Guild Wars 2

Zedd.8239:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

That’s great for your support character. But that character should still be in zerker gear.

Nope. She really shouldn’t.

There is no stat that increases how much damage other players do.

I’m pretty sure I never said or implied that there’s a stat that does that. Again, you’re only measuring effectiveness by looking at damage and not at other factors that can impact things.

There are no other factors. Zerker gear = fastest kill = most efficient. Any other factor is due to a lack of skill in dodging and using utilities.

Yes some players aren’t good enough to dodge and use utilities. Those players are more than welcome to use other gear sets. But that doesn’t make it the most efficient, it just makes it slower.

If you show me any video of content in this game, I can show you a zerker gear team doing it faster and more efficiently, guaranteed.

pullnointer.1476:

Penguin.5197:

You cant go asking for harder content when you deliberately took the easiest path and soloed it knowing its easier to solo it than to do it in a group…

people are always going to take the easiest path deliberately. I didn’t. I handicapped myself going solo rofl.

Except that’s not a handicap it’s designed to work that way.

It scales much much lower for solo players so that people who aren’t good enough to do it in a group can still finish it.

The difficult challenge they talked about was doing it in a full group of 5. If you want to experience that then go do it. But doing the easy mode and then complaining about how easy it is, is kind of silly…

Zedd.8239:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Bottom line is, while you can be successful using any gear, beserker gear is ultimately the best.

Yes, berseker gear is ultimately the best…just for doing damage. It’s terrible for overall group survivability. I’m not saying it’s bad to have people in berserker gear. It’s great for group damage. But having everyone in that generally doesn’t work out too well.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem ultimately stems from the fact that they tried to do away with the trinity without actually replacing it with anything. This leads to the situation we are in now that DPS trumps everything else.

Boss has a healing mechanic-> More DPS to outpace it
Boss Builds up power during the fight-> More DPS to kill it first
Boss Does powerful attacks-> Quicker you kill it the less attacks it does

There is no situation where having more defense is more helpful than killing things faster. Every class has the same access to CC/Ulility/Healing so you can have all that and still wear zerker and be the best dps as well.

Most classes can buff themselves and debuff the enemies just as well if they are wearing zerker or nothing at all. There is no need to bring in a support spec in a support set of armor because most classes can already provide their own might/fury.

Yes, killing stuff faster reduces the amount of damage the group takes. But guess what? Having a support character in the group can also reduce the amount of damage the group takes while actually increasing the amount of damage they do and how much they heal. There are very few situations where that wouldn’t be an advantage.

I’ve said this over and over again but DPS isn’t the only thing that matters in this game. Maybe that’s all that matters in the elite groups that are so kitten they never ever die. But for the majority of players out there (even many really good ones), it’s a limited and ultimately flawed viewpoint. More damage does not necessarily mean a group is more effective.

That’s great for your support character. But that character should still be in zerker gear. There is no stat that increases how much damage other players do.

If you want to make it harder do it in a group of 5 light armor classes.

There I just made harder content for you.

The problem ultimately stems from the fact that they tried to do away with the trinity without actually replacing it with anything. This leads to the situation we are in now that DPS trumps everything else.

Boss has a healing mechanic→ More DPS to outpace it
Boss Builds up power during the fight→ More DPS to kill it first
Boss Does powerful attacks→ Quicker you kill it the less attacks it does

There is no situation where having more defense is more helpful than killing things faster. Every class has the same access to CC/Ulility/Healing so you can have all that and still wear zerker and be the best dps as well.

Most classes can buff themselves and debuff the enemies just as well if they are wearing zerker or nothing at all. There is no need to bring in a support spec in a support set of armor because most classes can already provide their own might/fury.

DrMatt.9408:

Everything about this event has been carefully designed to fleece as much money as possible from people. You actually have to admire the genius behind it. People are splurging cash now in the 2 week ‘cheap’ skins window, and they will splurge cash again once the 2 weeks are up and Evon’s inevitable win leads to a ‘cheap’ keys window, despite the skins now being more expensive themselves. I honestly thought they had changed after the jade weapon scam but whatever. I’m enjoying southsun survival though so Im not too bothered. As always, the content is great, but the skin policy is a cesspit of greed and deception. Scraps are a ‘common’ drop? Lol

Yeah it is sad. I really thought they were taking a better route after dragon bash and kite fortunes both turned out pretty good with their balance between RNG and in-game aquisition.

Now we are 100x worse then anything else they’ve tried…

The only skewing achievement is southsun survival. It takes approximately 10x longer to get the achivement there then it does in the Aspect Arena. Therefore people will be giving 10x the support to Evons game over Kiels in order to get the achivement.

