Guild Wars 2

Electro.4173:

That would make it arguably better to have saved the items instead of turning them in like you were supposed to. Not a good idea, I think.

It depends on your interest in the event items (the toy pets from Wintersday and permanent skins and such from Halloween).

And it would likely not be a 1:1 exchange.

I was wondering if this was a potential rework:

1. intensity stacks act as a multiplier on a single damage value.

2. said damage value is the highest done while the condition is maintained, so if someone comes along with a stronger condition damage than my own that is the damage the condition will do until cleaned or the duration runs out, multiplied by the total stack of intensity applied by me and him.

3. each second the intensity stack drops by 1 or more. once it hits 1 it will remain there for the duration of the bleed. Players can reapply bleed stacks to pump the stack back up.

How about we are able to exchange leftover items from wintersday and such for laurels once the event is over? Oh and perhaps captain’s commendations as well.

emikochan.8504:

There are so many controls in this game a taunt would be pointless.

I see quite a number of interrupts, but very few controls (frost bow #5 comes close, but barely).

Best i can tell, the game suffers from a opaque aggro system.

There are some guidelines on the wiki, but nothing is hard and fast because:

1. to really check the system you would need a group of 5 that would do gear in specific ways and do specific actions in a repeated fashion, and keep notes.

2. while there are guidelines, various mobs, both large and small, deviate from said guidelines. Ranged attackers may be favored by ranged mobs and so on, while they should under the guidelines favor the shield carrying guardian standing right in front of them (the extreme example given the guidelines).

As for using the current CCs, maybe maybe not. Problem is that with larger mobs there is the whole Defiant mechanic to deal with. That kind of stuff require a guildie party on voice to handle in any reliable manner, as the game offers very few tools for PUGs to coordinate at all.

All in all, some love fights where they are on the reactive side the whole time. But others like a more structured and controllable fight.

They seem to aim it for noon Seattle time, So 20:00 (8PM) GMT.

redhare.9210:

I think it is around Noon PST. Im on the east coast and usually it seems to be up by 3pm EST

This seems to be what they aim for usually.

Meaning that it will be late 27. for Europe.

Fungu.4103:

it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis.

Does this mean that every condition tick is sent from the server to the clients? Would it not be sufficient to only send condition instances when they is created and then let the server and the clients simulate the ticks on their own?

In a sense i think they do. But even then, as a worst case scenario, you are looking at condition and boons (never mind food and some other stuff) for yourself, your target, and your 4 party members showing up along the left edge of the screen that the server need to keep you informed about.

Lets say they use one byte pr piece of info (two for the ones that have a intensity stack). That means that if you have a full party targeting a boss, each update the server send out results in at least 5×5×24=600 bytes just for the boons and conditions.

So while his claim has some technical merit, the larger issue is what it says about the company attitude given how important boons and conditions are for the game experience overall.

DKNS.2135:

Where’s this qoute taken from ??

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/212/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-III.aspx

Rifter.6591:

Also if you agro more than three mobs at a time thats on you and a player skill issue not a gear issue, its not like mobs are super tightly grouped in this game its very easy to control agro if you look where you are going and dont run blindly then stop out in the open while you have 30 mobs chasing you.

Not exactly, fire off an attack at any mob in open world and watch one or more of the same kind get red crossed swords over their head. The game loves to throw multiple mobs at us just because it can.

wintermute.4096:

Elvahaduken.3609:

Why would we have to lose epidemic when it can only apply to max of 5 other targets

Because of exponential growth, the power multiplication in coordinated groups would put time warp to shame. Assume there are 5 necros and 2 targets (A and B ). The necros stack 50 aoe bleeds up on both, which is only 10 stacks per necro, so a rather conservative estimate.

1. A50 B50
2. necro 1 epidemics A -> A50 B100
3. necro 2 epidemics B -> A150 B100
4. necro 3 epidemics A -> A150 B250
5. necro 4 epidemics B -> A400 B250
6. necro 5 epidemics A -> A400 B650

Granted, that would need some well coordinated play, but it would put good groups way too far ahead of pugs in scenarios where this would be possible.

