Guild Wars 2

@Gaiawolf
tyvm — that makes a lot of sense and you changed my mind. I agree with your statement that it should be a build option for all classes. You suggestion makes the decision meaningful instead of arbitrary by using trait lines.

What was the recent AH nerf? Did I miss it? (EDIT: is this the change to the vigor on crit? I can see where this would reduce the effect of AH due to less vigor applications).

In support of the OP, the dev’s have described this class as:

•The Guardian is a heavy armor class who relies on boons to make up for their low levels of innate health. They focus on area control and punishing enemies for the position on the battlefield. We want them to feel very powerful when their boons are active, but if those boons are removed, they will start to feel pressure. They can remove conditions more easily than the Warrior, but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.

So boons are worth discussing in this light. Saying the OP is “ignorant” or a “bad player” is really quite lame.

I think it’s an interesting idea and neat design concept. My only concern is those trait lines already have a focus that is similar to the boon idea. So maxing out Zeal already does nice things to our Power attribute — having it also jack up Might could be a bit over the top.

It does appear suspicious. Hopefully it’s just a stealthy nerf (stealthy in that they describe it as “fixing the tool tip”). Otherwise it’s indicative of poor software CM process (and that’s a tough hole to dig out of).

possante.8310:

as a mesmer i think anyone can see how this MINOR trait is insane OP right now, this even it was a elite trait would be OP but a minor trait? please just nerf this or otherwise soon everyone will play mesmer.

make it only 3 stack might full shatter, 9 stack might is just insane for a MINOR trait….

This is a GRANDMASTER trait… not a MINOR — you need 25pts in illusions to get it.

Funny thing is the +25% passive is for out-of-combat only. It’s funny because this should not really be a profession advantage thing. Why even make it selectable at all. Just give everybody +25% by default if that’s what the game needs.

Swiftness differentiation between classes should really be an in-combat thing.

There really should be no advatage to ooc movement speed. I could see in PvP how it’s a build strat for roamers so maybe this can be taken into consideration some how. But just for game enjoyment, ooc movement should be the same, and fixed, for all professions — and fixed at something high (hence “enjoyable”).

Gah a little too much kool-aid in this thread.

I loved ANet in GW1 — so much so that I had unrealistically high expectations for GW2 (like it would be the end-all of MMOs… the pinacle). That high expectation has led to a shocking disappointment in GW2, even though the game itself is very good. It just not what I thought it would be going into the deal. It’s worth my $60 and I’ll continue to play it for a long time. At this time I feel I’ll buy the expansions as well. However I won’t drop a dime on the gem store — ever.

That said, ANet has bungled quite a few things since the release of the game, some horribly so. However they appear to learn from their mistakes and so far the Wintersday Event has been VERY enjoyable and accessible. Even the jumping puzzle (which I still suck at but at least I enjoy it while I’m stinking).

I think in six months GW2 will be close to the game we expected at release. It’s a shame it couldn’t release in that state to begin with.

What people tend to miss is right near the center hub in the zone. There’s a walkway leading north from the center platform area. The pathway is lined on both side by what appear to be little obelisks. They are different in appearance from about everything else in the zone that you destroy (which is why people forget about them).

Make sure to take them out and boom you get the deed.

Guardian staff #1 ftw

Cousland.2187:

Bradesco.9621:

Orr is dead, most group/temple events can not be done.

I just wonder why didn’t you realise it yet.

Where is our “downflow” system?

So slow development….

Why have a downflow system when you could easily solve many of the games issues by introducing the district mechanic which is what Guild Wars 1 used? I mean it’ll solve many of the games problems such as the lack of a guesting feature, difficulty joining your friends server due to it always being full and those annoying overflow/queue popups.

Before anyone who believes that this would effect WvW greatly, it won’t. You’ll still have a ‘home server’ you fight for but it when it comes to PvE, the GW2 community won’t be divided for the sake of WvW.

I think that’s exactly what a downflow server is — the equivalent of districting (but doing it automatically).

Ryuujin.8236:

ProphetSword.5427:

Let me get this straight. There are actually people who want to keep the bots in this game? Now, I’ve heard everything.

