Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

Khisanth.2948:

vesica tempestas.1563:

you can get ascended from pvp, wvw, fractals, crafting etc, for example 1 season of spvp will give you almost a full set of ascended armor.

That almost is one of the most perplexing choices they’ve made.

It’s probably part of the ongoing initiative to entice players who play one mode only into other modes. Asc. via PvP could work both ways. A WvW or PvE player might go into PvP because he doesn’t want to dungeon/raid/craft or a PvP player sees he can go through the Asc. gearing up process by playing his preferred mode.

I think the perplexing part is why you get 5 pieces and not a complete set, but I could very well be mistaken.

The problem with how you get Ascended armor from pvp is you can get it without playing actual pvp because you progress the track even if you lose. Basically it’s one of the easiest ways in the entire game to get Ascended armor. Hardly an incentive to play pvp, or learn how to play pvp since you are rewarded for losing.

But as OriOri.8724 pointed out the pvp league will be over in 2 days, 3 if you count patch day. The OP can wait for S6, although I do hope they change how that reward system works in S6 and it’s not the same kitten.

phys.7689:

Sadly, it really is one of the least gratifying games, but increasing the powerlevel wouldnt do much to help. End game gear is not ungratifying because its not enough of a power boost, its ungratifying because the process of obtaining it is usually so tedious, that by the time you get it, its like taking off a burden instead of unlocking something new and cool.

There are two commonly used ways of blocking players from obtaining something:
a) Put it behind some type of content that not everyone will be capable of finishing
b) Put it behind heavy grind, either repetition of the same content, heavy material grind, gold or gems

Since a) is something players of this game dislike with a passion, the most widely used method by Anet as their reward acquisition system is b). It also helps with their gem store, as impatient players can skip some of the grind by paying and converting to gold. Which leads us to the problem at hand, of the items not giving a feeling of accomplishment when you get them. It’s more like “finally I got my legendary, now it’s time to do something fun”

I’m going to make a new comparison when Episode 4 is out, but up to Episode 3:

LS3 started on July 26, 2016 with episode 1. The latest release, episode 3 was released on November 21, 2016. That’s 4 months.

In those 3 episodes we got:
3 new zones, 2 new fractals, 2 new pvp maps, 2 legendary weapons

LS1 started on January 28, 2013, with Flame and Frost. In 4 months of LS1 we got 4 releases (because it wasn’t 2 weeks per release yet).

In those 4 episodes we got:
2 slightly modified zones, 2 new mini story instances, 1 dungeon, 1 pvp map and Guild Missions. The rest were new mechanics(custom arenas), fixes (culling) and reward systems (laurels)

Now you can say that those 4 months were the worst of LS1, with the least amount of content and’d be right.

Let’s see what we got with the last 4 months of LS1:
From November 12, 2013 to March 4, 2014 (I don’t count the March 18, 2014 release because it was just an aftermath without new content):
Tower of Nightmares, 5 new fractals, 2 world bosses (Triple Trouble and Marionette), Edge of the Mists in WvW, Escape from LA meta event, Battle for LA meta event, Final battle with Scarlet.

If we add Episode 4 of LS3 we need to add 2 more months. In those 2 months we got the updated Tequatl world boss (so 3 world bosses total) and the Aetherpath of Twilight Arbor dungeon.

To sum up, in the 6 last months of LS1 we got:
2 permanent world bosses, 1 temporary world boss, 5 fractals, 1 dungeon, 1 WvW map, 1 new PVE map (Tower of Nightmares). I’m not sure how to count the 2 LA meta events and the final battle with Scarlet.

In contrast, in 6 months of LS3 we got:
3 new zones, 2 new fractals, 2 new pvp maps + what we get in Episode 4 (1 map and 1 raid????)

Draw your own conclusions because each content type has different weight on different people.

MikaDeMika.4369:

So when I refer to a berserk meta, this is what I’m talking about. It didn’t matter which profession I played back then, because it would just be the same thing anyhow.

The meta builds weren’t all about maximizing their own dps. It was about maximizing the dps of the entire group through the use of traits, buffs and boons, often at the sacrifice of personal dps. If you wanted to play a Support role, you could play a Warrior (PS/banners), a Mesmer (Time warp/reflects), a Thief (stealth/blind), Guardian (reflects/aegis/stability) and others.

There were lots of support options even before the elite specs, they weren’t called “Support” builds by the community because they were all using Berserker stats. Or maybe because they were used in certain situations/encounters and weren’t used everywhere, who knows.

Anyway, good luck with your Druid, it’s a fun spec with loads of options, power druid, condi druid, healer druid, pick your choice based on the group you’ll be playing with.

MikaDeMika.4369:

So before I stopped playing I had bored of the berserk meta.

