Guild Wars 2

I have come to suspect that whoever set up the achievement didn’t know that the periscopes were only once pr day pr account.

Seems like ANet made trouble for themselves when they made the grenades work as a multiple projectile attack.

Shootsfoot.9276:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

maddoctor.2738:

emikochan.8504:

Well AA doesn’t do much on Ele

Staff skill1 attacks are way similar to skills we see in other games, not auto attacks, Fireball has aoe damage – actually it’s the same as Fireball in GW1, Stoning applies weakness, Water blast heals in the radious and Chain Lightning hits multiple targets, I could hardly say these attacks are in any way or form similar to “auto attacks” in GW1 or any other MMO, where they only do an animation and deal a bit of damage, nothing more.

And then you remember that there’s more weapons than just staff. Scepter: water’s autoattack is the worst in the game, having terrible damage and no special effects whatsoever, air’s is about the second worst since it’s dps still isn’t even that good if you let the whole thing fire, and in the meantime it prevents you from dodging or else you lose your damage output. Dagger: both fire and air are very plain, no chain, no special effect, and is basically just a regular melee attack that looks flashier.

Well, to be fair, water isn’t really intended to be a DPS attunement.

Making it a pointless attunement except for dagger #5, thanks to how the numbers work out right now.

carabidus.6214:

Maybe our end game characters can finally start to “feel” epic, instead of succumbing to common dungeon trash, which often hits harder than the boss himself.

Or get swamped by a horde of low damage mobs unless your basic attacks have AOE characteristics (hello GS).

Btw, i find it interesting that there is no gear that has a combo of toughness, vitality and healing power. You can get plenty that has either toughness or vitality paired up with healing power, but the third is usually a offensive attribute like power or precision.

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

SadieDeAtreia.8912:

Milennin.4825:

Strange, didn’t know they removed the blogs. Maybe to prevent people from digging up old ‘promises’ they made in some of them (such as account-wide dyes).

I’d go with this theory until someone proves otherwise.

Because it’s easier to go with a completely unproven theory than to not judge. Says tons.

Have you read some of those blog posts? It’s pretty obvious why they pulled them. Much more kitten than the “manifesto” compared to what we have.

I’ve read all of the blog posts. Every single one of them. It’s not obvious why they pulled them. It’s your opinion why. Some of the blog posts are years old though and probably not relevant to an evolving game.

No, it’s pretty clear as to why. There are lots of things they made definitive stands against that now appear in the game. Some things specifically contrary to what you continue to say.

It’s only clear to you, and maybe a couple of guys like you. As you get older, you start seeing more shades of gray and less black and white. I hope you remember some of these conversations when you’re my age.

Odd, my experience is the opposite. As people age they become more set in their ways, resulting in more black and white thinking (also known as their way or the highway).

phys.7689:

yes people are exagerating, however, from my research, a berseker full warrior gets 13.68 dmg reduction, whereas a full max toughness build gets 49.6 dmg reduction. this means, say a monster hits for 10 000 dmg
berserker warrior gets hit for
8.632k
knights warrior gets hit for
5.04k
but now we look at protection, which essentially allows you to take 66% dmg
so the defensive dude is taking 3.3k dmg
the berserker is taking 5.6k
so the berserker is taking 70% more dmg roughly, now not only that but when you start looking at heals
the most effiecient healing skill is giving 281 heals per sec with no healing from what i have seen
this means the toughness warrior needs 11.7 seconds to fully recover from a hit

the berserker warrior needs 19.9 seconds. this is basically an extra dodge in terms of damage mitigation, and this is only including your basic heals, its not including heals on shouts, team healing regeneration etc.

So while its only 70% more damage taken, in overall survivability its a pretty big deal, with the nature of heals, i think it could be the difference between being nigh unkillable and not having to stop attacking very often, and having to back off constantly.

Of course, how much one actually needs all that defensive stats is questionable, this isnt a game where you are guaranteed to get hit as much. But its not that these stats arent effective, they are a huge difference in how much dmg your team can sustain and mitigate through heals.

The devil in the details here are that protection is a straight percentage decrease. In other words, the more armor you already have on the more armor it in effect adds.

Wethospu.6437:

Lafiel.9372:

Lafiel.9372:

—
Berserker gear pve is only strong if the person who wears it is skilled. Others who wear it just end up dying 2-3 seconds into a boss fight – constantly.

How much stronger do you think PVT-gear makes you? About 2 times stronger? So you last 4-6 seconds instead?

