Guild Wars 2

Many have stated here about us needing more control over our pets and the small problem of “Y U no dodge the red circle of death!!”.

I propose a very simple solution – a pet mechanic that is opposite to “protect me!” shout.
This time instead of pet taking damage for you, you take damage for your pet!
You would be able to activate and deactivate at any time, just like commands to follow or attack target.

What’s the point of it? Simple. If you facetank, point is a swift and humiliating death. But if you’re evading/blocking/reflecting at the time pet would get hit, then you’ll negate those blows that pet couldn’t, saving it’s kittened rear. Though a great gamble for ranger himself, it would still be an epic help against pet’s love for dying in red circles.

My idea for new skill acquisition would be mix of dailies and specific challenges. Here’s how it would work:

There would be certain activities, with progressing difficulty levels that would net you points for unlocking the skill. New type of points, not old skill points.

For example jumping a puzzle that is easy would net you one point, harder one 2 pts. hellish one 5 pts.

you could daily get points for each challenge of each difficulty only once, and you could cap it at some amount of points you deem fair.

And here’s where the fun starts. Hardcore fans of certain activity will simply go for that one activity alone, taking on tougher challenges, for more points. Not so skilled players will got for easier challenges of all types to get to their goal.

Among possible challenges i would most definitely include pit fights. Today i played my norn ranger and i had lvl 16 personal story “the semifinals” (of big brawl challenge to get back at old enemy). Rarely did i enjoy personal story so much as i did that one. Arena fights are something that should be build upon!

Back to main subject. Challenges might include:

Affore mentioned Arena fights
Fractals (reward based on difficulty)
Jumping puzzles
Tequatl
Crafting a potion that gives it from rare ingredients
One point per certain number of events completed.

Sorry if ideas ain’t best, mighty tired atm.

New ideas i support:

1. order missions and personal story development (it gets less personal when you join order, totally apersonal after forging of pact)
2. skin locker
3. Those racial skills for all, but under the condition they don’t get any benefits/disadvantages based on tha map they’re used

Old stuff that needs fixes, no buts:

1. stacking in dungeons
2. game balance (traits, skills)
3. missing weapon skins (T1+T2 cultural asura, sylvari, sorrow’s embrace).
4. alternate skins for legendaries so each has a serious version and another one (be it serious or easter egg).

Ideas i’m not fond of:

• subclasses and branches – either differences between professions start to blur(2 proffesions on one character) or it kills flexibility (one of 3 paths to choose for a profession) based on what idea exactly means .

My idea is pretty rough around the edges and some polish is highly welcomed;) However i stand strong on the role of bow in necro’s kitten nal (yup auto censor is stoopid). It’s a damage support weapon. In no way can it be compared to staff, which is a condition application and removal weapon.

The bow is to be the weapon you swap to make your damage epic then get back to your mainhand.
Notice the following advantages the bow gives to power players:

• untraited, fire & forget might stacking (totem). It has to be bit hard to set up, cause necro is not a boon class. Think of it as less easy to use warrior banner.
• short cd teleportation with swamp fiend follow up skill. This gives you the much needed evasion that your regular dodge just can’t provide enough of. And the nature of teleport does not give too much advantage in pvp (always to same spot and costs precious life force to use).
• torment stacks on auto attack to punish both runners and pursuers
• mist offering both severe condition damage or raw burst damage (at expense of your life force once again)
• a controllable fear cast that’s easier to use then the rest (save DS one).

It’s not a cleaving melee weapon nor it should be. Having options is one thing, having necro act like conan the barbarian is another. That’s just not necro like. But then again there’s always a way. Anyway my idea for the bow is to give extra damage sources as well some more opportunities for damage oriented necros and their lacking defense and mobbing abilities.

I started posting in Necromancer longsword idea thread about a bow and …well it started a life of it’s own, and it wouldn’t be fair to topic starter there. So i’m moving it here, so greatsword support goes to it’s thread and Necromancer bow (be it short or long) goes here:)

The bow would be necro’s burst aoe damage/control weapon. It would lack high sustained damage like dagger auto, but would provide occasional burst of damage as well as some buffing and enemy control ulitilies. A weapon you’ll use to both throw in something nasty in between main attacks, as well as to let your enemy know, fighting you at range is a very bad idea.

I would imagine it having the following skillset:

1 withering arrow - shoots an arrow that causes 1 stack torment and cripple on an opponent. Moderate damage.

Cast time: 3/4 sec.

2. terror arrow - shoots an arrow that toxifies enemies with pollen in landing area. If any enemies are hit, skill changes to toxic terror – causees fear in all afflicted enemies for 2 seconds when triggered.

cooldown: 15 seconds
radius:240
duration of pollen (time to activate toxic terror before it expires): 10 seconds.

3. Swamp fiend - Mark, Minion. Designate an area to set a trap. When enemy activates it, a swamp fiend attacks from underground, slashing & immobilizing enemies in range each second for 5 seconds before exploding for large aoe damage and bleeding.

Radius: 180.
cooldown: 30 seconds
combo finisher: blast

Follow up skill - Master’s Trap. Instantly teleport to the mark, or your swamp fiend as long as it’s alive.
Note: swamp fiend is immobile, it damages enemies inside mark’s previous radius. Just on activation mark is replaced with swamp fiend that also works with master’s trap follow up.

