Guild Wars 2

Too many threads merged together here. Everything with the word raid on it is not the same discussion… really annoying that these things got merged.

Might as well close the thread at this point, this mish mosh of comments is not constructive.

Strach.1572:

I was toxic to free players on pvp becuse they dont respect server rule in rank farm , its 1 big chaos there.

Free players can’t access custom arenas until rank 20+ which is impossible to have reach at this point, so yeah…

This is something I think is very important for raid design in GW2. In most MMO’s raids take 1-2 hours to organize, and 2-3 hours to run. This is simply too much of a time commitment for GW2’s playerbase.

This has nothing to do with difficulty, so if you are about to type a reply about how we don’t want raids to be easy, don’t bother because I will ignore your post and report it as off topic.

I think raids in GW2 should be broken down into shorter, multiple section runs. Each completable within an hour if the group knows what they are doing. Obviously it will take much longer as you are learning the raid, but that is to be expected.

There are multiple ways to accomplish this. Something linear like you can’t access the second stretch until you beat the first stretch, but once you do you can start your group at the second stretch if you want. Or just make the wings each very short so you can choose which wing to do and only do that one wing then enter a different instance for the next wing.

Since we don’t have to wait for tanks and healers the set-up time should already be significantly reduced.

The second portion of the discussion is lockouts. Currently dungeons have a 24 hour lockout, which is fine since they are meant to be run over and over and over and over… I think a weekly lockout like guild challenges is good for raids so that players don’t get burned out. Lockouts should be for loot only, to allow for groups to run multiple times and help friends out just like dungeons are currently.

What are peoples thoughts? Remember they want raids to be hard, but accessible, meaning most players should be able to get a group and attempt a raid, but that does not mean that most groups should succeed. What is the best formula for length and lockout for this to occur?

PlatinumMember.5274:

Fine op, necromancers have no role. How does that change.

IMO here is what would be needed for necro to secure a role in most groups (as well as making other classes more useful too)

1. Ele needs to be nerfed. There is just no way around this. They provide the best support, the best damage, and the best survivability in the game (though survivability is a slightly different spec). No one class should be the best at everything. There is simply no reason not to take more eles. Need more healing, take an ele, need more damage, take the same ele, need more support, the extra ele can do that too!

2. Debuffing needs to be buffed significantly or boons nerfed significantly. I doubt they will nerf boons any further, so debuffing needs to be fixed. It seems they are working on a solution to this, but we don’t know what it is. Boss design could play a big role in this. If an enemy attacks the entire party at 2 times a second for low damage then weakness becomes very attractive. If a boss has an attack with a 60 second CD that auto kills 3 people and goes through active defenses then rezzing and chill become important.

3. Necro damage needs to be brought up in line with other classes. In an organized raid everyone will have 25 stacks and might and the boss will always have 25 vuln. This isn’t something special that should mean necro gets less damage. Necro damage needs to be balanced around this fact, not around these assumed situations where necro is the only one with buffs. Sure we are a good self buffer, this is meaningless to raid balance.

4. Condition damage needs to be tweaked. The master of conditions is currently the worst condition class. This is mostly because burn is OP and bleed was nerfed. Reduce burn by 20-30% and increase bleed by the same amount. Finish with a scepter rework and necros become much better at conditions. Epidemic is great for multiple enemies, but most boss fights are against a single enemy which renders epidemic completely worthless. Possibly give epidemic an effect if it doesn’t hit any enemies besides the target (refresh condition durations or something).

These 4 changes would allow necros, as well as some of the other less desirable classes to be competitive in raids and have a potential spot.

Dynamic sizes are impossible to balance. look at the current “dynamic” scaling events. There are basically just 2 extremes. Either the event is super easy regardless of the number of people there, or it is impossible to complete without the maximum number of people.

Raids would be the same thing. Either it will be trivial with the maximum number of people and that will be the required number, or it will be impossible without the maximum number of people and it will still be the required number. Either way it still will only be done by a set number of people at a time it will just be less balanced and harder to get a group.

