Guild Wars 2

When it comes to ninja buffs, one should be very careful about making these observations in PVE thanks to the WVW won server wide boons.

I can’t seem to make up my mind of those boons are a good or bad thing. But in a way they make PVE subservient to WVW, as someones performance in WVW impact my performance in PVE while my performance in PVE do not seem to impact anyone’s performance in WVW.

Listening to asura is like listening to walking thesauruses.

One exchange i love if the one right after you liberate the camp north of fort Trinity, Especially as the verbiage comes from someone wearing plate armor

mattbitts.7490:

Man! I so badly want to get the Daggers/Vampire/Blood archetype working on this class, but with reading this and trying it out…i’m not feeling confident.

Always been a big fan in all games of dumping into damage-increase, and relying on life-stealing for sustainability, but in this game it’s not looking too promising. Life siphon probably isn’t enough to stay tanky…need more than that (vit/tough gear, wells, minions). Wanting to get crit hits, deathshroud and life siphon to compliment and work together nice. something like 0/20/0/20/30. who mants to manage minions anyways? yuck…

Is the dagger wielding, life stealing, dark and sinister vampire just a dream?!?

Best i can tell, it used to be. But then someone turned it into a hardened bunker in beta and ANet reflexively nerfed it into rubble.

Hopefully their admission that their attempts as balancing SPVP and PVE as one has largely failed will bring PVE improvements in this area.

iKeostuKen.2738:

Usually in the middle.

-Trying to get off that amazing Epidemic hit: But half a second after the target goes into downed state or is completely cleansed.
-Using weak staff skills to try and stack conditions which are cleansed or barely move enemies health :/
-Tossing well placed wells and marks just for them to be evaded.
-Spamming lich form skills.

Then I switch to D/D and attempt to be front lined and actually do better till im targeted to find out i cant tank worth crap. 2 seconds of death shroud and interrupted life transfer.

I have no idea of the role for a necro mancer, Everything is just so backwards with this game that its confusing.

Supposedly movement is to take the place of defense and control in this game, but that means that they have in essence created a third person shooter masking as a RPG.

Allow me to be the radical in the room and suggest that if CC actually controlled stuff, skipping would be more than pray and run. That way you could CC your way past the trash rather than banzai thru and hope everyone makes it.

I do not see how conditions or boons can help reduce pressure, especially when getting hounded by multiple mobs.

And i have not played COH nor WOW to any great degree, i am talking about pressure in the sense of workload/information flow a player has to deal with.

Making one or more mob ignorable greatly reduce said workload, but i do not see any amount of conditions that can do so for any useful durations.

I am basing this on my personal experience that i find boss fights, where you face down a single large boss in a relatively open area, much less stressful and manageable than when i face a group of mobs in narrow tunnels. And that seems in all honesty backwards. Why should mobs that by all accounts should be a nuisance end up being a bigger threat than the big bad boss?

CC is the classic pressure reduction in a MMORPG, in that you put one or more mob that could damage you temporarily out of commission.

But CC in GW2 come in the form of 2-3 seconds of effect, 30+ seconds of recharge.

And without that, the obvious alternative is to stay out of the mobs range. But that do not reduce the pressure on the player. If anything it increases the pressure as now not only do he has to keep up with skill recharges and mob actions (and the status of his party, if he is not roaming open world), but also the terrain so he do not blunder off a cliff, get stuck, or enter aggro range of even more mobs.

Right now CC in PVE is bordering on worthless as it has recharge durations that are 10 times longer than the effect durations themselves. This means that nobody can bring enough CC to a fight, especially one involving high number of mobs, to allow any semblance of control over the fight.

End result is that every fight becomes a DPS race between the characters and the mobs, because attempting anything else is a exercise in futility.

The idea of CC as interrupts against other characters and boss grade mobs are fine, but that can’t be their only consideration.

How about this:

1. defiant needs to if not go, get drastically toned down. That way you don’t need to voice com time each and every application of CC to juggle a bigger mob.

