Well, given how much a test of skill they’re supposed to be I’d hope things like rez orbs are disabled. Personally I think they should remove the repair anvil as well.
It made for a good joke.
But these folks asked for a truly brutal challenge, and it just wouldn’t be fair to steal that from them with such cheap things as rez orbs and easy access repairs.
No, punishment for not being as awesome as they think they are should cost them a trip elsewhere to repair.
Part of raiding is learning the fights. You can expect 40-50 wipes minimum for the first guilds to complete the content. Not having a repair anvil is just silly. Hard does not mean having to start over every 20 minutes while you are trying to learn the fight. That is just a useless time sync.
Res orbs on the other hand allow you to rotate people in and out of the fight and complete it when you should have failed. it may be a non-issue with enrage timers, but it is something that should be considered.
Will res orbs be disabled in raids?
Or will beating a boss just be a fight of who has the most rez orbs in their inventory?
Just remember to only push your duration up to the nearest whole number. A 3 second burn ticks the same as a 3 1/4 second burn.
They actually fixed that over a year ago. Conditions do partial ticks when they fall off now so you can count the 1/4.
The exception is necromancers terror. That will not tick partial damage because the game doesn’t consider it a condition. Presumably the same will apply to reapers chill.
I’ve been away for a year, but unless there have been changes, the problem with condi builds is the cap on condition damage on the mob in question in group content. That is, if the boss is capped adding a condition player means that she will only be doing white damage. Contrast this with a direct damage class/build where all of their damage is accounted for.
Until condition damage is managed as damage over time by player condi builds will always be viewed as sub-par in terms of group content. And, btw, this is how DoT damage is managed in other games like WoW where it’s conceivable for an affliction warlock to be top DPS as all of their damage is counted against the encounter. Anet has played the “I’m sorry but the servers can’t do that” card but of course they can as that is how it’s done generally.
Condi builds are fine in certain game modes but don’t work well across general PvE. Of course, they are fine for leveling and soloing content. Just don’t try to destroy environmental destructibles, leave that to a warrior.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/combat-changes-dotsanddashes/
You’re about 3 months late to the party
(edited by ZudetGambeous.9573)
I completely agree on his statement that we are not in a zerker meta but rather the ice bow meta. That one spell has hurt build diversity in this game so much and strangely enough it was buffed when June 23rd came around.
I also think he has some valid points on pre-buffing.
In regards to his DPS comparison to warrior, I believe that your run of the mill PS warrior can pull around 13k DPS. The numbers provided in the video show he is pulling 14K on this new zerker variant (which is yet to be disclosed) so it appears on the surface to be better damage.
Of course the PS warrior is boosting group dps by nearly 50%. A full zerker dps warrior can pull 16k dps, but that is not the role of a PS warrior. So great for the necro… he can outdps a support role and reduces the groups DPS by 50%. Doesn’t seem like something we should be proud of…
Power = condition damage
Precision = Precision
Ferocity = Condition duration
You are losing significant dps if you are not maximizing condition duration and precision.
sure each stack of bleed might be doing the same amount per tick, but you’ll have 50-60% less stacks on the enemy if you don’t take the other stats.
Different classes play slightly differently as well. Warriors for instance don’t have a pure condition build. All their builds are hybrid. They require high power and condition damage because they have a much lower base condition damage than other classes due to their trait setups. However to offset this they get a higher base crit chance and more direct damage.
Necromancers on the other hand gain absolutely nothing from power on their condition weapon. They apply long duration bleeds and in order to get good damage you need to obtain higher stacks of bleeds via condition duration and bleeds on crits.
There is also a more important consideration for conditions as well. They may bypass armor, but in exchange your damage can be wiped away completely by condition clears. Spend 20 seconds getting 20 stacks of bleed on the target? Too bad they just completely removed all 20 stacks instantly and you do no damage at all now. This gives direct damage a significant advantage over conditions because there is a whole extra category of ways to negate your damage completely.
