Guild Wars 2

Your kinda beating a dead horse by now. The original gw2 is now free to play. The only reason there are restrictions is to prevent botting which many players, including myself don’t want in the game. When the next expansion comes out, you will probably get HoT free with purchase of the next expansion. This is simply due to devaluation. The reason there was an uproar is frankly because many people in the community cannot understand these concepts and therefore acted like self entitled brats.

Marko.2906:

Nah it’s not that i want to rush it to max it out, cuz i really don’t care about that. I just want the masteries to unlock the hot weapons. only thing i am missing to become full ascendend.

Even if you don’t want to max everything, I would still give the same recommendations. However, providing additional information on what line you want to work on and what you mean by “best” way could also be beneficial for helping readers understand what exactly you want. For example, if you want HoT legendaries than the track for that is actually under Central Tyria rather than Heart of Magumma. This would mean that some of the advice others gave you about doing HoT events like auroric basin or the new living world stuff would not count towards experience for that track. You would have to do “central tyria” stuff.
Perhaps the fastest way to get experience for central tyria would be to equip an experience booster, go into the dungeon Citadel of Flames path 1 in the brazier room with a bunch of people, and just kill mobs that continuously spon until you have the masteries done that you want. The reason this is fast is not that each mob provides a lot of experience, but because there is no down time. If you do events like silver wastes instead, you have to spend time clearing your inventory and waiting for a new event. People were doing this when masteries first came out. However, I would not personally recommend it and only call it the ‘fastest’ not the ‘best’ for multiple reasons, such as: you gain no gold for doing it, many people get burned out, and you don’t really accomplish anything else in the game by doing it.
Usually all meta events provide a lot of experience and gold. However, there is downtime between events, so you want to switch between maps and events if you want both the most gold and experience. Also, once again, equip an experience booster if you have them. Also, as mentioned, the leather farm is probably very fast for experience (faster than events). However, I personally find it boring as you are just killing mobs (but maybe you are different), and I really don’t know how the gold per hour it is now that the leather prices are starting to drop. However, its still prob not too bad.
I don’t really know what HoT weapons you are talking about, so I can’t really comment on that. However, if you are interested in getting ascended weapons and working on central tyria masteries at the same time, then I would also recommend fractals. It won’t be in any way the fastest, unless you want to do fractal progression anyway (because then you hit two birds with one stone). However, you alway have the chance of an ascended armor or weapon crate dropping for you in fractals.

Cyndercat.5120:

Dude asked for advice not for a lecture. If he wants to only play efficiently and ends up getting bored thats his loss and his choice.

Um, . . . pretty sure I was giving advice. Of course your always free to make your own decisions. The op also didn’t say he wanted the most efficient way, they just said the best way. Advice is there to provide recommendation, not to just say “do whatever you want, the decision is yours.” If a kid comes up to me for advice if he should have an apple or Cocaine for breakfast, I’m not gona just simply tell them that the choice and consequences are yours and leave it at that. I’m going to explain why many people in the past who had Cocaine for breakfast did not ultimately end up as happy campers down the road.

what is the best way / even chain to farm xp for mastery point nowaday?
The best way to farm xp for mastery points nowadays is to do the event chain that you most enjoy. Better yet, you probably want to do a variety of event chains so one doesn’t wear you out. From my experience of seeing complaints on the forums, this is what happened the most. People tried to do one event chain or tried to get experience as fast as they could to max their masteries. This caused them to go crazy and hate the game.

Your goal should be to have fun, not to max your character as fast as possible. This isn’t WoW and its called horizontal progression instead of vertical progression for a reason. Most of the masteries are not needed. The only really important ones are bouncing mushrooms, gliding, and updrafts (in gliding). Try completing achievements, story missions, and collecting armor, runes and other rewards that you want in the game. The experience will just come along with it. Enjoy yourself

Ya, maybe you can propose some of these traits for another elite. However, for replacing, you didn’t list what traits in particular you want taken down. I personally find most of the traits useful in some shape or form. For example, even though that fall trait isn’t useful to you or isn’t useful in pvp, there are some people who use it to portal people in the twisted castle in Stronghold of the Faithful. The only big trait gripe I have is “Master of Manipulation”, and that is because the “mirror” effect gained from it is pretty much detrimental or not beneficial with half of the six manipulation skills in the game: mirror, blink, and mass invisibility.

Me Games Ma pretty much summed it up. Your build seems like it is pretty much just a downgraded version of Minstrel tank.
https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Cleric/Minstrel_Tank

The reason for minstrel and cleric pieces (besides obviously boon duration) is so you have as much healing power as possible for healing allies. Could you go into more detail about why you take issues with the current minstrel build? This might help us better understand the direction you are trying to take with your build. At the moment, I’m not really seeing any cracks in it for your criterial of healing, being self sufficient, 100% boon duration, and doesn’t cause redundancies in the meta.

Depends what your doing in PvE. Are you raiding? Are you doing fractals? Are you doing open world bosses or doing content solo?

Distortion can be used to save your life if you know an attack will down you and for whatever reason you have no blocks or dodges left. Its also useful in raids for certain mechanics such as protecting your teammates from green blasts in vale guardian or soaking up Slothasor’s shake attack. However, as this shatters your phantasms, its usually best to only use this as a last resort in most cases.

Diversion can be used for very quick breaker bars. However, once again, it uses up your phantasms and mes usually has a ton of access to cc even without diversion, like tides of time, gravity well, etc. However, it may be super quick or sometimes in open world you use up all your skills and the breaker bar still isn’t down. You then see that even though there is a huge mob attacking that there is not a single other person who will use a skill to finish off the breaker bar, so you just use diversion to finish it off out of frustration cause for some reason out of all the people there, you are somehow the only one who can finish it off.

Cry of frustration isn’t generally used except to supplement some extra damage if a mind wrack didn’t finish something off or just spamming for alacrity when you have no illusions up to help with cool downs (well, all shatters can be used for alacrity when traited).

