the other person. Even his going afk had been a type of running. What I should have recommended, if I had thought of it, was becoming the boss of the harasser. Block him so you can’t hear him then ping a waypoint in local chat where you are going and order him to follow. Tell him you are going afk and order him to stay there till you get back. Tell him you plan to harvest every node on the map and tell him not to leave you. He can say what he wants, but you’ll have him blocked. If he does what you tell him to do, you won. If he leaves, you won. Either way is better than running from him and hoping he’ll leave you alone.

Lol, that is a very amusing way to turn the situation around. I will definitely do that if it ever happens to me. I just get the sense from your story that your friend must have been talking to that person for a while in order to provoke that kind of harassment. Maybe they had an argument in map chat? I don’t mean to insult your friend, but maybe he said something foolish or expressed an unpopular opinion and further inflamed the situation by interacting with trolls before trying to “run away” as you put it. I mean realistically, trolls target people kittenpond to provocation. They feed on interaction. If you cut off the interaction, they get bored and look for a new target. The earlier you cut them off, the better. Hence the phrase “don’t feed the troll”.

videoboy.4162:

Pocahontas and X-Men: Rise of Apocalypse to name two. There are many more. I’m not asking for super life-like hair, just some movement to make it seem more like actual hair and not a hat.

Is this the pocahontas game you are referring to?

That’s called 2D animation… Which is hand drawn… Absolutely zero physics involved…

I understand what you are asking for. I’m just trying to explain how and why things are the way they are. I get bogged down in minutiae sometimes, so please forgive me. There’s a lot more complexity to animation than most people realize.

And I’m not trying to be mean or shoot you down or anything, please don’t take it that way. I just want to help and maybe shed some light behind the scenes.

rapthorne.7345:

Xenon.4537:

Hair in GW2 doesn’t use physics. It is most likely scripted or even manually animated to give the illusion of natural hair movement. It’s far cheaper on processing requirements that way. Unfortunately in a game with such a wide variety of body shapes and sizes, some hair styles won’t look 100% perfect.

Given how I’ve seen my sylvari’s hair react to movement and direction in almost the exact way my more flowing armour does, I strongly believe you are highly misinformed about this

No, there’s a difference between what you think of colloquially as physics, and what actual physics are. I described in a previous post what your sylvari’s hair is doing. It’s kind of like inverse kinematics. You could call it physics, but usually “physics” refers to objects hitting each other and calculations being made to simulate realistic movement after collisions. Your sylvari’s hair isn’t bouncing off of anything is it? It’s just flowing back and forth when you turn? That’s because there’s an invisible chain of nodes called bones and joints to which the hair geometry is parented. There’s a script telling those bones how to sway back and forth.

Again, if you applied the same script to hair which hangs close to the body, it would make the hair sway the same way, but that would make it clip through the torso. And the only way to prevent that clipping is with actual physics, which they probably can’t afford to squeeze in with all the other things that need to be processed in the game.

Miku.6297:

Honestly, lack of physics on the new hairs is sort of depressing, the human ones would look GREAT if they weren’t super glue style… On a side note, why is it the SYLVARI get a hair from kits that actually does work with physics (it’s the twin tails)?

I just logged in to look at the twin tails you mentioned. That’s not real physics. There are scripts you can apply to a chain of bones that make them behave like a dangling rope. The parent at the top moves, and then the script makes the next bone move a certain way, then the next one, and the next, etkittenil it reaches the end. There is no collision. It looks great on this specific hair because they dangle far away from the head and don’t touch the body.

I suspect the reason they didn’t apply this technique to the human hairs is because the ones you refer to are longer and lay closer to the body. If they were allowed to wobble the same way, they would clip through the torso. The only way to prevent that clipping would be with collision, which as I said doesn’t exist for hairs because it would require too much processing to calculate for so many players on screen.

videoboy.4162:

Ugh, you’d think a game that puts such emphasis on Cosmetics would apply physics to the hair. I’ve played games for the Super Nintendo with better hair physics.

Anet, why are you making me sad?

What SNES game had hair physics? Do you know what physics are in 3D animation?

In case you don’t, basically in 3D you can have the computer calculate when and where two polygons are touching, and you can have the computer calculate what happens when those two polygons collide. You can make them bounce off of each other, stick together, slide, etc.

Now consider how many polygons are used on a character in a modern game like GW2. There’s probably between 7,000 and 15,000 per player character. MMO polygon budgets are more restricted than single player AAA games. Now imagine having 500 or so of those polygons bouncing off of each other for hair physics. Now multiply that by 50 or 100 players on screen. Now add in the particle effects and all the other stuff. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Doing raw hair physics, or any raw physics for that matter, is the most expensive way to process it. Sure it looks good… IF it runs at all. However, it’s much better for optimization to design hair, cloth, etc, to approximate real physics. There’s a number of ways to do that.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

There have been other threads and conversations about people following others to harass them by jumping up and down beside them while the other person is playing, throwing down skills, following them around to jump/throw down skills even if they waypoint, tracking them down to resume jumping/throwing down skills.

I’m genuinely curious about this because I’ve never experienced it or seen it happen to anyone. The only place I hear about this is on the GW2 forums. How and why would someone track you down and follow you and spend all day jumping next to you? Even if they did, why would it bother you? How could they possibly find that entertaining for longer than 30 seconds?

