Guild Wars 2

I haven’t seen the livestream, just read the highlights on Dulfy, so perhaps this was mentioned but not transcribed. There was a request that any builds that have been broken by the new traits be reported to ANet but Dulfy didn’t include details on where that should be done … should I do it here? Or should I send an email?

Clearly I have a (Mesmer) build that has been utterly destroyed by the changes and would very much like to provide meaningful feedback on that, as opposed to just howling into space.

Bearing in mind that (a) fall damage reduction is incredibly useful in most of WvW, and (b) it’s no longer possible to dip into a traitline to snag a minor; wouldn’t it be better to make fall damage mitigation a signet (or gadget for engineers)? I wouldn’t mind sacrificing a utility slot in WvW (or while doing a JP or some other specific instance) so I can move with fewer restrictions.

Sixes.5824:

The stat change means you are speccing for the right reasons (i.e. traits/ability modifiers and not stats). Given armor can be swapped and adapted that is a perfectly good place to move the stats.

I really like the idea of separating stats from traits, I’m just not keen on making/buying a whole new armour set if I want to try out a build. Or, worse, carrying around multiple armour sets … though if I’m honest that is just not going to happen.

Sixes.5824:

The wells are really a non-issue … if engineers can pvp with grenades, you can figure out ground targeting.

They may be a non-issue for you but the same is not true for everyone; clearly for me it is an issue, and a significant one. I don’t often use grenades on my engineer specifically because of the ground targeting issue, though I’m all over them underwater where the cluster is centred on the targeted player/mob. If wells are changed to ground targeting without any way of opting out (fast-cast is no use at all when you have no idea where your cursor is) then a well-heavy build will stop being either fun or useful to me … and isn’t “fun” the main reason we play this game?

Sixes.5824:

My only real worry right now is with the current mandatory traits. For example speedy kits is the only reliable way engineers have of getting swiftness on a regular basis. Given the class has no dash or swiftness on weapons, the alternative would be to burn long cooldowns on sub-par utilities to get places. The problem being that if such traits remain, most engis will be using the Tool trait line just to get access to that adept trait.

That being said, Anet have an opportunity to make sure things like swiftness that most classes want are accessible in one form or another through multiple trait lines. For example the engi trait could be split so that the Tool trait line has an option for swiftness on toolkit swap while the Explosives line has swiftness on bomb or grenade kit swap and the firearms allows swiftness after a dodge roll or something.

I hope you’re right, lots of my characters are specced into lines they aren’t otherwise bothered about for increased speed (whether swiftness or +25%) or (more frequently) fall damage mitigation (without which WvW is an exercise in pain). I would still like to see these being a choice rather than just given to us on a plate but, as you’ve suggested, I’d like to see them copied across multiple trait lines or available to every profession as utilities.

/signed

Valento.9852:

There’s a simple solution, just like many combat-related stuff in Options panel, add an option to automatically cast ground-targeted skills centered on the player.

The problem with this is that there are some things (ie. marks) that I’m generally very happy to have ground targeting for, so a blanket use/do not use choice would be less than optimal for me. What I do want, much like the OP, is the option that we already have either to use ground targeting on wells or (in my case) not.

bigbobpataki.4796:

binidj.5734:

Ground-Targeting Wells
Please, I beg of you, do not make this obligatory. Having a trait that allows me to ground target my wells is just perfect for me because I can ignore it. If you make ground-targeting compulsory then chances are that I’ll be changing my entire build, and not for any good or positive reason. I’m sure that it’s incredibly useful to have ranged wells, however it’s not useful to me.

Also, I don’t understand why you aren’t a fan of things like targeted wells being baseline? Do you not want skills to be buffed and made better? How could having ranged wells baseline ruin anyone’s build?

Targeted wells means one extra click, assuming that I can find my cursor (which I frequently can’t) and my reactions are quite slow enough at the moment. At present my (primarily PvE) build is characterised by always opening wells at point-blank range, the occasions when I would want to move them away from me are few and far between. Forcing a mouse click (and possible repositioning) would be sufficiently inconvenient that I’d almost certainly abandon the build, which is a shame because at the moment I quite enjoy it.