2. make CC last longer on trash mobs so that it can actually be used to control a fight. What is the point of applying a 2 second CC on a 30+ second cooldown, when the thing can take a beating for a full minute and you can’t?

Those two would allow people to use something other than APM to determine the outcomes of PVE fights, without the need to turn every fight into a gimmick fight.

My thinking is that ANet’s eyes are firmly on SPVP. And so the majority of profession changes they do are in a step by step attempt at making multiple profession builds SPVP viable, while also toning down the impact of “bunker” builds.

by virtue of SPVP and PVE (and by extension, WVW) sharing the same skills (there are some differences, but the majority are the same) any changes done with a eye towards SPVP will impact PVE in various ways.

Problem is that what works in SPVP may not work in PVE thanks to the difference in the opposition. The AI of your average AI is as dumb as a brick. As such they are given more health (and from champion on up, a special ability to help against “control” effects) than your average character.

End result is that effects that can make or break a fight in SPVP are bordering on worthless in PVE.

I avoided them via JPs and grinding veterans and events in Queensdale, now i only trash one if i find myself nearby when roaming after having completed my the daily.

If i get it right it would be that if i put 30 points into any trait line as a necromancer, i get access to all the 10 GM traits that are now spread across the 5 trait lines. Meaning i would not need to go 30 deep into Spite to get Axe Training, i could go 30 into any of the lines to get it (and or any of the other GM tier traits).

It is a interesting notion, but i suspect the argument is that the traits are on the line they are so as to make it a tradeoff. A tradeoff in that you can’t get both the trait and the 300 attribute points that you feel would make it a “i win” button, but instead spend perhaps 60 points and find yourself without other abilities that would keep you stomping the field longer.

Thing is that you can set any skill as THE autoattack skill by ctrl+right-click (some warriors seems to have it set on a shout). And so referencing the #1 skills as autoattack skills end up distorting the message.

carabidus.6214:

LameFox.6349:

Life transfer especially feels very meek to me. I didn’t play GW1 so I’m not familiar with what it was there, but seeing the traits and handful of skills necro has made me think I’d be able to actually build around that…

I feel the same. For a long while, I was running an end-game build with 30 points in Blood Magic that focused on lifestealing. Paired with the now defunct lifesteal food, this build was a lot of fun and quite viable and certainly not OP as proponents of the nerf would suggest. As they stand now, the lifesteal traits on their own are rather underwhelming and not worth the investment. That’s really a shame because the original conception of my necromancer was actually a vampire!

The life steal food basically carried any and all vampire builds, with the traits just there for the thematic.

If this was not the case, then going without the food should have a minimal impact on the experience. But as you say, without the food the traits seem underwhelming.

Could they make Aegis into a halo around a equipped shield perhaps?

Not that i am sure that shields are even worth the slot in most cases…

Einlanzer.1627:

LordSlack.4685:

So does manually pressing 11111 make a pistol fire faster than letting the auto attack do it? or are we basically talking about #1 skill speeds in general?

No, it doesn’t. This entered the conversation somewhere and shouldn’t have, this has nothing to do with the point I’m making.

It entered because your insistence that autoattack made a difference, in that the issue only shows up when autoattack is enabled, makes it a valid question.

If the animation lengths are the same independent of the key being manually pressed or autoattack doing the pressing, then calling it a issue with autoattack obscures the real issue.

That issue being that animation length impacts the DPS of skills, making them better or worse than the tooltips suggest they should be.

Sadly the one big source for monetizing the game that ANet have right now is fashion. Want to bring that cool looking set over to a different stat build, or duplicate it. Fork over the money for gems so you can buy transmutation crystals (you can’t use stones on level 80 items) or forget about it. As long as there are no subscription option for the game, we won’t see a DCUO style wardrobe of skins, or anything remotely like it, any time soon. Even a “fashion” tab where you can slot items purely for their looks would have been nice, but ANet need to make NCSoft money somehow.

