Guild Wars 2

The “less danger at range” argument may have held up in PVE, if the game had a functional way to manipulate aggro (aka tank). Without it, a ranged attacker may well find himself in melee with a enemy pretty quickly. That is, unless he wants to do the whole Benny Hill routine around the room…

Or healing in general while in DS. I hear necro are a constant issues for elementalists. They notice a health bar dropping in the party UI, lob off a healing AOE, only to the see necro in question pop DS right before the skill lands. End result, one expensive heal spell on cooldown…

Could turn Life Transfer real nasty tho, if they also allowed Transfusion to heal the in DS necro. Something it potentially can, as we know by running out of LF before the channel completes.

A complete Life Transfer with all crits on the pulses could heal for 3384 at least.

Anymras.5729:

mammasaura.5907:

Two words about Deployable Turrets.

I know Jon didn’t write about it in this topic, but this trait will can be a positive side-effect after the change of Power Shoes and the move of Accelerant-Packed Turrets into the adept traits pool.

The problem is the usage of this trait with the healing turret, you always want the ht next to you when dropped, and I find less reactive to accomplish this when I trait Accelerant-Packed Turrets. When I chose a trait, I always expect from it an improvement not an obstacle.

If it’s not possible making ht untargetable if traited, is it possible to add a key button like [key button] + [key of the skill] to perform self-casting? It’ll surely help not only the engi player, but all the professions with the same trait design and any targetable skill user.

Thanks

If you use the ‘press to prep, hold to aim, release to fire’ variation of Fast Casting, clicking it on the skillbar instead of pressing the button of the skill will center its drop right on you.

Or mouse over any opaque UI element before hitting the skill button. That causes ground targeted skills to center on the character.

Do not however attempt to hold the key down and mouse over, as then you just get a “out of range” error.

I’m starting to think it may be better for this game is turrets were disposable, but easily replaceable. Right now they are tuned for sieges, not run and gun boss fights.

What if they were pretty much thrown into existence, much like how a empty elixir bottle is disposed off?

One second they would be facing a lone engineer, the next there would be multiple turrets sprouting.

Make them disposable like mesmer phantasms rather than something we need to baby. Then it would we a option for both offensive and defensive fights, without having to set up a permanent camp in the latter case.

I swear that guardians is something unique in this.

Maybe because just about any action produces some AOE boon, and that again produce a personal heal…

But yes, having some way to manipulate mob aggro would go a long way towards a more cohesive group experience overall.

Mel.8769:

I’m pretty sure if this type of behavior occurred in school or the workplace it would be classified as bullying.

Not if it was being dispensed by managers towards the peons.

There is apparently a escort event that when enough people are nearby produce a high number of champions. The trick seems to be to fail it before a certain point (not defending the NPC most likely) so that it starts over sooner.

Yeah, ANet is pretty much looking at the extremes.

And that would be the extreme in a SPVP point fight scenario. And would allow a necro so take quite a beating. Especially when supplemented with DS.

End result would be a return of the immortal beta necro.

Bloodgruve.6038:

That being said I’d still like to see hammer. To DPS with Rifle you need to treat it as a melee weapon though.

Yep. Blunderbuss and Jump Shot pack a wallop.

In essence make turrets fully disposable.

First off, remove Detonate and Overcharge. Instead allow the engineer to access the turret toolbelt skills at all times, and make overcharge the default turret behavior.

Second, have their health deteriorate from the moment of deployment and start the skill recharge at once.

Third, make the deployment animation simply being the engineer throwing a box over his/her shoulder that unfolds to a turret on their own.

Thus turning the turrets from something immobile that the engineer has to babysit (only useful for PVP point defense) to something any engineer can use as something between a well and a banner. In other words, a stationary and temporary boost in DPS, control and/or support.

Farzo.8410:

Nah, people are overanalyzing as usual.

ArenaNet just thought it was cool to add a creature with six eyes, nothing more, nothing less.

There’s no connection to either margonites or Abaddon.

Yeah, the thing looks more spider/plant (slap some more arms on it, and it would be definitive). Possibly fueled by a necromantic spirit.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Fiend

The game is at its core built for SPVP. And ANet has likely assumed that any serious SPVP team will bring their own VOIP server.

Similarly it seems as if the profession skill spreads are built specifically to cater to people using gaming rodent and specialized keyboards.

