Guild Wars 2

Well, given it’s anatomy it indeed can’t run like a cheetah, but we’ve yet to have one dragon that is mobile during combat, and by that i mean actual ground combat when we’re hitting it, and not flight/underground attack sequences.

I can imagine it, and it would be awesome!

What? Wyvern is accually chasing people and killing them? Well hurr durr, maybe time to use that shield for some blocks, get those extra dodges you got under your belt, or coordinate group effort to cc it out of it’s frenzy!

I don’t belive any raids are coming. Watch Angry Joe’s interview, and Joe repeating “raid” like machine gun and Colling making dodges left and right when hearing the word.

What i’m worried about is how much new stuff are we getting there, really. How much new traits, skills, weapons (and their skills) are we actually gonna get for our existing chracters, both as changes to our base profession, and via specializations?.

So far what’s for sure is that specializations will be able to use one new weapon (so that’s 5 new weapon skills tops). Few utilities, maybe 2 new elites, 2 new heals, and one traitline (profession based one). That’s the barebones and it’s not looking too…hot.

I’d like them to come out and prove me wrong, that there’s more then just that and specializations will have more of the above and not feel like 1/5th of your base profession changed into something new, but an equal, different option, rivaling the base one and not being a tiny add-on.

Dr Evil voice: It’s a start.

I don’t care about “points vs Colin”. I care about new information. If you go there only to learn what already has been shared on the whole internet, then there’s not really much of a point to the trip, now is there.

Joe should’ve pushed Colin more, like “Colin, that was not the question. I asked about map size in the x-pac.” Sure he could answer “we can’t reveal that yet” and fine. But at least he’d know he can’t eel his way that easily out of giving some new feedback.

If you’re not gonna drop fresh information, then don’t make interviews for people who rode across the country for this specific event. If you do, you gotta be ready to spill some beans, and it’s the interviewer’s job to rip out as many of those as possible.

So i’m watching the wyvern fight montage, and not much action there when it’s on the ground. I would expect this savage wild beast tearing kitten up, but nope. He just does the stationary flamethrower duty, not moving one inch till it’s time to fly.

I’ve yet to see a dragon in this game that would charge the players, filling all those voice chats with “Oh kitten IT’S ON US, HEEEELP!!!”.

To make my point, here’s a dragon fight done right, from vindictus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEeOSmAUUxA

Just first few minutes shows what a savage, relentless assault a dragon should unleash. I’m not saying our dragons have to be this fast, since we have cooldowns etc, but to consider this as a model for a good dragon behaviour.

Map size? evaded.
Guild halls? eeevaded
Raids, instanced challenging content? dodged
Zathain fight was cool? As long as smashing #2 button is your definition of end boss…

You’re too soft Joe. It’s not asking the right questions that matters, it’s getting the answers to those questions that does. A great review is when you do, most of the time against the initial intention of the person being interviewed. You didn’t bust Colin once on him evading the main question and starting up PR jibba-jabba.

That being said it’s an accetable review as you did walk away with information of some attention being payed to base professions, new wvw map being available to everyone, same with stronghold and that wyvern boss fight footage (which tells more then the whole talking imho.

Regarding bats – if we get them it would be just fittng for one of them to have F2 skill that does aoe revealed, given echolocation and that revealing thieves is our specialty.

Lethal Njection.8741:

I just want to glide in WvW ;D

I want you to glide in there too:)
As does my longbow:)

More seriously then my previous post – why we rangers lack pet granting switness outside of combat? Jungle Moa wink wink. We got fury giver, give us swiftness machine!

Actually i think cat’s outta the bag with living story. It’s purpose is to serve the upcoming xpac. With all the living story content coming and going away in the first season it hit me this made sense only in two cases:

1. they went tv show batkitten crazy disregarding the insanity of taking away new content soon after it appeared.

2. Living Story served to not only pave way for x-pac lore wise, but more importantly mechanically wise. They tested new things with it, and if they flopped no worries, it gets taken away in a sec anyway. After that they would reserach how well that little experiment did, and put something similar (or not!) in the x-pac.

Since HoT is coming soon, they most likely have no time nor reason to do LS. Their hands are full with xpac. Once it launches and settles in a bit, then they may begin a series of new experiments of their favourite guinea bookahs.

Christopher Lambert voice: I don’t think so.