The thing is that to you it may seem like a buff, for me it’s game breaking … but that’s the great thing about the flexibility of the current system, we can both play the styles that we prefer. While I welcome an overhaul, I’d rather they didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The relevant blog post can be found at: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-one-a-primer/

From my first read-through three issues immediately cropped up: removal of traitline stat bonuses, (apparent) siloing of traits, and (Necromancer specific) ground-targeting wells.

Removal of Traitline Stat Bonuses
First off let me say that I don’t hate this idea as such, however what I do hate is the proposed implementation. Please, please don’t transfer stat gains to armour, by all means give us a UI attached to Specialisation with sliders (or whatever) to manage our stats but lumping them all (or the majority) into armour sets will actually reduce the ways in which we can tinker with our builds … and that would be a terrible shame.

Siloing Traits
From the blog post it looked as though adept traits could only be placed in adept slots, master in master slots, and grandmaster in grandmaster slots. On a couple of characters I have the current equivalent of putting an adept in my adept slot, another adept in my master slot, and a grandmaster in my grandmaster slot; will this be possible under the new system? If it won’t be possible then, again, we’re actually having flexibility taken away from our builds … and that is a bad thing.

Ground-Targeting Wells
Please, I beg of you, do not make this obligatory. Having a trait that allows me to ground target my wells is just perfect for me because I can ignore it. If you make ground-targeting compulsory then chances are that I’ll be changing my entire build, and not for any good or positive reason. I’m sure that it’s incredibly useful to have ranged wells, however it’s not useful to me.

Please let us choose the way we want to play this great game, don’t shoe-horn us into a way of playing or building our characters that you think will be better. We’re all different, and sometimes what we enjoy playing isn’t necessarily the most optimal build or stat combination.

Same issue, 1 file remaining and the connection issue strobe comes on after a few minutes. So far it is downloading 125mb, download speeds are varying between 100kb/s and 0kb/s.

All in all I found it quite interesting, gradually (and painfully) figuring out the mechanics. Then with the end boss at 50% the vortexes stopped spawning. Just, stopped. I couldn’t face going through the whole rigmarole again and risking another bugged encounter so I went for the ragequit option.

It was very pretty and going through it the first time was quite fun but it’s not that much fun.

Hopefully the encounter will be fixed but until then I think I’ll steer clear.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

Serious question.

Are Foxfires available outside of Dry Top?

Yes, they drop anywhere you find T5 or T6 wood nodes.

eg. Frostgorge, Cursed Shore, Malchor’s Leap, etc.

I’m not a fan of fractals at all and this news is quite saddening.

It seems odd to me that where (in my opinion) they got things so right with the spinal blades, they’ve got things so wrong for this.

As if the foxfire isn’t bad enough (really, how is parking my alts in Malchor’s Leap benefiting the game?) with its bizarre drop rate!

Lishtenbird.2814:

• You’re not forced to do anything. Having or not having a skin makes zero impact on how you kill mobs. “I can’t kill mobs because I’m not stylish enough!” is not an argument, even for Kasmeer.

Except that progression in this game is largely about how you look. Any schmuk can kill a dredge but not everyone can do it and look awesome!

Lishtenbird.2814:

• Despising Fractals, WvW, PvP is not an argument. Want a reward? Make an effort. That’s why it’s called a reward. Even if it means you have to step outside of your comfort zone. Or ask someone to 4-man fractals and buy a slot with gold.

Actually yes it is, it may not be an argument that you agree with but it’s still an argument. Why coerce players to take part in game content that they don’t like? Remember that nobody here is asking for a free ride, indeed the OP made it clear that they it’s not the degree of effort/difficulty that was at issue. I wanted the Balthazar backpack so I slogged my way through PvP to get it, even though I don’t really enjoy that aspect of the game. Fractals though? Ugh!

It’s like being told that you can’t have your pudding until you’ve eaten your greens.

Lishtenbird.2814:

• You are not entitled to get everything unless you’re investing effort or money.

Yeah, I’d probably pay real money if it meant I didn’t have to go into fractals. You hear that ANet? I would pay real world money to avoid an aspect of your game.

