Guild Wars 2

MorganLeFay.5816:

1st:That system would discriminate new players. Would be like: “sorry but you cannot get a precursor, you’ve played too little”. That would be unfair, plus, it creates intensive farming and even botting, something that Anet stated multiple times they don’t intend to have.
2nd, : 750h probably would be enough to buy a precursor even by selling linen. I mean, if you salvage and sell silk, linen,damascus, piquant food, growing lamps or w/e TP values most and is easy to get , by the end of 3 months you would have enough gold to buy the darn thing and let the rng gods rest in peace.
Thats what I plan to do and tbh, my goals seem more straight forward and easy to reach atm. I got 50 gold, 2500 left:D

1. They haven’t played enough to get a precursor. They shouldn’t have a large chance to get one. Not sure why you think they deserve one since they just started playing? I would suggest that a new player looting a precursor very early on has a significantly higher chance of quitting the game then one who doesn’t. If you can buy everything you want/need the amount of time you stay around is greatly reduced. this effect decreases as your account ages because you have more goals which are more expensive as time goes on.

2. I do think the system would need to be more complicated than that, otherwise people would just leave their accounts logged in 24/7 and then go out and loot a precursor every 2-3 months.

I don’t know about the lower level areas but in SW and Southsun DR kicks in very quickly, usually less than 30 minutes.

In Southsun I’ve farmed skelk’s and kakras. Skelks will give me an average of 5T6 and 50T5 blood per hour for the first hour and an average of 0 T6 and 10T5 for every subsequent hour. Kakra farming the main event on the loop will give 10-12 blues/greens, 5-10T5 and 0-2T6 for the first 2 loops and 0 blues/greens, 0T5 and 0T6, with 3-4 junk items for every subsequent run. DR is clearly noticeable in this case as it is sudden and dramatic.

In SW you get both Event DR and reward DR. most of the mobs don’t drop loot so it is harder to see the drastic cutoff, but you can see it in the event chests. At first the event chests grant 12-25 Crests, and 2-5 bags of gear per event. This lasts for about 30 minutes. After that you will see a drastic drop down to 2-8 crests, 0 bags of gear and 1-2 piles of sand. Event DR also kicks in pretty quick with the experience and karma rewards quickly dropping off to 0.

Once DR sets in I usually just log off completely. I find zoning or changing characters doesn’t help, you just need to log off for at least 12 hours. That seems to fully clear it.

I read through this post but I don’t understand the purpose of these changes? Make the game less fun? take longer to kill everything? These nerf suggestions seem to be randomly thrown about with no intended purpose other than to hurt players who play differently than you.

The only thing that really needs to be changed at this point is condition damage. Condition damage scales terribly, has a much lower dps cap, takes longer to build up and requires more upkeep than direct damage. If you want to go about changing stats then you should be pushing to rework the condition damage formula to allow it to scale to at least the same point as direct damage, though realistically it should scale higher than direct damage over time like in every other MMO on the market.

Well after countless hours of farming and getting nothing of value I got:

2 ascended chests
Beta portal
3 exotics

in a 4 minute span… yay for “rng”

I’ve mostly shelved my necro at this point as well. Until DS is completely reworked or the devs make real progress in fixing the class it simply isn’t worth playing. My ele is much more rewarding to play.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

CONTINUUM SHIFT IS NOT A FREAKING DEATH SHROUD X_@

Well no.. it’s significantly better in every way, but it is the improved DS that won’t be used as an excuse to completely screw over the mesmer at every turn (hopefully), and won’t lock them out of their entire class, and won’t take 30+ seconds to charge up.

As a necro I like these changes. Haven’t faced a diamond skin ele in a while, but there was nothing more annoying then there being no possible way for my spec to kill one… These changes make counterplay more interesting and also make the trait itself more interesting.

Maybe the best discussion would be why don’t we see these claims in other MMO’s.

I know in WoW they drop rate of individual pieces of gear is in the 20-30% range so you almost always get what you are looking for within 4-5 runs, and if not you get tokens to just buy the gear after 5 runs.