They would shoot their own foot if they let us obtain mastery points via books, only to zip through content or at least most of it’s barriers on the first day.

The whole pve part of expansion seems to be about exploration and adapting to new environment, not going “Jolly good chaps, we’re in a jungle with wild savage unknown beasts, but worry not, i got 100 tomes of knowledge. Now serve us tea, James, before we got kill a dragon or ten.”

I’m against immobilize being considered a cc. mobs can turn and attack despite being immobilized, and it’s already a cleansable condition.

From what i’ve seen the base of deciding if something is a cc or not is it’s ability to interrupt opponent’s action, and shut down his ability to use skills other then stunbreakers or 0 cast time skills. Immobilize falls flat on all these fronts in pve and barely scraches one in pvp (you gotta be behind them and immobilize doesn’t stop their ground targetted aoe or point black aoe.

lasers for our sharks!

It hit me some time ago when designing my human necro, that every human male has the same very apologetic animation when standing idle. They seriously look like some super complexed dude before asking love of his life to the prom.

What the hell. Here i make a tall, kitten looking necromancer with “socially unfriendly” attitude and backstory, only to see it show body language of primary school’s scapegoat when left alone for a second.

moral of the story:
Restore the personality types based on our dialogue choices (charming, ferocious, noble) and add some idle body language that matches the choice. Norn males for example have good “i mean business” body language.
Because right now all humans have only one personality type looking at their movement – “wuss”.

Telling your cabbage to shut it and just grow roots is not racism. It’s gardening.
As is telling your furball to zip it and lie down infront of fireplace. Well ok, that one is animal care:)

I got mixed feelings about the new defiant. On one hand i fully understand it’s meaning and role in open world content. With 100 players tackling a champ you can’t hope for coordinated defiance removal and using that one, long lasting cc at the right moment.

But for instanced content like dungeons, the old defiance is way better in my opinion. Coordinating cc skills to remove defiant, and then using that superior cc to interrupt, or at least keep it a bay for few precious seconds is a great system, that rewards teams that know what their doing and punisher button mashers that pay no attention to what they’re pressing.

Also the new system rears it’s ugly head with no real choice of what happens when defiance is broken. Instead of us having control (will we fear it, pull it, blow it away, stun it etc) we’re down to one pre-determined boss mechanic if i understood correctly. Feels like “communistic choice” to me.

Also going a peg down from chaps an onto elites – I would like to see the day where “safety mechanics” are taken off, and if a mob can push me off a cliff, then i can do the same to it for fast, brutal kill. Pulling them into a deadly trap (like in sparkfly fen’s even to deal with 2 risen krait veterans), or stunning them so another deadly trap has time to trigger and catch them, would also make for great encounters if you ask me.

I just hope he won’t forget about pve aspects of the game, cause we all know he’s a wvw type of guy.

You can do a guild bounty even with one person. Here’s how you do it. Once you unlock it (you can bribe your way to it with gold for influence) start it up at sunday or saturday evening. There’s a 90% chance someone else (and in numbers) will be seeking same bounty or even already be pouncing away on it.
Just ask in map chat and if that’s the case join in. That kill will count to your guild’s bounty. If no one is fighting it, you can still ask in map chat if someone saw it and gather ppl for it. Few refuse the allure of a champ for thrashing;)

If you’re moderately lucky you won’t get one of the 3 pain in the kitten to find bounties. Also be sure to read up on wiki on bounties and the maps they spawn in. be sure to have all of those maps properly discovered (waypoints activated).

And as i said one person is all it takes so….you can hunt one target, while your buddy at same time seek the other. With outside help you’ll be done in a jiffy and get your guild merits. Guerrilla tactics ftw (even if my guild underlings hate me for it:>).

Cool ideas here!
I’d like to see:

1. Pirate flag themed glider (for my jungle pirate themed guild).
2. Jungle palm leafs and bamboo frame glider (let me feel the jungle!)
3. If we’re going by profession then a big bad kitten eagle as ranger’s glider:)

as a ranger.

And that is to have freaking laser beams attachable to our sharks’ heads. Now evidently a-net tells us that can’t be done, looking at the current state of things.

Can you remind me what i pay you people for? Honestly throw me a bone here!

Ps. Oh and fix pet pathing while you’re there;)

Take home a risen today! Nurture him, read him stories, saw up his lost limbs, and in no time you’ll have a good zombie for your own!

