Guild Wars 2

One thing I picked up, that I’ve never tested, is if the enemy can see which way you leave spawn from. If they can see/spot this, then I think that should be changed. That way you at least have the option to take some people and break out one of the side exits without spawn campers predicting you and waiting.

Other than that, got to agree with Puck and the rest.

Though I wouldn’t mind having the LegDef’s patrolling a bit, so they’re not so static. (Often hid behind 3rd opponents LegDef to shake of some pesky enemies following me around).

Puck.9612:

Erbage.7290:

…

unless merging those server miraculously gave them off hours coverage they would still get destroyed in silver.

This.

It would essentially just be a EotM’ish variant of bronze.

For me, it would be the Charr Warbands from GW1 (As I discussed here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-miss-Charr-Warbands-from-GW1/first#post5447511 )

synk.6907:

GW1 was certainly more akin to an online, cooperative version of, say, Baulder’s Gate with respect to world exploration.

Just got to say that is the reason I started playing it! I needed more Baldurs Gate >_<

@ IndigoSundown

Dude give me Trehearne npc, he is GW2’s "Oink", he doesn’t die! Best npc in game! (Not entirely trolling, but he is invulnerable in most of the story missions, thus he is the only useful NPC I’ve ever seen in this game. Just like the IMORTAL OINK from GW1, best npc in game).

RoffleMyWaffles.1295:

joneirikb.7506:

…

I have decided to play a bit more. I’m giving it until about lvl 20 to really decide whether it’s the game for me. I just can’t see GW2 getting so many incredible reviews my respected reviewers and it being a crappy game, like Angry Joe for example (he is brutally scrutanizing in his reviews).

From the suggestions, I think I’ve decided to go ahead and try Elementalist and Mesmer next, just to get a feel.

What I REALLY need is some kind of expanded tutorial that goes into detail about what character stats, item stats and all that jazz really mean. I still have no idea what “dazed” means (I’m assuming it’s an interrupt), and things of that nature. I’m a DoTA2, Dragon Age, Baldurs Gate, etc. old-school RPG player, so maximizing builds and digging deep into complex games is fun to me.

First rule of learning the inner mechanic: /wiki daze

The wiki gives you most of the information you need. And you can use it ingame with the /wiki command to launch the browser, this is also very convenient if you have 2 monitors so you can keep the wiki on the other screen.

For stats, and considering what you seemed to prefer in your other thread, you should probably go full damage and enjoy the higher risk to get beaten to death. For starting levels 1-20 that means grab anything that has +power and some +precision. And if you want some, +condition damage.

I’d say stick to thief, it is a very squishy class to begin with, that is very dependent upon your mastery of active defenses, as it has near no passive ones. You will be at a disadvantage against larger numbers of enemies, until you start making proper use of stealth and all your class abilities. It is one of those classes you actually can feel that you’re learning something in PvE.

For example Warrior is fast, deals lots of damage, has uses in all game modes and is wanted in solo and groups, in pvp and wvw etc. But it is also a very easy class to learn, so you probably would get bored of it quickly.

Elementalist and Engineer are probably the two classes with the highest skill ceiling if that interests you.

Also, go PvP.

To be honest, play a bit more first. At level 19 or so you will have unlocked the 3rd utility slot, and once you start getting some different utility skills to mix with different weapons, you start seeing the Thief more as the kind of rogue you’re thinking about.

For example: Blinding Powder + Shadow Refuge + Signet (whichever was the one that gave +25% move speed). Combine with a heal skill you like, and you got the fast and deadly backstabber. Dagger+Dagger, or Dagger+Pistol depending on taste. Secondary weapon anything you want, but recommend shortbow for aoe and multiple enemies, and the only weapon you got that can be used for support (and boss fights).

Traits later one will give a lot more play on this.

For other classes, take a look at Mesmer, sort of a combat-illusionist-dueler. Learn to use the Shatter skills from the start, and can still do melee with the sword, but everything else is ranged (Yes, it has a ranged greatsword, don’t ask).

So you decided to at least try to play a bit more ?

Jayne.9251:

joneirikb.7506:

Jayne.9251:

joneirikb.7506:

Quick fix: make AC deal no damage to siege.

Oh honey, think about this

That damage goes both ways — so many rams will celebrate.

Yup I know, but this also means that you can still build cata or treb inside and shoot down the rams from inside, and those won’t be plastered by AC’s. It gives you some small room for counter play.

.

I thought they removed cats doing damage to Rams/gates defensively in 2013? Did they change it back again?

Sorry meant the knockback from the cata/treb.

You’re still not likely to win the fight, but at least you get the options to slow it down enough that you can either get help, or bore them so much they go take another tower instead (most likely).

Jayne.9251:

joneirikb.7506:

Quick fix: make AC deal no damage to siege.

Oh honey, think about this

That damage goes both ways — so many rams will celebrate.

Yup I know, but this also means that you can still build cata or treb inside and shoot down the rams from inside, and those won’t be plastered by AC’s. It gives you some small room for counter play.

Or my favorite, Counter Ram from inside, with Ram mastery.

Second favorite, 5-10 guardians with staff mass spam 1 out through the gate with full might, fury and quickness.