I see two possible scenarios playing out.

1. fights have standard dps checks. In this scenario the boss has a wipe mechanic that occurs after a certain length of time. You must defeat the boss by this time limit. This will encourage the zerker meta, with team coordination and active defenses.

2. fights have no dps check. Fight is on an endless loop that goes until you either wipe or kill the boss. Zerker meta will still be used for the best players in the game, but casual groups and pugs will use the new nomads/PVT meta to just outlast the bosses and eventually down them. Sure it might takes 3x longer, but they will still clear it.

You can’t ever get rid of zerker’s because gear has no bearing on roles. You can blast fields no matter what gear you are wearing and you still have access to all your support/defensive skills no matter what gear you have.

Bhawb.7408:

You have no clue what PvE will be like. I don’t get why this is difficult. Elementalists have high DPS because mobs are stupid and stand in fields, if Anet returns (yes returns, because it was originally in the game) the AI that makes mobs move out of pulsing effects Elementalist DPS drops hard. Same if they make mobs hit hard consistently, in a way that just dodging doesn’t mitigate, and zerker thief/ele gets two shot. They could very easily hard-counter the entire PvE meta if they wanted.

Stop comparing the way PvE works now to the way it will work. They can make fields extremely difficult to use by having highly mobile fights, they can make boon stripping mandatory by having bosses that apply every boon in the game to themselves once every 30s, they can make control/range necessary by having a boss that instantly kills anything within a small radius around itself, make conditions required by having mobs with 8k armor. They can take everything you think GW2 PvE is about and completely flip it on its head.

The reason the current PvE meta exists as it does is because every nearly every single fight is a stationary DPS race where the only threat is an occassional highly telegraphed nuke. Glass cannon builds can exist because active damage negation can allow them to work, but if bosses hit quickly and hard Ele and thieves would drop like flies. Things like stacking exist because bosses don’t punish it well, but they easily could.

Until we have further details, stop assuming that ANet will go out of their way to say they will highlight all the unique combat GW2 has, only to give us the exact same PvE they say they won’t give us.

Well i’ve played HoT beta open world and story instances and nothing has changed. There is no magical new AI, no super new mechanics. Things are certainly improved, but I have seen no evidence of any change in the meta from the beta content I have seen.

So I have 3 years of game design and multiple beta weekends as evidence that this is how it will be, please present your evidence now.

At minimum you’ll need 2 guards for heals/reflects/defensive boons/dps and 2 PS warriors for offensive boons, offensive buffs and dps. Since buff limit is a hard technical limit of 5 players this is simply a requirement.

That last 6 slots will depend on the type of content.

If there are hard dps checks with enrage timers then you will need at least 2 ele’s. If there are no dps checks then 6 bunker guards or 6 bunker necros will guarantee a raid completion even if it takes a while.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, it has. They announced at 5m players today, that’s over twice what it launched with.

That is incorrect. There have been 5 million copies of “Guild wars 2” sold to date.

That includes the base game AND HoT. So if you bought both the base game and HoT then that is 2 units sold. I suspect the number of accounts is around 3 million, and the number of active players (log in at least once a week) is around 400k.

I was unaware they were working on changes to control conditions. That is good news for necros.

However we will never be desirable as other classes as long as our dps is sub-par. When it comes down to it everyone needs to do damage, it is the primary role of GW2. We aren’t really any more tanky than a warrior, yet our dps and support is certainly far below the warrior level.

I’ll almost certainly be bringing my condition reaper into raids, but if I become a liability then my PS warrior is almost certain to be a better use of a slot, especially if I put him in solider’s trinkets.

I can really only imagine two ways raids play out.