Life Force Cost: 15% of max value.
Cooldown 8 seconds

4. Totem of power – chain. Place a totem of power to create an area that pulses might to allies and weakness to enemies (think of it as a non mobile warrior banner effect). Chain has 3 stages each placing one totem. When 3rd and last totem is placed the totems effect area is formed and they start working. Totems stay active for 30 seconds.

cooldown:45 seconds.
might stacks per pulse: 1.
might duration: 8 seconds;

5. Putrid Mist. Shoots an arrow with chemicals that cause target area to be flooded by noxious, flammable gas, that pulses poison, blind and confuse on all enemies caught in it. Lasts 10 seconds.

Combo field: poison.
30 second cooldown.
radius: 240

Follow up skill: Detonate. Detonate your poison mist causing aoe explosion for each pulse the field had left.

Life force cost: 20% of max.
Blast Finisher.
Mist’s combo field becomes fire elemental for remainder of it’s duration and causes burning until it expires.

Thund.2795:

Here is my mesmer! <3

Awesome job on it! Not everyone can make a male asura look that good. While Bolt, capacitor and enigma give it that flashy blue/purplish look, it’s the coat + pauldron + glove combo that impressed me the most for that heavy top feel on light armor char (inquest armor ftw;). Also your only woe seem to the the shoes – i guess there’s nothing good from culutural armor sets for scholar profession asuras, cause it sure solved my side-toe problems for my guardian:)

DarksunG.9537:

Many of these suggestions are not about Horizontal Progression, but about balance & class changes. We should try to focus on real horizontal progression.

To my understanding horizontal progressions means having many choices and things to do, “each different, all equal” or at least as close to that as possible.

Fixing game balance and bugs greatly aids this goal, giving new builds, class roles and reasons to get new armor/weapon sets and try new approaches to pve and pvp content, both solo and in team. That’s pretty horizontal to me.

I can’t really decide between the awesome floppyness of my genius guardian’s ears or the 19th century machine power of my necro…so you decide which is the top dog:)

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

4) Poor defensive/utility support. Guardians, thieves and mesmers have, by default, tons of reflects, condition removal, block, blinds, stability, etc..

I don’t know what thief is doing in the above sentence. Thief is pro at blinding true, but reflect? stablity? Condition removal?!!!

All those 3 things come in shorter suply then love and peace in black citadel, and that’s for himself, not to mention others

Thief can stealth, give venoms, blind like mad, and be the best combo finisher provider given someone else drops a meaningful combo field. But certainly not reflects, condition removal or stability!

My Swampjoe:> Who says you can’t cook up something fun with male light armor?

Nope. Just nope. That’s not a necromancer style weapon at all. A bow would be for more like it, since necro is clearly shaman/witch doctor themed, and poison arrows etc stuff would match him far more:)

Here’s my necro. Finally hit lvl 80 and put those awesome armors on him:>

Improved character creation
if there’s one thing where it’s not pretty it’s the character creation and it’s flow of ugly/bizzare/missing features and mechanics.

I. The faces
Sweet mother of an Ettin!. That’s a lotta ugly right there. What’s with those faces, seriously? Like 2-3 models that don’t look like post alien abduction material, rest either ugly, weird, or weird AND ugly! Not to mention female faces that for some odd reason can’t seem to have a bit sharper facial features. For my eyes sake – open up a fashion magazine, type “beautiful woman” in google, see what their faces look like. Not everything you get is perfect but it’s a start.

The hairstyles
Not as bad as the faces, I’m very glad to notice someone cared to provide long hair styles for male humans and norns, but stilll – a lot more could be done here! hair is the first and foremost part of character customization. Because it’s unique enough to make it personal (color+style), and unlike facial features it’s easy to see from a distance without big zoom-in.

There are TONS of hairstyles that gw2 didn’t even touch for humans and norn at least. Some nicer hairstyles for male asuras wouldn’t hurt either!

Needless restriction depending on race
I want a beard or moustache i like – no problem – as long it’s human on norn. Sylvari? Na-ah! Not happening! Your facial “hair” is welded to the face model! Take it or leave it!

I understand not everything goes everywhere (horns exclusive to charr, ear customization to asura, glowing body to sylvari), but why can’t a human have a tatoo? Why can’t sylvari have customizable facial “hair”, why a norn can’t have certain hairstyles humans do and vice-versa?

If there’s one thing i hate it’s running in mmo full of clones dressed like clowns, and while the latter is not the case here, the former is a real danger with those very limited options, especially for male characters.

Enemy HP in visible number

Ok, so what’s this about and how on earth is such a thing a horizontal progression idea?

Well this idea is sponsored by letters “A” and “K” like a** kicking. Which is what i got when i returned to gw2 after a break. What’s wrong you ask?

Well every 3 minutes or so i run into veteran without realizing it (most risen vets look same as normal mobs) and got grounded hard.
This was easily the best way for the game to make me take another break. Rather then feeling a steady progression, that the rust is coming off and i’m doing better as i play more i had “hoops” of “3 monsters down, vet downed me”, without realizing it was a vet. Real morale breaker.

Adding visible hp number sets the picture straight, helps decide “fight or flight” scenario and gives you both a clear idea where you’re in the foodchain and what is no threat/lethal/next on your hit list.

I know full well about the rings around monster picure, but in heat of battle especially with many mobs, my tunneled vision is not on their ugly mugs but the red hp bars.

