Guild Wars 2

Beast Sos.1457:

If I want to play all the content in the expansion I’m going to have to pay $60. Why might you ask, because if I want to play all the content that is going to be released I have to buy another character slot. Don’t come on and tell me, “well you can convert gold to gems!”. All that is saying is Anet doesnt give 2 kittens about my time even though I’m spending $50 on top of the few hundred I invested in the game(gems to gold). And no I didnt need the gold I just wanted to support a company that I thought had the players best interests in mind, which, evidently, is far from the truth.

You thought a subsidiary of a publicly owned corporation cared about giving you free stuff? And you gave them money for things you didn’t need expecting them to reciprocate? Did you have a contract?

I still find it laughable that players assumed Anet needed cash when they were making money from the cash shop…Anet never considered an expansion because you guys were giving them the revenue they needed. Gem buyers are the reason we didn’t get an expansion for 3 years.

Gw2 did come out with only 5 character slots but the amount of content that we got justified that. The amount of content we are getting, from what we have seen, is not nearly worth the price tag so we cant compare the two.

If Anet sells fewer HoT pre-purchases than expected, they’ll spend more time on development. This is the reason there’s been no release date, if they sell a million copies now, they can just give you whatever is ready and not refine/add content. Why do you think GW2 shipped with such a lack of features? It’s because they sold so many copies it wasn’t necessary to add more.
http://techland.time.com/2012/08/28/guild-wars-2-sales-one-million-pre-served-record-400000-playing-at-once/

Beast Sos.1457:

If I want to play all the content in the expansion I’m going to have to pay $60. Why might you ask, because if I want to play all the content that is going to be released I have to buy another character slot. Don’t come on and tell me, “well you can convert gold to gems!”. All that is saying is Anet doesnt give 2 kittens about my time even though I’m spending $50 on top of the few hundred I invested in the game(gems to gold). And no I didnt need the gold I just wanted to support a company that I thought had the players best interests in mind, which, evidently, is far from the truth.

You thought a subsidiary of a publicly owned corporation cared about giving you free stuff? And you gave them money for things you didn’t need expecting them to reciprocate? Did you have a contract? I still find it laughable that players assumed Anet needed cash when they were making money from the cash shop…Anet never considered an expansion because you guys were giving them the revenue they needed. Gem buyers are the reason we didn’t get an expansion for 3 years.

Gw2 did come out with only 5 character slots but the amount of content that we got justified that. The amount of content we are getting, from what we have seen, is not nearly worth the price tag so we cant compare the two.

If Anet sells fewer HoT pre-purchases than expected, they’ll spend more time on development. This is the reason there’s been no release date, if they sell a million copies now, they can just give you whatever is ready and not refine/add content. Why do you think GW2 shipped with such a lack of features? It’s because they sold so many copies it wasn’t necessary to add more.
http://techland.time.com/2012/08/28/guild-wars-2-sales-one-million-pre-served-record-400000-playing-at-once/

Jazz.1870:

I do need a case and extra cooling fan(s) (It gets very hot where I live)

How hot?

Horrific fps lag constantly. Normally I’d have 100 fps with no one on screen but the game is saying 35 frames and it feels like 10. What the kitten happened?

Tere.4759:

50.00 is 1.00 per hour of play time if you play for 50 hrs and most of us have thousands of hours put into the base game. So, let’s see. We spend 100 hrs playing the new content (the content we have seen is not the only content that will be provided, it’s just a start) that means we get our entertainment for .50 an hour. You spend 200 hrs in the content and it is .25 cents per hour.

Now let’s compare that to a movie since movies are entertainment. It is 15.00 per movie for a 2.5 hr movie. That’s 6.00 per hour of entertainment. If you want to see it again, that’s another 6.00 per hour unless you buy the blu ray and then it’s an extra 30.00 (depending on the movie of course).