The only way this makes sense to me is if the “victim” kept responding to the “harassment” in a way that provoked further engagement. If you keep whispering and arguing with a troll, they will keep annoying you. If you try to fight back at them or get your friends to help you whisper the troll, you are only adding more fuel to the fire. If you post on the forums about trolls and abuse, you paint a giant target on your back for further abuse. OP is basically advertising to everyone “Here I am, I get upset easily and make a big deal out of it.” This is just the way human beings are wired. The most effective way to deal with these situations is to block communication and ignore them. They will get bored and leave soon enough.

Think about this: You go through life and you run into problems. Your car breaks down. You date a person who ends up being terrible. You forget your keys. You spill coffee in your lap. You overcook dinner. You forget to buy enough paper plates for the party. What is the constant in this equation? YOU. The solution is not to change the entire world. You can’t fix these various problems by blaming others. The answer is internalization. You make yourself responsible for your own problems, and look for a way to fix your life from within.

Apply the concept of internalization to this thread. It’s not your fault that you get trolled. But make it your responsibility to ignore them instead of feeding them.

OP seems like a giant troll, but I’ll just pretend for a minute this is completely serious…

You don’t have the same personal space “rights” in a virtual environment as you do in real life. No one can physically harm your virtual avatar without your consent (pvp). Virtual avatars have unique properties that are physically impossible in reality, such as being able to walk directly through someone. You can’t be body-blocked, otherwise accessing the bank would be a nightmare. Did you ever consider that maybe the person who stood close to you was trying to talk to the merchant, or simply had no interest in you and just happened to stop pressing W when next to you?

On the other hand, maybe they were spamming Lava Font on you on purpose. So what? Walk away? There’s nothing an individual could possibly do with particle effects that would harm you or your computer. Have you ever been to a world boss fight? Should we ban everyone for using particles there as well?

The biggest problem with OP’s suggestion however is the idea of turning other players completely invisible. What if you did this to someone in pvp, and then got matched against them later? That person would have an unprecedented advantage over you. They would be able to attack you with any skill, any AoE in the game and kill you without you ever seeing it. You would simply take damage from nowhere.

It honestly sounds like you just don’t like being around people. I mean, this is how people are in video games. They run around and cast spells for fun. Sometimes people say mean things, and you can just block them and report them. If that’s not enough then why are you forcing yourself to play a multiplayer game with other human beings when you can’t tolerate it? Play a single player game maybe?

Hair in GW2 doesn’t use physics. It is most likely scripted or even manually animated to give the illusion of natural hair movement. It’s far cheaper on processing requirements that way. Unfortunately in a game with such a wide variety of body shapes and sizes, some hair styles won’t look 100% perfect.

I suspect this particular hair (judging from the screen shot) has skin weights painted to different bones in the character rig (the skeleton that governs geometry deformation for animation). The hair at the top of the head is weighted to the head bone, while the hair at the bottom is weighted to the torso or hips. If all the hair were weighed to the head, it would be static and only move with the head (it would look like her hair is frozen solid to her scalp instead of bending).

I think they need to completely repackage the personal story, and do it similar to season 2 of the living world. The story of GW2 really hit it’s stride in season 2 and stayed strong (mostly) throughout. The reasons for this are because they scrapped the side-by-side dialogues, and made use of recurring characters with meaningful interwoven plots. Also, each episode culminates in a dramatic, and relatively challenging boss fight with unique mechanics. The story is MUCH more satisfying when you feel like you’ve defeated a worthy foe. Most of the original personal story is full of trivial veteran enemies that die to auto-attack with little or no dodging, and no unique mechanics to speak of.

These zerkers go to 11.

Miku.6297:

So I don’t understand why you are saying mesmers and necros unique mechanics are stolen by other classes?

" who constantly have our “unique” mechanics stolen by the “privileged” classes" You didn’t say boons, you said “unique” mechanics

I agree boons are a combat mechanic, combat mechanics are not classes specific, so I don’t understand how a class could be stealing another classes mechanics based on the ability to use boons.

I was referring to how they gave confusion to warriors, engineers, and thieves. And now with perplexity runes, those classes are arguably better at confusion builds in many cases. Same thing with torment. Those things were going to be unique, but they quickly scrapped that notion for some reason.

I guess that’s a small, old example, but as a mesmer I feel like a second class citizen because my reflects can be done by guardians and engineers in a pinch. My conditions are garbage in pve. Anet is extremely fast to nerf my traits (literally 10 hours after the patch) while they are frustratingly slow to address engineer, warrior, or thief (LOL @ broken nade barrage staying for over a week).

I’ll just come out an say it, I’m biased, and I think Anet is biased with the engineer. They got so many cool trait and skill changes my brain just goes fuzzy thinking about them. And when Engie had a broken skill that let them wipe the floor in pvp, they get to keep it for a really long time and abuse the crap out of it. Meanwhile just about every cool thing the mesmer got was almost instantly destroyed. But now I think we are getting off topic…

I’m actually curious about ESO now that it has a non-sub option. Is it prohibitively difficult to play without the sub? Are there stupid annoying restrictions that prevent you from enjoying the game from start to finish? For example in SWTOR they actually make you purchase skill slots and the ability to equip the best armor… That crap is a deal breaker for me.