Yeah i gotta admit dungeons are the ugly side of community. For me it’s less the speedrunners (i like an efficient fast run), but the profession elitits, kicks for low achi points or group “leaders” that quit after one single wipe at lupi. And i pity the fools who think thief is subpar in dungeons. Obviously they know nothing of both damage and support a thief can bring to the table.

New condition + condition system adjustment

New possibilities and layers of fun can also be achieved through fixing what’s broken or not used to it’s full potential. As i already mentioned in this thread such a thing is condition system. I have two ideas reagarding it:

1. The before mentioned moving of 25 stacks cap from monster to attacker. Each player has a 25 stack cap of bleeding/confusion/torment on any given single monster, but monster itself doesn’t have any cap of how much it can take. So any other player who puts those conditions on it contribues to damage and is not a waste of space for being condition specced.

This makes all those PvE condition builds accually meaningful, may give “zerk warriors” a run for their money, and gives underdogs like necro some teeth. Not to mention all that condition damage gear becoming a viable option.

2. New condition – enfeebled. This is my idea for a new condition. This is a critical-hit and hard cc degeneration condition that stacks in intensity.

Each stack is 2% less chance to critically hit, 3% shorter fear duration, and 4% less chance for hard cc to work. The basic idea behind it is that not everyone has stability in bulks (necro!) and if there’s a boon vs control effects, then why not condition?
On top of that it would challenge all those zeker buids.

The stacking nature of the condition also provides for both a challenge and strategy. You go for full 25 stacks if you want stability level protection from the target, but it’ll cost you cooldown on all those skills you used to get there. Or you can whip up less stacks for more of a gamble, but some stacks in reserve for emergencies.

With this it would also be advised to alter weakness condition. Returning it to former mechanic – chance to half attacks’ damage if it’s not a crit (crits doing full damage always) would be logical as now enfeeble would serve to deal with criticals. Still higher activation chance or larger damage reduction for such a weakness would be advised to balance out the danger from criticals, as well as the fact that enfeeble would be reqired to make it truly shine.

By hard cc i mean:

• knockdown
• pulling
• stun
• blowout

As for distributing between professions, the clear top dog must be necro – he’s got hardest time with knockdowns. I belive rangers should have a few meaningful options for it too.

Thieves, warriors and guardians shouldn’t get much of it, if at all. They all have very viable defense options (stun breaks, thieves tons of evades in skills, guards + wars stability)

Engis, Mesmers, Eles i don’t know so i leave no recommendation here.

Well i just started a new profession (necro) and am having fun with that. Also gear mix&match for looks and builds does it for me. That and theory crafting.

DiogoSilva.7089:

• As race discrimination is an important issue, consider a proposal to make all racial skills unlocked to all races, but gated by territory-context “quests” (hearts and dynamic events). Yes, this would come at the cost of some distinction between races, but let me ask you: which distinction exists now, when those skills are underwhelming and no one uses them? Let me ask another question: what is better for world immersion, underwhelming skills gated by race, or appealing skills obtained from exploring the world? Under mathematical terms, there would be more potential for world immersion if all races could obtain them (1. Because it would add less restriction for balance, and thus players would actually use and “feel” them, and 2. because they could be tied to territory and thus add personality to each map) than not (because it would remove race distinction, which barely even exists at the current place for the sake of race balance). Two points against one in favor of racial skills be made available to all races. But let me ask a third question: World immersion aside, how fun would it be to all players in GW2, if suddenly they had 24 (!!) new skills to try out, and 30 new skills (by including the racials they already had) buffed to become stronger? I can tell right now that I would personally love it, and make the gameplay a lot more refreshing, while Anet wouldn’t even need to design 24-30 new skills for this single purpose: they are already there. Anet would have to rebalance them and design “quests” for each of them, though.

This is a terrible idea.

Racial skills add to uniquness and make my race choice matter. I don’t play a sylvari to watch it summon charr warband or draw hidden pistol. I play a sylvari so even in burned ashford plains i can bring the power of nature into the fight!

Tying it into given map makes me feel like i’m the map’s she-dog and not master of my own fate, walking down my own path.

Not to mention how ridicilous it would look lore-wise:

• charr warshipping human gods (to use human racials)
• sylvari morphing into animals (while they’re plants)
• asura becoming “9 feet tall!” when doing same
• norn who aren’t into science using radiation fields and golems…oh wait they can do that via runes…yikes!

You want to make racials on pair with normal profession skills – i absolutely agree, more power to you if you do. But if you want to make them a communistic “if you have it so should everybody else, only on our terms” then i say “HELL NO!”

1. Cosmetics:

Two legendary weapons of each type - one humorous one, like the moot mace, one serious one like twilight.

Weapon dyeing - nuff said

Missing weapon sets - everyone can see that sylvari and asura T1 and T2 cultural weapons are placeholders for “sunnier days”, same with Sorrow’s Embrace Weapons (aren’t the real ones the level 50 craftable rares?).

more themed backpacks – run a sylvari necro. Green one. Guess which backpack fits me? None. Not even the haloween book in green version (to big and it’s not properly dark)

2. Dungeons and combat systems

• balancing professions - everyone knows the “lvl 80 full zerk warrior” story from group finder. If only one to three out of eight professions matter that’s butchering your own content

• balancing dungeon and boss content - stacking in corner is not a good encouragement to try many builds, strategies and professions when facing a hard dungeon boss.

• balancing a dungeon path length and difficulty - take AC as a example of doing it right. All paths are different, but each presenting a similar level of challenge, time consumed and reward if you know what you’re doing.

