Guild Wars 2

Well Legendary lines up with the earlier claim of a “rare boss”.

So i guess the catacombs has to be run some 200000+ times before we know “for sure”?

And honestly, why would they park a legendary that far out of ways if it was not protecting something interesting?

Robbyx.1284:

eremos.8142:

… but loot rolls are binary. Based on how much damage you do you get loot or you don’t. It doesn’t give better loot to those who do more damage.

Not true at all…..ive soloed the champ boar, wasp queen and troll several times and received no loot at all.

The champ drop treshold was recently revealed to be borked, and is being fixed at the end of this month.

As it stands you get nada for doing anything but damage, except for the little bit of XP (and maybe the daily “healer” count) you get for helping someone back on their feet after they were downed.

I guess it is yet another factor in ANet’s attempt at making this a no trinity game…

Andele.1306:

Just to mention, if a higher bleed cap was possible, condition cleansing abilites would have to give about 5 seconds of condition immunity after the cleanse to balance the gap and Consume conditions would probably count every 5 bleeds as a seperate condition.

Unless ANet made some very poor choices while implementing condition stacking, they should be able to have the stack adjustment only apply to very big mobs (champions or higher) as that is the major sore point. If possible i see no reason why they could not implement it to act similar to the defiant stack, as it is automatically adjusted based on the number of characters taking part in the battle.

Ellisande.5218:

Sylosi.6503:

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that ‘trinity’ gets more mentions in a game that attempts to get away from the commonly used trinity. Saying that I’ve seen ‘trinity’ mentioned many times in other games, not least because if you’ve been playing games long enough you will remember ‘trinty’ originally meant tank, healer and CC, not DPS. So as DPS are still ten a penny they should really of changed it to the ‘duo’ (tank + healer) in games that have dumbed things down enough to the point support/CC is not a vital role anymore.

It’s not that CC is vital but that CC is generally made unuseable because the devs decided to make bosses immune to CC for some unexplainable reason.

And CC is not CC in the classic sense, they are PVP interrupts masking as CC via attached 1-3 second effects (daze, stun, knockdown, fear). Their primary job is not to keep some mob out of the fight for extended periods, but to stop that big spike for actually happening by interrupting it during windup.

Caatalyst.7289:

Attack moves 3,4 and 5 requires quite a lot of work to get right in battle. It makes rifles less appealing and feel clunky in my opinion. We can talk about references to shotguns all day, but at the end of the day there isn’t a single shotgun skin in the game.

The lower rarity skins look like a blunderbuss tho.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blunderbuss

Blacklight.2871:

The Engineer’s versatility is NOT rewarded in this game. What is rewarded is high damage numbers being generated in rapid, uninterrupted succession. Basically, ANet didn’t design this profession with the reality of their game in mind, they built it with an idealized notion of the game they hoped it would be. Turns out though, it really is just about the DPS.

Best i can tell, the game is balanced around SPVP. The mobs in PVE are given large health pools and certain special abilities (unshakeable, defiant) to compensate for the dumb as a brick AI.

End result is that the game plays very differently in SPVP and PVE, because in SPVP a properly timed CC may well turn the tide of battle. In PVE however it just postpones the inevitable and you are better off just dodging and continue your DPS grind.

If the damage was to drop, the rate of fire needs to come up.

Kakeru.2873:

You should watch this. Basically what your talking about, and the guy brings up valid points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eM-hWpCBoPU

Basically what i have been saying since day one on this issue. The problem is not the lack or not of trinity, it is that even when going full in with gear and traits, anything but focused DPS in GW2 just becomes gimped DPS. The various non-DPS stats are so reduced in their impact before they reach the skills that you do just as well by not going there in the first place.

And the duo of being able to stack on crit damage percentage and the dodge mechanic exasperates this issue.