I get that you can’t please all of the people all of the time but that’s why there should be (in an MMO) multiple ways of achieving the same thing … not easier, not quicker, just different.

danielrjones.8759:

At first it seems I was avg about 10-15 day. Now it seems about half that.

Good Lord! How many characters are you doing this with? And for how long? Wandering around Cursed Shore for an hour or two (very specifically hunting down trees) nets me between 1 and 3 drops.

My luck’s not quite as bad as Lanfear’s but it’s not great. Given the amounts needed the drop rate seems to be really low.

Moving the patch note link to the screen prior to log-in would be great though. I don’t need my friends to know I’m online if I’m just reading the notes.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

binidj.5734:

If zergs no longer spawned champion mobs then the problem would go away instantly, everywhere; even if ANet had a more creative solution, replacing champions with elites would be a decent enough placeholder measure to buy them breathing space to implement it.

So we should have no champs anywhere? Let’s just take out all loot. Why should anyone have anything in this game? Heaven knows we should just repeat the content for the sheer fun of it for the next 5 years. If there are champs, players will go there. Why? Because other than TP flipping there is no other way to make any gold in this game. So ya, just remove all loot and all champs. Then the RPers and pristine “for fun only” game players can have at it.

Sorry, but I’m really tired of players asking ANet to nerf everything. CS is finally fun for a change. LET’S KILL IT.

That’s a Straw Man argument and quite a blatant one. I categorically did not say “we should have no champs anywhere” what I did say is that they shouldn’t spawn as a result of increased numbers of characters in the event area; which is a very different thing. I am in favour of keeping scripted champions (eg. Champion Archmage, Champion Risen Giant, etc.) as normal, just getting rid of the event scaling that is being abused at Shelter’s Gate now and was being abused in the Ember Farm.

If all you’re seeing of Cursed Shore is the Penitent Path (since you mustn’t actually set foot into Shelter’s Gate for fear of the event succeeding) then your definition of “fun” must be very different to mine.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

1)Tequatl does not need the entire map present in order to succeed. So there isn’t any call for people to be telling non-participants to leave the map.

You are both right (Tequatl doesn’t need the entire map to defeat it) and wrong (there are perfectly legitimate reasons to ask – not tell – non-participants to leave the map). Imagine you are a member of a large guild, possibly a guild that exists primarily to take down world bosses (we have one on Piken so I can’t imagine other servers don’t also have them) and similar level encounters. Imagine that you can’t get all of the members of the guild who want to join you into the map you’re on. You have a couple of options:

• Option 1 – try to taxi your locked out members into the zone until the fight starts, at which point they miss out.
• Option 2 – ask if people not involved in the encounter would mind hopping to another instance of the map so that you can get your missing people in.

It’s not about how many can do it, it’s about how many want to do it but can’t because of the way that mega-servers work.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Well I don’t know what maps you guys are on, but I am in CS a lot. Every day. The only thing I have seen anyone ask to fail is the Arah defense, since, if it is not failed, the attack on Arah won’t happen.

Jofast escort never fails. Defend shelter never fails. Nothing fails. Even the Arah defense hardly ever fails because people want to go farm the defend event even though the attack provides better rewards. What maps are you on? I don’t see this happening.

Honestly there are enough mobs and champs all over CS that you don’t have to fail anything to get lots of champ bags. And that’s ok, because it’s a high level area, with hard hitting mobs and champs. The events are fun and I can easily go there now for hours on end, thanks to the megaservers and always having lots of players around. This is one area where the megaservers did their job well IMO.

I don’t know which map I’m on (other than it’s a European one) because of mega-servers. What I can tell you is that I haven’t seen Shelter’s gate occupied by the Pact more than once in a week, conversely I’ve seen the Blix failtrain zerg on every other day in that week.

While I agree that there are quite enough champion-level events across the zone; the failtrain generates more champions in a shorter period of time and without spending silver on waypointing.

If zergs no longer spawned champion mobs then the problem would go away instantly, everywhere; even if ANet had a more creative solution, replacing champions with elites would be a decent enough placeholder measure to buy them breathing space to implement it.

Lostwingman.5034:

What are you talking about? What fanciful server did you play on that you got to see the same people regularly? I don’t think I regularly even saw people on the same champ trains day in and day out.