On top of it each teaches an important aspect of teamplay:
-path one – protecting npc and kiting
-path two – self control when facing boss and strict teamwork
-path three – what is stability;p And quick bursting down of targets.

Crucible of Eternity is another example of things done right (minus stacking ofc).

• Traits that matter. Most traits are doing what they should, but some are still making for running jokes of the year, killing build diveristy (13% power as condition damage might be good necro trait, but certainly not guardian grandmaster one )

• Skills that matter. Signet of Mercy active, Assasin’s signet active, Shield of Avenger command, Bow of Truth normal behaviour to name just a few unattractive, unrewarding skills from top of head. I’m sure there’s more to be cherrypicked for the needs of this conversation.

• 25 damaging condition stack cap per attacker and not per monster attacked. All damage condition builds are useless in pve unless you solo or do in two people tops. Again killing horizontal progression that is already there, just unchain it from the floor.

Mini games!

I know one minigame i really love and like to see implemented on bigger scale – the bell choire from wintersday! Not only it’s fun, but “play your own music!” is like a small musical simulator! It really got me into trying to play songs i know using bells. Needless to say how happy i was when i found bells in my wintersday box to play when event is over:)

Well i’m gonna think bit outta the box, or bird’s eye view like.

1 Gem store horizontal progression.

Gem store is no exception to player’s ingame experience of being treated either fairly (horizontal growth), or a part of society with “master money class” and “99% rest” (vertical). To avoid the latter the gemstore must adamantly adhere to certain rules:

• low prices
• wide selection of items
• absolute lack of any ingame advantages on said items.
• no RNG
• exchangeability of gold for gems.

So far you got 2/5 right. The pricing, limited item selection and RGN are still
blocking a lot player’s bucks from flowing into your accounts.

Low prices and wide selection of non RGN items is the good and clean way of making big profit without relying on underhanded gambling and wallets of few elitist at cost of your reputation and large part of playerbase.

If it’s cheap, average joe doesn’t feel gated out of the cool stuff and has no reason to complain, nor to tell his friends that if you wanna be cool in this game you better shell out or look for another one. And there’s a loooot more average Joes then rich Steves so to say.

Wide selection of items means bigger chances a player will find an item (or many items) he likes and decide to “support the game” according to his own financial possibilities. And for those who wanna support it all the way, the collectionists can buy all that stuff and blow their money. Or sell it on Trading post for gold, that works too and no one’s complaning.

2. Professions’ horizontal progression.

For a class/job/professions horizontal growth means “more equaly tempting choices”.
More builds, more skills, more viable gear stat combinations, defense builds, support builds, crazy oddball builds, as well as cosmetic choices…as long as they are all fun and have their place in the world.

This all goes down the toilet though if there’s no balance. Then suddenly you lose professions, builds and skills because there’s a top dog, and rest are niche, useless and for masochists. Just take a look at LFG tool to see which scenario is currently shining down on us at this very moment.

First rule of medicine is “Firstly, don’t make it worse”. So listen to your community and either convince them that it is them, who are not seeing full potential of certain professions, or take decisive action where necessary (pve op warriors).

Getting to 80 does not automatically make my crafting get to 400. And it matters a lot because crafting grants me ability to truly hand-pick the stats i want on my end game gear without being reliant on TP or luck, and lets me get the stats i want on a gear which looks i love via transmutation.

That’s basically because lvl 1-30 is the “getting used to the game” stage. You unlock weapons skills, 2nd weapon set, slot skills, start with traits, and at magical level 30 your last ulitity slot (elite) becomes unlocked and usable.

Before that it would be like sending a first day recruit to the front line.

Not long ago i dusted off my level 50 necro and while i was getting busy with his tailoring it hit me:

It takes considerable amounts of materials to craft what i need (if we’re talking rares), while results lasts a day or two, before i drop(!!) something better.

Everything rare or even master quality is quite costly given how short-lived it is untill i hit lvl 80 exotics or ascended crafting tier.

My solution:
Recrafting – rather then making new item, you upgrade old one you use to current crafting tier stats.

Benefits:

• you can keep the looks of the item you like without stat sacrifice
• matches the pace of leveling system – you level fast & you can upgrade fast
• helps ascended farming – less mats needed for upgrades = more in bank for end game gear.
• greatly reduces frustrating mats grind, remember not everyone levels by killing hoards and hoards of mobs.
• doesn’t really kill off making new rare items from scratch, as they’re new skins to use.
• given the above it kills off crafting new ugly items or same looking gear – and good riddance.

Talk about broken mechanic. I fail to understand as well why the condition cap is per monster, and not per attacking player. For example my necro stacks 25 bleeds on boss and that’s MY 25 stacks, i can go no further. But the thief next to me has 10 stacks of his bleed on it and he can still do 15 more.

As a programmer myself (webmaster) i can easily tell that “technical difficulties” sounds very unrealistic to me. The monsters have the ability to take damage from many sources and calculate it just fine. Including condi damage and maths to calculate how long and strong. Just that 25 stacks cap per monster instead of per player. Someone is a sloppy coder there i say.

Well i think keyword here is purpose.
What purpuse does each model serve?

They way i look at it, vertical progression serves several crucial goals:

• familiarazing player with the world, his character, and game systems
• progressing the story (you get stronger, get allias than face Zhaithan)
• giving him the feeling of permanant, sure reward for his effort
• providing him with greater challenges that will hone his skill and force him to be at his best

Horizontal progression imho serves the following goals:

• uniqueness. Be it of build, of looks, of personal story, nobody likes being a clone in mmo. Walking your own path is a huge thing for a player.