Note that I’m not at all saying the bleed cap does not need to be lifted, just that this single skill would need to be adressed as well if they did.

Unless those two necromancers keep refreshing the stacks, without killing their targets in the process, each AB cycle would have a loss of stack between them as epidemic has a 15 second cooldown.

ThiBash.5634:

Take an Frozen Ground for example. Say you place it on the boss. It causes 10 seconds of chill. Your team, that uses projectile finishers as well as a melee player with a blast finisher. The projectiles each add another second, the blast finisher gives a Frost Aura that, when the affected players are hit, adds 2 more seconds per player per hit. This could easily turn into a chill duration fo 20 seconds or more. 20 seconds of chill from a single skill is huge.

More like 20 seconds from 2+ skills, something that can be achieved also without combos.

ThiBash.5634:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

But, in a given theoretical group of players, when an enemy has singled out a player and has started attacking him, that players survivability is dependent on the total DPS of that group.

That, and any healing that the group may give him/her.

Something ANet specifically designed the game against, thanks to no targeted healing spells.

lynspottery.6529:

BTW, I recently learned how to kite. Woot …what a great mechanic. I am using it in everything I do now and am not dying so much.

Maybe i am an old grouch, but my default reaction to kiting is that it is an abuse of game mechanics.

Lil Puppy.5216:

digiowl.9620:

somsom.5201:

I got an 80 rare from it on my latest attempt today, so it definitely drops 80 gear. Timer is 24hr per character from what I can tell.

Problem is that with recent patches, all events and mobs have a chance to drop character level gear. As such it muddies the water of where a specific item can drop (not that anyone would have expected a exotic focus to drop from a level 20 event).

Why not? Frozen Maw is a level 11 event and it drops exotics and rares all the time and has since before all those updates.

Anyway, would love to have at least one eliminator! like “It’s NOT Zho’Qafa Catacombs”

Yea, but best i can tell the first indication that a high level exotic can drop from low level events were that a level 20 toon got a level 80 exotic focus from a event in the sylvari starting area during the first month or so of the game.

At the time that was a bug, as only a level 80 or so should have gotten said drop. Meaning it could very well have gone unnoticed for months until someone brought their 80 toon back to help a friend who recently joined (or just poked around for that world completion achivement).

Lafiel.9372:

Flamenco.3894:

This game should’ve been a hybrid. With that I mean, you can play with or without trinity. It should’ve been all up to the players, that way the game would’ve been more interesting and more fun with this various dimensions of gameplay.
Now, the game is most likely doomed.

The complexity to scale for both is near impossible. Trinity was an inferior system anyways, the current system is much better and I don’t get how this will doom the game. You came in knowing very well what to expect.

Different, yes. Inferior, them be loaded words.

DarksunG.9537:

The fact that anyone thinks infinite condition stacks is even remotely balanced is laughable.

No less balanced than a infinite number of zerkers.

somsom.5201:

I got an 80 rare from it on my latest attempt today, so it definitely drops 80 gear. Timer is 24hr per character from what I can tell.

Problem is that with recent patches, all events and mobs have a chance to drop character level gear. As such it muddies the water of where a specific item can drop (not that anyone would have expected a exotic focus to drop from a level 20 event).

combo fields are also easily overwritten and quickly overlooked in the particle wash that is a big fight.

About the only ones that seems to make good use of comboes right now are D/D elementalists, because they have a blast finisher coming out of evasive arcana.

Redfeather.6401:

I have a question. Condition damage bypasses defense rating?
If so then some boss mobs can have their defense upped and health dropped. That way condition damage is an attractive option in those situations.

Do not fix the issue, because condition is hard capped. You can only have 25 units of bleed going at once, while you can (at least in over world events) have any number of zerker warriors (or their equivalent) beating on the same target. Meaning that 5 or 500 people delivering bleeds will do the exact same damage once the stack is maxed out, but 500 zerkers will do 100 times the damage of 5 zerkers.