Piken Square, thanks for asking.

I really miss the sense of community we had in our cities, the outdoor zones I can (grudgingly) understand having as mega-servers but our cities were never empty, you consistently saw the same names crop up and it felt like home. Nowadays I don’t recognise anyone in the cities (except for Rflgmp113* the local gold seller ) and I am less engaged with the world as a result. WvW is great but generally we’re all too busy being stomped/stomping to sit around and chew the fat.

Making our cities server-specific again would be marvellous.

*completely made up name.

I think a lot of people just starting the game face this issue, usually it’s because they are missing out on one or more activities:

• Personal Story – are you doing this at your current level? This is by far the biggest source of experience at lower levels.
• Dailies – are you completing your daily achievements? Although it might seem a little grindy, it’s an excellent source of experience.
• Crafting – are you discovering recipes? The biggest source of experience gained from crafting is by discovering new recipes in the discovery panel. Repeating actions don’t gain anywhere near as much experience as doing something for the first time.
• Events – are you getting stuck into every event you see in the world? Dynamic events are a great source of experience (much better than just killing mobs) and are even quite fun.
• Random – are you gathering everything? Reviving everyone? Exploring everywhere? GW2 rewards activities with experience that other games don’t. Chop drown every tree, mine every node, gather every plant, rez every guard … it all adds up.

You’ll be surprised how quickly your playing style adjusts to the GW2 way of doing things and I can assure you that any characters you make after the first will not have the slightest bit of trouble levelling. It’s just that the things you do to level in other games (eg. kill mobs, do quests (renown hearts in GW2), repeat recipes in crafting) don’t work as efficient sources of experience in GW2.

The problem isn’t whether the event will succeed or not, I think most guilds and alliances that are doing the content now are quite clear on how to beat the encounter. The problem is that they are probably trying to ferry people in for the encounter and they can’t if the server is full … hence the request for people not involved in the encounter to leave. There is NO excuse for rudeness or abuse but I can see the reasoning.

In PvE I don’t see that there is much harm in briefly logging out to let someone else have your spot in that map; you’ll just get ported to a new server and if you’re not doing the event I can’t see that it matters which mega-server you end up on.

Don’t report individuals, /bug report the event; the options available are, I think, more appropriate to describing the problem. of course if another player is abusive toward you then report them individually but the zerg itself is (in my opinion anyway) a bug that is being exploited.

A level 15 Charr what? Without knowing your profession it’s impossible to make any helpful suggestions. As for specific versions of weapons, Gunsroll gives fine advice. Generally speaking if you want damage you should prioritise the Power and Precision stats … I think that’s true of any profession that can use a 1-handed sword.

Astral Projections.7320:

If you see something that looks like an exploit, report it. Don’t join in.

Excellent advice, I shall start reporting the event-fail trains more regularly.

I was all set to write a response to the mega-server issue and then Hamfast wrote their post which summed up most of my feelings on the matter:

Hamfast.8719:

What they need to do is revert to the old multi-server system, and give FREE server transfers every so often, so that people can gravitate towards a population size that they are comfortable with. And perhaps even unlimited Guesting as well. The point is, we should be able to go where we want to, and play where we want to. (Much like the suggestion that GW2 adapt a GW1-like Districting system).

Wouldn’t that make everyone happy again? Let us play where WE decide to play, but give us the freedom to change our minds every now and then? It beats the heck out of locking us all into the same cell.

I miss, I really miss, playing on a map and knowing that I share it with others from Piken Square. While I can go to WvW and know that I’m only with others from my server (and my goodness you can tell the difference in map chat) the WvW experience is generally pretty focussed with little time to just relax and chew the fat with other people on the map. I want to get that “Piken Square Experience” in PvE back … even our cities are mega-servers … what? How is that an improvement?

I agree with Hamfast, give us the choice of where to play; let those folks chasing champ-bags and scaled events play on mega-servers, let those who want a less frantic style of play play locally.

Ayrilana.1396:

Everyone who’s against that exploit should just team up and force the event to complete unless there’s a way to solo complete it.