I wonder if what is fueling this “support bad, zerker good” mentality is that going support heavy do not mean you can take any more licks in the short run. You still have to dodge and evade like the rest of them on the heavy blows, you just recover a bit better in the long run.

Meaning that support builds are better at attrition, while zerkers are all about not getting into a attrition fight in the first place.

Never mind that outside of boon duration (not much gear for that) and healing power (groan), there are really not much that affects support. Meaning that you can in practical terms play support with a zerker gear set.

Not likely, as i don’t recall the mobs going from threat to steamroll the moment i level up a bit.

And i have been testing this on similar mobs from different zones. Like say svanir in Wayfarers and Frostgorge. Same name, same model, taking significantly more blows by the same attack to take one down in Frostgorge.

I say they should toss the whole concept, and instead use the tab for a “costume” overlay over our effective armor. Thus allowing us to have one set for looks and one for stats, without having to constantly muck about with transmutation consumables.

Am i seeing things or is there something strange with how channeled skills interact with opponents that either evade or move out of range for a bit in the middle of a channel?

By this i mean that the channel seems to continue, but do no damage once the target again becomes valid (no longer evading or out of range).

I know i have had some reliability issues with the engineer flamethrower in the past. And today i noticed that the dodging bandits in Queensdale stopped taking damage, even after moving back into Ghastly Claw range.

The L80 toxic Krait in the LS instance (playing on my L80 toon) take noticeably longer to down than their L25 brethren roaming Kessex Hill.

As long as this is the case, the starter areas will be a favored farming zone after leveling, as the time pr kill will be significantly lower.

Sorry, just got to went.

This may be the most annoying variant of the order events.

Not only is the bomb in limited supply, but they come with a timer!

And the timer is so short that you barely reach the plant before it blows.

Add to this, dropping the thing requires a second long channel. That if broken for any reason leave you with little time to dispose of the bomb, before it blows up with enough force to pretty much wipe away your health. In the middle of a area continually spawning mobs, no less…

The thing about targeting is that is has a dual component.

There is the classic MMO component, and there is a action game component.

By the latter i mean that there is a invisible crosshair of sorts that takes priority over the normal next or nearest targeting mechanic.

So if you have a mob near the center of the screen, within 1200 range (it ignores the max range of your equipped weapon and utilities), and not blocked by any terrain object (similar to projectile attacks), it will be prioritized by both next and nearest targeting. This even tho there may be a mob closer, but further from center of screen.

This and other UI niggles makes me wonder if ANet stopped half way in implementing a proper action game control scheme.

I keep seeing question after question about how some living story part will last, and all i can respond with is guesswork.

I would love to instead point people either to the releases page, where they could find a end date as well as a start date (and perhaps times in UTC!), or to a in-game calendar showing exactly how long each living story part will last in graphics.

Not having this leads people to burning out as they feel they need to rush through it all, as they have no way to plan their game time next to their real life commitments.

I know the guardian staff has a wave as its autoattack, but what i am talking about is something that is narrower in width and longer in range.

Right now there are two kinds of support skills.

1. point blank area of effect. pretty much requiring everyone that wants to benefit to join in a group hug mid combat.

2. ground targeted area of effect. very cumbersome to use in the active combat environment that GW2 is.

So i propose a new kind of support area of effect. Shaped like a narrow cone spreading out from the character out to some range (maybe 900, maybe 1200).

This allowing someone to support from the ranged without having to attempt to lay down a ground targeted effect whole someone else is being chased by the mob.

This in particular if it can have the dual nature of both supporting fellow characters and damaging mobs. Then it would allow the player to target the mob, and get into a good position to hit both mob and any characters in melee range.

Don’t care much for two-handers as they limit weapon skill combinations.

One-handers could combo with existing pistol and shield, as themselves, in various ways.

Autoattack was a late addition. Before then i think the design was more in line with SWTOR, where you have to keep hitting that attack skill.

Then again, at launch the game didn’t even include activation times on non-channeled skill tooltips.

I am getting the impression that they never intended for us to constantly spam skills, but instead run and dodge until a opening offered itself (or we created one with a interrupt) and then pounce.

But IMO the control scheme do not favor this. And so instead we get people piling in tight spaces to maximize the effects of support skills, while spamming weapon skills between long sequences of autoattack.

