Guild Wars 2

I appreciate the hard work Anet is outing into this, but I’m just not excited about this. I played the other Capricorn new map about 5-10 times and it just feels similar to other conquest maps (the underwater version was more unique) and in general the game mode is too limited/repetitive.

I’ve been wanting a 10v10 or 15v15 GvG mode since launch, not more conquest. We need something new and game changing.

When I tried the HoT beta I told the dev that my only negative feedback was how boring and underwhelming Tempest was to play, how the skills and overloads didn’t synergize with the class mechanic, and how little impact they had.

Then I just stopped playing for 6 months, came back and played a few months. I still feel the same. HoT ruined the elementalist class. The rest of the additions are fine, I have no problems with the map. I don’t play the raids however, it’s just a painful experience to have to repeat the same fight hundreds of times for an item that hasn’t been implemented in the game yet.

tobascodagama.2961:

Xillllix.3485:

the class will still be forced to bunker up just to do something useful

This is an inherent problem with Conquest as a game mode. To win Conquest, you need to hold two capture points for longer than your opponents can hold two capture points. To hold a capture point, you need to stand in it longer than your opponents. To stand in a capture point, you need to have a bunker build. This is why the strongest PvP builds have always been bunker builds. This is why the strongest PvP builds always will be bunker builds.

Mobility builds and burst builds and sustained damage builds only come into meta if they’re strong enough to kill bunkers. And when they’re strong enough to kill bunkers, they’re so insanely deadly that they melt non-bunkers with little counter-play, so they inevitably get nerfed. And the cycle repeats until the only builds that are viable are bunkers.

Even if ANet plays whack-a-mole with the bunker of the month, this pattern won’t change. Because it’s baked into the game mode. The only thing that could possibly save us from the eternal bunker meta is a new game mode. But ANet can’t get anybody to play a new mode now, because the die hard PvP players are too addicted to the current meta and the idea of change scares them, while everybody else has already been driven away from the boring, frustrating bunker meta.

This is in large part right, and Stronghold has the same flaw. Bunk up and heal the npcs and you’re almost certain to win.

However even without that aspect build variety is extremely low. Too many skills/traits are useless, too many skills/traits have a huge advantage over others. The amulet system doesn’t work as well for every class. The 3 trait lines instead of 5 and the removal of stats associated with them reduced variety.

Same with many nerf and buffs, they didn’t help at all, most of the time they just completly removed the skills by making them completely useless (Ice Bow, Turrets, Wash the Pain Away, etc).

Mr Godlike.6098:

Supreme.3164:

Skittledness.5106:

Teams have learned to counter play engis Rez and ele is support makes some classes like necro super strong .
The support is still amazing it just can’t troll 1v2s and some 1v1s anymore

Ever occurred to you that people may not like to play support?

People are actually asking for build diversity….we couldn’t care less if your supportbot get nerfed or buffed, peace

Agree with this…problem is that devs made class so stat dependant…other classes can do one-shooting burst and heal or migrate damage with zero toughness or healing power….

But I don’t believe devs will do anything serious about this…they would have to do serious class rework on this point to make it closer to other classes, elite specializations…

I bet they keep buffing/nerfing numbers without any passion or direction…

How ironic is it that in a game that brags about not having combat based on a trinity system the only real mage class is forced to play heal-bot?

And all of that is due to a main dev in charge that dies fighting Svanir while showcasing the elite spec he design himself. Something most of us can do with one hand while looking at the minimap.

To be honest the tempest design was so bad it’s no surprise that it ended up breaking the class completely. The beta feedback from everyone here really went in depth with everything that’s wrong about it and they didn’t listen. Even the elite skill was rushed in a week or so between 2 betas because the first one didn’t even do anything (the new one doesn’t do anything either but hey, too late, it was time to ship HoT).

It’s like they are blind to the difference between how fun the class used to be and how limited it is today.