You don’t “earn” armor by running a raid, you are not “generating” anything by running a raid
This is the primary flaw in your thinking. We are not going to see eye to eye on this, and you are not going to convince anyone of anything with this line of thinking.
We are playing a game, and like in any game mankind has ever played, we earn victory.
PvE is not a competitive game. It is not about victory. It’s about having fun playing. You are confusing entertainment with sports.
If you want competition, go PvP.
Incorrect.
You are competing against other guilds and other players to see who can clear the content and who can do so the fastest/most efficently and earn the best rewards.
Many competitive things follow this same principal. Bowling, golf, cheer-leading, shooting, even track, etc etc. You never face the other opponent directly (PvP), you face the environment and you win awards if you do it better/faster/finish at all compared to the other people facing the same challenge.
Going to try out a condition reaper and a hybrid berzerker myself. Might give tempest a try as well. Mostly I want to explore the new map and figure out where everything is so that I am not lost when expansion time comes!
Designing Challenges vs. Designing Gimmicks
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
Sounds to me like gimmicks are things you find hard and can’t beat and challenges are things you have overcome and defeated so they must be designed better.
Unique mechanics make fights memorable and require good positioning and team work are some of the best mechanics (mai fight).
Running around randomly, completely ignoring your team mates, and just dps’ing the boss the whole time is fine once and a while but it is not really unique or challenging (molten bosses).
Good fights make use of both mechanics plus more.
Enrage mechanism are bad design… this will just strengthen the zerk meta. (I’m sure even a dev can understand that)
Hopefully, raid encounter will be designed around securing secondary objectives and not stupidly bashing a boss “as soon as you can”. We know that they can do some great things in this regard (Brill’s lair was a huge success and didn’t needed players to have a dps check).
If the encounters are designed around trash management and boss tanking while ally or players prepare an environemental mean to chunk at the boss HP, then, I believe, Every profession (necromancer included) will have it’s place in Raid. (On second though, enrage could be a periodic state where the boss destroy everything on the area, forcing player to build a new environmental thing to try and kill the boss. Well there are tons of possibilities that exclud brainless DPS and promote all kind of different gameplay. I mean, do you really think that hitting a giant foe with a sword that look like a toothpick for him is a good way to kill it?)
On the other hand, if it’s a DPS check encounter (like what we currently have in dungeon) then the actual meta will stay meta… nothing will change and necro, due to the area where he is lacking, will be pushed out of the roster (Like he already is).
Enrage mechanics make sense because:
- it ensures a full turtle party won’t work
- it adds to the difficulty (see world boss)
I guess the devs assume that a full turtle party is more likely than a full zerker, and this is probably true in the beginning. I sincerely hope full zerker will never work, but many people seem to disagree with me in the PvE forum…
I can’t agree with you. In GW2 passive defense are to crapy to be viable enough to ensure a turtle party.
Don’t get me wrong, or get the zerk meta wrong. The zerk meta is here not only because it’s the fastest way to clean dungeon, it’s here because the longer you drag a fight, the higher your chance to wipe (due to a lack of active defense).A dev that would think and fear a “turtle strategy” wouldn’t know a bit of it’s own game.
NB.: Pasive defense are fine for PvP though.
Passive defenses are very OP in this game. They are just slow. A group of nomad’s guardians can literally face tank lupi. No dodging, no active defenses required. Just passive defense and healing.
No one uses them anymore because all the fights are known and everyone knows exactly when to drop active defenses to avoid 99% of the damage.
At launch every single dungeon was cleared using only highly defensive builds and gear. Every group required at least 1 tank guardian to clear. The meta has changed due to learning the fights, but the devs should be very worried about full tank groups.
So he can manage half decent burst dps that is almost 75% of ele’s sustained dps even without ice bow… color me not impressed…
Too bad his dps would drop by 80% if he took a single hit or if the fight lasted longer than 30 seconds.
Yeah no…. please keep your communist crap in commy land
This is what i’m planning for PvE:
This is a full condition build. Power is pretty much useless with scepter so I think the added survivability will be key for raids with basically no damage loss.
It allows very high chill and weakness uptime, with good damage from RS burn and high bleed stacks.
