Guild Wars 2

Niyo.5920:

Some people don’t understand that GW2 is exactly that: A game in which you don’t hunt for the best equip but collect skins you want.
That was clear from the beginnig. I don’t get it that there are still people who mention this as a “problem” of the game. It’s not. It’s like GW was since GW1.

Yes in theory, no in execution. This because if you find a skin you like, but it is either on a level 80 item or you want the stats of a level 80 item underneath it, you need to find transmutation crystals. Good luck with that without gold farming or swiping your credit card for gems.

Skin collecting may have been a argument if the game had a actual wardrobe, making the worn skin independent of the worn stats (even something as simple as a second equip row that only provided the skin, perhaps selling access to more such in the same way that they sell bank and inventory slots). But as long as it takes a rare-ish consumable to mess around with skins, most will go for stats and ignore the skins.

Ugh…

So if i have done the numbers right a full 100b channel can rip some 10000+ off a target if the whole thing crits. And that is if the target has exotic armor with major toughness and a full toughness trait line.

So yea, the more i think about it the more i think ANet has made mobs damage sponges. Because they can’t find any other way to balance the numbers for both PVP and PVE…

tolunart.2095:

digiowl.9620:

I think it would have to be so that each unlocked skill was only available on a specific skill slot, this to attempt to mitigate the scenario Tolunart mentions. Kinda like how you can only put elite skills in a specific slot. Meaning that you would find certain unlocked skills under #1 and so on.

True, I’m sure it could be done, I’m just glad I’m not the one who has to test all those skills and adjust their positions and power levels.

For three similar, yet different, game modes no less…

I think it would have to be so that each unlocked skill was only available on a specific skill slot, this to attempt to mitigate the scenario Tolunart mentions. Kinda like how you can only put elite skills in a specific slot. Meaning that you would find certain unlocked skills under #1 and so on.

IronPlushy.4256:

Think a simple balance might be mobs with such high toughness the only way to kill them effectively is with conditions

I think that may require an armor value in excess of 5 000.

Edit: Allow me to correct myself, as further pondering and playing with numbers suggest that armor in excess of 50 000, maybe even 500 000, would be required.

Thing is that GW2 has a oddball hybrid UI. There are action/twitch elements piled on top of what is for the most part a classic MMORPG UI. Compare this to the likes of TERA or Neverwinter, where mouse is constantly used for aiming. And in Neverwinter’s case can be used to reposition ground target AOEs (TERA use a fixed arc alongside a range readout on the reticule), but it will default to centering it on whatever you have as your reticule target.

Shield may be lovely for PVP, but it is meh for PVE. the reflect roots you, and CC is worthless in PVE to begin with. Never mind how accidentally triggering any of those skills without actually blocking anything result in the skill going on full cooldown…

JubeiTM.5763:

It used to be auto-target a while ago but the devs thought it was too powerful. It already got a -30% reduction on first skill. So i guess that in order to stop the damage nerf even further, they made it more difficult to use.

ANet painted themselves into a corner with the GM explosives trait, it is the only trait in game (that i know off) that increase damage output of the relevant skills by 50% (you go from 2 grenades to 3). Most you will find elsewhere is a combined total of maybe 25%, if you scrounge together 2+ traits in various lines.

IMO, what ANet could do was for the autoattack to work slightly differently on GT skills. It should make them autofire as long as the button is held down. This allowing you to move the GT circle by moving the mouse, while not having to hammer the keyboard to death. Oh and while doing so it should show the relevant circle so you know when you are out of range or off target.

10x the healing power “co-efficient” on skills, 10x the duration of CC effects on mobs.

Here is another bug with ground targeting and the game UI.

Before i stated that putting the mouse on top of the target data (top center on the screen when you have a target selected) before triggering a ground targeted skill would result in the targeting circle appearing under the player characters feet.

This however seems to only apply to targets with a portrait. Target a dummy in Lion’s Arch for instance, and it works fine. But target a nearby lionguard and the bug happens.

