Guild Wars 2

This has probably been said 100 times, but the WvW proof of heroic needs to be made account bound. Really sucks to have to farm for dozen of hours a class that isn’t your main class just to try out something.

I’m convinced people will realize it in a few weeks, when the novelty of Tempest wears off and they start comparing it to the other elite professions, that they have been better designed.

Of course Air overload does nice damage (good for pve mostly) and fire overload gives some might, but the rest is severely lacking, specially the elite and warhorn which are beyond horrendous. Yeah you can bunker up and share auras, critting for 400 with the warhorn while your friends are discovering their powerful new skills making 6000 damage on a daredevil dodge and 10000 Reaper Shroud skill 5. But even there, numbers asside from a gameplay perspective it doesn’t come together as an unified idea and the skills are slow, unresponsive, and they work chain together well.

Wait until you see what combos people will pull off with the other professions. Tempest is just not up to the challenge.

Could Rebound be redesigned again?

The new version of it is frankly just the new worse elite skill in the game after the asura’s power suit. Why can’t we just have something simple and useful? Like the Reaper’s new elite (or every other prof elites for that matter)…

The previous version version that was supposed to reduce your next skill cooldown by 25% didn’t work well at all and was scrapped, but this new version just seems rushed for HoT’s release (same visual effect for a completely different skill, barely useful effect) and isn’t much better. The only thing that is reliable on it is the delayed aura, but auras aren’t even that good to start with.

There is a lot of stuff quite questionable about Tempest, but Rebound is where it really completely fails to be interesting.

I think the squishiest class in the game deserve a better elite.

I think the issues are:
1- 3 copies of this map is too much for the current tier populations
2- Map may be too big for the map population cap
3- There are not enough waypoints (maybe having a tent you can deploy for respawn or waypoints in camps?)

Otherwise personally I love the design and graphics.

Polismassa.6740:

A sentiment that I have heard from a lot of dedicated WvW players (and one that I share) is that the maps would be awesome if they were always full of players.

I really think that the maps are fantastically well designed. They are interesting, and nuanced, and complex. I do think however, that this complexity really tends to exacerbate the feeling of emptiness that comes with a lack of population.

Honestly, Imagine how things would be different if we had release level population (queue every map during prime-time for the top 2-3 tiers at least) on these maps, it would be absolutely amazing. Right now though, they feel huge and empty and a little sad.

I’m hoping that once people work their way through a good portion of the PvE content, things will come alive again. My sole worry is that a lot of people will never even really give the new BLs a chance, which will leave the people who do running around empty maps. I know that for a lot of veteran WvW players, it feels a lot like Anet has just given us the shaft with this one, but maybe take a break and come back, see how things are in two weeks or so when Halloween is gone and people have unlocked an elite spec or two and decide to WvW again.

100% in agreement. However all of this is related to WvW population issues that have been talked about for almost 2 years. Releasing this map without resolving the low population issues was a huge mistake that they will have to fix really soon else this game mode is not going to survive.

As I said: Merge empty servers or remove duplicated maps or both.

The WvW “proof of heroic something” or whatever it’s called, should be account bound not soundbound.

Laraley.7695:

Maikky.8526:

reapex.8546:

Maikky.8526:

Unblockable, undodgeable one shots

What a game

If you’re getting one shot, you’re either doing something wrong or need to change your gear.

Someone hasn’t fought any of the canopy champions

Try playing a zerker ele, everything will one shot you.

Don’t talk about the ele, it’s bad luck (always getting nerfed).

I find Rebound is completely terrible as an elite. It’s so situational, basically it’s a 75 seconds cd on what is just a delayed aura. It even interrupts overloads because it is not instant, which is where you’re the most susceptible of taking a killing blow.
Doesn’t seem like “good expansion content” to me at all.

Shouts are not worth their long cooldown even with the weakness/might bonus. Only Fire is interesting, because the fire aura can be traited in 2 trait lines.

Traits are ok I guess, none feel like a real choice or game changer. Stability is essential and the 10% damage bonus makes it the only viable choice.

Warhorn has… the worse weapon skills of the expansion. Why?

Air overload is good, Fire overload is ok, Water overload and Earth are kinda bad in WvW.

All of this would be “alright” if we didn’t get outclassed and easily beaten by other Elite professions that are way better, like Chronomancer and Reaper.