At this point I just hope they started the development on Guild Wars 3.

sephiroth.4217:

QQing.3089:

Offhand dagger rework please. It doesn’t need 30-40s cooldowns anymore. Also stability needs to be an innate ability with overloads. Those are my #1 and #2.

I was going to suggest offhand dagger too…

I play D/D mostly in WvW and PvP.
-The cool down on Updraft is WAY too long for PvP.
-Cleansing Wave could use a shorter animation, again in PvP. Lots of disrupts now.
-Fire grab…… Is the hitbox on this supersmall? I have to be perfectly lined up or miss.

There was once a time when you could play zerk d/d ele in WvW blob fights, it was fast and super enjoyable. It required : the ability to heal while in mist form, stability you could rely on, RTL on low cooldown to disengage, no power creep of other class.

Then you know the rest of the story.
While things have improved in this game for other classes, for the elementalist they never did.

The main issue with the game is the disappearance of build variety.

Anet can well nerf DH (which they’ll probably do since they mostly react to forum complaints) it will not create more variety; 75% of the elementalist traits will still be useless and the class will still be forced to bunker up just to do something useful.

The “new” trait system was a failure in the fact that all it did was limit most of the possibilities while making a few new ones completely overpowered.

The game was balanced around getting extra stats from trait lines, specially in the case of a celestial class like the elementalist (which is why the class is so broken right now):
At launch the class could use a berserker amulet, but with traits in water get extra healing and vitality. You could have points in all 5 lines. The condi duration buff from the fire trait lines made condi/power hybrid builds possible; I had an amazing unique build using that which was destroyed with the new system.

Anet should understand that people expect class balance (we shouldn’t have to ask for that), but what we really need is some build variety back. They need to stop tweaking numbers, it’s the trait system that is flawed. Then once the have variety back at the core of the system they can start by looking at all the skills that are useless and those which have unreasonable animation time, like Dragon tooth.

Then for god’s sake stop buffing unskillful gameplay and buff complex combo chains.

They made all the auras and some other effects uglier/less detailed, while at the same time managing to decrease system performance to the point where the Mac client is in many case unplayable.

Skittledness.5106:

Ele will be present in nearly every WTS team at LAN it is fine atm

Every elementalist that has been here since the launch of the game will agree that the elementalist is not fine. It has lost ALL it’s build variety.

wardspratlin.9107:

Can we please finally fix necro GS i think its widely believed to be the WORST hot elite specialization weapon. i want everyone’s thoughts about it!

1. The auto attack is SLOW i realize its supposed to be “thematically speaking” but i dont feel like this hits harder then War/gaurd GS which is a 1/4 second faster so how’s that balanced? (necro having a 3/4 cast vs war/guard 1/2 ) i didnt check ranger but id suspect its also 1/2. my main gripe about this is that either the damage needs a slight buff as 90% of your autos will be dodged or the cast time reduced. to bring it in line with every other class on GS

2. grave digger – i honestly feel OK with this skill although its hugely telegraphed (easy to avoid as long as your not cc’d) i have seen this skill hit north of 10k and that is nuts considering it cleaves and can be spammed on downs!

3. death spiral is so clunky it just feels bad and barely ever lands on anything that’s not downed….id love to see this skill either get a dmg buff or more life force when it lands. ( like never but least you could use it on downs)

4. nightfall although i love to throw this on top of downs to “bleed” them that is all its good for. The blind pulses so slow you’d think you could use it on downs to secure a stomp but you’d be mistaken the blind pulses are so far apart its very easy to still interrupt a stomp thru this skill… id love to see this skill get a faster pulsing blind / few more pulses total (thus making attacking inside of it very difficult for opponents and would make it do slightly more dmg overall) id offset this by removing cripple with this skill so enemy’s could move out of it freely unless they were chilled/crippled or pulled into it etc by another skill….

