Guild Wars 2

Kaleden.9386:

It’s not all doom and gloom, read Jonathan Sharp’s message in the AOE discussion thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-AoE-actually-a-problem-Discussion-Thread/page/4#post1237623

There are two types of people on these forums. Those who come to whine and those who come to learn.

Kaleden, your first mistake is assuming that people will read a post longer than three sentences. Your second mistake was assuming that they could actually understand what they were reading if they did read it (they won’t). Your third mistake was being the second type of person on these forums and attempting to communicate with the first type of person.

On topic:

I can see how the elementalist’s area damage is a little bit imbalanced. It allows for almost constant AoE spam. For other professions this isn’t much of a problem; the elementalist just has too many AoE skills with four attunements. AoE damage as a whole is not imbalanced at all though.

Conversely, I understand why people are concerned (I am too). ANet has gone so far as to nerf my favorite profession beyond reason (engineer). I don’t like it and it has made the profession unplayable for me. But that’s not because the nerf wasn’t justifiable – it’s because their supposed buff to the profession was pathetic, it is a buggy, unreliable profession that didn’t receive the development time it needed and needs a major overhaul. It was a mistake. They messed it up. They’re human (not Asuran) but hopefully they will fix engineers. Fortunately, elementalists are not in the same boat – not by a long shot.

Voicing concern/criticism in a reasonable manner is cool. I do it all the time. I actually agree that this could be very bad for the game balance. Forum diarrhea is annoying though. And most of these posts are just that. If one change to the elementalist is enough to make you uninstall, you should probably quit playing MMOs completely because it happens to us all.

How do you get the outmanned bonus? I’ve never gotten it.

Any fantasy race that features a lesbian vegetable as one of their most renowned characters is indeed very special.

Any English language speakers out there tonight? Oh wait, internet forum… silly me…

sup·pos·ed·ly
Adverb

According to what is generally assumed or believed (often used to indicate that the speaker doubts the truth of the statement).

Synonyms
presumably – presumedly

To quote a brilliant mind…

Zonzai.2341:

Yeah, I feel like the necro is pretty strong. They’re probably at about mid-level strength. Once their many bugs are fixed and ANet starts giving them some love like the elementalist got they’ll be in a really great place.

Kardiamond.6952:

Necro being the second worse? Where did you get that?

It’s a common misconception since it is such a subtle profession.

Kardiamond.6952:

But serousily, most Top tPvP team have a necromancer in their team. Don’t underestimated necromancer.

Yeah, I know a couple of them.

shurick.7054:

However I totally agree with you regarding the vulnerability stacking, it is awesome and really is contributing(same goes for all the other conditions that i apply).

Depends on where you’re using it. Condition removal is (generally) too strong in PvP. If I see vulnerability, I remove it. So does everybody else. There is some potential for a great build there though, I’ll give you that. The engineer needs a lot of work to make that happen though.

Let me add that to my list…

1. Don’t use your karma jugs unless you have a karma booster.

I’d bet 100 gold (if I had it)…

They will reduce the radius of AoE and/or the timers while increasing the damage. They adjusted the same things a lot in GW1. They also played around with AoE settings during the GW2 alpha.

Money tips:

1. Buy harvesting tools. Harvest everything you see.
2. Focus on completing your dailies at low levels (below 35).
3. Don’t craft, sell your crafting materials. Later in the game you can think about crafting (35+).
4. Sell everything on the trade post that you can (right click an item). Only sell items to vendors if you can’t get a better price on the trade post. Don’t bother with salvaging until you hit level 35+.
5. Sell things that don’t have a large supply a few copper below the lowest seller. Sell things that have a lot of supply for as much as the highest buyer will give you
6. At level 35 run Ascalon Catacombs (AC) for money. Spend the Ascalonian tears to buy gear and salvage the gear for rare materials to sell.
7. Check the price of dyes before using them. Sell the expensive ones and use a similarly-colored cheap one for yourself.
8. Stay alive. If you die you lose money on the repair bill.