Overall some of Tempest is usable, but not really good. And what is usable is not really different from what we played before as ele (unlike scrapper, daredevil and druid for example).

All it needs to “feel” like WvW is more people in it…

Anet probably expected an increase in WvW population with HoT but they got the opposite because everyone is playing PvE.

They need to either remove the 2 extra copies of the map per tier or merge servers to increase the tiers population.

Again, I really like the map, I think it’s a huge improvement over the previous borderland. After 3-5 hours in it the confusion is gone about the paths you can take.

The issue is the same as we’ve always had, population/map coverage. Servers need to be merged.

Anet currently has 24 version of the map running at the same time, it’s 3 times more than required.

Look at ESO, it may have it’s own problems, but at the end of each matchup population numbers are calculated and the appropriate number of maps (“campaign”) is generated for the next matchup.
Most of the maps go from full to half-population, but none of the maps are empty.

The current Guild Wars 2 WvW server system doesn’t take into consideration populations when the matchups are generated; it has always been a recipe for disaster.

AncientYs.8613:

hi i’ve patched the game but now it is stuck on initializing.. it has been like this for an hour nowwhat do i do?

I’ve had to delete my config files on mac a few times to get it to launch.

Skeletor.9360:

Hi,

Just and honest opinion about the new game. For those who had fully developed characters etc and were not buying new content, to have their world turned upside down with no options I believe will make many people leave the game.

I suggest having 2 separate games completely. The new one and the old one. If you want to see what happens just have 3 old style servers and allow free transfers. When those 3 fill up…open three more…when those fill up….etkittenil you find that few actually like the new content.

It might be different for non-wvw content, but all I do is wvw and it is now ruined.

Thanks

I would suggest that you moved to a top tier server and take more time to learn the map. It is a little design masterpiece. The complexity just make it rewarding in the long term.

As for players leaving, well they already left last year, they probably aren’t coming back, but the maps got bigger so they feel more empty. Having just 1 copy of it would be plenty.

Ironically Tempest is better with every older weapon set. Shouts are good I find only if traited for might/weakness, air overload is good and fire overload is ok. Water and earth overloads aren’t really useful.

Warhorn sadly just has no advantages. It doesn’t do AoE or storm, it has short range, it’s slow, damage is very low, has no blocks, evades, or mobility skills…

I don’t understand what they tried to do, it doesn’t fit the ele very well.

Stacking might with fire overload before a fight and casting air overload after a meteor adds for some good damage. It could be better if you didn’t have to wait 5 seconds for overloads (cooldown could be global).

I love the new map, but they need to remove the 2 copies because the population can’t fill it.

Sol.6340:

My entire server could fit in one map, be out maneuvered and out zerged.

And somehow Anet didn’t see this coming a mile away when most of us did and told them? The map is great, but the population is the issue.
If you make a new map that works best with 100 players and you make 3 copies of it, then how can you expect that map to be played on a server that can barely have 40 people online at prime time and has 5-10 people online the rest of the day?

400 player spots to fill with EBG, and the server has barely anyone online at prime time, and Anet still doesn’t want to merge servers? Why can’t this work?

Even in T2 we can’t fill 25% of the maps.

And don’t misunderstand us, what we want isn’t a randomized server mashup like EotM, but a real guild-based alliance system instead.

ArchonWing.9480:

• Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

• Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

• Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

• Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

• In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

• How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

• In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

• Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

Personally I don’t think you guys at Anet have been listening to what the community has been saying loud and clear on the Forum. The new map is fine, in fact it is quite spectacular.

The issues are:
1- How the maps aren’t organized together in a coherent fashion (3 copies of same map, removal of maps, EotM (why never implemented in WvW?)

2- How the PPT system has to be improved, it’s always the same, after 1-2 days you know who is going to win at the end of the week, and this hasn’t changed since launch. PPK was never implemented.

3- How the server system has to be completely scrapped and redone: What is the point of having 72 copies of the new borderland map running at the same time (in America) if 64 of those instances are completely empty? Why can’t you create new instances of maps only when the other maps are full, like other MMOs are doing?

4- Lack of pertinent rewards for WvW ranks

To put it short, the WvW population has been annihilated over the past 2 years by the lack of content and support, and now what remains of it is given a huge beautiful map, times 3 copies, that the servers can barely fill once. We told you this was gonna happen.