• fairness. If someone is “pro” cause of his +11 sword, while someone with +2 is a nib then that’s broken design right there. If someone is a “noob” because he’s not on a zerker warrior (hi dungeons), then that too is broken design.

• exploration – with everything being on roughly equal ground, you have whole world to explore, and not just 2-4 end game weapons, endgame maps and endgame bosses.

• player growth. Skill based combat is around growth of player himself and less of his character ingame.

It doesn’t take a lot IQs to figure out that the virtues of horizontal progression usually are the cures for misguided vertical progression’s sins in many a game.

So the simple question to ask here is – what good from vertical progression are we missing, is there any bad from it creeping in here, and is horizontal progressions as good as it should be?

Pawstruck.9708:

These conspiracy theories are just silly. There is no major game company in the world that buffs and nerfs in order to make money… because that’s a horrible way to make money. It wouldn’t work.

I played Nexon’s Maplestory. I dare you, i double dare you, say that one more time!

I don’t know what is going on, but whenever i enter a dungeon it’s like my pc gets 5 times the load of open world. After running one dungeon on middle graphical settings (which works just fine in open world, around 24 fps on it) any next attempt ends in frames going below 10 and i’m forced to set to lowest settings to get playable experience.

Why is it, that in open world that is for most cases bigger, has more objects in it etc, i can play for hours on end with medium settings, even high settings, and get playable experiece, while in personal story and dungeons it acts like i just run some supercomputer calculations? Polish this you know what!

I couldn’t agree more with this thread. Vote of majority should decide which in 5 man party is 3, not 2.

keep your filthy pecking worm eating flammable clocking food rations away from my asura’s home instance! Applied development lab is a lab, not a farm! No chickens in asura home! Or sylvari one for that matter! Charr seem to love eating them (“Meat” or “Meal” named chicken in town of Nageling:) and humans…well they got straw sticking out their boots anyway…Norn? I think they eat bears..for appetizers. But only good chicked for my pointy teethed genius is a fried one!

I seriously wonder at all the people (belive me i wanted to use term that goes with “Beavis”) that post in this thread about “non lvl 80, non zerk dungeon runners”.

I did half of levels from lvl 37 – 80 on my thief, that was both zerk specced and at times more shadow arts and trickery specced. Didn’t stop me from defending Hodgins in path 1 (i simply stealthed us both and kept it up as long as possible), or giving team serious mights for burrows (given team was smart enough to listen to my request for fire combo field)

Warrior running around in clerics is nothing shocking to me. By playing my warrior i can easily say he has much more potent self heals then my guardian, and unlike guardian putting lots into healing power (given warrior’s vitality is massive and healing that matters without using 4+ hp restoring skills at once) seems to pay off for those warriors who are not masters of dodging. Also warrior is a boon machine in it’s own regard, especially when it comes to swiftness, might stacks and fury. Popping a healing and boon duration increasing banner is nothing surprising here.

I would be glad to see that there’s a warrior who realizes that he’s “not there yet” and chooses to have lame damage but enough sustain to land some blows, rather then “true zerker” that 10 seconds into boss fight zerks from 3 feet below.

Last time i checked people bought Guild Wars 2 not Zerk Warrior Wars 2, and they are to enjoy all classes in all the ways they like.

Speaking of line where both horizontal and vertical intertvine. Let’s forget gear for one post (mine), and get down and dirty with real ingame experience of dungeons. I have returned week or two ago after a break, and saw quite a few things gone south in regard of player experience (as in enjoyability, not the yellow bar on bottom of screen) with running dungeons.

If you wanna talk “gated content” here it is. “Lvl 80, experienced, zerk warrior, gear check, over 5k achi pts, AR over 9000” – anyone who does dungeons saw that more then once. Shmucks willl be shmucks but sometimes there is a point to at least “experienced” expectation.

So why not add dugeon titles let’s say you did ac path 1 ten times, from start to finish, you get a title. Then all those “pro speed runners” would shut up about level and achi pts, seeing you’ve been there and done that. Ofc not everyone, but it’s not that difficult to imagine person with low achivement points (break from gw2, or interested in one type of content only), who can be a reliable dungeon runner but gets the boot before he can say a word because he has no way to show his experience with given dungeon and path.

Reading it all i just wanna state that i’m absolutely opposed the idea of ascended gear stat change via gem store item. That would be massive unfairness ingame (make anotehr ascended weapon/armor set or use gems), not to mention how would you feel if you had to choose between awesome skin in gem store or not flashy but practical stat change? Like kicked in the nuts in my case!

That’s because it’s not really a heal skill in true mining of the word. It’s a damage mitigation utility – no hits, no “healing”. There needs to be another source of heals, independent on enemy hits to truly get your hp up, and not just ease the beating you’re getting if you ask me:)

I’m sure that had to be suggested 100 times already so i’ll suggest it 101th. Give us the ability to dye our weapons!
There are times where a given weapon woule be just fine, were it not for unmatching color scheme. For example let’s take ascended spire (the staff).
Type of insignia used may define the gem color of weapon, but that shaft remains extremely unimpressive pale gray color no matter what you do. I for one need it to be dark brown to match my necro’s color scheme, but nooooo. I can’t touch that:/

I don’t know as for others but for me vertical progression has one plus – the feeling of power! To see your character trounces the challenges, how one fart sets half the map flying, muahahahah!
It does however have nasty sideeffects of anything that is not endgame (gear, maps, skills) becoming “very temporary” until the end game part which becomes game itself.