Even still, I’m going to continue reporting them every time I see them. I hope others will do the same.

And the problem is rising, I had a heated argument the other day about botting with my guild and quite a few were against reporting them. You know what they say, either you’re part of the solution or you’re a part of the problem…

Apathy isn’t an acceptable position on botting if people want the game to survive the long term.

ANet is in charge of the game surviving long term — if the game is “good” (with all the depth and detail that “good” infers), then the game will survive.

Reporting bots is not the job of the Player, and you have to respect players that would rather play than police for their $60 USD investment.

I was commenting that reduced prices are a good thing for most players. Currently the source of that is bots. When bots are truly thwarted (if ever), the cost of everything in the game will become painful for the casual Player. Exotic gear will become a more significant challenge (and it really shouldn’t be if you value the Manifesto).

Funny thing is lower prices also make the gold farmers less profitable because Players need less gold — it’s a self defeating endevor.

DenverRalphy.4185:

Sure the prices go down, so it’s cheaper to buy. But at the same time, profit from selling is down. The only people who make money selling are the bots because they have mountains of product to sell at a rock bottom price. Those of us who actually play the game are now sitting on small amounts of worthless product.

But there is also a base revenue stream you get from playing the game (end-of-dungeon rewards, event rewards, merching blue/green trash). So lower prices for materials makes that revenue effectively more valuable/useful. This revenue doesn’t change with inflation, it is set by the developers and that’s what you get (no RNG).

Higher prices (by reduced supply from reduced botting) makes the base revenue less valuable — essentially forcing you to alternate revenue streams like farming mats, grinding for drops, winning the lottery in the mystic toilet, gem conversion, etc.

rchu.8945:

Since the Nov 15th patch, the drops in world NPCs have gone to kitten. I’ve killed enough champs while doing my daily gathering runs to say that you’re lucky if you get a green or blue out of them.

That was exactly where I was going with “fill in your defintion of compelling”. Players feel compelled to do fractals because of multiple reasons:

1. Better drops than ANYWHERE else in the game
2. Gear grind for ascended (vertical progression)
3. More entertaining than existing content
4. Can’t find players to do anything else
5. Some other reason here…

And those are ones I thought up in 30 seconds of thinking about it. Personally I’m in fractals for #2 — gear grind. I’ve run to level 10, and then level 10 about 5 more times trying to get ascended ring drops. I’m really not interested in running it so much, but where else to get the ascended gear? Where else to get exotic gear drops from trash mobs?

I’m also on Yak’s and there are few players outside of LA.

The same for WvW which use to be a queue-fest. Now I’m lucky if my “zerg” is a group of five. Three of us actually rolled through a lot of Maguma three-manning supply depots, vets, and dolyaks. Until we ran into a maguma zerg of 20 that is…

sPvP seems low as well if you use the random arenas with the “Join” feature. I was literally in a match by myself for all but the last 2 minutes. By the time someone was assigned to my match I had 450 points.

coglin.1496:

Bradesco.9621:

Orr is dead, most group/temple events can not be done.

Orr is not dead on my server. Unless you frequent all servers, which I suspect you haven’t, you have no business making such false blanket claims.

His statement is based in his perspective, which is his server. Just because your server is not “dead” in Orr doesn’t entitle you to throw out his concern. You did exactly what you bashed him for — nice work.

Anyway, Orr is dead on my server as well (Yak’s). I’ve been waiting for days for Melandru’s to open up or enough bodies to show up to do it.

It’s a mixed bag for ANet to put in the temple content. It’s there to encourage participation, but at the same time it’s unusable by the few in Orr if there are insufficient players to perform the content.

There are a few ideas floated already about reviving activity in Orr. However the introduction of Fractals has really killed the “end game” for everything but fractals. I don’t see that changing as long as fractals remains more compelling than anything else in the game (you can fill in the blank with your own reasons for “compelling” as it’s different by Player).

Rynarx.6124:

If OP prefer to grind instances, he would find the population booming in LA.