I wish, but then i would have to limit myself to item of level 79 or below as getting hold of transmutation crystals without COF-ing gold for gems is a pain in the backside.

Well the whisper agent reports seems to hint towards the Moletariat building something big. Could be they have salvaged the remains of the Inquest project and has teamed up with the Flame legion for their magical knowhow.

Tintifax.2614:

No, digiowl, I’ve just tested it. You can’t cast faster manually than using autoattack. What Einlanzer means is that you don’t notice the skill activation delay when autoattacking. You don’t care that the skill activates half a second after the computer presses the button for you, as long as the skill fires, say, once a second. Although you notice it when casting manually.

In that case i am not sure it should be called the autoattack problem, as the problem is independent of autoattack. It is rather that autoattack masks the problem, that animations influence execution times and so distort the effectiveness of skills.

As such, i fear it to be a “side effect” of their “play the game, not the UI” mantra. I am almost surprised they bothered with tooltips at all, as the combat video they have up seems to describes a shooter rather than a RPG.

With added irony being that shooters are notorious for their latency sensitivity, yet supposedly they dropped GW1 style interrupts because they were latency sensitive.

Yet the game we have now is as much, or even more, latency sensitive.

Sadly it seems they have trashed their blog, as i suspect within it hid the article where they mention the combat being animation based…

So in essence, you may see a higher DPS by hammering #1 manually vs leaving to in the hands of the autoattack mechanic.

lordkrall.7241:

Team up?
What makes you think everything should be done solo?

Unless the event is marked [Group] or has a dungeon entrance (notice the confusion about SAB having a group size recommendation), people conclude that it should be possible to completed solo.

More like, complain because i love it and want to see it improve. If i didn’t i would have simply walked away long ago.

Jaxson.1593:

Add to this its tendency to attack stupid. As in moronically stupid.

I mean, you’re standing right next to a monster who is already aggroed and it picks some other random monster — unaggroed — to shoot at. Or you’ll be standing there shooting at an aggroed monster, kill it, and it just keeps on shooting,bringing aggro on you from outside the aggro range even if you needed to give your skills a few secs to recharge. Even stupider is when it does this against a yellow monster, one that would NEVER attack you if you did not directly aggro it.

1) Auto attacks should shoot at the nearest aggroed monster if you haven’t specifically clicked on one within a short fraction of a second… and I do mean short — short enough that it’s clear you were targeting.
2) If there are no aggroed attackers within range after a kill, it should “shut off” for a fraction of a second to allow you to choose to continue attacking.
3) It should NEVER auto-switch to attacking yellows after a red has died.

While it is a side issue to the one in this thread, best i can tell the targeting mechanic uses center of screen and ignores the character completely.

That is it seems to draw a invisible line from the location of the camera forward, through the center of the screen onwards. And prioritize targets based on proximity to that line first, and proximity to camera second. That is why you sometimes have it target things directly behind the character, because it is on or nearest the line and nearest to the camera (that happens to be far behind the character).

It is like everyone in QA plays the game with the camera stuck to the back of the characters head at all times. And given the spastic nature of the camera when near walls and such that would not surprise me one bit.

Chuo.4238:

Agree. It drives me absolutely nuts. My suggestion would be, if I use a skill that does not require a target (for example, a shout), my character should not start autoattacking the nearest thing…

Noticed something similar when using stimulants from the engineer med kit to traverse distances. I find myself targeting fauna left and right, and if it was not a kit i would likely attract a whole lot of needless attention.

IndigoSundown.5419:

digiowl.9620:

Honestly i wonder if these hidden delays are why i have such issues dodging various stuff. It is like the actual evasion kicks in a half second or so after the actual animation starts…

Yeah, many’s the time I was caught half in and half out of Subject Alpha’s crystal of imprisonment — obviously right in the middle of the dive portion of the dodge animation. I think the evade procs on hitting the ground.