Where do you want to spend your entertainment dollars. I love the core game. I love what the devs have done so far and I spoke with my money. My entertainment dollars went to Anet.

This argument has to be one of the greatest fallacies of man. People would never say this in real life(for fear of ridicule), but their behavior lines up with this thinking far too often.

darkdomino.9578:

Back in GW1 – an expansion was an entire CONTINENT of content. Nowadays, a full-price expansion means 1 class and some guild halls. My how times have changed.

Let’s be honest here. The cash shop in GW2 is much larger and generates more revenue than GW1 cash shop ever did. Why would Anet need to develop new content when they can sell skins?

What players haven’t realized is that by giving Anet cash for gem shop items they’ve said: “I’m happy with the game”. Some believe they’re “supporting” new content but all they’ve done is line NCsoft shareholder’s pockets. If you like new skins, fine- buy what you want but don’t confuse the 2.

Looking at GW1, in order for Anet to generate revenue they needed to provide new content- campaigns. By spending money in the cash shop people delayed the creation of an expansion, Anet didn’t need new content because revenue was being generated without it.

But the icing on the cake is how some view Anet. Today, a player in-game said that Anet needed funding for the expansion so you should pre-purchase it…like Anet is a broke studio needing handouts to survive. It just boggles the mind.

uknortherner.2670:

With the way the game industry functions these days, only a fool would pre-order anything unseen and untested. Contrary to claims that I am “punishing myself” for refusing to stump up the cash for something unseen and untested, I would say I’m being an astute consumer… Wouldn’t you?

The very notion of pre-ordering anything in an age of digital distribution is laughable.

Absolutely love Mr. Biscuit’s take on pre-ordering. As some comments explain further, consumers can benefit from avoiding pre-orders. One of them pointed out how the number of pre-orders dictate release date(you’ll notice Anet never posted a release day) because high pre-orders means they can ship an incomplete product instead of refining it further.

Anyone arguing “It’s a free core game” doesn’t get it. It’s simply a pricing gimmick, the core game is worthless to you. It’s more like, “Anet gets 10 free dollars”. As it stands I have no reason to pre-purchase and this leaves a bad impression(it brings to mind milking a cow for all it’s worth), I’ll probably get it through a retailer at some point…

Sizzle Hint.1820:

how many times does it have to be repeated :sigh:

it was already said by the developers that every single ability the thief can steal will be reworked…

What I’m saying is it’s already very powerful. It already grants thieves 50% uptime on boons, if they can use ecto twice it becomes 100%.

I find it incredible that ecto isn’t nerfed, a 50% uptime of almost all boons. It’s interesting that the rune version of this skill was nerfed into the ground a long time ago- rune of lyssa. It removed all conditions and granted all boons for 5(not 10!) seconds but this was apparently too strong. Now it removes 5 conditions and grants boons based on how many conditions you had. This was a meta rune at the time but after the change, mesmers, warriors, thieves and everyone else stopped running it. The condition removal part stayed essentially the same but that wasn’t why it became meta and Anet knew it- it was the boons. How can Anet claim that 5 seconds of boons every 45 sec is OP but 10 seconds of boons every 20 seconds is balanced?

Sorel.4870:

Sizzle Hint.1820:

then a net decided it would be better to take it out again because teams are having too long queue times…

Come on now. I can understand a little bit of nostalgia. But this is just plain wrong: solo queue times could be over 10-15 minutes, and I was under rank 80 back then! Most solo players were playing in teamq, because there were fewer 4v5s, shorter queue times, better rotations. There were threads about the joke soloq was.

You can be in favor of soloq because the idea appeals to you. You don’t need to reinvent the history of this game to make a point. Or do you?