The problem lies in how GW2 is set up, and I think it needs a serious overhaul to be fixed.

Well at least we know for sure that some accounts are luckier than others… Beta access and a crap ton of free stuff… yep i’m sure all accounts are equal….

Here are the problems with RNG in general and with this game specifically:

1. “RNG is RNG”… this is a meaningless statement. It is invoked in nearly every thread on these forums but it has no meaning. It is just as valid to say “God did it” or “just because”. “RNG is RNG” covers every possible outcome in existence. There is no counterargument because the first argument was a catchall statement. If you ever find yourself typing “rng is rng” rethink what you are typing.

2. RNG is working as intended… another meaningless statement, and even if it is true, maybe the problem is what is intended.

3. Pure randomness: Maybe the fact that the system lets one player get no precursor in 8000hrs and another player get 13 in 1000hrs IS the problem. Sure in a purely random system this is allowed… but why do we have a purely random system? What’s so great about purely random? Why is that the status quo? Wouldn’t a semi-random system which broke both bad and good streaks be better? everyone would get lucky sometimes but no one would be super rich from drops or super poor from lack of drops.

Expanding on the last point, streak breakers are good for both players and Anet’s profits. A new player who loots 4 precursors in a row is unlikely to keep playing the game. They instantly got enough money to buy everything they could possibly want and they will quickly get bored and leave., never spending any money. A player with terrible luck will eventually burn out and stop buying gems and eventually stop playing all together. Getting no loot is no fun. By having a system that mitigates these extremes you keep players more balanced, more likely to have goals to work for and actual make progress towards, which keeps them in the game spending money.

I love how RNG is a catchall for everything. No matter what happens in the game someone just yells “RNG!!!!!!” and there is never any defense against it. You can’t possibly argue against it because the odds of whatever happened to you can never be 0, and people just spam RNG RNG RNG RNG at you until you give up.

And people wonder why there have been unfixed bugs in the game since launch…

Just FYI john smith had a thread discussing RNG before they closed down the economy section of the forums. It reached about 500 replies with pretty much every person saying that pure RNG was a bad system and there should be streak breakers and only ever semi-RNG. Of course nothing ever came of that discussion.

khani.4786:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

What makes you say longbow? Isn’t that the Shortbow Aether in the picture?

It could be Azureflame.

oh didn’t realize there was an identical longbow skin, good call.

What makes you say longbow? Isn’t that the Shortbow Aether in the picture?

Orpheal.8263:

Please dont let it be longbow, let it be shortbows prays

He’s wielding Aether, which is a short bow… so looks likely.

People seem to be confusing the ideas of “won’t pay this much” and “can’t afford this much”.

I could easily buy the expansion even if it was $200, but I won’t. I will only pay what I think it is worth. The amount of revealed content is not worth $40-$50, so I will not pay that. It has nothing to do with what I can afford. If they release $15-$20 in content then I will pay $15-$20 no more.

Would you pay $200 for this expansion? if not why? that is only ~$1 per day since the announcement, surely you can afford $1 per day right? if not then maybe you should look at your priorities.

Well last week when I made this thread the answer was 100% ele, from over a dozen posters… we got Mesmer…

so what will it be this week?

My guess is they are doing the reverse of the release reveal order, which would make engineer next.

Elrey.5472:

Skarpa.8203:

Although it sounds far fetched, this has happened before in another game. Check out Asheron’s Call and the Wi bug.

http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/Wi_Flag

Totally relevant because I did experienced this in many bosses of GW2. As example in the Husk champion of Silverwastes after the Vinewraith. If there’s 70 players killing that one but i’m the first one that goes and hits in my warrior and i’m always on melee, he keeps attacking me all the time. If I step back for 1 meter, then he attacks someone else. That’s ok, is not a problem, the question I ask myself is why if there is always 70 different players, he attacks specifically me? It doesn’t seems random at all.
Edit: I also tried not being first, and the boss takes a while to start attacking me, but once he starts, he never stops unless I move out.
Edit 2: For replicate porpuses: Warrior Female 12k AP, Twilight and Kudzu, Rampager’s armour and Berserker jewelry

I’m just telling that example because as I understood the Wi Flag just a couple of minutes ago, I feel that kind of code might be already in GW2 with some enemies, and who knows if RNG works under the same cirkittenances. Now I need an Anet answer on that.

