Guild Wars 2

The long cooldowns are there so we will consider the situation before using them. This in complete reversal to GW1 where elites were build defining skills that everything else you selected revolved around.

Actually i think ANet see swiftness as a defensive boon, not a travel aid. This because they are hell bent on making movement our primary defensive tool.

Katai.6240:

Necromancer elites are pretty terrible. Plague form and Lich form strip you of your utilities, so they actually hurt when I need to put down wells and junk. Flesh Golem just dies…

You forget that as both lich and plague are transforms, they send all necro minions to cooldown on trigger. Never mind that the duration of lich is so short that you only get to use most of the skills once. Oh, and you are now a 3 meters tall, neon green reaper with no healing skill.

SirDrygan.1823:

Only one word. “LOOPHOLE”.

more like wormhole, or perhaps misthole

Supposedly there are 50 scopes spread around the norn and charr zones, including places as far afield as Iron Marches and Fireheart Rise.

Would not surprise me if there are even some down in Fields of Ruin and Timberline Falls…

Honestly tho, i would recommend ignoring the periscopes and go do 12 different jumping puzzles.

Here is a list of supposedly easy ones to complete: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1bjk07/puzzle_jumper_monthly_achievement/

Edit: i stand corrected, here is a list of zones and pericope locations within each of them: http://dulfy.net/2013/03/26/gw2-sonic-periscope-audio-log-guide/

if the mouse pointer is near a target, meaning it s getting a name and health bare overhead, the targeting will stay active while moving the camera.

This will result in two potential targets being highlighted at the same time, one for the mouse (even tho pointer is not visible) and one for the camera center.

First i thought it was only the mob info area that did it, because that one is constantly in the way when i try to lay down ground targeted skills from a distance (i angle the camera so that i can tell where on the ground the circle actually is).

But recently i discovered the same was true for the mission area on the right side, and apparently even the interface row on the top left. Perhaps even the chat window if i set it to opaque.

what i mean is that if the mouse is over any of the UI when a ground targeted spell is activated, the targeting circle is not found where the mouse should be in the world, but under my characters feet!

I noticed this because i am not playing with fast ground targeting, but instead double tap skill keys to quickly fire off the skills when i think i do not need to move the location. Like say trying to layer two necromancer marks on top of each other to trigger a combo.

But when doing so i sometimes noticed the mark ending up below my character rather than below the mob.

I have yet to track down why, but more and more often i find that the mouse loose ability to interact with objects in the game world until i log back in.

This means no highlighting or changing of pointer on mouseover, left click targeting, double click interaction or right click interaction.

Curiously i can still operate the game interface when this happens, so i can still do things like click skills, change options and sort through my inventory.

So we got one error about stowing a off-hand weapon away, and one about failing to apply an aura.

Kimbald.2697:

Tool kit #1 is slow… but in a power build it hits like a truck!

It also cleaves.

Ision.3207:

Voodoo.1709:

I just don’t see how adding a class that is more oriented towards group healing would hurt. It would please those that enjoy that role but would not be required for dungeons for all the reasons you all have already mentioned.

Because those classes ALREADY exist … For example: a deeply water traited staff Ele with very specific set of utilities and a very specific skill rotation can do wonders for a coordinated group of players that are famliar with a dungeon.

Same for Guardian and Engineers … hell, even the DPS monster known as, “the Warrior” can be a banner/shout beast if he desires … so a dedicated healing/regen/aegis alternative ALREADY exists – and in spades. So anyone that likes those roles has a plethora of choices …

The only thing a TRUE 100% heal the group class might do for this game is possibly make PUGGING easier (assuming he knows what he is doing, and assuming he LIKES the role …) … but the cost of having a class like this would be ruinous to every single other aspect of this game. Not to mention the gigantic overhaul of the core game the devs would have to make, as well as an overhaul to every single professions healing and regen mechanics …

Basically, if Anet wants to destroy their own game … then feel free to make a LotRO “Minstrel” class and put it in this game. Normally I would think they would never even entertain such nonsense, but hey … ya never know …

While the healing is there, in theory, the numbers just do not do the focus justice.