Mindwrack is generally only used to finish off enemies (and sometimes for alacrity spam if you have no illusions). Therefore, this really requires experience. Overtime, you will gradually gain the intuition of when it is the right time to use it for what enemies since all enemies have different health. It is actually surprising how many mesmers read guides that say something like “avoid shattering or never shatter in pve”. They then summon phantasms and use auto attacks to finish off an enemy when a mind wrack shatter could have got the job done in half the time.

Continuum Split really requires a whole guide on its own, so I won’t talk about it a lot here. However, its generally used with your elite (gravity well, time warp, and sometimes moa), along with tides of time, signet of inspiration, well of action, and well of recall to pump out quickness to other people. However, there may be situation were you need to put out multiple feedbacks as well. Continuum split can also be used on the skill mimic. This tactic can then be used either to cast multiple portals (used before setting the exit portal) or to use 3 blinks in a row.

GS: Great sword normally isn’t used in fractal, dungeons, or raids because it severely lacks sustain damage. However, perhaps its only strong suit is bursting. I have a build for some open world stuff that I frequently use that uses gs and domination, illusions, chronomancer. Some of the key traits are imagined burden, persistence of memory, master of misdirection, and flow of time. These traits all work together to reduce your shatter cool downs and gs cool downs to make them fly by. With this build you want to use phantasmal berserker and mirror blade followed by mind wrack, cry of frustration, and then mind stab. This is mostly for taging and finishing “low health” enemies in open world meta events that are getting bursted down pretty quickly. After you do this rotation, the enemy (or group of enemies) should be dead and you quickly move on to tag the next one. It is also recommended to take gravity well so that you can group enemies together for mind wrack to damage the whole group. Depending on the circumstances and how much health is left, you can also finish this off by swapping to sword shield to pump quickness to allies so that the enemy is finished off more quickly if it is one in the event with more health. You can then still use this build for the “main” open world boss. However, your main job then switches from bursting to a more direct focus on pumping out quickness. For example, phantasmal berserker, mirror blade, continuum split/swap weapons, time warp, tides of time, signet of inspiration, well of action, well of recall, continuum shift, time warp, tides of time, signet of inspiration, well of action, well of recall, summon multiple iavengers, and then auto attack with sword.

K THEN.5162:

OriOri.8724:

@K THEN You’d be right if the intention of this change was to buff GS, but that wasn’t the intention of the change. The change was, or so we were told, supposed to give the mesmer more sustained pressure. And it still fails miserably at that

o.O much like scepter on the elementalist I always thought the design philosophy for gs was to be an inconsistent burst weapon. If we want sustain damage then go condi…then again this change was probably made more for pve than pvp

“Also in this update, we are implementing initial attacks on several phantasm skills, allowing the mesmer to deliver a primary attack in addition to the summon in order to provide a bit more constant pressure on your targets.”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-February-22-2017

They definitely said it was for more constant pressure/sustain (also to make all phantasm summoning skills have similar attack affects). However, I definitely don’t believe this for a second. More than likely its so we can’t cast phantasms in stealth.

Overall, it definitely felt like a nerf to me. Its not going to be that useful in pve either as vulnerability is easy to apply and you still get the increased cast time that makes it feel more clunky. Getting out of stealth is already a big enough nerf for the vulnerability cast. Why can’t they decrease the cast time?

Just got the idea of the phantasmal berserker skill to knock down or stun your target rather that inflicting vulnerability. Aa, the idea makes me drool. Prob won’t happen. Maybe a daze? Please, purty please
Welp, I can always dream.

As they said PvE only, I actually expected it not to affect WvW. I also don’t necessarily think it should as I believe power block and mental anguish are fairly well balanced and imagined burden, if anything, is the weakest trait, even with increased cripple on the phantasmal berserker skill.

We also have to remember that there is a difference between “meta” and “viable”. If burn guardian, condi war, condi thief, and mallyx rev are viable, while at the same time, the old “power” builds of those classes are viable, then Anet deserves a round of applause. The same could be said about power reaper and mesmer compared to condi. Build variety is always welcome and helps the game.

My Opinions
Overall: Meta builds, pulsing boons, passive defense, and heals were nerfed. However, at the same time, bursting sigils were removed from the game. All this needed to happen. Many of the meta builds were way ahead in efficiency and viability compared to other builds in the game. However, many were also meta because they relied on pulsing boons and passive defensive skills. Many believed this was a problem and led to more unskilled game play then before. All the class best meta builds may have been balanced against each other. However, it was a “fake” balance that still contained many problems hidden underneath the surface. We also have to be aware that removing many of the bursting sigils makes condition clearing sigils look far more appealing. Although there are far fewer choices, the choices left are far better balanced (except perhaps ruthlessness and absorption which should be tuned down).

I personally don’t see burn guardian or condi thief becoming meta as those builds each have their problems. I think there is more experimentation now than anything and we should wait to see what happens. I do however, think that condi warrior is a possibility. However, I also believe that this is ok as long as its not way ahead of the other classes. After all, berserkers were given torch in their elite specs anyway. Condi rev is also a very strong possibility/probability. If condi rev seems too powerful than they should tune it down in the “small” patch before the season begins. However, I also think they should boost power rev a little.

Necro: They boosted dagger dark path, eh not much but somthing. Necro changes were the most confusing to me. I have mixed feelings about plague sending as I did think it was a nice counter to condis. However, I do greatly sympathize with you. They really do need to work on greatsword. It is an underused weapon compared to what it should be. There needs to be some buffs with the weapon design. I am actually surprise this wasn’t covered this patch. Just try to keep your head up, hope they buff it soon, and be aware that condi clearing sigils are now a viable choice. Its not much, but they help a little if used right. Perhaps they should change one of the greatsword skills with a longer cool down to send one condition on you to your foe. However, other changes should be made as well.

Run Forest, Ruuuun! If an actual thief is targeted on you, your best option is kiting. Try to get to teammates so they can help you out. Then burst them when they aren’t expecting it/targeted on you so that your in charge. Distortion, blurred frenzy, and blink to loose line of sight are your friends.