Also, counter spam aoe’s from inside to chase the players away, the usual siege disablers, etc. Would love to recommend the Oil, but the only time I’ve ever seen that one work is against the enemies in SilverWastes when defending towers.

Quick fix: make AC deal no damage to siege. That would remove *some* of the problems. Defenders can still swap place on the AC’s etc and shoot back.

But yes, Projectile Block/LOS limits needed, looking much forward to the rumored second part of the AC patch.

Also, it’s been 3 years, give them poor workers enough materials to build the gates all the way up. They’ve earned it.

Must agree with some of the other comments here (Lol @ Puck, love you man!).

But I must also admit that I would enjoy seeing that if there was a lot of enemy players outside of spawn, that the Leg-Def’s decided to make a push, brought Siegerazer, everyone got 1 min super swiftness, and chased away the rabble outside the gates!

(They would obviously stop at a certain range, say halfway between spawn gate and tower for example, or perhaps all the way out to the rock but not enough to get to the tower)

Don’t come and tell me that wouldn’t be fun!

Linken.6345:

Brigantia.5746:

Linken.6345:

Brigantia.5746:

They should especially do this for the hearts that REQUIRE the events in order to get heart completion. Waiting almost an entire hour for an event to trigger to get map completion is just aggravating.

what heart are those cant recall any?

The one in Diessa Plateau called “Assist the Ash Legion” .
There’s an event that takes forever to start but is the only normal paced way to complete the heart. Players can get lucky and get a mob to randomly jump out if they walk into the right spot but there’s not enough and the progress is so miniscule that by the time they respawn the even is close to starting and it ends up taking almost an hour anyway. This was a long time ago, however, that I had this problem. I remember having another heart that took similarly as long but it’s been far off my thoughts and I don’t remember. Anyway, people have made forum posts about this heart taking too long to complete before.

Oh I never done that heart event just kill mobs to get it dont take that long

The point is that outside of the events, there are no mobs on that heart. I caught the tail of that event, and got a couple of kills, then randomly spawned one big guy every 5-10 min. Until the event finally spawned again, and I could run around the bottom ring and kill normal grunts until I completed the heart. I sat for an hour at that place just waiting for grunts to kill

Thankfully I had a silly guild-chat to read, so it wasn’t so horrible.

Freeware, with HoT release, perhaps closer to Shareware.

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

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

@ Brigantia: I did this one 2 days back, still the same. Took be about an hour to get it.

And yes, I do wish that specifically the events around a heart spawned more often, since the hearts are usually very boring to do without them. (Stuff like the clear the spiders and gather the apples around the heart with the apple farmer in queensdale etc).

@ Regarding fluff

Regarding how they "had" to make charr the good guys. This is a game "world/setting", they don’t have to do anything, they could have just said humans invented a macguffin and wiped them out and blew up the macguffin as well. And then no Charrs in GW2 etc.

They had planned more races already back in/before EotN, so they already had a plan with that and wanted it to turn around to what we have now. Pyre (if that was his name) was the fore runner for this, starting to mend the connection between humans and charr.

I do feel something is missing from the Charr compared to the first game but I suspect that is more the emphasis away from "dangerous enemy" to "funny kittens on youtube".

---

@ Regarding game

I do realize and agree that there is a big difference in the design of GW1 and 2, and how this affects soloable vs group play etc. This is why I didn’t suggest to replace ALL enemies with this (I would have loved it!).

instead I suggested this as something that could be added to a few of the middle/higher maps and in specific areas a bit out of the way so it didn’t make existing content harder. And it would be classified as group content, and probably considered similar to champion fights in general.

I just want some challenges even in the normal maps, and I want a reason to actually want to play together with other players. Because right now, if I want to play PvE, I mostly play some other game (Pillars of Eternity or Valdis Story for example).

And there should always be some harder content available to have something of a goal, a challenge, something to overcome just for the feeling of satisfaction that you accomplished something you thought was hard.

@ PopeUrban + synk

Do you think it is bad to want to have some more group content ? Even in the Open World ? I do understand the lack of heroes/henchmen etc. But you also have a lot of other tools to work with in GW2, friendly npc’s, often you can use neutral creatures or set enemies up against each others etc. And using the terrain much better. I do miss the imp though, hated leveling to 20 in GW1 because I lost the imp :p

@ Castigator + Mikazuki Yuki

Regarding Stat Focusing: Power and Condition damage is the most popular, so it makes sense that there are lots of stat sets around them. About Healing Power, beats me! I still can’t figure it out, I’d love Clerics in general but I do hate that Healing Power is the main stat.

The lack of ferocity is probably because in "general" the stat is useless without the full zerk package. So they probably haven’t seen a reason to make it a major stat.

@ Castigator + Quiznos

Regarding 4 stat items: Guessing he is referencing some of the ascended trinkets etc that has a split stat setup ? Iirc one of the Dire trinkets has some extra precision added but a bit less vitality if memory servers. I think this is because they didn’t have an upgrade "gem" for Dire when they made them, so they calculated it as Dire amulet + Rabid upgrade gem or something. You can see this on a couple of the ascended trinkets at least.

Alternatively, PvP recently gotten a few amulets with more than 3 stats, which I find interesting and hope they bring along to the rest of the game.