Also what about the leveling post-sub? Now that you can opt out of a sub, did they change the exp so that you level super slow? Forcing you to buy exp boosters or pay the sub? Do you have bad drop rates? Low gold find? Basically did they rebalance the base game to be unrewarding unless you “upgrade” to the sub?

Miku.6297:

Xenon.4537:

The fact that these mechanics and abilities are shared across so many professions makes them, by definition, nonexclusive. This leads to the whole game feeling homogenized. It’s especially irritating to people like me (who main mesmer, or necro) who constantly have our “unique” mechanics stolen by the “privileged” classes (engineer, thief, warrior, guardian) who end up performing those abilities better than us.

Many of the mechanics you are discussing are boons (that and the threat is aimed at boon/condis)…. Boons are NOT class mechanics. Mesmers unique mechanic has not been stolen by any of the 4 you mentions, unless engi/thief/war/guard can create clones and shatter them, necro is in the same boat, unless one of the “privileged” classes has death shroud and life force.

Each class has differnt mechanics and attacks, if you break down ANY game like this to the most basic level, you have… damage dealer, damage taking, buff, heal, debuff/condi, or mobility. Skills need to attempt to fall into one of these categories.

I get what you are saying. You are talking about mechanics like clones, death shroud, etc. But boons are a mechanic too. The same way shouts are a mechanic in Skyrim, planting land mines in pockets is a mechanic in Fallout 3, and stealing cars is a mechanic in GTA5. Boons are simply a mechanic that is shared across many professions.

Your point is valid, I’m just saying boons are a mechanic too. “Class” mechanics are actually a subset of “combat mechanics”. Boons are also a subset of combat mechanics.

Eponet.4829:

Mesmer: Slow, Distortion, Polymorph, Chronomancer will have alacrity

No official word (afaik) on which classes will get slow besides mesmer. Revenant has it on downed state, and might have it on other skills/traits. Polymorph is only practical in pvp and situational. And I think it’s foolish to assume alacrity will always be exclusive to mesmer. I mean come on… we are talking about mesmer here… Why would they ever let mesmer be better at a mechanic than engineer or thief? Enginer, btw, has polymorph now…

Eponet.4829:

Elementalist: Auras, Deep Freeze

Anyone with a field and a leap skill can get an aura. Hardly an ele-themed mechanic. Deep Freeze is a skill that applies chill… almost everyone has chill.

Eponet.4829:

Necromancer: Convert boons into conditions, Vampiric Aura

How many times is boon convert useful in pve? Half the time the boss’s boons are bugged and can’t be removed or changed. Vamp aura is… kinda helpful… if you are a very fast attacker with lots of hits to proc it. I’ll give you that one I guess.

Eponet.4829:

Thieves: Stealing boons

Mesmer can do this too, albeit on a longer cooldown.

Eponet.4829:

Ranger: 1500 range, Frost Spirit

1500 range is hardly useful in pve where everything is stack in melee and LOS into a corner. Frost spirit is alright. That’s 2 things I guess, if you count vamp aura.

Eponet.4829:

Warrior: Banners

Okay that’s 3 things. This one is really the strongest unique mechanic you listed, and WOW whaddya know… it’s on the warrior… Anet’s beloved profession, second only to the almighty engineer…

Eponet.4829:

Guardian: Aegis

Mesmer can get aegis as well, and so can thief if they steal from a mesmer, but I suppose guardian is still better at aegis than anyone else…

Eponet.4829:

As well as effects that are provided by only a few classes

Stealth: Mesmer/Thief/Engineer
Fear: Necromancer/Warrior/Thief (Via a steal skill)
Reflects: Mesmer/Guardian

The fact that these mechanics and abilities are shared across so many professions makes them, by definition, nonexclusive. This leads to the whole game feeling homogenized. It’s especially irritating to people like me (who main mesmer, or necro) who constantly have our “unique” mechanics stolen by the “privileged” classes (engineer, thief, warrior, guardian) who end up performing those abilities better than us.

Lian Olsam.9541:

i use all classes in pve (all zerk ofc) and spvp, what i suggest is not to remove everything, but to give a different access to boons and conditions

i think there is no sense to give everything to everyone, i’d like to have some exclusive boon for some classes, quickness only for mesmer, stealth only for thief, protection for guardians etc etc

Personally I think this is how the game should have been designed from the very beginning. It seemed like they were doing that at first. Before launch, mesmers were reported the only class with confusion. Thief the only class with stealth. Necro the only class with fear. Now it’s all watered down, and in fact some classes are better at things then the original class is. When they added torment, Necro was going to be the first and best. Then mesmer. Now warrior and thief are better at it then either of them.

Alacrity is supposedly going to be exclusive to the chronomancer, but who the hell are we kidding? I’ll be surprised if thief doesn’t get alacrity 3 months after HoT, followed closely by warrior and engineer.