5 . The pull- this skill is just buggy 50% of the time it doesn’t activate so id say all that needs to be done is for that to be fixed….id also like it to target your target rather then going straight in front of you. This skill is often the make or break in a fight with a GS necro as if they pull you they will certainly land a grave digger and that can one shot you unless your running something tanky* however due to this skill sometimes not working properly its just not consistent at all and that why i think GS is widely viewed as a terrible weapon for necro.

most of my thoughts are not full fledged and may be imbalanced im really here to see if anyone else thinks it needs to be buffed and if so how would they buff it?

this post is strictly about the spvp usage of it im not sure how GS stacks up in pve usage as i do not play that game mode

You can have my elementalist warhorn if you prefer. Then you’ll see the difference when you do 675% less damage.

If the Meta was balanced there would be some build variety.
It’s far from balanced in my opinion, it’s the contrary, the worse meta in a long time.

The game was balanced for a few weeks when they nerfed turrets engi, before they came up with the new trait system and ruined everything.

Back them I had 4-5 builds that were unique and completely viable. None of these builds are possible today.

EriskRedLemur.7153:

It’d help if the devs had changes more often; given how they balance, or don’t – it just irks ppl. Hopefully given the quarterly lowest earnings in a while they will have more updates for things sooner not just every 3-4 months.

In PvP it’s been an entire season with 5+ guards per match and barely any elementalists.

Anet is way too slow to react to their mistakes.

Playing staff elementalist right now in WvW is just the most unpleasant and frustrating experience you can have in this game, or in a MMO.

Nothing hits because of the huge delay between skills, damage is way below what other class can do with much easier means, and even with super high toughness you still get 1-1-1-1 to death before your first skill goes off if you don’t have permanent protection upkeep.

In PvP it’s the same, you’re just good at healing others and there is no build variety. Great job!

Compared to how fun the class was to play on release, this is complete kitten balance work by a team that apparently doesn’t care if in a PvP match with 10 players 8 of them are guardians.

I’m taking another break from this game. See you in 6 months or a year maybe, if the balance team ever actually balance the game instead of destroying the gameplay and build variety.

Had a bit of fun switching class to Revenants and killing other elementalists pressing the “2” key, but then I realized playing classes that I don’t enjoy because my main class is broken is not worth the space on my hard drive.

1- WvW Always Crash on Mac, it’s been getting way worse since the server merge and the population increased. It’s literally unplayable, every time there is a zerg clash you press a few keys and end up on the desktop.

This is unacceptable.

2- Also the framerate is about 3 times lower than how it was when the game was released. And back then my computer much less powerful than it is today and I was running it with more details at a higher resolution. I’m getting 15 fps in places where I used to get 50. Something is wrong.

Again this is unacceptable. How do you achieve such terrible performance on a brand new top of the line Mac with super fast SSD, pretty good video card, i7 Quad core and 16 GB of ram?

So please can we get the Mac version at lease as functional as it used to be about a year after the Windows release?

All we Mac users want is to play at a decent performance without crashing all the time.

Necro still has a chance in 1v1 to deal good damage. All the elementalist can do is bunk up and make other classes seem better.

In PvP I re-rolled my Elementalist to a Dragon Hunter
In WvW I re-rolled my Elementalist ro a Revenant

Now I do so much better without needing to be skillful or 5k hours of experience. Hell in WvW I can press 1 key on a 3 second cooldown and do 17k CoR on elementalists: 1-shot dead. In PvP I can win a 1v2 by just pressing all my keys randomly when its a close-quarter fight.

When you master a class and you’ve been nerfed so bad that you still get wrecked by new players playing other class I think the answer is pretty simple: balance in this game is not made in regards to the skillcap/cd/cast time/etc, but only as a way to market their gameplay as something different every once in a while.

I would love that, specially if it supports GvG.

kdaddy.5431:

Question why do you dislike conquest so much?

I didn’t say that. I said that the conquest gameplay doesn’t work with the current class balance.