An example of tricking a thief by kiting is funning towards the center at Foefire. However, right before you jump off, summon a clone with illusionary leap. Then, swap when you jump off so that the thief follows your clone to the bottom of middle while your on top. However, this is just an example. There are other ways. Sometimes, the key is just to simply trick or mind kitten with them. This is also one of the reasons I find stealth useful with thieves. If your running gs, you can also use illusionary wave to interrupt their stealthing. This can really throw them off.

Our guild hall feels like home due the the work to build it up and decorate

The royal terrace feels like home due to always returning there at the end of the day to finish up and do buisness.

Eir’s Homestead/instance feels the most like an actual house/home to me due to Eir guiding and mentoring me in guild wars 2 since the beginning. In the game, it felt like she was the only family I had. I wish I could move my home instance there.

Zodryn.4216:

You realize skill splitting is exactly what we’ve been asking for for ages? Previously they tried to balance across every mode and it’s just not realistic. Yes splitting means you need to know the differences between modes, bit that’s a small price to pay for better balance.

+111111111

I think Anet clearly knows that many people in the population don’t want power creep. There were a lot of complaints about the elite specs not being balanced with the core specs. I believe it is most likely that the new elite specs will be balanced closely with the old ones-only having different specialties or play styles. Now, of course there will still be nerfs and balance issues when they first come out, but that is just because they would be nearly impossible to balance perfectly without seeing them in action first.

1. Different voice overs could happen. This doesn’t bother me, so I would personally rather have the money for the new voice actors spent elsewhere. However, I could also see how other people would enjoy a new voice.

2. Highly, Highly unlikely. There have been many posts created explaining why this would be nearly impossible to do or require about a whole expansions worth time and resources to accomplish. For example, they would have to go back and modify every single piece of armor present in the game to make it work with the new race. They would also have to do new voice acting for every sing story from living world season 2 up to the present. There are other issues as well. Right now, the best thing for them to do is to just add more infinite combat tonics. Yes, many would complain when they see a Tengu infinite combat tonic thinking a new Tengu race will never come. However, they just need to rip the bandaid off and get in done and over with. The more infinite combat tonics, the better. It would also help if they added a lot more lore with the other races to make people feel better, especially about the Tengu.

3. These quality of life items are in the gem store right now. The Watchwork Mining Pick has infinite uses and gives you a chance at watchwork sprockets. Therefore, it is likely these items will remain in the gem store. If they added them to the game, it would devalue other player’s purchases, leading to complaining. Besides, you can always spend in game gold to buy gems to get the infinite harvesting tools already.

4. More racial skills would also be a possibility. However, once again, I would personally rather see the recourses used elsewhere, but could see how others would enjoy it. The problem for me is the devs have it planned that every racial skill is sub par to the class elite skills. This is so players don’t feel obligated to play a specific race just for that skill. Therefore, if the new racial skills added to the game are not as good as the class elite skills, then I would have no reason to use them.

5. Also a possibility. However, if they are added, don’t be surprised if gw2 takes a totally different approach on them then other games have. Gw2 is known for its innovative and unique approaches to its game.

6. I think elite specializations are suppose to be gw2 response to duel classing. We will most certainly get new elite specializations in the next expansion.

While I don’t like that the phantasmal berserker skill will reveal you now, I can see why they did it. Reveal aside, I actually like that the skill applies vulnerability on enemies, as someone has mentioned already, goes great with domination. However, what I don’t like is the long animation. It just feels out of place and seems like it ruins the flow.

Ya, my guess is the next elite will allow your phantasms to benefit from boons.
There is also the slight possibility of a stealth skill or trait and they are just preparing for it so that you can’t cast phantasms in stealth.

It looked to me that they just finally brought down some of the best meta builds in the game of every class to be more in line with alternative builds and play styles. This just opens the door to more viable build diversity. There was also a lot of complaining earlier when the expansion first hit that the elites weren’t in line with the other trait lines. I honestly think they are just finally making the changes that many would have hoped would have happened a long time ago. I expect the new elite specializations to be more in line with the current/nerfed HoT elite specs since if they aren’t, based on what I read in the forums since the expansion, there will be a lot of upset people.

Curunen.8729:

I must say I do like the offhand sword 5 animation now and it seems like a fun weapon to use.

Haven’t looked at the animation yet though. I need to try it out.

I think improved alacrity will probably take over. However, I would keep your shield. Tides of time is still going to help you land shatters and the shield has a channeled block rather than the single black of Illusionary riposte. Plus, the last skill just summons a phantasm and really doesn’t have any utility. There is really no reason to take OH sword.

I …I ….. I don’t know anymore. I was hoping it was just an odd explanation for the change in the update notes. But hey, they . . . . . . tried? Or wait, maybe a dev is just trying to mess with us for payback.

Xaylin.1860:

Xstein.2187:

The big problems are the traits “Illusionary Retribution” and “Maim the Disillusioned”.

This is only true for condi Mesmer. Every Mesmer can spam Shatters to gain additional effects like Boons, heals, cleanses and Alacrity, though. It still remains an issue.

Regarding condi Shatter Mesmers I still think tying those traits to F2 and making it more bursty and more frequent like F1 would help balancing the class overall. However, this would, of course, alter the playstyle quite significantly.

Doam.8305:

Ya know like the clone death we used to have before they removed it and created all these problems.

Did Ithilwen put a spell on you?

‘On death’ traits are very debatable. I personally don’t like them. However, I’d argue removing them certainly didn’t cause any issues the class didn’t have to begin with.

Ya, I have to agree with you. I am also very glad that they nerfed shatter spam through IR while at the same time, nerfing all the pulsating boons and sustain of all the other classes in the game. Not sure how things will turn out though. There is a lot of talk about more condi becoming meta after this patch, but only time will tell.

Obviously CP won’t become base line anymore. However, most of us probably didn’t think it ever would. I mean, if the devs didn’t CP baseline instead of a trait when HoT originally came out, then they wouldn’t do it now, since the community would give the idea even more hate. The best solution now is just for there to add more traits like CP in future elite specs, but not as much illusion uptime as there was before this patch.