Something that is a real problem if you try to avoid a virtually instant attack, like those recent sonic periscopes. Dodging the moment i hear the sound usually just see me starting the dodge and then go flying as the shockwave hits.

And much the same seems to be the case with block actions. I wonder how many times i have tried to use the various damaging blocks on a mesmer and seen the mob land the blow and then my toon raising his weapon into position, even tho i hit the button the moment the mob attack was noticeable.

These kinds of actions needs to be instant, or they are pointless and you further fuel the DPS race.

Krosslite.1950:

1) Make the world a living world.

Evolving at a snails pace.

2) Cooperation is key

Game lacks basic tools for cooperation, like canned hotkey statements or universal voice chat.

3) Play the game not the UI

Good marketing punchline, trash execution. Vanishing mobs, vanishing characters, mobs so covered in particle effects you do not know if they are coming or going. And that is if the tells are working at all.

Would be interesting to measure the difference between races doing the same exact attack.

Einlanzer.1627:

digiowl.9620:

Meh, chalk it up to design esthetics overruling game mechanics.

Honestly i wonder if these hidden delays are why i have such issues dodging various stuff. It is like the actual evasion kicks in a half second or so after the actual animation starts…

Except it’s very likely to be an oversight on Anet’s part, and it’s a very serious one. This is the major culprit behind why the Longbow feels really off and why people complain very loudly about it in the forums. Even the devs have admitted that it needs work.

I wonder where i read it, but i swear ANet claimed their combat system was to be animation based or something.

Goloith.6349:

The toolbelt skill looks pretty cool. Blocks attacks for two seconds.

With a 45 second cooldown. It is worse than Static Shield, and the latter at least has a stun on melee block (not that it matters much outside of SPVP) and the option to throw the kitten thing for potentially two damage hits. Face it, shield like skills in this game stinks if you’re not a HEAVY SPVPer…

And if you want any more evidence, observe other skills that block but also do damage. They all of a sudden have cooldowns half that of the engineer shields yet do the same or more.

As it seems the wreckage is spawned after a kill, rather than us simply looting the “corpse” of a periscope, it could be that it tracks what you loot rather than what you kill. Meaning that if you stop to loot random wreckage you may not be able to get something from killing a periscope in the same location later that day.

That fire column/tornado is weird. Sometimes it is a single tornado and just runs past you. Other times i is 3 of them, and they seem to boomerang slightly towards the end (meaning they can sneak up on you while you focus on spotting his next attack). Also, the hitbox of the tornados are wider than the model. Meaning that when you think you can step between two of them you still get hit because the invisible hit boxes still touch or overlap.

Meh, chalk it up to design esthetics overruling game mechanics.

Honestly i wonder if these hidden delays are why i have such issues dodging various stuff. It is like the actual evasion kicks in a half second or so after the actual animation starts…

Karizee.8076:

Dafomen.7892:

When I stumbled over to Dolyak gaveyard and following their ghosts….I dont know, but It makes me sad in a way but not negative, Its just pure immersion for me.

Or the little puzzles you come across, aside from any PQ oder DE, just waiting to be discouvered by an explorer….love it!

:)

I haven’t seen this Doylak graveyard, can someone point me to it?

South east side of Harathi Hinterlands. Apparently it is a skill point location.

Ooshi.8607:

Skritt dialogue with the player or between themselves. Always makes me laugh!

Like hyperactive kids when alone, but becoming very eloquent when in massive gatherings.

Fungalfoot.7213:

Go figure. It’s almost as if they designed thieves for a completely different game.

Devil May Cry: The Thief Guild Wars.

That “blindspot” is not really reliable. I was going up against a periscope in Diessa the other day and tried to use a tree as cover. Didn’t help me much as even tho the effect hit the tree squarely i was still knocked on my behind.