This is fine by me, I want him to win.

DaMunky.6302:

Guys, karka is not OP at all. It takes forever to surface and can be dodged.

The Mist Walker mechanic is amazing, because it prevents the game from becoming Southsun Dragonball. It forces you to really think hard about killing somebody, because if you do they’re going to try and haunt you to death.

If you are getting killed by mistwalkers a lot, here’s what you need to get a handle on:
– Kill lots of people for their food during the grace period. You get food, and they get a respawn somewhere else away from you – no ghost to haunt you!

- Avoid killing people if you don’t have to. If they have no arrows and no food, leave them alone. If they have no arrows and you have plenty of food, leave them alone. If they have tons of arrows and no food, use Disarming Shot and they can’t bother you.

- If you do need to kill somebody, you now have 2 options: (1) quickly kill more people so you’ll be haunted by a group. They will fight over motes and you’ll get hit by fewer traps. (2) Avoid scavenging at all costs. A single walker with lots of motes is far more scary than a group with no motes.

- Avoid areas where idle walkers congregate, such as the starting area. Bored walkers will haunt you just because they’re bored!

- Learn to dodge the karka. Seriously it isn’t that hard.

l2mistwalker

You can’t dodge the kakra when you’re on your face during the entire spawn, charge, and roll sequence.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

So we now have content that can be done solo by thieves, but guild groups can go suck lemons.

Lovely.

Thieves, mesmers, guards, warriors, rangers, engineers, and necros so far actually…

Pandabro.8743:

Heh… Well Anet certainly did a great job at making this as much like a real election as possible. Now we just need propaganda from our favorite political news source to post on our Facebooks.

Here you go:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/cutthroat/I-need-the-propaganda

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Karka isn’t bad it’s just a mix of karka and the tripping trap. I’d say limit revenge to 10pts at most not 15.

This would help. You can get away from the kakra if it wasn’t for the tripping trap

The time gating will determine the value of the new mats, the amount of lower mats required will most likely not be the limiting factor.

A good amount is enough that you are still having fun playing the game but also have some spending money.

For me this works out to about 3g/hr from normal play

And an additional 20-30g/week from investments (on average, usually sold in big chunks).

Sure you can earn 6g/hr spam farming Cof, or 50g/hr staring at the TP. But if you aren’t having fun doing it then you should question your motives. If you do enjoy that then those are your two best options.

There is another thread floating around with dev repsponses if you are curious.

Highlights:

Will be rebuilt “very soon”
This was the art district before the collapse
Data mining appears to show it becoming the “royal terrace” which is basically a mini LA in DR.

Yeah I have to agree with the premise of this thread. I’m all for large overarching stories that all tie together. But that simply isn’t what we have. What we have right now is disjointed half sentences that make you work really really hard and rely heavily on out of game info if you want to have any idea of what is actually going on.

I had no idea that these stories were related at all until I was like, wtk (what the kitten) is going on with this story, and spent 3 hours in the lore section on the forum. That is simply not good stroy telling.

Also having 6 months of story and still not knowing the overall plot or where it is going is waaayyyy too slow. It would be ok if we knew where we were heading. I.E. a powerful dragon minion is manipulating the people of tyria in order to weaken and distract us from our goal of killing it. Heck it took 3 months just to get the name of a person who may or may not be important and may or may not be out nemesis.

When I pick up a book, the first thing I do is read the back cover to get an idea of what the story is about. Then even if it gets confusing and disjointed I know how it all will eventually tie together so I can focus on the details and try to tie things together in my mind.

zerorogue.9410:

you hear that loud booming noise behind you? no?
you see that large shadow looming over you? no?
you see that giant karka slowly crawl out of the ground? no?

Then maybe it’s not the skill that’s not working correctly.
The general idea of it is when you see the karka drop what your doing and run for it!. It gives you plenty of time to get out of aggro range before the karka becomes active. I just wish you could control it to some degree….then agian THAT would be op

you are not playing a ghost very well if the person has time to get away…

After 20 kakra kills I have yet to let a single person get away. It is crazy OP.

spoj.9672:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The sad part is that you will soon need 5 tickets or 50 scraps to get a weapon…

That is an average of $300 to get a single skin…

The tickets and scraps are permanent so theres no hurry….

I fail to see how the length of time it takes you to spend $300 matters. You will still pay $300 for a single weapon skin, whether it is over 1 week or 6 months.

Yeah it is completely unbalanced compared to the other one.