Taiyoroku.1028:

1. Teq is impossible for casual players

It was meant to be a difficult fight, especially after the revamp. Find a guild and learn the mechanics if you want to beat him. If not, then there are plenty of other world bosses. Why do you feel entitled to strip down this one boss that happens to be harder? You are trying to destroy one of only TWO bosses in the entire game designed for the hardcore community. So they have 2% of the world bosses designed for hardcore, and 98% for casual, and you think this is unfair?

Taiyoroku.1028:

2. Teq is impossible for casual players (it became a battle for the self called hardcores and elites, fill the chap map with the usual “noob” -Read casual- player insults, waiting 1 hour to a posble win/fail is super boring, again is not fun to devote a life to a single boss… but well harcores are happy that they can spit on the player base and can brag about its egos – thing that they cant do in Real life-

If you see people in map chat harassing or insulting, report them, block them, and move on. Welcome to the internet. It’s not Anet’s fault the human race treats each other like dirt.

Taiyoroku.1028:

4. AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PART, they AGAIN, broke a already shattered community (now is not about friendly playing, is about whos on the better -read elits hardcore guild/map/zerker/ascended-legendary gear) actually i dont wanna play with braggarts, and mostly jerks, and moslty alinate people couse their ego is too dam large…

News flash: no one is forcing you to play with anyone. If you don’t like those people, block them and go do something else. If you are still driven to defeat Tequatl, then you need to set your own ego aside and find out what it takes to kill him. That means find a guild with people you like, learn the mechanics, and schedule a night when you can all get together and fight him.

Edit: fixing some weird quoting bugs…

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m ok with the game being “casual.” In fact, I love the ability to walk away and then come back and not be left behind by new gear, new level caps, etc etc.

I am not ok with people equating “Casual” to “Easy mode.”

I think maybe you are misunderstanding. You seem to be talking about gear tiers. I believe most everyone else is talking about combat and bosses just being more engaging. We want gameplay that requires more than just auto-attack. They don’t need to add new gear tiers to accomplish that.

And sorry, but it’s difficult not to equate “casual” with “easy mode” because the definition of the word “casual” suggests “easier”.

I believe the best course of action is for Anet to dedicate certain resources to please both groups. They can make much of the game accessible to casual play, while adding some hardcore bosses like TT wurm as an option for the hardcore community.

I don’t understand Anet’s logic behind the NPE. They say it’s because the game was leaking players, but based on this guy’s reaction it seems like they are going to leak even worse than before. If people are getting bored and quitting before they even discover the personal story, pvp, or wvw, then something needs to change.

What’s even more troubling is once they reach level 10 and start the personal story, they will probably begin to hate the game even more. WP did a video showing just how stupid and pointless these missions can be.

If the game is this sleep-mode easy, why would anyone care to stick around? What reason do we have to care about the story?

RobsterCraws.6405:

Xenon.4537:

Frankly, I get offended when a veteran player asks for another hard boss, and everyone attacks him.

As I said, I’m 100% behind adding harder bosses or content. But add new content. Don’t take it away at the expense of mid-level content.

This isn’t a zero-sum game, where your gain must come at other people’s loss. You can add new content without messing up someone else’s lower-level content.

I think you and I are in complete agreement. I’m simply in favor of keeping TT a challenge while adding new challenges to the game. Personally I wish dungeons and other things were harder, but I understand that everyone is used to them being as they currently are. That content has been largely unchanged for far too long. To make the game more challenging would be better to add new things, not alter old things.

RobsterCraws.6405:

Xenon.4537:

However, it’s the hardcore, dedicated players who drive the long-term life of the game.

90% of the time no one is there because it doesn’t spawn all the time. It spawns at a specific time each day,

2 points…
1. I’m 100% behind making more content for hardcore. But there must be different level content for every level. Teq is not hardcore content. It’s mid-level content. Thinking everything must be either newbie or hardcore is the problem here.

Hardcore players indeed gives a game life but the average player pays the bills. Keeping both satisfied is absolutely essential. And that required tiered content.

Indeed I think you and I are in complete agreement about the need for content for everyone. There needs to be some hardcore content for hardcore players, and there needs to be some easy content for new and casual players. No reason the game cannot have both.

RobsterCraws.6405:

2. I’m fully aware of the timer. Try going to TT at the right time and count how often there’s no one there. I’m guessing the majority of the time.

Find out when a guild is organizing to kill it and join them. It’s not somehow criminal to use the guild system to organize players. In fact, that’s exactly what it was designed for in the first place. TT is one single boss in the entire game that requires guild or large-scale community organization.

And before you (or anyone) says it, there is literally almost no barrier to entry for TT. My guild, Attuned, does it 3 times per week. We invite anyone on the map to join us, and we usually end up with 50% or more of non-[Att] pugs. We give them free food buffs and we explain the fight to them. We don’t ask them to ping gear or builds. We don’t check achievement points or any of that crap. Anyone can do it, they just have to put in a MOLECULE of effort.

I’m sorry. I get really flared up when people suggest “elitism” that somehow there’s a secret society of malicious guilds keeping everyone from attempting TT by blocking them. I just want to nip that in the bud. You want to do TT? Join a guild. It is called “Guild” Wars after all. You don’t want to join a guild? There’s plenty of other world bosses.

Coulter.2315:

RobsterCraws.6405:

Forsaken.7524:

without challenge (i.e. content unplayable to the average player), an MMO will lose players faster than if it consistently deferred to the average player.

