Guild Wars 2

Btw, actually stopping to revive someone makes you an aggro magnet.

Also, do not forget that each time you go down within a certain time period you go down with less “health”.

Do wonder if the models used are modular enough that they could have a “tail/skirt” kind of checkbox. Or expand on that idea and even provide a “skimpy” checkbox that would hide or make sheer certain areas of armors. We already have examples of long gloves that will hide certain sections if worn alongside long sleeved tops (tho i wish i could instead opt for shorter sleeves at times).

Would allow for more modular armory without the need to make a a ton more models.

Did those whales have any direct link with the Lost Shores storyline?

dunno. GW2 has some serious issues with transforms. This especially if you play necromancer. Hit a transform and any minions go poof. Hilarious that two out of three necromancer profession elites are transforms.

Anyways, i would not mind if ANet replaced the current necromancer death shroud with current Avatar of Grenth. The current death shroud is too disruptive, imo.

I guess it is the same issue that had people see candy corn glimpses after the halloween event.

CC Charles.3675:

It’s true that our team is a bit reduced due to this end of the year/celebration time.

The term double entendre comes to mind.

It’s just that people seems to have enough trouble scrounging together one viable set as it is. Expecting them to build 2+ sets may well find them abandoning the game altogether.

In essence, ANet built a action game with classic MMORPG controls.

Kruhljak.2705:

Didn’t ANet realize most presents would be opened by lone players? That maybe a 6v1 with chain stuns, massive Confusion stacks, knockdowns, AoE, multiple self-buffs, etc. would be a little too much for many players?

It sometimes feels as if the map designers didn’t get the message about the game mechanics not supporting tank and spank. You find open world mobs that pull in 2+ nearby mobs if you attack one of them, and unless you then swap to kiting and aoe auto attacks you are likely to get very intimate with the down state. Never mind story quests that drop us into confined spaces and then proceed to spawn wave after wave of mobs on us.

draxynnic.3719:

I have found that lower-level characters seem to be more kittened than high-level ones. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m better with the higher-level characters, because the higher-level characters have more tools to deal with it (my successful engagements with anything higher than ventaris on the threat scale above have all involved popping an elite, for instance), or simply that the toys have been scaled poorly for low levels.

Makes sense, as elites usually provide long duration stability. Need to keep that in mind if i ever decide to pop a present while playing necro again. Going lich may well be the thing to do…

Horrorscope.7632:

Asdar.9572:

Again, I am only dieing quickly to the RISEN. I can take on 3,4,5 normal mobs and live through it fairly easily, Only the risen tear me apart. All of my gear is 70+ so its not like I am ignoring it. No exotics except for my bow. If my build is good enough for 70 levels, why all of sudden do I need to change it?

Now dont get me wrong, I can fight 1 or 2 risen and sometimes even that is a risk depending on which risen it is, but you get 3 or 4 and its pretty much lights out.

I’ll I can reply with is “I did not see this issue myself”. I didn’t have exotics when I first entered either and I didn’t have this “I owned previous content, to being owned”. For me it stayed pretty much the same, I could take a couple few trash at a time inside or outside of Orr. at near level. Hmmm….

I’m not sure why we should think we should do 3+ at once. Now I can get your point if you are talking outside of Orr and down leveling. The game is too lenient down leveling. Yes an 80 running well under their level can face roll many at once, but I wouldn’t expect at level to be the same experience, nor did I find that right. I’ve been one for more take-away more stats when down leveling. The point is is to meet up with others and still have a balanced game.

thing is that often attacking one mob also aggro their nearest 2-3 fellows, or they have the ability to summon help, so we do not really have a choice.

Rezzet.3614:

as i ve said many times sure you have less stats but you guys are forgetting traits play a big role if the player has a power/crit%/crit damage% build he/she will still deal some decent damage.

Best i can tell, the numbers you get out of a full armor set outstrip the points you can get out of traits.

That, and the ability of individuals to maintain focus during 30+ minute fights.

Edit: and in that may lay the difference between challenging and annoying. If you can’t keep focus, the frequent drawn out battles become an annoyance that get in the way of your goals. But if you can, they become an accepted challenging part of the game.

Given that he brings up the prisoners dilemma (a questionable structure outside of a paranoid baseline) i suspect the whole thing is rigged based on “neoclassical” economic thinking. Do ANet have an economist on staff to manage and structure the in-game economy?

Seras.5702:

Doesn’t Retaliation scale with the damage with which you get hit?

Nope, it only scales with your own power.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation

Yea, the line between challenge and annoyance is highly blurred in this game (and its community).

