It impresses me that they’re still playing the game.
The OP is correct. The combat is very shallow. The rotations, while generally basically hardly more than auto-attack with an occasional 8 second cooldown filler, are much more trivial than those found in other games, e.g. WoW, EQ2, Rift
In PvP it’s still rather trivial compared to the aforementioned, but the complexity lies in building your character for the appropriate party/situation. Again, the long cooldowns on 1/3rd of your abilities (or more) and the general lack of resource management for most classes means that you really don’t have much to do in combat besides manage dodge.
Without dodge, this game would have some of the worst combat I’ve ever seen. However, with it, you have to pay attention to your opponents location, casting animation, etc.
Still, with dodge, it’s much more trivial than other games…. and I think that combat is the weakest aspect of the game as a whole.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-06-2013/
Bonus Rewards for Dungeons
Each day when you finish a unique path for any explorable or story dungeon, you’ll receive a bonus reward for completion—1 to 3 gold for explorable dungeons depending on their length and difficulty, 50 silver for story dungeons. Guaranteed coin rewards that previously dropped from bosses in dungeons have been removed in lieu of these new rewards for dungeon completion; all other drops off of bosses have not been changed. Now you have even more incentive for braving the hazards of the dungeons of Tyria!That is all.
Yup.. I made that post well before I was aware of that. That’s pretty kittening awesome.
Amazing insight, A-net. I guess this post doesn’t have anymore relevance….. at least I sincerely hope it won’t.
You and I both. A lot of the weapons are for sissies, especially legendaries:
unicorn shooting bows , vine shooting bows covered in flowers, rainbow spewing staves and the pseudo light sabers as you described.
I would rather take the grawl two-handers that look somewhat primitive and basic, but have the kind of mass and grittiness that the fairy weapons lack.
When playing a Charr/Norn male you kind of expect to be something out of a Robert E. Howard tale, not my little pony.
Because most of us who run dungeons for the fun of it, are doing it with friends and guildies, rather than random strangers. And we have a great time.
That spawns the rhetorical question: “Why play an MMO if you only want to play within your own circle?”
10-20 years ago people actually enjoyed meeting and interacting with people online. It was a way to learn new things and gain perspectives.
I guess your generation is just different in that respect.
I just deleted all of my chars and transferred to a different server myself, although it was still within Europe.
I don’t know if it’s possible to switch from different regions. So you might want to seek confirmation from anet (or another player) before you do.
The PvP due to the complexity of skill selections and interaction is better by a country mile.
If you are more into PvE, I would not give it a go, but for PvP it has to be one of my favorite MMOs of all time, especially the arena.
I think they are purposely avoiding (or created it for the very purpose)the issue to force spec diversity in the cheapest way imaginable a la WoW, i.e. PvP/WvW/PvE optimal specs
It is impossible to just “make something appealing”.
What is beautiful to you is hideous to me.
/my three cents.
Ok, then prove to me that the dearth of legendaries 1 year into the game is somehow indicative of most of the population of gw2 being satisfied with how legendaries look.
If most people are indeed happy with the way they look, then so be it. That is the objective notion of a successful design.
Don’t misconstrue this as a “power” complaint, e.g. about ascended gear, this is purely about aesthetics.
I think some exotics look better than most legendaries and judging by the number of people with 8000+ achievement points without a single legendary, I think it is quite telling of their quality relative to cost.
Shouldn’t it behoove the developers to make them more appealing?
I think map completion and all of the other ridiculous grinding/farming you have to do to even create the weapon, let alone find/buy a precusor entitles you to something really, really awesome.
A unicorn spewing shortbow and rainbow ejaculating staff should be more of an april fools joke than weapons people spend weeks-months obtaining.
/my two cents
I created my account a week ago. My brother got the game this weekend. Now that he bought the game my server is now full and he can’t join my server. I would like to join his server. I have read if you delete all your characters you can transfer your home world for free. I have deleted all but my last character. When I try to delete my last character the “delete” button never lights up. I type the characters name but it doesn’t seem I am able to delete him. Please someone let me know if I am doing something wrong or if I have misread something.
Thanks everyone.
Where did you read that? I’ve deleted all of my characters multiple times and never had that option.