Phantasms don’t benefit from might, but don’t they scale with your power, meaning that if you gain might, your phantasms still become more powerful since might gives you power? Maybe the skill change was meant to work this way and they just said your swordsman gained might to make it more understandable to others? Idk

Khisanth.2948:

I am somewhat glad that the legendary armors suck, saves me from ever having to consider making them. Still kinda want the light shoes though….

Xstein.2187:

I also highly recommend watching the latest guild chat before complaining. They did try to keep with heavy, medium, light traditions because they believe all those class types should have a distinct look to them on glance. They explain that they did try to bring down the light armor to make it look more “clothy”. This is actually one of the reasons it took them so long. After they made legendary armor the first time, they believed that medium looked to much like heavy armor and light looked to much like medium armor. So, they basically redid it. And of course, I can’t speak for everyone, but I love the “combat” feel of the legendary light armor. This is also one of the reasons I loved the vigil light armor before the legendary armor. When you wore it, it made you look like you were wearing it for battle and not just to make yourself look “pretty” and “fashionable”. My goodness, your dressing to kill, not to go to the ball.

Really? This is what you call “battlefield appropriate”? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Perfected_Envoy_armor_(light)_human_female_front.jpg

I’m well aware of what the armor looks like.

To many people, its all about aesthetics and what feeling those aesthetics give you, while reality is a totally different subject. In reality, the combat active heavy legendary armor would absolutely 100% not be battlefield appropriate either because it has many spikes on it. In reality, you want smooth armor where blades would just glance off. This would be true of medium and light armor as well. If this was reality, all armor in this game would look pretty much the same, like the smooth armor produced in the middle ages.

However, when you get to mmos, video games, and movies. The important thing to many people isn’t how well the armor would act in reality, but what feeling that armor gives you because this is after all a fantasy game. Spiky armor in movies and video games gives many viewers the feeling of a dangerous, brutal warrior. Oversized great swords that would in reality be too heavy for combat give players and viewers the feeling of an exceptionally strong warrior with a weapon more dangerous than a punny, tiny sword. Lots of furs, like the shoulders release with the new living world episode, gives players the feeling of a barbarian warrior. Good for combat in reality? Of course not. But many people still love it because of the feeling it gives them. In reality, the legendary light armor would of course be bad for combat, just like almost every other piece of armor in this game. However, I am saying, when compared to other light pieces of armor in the game, it gives me a much sturdier “feeling” of combat armor than most of the other light pieces of armor, like this
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Apprentice_armor_human_female_front.jpg

Now, of course I realize that there are many people who like their characters looking like the image above. However, to me it just doesn’t work because it doesn’t give me the “feeling” of combat armor . . . at all.

I also highly recommend watching the latest guild chat before complaining. They did try to keep with heavy, medium, light traditions because they believe all those class types should have a distinct look to them on glance. They explain that they did try to bring down the light armor to make it look more “clothy”. This is actually one of the reasons it took them so long. After they made legendary armor the first time, they believed that medium looked to much like heavy armor and light looked to much like medium armor. So, they basically redid it. And of course, I can’t speak for everyone, but I love the “combat” feel of the legendary light armor. This is also one of the reasons I loved the vigil light armor before the legendary armor. When you wore it, it made you look like you were wearing it for battle and not just to make yourself look “pretty” and “fashionable”. My goodness, your dressing to kill, not to go to the ball.

Guys!!! . . . . . . No, No No!. I said it before, but ill say it again. Illusionary Reversion and Chronophantasma are NOT the problem with shatter spam. If this was the case, why don’t you see as much shatter spam in PvE like fractals and raids? In PvE, its not shatter spam. You see people use mind wrack for damage to finish off foes, distortion for protection, and diversion for breaker bars. You don’t spam your shatters because there is a certain time and place to use those shatters. Chronophantasma just lets you do this without sacrificing sooo much of your damage to use the effect.

The big problems are the traits “Illusionary Retribution” and “Maim the Disillusioned”. If your primary goal is to do damage and you have the potential to damage with all of your shatter skills, than you are going to spam them to get that damage. These traits are just incentivizing players to spam shatters, while all traits like illusionary reversion and chronophantasma are doing is covering up the mesmer’s designed flawed weakness. The only reason you didn’t see problems with these traits before HoT is because they changed how condis worked and because there was no fix to this mesmer flaw besides DE. You also don’t see shatter spam in power shatter PvP builds, even if they choose to use the skills IR and CP. However, if there was a trait that gave all your shatters power damage, than you most certainly would see shatter spam in those types of builds as well. Diversion and Distortion should stick to their intended purposes so that they are used at appropriate times and not spammed for “alternative” reasons. At MAX, Illusionary retribution and maim the disillusioned should only affect mind wrack and cry of frustration. If the chronomancer would need to be rebalanced by alternative means for PvP afterwords to be competitive, than so be it. Anet had no clue what the PvP meta build would be for chronomancer when they made HoT anyway. However, in the end, this would cut down on shatter spam afterwords. Right now in PvP, there is just too much synergy between (Illusionary Retribution + Maim), (CP and IR), and alacrity for shatters. It just makes for a big mess. It is also bad because to me it makes it seem like Anet only cares about the balance of the best “meta” builds in PvP and the above means any builds without Illusionary Retribution and Maim will not benefit from this synergy like a build that has those traits, hurting build diversity. To make things worse, not matter what Anet uses to try to patch over the mesmer’s flaws of giving up all illusions for shatters, builds with Illusionary retribution and Maim will always benefit more due to these trait’s inherent synergy with other traits like IR and CP.

But, back to the point. Based on the reasoning above, I don’t think you need to mess with IR and CP to fix shatter spam if you think this would be a problem with making CP baseline. You need to fix the other traits that make you “want” to shatter spam, the other traits that give you a benefit for shatter spamming.