This because dodge is the shortest cooldown defense ability in the game, you can have one as often as every 5 seconds if you can maintain vigor. This while block/parry, CC and heals are all in the 30 second or higher range, meaning you can dodge for 3-6 times for every block or CC you can get off. So why bother when you can banzai in as some frothing berserker, dodging left and right as need be?

And the crit damage stack allows any hit to balloon up to 2.5 times its size after armor, meaning it can recover whatever impact high armor had on the initial damage and then some, making the hard counter of the dodge much more valuable than any amount of plating you can pile on.

To sum up, the problem is not hard trinity or not, but that 2/3 of the potential builds in this game are gimped out the gate.

Ayanavi.1904:

It only seems logical that as MMOs followed tabletop RPGs in their creation, and mirrored their progression, that MMOs would continue to follow their evolution and progress in the direction Gw2 and others are going. This, combined with the recently fusing genres of real-time action and stationary hotkey skills, seems to simply be what the future of MMOs is looking like.

In theory yes, and what i was expecting going in. In practice this game does not deliver. This because the twin cases of trying to avoid the LFH for dungeons (the main place where trinity crops up in MMORPGs) and trying to make a esport out of the PVP.

End result is a game that reminds me of the old Ford quote, “You can get the model T in any color, as long as it’s black”. Or in GW2 terms, you can play your profession in any way, as long as it is DPS.

What ANet has done is break off two points of the triangle. Leaving some jagged edges that may look like tank/bunker and healer/support at first glance, but that do not really work out because everything else in the game, PVE reward/incentive structure on up, only take DPS into account.

Now if i could actually play my profession of choice as if i multiclassed in D&D, i would be happy. But in my frank opinion, i can’t. I need to be up on the front lines doing as much damage as i possibly can, or i am a secondary citizen.

Sumii.2845:

My ideal MMO wouldn’t even be like FFXI. It would be closer to SAO (anime series). The idea of a system in place with finite levels (100 in this case) where the extremely hard boss has to be defeated by a front line group (not a guild, but actually conglomerate of server) before the next level is unlocked for anyone.

The idea that if your character dies all your loot, exp, and character are gone and you have to start over or re-incarnate.

The option of choosing to be combative or just live a virtual life like Sims where you can fish, be a merchant, etc.

Active combat system without hot keys (the main point of this thread).

Sounds like a fantasy themed MMO FPS to me…

Quaggan golem!

grumble 15 characters grumble

Kinda like my sylvari, a weed with a flamethrower

ZudetGambeous.9573:

4. Aggro dropping. If you attract the attention of the boss you will only be able to take a few direct hits before dying. When you get low on health switch to a ranged weapon and dodge back to a distance. The boss will switch to another melee target 99% of the time allowing you time for your heal to recharge before you get back into melee range.

If only. I have also seen bosses being pulled off melees by ranged attack and come rumbling across the room to feat on the ranged attacker. Never mind the counter intuitive design that apparently stacking on toughness for the little extra defense it gives you (thanks PVP bunkers) you suddenly become a red cloth to every mob within aggro range. The incentives in this game, on the PVE side at least, are all whack to say the least.

Mungrul.9358:

fishergrip.4082:

I dunno about dungeons and fractals because I don’t do those, but in terms of general PvE leveling ease from 1-80 I’d put mesmer last. Also, ranger is very strong in general PvE.

I’ll echo those thoughts. Getting from 1 to 80 with my Mesmer was a horrible experience for me; I crafted the last 20 levels out of disgust. Since getting to 80 however, he’s become one of my favourite characters. He just needed all of the traits and gear to really shine.

I suspect this is a unforeseen side effect of a late beta change to traits. Before the change you could pick any 12 traits in all slots, but afterwards, because of PVP cherry picking, it was changed to the tired structure we have right now.

All well and good for SPVP where you start as level 80 out of the gate, but for PVE it distorts the experience of the professions in subtle ways as most of the survivability traits are hiding out on the upper tier. This likely because everyone in the SPVP betas were trying to grab as many of them as possible via the cherry picking. End result is that many professions feel more squishy leveling up than they really are once you have all your options open to you. And this then affects the way people end up playing the professions.

