Guild Wars 2

Arnath.2319:

Karizee.8076:

Arnath.2319:

If new expansion hits in 2-3 months… then there is no point in me working towards making a legendary.

New expansion = new legendaries, new and fresh is always cooler, people want what most people dont have, they want to stand out.

So basically for 99% of players we might as well give up on our legendaries until the next expansion.

I think you have it confused with other games where your legendary becomes obsolete at expac.

Your legendary will always be BIS here in GW2.

When it comes to stats that is true, but cosmetically when new legendary greatsword skins are released it will become “uncool” to own a Twilight or Sunrise. Everyone will want the new shiny graphic to show off.

So much fail in these two replies.

Only the skins will have any value when an expansion is released, unless ArenaNet deliberately allow them to scale with character level. And if they do that, then why would anyone grind for the new ones, with presumably identical stats?

No, you can expect your current Legendary Weapons to be eclipsed when an expansion arrives. There is no benefit to ArenaNet in letting you keep them and avoiding the grind for new ones. This is a gear treadmill remember.

I highly doubt the first expansion will leave the level cap alone. With the introduction of new gear, stat increases will eventually push certain stats like crit % up to 100%, and the only way to add new gear after that is with a gear reset. That comes in the form of raising the level cap.

I wont be buying the expansion if this is the case. I bought GW2 on the basis that new gear wouldn’t be added, and that I wouldn’t need to grind the same gear again and again. I simply don’t have the spare time to devote to a game of this nature.

If I had known ArenaNet would do a U-turn regarding adding gear (lying kittens never mentioned that in April when they were accepting pre-purchase orders) I would have passed. All I want is an online game I can play with friends, without the tedious grinding. This game isn’t that, and I don’t have the time to devote to it like I did with WoW unfortunately.

Just think of all those people who spent real life money getting their Legendary Weapons, and how soon it will be before a junk weapon in the expansion will be more powerful.

Why not ask ArenaNet if they have plans to make current Legendary Weapons scale when the level cap is raised I predict they will give us a nice place to store them for free when they become obsolete.

FourTwenty.4268:

Zantetsuken.9051:

This is a symptom of the burst/bunker issue that is plaguing PvP at the moment. It takes one of the stupidly high burst builds to counter one of the stupidly high healing builds.

I like that though. it helps add to the paper/rock/scissors element to it all, which to me, adds sooooo much more to the meta.

I could be totally off since im not in any high level tpvp yet. . .but i do enjoy that added layer of strategy/complexity/whatever you wanna call it

but sure, if you wanted to go 1v1 you’d need the silly high burst. focus fire works wonders though

In my mind a bunker should be a high health, high defense player, that takes a lot of time to kill. Fail to burst a bunker to death in GW2 and he resets the fight, and you have to start again from scratch. Instead of wearing him down, where everything you have done to him counts, his high healing nullifies it, meaning you wasted your time and cooldowns.

This is a bad way of doing it in my mind, as it requires co-ordinated teamwork (which isn’t going to happen in a pug) instead of just being able to blast away and eventually kill them.

It is because of this, that the sick burst exists. Add them both together, and people will complain because it simply isn’t any fun to fight against. 3 people being thwarted against a single player because they were pugging and unable to communicate and co-ordinate is bad design for a game that you want to market to the masses.

The thing to take away from all of this, is that it is in fact possible to create builds that are practically impossible to kill for the average balanced build.

Switching to Earth with Rock Solid gives 2-3 seconds of Stability, and Ether Renewal takes 3.5 seconds to channel, meaning that the bulk of healing is delivered, safe from interruption. Using this combo you can essentially reset the fight every 15 seconds, leaving only a small window to actually burst the Ele down. Add in other heals from Water Attunement, and you are looking at a build that requires high burst and focused teamwork to take down.

This is a symptom of the burst/bunker issue that is plaguing PvP at the moment. It takes one of the stupidly high burst builds to counter one of the stupidly high healing builds.

Not sure which dummies you mean. The ones in the Mists are crittable. If there are some in game, then they sound like objects (like turrets or siege equipment) and can’t be crit, or have conditions applied to them.

I highly doubt that in 2-3 mins of being attacked by 3 players, that he never once used his heal, and simply tanked you with regen.