Retargeting phantasms and clones is a great solution to the first problem. I also believe chronophantasm is a possible solution to the second problem. However, I don’t necessarily think it would be the best solution. First, other people would obviously greatly complain of making such a trait baseline. Mainly because I believe they share a somewhat flawed belief that CP is to blame for shatter spam. However, once again, I do believe it is a flawed belief. What I would do instead make something closer to this baseline:

Whenever a phantasm is shattered and destroyed, the phantasm skill that produced that phantasm would instantly come off cool down. Perhaps there would be an internal cool down with this baseline trait. However, testing would probably be needed to determine how long. So, if you shattered a illusionary swordsman and it was destroyed by this shatter, the trait phantasmal swordsman would automatically come off cooldown. This is what I think should happen. However, I think the odds of them implementing something like this or making CP baseline is near zero. Most likely, we will just continue to get a trait like CP, IR, or DE with every new elite specialization they come out with.

You kinda missed the point of my analogies. The pumpkin example was just to show that some things don’t have good comparisons. We could replace the pumpkin with something else like a refrigerator and say no other appliance is like a refrigerator. You could say a freezer keeps stuff cold as well. However, that not the point. Even with this very small similarity, they are still completely different. The main point is just that some things have qualities that make them hard or nearly impossible to compare to other things to the point that they shouldn’t be compared to the point of equality.

And the analogy about money made per hour was about how people performing different work for the same amount of time is not necessarily equal.
Of course you could make the same amount of money if you worked longer. However, this is exactly why I made the super bowl ring analogy. Because there are some things that don’t work this way. Time does not alway make things equal. Even if you don’t believer this, I can assure you many others do.

Once again, I don’t and never meant insights are impossible to compare because of their difficulty. They are difficult to compare because they are so much different. “Raid difficulty” is soooo much different than difficulty in other parts of the game. For example, getting high on the leaderboards in pvp is extremely, extremely difficult. There is no doubt about this. However, that STILL doesn’t make getting on the leaderboards in pvp equal to insights. From your last post, I get the vibe that you think I think raids are much more difficult than all other areas of the game and that I think no other areas of the game should get legendary armor. However, I can assure you that this is not the case at all. After all, my original post was not about how other areas of the game shouldn’t have had legendary armor. It was about how they should have put everyone on an equal footing so that there is no “fairness” issues while at the same time trying to make it so all people enjoy as much of the process as possible (It would be impossible for everyone to enjoy all of it, but at least everyone would have enjoy a portion of it). Plain out replacing insights with something else does not lead to complete fairness and sympathy has nothing to do with this fact. Your last paragraph didn’t make any sense at all compared to the quote because being jealous of what another guy has is completely different than fairness. I also now strongly feel that you are starting to use the tactic of emotional appeal, which is a logical fallacy. When I say this, I don’t mean emotions and empathy isn’t important. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t try to get someone to agree with you because of how they emotionally feel because it doesn’t change the logic or facts of the situation.

Ohoni.6057:

However, pretty much nothing in the other game types really even remotely compares to insights.

Insights are just a collectible currency. You’d just collect them through some other means. I’ll grant that there are few other aspects of the game that would be as worth one Insight per unit of time as beating a raid boss, but they could perhaps add Insight fragments or something, and combining 10, 100, or 250 of them could result in a single Insight, and they would be given out by various tasks in varying numbers. There are plenty of things in the game that are at least half as worthy as beating the weaker raid bosses.

Just to try to be a little more clear, in that statement I didn’t really mean “nothing . . even remotely compares” in terms of difficulty. I meant it just in terms of comparison. Like no other fruit even remotely compares to a pumpkin. You can try to give me fruit to make up for a pumpkin I got for halloween. You can say x amount of apples should make up for a pumpkin, but in the end a pumpkin is a pumpkin. The problem is many people believe time doesn’t always make things fair or equal. A person shouldn’t get paid the same amount per hour if they operate a toll booth vs say if they are a professional football player. There are also rewards that people think shouldn’t be tied with time. For example, many believe that even if the toll booth operator works for 20 years, they shouldn’t get a Super Bowl ring that the professional football player earned in 1 year. I know many WvW players think that if they run around with a zerg for enough time or even complete some sort of new difficult WvW achievements, than it will be a fair comparison. However, many other people don’t. This is why I think a insight replacement would break down into fighting and complaining. This “fairness” problem would not occur if the legendary armor required all 3 game types because everyone would still have to do the exact same things for the reward. However, yes it would run into the problem of potentially “forcing” people into a game type they don’t like.

Ohoni.6057:

But they would also be likely to have to play a significant amount of 2/3 modes that they don’t enjoy. Mutually assured annoyance is not the ideal solution, having everyone a path that they 100% enjoy is the superior solution.

The way I would do it is to

1. Have many ingredients necessary for the final build of the object.

2. ONE of these ingredients could only be found in each of the three modes, OR in one specific mode (like raids) that they want to highlight, but would be buried very shallowly, something that only takes a few hours to acquire. It would give incentive to TRY that mode, but would not force players to spend more than a reasonable amount of time at it if they don’t enjoy it.

3. The remaining components would be available in ALL modes. If you like to raid, there are ways to find them in raids. If you like PvE open world, you can find the bits in the open world. If you like to PvP, there are ways to earn them in PvP. If you like WvW, there are ways to earn them in WvW. You only need to get one of each, so pick the method that works best for you.

Perfectly balancing these isn’t really feasible, but they can skew the balance deliberately, so that at least a few of them are clearly easier to get in a given mode than in the others, and other items are clearly easier in the other modes, so that a player who wants to be 100% efficient would end up doing all the modes for a bit, but a player that insists on only doing one mode would still be able to do that for all but a tiny portion of the total acquisition time.

You see, I believe this would be good in theory, but in reality it would break apart if you are not very carefull. For example, referencing apharma’s post above, how are you suppose to make sure the WvW portion contains a strong enough “comparison” to raids? I suppose leaderboards were the best option I’ve seen for PvP, but WvW is even more difficult. In the end, I could just see this leading to a lot of complaining because one mode is a lot easier or faster (depending on that perticular person’s preference) than another if the modes aren’t Very closely balanced. IMO, the devs could install a “replacement” option for much of the open world portion of the legendary armor to give players the option of replacing it with a WvW or PvP reward track option instead (IMO they are similar enough). However, pretty much nothing in the other game types really even remotely compares to insights.