I’m not a fan of the tri-stat system. But one change I would have liked to see, is to remove the "major/minor" stat aspect. So all 3 was identical. I know a lot of people would dislike this, but it would simply remove useless clutter in the design.

Right now many stat sets like Cleric is weird because it got major stat healing power, where probably everyone would prefer Power, or even Toughness as the main stat.

This would also make it easier to play with different setups, as you’re not locked into either major power or condi damage sets only, but could actually use things such as Carrion and Knights as well to supplement a build without losing out on your favored damage stat.

This would also reduce the amount of possible stat combinations considerably.

Honestly I’d wish to see them move away from Tri-Stat, I’m using lots of Celestial for that reason, but would like to see some of the new PvP amulets made available like the one that gave Power+Precision+Ferocity/Vitality split.

I find that some events run almost continually. Queensdale the guy collecting scale eggs, you can finish it, go outside with the trash, or take a walk to the bathroom or something and it is ready again (slight exaggeration). In Kessex Hills you can almost sit and wait for the whole Centaur war event chain.

I would like to see more variation in events, I tend to see the same ones over and over. Would be interesting to see them tie together more events, so they chain together from where one ends to another one starts. So you can literally follow through 3-4 events in a row and see some that is more rare nowadays.

@ RoffleMyWaffles.1295

In short, the majority of the game, especially the open world PvE part, is very easy in this game. And if this is not to your liking then I would recommend to either find another mode or play another game. If you want challenges then focus on either PvP or WvW. Enemy players is the greatest challenge you will find in any game.

If the lack of challenge in PvE is such a problem that you can’t enjoy it, then don’t play it, either try another mode or play another game.

I would however recommend hitting level 15 first, and go to the NEXT area. The starter zones (1-15) is crazy simple, even by this games standards. Go to one of the next ones (15-25) and for an opinion there (I’d recommend Kessex Hills, in the human lands). If you still don’t enjoy it at this stage, you’ll hate it all the way to 80 anyways and would be better of doing something else.

Myself, I’m bored to tears with most of the PVE content, and has played mostly WvW the last 1.5 years now. Keep telling myself I should get started on PvP as well, but the guild tend to nag on me joining in WvW instead. I enjoyed the open world exploration when I started playing, because I’ve always enjoyed exploring in games. But once I had explored everything the open world lost its charm for me. Started trying to solo champions for challenge, and grew bored of that as well. Still enjoy the toxic events in Kessex.

TLDR: Yup, this is another “Man I wish Open World PvE gave me a slight challenge” topics.

-

Was out taking a walk, and was thinking about GW1 a bit, and realized that the one thing above everything else that I really miss from that game is: Charr Warbands.

Everyone that has played GW1 knows exactly what I mean. For everyone else: Charr’s was the big bad evil in much of GW1, and you spent a lot of time fighting against them, especially wandering around in the open maps dodging or fighting their roaming warbands. Each warband was 4-5 Charr’s of different types, and each type used one of the professions and skills and weapons from that profession. They could be quite nasty to take down alone, and you often had to change builds, bring heroes and henchmen to survive though a map.

The part that I really miss, is that you had 4-5 enemies, that each are weaker than your character (on equal level), but they had a simple but efficient “build” based on one of the professions, so they had some skills on par with players. They worked in a group, and if you attacked one, the entire group responded together. And their builds had a variety of different styles, and some of them even helped the rest of the party (like the monk/healer ones).

They became something you didn’t want to take on solo, unless you had the right build, or felt very confident in your own skills.

-

This is something I just don’t feel in GW2 at all. Closest feeling I’ve gotten is small group encountering small group in WvW.

The I remembered the training dummy NPC’s in Heart of the Mists, they got one for each of the professions (minus ranger), that actually makes use of profession skills, stats, and even have a basic build. They’re still to dumb to properly dodge or move away from danger etc, but they would be perfect for my conceptual “charr warbands”.

Now imagine we take a map like Iron Marches and add a few roaming Flame Legion Warbands, randomized 4-5 different charr’s based on the 7 test dummy npc AI/Builds, that are programmed to walk around in areas on “patrol”. Suddenly we got something most players doesn’t want to take on solo, but wait for others, or team up with someone to fight against. You don’t even have to put them in the way of anything, plenty of “quiet” areas that would benefit from having a fight.

Or in Harathi Hinterlands, make a few similar “Centaur Patrols”. Dedgehaunt Cliffs could easily have a few Dredge patrols like this. Adding some of these to the existing maps would create some interesting fights, without making the entire map “unplayable” for those that like the game as is (easy).

-

On another note, I’d like to see this actually done to the friendly NPC’s as well. I want to actually see Charr Warbands patrol and fight together, and supplement each others. Unfortunately, they have nerfed the poor allied NPC’s so much that they just go and die the moment a scale looks hungry at them, so probably wouldn’t work.

/rant

godofcows.2451:

"WvW is not and was never intended to be balanced."

I’ve heard this line so many times. I believe this was mentioned by a dev years ago? Why not demand. You’re swallowing the words of someone. What’s worse is you paid for his product. You have a flight of stairs. Your goal is the top. You can’t reach that unless you start climbing the flight of stairs and stop listening when he’s shouting it’s too high when he could’ve held your hand to make the climb even easier. i’m sorry i don’t buy it. they can start by looking at some of their conditions, food, armors, but then again this shouldn’t be new to them. it’s been complained over and over and over and ignored over and over and over and will be ignored over and over and over.