Leveling Tips:

1. Join a guild for XP bonuses.
2. Always hunt with food XP bonuses.
3. Complete dailies until level 35.
4. Do AC with XP boosters at level 35+.
5. Get gear every 5-10 levels. Use karma to buy trinkets and earned money to buy armor and weapons from the tradepost. Keeping up on this is cheap.
6. Stay alive. If you die, you aren’t killing things.

Karma tips (since it was brought up):

1. Do dailies for Karma jugs and save them
2. Use them with karma boosters, guild banners, ice cream and the outmanned wvw bonus for up to 7,875 Karma instead of 4,500. (Thanks Esplen.)

Enjoying it Tips:

1. Build Vitality and and Toughness at low levels. Worry about Power later.
2. Read your skills’ tool tips and practice using them on easier mobs before running into the thick of it.
3. Play with other people (your guild or your boyfriend and his friends).
4. Stay alive, dying sucks. Run away to fight another day.
5. Try different professions until one clicks.
6. Don’t give up on a profession until after level 20ish.

Survivable Professions (without need for a specific build):

1. Guardian = melee, great survivability
2. Warrior = melee/ranged, decent survivability
3. Necromancer = spellcaster, good survivability using death shroud (just don’t use minions), great survivability once you get elites (lvl 30)
4. Ranger = melee/ranged, decent survivability (but nobody will want to play with you in difficult end game content)

Other professions (that you will specifically have to build for survivability):

1. Mesmer = The most difficult profession at low levels. Suffer through it until you can get some elites. Even at higher levels it is still one of the least survivable professions.
2. Thief = Can only survive by using stealth and dodging. Has poor heals.
3. Engineer = Pretty much the gimp profession, skip it for now.
4. Elementalist = Great survivability when built for it but low survivability for the first 30 levels.

Some of this is probably just common sense but some of it may be helpful.

You’re right Kyon. They won’t make any major changes to the engineer any time soon.

Only an engineer would break a two second stun with a four second knockdown.

Only an engineer would want his wrench to do more damage than his morter.

Randomized conditions are good. Randomized buffs are useless.

I rolled a necro. It’s supposedly the second worst class in the game. It’s amazing how much better it is than the engineer though…

Yeah, I will never buy something like extra bag storage. It’s not even remotely worth it. if it were for all characters, then I would.

The CC is so short though that it doesn’t really matter. Right now mobility dominates CC in the meta. You can’t keep people down for anything. At one point I used to rock WvW with a hammer warrior but then everybody started getting used to the long build up of hammer attacks (Backbreaker mostly) and that ended.

The only time it really matters is in PvE boss fights but ANet can directly control those so they can set them up however they want. Anyway, with the weakness of CC in the PvP meta I don’t think diminishing returns are justified but personally I’d love to see stronger CC with diminishing returns.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Sorry to highjack the thread but wondering how many of the female characters herein are being played by human males…

I’m a guy. I have one human character and she is female. I wanted to experience the racial story from each race but I HATE HATE HATE the way the male humans look in this game (and most of the female faces as well). I feel like they all look awful hodgepodge mismatches or they look like 15 year-old boygirls. Also I thought the human male light armors looked very bland.

Nightarch.2943:

4. Humanity in general, guild wars was always about the humans and the humans alone made the original story great. Charr and Asurans just seem out of place. On a side important note I miss manly looking humans. They all mostly look like pre-teens and teenagers, same for hairstyles.

I get what you are saying here but that’s more of a complaint with GW2. At least for me. I tried so hard to make a male human that didn’t look like a 15 year old and then just gave up and made a female human instead. I almost never play female characters. But when the dudes all look like women, may as well play a woman… Anyway, one human character in GW2 is too many. I wish I’d rolled an asura necro instead.

Wanderbeard.3291:

Hi, I’m GW2 Engineer, welcome to J aac k aass! * *stuns himselkitten

- Johny Knoxville..

Awesome! * stuns himself *

Yeah, I feel like the necro is pretty strong. They’re probably at about mid-level strength. Once their many bugs are fixed and ANet starts giving them some love like the elementalist got they’ll be in a really great place.