You’re both correct. TeamQ died when soloQ was introduced because teams had been feeding on the pugs. Eventually lower ranked players played teamQ because it gave more glory/rank points, didn’t have skyhammer and was less likely to have 4v5s. These lower ranked pugs rarely fought the teams and higher ranked players would sit in the queue forever. TeamQ also didn’t suffer from the horrendous “syncing” where high level players could join soloQ at the same time and get onto the same team. You were more likely to play teams or partials in soloQ because it joined high ranks together and then searched for a match- if one wasn’t found it matched against a low rank party. This has been fixed/changed.

So how can Anet reasonably fix these current issues? It seems to be stemming from a declining player base, not blatant errors in the matching system. If we had enough players then soloQ, teamQ, unranked and any other queue is feasible. I have my own ideas but I don’t think changing the matching system is going to be the stone that nailed 2 or 3 birds.

Turrets sucked. I’m glad they’re finally being treated like every other AI. They had way too much health(they couldn’t be crit or conditioned so their effective health was too high). Why would anyone want to bring back massive AI builds unless they largely benefited from it?

Xom.9264:

Javonovich.5280:

Too bad, too, as I absolutely loved random arenas in GW1.

RA was what got me hooked on GW1.

Random arena was truly fun. I can’t pin the reasons why, perhaps it only worked in GW1? I think AB was a TON of fun also, considering it was conquest makes me wonder if it isn’t the game-mode but the pvp mechanics themselves.

Exedore.6320:

The best solution for players and developers is to split the amulets into multiple items. I recommend amulet, ring, ring at 50, 25, 25% of the total stats using the existing stat combinations. It’s enough customization to get close enough to any build you’d want to do while not being at the mercy of the patch cycle and watch developers decide to add.

I’m wondering if this will be their path of choice. Anet may have a difficult time making a one-size-fits-all amulet and just give you more slots to choose jewelry. I don’t think they need to give different weights though, just some slots where you pick an accessory with a few stats. Something like 4-6 slots each giving a piece of jewelry with stats for 2/3 attributes should work.

Nerifes.4931:

ANET wants us to sit in HoTM and waste our lives away doing nothing while waiting for Queues to pop only to have your team end up as a 4v5.

That’s GW2 PvP in a nutshell. And you might wonder why many people aren’t interested in playing PvP.

This wouldn’t be an issue if queues weren’t so long. :\ Unranked has a shorter wait but the “waiting for players” timer is like a 2nd queue. In the end you waste at least 3 min to wait for a match that might be a steamroll, wasting 10-15 minutes total. I feel unranked is similar to RA in GW1 but most people would disagree and prefer the MUCH faster queues and matches.

Puck.1509:

Helping GW2 create succesful competitive PvP

I’m sorry bro, it’ll never happen. Enjoy the game in a really casual manner.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Having Randomness to a game doesn’t negate skill. Poker is random as far as what cards you get yet it is a very high skill game.

Do not compare this game to poker ever, ever, ever, ever.

The last couple nights in NA have seen terrible lag spikes in pvp. Is this going to be a regular occurrence or is it related to the closed beta in some way? Because if Anet is trying to save money on bandwidth it’s not helping the game. -_-

Toxsa.2701:

data.4093:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

It’s actually kind of funny. If you are being targeted for kill shot, stealth, teleport in back of the warrior and run away, the warrior will turn around to shoot you!

This is where the game breaks down completely. Ranger LB obliterates mesmers and d/p thieves due to this. Anything except LOS will get you killed because so much damage comes from that 1 channeled skill. It’s completely nonsensical that a channel would follow you even AFTER teleporting 900-1200 range. On the other side some skills don’t work properly against stealth, shatters for instance. The clones will stop running and pop if someone stealths but pets don’t seem to suffer this issue(they continue with the attack even at short distances). This is one of the reasons rangers aren’t nullified by thieves while mesmers are hard-countered.

Or you can just do what every other professions do already: Dodge it.