A LOT stronger (try 10-20x). I can face tank most mobs for a long time wearing “knights” not pvt. with berserkers, no way.
—
Maybe missing your main point again but scroll up , check my calculations and see how many stats you need in order to get 10 times stronger (not to mention 20…), it’s monstrous.

That would require a total armor value in the 20000-40000 range, right?

CMF.5461:

What if…

What if there was no auto attack and only cool downs?
Attack animations could trigger to “look” like fighting where weapons clash and people move and swing without doing damage so it looks like sparing and “melee”, but the only way to do damage is by using cool downs.

You got something like that in SWTOR. Looks fancy but other than that it is a classic style mmorpg.

I could have sworn that you can’t pick up multiple projectile combos. Only the first one actually apply. Never mind the similar issue with stacked combo fields, with only the most recent being available to finishers. As for area control, may work for SPVP capture points. But forget it for PVE (banzai mobs) and mostly for WVW.

DrixTrix.7168:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

TwoBit.5903:

To be fair, the designers probably didn’t know what they were getting into when they decided to do “active combat.”

They clearly didnt. Despite the fact that they added jumping and dodging and swimming, this game is still based too much around skills to be considered “action” combat.

Now all we have is a poor excuse for either.

In your opinion. I actually quite like the combat.

Some people prefer shallow easy combat. That, however, is not something for a developer to be proud of.

The fact that’s it’s shallow is ALSO your opinion. I don’t particularly find the combat shallow. And I think Anet has made a game to be proud of. Of course that’s also just an opinion.

Nope, wrong again. By definition the combat is shallow. Maybe you should read up on that.

i think it is shallow if you don’t make use of combo fields and all the other abilities extra effects, our definition of shallow is very different, and thats what it comes down to, not facts, opinions.

There are a few fields that do interesting things when comboed, the rest simply do the same old boons and conditions in larger amounts.

DrixTrix.7168:

for an MMO i think the combat is extreamly active and action packed, dodging abilities is very rewarding thats active enough for me we can move while casting anything and we can fly about the screen and combo with fields……its very active to me for an MMO.

going afk on a boss is simply because the bosses don’t scale properly and don’t have enough 1 shot raid wipe abilities, go to grenth if you go afk there you will die, or balthazaar.

1 shot moves are cheap shots tho. Much rather see things reworked so that you actually have to do something other than pew-pew to get anywhere, but without the overhanging threat of dodge-or-die.

The Claw of Jormag almost gets there, except that it is not 100% invulnerable until certain conditions are met.

Similarly, Tequatl should be invulnerable unless he was blasted by the cannon. Right now people just slip round the wall and stand there pew-pew-ing, avoiding the odd mob and knockdown tentacle.

Never mind issues with dodge-or-die related to lag (hello mass gatherings) or culling (hello champion karka roll during event).

Active defense is fine for SPVP scale battles. But falls flat once you have waves upon waves of opponents coming after you. Especially if it is combined with cramped quarters.

marnick.4305:

Cameirus.8407:

marnick.4305:

Jordo.5913:

for instance…in WoW, your skills basically do the same thing…swing your weapon in melee range(chop right)….hit another skill…swing your sword in a different animation(chop left)….hit another skill(overhead chop)….hit another skill(spin chop)

in this game its…..for instance on the greatsword…..autoattack is your chops, skill 2 is chopping on steroids, skill 3 is a mobile whirlwind, skill 4 is a throwing greatsword, skill 5 is a dash uppercut

so each skill does something different other than doing the same thing, just in a different direction

Let’s take guardian greatsword as an example:
1: chop, choppy, aoe chop (spam combo)
2: pbaoe ranged chop
3: jump and blind (no chopping)
4: holy symbol with buff and debuff (no chopping)
5: ranged chop and pull

2 out of 5 don’t chop.
.

And all have some form of dual use. Some blind, distance close, act as CC to pull or interrupt, make combo fields, activate combo fields (whirls and leap), not to mention adding conditons or boons.
Plus with guardian you have virtue activation to throw in there and the associated variability in that due to traits.

Engi shield is the best example of dual-use skills.
4: ranged block or melee blast
5: melee block or ranged attack
No chopping involved.

with pointlessly long cooldowns.

Thing is that direct damage stacks to infinity. Conditions hit a brick wall at 25 stacks, if they stack at all. And they are only really reliable because the AI is too dumb to use removal (tho apparently there is a risen mob that will dump them back in your face if you pile on enough).

Instead what we have is “i roll in the mud, i roll in the mud some more, i roll.. oh crap i am out of endurance!”.

On that note, i am not sure people mean that they can go from full health to zero when they say “one shot”. But there are plenty of bosses, both event and otherwise, that can drop you in a single blow if you have less than full health when it happens.

