Guild Wars 2

GS is a nice weapon with two flaws:

- #3 should do a little bit more, even if it just applied one stack of confusion on top of the normal Aoe damage (which is very welcome since it’s not easy to get reliable and fast aoe dmg with Mesmer)
- the fact that #2’s bounce only works at midrange and closer is counterproductive to the concept of the weapon. I can choose between doing less dmg with skill #1 and maximizing my bounces (which is fun!) or I can stay at range, but then skill #2 is rather bad.

leman.7682:

Give each profession few minutes (fair share!) so that devs can elaborate on how they designed the profession, how they see it now and where are they taking it in the near future (strongest spots, weakest spots, weapon sets, etc.)

Would love to see that happen.

Somehow I still wish public test servers would be a thing. I don’t quite get why there are none. It has done Blizzard very good and I think players would be a lot less anxious if they sort of knew where gameplay is heading. Plus you can’t have too many testers.

I always cringe a bit when I read the words “Warrior” and “lacking mobility” in the same sentence. I agree, however, that probably not all dash-like movement skills should be cut in half by snares, because it can shut down the mobility of certain builds and professions pretty hard. Ironically, many of the movement skills affected by snares are supposed to be escape skills (like the Staff Elementalist’s Fire attunement #4, which is the only weapon based escape skill Staff Eles have).

If the DE scaling is at max then the Champions will oneshot people left and right, which isn’t fun (especially if you lose 25 luck stacks). They also take very long to kill, as mentioned. Aside from that I like the new system much much better than the old.

In relation to that: Plinx endboss in its current form is the most annoying and random/bugged fight on the whole map and I see more and more people just skipping it.

I would argue that even when farming these events hardcore with multiple toons you won’t make more gold than spending the same amount of time in Cursed Shore farming tunnel.

I farmed the tunnel in Orr today, including Jofast camp. Overall I’m very pleased with the new combination of mobs. Farming is now way more challenging and I get more loot than before, because mob waves do not die instantly anymore.

What bothered me a bit was the fact that I didn’t get any credit for camp defense events twice after coming late to the event, but still doing damage to mobs for roughly a minute. Usually I already get Bronze medal in events as soon as I’m contributing to killing one or two mobs.

Lysico.4906:

For Wpvp I mean..

something like 20/25/20/0/5 idea?’

Go with knights and valk gear..

IMO you absolutely need the Bounce trait or your Staff will do super low damage, which is the big problem, because it basically forces you 20p into two trees just to make one weapon good in PvP (CD reduction talent is a must IMO since 5sec Phase Retreat = awesomest).
I give up GS specialization trait, because GS still kinda works without it, but Staff doesn’t work at all without the aforementioned 20p in Chaos and Illusions. Really wish they would make the Bounce trait a Tier 1 trait.

Good to hear that this is on your list. You should consider looking at the floating combat text as well IMO. For instance, I’d really like to see more clearly when, and most importantly which, conditions affect me. Also, maybe I’m a slow reader, but I think the combat text disappears a tiny bit too quickly to easily register incoming damage when attention is elsewhere.

I don’t understand why people keep saying Warrior has no “viable” condition removal. Somehow I think this comes from players who assume they can stand in the front line all day, swinging away. Of course more conditions will pile up on you than you will ever be able to remove if you are first in line and stay there. Warrior also has fantastic mobility period and does the most damage in the game BY FAR. Ele on the other hand has one build with extreme synergy that manages to get almost every boon in the game almost all the time, which is of course broken and will be toned down. Aside from that the Elementalist is a pretty weak profession that needs WAY more improvements than Warrior.

Random sidenote: the coolest mentor, and the only one I really missed “leaving”, is Forgal. I laughed out loud several times through his dialogue lines. The Whispers Charr guy was OK, and I hated every second with my Priory Sylvari mentor, because she acts like she’s on drugs.
IMO Trahearne is disliked mostly because he is a very shallow character. There are no surprises when he talks. He also keeps on saying the same lines over and over, which makes him annoying. What would have made the story with Trahearne a lot more interesting would have been if he had led the pact into a preliminary disaster. The resulting tension and confrontations between him and the pact, the player character and the pact, the player character and Trahearne, maybe even Trahearne and Mother Tree, would have given plenty of opportunities for interesting story telling and decision making for players.