I know you’re using those “broken mechanic” to carry you so much, that you don’t really want to dodge with right timing anymore

No no no. If you open the ranger or 1v1 then fine, it’s not the same. But rangers join teamfights and just melt d/p thieves unless they can LOS. I’ve seen rangers come to a teamfight, knockback, followed by rapid fire(double sigil proc) and 1 auto to take out 15k health. The wolf AOE fearing you into a wall doesn’t help, and rangers opening fights like this isn’t rare either. Even d/d full burst thieves can’t put out so much damage without risk of getting drawn close or losing most utility.

Apolo.5942:

Please consider that passive healing and the ability to sponge damage is what defines the warrior. I play warrior and not a guardian because of the damage it can soak, beacuse of its passive healing, that is what we look for in the warrior.

Do not do the guardian shield vs focus treatment to the active vs passive effects of the signet.

If you want people to use the active more, buff it, do not nerf its passive.

Warriors have always been a damage sponge, not a passive regen class. That’s the domain of ranger. You also need to realize hambow is coming back and Anet doesn’t need them running over everything like before.

Hermos.2389:

People keep telling me to go S/F or S/S in Dungeons, and I’m just here, spamming my Illusionary Berserker and shattering like a boss.

You need to learn the mechanics of dungeons, boon sharing and why people stack.

redcomyn.4651:

I leveled my mesmer using greatsword, with the staff as my secondary weapon. It works great. The GS may not have as much damage as the sword, but you are certainly safer at range than in melee range. Mesmer’s are lightly armored and take lots of damage.

I did try the sword a few times. I died far more often. So I stick with the range weapons. I kill slower, but I die a lot less.

You sound like a bearbow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSCrskT-z9w

The Gates Assassin.9827:

It’s actually kind of funny. If you are being targeted for kill shot, stealth, teleport in back of the warrior and run away, the warrior will turn around to shoot you!

This is where the game breaks down completely. Ranger LB obliterates mesmers and d/p thieves due to this. Anything except LOS will get you killed because so much damage comes from that 1 channeled skill. It’s completely nonsensical that a channel would follow you even AFTER teleporting 900-1200 range. On the other side some skills don’t work properly against stealth, shatters for instance. The clones will stop running and pop if someone stealths but pets don’t seem to suffer this issue(they continue with the attack even at short distances). This is one of the reasons rangers aren’t nullified by thieves while mesmers are hard-countered.

Drennon.7190:

Seemingly the only way to get this fixed is to have it abused more. So while we’re at it, someone make a tutorial video.

Pretty much this.

Argon.1563:

But I agree with the point. Berserker has trivialized this game’s content. I don’t care how “hard” people say the endgame (Fractal50, etc.), it can all be done with ultra glassy builds on full berserker, which isn’t right. Im just glad ArenaNet will phase that out, so we are forced to have defensive investment to diversify the buildpool and detoxify the nasty “berserker only, no ranger, no necro” side of the community.

Ranger and necro are not useless. The majority of people playing ranger and necro are horrible. They don’t use melee, they get their group killed and argue when you tell them to actually help instead of sitting back and doing nothing(LB was insanely buffed for ranger yet people still don’t like rangers, it’s not the class it’s the people). A noob on a warrior is 10x more useful: he will melee, support the team and not die easily. So…rangers aren’t terrible as a class but everyone wants to play bearbow. It’s a bad joke.

Considering people wearing Celestial got wrecked, people wearing Berserker will literally die instantaneously, and after we played, we found out from the devs that they nerfed the Wyvern for the demo so it wasn’t too hard for us. So if Celestial players struggled against a nerfed Wyvern, berserker meta is dead when it goes up against it un-nerfed

Ive already got my Soldiers/Knights gear in advance.

Soldier’s gear has been meta on difficult bosses for…forever. You don’t crit structures.

Power necro is the only class that requires you to run AWAY when you down them.

“oh you still have 7k health? not anymore.”