The only way I was aware of was through gems.
I read the part where you tried to extrapolate your own personal dungeon failings to the broader gw2 playerbase and make a dull point about it.
I’d much rather be “bad” at a video game I’m supposed to enjoy than fail at rudimentary inequalities.
Go youtube how to do each path, make sure 4/5 members of the party are guardians and warriors, tell everyone where to stack and dps. There, now you can pug every dungeon with ease. This game is not hard
I’m not sure whether you’re deliberately being obtuse, or just haven’t read a word in this thread.
(edited by crestpiemangler.7631)
The very few times I have gotten into dungeons other than CoF p1 and the very rare AC exp by use of gw2lfg, it ended in utter disaster:
people would wipe a few times and then immediately leave, often without typing word.
Maybe you’re the problem? I do dungeons with gw2lfg all the time without wipes. Either stop inviting people who don’t know what they’re doing, or get better at explaining what to do.
I don’t know.. would it be possible to actually offer constructive criticism without resorting to an ad hominem argument?
I don’t feel bad though, because even if I am the deficient one it would appear that most people partake in my deficiency as well.
Not to mention that I’ve never had the opportunity to run other instances due to the lack of available people.
the best thing any MMO can do for its health is not make any adjustments for 6 months after its released. that’s usually the time when the nerf/whine zerg has hopped to a different game. catering to them only serves to damage the product overall, and shortens the lifespan of it considerably. ignoring them, waiting for them to leave, THEN beginning to gather data from those who remain to see if anything needs changed will yield far more accurate feedback. unfortunately, pretty much every MMO i’ve ever played has buckled under the pressure, and paid the price for it.
I can agree with the preceding paragraphs, but I must ask: how is that statement to be applied to the current state of GW2, having been out for quite a bit longer than 6 months and with a plethora of people who have completed all of the content?
CoF P1 is the easiest, fastests and most profitable dungeon path. This means that this is where low skilled players go to do their dungeon runs, this is where people without much time go to do their dungeons runs, and this is where people who just want the most profitable dungeon runs also go. This combined with a great sense of entitlement and lack of patience we see from many gamers nowadays means that this easy dungeon is going to be the one that gets the most use. Player’s skills will get rusty, as they are not required to use any skill for CoF P1 (unless they are trying to do the fastests possible speed runs, as that takes a fair amount of precision and practice).
Now when these people who have been babied by CoF P1 go out into real dungeons, they are not only unprepared for the step up in difficulty, but they have no patience for the time required for such a petty reward at the end. Their time is literally better spent just running CoF P1 rather than any other dungeon path.
This is what happens when you make one path so much easier, faster and profitable than all the other dungeon paths. This isn’t even commenting on how this form of making wealth for a player contributes to inflation (as gold itself is what is farmed, not actual useful items).
Not to add fuel to the fire, but maybe that was Anets intention to some degree….
Of course making only dungeon have that property out of the many is kind of shortsighted, since people get tired of CoF runs quickly.
It would be a never ending tweak because people will always seek and identify which one will hold the most benefit vs time invested. Even if they managed to get them all similar, one would be identified as the absolute best and we would still have the same issue.
I beg to differ. In a set where every value is an optimum, there is no wrong choice.
Other games have encountered the same problem and made tweaks to the “harder” content to either make it more accessible (which I think is the lazy solution), or make the rewards much more compelling.
So what is your take on the issue, or is there even an issue?
Because of armour repair, finishing a dungeon can cost more than it will bring. And if you wipe 20 times, I doubt the fun will be long gone as well.
So, combine annoyance with more cost than profit, and you’ll see people leaving a party when a dungeon run will start going south. Why would I do something that costs me money and won’t even give me fun in return?
If repair costs were very high in this game I would tend to agree, but they really, really aren’t, at least not compared to some older games.
For a level 80 item it’s only 1.64 silver implying less than 40 silver for 20 wipes..
A single rare could make up for that cost, along with pouches and the value of dungeon tokens being akin to legendary value in aesthetic sense.
One thing you also omitted is your definition of fun: what exactly constitutes fun for you? Is it in-game currency? Your characters items?
I know, it’s one of those lame rhetorical questions, but it has a purpose… it’s a very sad kind of irony when the only thing people care about in a game is their return on in-game investment.
