It seems that you are in favour of altering the sigils on the basis that they are “unpredictable RNG burst on a very short cooldown that may or may not happen”, yet you don’t appear to be adverse to the idea of critical hits themselves. In fact, your proposed modifications utilize critical hits as the triggering mechanism for the sigils.
I find this to be contradictory. On the one hand, you want to eliminate a source of “RNG burst”, yet you seem fine with the RNG burst provided by critical strikes. Crits are RNG due to attacks having a chance to crit (ignoring a case of having 100% critical chance), and they can significantly but unpredictably change the damage of a particular sequence of attacks. For instance, the warrior’s kill shot on their rifle can have dramatically different consequences depending on whether or not it critically hits, as can something like the necromancer’s death shroud life blast and thief’s backstab.
So if you’re going to propose alterations to the sigils based on the quoted principle, I don’t see why you wouldn’t also be against the current implementation of critical hits. Or rather, I don’t see why you wouldn’t be a proponent for removing the critical hit system entirely. In fact, I would even say that this idea would logically extend to condition and boon application via RNG, going off principle alone. Removing or at least altering these aspects of the gameplay would further your goal of “making damage more predictable and playable both for and against”.
I think you would need to provide more specific examples to make your argument stronger.
You make statements like “The fact that these sigils grant an extra 40%-300% damage increase on a given critical strike is enormous and makes it very difficult to predict exactly how much damage may be incoming”, yet I don’t think you correctly establish that it is not already difficult to predict exactly how much damage may be incoming in the first place. Can you accurately predict incoming damage for builds that don’t use these sigils? I think presenting a method you use for doing so and how it is undermined by the nature of the air and fire sigils would strengthen your proposal, though this wouldn’t necessarily mean it is “better” (which is entirely subjective).
Similarly, you make claims such as “these sigils do absolutely monstrous amounts of damage for how little the investment cost is” without providing any quantitative data to support the claim. I find the latter part of the statement odd as well. Is not the investment cost, the fact that they occupy a sigil slot, the same for all sigils? Something like this should be clarified.
Furthermore, things like sigil of force do have value, but perhaps not as much for burst-style builds. However, those aren’t the only builds in the game. For instance, I wouldn’t equip a sigil of earth on a skullcrack warrior spec because the value it provides is extremely low. However, there are other builds that can make much better use of a sigil of earth, such as a spirit ranger using a shortbow. Not all sigils need to be of equal value for all builds, and they are used to satisfy different niches. The sigil of force can be better for builds that need sustained damage or who can’t afford a lot of precision (i.e. tankier specs), whereas sigils of air and fire are generally a better fit for very bursty builds.
On a personal level, I don’t feel I can agree with your proposal of “making damage more predictable and playable both for and against”. To me, this sounds like the game would veer towards a state where numerical optimization would have a much greater impact on competitive effectiveness due to the predictability desired by the system. Having the combat being more focused on skill, positioning, and chance situations can prevent such numerical optimizations from being too relevant.
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)
I’ve had this bug before too, it tends to happen to me when engaging in large group content (i.e. WvW zerging).
Setting the sound quality to “low” and the mixing buffer to “most stable” alleviates the problem for me. However, this has other ramifications, most notably causing NPC voiceovers to misfire during cutscenes. However, I just turn the sound quality up when I’m doing that, and if I’m doing large group content I turn the quality down.
You used to be able to alt-F4 and deprive your killers of XP, loot, and whatnot, but they did fix that. Hopefully they fix this sooner or later as well.
One thing that has always irked me about this issue is that there’s no report option for “hacking/exploiting”. It’s sometimes annoying enough to try and right-click on the person while they’re blinking away in order to report them at all (which gets to be impossible if they break through the ground), but then when you do, there’s no option to report them for what they’re actually doing.
I generally select “botting” for my report option, but I don’t feel that’s entirely accurate. My concern here is that I’m reporting them for something they’re technically not doing, and thus someone might look at it and say “no, that person wasn’t botting, they were definitely playing the game as evidenced by X, Y, and Z”, and thus nothing is done about it.
Is this for you to use, or are you just looking to buy them up to resell them?
If it’s for you to use, I’m pretty sure the HoT trailer showcased some kind of “clock shield”, which was in use by the character using the new mesmer specialization (chronomancer or whatever they want to call it). So maybe you’d want to just wait for that one.
Otherwise, I dunno. Wall of the mists is probably a good bet, maybe the chaos shield, eidolon, or lovestruck shield…
Shadewort and shield of the moon might also get popular since they have a more sylvari theme to them, and the expansion will focus heavily on the sylvari.
In the worst case scenario, I imagine they’ll bring it back next Wintersday. This would allow people who never had a chance to get the star to be able to get it.
It’s a little silly that you were not able to complete it because you threw that letter away though. Hopefully support can help you out.
In my case, I had started but hadn’t finished the scavenger hunt during Wintersday, but it remained active following Wintersday, and I was able to complete it for the star.
hylek, ogre, and krait rewards are crap, yes they are unique, but that doesn’t make them better. I would rather take the grawl rewards every time..
Even though you may not find the consumable recipes to be useful, completing the collections is still the only way to get those. Thus, they have something unique associated with them that gives the collection its ultimate purpose.
It’s a similar case with titles. They don’t functionally do anything useful in game, and most people will barely look at them, let alone remember them. But there’s only specific ways to get those titles in game, which makes the things you have to do to get the title have some sort of novel value to it.