Addition: Just to be a little more clear, my suggestion that the armor should have required all 3 types wasn’t really to “encourage people to play more types”. It was more an example how I would have done it because it would have helped with the problem while at the same time requiring achievement in all areas. I personally don’t believe legendary armor is about encouraging people to play raids (or other areas of the game if it contained all 3). Its about mastering the game, putting dedication into it, and getting rewarded for that effort. However, I also realize that this obviously can’t be a current solution to the problem as whats done is done. However, they still potentially could do the idea of replacing parts of the items necessary for the armor for alternative recipes. However, once again, I just wouldn’t touch the insights.

Ohoni.6057:

Xstein.2187:

I’m a firm believer that if you want the one set of legendary armor in gw2, then you should play everything in gw2.

I disagree strongly. Wooden Potatoes made a good comment about this in one of his HoT review videos (the one on WvW, I think), but the devs seem to believe that most players enjoy doing a little of everything, while in reality, most players gravitate towards exactly one playstyle, and spend all or most of their time there. There is no benefit to encouraging players to spend significant time in all three modes unless they ENJOY all three modes.

They can make playing all three modes the easiest way, the shortest way, so that players inclined to do that have a nudge in that direction, but players who definitely don’t want to do that, definitely shouldn’t have to, and should have alternatives available.

Yes, I have seen that video as well. However, this wasn’t in reference to legendary armor. It was stated to show there was a disconnection with what Moe or the devs believed and what was really happening at the time the devs were making HoT. (I’m not really stating this for you, but more for other people who read this who haven’t watched the video).

So, just under curiosity, if you only had the resources to create one set of legendary armor (It took them over a year and a half to come out with the first set) that was suppose to represent one of the pinnacle achievements in your game based on difficulty, time, and overall achievement level to aquire, and you knew this or knew due to the difficulties involved with the project that you could only handle one set, how would you go about it?

If you used all 3 game modes, than everyone going after the armor would at least have one or more aspects of the collection they enjoyed. PvE people that didn’t like WvW would have to go through some aspects they didn’t like, just like WvW players that don’t like PvE. At least this would be better than it is now (where a WvW player who doesn’t like PvE has to do all collections in an environment that they don’t like). The situation is also similar now. There are many people who raid who don’t like open world content. There are people who like open world content who don’t like raids. However, the legendary armor requires both.

This is also a bit beyond the point. However, my personal opinion is that the pinnacle set of armor in terms of achievement should require achievement in all areas of the game.

I can confirm that many people that I know, and me included, don’t play very much pvp anymore for the exact same reason.

kin korn karn.9023:

You had a bad team comp and lost. Imagine that.

Yes, he lost because they had a bad comp. However, what OP is saying is “why the hell is everything a bad comp thats not part of a very small selection of build picks?” Anet did a great job with “extrinsic” balance or making sure that the best builds from every class are competitive with each other in the pvp game setting. However, since HoT, they still did an absolutely horrible job with “intrinsic” balance or making sure there are a wide array of “competitive” builds, or at least somewhat competitive builds, to choose from for each class. How many different builds from each class did you see in the most recent pvp world championship? Yes, “intrinsic” balance will never be perfect and there will always be a best build. However, kitten, they could do a lot better job than this. Of course, I’m sure many people that still play a lot of pvp don’t have quite as big of a problem with this, hence why they are still playing a lot of pvp and on the forums. However, just because you don’t think its a problem doesn’t mean that others don’t as well and that it hasn’t been affecting the active pvp population or what the active pvp population could be.

I feel like there is a lot of misunderstanding in this thread. I don’t think the kill limit is necessarily meant as a limit to enforced making it take longer to get the armor. Its more so you can’t kill the easiest raid boss over and over again in the game to get the armor, and wellll obviously you could do it that way, but it would then take you over 3 years to get enough insights. The kill limit is in place to put a emphasis on killing the tougher raid bosses as well. Now, here is my view on the subject.

I still think where they went wrong isn’t due to the fact that they don’t have legendary armor planned for the other game modes, but that they didn’t require all 3 game modes to make the legendary armor. I’m a firm believer that if you want the one set of legendary armor in gw2, then you should play everything in gw2. For example, instead of the rather boring provisioner tokens, they could have had a gift that required pvp and WvW. This gift could have been created in the mystic forge by combing a Gift of Battle, a Gift of Skirmishing, and two more gifts not in the game (kinda like the Gift of the Competitor) that require you to complete achievements in both PvP and WvW respectively. Legendary armor should have required play in All game modes.

First, there are a bunch of these threads that should really be bundled together. Here is my view on the topic.

I still think where they went wrong isn’t due to the fact that they don’t have legendary armor planned for the other game modes, but that they didn’t require all 3 game modes to make the legendary armor. I’m a firm believer that if you want the one set of legendary armor in gw2, then you should play everything in gw2. For example, instead of the rather boring provisioner tokens, they could have had a gift that required pvp and WvW. This gift could have been created in the mystic forge by combing a Gift of Battle, a Gift of Skirmishing, and two more gifts not in the game (kinda like the Gift of the Competitor) that require you to complete achievements in both PvP and WvW respectively. Legendary armor should have required play in All game modes. If that was the case, then this argument wouldn’t be happening. . . .well, it would, but people wouldn’t have as much reason to complain.

I still think where they went wrong isn’t due to the fact that they don’t have legendary armor planned for the other game modes, but that they didn’t require all 3 game modes to make the legendary armor. I’m a firm believer that if you want the one set of legendary armor in gw2, then you should play everything in gw2. For example, instead of the rather boring provisioner tokens, they could have had a gift that required pvp and WvW. This gift could have been created in the mystic forge by combing a Gift of Battle, a Gift of Skirmishing, and two more gifts not in the game (kinda like the Gift of the Competitor) that require you to complete achievements in both PvP and WvW respectively. Legendary armor should have required play in All game modes.

I would be ecstatic for an mh axe. In fact, its probably my most preferred weapon. As others have mentioned, Astralaria would go perfectly with a mesmer.