One thing that you should know is that build != gear stats. In this “Berserker” meta you so hate players were always supporting and buffing. And the fact is that your stats (Berserker) do not affect the strength of skills like Warrior Banners, Ranger Spirits and stat buff traits like Spotter and Empower Allies. In other words you could be an excellent support character while using Berserker stats to also deal lots of damage while supporting. I know that coming from other games it might be hard to grasp that a Support character can also deal damage but that’s the truth in this game.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• How many roles are you going to support?

3 at best. Something like Top 3 traits → 1 role, Mid 3 traits → 1 role, Bottom 3 traits → 1 role. Sometimes a spec can support the same role twice but with different playstyles or different weapons (like Air supporting two types of DPS, one with and one without Fresh Air).

• Are they going to be traditional roles (tank, heal, damage, etc.) or more like the roles that have evolved in GW2 meta play (defensive boon support, bunker, might stacker, etc.)?

Not like traditional roles like tank/healer/damage that wouldn’t fit the game at all. I’m not talking about reworking every single trait in the game, just those that nobody uses so they support a role better.

• What are you going to do with Minor traits, which mostly support one role as is (e.g., Water Minors are all healing related)?

Well since we can’t change minor traits that can indeed cause problems. One of the better features of the Elite specs is that their minor traits all buff their respective new abilities so they are always useful if you select the elite spec. That’s not really possible with the other specs (other than the “profession” specs like Strength and Trickery)

• Either way, how do you see that change adding diversity?

We can see it in the Ranger now, which is probably one of the better professions. You can spec for a Druid which is a great Healer, or not take Druid and spec for condition damage and be highly competitive as a condition damage dealer. If you take a look at the meta builds for Rangers every single specialization is used (with Skirmishing being used on every single build).
However even though all specs are used not all traits are being used because some traits are not powerful enough compared to others. For example in Skirmishing there are traits that give damage boost for both power (Most Dangerous Game) and condition builds (Light on your Feet) but they are overshadowed by Quick Draw, the more “general” trait, and not used in the Power and Condition builds. Because they aren’t so good traits.

You’d kill a bunch of existing builds if you turned the profession line into an Elite Line.

That’s true, but how many builds “died” with the specialization update? I’m sure way more since back then we could take traits from every specialization at the same time.
Killing builds is a touchy subject and it would be really hard to balance these “new” elite specs, I’m not even sure if they could do this properly, if they chose to do it. The balance team doesn’t inspire confidence.

Burtnik.5218:

Improve performance, add multithreading support

It was explained some time ago that multi threading (and DX12) won’t do any good to the game because the main thread of the game is the bottleneck and it cannot be split into multiple threads.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necrotic_Slash does slightly more damage than https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Double_Strike but it’s a bit slower.

NS is 330 damage in 2.04 sec (161.8 DPS) and DS is 294 damage in 1.68 sec (175 DPS) assuming tooltip damage. In other words, NS is a bit slower because it does a bit more damage. If they increased the speed of NS to 1.89s instead of 2.04s the two attacks would have the exact same DPS, just 0.15s faster

The other parts of the two auto attacks have the exact same attack speed.

IndigoSundown.5419:

One question is, “Are the under-used traits under-performing, or are they simply not perceived to be needed in most aspects of PvE?” My answer is, “The under-used traits are not out-of-balance, they are perceived as not needed.”

I disagree and I gave an example with how the fire traits for Eles should work to support condition damage and a defensive playstyle but they do not because the traits are underwhelming for that job. Missing traits for those roles is another problem, there is no major defensive trait in Fire, and no Grandmaster condition trait. In my opinion each specialization should be given 3 roles and support all 3 equally. Or offer a clear variation of single role (like Air having 2 different damage role options)

It’s more like they are the better option across all (or at least most) builds.

I’m not sure about all builds but for certain professions I’m sure in the “old days” before HoT that third trait slot was taken by a very specific traitline for nearly all builds. Thief builds were using Trickery as their third line, Elementalists were using Arcane and Guardians were using Virtues. Now they are using Daredevil, Tempest and Dragonhunter respectively (although sometimes you can mix Dragonhunter and Virtues). If you remove elite specs then the “problem” is still there as there was always a traitline that was a better option for most builds, it’s usually the one that buffed the profession mechanics. And in most cases it’s the one that was swapped out for the elite spec.

Maybe if they turned those into elite specs it would help

Astralporing.1957:

Then the condi build would use Fire, Earth, and Tempest traitlines.

I think you are forgetting that before HoT the “3rd traitline” of Eles was always Arcane. It’s not like the issue of having a fixed build is new with HoT.

And in this discussion, buffing the core traitlines for specific roles will not change much.

Depends on the kind of buff they will get. The alternative is what? Nerf elite specs?

LS3 is slower than LS1 because they are working on the next expansion. People asked for expansions so here we are

Randulf.7614:

I really don’t understand why they don’t put an end date either in patch notes or on the release page for these things anymore (although last I lokked, Lunar wasn’t even on the release page!).

Last time they added something on the release page it was Wintersday and it had a wrong end date :P

This is getting really about Eles and not elite specs in general but oh well.