I’ve just always found it odd that the hylek, krait, and ogre collections give you something unique, whereas the grawl one, which is essentially identical, doesn’t give you anything remotely interesting. Even the bandit weapon achievement, which has no unique rewards, gives you way better rewards than the grawl achievement does, and the weapons are generally much cheaper to purchase off the trading post.
Though I don’t see them altering the grawl achievement at this point, particularly since a ton of people will have already finished it. But for future collections, I hope to see them give more unique rewards, if not rewards that are of appropriate value for what the collection is composed of.
Chipping it in, full cleric’s build.
I’ve used almost the exact same build, although with a magi/cleric mix instead of full cleric. I will also use ether renewal and armour of earth instead of arcane brilliance and arcane wave if I feel the situation warrants it (the self stability can be really crucial at times).
It can pump out quite a bit of healing and keep itself safe with the cantrips, though you won’t be causing mass destruction with your meteor showers. Still, I feel it has a place in WvW, depending on your overall zerg composition. For smaller scale roaming stuff, it may or may not be that useful.
Such a build is generally unnecessary in PvE since damage is king there, and I haven’t seen or tried a staff supporty/healing type build work in sPvP, but maybe there are people who do that.
I’m not entirely sure what the point of the video is.
From what I can glean from the video description, the purpose is to feature their guild, [FAIL], in a drawn out, large scale combat scenario from the author’s point of view. I believe the intent is to have the viewer be impressed with or entertained the gameplay, possibly to the point of wanting to join the guild.
The title is a pun, essentially.
So you started this thread but did it anyways? lol… facepalm
But in any case, I still think the method of acquiring a legendary should still be altered so that you can do it in any one game mode instead of all three. If not, it should require you to play in all game modes, which is not currently the case in regards to sPvP.
And as others have pointed out, you can farm those skulls (pretty quickly, too), make the darksteel, and then craft all the weapons yourself. That’s what I did for that achievement.
Although one could argue in this case that it’s simply more valuable to sell the materials you farm rather than completing the collection.
The problem I have with the grawl collection specifically is that it doesn’t offer a reward that is comparable to similar collections.
For instance, if you look at the hylek, ogre, and krait weapon achievements, they all require you to collect a similar set of things (weapon skins and one special loot item for the unlock). However, each of these collections offer you a unique reward in the way of a special consumable recipe that you can’t acquire via any other method. As such, the point of completing these collections is to specifically get those recipes.
In comparison, the grawl collection provides you with no unique reward, and the things it does provide you with are easily acquirable through other in game methods.
If you look at something like the trash collector achievement, the main value it has is a special title. It doesn’t provide you with any meaningful loot for the time you spend tracking down the junk items, but you would generally do it to earn the title.
If the grawl achievement had a similar unique reward, like a title, special weapon skin, or some sort of crafting recipe, it would make it more worthwhile.
So while I don’t agree with the OP’s sentiment that collections are stupid, I would argue that certain rewards for some of the collections are not appropriate for what they require.
Granted, one could say that the real value in a collection is having all the skins and whatnot unlocked, which is true. But most people will only ever use a fraction of those skins in the first place, if at all, since they don’t find them valuable in the first place. The collections are a way to bring added value to the items featured in a collection, so the reward should be something with a unique or significant worth to it.
Regardless of the derailing of this thread, I do think it’s reasonable for a user to expect that the act of blocking another user should prevent all forms of them knowing their location in game. It simply doesn’t make sense for a user you’ve blocked to be able to acquire that information. Blocking someone should mean that you want to cut all possible form of contact with them, and thus is seems sensible for them to have no means by which to determine your location in game or whether you aren’t or are online.
Mind you, I haven’t verified myself that the system currently allows for this in the manner described, but I’ll give the OP the benefit of the doubt.
Playing in invisible mode might alleviate the problem in the meantime, but it shouldn’t be necessary for a user to do that for people they’ve already blocked.
I got a off-side question: If I use Elix F in conjunction with Cleansing Formula 409, will it cure a condition?
Same questions goes for Elixir H – will it, under the influense of CF 409, cure 2 conditions?
Thus, adding that trait and maybe elix S or B to the typical Cele Rifle build would make it fairly condi counterable
Thanks in andvanceDyna Mic
Any traits that affect “elixirs” will affect elixirs H, B, R, U, S, and X. Most of these affect the tool belt skills too(the tossed elixirs), as well as the auto-proc skills (i.e. hidden flask).
Note that cleaning formula 409 will cure 1 condition for both the toss and the drink, not 2. In contrast, HGH grants 1 might stack on tossed elixirs, and 2 on drunk ones.
The elixir gun has some skills labelled as elixirs, but they are not affected by traits that affect elixirs since these are not “elixir skills” and are “kit skills” instead. This includes elixir F, super elixir, acid bomb, healing mist, and launch elixir.
For further reference: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elixir
It’s really tough to make turrets work at all in WvW. Like you said, people can just move away from them if they want to, and that’s that.
It’s different in sPvP because the nodes are valuable, so if someone decides to run away from you like that, you win the node.
The other issue in WvW is that the combat can get much larger scale than in sPvP. Even if you and the enemy have comparable zerg sizes, your turrets will just get exploded in less than a second if they’re subject to any of the zerg’s ranged pressure or melee train. The combat just tends to be too mobile, and the turrets can’t really do a lot against a zerg.