Nothing about your post makes me think you know anything about Elementlists, despite your ‘credentials’. You don’t even mention his weapon set.

Look up Ether Renewal, that heals in pulses (which might explain why you think it was ‘regen’), has a low recharge (15 secs) and with a high healing stat, will take an Ele from low health to full when they are running 13.8k health.

And yes, it is pretty broken, as it can be shielded with Rock Solid. But there you go, you need to wait until he heals, then burst him down within that 15 sec period. That being said, if he wasn’t running 0/0/30/30/10 then he wouldn’t have Rock Solid, in which case you need to learn the animation for Ether Renewal and interrupt it.

Caffynated.5713:

The build can’t instakill anybody besides a complete glass cannon. Against a medium golem it was only doing just under 13k damage, and left a heavy golem at 15-20% health.

You’re also less survivable than every other elementalist build and blew your build’s one escape to get into combat. No wonder you took lava tomb.

Putting all of your eggs in a giant glowing basket that everyone can see coming and dodge isn’t a good idea against all but the worst players.

Zantetsuken.9051:

Why would they be a joke? If his first hit crits, and subsequently causes burning, then he gains 2 x +5% damage bonuses.

Those are really the only 2 traits in Fire that complement his build, the Power is the main reason he has points in there at all.

Using two traits for a 30% chance to maybe deal 5% extra damage on 1 or 2 abilities is pretty much the worst choice ever.

You mean a 30% chance PER CRIT to cause burning, which gives 2 x +5% increases to ALL damage. And even if this didn’t happen, you can burn your target first in Fire Atunement before switching to Air and bursting.

I think you maybe don’t realise this is a gimmick build, nothing more. His trait choices are there to increase the burst as much as possible, not make a viable build.

The best way to use this combo is to use Earthquake to Knockdown the target, then switch to Air and burst, you gain the 20% Grounded damage bonus, which can cause about 14k of damage consistently to a Heavy Golem.

This is what bothers me. In GW1, if I wanted to craft some exotic gear, all I needed was the coin and mats. And I could get those anywhere. This gave me a lot of freedom to choose where I wanted to play, and with so many zones all tailored to level 20, it never got boring.

From what I have read, when you reach level 80 in GW2, your experience bar continues to fill up and you continue to gain skill points, much like GW1? If this is true, then that would be a much better basis for purchasing gear, as players could then play whatever content they wanted, and gain the exact same rewards.

I think this is something ArenaNet should consider, as part of the reason I am struggling to maintain interest in this game is knowing that the gear grind hasn’t even started for me yet

The problem with that is, what do I do when I reach level 80? My gaming time these days is limited (as exhibited by the 4 months I was unable to play the game due to work :P) so I want to spend it playing the content I enjoy.

Grinding dungeons again and again for gear when I would rather be in WvW with my Guild is a waste of my precious gaming time. Wasn’t this supposed to be the game that let us play the content we enjoy without having to jump through hoops first? I tried WvW as an under-leveled player, it was awful being killed in 1-2 hits (even more so when you consider the silly repair costs). All I can really do is use siege gear and drop combo fields for my Guild to use.

As it is, I am spending more and more time playing Firefall, and that game isn’t even finished yet :P But a large open PvE world, fun skill-based combat, player generated content and dynamic events that always attract a large amount of players make it hard to resist.

I suppose GW2 is always there for the times when I feel anti-social :P

At this present moment in time, my first character is level 40. I have had to walk away from about a dozen group events during the leveling process, some of which are the culmination of the zone’s story, because there aren’t enough players joining in.

When I bought this game (back in April when ‘pre-purchasing’ first began), I did so in the belief that the side-kicking system would mean that max leveled players would be able to play anywhere in the world without being overpowered. I actually believed that the world of GW2 would be thriving with players, instead of being just another dead world, same as the majority of MMOs.

Where is the intelligent design, the questioning of long standing concepts, in what you have done with this game? Was it always your intention for max leveled players to grind dungeons for loot while the actual PvE world remains solely for those leveling their characters? This game is yet another in a long line of boring MMOs that goes to great lengths to create a world, and then gives players no reason to be part of it once they reach the ‘endgame’.

I can understand why people are walking away from this game. You tried so hard to convince everyone that you were doing something different, but under the surface this game is so much more like WoW than it is Guild Wars. I can already see your first expansion raising the level cap (to reset gear), adding new leveling zones and most importantly, adding new dungeons to grind for new loot. Yawn.