The main “problem” with going lone wolf in the game is that while the mechanics focus on 1 on 1 dances of death, the open world loves to throw waves of mobs at you as if tank and spank was still a valid option.

You can see this in the level scaling as well. One level below the area average and you will get stomped left and right, on par and you may get away with facing two at once if you have access to massive AOE burst, one above and suddenly you can walk all over groups of 3+ if you have access to any AOE at all.

Never mind the anchor throwing ones wandering around Orr, that enjoy partnering up with some that pack a hammer of some kind. End result, a CC chain of epic proportions…

I find myself enjoying being an explosives engineer simply because all my attacks share the same basic behavior. That means i do not have to how differently the basic behavior of 1-5 is, just what differences they bring to the table between them.

By this i means that all bombs and all grenades in generic terms behave the same. All bombs drop at my feet and do AOE. All grenades are ground targeted and do AOE. So all i have to worry about is what one of them are basic DD, another is DOT bleed or DOT burn and so on.

Contrast that to say the flamethrower where each attack is different. 1 is a cone channeled attack, 2 is a weird AOE, 3 is a launch/push, 4 is a ground target line/wall, and 5 is a PBAOE blind. Each behave very differently and i need to keep that in mind in the middle of combat.

End result is that i find explosives to have a much lower mental workload than the rest of the game.

Confusion can actually be nasty, you just need to pile on more than say 5 or so. Around that point each action by the target do as much damage as a burn tick.

Retaliation on the other hand is a flat out joke.

Healix.5819:

digiowl.9620:

Actually, each unit of bleed (or confusion, the other damage dealing intensity stacker) operate independently. So your example would be 1250 for 3 seconds and 500 for the last second (and during that second it would show only a single unit in the bleed stack).

And the burn example would be 750 for 3 seconds followed by 500 for 4 seconds.

This is how it should be and what was observed during the betas when it was initially tested.

Other things to note,

Any bleeds applied after 25 stacks are ignored. A player with 0 condition damage stacking 25 bleeds is screwing over a player with stacked condition damage.

The damage of conditions change in real time with your stats. For example, stacking might after you have already applied bleeds will increase the damage of the bleeds.

Feel free to edit the wiki to reflect in game behavior then, unless we can prod a dev to detail their planned behavior of condition stacks. Because the claimed observed behavior and the wiki described behavior are wildly divergent at this point.

the condition behavior, alongside the poor returns on point investment regarding healing power, is why people find themselves running some variation of “glass cannon”. That or don’t bother with dynamic events (if you can find one these days) at all.

If that is the in game observed behavior, either the wiki needs a cleanup or there is a bug on the loose…

Either ANet have some exceptional action gamers in their testing staff, or nobody bothered to test events beyond the warrior.

dandamanno.4136:

Bleeds stack intensity, and use the bleed that has the longest duration for the duration.
So let’s say 2 bleeds:
1. 500 damage over 4 seconds
2. 750 damage over 3 seconds

Result: 1250 damage for 4 seconds, and it shows as 2 stacks on the icon.

Things like burn stacks duration and uses the largest damage.
So let’s say 2 burns:
1. 500 damage per seconds for 4 seconds
2. 750 damage per second for 3 seconds

Result 750 damage per second for 7 seconds.

This is how I understand it to work.

Once the stack in bleed is full I am pretty sure it is like digiowl says, the stronger ones push the weaker ones aside. They also seem to always reset the timer, even if it is a weaker one.

Actually, each unit of bleed (or confusion, the other damage dealing intensity stacker) operate independently. So your example would be 1250 for 3 seconds and 500 for the last second (and during that second it would show only a single unit in the bleed stack).

And the burn example would be 750 for 3 seconds followed by 500 for 4 seconds.

Never mind that the tooltips shows expected damage if the DOT gets to run for the full duration, not the pr second damage (making DOTs look way stronger than they actually are).

Did some quick testing just now with a staff ele against a black bear (level 16-17 only, but just to look at the numbers). Sure, the main attack heals, but the AOE is so small that the bear had longer range on his auto attack and i had to move in closer once it stopped to attack me. And i needed both that heal, the regen from 5 points in water magic and water staff 3 to keep up with the damage it delivered on me. Sure, i could be hopping back and forth between water and fire, but i could just as well stay in fire and drop the bear faster, much faster.

IMO, the way the numbers are stacked in the ele attunements shows how ANet is thinking about DD, support, control and DOT. DD is fast and decisive, support more or less only delay the inevitable, control do anything but as you can’t really use it to take control of the battlefield because the cooldown way outstrip the effect, DOT is a slower relative to DD in that it needs to ramp up while DD do massive damage from the word go.