Only if “grind instances” is code for “grind fractals”. The other instances are not booming from what I’ve seen on Yak’s.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There have always been teleporting bots, since the first week of the game. So, it’s a huge deal if those are just about the only ones left. The announced metric was:

• October: 2,000 reports/hour.
• December: 20 reports/hour.

Even assuming players are only able to report the tip of the iceberg (10%) now, that would mean we should be reporting 200/hour… a drop from 2,000 to 200 is still extremely impressive.

Finally, there will always be bots in the game as long as the bot owners can make money off of illegal techniques, which primarily depends on gold selling.

Problem is the report totals are not indicative of the number of teleporting bots. Those bots are a lot harder to report. So where normal bots may be reported at a 10% rate, the teleporting bots are reported at something lower. If you postulate a 100x lower reporting rate for teleporting bots, then there are the same number of bots. The concept is what I’m trying to convey so don’t get hung up on 10%, 100x, whatever. The point is the new generation of bots are harder for normal Players to report. As a result the reporting numbers do not reflect the same as they did before.

Beachead.4127:

I think blink should be turned into a signit with passive giving us swiftness and the active being the blink. It would make the most sense.

That’s pretty sweet — but a lot of power packed into that signet.

Doesn’t address “reliable form of swiftness” though. That’s just passive move speed.

The drop on the rings is strange tbh.

First guild run of lvl 10 frac: four people received rings (80% drop)
Second guild run of lvl 10 frac: zero people received rings (0% drop)
Third guild run of lvl 10 frac: zero people received rings (0% drop)
Fourth guild run of lvl 10 frac: one person received a ring (20% drop)

These runs were all on separate days. The funny thing is the one player who received a ring on run #4 is the same player who didn’t receive a ring on run #1.

I’m happy that everyone has a ring, but you have to admit it’s a bit atypical for a pure RNG system.

offence.4726:

Population is still growing , servers are packed most people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time due to them being full.

Ok you lost me with “…people are upset they cannot join their servers in NA during prime time…”

I’ve never been unable to join my server. Even WvW doesn’t queue anymore even during prime-time.

Of my original group of 25 guild members, only 5 are still playing. They contribute to the server population, but not the active player population. My friends list is a big dead-zone.

Yes players will log on to check-out winter’s day events, but the game is not nearly as busy as it was when it released.

That same healing signet on the warrior doesn’t heal for beans. The first time I used it I was like “wtf?!?!?”. The regen from the signet is on-par with the guardian virtue of resolve, but it’s nothing for a good heal — especially when you are use to ether feast on your mesmer.

One of my best friends plays a warrior, and I see him dancing around at range during a fight with 10% of his health left. He has to back out and wait for his regen to bring him back up. During that time he’s plinking away with his bow or rifle — at greatly reduced DPS to what he was doing with that GS previously.

whole different game at lvl 80.

Orr is “empty” compared to what it use to be. You could say it’s fewer bots, but now I see very little of anyone. Good luck getting your temple karma armors.

Similarly, getting a dungeon team is not as easy as it use to be (unless that dungeon is fractals).

The “War on Bots!” post was a little too “feel-good” imo. I think it’s a huge stretch to say that there are significantly fewer bots because there are fewer player reports.

The new bots a exploiting some sort of teleport which makes it very hard to be reported by players.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Sorry juno, but the thread is sPvP focussed, there is no such thing as focus mesmer or staff guardian (oh well.. maybe rainbow guardians).

Giving more swiftness to mesmers because 4 classes get their passive speed buffs increased to +25% is not the right way of balancing.

Swiftness and Passive Speed Increase are two different things.

Agreed on all points (although I’m trying to figure out exactly what a rainbow guardian is lol).

fishergrip.4082:

As a guardian, this makes me sad. Its already near impossible for a guardian to stop an enemy from running away now they will all be dancing around with perma 25% move speed.

I have a lvl 80 guardian in addition to my lvl 80 mesmer, and I disagree with your opinion. Guardian has a lot of options for imparing a foe:

- scepter 3
- hammer 3
- GS 5 pull
- Bane Signet
- Signet of Wrath
- hammer 5 barrier
- staff 5 barrier

On top of that guardian has swiftness from staff 3 or “Retreat”. You need to QQ with a different class, or on a different topic.