ANet has talked about tool tips not showing the appropriate information. They’ve been working on them though. Right now I think their primary goal is to get all of the professions that aren’t buggy as heck (i.e. all but necro and engineer) balanced. Then they’ll probably come back and examine things like that initial inflated damage bug.

But I’m curios, were you initially using WoS on mobs that use Frenzy when you noticed the damage boosts? They will have all incoming damage increased by 50% as a result. Another possibility is that the WoS damage is/was being effected by armor for some reason. Which I don’t think it should be.

It doesn’t work on minions right now. Last I tried it anyway.

Nobody cares about the ritual, it can be a part of the story, sure. I just don’t like that a salad head with personalty of a two-by-four weasels his way into my story at the end and steals all of the credit for my efforts.

I agree that MF was a bad idea. It is precisely opposed to everything that ANet says GW2 stands for – a community of gamers working together.

It would be cool if you got XP bonuses based on your current number of level 80 characters. Even just 5% each would be great.

Mesmer has the highest potential burst damage of scholar professions but it isn’t easy to pull off. The elementalist has the best easy-to-achieve bursts. Other than that, a D/D power necro is very high burst as well. So even on a traditionally low burst profession, you can achieve significant damage bursts. But the BEST burst damage is the thief’s because it can not be avoided from stealth. A backstab thief is the burst damage king (I think).

I have seen enough of one ’nade nerf never to wish to see another. – Thomas Jefferson

All nerf-fare is based on deception. – Sun Tzu

Come you engineers of war
You that build all the turrets
You that build the death ‘nades
You that build the big ol’ bombs
You that hide behind guardians
You that hide behind elementalists
I just want you to know I can see through your nerfs. – Bob Dylan

maddoctor.2738:

Zonzai.2341:

Skill Caps – Doesn’t work with weapons, there are only a few elites, doesn’t work for traits, doesn’t work for PvP

http://www.arena.net/blog/eric-and-ben-answer-your-questions-about-warrior-and-traits

Traits
Q: Can I get all the traits for my chosen profession but only select the traits I want for an upcoming adventure, or are my trait selection options limited?
Ben: If you have earned a trait, you’ll have it available to slot outside of combat. The more trait challenges you complete, the more options become available to you.
Q: How do I acquire traits? Are there some traits that can only be “unlocked” after acquiring other traits first? Will trait acquisition be solo or will there be incentives for players to group together to help each other obtain more traits?
Ben: Traits are acquired through challenges that are specific to each profession. We don’t have traits that require other traits first. Traits are a way for you to develop your character, so it’s important that you be able to acquire them solo. With that being said, earning them certainly doesn’t have to be a solo activity and players are free to help each other as they see fit.
Q: Do traits in Guild Wars 2 replace attributes in Guild Wars?
Ben: Traits partially replace attributes in that they allow a player to customize their character beyond the choices they make with their skill bar. However, we do have a set of attributes that more directly replace those that we had in Guild Wars. Instead of being heavily profession oriented, these attributes are more general, much like those you’d find in other RPGs.
Q: Can a trait be improved once achieved?
Eric: Nope, players can’t enhance traits.

So, at some time, they DID have something similar to skill capping (trait capping?) planned for the game.

Not quite the same thing. Skill capping is when you loaded up a signet of capture on one of your eight skill slots and went out to fight a mob that used that skill – bosses for elites. Then, after you get the boss to use the skill by fighting it, you have a certain amount of time to activate your signet. If you did it within the time limit you unlocked the skill for use with your character.

What Eric was talking about was having characters participate in “trials” – whatever that means – where you are rewarded with a trait afterwards. I imagine it was something like earning skill points by fighting with some NPC’s on the explorable maps (or at least some of them were). That’s just speculation though.

So we’re talking about two different things here – skills are what go on your skill bar. “Traits” as they were then described, are selected from your character’s traits panel and are passive bonuses; those ones you get to choose every 5 points into a trait.