I do not care as much about runes/sigils unless they drastically change the prices of superior ones. I am most concerned about them selling mats above T1. Imagine if the ecto supply was suddenly doubled. If T6s were not worth a trip to a level 80 area. If the tools and time to get T2-T5 did not make it worth it to gather them.
Hopefully someone is monitoring prices and dynamically changing what they have access to so as not to allow more fluctuation than normal.
Thankfully the economy is based on supply and demand, not random prices you have decided things should be sold and bought for.
If F2P players farm lots of mats then the prices will fall, as they should.
Long term I suspect the market won’t see a whole lot of change, except for maybe T1-3 mats. The release of HoT will move all existing players out of Tyria, and hopefully the F2P players will pick up the slack in lower tiered mats.
"And if you fail to fill these roles?"
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
In the end it went F2P and is now doing well…
…is it? From what i heard, the income is still dropping, and the population managed to hit really low levels (in the low 5 digits range).
They recently started their F2P beta, and from what i’ve heard the game is much improved since launch and people are enjoying it.
I don’t think they’ve announced an official release for the full F2P yet though.
Either way, the point was that GW2 raids have literally nothing in common with Wildstar. It’s not even an apples to oranges discussion. It’s like apples to lawn gnomes.
So basically you want to give anything that necro does into a rune so you don’t have to take necros with you into raids?
Sounds about right…
Also those runes are grossly OP…
"And if you fail to fill these roles?"
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
“You’re going to have a bad time. But don’t worry, as we’re leaving you a repair anvil at the entrance. You know—to collect your tears on.”
You know who else talked like that about their PvE content? Carbine.
Wildstar had 40 person raids, no leveling content, AMD cards literally couldn’t play the game, crafting didn’t work at all, dungeons disbanded your team after a single person died, and a sub fee.
In the end it went F2P and is now doing well… guess what other MMO is now F2P… GW2
Also the devs have stated they are clearing the raids internally, so they won’t be that hard. The devs are not exactly top notch players.
stuff
I’ve been curious, what do these “DPS” numbers actually mean? You say ice bow increases DPS but considering the cooldown, DPS seems like the wrong term to use.
So I’m gonna ask you to reframe these numbers so I can actually understand.
How much damage does each profession deal over 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and 60 seconds?
The issue is how long the bosses last. IB increases DPS by such large numbers because using it usually kills the boss and ends the timer.
There are no 5 minute encounters in the current dungeon environment so long time dps is not even really measured.
IB is generally used once every 45 seconds, and it provides an extra 25-30k damage in that time. your other skills keep ticking during that time so it is pretty much a pure damage gain. That works out to an increase in dps of almost 650. and you get 2 of them, so someone else also gets that gain.
Compare that to necros “special” ability of life steal for 30 dps!
I don`t think people should be worried about “enrage timers”.
It’s obviously going to be a DPS check of some sort, so a bunch of plain terrible builds might be doomed to fail.
If the content is truly challenging, then the “plain terrible builds” are going to wipe anyway. Enrage timer is a fake difficulty, notthing more than a gear check.
It is a skill check. There is very little gear dependence on damage.
As much as people like to tote the “zerker” meta you can maintain equally good dps with the following gear combos:
1. Zerker
2. Assassin
3. Sinister
4. Solider
5. Rabid
6. Rampagers
7. Carrion
By using banners, spotter, fury, PS, and EA, you can use any of those 7 gear sets to maintain optimal dps within a 10% margin. As long as you maintain the proper support roles your dps will be fine.
If you can’t clear an enrage timer using a combination of those gear sets then you aren’t going to do it with 10 zerkers either. Of course all the organized guilds and groups that will be clearing this content already know that.
Heh, enrage timers. One more reason to go all zerker, i guess, as if what we had up to now wasn’t enough. Encouraging diversity, lol… what a joke.
Good luck with that… full zerker will not be viable for raids. You will almost certainly need a number of gear types to succeed.
Boss isn’t going down if everyone is on the floor.