Now if you need to flip a camp, a turret build could probably work fine for that. Or if you come across one of your camps that is being flipped by one or two guys, you could probably use your turret build to hold it against them. But anything large scale won’t work that well.
The only other trick you can do with turrets in WvW is to take deployable turrets and throw them on top of the walls of an enemy keep or tower to harass the defenders up there. In fact, you can even damage arrow carts and such this way if they’re in the proper position, though not like an ele or ranger can.
Yeah, you can only reasonably expect this to hit someone who is standing still or moving in a perfectly straight line.
But out of all the abilities on engineer that could use some tweaking, I imagine this one is either at the bottom or near the bottom of the priority list.
From the wiki:
“The banner will revive players for 100% of their total down state health and 100% of their normal health meaning that through debuffs (such as Poison and/or Agony), the banner’s revival capabilities can be negated to the point that the affected player will not revive at all, and only regain a portion of their downed health. This is a common issue in fractals, as levels with Mistlock Instability: Agonizing Expedition can cause players to have multiple stacks of agony, thus nullifying the effects completely.”
So if you tried to revive someone downed that was at very low downed state health and was poisoned, the banner may have only healed them up in the downed state, but not enough to rally them. That’s why it’s important to poison downed targets, it makes it tougher for their allies to revive them.
Also Loaf of Saffron Bread will be way way way overpowered and basically needed now for WvW especially for classes that rely on shared having Stability from other class AoE abilities.
I read this as saying “the ghetto bread might actually be valued now”.
Also, I’m finding Frenzy to have surprisingly good result. A Quickness Skull Crack is much harder to avoid, and you have time for a 100b AND a Whirlwind attack.
The eternal issue with frenzy, however, is that you have to sacrifice a different stance. Balanced stance is pretty much a must have, so you get to pick between dying to conditions or massive burst. Also, if they use a stun breaker, your entire use of frenzy could potentially be nullified, whereas endure pain and berserker stance are much more reliable.
Sundering mace is an interesting choice, though I think you might be better served by shield master. It’s a 6s reduction on it’s block instead of the 2s you get on the mace block, and I’d consider shield bash more valuable than pommel bash. Though I can see how there could be advantages to going with sundering mace instead.
Of course, again I’m hoping it’s like walls, and you have to pass over them to trigger (further) stability loss. If so, then the best solution will be to simply stand still.
Which is silly, because this means the engineer wins if they get you to stand still.
The issue with something like slick shoes is that the engineer can run around you, and any little twitch on your part causes a loss of a stability stack.
It will also be very potent in a WvW setting. If you managed to lay it under and incoming zerg, that’s potentially tons of stability gone in an instant. I’d have to double check, but I’m pretty sure you can activate slick shoes and use elixir S to dive into a zerg, so it would just spread underneath them and then you could walk out. Is the solution for the zerg to just stand still?
But hey, maybe this is just a doom-and-gloom phase we’re going through, and slick shoes won’t actually be that problematic. The last thing I want them to do is knee-jerk nerf slick shoes.
For the new defiance bar:
How will traited interrupts affect the bar?
1) Will traits that give additional effect to a control effect, such as Mesmer Halting Strike trait (Domination 2) or Necromancer Terror (Curses 9), impart a greater effect on the bar?2) If you have a trait that activates on an interrupt, such as Mesmer Confounding Suggestions (Domination 12), will using a control effect on the bar count as an interrupt proccing such a trait to further deplete the bar?
3) Will effects from traits, sigils (and food?) that increase durations of control effects, such as Necromancer Master of Terror (Soul Reaping 9), impact the bar more?
They’ve stated in that blog post that the new defiance bar will respect the duration of the CC. So for instance, a 3s stun from skull crack will drain more than a 0.5s daze from head shot.
As for things like halting strike and terror, these do not increase the effectiveness of the control effects, so the information released in the blog post implies that they won’t have any effect on the defiance bar. But we don’t know for sure whether this will be the case yet.
I don’t think they’ve stated whether CC’s will be treated equally, or whether different types have different weights for depleting the stability bar. For instance, I’m not sure if a 3s stun would drain more than a 3s daze, even though the former is technically more powerful.
Regardless, this thread was about the stability changes for players, not the defiance changes for boss-type creatures.
The stability changes sound like a recipe for disaster for WvW
I’d recipe for fun: finally no more stability trains but well timed CCs could break a zerg even when outnumbered. Great in my eyes.
Alternatively, it means zergs will be even less inviting to players running professions that won’t be granting AoE stability to the rest of the group. Besides, even if you CC a zerg, you still have to kill it, which will still be hard if you’re vastly outnumbered.
In any case, the increased vulnerabilty to CC your zerg has will also apply to the enemy zerg, so it will be interesting to see what adjustments actually end up being made.
From https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Stability-Change-Clarification/first#post4835530:
while Toss Elixir B (which is an area of effect ability for the engineer) will grant 3 stacks to 5 allies for 5 seconds.
Well, there we have it. 3 stacks. Since I mostly play WvW for competitive action, I feel it’s a bit low. Although it does give it to multiple people, so I can understand why they don’t want it to be that strong. It’ll be interesting to see how it compares to abilities like SYG.
What about hallowed ground’s pulsing stability? Will it grant a few stacks of short duration per pulse to prevent you being multi-CC’ed while you’re standing in the field? The point of the ability is to have psuedo-permanent stability so long as you remain in the confines of the AoE.
