Guild Wars 2

asura has better animations (shorter aftercasts, prominent on ele)
norn has a useful elite (bear form, small niche)

the other 3 arent better in terms of gameplay in any ways i know of, but it doesnt sound like youre thinking about gameplay, just flavor.

Idk I think the only cancerous thing is #2 personally

timmyf.1490:

tl;dr “the prices are out of whack, so to fix them, we’re doing nothing and hoping they’ll fix themselves”

This is why I’m not an economist. :-)

him telling us this will help stop stagnation and speculation that the “hand of god” (so to speak) will sweep in and fix things for us.

in some cases, the problem is that hoarders be hoarding and its restricting the ability of the market to compensate and reflect where a price should be. in other cases its the opposite. in all cases, perhaps john thinks that saying “we will do nothing” will catalyze the market. and maybe it will.

posters in this thread saying gobbler isn’t awesome are wrong. it’s overhaul was a net nerf, but its still an unlimited source for really cheap xp boosts.

but is the rng annoyingly inconvenient? yes.

kinda doubt it will come back, the trend for gobblers has been to make them (sort of) hard to acquire thru achieves/collections and the nature of the beast is providing gem store items for in game currency, which isn’t really a path anet prolly wants promoted in an unlimited fashion for anything less than legendary prices.

oh god taimi gon corrupt herself with dragon juice and turn into trahearne 2.0

yes, shield needs fixing. at this point its an outdated noob trap.

4 necros 1 druid does around 85% of the dps of a full dps comp (maybe more like 75% now that toughness scaling is gone).

but to play that full dps comp, you need 5 people on top of their game all on different classes, and if you dont have those 5 people who know how to not only put out dps but also not die while doing so, then someone will drag the group down.

with 4 necros 1 druid, all people need is to have fought the fights a couple times before. cuz aint no kitten gonna die while he droolin on his necros skill bar.

its faster when you can make no guarantees about the rest of your group. thats why its a pug thing.

you wanna get away from it? find a speed run guild. until you do, stop doing a disservice to your fellow pugs by dying while you try to kitten out dps (good job if you arent).

Khisanth.2948:

Hmm … the prices only started dropping in June but the patch was in April.

People blame AB multiloot but seems to have forgotten about the rares that are being handed out from other events. I haven’t really been keeping track but I know that I’ve been getting 1 or 2 rare containers from random events. Mostly in VB but that is just because that is where I play the most.

multiloot took a while to figure out and get highly publicized. you should expect a lag between its inception, its spread to common knowledge, and the price of affected materials.

dont expect balance changes with content patches that are not also touted as balance patches and dont fall in between pvp seasons :P

in pve, core power engi does great dps, but now there are easier things to play that do similar dps and the build that can do that dps is a 3-4 kit build.

turrets have never been good dps, only a couple select things are. you should still be able to hit your 10k rocket turret toolbelts… in full ascended zerk gear with scholar runes, a bunch of condis on the mob including 25 vuln, and a lot of might on yourself. that skill is a strong single hit with a too-long cd and you should be able to squeeze at least 20k out of it under full buffs.

as for ranger, anything is viable in open world and yes you can camp longbow on ranger and no you dont need a staff as a druid, but druid brings so much to the table for ranger that running without at least druid will feel bad compared to running around with druid. elite specs are op. they make them game easier. they are new and shiny. try them out. druid play doesnt have to be too different from ranger play, it just has more to work with.

its only like 10-20g more than crafting and doesnt require having 500 crafts so… whatever. its not like fractal goers cant afford the gold cost. especially since you can choose. there should be a nominal cost for the ability to choose (vs rng), and crafting isnt obsoleted.

it looks like it was balanced with maybe a target price of ~30s for matrices and whatever the current ascended mats price is, and demand is high right now cuz matrices are the new shiny (again) so the prices are a bit off from what crafting would be.

the “I’ll keep it cuz I don’t wanna rebuy it” people arent the target for the “people are sitting on their leather” comment. that’s referring to tp players sitting on 10k+ or so squares.

hornswroggle.8023:

So now the Necro is not the be-all end-all solution to fractals anymore.
I appreciate some nice “meta-neighbors”.

lol yes it is

any time you have no necro in the party, picking engi (or anything but a druid/healbot ele) over necro will make you have a harder time. any time you have a necro, you might as well stack more for more epidemics.

engi is a good choice when you can guarantee you and your group won’t screw up, unfortunately. engis mastery over pug fractals has been over since hot launched.