P.S: Whatever you do in following episodes of Personal Story, don’t make Trahearne a Risen…

I think what ties into content potentially feeling hollow is the fact that rewards in general are area-unspecific. It’s actually the opposite to what the direction of the game is concerning the “Living Story” and seasonal events stuff. Colin the Handsome said numerous times in interviews that Anet wants these events to feel unique and players should have something cool to remember after participating in them. Part of that uniqueness is created by unique rewards. The normal content in GW2 needs to scale, however, so it’s tricky to make unique rewards that give places more personality and distinctiveness…

I’m on my way to my 6th lv80 and IMO a Greatsword Guardian is by far the easiest and fastest profession to level. You can pull as many mobs as possible all the time and faceroll them without dying thanks to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Justice_is_Blind and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Renewed_Justice .
Thief with Shortbow is awesome, but you aren’t always able to pull a bunch of mobs and it’s easy to die if you don’t pay attention. Warrior is fast, too, and doesn’t die quickly.

Forewarned is Forearmed: Undead thingie attacks Risen Shark when I enter room, I kill both, nothing happens afterwards. Had to reset mission.

A Light in the Darkness: Skipping mobs and running straight to the camp makes mission stuck. Had to reset.

google.3709:

Necro have Dark fields
Mesmer: Ethereal
Ele: Frost Fields
Ranger: Poison field
Guardian: Light Field

why not have a class field for engi ?

Oil Field: Enemies have a 50% chance to slip ( knock down )
Combos:

-Projectile finisher: Projectiles have a 20% chance to have 1 additional bounce
-leap finisher : Cover yourself in oil, 50% chance to evade attacks
-Blast finisher: Creates an explosion damaging nearby foes.

I like your ideas for Projectile and Leap Finishers, BUT I’d rather see an AoE Burn from a Blast Finisher. This would be a fun field for sure!

What makes Conjures impractical is mostly the activation delay. If they used the same cooldown as attunement swaps, that would help as well, because players wouldn’t feel “stuck” in the Conjure as much.

Surprisignly nobody mentioned Hammer yet.
Whatever weapon you choose, I’d suggest killing the range guys first while kiting the rest. A form of condition removal seems to be necessary, too.

I like using Staff but only when I’m lazy. If it’s really packed then you have to go D/D with Arcane Wave. Fiery GS is also very good, and sometimes the Frost Bow.

It would be all good if mobs gave proper tells you could react to as a melee before doing something dangerous or lethal, but most of the time that’s not the case. I get downed or randomly take huge amounts of damage on my Thief all the time in dungeons and it’s not due to lazyness or not knowing where my dodge button is. It just happens, a lot. Maybe players who have run a particular dungeon 50 times can manage to read all mob patterns and be safe in melee, but a regular player very often can’t and thus would be stupid to not go ranged DPS if he or she isn’t a Warrior or a Guardian.

Long story short: If mobs had better tells before doing high damage attacks, the world would be a better place.

From looking at the video the map seems to have a lot of corners and stairs sets, so who knows how good RTL will really be.

The animation of an Asura ducking under a shield. Not only will this look good, it is also guaranteed to strike fear into our enemies!

kostbabis.8791:

Apparently anet think esports start from the hardcore side of things when in reality its the other way around…

Definitely an interesting way of putting it.
Some of the problems of high level tPvP teams seem just laughable in comparison to gamebreaking problems that affect every other PvPer all the time, like: too much burst in the game, Downstate not fun, too much spam and not enough tactical options, bad targeting system, zoning and positional play barely possible, etc…

mjharrison.3209:

Med.6150:

- Downed state being more important than anything else in terms of fighting. Why is this acceptable?

Or why it’s a good idea to suspend the flow of combat to play some 4-skill mini-game that follows a completely different set of rules than the main combat.