1. No DPS check, everyone wears nomad’s and soldiers and wears the bosses down.

2. DPS check, highest dps comps and active defenses reign supreme once again.

Just chiming in to say that if raid skins are accessable anywhere except raids I will be leaving the game

Dawdler.8521:

I honestly dont see why we have to overthink it. You want “a minimum of 2 buffers”… lolwut? What is this, release day Arah? Unless the raids are insanely hard or the eqvivalent of a level 250 fractal, you wont need anything but another player. And your average Necro is good enough at being that. Not the most ideal player perhaps, but they excel against larger mob groups, which we hopefully will see much of in raids. If raids require being split up against strong mobs the Necro is also one of the tankiest dpsers (hell even a MM Necro is usefull there).

Also I have little doubt that hardcore raids will be just 10 Guardians. Perma quickness ftw.

The whole point of raids is that they are extremely hard. It should be 10x harder than release day arah, if not more.

If a raid doesn’t require a balance well thought out team comp then it isn’t really a raid, it is just an instanced zerg that will be on farm status in a week.

I’m hoping they revamp blind, chill and weakness to be more useful in PvE. Currently they have greatly reduced durations and almost no effect.

If they allow them to work on bosses, and make bosses have more frequent smaller damage attacks I think necro could fill a debuffing role quite well. A necro could even become wanted.

This requires damage to come fast enough to render blocks/reflects unable to keep up
This requires damage to be absorbed, not just healed with a blasted water field (perma poison maybe?)
This requires poison, blind, weakness and chill to actually function on bosses, and not just instantly fall off or have no effect.

Really my question is to the devs if they see this as a valid role to be filled or if they see damage, fields and blasting to be the only roles.

Rym.1469:

Have you seen these raids already?

Because I haven’t.

Are you implying that we won’t need damage, boons, fields, healing, cleanses or support in the raids? because that seems unlikely.

I’m asking what the devs see our role in raids being. It seems we are designed to be “debuffers” except that debuffs don’t work on bosses in GW2, which renders us instantly useless.

What do you think necros do well enough to justify a raid spot. Remember boons have a 5 player limit, so you will need a minimum of 2 buffers. Uptime of alacrity/quickness/reflects means you will need at least 2 reflecters. Cleanses/heals are also limited to 5 people so you will need 2 cleansers/healers.

That means you will want 2 ele’s, 2 warriors, 2 guards and 2 chrono’s minimum. Their roles simply can’t be filled by any other classes.

Ele’s = best damage, best healing, good cleansing, good party support
Warrior = best buffing, good damage
Guard = best cleansing, best reflecting, good damage, good buffing, good party support
Chrono = only alacrity, good buffing, good reflecting, ok damage

So of the last 2 viable raid slots, what makes necro worth choosing?

I think this is awesome. They really need to give different effects based on what legendary things you have equipped. Weapons give footprints. Armor should give auras. Backpacks particle effect?

What do the devs see as the role of a necro in raids?

We don’t do damage very well
We don’t do boons very well
We don’t do fields very well
We don’t do heals very well
We don’t do cleanses very well

Chill and Weakness don’t work on bosses, which kills what seems like our best role.

Boon stripping has never worked in PvE since enemies apply boons much faster than our CD’s allow us to strip them.

Will chill and weakness be changed to be more effective? What is the role of the necro in a raid?

PS: please don’t say rezzing, if you need to be rezzed then you have done something wrong, not right. That is not a role.

Is this a typo?

“PvP immediately but must get to rank 20 before using custom and unranked arenas.”

Why would you restrict unranked arenas but allow them into ranked?

Please restrict ranked arenas to at least level 20! I don’t want trolls in ranked please.

Kormeg.2469:

xinkspillx.3914:

Agent Noun.7350:

xinkspillx.3914:

Giving f2p accounts log-in rewards is a serious slap in the face. :/
We need an official statement about this that includes all the details.

That’s why THEY DON’T GET THEM.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/95982157

I posted my comment BEFORE that went live.

Then why rush on the forums to post that? What exactly was the point of your post?

Because there was a blog post that detailed “all” of the restriction and yet made no mention of that?

Why rush to accuse him? What is the point of your post?

RIP GW2…

RIP Economy
RIP community
RIP game

Oh well it was fun while it lasted.