Hope that explanation helps.

Lechtrixx.1053:

like saying the world has to be black and white. You’re wrong.
Trahearne doesn’t need to be evil, you folks take the cake at it.

If only that were true. Our characters have to be the heroes… er, sidekicks of the story. We have to help Trahearne save the world. Don’t want to? Don’t play the personal story. There’s no other option.

I don’t care. They need to have something to keep farmers interested in the game. I’d prefer it be cool-looking armor and weapons than anything else.

My number one gripe with conditions is that they are too easy to remove. It’s so easy to counter conditions and it takes no skill to do so. To counter direct damage you have to dodge or use the right skill at the right time.

What I was most happy to hear was that they will be adding storylines that take place over a longer period of time. That has been one of my biggest disappointments throughout the GW2 experience. I’m so glad.

1. A beautiful world and art style
2. Great music
3. Asura
4. WvW
5. I know ANet will fix the bugs
6. I know ANet will balance the meta
7. I know ANet listens to their players

You don’t understand the meta. All it takes is one bunker ele to cap the back point in a match. And then the other team needs a thief and mesmer to counter him. Which means you are fighting in mid 3 vs. 4 without a mesmer. And if you don’t, all the ele has to do is run away, there is no way to catch him. You can slow him down but that’s it.

ANet isn’t stupid, they see this happening. They will nerf it because it is OP in tPvP and they want the meta to be a game of attrition, not elementalist kiting. This is just what will happen. I don’t care if you don’t think the ele has too much mobility. ANet doesn’t care what you or I think about it either. It is the number one thing for mediocre teams to do in tPvP. And that makes it a target for a nerf.

Loco.4561:

If you are struggling to beat D/D Ele’s, make one. Take it through the starter area, goto the mists, equip 2 daggers and spec the most popular build. Cast the typical rotations, learn the animations, what they look like, the duration of those abilities etc… etc… Learn the attunements and what benefit/effect they have on the Ele. Always slot a CC breaker of your own, learn to time your dodges. If you dodge RTL, 90% of these Ele’s will not know what to do. (if someone used to dodge my RTL, I’d lightning flash into an updraft anyway and continue the rotation, or use magnetic grasp instead to really freak them out lol)

I used to main D/D Ele, it has been my spec since beta. I shelved it recently due to the fact the build is now FOTM and everyone is running around as a D/D Ele.

I have since switched to my old Mesmer I have not lost a 1v1 to a D/D Ele, because I know how to counter them and once you do it’s honestly easier to counter them than you think.

That’s good advice. The best way to beat any FOTM build is to figure out how to use it.

TheGuy.3568:

Zonzai.2341:

Aether McLoud.1975:

Zonzai.2341:

Good advice. I like posts like this that help people learn the game better. A lot of people come from other MMO’s and aren’t used to how important timing is in GW2. So I give you a +1.

-EDIT- I should add, DD eles will be getting a nerf soon so everybody whining should just chill. I know ANet and if any one build becomes too popular or successful, they will “equalize” it. LOL

They already said DD eles will get a damage buff so no they will not get nerfed.

Elementalists will get a general damage buff you mean? That’s what I thought they said. The problem with the DD ele isn’t the damage output. It doesn’t do all that much damage. The mobility will end up being reduced though. The same thing happened with the ele in GW1. And the thief for that matter. It’s like deja vu.

Honestly that would make no sense. If you look at warrior, guardian, and ranger gs and sword builds they have just as much mobility or more. Seriously before you respond look at the skills and the cool downs literally more mobile than DD.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sword
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Greatsword

First, you are full of it. If there were so many high-mobility builds that could do everything the DD ele can do, the DD RTL ele wouldn’t be the FOTM.

In the end you will see that I’m right. Not because my opinion is more valid or because I scream louder, or because my argument makes the most sense (to me) but because I’ve been paying attention to what ANet does (not just says) since 2005. They nerf too much mobility and they nerf FOTM builds.

dypfryst.5132:

how is this any better then a static discharge build? seems awkward and clumsy to set up..

if your gonna play glass you might asweel use your distance.