But the reasoning is pretty obvious. People will grind the achievement anyway because they want the points. This is Evon’s game and Anet wants Evon to win. Many more people will play the survival game, thus giving evon a ton more points and helping him win.

Meglobob.8620:

You can’t see who is winning…

Because its a rigged election…player votes don’t matter at all…just a pirate con trick and your the poor suckers being conned…

Really, use that gray objest in your head…

you might want to use that grey object in your head to think about that a little more…

If they wanted to rig the election, how would an arbitrary vote counter, designed and coded by Anet prevent that?

LordByron.8369:

the game sosts 40$
Game expansions costs average 20-30….

Then we see that people would accept 20-30$ for a weapon skin.

That is why i prefer expansions….

Lol 20-30 would be pretty reasonable compared to what we have…

Drop rate seems to be about 10%.
You need 50 scraps to get a weapon (after this week)
That is an average of 500 keys… which are 450 gems/5

That is a total of 45,000 gems, or 1350g, or $500 to get a single skin

$30 aint lookin so bad now is it?

Well I thought “common” would be like “common” items, i.e. 50-100% drop rate…

Looks like the drop rate is closer to 10%….

This means to reliably get a weapon you will need either 1350g or $500

These skins will always be vastly under valued due to the sheer ridiculousness of the RNG.

Right now it seems the drop rate for scraps is about 10%. That means you need to open ~500 chests to get enough scraps for a weapon (after this 1 week discount). That’s 500 keys… or 45,000 gems or 1350g or $500

Good luck with that lol…

There is an alternate strategy as well if you die to aggro a lot.

You can lure kiel/Evon into the fight and they are invulnerable so they will slowly kill and aggro every vet there. Then you can killer the plunderers at your leisure without dieing to massive stun locks. Just make sure not to actually attack any of the vets so they don’t switch aggro.

The sad part is that you will soon need 5 tickets or 50 scraps to get a weapon…

That is an average of $300 to get a single skin…

Really? I read that and thought the exact opposite… how can anyone possibly vote for kiel for PIRATE captain when she won’t take treasure…

What sort of lame kitten pirate does that?

Yeah I have to agree. it is impossible to survive a ghost that knows that he’s doing. As soon as you die there are 20-30 blue orbs around you from all the things you recently scavenged.

You pick up 15, you spawn a kakra between the killer and the wall. When he tries to run you put a trap in front of him that is unseeable and unavoidable that gives a 2s KD and since the kakras attack only takes 1.5 seconds, gg for him.

The kakra trap should be removed completely. And when you die you should respawn as a mist in a random location.

They just need to fix the esc-canceling of #3 and reduce its duration by half. Then I think the game would be much more enjoyable.

Why would it matter if Anet showed who had the most votes? If they wanted to rig the election, don’t you think they’d just rig the vote counter too?

Azure Prower.8701:

Minos.3450:

I’d also add that completing either PvE or PvP daily counts towards the achievement completion.

But if you’re not supporting any one and you receive the chest, it’s too late?

correct

Some things to keep in mind.

1. There is a 2 minute grace period. If you kill someone within the first 2 minutes you are actually helping them. They respawn at a far away camp with plenty of time to stock up on supplies and be safe from players.

2, When you kill someone they need to get 10 glowy balls to summon a kakra. every time you search a supply you spawn a ball for them. This means there are a lot of players and kakras near the camps. Once you kill someone, immediately move to a different camp.

3. Make sure to grab a players supplies after you kill them. Best way to get rations.

If you can type a post on these forums you can get to the top of the sanctum.

If you are having trouble with the 3 jumps required then try using the lightning move instead of jumping.

yep, it’s significantly easier solo than in a group. Nice job though.

Barfoi.9537:

I was able to 2-man this with my wife (2x zerker thief p/p) following something similar. We just Scorpion Wired them to us near the rocks (where the mortars pop, which you can ignore), and burned them down in a few seconds. Alternating Head Shots can interrupt their loot-throws, but we still lost a few bags since they can still throw them away from their intended location. Whenever we pulled aggro from vets, we’d alternate Shadow Refuge, and they’d shortly walk off near center/back.

Before this, I tried a 5-man group and well, that didn’t go so well!

So does it scale with group size? Is there less vets with 2 people?

We had so many vets spawn in the same place as the plunderers that we were overwhelmed. We tried every combination of zerker, and bunker we could think of.

It is getting on the side of ridiculous…

4 hours of downtime for WvW/PvP during EU primetime is not good.