If it hasn’t been said before(I’m not reading all of this), immobilize is the strongest condition in the game. It works more like a stun preventing movement and dodging AND can prevent ALL skills from being used due to mid-air immobilize. This will guarantee death once you get stuck for 5-10 sec with no skills because of AOE thief venom. It means the frontline can’t use their blast finishers(guard/war go in the air when blasting) or leaps. On top of immob is 3 more venoms….GG.

I can’t believe some are arguing for guard stacks. Anet has been moving away from power creep. They removed stacking sigils without keeping the weapon equipped and now they’re removing guard stacks. This is 500 stat points that some builds have lost, mainly the ones that shouldn’t have had it in the first place.

Guard stacks were a bad idea. Do not listen to OP.

ODB.6891:

I see him summoning illusions and just sitting back watching the illusions go in dealing pitiful damage. In the bristleback/golem fights, he would periodically iLeap in to benefit from Tides of Time and pop off a blurred frenzy…then immediately move back to range…with a main hand sword equipped. He would swap to staff (in PvE…sigh), but never even attempted our auto attack with main hand sword.

Ding ding! Mesmer has the lowest dps in dungeons and some don’t bother bringing them anymore. The only cleave weapon on this squishy class has terrible damage. Compare mesmer to thief or guardian sword and the gap is enormous.

KarsaiB.9475:

So, by not playing what’s commonly accepted as “meta”, you’re generally dragging your team down. Now, you might experiment something with potential, or just play a far more fun spec, everyone does it. But no amount of “skill” will outweight that same amount put into playing something optimal, nor will a “surprise factor” that you might gain throughout the first 30 seconds of a match. Meta has nothing to do with playing safe, it has all to do with efficiency.

The problem is that the game shifts due to the tournaments. Hambow warrior was not true meta until it won in the CC vs SYNC match. Then it was EVERYWHERE.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

If people only ran the meta, the meta would never change. Rom and Tarcis ran shoutbow when it wasn’t meta, now everyone uses it.

this.

Anet has tried to stop people from stacking teams but it simply hasn’t worked(removing ranks did nothing). I don’t understand it myself, when I play hotjoin I’m just there to play. But I’ve consistently seen 7-8 people sit on spectator mode waiting for a team to gain a decent lead before joining. Maybe if you join then spectate you can’t join again? And once you’re spectating you can’t get any points. Would that work?

Unranked is random arena v2. There is no team arena because there were never enough pvp players.

Replying to the first post because this thread got really long….

Anet hasn’t “gotten it” for over 2 years. They’ve been trying to include elements of twitch, strategy and pattern based gameplay into pvp and it hasn’t worked. The thing is, you generally can pick 2 of these and make a game. There are fast paced MMOs and fast action RTS but games that include all 3 successfully? I don’t know of one. With this new stronghold map they’ve gone even further towards the action RTS genre yet 40 guys blobbing in a circle garners more views than tournaments with actual prizes and announcers. Part of the problem seems to be the success of the “mega games” and everybody’s desire to copy them. When FPS were all the rage, CS copycats were everywhere and when WoW was rising the same thing happened. Games like SW:G tried to get in on the action(but failed) and the billion other MMOs that sprang up wanted some of that money. Now the hot ticket to riches is the action RTS and you’ll see even more of these coming to market.

GW1 succeeded mainly because it pulled away from everyone else. While Anet claims they wanted to rethink MMOs and introduce new ideas with GW2, they’ve moved away from the MMO and towards the “hot” action RTS. But many people don’t want that, they want an interesting MMO and sPvP doesn’t offer it. It’s not fun to get nuked, it’s not fun to be completely unaware in chaos, it doesn’t make the game better to be fast if no one knows what’s going on. So what has happened? Players made their own MMO pvp. GvG(as far as I can tell) is simply dps/tank/heal and that’s it. They have like 10 guys in the first group and 5 squishies in the back doing dps. Tanking is done(in part) through the 5 max targets mechanic and healing is done through supportive skills and water fields. Players aren’t reading their opponent’s tiny skill animations because who cares, you’re moving with a team and it’d be impossible anyway.