It isn’t better that static discharge. It’s just a gimmick build. But if you can get someone stupid enough to stand still in a red circle for six seconds, it will obliterate them.

There’s no way that they will run into the 1600 skill problem again. Now they have too few skills. And they’re still not balanced…

But the biggest problem with how many skills they had in GW1 was synergy. Having two professions just allowed for too many combinations to keep track of. Now, in the current game, they could allow second profession skills (probably not traits) and still balance the skills fairly easily. Then again, maybe not…

But I understand why people want more skills. They miss making builds. GW2 just doesn’t allow for a fraction of the build depth or variety that GW1 did. It’s great for an MMO and all, but not as good as GW1 was in that regard. Which it was arguably, too good at.

hharry.1967:

GUYS, you say that combo is not OP because thieves/warriors/mesmer can do exactly the same. It is still OP, but not only eng, all of them, so have fun with future nerfs.

Yes because you can dodge a thief and mesmer burst by strafing…

It’s not OP because if you strafe left you won’t get hit by the grenade. It takes 2 seconds from the time the engineer throws the grenade to the time it goes off. It’s not that hard to avoid. And you can see them coming. Can you dodge a thief in stealth? No. Can you dodge a mesmer’s illusion bomb? No. You’re guaranteed to take damage from two of them and they can do it more than once every 30 seconds.

Plus they have to be aimed. None of the thief’s or mesmer’s burst damage requires any kind of skill to aim like an engineer’s does.

Engineers have already had a 33% damage nerf to grenades. Maybe if they didn’t do any damage, like all the other engineer skills, you’d be happy then. No, you’d just find an elementalist’s AoE to stand in with your glass cannon build and then you’d want them nerfed too.

Exploits are not a good reason to nerf engineers grenade damage again. You may as well take the kit away and replace it with a nerf gun.

Solcaust.4173:

“Miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss…” -Flamethrower

Best quote ever. You sir, win the GW2 forum! I spit soda out my nose.

No, they can’t throw their guns. That would be too effective. Damage nerf that for sure.

I think it’s a good idea. We were just talking about Trahearne in my guild the other night. Nobody in my guild likes Trahearne. Who the F is this guy that just comes in at the last minute and steals all the credit for everything I do? We’ve all already got a grudge against him. Please let him be evil.

I hope they give us cross-profession skills.

My problem with Trahearne isn’t that he steals the credit for everything we do, it’s that he sucks. He’s got no personality. At least the other salad heads have too much personality. But not Trahearne! He’s like the plain ice burg lettuce salad head man with no dressing. Who eats that? Lamest hero ever.

I was just happy she was dead. She was so annoying. But as others have said, a lot of the characters in the personal stories lack depth (not Seiren though, annoying is better than plain, so props for that). They feel like a cut and paste job. And they miss so many great opportunities with lackluster writing. Not just the generic dialogue, but other things, like not having to go face the risen version of your mentor.

Really, ANet you should have sent me the dialogue before you had the VO done. I’ve made many mods for STO, Neverwinter and other games. I would have helped you out. It only takes a thoughtful sentence here and there to develop a decent character. Trahearne for example, really would have benefited from this. And I am by no means the only person who could have done this for you. Live and learn.

I see everybody saying the same thing…

Skill caps
Having many skills
A second profession
The great GW1 story missions

It was such a great system and GW2 has none of these things. Sometimes I wonder if the devs ever really understood what people liked about GW1. And why didn’t they know that these things were so great? I know there were frequent posts/threads about how good all of these things were. What happened ANet?

Don’t get me wrong, WvW, explorables, new races, jumping, swimming, these things are great too. But sometimes I really miss just being able to create/discover a meaningful build beyond min/maxing.

If you gave me the character progression (even if it were just 80 skills per profession and the weapons stayed the same, but with two professions) and the storyline from GW1 and then took everything else from GW2, I would say that GW2 is the best game ever made.