What about abilities like stomp? They grant 1s of stability so that you don’t get CC’ed while using your counter CC. Will it just give you a high amount of stacks for 1s to ensure it’s very difficult to CC you during that time?
What about transformation states, like plague form or rampage? How many stacks will they get?
Yeah, having resistance included in SY would be really broken. Sucking all condis in but not being affected by them. It defeats the point of the ability, which is to “sacrifice yourself”, in a sense.
Mind you, the ability already kind of violates this principle because you can just pop it when you want to gain the boons and not suck up any conditions in the first place.
You can also just use it while channeling renewed focus to remove all conditions from allies without gaining any.
Nice, hadn’t thought of doing that before, although I imagine it’s not a situation that comes up very often.
In this case though, you’re popping a 90s cooldown elite that can be quite valuable. You’re expending something extra in order to counter those conditions, rather than just getting that for free.
You pretty much have to wait for your server to rotate to the right areas and for off hours. Otherwise, I agree. WvW needed for map completion is a terrible idea.
However, rumor has it this might be changed in the near future. . . .
I appreciate the input. But I was in Eternal Battlegrounds and my server is currently Blue and I was in Blue territory, trying to get the skill point. There simply wasn’t enough people from my server there to defeat the invaders and they are incredibly vicious. They chase you down even when you don’t fight back and/or are just trying to get away. I know they want loot and whatever points killing enemy players gets them, but seriously… to be THAT vicious. That’s why I do not like any kind of PvP what-so-ever.
It was bad enough that there were natural enemies there too (hylek, krait), and I was pretty much alone.
And yes, I agree… making WvW a part of map completion was a TERRIBLE idea.
I never understand this sentiment. So what about the WvW people that don’t like PvE? Should they be forced to go into PvE in order to do map completion?
Thats right, they shouldnt have to. Spvp players should also be able to get it from a reward track, and you should also be able to get a gift of battle through pve or spvp, and you should be able to get the dungeon item from doing only wvw.
It would be nice if that were made possible in the expansion. I got map complete pretty easy a year ago, but I can imagine how much it would suck to be on a high pop server and have to go through this. Hard to say if thats more difficult than a wvw player being forced into pve+dungeons, but it doesnt really matter which one is worse since the whole system is poorly designed.
That’s been my take on this too. WvW-exclusive players will often respond with “but we have to be forced into PvE, so suck it up”. But I’d rather they have it so that you can acquire everything you need for a legendary even if you exclusively only play one kind of content. They could set it up so that it would be faster if you did all the game modes, but that it was still possible to get it by only playing WvW, for instance.
The funny thing is that a lot of WvW people I know that own legendaries do PvE stuff quite regularly, and then their counter argument to sentiments like the OP’s are “well we were forced to do PvE”. But they would’ve done that stuff anyways, so they weren’t actually forced into it. The WvW players I do know that don’t give a toss about PvE also don’t give a toss about legendaries.
I can understand from a design perspective why they did it this way. They wanted legendaries to be reserved for those who explored all facets of the game, and thus they would have a mark of prestige to them. Thus you would know that someone with a legendary explored the entire PvE map, had their share of fights in WvW, and won numerous PvP matches… oh wait, scratch that last one.
I think the problem they did with WvW though is that they forced you to discover PoIs. How does this link to an “accomplishment” in WvW? In fact, you don’t have to actually cap anything or kill anyone to finish the WvW side of getting a legendary. If your in a matchup where your server just completely dominates everything, you just cycle your characters through the PoIs that the other people on your server already capped, and tick that off the list. If you want, you can just do jumping puzzles in WvW over and over again to farm up the badges you need for the gift of battle.
If anything, I think WvW people should be complaining that the stuff they are required to do in their game mode to earn a legendary is silly and useless. It prompts players to not work together as a team and put their own priorities over others (i.e. getting a PoI/skill point on the map instead of helping your comrades defend a location). I feel like they just built the game that way without really giving it a lot of thought, and now it’s stuck that way.
Hopefully we’ll see some change in the future that lets you acquire all the necessary components exclusively in one game mode. They’ve already made a few steps towards that by letting you get things like clovers and crafting materials from PvP reward tracks, maybe we’ll see more of that in the expansion.
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)
Yes, you need to use the overcharge immediately upon deploying the turret to get the cleansing burst to activate right away. Spamming the button will often be sufficient. Any delay in activating the overcharge means you need to wait until the turret fires again for it to come out.
It’s just a very annoying aspect to the design of the healing “turret”, but not a bug.
Edit: The thing is all armor pieces look the same for all 3 weights. If they sold full sets of separate weight classes you’d be paying up to 3 times for the same exact skins.
I feel this point you make at the end contradicts your earlier conjecture about how the shadow of the dragon skins can be considered to be of better value than something like the aetherblade armour sets. While you get the skin unlocked for each weight class, the skin is exactly the same. The only value this provides to the consumer is that they can use it on a larger number of characters. However, this assumes that the consumer wants to use said skins on multiple characters, and that they have the multiple characters with which to use the skins in the first place.
Now everyone has different preferences in regards to these things. However, I have 16 different level 80 characters, most of which have 2 or 3 different sets of armour for different builds. Each of these armour sets use a different skin. I never repeat the use of these armour skins because I want it to be unique to that character instead of dressing everyone the same. In some cases I have reused a few weapon skins, but those are for underwater weapons that I just don’t care too much about.