Not to mention how DS is the root cause of so many of the games problems and is definitely contributing to ppl not wanting to sPVP at all…

DS is such a big barrier to entry to PVP as no other games have it and I really think the impact of DS and whether it is a net positive for the game and PVP ought to be at least discussed.

Amen. The funny thing is that the most common way to deal with DS is circumventing it: stealth/quickness/stability/invulnerability executing, damage over time fields, max range DPS… people do anything to not having to deal with their opponent’s DS skills.
Some fights last 5 seconds, then it takes three times that amount of time to finally kill the guy in DS and you lose 50% of your life if it’s a Thief. 1v2? Forget it. I’m not telling news here, these are problems that existed from day 1 on and have been voiced over and over.

Watched the whole thing and I’m happy the discussion was so open. It’s actually the most sincere I’ve ever seen game devs talk about what’s going on, not the usual marketing phrases at all. (I just hope Jon #1 didn’t make Jon #2 sick :p . Get well soon!).
If I was interested in team PvP I’d probably be optimistic right now, but being more of a solo and WvW guy I still get the feeling that every other form of PvP besides sPvP/tPvP has little priority balance-wise.

Whatever you do, try to ask questions that 1) don’t exclusively revolve around tPvP/sPvP and organized teamplay balance, 2) haven’t been answered before or are of the kind “When do we get mounts?”.

For instance, there hasn’t been a direct question regarding the state of Downstate (pun intended) …like ever. It’s not a fun mechanic outside of organized teamplay and PvE and I wish the huge number of complaints about DS would at least be recognized and commented on for a change. Neither had we ever a question about the spammy (is that a word?) nature of combat that doesn’t emphasize tactical gameplay enough and instead promotes 1,2,3,4,5, swap, 1,2,3,4,5 gameplay too much. Another question that has never been asked is if the team is aware that zoning and kiting basically don’t exist in GW2, which is amplified by the current map design where you fight in super small areas all the time.

I really wish questions like these, that affect a much larger part of the PvP community than “just” the sPvPers (but them too, of course), weren’t ignored.

As many of you might know, strafing speed is always less than forward run speed ( http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Movement_speed ). I’m wondering why that is the case.

Personally, I feel this is quite unnecessary, especially since kiting and zoning are almost nonexistent in this game (which is a shame), thanks to dodging, an abundance of gap closers and the absence of pure melee classes. A large part of my movements in combat are done strafing and due to the aforementioned differences in run speed I feel compelled to turn my back to my opponent whenever I can, which is not a thing I would normally do, except if I wanted to avoid fighting. I feel this speed difference promotes “bad” play and makes movement enhancing skills and traits (for instance this one: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Compounding_Celerity ) a lot worse.

Is the Orr zones re-polish complete or more of an ongoing thing? I’m asking because I’d like to know if it’s still relevant to give feedback to these zones.
For instance, some smaller things I’ve noticed are a blocked Ancient Wood spawn at the bottom of the stairs towards Arah dungeon (only if the DE is active with the crashed zeppelin) and an extremely short delay between red target circle and shots hitting from Risen catapults in the Eastern Colonnade event in Malchor’s Leap (if it’s overrun by Risen). Also, the Risen Abomination at the end of the Plinx chain has a new and bugged charge move, where he will charge off a mile away and thus reset. He also does this move way too fast so that it’s barely possible to react to it once the event becomes crowded and spell effects clog the screen.

Edit: Another not so cool thing I came across: Malchor’s Leap, Valley of Lyss skill point. If the statue around there is active, then the skill point will be guarded by a veteran Ember AND a veteran abomination, two of the toughest veterans in the game, making it essentially impossible to get this skill point solo for as long as both vets are there.

From my experience, being in T1 means you have: an above average participation rate of players around the clock, a bunch of decent commanders, smaller well organized guild groups who can operate with success away from the main zerg.

P.S.: Thanks for the flowers btw, I play on Kodash

Actually, jumping while using a skill does help to prevent “obstructed”, at least in certain cases. Anyway, from experience I’d say that if you can see >50% of someone you will likely hit him/her, BUT sometimes you will get “obstructed” message randomly when your target is not really obstructed (seems to happen often in WvW).