But this is not the new bug.

there is an additional bug where if you trigger a ground target skill with the mouse away from any UI element, the target circle will vanish if the mouse pointer is placed on top of target data containing a portrait.

And if you then try to fire off the skill by hitting the skill key a second time you will get a “out of range” message, even if you are standing right on top of the targeted mob. Where the ground targeting circle thinks it is located i have no clue. But it is far enough away that even traited grenades can’t reach it.

Yeah, i am not quite sure what ANet’s thinking was there.

Could be they wanted to give a coordinated group some semblance of tanks by having one or two stack toughness and healing power and so become the mob focus of the group.

But for PUGs it just becomes a mess as there is no way to independently document who has the most toughness in a group, and so will carry the brunt of mob attention.

Gokki.9574:

The logic of it all defeats me. Why would they do Dragon’s Tooth a target aoe when you actually need it to be manually targetted because the idiot mobs run around alll the time, yet things like lava field arent…..

Best guess, so you can lead the target. Never mind that the game already do so, with highly variable result if the target zigzags, for targeted ranged attacks. Tho i guess that if it is a lingering DOT you can always used it to “block” chokepoints.

I was poking around trying to map a bug related to ground targeting (put the mouse on top of any opaque UI element, hit a GT skill, watch the green circle appear right under your toons feet) and found something interesting.

If i put the mouse on to of the target data after i have a proper GT circle, it seems to kinda vanish. And if i tap the skill a second time i get a “out of range” warning even tho the target is right in front of me. Made me wonder if there is some half-finished code in there that was supposed to put the circle on your target, if you moused over the target data, but now instead put it some place into the distance (or even outside the map).

Lately the game seems to not show the interact popup even when you can in fact do so from time to time. Yet to figure out the exact conditions for it to happen tho.

Never mind the massive irony is that piling on toughness in dungeons is likely to make you the mob magnet, negating any survivability said toughness is supposed to provide.

As i sit here reading i start to wonder if why the mobs are such damage sponges are because ANet knows that zerker is that massive but can’t find a way to tone it down.

Likely because they need the dual stats on each trait line for aesthetic reasons more than game mechanics, in some silly attempt at making us make tradeoffs in our builds.

The only option out that i see is for ANet to multiply all internal healing power skill modifiers have by 5 or 10 in PVE, so that heals actually have the potential to pull you back from the brink rather than just postponing the inevitable.

If that results in people foregoing dodging for facetanking mobs, so be it. Right now the defensive side is so tilted towards dodge as the be all end all that it is gone beyond tragedy and become a farce.

so it is true, ladies do like the big & hairy kind.

1. Humans and norns outnumber the other races massively, and so their zones are more likely to have something going on.

2. Mid level zones not bordering a city are avoided because of waypoint costs unless it is to farm daily chest events (golem, centaur, fire shaman and so on) or personal story.

of all the crazy euphemisms…

Southsun is in essence ANet trolling everyone that claimed pre-patch Orr to be facerollingly easy. Sadly i suspect most of those claims were a lot of digital hot air, but i guess that i water under the bridge at this point.

Milennin.4825:

I’d love a solo dungeon, but yeah, it’s probably going to be balanced around people that have trouble killing a generic veteran enemy in the open world in a 1 on 1 fight.

Your fly is open…

Arisal.9740:

Lilium.1509:

Arisal.9740:

Mirta.5029:

CobaltSixty.1542:

Mirta.5029:

I find it funny that Anet didn’t learn how to put DR on stuns and knockbacks yet.
A) if in any other MMO you get stunned you can’t get stunned again for at least 2 seconds
B) almost all enemies have a knockback or a stun of some sorts. Even the ones that don’t have it in their description
You can get stunlocked by 5 mobs infinitely.

Looks like the mobs are too intelligent for you and are exploiting your lack of stability.

not all classes can even apply stability. For example: necro – the only skill with stability is Lich Form. And I can’t really spam my elite.

There is a trait called foot in the grave that gives you stability.