You’re absolutely right but it needs challenges for ALL level players. Our disagreement is that everyone’s lumping all the challenges into one. Either its for newbie or elites. Teq is neither, it’s the mid-level challenge for the average. It’s so level 80 players can get together, do a little coordinating and gain a sense of accomplishment in about 30-45 minutes.

I’m 100% for making more challenges for veterans but the mistake is thinking that Teq is meant for veterans. It’s not. That’s the core of the disagreement.

What is the more challenging content then if Teq and TT isn’t? Don’t say Fractal 50 because its easier than the buffed bosses and is not difficult (can be pugged every day with zero effort).

And you just nailed the biggest point of concern that veterans have in this game. Teq IS easy for vets. It’s an average fight that only takes a little bit of coordination. TT is a bit harder and requires more coordination, so TT is really the hardest boss in the game right now. The problem is that veterans have been farming TT for a long time now. It’s one single boss fight in a massive game full of WAY easier bosses. All we ask for is a FEW more bosses like TT. We aren’t asking Anet to turn the ENTIRE GAME into Dark Souls for crying out loud.

Frankly, I get offended when a veteran player asks for another hard boss, and everyone attacks him. They ask for SOME additional content, not an overhaul. Adding another hard boss isn’t going to affect anyone but the people who enjoy hard bosses.

I get offended when casual players demand they nerf the only two remotely challenging encounters in the game (Teq and TT). There’s SO much other content in GW2 and you want to destroy one one small thing the veteran players have?

Forsaken.7524:

RobsterCraws.6405:

An MMO lives and dies by how well it attracts the average gamer, not the small group of elitists. When content becomes unplayable to the average player, this is a problem with the structure of the game itself, not the player.

This is honestly the crux of the entire thread and the source of our disagreement. I would argue that without challenge (i.e. content unplayable to the average player), an MMO will lose players faster than if it consistently deferred to the average player. While making a game easily accessible is great for getting new players in the door, it does a poor job of keeping the game fresh and exciting for veterans. There needs to be some sort of balance, which is why I would contend that there should be at least some content that is less accessible to the average player.

Yes! You are right on the money. Easier content attracts new players and lets them enjoy the game and learn. But it is not enough for long term. New players are only new until they’re not. One day they become veterans. They are still members of the community and deserve content they can enjoy. There’s no reason we can’t have content for everyone. All people need to learn is that SOME boss fights are easy, and SOME are hard. They are meant to be that way! We don’t need to drag every single bit of content down to the lowest level.

If a boss is too hard for you, don’t do it! Go back, improve your equipment, build, etc. Find a group. Learn the mechanics. Try again when you are better prepared.

RobsterCraws.6405:

An MMO lives and dies by how well it attracts the average gamer, not the small group of elitists. When content becomes unplayable to the average player, this is a problem with the structure of the game itself, not the player.

Incorrect. Sure the average player is very important. However, it’s the hardcore, dedicated players who drive the long-term life of the game. If there were no hardcore players, average players would go through the game, get to the end (level 80) and wonder what is there to do? Theres no hardcore players doing dungeons? No one is discussing the best builds or how to make the best gear? They conclude the end game is stale or dead, and quit. GW2 leaks players badly because it’s very easy for new players to get to 80 without ever joining a guild, without really knowing about fractals, legendaries, or anything. The most common reason people quit is because they got to 80 and didn’t know what to do. Casual players have less investment in GW2. They play to their whims, and they leave. If we relied on them exclusively, the game would be dead. You should be grateful when a game has a good dedicated hardcore community, even if they are the minority. Those people actually have a passion for the game, and you are treating that like some kind of disease.

RobsterCraws.6405:

If a full, well-organized map can’t reliably win, this leads to the downward spiral that we see with Triple Trouble where people don’t even bother any more.

Full, well organized maps CAN bear wurm very easily. It’s not that hard. You just have to know the mechanics, which takes all of 10 minutes on google to learn.

RobsterCraws.6405:

I WANT to play TT but I can’t because 90% of the time, there’s no one there. And that other 10% fails. There is absolutely nothing that I, as an individual, can do to remedy this. Anet has to fix this. Teq will quickly become this if faith isn’t restored quickly.

90% of the time no one is there because it doesn’t spawn all the time. It spawns at a specific time each day, which makes it better for guilds to organize an event. My guild kills it 3 times a week with 50% pugs. Yes, half of the map is random people that we invite into our group to help us kill it. We explain the fight to them in person. We provide food buffs and everything. Your attitude toward this specific encounter is ridiculous. It’s designed for a large organized group, not an individual. There’s plenty of solo-able content in the game. Anet doesn’t need to change this ONE ENCOUNTER to suite your whims.

Chilipadiboy.9340:

Basandra Skye.4031:

The only thing worth commenting at the moment is that no, you dont speak for the silent minority.

Silent MAJORITY. So yes thanks

I would just like to know who elected you the spokesperson of everyone? Where do you get your metrics for this supposed “majority” demographic? How many members? I think you are full of crap. You are trying to argue from authority by equivocating “majority” with “correct” which is a logical fallacy.