It has well defined strengths and weaknesses, and seems to actually have a place. The problem is that you will always be better by taking another ele.

ele is just so stupidly over the top right now that nothing else really matters.

This is currently optimal team comp and the comp that won the last tournament:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_Overskill

It starts in 24 minutes

It seems fairly likely that one of the new legendary weapons will be a staff since now almost every class in the game can use one. 2 elite specs are getting staff, i’d say there is an 70% chance the first new legendary is a staff…

No more easy content, we have open world, teq, story instances, dungeons, fractals, hearts, dynamic events, and the entire game which provides no challenge at all.

Please no more trivial content it will ruin the game for me. More casual stack and spam 1 meta won’t be better.

It doesn’t actually show up on GW2’s twitter page… I think they may have just pulled an IGN…

This is the oddest release date announcement ever… maybe the IGN guy got into Anet’s twitter account?

Basaltface.2786:

^ no wvw borderland and eternal battleground access either and im in

Yeah WvW is tricky. EOTM access is fine, but that isn’t really WvW. Definitely no EB access, maybe low priority BL access, but even that is not great. Yeah I think probably just EOTM access and nothing else is the only viable solution there.

The solution here is obvious…

nerf necro

Hopefully Anet goes about this in a smart way. There is no problem with f2p accounts, but they need to have certain restrictions in order to maintain a healthy game. Until you purchase the game you should not be allowed to access the following imo:

1. No TP access at all
2. No daily log in rewards
3. No map chat access
4. No whisper access
5. No LFG access
6. No Ranked PvP access

With those simple restrictions they can enjoy all aspects of the game, but without ruining the economy, community, or experience for others.

Anything less than those restrictions will be a death sentence for this game.

Confirmed to be raids, details to follow on saturday.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3imnl3/ign_just_tweeted_saturdays_reveal/

Prepare for hacker and spambot city!

This BWE is testing an entirely new section of map. No one has seen or done this part of the map yet so you will certainly not be doing anything you’ve done before.

Err… necro is one of the worst rezzers in PvP… no invuln… no blocks… no stability… what on earth makes you think your necro is a good rezzer?

The only thing we are good at is keeping other people off the player so an actual good rezzer can get them up…

maddoctor.2738:

Behellagh.1468:

They are only “pathetic” because you set your expectations high to begin with. If you remember them from the early days you should know they were nerfed to these levels because they were run so frequently back then that the influx of coin and items from them were disrupting the economy.

The dungeon rewards were never nerfed, nor changed since they were introduced. The devs said they will be watching them and make adjustments as needed, but no adjustments were ever made to them.

Dungeon rewards have been nerfed and/or revamped over 6 times since launch…

This latest solution was their final attempt before they abandoned dungeons completely.

To the OP: each dungeon run gives 1g, and takes about 8 minutes with a competent group. Do 10 dungeons a day and you earn 10g in less than 2 hours. Sell all your drops and mats and now you are up to 12-15g in less than 2 hours. Convert your dungeon tokens into rares and now you are up to 18g in under 2 hours. Congrats in 2 hours of play you can now afford 6 exotics or a full set of endgame armor!

Do this every day for a month and now you have 18×30 = 540g by only playing 2 hours a day, enough to buy a full set of ascended armor, or almost any precursor you want.

Seems like a perfectly reasonable reward rate to me.

Serophous.9085:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Vayne.8563:

TheLordQ.1857:

No mention of the achievements working and giving you permanent rewards means another weekend of ‘you lose whatever you do’. Which means another weekend of ‘I logged in as the new classes, played around a little, and then went back to the game that rewards me for playing’.

Edit: mm I sound bitter, but I’m not. I’m telling ANet why they they might be getting less user feedback then they may hope.

What makes you think they’re getting less user feed back than they hope?

Not gunna bother carefully going over events and reporting feedback if there is no point. I’ll check the classes I’m interested in and then go back to actually earning rewards.