There are MMO forums out there which are much more toxic. It’s quite OK here most of the time :p

Something that extremely disturbs me, however, is the lack of the most basic grammar skills in almost every thread. It seems that over the last year or so many English speakers lost the ability to differentiate between there/they’re/their, to/too, your/you’re, then/than completely, and it’s getting worse by the day.

AMra.9687:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Yes, those are today’s achievements. I’m not sure why the event veteran wouldn’t count… It had the veteran frame around its portrait, right?

I did my veteran slaying in Cursed Shore and the noticed that the veterans that were part of DE (the vet risen abom at the end of Plinx for one) did not count, every free roaming vet did however

The ending of Plinx chain has a Champion, not a Veteran.

I did my vets in Orr and some of them were part of events, every vet counted for my daily.

This skill is awesome now. More versatility, more combo, more dmg, more speed… If they fix every problem skill we have like that then we’re gonna be in good shape.

I clicked this thread in hopes of discovering hidden buffs to control skills, yet it was in vain

Network error disconnects with code 5:11:3:157:101 whenever I try to log into one of my chars that’s parked in Heart of the Mists. Now also infrequent login errors with the launcher… happens since yesterday (Friday), playing in Germany on Kodash

If sPvP didn’t revolve around fighting inside kitchen-sized circles all day, then PvP balance might look a bit different. Only making maps full of narrow spaces is a terrible idea, just look at how fun the Snowball Mayhem map was in comparison.

I don’t think this will be toned down in any way. The burst you get isn’t all that spectacular, it’s decent which is OK, plus you narrow down your versatility a lot if you go for the “best” discharge toolbelt skills.

I played Mage in WoW and no other class I tried in WoW came close to it in PvP. I love zoning and having many options and great mobility and a high skill ceiling. I was hoping the Ele in GW2 would be similar, but alas it’s not. Maybe some day…

If you spec into Earth and go for condition damage/duration, then Earth #1 becomes really strong. Too bad Scepter condition builds are also extremely boring besides being good DPS since all you do is sit in Earth, autoattack and use crit signet for burn.

Scepter is IMO not a good WvW weapon, it’s more a sPvP weapon because of the limited aoe capabilities and the combo character (if you want to set up Dragon’s Tooth more often). I gave up on my “super” Dragon’s Tooth build in PvP, because there’s ALWAYS something going on that prevents the burst combo, and it’s not even really worth it because there are enough builds out there that burst for more than enough across numerous professions, and that’s certainly not what this game needs more of.

Kardiamond.6952:

Each time I try another build, I feel gimped. What If I can do low damage with more survivality, when I can one shot people.

TL;DR : Buff our weak build, and balance our 100 nades build.

What’s your opinion about it?

You pretty much gave the definition of what “overpowered” means right there. It’s not good if something is a way better choice than all the other potential options, and it’s bad for the game if it has to do with oneshotting. I’m always confused when I see -insert oneshot build user- argue that these builds are balanced and of course it’s always a L2p issue… dodging that 20k instant dmg. This game is an MMORPG, not a FPS…

So now there are: Thief, Warrior, Elementalist, Mesmer (sort of) and Engineer instagib builds around, or did I miss some Ranger, Guardian and Necro technology?

I use this in the condition build I decided to go with today. I like the toolbelt skill for DPS, the AoE knockback is great. aoe dmg is pretty OK and has a wide cone + the fire field helps with downed opponents (gotta do what you can to avoid trying to stomp someone)

Happens to all professions, and it’s really detrimental to the whole feeling of combat, especially in PvP.
I also despise the similar “cooldown when out of range” mechanic. All this does is force you to stare at the UI.

There’s a ton of other stuff that’s unbalanced and much of it has to do with being able to spam multiple skills in very short periods of time paired with extreme gear choices. This is true for burst and bunker builds (like the Ele’s) alike.

What I’d like to know is, how many of these ominous power sellers/buyers are there and what is their real impact on the TP? I can’t, for example, understand how Unidentified Dye prices go over 10s, or dyes like Abyss 8g+. Runes and Sigils also keep rising and rising, and all of a sudden 250 Mithril Ores sell for way over 1g but Elder Wood logs drop to 30s/250. That’s all pretty mysterious to me.