• people abused throwing turrets in pvp, and turret engi was a thing that needed to die in a fire, so the trait was caught in the crossfire when the specialization overhaul came out
• people complained that it didnt make sense that you could throw things 1500 range and shoot things 1200 range along with the slow projectiles needing proper leading being hard to master and making nades make the most sense in melee anyways along with mortar kit taking over the long range
• neither of those have received nerfs in my imperfect memory, bomb kit has been buffed (2, burning duration)

• no, turrets are just simply in an unusable state for the indefinite future (except healing turret which is still the best heal no matter how they nerf it and rifle turret toolbelt)

• berserker and or marauder for power or viper for condi in pve
• marauder, or something tanky like wanderer, minstrel, crusader, or commander for power in wvw (you gotta figure out what feels right for you here and mixing things is ok and HoT stat combos are just plain better than core stats)
• viper/trailblazer/rabid/dire/sinister mix for condi wvw

there is a non rng method to obtain gold weapons, but 10 gold relics is ridiculous with current drop rates.

the scoring algorithm is not and never was a beta thing, what IS in beta is the ui elements depicting match scores and a field test for players to see if the changes feel better than the old scoring system. converting old scores isnt the point.

I think it would be neat if kinetic battery was changed to an active in-combat group buff (as in blinky like facet of nature with a medium icd) and changed from toolbelt to weapon skill (or utility, but {1} kits and {2} mimic make utility a worse choice imo). it’s unique, it’s useful to everyone, it requires skilled play (oh so engi themed), and it’s a trait that was created somewhat recently so it’s code shouldn’t be spaghettied and the devs might still know their way around it to make changes.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

This thread has responses pointing out issues in the current iteration of leagues and using those flaws as reasons why a rating and point (pip) system cannot both be used in tandem as I suggested in my original response. The issues mentioned include restrictive matchmaking based on pips, small tier sizes creating a large sense of loss when dropping pips, and a lack of prestige because of win streaks and rating-based matchmaking.

With that said, I’d like to clarify my original comment regarding using both pips and MMR. Our goals for leagues are still the same: create opportunities for skill-based prestige, give rewards for effort, and keep a low barrier to entry. We’ve tried to hit these goals with different iterations of a catch-all pip system; each emphasizing a different goal at the expense of the others. Pips are an easy to understand system for delivering rewards, but we understand that rating is a more accurate display of skill. We are now looking at how we can leverage the strengths of these systems individually to better succeed at reaching all of our goals. Both pips and rating can be used within the system if they are focused on solving specific problems – not all of them.

I’ve said all year that pips are a glorified reward track and that pvp should use mmr only for making matches and you ought to either throw out leagues and turn them into a ranked only reward track or (minimally) keep leagues only as a glorified reward track. :o

that’s cuz power rifle is obsoleted by hammer scrapper and all of the elite specs that have built in counters to things rifle does.

chill eats break bars nicely too in combination with the immob/cripples and is built in to the standard 4 kit build — nade 4 & mortar 3

spirit shards and obsidian shards are available for purchase, in addition to zerk (and some other useless stats) backpieces. between the 3 of these, there is always something for you to spend all your relics on.

the only reason you have to complain is if you hate using the mystic forge to make gold, in which case i say if you arent willing to put in the effort to convert what is given to you, you dont deserve gold. it takes minimal effort to make eldritch scroll weapons.

i wouldnt waste a toxic on fractals

Jerus.4350:

Malice if you don’t want to spend the money on Toxic Focusing Crystal? Or would you say the alternatives are still better?

personally id say malice is adequate for anything currently available and if a fight would come down to a loss with malice or a win with toxic + whatever, then it isnt that person doing the sucking, because i have completed many of the currently available fights with ample time to spare while using malice. and it saves 80s/30m.