Aggro mechanics in GW2 are not random. There are no tanks to control aggro but it isn’t random. Aggro is determined by the following:

1. DPS
2. Range
3. Armor rating

So if you are a warrior in melee with high dps he will almost always attack you. If you switch to range he will attack someone who is closer and doing similar dps.

Your best chance at a beta portal is to buy a new account. You will have significantly increased luck.

There are two ways to hit DR in SW. there is the karma/silver DR from completing events. This usually sets in about 30 minutes into playing. There is also DR on the completion bonus chests. After about 45 minutes the maximum crest from a bonus chest drops from 25 down to 8, and you start averaging closer to 2-3 per chest.

It is very odd since the entire purpose of the zone is to run around and complete and defend places yet you are punished for doing so… Best thing to do is chest farm, there is no DR on that.

I think the most useful discussion is how we can change the system for the better, instead of arguing over the obvious account luck factor.

Overhaul the loot system to be semi-random. There should be streak breakers in place to prevent extreme outcomes. No one should get 5 precursor drops in a week, and no one should go 3 years of heavy play without a single drop. Games are supposed to be balanced and fun, true RNG is neither balanced nor fun.

These threads will never stop until the loot system is overhauled to be semi-random.

IF you are lucky enough to have a loot blessed account these things drop like junk. One of the lucky guildies (3 precursor drops) already has 4 of these portals.

If you don’t have a lucky account you will never get one.

Run a chest train in Sw, it is 2x more efficient than the old champ trains, but they nerfed the money by 90% so overall it is a little worse than before. There is simply no more farms that give 20g per hour. They balanced out the economy, the only way to make that kind of money is by playing the TP now.

I wish this was more consistent across the game.. it seems damage is multiplicative, conditions are additive, movement speed is “best only”, MF is additive… I guess it’s anyones guess what alacrity and chill are…

What are boons? How do vuln and prot stack?

Obtena.7952:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Thanathos.2063:

Why? He’s right, when you assume that those percentages refer to the raw skill stats and not to the current displaying times.

a 10s skill recharge under the effects of alactriy will take 10*0.66 = 6.6s to recharge.

a 10s skill recharge under the effects of Chill will take 10*1.66 = 16.6s to recharge

a 10s skill under the effects of both Chill and alacrity will take 10*0.66*1.66 = 11s to recharge

They do NOT cancel each other out. A increase % and a decrease % are not the same thing

You’re assuming that’s how it’s calculated. It could be calced off the BASE value too, which would cancel it.

I suppose that is possible. Does anyone know if condition duration is calculated that way? If someone has lemongrass and pizza do they directly cancel or is the condition duration still shortened? If someone has any data I would appreciate seeing it.

Wanze.8410:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Thanathos.2063:

Why? He’s right, when you assume that those percentages refer to the raw skill stats and not to the current displaying times.

a 10s skill recharge under the effects of alactriy will take 10*0.66 = 6.6s to recharge.

a 10s skill recharge under the effects of Chill will take 10*1.66 = 16.6s to recharge

a 10s skill under the effects of both Chill and alacrity will take 10*0.66*1.66 = 11s to recharge

They do NOT cancel each other out. A increase % and a decrease % are not the same thing

In your example, the skill recharge increase of alacrity is 34% not 66%.

Opps you are quite correct. Yeah it should be 10*.34 = 3.4s recharge time.

Of course I don’t know how it works out in their programing. It might cancel out, but the way he stated it they don’t cancel out.

Also the slow for chill doesn’t cancel out, but he didn’t say it should so I assume they have a reason for that.