The issues with force-completing the event are (a) the scaling makes it virtually impossible to solo either of the two approaches to the camp (though with a few organised characters you could deny the zerg any mobs … but that would take upwards of a full group to manage), and (b) any players attempting to force-complete the event are subject to a LOT of animosity and threats of being reported … though I have no idea what heading they’d put the report under.

In short, while it’s theoretically possible it would be better (in my opinion) if ANet changed the event (and others like it) to be resistant to exploitation.

Harzul.9816:

It’s not hurting the game, scaling is the way to do it so it feels more fluid. It’s harming YOU, not the game and the reason why you say it’s harming the game is because you don’t want want to look selfish saying it’s hurting you.

Perhaps you could explain how it’s hurting me? Because I assure you that it isn’t. It’s just a terrible shame to see an entire event chain stall because a zerg is deliberately causing it to fail. Events aren’t running and that is hurting the game. It may not be hurting your bank balance thanks to all those champion bags acquired through exploiting a game mechanic but it is hurting the game.

Just to be absolutely clear on the matter; I have no problem at all with farming (indeed, I’ve been known to join the odd zerg myself) what I do have a problem with is players exploiting game mechanics by deliberately failing events. The notion that failing an event is more profitable than succeeding at it is nonsensical in my opinion.

The crazy thing is that I’d happily part with cash to buy weapon tickets outright, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. Buying a lottery ticket though? Nah, I don’t want the skins that much.

Still, as long as people continue to buy keys, nothing will change.

Pretty much ever since champion mobs have been spawned due to event scaling, people have been deliberately failing repeatable events in order to farm Champion Bags. It used to be the Ember Farm in Cursed Shore, and now it’s the Shelter’s Gate Farm, also in Cursed Shore. Part of the problem with failing these events is that they stop event chains moving forward, leaving aside that deliberately failing an event in order to repeat it is a blatant exploit.

The only way I can see to counter this incredibly annoying trend is to either (a) stop champions spawning as a result of scaling, or (b) stop champions spawned as a result of scaling from dropping champion loot bags. Obviously I’d rather option A but frankly anything to stop event chains being deliberately blocked by players would be welcome.

The ironic thing is that champion mobs that spawn naturally (like the Risen Archmage) are being left alone so that people can run up the same tunnel over and over again … making sure that they all stand outside the scary blue circle.

I’m surprised they aren’t salvageable, surely that must be some kind of bug?

Bugged here too, we did a run against him last night and, although it was messy, we didn’t do any worse than some of the posters here who have been successful. Foreman died leaving a group of adds in the far corner which we mopped up after the fight but no achievement.

With pretty much every dungeon added to the game (the latest being TA:Aetherblade) there is a (let’s be charitable) discussion between people who think the difficulty is set too high and those who think it’s set too low. Obviously it’s not possible to please both of these camps with the same releases so why not release them as really easy and allow people to make them progressively harder (as with fractals or gambits) if they wish to? I’d happily forego a few months of Living Story to see this implemented so that, once and for all, we can get rid of the pointless slanging matches about difficulty and instead look critically at quality.

I found that I was pretty much forced to use GS in this encounter as for some reason none of my clone summoning skills (I’m usually condi-staff) were working; even though I was in range of the boss about 90% of the time I wasn’t getting clones on dodge (yes, I’m traited) or staff #2 or Mirror Images, which was pretty frustrating for me as I tend to rely on having 3 clones up at all times to contribute to boons/conditions … I am utterly without Power. In many dungeons my build works extremely well, not in this one though … between the bugged clones in the Clockheart and the sheer amount of AE I think next time I’ll take in a different profession.

As this forum will be archived soon, I’ve created (and linked) a topic on the GW2 Discussion forum to continue the conversation, as it clearly has relevance outside of this episode of the Living Story.

Not managed to do the encounter on my home server yet.
Never seen Phase 2.
I still do it when it’s a daily but I’m not particularly motivated.
I’d rather go resource-gathering than do this event … at least then there’s some progress towards ascended/legendary.

The mechanics are interesting, the fight is entertaining, but because it (a) doesn’t scale, (b) is open world, and © has RNG awards that really aren’t that amazing (“unique skin” means “we coloured an ascended weapon green” apparently), I am not surprised that Sparkfly Fen is starting to look like Southsun.