End result, your best defense is a massive offense. This especially when the game throws more than one mob at you as you can barely deal with one using anything but DD.

Just replace the a with a e and consider him very thirsty

The main open question about intensity stacks are what happens when the stack is full and more gets piled on. Best i can tell, the stronger ones in terms of duration and/or DPS push the weaker ones out of the way.

This unlike pure duration stacking, burn and such, where the stronger one gets put ahead of the queue while the total duration grows.

I suspect in part that the thinking come from event/mob farming, where you need to do a certain level of damage before the mob dies to be awarded a drop.

Also, while running solo during the PVE leveling you can rarely compensate for less DPS by upping defensive measures. This because defensive sources are on much longer cooldown, and have a much shorter duration, than offensive ones. So your best bet there becomes stacking defensive with offensive, like how the guardian provides boons with their attacks and can trait for healing when doing so.

That, or get very used to running in circles with a ranged weapon (preferably some kind of AOE auto attack).

In essence, DEs and soloing do not demonstrate that anything but DPS can be viable. And this notion will carry on into dungeons and other organized group experiences.

Thing is that with the attribute numbers on gear, switching builds may well require switching out the whole wardrobe…

cainejw.7142:

Alice.8694:

You want to change the fundamentals of a skill to suit a playstyle that does not exist.

Your argument is that targeting a friendly target is not a playstyle in the game.

clicks a friendly target

HOLY CRAP! I CAN CLICK PEOPLE!

And that is the crazy part. We still have this “feature” (to the point that the game sometimes shifts our target when we drag the camera around) yet there is nothing in the game mechanics that makes use of said “feature” (except perhaps picking out the NPC shop keeper or similar in a crowd).

Munrock.3092:

The militia training activities in Claypool teach you to time a block

Not sure if it actually does. Last time i poked at that there was virtually no pattern, and no hint about when the attack would be towards you. IMO the supposed block system in this game is too unforgiving towards anyone with less than perfect reaction time and/or connection. The blocks last just a couple of seconds, but have cooldowns 10 times that. Meaning that if you get the timing wrong by even half a second it will hurt or be potentially fatal. End result is that it may not even be worth trying compared to a dodge. And that is before we consider all the shield like effects that are only effective against ranged attacks…

UnderdogSMO.9428:

digiowl.9620:

TexZero.7910:

Melee combat punishes inexperienced players, that’s all.

So all we need to do is to run the same encounter enough time that we can time our dodges and such on rote?

No you have to play the game enough to know the visual ques that tell you when the best time to dodge is. And to know when you have othe players boons efecting you and whats effecting the mob

Funny, i thought ANet told us to play the game, not the UI

Ashes.6418:

So with that in mind, the XP does feel balanced to me, and to fully experience the world of GW2 you shouldn’t arbitrarily limit yourself to tunnel visioning your own races leveling zones and instead explore the world.

Except that the personal story gives the distinct impression that you could not be wandering into the world until you start working with the orders, meaning that in theory the racial zones should be enough to keep up with the personal story level until then.

This may be true if me make sure to complete our maps, but then that ties into completing certain skill challenges. Except that they love to throw us up against bunches of mobs that seems capable of flattening anyone attempting to solo them even after out-leveling the general area.

TexZero.7910:

Melee combat punishes inexperienced players, that’s all.

So all we need to do is to run the same encounter enough time that we can time our dodges and such on rote?

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Naoko.7096:

This is expected from a game with no trinity system.
Everything seems to be about kiting without it.

Stuns, blinds, confusion, basically any control or seport abuiltys

Most of them lasting one attack or single digit seconds while having cooldown measured in half-minutes or more. End result are periods where everything is on cooldown and you kite kite kite…

Lalangamena.3694:

I find it a matter of a profession,

what I can’t solo on thief or elementalist I can always solo on the warrior.

there is almost no regular dynamic event that I couldn’t solo on the warrior
(the dragons, and the giant that instakills you if you in melee range)

sometimes I feel that the events and the personal story are made for warriors and guardians.

Would not surprise me, as they both have AOE melee weapons. This allow them to “tank and spank” clumps of mobs up front where for others it will be suicide. This before we consider some of the professions where the biggers AOE guns are ground targeted, making them a pain to use properly while on the run from the horde (and likely DOT rather than burst, meaning you really need to have them standing on it for several seconds to get anything)…

Btw, the level scaling in this game is very course grained. If the mobs are even one level above me i am likely in over my head when facing more than one. Same level and i can face down many two, depending on the availability of AOE (and how spammy they are with CC). Me being just one level above them and i can stomp all over 4+…

At first i thought the PVP gear underperformed. But then i looked at the numbers again and it actually over-performs. 5 jewels and a amulet of the same kind goes beyond the numbers you can get from a full set of exotics.