This is pretty much everything I wanted for raids… like x100
Throws money at screen
Let me start now!!!!
More detailed post:
Looks like roles will be important, which is good. This means my necro may have a place, especially in kiting and cutting down groups of adds.
Enrage timers will be a thing, which I thought was obvious but some people seemed to disagree. This means no cheesing encounters in nomads gear, also good. This does however bring up the awkward DPS meter discussion. It is hard to have an enrage timer if you don’t know who your weak link is…
Masteries- looks like you’ll need at least a few people with masteries to complete the raids. I know people will complain about this but I don’t think it is a big deal. It is a type of progress, and it sounds like you’ll only need a few people to have them completed to do the raid.
Rewards- unique rewards were a given, thankfully the “i’m entitled to get all the rewards in any game mode I want with no challenge” people are not being listened to. No statistical advantage, no problem imo.
I’d love to see 1, 2 and 6 implemented.
3 is a game wide issue, but should be better in HoT.
4 I disagree. Especially with F2P, you need a constant source of revenue and this is a nice simple one that isn’t a huge deal.
5. These are just skins. Keep the price the same and make them skins only. That was their original purpose anyway. I would like to see a T4 set with HoT though.
There is a new event launching this week. You’ll probably want to do that instead of testing the beta content an extra day.
Also it is labor day weekend… I doubt the devs want to work on labor day to monitor the beta…
Any guesses on when all this starts? Immediately?
I would guess probably not until after the beta weekend. Tuesday is my guess.
But they tweeted it now, so it might start now.
I think Gaile mentioned about a reveal today of something (to do with guilds), so I’d guess reveal this week content/start next?
Edit – found the post https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-Recruitment-Drive/first#post5443434
Interesting… I wonder how it will be guild related… Excited to find out.
Any guesses on when all this starts? Immediately?
I would guess probably not until after the beta weekend. Tuesday is my guess.
But they tweeted it now, so it might start now.
Interesting, so the pre-events are about to commence, hadn’t expected them quite so far out lol
Hopefully its more than just “here’s a few mordrem in KH go kill them”
Well we’ve seen the first story instance of HoT and it is set at least 2 steps ahead of the current game. We need Canach to join our DE 2.0 team and we need to learn about the disaster that was the invasion. So I suspect we will get at least 2 lead up stories/events between now and launch of HoT.
While learning the mechanics? I suspect most groups will break up, but average completion time will be around 6 hours.
After the mechanics are known and people are attempting to clear? I suspect most groups will take 3 hours, but the best groups will be done in 2.
After the raid is on farm status? Most people will be able to finish it within an hour, with the best groups coming in at around 45 minutes.
Obviously at first you will be wiping over and over and over again, trying to figure out positioning, team comp, mechanics, tricks, builds, etc. Only the top guilds will be able to finish at all. This takes time. Once that is all worked out then you will see times fall significantly.
The best example is teq. When teq first launched most groups got him down to ~90% by the end of the 15 minute timer. Eventually after about 24 hours, some of the top guilds had him under 75% within the 15 minutes. After about a week the top guilds had killed him with seconds to spare. After a month pretty much everyone had killed him. Now 2 years later he takes less than 5 minutes to kill with an organized guild.
https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/638852037879459844?s=09
Poor Kessix Hills… Humans just can’t seem to catch a break in this game.
Looks like we will be getting a new event to welcome all those new players to terragriffs lol.
Hopefully gear inspect and dps meter with HOT
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
People think that dps is the only metric that is important. What if someone doesn’t get downed, avoids all dmg and performs fight mechanically very good but does 30% less dmg than a dude that needs to be constantly revived and messes up mechanics making fight all around harder because NUMBERZ!
Anybody remembers tanks in wow standing in aoe to ramp up vengeance? to dps moar ?:P
So the other guy that constantly died still did 30% more damage than the guy that was alive the whole time?
That is exactly the reason we need a dps meter. The fight was dragging on so long because the second guy did 30% less dps than a dead guy.
We definitely need some metrics to tell us why we can’t complete a fight. If you can’t figure out what is wrong then you can’t fix it. damage meters are a minimum barrier of entry for raids.