Thanathos.2063:

Why? He’s right, when you assume that those percentages refer to the raw skill stats and not to the current displaying times.

a 10s skill recharge under the effects of alacrity will take 10*0.34 = 3.4s to recharge.

a 10s skill recharge under the effects of Chill will take 10*1.66 = 16.6s to recharge

a 10s skill under the effects of both Chill and alacrity will take 10*0.34*1.66 = 5.6s to recharge

They do NOT cancel each other out. A increase % and a decrease % are not the same thing

Edit: fixed numbers

On the livestream yesterday the guy who is responsible for all our skill balance stated that a 66% increase in skill recharge and a 66% decrease in skill recharge would cancel each other out so that you have a normal skill recharge…

I think that pretty much sums up why they’ve had so much problem balancing the game…

What i’ve learned from this thread is that most people don’t really understand how DS works anymore than they know how CS works…

They seem to think it’s some magical bar that gives us a full second health bar… lol

Anmida.4058:

I will never understand what people find useless about necromancer in PvE. Running power wells plays out excellently in all circumstances, including PvP and WvW. I’ve never had any of the issues most of you appear to be running into in the past two years, and generally tend to be fairly capable of doing better than most by simply playing intelligently.

You can run around naked with no armor and a level 1 weapon and not have any issues, the game is really easy. The problem is for efficient runs where everyone is pulling their weight necros are useless. All you have to do is play an ele for a few weeks and you will see the difference pretty clearly. 2x the damage, dozens of boons, projectile blocks, healing for the team, etc… Just because you can beat the content with your necro doesn’t make them desirable or working.

I thought I heard something about a reward track for each profession specialization than unlocked a unique weapon skin and unique head and shoulder skins?

GoogleBrandon.5073:

You also gotta remember that forum folk are the vocal minority

Necromancers, because of the theme, are incredibly popular by the masses – and only a few are truly bothered by the shortcommings of the profession because the game does not incentify to push yourself to 110% anyway

Despite all the sceptical jokes I make though, you should whisper me in game and ask about Warriors… Because oh man, despite it being a pick everywhere in the game… man… I got my complaints… Of course, it does not invalidate Necromancers being trash most of the times in “endgame” content \o/

As far as I know the last time they released numbers on how many people play which classes necro was second to last only ahead of engineer, and that was 2 years ago before the repeated necro nerfs and engineer buffs. I suspect necro is currently the least played class as it is not desirable in PvE or PvP currently.

Based on the duration shown in the video the burn will do less damage than scepter auto attack so it would make no sense for a necro to have it. The only time you would use it is if you were stuck in DS, which means you are probably going to die anyway so bad burning dps won’t help you. It may be ok on a hybrid build though, we will have to see what the final numbers for everything look like.

I can’t imagine it will be more than $15-$20. The size of this “expansion” is in line with those launched for SWTOR, which have been $15-20. This expansion is no where near the size of a WoW expansion which retails for $30-50. I don’t think anyone would buy it if they released it for $50.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Let’s wait for the necromancer specialization first.

you realize that’s the same as saying “yes” right?

No it doesn’t.
We don’t know what the necro specialization is yet. How can we already tell that an Elite Mesmer (for lack of a better name) is far superior to an Elite Necro if we don’t even know anything about the Necro elite spec yet? All we know is that it has a greatsword, that’s it.

Except the question asked if NECROmancer was losing a place, not whatever the new special class is. And the answer is a clear yes, necromancer is completely overshadowed by Chronomancer. I have no idea how ____mancer will fair, but it isn’t the topic at hand, nor one we can even discuss until it is revealed.

However based on Anets past treatment of necro, it seems likely that the specialization will simply fill the gaping holes that necro has had since launch. While every other specialization will add power, leaving the necro special class behind the curve yet again.

Invictus.1503:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Knighthonor.4061:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Knighthonor.4061:

nacario.9417:

They said all specs are meant to be on par. Tbh I wish they’d call it something else than “elite” spec as it sounds as if its the better spec.

it is better than a normal spec. it just has a trade off that balancing it out.