So while you do effectively get better value per unique wardrobe unlock by purchasing something like a piece of the shadow of the dragon armour set, the inherent value in it is lost in my case because I would only ever purchase that skin to use it on one specific character for one specific armour set for one specific build. I wouldn’t go and apply it to more than one character.
In comparison, things like the aetherblade sets are unique skins in each case. So while the consumer does not obtain as many unique wardrobe unlocks as they would if they purchase the shadow of the dragon pieces, they do obtain more unique appearances. As such, I would consider the aetherblade (or similar bundled full armour sets) to be of better value for me because I consider the uniqueness of the appearance to be more valuable than multiple wardrobe unlocks for each armour weight that look exactly the same.
Furthermore, I would make a comparison for outfits. Outfits can be used on any character, regardless of armour weight, and effectively works as a 6-piece skin set similar to something like the aetherblade armour set. These tend to be a bit more on the festive or casually-clothed side, but they serve the same function for a price similar to any of the bundled 6-piece armour sets. As such, one could pose the question as to why they didn’t make a “shadow of the dragon outfit” whose appearance incorporated the look from the existing 3 pieces but also had the other 3 pieces done, all for the standard shelf price that one would expect from outfits. I think the real reason for that is that they just didn’t have the resources to invest in such a thing at the time, but I’d rather they release something more complete instead of pieces that are just meant to drum up some quick money.
Now not everyone plays the game the same as me and perhaps they want to dress their characters in all the same armour. In that sense, purchasing a shadow of the dragon piece may have greater value for them. However, they still are deprived from having a complete armour set. That is, there is no chest, leggings, or boots (I think it’s boots that are missing). So if someone wanted a coordinating, matching armour set with that look, they can’t get it. Instead they have to make mix-and-match armour, and while some people enjoy doing that, others don’t.
My fear with supporting these sorts of items in the gem store is that they will look at converting all future released armour skins to be sold in a similar piecemeal fashion. I feel this is bad for the consumer because you will need to pay more for each “set”, and it means they may make less skins overall. That is, they might release something like an aetherblade set, but it would only have one appearance for all armour weights that must be bought piece-by-piece for about double the price that we are currently paying. As a consumer, why would I want to pay more money to have less variety?
Perhaps if the piecemeal sets they’ve currently implemented were less expensive per piece, I wouldn’t have an issue with it. But if they see that they can make more money selling the amour skins that way, there’s little incentive for them not to do so.
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)
I’ve used a similar build frequently with a carrion/rabid combo. The particular variation I use is: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdEQJAqalcTp6qlYx+KseNCbBBqNI6jEln85HGgkC-TFyCABA8ABsU9HsUidxJCIP9EJqEMLlH6t/ApAgYaE-w
This is my go-to build for fractals (particularly since my infusions are in that shiz and I’m not redoing all my gear for the sake of minor optimizations). I also use it in general PvE, though it can be slow to kill enemies in some situations depending on what you’re doing.
In WvW, I usually use a different version with the tool kit instead of grenades, but the gear stats, runes, sigils, and weapon selection are the same. Only the traits different slightly in that build (i.e. swap out grenadier for coated bullets, protection injection, cloaking device, or speedy kits). It’s one of my favourite WvW builds, even though it has it’s downsides (i.e. lower mobility and extended sustain).
However, I’ve not used this build extensively in PvP. Though in that situation you just pick your amulet and such, so no need for materials gathering. I feel that celestial would work better in this format anyways because the carrion PvP amulet does not allow you to round out some of your stats (i.e. low precision and toughness, too much vitality). The other common choice for this sort of build would be the rabid amulet. I’m pretty sure the aristocracy runes aren’t in PvP either, but I’d have to double check (though there’s other runes that would also work fine).
So if you want an alternative stat line to use while you’re crafting your celestial gear, my personal recommendation is a carrion/rabid mix. I would make your weapons and armour the carrion stat line since they can be easily crafted (insignias/incscriptions are craftable), though you can get them from the WvW vendor too. I’d reserve the rabid (or dire/rabid if you prefer) for the trinkets because there isn’t a carrion stat line available there for ascended trinkets (not including the dungeon reward one). This lets you hybridize your damage with a strong condition focus, while also build up your vitality, toughness, and precision to workable levels. You can always do things like swap in runes of the water or use the hoelbrak runes to round things out or make it more power focused.
To be fair, the ascended ring “problem” has existed longer than this “problem”, and nothing’s been done about that yet. At least they made items that can eat bloodstone dust and such, they haven’t made anything remotely equivalent for ascended rings.
And yeah, I can vendor them for 4s, but I might as well turn around and say you can just toss away the dusts and such, because it’s basically the same thing at that point.
They had this back in GW1, and it is a sorely missed feature in this game. In GW1, you could even ping the build in chat for others to look at, and it was very easy to replicate builds that you found on a website or whatnot since the author could post the code and you could copy and paste it into the game.
They’ve implemented many things to facilitate and encourage frequent swapping of builds, but they haven’t yet put in place a system to enable easy swapping between those builds.
However, I’m very confident that this feature is on their long list of things to do, and it just hasn’t been able to make it through the queue yet. Hopefully it can be implemented sooner rather than later though (I’m looking at you, expansion).
While I don’t object to adding such things into the game, I’d rather see more masculine customization options for male characters (at least for norn and humans, anyways).
The body hair is sparse at best, and the facial hair options are also not as diverse as they could be. They’ve released new hair and face styles, but I don’t think they’ve ever had any new beard styles.