If they want to see more active playstyles. increase strafing speeds and introduce toggled mouse look (and perhaps aim based targeting).

Sometimes wish that i could opt out of those, or that the game indicated in real numbers how much i was buffed from them.

Or how about this:

Change the turrets into disposables, much like mines.

When the skill key is hit, the engineer simply throws a box over his shoulder and the turret unfolds from that.

Make overcharge the default behavior, but give turrets a much shorter lifespan. Maybe make each attack they do cost them a bit of health, rather than some fixed timer, allowing the engineer to keep them going with the toolkit if he so chooses.

Remove detonate, and always give us access to the toolbelt skills.

Make the skill cooldown start at once rather than on turret destruction.

Have “always prepared” drop a turret or two on the engineer going down, rather than the current medkits.

This would allow turrets to be more “mobile”, rather than forcing a turret engineer to set up camp each time.

Healix.5819:

Hearts (and scouts) were not originally in the game. They are the result of quest driven players trying GW2 and immediately getting lost or confused. Hearts were meant to direct these players to areas with events.

And we can see how well that worked. Once the hearts are done people wonder what they should do next to get enough XP to continue their personal story.

The core issue is the concept of discoverability. Discovering that the events exist, what they do, and so on.

ANet seems to think that all players want to do is explore and discover. That is likely a fallacy coming from observing long term GW1 players. Those that didn’t wander off to other games once they were done with the quest lines, but instead went back and scoured each and every zone for lore and easter eggs. People like, For example, Wooden Potato. Him and his like may be loud, but not likely to be the majority of any game community.

Meh, more and more it feels like the issue can be found in SPVP.

The skills and mechanics are locked into point defense&capture, and works lovely for that. But anywhere else they pretty much faceplant because the same mechanics pretty much strip away player agency and group interaction.

1. the skills are balanced for small groups that have to choose between staying together or splitting up. meaning they break in WVW as there are always enough people around to max out the 5 man limit of even PBAOE support skills.

2. the skills are balanced around either holding a point or getting someone off a point. But points do not exist in PVE. And so everyone just crams together on top of the big bad and spam their supports, in much the same way as if everyone was stacking to defending or attacking a single point in SPVP.

leprekan.7248:

LordArrgh.8073:

I don’t mind the down so much but an update would be nice …hey we’ve run into a random Cthulhu boss so servers are going to be down an extra hour …something like that

I am not shy about ripping on Anet for the way they handle things but the one thing nobody can complain about is their server up time. They are the gold standard in the industry as far as I am concerned and deserve nothing but praise. A few hours a few times a year … I think they are doing pretty kitten good.

This because the game is heavily instanced, with the account data and login separate. This allows them to shunt people to new builds with ease.

Just about the only time they take down the whole game like this is when they work on the account and login system. And the last time they did that they expanded what could go into the collections section of the bank. Something that clearly required a database change.

Captain Swag.5893:

The problem is that engineers have NO melee (Tool kit isnt a fighting kit, it’s for utility)
Engineer is the only profession without some form of melee, and they’re already EXTREMELY limited in what they can build.

Dunno about PVP, but in PVE bombs make for one serious melee weapon (it is after all a full AOE).

The proposed changes to transmute may change this. As it will perhaps become a 100% chance, but with a longer ICD. Won’t help with conditions already on us tho.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rusttooth

The rigging of the sylvari are just a mess. Not only do the skirts bellow out like we are wearing ball gowns, but the gloves and shoulder pads are all too often massively oversized. I think my sylvari engineer grows several sizes with pads and gloves turned on. And i can’t turn them off because then the issue of the trenchcoat “skirt” becomes laughably obvious.

And take a look at the new gem store heavy armor on a sylvari. The shoulder pads seem scaled for a norn and are floating in mid air.

For a game that seems so heavily focused on the artistic, these flaws are glaring.

EvilSardine.9635:

I’d hate to see what OP would say if he played WvW where you’d have to worry about an invisible attack from a thief dealing 8K+ in damage every few seconds.

Silly PVErs….

And? I keep seeing complaints about said thieves. And ganker mentality in general is why i avoid playing PVP no matter what game.