What is that trade out? I’m pretty sure we’ve been told that the spec isn’t losing anything that the base class has. It’s just getting added to.

A mesmer loses nothing (besides from the 3rd trait line) to gain an F5 and access to a cool down decreasing effect that can be shared with a party. They can still run most of their normal build, just change a utility, and they gain a lot more versatility. If each spec gets something as cool as alacrity why would we want to be our base class?

Build’s that focus on 2 trait lines only need to decide do they want a 3rd core line or to become the specialization and potentially gain a lot more. My zerker ele friend is happy to go into Fire, Water, Air. But he’d happily lose Lighting Rod if it gets him an F5 for becoming a tempest. With my War build, I can recreate 90-95% of what I have now with just 2 trait lines. So, I only need to compare the warrior spec to one of the new lines, and I’m getting stronger, and if I’m forced into the spec to get an F2, it’s kind of a no brainer.

Elite Specs lose out on one of the core lines because it replaces it. So thats a big trade off. Elite get new mechanics to make up for it.

Do you have a source for this? As far as i’m aware you just choose this as one of your 3 trait lines, it doesn’t “replace” anything.

It does replace a core specialization, but not in the way you are thinking. It replaces a specialization SLOT You can still combine the elite specialization with any two core specializations. You don’t lose out on the option to choose from those core specializations, but you still only get to use three of them at a time and the elite takes up one of those options.

Later, when there are multiple elite specializations per profession, they will be mutually exclusive. This means that if you choose one elite specialization you will not be able to choose a second elite specialization at the same time.

Ok that’s what I thought. He made it sound like if you chose the specialization then there would be a trait line that you simply could not access, which I don’t believe is the case.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Let’s wait for the necromancer specialization first.

you realize that’s the same as saying “yes” right?

Necro offers a few things that super mesmers don’t offer.

They have better access to weakness, poison, bleed, and fear

That’s pretty much it. So you need to choose between the following:

1. Weakness, poison, bleed, fear

or
2. Blocks, invuln, stealth, quickness, alacrity, unblockable attacks, skill reset, shatters, confusion, torment, slow, and group support

Your choice!

Knighthonor.4061:

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Knighthonor.4061:

nacario.9417:

They said all specs are meant to be on par. Tbh I wish they’d call it something else than “elite” spec as it sounds as if its the better spec.

it is better than a normal spec. it just has a trade off that balancing it out.

What is that trade out? I’m pretty sure we’ve been told that the spec isn’t losing anything that the base class has. It’s just getting added to.

A mesmer loses nothing (besides from the 3rd trait line) to gain an F5 and access to a cool down decreasing effect that can be shared with a party. They can still run most of their normal build, just change a utility, and they gain a lot more versatility. If each spec gets something as cool as alacrity why would we want to be our base class?

Build’s that focus on 2 trait lines only need to decide do they want a 3rd core line or to become the specialization and potentially gain a lot more. My zerker ele friend is happy to go into Fire, Water, Air. But he’d happily lose Lighting Rod if it gets him an F5 for becoming a tempest. With my War build, I can recreate 90-95% of what I have now with just 2 trait lines. So, I only need to compare the warrior spec to one of the new lines, and I’m getting stronger, and if I’m forced into the spec to get an F2, it’s kind of a no brainer.

Elite Specs lose out on one of the core lines because it replaces it. So thats a big trade off. Elite get new mechanics to make up for it.

Do you have a source for this? As far as i’m aware you just choose this as one of your 3 trait lines, it doesn’t “replace” anything.

chemiclord.3978:

Welcome to the generic expansion model. Content updates become scarce as the developers gear up for the expansion pack.

We’re getting what we claimed we wanted.

No people wanted an expansion. That doesn’t mean we didn’t want other content. The problem people were complaining about was t hat we were getting TINY content updates once a month and NOTHING else. What we asked for was this same amount of content in ADDITION to expansions every 2 years… you know like every other MMO does…

No one ever asked for one or the other, we wanted BOTH because that is the industry standard.