Well, the idea here was that when they first described WvW they said that it was supposed to be a warzone, and not a balanced match like in PvP etc.

WvW really is a format where you just throw things in and see what happens, there are too many possibilities etc to realistically balance it. And that is a huge draw for many people.

The whole Condi vs Power damage is a example of this. How powerful they are depends entirely upon the context, how big a group are we talking about, 1v1, 5v5, 10v10, 30v30, 50v50 etc ? The answer will change completely depending on what numbers we pick.

WvW is only balanced in the "possibility" for each team. They have access to the same tings (classes, equipment, sigils, runes, siege, structures etc). But disregards more localized balance than this (which is what people usually refer to as balance, such as condi vs power, class balance, stealth, perlexity etc).

Jayne.9251:

Solution: Don’t drop siege in a place where it can be targeted from outside an objective.

Which right now means, don’t drop siege at all ?

Pardon, been to busy to sit down and really read through and consider this for a while. Here we go:

@ Aetrion

Didn’t notice you mentioning reworking the sigil/runes in the previous post, that would make more sense. Main counter arguments would be:

(1) that it would make much more work for ANet, since they would have to change pretty much everything around this.
(2) It would upset current players of at least some game modes, because they would think making something less complex = dumbifying.

I do like the idea a lot, I think it could have been a great system if they released it from the start. I think the pitfall is just the amount of work this would require. One of the ideas with my suggestion in the first post is that it wouldn’t create to much work to change it around, since it lets them retain the tri-stat system.

@ Scipion

I pretty much agree, since this feels like the same idea I had on the top, just different splitting up of the stats. Like the mix in power/condi damage over two stats. Splitting the boon duration an condition duration into sub types is an interesting idea, and gives more options to juggle with over stats.

@ Invictus

Can’t say I agree to that, obviously

For the reasoning behind that: I find in WvW for example that the defensive stats are often wanted but found lacking. We have no clear defences vs Conditions without using utility skills, traits and runes/sigils etc to counter them, while the toughness stat becomes entirely useless, while it is still decent against a power user.

(breathes)

Vitality is nice but underwhelming, and functions poorly alone withouth the other two defensive stats, thus crippling damage output in many situations. And healing power is a chapter in itself. Even ferocity is mostly a waste of a stat without the other two from Berserker.

While Healing Power + Boon Duration would certainly be a step up for Healing Power, that still leaves a lot of other issues.

@ Rauderi

That is actually a very good idea. Making each stat useful for both roles, would really break up the berserk’s monopoly on damage output, and perhaps make players consider what stats to bring. (They will still decide on a "max dps" setup anyways, but perhaps it will be closer)

So would you mix one offensive and the equalent defensive stat, or one offensive and the opposite defense ?

Some quick examples (similar):

* Power + Toughness
* Precision + Vitality
* Ferocity + ? (-Condition Duration?)
* Condition Damage + Healing Power
* Condition Duration + Boon Duration

This would certainly need some balancing, this would mean that a berserker would be just as tough and resistant as a soldier under the current system. This would fill out 5 stats, which is the minimum that would work with the current tri-stat system (5-7, best at 6). Main complaint against it, is that it actually makes it near impossible to play a proper glass cannon for those that enjoys that.

---

Thanks for comments and ideas!

I don’t see this argument, after all the core game has been on 10$ sale a bunch of times already. Anyone that bought the game at one of those would have similarly gotten it cheaper.

I think this is a good move. They get a working "demo" mode for players to try out without spending cash, while everyone that is going to play will want to or feel pressured by other players to get the expansion so they can play together in the new content etc. The only issue is if the limitations to the new accounts are enough or not.

And I bought one of those big packs on release with the huge Rytlock statue in it, and for the life of me can’t figure out why I did that :p If I wanted the game "cheap", then I wouldn’t have picked up the collectors edition, and I would have waited until the game got cheaper (or free).

Choices and Consequences.

Good post OP. Unfortunately the forum bugged and I can’t find a +1 button on it.

so: +1

While I personally completely agree, for different reasons, that adding the PvP system to WvW would be nice.

WvW is not and was never intended to be balanced.

PvP is balanced around 5vs5, not 50vs50 or 1vs1, so it doesn’t really fix that much in WvW.

Most WvW roamers and fight centric people enjoy the customization you get from mixing all the items, foods, utils, and runes/sigils/stats unavailable to PvP.

Being hard locked to the PvP amulets would unfortunately ruin a good bit of build diversity (Though most of this could be solved with splitting the amulets into 2 parts, so you could take 2 different stat setups if you wanted to)

Personally would love this, simply because it would make it so much easier and cheaper to test out new builds and experiment with stats and runes etc. And remove the entire uplevel aspect from WvW.

Inay.9865:

I’m still begging you.

Please, please. Or at least, to remove the giant floating crystals who make no kitten sense for my character. (And the spallier of the Ceremony, and Imperial outfit. The easy enormous ones.)

+1

@Osu:

I’m shocked most of those are still in the game by design. It is just tedious to handle all the green/blues etc, and all the spikes you got to hand off to the merchants.