Like Ford supposedly said, you can have the Model T in any color as long as it’s black…

And yea, the company is starting to look like it is high on designers but low on engineers.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Conditions work wonders in PvP and for PvE well… we’ll stick with 4 direct damage team members and one conditioner.
If it can’t be fixed without blowing up the servers I don’t think there is much we can do.

Illustrating once more that the game is likely built around small PVP skirmishes, not massive open world PVE boss battles.

I wonder if ANet could get away from some grief by dropping the idea that might affects condition damage retroactively. This because that means they have to track every condition someone applies to make sure that the might change is applied to “old” conditions. Never mind that we also have the damage change retroactively if we swap weapon set after application.

If this was not the case they could calculate the damage once pr attack and add them to x number of pr second variables relevant to that condition. Then on the next second the oldest variable is read, the sum stored applied as condition damage, zeroed and put at the back of the line to be filled again.

Part of the “problem” with the LB experience, imo, is that it has the damage drop at 50% LF. As such you feel pressured to make every shot count.

Also, being a projectile it can in theory be sidestepped without a dodge.

finally, SS is a 3 attack combo, so while the total time given is correct is does 3 fast but less damaging attacks in the same time as the single LB. And best i can tell about action oriented games, many fast but weak attacks are overall better than few but hard hitting ones. Less opportunity cost pr missed attack that way. Especially when fueled with a limited resource like LF.

Now i really do wonder how the server code track conditions, as this sounds messed up…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Tough-issues/

infrequentia.3465:

vespers.1759:

Skamlic.8041:

You are viewing balancing only from PvP point of view. If they buff all of them together, they would have to buff PvE difficultly too. 90% of balance they did so far, they nerfed something and buffed another thing in one proffesion.

Most people use similar build, because it is “the best”. By nerfing & buffing together they can make more viable builds to play with.

the classes that are terrible at PVE are the same ones that are terrible at PVP.

the exception is the thief, who is the god of PVP but only mediocre at PVE (they still have the potential to beat the “screwed 3”.

the tiers seem to go:

1. thief, ele, mesmer
2. warrior, guardian
4. ranger, engi, necro

the gap between the first tier and the 3rd tier is mind bogglingly vast.

oO some rated necro and ranger even BELOW wars,
wars are 1 of the worst pvp classes. same goes to thiefs but people still think back stab combo is op therefor the class should be a t1 class

One problem with these discussions are that people do not qualify what kind of PVP they are talking about when they do these rankings. There is SPVP and there is WVW.

And in WVW a thief can be nasty thanks to “culling” (the game withholding data in an attempt to avoid saturating your net connection). The overall game “mode” is a bad benchmark tho because anyone, with any gear and level, can wander in and be jumped by a high level thief for the amusement of the thief player…

Would not mind a simple mouse look toggle vs the current hold to look.

Thinking about it i suspect one reason why it is not in is because ANet put the interact action on the right mouse button. Now why they did it that way is anyone’s guess…

as for placing AOE while in mouse look, not a problem for me. I am so used to FPS grenade lobbing that having to lead the target that way is more natural to me than running one way while using the camera to aim over the shoulder. Then again i can see why people do it the other way as you move faster going forward than sideways or backwards…

then again i would not mind seeing a “hold to fire/attack” option, so that i do not have to hammer my keyboard to death playing engineer with grenades (or time some of the more wonky weapon attack chains).

Call of the Commissar sounds like something i would expect to find from a dredge.

Same with Cinderspire’s Tactic tho i guess it could also be a flame legion drop so Fireheart Rise perhaps.

Trusty Rusty also looks like something a charr would wield, while the Dark Moon Shield seems sylvari in origin so nightmare court? Mount Maelstrom perhaps?

Btw, it is hilarious that the Reaper of Souls have a axe for icon…

Interesting read, and seems to put numbers to the feel of the game i have been having for the last few months.