LordByron.8369:

you could be interested in this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Engineer-burst

you can find that most players just cry of OP things when they meet counterbuilds…..

For example, all this complaints about bunkers comes from a wrong way to calculate points in PvP imho…not to classes that have little to no offence capabilities.
(i.e. they can kill only FEW glass cannons beng their couterbuild……but some players do not accept they have counterbuilds…).

Interesting thread, in that it highlights how PVP focused the game mechanics are.

burst is king, because health pools in general are shallow and toons can quickly chain mechanics. This also makes retaliation a viable counter because all those quick hits mean that the attacker is also being hit quickly.

But PVE is a grind, because the mobs have much higher health pools. And because they attack maybe once a second, but hit harder pr hit, retaliation becomes much less effective as a counter.

And you observation about PVP scoring and bunkering is interesting. Do wonder if changing the scoring structure would allow for passive defenses to be more viable in PVE by reducing the complaints about PVP bunkering.

I think the problem with that, and the vizir tower, is that it is sometimes hard to tell exactly what you can stand on. Never mind that the camera can bump into the terrain, resulting in it shifting position at the worst of moments.

As for hard, anyone with some gaming experience will be familiar with the expression “Nintendo Hard”. Funny thing is that the difficulty level was usually a result of games being arcade ports (like the first Castlevania game) and so was designed to munch coins. But in the process of converting they usually only gave you a limited set of continues, indirectly ramping up the difficulty.

Honestly for me a part of this games “difficulty” comes from the mishmash of action focused game mechanics, and a very classic control interface. I would love to see ANet introduce a permanent mouse look that allowed me to aim ground target circles with the camera look. Without it the interface feels overly busy for no good reason, jumping back and forth as various skills are activated.

Like the doors during Halloween and the Wintersday presents?

Btw, Cryptic has a good one in the desert zone in Champions Online. Basically a big baddie that jumps from place to place, attacking mobs and toons alike at each stop.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

digiowl.9620:

weakness is cool, but not something necros can spread like candy.

So…how is it that with no condition duration bonus my target has weakness at least 75% of the time? As a side-effect to my main goal of bleed stacking? And this is on groups?

because you are running off hand dagger, a weapon that favors bleed stacking necromancers, and has the one weapon skill we have that provide weakness.

Rennoko.5731:

I checked over the Wiki and I don’ think it goes into enough detail about what happens at 25 stacks of bleeding. The working for intensity stacking is very generic.

One of four things happens at 25 stacks of bleeding: .

1. New bleeds applied do nothing. Stack is full, bleeds don’t apply.
2. New bleeds applied push off oldest bleeds, regardless of duration.
3. New bleeds applied push off only older bleeds that are shorter in duration, and if none are available, they do not apply.
4. New bleeds applied are looked at for total damage done over their applied duration, and any bleeds sitting in the stack with lower total damage done over duration are kicked off. If none are available, bleed isn’t applied.

The best possible case is 4. It also is the least likely to be happening. I still think case 2 is what is happening. I am open to suggestions on testing.

I think only damage pr tick is taken into account, not duration at all.

Meaning that a 1 second 25 damage bleed can push out a 5 second 20 damage bleed simply because the pr tick damage is lower.

Well you can technically fire shot thru a rifled barrel, and the range would be silly short, so it kinda makes sense.

nakoda.4213:

ft#1 hits 10 times in 4 seconds, ft#2 hits up to 10 times every 4.5 seconds.

with a crit heavy build, the duration of the bleed on crit trait is meant to be low to compensate for how often the ft strikes the opponent. this is also why the ft (much to the chagrin of our inner levitican) does not set foes on fire for very long. it would be over powered.

All well and good, if the thing actually worked as it is supposed to. With the added irony that Elixir Gun’s Fumigate (#3) seems to do a much better job with the same mechanic. Between that and the variable behavior of minions, I swear the game is made up of copy and paste spaghetti code.

nakoda.4213:

FT can be beastly with high crit.