The unique mechanics of GW2 actually see a lot of use too. Rallying and field management are crucial when 5 people can get up from 1 death and fields are such an important part of healing. Another note is the size of teams. MMOs encourage massive amounts of people to cooperate, spvp is 5v5. No one can play with their friends so they stay in wvw and that’s probably the most important factor to consider. People tend to watch and do the things they enjoy, being part of a guild and playing with friends is important. It’s what an MMO is all about.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

The problem is

1: The last auto attack can often miss enemies

2: the last auto attack works as a ranged attack but does not count as one, thus it can be reflected

3: The number 3 skill projectiles are slow & can be easily avoided by anything outside of melee range

4: Despite saying it’s a block the number 3 skill doesn’t actually block anything it absorbs. This means there are allot of traits it does not interact with.

5: Even if all the attacks hit the number 3 skill is a DPS loss when compared to the auto attack.

6: The auto attack cleave is incredibly small, enemies literally have to be standing on top of each other to hit multiple targets. (this also makes it miss vs strafing enemies.

The first 2 attacks in the chain are like anything else, they have a normal arc. The last one is a 300 range, piercing, projectile attack. It’s more like a cone then an arc, this is probably to balance the fact that it has better range and damage(if it had a large arc then you couldn’t hit 1 person with all 3 projectiles unless on top of them). Zealot’s defense projectiles do suck if you’re chasing someone, you really want to use it on CC’d enemies or to block ranged attacks. And you wouldn’t want to use it if there are 2 enemies next to each other because it doesn’t pierce. I’m sure they could do something to guardian sword but it doesn’t seem to be in a terrible spot.

I can’t understand the dislike of sword. The AA is great, sure the 3rd part is projectiles but so what- it has 300 range and pierces afaik. It’s the highest damage AA on guard coupled with a short cooldown teleport-blind and high damage attack that blocks projectiles. No changes necessary.

Baclavaman.9054:

The new trait system so far is great and i cant wait to reshape my characters with it.

However something is bugging me with the new system, on one end they will expanse the customization but on the other they will reduce it a bit, let me explain.

Currently my double daggers Elementalist is using a custom build around all the traits lines.

He has 2 in fire to reach the Burning Precision trait.
Air line is full to the Fresh Air Grand master.
Two in earth magic for Stone Splinters.
Two in water for Vital Striking.
Finally 2 in Arcane to get Renewing Stamina.

This is my custom Double dagger build that is using all the trait lines, same goes for my staff, scepter builds and my Thief, Engy, Mesmer, Necro to my Warrior on one of his set ups.

The new system seems awesome but in the video i dont know if there will be only 3 lines available at all time or if we can have all 5 at once like we have now.

I propose the new traits system that seems freaking cool with the old layout or a scroll down bar, that way we can invest points where we need to.

TL, DR: New traits systems announced with the current traits layout displaying 5 ( soon 6) traitlines at once.

Let me know what the community thinks about that!

The new system IS to limit you. Locking people into 3 trait lines and only letting them choose from 3 traits per tier makes it easier to balance the game. It forces trade-offs: if there were 2 really good traits in a line and Anet wanted to keep them both they can simply put them into the same tier now. The new thief traits are an example, perma-stealth guys are upset because they’re being forced to choose among 2 staple traits instead of carrying them both.

Bubi.5237:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/0c/Tormented_Shield.jpg

Ohh wait, wrong game..

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/3/39/Tormented_Shield_Skin.jpg

When I stopped playing months ago I gave away all my skins except 1. This^^ one. Now it’ll get some use.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

So instead of giving us rifles, we get yet another offhand, bring us up to five, with only two mainhands, only one of which is actually viable. Not because shield made sense from a mechanics standpoint, mind, but because it was “thematically appropriate”. Or in other words, they sacrificed giving us five completely new weapon skills for the sake of flavor.