The nodes circles are too small and do not leave space to fight or dodge out of insta-kill traps. It’s a completely unfair advantage when a class can just force you out of the objectives. No wonder why I’ve seen games with 7 DH! That’s all you need really.

Perhaps druids to counter and a necro to corrupt. That’s about it.

I don’t dislike conquest, but I could imagine a game mode and new maps that would be more dynamic and interesting where you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the objectives mechanics using a specific builds.

BlackBeard.2873:

Arthur is correct here.

Fresh air is still usable, and raids can be cleared in more casual groups with it, but you aren’t going to see any serious groups taking it.

Fresh air, and many other ele builds really took it in the gut with the last nerfs to alacrity traits, and air overload.

I don’t think they like the class, from memory:

Recently
13% nerf to skill recharge
Healing nerf
10% Damage nerf to air overload
Lava font cd nerf
Ride the Lightning stealth nerf

Earlier:
Might on Cantrip nerf
Blindness on burning nerf
Diamond skin nerf
Protection stacking nerf

Before that:
Ice Bow nerf
Line-casting and Meteor Shower nerf
Meteornado nerf
Healing and cleansing nerfs
Ride the Lightning nerf 3

Before then:
it took a petition to save Elemental Attunement
Ride the Lightning nerf 2

Even Before then:
Mist form nerf
Ride the Lightning nerf 1

I miss GvGs so much… The GvG scene died because of a meta that doesn’t reward good gameplay. The best period of GW2 will have been that time just before the new trait system came into place where GvG guilds were fighting every evening on all borderlands.

The problem isn’t the guard that much, it’s that the balance in general across the board is just terrible and the conquest game-type doesn’t promote interesting gameplay.

When traps that insta-kill players without stability cover the entire objective of your game-mode you know you’ve failed. The original Guild Wars 1 team would never have let something like that happen.

Shylock.4653:

Vicariuz.1605:

Is there ANY ONE playing the game any more?

This is the fourth season with this really bad league system. I think many people have lost hope and stopped playing PvP.

I stopped playing pvp after having 3 matches in a row with 5 or more Dragon Hunters.
When a game is that unbalanced going up a ladder loses it’s meaning.

WvW has gotten a few improvements so I can play that other unbalanced game mode instead doing 18k Coalescence of Ruins on poor elementalists.

The improvements they’ve done the map were really worth it. It shows that when Anet listen to the player feedback and get to work they can really improve WvW.

Now that said, they need to keep improving DBL and not stop there.

- The Garrison area is way too crowded with junk rocks everywhere that get in the way of fights.

- The Keeps lord areas are really far, they way there should be faster and more direct: Instead of having 2 sets of stairs on both sides there should be only one in the middle.

- The middle part of the map is completely useless, and that’s fine, but why is it still there? Remove it completely.

Then if they can finish the WvW scoring system everything will be so much better.

Finally the last thing that is absolutely essential for WvW: A new meta. Bring the WvW class and skill balance similar to how it was in 2014. Small groups should have a chance to win fights against larger groups once more. For some reason I have the feeling that Anet is completely lost there and that skill balance is never going to be under their radar until the next xpac.

If they removed some of the rocks on the way to Garrison and opened the area a bit more it would make a huge difference.

The middle area in my opinion should just be completely removed. It could be a huge lava-pit or endless hole and it would focus the gameplay more on the objective. People think that it would make it easier to karma train but I think that’s wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing once you have 3 servers karma training in circles. They are gonna collide at some point

It’s the stability changes really that is responsible for the gameplay we have today.

Because you cannot rely on stability anymore the group with the most amount of ccs automatically wins the fight, so the larger groups are almost guaranteed to win.

For example you could once fight and win a 12v25 before the stability changes and rely on skills like Armor of Earth for 6 seconds of stability. Today I sometimes get the 10 stacks of stability removed in less than 1 seconds because there are so much ccs around.