People can’t play the new maps competitively because there is too much ground to cover for the server populations, meanwhile the PPT system is just off the chart accumulating points for maps with just a handful of people roaming, and you are asking us questions that have nothing to do with the biggest issue (Server Population-PPT-Rewards)

2 Solutions:
Solution 1: Remove the map duplicates, bring back old BL as well as EotM in rotation.
Solution 2: Merge all the servers in 3 alliances and create new overflows as needed (for example, with 3 alliances and a total of 9 Desert BL overflow all the sides could be balanced). (9 or 18 versions of this map would be plenty, I can’t even begin to imagine how you thought you would fill 72)

Personally I love the new map but I don’t think there should be 3 copies of it.

It’s too big for the tiers populations.
They should have made EotM a server borderland map, kept the Alpine BL, and added the new one as a third BL.

We would have 4 distinctive maps instead of 2 and the game would be much better.

Having 3 copies of the same maps makes no sense, it’s just a huge waste of space where the server populations are scattered.

When you get the Mac version you get all the Windows crashes + the Mac crashes.
Fixing the Windows crashes is only half the problem.

Maybe Anet should subcontract Mac experts like Aspyr to fix the mac crashes or coach their mac team.

caperaven.1052:

Game client on mac keeps crashing every 20 min or so.
Very frustrating when you crash out of a boss fight or find yourself dead when you get back

Same here and I believe for every Mac users.

red light november.3521:

red light november.3521:

Hi!

Im using the Mac client.

It keeps crashing on me especially when i go to a populated area like Lion’s arch. Even when I have my model limit set to the lowest.

It used to crash alot when Silverwastes was released but it didn’t crash as much a few months after. Now that HoT is out I am crashing a lot more so than previously.

Pretty sure its a mac issue as my friends on their windows os don’t experience the crashing like i do.

It is very frustrating cos I bought this game cos i was told it was playable on mac but my game crashes every 15min especially in the middle of world events and When I come back online I am on a different megaserver and out of the event.

Im using a :
Mac Book Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)
OSX Yosemite version 10.10.5

Processor : 2 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory : 8GB 1600 MHZ DDR3
Graphics : Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

:(
Do let me know if I can assist in anyway to get this fixed.

OMG I CANT DO HALLOWEEN EVENTS COS I KEEP CRASHIIINGGG

Yeah I can confirm this, the game on Mac is now in a “barely functional” state. It crashes ALL the time even when not fighting.

They didn’t even improve it after BW3… Not even the rushed elite or the warhorn!

It’s just unbelievable. Anyway when I do a full review of HoT it’s clear Tempest won’t get a lot of praise.

Gilded Hollow Waypoints aren’t working for me, but the game still takes my gold.

It crash for no reasons even when I open the map or sell stuff.

Since they merged the PC and Mac forum I think they disbanded the Mac team. We’ve had zero mac support. It is quite insulting to crash every 5 minutes after paying 50$.

Jon Olson.8439:

Hello,

We know the Cider wrapper isn’t the greatest. One of the reasons we don’t tend to respond to a lot of Mac specific posts is because an overwhelming majority of them are shared with Windows users. I do want to assure you all that we are actively fixing bugs on all clients. Some are quick to fix, some take a fair bit of time. Please try to be patient and keep submitting those reports!

Thanks!

Cider wrappers have lower performances, we can all admit that here. But how come all the other cider games I play don’t crash every 10 minutes?

We’ve been patient for 3 years almost, at one point you fixed many of the issues, then you brought them all back with a patch and now its the worse it has ever been.

Crashed again this time with a blank error message. Basically everytime you are fighting in WvW it crashes. Fix it PLEASE, this is ridiculous.

Expansion crashes even more often… Like every 20-30 minutes.

Nvm that: crashed 5 seconds after login in.

On mac the game crashes every 20-30 minutes.

Was just never fixed. It’s been a bug since the first beta.

To nerf Heat Sync they needed to buff the damage on all skills drastically. Now there is just no reasons at all to use Warhorn.

Guild chat isnt working for any guilds.

I didn’t see this thread when I made mine. They can be merged I guess since I was also complaining about the constant mac crashes.

It’s not on his side. The mac version has a numerous amount of bugs that were never resolved, on top of a memory leak that is directly linked to character textures.