You elected yourself president of a false majority that has no proof behind it. There are many many different kinds of people playing GW2, and many of them (myself included) want more challenging content. If you don’t want challenging content, there’s plenty of it throughout the game. Just because you played through 10 hours of easy content, and then stumbled into a Triple Trouble Wurm, does NOT give you entitlement to nerf that ONE SINGLE challenging boss. You can’t just go around nerfing everything to your level. Sometimes there are harder bosses. Get over it.

Just curious, but am I the only one that really wants condi mesmer to be effective in PvE? Seems like everyone is primarily discussing this trait for PvP. I’ve been playing PU condi in PvP for a bit and it seems very strong to me, but only because I can use the high stealth uptime to let my shatters recharge and set up a confusion burst, or disengage.

I’m personally sick of melee sword auto attack gameplay in PvE. I’ve tried some condi builds in dungeons with full Verata’s gear, and it’s just terrible. Currently the viable PvE condi builds work because they can “burst” or “front-load” their conditions. The faster you can get high stacks, the better you perform next to berserkers. Mesmer takes way too much time to build up bleeds from clone crits, and has way too much downtime between shatters. Not to mention MtD just can’t put enough stacks to match burn damage, especially when mobs stand still.

What if they kept MtD the way it is and add 5 stacks of bleed for 5 seconds per phantasm that gets shattered? I would also like to see a trait that adds 2-3 stacks of burning for 5 seconds when a clone or phantasm crits. We need a little extra something if condi mesmer is ever going to be a thing outside of PvP.

Does anyone else even care about that or am I the only one? ._.

Kagamiku.9731:

Xenon.4537:

Whats the average burn damage? WP posted a video where he got 19k for about 2-3 seconds using every burn duration and proc he could. How is 19k burn different from a 19k backstab or 100blades?

What everyone else said. Also because burning is not the only condition. Burning by itself is capable of doing as much as a full hundred blades with a single tic. And then you factor in poison, bleeding, torment…And the difference really shows. I don’t care about pve, but burning is ridiculous in pvp.

Show me a burning build that does 20k in a single tick that also has plenty of torment, bleed, poison, etc. Wooden Potatoes video shows ONLY burning with some very crappy bleeds as a afterthought. And the burns in WP’s build only tick 19k for a couple of seconds, and require popping a lot of long cooldowns. Longer cooldowns than 100blades.

Necros can put up a “whopping” 2 stacks of burning if they camp in deathshroud and spam 1, meanwhile their bleeds and poison disappear. Mesmer can get roughly 10 stacks of torment on a foe for 8 seconds, and I don’t really expect that damage to be good when 90% of pve is stack and kill. Show me the mobs that constantly run around while also attacking? Most of them stop moving to attack. Mesmer bleeds are even more pitiful, and they get 2 short sources of 1 burn stack, and 1 RNG source of poison for 5 laughable seconds.

Sorry I’m not familiar with engineer post-patch, so feel free to enlighten me.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Xenon.4537:

Whats the average burn damage? WP posted a video where he got 19k for about 2-3 seconds using every burn duration and proc he could. How is 19k burn different from a 19k backstab or 100blades?

Because you can’t do a 19K backstab or 100-blades every second while actively avoiding being hit? Burning SHOULD hit hard, but not that hard.

You can’t do 19k burn every second either. It takes a bunch of long cooldown skills and even then the 19k ticks maybe 1-3 times before dropping back down to 3-4k.

By the way… 100blades without being hit? Have you even heard of Endure Pain? How about Aegis? Give me a break. Zerk has been king of PvE for 3 years. Now they have an equal, and everyone is crying foul without thinking.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

How about instead of nerfing conditions (especially ones that some specs are reliant on as their soul damaging condition) we instead look at other ways to fix the problem.

For PvE it would make sense for boss type creatures to have access to the resistance boon, condition cleanses or possibly even a flat condi damage reduction.

For PvP it would also make sense for every class to be given varying degrees of the new resistance boon.
It could be tacked on to various traits, skills, utilities etc…

That would solve allot of the problems in PvP.

If they continue to persist then other solutions could be looked at.

This, this, and more of this. You all cry “nerf” now, but what happens when they add the resistance boon? Will you cry “buff”?

Silverkey.2078:

Well but in the meanwhile, he was doing some damage. It’s not “just” a 19k burst in 10s (which is already strong), he did massive direct damage and massive burning before he got that 19k tick. I haven’t counted how much damage in total during those 10s, but that is insane!

He has no ferocity to augment the power hits. Also, its not like berserkers can’t auto attack or use other abilities in between their backstabs and 100blades.

Whats the average burn damage? WP posted a video where he got 19k for about 2-3 seconds using every burn duration and proc he could. How is 19k burn different from a 19k backstab or 100blades?

Whats the average burn damage? WP posted a video where he got 19k for about 2-3 seconds using every burn duration and proc he could. How is 19k burn different from a 19k backstab or 100blades?

Right now I see a lot of discussion over the strength of conditions. Some builds are really powerful (burn ele) while others are in a bad spot (condi mesmer strong in pvp, but weak in pve). While I’m not sure if my suggestion will help fix specific short-term issues, I think it will begin to make the game in general easier to balance in the long run concerning conditions.