DGraves.3720:

Part of me wonders what your background with statistics is. You seem to have a lot of theoretical knowledge but also seem young in it (hence mixing up methods like Bernoulli and Binomial Distribution, suggesting something that doesn’t apply like Poisson, suggesting something that was already being done in the case of Bernoulli and being unable to explain your suggestion, excusing yourself for getting your terms backwards and throwing around new terms, etc.) as if you yourself are just learning it.

ive taken a couple of the general requirement grad level stats courses, where there is a bunch of analysis and very exact language, and passed them with A’s, but its been a couple years, and several years before that. im not learning it, im remembering it, and not perfectly, which is why i corrected myself. and my main focus was applied math, especially acoustics, which does not require the really heavy statistics that could potentially be applied to it for things like error correction or something.

you see, this a game, not a job. if someone finds it fun to go through these calculations in their spare time, power to them. i can take a look at it if they post it publicly and check if its believable at the fairly rigorous level of a grad student who passed his classes, but i am not going to do more than take a look and i am not a teacher of this kind of material. because doing the calculations is a job to me, it isnt something im particularly keen to do in my spare time. but i like math, so i do enjoy having a look at the work others do about a game i enjoy.

J envy.5270:

forced to use traveler runes because you sacrificed tools for scrapper is not worth it.

i think it is worth it. i suggest you try it. tools gets you very little in a condi build. and trailblazer/viper make up for not having balthazar runes.

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

Phaeton.9582:

Better hold on to that IP

Man what a pun. Doesn’t that make this all seem worth it.

sometimes i dont feel like its worth it to engage him, but then again i fear people might believe in Math™ by DGraves.

Yet you yourself make terrible math errors. Very, very often. You know, like suggesting Poisson distribution as an option? Which of course doesn’t even make sense and would never work because of the requirements not being met.

its not an error to suggest to you a broad swath of material so you can better understand the things you are messing around with. i couldve also said gaussian and chi^2 distributions, and theyre no more relevant to this specific problem, yet are core to statistics as a whole.

Phaeton.9582:

Better hold on to that IP

Man what a pun. Doesn’t that make this all seem worth it.

sometimes i dont feel like its worth it to engage him, but then again i fear people might believe in Math™ by DGraves.

condi scrapper is enjoyable for me but im really not quite happy with the build overall. I take traveler runes to swap tools for scrapper, and I get stealth gyro from the trade (potent for roaming). generally I run bulwark/ft/eg and the obvious firearms/alchemy, and 312 in scrapper. trailblazer and rabid mix for gear, but I need to put more viper on that engi now that it’s accessible.

it does well in target sparse environments, but really lacks aoe. the damage is fine despite traveler runes, just make sure to spam some eg autos for burn covers.

it’s fun but in the end it doesn’t make use of scrapper very well, but replacing scrapper with explosives leaves you vulnerable, and switching runes to take tools or inventions leaves something to be desired against other elites.

pull hasnt always had these problems, but patch after patch on the backend has gradually degraded its inner workings and now the only reason its not a bigger issue is cuz hammer/scrapper more or less obsoletes toolkit.

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

DGraves.3720:

.39 isn’t a mean, it’s a deviation, 1-.85^3 = .385875. That’s the deviation for shrapnel in a set of three grenades (one salvo).

that’s the chance of at least one success, not the standard deviation of the distribution

Well let’s test it instead.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?amp;rawformassumption=%7B“C”,“Binomial”%7D->%7B"ProbabilityDistribution"%7D&i=Binomial(3,.15)&rawformassumption=%7B"C",“Binomial”%7D+->+%7B"ProbabilityDistribution"%7D

So the standard deviation is .61…

If that’s the case 1 – .61 = .39.

So that’s where the number comes from. I “skipped” a step in the sequence since I figured you already knew how to work it.

It’s binomial distribution method since it best fits imo.

the standard deviation for a binomial distribution is sqrt(np(1-p)), not (1-p)^n.

they are similar to 2 significant figures in this case. the step you skipped is an important concept.

DGraves.3720:

.39 isn’t a mean, it’s a deviation, 1-.85^3 = .385875. That’s the deviation for shrapnel in a set of three grenades (one salvo).

that’s the chance of at least one success, not the standard deviation of the distribution

I hope they nerf hammer instead, along with all the other elite specs.

DGraves.3720:

Math is a tool, not magic, so if you don’t know what to do with the numbers it won’t help you to get the answer.

clearly you dont know how to use the tool.