Draknar.5748:

digiowl.9620:

krixis.9538:

you got hit by a special attack.

learn the attack animations

and learn to dodge / not stand still

do this and you will see how easy things are to fight. this is not wow dont just stand still hitting it thinking you can out dps it.

First time fighting it, and didn’t notice any tell. It just kinda did a spin in front of me and i watched the globe drop sharply.

And with the varied number of mobs in this game i do not have the capacity to learn every last attack pattern unless i spend my day farming the same kitten champs over and over.

Whoa wait, you’re talking about the Elite mob? You’re saying that they do too much damage? They are between Veteran and Champion! They should borderline one shot you, which is exactly what you described…

Sounds like everything is working normally then. Silver mobs are meant for groups, not solo. If you can solo it more power to you, but if you can’t you don’t get to complain about it.

Group or not, what i am talking about is that the damage curve goes from flat to vertical to flat again in the space of a single second. And the flat damage is easily manageable solo, while the vertical spike can wipe you or not depending on when it happens. That is not good game design, as you go from seemingly a manageable threat to a in your face hydrogen bomb in the space of a single second.

krixis.9538:

you got hit by a special attack.

learn the attack animations

and learn to dodge / not stand still

do this and you will see how easy things are to fight. this is not wow dont just stand still hitting it thinking you can out dps it.

First time fighting it, and didn’t notice any tell. It just kinda did a spin in front of me and i watched the globe drop sharply.

And with the varied number of mobs in this game i do not have the capacity to learn every last attack pattern unless i spend my day farming the same kitten champs over and over.

haviz.1340:

Is this level 80 content? Honest question, I didn’t played newest content.

The silver toxic krait patroling the tower walkways in Kessex.

BobbyT.7192:

Out of curiosity, what armour are you wearing.

Edit: I should add, 1300 is not a how lot of damage, what it the melee krait or the caster.

Dwayna set. Not the most tanky, not the most glassy (wish those temple armors were sold without the rune preinstalled, so it was easier to mix and match).

And it is not so much that is a big hit. But how high it spikes vs the rest of the damage the mob so doing. The lower general damage lull you into a “i can handle this” and then BAM “where did my health go?!”.

If instead the damage was higher in general, it would be much easier to notice one was in over ones head and get out before being downed.

Mesket.5728:

but that’s how you make a game harder! one shots!

/sarcasm

Someone gets it.

Asmodeus.5782:

digiowl.9620:

shaidyn.4016:

Taking the advice in this thread, I tried to clear out a waypoint. I had catapults pinning me from either side, mobs that respawned constantly, NPCs that died as soon as I rezzed them, and a 5 minute run back every time I died.

I get the feeling the game is tuned to have about ten times more people running around than it has. I can’t imagine I’m supposed to be doing this alone.

Sounds like the bridge in Malchor’s Leap. Not sure if it is tagged as group, but i have no clue how to solo it. The catapults will bounce you around if you try to revive the pact engineers. And if you break a catapult some risen will instantly run over to rebuild it.

Huh, I soloed it with my flamethrower engi and 2xaxe warrior quite a few times, with relative ease… You have to clear out some Risen, true… But they do not respawn that often.

So it is another case of a DPS check…

I should have guessed…

Was fighting one of those Krait elites the other day, and found another example of what i think is a core issue with PVE combat.

For most of the fight each attack from the krait did about 300 damage.

But out of the blue came a single attack that did 1300!

That is x4 the rest of the attacks.

This was a single attack, and i swear there was no tell. And if it was a crit then the mob was packing a crit damage percentage in the 400% range.

Crap like that is downright bad game design.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Funny how people were screaming it would be OP…

They were? Must not have known ANet then. They are so afraid of an overshoot that they continue to undershoot.

Anyways, the base numbers pretty much shows that it is designed to be a flavor skill on par with the racials. 30 second recharge, base heal is character only, only certain conditions removed. It is there to add flavor to the tower fight, and to fullfill ANet’s promise of introducing more skills, without rocking the balance boat.

shaidyn.4016:

Taking the advice in this thread, I tried to clear out a waypoint. I had catapults pinning me from either side, mobs that respawned constantly, NPCs that died as soon as I rezzed them, and a 5 minute run back every time I died.

I get the feeling the game is tuned to have about ten times more people running around than it has. I can’t imagine I’m supposed to be doing this alone.