Anything can be beastly with high crit in this game, just observe the critzilla that is 5 signet warriors…

Tho i guess most would not mind so much if Anet had not neutered defensive stats into pointlessness to promote the whole active defense thingy, and put in a secondary stat that directly increase the percentage buff a crit gives…

Then again, Ebonhawke is part of a zone rather than a zone in its own right.

I think that a way for the NPCs to point you in the general direction of far off events, and some kind of log to keep the ones you deem interesting in, would cover what he is talking about without going all out traditional quests on the game.

Heck, a way to maintain a list of places of interest would help the game as well.

Right now once the world completion has been done (or as close to as someone who will likely never wander into wvw can get), it is quite easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer size of the open world. And the waypoint costs are not exactly helping when it comes to random exploring, unless you know you can recoup the travel costs, or perhaps land a small profit, while over there.

The game is animation based rather than timer based. This in that each skill has a related windup and cooldown animation that can rarely be interrupted once started.

You can see this with blocks, where the actual skill only comes into effect once the windup animation (perhaps as long as .5 second) has completed. Making any attempt at blocking a non-telegraphed attack by the enemy more a game of chance than anything else.

It does not help that the tooltip attack time is at best a rough estimate, down to the closest .25 second, and include both windup and cooldown. Meaning that the actual skill effect may not trigger until .5 into the time given on the tooltip, rather than instantly, unless there is no attack time given at all (and those can be inserted anywhere as they have no animation to speak off).

I am not surprised that some have reported quite the success with playing the game with HUD hidden, as the numbers and animations presented there may well be more a distraction than a benefit.

Foo on ANet for going overboard with their “watch the game, not the UI” mantra…

Phoenix.3416:

The problem with engineer is the best builds revolve around Crit and Grenades.

The whole flipping game resolves around crits, because crits can nearly triple (250% at the high end) your damage output thanks to crit damage percentage increasing traits and gear.

This while vigor makes a dodge available every 5 seconds (10 seconds otherwise), meaning that you can run into a fight virtually naked as long as your crit chance is high enough so that you can close to guarantee a crit on that spike damage ability.

The game as it is currently “balanced” as a third person shooter masking as a RPG.

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, with healing power you can have WoB heal other classes for nearly twice what their own heal will do

If they stand around in it long enough to matter. And last time i checked, the major defense in this game was not a passive one that allow you to stand your ground, but a active one that send you rolling across the floor every 5-10 seconds (depending on you having vigor up or not).

Saintly.8062:

Red Falcon.8257:

Necro = Low DPS, shallow support

Multiple darkness fields (lifesteal/blindness), poison, weakness, condition control…

Anyone got any hard numbers on that lifesteal? Given that the most effective lifesteal in the game at present seems to be a consumable, and it still only produce numbers in the 3 digit range while incoming damage at the upper end can be measured in 5 digits, i can’t say i expect it to mean much (especially as most projectile finishers are the 20% kind, and whirl is random to say the least).

And the only really effective blindness in this game is the pulsating field kind. And necromancers have exactly one of those (on a minute long cooldown). the rest will counter exactly one attack and only stack in duration.

Poison is only meaningful in PVP, as mobs rarely if ever heal.

weakness is cool, but not something necros can spread like candy.

as for condition control, our major thing there from a group support perspective is at present broken (or working as intended with a badly worded tooltip, given how long it takes to get fixed). Leaving us as the one trick typhoid mary. And with the hardcap on conditions in the first place, may as well bring another AOE direct damage toon instead.

They could have the cap act similarly to Defiant, in that it increases with the number of people present. Events and such scale with the number of toons present in the fight anyways.

The major issue here are not dungeons, nor mob swarm, but open word bosses. While the impact of conditions hit a hard cap, direct damage scales pretty much linearly with the number of toons present. Meaning that once you hit a 25 stack of maxed out bleed, that is as much bleed damage as will be done for the duration of the fight. But bring in more direct damage toons and more damage will continue to be done as they keep coming to the fight.