If you set characters to colored blobs instead (without textures) it takes much more time to crash. If you set it to medium or high details, even if you get 60fps and have the most powerful mac on the planet the game will crash every hour or less in large fights or boss battles.

We’re 1 day from the expansion release and the game still crashes all the time on Mac in large WvW fight.

Would have been nice if it had been fixed.

A bit of history
When they explained the concept of the new trait system:

Elementalists: “we’re gonna lose build variety”
Developers: “Don’t worry, we’re merging bad traits together to make good ones”

- They merged Cleansing fire with might on cantrips, eles were happy.
- Eles are played more and are strong because of the huge global burning buff
- People complain eles are too strong and that burning is broken

What Anet does:
1- Anet undo the trait merge by deleting the best half of a good trait, making the trait just as useless as it was before the trait merge for the new trait system. This is a complete step back but this time we have less build variety on top of having bad traits.

2- The nerf affected staff eles more than bunker d/d ele. Basically the unintended consequences are negative and are a bigger loss in terms of balance than the gain.

3- Anet also nerf blinding on burning and vigor in arcane, even through these are the class survival mechanism. Class is tunneled more into bunker build, and the improvements in the fire line will only have been temporary, they are all lost and we are back at the starting point (but with only 3 trait lines).

Unintended consequences #2:
Tempest becomes the best might source

I’m glad its gonna take forever. It’s gonna give people something to do and bragging rights once they’ve unlocked it.

Bifrost is the first legendary I made and it’s still the one I like the most (I also have Incin and Meteorlogicus). Incinerator is nice for pvp. Scepter/Focus isn’t as viable as it used to be and Warhorn so far is bad.

We’ve been nerfed to the point where nothing else beside celestial bunker is remotely “easy” to play. Everything else like Marauder staff or s/d and we get 1-shot all over the place by classes 3 times easier to play.

So please, no more nerf that end up just forcing us to go even more bunker. Specially now that all our might has been nerfed and that Tempest is the worse of all the new professions.

It has to do with class balance. 1 year ago the game was more balanced than it ever was, and beside the turret engineer being slightly annoying the class balance was near perfect.

Now the huge power creep and condi buff with the more restrictive build variety makes people die in 1-2 seconds sometimes without being able to fight back, it makes for a negative atmosphere.

I think the entire system has to be revised:
- Each 4 hours the server that has made the most PPt and PPK should be rewarded (smaller reward)
- At the end of each day you should receive a point if you make the most PPT and PPK (medium reward).
- At the end of the week scores would be something like: 3-2-2 and the winning server would get a larger reward. In case of a draw there should be a 1 hour long TDM fight in EBG where only PPK counts (all gates removed).

Servers should have rewards for proportional to their accomplishments. Even a losing server could win some days and score on the scoreboard.

PPK should be changed to 3 points for losing server, 2 points for middle server and 1 point to the winning server.

I guess we are not receiving the Tempest changes before the release.
This is just my complete opinion on tempest as it is now since BW3, it is my last wall of text on the topic:

I will start by acknowledging that there has been a few good improvements since BW1 but still, it should have improved much more.

First thing first, Warhorn :
The only way I could have imagined it working was for it to do large ranged AoE skills or fast mobility-oriented skills. As it is currently I just don’t think it works:

On a class with the least hp and armor, designing a melee weapon with no evade, leap, blocks, invul, cleanse and reflect is just a bad idea. Mobility is the only thing that keeps an ele alive, and there is zero improvements there. Why are heavier classes getting more mobility and damage negation? It makes no sense from a balance perspective.

We doubt at first that a Warhorn will never be as interesting as a sword and it disappoints me to see that we just had the demonstration of that. If at the very least Tempest would increase the potency and range of Scepter or if we gained weapon swap [on some balanced cd] then perhaps Warhorn could serve a purpose.
I don’t see why someone would equip it just to share boons. It worries me to see the best skill is the one we prevented the nerf and that the only blast is the one we asked for.

Generally
In general the rest is “alright” but I wouldn’t qualify it as great, it’s only “ok”:
It is not a number issue as others have mentioned:
Barely any of the new skills can be chained together, there is no mobility skills or high damage burst/combos that would make the combat energetic. Even the overload rewards you by locking and slowing you down. In competitive modes every classes will wreck Tempest eles as soon as they start overloading. There is very little synergy between Tempest and the other trait lines.