Genius asura level idea:
Give the feeling of power to skilled players! But not with flat stats, but battle mechanic and animations!

• breakdown for veterans/elites - if they can’t land enough damage on a player or group of players during a certain time they start to panic taking more damage, or maybe even self-fearing and trying to make a break for it!

• more brutal animations - animations add a lot to the feeling of power. Now take warrior’s 2h hammer for example. When you see him use it it’s BRUTAL! When i see my guardian use it it’s like…oh..he did a swing..wow… Especially “banish” skill should have far more vigorous, fast, PAINFUL swing animation!

I fully understand the great benefits of skill and not stat based combat – all maps useful, no player shunned cause he doesn’t have that latest patch sword etc. But i still wanna know that when i willl enter orr with my necro and i will play it right, i will feel like death incarnate and those sorry risen will know the business end of that feeling!

Awesome, great we have devs ears on the subject:)
I have 7 things to say on the subject, hopefully it’ll be your lucky 7;)

1. Be brave - i know no one likes flames in their thread, but as a dev you gotta be though like John Rambo. Forums are usually half the unsatisfied people (satisfied ones are ingame!) wanting change be it through discussion or flames. Some shells will be fired, but escaping community contact has been a downfall of many a game. Hopefully not this awesome one:)[/b]

2. Horizontal progression = good I really love that you made ascended the “top tier” less through stats, and more through ulitity (account bound and not soulbound). I also heard legendaries are to have dynamically changeable stats. YEAH! That’s the way to go A-net!:) New builds, trait improvement and skills are the way to go!

3. Fractal wepons Word is they are extremely rare, unless you’re looking for a trident. I’m no fan of RGN loot with 1 in 10000 chances. Time and effort put into running them should be met with sure reward even for the less lucky of us. Adding a fractal weapon box for “number of run fractals achievement” should even the score. Box lets you pick one fractal skin you want, kinda like box with ascended gear.

4. Gear looks Yesturday i spend 5 or so hours on hardcore….mix & matching armors for my necro. Not exactly a role model for posterity, but making my character look unique is a huge part of the game, and there’s room for improvement.

Why can’t i dye my weapon?
Where are all the non-chubby looking swords?
Asian weapons?
Why some legendaries look awesome, while others are a clear joke? I mean sure, i have lotsa sense of humor, but i’d like to have a choice if i want to wield a kitten looking legendary pummeler, or a disco ball, and not be trapped in “you want a legendary mace? Hope you like to boogie!”

Less important but more personal – i could not find one dedent looking light short sleeved chestpiece to match dungeon inquest pants + inquest gloves. The inquest top is bland and makes my character look like “lotsa on bottom, little on top”. Arah one has the right idea – the scarf around sides and back, but the textures are just horrible and in no way match inquest’s orderly, world-explorer design.

Profession tweaks There’s a lot of make or break in there. Good balanced skills & trait set with lotsa tempting options and builds is a huge horizontal progression factor and good reason to stay and play..and experiment!

Nedless to say what the opposite does. Right now you’re in the middle with that. There are professions with interesting skillls, traits and many builds, and there are some that are severely lacking in anything meaningful save one, maybe two options (necros!).

Listen to player feedback, i’ll b glad to help and give you my opinions on what and why, as long as i know there’s a dev ear listening to that. Please remember – you guys get payed for it, we don’t, and it’s no less of a job to make trait/skill/ improvement ideas or invent new ones.

6. gem store Ah the gem store, this is another huge topic to discuss. To sum it up shortly here – just like with traits you’ve made some good and bad.

Good – account bound harvesting tools – excellent idea. Convinient, beutiful, doesn’t break the game balance. And lets us support the game without looking stupid while doing it.

The skins – marjory’s dagger was epic (too bad i didn’t get it)..

Bad – instant retrait item in gem store. That’s P2W starting to rear it’s ugly head. If i can retrait in dungeon, then that gives me advantage over my teammates who can’t.

The prices – aren’t we a bit too expensive NcSoft? I mean it’s simple economy (which i have master’s degree of) that teaches that if something is cheaper more people will buy it (given it’s attractive to them) and the number of purchases will often outweigh the loss in price. Looking at other mmos i recently played i can certainly say your prices are way above the optimal pricing line.

Skins – it’s epic we’re starting to get good skins, but doesn’t that mean that those go into gemstore instead of ingame? And now people who could get new and cool looking customization options are stuck behind a pay-gate?

Time limited stuff – you would have a marjory’s dagger and axe profits on me had you not made it time limited. I just told you about your pricing, right? Well yeah…i couldn’t muster enough on time to get the dreamcleaver axe AND marjory’s skins on time..

7. New professions? Well nothing is more clear horizontal progressions then new profession! Seems gem store took off the need for expansions off your shoulders, but that doesn’t mean we don’t expect you to deliver new BIG content asides current world polishes. Ofc it’s your game your rules and you didn’t start with mmo classic “3 starter classes”, but you know;)

Thanks for your feedback:) I took your advice and chopped off a lot of this wall of text, hopefully making it an easier read.

Boon duration always matters, and i’m very glad that hollowed ground gives 20% buff to that while it’s active and virtues line is so good to have.