Either they should give us some options to automate that as you suggested, or just have them do most of that automatically.

Or, they should just stop giving us blue and green items etc, and instead just give us mats, silver etc. So we don’t have to sit there and get RSI for cleaning up our inventory.

That, and give us the option to auto deposit all mats to bank all the time without having to push buttons.

The current bag system is a relic of the past.

There has been a random factor i the Glicko match-up calculations for years now, don’t recall exactly how long ago. They never took it away, it is just that T1 managed to lock itself so high in glicko that even the randomizer couldn’t reach that far.

Now YB managed to get high enough Glicko rating to be inside the range of the randomizer. That is all there is to it.

Liston

What is in place now does not work. I fail to see how a 1 up 1 down trial for 2 months or so labeled as an “event” would do more harm than good. If it works well, it can be made permanent. If it works exactly like some of you think it will, then it goes away…..

I am not a fan of the 1up/1down system, largely because it will create a lot of very unbalanced match-up’s. Many servers have trouble finding someone remotely near themselves in numbers/skill/coverage/etc, and often there is but a single server or perhaps two other servers that are similar to you in all over capability. and then you keep getting changed into other match-up’s instead.

We already have a problem with how the tiers work, servers like IoJ and FC that are pretty close in points and possibly would be a good match for each others are locked out because one keeps rolling T7 and the other T8. With glicko they at least have a slight possibility of meeting each others once in a blue moon, with the 1up1down they would always get stuck moving past each others.

My own server Kaineng is also in a weird spot, where its 60 points up to next, and 80 points down to the next server, we don’t really have any good match-ups at all right now. So if we keep getting the two closest servers (SoR and IoJ) we can at least fight back somewhat, and not completely dominate the weaker server in the match-up. But with the 1up1down, that would be changed constantly for servers with larger size differences.

Or T1+2+3+4 Where whoever goes up gets destroyed, anyone goes down bulldoze the entire match-up. So basically every other week is "fair fights week" with straight match-up’s, and the opposite week is "crazy steamroll week" where half the population basically doesn’t bother to show up, because it is no fun to play when t1 vs t2 vs t3.

The population/coverage/size/whatnots between servers of different tiers is to large, which is *why* glicko doesn’t give huge variations in match-ups. If the variable match-ups was viable, glicko would give them. Notable exception here is how T1 glicko locked themselves, that should have been fixed by ANet from the start. Starting to like the idea of max/min glicko rating.

Liston

Glicko takes way too long to adjust to shifting populations and NA has had huge shifts in the last month…..

This can also be solved by adjusting the glicko calculations, to allow for faster changes.

Still in favor for #1.

Worried about the farming possibilities of #2

neutral on #3.

Yup as Orochimaru said, using the WvW screen to "leave the mists" doesn’t leave loot or kill. Same if you get accepted in a queue to another map or something.

If you Alt+F4 (and I believe if you change toon) you’re considered dead, give kill and loot as per normal.

You mean I can finally target those kitten mesmers and thieves ?

Which shrine do I make offerings too ?

@OP: Love the idea.

@Orpheal: First impression is "Nope, don’t want that".

1) Wouldn’t mind removing all the food/util bonuses, but that will not happen, because it would invalidate chef and many other craftings. Though they should definitively look them over and streamline the design of all those.

2) No PvD I agree with rest, no thanks. Limited siege spots vs trolls and set locations remove finding new and creative places.

3) If they fixed the problems with aoe bombing and ranging cannons etc, this wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

4) Same as 3.

5) As long as they don’t make the WxP "required" for anything it is fine. Seen enough "get off ram! let master ram!" etc. I’m just glad they’re removing the applied bonuses.

6) That doesn’t sound like what I see those classes do. I see most guardians in open field/zergs or roaming groups. Eles I see mostly roaming daggers or defending towers with mistform. Thieves are to busy trying to gank solo roamers to care about commanders etc. So the problem becomes what is each class’s "role" ? I don’t think a class should be pigeon-holed into anything.

7) The usual condi stuff, fire is a bit to strong and needs a slight reduction. The rest is probably more on a per class/skill basis. Perplexity runes is a chapter in itself. But again Conditions doesn’t really become a problem once you have a certain mass of players. Even 5 players can bring enough condi cleansing that it isn’t a problem (and they’ll die to zerg spamming 20 staff attacks before the condis). Rebalancing rune sets etc has to balance up to every game mode not only WvW, so is a big undertaking, it is just that most players in this game only scream "MOAR DAMAGE!!!" and doesn’t care about other attributes.

8) Uhm, no thanks. more logistics, more confused pugs, more arguments in chat "I thought you guys got material X !" etc. And I just don’t see much gain. Complexity for complexities sake, do not want.

9) Agreed.

10) Agreed.

11) Absolutely not! This is one thing I think ANet been really good at, to make certain that the outnumbered buff DOES NOT give you an advantage in a fight! The buff is there to make those wins you can get sweeter, not to win you fights. It primary acts like a warning signal. If there should be buffs for it, it should be buffs to counteract the numerical deficiency you have compared to the opponents. Things like increased supply limit, faster building/repairing to counteract that the enemy has 20-80 people that can carry supply and build instantly anything. Not messing with fights.