There is a point. You help create a better game. I don’t understand what you thought a beta was suppose to be about

Not my problem, I already paid $50 for a polished complete game. They need to deliver that or i’ll get a refund. If they were offering HoT as a free expansion then I would gladly donate my time to help make it better. But they took my money so it is their problem now.

Vayne.8563:

TheLordQ.1857:

No mention of the achievements working and giving you permanent rewards means another weekend of ‘you lose whatever you do’. Which means another weekend of ‘I logged in as the new classes, played around a little, and then went back to the game that rewards me for playing’.

Edit: mm I sound bitter, but I’m not. I’m telling ANet why they they might be getting less user feedback then they may hope.

What makes you think they’re getting less user feed back than they hope?

Not gunna bother carefully going over events and reporting feedback if there is no point. I’ll check the classes I’m interested in and then go back to actually earning rewards.

Donari.5237:

Arrrgh! We’ve had Wednesday article reveals on other Elites, thanks to ZAM and Massively OP. I don’t know how to find them, though — I’ve been googling various things.

Now, it’s not even 9 am west coast time yet so maybe something will show up. And certainly we should get a blog tomorrow. But if anyone finds an in-depth article like we got on Tempest and Berserker, I hope you’ll link it asap

no need for the article, dulfy has all the skills, traits, and utilities posted on her site already (they were datamined in yesterday’s patch)

Ayrilana.1396:

Is there any evidence, whatsoever, that these achievements will be applied to your existing account rather than only the beta account despite Anet having stated several times that progression on beta characters will not be saved?

The AP’s appear in the main game, and award AP’s which have 0 purpose for beta characters. I suppose the devs could just be wasting their time, but that’s all they would be doing.

Wwefan.4982:

There is no in game announcement there is just an announcement at PAX this weekend.

the golden star in-game seems to think otherwise.

Good news, anyone can get these AP’s!

All you need to do is hit the “my account” button at the top of this page and follow the instructions for preordering HoT! once you complete this process you will have access to all the HoT AP’s, not just these beta weekend ones!

Even better is that this will be cheaper than buying all the BL skins which also cost money and reward AP’s!

It’s a new buff called alacrity that speeds up your recharge times. It is new in HoT. As far as I know no one has access to it yet.

maddoctor.2738:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I’m hoping that HoT adds something like 30k AP’s so we can actually reach some of the rewards they added. I’d love to finish my hellfire set!

To finish Hellfire / Radiant set you need 30k APs.
The current APs are as follows:
7k at release, 15k daily cap, 7k with content, total ~29k.
Basically they need to add 1k to make full AP sets available. I guess they will add ~7k, similar to how many we got at release and how many were added in the last 3 years.

Of those 14k, only about 11k are reasonably achieved. at 10 points a day, 15k from daily will take 1500 days or 4 full years. That isn’t too bad for a max but still it means the average player will probably only see a max of 26k even after years of playing. I have personally put in almost 3000 hours and am “only” at 16,600 AP’s, only half way to the full set.

Additionally about 5k of the content AP’s are not accessible anymore, and the cap is at 60k meaning there is about 40k worth of AP rewards that are not accessible to most players.

That’s why I think they will add more like 30k AP’s in HoT rather than 7k. Though granted a good chunk of those may be through future LS releases and not right at launch.

I like the lion arch dyes personally, deep colors, good saturation, nice selection.

They are not as expensive as the electro dyes, but they are still up there. I plan on picking one of those once I get my unlock later today.

Necro theme are the toxic dyes. I use a number of the toxic dyes on my necro. swampblack, caustic, toxin, etc all can be made to look good.

Ayrilana.1396:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Mustafa.7684:

I found this article on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ickp9/new_beta_achievements/) that states there will be AP for the beta weekend. Now my concern is that will these points add onto your account or will they just be in the beta and become useless afterwards.

I am an avid AP chaser and i would like to know if this is the case since I haven’t bought the expansion yet. Anyone have any idea??

What would be the point of them if they didn’t go towards your main account? that would be a massive waste of time imo.

I suspect they are an incentive to get people to test specific content. Think of them as early unlocked HoT achievements.