I suspect this is a combo of things. Might stacks on the toon, not the mob. This means that if the toon has a AOE auto-attack (like say the GS chain on warrior or guardian) it benefits no matter what is hit.

And it adds another 25% on top of whatever you gained from crits if the stack is maxed out. meaning that you can hit 2.75 times your base damage if you manage to go all out. And with AOE no less.

And if the target mob goes down, the stack remains, so you just keep on attacking.

Vulnerability in comparison is pr mob. So while it makes little difference while facing a boss, it makes a difference while facing a group of mobs. And you loose nothing with that build when facing the boss, so it is a winwin to focus on might over vulnerability (tho you could perhaps combo the two when facing a boss for even more hurt).

Honestly, there is virtually no reason for not going AOE all the time in PVE.

PVE not only favors ranged, but ranged AOE. This because aggroing one mob is likely to aggro 2-3 others nearby. End result is that unless you have some kind of AOE (notice that most of the warrior and guardian melee weapons are just that, especially the “beloved” greatsword) your in for a world of hurt.

The whole game devolves into a kite fest, where you run in circles spamming anything AOE that is not ground targeted (because you will just pull the mobs out of that circles before the effect can do its thing).

Rhysati.4932:

Heinel.6548:

If you think there’s no tanks or healers in GW2. You are not exploring the game fully. Before you denounce GW2’s combat as unstructured and chaotic, think back to your CoH/V experience, apply the same framework to GW2. The two systems are very similar.

You can build tanky or build to do some healing, yes. Can that be your ultimate focus? Not really. You can’t do either to the level required to be labeled as a tank or a healer.

Best guess for me is that ANet wants everything as much as possible to behave the same in PVE and SPVP. Problem is that if you have effective heal/tank in SPVP you get the proverbial immovable object, that can bunker down on a point and hold it against even the four horsemen.

The necromancer death shroud was nerfed during the betas for this reason, and i suspect ANet will be taking long hard looks at both engineer and guardian to avoid this.

DarkWasp.7291:

2. Dynamic events

I do agree that dynamic events eventually get dry and never were as big of a savior from traditional quests as we had hoped.

Usually the DEs have some kind of trigger, often a NPC with a big flare over their head. If said flare was visible on the map no matter the range, people may be more inclined to look them up and set them in motion. Having to virtually walk into them do not help with triggering them…

Please add a option to have a ground targeting circle always show below the mouse.

This would make fast-cast ground targeting more practical, and also make it easier to use ground targeting while using mouse look.

And make it adjustable width so that we can tune it to our most used AOE abilities.

Right now the ground targeting mechanic is overly cumbersome for such a fast paced game in its default form, and highly inaccurate in the fast-cast form.

NightyNight.1823:

The question is , what is the point of anything other than Glass Cannon?

I sometimes wonder that myself, as i feel the numbers do not really provide a suitable “mass” to anything but direct damage crit builds.

Xsorus.2507:

digiowl.9620:

What is the second song used?

Rise of the Cavalry, It was suppose to put the names at the end of all the songs, I’m disappointed it did not.

Thanks, tho i noticed after i posted that i forgot to count the opening tune

Anyways, the one i was actually after was the one you mentioned at the end of the video (tho putting such things in the description over on youtube may also be nice).

bluewanders.5297:

I crafted [Courage] for my girlfriend.

Delivered with a /kneel?

What is the second song used?

Dunno about anyone else, but i managed to overlook the area around Ebonhawk while playing my first toon. end result was that i scoured the starter areas for just about every race until i wandered in there by chance while poking around the nearby higher level charr area.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigor

Necro is the only profession without vigor, likely because ANet think it can be compensated for by popping death shroud instead (extra “health” pool and all that)…

Given the aggro mechanics and general uselessness of going heavy on HP, vigor is indeed the best boon one can have going for general survivability. For one it makes a misplaced dodge much less costly.

Thing about soloing in this game is that while the mechanics are focused on sPVP mobility, the PVE AI will basically just banzai rush you and virtually force you into the proverbial “tank and spank” unless you get very good at kiting them around the place.

Never mind story episodes that will drop a ton of mobs on you while your in cramped quarters. Sure, there is likely a NPC or two around to “help”. But they will drop so quickly that even as a distraction they are useless.

In essence the game quickly devolves into running in circles with anything you have that can AOE spam unless you happen to have a weapon that heal (not that they really count for much even with 30 points dropped into HP) or preferably one that launches or similar as part of the auto-attack chain.