Right now, CoF gives the biggest reward for the time spent, among all dungeons. If ArenaNet nerfs it, people will go to the next best dungeon. ArenaNet could nerf everything, but they won’t, because they are afraid their players would leave.
That might be true (I actually agree with every word you typed), but if that is the case, then why not up the rewards for the other dungeons to match their expected time invested?
It is, after all, the job of the developers to keep tabs on this kind of thing and alter the content accordingly.
By variety I mean the distribution of the people doing dungeons, i.e. the percentage of people doing anything other than CoF p1
Anecdotal evidence against community:
The very few times I have gotten into dungeons other than CoF p1 and the very rare AC exp by use of gw2lfg, it ended in utter disaster:
people would wipe a few times and then immediately leave, often without typing word.
I’ve never been in a group where people have wiped more than 20 times and stayed, which, once upon a time, used to be the norm for doing any kind of endgame content.
Is it this mentality that is keeping people away from the challenging dungeons? Is the reward/time too trivial as it is the only impetus for playing the game in the end for most people?
… or….
Is it the dungeons themselves?
I am not one to complain about long dungeons, especially those that were specifically designed for parties of 5, but Arah path 1 is quite vicious to a beginning group.
The only time I’ve ever managed to get in involved spending over an hour just to get to the slime and having people quit, since it was only 1/4th of the way and they had things to do, e.g. dinner, work etc.
I must admit it was somewhat fun getting to that point, but getting to that point involved essentially avoiding most of the trash mobs and using cheap tricks (the mob AI).
So what is your take on the issue, or is there even an issue?
There are jumping puzzles that I absolutely adore and jumping puzzles that I absolutely hate.
I think this game has the potential to become an incredible platformer if it stops taking the trivial approach of making jumping puzzles linear paths that penalize you harshly for making a single mistake and puts more effort into the actual ‘puzzle’ aspect of jumping puzzles:
Let players be rewarded for looking around, exploring and trying to FIND a solution, instead of giving the player one, trivial solution in the form of choreography and asking them to perform it flawlessly.
Let me clarify what I mean: Content that encourages exploration, gives you multiple approaches for solving the puzzle/dungeon and doesn’t necessarily give you a straight line and tells you to follow it, or perish.
There are puzzles that actually do this better, hexfoundry unhinged has recently become a favorite of mine, since two of the required paths (I don’t want to ruin it if you haven’t done it yet) have multiple approaches implying even more possibilities for completion.
Heck, even the rookery has multiple approaches if you use the right profession, or simply screw up and make time in creative ways.
I know this isn’t a subjective definition, but to me the quality of the game is defined in the manner in which it gives you the tools and possibilities to solve it. Old school games with open worlds did this best; you explored, or you probably died, but usually there was definitely more than one way to skin the cat and in the process of doing so you became your own expert as your personal playstyle created its own unique solution.
I wish that there were more of these kinds of puzzles in the game, in fact, I would substitute the hundreds of hours I played this game doing heart quests and events for tens of hours of equivalent time spent doing puzzles like the aforementioned.
Am I alone in this desire? What kind of jumping puzzles/content would you like to see in the future? Are you more a fan of the challenging linear puzzles, e.g. coddlers cove, or do you prefer the puzzles that encourage exploration/puzzle solving?
Thanks for reading/replying.
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[/quote]
That’s horrifically inefficient. If the goal is leveling swiftly, you’re deliberately hurting yourself by doing that.[/quote]
sure, whatever..
If you’re relying on marks to be your AOE for fast leveling, you’re already working ineffeciently. A single well outperforms the best mark for AoE purposes, and is more than adequate to reduce mob HP to one-hit level. Not to mention DS4 is superior AoE to marks as well.
In all reality, if you want to level quickly you go with a power build and skip the staff altogether.
But hey, maybe you have a different definition of ‘necessity’ than the rest of the world.
I don’t use a single mark, I use all of them at once and since the radius is so large, I don’t have to herd and can swap to a dagger/scepter to mop up….
oh yeah, I can use a well on top of that like mentioned
on the contrary, it is, because most conditions won’t last long enough to make them worthwhile as the majority of enemies you will kill leveling to 80 aren’t veterans/elites
most of what you kill is trash
This will be my last post on the topic, I gotta move on xD. You are free to have the last word, but gm is not worth taking if you dont have the points, and would otherwise need to sac 100 con dmg or 10 con duration if your con dur is less than 100.