DGraves.3720:

I just did the deviation for you. All you derive is the original rate of success, the failure rate, any given sample success rate, and the variance expected.

But those won’t help you in a finite series resolve partials of non-events in averaging. But as always you really can’t explain yourself.

my bad. i always end up confusing bernoulli and binomial distributions. bernoulli is a single trial, while binomial is an aggregate distribution of bernoulli trials. the thing wrong with your previous statement,

For instance let’s set the constraint of 10 explosions. Well the first thing we do is calculate the odds, which for independent events, is just adding them up or just writing it out as .15 × 10 = 150%. For averaging that would mean at least one of the ten will be guaranteed but then we have the .5 to deal with.

is that such a setup will produce a distribution from which you randomly select an outcome. have a look at this for a concise example. youll probably need to click the “use as a Probability Distribution instead” link, because wolframalpha doesnt really play nice with URLs. as you can see, 10 trials, 15% success rate. our random variable X lives in the discrete set {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}, and the PDF, or Probability Density Function, tells you the probability that you will get a certain outcome for X each time you “roll the dice” (so to speak). when you integrate the pdf (or in this case, sum, since its a discrete distribution), the probability of getting any outcome from the set of {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10} is 100%.

there is no such thing as 150% in these numbers.

you are literally not guaranteed to get any bleeds, and in fact, you have a 19.69% chance of getting 0 bleeds. this is how i know that you do not know what you are talking about. plus, standard deviation is entirely irrelevant to this conversation.

have i explained myself well enough yet?

i can tell you, rather than explain in the most boring fashion, that it quite simply is the answer to this problem, and since you dont know that i can only assume you have no background in statistics (as youve claimed you have before).

hmm a 2 hour rollback.

i remember 10 years ago when i was playing maplestory and nexon frequently did rollbacks (sometimes days, sometimes minutes) with no kittens given for their players.

anet handled this really well. thanks gaile, mo, support, the team that noticed/fixed the bug, and whoever else was involved. you guys did awesome.

DGraves.3720:

insanemaniac.2456:

no, it being random has nothing to do with anything cuz you are averaging it out and taking the randomness away. rare events work perfectly well with averaging, but they are particularly unsatisfactory from a “getting a reward” standpoint because of the nature of dry streaks in conjunction with confirmation bias. and 15% isnt that rare anyways.

The problem is that when you produce these random numbers and averages you have to truncate them because when managing events you can’t have “partial” events. For instance let’s say that a light turns green 60% of the time and red 40% but you only have two trials so how often is that light green? In those two trials it’s probably going to come out 100% of the time. You can’t have a “60% green light”. It’s either green or red.

Random events and their values change (Standard Deviation) regarding constraints. Normal averaging is without bounds so it presumes continuous eternal application which allows decimal based behavior to work; for instance:

.15(odds) x 100 (damage) x 20 (duration) = 300

This is the true averaging value of any given explosion regardless of whether it produces shrapnel or not in relation to shrapnel. This is the number that gets augmented when you add a time and divide it up.

The problem with this is that it only works in relation to an infinite set. This is any given explosion at any time over an eternal duration. If we were to set a constraint it doesn’t work out anymore. For instance let’s set the constraint of 10 explosions. Well the first thing we do is calculate the odds, which for independent events, is just adding them up or just writing it out as .15 × 10 = 150%. For averaging that would mean at least one of the ten will be guaranteed but then we have the .5 to deal with. The question becomes “Can we have half a proc?” and the answer is “No.”

So we truncate it. This means that the odds of getting one true occurrence in averaged instances must be the same between explosion sets 7 and 13. If you don’t truncate you are overstating your results. The larger the base number of sets you use (explosions, time, etc. are all working the same way here since they all produce one another) the lower that error margin.