Challenging content is great but it needs to be instanced.

It is pretty demoralising to be in a world boss fight as a condition user, knowing that you are adding virtually nothing to the event. Conditions become less useful the more people you are co-operating with, that probably wasn’t what ANet originally intended … so why has it been allowed to persist for so long?

Agree wholeheartedly with everything the OP said.

Nick, the SAB isn’t my cup of tea either but I don’t complain about it because it’s good. The Tequatl encounter should be my cup of tea but I unfortunately I don’t think it’s good, for the reasons outlined above. I hate having to read players cussing out everyone who was downed and blaming them for failure (fortunately I stick to turret defence so I’m never the target of these comments but if I were, you bet that I wouldn’t come back to the encounter). Mind you, I don’t think I’ll ever get to play on my own server … yesterday I only managed to get into overflow, despite one of the attempts being at an off-peak time (and turning up 5 minutes early).

I’d happily swap those two for the awful crab toss and southsun survivor (which I know a lot of people like … but I find tedious).

If the Stow function worked properly (ie. stowed until actively called) then that would be a good thing.

/signed

Corvis.5632:

make it cost less but require a specific WvW level to be able to use it.

While I think you have a point when it comes to WvW, I do not want someone who never leaves the battlegrounds except on special occasions to be leading tactics in a PvE environment.

The title says it all really.

A commander flag would be very useful when organising multiple group activities (whether in a PvE or WvW environment) but being something of an altoholic, I quite often find myself running around on different characters. I would find it extremely useful if, having bought the compendium, I could use the flag on whichever of my characters was most appropriate for the situation.

To my mind the WoW LFG tool became toxic when it became cross-server, while it was limited to one’s own server there was actually something of a community built up, where reputations were gained or lost based on one’s behaviour in a group. With the cross-server tool the numbers involved became so large that many seemed not to care about building a reputation as the consequences for being a “kitten” were too dilute.

Milennin.4825:

… blame commanders for stacking in Aetherblade Events. I don’t understand…

Commanders stacking is an issue because:

(a) Why bother? If all one commander is going to do is follow the other around all event then why bother flagging up? All I see is somebody waving their kitten around in public … nobody needs to see that.

(b) Double trouble. If two zergs collide then the ratio of players to mobs gets silly, given that non-captain Aetherblade champions are the same size as regular examples of their race, having twice the number of players getting in the way makes targeting champion mobs completely random, and there just aren’t sufficient champions around even with a double-zerg to make up for that. Each additional commander in the same event compounds the problem.

I don’t mind people farming in the slightest, the point with multiple commanders is that they actually reduce the amount of loot in my bags, and I don’t appreciate that.

Happened to me too … much to the amusement of the rest of my group. Appearing on my head mid-way through events (as well as at the end) was a special treat.

Yes, Piken Square has been horribly laggy this evening. Are ANEt’s servers under attack?

Agreed, even if all they do is make pretty sparkles.

I recall hearing a conversation between two Asura NPCs in one of the crafting areas of Rata Sum commenting on how amazing their magitech would be if they managed to combine it with charr science. Actually I think we can see two examples of charrsura hybrid technologies in the game (though one is a bit of a reach): firstly are the Pact cannons seen in every fortress in Orr; the second is the steam creatures. Although there is no in-game textual evidence to support charr involvement in the creation of steam creatures, the name and the overall look of the things would suggest what we might see if an asura did actually learn the secrets of charr steamtech.

In short, as has been said already, the two technologies are sufficiently different to be able to say one is “better” than the other, however I think there is no doubting that hybrid technology is superior to either of its parents.

Vulkanos.3276:

What’s wrong with this piken? Everytime u beat one of them in 1vs1 they run away with 5% HP and come back with theire guild! -.- cowards…

Happens to me all the time … except for the guild bit as generally speaking I’ve moved on by then. I guess it makes a certain kind of sense, if they can get away from me before I kill them then fair enough; it’s frustrating but then I guess running is a viable tactic.

Note: I don’t initiate 1v1 if someone is clearly going for a PoI or vista until after they’ve capped it. If that was the situation then getting friends along to help world completion then I’d say it’s legit.

You know what norn don’t have? Tanks.

/thread