Joiry.2504:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Pretty much this… They’ve added 4 ways to get them. This is better than we could of ever hoped for. Anyone complaining now is just complaining for the sake of wanting to hear their own voice.

We got RNG boxes + TP + Build up to buy + Loot Drop

They pretty much listened to every suggestion on the forums yet people still complain.

Except just allowing people to directly buy them.

Btw, there are only 2 ways to get them, you magically tried to make it seem like 4. There are only 2 source of the skins:

BL Ticket (whether it is a 10 scraps or a lucky draw)
random drop in event (and random which one you get)

TP – this isn’t a “source”, its a place to sell the skin once you have it from the above 2 methods.

So you are saying that I have to buy BLK’s in order to purchase the skins off the TP?

No? Didn’t think so… Guess that is a separate way of getting them then.

How is this change a bad thing? It is like the best of both worlds.

1. RNG luck to get skin
2. Scraps to slowly earn skin after enough failures
3. Buy directly off TP
4. Sell skin on TP to buy more keys if you don’t want skin

WvW has been down for almost 2 hours… not sure why they bothering taking it down if they aren’t going to patch…

You can either make choices that matter or not make choices that matter, but you can’t have both.

If they had this vote then implemented both fractals then our choices didn’t really change anything did they?

They also don’t have unlimited time and money.

Iason Evan.3806:

Grimwolf.7163:

Even if ticket scraps were a 100% drop chance, that would still be 900 gems for a single weapon skin. This is disgusting.
And what is it really, 30%? 20%? Do the math.

People don’t just want weapons outright. They want the rarity associated with them. You don’t see many Wintersday weapon skins on players (I’m referring to the ones sold on the cash shop during Wintersday). You don’t see Rox’s stuff on many players either. ArenaNet is doing this stuff better now too. We can get these new skins many ways:

1.) Do the Aetherblade Horde Mode thing and hope you get one like everyone else and have fun with the NEW content

2.) Get the ticket scraps after buying a lot of BL Keys.

3.) Get lucky and get a ticket outright

4.) Buy one off the BL Market that players post their because they aren’t soulbound til use

IDK what the issue is here. We are getting new skins almost 2 times a month now if not 2 times a month now forever. At what point is it good enough? If you could outright buy the skins you wouldn’t want them because people would all be running around with them except that nobody wants that really. We secretly want them to be rare so that others gawk at them when we run by and that doesn’t happen to skins that can outright be purchased.

Pretty much this… They’ve added 4 ways to get them. This is better than we could of ever hoped for. Anyone complaining now is just complaining for the sake of wanting to hear their own voice.

We got RNG boxes + TP + Build up to buy + Loot Drop

They pretty much listened to every suggestion on the forums yet people still complain.

danbuter.2314:

Weapons skins are RNG in Black Lion Chests. Total crap, but not unexpected. It would be great if you could get good things from skill, instead of just having money and luck.

Guess you missed the part about being available as a drop too..

And the part about the scraps dropping so you can work towards it instead of having to get lucky…

Vast improvement imo.

Unlikely. The number of people farming event chests is a lot greater than the Cof token ectos.

In 2 hours I can get like 15 rares, along with the 200 other people who zerg around with me. That is where most of the supply comes from. Prices may rise slightly due to speculation, but I suspect the final result to be about the same.

Vayne.8563:

You can support both candidates a bit till you get both achievements, which most people will do, and after that continue to support your candidate.

Do you remembre the NPCs on southsun that gave you the MF and gold find buff?

You had to run the gold find one for a period of time to get achievements but the rest of the time you ran the MF one.

The same will be true here. And because everyone will be doing it, you won’t lose anything by doing it yourself.

That’s true I suppose. Most people will be going for all the achievements so it will essentially just set a higher 0 mark.

Oh well, carry on then.

Another band-aid fix would be to override bleed ticks and give higher priority to the highest condition dmg. At least that way you only have to compete with other condition specs and not power specs as well.

TheDaiBish.9735:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Dawdler.8521:

Wow thank god warriors and guardians have been buffed considerably, they really suck, especially in WvW.

Fixed that for you… every change for necros was a nerf…

Increased Mark radius
Fixed a damage bug that caused the Necro to take increased damage in DS
Increase in Lifeforce generation

Not seeing how everything is a nerf, to be honest.

Moved greater marks to master tier, overall nerf.
Made DS spill over into necro health, can no longer be used to “block” heavy hits. Overall, undecided, no one was aware or sure of how much increased dmg we took until right now… so this is a wait and see.
Added one second internal CD to those LF skills, vast nerf.

You also forgot… Terror Nerf and Dark Path nerf.