Then you have skills like Coalescence of Ruin on a 3 second cooldown that I hit and 1-shot someone for 18k with yesterday.

If you roam thieves can blow you up from stealth pressing 2-3 keys while you’re dazed, mesmers can dual shatter on you from stealth, DH traps can daze you for 4-5 seconds, druids can pewpew you from 1500 range while their pet keep knocking you down, etc. All of this needs addressing and fine tuning. Then you have classes like the elementalist, that is a boon machine with nothing else really working well anymore. You cast meteor shower and 3/4th of your meteors are blocked and even at max zerk for a light class you can barely do half the damage of a Revenant auto-attack. Sometimes by the time your first meteor or Ice Spike fall everyone is dead already.

Basically nothing is balanced around WvW at all.

Because fights are not about skill anymore but about numbers people are afraid to engage, and you get this meta where everyone just pewpew from range for 5 minutes or run away as soon as their skills are on cooldown because they know if they really engage the fight is about 5 seconds and then they have to run back from spawn.

SPESHAL.9106:

This DH thing is baffling because they had a whole month of seeing the impact in unranked, yet did nothing before the season started and nothing since.

Problems go far beyond the DH. The new trait system doesn’t cut it.
It was more interesting before, when stats were attached to trait lines.

The old trait system is what kept balance in place in the first place. Balance and build variety dissipated the moment they removed it. I told them, others told them, they replied “It’s too soon to tell”. In reality it wasn’t, they just didn’t want to admit it.

How long has it been now? 18 months? And they still didn’t re-balance the game and build variety is at it’s lowest point for many classes if not all.

Turamarth.3248:

Xillllix.3485:

They promised the Orbs would be back as well, never happened.

Do you have a source for that?
The patchnotes for the removal said
“Orbs or some similar mechanic may return in the future, but only if we’re confident that they won’t create similar issues.”
The posts from Devon Carver also all said pretty much the same thing.

2 years ago on this forum, WvW lead said it would come back. Lost the thread.

The one good thing about this season is that nobody is complaining about the elementalists. Now everyone just pity us.

You made a good effort posting all these threads here, but don’t forget Anet isn’t paying you. You shouldn’t have to do their job.

Right now it takes months for them just to mix up maps they already have made. The simplest things, like making it so that your own server can see your WvW rank, seem too complicated.

They promised the Orbs would be back as well, never happened.

They are improving the game, but at the current speed it’s going to take years. I think their WvW teams is really, really small.

He has obviously never been moa’ed.

Xenesis.6389:

Pfft dunno why people complaining, game looks balanced.
Also thief needs a buff please, stealth skill should be hitting harder.
Thank you.

There is just not much reasons to play elementalist anymore besides the nice animations. The skills are too slow, and the other classes buff are too great. Every other classes do more damage and have more survivability.

Aeolus.3615:

Xillllix.3485:

WvW Balance:

Staff
- Buff meteor shower damage by 20%
- Buff Fireball speed by 25%
- Buff Chain lightning to 5 opponents and damage by 20%
- Buff Eruption speed by 50% and damage by 20%
- Buff Ice Spike speed by 20%
- Make Lava font insta-tick
- Make Gust aoe targetable 1200 range
- Remove casting time on static field
- Make Shockwave aoe targetable 1200 range
- Stoning, increase damage by 33% and speed by 50%
- Water blast, increase healing by 250%
- Lightning Surge, increase damage by 25%
- Flame Burst, add 8 stacks of burning instead of 2

(snip)

u know u would melt everyone with those changes?:P

You know the truth is that it wouldn’t be that OP in WvW, only in PvE.
I’m running around with my Revenant in WvW doing 5k auto attacks at 1200 range, 10-15k+ CoR on a 3 sec cooldown, every other hammer skills ht for 6-7k+ and I got permanent duration of the buffs I need.
All these skills do more damage than my Meteorshower which only kill players unable to dodge out of the red circle. At full zerk spec elementalist meteors barely hit 7-8k (against a completle glass), and we all know the elementalist is just a glass canon when full zerk. For years we could do 12k meteors with meteornado and nobody complained because everyone understood that we had no good elite skills.