Put on as much healing gear and go full traits and you may bump the healing output pr skill with 1300. That is if the skill in question get 1:1 boost from HP, but so far i have found precious few that do.

Edit: and one of those that do are ironically the one that elementalist can trigger via evasive arcana…

Shootsfoot.9276:

But I do think somebody gearing for support or control should feel that is their main function, while currently it feels as if everybody is primarily damage with support and control as a secondary function.

This! Right now when gearing for anything but DPS, the tradeoff is simply not worth it. The survivability or control do not change much while the DPS drops like a rock.

And in my opinion this comes from ANet being on a bunker vendetta in SPVP, spilling over into PVE via the shared mechanics. And also ANet’s insistence on movement being defense (and control, according to part of the community). All fine and dandy for fights with minimal chance of bumping into random mobs (SPVP) or open fields (WVW), but breaks down fast once you start sticking your head into caves and other cramped spaces with aggressive mobs around every corner.

Basically the problem is not just with big bosses but also getting multiple trash mobs on your behind, and your options for survival are kite in circles until the cows come home (hope you brought a ranged attacks you can fire over you shoulder, because running backwards in a no go thank to the speed difference) or drop them on the spot via AOE spikes. And the latter option are what warriors, and to a lesser extent guardians, excel at thanks to their greatsword coming with a inherent cleave on their #1.

Never mind that you can have aggressive objects stat remain yellow, the same color as non-aggressive mobs…

Mod lock in 3.. 2.. 1..

The level of condescending in here can be carved with a focus…

On 3, what the higher numbers allow for is more fine grained maths. Observe the hidden modifiers on healing power that various skills have and so on.

Frotee.2634:

As for respeccing costs: Have you tried testing those in the Mists? You can get runes and armor for free there I believe.

The numbers there and in PVE do not line up exactly.

Kingfisher.7213:

You’d need something like magical veil to help explain why the Norn refugees set up ragged camps on the road, rather than seek the safety among their brethren in fortified Cragstead (just a few steps up a hill).

Heh, i keep getting the feeling, while traversing the game world, that the maps should really be 1000x bigger than they are. Part of the problem of running a persistent world vs running instances i guess.

Mirta.5029:

digiowl.9620:

Mirta.5029:

RebelYell.7132:

Mirta.5029:

I would rather it would not go to trinity. Ever. You can still heal as a heal dedicated character and you can still tank just fine using your utility blocks, dodges and piling toughness on yourself. I like not being forced into a role.

Toughness scales poorly, endurance runs out quickly if you like to dodge, and all blocks are associated with significant cooldowns rather than passives :[

you don’t dodge at random, you time your dodges, yes, there’s cooldowns, that’s why you use your abilities in an intelligent manner instead of spamming them. It also helps to learn the bosses mechanics so you would know when to dodge, when to block, etc.

Problem with that is that crits from a bigger mob can land you in just as much trouble as their dodge-or-die attacks. Never mind that it is not always easy to spot the tells through the fog of particles that can form around a mobs, especially if there are a couple of elementalists around.

sorry to tell you, but I think that you should play more to become more familiar with mob mechanics, because me and my boyfriend can get by without dodging at random.

I do not have the mental capacity to memorize the behavior pattern of every last mob in the game. Nor do i have the detachment needed to run a single dungeon path enough that i can do it with my eyes closed.

Mirta.5029:

RebelYell.7132:

Mirta.5029:

I would rather it would not go to trinity. Ever. You can still heal as a heal dedicated character and you can still tank just fine using your utility blocks, dodges and piling toughness on yourself. I like not being forced into a role.

Toughness scales poorly, endurance runs out quickly if you like to dodge, and all blocks are associated with significant cooldowns rather than passives :[

you don’t dodge at random, you time your dodges, yes, there’s cooldowns, that’s why you use your abilities in an intelligent manner instead of spamming them. It also helps to learn the bosses mechanics so you would know when to dodge, when to block, etc.

Problem with that is that crits from a bigger mob can land you in just as much trouble as their dodge-or-die attacks. Never mind that it is not always easy to spot the tells through the fog of particles that can form around a mobs, especially if there are a couple of elementalists around.