The smaller the number of sets as seen the higher the erratic nature of the margin. So long as you average and use values that are not rounded down to real events you’re going to greatly overstate your outputs. Not that it matters to everyone. It is just a game after all.

not this again.

edit:

For instance let’s set the constraint of 10 explosions. Well the first thing we do is calculate the odds, which for independent events, is just adding them up or just writing it out as .15 × 10 = 150%. For averaging that would mean at least one of the ten will be guaranteed but then we have the .5 to deal with.

this is not how probability works. i suggest reading up on binomial, bernoulli, poisson, and other types of distributions in statistics. in particular, this experiment produces a bernoulli distribution.

no, it being random has nothing to do with anything cuz you are averaging it out and taking the randomness away. rare events work perfectly well with averaging, but they are particularly unsatisfactory from a “getting a reward” standpoint because of the nature of dry streaks in conjunction with confirmation bias. and 15% isnt that rare anyways.

nah.

you only truncate the bleeds when you want to simulate a mobs death. mob death isnt really a necessary assumption in a dps calculation, but it will make paper calculations into slight overestimations compared to empirical testing. 158.4 dps or whatever (might? no might?) is a perfectly valid theoretical calculation with sound reasoning.

Tornupto.2304:

insanemaniac.2456:

op is one of the reasons his party dies, but will wholeheartedly claim he is better than them cuz he survives longer ><

if he was using rise, he would not need the junk stats given by cele gear and could use viper to the same effect but with 3x the dps. by doing 3x the dps, fights are shorter and there is less opportunity for his friends to kill themselves.

Rise already seems to be included in his build…

when one camps shroud, one does not use utilities

op is one of the reasons his party dies, but will wholeheartedly claim he is better than them cuz he survives longer ><

if he was using rise, he would not need the junk stats given by cele gear and could use viper to the same effect but with 3x the dps. by doing 3x the dps, fights are shorter and there is less opportunity for his friends to kill themselves.

lol

necro is optimal for fractals cuz as someone who posts lfgs, when I see a necro join my group I think “welp I don’t need to worry about this guy” even when he turns out to be a terribad. I can’t say the same about any other class, cuz other classes have to actually not be terribad for me to not think about kicking.

Novuake.2691:

insanemaniac.2456:

Novuake.2691:

Pride.1734:

Why applied force and hoelbrak over adaptive armor and strength?

Applied force allows you to land grenade bursts and damage a lot easier.

The problem with nades has always been that you need to setup grenade damage with CC. Since CC means less now than it did when nades were popular, you get a similar effect by being able to throw them out faster with quickness.

now theres a new problem with nades: new HoT things defend while attacking, and nades only attack or defend (blind).

Thats why hammer is used and not rifle FOr when defence is needed.

when you use hammer, you have enough attack and defend things that you dont need attack or defend things and those attack or defend things are a waste of time in comparison ;(

Novuake.2691:

Pride.1734:

Why applied force and hoelbrak over adaptive armor and strength?

Applied force allows you to land grenade bursts and damage a lot easier.

The problem with nades has always been that you need to setup grenade damage with CC. Since CC means less now than it did when nades were popular, you get a similar effect by being able to throw them out faster with quickness.

now theres a new problem with nades: new HoT things defend while attacking, and nades only attack or defend (blind).

I kinda miss the cliffside arm seals tbh

Ariurotl.3718:

insanemaniac.2456:

yeah sure if you wanna turn engi into something that spams 11111111111 with the occasional nade barrage

Anything to annoy the elitists with their megarotations? Sign me up!

the elitists with megarotations will just spam 111 instead cuz its the best damage

it wont be an annoyance, itll be a relief

maybe its fun to change things up and maybe you do well cuz you know how to play it against your opponents and they dont know how to counter you (until they learn after dying once, twice, 3x, after a match…) but if you go with boring then on average boring will be just plain better. and in pvp, making another class isnt a big deal. you have 5 character slots to start and you can make a toon and immediately play it at its strongest so theres really no reason to be bored with the build you are playing when there are 8~15 other meta builds that are just as strong as the thing youre bored with but have different playstyles.

gw2crafts.net

first, I suggest inventions 232 over whatever you’re using in alchemy (221?).

second, are you leaving medic gyro out or killing him immediately? immediate destruction will improve your healing capabilities if you aren’t doing that. and on that note, healing turret is prolly better now anyways due to nerfs to medic gyro and that it will cleanse condis, which you lose when you give up alchemy.

i have tags but i dont tag up cuz theres no challenge in open world content when you drag a bunch of extra people to it and because if i/we finish the content too quickly someone will kitten about missing out