Raids will fail as content if we can not accurately determine who/what needs to improve.
the question is easy to answer – the one who needs to improve is the DEAD guy …
no dungeon boss has some kind of enrage mechanic or a timer – there is literally no reason to nuke the kitten out of him as quick as possible if everybody survives. The only reason to fail a dungeon boss is that ALL of you die
DPS is a useless metric – if a rev uses his energy to keep up protection and might and refuses to do dps aside from AA is he weaker than a ele who nukes the kitten out of fire and air but never ever procs a heal or a shield?
The ones who keep an eye on control and support are way more worthful than the ones who just faceroll their buttons to gain the largest number because they take care of their party members instead of focusing on stupid numbers
Raids will obviously have an enrage timer, you have to have one or raids won’t be challenging. It could be a soft enrage, or a hard enrage but it must be present.
If there is no enrage timer then you will just see full groups of nomad geared guardians who just facetank every raid boss while watching a movie. They are literally unkillable but they do next to no dps.
Anyone who was around at launch knows this all too well. Before traits were op and everyone was in full ascended gear and knew about stacking, the optimal dungeon strategy was 2 bunker guards and tanky everyone else. you just ran around at range and slowly killed every boss. Nothing could kill you and there was no time limit so even though it took a long time there was no danger.
And since you must have an enrage timer to prevent cheesing the boss via tanking you must also have a damage meter to make sure your damaging classes are doing damage.
People seem to be confusing support and damage like they are mutually exclusive. In WoW your healers and tanks don’t do a lot of damage because they are supporting the party. In GW2 your support abilities have almost no effect on your dps. the reflect healing guardian can still do 90% of the dps as a full offensive guardian. The PS warrior giving 25 might, empowering allies and dropping banners still does 70% the dps of a full dps warrior.
Just like any other tool you need to use it intelligently. Obviously your PS warrior and reflect guardian will not top the dps charts, but they should still be doing decent dps, and if your ele is at the bottom of the chart then you know where the problem is.
This is an unfortunate side effect of Anet’s refusal to put adequate tools in the game to form groups.
This won’t fly in raids. If anet does not add ways to check gear or dps then players will make their own tools or they simply won’t do raids and Anet will have wasted their time.
Hopefully gear inspect and dps meter with HOT
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
People think that dps is the only metric that is important. What if someone doesn’t get downed, avoids all dmg and performs fight mechanically very good but does 30% less dmg than a dude that needs to be constantly revived and messes up mechanics making fight all around harder because NUMBERZ!
Anybody remembers tanks in wow standing in aoe to ramp up vengeance? to dps moar ?:P
So the other guy that constantly died still did 30% more damage than the guy that was alive the whole time?
That is exactly the reason we need a dps meter. The fight was dragging on so long because the second guy did 30% less dps than a dead guy.
We definitely need some metrics to tell us why we can’t complete a fight. If you can’t figure out what is wrong then you can’t fix it. damage meters are a minimum barrier of entry for raids.
Raids will fail as content if we can not accurately determine who/what needs to improve.
Will Raids Take Up Too Much Of Devs' Time?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
PvP seems to eat most of their time and that is the most useless game mode. It also eats up huge amounts of money for no reason.
If you really want to free up dev time and money encourage them to get rid of PvP.
“I don’t like this part of the game, therefore it’s useless. Scrap their mode and spend more resources on what I want”.
Classy.
/hyperbole
guess I need to tag these things.
Though objectively PvP uses significantly more money with significantly less returns.
Their “world-wide” tournaments gave away over $100,000 and drew less than 20,000 viewers I believe.
Most of their current revenue stream is from selling HoT, which contains no PvP content and is entirely funded by PvE players.
It just makes sense that they should focus on the parts of the game that are drawing players in. When was the last time you heard someone praise GW2 for its “awesome and varied PvP with great balance”?
Probably never. GW2 is praised for its beautiful world, fast PvE content, awesome story, and never increasing level cap.
How many of you are NA players? What time are you finding these groups?