Kamahl.3621:

The difference between a good engineer and a bad one is miles apart. I usually hold my tongue in PvE if I see pistols, as long as they’re staying in grenades – but if we’re having trouble at the grawl fractal, and they’re using a flamethrower still, you can guarantee I’m gonna tell them how to play.

Well that’s too bad, as i find rifle downright boring. One long range attack that pierce and one short range that bleeds, and the rest are utilitarian if that. Pistol at least make me do more than look at the autoattack go plonk-plonk-plonk (with the inevitable boom when some mob gets in my face).

Just wish shield didn’t have such absurd cooldowns, but then that is the curse of having a single skill balance across PVE and SPVP i guess.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

digiowl.9620:

Apparently wvw is a good place to farm veterans and events.

I suspect that ANet’s real April Fool is putting 150 audio logs in as a monthly…

Worm area in caledon forest has those living oaks. 3 typically spawn in that area fairly frequiently and you also get to work on the plant slayer achievement if you need it.

Yea, the population of oakhearts will be decimated…

Rhaps.8540:

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

The bubbles behind the underwater Carrier Pigeon

I always felt they should have made it a penguin for underwater.

On that note, are there penguins in this game at all?

Rising Dusk.2408:

/threaten on my Charr makes me smile every time I do it.

Heh, i find the /surprise backflip hilarious. Reminds me of a kitten poking a bug and have it react.

Each puzzle is only counted once for the whole month, so you need to find 12 different ones to do.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1bjk07/puzzle_jumper_monthly_achievement/

here is a helpful list of ones that are on the easy end (if not easy to do then at least easy to start over on).

achensherd.2735:

I got like 90% of my veteran monthly from the Ascalonian Fractal, and I finished the jumping puzzle monthly last night (I never want to see some of those ever again, btw).

digiowl.9620:

I suspect that ANet’s real April Fool is putting 150 audio logs in as a monthly…

I totally (somehow) misread that one in-game. YOU NEED 150 OF THOSE?! Okay, kitten that one, then! Pretty much any of the other ones are easier to achieve than that!

A little trick is that the achievements screen only shows the requirement for the current tier, while the mission list shows the total for all tiers when moused over.

The audio log monthly have 4 tiers that total up to 150 logs recovered and returned.

Halanna.3927:

April’s monthly is a nightmare.

I don’t do WvW or fractals, and I’m not getting credit for jumping puzzles, except the first one I did, so I have no choice but to do the audio logs if I want to complete the monthly.

Make sure you do 12 different JPs.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1bjk07/puzzle_jumper_monthly_achievement/

Now i really wish the mine field was throwable, like the grenade barrage.

Not touched my necro in a while, but ANet changed the staff sound with the March patch.

Sadly it seems that ANet do not bother with LOS checks because projectile attacks can interact with terrain. As such they seem to think that if the player can’t see it, they can’t attack it.

This causes all kinds of secondary issues like engineer turrets blasting terrain because it “sees” a nearby mob on the other side of it, ignoring the clearly visible mob further away.

Or how they recently had to put a LOS check on necromancer epidemic, likely because people were using targets as typhoid Mary by loading them down with conditions, and only hitting them with epidemic once they had retreated out of view and likely into a group of friendlies.

Hearte.6852:

Doggie.3184:

No one has gotten the fluffy puppy mini yet? :<

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8e42FC_ZqI

That is one lovely video.

Karizee.8076:

Auesis.7301:

Araziel.7201:

I want to see someone with Chauncey Von Snuffles III.

Ask and you shall receive.

He reminds me of Mr. Mistoffelees from CATS.
If he had a Conjuring Turn move that would settle it!

Or perhaps give him a trumpet:

lunawisp.2378:

I’ve twice had that annoying thing happen when you destroy a periscope and while you’re dealing with the mobs it spawned, someone runs in and loots the device leaving you with nothing. I thought that wasn’t the way GW2 was supposed to work…

Err, that should not be possible. Anyone passing by get their own loot, just like with resource nodes.