Btw, not only is dodge a powerful defensive mechanism in this game (you can dodge once every 10 seconds, 5 seconds with vigor boon up) but you can also trait it to do various effects. Notice how one popular elementalist build appear to be as much about dodging as it is about the weapon skills. I think some players claim that their least use skill on D/D builds are #1, meaning that they spend very little time purely attacking.

I wonder what would happen if bigger mobs were given heal skills rather than simply massive health pools and nuke level area attacks.

I suspect Nerva two posts down from the one linked touches on why crap don’t get fixed. pets/minions, at least to some degree, work in SPVP. Ergo ANet won’t touch them, or flat out do not see the problem, because balance in SPVP is prioritized over balance in PVE/WVW. Because if they become too smart suddenly 5 necromancers become 15 threats. Or in other words, necromancers become a team/squad of one.

Both your scenarios seem to involve 1 on 1 duels with a mob.

what i am talking about is 1 on 2+. Often a skill point challenge involve the spawning of 3+ mobs, with one being a veteran. most CC skills are single target with effects that last 1-3 seconds.

Meaning that there is no way to temporarily reduce the threat by putting either the veteran or the other mobs out of the fight for extended periods.

This then mean that AOE and kiting is the most relevant way of dealing with the fight.

And similarly attacking a single target at range in the open world will see red crossed swords popping up over one or more nearby mobs, leading to yet another 1 vs 2+ fight where attempting to be clever with CC is less effecting than simply running in circles and spamming AOE.

Never mind personal story missions that almost from the word go, across all races, put you in front of waves of 5+ mobs, often in cramped quarters.

Ulari.9547:

Otaur.9268:

According to another thread a long winded answer by Anet came down to 1 thing… Bandwidth

Can you link to the ArenaNet post?

https://twitter.com/DragonSeasonCom/status/304252471147122689

Likely the full answer will show up once they get to that part of the interview transcript.

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/BlogID/5/Default.aspx

Not sure how the heck condition stacks can eat more bandwidth than a bunch of people with fast direct damage rotations tho.

Khisanth.2948:

I guess the condition equivalent of a fumble would be stabbing yourself/setting yourself on fire?

Guardians already do the latter…

xerca.6135:

ArenaNet are on the same note, it seems… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ZCMWM_qUE

Love that charr head!

Also the giant stuffed moose and the penguin suit

Bunny norn strikes again!

Jski.6180:

A nice thing would be add remove conditions you put on some one for a burst dmg well for bleed and fire only.

Something like Necromancer scepter #2, but that would convert his previously applied conditions into damage on the spot?

I found myself zeroing in on one of the new prices, a combo banner. Are we talking a long term combo field of some kind? Perhaps similar to warrior banners in that they can be repositioned?

SquirrelKing.8964:

It looks pretty interesting. I’m wondering how this will scale for my little 5-man guild. Will we be able to run any of these, or is our guild too small?

I have the impression that each mission type will come with tweakable parameters, so that the guild leaders (or whoever else is given the ability to initiate them) can tune it to the available numbers and interests.

Given that, they kinda remind me of the mission booths that Anarchy Online has for both individuals and groups. There various sliders (kinds of opponents, amount of traps and locked doors, level of stealth required, and so on) can be used to tweak the kind of missions one want to generate and then is given a set of 6 to pick from (that can be rerolled as long as you pay the fee).

Depends, as each condition have a different 0.x multiplier (coefficient?) attached to them. For instance, you need 8-10 stacks of bleed to reach the DPS of burn for the same about of condition damage points.

Never mind that a similar formula is behind each direct damage skill. But there the multiplier have to be teased out of the formula, further complicated by the inclusion of armor. Power and armor basically balance out with one increasing and the other decreasing the damage, with the critical hit percentage increase being applied afterwards.

RakaNishoo.6071:

As for the posts that state the mechanics is bad -> it is not.
Also it is not hard to pull off in PUG.