But I do know some of their previously given answers for things…

Skill Caps – Doesn’t work with weapons, there are only a few elites, doesn’t work for traits, doesn’t work for PvP
Fewer Skills – Easier to balance a few more useful skills (LOL, still not working out!)
Second Professions – Not needed since every class can fill every role

Now, while I understand their reasons from a design standpoint – as I do with the writing in the personal stories – I think they missed so many great opportunities to impress. I’m just posting their stated reasons.

Skill caps were so much fun, creating meaningful builds were so much fun, profession combos were so much fun, the story missions were so much fun. GW2 is a lot of fun too, it just isn’t as much fun as GW1 was in terms of story or character development. I think it will be interesting to go back to GW1 after I get bored with GW2.

I really hope that ANet goes back reexamines the second profession question. It would be best way for them to add so many more builds and such great depth back into the game again. Because let’s face it, even though GW2 character development is much deeper than a traditional MMO, it has merely a fraction of the depth of GW1 character development. And that is ultimately what I think all these missing things really represent.

If you are dumb enough to stand still and let a grenade engi hit your for 16k you deserve to die.

I hope they fix the current skills before adding new ones. There are too many bugs, incorrect tooltips and useless skills for ANet to be thinking about new ones. I’m not trying to be unduly critical here but I play a necro and an engineer. They both need a lot of work before new skills should be considered. But after the professions are properly working, then they can worry about new skills. And I hope they add a lot more.

But what would be the fun without the bugs? All those other classes are boring. Their skills work.

Condition damage is always good on a necro. If you are going for glass cannon, look for power, precision and condition damage in that order. Though I will say I think you’d be better off with a more balanced build for leveling. Necro power builds are better for end game content, dungeons/pvp.

pmnt.4067:

Zonzai.2341:

Combo fields are crucial for dungeons and nobody does that better than necros.

Yes, who needs those underpowered water fields anyway :P

Water fields are fantastic but taking into account that most of the time a necro functions in a support role and is specced and traited to spam those fields as much as possible, I’d still give the edge to the necro. It’s his job to put out those fields. Plus, against a tough boss weakness or blindess beats a weak heal or a few stacks of might every time.

John Valdea.5879:

Guild Halls/Towns: i have seen many suggestions on rather than bring back the halls to instead give us towns that we can build and customize. I would very much like to see this myself. Allow us to add specific buildings, merchants and even locations. Give some basic locations as a small list that each guild can start out with then allow the guild to purchase or unlock better locations. Say we start with basic town farm or cave locations. Then a guild could choose to either stay there or unlock or purchase maybe a rainforest or beach location. You could then add npcs with guild discounts much like in the first gw. In addition you can add buildings, defenses, decorations etc and improve them or purchase different styles of buildings.

Good list. I don’t know about guild towns but I like the idea of having upgrades built into guild halls for non-paid GvG battles. Upgraded turrets, guards, traps, fences, whatever. But it wouldn’t work for tPvP.

I really like the in game calendar idea. It’s one of those simple little things that can really add a lot to the guild experience.

You’re absolutely right. There is a very unforgiving pace in GW2, just as there was in GW1. ANet likes to cram as many mobs on the map as possible. That said, GW2 does it right most of the time by leaving the roads fairly clear of mobs. They’ve even taken the time to change spawn locations specifically to keep some overrun roads clear.

I’d like to be able to purchase (with gems) a bank page similar to the collectables page but for runes and sigils.

Why do I think this is a good idea?

1.) I prefer not to buy things for alts. The leveling process is easy enough that I usually don’t have to (excluding weapons). But I’d love to be able to keep all of my sigils and runes for my alts and for guild members. My regular bank slots are so full I can’t really afford to do it with the regular bank vaults.

2.) I give a lot of things to guild members and somebody is always looking for a rune for an alt. It would be very useful to be able to give lesser runes away instead of selling them for a couple of silver (at best). I think this could also be useful as a guild bank option.

3.) If you offer it people will spend gems on it. You will make more money. It’s a win for everybody. I think 600 gems is too much though. 200-300 seems right.