I use to run a 0/0/25/25/20 build with staff and scepter/torch in PvP along with Carrion amulet and Runes of the Necromancer. It’s a very tanky build with lots of vit and decent toughness. It’s a condition based build so you wear your opponent out rather than kill them outright.

Defensively it was powerful due to the high vit/tough, mobility, and frequent chaos armor. Since then the staff and torch were nerfed a bit.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Mostly more reliable swiftness.

This made my day.

Passives stack with swiftness – 25%+33%=58%, mesmers are left behind! Let’s make swiftness more reliable, let’s buff focus (note, that nobody uses in combat)!

I use focus in combat for iWarden (PvE) and the pull (WvW). For non-combat I use it for swiftness although the uptime is too low (even when traited for focus which I’m not). It’s always has a loving spot in my second wep set.

Gaiawolf.8261:

@Juno: Yeah I’m like you. Somehow I have the feeling more “reliable” means just fixing curtain so it stacks with other sources of swiftess.

lol, that made me smile — it’s sad and funny at the same time! Shows how low some of our expectations have sunken.

I run a GS shatter build and it’s really enjoyable. I also like a tanky staff condition build too. Here’s the jist of GS shatter for me:

20/30/0/0/20 — GS trait for reduced c/d, dodge clones, mantra 4% dmg, elasticity for extra mirror blade bounce. Valkyrie armor with ruby orbs. Knights jewelry. Mystic Claymore with sigil of fire (although I’m not real fond of the sigil atm).

Crit chance is 47% with damage +64%.

Lots of dodge clones because GS-1 crits like crazy with it’s fast pulse count. The crits give vigor so lots of energy to dodge.

JonPeters.5630:

Got some movement improvements coming for Mesmer also. Mostly more reliable swiftness.

When I read this my first thought was “pull will be removed from focus-5 in order to reduce it’s c/d so it can be used more often for swiftness”.

Hopefully not the case, but I’m in a “glass half empty” mood today.

Ultimately it’s not the Player Community’s job to sit around reporting bots. I will if I can, but I’m definitely not going to camp resource nodes trying to catch some (although at some level it can be satisfying). I say this because personally I have a few hours a week to play and I try to be efficient (i.e. do stuff that’s fun).

I hope that ANet has hired some interns to do this very job. Then use the data from their reporting as “pure” data for bot detection algorithms.

Associate the Exploration “star” by the character’s name with the Exploration Title. This way the player can disable the appearance of the “star” by choosing a different title. This would be similar to Commander where the blue chevrons do not appear when the title is not set:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Will-Exploration-Star-be-fixed-for-clones

Disabling the “star” is very desirable for Mesmers in PvP/WvW because it singles out the Mesmer from the clones.

I think all players in PvP would like to disable the “star” because it can be seen through obsticles without having to target the player at all.

Make fractal progession account-based instead of character-based:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Fractal-Progress-make-account-based

Cheechglg.8734:

why oh why is everyone haters of grinding, all i see is QQ about to much grind here to much grind there, grinding gives you something to do, gives the devs time to come up with new things for game while you a re grinding that teir of gear, without some grinding then everyone will acheive what ever theirgoal ios, ghave nothing to do, get bored of game an find some game with something to do in, LESS QQ more pew pew

give meh some grinding!!!!

Because grinding is a waste of time — designed for exactly that. If you want to waste time then you are perfectly capable of designing your own grind.

This grind is completely engineered by ANet. There is little justification for it (other than the “con” I mentioned in my original post). People just want to play… not grind.

GS Clones will cause bleeds with “sharper images” trait. It’s nice.

EDIT: Just saw that Aberrant already said this…. ahh well now you have it from two sources.

Love my G13 but after using it for a couple years the thumb-stick gets “stuck”. For example it’ll get stuck in the W or the S position. I find this annoying with jumping puzzles. Other than that I love it.