I’m just about done with my dungeoneer achievement, and have completed probably over 500 dungeon runs. I have pugged every single one.
I have never once been kicked from a party and only 2-3 times have had people join who were clearly lying about their status when joining the party. I’ve done zerker runs, casual runs, meta runs, all welcome runs. 99.9% of them are exactly as advertised. I’ve never once had a run fail.
I just don’t understand where/when/how everyone in this thread seems to be finding all these bad players/groups…
I wonder if these people go around heckling landscapers, roofers, and other service oriented jobs about how evil and morally wrong it is for them to be charging for their time and services… or is it just selling your time online that is wrong? you guys must reaaaalllly hate craigslist.
And yes having the ability to change stats at will makes this the best armor.
It really won’t since it won’t change runes.
The best way to change stats is multi sets of cheap exotic gear.
As has been pointed out multiple times in this thread.
Also it will be just as good as ascended armor, even if it can change stats those stats are the same as ascended, not better. It may be more convenient armor, but it will not be better.
I’m glad the devs are in charge of this game and not the people posting in this thread…
Legendary items should never have been tradeable. It was a mistake and everyone know its, even the devs. Thankfully the new legendary items will be account bound which solves a whole host of problems.
The best way to get a top-tier item should never be, and never should have been “follow a mob of people around digging in the dirt while watching a movie”
That is not a sustainable game model, which should be obvious by the significant drop in players and going F2P.
HoT is attempting to fix this problem, and so far seems to be doing a pretty good job.
Will Raids Take Up Too Much Of Devs' Time?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
PvP seems to eat most of their time and that is the most useless game mode. It also eats up huge amounts of money for no reason.
If you really want to free up dev time and money encourage them to get rid of PvP.
I stopped reading this post and taking him seriously (and you should too) when he said “i’m going to tell the whole community what you did and what you look like.” Just…. lol
You do realize it was the other guy who said that right… he threatened to tell the whole community that the OP was selling runs.
To the OP, there is nothing wrong with what you are doing. Just block that guy and move on.
Look for runs that specify “all welcome” or “casual” you are unlikely to get kicked from these runs. If you just started two months ago then your class combined with low AP score, combined with the fact that you probably don’t know the dungeons that well yet will lead to you getting kicked. At 17K AP and 500+ dungeon runs under my belt I can’t say i’ve ever been kicked from a dungeon, even when playing necro.
Though I also don’t join groups that say meta with my necro, I always switch to my ele or warrior for those runs.
This was a response from Robert Gee to the mesmer forum on why mesmers don’t have a bunch of blast finishers (sound familiar?).
From a design perspective, Mesmers are more about providing fields and less about activating them. It’s not just blast finishers, Mesmers lack reliable sources of many other finishers too. Necromancers fill a similar role. By contrast you might notice that Warriors have lots of finishers but not many fields.
We don’t always get this balance right (and I think there is a different discussion to be had about when we don’t) but I hope that clarifies what we were going for in the case of Mesmers.
His response makes it sound like profession (and encounter) design was supposed to allow for other professions to fill in the weaknesses that are inherent in other professions. And clearly, he knows there are some issues with this. Much like for mesmers, rangers, etc., getting this balance right for necros is a work in progress. They have a target they are shooting for and it’s either avoiding giving all professions what the current meta calls for, testing the waters for future content to see if that is what is needed or whatever design balance concept #3 is. This isn’t quite new info in terms of what they’ve said before about balance and design, but also remember that with the Blood Magic redesign, making blood is power a group buff, and giving Reaper Shroud 2 a projectile block, they are open to new ideas in terms of profession design/theme.
lol @ “warriors have a lot of finishers but not a lot of fields”
you know except permanent moving fire fields…. plus 2 other fire fields… but otherwise no fields, no fields at all…
I’d love to have no finishers like warriors have no fields!
Also lol at necros having a similar role as compared to mesmers… I’d love to know how to access necros quickness, alacrity, slow, and reflects.