I doubt I will even get to level 80 at this rate, the game is simply too boring to play for any reasonable length of time. The AI of the PvE mobs is laughable, the more interesting dynamic events require more people to take part, and the fact that I have to pay silly amounts of money to respec my traits just for a bit of variety are all combining to make the leveling experience a chore instead of enjoyable.

One of TotalBiscuit’s GW2 videos (I think from Eurogamer 2011) shows him fighting a huge boss, Tequatl the Sunless, with only one other player taking part. That is the real GW2. Which makes me wonder, why did you even bother with group events?

I now understand why you insisted that players pre-purchase this game before you let them play it.

Caffynated.5713:

Calls his build Arcane Lightning…
Doesn’t take Arcane Lightning ^.^

I hope your fire traits were intended as a joke.

Why would they be a joke? If his first hit crits, and subsequently causes burning, then he gains 2 x +5% damage bonuses.

Those are really the only 2 traits in Fire that complement his build, the Power is the main reason he has points in there at all.

Time wasted is another factor to consider. Let’s say it takes 20-30 seconds to run to a point, 20 seconds before a Thief shows up, 2-3 seconds to die, and then potentially a 20 second wait to respawn.

Casual players want to spend their time fighting, and having a chance to either kill or be killed. They don’t want to die in seconds, or be unable to kill the other player because they out-heal the damage they take. The yo-yo health bars of bunkers is boring and futile to fight against, and being killed in seconds is also tedious.

Blizzard learned this lesson with Cataclysm, where they reduced the healing power of healers, but giving other classes better self healing and better damage reduction in the form of the new and improved Resilience.

Tournament players might prefer the fast style, but casual players don’t, so ArenaNet needs to find a compromise to satisfy both sides, or choose which is their priority.

Edo Tensei.8254:

the tpvp needs a matchmaking system aswell but i am afraid that it wont work with this low pvp playerbase this game have at moment. i think the pvp in gw2 will die soon , well lets see if the big pvp update in februar/march will solve some major problems so the people might come back

Chicken and the egg situation right there. Noob teams enter tournaments and can potentially face the best teams farming tickets. After they get smashed, they give up as the learning curve is too steep.

I agree wholeheartedly, the game needs a ranking system, and it needs custom servers as well so teams can practice their tactics in a controlled environment.

If these features aren’t added in the next patch (and instead we get a new map and some balance tweaks) then I don’t think PvP will last. At the moment, people are hanging around waiting for this patch. If it doesn’t deliver, I think many people will walk away.

Glass cannon Elementalists kill by chaining CC with high damage skills. In 1v1, this is quite dangerous, but as with all classes, if you avoid the setup, you break their chain and gain the initiative.

In group play though, glass cannon Eles die to casual AoE as their health pools are so low. And Mist Form only makes them invulnerable, you can still damage them with conditions. Throw an Immobilise on them when they Mist Form to stop them running, and they will be dead a few seconds later.

Much like Warriors, once committed, they will struggle to disengage. The major disadvantage they have is that they can’t do anything from range when specced as D/D. They max range they have is 600, so if they are attacking, they are within range to target and quickly kill.

Elementalists are in no way the same as Thieves, hitting with all attacks take a lot more skill as an Ele, as the targeting has a habit of missing due to camera angle and latency. That being said, they are quite easy to play if you use an MMO mouse, as it helps with rapid Attunement switching.

This isn’t about Thieves having burst, we are all for that. But when a Thief can kill a bunker with 3.2k armour (and 13.8k health) in a single combo, then things are just getting silly. Not because they can kill bunkers, but because they can do it to everyone else.

Ultimately though, ArenaNet will lose more and more potential PvPers (look at the amount of dead hot join servers, even at prime time) unless they make the game more casual friendly. This isn’t GW1, this game was made to appeal to the new generation of MMO players, and the PvP isn’t doing that, hence the complaints (and dead servers).

It sucks to be sure, but if ArenaNet lose PvPers because they aren’t enjoying themselves, then they lose development money, and the PvP budget will shrink. PvP already feels somewhat neglected, you want it to get worse because only the Tournament crowd are playing? At the moment even paid tournament players are getting kitten off because they are having to pay through the nose for tickets and endure long queues due to lack of players. Ask them if they would happily trade Thief and Mesmer burst (as well as Ele and Guardian survival) for cheaper ticket costs and faster queues (due to more players being involved).