“Gain stability for 3 seconds when you enter death shroud.”
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Foot_in_the_Grave

I play a necro and, not only does the ability have a cool down, but if your deathshroud goes out before it recharges, you have to wait for death shroud to fill up again before you can use it.

edit: I’m sorry, I thought it was the other thing in the third ability bar, not the trait skill thing. But again, you still have to wait for death shroud to be usable again before you can use it.

Death shroud has a 10 second cool down. That means you can have 3 seconds of stability every 10 seconds which is a heck of a lot. I was just trying to point out necros have a pretty good stability option if speced that way :P

With the spec tying up 30 trait points…

Blaeys.3102:

If you encounter multiple high level mobs with knock downs, then strategically place yourself in positions that minimize their effect – use line of sight, kite them etc. – as well as all of the tools you have to proactively defend – stun breakers, blocks, stability, profession specific abilities (aegis, distortion, etc), knockbacks, knockdowns, dazes, stuns, fears, reflections, etc.

The things like knockdowns (or stuns or pulls or confusion, etc) that we see a small number of people call “frustrating” are in fact what make fights interesting.

And, if all else fails – either make sure you dont aggro too many of these kinds of mobs at once – or, in worst case scenarios, simply run away.

At this point the game should be called kite wars 2 and melee weapons removed from the game, as kiting is best done with a elephant gun on repeat. And perhaps implement a proper mouse aim.

It is downright silly. ANet have made very sure that players can’t grief other players by CC (long recharge, short duration), nor mobs where it would be a practical option (Defiant on anything champion or stronger).

Yet every trash mob from level 30 onwards seems to have something they can spam every 5-10 seconds. And with the aggro system being what it is, you usually get 3 or more running at you if you attack one of them.

Never mind if something spawns out of view that packs a pull or similar, hello waypoint and armor damage…

I wanted to have a but of a look around Southsun today and climbed a watch tower along the barricade/homestead.

A futile effort tho, as the only thing i could see from up there was the back of my characters head. This because the camera bumped into the tower roof and so came very up close and personal.

If i managed to hit just the right angle however i could get it to snap past the roof edge, showing me the potential field of view if the roof would fade rather than the camera bump.

The problem is not the control spam directly, it is the amount of mobs clustered together with it. Especially when bigger mobs have a special boon that makes them virtually impervious to control spam.

Never mind that a single control effect landing can make or break a PVP duel, because of the health each side has. Mobs on the other hand, even trash mobs, can simply ride trough multiple applications of control because of their health pool.

meaning that control on mobs are borderline worthless, while control on characters are potentially overly effective. Especially when it comes from a recently spawned mob right outside of view while you’re trying to avoid the stuff from the big mob you’re already in a fight with.

This is what made early Orr so infuriating. Masses of mobs with pulls, knockdowns and so on. Especially as aggroing one meant you would get 3+ of them running towards you.

Thing is that with the focus of the game on active defense, you need to really be able to focus on specific mobs so you can avoid the big attacks.

I had previously been furious with the champ at the end of the svanir chain in wayfinders, but actually found myself enjoying it once. This was when i was doing it with only one other player, and because of my build the champ focused on me the whole time.

This allowed me to focus on tells and learn the pattern. This because there was no other mobs running around, nor any players spamming massive particle effects.

I honestly do not see why ANet felt the need to give big mobs defiant, as usually they simply end up being swamped and held in place by the mass of melee range targets. Unless they wanted to avoid one or two people champ farming by control locking. Not that the drops are conductive towards that anyways.

lorazcyk.8927:

Anet said it’s working as intended, right? But someone said that left click and right click have different functions?
I don’t see the difference. I know that holding the left mouse button moves the camera without changing your direction, and the right mouse button moves the camera as well as your direction. But I don’t see a difference for the clicks themselves. They both target, and they both target everything. Oh, right mouse click doesn’t de-select, I guess.

Left click selects only, while right click selects and trigger whatever you have set as autoattack. Right click is hard coded to be the “interact” click, a single click to both select something and trigger whatever “F” action it has.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Currently the game automatically deselects targets that are off screen

Only happen if you have unchecked the “promote skill target” option.