You can group mobs very easily in open world which will make up for gm in most cases. The biggest dps gain for staff is MoB @ a 6 sec cd… but you get 2 aoe bleeds on scepter/dagger already. If you only have say 15 points, it would be silly to lower the effectiveness of all 5 of your scepter/dagger setup and all 5 of the staff skills in many cases, just to make a slight gain in very specific and rare circumstances in which you cannot group a set of mobs tight enough by the time you have use all ur other aoe, and provided the mobs have enough hp left to benefit from applying marks, but not so much hp that a wep swap could lower your dps.
the time saved and less damage received herding mobs compensates you more than adequately
Basically, you will NEED/WANT 10 points in death for the greater mark area. It’s almost a necessity in all aspects of this game, even in PvP.
Not at all a necessity for PvE content. Not even close.
Whatever you say. Enjoy your pathetic baseball radii.
It’s PvE. Not at all like it’s difficult to place marks on AI. Do you have difficulty in doing so?
Yes, problem? You also conveniently avoided the fact that you are often faced with large groups of mobs in PvE, especially solo. You will not be able to cover dispersed groups as you would with greater marks.
If you want to solo/level up, GM is a must .. as much as having a staff is for a group of mobs.
Dont forget this guy is lvling. It’s tough to justify taking gm over con dmg and duration, esp a low lvl.
on the contrary, it is, because most conditions won’t last long enough to make them worthwhile as the majority of enemies you will kill leveling to 80 aren’t veterans/elites
most of what you kill is trash
Basically, you will NEED/WANT 10 points in death for the greater mark area. It’s almost a necessity in all aspects of this game, even in PvP.
Not at all a necessity for PvE content. Not even close.
Whatever you say. Enjoy your pathetic baseball radii.
It’s PvE. Not at all like it’s difficult to place marks on AI. Do you have difficulty in doing so?
Yes, problem? You also conveniently avoided the fact that you are often faced with large groups of mobs in PvE, especially solo. You will not be able to cover dispersed groups as you would with greater marks.
If you want to solo/level up, GM is a must .. as much as having a staff is for a group of mobs.
Basically, you will NEED/WANT 10 points in death for the greater mark area. It’s almost a necessity in all aspects of this game, even in PvP.
Not at all a necessity for PvE content. Not even close.
Whatever you say. Enjoy your pathetic baseball radii.
I wanted to play necro because I wanted to have a condi toon on hand, but I’ve found it’s a real pain in the kitten trying to work a condi build at lvl 27. I’ll give it another shot when I’m at higher levels but in the meantime, you guys have any advice for lower levels?
I tried running multiple minions to draw off agro and while this helps me survive a bit, things die reeeeally slowly. Also a lot of the times the mobs go after me not my minions which makes this moot.
If someone can direct me to a leveling necro guide or just general advice I’d appreciate it very much.
Have a staff as your main and switch to scepter/axe/dagger as your secondary after you use your marks.
The burst from the staff will leave a large group of most standard enemies at half health, while you can pummel off the remainder with the higher dps dagger/axe (or even scepter).
Basically, you will NEED/WANT 10 points in death for the greater mark area. It’s almost a necessity in all aspects of this game, even in PvP.
Once you have mastered the above, you’ll probably want to get flesh golem at 30, since it provides some nice shielding and sustained damage.
From what I have heard:
PvE (Open world) – Yes, you’re fine.
PvE (Dungeons) – Some fights will kill off all your minions ruthlessly, and there’s not much to be done about it. In others you’ll have some good fodder / extra damage though. Once you know what fights are coming, you’ll be able to switch out a few of your minions for specific skills that fit the fight.
PvP – You’re exceptionally powerful in a 1v1 situation, but opponents with strong AoE damage can still neutralize you. I can’t advise much here, since I’m still foggy on the roles in sPvP, let alone how necromancers fit into them.One thing to note about PvE is that while minions are OK for levelling, they get much more powerful after you put a couple of traits (Training of the Master, Flesh of the Master) into them.