Never mind that many of such blows are paired up with a launch/blowout/knockdown effect, meaning that you may find yourself with very low health and unable to get out of range of a followup attack.

The mob was level 15 while you’re downscaled to level 8. That is enough to trigger glancing i think.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glancing

Edit: looking at the video some more i see non-crits producing “glancing” over and over, so it seems that’s part of the problem at least.

All in all, people were doing 50% of their normal damage to the mob.

Leo G.4501:

phys.7689:

i say make some of these stats more tied to skills, then people may have more reasons to make interesting choices.

Or they could just increase enemy reg attack speed.

Defensive stats already have an effect on the enemy’s attacks so I don’t think it’d be right to let your skills be affected by a stat that also affects enemy attacks.

They do, but they fight a up hill battle.

Remember that the damage output before armor is weapon power multiplied by power. Meaning that for armor (it divides the result) to have a solid impact it needs to be higher than the power of the attacker. And then you get critical hits, that increase any remaining damage by at least 50%. Meaning that critical hits can quickly cancel out whatever impact armor had.

Never mind that while a hylek can produce a perfect stream of darts using a blowgun(!), pistol #2 can barely hit a barn wall outside of melee range.

Bhawb.7408:

Vamp builds basically use a bunch of the vamp sigils/runes/food along with up to 30 in blood magic (you can get 3x siphoning +better siphoning) and high crit chance. Looking at your build, it seems like it does all that just fine, it’d really just be tweaking to fit your playstyle and maybe fixing anything you find in game.

Sad thing is that until they put in the timer on the life steal foods simply going any high crit build would outperform going all in with vamp traits. Even now the traits are only really effective when going 1v1 on trash mobs or if you happen to get a bunch of them into a massive pile of wells.

Now if they picked up anything at all from healing power, they may have made sense…

Sadly the little rodent is balanced around the lich mark that spawns 5 of his kind at once. That swarm can be nasty because it spawns them right next to a viable target, resulting in stacks of bleed fairly quickly.

One thing ANet could do with it was to turn it into a boon like charge. In essence when something dies near us, rather than spawn the rodent we get a token that will spawn one when we next attack a mob within a certain time.

Tho i don’t think people would mind as much if it didn’t trigger the minion loss lines each time it dies!

Wish it was broken down into individual videos for weapons, because i would be very interesting in dagger #1 but finding it in a 20 minute video (if it is there at all) is a pain. This because i swear i have seen the golem sit there while i sliced and diced a mob multiple times, and that was with me opening up with the full dagger chain without him budging.

that you get different behavior for different weapons for no rhyme or reason is annoying, as you really need consistent predictable behavior without spending hours in the mist training grounds drilling every last possible permutation into your reflexes.

Right now it seems ANet can’t make up their mind if they want us to adapt our setups to the situation, or run one build that we have practiced katas with. With different behaviors on different skills we are basically required to do things kata style, but at the same time it seems we should be swapping weapons, utilities, maybe even major traits, to fit the situation.

Thing about grenades is that they hit harder than rifle, matches its range (1200-1500 depending on traits), and is circular AOE rather than pierce. This means that it is the hardest hitting long range attack we have.

I like the look of pistol/shield, but feel that i am hampering myself damage-wise unless i run rifle.

Ambrecombe.4398:

I have tested two play styles, I have a Condition Warrior with a full Rampager set and a Turret Engineer with a mix of Rabid/Apothecary set.

While yes it is possible to do any content with a full glasscanon build, I saw something very particular, I was always able to be the last guy alive when I was playing with my Warrior. It is funny, because monsters weren’t realy paying attention to me while I was dishing out tons of damage. All I had to do was to watch out boss animations and dodge whenever I needed.

While on the other side of the fence, when I was playing with my Engineer, it was a whole different story. I could survive very well a lot of encounters, give a bit of support for my team and myself, but I also drew a lot more attention (wich is needed if I want my turrets to stay alive). During those fights a lot of my teammates surviability (playing glasscanon builds) was related to the fact I was kiting ennemies a lot, blinding them with smoke fields and stunning or immobilising them when needed. Able to soak up more damage also helped a lot when fighting veterants and champion NPCs and I see a very big difference whenever I go down and they need to stay alive on their own. It usualy don’t end well.

Yeah, the aggro system is not exactly helping. If you happen to have just 1 more armor than the zerkers you end up being a mob magnet, no matter if you can handle it or not.

I swear i have seen mobs cross the room to get at me while multiple people are in melee with them. And that was with me plinking away as a staff necro at max range.