ArenaNet could create 2 sets of amulets, one for Tournament, and the other for hot join. That way the extreme bunker and burst amulets would be more rounded for hot join, which would lower the burst and the huge survival, making the game more like WoW PvP.

MarkedOne.1309:

All of you CRYING noobs are calling for nerfing burst. I SAY NERF BUNKERING. Bunkering is more OP than burst. Think about it.

Both are over the top. I made a D/D Elementalist bunker to mess around with, I was pretty much unkillable 1v1. Every 15 seconds I could give myself 2-3 seconds of Stability and cast Ether Renewal. No skill required, just the right build/stats. Only way I could die is if I was bursted down within that 15 second window.

Same applies with Thieves, Mesmers and 100B Warriors, very little skill required to actually pull the combos off. Skill in this game comes from winning group fights, not 1v1s. Which is why the casual crowd aren’t enjoying it. It just isn’t balanced for 1v1.

Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and call Anet out on this for not putting TDM in, as there are so many ‘PvPers’ who do little else.

As for Mesmers (and Thieves), I will say this plainly; Tournament players, your prize money will be crap unless you have a very large audience behind you. And that wont happen as long as bad (or macro abusive) Thieves and Mesmers can smash casuals in the blink of an eye. Casual players do not have, or ever practice to have, arena/tournament reflexes.

It might be better for everyone if this ‘wicked sick’ burst (what are you Jonathon, 15?) was toned down.

…for not following the same queue based system WoW uses. Deserter debuffs and long queue times killed WoW for me. Being able to leave and enter games at will is so much more satisfying when 8/10 players on a server are all playing flavour of the month

Merry Christmas everyone, hope Santa rewards you all as you deserve

During beta I loved the PvP, but now, 3/10.

I’ve stopped playing hot join because most games are filled with Thieves running glass cannon builds, and the burst they produce is far too high for the skill required to pull it off. Survival boils down to whether or not my stun breakers/condition removal is on CD or not. If I have CDs I live and get to at least fight back, if not I die. Pretty boring situation given the recharge time of some of the stun breakers.

As for tPvP, I typically only play when my guildies need players, but I have little interest in taking it seriously. Unfortunately I just don’t have the time to devote to it anymore.

Capture and hold gets boring quite fast as well, and the lack of build diversity between the classes doesn’t help. The map rotation is annoying as well, I would rather be able to choose my map and remain playing it for each game. Capricorn just doesn’t do it for me

The ranking system is pretty worthless as well, as is always the case with time based ranking. Just part of their sPvP grind I guess.

That being said, I dislike fast games and I’m not really convinced that the majority of comps can be valid, or that team skill > build choice.

EDIT: Forgot to mention the lack of custom servers. I know they are coming, but not being able use these to practice with guildies without randoms joining, or being able to play solely on a specific map doesn’t help. Hopefully the Feb patch will address this.

ilJumperMT.4871:

Lol at people whining about macros in a game that takes so few keybinds.

http://taugrim.com/2012/06/27/guide-to-guild-wars-2-keybinds/

Learn to Keybind. Even if people use macros they have no advantage lol.

This is like saying learn to aim to someone using an aimbot. Good players don’t need to, but scrubs will as it is the only way they can pull the combos off. The more scrubs using these combos in spvp, the more complaints, the more people switching to the fotm classes and the higher the chances that the classes in question get ‘panic nerfed’.

To be honest though, ArenaNet brought this on themselves by making it so easy to burst with these classes (at least from a Thief perspective. I haven’t played Mesmer much). If they had incorporated class mechanics that thwarted macro users this wouldn’t be an issue.

maddoctor.2738:

Zantetsuken.9051:

Some professions use Malice and Precision in their condition builds, others use Malice and Power. You shouldn’t make a straight up comparison of purely Malice damage against health, as there are other factors to consider (direct damage from skills, rate of stacking, removal traits/abilities, ease of re-application etc).