Offensive guardian is not a guardian who loses his defense. On the contrary – offensive guardian is a guardian who has mastered his defense, and needs not to rely oh high vit or toughness because he can mitigate incoming damage with his skills and knowledge, as well as swiftly deal with conditions that would kill an unprepared, low vit guard otherwise.

And since most our skills are party friendly, we don’t really lose out on much other then our own threshold of making mistakes in a fight:)

Mace has the advantage of being 1h. You can pick skills 4 and 5 with offhand of your choice. And i don’t now why no one mentiones the torch? It’s your offhand damage disher, and fairly evil one at that:)

24 secs with traiting is not horrible cooldown. Try virtue of courage’s cooldown or save yourselves (48 secs traited). That’s horrible cooldown.

Ok now for my solutions to this guardian revamp:

1. Condition damage builds:

Grandmaster zeal trait – Engulfing Flame

Your continual burns grow in intensity over time, dealing more damage but lasting shorter.

A continual burn inflicted on the enemy will make your burning damage shoot up, but at cost of negative burn duration for you, that grows with each “rank” of burning. And the moment burn ends, even if for split second, burning damage and duration return to base value.

Example (with this trait on):
0-7 sec of burn – damage = 0.25 condition damage
7-14 sec of burn – damage = 0.5 condition damage, -15% burn duration.
14-21 sec of burn – damage = 0.75 condition damage, -30% burn duration
21 sec + = 1.2 condition damage, – 70% burn duration

Also this applies only to your burns and burns inflicted by other players do not count as keeping the fire alive. Only your own burns add up to longevity of the flame.

With this guardians get real reason to care about both condition damage and duration, and look at those burn inflicting traits and skills.

2. Virtue of Justice traits in Virtues line.

Absolute Justice (master tier) - rename it to “Swift Justice”. Passive stays as is (every 3rd strike a burn), active adds 4 seconds of quickness with one minute internal cooldown to you and party.

Quickness “ready state” is displayed by flames around your weapon skillbar burning a lot faster.

Permeaning Wrath - rename it to “Furious Justice” – adds 5 seconds of fury with activation with 30 secs internal cooldown.

Fury ready state is indicated by flames changing their color to visibly more white hue (red doesn’t fit with guardian theme so…)

Passive can stay as is.

Those changes put a carrot at end of virtues trait line for offensive guards – fury accessible with virtue of justice. It won’t replace professions that are meant for the job, like warriors or rangers, but will give you a short window to unleash pain before it runs out.

Quickness in 2nd tier doesn’t hurt either and gives a meaningful alternative to the other two awesome virtue buffing traits.

3. Shattered Aegis - The buning was fine, but it can be staks of vulnerability for your lost aegis. Anyway something that does not end up in fixed number, because it’ll alwas end up with “that’s so op”, or “i prefer tickling them – more damage”.

4. Glacial HeartThat running joke of a trait for 2h hammer in honor line. Lower it’s cd from 30 secs to 15 secs. Give hammer guardians a reason to get those chilling sigils and condition duration to hunt down some frozen tv dinner and cook up in their flames:)

5. Spirit Weapons.

Shield of Avenger just owns. Putting it in my skill slot makes a huge differece. Why is it the other 3 fail to do that for me?

Sword of justice. Should be executing it’s attack all the time, not once per x seconds. I know it can draw aggro, but it’s also on nasty cooldown during which i have neither damage boost nor an ai ally. Passive from bane signet looks better.

Hammer of wisdom - i accuallly like it’s chain a lot. Give it a lower cooldown and we’re home free.

Bow of Truth. That thing is supposed to follow me everywhere i go, like a stalker on perole. Not root iself while i run away from condition field or risen.

Symbol of Swiftness - Old one had a good idea behind it – run in, run out – true to nature of swiftness.

If december 10th update goal was to make offensive guardian builds more viable, then it failed. Here’s what’s wrong with your changes:

Zeal V—Shattered Aegis: This trait now applies damage instead of burning.
Joke damage. Burning was fine, or add vulnerability here.

Zeal VII—Zealous Blade: This trait now scales with healing power by 2%.
Weak!! . Make it scale with power or something.

Zeal XII—Kindled Zeal: Increased the conversion from 10% to 13%.
Who cares? Burn is far too weak to make a build around it for pve.

Radiance V—Searing Flames: Reduced the cooldown from 20 seconds to 10 seconds.
10 secs is better then 20, but still nothing to scream about.

Radiance X—Powerful Blades: Increased the damage from 5% to 10%.
Finally something meaninful. Now we’re cooking with gas!

Valor VI—Retributive Armor: Increased the conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
A nice upgrade to a small but nice trait in valor.

Honor VI—Pure of Heart: Increased scaling with healing power from 25% to 40%.
That’s not a bad news for healing guards. Not offense ones.

Virtues VIII—Supreme Justice: Decreased the number of attacks from 4 to 3.
Other traits on this tier still eat it alive.

Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds to players without swiftness and 1 second to players with swiftness.
Idea of switness is to run for the hills, not be a sitting duck inside a symbol, or else your buff ends before it even begun.

Shield 4 is epic. It’s the only protection source a guardian gets that has no strings attached. Everything else always has something (it’s a symbol with longest windup, needs to be traited, horrible cooldown, good belch lasts longer then that or it’s an elite).