Recently i had the dubious fortune of accompanying some friends on a COF run. This with me playing a recently L80 engineer in a random hodgepodge of story gear, while they were rocking exotic sets. Even so i ended up the mob magnet, first with the slave driver effigy and then the acolyte room. The latter being particularly insane as i swear i had close to 10 mobs following me around.

Milennin.4825:

I have no idea why they thought placing these in starter zones was a good idea. I mean, they’re merely annoying for a level 80 who knows how to dodge/use stability. But for a new player who’s just going into the open world on his first character, still learning the basics, and getting chain knock-back’d over again by these things must be plain frustrating. I know I’d hate it.

The problem, imo, is not to know to dodge, but that unlike other starter mobs with knockdown there is in essence no tell. Compare the periscopes to your average ettin for instance. Then again, even the adult vurms can be a pain. This because you do not dodge when the circle shows up, but when the rock actually launch. This because if you dodge out of the circle the rock will just follow you. kinda counter-intuitive.

I will never understand the mentality behind loot farming. Closest i have come i trying to play some asian mmos, and i was bored to breaking point within hours.

After a dev response over at the living world subforum, i wonder if whoever set up the monthly was not aware that the periscopes were limited to 1 log pr account pr day. Meaning that he or she expected that people would be farming a small number of periscopes in rotation. Still, there are actually 50 periscopes spread over 5 zones. So one can finish it in 3 days. But that means referencing a location map and keeping notes about the ones destroyed.

As long as ANet insist on balancing with SPVP as the focus, and have a apparent vendetta against SPVP bunkers, non-DPS builds will suffer in the other modes.

This then in compounded by access to various ways to fully invulnerable for variable durations, starting with dodge and moving on to block, aegis, blind and perhaps others i forget about.

Periscope, sure. But it seems the molten mobs that spawn on some of them (from the looks of it, 3 of the 10 in each zone gets assigned said spawn each server restart) still have knockdown/launch/blowout. Never mind reports that some of the mobs spawned are overleveled for the zone.

That reminds me of Champions online. There you have a block system where while held down you take sharply reduced damage but can’t attack. You can also use the same key to counter a CC effect, and gain a short immunity after doing so.

The cutoff is nonsensical. Item level 79 and below, transmutation stone. Level 80, transmutation crystal. This no matter if the item is basic or legendary.

Been doing it more focused lately as i discovered i was close to getting the laurels needed for Goedulf.

MistaMike.7356:

For the amount of blood and sweat invested in this project so far, I think they would be crazy not continuing it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you can’t expect to achieve WoW status overnight. They have sold very very well for an MMO post-wow, they must still be working on the game.

Given modern management, Rome would never have been built in the first place…

Only reason i grab the medkit is the 5 second shorter cooldown on the toolbelt heal vs the elixir. Having it as a kit is cumbersome in the first place, that you have to run forward to pick up the kits to heal yourself do not help, and #1 is buggy as it can be interrupted by the other 2!

The timing seems to coincide with the daily achievement reset.

I speculate that there is a spike in logins related to that, and so whatever part of their server setup is handling the logins, and storage of character states, end up swamped in what amounts to a DDOS.

This part then ends up rebooted, but loose whatever character states that has yet to reach non-volatile storage in a verified manner.

RebelYell.7132:

Mesmers have a better minion bombing mechanic That cinches it for me.

Why those skinned critters can’t learn to run towards a target before going pop, when transparent magical constructs can, is a puzzle…

The timing seems to line up with when the daily achievement resets. Mass login ddos?

panikos.8309:

Necromancer’s elites are either useless pets or transformations that disable all your skills including healing skills and give you some pretty useless ones instead which maybe 1 of them is useful. Only the grenth aura thingy doesnt transform you but it only lasts for 15secs or so and has a 3 min cd.. really Anet? I rarely use elites. Gw1 elites where game changing and actually important for your build.

Err, the Reaper of Grenth elite is a human racial elite, not something related to the Necromancer profession. But honestly i wonder why they put a timer on the transformations. With the lack of a self heal, and with the NUKE ME! sign that is the large neon green reaper, i am unsure how much harm being in the form until killed or dropped would do (tho rampaging across the PVE maps as a reaper may be pushing it).

Seems like it lines up quite nicely with when the daily refreshes. Perhaps there is a login spike that ends up ddosing the servers?

Knowledge based mechanics can be a pain to balance. You need them to be discoverable, yet threatening. If they are one but not the other they become boring or annoying. Boring when they are easy to discover but not threatening. annoying when they are threatening but hard to discover (hello dodge-or-die).

One can quite quickly end up with a dungeon that requires research, rehearsals and long quizzes before being allowed into a group. Something that is highly discouraging for a new player.