What i expected when i first started playing was that each profession could fill any of the roles with the appropriate traits and such. This, in my opinion, is not the case.

The closest i have gotten to tanking was when i ended up two-manning end champion of the svanir encampment and finally figured out what the tell was for its blast attack.

Meaning that my tanking of said boss did not rest on how i geared or traited, but that i was able to actually observe the boss for once without camera trouble or some particle fog obscuring the animations (tho it was close sometimes when the boss was lit on fire).

Similarly, the only ways we have for peeling a mob of someone that is downed is by using a knockback or similar. But bigger bosses have defiant, making that virtually impossible for PUGs.

Never mind that aggro apparently goes to whoever packs the most armor, even tho that happens to be the clothie that brought his roaming gear into a instance while the rest are running zerker. The only thing that seems to tick mobs off more are helping people back on their feet.

All in all, what this game lacks is not so much trinity as any semblance of proper control in a fight. So that more lightly armored builds can compensate for that with proper tag teaming. What control there is in the game is designed for PVP dueling, interrupting the opponents massive attacks and heals.

A change in the look of the #1 bomb explosion, a trail on the wrench swings, a different color on the flames and a different trail on tranq darts perhaps?

RebelYell.7132:

I’ve played plenty of action games with dodge/roll buttons, and they almost never give you invulnerability frames or proccing an “Evaded”, they’re for not being there when an attack lands. It would be helpful if the only thing you were expected to use it for here was moving out of red circles.

Yea, the whole “evaded” thing seems tacked on. It seems to not even kick in until after the first complete roll or so. Someone else on the forum mentioned getting their toon stuck in half rolls from Subject Alpha’s crystal cocoon attack, for instance.

As for the continued example of Dark Soul, never played it. And from what i gather, i should never attempt to play it or i will end up smashing my keyboard into a fine powder.

Jski.6180:

In GW2 you have flexibility of movement that is where creativeness comes into play.

Until the game dumps you into a narrow hallways with a bunch of AOE dodge-or-die spamming mobs.

To me a glaring issue with engineer is that we only have one kit that hits hard at proper range. We have two option for melee (tool kit, bomb kit), and two for range (grenade kit, elixir gun) but elixir is more debuff (weakness) than damage. This is then compounded by the added workload from grenades being all ground targeted.

Sure, both our weapon options are ranged. But they seem to have more skill in the flamethrower region than anything out around 1200 that seems to be the general long range.

Blunderbuss and overcharged shot reaches only 400, leaving us with hip shot and net shot for ranged attacks (and why they put a gap closer on rifle i will never understand).

And don’t get me started on poison dart volley. Why oh why can hyleks land a tight stream of darts using a blowgun when we can’t hit a barn wall past some 200 units?! And static shot is interesting, but risky to use because it bounces. And the range of that bounce is erratic. Sometimes it seems to bounce for more than base range, sometimes it does not bounce at all even tho the distance between mobs seems to be lower. And blowtorch seems to have much the same issue as blunderbuss, 600 range, but only really hard hitting out to about 200.

The veil of the spirits been lifted, perhaps?

It seemed to show up alongside the invasion portals attacking the nearby homestead, so around the second part of the story arc.

The tricky bit, and a recent dev response on the forum highlights them moving away from this, is that ANet has attempted to balance all the game “modes” at once.

turrets may not be worth it in PVE thanks to the amount of dodge-or-die spam the bigger mobs have (ranger pets and necromancer minions share the problem), and are marginal for defensive use in WVW (being stationary, turrets suck at zerg running), but seem to shine for point holding in SPVP.

And i distinctly recall that when the game launched, ANet stated that the balance focus was SPVP at that time.

While trawling the wiki i found a link to a pdf at the bottom of the page on dynamic level adjustments:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_level_adjustment

http://www.scribd.com/doc/122803255/Dynamic-Level-Adjustment

If i am reading it right, there is a ~30% adjustment difference between 62 and 71.

That is about the same as going from masterwork to exotic.

The effectiveness of conditions change drastically depending on where you play. PVE solo, can work quite well, especially a big stack of bleed or a maintained burn. But head into a PVE group situation, never mind WVW or SPVP where enemies are intelligent enough to equip condition removers, and they quickly hit a wall.