12) Kinda agreed that it feels weird that Siegerazer just stands there if you take out his poor Yak. But I’d rather want to see Siegerazer build his own ram and start ramming. Not just magically summoning more dolyaks.

13) I don’t see the problem, it takes a few seconds to stand in the ring, and you can build the siege for what 5 supply ? and almost instantly. Except that the flame ram has been bugged since who knows when, I don’t see a problem. And nope, no immune to melee attacks on siege, that is a valid counter tactic.

14) Better rewards for defending, nobody is going to argue against that. Better rewards for winning a match-up on the other hand, no thank you. There are way to many people out there that actually care about easy rewards and will constantly change around to servers that win, and we will end up with lots of annoying stuff until they all find one server they’re happy with that dominates everything else around them for easy match-up rewards. Do not want.

15) HoT is already making improvements to Sentries, so no worries. Don’t like the class specific idea, except that I’m always for more reveal in this game. And I don’t think players are ever going to bother upgrading Sentries, they don’t offer anything back for it. Just wait for HoT and see how they turn out.

Zachary Stiers.1879:

An upcoming patch will contain changes to how line of sight is calculate for arrow carts. Some of the arrow cart skills ignored line of sight and the rest were too forgiving with their line of sight calculations. Both of these issues allowed players with modified cameras to shoot an arrow cart from behind walls to locations they shouldn’t have even been able to see, much less fire at. In the future arrow cart skills will use a special type of line of sight checking specifically designed to reduce this problem while still making the allowed target areas feel reasonable.

<3 <3 <3

Can I hug you ? If you ever come to Norway I’ll buy you a beer!

@Jade:

Basically go into WvW or PvP, and other stat combinations becomes more useful: Cleric Amulet is still used for bunkers in PvP.

And Soldiers is the prefered stats for many in zerg fights, and using might stacking and focus fire to compensate for lacking offensive stats. And this can be added in some Clerics as well for a bit healing power to taste.

In short, in other areas of the game where you actually meet resistance (enemy players) the different stats becomes much more valuable. There is still a focus on Damage (Or Conditions in WvW-Roaming).

Healing power is still a reject stat in most cases, and the only cases I see it used is Clerics/Apothecary for the armor+low healing aspect. Or Celestial because it’s free stat.

To fix it ? Well giving it Boon Duration would make it a LOT more popular in WvW at least, and would make several classes try to stack it, especially support oriented guardians and elementalists.

The problem is that Healing Power itself isn’t really support at all, so we don’t have any stats for support. But that is what most people I’ve talked to "wants" it to be. And neither ANet nor most of the payers wants Healing Power to be buffed to the level where it heals everyone around you so much that content is even more trivialized than it already is.

For Healing Power itself, I’d wish to see it affect healing of the character itself, and not anyone the character applies healing to. Make it a selfish stat, and make it obvious, so people doesn’t think it is a "support" stat when it is not. (That, and roll it into Vitality already!).

Boon Duration is the closest thing we got to a support stat.

BillFreist.1527:

More improvements coming with our next release. As always, I’d love to hear if anyone notices an improvement. This one should be much more significant. A lot of the improvements so far haven’t been very visible to players, but behind the scenes have really made an impact.

I’ll be shifting my focus back to this in the next couple weeks so I can hopefully get more improvements into the release after next. I’ve been trying to tackle other issues plaguing the client like out of memory crashes and frame-rate hitching in the past week.

As much as I might like to dress up in full costume in my spare time, I’m not superman. One thing at a time

-Bill

+1 &lt;3

@GROMIT:

Actually they had a video good while back detailing a bit about how their software divided resources and pooled them etc, and stated that something like a single map wouldn’t cause problems, since the server would divide resources and split maps between them to avoid things like that.

Also, unless they changed it back (haven’t heard) WvW is currently running on their own servers/resources independent of the other game modes since sometime around spring this year. I think it was mentioned earlier in this thread.

Do we know if the server client is Windows or Linux based ? Don’t think I’ve heard either.

Anyways, if it was "that simple" they probably would have done/fixed it by now.

I like the idea. I did it slightly different in my own suggestion, mainly because I think that Boon Duration is the "main" stat for support, not healing power.

You idea would certainly mean less changes over the stats and current items than mine would though. :p

Infact I’d rather see Healing Power as a stat replaced with Boon Duration, than what we have now. Healing power scales so bad that it has little uses outside of some specific builds in some modes. And would actually help support, instead of just boosting your heal-skill.

@Orpheal:

I like the base idea of having two effects for each stat. But don’t like making more different stats than there already is, I expect that would create more situations like the Zerk-meta we got now (by encouraging more stat sets with only offensive stats). One of the main designs around my suggestion was to limit each "type" of stat to max two, to avoid just that.

Also dislike some of the effects you added to some of the stats:
* reduce critical hits received
* reduce critical damage received
* increase range
* increase speed
* increase endurance gain
* increase crowd control duration

Feel that some of these step on what is supposed to be traits, and some like the range/speed should not be affected by stats at all. And the reduction of criticals will make other players angry that their building for criticals is neutered by another players passive stats that directly.