Mesmers get utility, at the cost of utterly trash damage. As in, worse damage output than a necromancer. They are not a class you want to talk about, they are equivalent to a vanilla WoW shaman/paladin, gimmick buffbot.
I don’t want my necromancer to become a buffbot with trash damage. I want my necromancer to become like warrior/engineer/ele, great damage and great utility.
Memsers have very good damage, they just struggle to keep that damage alive because their phantasms die so easily. Not sure if this will ever change or not.
But either way, even with low damage mesmers are desirable. People want them in their groups in spite of their damage. Necros aren’t wanted even though they do more damage. There is nothing wrong with a buff bot. It may not be your particular play style, but it is a valid and useful role that will get a raid spot, something it doesn’t look like Necro is going to get.
Hero point cost on Elite Specs too high
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
Heaven forbid we have to complete in-game content to unlock Elite Content… yeesh…
Yeah in-game content that we enjoy if we not into World Explorer. ..
glad we on the same page
Meaningless statement. “content we enjoy” is something different for everyone. You will have to play the game to unlock the in-game elite specs. If you don’t enjoy the things the game offers then you won’t unlock them.
You will never get a dragon finisher if you don’t like PvP, you will never kill Mordy if you don’t like story content, you will never get legendary armor if you don’t like raids, you will never get rank 1000 WvW if you don’t like WvW, and you will never unlock elite specs if you don’t like earning Hero Points.
Such is life. Life shouldn’t change just to suit your every want and desire, nor should it.
Good. LFR killed wow. We already have dumbed down raids that any bear bow spamming kid can complete before bed time. Time for something new!
Don’t like it, don’t do it. There is content for everyone, not just for you.
This was a response from Robert Gee to the mesmer forum on why mesmers don’t have a bunch of blast finishers (sound familiar?).
From a design perspective, Mesmers are more about providing fields and less about activating them. It’s not just blast finishers, Mesmers lack reliable sources of many other finishers too. Necromancers fill a similar role. By contrast you might notice that Warriors have lots of finishers but not many fields.
We don’t always get this balance right (and I think there is a different discussion to be had about when we don’t) but I hope that clarifies what we were going for in the case of Mesmers.
His response makes it sound like profession (and encounter) design was supposed to allow for other professions to fill in the weaknesses that are inherent in other professions. And clearly, he knows there are some issues with this. Much like for mesmers, rangers, etc., getting this balance right for necros is a work in progress. They have a target they are shooting for and it’s either avoiding giving all professions what the current meta calls for, testing the waters for future content to see if that is what is needed or whatever design balance concept #3 is. This isn’t quite new info in terms of what they’ve said before about balance and design, but also remember that with the Blood Magic redesign, making blood is power a group buff, and giving Reaper Shroud 2 a projectile block, they are open to new ideas in terms of profession design/theme.
lol @ “warriors have a lot of finishers but not a lot of fields”
you know except permanent moving fire fields…. plus 2 other fire fields… but otherwise no fields, no fields at all…
I’d love to have no finishers like warriors have no fields!
Also lol at necros having a similar role as compared to mesmers… I’d love to know how to access necros quickness, alacrity, slow, and reflects.
Interesting results, mostly what I suspected, but a few things that struck me as odd.
1. People are much happier with DS than I thought they would be… I guess I don’t see the draw as a condition user.
2. People vastly overestimate their PvP skills. Sorry but you are not winning 50/50 fights against an ele, lol. Most of them are completely immune to necros.
Hero point cost on Elite Specs too high
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
I am fine with running about getting the Skillpoints, but, like others have said, I feel the number is too high.
Ohoni-I am curious about something. you said…
“In any case, it really isn’t all that onerous to run out and pick up every skillpoint in the world. Even if you mainly PvP or WvW it shouldn’t take more than a few hours, less if you do it in small groups. Getting all the heart quests is far more involved.”
How is it that you can suck up every skill point in the world in just a few hours? I can see it if your maps are all uncovered and all you have to do is waypoint everywhere…but what if the maps are yet to be explored?
What is your secret? I think a lot of us are going to want to know your method.