Another aspect of this issue is that event rewards appear to be focused around damage done as a gauge of participation.

Yea, the place was more annoying than hard. Then again, both annoying and hard are in the eyes of the beholder…

CameronJames.4897:

Magumma Falls!

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

There’s a second pale tree there!!

Yea, would love to see some high level areas out west. Once you hit level 30 or so there is not much reason to travel west of Lion’s Arch at present.

Mungrul.9358:

There’s another problem with this mechanic that goes against one of their design goals. They stated that they changed the way skills activated so that the player was watching the mob rather than the health bar. GW1 was very much a case of watching red bars and choosing the right time to use a skill, whether that was an interrupt, a spike or a heal.

This mechanic means that once more, CC characters are watching the health bar of the enemy rather than the enemy itself.

Design goal fail ArenaNet.

there is another hilarity involved with “CC” in this game. ANet claims they removed GW1 style interrupts because it depended too much on latency. Except for the current CC/interrupt mechanic is also build on split second timing.

FateZero.8536:

Not many players will take time to learn boss buffs and mechanics. To them is just dps it. I usually inform my team when boss is vulnerable to CC and tell them to save it when boss is about to cast a certain dangerous skill.

And this may be a major issue with the game. You have to bring in third party tools to get any semblance of coordination going in this game.

Ayestes.1273:

Good point, clarity is good there. In regards to condi-dmg though, there are sources of condi-dmg that can be brought about by a critical hit. So increasing Precision does increase your condi-dmg, but the actual condi-dmg will not crit.

Depends. Burn or poison on crit is virtually worthless as they are duration stack only, and even bleed and confusion have hardcaps of 25 (meaning they quickly max out in group scenarios). This while the only practical limit on direct damage is the currently available gear.

I find myself wondering if acended are basically exotic with a extra socket. But to avoid a major UI rework they basically prefilled the socket, locked it, and the end result is what we are seeing.

One thing to keep in mind is that events run with or without player presence. This means that event chains likely have quite a bit of leeway put in to make sure there is a reasonable amount of time for someone to stumble across the event before it fails.

Open world mobs non-threatening? Perhaps 1 on 1, but if they come in groups of 2+ they suddenly become a issue unless you enjoy running like benny hill all day. And when constantly being on the move the auto attack becomes even more used, as others that actually do damage are likely to be ground targeted or have some other convoluted mechanic that makes them a royal pain to use while “kiting”.

Now if CC actually did CC, and not claim to be CC while actually being fighting game style combo breaking interrupts, maybe half those bars would not be so dead.

Flamenco.3894:

GW1 only began when you reached lvl 20.

GW2 just begins when you reach lvl 80.

And part of that is because ANet tried to combat trait cherry picking in SPVP by making said traits tiered. All well and good when you have a full set of points to spend out the door. But for PVE it means that some build variants are basically out of reach for 2/3 of the game leveling process, in particular traits that provide incidental healing during combat.

Vigorous shouts? Grandmaster
Altruistic healing? Grandmaster
Elixir infused bombs? Grandmaster
Evasive arcana? Grandmaster
Shadow’s rejuvenation? Grandmaster

gimmethegepgun.1284:

digiowl.9620:

Anyways, i am not quite sure bit i think that explosion trigger a blast finisher.

No, it’s definitely not.
I use EG more than enough to know that I’m not getting permanent retaliation by spamming medkit in my Super Elixirs.

I could have sworn i have seen a heart pop up, but i could have been mistaken. Usually only use the actual kit for the stimulants (and the odd condition removal) and the toolbelt item for heals. That pesky bandage on #1 seems to be interruptable by #2 and #3 for some reason…

Weakening shroud? No heal there, iirc.

And the daze last 2s (3s with Banshee’s Wail).