As for sylvari indeed this will be challenging, and more over it’s pretty clear that if mother tree starts saving her children, mordry will once again remind her the pecking ordrer. Ofc there’s always the “fried vegetables” solution.

I’ll be the second. I ain’t leader of Jungle Krewe for nothing!:>

If any healing skill should be a survival skill, it’s troll unguent. It has the most survival feel to it, and while powerful there is the fact of it not providing immediate save.

As for Heal as One i would extend it’s cd but add ability to resurrect your fallen pet with it. So if you suck with keeping your pet alive – HaO, if you’re doing cool – troll unguent.

Guild halls – will we be able to customize their looks to our liking (Like Wildstar’s housing) or do we all get same old hall, just of different size depending on our guild’s funding?

Specializations – we know jack smack you-know what about them. Just how much new do they bring? Is it just one single new weapon for each one? Do they use same weapons as base professsion asides that one new weapon? And if so are their weapon skills the same as base profession’s in that case? How many new skills and traits are they getting compared to base profession?

Dungeons – will we see new ones, and will old ones be given some attention, especially A.I. wise?

“challenging conent” be mostly open world, instanced, or plenty for both cases?

And finally, how far is their current progress with HoT more or less? Are we looking at something that’s half done, 80% done, not even halfway yet?

It’s raise of defensive builds, not tanks. Tank is expected to hold aggro and damage from a mob (especially a boss) at all times with healer allowing him to sustain the punishment. With taunt which will be a control effect for what it seems it’ll mean you’ll be able to get mob off someone, but only for a short time. Then it’s back to “who it kills, nobody knows”.

The taunter might need protection, solid regen, block/evades depending how severity of encounter, but by no means will he hold attention of a monster 24/7 nor be able to sustain it for that long with ease.

Also it may have offensive uses. Imagine a pesky archer on ledge above you just can’t reach, or outsnipe him. Taunt the guy and watch him lose his advantage of high ground and walk straight into your caring arms – recently sharped and craving for blood;)

Deleven.7508:

They could do something interesting, and make RaO give some stacks of stability on cast, and then have each of your pets attacks grant further stacks of stability.

My thoughts exactly. What if stability now becomes same as might in RaO and each your attack gives your pet a stack of it, and vice versa? I would say that would be pretty powerful considering how now one boonstrip is all it takes, while ranger themselves have zero counter vs enemy boons.

That someone was me;) But seeing revenant still in development made me doubt. But seems i overreacted, good to hear some logical arguments here:)

Well if he said that then that’s a ray of sunshine for me. I sure would hate to wait till next year for it.

Till yesturday i was convinced we’ll be getting HoT at late spring to middle summer, but seeing how revenenant is still in the works (3 trait lines missing, no balancing applied yet) it’s clear to me that they’re far earlier in the works then I expected.

Given there’s at least finishing up the revenant, beta testing of the whole xpac, game balancing and some seeerious debugging, I’m no longer so optymistic about release date. So just gonna sit down, chill out and focus on here and today.

The good news:

1. It’s not even complete yet it seems so there will be some serious balancing ahead.
2. If not at least warrior cheese will end in favour of revenant cheese;)

maybe because of that bolded quote in my opening text? That’s not me saying it, that’s A-net themselves. Read carefully man. It’s not “and their specialisations”. So yeah that’s why i’m posting this topic. Because game balance is getting limited by xpansion purchase.

For crying out loud people, look at Diablo 3. Money grabbing Bli$$ard who has far worse reputation then A-net did add many new features to the base game when realeasing their expansion, not shoving every possible little fix into the x-pac box. If they could do it so can a-net.

My humbles apologies if the quote above is wrong and base professions will too see their share of new condies/boons be it as additions to their old skills or few new ones.

i agree with opener. Taunt makes for great opportunities for strategical combat. And given it’s a control effect, and not condition i think we can be sure that it’ll be short and scarce enough to not turn the whole game into perma taunt spams into the “tanks” (which we don’t have).

Well consider this scenario (which is real, btw). I’m more then willing to buy the x-pac. But supposing it launched and i did buy it.

Things still stay the same for our base professions. If i choose to not fight as my specialization, but my base profession, I’m still without access to new boons/condis. Cause money. That’s my beef.