This because there is a hard limit on how many conditions can be stacked on a single target, be it a boss or trash mob. This result in reduced individual effectiveness if multiple people apply the same conditions, something you do not see with direct damage.

Heh, could be a combo of the longbow damage code and the dynamic leveling code.

Anyone got any solid numbers for how much the game changes power and armor via dynamic leveling?

“if i recall correctly”. Old IRC shorthand i think.

And supposedly there should be a proverbial bulkhead between PVE and SPVP, so i don’t think the game would allow the skin of a SPVP item to be put on top of PVE stats.

There is a ingame mechanic called glancing.

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

Go up against a mob 7 or more levels above you and you do glancing damage to them.

RebelYell.7132:

digiowl.9620:

As so many things with GW2, the core idea of the combo system is interesting. But its implementation seems overly focused around a small group of players coordinating over voip. Trying to find, never mind identify, a combo field in the middle of the particle storm that is your average battle is virtually impossible.

I’ve never had that much trouble with it when playing as a duo. Me a Mesmer and my GF a Guardian, it was as simple as telling her, “Hey, if you equip a hammer, you can spread around Chaos Armor if you blast the purple stuff.”

That would fit squarely within the exception i gave.

As so many things with GW2, the core idea of the combo system is interesting. But its implementation seems overly focused around a small group of players coordinating over voip. Trying to find, never mind identify, a combo field in the middle of the particle storm that is your average battle is virtually impossible.

Additionally, one field can be overwritten by another all too easily. This because fields are usually part of the heavy hitting AOEs of the various professions. And most of the effects are yet more boon/condition spam. And we know that system is bordering on broken, particularly the condition side, when one person can block another from having any impact what so ever. This because their efforts either don’t stack or quickly fill out the stack on their own.

On CT the combo system was interesting because they could do quite a lot more via double or triple combos than they could do just acting individually. But in GW2 very few combos do things that can’t be matched or outperformed by individual action.

Maybe GW2LFG should introduce a speedrun section?

Did someone say motorcycle?

At least a change to the jungle wurm is scheduled, so yeah it will be the usual bundle of fixes and balance changes on top of the living story advancing.

Sure hope the underground element means we will start to see the subterranean parts of Tyria opened up. The world map has had a big “underground” label on it for months.

Hopefully the fact that we will be heading underground means that they will be opening up the underground area that the world map hints about…

What i find sad is that mesmer illusions will rush the target before going pop while bone minions just pop where they are. And this is with something we have to spend a utility slot on while mesmers fart clones with every weapon swing…

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

As to the impact on performance due to WvWvW, nothing is being taken away from you. If your server has no buffs from WvWvW, then you’re playing with skills and traits at their normal baseline. You only gain bonus modifiers to your abilities due to WvWvW; never penalties. For example, if a skill does 100 points of damage and your server is in 3rd place in WvWvW with no bonuses, you’re not going to do less than 100 points of damage with that skill.

It is more that it makes the output, and testing, of PVE builds bothersome as one day it performs better or worse than the other day (because a buff was gained or lost) without me changing anything.

If i could opt out of WVW buffs i would do so in a heartbeat, just so i could get some stable predictable results.

Adamantium.3682:

They target the closest aggressive monster to them, even if you have not yet pulled it.

Including such targets on the other side of walls. I have observed this directly on several occasions. Once i had a turret continually blast a bridge because a risen was idling in the waters below. Another time i had it blast a ruined wall because a flame legion was idling behind it. They really need to do LOS checks before attempting to blast potential targets.

Puru.4217:

Warrior are op in pve, just like mesmer and guardians are (mesmer only really being op for dungeons or inside a group, on their own they aren’t so great).

Mesmers are in essence force multipliers (time warp, the longest duration group quickness in the game) and travel agents (portals, perfect for getting past puzzles), while warriors (and sometimes guardians) bring the hurt.

Anyways, i suspect the real issue here is not so much warriors as the workings of critical hits. It is all too easy to create builds that basically give you a 2 for 1 payout of every point of power you put in.

There is nothing equivalent on the defensive side, and so the game quickly devolves into a DPS race.