All the casting time buff would just be more in line with the speed of HoT which is just faster.

Eruption and Ice Spike need to be easier to land, as they are currently the miss 75% of the time. Eruption should at the very least have a bleeding damage increase and speed increase.

Gust and such are a given, waterblast is so kittenty nobody even use it. The casting time on Lightning surge justify the damage increase. Seriously.

I don’t understand why Anet is being so silent on class balance.

Why do we always end up with 3 to 7 Dragon Hunters in every match we play?
I mean I’ve played matches where you had 5 DH on one team and 2 on the other team.

There is a lot of work that remains to be done after the Scoring changes.

We need basically 3 different maps with their own unique gameplay feature.
1- Bring the Orbs back to the Alpine BL.
2- Add a central event that makes sense to the DBL or remove the entire central area and have the shape of the map be the feature
3- Make a new map with another central idea, like an Arena that contributes to the PPT with a queue system and that everyone can spectate

WvW Balance:

Staff
- Buff meteor shower damage by 20%
- Buff Fireball speed by 25%
- Buff Chain lightning to 5 opponents and damage by 20%
- Buff Eruption speed by 50% and damage by 20%
- Buff Ice Spike speed by 20%
- Make Lava font insta-tick
- Make Gust aoe targetable 1200 range
- Remove casting time on static field
- Make Shockwave aoe targetable 1200 range
- Stoning, increase damage by 33% and speed by 50%
- Water blast, increase healing by 250%
- Lightning Surge, increase damage by 25%
- Flame Burst, add 8 stacks of burning instead of 2

D/D
- buff all skills damage by 20% except lightning whip
- Undo RTL nerf

Scepter
- redesign with Warhorn offhand trait

Warhorn:
- Add trait that increase Scepter range to 1500 when using Warhorn
- Redesign all the warhorn skills to do something unique and buff damage by 100% since it can only be used with a defensive trait line

Utilities
- Undo Mist Form nerf
- Buff all conjure damage by 25%, undo Ice Bow nerf
- Add healing and protection traits to conjure weaps
- Redesign shouts to do something else than auras
- Redesign Glymph to be fast and useful

Elites
- Make glymph of elemental permanent summon, increase AI speed, make interesting
- Tornado: Make it do something that isn’t a joke
- FGS: Make it good again
- Make Ice Bow Elite with 50% buff (undo nerf)
- Rebound: Scrap and redesign again, it’s still kitten

The stability changeand new trait systems are what changed the flow of the gameplay the most.

It used to be possible for a group of 15 to beat a group of 50.
Now only numbers matter since if you have more numbers you have more cc and smaller groups can’t rely on stability.

Basically WvW used to be about skill, now it’s only about having the biggest blob.
Anet did exactly the opposite of what they said they would do in regards to blobbing.

They even buffed boon rip.

OriOri.8724:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Disagree.

At gw2 launch 2.546.124 players played hardest content. (Arah dungeon)
6 months later 1.8245.654 (fractal update).
1 year later, 1,124.456 players played liadri, concealing dark (8 orb extra challenge)
6 months later 741.874 (Fractal level 100 was added)
Another 8 months later: 600.754 Hot Added, difficult maps/mobs only this much people have all masteries, map completions, and story completions in this map
3 months later: raids. Player tried 1.541.235. Players succeed 214.456
5 months later, game in stagnation, only two raids added, current amount of total play (defeats included) 412.456
4 months later: OP’s suggestion makes it out: 214.214 people left doing it
4 month later, op’s suggesiton make it out again 124.478
1 year later, 3 inclusions more: 32.458 players left, playing hardest content.