Shield 5 is the party panic button. Pushes mobs away for a sec (with interruption) and protects from incoming projectiles for a brief mooment. When big “anti arrow to knee skills” are on cd, or are casted but now nowhere near where the heat is, that’s your first most reliable bet. And it doesn’t pop after single projectile hits it, unlike focus 5.

I feel your pain mate, i too was to buy them today, only to find out they’re gone. Well on positive side my ectos aren’t leaving their daddy;p

Well i’m recruiting for Jungle Krewe (whiteside ridge), which is my awesome really small guild;P But that’s a plus cause i have a very specific goals in mind with it:

1 Freedom & Research. I love experimenting and new approaches, especially to dungeon content. I’m a tweker and theory crafter. So you won’t hear me telling you how to play your character, though i can sure advice if asked;)

2. Fast pve play – i wanna do lotsa things in little time, so i like doing them fast! Like harvesting, crafting, dungeons, orr statue raids (have yet to have a good one done), and world bosses.

3. And unlocking those guild puzzles, bounty hunts (training unlocked!) etc and doing them with my guild.

4. Not overblowing it with huge forums, teamspeaks and crapton of things you don’t need to simply play!

5. Making squawking noises to spread the power of out guild emblem – the mighty green parrot!

I get a blast out of doing things in fast, orderly fashion, equal blast from doing what i want and not some big guild tells me to do, and biggest blast outta doing them my own way!

If you feel that’s your kinda guild hook up to MonsterZed or The Puller ingame! (you can leave me a mail or buddy invite)

Well i just hate scams that’s all and played a game where they were under every rock. Myself personally i love giving sellers a bad day by starting my own, normal run:)

I’m no fan of the practice, seeing as in group finder 90% if not more arah runs are “selling”, but free market is free market so best to make it safe on ppl who wanna do it.

You could add a dungeon sale option to group finder tool, which would work the following way:

1. Dungeon run maker makes the party add, checks “selling run” option and sets the price for admission.

2. User that sees it and decides he wants in on it, has his gold checked if he can afford it, and if so it’s deduced and stored by the system upon entry.

3. Money stays in the system until one of two things happen:
a) buyer leaves before completing dungeon – he gets a full refund
b) dungeon is completed – seller receives buyer’s payment from the system.

Escrow style security in short. Cause the way i see it there can be some nasty scamming going on without security measures in place.

If you’re in Whiteside ridge then read, if not…LEARN TO READ you skritt brained bookah!

Arrrrrr!! Ye landlowing rats of limited mental capacity should know a good pirate guild when you see one! Love raiding, looting and pillaging? Then don’t just stand there looking stupid, enroll and look stupid under our banner! Lo and behold our symbol of might and cunning – the mighty green parrot!

Here are the things we need new sla..pirates for:
- getting those statues in orr and world bosses down for dragonite pieces
- harvesting those orr resource nodes together
- doing dungeons good in old pirate style – ye enter with your crewe and ye loot & pillage no selling/buying shannenigans
- fractals are good too from time to time
- doing living (not for long!) story together
- unlocking and doing guild activities for those sweet rewards and laughing at eachother’s failures!

A pirate crew is like a family. That means we hate eachother and don’t wanna even know you exist, asides when we go and pillage:) So expect no kitten control on every step, no teamspeaks, no forums no etc stuff. Small, simple and smelly, just the way you like it!

Get together to do the stuff we need, then it’s totally up to you if you go do personal story with guildie, just chat under tha palms with risen or go jump off a cliff using the lame “it was a jump quest” excuse! Just be sure to leave your valuables and next of kin before you go puzzle jumping!

What are you still reading for?
Apply to Monsterzed or The Puller to get caged…erm i mean join our krewe!

Well not long ago i read a thread about making story mode in dugeons account shared, which was pretty horrible thought for me. I mean imagine you’re a fresh player…and no one will do story with you cause they all got it unlocked.

Then again account bound story mode unlocking is kinda meaningful and has a point.

So i thought of this. How about giving gold reward for story mode, with two little special rules:

1. bit less then exp paths (obviously)
2. only payed out when there’s a person in party who does not have story mode completed.

That way pros won’t be forced to run story mode they hate on daily basis, but will have incentive to do so to help a new citizen of Tyria. On top of that with his completion being the condition for payout he would have upper hand so he can experience the story mode as he sees fit without being nagged to skip cutscenes all the time.

That’s my idea for it, don’t know if it’s cool or gonna spawn some monstrous pathologies (not too brainy today;p). Leave your comments on it if you like;)

As a PvE thief i couldn’t disagree more with stealth nerfs. Maybe you meant cloak and dagger cause i’m one thief that rarely looks at daggers at all. But in dungeons or in orr i want veeery long stealths, so i can zip around doing my harvesting without being constantly bullied by the risen.

In Ascalonian catacombs path 1 i did hodgins defense by playing smart and cloaking us both – shadow infusion + blast finisher on smoke field gave all the stealth we needed for initial stage, keeping shadow refuge for use when i couldn’t afford any blast finishers due to gravelings all around us. It’s not a perfect strategy, but it sure buys a lot of time before i’m forced to kite.

Still use of utility stealths was necessary in that rotation, not to mention smoke screen for that smoke combo field.

I think there are two sorts of stealth thieves. Those that use it as avenue of attack, and those that use it as means of defense, simply to get past trouble without unnecessary hustle. Perk of being a thief. I’m definetely the 2nd type, so…if it’s because of the attacker thieves, take it into consideration and don’t stomp us “shadow walkers”.