One interesting thing about the med kit is that it does not turn the heal button into a “stow kit” button, meaning that you can in theory hammer that explosion like it was a grenade.

Anyways, i am not quite sure bit i think that explosion trigger a blast finisher.

1 × 453 (+healing power) heal from sigil = 453
3 × 325 heal from omnomnom = 975

This is what carries the day, not the traits. And it can with equal ease be applied to any other profession out there…

At present i will say that necro traits are either underpowered, buggy, or both.

And that does not just apply to the vampiric traits.

Well the latest patch notes did mention toning down the aggressiveness of minions, but most of us assumed that only applied to the golems hatred for fauna in general.

Maybe i should test out our walking puss bombs a bit…

Rezzet.3614:

Disable Auto targetting and Promote skill targetting Presto your FT wont miss as long you keep focused on the direction your targets are .

Makes me wonder if ANet was in the middle of converting the game to TERA style controls when the decree came from on high that they needed to launch before the pandas…

A heal signet thief chewing omnom will outperform a necromancer using traits…

Daecollo.9578:

Elias.3204:

What’s the survivability of the Necromancer like compared to the other caster professions (Elementalist and Mesmer)? Pertaining to both WvW and PvE.

Not very good, Elementalist and Mesmer can run, while necromancers cannot.

Never mind the elementalist heal on dodge, that actually get a 1:1 payout from healing power (same heal as they have on off hand dagger, meaning any of them with a off hand dagger can drop some serious heal down quickly while avoiding).

pdboddy.4162:

digiowl.9620:

Funny thing about wells is that they in essence require you to stand still and take a beating. Try to dodge and you pulled that mob group off the well, loosing quite a bit of DPS in the process. This while the rest of the game is basically built around player keeping on the move and dodging…

Eeh, the wells are one of the largest area effects around, you’ve got plenty of room to move in them. Not to mention you can drop other aoe spells as you move around, like the staff spells for example.

Laying down a ground target in the path of a moving target while on the move myself? Thanks, but i got enough on my hands as it is…

The game is balanced around SPVP, not WVW, not the various PVE.

And necromancers are a troublesome profession for ANet. I have read claims that a single necro during one of the beta weekends could sit on a SPVP point and via DS and other means basically hold out against the other team in full.

Best i can tell, they call this bunkering. And it is something ANet seem to have a phobia against. Sadly, as the SPVP balance bleeds into PVE it means that anything that reduce a professions ability to bunker in SPVP will reduce their survivability in PVE.

Honestly, from the recent changes in daily achievements we can clearly see how ANet wants everyone to play the game.

Daily dodger requires us to get the evade message when dodging, while the dodge mechanic both makes us invulnerable and move us in a direction fast. Meaning that ANet doubled up on the functionality of the ability, but intended the unvulnerability to take present. But as we can see from the number of question after the achievement introduction, most people had picked up on the movement as the key.

Same with healer. What ANet considers “healing” goes by rez or resurrection in community lingo.

All in all there appears to be a serious disconnect between how ANet intended the game to be played, and how it gets played by the community.

I wonder if someone at the helm got overly hung up on some early design concepts and insisted on ramming it home, come hell or high water…

burn and bleed rarely last as long as some of the mob applied poisons. And as long as the poison is running you are stuck in combat, meaning lower movement speed, no automatic healing, and overall a annoyance when you know the poison do not do enough damage to kill you before it runs out. Problem is that if you just stand around and wait it out you may well find yourself facing the exact same mob that applied it in the first place, because the respawn timer is that short. The annoyance is second only to the buggy tether code (especially under water)…

Another niggle with the new list is that it is all too easy to hit the personal story quest (as long as the final requires me to get a 5 man band together and head into a dungeon, i will not get rid of it) when trying to expand or collapse the list. End result, a big story window in my face that at present serve exactly zero use. If i at least could go back and rewatch some cut-scenes i would not mind so much. But even then it is annoying how narrow the band is for the achivement title is…