What that one do is deselect a target that was selected via it being hit with a targetable skill, when said target finds itself outside your front arc.

You can test this on the LA dummies. Line one up with a ranged attack, but do not select it via mouse or tab. Start attacking with whatever autoattack you have, and start turning the camera to either side. The dummy do not even have to leave camera view to be deselected.

Ground targeting have a bug where if the mouse pointer is resting on top of any UI element (target data, chat, minimap, toolbar, anything with a solid background really) the targeting circle will default to right under the characters feet. I have wasted many a necromancer mark that way.

I have reported it both via the in game reporter and on the sub-forum, and so far i have seen no reaction from ANet on it.

Narcemus.1348:

I agree

West Border – Caledon Forest (portal to Morgan’s Spiral)
North Border – Tengu Wall perhaps… We don’t know how much they secluded themselves.
East Border – Sparkfly Swamp (Portal there as well)
South Border – Prolly similar to how it is now with strong currents.

Hmm, i would not mind an alternative route into Sparkfly.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Spread it east a little, and there’s a pre-existing path from Sparkfly Fen into a rock wall (which makes little sense – makes more sense if it were a rockslide look, but it’s one large solid single cliff) which can link to Southsun Cove. To the western side of Southsun, the map goes right next to Caledon Forest and The Grove, a slight alteration to Sleive’s Inlet and you go to Southsun – add a little peninsula to connect it, no differently than adding Cragstead. And before one makes a problem of a level 6 area going into level 80 area: Wayfarer and Snowden go into Frostgorge (15 and 17/19 into 70/75).

Never mind that you can stroll straight into L40-50 mobs from Hoelbrak, by taking the south exit into Dredgehaunt Cliffs.

Isslair.4908:

Oxymus.5241:

if you ask 10 ppla with same classes then 7/10 of them wearing the same armor look just different stats….boring!

Well it’s a prblem of people actually.
I don’t know why, but most of dungeon runners wear arah set with abyssal dye. Most norns I see wear the same old t3 cultural, it’s so dumb.

Most people in this game don’t care about looks at all. All they care about is status. Like the more expensive some piece of armor is, the more peopl would wear it. It really bothers me, but I don’t think adding more skins will lessen the amount of abyssal+arah clones.

I see more people with one or more piece of COF than anything else. But perhaps the masses of eye catching fireballs help in that regard.

Honestly, i think ANet shot themselves in the foot with the transmutation system.

1. if a item is L80, be it white or be it purple, it require a transmutation crystal (previously know as a fine transmutation stone).

2. said transmutation crystal is insanely rare unless you feel like converting gold to gems or spend cash on gems. And there is no way to cram transmutation stones into the forge and get crystal back.

3. each transmutation is “destructive” in that the old look or stats are lost. so if you have a expensive item, and you want to experiment with the stats, you need a second item if you want to preserve the look but not loose the original stats.

all that ads up to a whole lot of effort for something that is simply cosmetic.

It struck me the other day that the outlines of the trenchcoats and the light armor “skirts” seems be oddly similar. Almost like they are simply different textures on the same overall model.

One alternative to new weapons could be more skills on existing weapons. This in a similar fashion to utility skills, in that each weapon skill slot would have a pop up menu of skill alternatives.

With each slot having its own range of alternatives, balancing would be easier than if we could mix and match freely. This while still allowing more flexibility than the honestly rigid weapon bound system of present.

Sounds like how they intended the Orr maps to be played from day one. Just wish there was a bigger incentive regarding staying put, be it XP, gold, or whatever other they can think of.

Would perhaps be interesting if people could leave more lasting notes on the world map, so that large scale, cross zone coordination were possible. Not even sure if most even know they can draw on the map.

Nice to see it on video in a repeatable fashion.

Khisanth.2948:

darkace.8925:

Casual is a state of mind, not a time card. One can casually play four or more hours a day

Mount Maelstrom is a great map for that!