Their goal is two fold

1. prevent people from having terrible builds. They want to make every choice a viable option so people who don’t understand the game can’t ruin their character.

2. Reduce the number of viable builds to make balance easier

Locking you into 3 full trait lines makes balance much much easier because there are only a few viable builds to balance and no super OP or super terrible builds.

So the counterargument to my claims seems to be…

Well yes Necro sucks and is completely useless, but maybe we will be able to have a useful spec when they reveal our specialization…?

Well I guess Anet finally beat the hope out of most of us…

According to the devs, access to a second health bar means a class should not have access to the following skills:

-Block
-Invuln
-Vigor
-Stealth
-mobility

Since mesmer now has access to a second health bar via their new f5 shatter skill, please remove the above from all mesmer skills to maintain balance, thank you.

-a concerned necro.

With the introduction of Chronomancers it appears that necros are just a poor mans mesmer…

They now have 2 health bars via their f5 skill, but it also resets their CD’s, they maintain use of block, mobility, invuln, vigor, and stealth.

Their new wells are better than necro wells, they can apply confusion and torment 10x better than necro, but maintain the ability to apply bleed like a necro.

Plus they get obsene amounts of projectile reflect, the new alacrity effect, and access to quickness…

is there any reason to choose necro over mesmer now? It seems that mesmer does everything a necro does, but better and with more stuff added on top…

HAHA poor mesmer. You just got necro’d. I feel kinda bad for you guys… your Continuum Spirit skill will become the bane of your existence. Poor necros have had to suck for 3 years because of DS, and now you guys are going to have to suffer the same fate.

Your entire class will be balanced around this one skill. Every other skill will be nerfed into the ground because of the “what if” scenarios that Anet loves. Welcome to the land of necro…

Wow those seems massively powerful… I hope all classes get skills with that much power…

It is interesting that you somehow managed to see the cooldown being put baseline… but missed the 50000000000+ nerfs that ele got in the same stream…

Leo G.4501:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Torsailr.8456:

They never even implied a “full week of reveals” they only said each specialization would get it’s own week. That starts this week and given their previous schedule that means,

Wed: an interview they won’t tell us about.
Thurs: a blog post telling us the same thing that was in the interview
Fri: a POI/Ready Up about the blog post.

Well that’s somewhat disappointing. This expansion seems to be a trickle of small things instead of a flood of big reveals. Hopefully we get some interesting information in the interview at least.

I dunno, last week was pretty great. There’s plenty of info and possibilities and speculation and brainstorming for several more weeks on what they revealed last week by itself…and it’s not even going to be a part of the expansion.

If the train keeps even some of last week’s steam, I think we’ll be in good shape.

I agree last week was great. I was hoping that would be the new pace of information as we got closer to release. Seems most people are happy with the trickle of info though. I guess the expansion is still pretty far off so they need to go slowly.

Torsailr.8456:

They never even implied a “full week of reveals” they only said each specialization would get it’s own week. That starts this week and given their previous schedule that means,

Wed: an interview they won’t tell us about.
Thurs: a blog post telling us the same thing that was in the interview
Fri: a POI/Ready Up about the blog post.

Well that’s somewhat disappointing. This expansion seems to be a trickle of small things instead of a flood of big reveals. Hopefully we get some interesting information in the interview at least.

We were promised a full week of reveals for each class specialization… we are two days into the first reveal week…. and well… I can’t say i’m impressed. All we have gotten is a single picture… With new elites, new utilities, new traits, and a new weapon there seems to be a lot of stuff to tell us… so where is it?

If a “week full of reveals” is just going to be one blog post on Friday then color me disappointed.

They said they were leaving them in for drops for a WEEK so that there is enough people to fill a server… So yeah… the drop is probably around the precursor drop rate.

It can happen:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/richardhjames/people-dont-believe-that-these-teenagers-are-twins#.ujx7wnyql