I exported my profile which you can find on our guild website here:

http://stooges.enjin.com/forum/m/5527682/viewthread/5184575-g13-key-profile-for-gw2/page/1

Just copy and paste the XML into a .xml file and import it from the G13 tools.

I think a great fix to make it behave like the WvW “Commander” graphic. That graphic is enabled only when you turn on the title (or so I’ve read).

So make the star show by the Player’s name only when the Player has the exploration title selected. Boom — problem solved.

This is a duplicate of another topic from a month ago… the search feature does work (and then I wouldn’t have to repost the same stuff I already posted )

Anyway it’s a meaningful choice in the game that comes with consequences. MF has a real effect (I can see the difference). If you go with MF you give up 1/3 of your stats on your gear which makes the content more difficult. So again, the choice is meaningful.

My only complaint is some professions have a much easier time giving up 1/3 of their stats for MF. Mesmer is an example. My lvl 80 mesmer could probably walk around naked and still handle open-world PvE content.

I’m sure it’s been said already, but I’d like to see a way to save builds (traits, skills, gearset). The saves can be exclusive between the traits, skills, and gear.

I understand there’s a fee to switch traits, but maybe you can incorporate the fee into buying “save slots”. Or you can have the gold sink on the activation of the save slot itself (but that is horribly un-GW like).

This would be a well received feature (unless you implemented it in a way where players had to buy the capability from the gem store… that would generate a small revolt).

RinKyu.4317:

UnknownFreak.2805:

Can they fix that clones have 100% map complete so I have a chance when downed…

You’ll still have a huge red arrow on top of you when downed and anyone worth their salt won’t be tricked by Deception.

No need to make it insanely easy by giving a bright gold start above the real mesmer is there? Further consider that the star is visible through obstructions like trees and the such.

Your points are valid, but they don’t negate the need to remove the star.

Hellkaiser.6025:

juno.1840:

I’d actually say 80 levels are too much. Your skills are flushed out fully by 50. The remaining 30 levels to get trait points feels grindy and tedious. It’s a departure from GW1 where you can be max level in a weekend or less (i.e. Nightfall).

It’s part of a collection of things in GW2 that seem “contrived” in order to be familiar to other MMO players (like WoW).

I don’t want anything “grindy” in this game. Players shouldn’t need to play 200 hours to feel “accomplished”. A game should be fun, pure and simple.

As it is right now, this game has lots of grind. If you need examples, just post a Q/A topic stating “what parts of GW2 are grindy” and watch the fire fly.

This is the hopes I had for this game when I started it and levelled up to 80 only to be let down, I didn’t see the need for any of the grind, why the aesthetic progression could take months or a real money infusion or any of the other contrived stuff. Sadly one third of the community that posts on the forums hates it all, the other loves it all and the third part just post nonsense.

I love the “[last third] just post nonsense” part!

Sadly it does seem that a significant portion of the population likes the grind and seems to view it as “good MMO design”, or possibly even “fun” although I’m not sure how.

Another equally significant portion of the populations wants GW1 version 2.0. I can only guess that this is the player base that came from GW1. Whereas the folks who enjoy grind are from other MMOs. This is an ignorant view, but would make sense.

There is wisdom in both sides of the grind argument (or about any argument for that matter). Myself, I wanted GW1 version 2.0.

evolverzilla.2359:

Zaishen mission anyone?

Love this idea in concept. It could be implemented in a cool GW2 way. Those details aside, it has the potential to be a nice addition to the game.

A subscription model also tends to drive development towards time-wasting features. Those are required so players feel like they have stuff to do for their money. Look at any MMO out there with a sub and it has time-wasting features.

Mesmer does a lot of damage. In fact a GS shatter build is face-slap easy to play. I destroy noobs in WvW. In PvP it’s a different story because all players are geared equivalently, and skill level seems higher in general. I’d say GS-shatter has made me a worse Mesmer because it’s so easy to play — it has a low skill floor compared to other builds I’ve played.

A staff mesmer can be incredibly tanky while dealing out tons of condition damage. I love that build too, but it’s a slower kill in WvW where stuff dies fast (and you need to get your player tags while in the zerg). In PvP it does much better. In PvE it’s nearly indestructable.