I find that map annoying. going eastwards from west map edge you have a strip of risen infested land, the vulcano, another risen infested strip, the cove filled with krait, and up north east the massive inquest facility. the place is all in all a pain to navigate.

I can see why they go with dungeons from a story telling stand point. Easier to pace out a story that way without being swamped by random interference. My issue is with them being the culmination of events that so far have been available for soloing.

Especially as they have all this code in the engine for scaling mobs up and down depending on the number of people present anyways. Given all that, requiring 5 people minimum (unless you want to demonstrate your “skills” on stream and recording) seems paradoxical.

And that is before you account for glaring issues like having the whole dungeon group being dumped the moment the group leader leaves. Never mind if someone is busy with a final cutscene they want to catch or something, leader leaves, everyone out of the instance (no chest for you, laggard).

The open world was at the outset set up to minimize griefing, but vote kicks and the above mentioned leader issues with group instances brings griefing right back. Never mind all the debate over using magic find gear in groups. If things could be run solo, with the appropriate scaling, none of this would be a issue.

Btw, i have 2 characters so far sitting at the final personal story mission simply because it leads me into a dungeon. I have so far soloed all the rest of their stories, so why the heck am i required to team up with others for the final leg?

Never mind that unless i make sure that my character is the team leader for that final leg, some other character will do the final cutscenes. To me that is a bigger violation of the “personal story” than all the bruhaha over trahearne.

Furikake.4052:

Life Transfer and Egg-laying are supposed to be interrupted, only in theory however.

CC in this game is horribly designed for open world PVE, because the implementation of Defiant stack is a punishment for using CC rather than a reward.

I was in a zerg, interrupting the champion and causing 63 stacks of Defiant due to scaling. This means one single untimely CC mistake will result in a very harsh punishment.

CC won’t work for open world PVE for these reasons:

1) PUGs can never be corrdinated in removing Defiant.

2) It takes just ONE CC mistake to screw up the whole removal effort.

3) The event scaling for the number of Defiant stacks exponentially aggravates the punishment.

4) For many open world champions, soft CCs like cripple, chill, blind, etc only last for some length close to 0 sec.

That’s why most people in open world PVE don’t bring CC weapons or utilities.

P.S. On the subject of the egg-laying of the champion spider, the anticipation part of the animation is the same as its web-pull, egg-injection, and even normal attacks. So, trying to interrupt the egg-laying is a risky gamble.

Never mind that even with defiant up you will see “interrupt” popups when a CC is applied, giving the erroneous impression that you actually interrupted something.

This similar to how you will see the combo heart every time a projectile finisher pass thru a field, even tho said projectile only have a 20% chance to actually produce a finisher result.

Funset.7893:

Galtrix.7369:

I decided to move on to Neverwinter.

Ive never seen so clunky game in my life. How do you people even like it?

Working CC for one. Love how i can win a fight with a big mob via a couple of skills that lock him down, rather than having to run circles all the time because the CC is miss it if you blink but the cooldown is half the fight.

Zackie.8923:

can we have some really cool knight in shiny armor skins?

all these creepy risen blight growing stuff gives me the jitters

GW2 for you, fridge horror galore.

The elephantine irony in all this is that ANet keeps boosting various aspects of the warrior, because it is the worst performing SPVP profession.

It all boils down to them having SPVP as something of a main focus, and you can see why now that they finally got spectator mode working. The web is exploding with various groups setting up tournaments that they plan to stream the finals off, and are offering various prizes for the winning teams.

So while the lions share of the art effort has gone into the expansive PVE world, game balance have had a laser focus on SPVP.

ANet is however starting to own up to the fact that this did not work out as they had hoped, and we may well see various skills get numeric tweaks for different game modes (PVE, WVW, SPVP) in the following months.

Mirta.5029:

I’m soooo getting those when they come out!
Regretting not having a character that uses shield right now, that blinking eye on it is soo cool!