Ya, I love these types of maps and really hope people who don’t like navigating them realize that the best solution is map variety. However, I also agree that the mini map could be improved. Right now they have it so you can still see points, vistas, etc. on all three levels but if it is on a different level than it is grayed out. The same is true for the green “story” stars. However, I could not tell at all from the mini map what level the green “story” circles where located. I think this needs to be changed. Additionally, I think it would be better if instead of graying them out, they just made it so you could only see one level, period. Either that or they just grayed them out a lot more to make the difference a lot more noticeable.

There are a lot of helpful navigation tips here already. However, I will give a few more for the new mastery and navigation.
1. You can shoot the vine to a higher area and then glide or glide back down to a lower area or area that was between you and where you shot the vine that you couldn’t reach. So, in many cases its alway best to aim as high as it will let you.
2. You can shoot the vine while gliding, This makes it possible to shoot the vine high and glide (no need to land), and then shoot the vine again to go even higher.
3. You can use the vine just as a speed boost to skip trash mobs by just shooting yourself straight ahead. This may be useful if you have a hard time with combat or just want to get places faster.

Spoilers

My guess is that Kas was doing some kind of very important secret work for queen Jennah and Countess Anise to get her title back. During this time Kas may have found out that Jennah and Anise were really the gods Ilya and Lyss or together Lyssa. At this time she may have also learned other stuff from the gods that caused her extreme shock from seeing balthazar, hiccups, and need to leave the scene early. I think something else is definitely going on with her behind the scenes. At this time its just pretty much impossible to pin down exactly what.

I would prefer some level of clipping

I only have the light armor, so I can’t comment on the other two.
I’m a little confused after reading reddit if moving the back piece or shield would affect mainland or 2h weapon placement. I feel like this needs more clarification for this pull. I don’t want gs or staves sticking into the butt cape. However, the shield is pretty bad. It really needs to be moved in at least a little. It just feels game breaking right now. Its also too far away when you’re holding the shield in combat. I’m soooo glad you are asking for our opinions. Thank You!

75 words

Best map of LS3. Much better than Doric. Realllly hope to see more maps like this in the future. Liked how low wp numbers made travel, masteries, and adventuring feel more important. Loved variety and number of different mastery types in this map. Good variety for future maps.

Story seems short, but boy did it keep my interest. Lots of missing information, but I expect the last episode to feel in the gaps. Great job!

“Bonus”

Best mastery since gliding
Ty sooo much for adding LS3 currency to storage.
Was truly amazed a map of this quality could come out of a living world episode.
Can understand how people felt there was no build up but . . . . . I mean, it was suppose to be a surprise.
Loved the last fight to death and hope to see interaction like this in future raids.
Love the “direction” the story is taking us.
Would like to see more npcs you could talk to for acquiring lore in maps
Didn’t seam like there were enough events in this map, or they were spread out too much.
Needs to be more rewards besides trinkets, skins, and minis. For people who don’t like collections, I would like to see more rewards that provide “utility”.
After research, loved how there was foreshadowing I didn’t notice until after the big reveal, like divine magic used to protect Aurene and scorch marks on the ground next to the bloodstone explosion.

I pretty much disagree with everything the OP stated. I guess we just all have different opinions. I, along with many people I know, believe this is the best living story episode and map so far. I also like that there are many unanswered questions waiting to be potentially revealed in the next episode.

I agree, I absolutely Love the new map. The new mastery is amazingly and all the masteries together make navigation on this map incredibly fun. I haven’t done all the achievements or even bosses on this map yet, so I don’t really know why you would think there is a lack of content on the map. Of course, a meta event would have made the map even better, but none of the living story have them, perhaps due to time constraints.

Draconis is now by far my favorite living story map so far now. You can read my comments above if you want to know why.

FJSAMA.2867:

Any back stowed items (shields, backpacks) have a huge gap on Perfected Envoy Vestments.
I took 2 screens comparing Perfected Vestments and Refined Vestments for reference:

Yesss, pleeaase! I haven’t been paying to much attention to this thread. However, I bounced in to say the same thing. Please move the shields closer (at least when its on the back) so that there is not a great big hole/gap. There is also a gap when you hold it, but I don’t know if you can really fix that with the crystals. However, everything else looks amazing. Love how the dyes look on the light armor. Great job!

4. Currencies and Rewards: Not much to say about this with the living story, as they all follow the same design. You obviously can’t just keep adding currencies without a key ring or another feature. I liked how HoT currencies could be kept in your wallet. However, perhaps this wasn’t possible in the living story maps with time constraints. Obviously more rewards in maps is better. There is not much armor to go for in living story maps, but for obvious reasons. However, what I do like is that all the rewards involved with the living story maps are tied to the themes of those maps. What I really don’t like is how predictable the rewards are. Its pretty bad if you can predict that the next living story map will have a different currency that allows you to buy stat selectable trinkets and a back piece. Anet needs to learn that variety is key and that sometimes there isn’t always one answer or one template that always works. I also believe there should be multiple ways to obtain rewards. Silverwaste’s armor followed this concepts pretty well. You could get certain pieces certain ways, like certain bosses on the map, the maze, treasure chests, or from completing achievements in the actual living story itself. However, if one of those ways of obtaining that armor piece didn’t appeal to you, you could always go the second route and save up currency for it. None of the HoT maps or new living story maps had this many variety of ways of collecting rewards. Excluding adventures, all the HoT maps and new living story maps also didn’t have that amount of different group events that kept peoples interests like the silver wastes did (meaning: treasure chest farming, maze, meta events, jumping puzzle etc.) Finally, I would like to see other rewards beside trinkets and weapon/armor skins. Yes, this is fashion wars. However, there has to be a reward that interests players that have enough ascended equipment and already have looks picked out for their characters that they don’t want to change. Anet needs to get their creative thinking caps on. Converters, Koda’s blessing, the region teleporters, and the gliding attacks that you could purchase in Bloodstone fen are good starts. However, there is soooo much more future merchants could sell. Examples might include: an item that temporarily gives you swiftness every so often just from having it in your inventory, new enrichments types (gain more map currency, take less damage “only” from open world enemies, deal more damage “only” to open world enemies, more boon duration in open world, increased gliding endurance, increase open world down state health, etc.), An item that temporarily removes a condition every so often just from having it in your inventory, An item that temporally gives you stealth when you click on it (like harpy feathers from Harathi Hinterlands), Keys that allow you access to exclusive regions or instances from that map for a certain amount of time (examples might include gathering regions or regions full of exceptionally dangerous terrain and enemies that drop valuable items or map currency (perhaps those are the only creatures that drop it)), new guild hall decorations that can be purchased only with map currency and aren’t just a gold sink, weapons that are weak in stats agains most creatures, but are very powerful against specific creature types, poisons that you can coat your weapons with or replace the sigils with that deals damage separate than that of condition damage and perhaps even wears out over time, a musical instrument or toys that aren’t in the gem store, etc. Basically, just anything that players may want who feel like they are done collecting “skins, tonics, and minis”