The “work harder” part refers to anything not D/D Bunker faceroll. Staff for example is excruciating to play outside of group scenarios.
What makes the D/D bunker build so good are the millions of boons you get with speccing into cantrips, who also happen to be great defensive tools on their own. Perma Regen and lots of Might and Fury make up for the subpar damage output etc. If D/D Eles didn’t have this abundance of boons then they would just be pressing a lot of extra buttons to achieve what other classes can achieve with much less APM. With the boon masses however it’s kind of ridiculous…

IMO both Ele and Engi could use some workflow improvements. Both professions seem to have at least a few competitive ways of being played, but spread out over more button presses than other professions, thanks to kits, attunements, Conjures, tool belt skills etc..

bahamut.3204:

Xolo.3580:

4. Nerf thief stealth and bring spvp for thief nerfs to wvw.

What most of us are waiting for. They got that blink skill already. Stealth skills with low cooldowns are too much. It’s easy to keep alive while killing people with condition spam. Either they lower the duration of invi state or increase the cooldown of stealth skills.

I never wrote this anywhere. Please don’t put my name over quotes that are not mine.

Some good suggestions here already. I like the autoloot suggestion; corpse spying (dead enemy lying around at vital spot on the map to check troop movements) really is a bit odd, too.
The idea of a temporary waypoint is really cool, because oftentimes you do have to run for minutes to get to a battle, so players tend to zerg more to avoid that fate. This would have to be balanced carefully however: you shouldn’t be able to create a WP right next to an enemy keep or flood the map with them. Maybe make it a one-time consumable that only respawns (while the old despawns) once an hour and that you have to fight for? Sound like a good objective for smaller groups

My Engineer is lv62 and while I agree that the profession is lacking DPS while leveling, I know from WvW experiences with my other lv80s that condition Engis do tons of dmg for example. I’m sure there are a few other builds that aren’t too bad, but maybe there are fewer of them than for other professions…

cesmode.4257:

Hey there,

I have two gripes, however:
1. Clones die way too easily. This is obvious and by design. Using the staff and pumping out clones that are throwing Winds of Chaos, I wish the mobs would focus on me, not my clones. However, they seem to still smack my clones first, even if I put a few hits on the mob before making the clone. Any advice here?

2. The AOE potential is inexistant it seems. Its terrible. The mobs need to be clumped to smack them all with mind wreck. I dont want the build to be centered aruond shattering… Chaos Storm does crap damage it seems. Any idea to increase my aoe?

3.In general, I feel that my character is a bit weak and it does take a little while to kill some mobs. I know I am stacked full condition, but shouldnt the high condition damage make up for any lack of pwoer/crit?

1. Get dat Signet of Illusions. Makes all the difference between illusions being oneshot and surviving.

2a. Get dat Greatsword and/or Sword/Focus.

2b. Naturally, conditions take a bit to apply their full effect. For more direct dmg I suggest Greatsword + Sword/Focus or Sword/Pistol

I’m wondering what everyone thinks could be easy to do improvements and fixes for a better WvW experience. Please note 3 and try to be brief so the feedback is easier to digest for dev eyes.
(Culling doesn’t count, since it’s not an easy fix and being worked on anyway)

1) Name plates of dead players greyed out for much better overview.
Seriously, how much spamming of skills on nothing would that avoid? It would also likely improve frame rates for everyone.

2) Profession symbols for enemy players.
Small and easy change for big impact on overview. This would make planning for an impending engagement so much more doable.

3) More stuff to do for smaller groups.
Might not be an “easy” fix, but I feel that steamrolling around with a 50 man zerg is not the most interesting form of PvP.

Jayne.9251:

I’m wondering if its not devs playing on the busiest WvW maps to test out fixes/research culling.

I wonder how that would go^^: “…yep, didn’t see them… again……… now what killed me… oh those 50 guys over there….good…” writes note on notepad

I should have made a bet on someone creating a thread with this topic. It’s Wintersday in real life guys, many people working at Anet will have time off for the holidays.