Sadly the only shield using profession with skills that are worth using are warrior. Guardian has better shield skills on focus, and the less i say about engineer the better…

Getting a shellfish vibe from this.

Just wish they would fix engineer med kit #1 so that it didn’t get interrupted. If you hit 1 2 3 quickly to drop all of them, for self heal on the run, #1 goes on cooldown because it gets interrupted by #2.

Deamhan.9538:

nekitten234:

As I commented here (did not saw this thread) I do agree that combat can be made much better.

OTOH I agree with Vayne that going back into “Buld Wars” is not the solution, at least not for the “majority” of players.

In short, AI changes to the PvE can do wonders to the combat feel without even touching current system.

As forums are nice place for the (imaginary) wish lists:

Remove dodge from the heavy classes! PLEASE! : its stupid seeing character wearing a ton of armor dodging around — replace it with real blocks (same endurance), they should be able to take hit one way or another and not jump like rabbits around.

This. I like this. Although if I may expand upon it a bit….

The “dodge” mechanic is somewhat bad but it is bad on the AI side of it. It’s not the fact that we can dodge that is bad, but rather that you basically have to stare at the screen without so much as blinking because some of the attacks that require you to do come without warning and have a fraction of a second cast time.

Just remember that given any cast time you have to work with, subtract .08 seconds from it. Most don’t know it but even our brains run at a frequency when it comes to processing information. 80ms. In short, we gather up 80ms worth of information then process the ‘packet’ at once.

Add on each person’s unique delay in reflexes, motor skills, etc. etc.

Then there is ping.

Then there is all of the particle effects taking place that can mask the mobs action causing you to miss the, sometimes, subtle move that indicates what they are going to do.

Never mind facing down multiple mobs, where dodging one just find yourself facing the end of the windup of another. And the PVE part love throwing multiple mobs at you.

It all just a little too twichy.

Yep.

Rant aside and more to the point of expanding on the idea above…

If “dodge” was something that was more unique to the class. Block or parry would work great for a warrior and a guardian. Keep the current dodge for ranger. Thiefs could phase out / stealth for a second. Elementalists can “block” with a large rock. Mesmers can phase in some way.

And perhaps some way to sustain a defensive action rather than have it last a predefined number of seconds. So that in a group setting you can go “oh snap” and raise your guard while the rest of the group peel them off you or some other option come off recharge (the latter also applying for solo play). Right now your only option for this is to run around in circles like a headless chicken. To me that just adds to the workload rather than giving the player a controlled breather to reassess.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

How is a person who’s never done this b4 supposed to actually do it?

I’d probably start by reading the wiki entry and then maybe some other walkthroughs.

Then I’d organize a party and make sure everyone understands the key mechanics to each encounter, and plan the party build around that.

And IMO, that is as kitten backwards as it gets. A game should be solvable from within the game, anything else is insane.

Then again the MMO dungeonering attitude in general seems to be that you need to sit through a college course on each dungeon, and ace the exam, to be allowed to even be considered into a group.

What is this, a game or a job?

You can in some sense measure ease of play by the number of different buttons that needs to be pressed during a fight to maintain DPS.

Warriors speced for critical damage (zerker) is very easy in that regard as you’re more or less bouncing between 2-3 buttons.

Elementalists however end up jumping all over the keyboard because of the need to mix attunements, fields and finishers to get the DPS.

This is a two in one balance attempt from ANet.

1. reduce the effectiveness of boon bunkers in SPVP.
2. provide a reason for playing warrior in SPVP.

It has kitten all to do with PVE or WVW.

In essence, ANet is still pegged on turning SPVP into a esport.

One big issue, imo, with the whole transmute gear skin thing is that your level 80 items suddenly need a very different and very scarce (unless you go for gems) consumable. I had plans for my toons looks until i discovered that, and could not bring myself to run around in 79’s after having dumped a fair bit of gold on a stats set.

And that is likely why so many sport COF; transmuting is to expensive just for changing the looks, and the gear carries zerker stats.

Only guessing but i think he may have bought all he can already, and is asking if he can have even more.