2. Enemies (well, basic enemies): I love how HoT introduced creatures with skills that are easy to telegraph, but have devastating consequences if you get hit. This is important as the game is actually teaching you dodging and positioning rather than just face-tanking and changing your armor, traits, or class. Many of the creatures in the base game were pretty bad at teaching you these skills, and in the future living stories, I believe some creatures were better than others. For example, I was severely disappointed that they just gave poison to fire elementals. I was also not a fan of many of the enemies skills in Lake Doric (with the exception of the mesmer’s mind stab). In contrast, an example of a skill I like is the Stonehead’s charge attack. You can see them bend down and get ready to charge before they do it, and if you get hit, not only do you deserve it, but you deserve to get hit hard. Even though I feel like the many of the creatures in the living story didn’t live up to my expectations, what I did enjoy is the extra variety they did add. Examples of this are how jade constructs had stability and how you could use your special action key to counter certain attacks. My dream map would have a wide variety of enemies with very different weaknesses, from lots of little pocket raptors, to telegraphed hard hitting Nuhoch, to jade constructs immune to my gravity wells. However, I would also have a wide variety of enemy densities in my map. Some areas would have no enemies and some would have a lot and be very difficult. However, what I wouldn’t have is enemies “constantly” blocking your only narrow path to your destination, like in tangled depths.

3. Meta Events: Silverwastes is by far one of my favorite meta events and unfortunately, I can’t say very much about meta events with the living story maps that came out. I love how there are 3 different bosses for you to choose during the event. I also absolutely love to death the maze they have at the end. The only thing that would make it better for me is if after you beat the 3 bosses in silverwastes, it then allowed all 3 groups to come together for one super boss at the end, a boss similar to the legendary wyvern patriarch.

First, I think it is hard to rank maps since there are certain aspects of the maps I enjoy and certain aspects I don’t enjoy. For example, none of the new maps having meta events was a huge disappointment for me. However, should meta events be counted with the map rankings or should they be given their own category? Same with enemies, while I may enjoy the layout of a map, I may find the enemies boring. Should the enemy types be counted with map rating? Therefore, I thought I would do something different. Instead of just ranking the maps, I am going to tell you what are my favorite aspects of the maps to pretty much create my “dream” map. Note: Just because this would be my “dream” map doesn’t mean that I believe all maps should be like this. I am a firm believer in a very large amount of map variety for the next expansion since everyone has different opinions.

1. Layout: Verdant brink had by far my favorite layout out of all the maps in the game so far. However, just because it was my favorite so far, doesn’t mean I thought it was perfect. I loved how verdant brink had more “defined” layers than all the other living story maps (perhaps with the exception of bloodstone fen), Auric basin, and Dragon Stand. However, I also enjoyed that it was much more intuitive to navigate than Tangled Depths. As someone else mentioned once in a post, I believe improving the actual map that you get when you click “m” would help with tangled depths tremendously. For example, I like how HoT introduced a map system with different layers. However, when you look at the map, it should show precisely where you can move up or down between layers, just like it might show where a merchant is located. If this was implemented, I would be all for pushing certain aspects of verdant brink more towards tangled depths. In my dream map, there would perhaps be multiple ways to get to a location. There could be a more intuitive way to get there, like verdant brink, for when you are just starting the map, and then there would also be more complicated shortcuts so that those who like the more complicated feel of tangled depths and strong “exploration” factor of that map have more paths and areas to explore rather than just an intuitive landscape. The last aspect of the layout I would change is adding a more “defined” feeling between the the different layers. If you are in the canopy, you should really feel like you are walking on the tops of trees or branches, the ground is self explanatory, and if you are underground in the roots than you should see roots all over the place. Basically, just from the scenery, you should always know exactly what layer you are in at all times. You should never have to click your ‘m’ key to find out what layer you are in. This would also increase the feeling that it is actually 3 maps or map layers instead of one map that just changes elevation.

Did anyone else actually google “flashpoint”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashpoint_

There has to be two timelines. My guess is that Lazarus is . . . . . . . Kasmeer. In the future, Kasmeer went back in time to impersonate Lazarus and save the world. What we are seeing in the trailer is “present day” Kasmeer seeing Kasmeer of the future/the Lazarus impersonator for the first time.

My guess after seeing the trailer was also that he/she is one of Kasmeer’s family members. It was just her reaction in the trailer.

For those who don’t know, this idea was mentioned in one of wooden potatoes videos before it was mentioned by baylock. I think the idea would be that in a new elite specialization, if you have something like zerk armor, you can both do a lot of “power” damage with skills like mind wrack while at the same time doing a lot of condition damage with skills like cry of frustration. Additionally, it would open up for more set varieties like power, precision, expertise. Even though this was for his Empath elite specialization idea, I think the idea probably mainly sprouted out from the question of what kind of new, unique features the “mirage” condi elite specialization could have.

30:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4n3UV6ivDM

This is mostly used for only the raid bosses Matthias and Cairn right now, but it can have its use in other parts of pve as well. However, the main problem with this build are
1. It takes some time to build up condis
2. It severely lacks AoE damage, therefore is really only useful for a single target boss.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Condition_DPS_