Mesmer is a very squishy class and shield seems to be offering support/defense abilities, it’s very appropriate mechanically. Why would mesmers want/need rifle? It wouldn’t fit. Mesmers have ranged weapons so rifle would be out of place unless it became melee(?).

EremiteAngel.9765:

…i think its a matter of learning to play.

Nah not really. That’s always a factor but even against aware mesmers, thieves can simply wear them out. The S/D will burn burst options rather quickly, openings don’t really exist unless the thief gives them to you or you luckily stun them twice. Immobilize does nothing to S/D. D/P is a more consistent set, thieves can’t dodge everything but carry 2 stun breaks. D/P 3 skill ensures they can stay aggressive in almost any situation. If D/P 3 skill wasn’t unblockable or at the very least didn’t blind then it may be another story but the skill can completely shut down a mesmer and prevent kiting. The only way to escape the aggression is through stealth.

smilko.4056:

There’s no mention of a phantasm. Will X/Shield only be able to spawn the scepter/sword 3 clone and that’s it?

If I had to guess it looks like the shield does AOE pulls and this is basically chaos storm + old confounding suggestions before the nerf. We can’t complain about a second AOE CC field.

double engi/ele winning WTS…gg.

The biggest bug of them all: The map selection wheel favors the top left quadrant meaning skyhammer gets picked way more than it should. I’m not kidding, if 1-2 people pick hammer there’s a huge chance of getting it. And the wheel always puts hammer there because it’s based on alphabetical order.

Dredrum.2563:

Becasue team Q is dead without solo Q’rs to feed the Q, this is the real reason for the merge.

Pretty much this. Players want e-sports and things like WTS but that relies on teams. TeamQ didn’t work so solo players must prop up the system.

Courtyard is fine. Leave it in.

OP, you’re giving young people(i’m assuming you’re a young adult) a bad name:
http://www.vanityfair.fr/culture/livre/articles/generation-wuss-by-bret-easton-ellis/15837

The victim narrative part fits so perfectly….:\

I probably should explain my post above because the triangle was uninformative. I was trying to point out that a game can have elements from multiple types, and generalized fps, mmo, rts. Guild wars 2 at it’s core is an MMO but contains elements of shooters(importance of twitch play) and strategy games(enormous map awareness/coverage and the idea of counter comping). Some people have already mentioned other things that lean more towards the shooters and strategy games than general MMOs in GW2.

Now when you try and throw these elements together you end up with a mess. People looking for basic MMO PVP end up in conquest(or as someone noted WvW which is just zerg trains unless you’re running with a focused group) with no map/composition awareness and can’t comprehend any of the skills being thrown at them. In a very short time they quit.

Pick any 2 styles and they can work together in the right game.

The patch was pretty awful. I don’t know if anyone believes Anet is competent as a whole. Check the first/second pages on the spvp, tech support, game bugs and general discussion to see how bad this patch was then you’ll understand why fewer people are playing. Huge lag spikes, bugs everywhere, crappy FPS and lots of people just unable to log in…

BLUna.7928:

I’ve been running it for 2 days now, step up your math game son

eh…what’s the exact numbers then?

Dagins.5163:

Assassin will deal the same or slightly lower DPS than berserker. Crits are lower. It just proc on-crit things more often, and that’s for having 3k hp less. It might be better for hit-and-run tactic with double sigil of flame and air, but otherwise – not worth it.

I’m trying to figure out your reasoning here. You lose 282 power, gain 282 precision then lose the vitality and gain 199 ferocity. So you’ve gained 13% crit damage and 13-14% crit chance in exchange for 282 power(~10-15% damage?) and 3k health. It’s too bad we don’t have steady weapons anymore to do exact testing(why are those even gone? they were so useful for spotting bugs and testing builds…) but I’m pretty sure things like rangers with multi-hit skills benefit the most and things that burst(like a d/d thief) gain the least. Overall it may give a marginal gain to any zerker’s DPS though.