I’m comparing Burning and Bleeding I have no numbers on how fast “raw damage” will kill someone compared to them, only how fast Burning kills people at certain amounts of Condition Damage. I wanted to measure how our two conditions scale with different levels of Condition Damage and a comparison between them.

Lifelike.5862:

It’s nice to know that burn = 6 stacks of bleed though.

Burn = 6 stacks at 850 condition damage and above.
For me that’s the main issue with burning. It scales badly compared to Bleeding, I was expecting the more condition damage you have, the better burning damage scales but that’s not the case, it’s the complete opposite.

So a condition that doesn’t stack on itself scales poorly, compared to a condition that can stack multiple times? I’m finding less and less use for Burning now, especially in groups. A single Scepter Elementalist can keep Burning up forever, what happens if your group has more people that apply regular Burning with their builds? It’s also sad to read so many Elementalist traits are offering more and more Burning, which is, again, almost useless for groups. 25 stacks of bleeding aren’t very hard to achieve with lots of builds, while fighting bosses, and they can surely deal a great deal more damage than Burning.

How about making Burning stack once 20seconds are reached (or 30?), so every 20 (or 30)seconds of Burning applied, 1 more stack is added to the total. This change won’t make a difference in sPVP, WvW or even in general PVE, but it will certainly make Burning a more viable option in dungeon groups, against big bosses.

Burning does its damage instantly, and can be reapplied very quickly if it is removed. It is best used in builds that focus on Power and Malice.

Bleeds on the other hand have a ramp up time, and become weaker and weaker the more condition removal the target has, as the stack will need to be started again, and then protected with other conditions.

Neither is weak, they are just stronger in different situations. And as for keeping burning up indefinitely, yeah, you should be aiming to do that AND switch through all 4 attunements to support your group. So you need a decent duration-stack before you lock yourself out of fire for 9-15 seconds.

Lifelike.5862:

I’m pretty sure elementalists don’t have a way to generate poison fields. Unless you’re running around with a shortbow thief or necromancer glued to your hip, it’s probably best to assume that poison will come from sigils.

It’s nice to know that burn = 6 stacks of bleed though.

Well, since this is a teamwork orientated game, taking advantage of other players fields is a fairly standard tactic :P

Some professions use Malice and Precision in their condition builds, others use Malice and Power. You shouldn’t make a straight up comparison of purely Malice damage against health, as there are other factors to consider (direct damage from skills, rate of stacking, removal traits/abilities, ease of re-application etc).

As for applying Poison, you can fire projectiles through poison clouds, Hurl in particular is reliable for this as it adds 5 stacks iirc.

Had a similar one in sPvP the other day. Bunker build with 3.2k armour (but only around 13k health), dead in 2-3 secs by a Thief using Mug > C+D > Backstab (from the front kitten > HS spam.

I blinded him with Blinding Flash before he shadow-stepped, but I still got caught with Basilisk Venom (I’m guessing he had Residual Venom) just long enough to blow me up.

Managed to cope with him better after that, but I was gob-smacked at the damage considering a moron with a macro keyboard could easily carry out that burst combo.

Due to my career, I was unable to play GW2 upon release. Until the last few days.

The first time I played WoW, I explored the game thoroughly, looking at objects in the world, curious to know what each one was, if there may have been something interesting or not.

This was because the map and minimap were very basic. The game didn’t hold me by the hand and point me in the right direction. When I needed directions, I asked a player, not an NPC. And I looked at the actual world, not the map.

Fast forward 5 years and GW2 is released, and is by far the most gorgeous MMO I have played. Yet all morning when running around areas for the first time, my eyes have been glued to the minimap, to make sure I’m on the right ‘bearing’ to the next marker of interest. It is sucking the life out of what is usually the most enjoyable part of exploring a world for the first time.

Now look at Oblivion/Skyrim. That game doesn’t hold players by the hand the way modern MMOs do. None of the map markers exist until you are within range of each of them. And exploring those worlds has been far more rewarding and satisfying than exploring Tyria has been these last few days.

Please, consider removing all map markers until players have manually discovered them. Map completion achievement will take much longer, but removing the empty feeling that I have right now following this ‘tick off list’ that you have given us will make it worthwhile.

Rift was the exact same, so ask anyone you know how much fun they had exploring Telara. It is because of this blatant hand holding that I spend most of my time in PvP, as PvE in MMOs has become far too convenient and boring.