From post about revenenant:

“New boons, conditions, and status effects have been added to the revenant as well as spread across other professions’ specializations. These are cool ways we’ll allow players to interact with new types of skills in our combat system.”

For me it says clearly that the distribution of those new conditions an boons is strongly affected by marketing team, putting game balance in 2nd place.

Chief reason combat is so fun is because very blurred line of what a given profession is supposed to do and what not, resulting to wide and often unexpected access to many different boons and conditions by many professions.

When it comes to new ones, nope. The line is thick and clear – expansion’s specializations and reveneant, base professions not. That doesn’t sound like a decision made purely with game’s balance and fun in mind.

And no, i’m not afraid to pay 40$ to buy an x-pac, like some posters here suggest. I’m just afraid that in the new world base professions will turn bland regardless if you bought it or not, cause they were denied access to new condies and boons for sake of marketing. (Yes i edited this post since majority seem to have completely misunderstood the point of it.)

This is far bigger then it seems people.

The real deal here is “why taunt exists?” And one of the possible answers would be “because A.I will no longer play game by your rules and nicely bunch up on one target, for AoE to smite them”. Just as defiant strongly encourages cooridination in using your cc as a group, taunt might be implication you’ll now have to coordinate taunts to position enemies to your advantage or get them off that one player that’s clearly next to fall.

TL;DR
Taunt may mean enemies will no longer be brainless and you’ll have to use taunt to keep their much more lethal A.I in check. And lack of proper A.I is the number one reason PvE meta is the monotonous “zerk or go home”.

And today is yet another day when my theory is proven correct. Everytime a-net writes an entry on HoT website i feel i’ve been thrown a big, juicy bone to chew on for the next week or two. I just have yet to see one lame entry there regarding HoT. They’re big, they’re informative, their fresh. I love them.

No less can be said about movie trailers – both HoT premiere trailer, and the “dino trailer” are hype building, interesting and reavealing never before seen.

And then the train derails and crashes into Point of Interest.
So my humble request here. If you can’t put something meaningful there to last the whole show, just don’t put it. Take those 5-10 mins of HoT relevant material and put it up with post on website.

Or if you are going to be doing it in PoI make it more significant. You have a perfect opportunity right now with revenant. His skills have been disclosed along with mechanics and some screen of animations. You can go on and show those revealed skills in action. Or skip the minor stuff and spend 20 minutes talking outside of fallen pact ship with flamethrower bundles in your hands. I’ll let you decide;)

Tragic Positive.9356:

I’m running a mesmer anyways. So they don’t really need the Quickening Zephir.

Bit offtopic but as engi i sometimes grow to hate mesmers in dungeons. Little annoys me more then watch my setup for massive fire field blasting go to pot, because someone went time warp before my fire bomb exploded and i got lifetime supply of chaos armor instead of might stacks…

just saying;)

Actually since i solo in pve a lot i’m very happy to know my pet gets spirit buffs. We’re could use more sources of burning that don’t tie us to torch (or have torch brough up to levels of other offhands).

Kudzu is not a joke weapon. Flowery, feminine, yes. But not a joke weapon. Quip, the dreamer, the moot – now those are joke weapons.

It’s been said 1000 times and i’ll say it 1001st. Difference in damage reduction between heavy and light armor is so small it’s near impossible to say “it makes someone tanky/glassy” with straight face.

The base hp + access to defensive skills/traits, and how much you have to stray from offensive setup’s path to get reasonable defense – now that’s what makes a character squishy or tanky by default. And necro is pretty kitten tanky here.

Armor piece:
Inquest Breeches – light, male.

Bugs:

1. rear bottom section is undyable.
It’s always gray with yellow compass icon. An obvious bug since female version does not suffer from such issue at all, nor do identical sections on sides.

2. Both front and rear streatching horizontally when in battle stance producing real ugly and unnatural result.
Front flap should simply stay the same size, nothing harmful will happen when we see more of the legs, which are fully dressed in pants anyway. Back also looks real ugly when in battle. Here’s a screen:
-

MrKahwk.9524:

Why do people hate on LB ranger??

Why do you care about what some thief corpse is barking at you? Must be a risen. Pull out a torch, kill it with fire. Or rapid fire. Again:>

The big question in most of our heads is “just what are those specializations, really?”

And big part of this riddle are the weapon choices a specialization has. We’ve seen our characters will be able to wield weapons they could not before when they specialize..but how many and what of the old weapons?