Overloads
The overloads are the second problem after warhorn, without a huge aoe damage burst at the end they’re will never be any point using them beside for buffing might in fire. Air is the only one that does damage high enough not to be ignored by your opponent.

1 stack of stability is better than nothing, but it isn’t enough and we shouldn’t have to explain why. Have you tested dueling mesmers or necros with tempest?

Finally, verdict
Contrary to the rest of the expansion which is showcasing amazing guild halls and PvE zones, unique professions (Chronomancer, Druid, Herald) Tempest looks rushed:
It lacks new things (no new boons, no new condition, no new gameplay effects), it has recycled auras, recycled might from fire line, recycled animations, barely finished trait line, unfinished second try at an elite skill, etc.

Even during the course of 3 beta tests the improvements have been minimal therefore not really satisfying. I understand you may not have had the time necessary available to make an elite professions as compelling as the Druid (which is even getting new pets) but some of the stuff is really questionable:

Example:
Why does Lightning orb go through stairs in Stonemist Castle instead of going up toward my target as the ground arrow-target indicates?

Why does changing attunements while overloading cancels the overload?

Why is all the Warhorn skills damage so low even with full zerk gear?

Why must I camp an attunement for 5 seconds if after 2 seconds all my skills have been used and all I can do is wait/auto-attack?

Why are the Warhorn and Shouts skill cooldown so high?

Anyway I’m still really looking forward still to see the final changes and I hope to be pleasantly surprised. See you Thursday really late.

I think they didn’t have time to do all of them and I wouldn’t blame them: from what it looks like Tempest isn’t ready for launch and we’re 4 days from release (post-BW3 changes haven’t been posted yet and the new elite and warhorn in BW3 didn’t work well at all).

It’s probably stuff that will get improved or redone after the release of HoT.

I like the Malice idea but I think it would work better as a boon.

Every time weapon swap has been mentioned for the ele Anet didn’t reply.

I doubt that they care about the class. I mean warriors with 27k hp and heavy armor are running around in pvp cleaving for 5k and rampaging for 9k on staff eles with Marauder’s amulet doing less damage with less health, less armor and longer cast times and they still nerfed the Fire trait line and Vigor. Then there is Tempest that is recycling animations/emotes/auras and looks rushed from start (Warhorn clunky animations) to the end (elite skill scrapped and redone in a few days).

I love the game in general but when it comes to the elementalist class no real improvements are being done.

Aomine.5012:

Wait, so Gift of Fortune can be salvaged back, but for what purpose?

Are new legendaries require something different, yet still including all types of t6?

They said the Gift is not compatible with the new legendaries but some or all of the mats are. They were not precise about it because they probably want to avoid market manipulation.

As for the Gift of Mastery, I was asking why we can’t trade the Gift Exploration because clearly in today’s stream the devs felt awkward telling us that if we saved on that gift it was just a wasted effort.

Some of us did world completion and gathered T6 mats when HoT was announced thinking that we could use our Gift of Mastery/Fortune for the new legendaries.

While HoT will allow us to salvage the Gift of fortune back, what actually takes time instead of gold, the Gift of Mastery, has no way to be salvaged or used in any way regarding new content.

I think Anet needs to let us salvage our Gift of Mastery as well and let us sell the Gift of exploration on the Trading Post (remove the account bound on the item). Having a gift of Mastery in our bank we never plan to use is really disappointing.

The mechanics of the engi are a little harder to master than those of the ele.
However it is a much more forgiving class, unless you are playing celestial bunker d/d it’s much harder to stay alive on the ele because of the lack of blocks on short cooldown and weapon swap when in different range. Staff is particularly unforgiving because of how slow the skills are, you can get cleaved to death with 2-3 hits in the cast time of a meteor shower because ele has the least hp and armor.

Gokil.2543:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Xillllix.3485:

Would be nice if Warhorn had a RTL equivalent on air skill 4, like if you teleported into the cyclone.

THe ball from the ball lightning (warhorn air 5) should chain into a skill that lets you teleport to it. It does pitiful damage anyway might as well give it some mobility.

This is a super cool idea!

It would be similar to our underwater air skill actually. I would like that, but it would have to move faster.

From difficult to easy in my opinion:
Engineer
Elementalist
Revenant
Thief
Necro
Mesmer
Warrior
Guardian
Ranger