Lisa-Off to work.
I don’t know what he does, but on each new character I make I do a full 100% map completion. This takes ~40 hours of play time. I typically do 1 full map a day, and it takes me less than a month to finish. Kill everything you see when you are in range of a heart, always beeline to the WP’s and go in a consistent manner throughout the map. For wide maps I go top to bottom, then left to right. For tall maps I go left to right and top to bottom. This ensures no backtracking, and no spending 30 minutes looking for the one thing you missed. Also make sure to talk to every scout so that you don’t have any hidden hearts that you missed. I’ve done this with 3 characters so far and i’m working on a 4th right now.
a month is a long time for a traitline and 5-8 skills
That’s a month at like 30 minutes a day. I could do it in a week if I was grinding it. I could do it in a day if I was only doing HP challenges.
Plus that assumes getting all 214 HP’s, you only need 170 to get all the skills and traits. And it also assumes you don’t do any of the new HoT HP challenges.
It also assumes you unlocked all 5 other trait lines. If you are taking an elite spec then you only need 2 other trait lines, not 5. So just unlock the ones you want and skip the others until you get enough HP’s over time.
Remember that they are releasing the specs as they complete them. You will notice that the coding and level of sophistication has gone up significantly as the specs were revealed. The first elite they worked on was reaper, and it is basically just necro with chill and a GS. There are no new effects, no new tech, just same old sup-par necro.
Now look at the later elite specs. Bezerker and Daredevil. They have human projectiles, extra endurance bars, moving fields, dodge modification, so on and so forth. They have all the shiny new OP things because they were developed later.
You should be very happy that they are still working on these as it means they will get the latest and greatest upgrades that will almost certainly be unbalanced compared to the early boring stuff.
Hero point cost on Elite Specs too high
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
I am fine with running about getting the Skillpoints, but, like others have said, I feel the number is too high.
Ohoni-I am curious about something. you said…
“In any case, it really isn’t all that onerous to run out and pick up every skillpoint in the world. Even if you mainly PvP or WvW it shouldn’t take more than a few hours, less if you do it in small groups. Getting all the heart quests is far more involved.”
How is it that you can suck up every skill point in the world in just a few hours? I can see it if your maps are all uncovered and all you have to do is waypoint everywhere…but what if the maps are yet to be explored?
What is your secret? I think a lot of us are going to want to know your method.
Lisa-Off to work.
I don’t know what he does, but on each new character I make I do a full 100% map completion. This takes ~40 hours of play time. I typically do 1 full map a day, and it takes me less than a month to finish. Kill everything you see when you are in range of a heart, always beeline to the WP’s and go in a consistent manner throughout the map. For wide maps I go top to bottom, then left to right. For tall maps I go left to right and top to bottom. This ensures no backtracking, and no spending 30 minutes looking for the one thing you missed. Also make sure to talk to every scout so that you don’t have any hidden hearts that you missed. I’ve done this with 3 characters so far and i’m working on a 4th right now.
They’ll probably make a spot for us. For example, add foes that condi bomb you, but are really weak to whatever they put on you, so if you transfer it back and use epidemic, the fight becomes a lot easier.
The problem with solutions like this is they only apply to single encounters and are essentially forcing a necro onto your team. They will bring you because they have to for this one fight then ask you to switch back to your “useful” character after that fight.
Much better to fix the overall design of necro and the encounters in general once and then we are useful everywhere.
And although we are the most hated class, other classes aren’t really wanted either. Ranger is just as bad off as we are currently, and Engineer’s while not hated are not particularly sought after either.
Hero point cost on Elite Specs too high
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
Seems a little low to me. It is an elite spec made for progression, not a casual lazy give it to me for free on launch day spec.
Grinding low level zones for hero challenges doesn’t sound elite to me either.
You can’t grind hero points, and they can be gotten primarily through HoT zones, which are all level 80… so… yeah.
Hero point cost on Elite Specs too high
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: ZudetGambeous.9573
Seems a little low to me. It is an elite spec made for progression, not a casual lazy give it to me for free on launch day spec.