How many of the previous living story achievements been broken in some way at some point in time? This could be a means to test various ways they could do achievements to make sure they work correctly.

Possibly, but unlikely. The first problem with that is that you trivialize the achievements and remove incentives to fix things by adding them early. If there is a really hard achievement that someone finds a loophole to in the beta they will use the loophole and keep it to themselves so they can profit off of it once it goes live.

Secondly there would be no reason to call them beta weekend achievements if they were actual HoT achievements that didn’t transfer, they’d just call them whatever they were going to call them.

Mustafa.7684:

I found this article on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3ickp9/new_beta_achievements/) that states there will be AP for the beta weekend. Now my concern is that will these points add onto your account or will they just be in the beta and become useless afterwards.

I am an avid AP chaser and i would like to know if this is the case since I haven’t bought the expansion yet. Anyone have any idea??

What would be the point of them if they didn’t go towards your main account? that would be a massive waste of time imo.

I suspect they are an incentive to get people to test specific content. Think of them as early unlocked HoT achievements.

Essence Snow.3194:

Don’t like it one bit. It’s just another way to get pre-orders imo. If betas were open, then I would have no issue.

Will you complain when HoT adds 30,000 AP’s for HoT related content that you can’t get access to those AP’s without buying the expansion?

If yes: lol

If no: this is just early HoT AP’s

I’m hoping that HoT adds something like 30k AP’s so we can actually reach some of the rewards they added. I’d love to finish my hellfire set!

Today’s patch added a bunch of new info into the game files…

Looks like a new major event is going to be added soon, and there is an in-game announcement coming… the last time we had an in-game announcement was for the HoT reveal…

Combined with CGC on Saturday, Dare Devil on Friday, and promises of multiple other announcements on Saturday it looks like the hype train may finally be getting back on the tracks.

Add in “Quaggan Glide Challenge” and hints of a new beta weekend imminent and it should be a party!

Seems like a good way to encourage beta participation if they transfer to the main account. If they don’t transfer then what’s the point?

Man I hope the Taimi dye kit goes on the anniversary sale tomorrow for half price… that would be hilarious lol.

roachsrealm.9284:

DevilLordLaser.8619:

They’re not going to give people Initiative-spammable knocks on staff.

how would that be any different than the spammable block on spear that thieves already have?

And it was so broken that they ended up removing water from PvP entirely because they couldn’t get it balanced. talk about extreme… It was fun playing that map on my thief though… oh you want to kill me… too bad i’m in the water and can block all your attacks while also killing you… Actually, reminds me of guards in PvP right now…

Blaine Tog.8304:

Lily.1935:

For Arah on the other hand, Never ever bring a necromancer. They are REALLY bad in Arah! Like, actually useless. The enemies in Arah seem designed specifically to defeat high defense and health. So even if you have 30k health with full life force and activate it right before some of them hit you with a 80% damage reduction you’ll still be OKOed! Reflects, targeted instant blinks, invaln, stealth, stability are really needed in Arah.. OH would you look at that? Necros have none of those things… I doubt reaper could make you even remotely useful in that dungeon.

I’ve actually run Arah a lot with my Necro. I figured since I was getting the Arah armor for her, it was only fair that she earn most of it, though really I had a lot of fun doing it as well. If we ran into problems, it was rarely my fault. If my PUG wiped during Lupi, I’d usually be the only one to make it out.

All you really need for any dungeon is to know the dungeon mechanics and good dodging. Certain things can make it easier and I’ll admit that the Necro lacks most of those, but it’s still totally doable without them.

This is a pretty common fallacy on this forum and in game. Being the only one to survive usually means the wipe was your fault, not the other way around. If you manage to be the last one alive it means you had the least aggro and/or weren’t properly in the stack. Both of these mean you weren’t giving/receiving optimal buffs and were doing significantly less damage than the other players. This is what leads to 90% of wipes. The last 10% of wipes is when people don’t know how to dodge, but that is a l2p issue, not a class issue.