Starbird.4029:

Quick Mouse.7635:

I think one of the things that would make boss battles epic would be Touhou-style aoes

If you are unfamiliar with Touhou, see attached:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Nb5Ohbt1Sg

Obviously not as insane, but something similar adapted to the available mechanics would be epic IMO.

There should be several different aoe’s with unique patterns, used in no particular order but with distinguishable charge ups.

Jormag phase 1 has this to some degree, but because of the “safe spot” most people dont notice.

This sounds cool, but WoW tried this sometimes – all you get is a boss with a ‘you must have sub 50ms latency or don’t even bother joining the raid’ check.

Also, very few would even bother trying melee. Just switch to ranged, lock on to the boss and plink away with autofire until done. In the end it would simply be a test of player concentration over time, something some of the boss fights already demonstrate via the dodge-or-die attacks and large health pools. Get distracted once and you’re down, maybe even defeated.

purpleskies.3274:

It isn’t necessarily the trinity, but the trinity was a way to ensure interdependence, since groups had to work together to accomplish something none of them could individually. DPS, healers and tanks all needed each other because they all lacked in things the others were good at. This interdependence is further seen when you add in the need for support (debuff and buff classes) and CC (like the tank ensuring survival).

GW2 is a system built on being independent. You are responsible for keeping yourself alive and doing damage with very little interacting in a group. Most classes only have 1 or 2 abilities that help increase the damage of the group, so there is a little support. Debuffs are not really in this game other than poison, and bosses are immune/resistant to CC. GW2 has a system that is basically two roles, DPS and DPS with some buffs.

Better dungeon design could help, for example the suit in the dredge fractal requires people have someone working well with the switches and the group people positioning the boss. So it is possible to design around the roles by making the roles specific to the encounter. But no matter what happens this is still a game designed on independence, because if you were interdependent you would have to have required roles filled, which they said they don’t want.

But I also want to say the dungeon design also fails to provide fun mechanics and things like phases to keep the fight from being repetitive, but everyone knows GW2 has very poor boss designs.

Meh, they could get around the whole roles thing if they allowed us to save trait and gear setups in some way. But that would also require that traiting for CC or support/heal could actually have a impact, something it does not at all do right now to avoid bunkers and permaCC in SPVP (yet mobs can easily permaCC us in PVE, just observe the dislike for Orr and periscopes because of this).

Quick Mouse.7635:

What they need is instead of giving bosses random aoe attacks, they should give them really cool patterned aoe a la touhou style. These attacks should be used in no particular order, but have distinguishable power-ups. I think this would make boss encounters epic

3D bullet hell?! Not without dropping the health pool of the bosses drastically and removing target lock fully. Because without that people will just go in, switch to whatever ranged weapon they have, lock on to the boss, and let autofire plink away at the boss while they navigate the red circles of hell.

Shootsfoot.9276:

Acelerion.6820:

We have no trinity but still have bucket-o-hp mobs designed for a trinity system. Re-tooling AI would go a long way.

Agreed.

This would be a decent opportunity for tweaking. While we do have a soft trinity, (damage, control, support) it would be interesting to see all those mobs gathered up by the control and support guys in the group, while the damage group does their part in taking them down.

As it stands now the current strategery is “just run, don’t fight.”

Not going to happen as long as ANet insist on balancing everything around SPVP. This because strong control end up with people permaCCed in SPVP, and strong support result in bunker builds (bordering on SPVP heresy).

Also, running (mobility) is supposed to be a feature in this game. /s

MLieBennett.9031:

Glass Cannon Berserker builds get the best of both worlds, at the cost of being … well Glass Cannons.

And why they love their protection…

You can’t list sells that undercut vendors, but you can place buy orders that do so.

Does it help to move it to the top once and back down?

Sarrs.4831:

Also, tweaking up racial elites would be cool. Don’t see why nornforms shouldn’t be at least a damage increase when you use them.

I suspect that part comes out of race choices being pure cosmetics in SPVP, and ANet not wanting us to get too attached to our racial choice (or getting debates about the best race&profession combos). This because they cling to the idea that you should be able to jump between PVE and PVP with little disruption in build understanding. But if so they really need to beef up the AI smarts.

Wolfheart.1938:

While there’s definitely classes that have poor choices as far as elites go ( Engi ) the situation is not as bad as some posters seem to think. Plague Form useless? LOLWHAT

While not useless, plague is very situational. It is nice in PVE where the mobs are dumb enough to stay within range so you can keep them blinded and poisoned. But in PVP anyone with a bit of sense will immobilize you and get out of range.