These numbers are artificial, and made up, but they are made up to illustrate a point, wich correlates closely with reality (in my opinion) of what Anet has done.

You can’t make up numbers and then proceed to use them as an argument. That is absurd

Politicians have been doing it for decades and people still vote for them.
Then when it is revealed to the ignorant that the numbers are made up he pretends to be upset, and at the next election vote for someone else that also made up all the numbers.

Jayne.9251:

Sylvyn.4750:

We need our gliders in DBL…would be so much fun!

Only if I can shoot you out of the sky and watch you drop like a lead balloon.

What about if there is a new central buff and the team that possesses it can glide for 10 minutes (including glide above gates)?

Asumir.1978:

Qugi.2653:

Mac beta client actually is now worse than year ago or even 2 year ago. Use to work not to bad. After some patches back in last year it get even worse. I use to have 30-40 FPS medium setting no problem. Then some month ago big loss in FPS even on lowest setting and many graphic error and more crash than ever. Now Nvidia own company TransGaming that make cider wrap and who know what will happen if any thing.

I now use bootcamp windows and it is like new game it work so much better.

The loading times of each map inside Tyria, WvW and PvP have gotten at least 30% slower since HoT. Haven’t Mac users been included in the update?

Since they started on a native client they probably stopped supporting the beta client.
I also have an SSD and the loading times are extremely long.

Azalis.5142:

It’s funny that the ele has double the abilities of all the other classes and is weak. Like, you’d think the complexity factor should bump in and be like “it’s hard to play, but the reward is great” instead it’s like have all these abilities that don’t really do anything!

At release most people found the ele and engi too complicated to play but understood that it was more rewarding if you invested the time.

You could use the elementalist in pvp with a berserker amulet because the old trait system was way better. It’s the class that has suffered the most from the new trait system.

sinject.4607:

why is it the only people defending DH are the people who play it?

It seems that these days pretty much everyone plays DH so I’m not sure what you mean. I play DH and I think it’s completely OP, but other classes are too.

When I play ele I usually take in more damage than I make so I play DH more now. When playing DH I do about 2-3 times more damage and the same healing. Something just doesn’t had up.

I think we need the scoring changes now with the new map. It would just make more sense.

Anyway looking forward to this, been waiting so long for these changes and if it’s anything like what you’ve said it is very similar to what I suggested except for the PPK.

For PPK I had suggested 1 points for the winning server, 2 points for the second one and 4 points for the losing server.

joneirikb.7506:

Still full in favor of making all maps true 3-ways, and remove “Home” map system. (As most should know by now). And basically what Johje said, single colored map is boring map.

---

Do like a lot of the suggestions here about what to do with the middle, shout-out to the “giant treb hill” idea, love it.

---

I’ve talked about some of the advantages/disadvantages about a Donut map design. I’ll try to keep it as short as I can this time.

If you make a map fully circular, and close of some spots with tower and keep walls, you can create a constant 2(3) front fight going on. Where there are natural choke holds that you can fight in to hold back enemy, etc. For players that enjoy the actual mass combat and siege warfare this could be interesting. For those of us that likes roaming, less so.

The idea (example) is that if you have 3 keeps, and 6 towers in a circle, each tower blocks off the circle so you have to take it, or at least break down the wall to get past it. Each keep guards the only entry to the map from Spawn, and stands in a very defensive position.

Starting equal, each server will hold their own keep, and the two nearby towers. Fighting then starts for the neighbours towers. If Server A takes Server B’s tower, then they have access to attack either Server B’s keep or their other tower, if they’re willing to let Server B have free access to ambush them from behind.

At the same time, Server C might have taken Server B’s other tower, and Server A and C clash in front of Server B’s keep. Or, Server C taken Server A’s tower on the other side of the map, forcing Server A to move back to defend their keep and retake the tower.