Sounds like the bridge in Malchor’s Leap. Not sure if it is tagged as group, but i have no clue how to solo it. The catapults will bounce you around if you try to revive the pact engineers. And if you break a catapult some risen will instantly run over to rebuild it.

Orr is basically two maps too large, as except for the temples (and barely those, thanks to the less than user friendly karma armor offerings) and world completion there is little reason to hang around Straits of Devastation or Malchor’s Leap. And so everyone bunch up around a few waypoints in Cursed Shore, leaving the rest of Orr a wasteland more ways than one.

In essence, ANet’s downleveling do not work as well as they hoped. It do not take into account the gearing of the character, and so a downleveled green and a downleveled orange makes a noticeable difference in DPS. Between that, the almost year old increase in loot drops for downleveled characters, and now the champ bags have resulted in the high zones being abandoned save for champ farms and world boss runs. And those are much easier to do in Frostgorge, thanks to less issues with waypoints.

Another issue is that waypoints are pretty much needed, as things like crafting and trading posts can’t really be accessed in the field. So we waypoint to LA or stay in the starter zones that have easy access to home cities. And DR becomes the natural fit for that, as it is located near the middle of a zone’s long side, rather than in a corner (Rata Sum, Hoelbrak) or on the short end (Grove, Black Citadel).

Lostwingman.5034:

I wonder if it’s possible for ANet to scale the hp of enemies dynamically to how many people are in the nearby area.

Could have sworn they already do.

Nope, nor is is designed as such. It is pretty much in the same league as the racial skills, designed for adding flavor to PVE rather than being a viable alternative to profession skills. This to avoid confusing potential SPVPers.

Darn it ANet, fix those oversized sylvari shoulderpads already!

There is dodging and there is CS style constant rabbit jumping around…

The game all too often seems aimed at the latter. So much so that i wonder why it don’t have a FPS control scheme…

Dunno about hard, but downright RNG about being kitty cat and alpha predator.

Was fighting a elite today, and the attack rotation from it went something like this:

300
300
300
1300
300
300
300

Notice that 1300 there? That is 4-5 times higher than the rest (that means that if it was a crit, that elite was packing a crit increase of 400%!). And i swear there was no noticeable tell that it was coming (or it could have played for the split second i was checking my skill cooldowns).

That is the kind of design that leads people to building glass cannons, as that sudden damage spike was enough to remove a third of my non-glass engineer on the spot. Meaning the fight went from me being reasonably in control to “oh, crap! heal heal heal!!!”.

As for dodging, this fight was on the walkways around the new tower. Dodge there and you are liable to get wet…

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Devildoc.6721:

snip

Excellent post. You and Kraag have summarized precisely what one of the biggest problems in the game’s combat is:

• Particle effects scale with the size of an enemy
• UI is often in the way, and cannot be moved
• Poor visual cues for insta-kill attacks
• Lack of cast bars

And I would like to add to that list, the fact that your target is automatically deselected when you look the other way. This is a huge problem in the game’s combat. There are several boss encounters that force you to look away from the boss, to see where you are running, and then the target is deselected. Because of this, players go through the game of trying to find the boss in all the clutter, over and over again.

I would suggest the following:

• Turn that auto deselect off, it’s a dumb feature
• When we target the closest enemy, TARGET THE CLOSEST ENEMY! Not the one I’m looking at, not the highest threat, not the one who has the most health. Target the closest one! How hard can that be?

Sounds like you may have “Promote Skill Target” turned off. It makes targets selected by other than mouse/next/nearest drop once they go out of camera view (or nearly so).

Vissarion.6509:

tom.7468:

Butter.3024:

+ Very tanky

They are not very tanky. They got so much hp because they have no stealth or pets.
They have a few strong defensive traits but the healing is minimal.
If you are using shout heals you sacrifice pretty much everything for healing power.

so elementalist dont have stealth or pets, they dont even deal as much dmg as warriors but they still have 1/3 hp + even less toughness than a warrior.
explain..?

Water attunement. /s

Or to be serious, the professions are balanced for 5v5 SPVP. Not PVE, not WVW, 5v5 SPVP.

What makes PVE a balancing mess is that mobs do not play by character rules. By this i mean that they rarely boon, they virtually never heal, and they hit like backstab thiefs by default. They are in essence bags of health with big guns.