Will my druid be able to wield staff only and nothing else?
Or will he be able to wield other weapons, including some (if not all) a ranger can?
And if the latter is the case, will he be using ranger skills on those weapons that the base class uses, or have a new, druid-only skillset on them?

Well i guess they’re saving this for last, but if someone knows something asides “druid-staff, mesmer-shield, engi-hammer, and guardian probably longbow” i’m all ears.

I’m a frequent visitor to queens terrace, but today i noticed that guild commendations vendor that was near the asura gate is gone! I hope this is a bug and will get fixed.

Stiofan.6720:

Im sure its not your intention but this thread is kinda racist tbh. How would it look if i made one titled ‘post your white (caucasian) only charecters’.

And while we’re at it, all urologists should be locked up for gender based discrimination and treating only males! Now that’s a real threat to our equality and freedom!

I agree that this fanart section needs to go. Especially that children’s book format made me shrug, recalling that it might as well be their real approach to us given NPE and trait rework (cause it’s too confusing for new players!).

That aside, once the show finally got to the subject (took you only a week and half of PoI) it finally got moving. I got to see that gliding is not on rails, it’s indeed fully player controled, that’s awesome. Also the news of there being more types of those mushrooms, and how they plan to put more environmental mechanics unlockable for given mastery owners was also something new and interesting.

The close up on those mordrem spawners and new type of enemies was also very cool.
Unlike last week this PoI was actually pretty good, once it started after that needless fanart section that is.

I’d love to see those mastery trait line panel, but guess it’s too early for that yet. Anyway while there’s still some work to be done over PoI attractiveness to HoT hungry crowd, today was a step in the right direction.

Rather then speculate i’ll say outright what the biggest issues with current trait system are, so whatever the new one is, it’ll hopefully take my feedback into account.

opening traits at lvl 30 was a horrible mistake. That’s way too late. Think of all those players heading into AC and then wanting to do explorable mode at level 35 and up.

Before they would at least have 2 adept traits ready, which in some cases were real life savers (for example shorter cooldown for thief’s stealth skills). Now the gap between lvl 80 with traits unlocked and a level 35+ character is an even greater gaping chasm, leading to non lvl 80 characters being treated like 3rd rate runners by the max level part of dungeon runners, and sadly so – for a good reason.

condensing trait points into 5 point steps 30 points to maxing trait, with one awarded each level was a great system. Due to passive stat boosts it let us build our character’s stats with traiting and each level had a reward of one more trait point for a small, but meaningful stat boost. Our stat boost, one where decided where it goes. It was great to feel my condi necro get more “condi” with each level, thanks to traiting.
Now we got one trait in some weirdly spaced level intervals that once again start being generous near level 80, making lower levels lag behind far more then they would with linear progression.

If you want to alienate newcomers from dungeons, not leaving them even barebones access to traits till they get nearer max level, then you’re doing a great job so far…

Ps. and for heaven’s sake don’t even get the idea of “simplifying dugeon experience to match current trait system.”

I love a challenge and having options. A hunt is exciting when i have access to wide array of skills, weapons and traits, and by making intelligent choices and staying on my toes i manage to slay a cunning, powerful and tricky foe.

It’s not fun if you have your weapons taken from you but “hey, don’t worry, we pulled out the boar’s tusks as well, so it’s fair game”.

So far the dragons are known to do most of their living via their agents, except rare cases when they themselves take action and then tyria gets a major landscape makeover.

So i imagine fight with mordremoth being a mass event, but not focused on the dragon itself, but rather his agents that are helping it control the fleet-destroyer wines, it’s mordrem armies and defences shielding the dragon itself.

I imagine it as a fight where Mordremoth is about to fully awaken and raise above the ground. If that happens all the pact gets wiped out. Our job is to find a path to him before that happens and immobilize/weaken him, while pact readies it’s super weapon to kill it.

To achieve that we would need to go into the roots, cut our way through and inject the dragon with some anti-modrem toxin, facing champs, vines and numerous obstacles to do so.

All the while at surface other groups of players would have their hands full with mordrem army and killing it’s agents controlling said armies, as well as those giant, fleet destroying wines.

Only if all efforts on all fronts succeed at the same time, will the operation succeed and we’ll have fried vegetable dragon for dinner.