We did get increased LF generation from ghastly claws. That is a genuine buff for some specs.

Dawdler.8521:

Wow thank god warriors and guardians have been buffed considerably, they really suck, especially in WvW.

Fixed that for you… every change for necros was a nerf…

Oh look gaurdian and warrior buffs… how shocking and surprising…

Well at least they are consistent with every patch since launch….

It would be a lot quicker if they just gave warrior and guardian IWin buttons and were done with it.

I would like Evon to win. I want his rewards and his fractal. I think he is a better candidate. However I am being forced into voting for Kiel if I want to get all the event achievements…

The achievements should be general, not for a specific candidate.

Forcing us to support both candidates to finish the achievements isn’t much of an election…

I think the bigger problem is if you want the achievements you don’t get to pick a candidate, you have to support both of them equally to get all the achievements up to a certain point.

Xenon.4537:

The Boz.2038:

That theoretical 5k DPS is still the damage of two characters. No single build can maintain 25 bleed stacks for more than 3 seconds. So when you compare stuff, make sure you compare the 25 stacks of bleed to the autoattack damage of at least two characters.
Also, by just clicking hundred blades, a single greatsword warrior outdoes 5k DPS in an equally ideal build for a short time, and maintains a total of 3.5k when chaining might and fury just right.

Well the calculation I was making was mostly to figure out how much damage a PvE mob could take from conditions. Considering during a fight like Jormag where there’s a whole zerg of players to easily maintain the caps, the boss will be taking 5k damage from the bleed stack, 1k from the burn stack, and 354 from the poison stack. So under these circumstances the boss will be taking a sustained 6.3k damage per second for the entire fight just from the condi ticks. This is twice the sustained average dps you mention for normal power damage output, and equal to the burst.

Now those full condi stacks are representative of two people (basically). So between two people (in a dynamic event) you’ve got a 100% uptime packet of damage that is equal to a single burst (of 100 blades for example). Imagine if the cap was lifted to allow more of the zerg’s condi through. What I’m getting at is basically it would be like allowing warriors to channel 100 blades 100% of the time.

Keep in mind what I’m talking about is how much damage the boss is taking per second from the zerg, not the personal performance of individual players. I’m just playing devil’s advocate for a moment on PvE balance.

Except that’s not at all what it’s like. If you have 2 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps. If you have 4 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps. If you have 1234678503857398573 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps…

if you have 2 warriors attacking jormag they do 10k dps. If you have 4 warriors attacking jormag they do 20k dps. If you have 132305847505406 warriors attacking jormag they do 1498245093453578358037453 dps.

You say it’d be like adding warriors… so why is it ok for adding a warrior to the zerg to do more damage but adding a necro means you don’t get to do more dmg?

morrolan.9608:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

There was a notable absence from the recent blog post. There was no mention of fixing condition damage in PvE. This should be one of the highest priority issues in the game, yet it wasn’t even mentioned. Are solutions to this issue coming? Or have they been delayed until next year?

An entire year of having half your damage being useless in PvE is not great…

Are there any updates on this issue?

Is the issue with condi dmg the caps on it?

There are multiple issues. The cap is one of the bigger ones. As a necro I can sustain 20 stacks of bleed on a target. If there is a thief or a ranger or another necro, or a mesmer, or a warrior in the group that also applies any sort of bleed, after 5 stacks their damage overrides my damage.

Imagine if you were in a group and every time a warrior crit for more than 2k your damage got reduced for the next 5 attacks… You probably wouldn’t want that warrior in your group anymore would you?

The other issue is that some conditions don’t stack at all. One guardian or ele can keep burning up on a target indefinitely. This makes burning from all other group members completely useless.

On top of that condition specs don’t have an armor set that scales as well as beserker for power builds, thus leading to overall less damage than direct damage specs.

There are bosses that it is detrimental to use conditions against, but no bosses that heal/transfer direct damage, thus leading to even less appeal for condition specs.

Some conditions are just plain broken in PvE such as confusion. The best confusion applying class, mesmer, can burst maybe 12 stacks of confusion of a target for a maximum of 8 seconds. in PvE that means 1 or maybe 2 attacks from a boss… That means the mesmer used all of his CD’s and burst to damage the boss twice for about 4k. That is just plain sad.

Then of course there is the fact that the main benefit of poison is the reduced healing does not even currently work. It was bugged about 2 months ago and they just never fixed it. To have a core conditions main effect be bugged for 2 months is just unacceptable. Imagine of 100 blades was bugged to not do any damage for 2 months… I doubt there would be anyone left playing the game.