All the critical effects are still counter worked by Toughness/Armor so shouldn’t need to add even more counter-stats just to single out those specifically. That will just create another situation of having too many situational stats.

Separating out the decrease to crowd control skills could be interesting, wouldn’t mind putting something like that into the "Damage" stat in my suggestion above. But wouldn’t want to have the opposite added to "Malice".

@emikochan:

I completely agree for PvE. Things are a bit different in PvP/WvW, and more stats are used. For PvE, all this would mean is that you could run full damage and still fit in an extra stat. Would expect Rampager/Sinister to be the new Zerk, but others like knight, valkyrie, zealot etc would also be plausible, so might actually see some variation in stats for once.

@Aetrion:

For PvE I completely agree with you, that would have been a very nice system. Heck I’d love it if all I did was play PvE.

I can agree that the game has a bit too many stats, and a more complex build system than it really needs. Still in view of other game modes PvP/WvW there is still quite some use for lots of these stats, and the play styles it creates. Though to be fair, I’m not a fan of Critical Hit gameplay either, and wouldn’t be very sad to see it removed or changed.

For example Condition Damage vs Power depends on the play-style and situation in WvW. In 1vs1 Conditions are usually better, in 5vs5 it’s pretty balanced, while in 10+vs10+ Power works a lot better due to the many aoe Condition removal. Removing one would destroy a lot of the build diversity in WvW and remove play-styles from many players. And if you just rolled both into one stat, it would just make all of them play very similar (The difference between a "Power" and a "Condi" character would be the weapon selection basically).

---

Lots of interesting reads!

+1

WaterBreathers serves no real purpose.
* Use helmet STATS/RUNES
* Add a "Skin" slot, so it looks like you’re wearing one UnderWater

Both and. Toughness and Healing Power Synergy pretty well. So if you have a build setup that can make use of multiple instances of HealPow then it can work decently. But it also depends on what you play.

in PvP for example Cleric Amulet is still popular for "bunker" type of characters, usually warrior or guardian.

In WvW most people doesn’t use much Healing Power, but it can still be useful. Clerics again can work for some builds, especially for zerging. Guardian and Warrior again can make good use of it, probably some others as well.

In PvE, while it isn’t popular, a cleric build guard/warrior can pretty much walk through most mobs and not have to worry at all, since few mobs uses any condition damage worth mentioning. On the other hand, you will kill things slowly. So this isn’t very popular.

You can do this with other classes as well like Elementalist. The clue is that these classes can keep multiple healing abilities going at the same time.

Guardian can use Absolute Resolution to increase the base healing of Virtue of Courage, keep Regeneration and Protection up most of the time, combined with high armor (less damage taken), staff #4 for more healing if needed, Shelter for blocks and heal on fairly short cooldown. There isn’t much in PvE less than champions that is going to touch you.

Warrior can do the same, Signe t of regeneration, regen boon, trait that heals on shouts (good ratio of healing power), combined with high armor/toughness and dolyak signet. You can stand in front of most mobs and autoattack them.

The largest problems with this play style is that 1: it is much slower than just using berserk to kill everything faster. and 2: It really doesn’t teach you to use your active defenses, which is what will keep you alive in this game when you start meeting champions or other group content, or heavens forbid, other players.

TL;DR: If you’re going to use healing power, it synergy with Toughness, and use 3-4+ different things that makes use of it. Instead learn to dodge and use Aegis/Blind.

+1 Much like to this thread.

At the moment my favorite PvE is taking objectives in WvW, they at least fight back.

My favorite NPC’s in the game is the NPC test dummies in Heart of the Mist, because they actually hit you a bit, uses decent skills, and if you don’t pay attention can kill you.

I used to try to solo champions in PvE to get some sort of challenge, that stoped being fun 1-2 years ago.

Some other similar ideas:

Increase AoE damage with a % based on how many other players are in the AoE that won’t be hit because of the 5-Target-Limit. This would require a reduction of the base damage from AC.

Reverse the 5-Target-Limit, and let each player be hit by Max-5-Enemies at any given time. Against a competent and organized group this would neuter a zerg completely. You could very likely end up with a situation where 5 players slowly chews up and entire zerg.

Hello there Narrrz Your thread is one of several I’ve picked up ideas from for this, especially the discussion about the combination of Vitality+Healing Power and how it might interact etc.

The whole "Critical"=Perception+Ferocity would need lots of numerical tweaking, especially weakening down (as I mentioned above). I was hoping that it should stand about as powerful alone as either "Damage" or "Malice" alone so you could get similar damage with either one of them. But yes it does Synergy with Power, my main concern is how it would react with activating "on critical hit" effects.

To be more specific, The Base % Critical hit should probably be raised slightly, and the "Critical" stat should give less % to critical than Precision does, and less Critical Damage than Ferocity does. But combined to give a roughly equal powerful stat to "Damage" or "Malice".

Edit: Basically, when: Critical + Defense + Health would be as viable a setup as Soldier (Power), I’d think "Critical" would be in a good spot.

Edit2: Another posibility would be to split Ferocity over both "Damage" and "Critical" stats.

Absolutely agree with you SpellOfIniquity (Even if you left Kaineng).

Suspect this thread will be moved back to WvW though.