It’s really suppose to be a character development decision — pick two crafting professions. The decision is suppose to be meaningful.

I think this is something ANet did right. They give you an option to change your mind, and then change it back. The only penalty is in-game currency. Even that penalty is low at 40s for max tier. So your decision has consequences but not earth shattering ones (which is good).

Since crafting is not gated by player level, you can easily make alts and level them to crafting 400 with no additional effort over doing all crafting on one toon. In addition you’d get XP which is probably useful to your alts.

IMHO, the crafting implementation is not really in the same league with all the other legitimate ‘bad’ things in GW2.

Rfreak.6591:

@juno.1840

60 foes is kind of overkill, sounds a bit too bothersome also the 15 types…

you should think it as this:

-why would I play a lower level area instead of a better-rewarding and often funnier dungeon?

Your idea isn’t bad as it is, I think we should have multiple daily achievements not just one, so we could focus on pvp OR wvw OR pve and such things

I’d lower numbers on your idea either make it a weekly achievement, it’d work like some events used to on GW1, this way it’d bring more people in an area every week working like a world event.

Completely agree — was more of a brain-food idea and less of an actual implementation description.

People do dailies/monthlies (although i’m not sure why as karma seems mostly a waste imho — the game forces me to grind dungeons to get soldier stat’d gear ). So it may be a mechanism to “encourage” participation in lower level zones. I think it’s really a work around to a more systemic problem in the game which is how to engage players to do stuff they find fun… rather than force them into meaningless activity.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

I disagree here. Different classes are, well, different. Just because you managed Level 746 on a Guardian doesn’t mean you could do it on a Mesmer.

I did level 1-10 on my guardian. I could do it on my mesmer better because I’ve already completed it on my guard (and everyone knows mesmers are da bomb).

Seriously tho, the previous poster nailed it already. I know how to play all my level 80 toons (I have at least 80 levels of experience with each, which doesn’t include all the post-level-80 knowledge). I also know how to play fractals as I did a bunch of levels on one toon already. I think it’s safe to say I know those levels.

I feel incredibly heroic with my mesmer… but that’s at lvl 80 after experimenting with numerous builds and gear/stat combinations. My Mesmer does stuff in PvP, WvW, Dungeons, etc. that blow my mind.

Last night I blinked past the lasers in CoE-Path1 then opened a portal for two more team members to cross so we could quickly operate the five security panels. That’s one example of many.

The class is just amazing. Again this is at level 80.

I actually gave up on my mesmer the first time I played it. I went to level 11 and said “this sucks”. I came back to my mesmer months later and stuck it through to level 80. Once you cross level 40 it starts to come together (on many levels).

I think this is a general game flaw in GW2. The grind to 80 is exactly that and doesn’t really give you a good flavor of any profession until the high levels. My guardian for example was epic at lvl 10. I never died once until lvl 35 when I ran my first dungeon. However in the higher levels the guardian power curve comes back down to reality. Mesmer is the complete opposite.

GW2 would have been better served with a much smaller max level (like 40).

Expansions are funded by gasp charging for the expansion! No sub required.

If GW2 goes sub then that’s truly the “end of the road” sign for this game.

I’d actually say 80 levels are too much. Your skills are flushed out fully by 50. The remaining 30 levels to get trait points feels grindy and tedious. It’s a departure from GW1 where you can be max level in a weekend or less (i.e. Nightfall).

It’s part of a collection of things in GW2 that seem “contrived” in order to be familiar to other MMO players (like WoW).

I don’t want anything “grindy” in this game. Players shouldn’t need to play 200 hours to feel “accomplished”. A game should be fun, pure and simple.

As it is right now, this game has lots of grind. If you need examples, just post a Q/A topic stating “what parts of GW2 are grindy” and watch the fire fly.

Already a proposed suggestion here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Fractal-Progress-make-account-based

I’d recommend pushing this discussion to that thread as it’s a suggestion rather than discussion which may be more directly received by the developers.