A lot of the male human faces have a feminine quality to them as well (or at least characteristics that are traditionally associated with a feminine appearance according to society’s norms, &c., &c.). It’s not that I want those to be removed, but I would, for instance, like some of the norn male faces to be ported over for use in human models because they have a more masculine quality to them (or at least characteristics that are traditionally associated with a masculine appearance according to society’s norms, &c., &c.).
Of course, that’s all personal taste. But if I am going to enjoy dressing my male characters in more revealing outfits, I’d like some additional masculine qualities to be present in the bodies (lumpy muscles and no breast does not suffice).
EDIT: On that note, I’d also like some female bodies that have small breasts that are also lithe. It seems the smaller breasted models all tend to have thicker thighs or bulkier torsos, which I find weird. It’s impossible to make something flat-chested that is also petite.
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)
It’s the same deal with things like the lawless armour pieces that don’t feature a chest or leggings, and the toxic pieces (or whatever they’re called) that only ever had shoulders and gloves. Instead of doing art for a full armour set, they just have pieces that you can buy separately.
As to why they’re this way, I can’t say for certain. One plausible reason is that they weren’t able to make as big an investment for the art assets for a full armour set, so they just made some pieces (I imagine things like gloves and helms are less complicated to make than chests and leggings). Or it could be related to variations on their business model, seeing how selling armour sets in piecemeal rather than in one bundle.
I think it’s a bit of a shame. If you want something like the lawless armour pieces, you end up paying at 50% more compared to other armour skins, but you only get 4 pieces instead of six. I don’t think it’s that big a deal for some of the specialty items (i.e. buying a decorative hat that you use with five armour pieces from a different set), but these piecemeal and unbundled “armour-sets-that-aren’t-sets” really don’t sit well with me.
Personally, I boycott such items like the lawless, shadow of the dragon, and toxic armour piece skins because I feel it’s a less consumer-friendly business model and I don’t want to support that in any way.
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)
I think the way the enemies in the story are programmed, they aren’t considered “kills”. It’s likely the same reason they don’t drop loot. They aren’t considered “kills” by the game, so no loot (and I think XP) are ever gained, and thus they also don’t contribute to stacking sigils.
I think I’ve encountered enemies in some story instances (living story as well) that will contribute to stacking sigils, but I might be recalling that incorrectly. However, it would be nice if the sigils did allow for the building of stacks since it’s otherwise a completely wasted sigil slot.
Although the story steps tend to be rather simple as far as completion goes, so having a dead sigil slot generally doesn’t prohibit the proper completion of said steps. The only things that end up actually being challenging to a degree are some of the boss encounters, and there may or may not even be mobs from which to build stacks prior to them.
“By Ogden’s Hammer, WHAT SAVINGS!”
I kind of miss that guy, as repetitive as he was.
I don’t think it’s a complete solution as running multiple banners means you will have to abandon some of your banners whenever you want to relocate.
I can understand when some random guy that doesn’t want to make any effort to communicate picks it up and runs off with it. Although I find that most people are pretty reasonable and will let it go if you simply ask them.
I find I usually have the opposite problem with no one wanting to pick them up and just leaving them behind altogether, but I’m not really sure what other solution there could be aside from somehow “packing up” the banners after they’ve been summoned, kind of like how an engineer can pick up their turrets.
Really, what better guardian skill to put it on?
It could easily go on purging flames. In fact, I bet they would’ve put it on purging flames if resistance existed at the time they changed the skill to lower condition duration while you’re inside of the field.
Sanctuary is also another good choice. It doesn’t last that long and has a very long cooldown, so it wouldn’t be particularly powerful. But resistance would fit nicely with the purpose of that skill.
Other than that, there’s always signets that could use some loving. Giving one of them some sort of resistance capability would make them more attractive than they are now.
Then there’s always the possibility that it could be incorporated into a trait or weapon skill somehow.
I’ve had problems seeing this being that effective a stat combo for engineers. The damage is just not often as bursty, and if you’re swapping out things like the vitality from carrion or the toughness from rabid (or both from dire), you’re making yourself even easier to kill than you normally are.
If think it’s a much better overall choice for professions like thieves and mesmers who can unload giant bursts while being able to blink and stealth away if they get hurt, whereas an engineer often has to rely on their feet to create proper spacing.
I guess it could be used in a PvE build though… I’ve used a carrion/rabid HGH build which can turn out decent damage, and going sinister would make it even more so if you were able to function just as well without the durability.
While many people simply want an option to hide them, or have your back item “overlap” it, the developers say that the problem is identification of which kit the Engineer is in.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say this is “execu-speak”, but it’s in the same vein. I don’t for an instance believe that’s the actual reason for anything.
If nothing else, the real reason is something along the lines of “this is the way we did it, and it’ll be a very costly to go back and make this sort of cosmetic change, so it’s not something we’re going to invest in or plan to invest in any time soon”. Then they give the first reason because it has a more friendly, positive spin on it.
It’s not that I feel the actual reason (or rather, what I believe is the actual reason) to be invalid. In fact, I think it’s completely valid and I understand why they haven’t shown any effort to alter anything in regards to the hobosacks. But then they go on about how it’s important so people can understand what’s going on and how it keeps the engineer in balance. Blablablablabla.