Discus: Re-designing Stats

I’ve been annoyed at the Stat Design in the game for quite some time. Some stats been rendered near useless except in some specific situations or builds, others have a single purpose, others locks you completely into other stats, while some stats are just so good there exist no reason to not use them.

So the idea here is to make most stats have multiple uses, and that they are useful against and for a huger amount of styles and situations. Example old Toughness doesn’t help at all against Condition damage, so I put it together with -Condition damage, so the stat will actually work as a defense.

Obviously numbers and formulas would need to be crunched to make this work properly, and I’m not a good enough mathematician to pull that off. This would also need to completely redo most items/stats, and several traits would need to be adjusted.

This is not final, I’m posting it to hear opinions and ideas, and how people think this would work in the game. Also, the +/-40% condition duration foods would need to go or be reduced with this, if not it would cause problems with the design of Condition duration increase and decrease through the stats.

=Old Stats=

Power (godstat )
Precision (Needs power to be very useful )
Toughness (Only reduces Power damage, does nothing against condi )
Vitality (Only useful to survive burst, prolongs bad situation )
Healing Power (To low efficiency to be worth it on anything, good synergy with toughness )
Condition Damage (godstat )
Ferocity (useless without power+precision )
Boon Duration (best defensive stat, best support, almost impossible to get )
Condition Duration (secondary good condi stat, hard to get, useful for support )

=New Stats=

Damage (=Power. Damage is king )
Critical (=Precision+Ferocity. Tune the numbers down a bit, about similar damage output to damage alone )
Malice (=Condition Damage. Damage is king )
Support (=Boon Duration + Condition Duration. Boons is the best support in the game, Condi Duration second best for things like cripple, chill, imob, vulnerability and other none damaging condis. )
Defense (=Toughness+“-“Condition Duration. Makes this useful against both power/condi damage )
Health (=Vitality+Healing Power. gives more health and heals health better, lets you survive bursts, and gives you an edge in longer fights with sustain. )

=Tri-Stats=

This idea would make a physical damage build require only 2 stats (Damage+Critical), thus the third stat is optional if you want to go defensive, party support, or mix into condition damage etc.

This would make a condition build want to have at least 2 stats (Malice+Support for the condi duration which also gives boon duration), the boon duration will actually help this stay a attrition type of gameplay. And you can pick a third stat for defensive, pick up critical for using traits and sigils that triggers on crits.

If you want to go tanky you have several options from Defense+Health for the traditional bunker style, to mixing in Support for the boon duration and also helping the team. If you go all 3 you will hit like a wet noodle so most will mix in at least one of the damage stats. Damage for the traditional soldier style, or Malice for the Dire style.

=Example Tri-Stats=

Apothecary = Malice, Support, Defense
Berserker/Assassin = Critical, Damage, ???
Carrion = Damage, Malice, Health
Cleric = Damage, Support, Defense
Dire = Malice, Defense, Health
Knight/Cavalier = Critical, Damage, Defense
Magi = Critical, Support, Health
Nomad = Support, Defense, Health
Rabid = Critical, Malice, Defense
Ravager/Sinister = Critical, Damage, Malice
Shaman = Malice, Support, Health
Soldier = Damage, Defense, Health
Valkyrie = Critical, Damage, Health
Zealot = Critical, Damage, Support

In general they should work on making as many boons as possible work for and against both conditions and power damage. Strongly dislike the design of separating several that way. The same goes for Stats btw, Really irks me that several stats are useless (healing power), only functional against one damage type (toughness), or just a stop-gap measure (vitality). Poor design.

coglin.1867:

Malediktus.9250:

Easy fix if some servers are too empty. Merge them.
Better solution than punishing the top servers for better community management.

Not yet. It is completely illogical to merge servers this close to an expansion in which we know we will likely have a massive influx of new or returning players.

Not to mention that no matter how many merges, it won’t solve the Coverage problem, it will just oversaturate NA Prime on all servers instead.

Well, unless you made all servers EotM style megaservers in the off hours (only). Oh boy that would get people trousers tied up in some crazy knots.

I want PvP style rune swapping. Buy the rune and unlock it for your account, and swap between them.

I know everyone else disagrees with me on this one, but I’d also love the option to run PvP style builds/characters in PvE/WvW. I’m just sick of leveling, grinding items, and gear etc. Loss of Ascended worth it for me, much prefer the versatility of changing things on the spot when I want to try something new.

Speculation: They could also have set the limit lower to prepare for HoT, so they don’t run into half the servers already being so full people can’t get through the queue’s after HoT releases and potentially lots of people return. It could even be that once they get a couple of months of metrics to measure by, and HoT releases, that they will adjust it again. It would seem almost reasonable.

gavyne.6847:

Server politics, almost as dumb and pointless as rl politics. I do find it funny and ironic how everybody believes in their own facts & truths, and apparently everybody else is wrong for seeing things differently. But just like in rl, sometimes both parties can be right, they simply see things and experience things differently from their perspectives.

I see a lot of misinformation tossed around, but that’s what happens when you get into politics. Each server is going to agree and cheer on only those speaking for their servers, and they’ll think everybody else is rubbish even if they make sense. Not gonna bother getting into details on the wrong info people are posting. Because frankly it won’t make a difference as people are dead set in believing what they’re saying.

+1 Great post, spot on.