Everyone needs to follow a very simple rules:
a) If you see a defiant stack on a boss -> use CC
b) If there is no defiant stack on a boss -> DON’T use CC
c) If boss is about to perform a move that your party wants to interrupt, use CC.

The coordination is only needed if your group has very little CC and every wasted CC matters.

This assumes people in a PUG even recall that their skills have a CC effect at all. Most non-damage CC have so short a duration combined with long cooldowns, and the open world PVE and personal story so in love with throwing waves of mobs at you, that you quickly start to favor AOE attacks over CC because the CC frankly do not provide any real means of controlling the fight.

This, along with champions onwards having defiant, discourages the use of CC while leveling to the point that people may well have forgotten that they have them at all. This then fuels the impression that the game is a DPS race, further reinforced by spikers rampaging around WVW.

Hawkian.6580:

Conditions ignore armor, protection, and even pure invulnerability. Having 50%+ crit with conditions critting once every two ticks would be outrageously overpowered.

Armor, sure. But protection? Unless i am missing something, protection flat out reduce damage. It is not a armor boost or similar.

emikochan.8504:

Condition cap needs to go away – give npcs more condition removals (that you can interupt if you time it well, like ether renewal on ele.)

And similarly give them healing abilities rather than larger health pools.

Not that it will matter much in zerg situations as interrupts often happen as side effects of the dps rotations.

JohnyCash.1894:

If “control” is up there with “damage” and “support” as the 3 dimensions of fights, then we’re seriously gimping the depth of boss fights by basically ignoring control through the unshakable/defiant mechanic 99% of the time. That’s why a lot of bosses end up being just a long dps fest.

Indeed.

Control and support are secondary in PVE.

Control because of the boss mob specific “boons”, as well as the duration vs cooldown being largely not worth it. You can dodge 3-6 time in the space that a the shortest cooldown “control” skills take, and with defiant up the outcome of using either is basically the same. End result is that “control” becomes a euphemism for “kite”.

Support because most of the support related boons and conditions are duration stacking only (and some drop after a single attack, making them more interrupt/control than support). This makes the difference between dedicated support and incidental support (standing inside each others PBAOE range when skills are used for personal benefit) in groups minor (or none, once the boon’s stacked duration becomes longer than the shortest cooldown skill).

Funny, i checked the text multiple times but still missed that bit.

Bounty hunt sounds interesting, tho the company sounds design heavy…

And the transcript do not expand on the bleed cap reasons.

Seems someone managed to sneak in a question about the bleed cap, that got a long winded response that boiled down to it having to do with bandwidth.

https://twitter.com/DragonSeasonCom/status/304252471147122689

Makes me worry that they are sending data for every darn popup shown above a mobs head!

Honestly i lean more and more towards that out of the way catacomb in Orr. If there is nothing special about it, why did ANet cram a Legendary(!) Eye of Zhaitan down there as a event chain boss?

Deniara Devious.3948:

6. Fix WvWvW
- This is the true crown jewel of GW2. Give it the love it needs! Right now, not tomorrow.

If this reflect a majority opinion of the game community, and i suspect it does, than it is the perfect example of the disconnect between ANet and said community (tho ANet may be slowly waking up to the fact).

Best i can tell from around launch time ANet’s balance priority was this:

1. SPVP
2. PVE
3. WVW

But SPVP seems to be a virtual graveyard with a dedicated few hanging on, while the masses are in WVW and hoping to find what ANet meant SPVP to be.

Kristine Heath.1483:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Just a quick note—I said the odds of it dropping was closer to .005 than the 1 in a million or so that was tossed out. Those aren’t the exact odds, but if my math is correct, 10 players running the event every day might expect one staff to drop after about 7 months. (And we haven’t been out that long.)

lol? it takes people less than half that time to make a legendary. this staff is not legendary and doesnt even have particle effects. what point is it to make it that low drop rate

Likely it share drop chance with other exotics in the area, but this one happens to be in a chest that do not get event zerged as often as the rest.