I’ve seen some people claiming that conditions are too strong because they only rely on one stat. This is simply untrue. Conditions rely on 3 stats, just like berserker builds:

• Condition Damage for damage
• Condition Duration for more ticks and higher stacks
• Precision for more rapid application

My suggestion is to make these three stats into a gear set (armor, trinkets, weapons, etc.) Right now we can get 2/3 of these stats, but one of them is conspicuously missing: Duration. Where is duration? On traits and food, and in very large quantities. I think the distribution of the Duration stat should be equivalent to other stats which berserkers take for granted on their gear. I’m not saying “double” or “triple” the duration of conditions. Not at all. I’m saying redistribute the stat to other available sources. This would make it more consistent with other types of builds.

Additionally, the scaling of Condition Damage should be similar to Power. All players start with a base of 1000 power (at level 80), and a base of 0 condition damage. Here is the wiki page for attributes. 2/3 stats for berserkers is considered a primary character attribute and treated with different scaling. Only 1/3 (precision) is a primary for conditions. I suggest making Condition Damage a primary attribute for all characters. Here is a comparison of the suggested equivalency between berserker and condition:

Berserker——————————-Condition
Power —-————————————> Condition Damage
Precision —-——————————> Precision
Ferocity —-——————————-> Condition Duration

Characters would have a base of 1000 at level 80 of Power, Precision, and Condition Damage. Duration would be treated like a % modifier, similar to Ferocity.

The last step is to take a good long look at every profession-specific ability in the game (both traits and skills) and make sure that, assuming they are wearing a full set of the new condition armor, they can apply no more or less condition damage than a berserker could apply power damage.

Personally I think it’s fine for elementalists currently to be able to reach 19k burning. That burn only lasts 1 or 2 seconds because it requires using a lot of abilities in a certain order. It’s no better or worse than a thief getting 20k backstabs, or warriors getting 30k with Hundred Blades. Classes which are supposedly know for their condition ability (necromancers) should be able to pull those numbers through bleed, poison, etc. Those numbers are clearly PvE numbers, yes. So the stats of this new gear in PvP would need to be lowered.

Forsaken.7015:

Too make condi successful all you need is condition damage.

No. You need 3 things:

• Condition Damage for damage
• Condition Duration for more ticks
• Precision for more procs

I would switch to Ineptitude, Rending Shatter, Furious Interruption, Maim the Disillusioned, and Blinding Dissipation if I were you. At least the vuln would help increase your condi damage, and the blinds would proc more confusion. Like Cerpin said, you should either go full condi or full phantasm. My advice for condi is stick to pvp. It sucks in pve right now.

Silverkey.2078:

The value you mentioned for torment and confusion are the base only right? In PvP, players attack permanently and move permanently, this is the reason why these are strong conditions in this context (and why people hate us). It’s also why confusing combatant was removed: they already mentioned they wanted confusion as a burst and not continuous application. I would have liked confusion on phantasms, a bit like sharper image but with confusion… This would have helped PvE without destroying PvP since phantasms do not last very long anyway.

Daze on Chaos Storm: just no! Mesmer is made so that basically all weapon sets have some interrupt, and I rely a lot on the staff interrupt when I play condi. On the other hand, I agree with some more condi duration on staff. We are the only class who didn’t get a buff to burning to make up for the stacking in intensity… So basically we got nerfed.

No, the value I listed for torment was used on the running golem. That’s the higher damage… I realize I could have used Signet of Domination and corruption stacks to bump it up a little, but I needed 2 slots for clone generation, and the 3rd slot for Signet of Midnight to raise the pitiful condi duration.

As for the staff daze… Yeah I figured people would hate that Idea because they are currently just loving that Power Block proc with Confounding Suggestions. Everyone hates a nerf, but I figured there were plenty of other interrupts that lockdown would be fine. People are already complaining that lockdown is too strong. Not sure if that’s true, but the point is I feel staff should be better at condi than it currently is. It’s far too slow for PvE condi, which is more what I’m concerned with. I don’t want to ruin PvP, but mesmer needs more condi burst and/or sustain to break even with other classes in PvE.

Exciton.8942:

Yeah. It is 10sec optimally. I think he was thinking about a blast finisher that gives you 3sec of chaos armor.

Ah, my bad.

morrolan.9608:

Xenon.4537:

I was really excited for interrupt mesmer before the patch. I was even excited for condi mesmer. But it seems like people just want to knee-jerk reaction everything and play whack-a-mole with balance. No one ever wants to spend a few days adjusting and learning new builds or tactics. Indignation, incredulity, and willful ignorance permeates the gw2 community.

Thats expected for players though not for the devs to react to it.

That’s exactly my point. The nerfs they’ve done started coming in less than 24 hours of the patch. The players freak out, and the devs jump on it. I can only assume it’s because our class isn’t named “Engineer.”

I want to open this topic for anyone like me who wants to play a condi mesmer. A real condi mesmer. One that is on par with Engie, Necro, Ele, Warrior, etc. And not just in PvP, but in PvE as well. Right now PvP condi mesmer isn’t half bad, but it relies heavily on PU which many want nerfed. Then how good will it be? And PU doesn’t really apply to PvE unless you are just skipping trash.