Faux Play.6104:

Make the trash mobs less trash and people will kill them. If you got on average 30 tokens from drops for doing the trash and 30 at the end more people might kill them. Or maybe make double token bonus for vanquishing the dungeon path. Right now there really is no incentive to kill them. They take a long time to fight, they are annoying, and you don’t get anything worthwhile from them.

Kinda like how DDO does it with XP? you get an amount pr quest but certain activity within each quest, like breaking a certain percentage of objects, killing a number of mobs and so on, result in bonus XP.

The obvious question will be if it is worth the extra time spent vs just skipping, grabbing the base tokens and repeating.

Heh, i actually like the mental image of a engineer, in particular an asura, hefting a large pipe onto his shoulder and launching a missile. Especially if it comes with a cartoon sharks grin on the nose! I would gladly trade the mortar for something like that

Yeah, protection is weird if put side by side with its counterpart vulnerability. While the latter has to be built up over time, protection goes straight to max and stays there.

Could simply be that ANet has not bothered to put enough data into the tooltips.

I faintly recall that when i first started playing the game last year there was no activation time in the tooltips at all. While it is not solid evidence, checking the wiki entry for various skills show them gaining activation time entries around October.

Also, as part of their combat video ANet claims that combat should be about playing rather than number crunching. So it may well be that activation time was added reluctantly by ANet, and do not capture the whole picture.

It is as if ANet went out of their way to dissuade theorycrafting by withholding details and means of running proper tests (at least outside the tight confines of SPVP, where you have targets of different armoring and so on).

They seem to insist that we should play the game by the seat of our pants, not with a spreadsheet and drilled tactics. Meaning that we should go by what feels right for each individual, not what is numerically superior according the spreadsheets and tests.

Hmm, did a quick wiki search on aftercast, and some skills have entries for such.

Also, there is a patch note of interest:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2012-12-14#Elementalist

it mentions that Rocky Blade, a elementalist underwater #1, has has its aftercast increased by 200 milliseconds.

And yes, it also shows up in the patch text here on the forum.

So it seems that ANet are actively tweaking these delays, and so it becomes less likely that it is a unforeseen side effect.

Healing skills in general are lackluster if one look at them in individual HOT terms.

In part likely to avoid heal bunkers in SPVP, in part to drive home the lack of tanking and so get us to move more for defensive reasons (just wish that camera inaction with terrain and PVE map designs in general didn’t so strongly contradict that goal).

The profession that still heal bunker/tank seems to do so not because of single skills, but because they can not just string healing skills together but also gain healing from other combat activity.

Guardians drip healing on every boon, and they dispense like boons like santa dispense gifts.

Elementalists, specifically those with evasive arcana, can heal on virtually every dodge they do (or they can choose to harm by swapping attunement).

Warriors, oddly enough, can heal on every shout if they so choose (and they seem to shout a lot).

Closest i have come on engineer is coated bombs and backpack regenerators, and i don’t think the numbers get close to warrior, never mind elementalist or guardian.

Never mind the big variation in how effective healing power are towards boosting output of various skills and traits.

Penguin.5197:

An optimist sees the glass half full. A pessimist sees the glass half empty. An engineer sees a glass twice as big as it needs to be.

Or someone put in quite a safety margin against spills

Kimbald.2697:

Zenguy.6421:

The Eng class is a lot of fun to play – that’s a pretty good start.

absolutely.
For me it’s all the gimmicky small things.
Kits being a bit different, turrets being mechanical oddballs, gadgets…

That’s why it does sadden me bit to see it’s mostly the ‘simple’ design builds that are doing best.
Neither 100nades or HGH condi burst I consider simple to ppull of, but I do consider them ‘simple in design and purpose’.
Not all that engineer gimmicky fun like.

I speculate that part of the gimmicky fun is that of control. That you can control the fight by proper application of the skills available.

A potential example from GW1 would be how a mesmer could damage a opponent not by direct DPS, but by applying skill combinations that would hurt the opponent no matter if they used a skill or not.

This kinds of combinations are painfully hard to balance in a competitive sense however, and so we have the kittenization of control that are pretty much interrupt/denial.