This, more or less.
In SPvP, they are good for PUGs, for specific team builds, i.e. premade teams it’s not a good choice, because the greatest strength of the necromancer isn’t bunkering per se, but applying pressure through conditions.
As Softspoken stated, they are WORTHLESS in PvE dungeons, since you have to move around a lot or get one-shot by the myriad AoE attacks… or traps.. etc. while avoiding aggro. For the more difficult dungeons you won’t want to use any pets.
For Solo PvE, they are great… more or less due to their terrible AI.
For Solo WvW, they can be great when you are traveling alone and need to get a Dolyak across by yourself, or simply want to explore and strike fear into the hears of rogues… that are dumb enough to try and kill you by themselves.
For normal/group WvW, worthless. Die readily in AoE even with fotm.
I would recommend a minion build ONLY for leveling, personally. You will find yourself much more useful in a group setting as any other spec.
The whole problem with the minion, is like with any melee pet with an activatable skill that holds the pet stationary, it is readily avoided and neigh useless in PvP AND PvE.
Melee pets in this game are generally worthless in PvE and this one is no exception.
They either need to make them exceptionally resistant to AoE PvE damage AND make their activatable have a shorter cooldown, or simply make them ranged and give their skill an incredibly long range.
I know this will meet some ire, but … toughness/sustain build.
20 in blood for life siphon from minions, 50% minion hp from death, perhaps some in spite for minion damage and with the right itemization you basically become a walking, tanking freak show
nothing will kill you readily 1v1. nothing, but.. the question is whether you have enough to stop him from killing the dolyak quickly enough
At least you guarantee your own survival.
I am using staff as my second set. Good stuff to know.
Like I said in my first post, I like axe warhorn against melee since I can always stay out of reach and take no damage indefinitely. I’ll look at daggers next time though.
Scepter has more range and sustained damage than an Axe at the cost of less burst, if you don’t want to use a dagger. Nothing beats the life force generation and sustained damage of a dagger, however, but it does force you to be in harms way…. so if you plan on doing instances, it’s nearly worthless.
Greataxe? Naw…
guillotine!
Okay, so when there are ranged I should stack and burn.
DS is so awesome. Which weapons build life force fastest?
I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned, but Staff (at range) and Dagger (in melee) are the life force optimal weapons.
You should always have a staff as your alternative weapon, because it is the best group damaging weapon at your disposal (and arguably the only one).
When faced with many enemies, use your Staff. When faced with one big one, or a couple, use the staff abilities, then swap to an Axe/Dagger/Scepter in your other weapon set.
So.. yeah.. get yourself a nice staff ASAP. You’ll thank me later. Once you get your staff make it a habit to start off with it, because staff skills are long cooldown and the weapon swap goes on cooldown after the first swap, i.e. the weapon with the better single target DPS only benefits when you can swap to it immediately.
Not in PvE. In SPvP? Solo queue. In WvW? Not really, unless you want to solo a skill point, or just roam around by yourself… so .. basically NO.
People say the ranger pets are worthless in PvE, but I have not found that to be the case, since you can select ranged pets and control their behavior.
They need to at least let necros control their pets…. so they could at least use a bone/blood fiend for PvE.
I agree 100%. I made a similar thread and it was deleted by Arena Net. Hopefully they’ll let yours linger longer..
I’ve done coddlers cove. That wasn’t fun either. This is essentially an extended coddlers cove.
Anything that makes you start from the beginning from an error in a long sequence is, by definition, bad gaming design.
People started learning this shortly after the NES and Sega master system launched by introducing passcodes, so you didn’t have to start from the beginning again (and for a few games there were even save states).
Heck, most games had save states by the time the 90’kitten and now we’re in 2013 …
Look, being penalized and forced to start from the beginning is not the only way to introduce “challenge”. There is nothing intellectual about pressing the same sequence of buttons ad nauseam in a certain order at a certain time.
In fact, it’s the very opposite: it encourages you to stop thinking and let instinct dictate your moves, because your brain is no longer trying to solve a problem, it’s trying to cope with having to do the same thing again and again..