I’m sure a lot of my suggestions will upset some of you, especially mesmers who know more than I do. I’m not the best mesmer, but I daresay condi is pretty crap in PvE even after the revamp. I’m sick of running the same old power builds, and I like racking up big DoTs. So I’m asking anyone who maybe knows better for their input on this as well.

My ideas:

• Restore MtD to 2 stacks. Consider putting it where Bountiful Disillusionment currently is, so that you must chose between PU and MtD. Not sure where to put BD in this case… Certainly not where MtD is. It will require some musical trait chairs.

• Remove the daze on Chaos Storm. Increase the condi duration. Add vulnerability, burning, and/or bleed as a possible proc.

• Increase Chaotic Damping recharge from 2% to 3 or 4%. Reduce the base duration of protection from this trait to 1 or 2 seconds.

• Bring back Confusing Combatants in some form.

Well there’s my ideas. I don’t mean to blow up the meta or anything. I just want to play condi without relying on PU, and without being terrible in PvE. Thoughts?

Edit: Oops I didn’t mean to make it a question topic, and I’m not sure how to fix that…

ICEverfrost.8567:

Plus how often do you overwrite Chaos Armor with Chaos Storm/Phase retreat or Staff 4 because you want to swap weapons.

The whole point of not being 20% CDR is that you should be able to go a bit over 20% if you do your rotation in a specific way, but if you are forced out of your optimal rotation you end up a bit below 20%.

8 seconds of Chaos Armor being what I’d usually get at best, 40% CDR was nuts if only 5 seconds, it was still 25%. They didn’t really think that through did they.

Now at 2% per tick, 8 seconds of Chaos Armor gives 16% CDR and at 5 seconds 10%. This is way too low, lets look at 3%.

3%
8 Seconds: 24% CDR
5 Seconds: 15% CDR

Well look at that, that almost looks balance Devs, wouldn’t you say.

Even if someone does get another full duration leap through a utility, that’s still only 11 seconds for 31%, and hey if your investing that much of your build into getting that, I’m fine with it.

What are you on about with this 8 seconds business? Chaos armor is 5 seconds long and you can get it twice just with staff skills. That’s 10 seconds optimally if you don’t bring glamors.

Personally I wish they would remove the protection from the trait and return it to 5% so that we can actually have something fun and unique to use. However anything is better than 2%.

Mesmer condi is only good in spvp, and mostly because they can run and hide via PU. I was excited to finally maybe play condi mesmer in pve, but the wave of panic-nerfs have left it barely viable.

Condi in general kinda blows without PU propping it up, but everyone wants to nerf that too… so I guess its back to power builds.

MtD was not really OP… Right now with a 6 clone burst I can get 8 stacks of it on a target. With rabid amulet they tick for ~1200 which lasts like 4 seconds (it says 7, but it takes time for the clones to catch up and pile the torment on). Not to mention this is predictable and dodge-able and requires the mesmer to be in point blank range. With the old MtD this would be 16 stacks, ticking for presumably ~2400. Compare this to engie and ele who are currently enjoying 7-8k burn ticks, and I don’t see Anet rushing to nerf that at the moment… What the hell?

Edit: Oh yeah, and this combo is even less likely to hit when fighting on point because of all the aoe cleaving clones before they can shatter. GG.

tobascodagama.2961:

I’ll use Ekko as an example, because he’s a new champion who had a complicated kit with elements that were clearly overtuned on launch. Here’s his timeline:

• Launch: Patch 5.10, June 4
• First Nerf: Patch 5.11, June 16
• Second Nerf: Patch 5.12, June 23

Compare this to Anet’s timeline:

• Launch: June 23
• First Nerf: June 23 (really? same day?)
• Second Nerf: June 24

Anet, strap your knee down and stop it from jerking PLEASE.

Curunen.8729:

Staff trait – should be 3%.

Can someone explain the math to me on how exactly this works? Is it reducing the recharge by a % of max, or by a % of remaining? What would be the effective recharge of chaos storm with 100% armor uptime if the trait were 3%?

Anet is quick to nerf anything that punishes bad players for spamming attacks mindlessly (i.e. killing themselves with confusion). Anet needs to give the community a little credit. Give us back our torment and confusion and maybe wait one single kittening week before bring out the nerf bat. Give other classes some time to actually come up with counters. Give everyone time to come up with an informed opinion instead of emotional reactions.

TyPin.9860:

Why not let it play out for a while? So that people can actually come to the forums with informed opinions and not with first impressions and emotional responses.

+11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

Mesmer should get nerfed. Its the most OP class at the moment.
The last thing you want is your class to be played effectively by braindead players. Or even afk (bearbow style).

I qm seriously amazed how some players didn’t see this coming.

There are so many changes to the basic mechanics, that things just need shaving and balancing.

Mesmer is only OP in pvp right now because of a single trait… And they didn’t even touch that trait. Again, why the knee-jerk balance behavior? They could give it at least a week to see what other classes come up with to deal with mesmers. A day later shows that all they care about is how much QQ they hear from bad players how the “big bad mesmer hurt me.”

I would just really like to see Anet treat mesmer (and other classes) as well as they treat Engie. Oh, but engie is Grouch’s favorite, so of course it will always get the coolest stuff…