In all honesty, if this is their intent with the hobosacks, they might as well have just had giant, garish-looking things attached to your back. Bomb kit? Just have some giant bomb (kik puns) strapped to your back instead of some generic brown sack that looks like the tool kit anyways. Tool kit? Just put a giant gear shield on your back, no need for that lunch bag. Flamethrower? Just light your head on fire, that should make it clear enough.
The funny thing is that this would actually be less of an issue if 98% of builds were not forced to run kits in order to be at all effective at doing what they’re supposed to do.
Yeah, I too ran into a situation where I was trying to sell off 100 gems, but the kitten thing was stuck at 11 gems for 1 gold, so it wouldn’t trade evenly. Had to keep a watch until it allowed me to sell off all 100 at once. I just don’t want to be hanging on to like 5 gems which are utterly useless.
The custom exchange system in place really sucks though. I’m not even going to be diplomatic about it, it’s just a filthy, grubby, rotten way to scrounge up every nickle and dime off the greasy floor. I’m less inclined to buy things from the gem store these days because I know I’m going to have to go through this custom exchange hassle every time I want to sell any excess off as gold.
I could understand if they were worried about some buying-selling scam (for some reason the fractional cents scam from Office Space comes to mind), but since you have to sell the gems at 70% of cost, I don’t really see what the issue is. If I have 5 gems, just let me sell them, I don’t care if they total less than 1 gold in value. I already gave you the money, now let me do what I want with it.
I could show this to a 5 year old and they’d be able to accurately point out how it makes no sense.
While I don’t necessarily agree with the OP’s sentiments (though I consider boosters useless trash that I hoard anyways), it can be extremely annoying when you want a particular weapon skin, but the ONLY means by which they are available is by gambling.
In contrast, armor skins and outfits can simply be bought for a flat price from the gem store, whereas the weapon skins (some of which are really just reskins of existing weapons) will have a variable cost for each individual depending on what the chests decide to reward them with.
No one’s thrown up “there’s something in the water!” yet? It’s clearly the best line of dialogue in the entire game.
Yeah, having resistance included in SY would be really broken. Sucking all condis in but not being affected by them. It defeats the point of the ability, which is to “sacrifice yourself”, in a sense.
Mind you, the ability already kind of violates this principle because you can just pop it when you want to gain the boons and not suck up any conditions in the first place.
I use a healing build in WvW. I’m sure people could spend hours lecturing me on why it’s poorly optimized and inferior to your garden-variety zerg build, but it’s effective at what it does. I’ve been happy with it’s performance and see no need to change it.
I haven’t tried a healing/tanky build in PvP… I much prefer to go medi burst or spirit weapons because I find them funner. I do encounter people using them though.
For PvE, there’s just really no point in using a healing build. Better to just keep your party’s stability up when needed, use any necessary projectile reflects/bubbles and then put the rest of the build into killing things.
I’m actually looking forward to the stab changes with regards to Elixir B (the guard in my is scared the engi in me is excited) it’s such a mediocre stab already maybe with the changes it’ll be decent.
You are much more optimistic than me, but I hope the change is for the better too.
I’ve sent requests in mail to Anet and tried mailing devs in game (grouch) to change Toss Elixir U to be the same reflective bubble that turrets can be traited for, rather than the randomness of a reflective wall or a blinding wall. (Reflection 10x better)
Alas, nothing ever happened.
Having a circular AoE rather than the line would definitely synergize better with 409 and HGH, and the consistenty in the skill would be a breath of fresh air. However, I imagine this change wouldn’t be made because it’d lose the “randomness” to it. It days past, it was actually capable of making a line of warding too, but they removed that early on.
Though the smoke screen is not necessarily less valuable than the reflection wall, it’s just more situational. It’s capable of defending you against melee opponents while the wall isn’t, and it can be comboed for more stealth whereas the reflect wall will just get you retal. Though it’s a bit unreliable for dealing with melee opponents since getting the reflect wall doesn’t help in that regard, which is why people generally reserve it for dealing with ranged enemies and thus not wanting the smoke screen.
Then there’s also the galling fact that an engineer can make a wall of reflection or smoke screen underwater via toss elixir U, but guardians and thieves can’t.
Because sense-making.
From my understanding, the more popular version is a 60062 build, though I could see how 60044 would be nice too.
One primary disadvantage to your build is that you have zero sources of protection. You should at least slot something like protective shield or protection injection. In particular, the latter is a much better choice than self-regulating defences, which can actually prevent you from healing yourself or cause an enemy to force a decap of a node.
Though the 3 point trait in inventions is nice, I also wouldn’t underestimate the tool belt recharge reduction. This can give you back your stun breakers, which can easily save you more than a healing skill recharge will.
You could also take both adventurer runes and speedy kit/invigorating speed. That’s even more dodges than one option alone, and you’d have a lower cooldown on your stun breaker to boot.
I’m also a bit confused by the sigil of intelligence. Is that just to proc incendiary powder? It seems to be a bit of a waste to me, especially considering you have the grenade kit which can proc the trait more easily. Without a doom sigil, your pressure you’d be able to apply to the opponent could diminish severely because you only have one source of poison in the grenade kit, which has a significant cooldown. Keeping a higher poison uptime makes it much easier to dislodge builds that are reliant on constant healing for their sustain (i.e. warrior’s healing signet, typically d/d ele).
You’re also designating an entire trait to obtain ~100 power in the form of energized armor, which is arguably not the best value especially when you could have more frequent use of things like pry bar and magnet, or more dodges via invigorating speed.