There are VERY WELL designed, yet difficult jumping puzzles, that either offer some kind of leniency for mistakes made during the puzzle by offering alternate, albeit more difficult paths, like in rookery, or simply add pseudo-waypoints (like in Goemms lab), so you don’t have to do the same thing OVER and OVER again.
If anything, JPs like this encourage cheating for the reward through portals and/or necromancer spirit walk tedium.
Not to mention, as many others before me have, the camera is incredibly annoying, the hit boxes for springs are out of whack (you will be pushed up at distances further than your characters hitbox with a norn/charr))… and the puzzle sort of messes with your mind when you see the platforms leading up to your almost certain demise in lieu of the chest.
If you liked it, then good for you. I am just providing my personal feedback.
Edit: Thank you Arenanet for deleting my thread and “consolidating” it with this obviously skewed thread. I guess they don’t want to hear what people might not like about the map.
(edited by crestpiemangler.7631)
UI clutter is my suspicion – Guild Wars 2 has gone to great lengths to keep the number of buttons to press and on-screen icons at an absolute minimum, and adding a control bar for one subset of necro skills is disproportionate presence for a subset of the profession.
The typical comparison is the ranger pet control bar: note that for rangers, their shouts, signets, two of their heals and about 1/5 weapon skills have effects for their pets specifically: their entire profession is based on having a pet – minions are just a sideshow for necros, like spirit weapons for guardians.
I understand that design decision and concept behind the UI, but, unlike spirits, the inherent problem is that pets can be “aggroed”.
Spirits might be a sideshow, but they are a FUNCTIONAL sideshow. Pets aren’t really functional. The flesh golem is just a forced preference of cooldown…
By virtue of clutter minimization, why do some of the pet skills even exist if they are meant to be broken and redundant? Why not replace pets then with something a necromancer might actually use?
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Pets – Can be controlled, Their skills can be activated on command
Minions – Can’t be controlled, Their skills can be activated on command
Illusions – Can’t be controlled, can only be shattered on commandBesides the usual AI concerns which have come a long way btw, this differentiation is important and should stay so that variety is kept.
The only problem I keep pointing is that the Flesh Golem out of all the minions cannot Swim but I’m hopeful it will be fixed eventually.
Keeping something broken as a mechanism for enhancing variety is not a valid methodology for game design.
It makes about as much sense as having a burger on the menu without a bun, but having a chicken sandwich come with one automatically as a means of having variety.
I’m not buying it.
This is mostly for PvE. It seems like minion builds are really good for nothing due to how awful the AI is and how you are completely powerless to do anything about it.
Blood fiends will often go for passive structures, or simply retaliate and force you to sack them like potatoes. The corpse dogs are even worse, due to their short range and propensity to bring armies to you.
Why can’t we control our pets beyond one ability?
Please, give us a bar or something, so we can at least determine what they attack.
Another pet peeve of mine is the fact that nothing regenerates except for the flesh golem. Why is this the case? I don’t see this really killing balance in PvP and it sure as heck would make soloing for a petmancer somewhat less painfully tedious.
Thats even more unlikely as hes practically kissing him.
Not really, he’s just barely within 900 range at 0:14 when he casts it. Of course that’s on his screen as well…..
At least that’s my hypothesis… he was dodging, or doing something and it didn’t show on your client.
He was feared?
I get what people are saying, but watch the video.. it wasn’t a laggy situation. Things were happening in real-time.
One thing that might have happened and now that I think about it, this is much more likely: Dark path only has a 900 range.
This is from the gw2wiki:
" The projectile can hit from a longer range than indicated. However, if cast from longer range, it will not track and you will not fully teleport to the target. "
So if the server though he was at a farther distance than 900 and you attempted to cast the spell it might have failed in that manner.
(edited by crestpiemangler.7631)
It has to do with the game itself: It doesn’t use clientside “hit detection”, but checks it serverside. A similar issue exists in WoW as well with people having their spells interrupted, yet concomitantly execute due to the server not being able to register either effect for the clients quickly enough.
In laggy scenarios you can also dodge attacks on your screen and still get hit by them. This of course prevents people from hacking things client side, but it also makes things a hell of a lot laggier.
At least that’s my hypothesis… he was dodging, or doing something and it didn’t show on your client.