This creates a system with 3 pushing fronts that will move back and forward (as the population changes). People that just want action, zerging and siege warfare can jump right in and instantly find where to go. And the 3 way system creates a pull and push.

Also if you lose your keep, you’ll have a spawn isnide a “tower” of a sort, that has a crazy defensive advantage (that can only be accessed by going through the keep, think an offshot cave or valley from the keep only). That makes it very easy to retake the keep, very hard to take for the enemy. But can be taken. Then the enemy can retake from spawn super easy if there is no defenders. Basically handicap more and more the further you’re pushed back. The “Spawn Tower” should be defend-able by 3-5 people. And anyone capable of taking a tower lord should be able to take it back if no enemies.

That’s exactly what I was going for. I think it would have the potential to redefine WvW with a more directional gameplay. It could become more strategic that way because you could predict more easily where the enemy is coming from.

I think the team that made jumping puzzles and SAB is not with them anymore. It would explain why both of them have ceased to be developed.

KickzNGigglez.4958:

Xillllix.3485:

Why would you craft it if all you wanted is gold? There are more profitable legendaries to craft.

Because I still get the skins and I enjoy cosmetics

You’ve just answered your own question.
Sunrise and Twilight are not Eternity… Eternity is still the best skin in the game with Bifrost. Keep the skin.

Look at Incinerator, the legenday doesn’t even have an aura effect, it’s still a pretty nice one to have none the less even if it really needs to be improved.

Lews.8146:

Any news on when the mac client is going into public beta? I’m starting to get anxious waiting, super excited thinking about having a native client that lets me play at anything better than “Best Performance”. Any information you guys have for us would be awesome, keep us in the loop.

When the game was first released the mac client would work for me at over 30 fps on an older computer in 1440p with most of the settings high besides shadows.

Today I barely get over 20 fps with everything set to low in 1080p on a way better computer. Since 2014 the Mac version has suffered from systematic performance decrease that are somehow tied to the UI code and HoT.

Why would you craft it if all you wanted is gold? There are more profitable legendaries to craft.

WvW is going way better than it was 3 months ago. It’s far from dying, it’s even improving but there are still much improvements to be made.

They need to reconcile EotM with WvW, add a 3rd BL map, merge servers, change the scoring system to be dynamic, rebalance the skills and conditions for WvW in favour of smaller group, nerf arrow cart damage, etc.

Lots of work to be done but none the less, you can still have some good times there, fights are just much less strategic with the current balance.

Oh Yeah, and then you can take the middle part and sell it separately…

Like make a King of the Hill smaller-WvW map with it for fight guilds.

If you ask anyone on the planet to draw the picture of a donut they will undoubtedly draw a circle first and follow with another circle in the middle representing the “hole”.
Nobody would ever question the idea of having nothing in the middle of a pastry now that the donut exist. The empty middle has become indissociable from the concept, even if some people make some donuts without holes you can’t help but wonder: Are these really donuts?

Then we come to the new Desert Borderland map. The map has had significant improvements over the last months.
It is pretty good and all, but…
… There is a big hole in the middle and it doesn’t make the rest of it seem better!

The middle of the map should be more important, but that doesn’t mean we need more events, to the contrary.

Proposition:
Make a true donut shaped map, fill the entire central area with deadly lava or a bottomless pit, and have people going around only from the sides. This will shrink the map size, something that can only help bring fights closer together. It will also be interesting from a gameplay perspective. This is an example of doing more with less.

You can still play the older maps if DBL is too complicated for you.
Even in T1 last night all the maps were accessible so there is really no reason to complain.

Jana.6831:

Alright: I stopped caring about the polls altogether after the BL poll with no option. So, anet, if you ask yourself why people are still unhappy with the DBLs although the second poll said they should come back: there’s the likely answer.

It’s still not a perfect map but they’ve made improvements to it. I’m more happy about variety than having no variety. And we had a blast with friends playing there last night.