Other than that, there’s the entire fact that the absence of strength runes will eat heavily into your damage, both condition and direct damage. Though you exchange that for sustain instead via the leeching sigil. But one of the reasons celestial builds became so common is because they could maintain significant damage output via might while still having a well-rounded stat line. If you remove all your might, the damage can take a nose-dive, unless of course you can coordinate with allies in group fights to keep high group might uptime.
In any case though, I think it’s still a fairly solid build (minus the self-regulating defences trait). If nothing else, it would probably exhibit higher sustain than a 60044 build, though I don’t think it would outperform holding a node compared to other builds. I could see it working well in a team comp, although I still imagine the garden variety 60062 having an edge in PUGs.
Though if you’re going to use orb running on spirit watch to market the build, I’d include rocket boots. A super speed→rocket boots combo will beat out just about anything, +25% passive move speed or no.
That is your game crashing. It encountered some kind of error and had to shut down. As to why it does that thing where it still lets you sort-of play for awhile, I don’t know.
This will generally only happen in large-scale events, such as Tequatl, Jormag, WvW zergs, &c.
One common solution for this is to lower your in game graphical settings. If your graphics are at high settings, such crashes are much more likely to occur. This is because the game has a lot more to process with the number of players/effects/enemies/&c. around, and having high graphical settings makes it so the game has to work exponentially harder to process all the information. At some point, it might mess up somewhere due to being overloaded, and end up crashing as shown in your video.
After the event is over, you can put your graphical settings back up to whatever you had them to before since all the in-game craziness will be over.
If your graphical settings are already on minimum, then I would check to ensure that you’re using hardware that meets the “recommended” specifications given (I’m assuming that it already does), and that you’re using a 64-bit operating system (which it looks like you are).
Yea sure, rifle and power is easier but normal = mainstream = booooring :>
So does waiting for a random mob to die because you decided to apply conditions to it instead of higher direct damage.
But meh, it’s just levelling. It’ll get done one way or another.
I’d like to see Acidic Elixirs not be so poopy!
Wahoo! Bye frands!
The main thing it needs is to not auto-reveal you when combined with elixir S. Perhaps also two boons stripped since it’s a large investment to use an elixir over a kit/healing turret. Maybe even apply an AoE blind, I dunno.
As far as the OP’s suggestions:
Toss elixir H – I think 2k is perhaps a bit high, although a heal on toss would be a nice little buff it could get.
Toss elixir B – this cannot be a stun breaker. As odd as it sounds, this would just make the ability too good, especially with it’s partner-in-crime elixir S. 8s of stabs also seems a bit long, but perhaps it would be more appropriate with the upcoming changes in HoT.
Toss elixir C – I don’t think this can be a stun breaker either. Maybe the base elixir could have it instead of the toss? That has a longer cooldown, so it would be less powerful as a stun breaker while still providing one.
Toss elixir U – the toss elixir is already quite valuble, but it’s frequently not taken because the actual utility skill (AKA “drink” elixir U) is highly suspect. The toss also doesn’t really synergize well with cleansing formula 409 or HGH. I can’t really think of what to do to that elixir though, it’s really the oddball of the bunch.
Toss elixir S – way too low a cooldown, especially considering that can be lowered to almost 20s with full investment in tools. The only thing keeping this ability balanced is it’s long cooldown. Putting it at that level simply gives too much access to stealth, especially relative to mesmers and thieves.
I’m a bit worried about the fate of toss elixir B in the expansion. With the stability changes, it could lose the only thing that makes it good. Hopefully it will at least provide a few stacks of stability, but even then I don’t know.
Some other suggestions you could use with HoT is something like resistance. For instance, if toss elixir C (and the drink elixir too) provided, say, ~3-5 seconds of resistance on use, that would make them directly more powerful and fit in with the theme too. Thus you can clear conditions, but also become unaffected by them for a short time. So even when that necro just reapplies 10 stacks of bleed, 15 seconds of poison, and chain fears you after you pop elixir C, at least you’ll be defended against it for awhile. It would also let you put resistance on allies via the toss to fulfill a more support-style role.
Maybe there could also be a new trait (or maybe mod acidic elixirs or something) so that the toss elixirs apply ~1-2 seconds of slow on enemies or something. I dunno.
EDIT: Oh also, there’s still bugs with the underwater toss elixirs. For instance, cleaning formula 409 does nothing for them. I don’t forsee those being fixed anytime soon though.
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)
It’s an odd quirk to the ability. I’m not sure if it’s entirely linked to the terrain, but my guess it that it would be so. Though it’s something that’s generally difficult to reproduce.
So no, it’s not just you. It seems to happen to everyone that uses the ability.
A small tip. If you don’t want to risk the roll part of the animation potentially sending you backwards, but sure to swap out of a kit just as you land. However, you need to make sure to use the weapon swap key to “drop a bundle” instead of hitting your utility skill again.
So for instance, have the toolkit out when you use the boots (or take it out immediately after activating them), and then just prior to landing at the end of the leap, hit the weapon swap key. This should produce a “you can’t drop bundles in the air” message, and the animation will be cancelled, thereby preventing the roll after the leap. It’s basically the same technique that you use to cancel the leap from the elixir gun’s acid bomb.
Just make sure that you don’t hit the weapon swap to early during the rocket boot’s leap because then it will cancel the actual leap and can severely or completely eliminate the distance you travel. It might take some practice.