Astralporing.1957:

You kept mentioning that all the ele builds use fire, so it seemed as if you were unaware that there are other builds than just PvE dps ones. Or as if they didn’t fit your thesis, so you ignored them.

The most used Ele builds use Fire because even though the Auramancer build exist it’s not the top healer on most encounters, it’s a rare build anyway. Maybe using Warrior or Thief would be better examples.

If, for example, you change Fire into a traitline that will benefit all the roles, it will no longer be the dps traitline (because, to gain something you need to lose something).

That’s so sad, you must’ve forgotten how each core spec has 9 different traits. They can make each specialization fulfill 3 distinct roles with those traits.

Let’s take Fire for example, Burning Precision, Pyromancer’s Training and Persisting Flames are the go-to damage traits, one is condition based but damage nonetheless. Then you have Burning Fire and Blinding Ashes which are defensive abilities, both have a use and back in the day were used by Eles in PVP a lot. Unfortunately there is no good Adept defensive trait to complete that role.

The remaining traits are just lame. One with Fire tells us that some developer wanted Fire to be a condition damage trait line, combined with Burning Precision, but it’s completely underwhelming. There is no grandmaster trait for a condition build while Pyromancer’s Puissance and Conjurer are struggling to find any use.

In other words, Fire can support 3 roles, direct damage, condition damage and defensive / condition removal (mostly for PVP due to blind being useless against bosses in PVE). Direct damage combined with Air, condition damage combined with Earth and defensive combined with either Earth or Water (or both). However, as we are now, the only usage for Fire is for damage builds because the other roles aren’t supported enough by the Fire traits. There is also a possibility if they made Conjurer better to combine Fire/Water in a Conjure build (using Piercing Shards in Water will be a DPS boost)

The other specializations are similar.
Air is mostly power damage spec with some crowd control, but offers two distinct ways of playing a power damage build.
Earth is about bleeds and protection, offering anti condition and anti-power abilities.
Water is about healing, cleansing and power damage.

There is no “damage specialization”. Each specialization has a variety of options, it’s just some of them are useless meaning only a few of the traits from each spec even get picked and used.

We can’t do that.

Earth is supposed to be the condition and toughness trait line but there is no competitive condition damage build for Eles. They could make it so Earth and Fire are the go-to trait lines for an Ele condition damage build. That’s the kind of buff I’m talking about. If they can’t buff Earth because it will still use Tempest as the third spec, then the only way Eles will ever get a valid condition specialization would be in a future elite spec. Why do we have to wait for another elite spec to get a valid condition damage build for Eles?

Astralporing.1957:

Anyway, even now it still does require winning a lot of matches, with more than one class, not merely afking as some people in this thread claim.

You need 27 wins with 3 different professions for a total of 81 wins. If the 4 season limit was still here then yes that would be “a lot of matches” but since you have an eternity in front of you to get those 81 wins then it’s no big deal at all. “A lot” is subjective, you need to add how much time you have available to do it.

The new matchmaking algorithm takes into account your personal rating alone when matching you against opponents. A player with zero PvP experience or skill will get those wins by afking at the bottom of the bronze ladder where the games are really hit or miss. Now that you get the division crossing achievement by not playing… there is really nothing that requires any effort or skill in order to get the Ascension.

IndigoSundown.5419:

maddoctor.2738:

It’s simple, finding use for the under-used core specializations is more important than nerfing Elite specs in order to make those under-used core specs look better.

Massive oversimplification.

Core lines are designed around the idea that sustain, soak and glass are different things, and you cannot have all three because glass requires (at least) 2 lines. What’s so about the Elite lines is the drawbacks to glass are less prevalent due to things like increased access to invulnerability, evasion, sustain, condi remove, etc. are more readily available with the Elite Spec. There’s also the increased options thing which you conveniently ignore.

Let’s face it. Elite specs are not going to be nerfed too much, because that reduces their appeal, which could (will) diminish sales. And you’re barking up the wrong tree and cherry picking who to respond to while ignoring other points of view that you (apparently) have no counter for.

I doubt they will nerf the elite specs in any significant way, the only kind of nerf that would “help” is reducing the options they provide, and that’s not likely to happen. Reducing a few numbers here and there won’t make the elite specs less desirable because as you say the elite specs bring to builds more options and number tweaking can’t help much with that.

Buffing the under-performing trait lines on their respective “build” can open up builds. Like, if there is no condi build for a profession and there is a trait line that offers better condition damage (that nobody uses) buff that trait line so the condi damage build is competitive. Of course that can happen only if the next elite specs aren’t going to nerf core specs again.

Nikkinella.8254:

We’ve suggested ways on how they could do it that would require actual effort to get.

Out of curiosity do you have any links for threads with those suggestions? I’m more interested in WvW rewards because that’s the hardest to balance, and had the least amount of effort by Anet. At least the Ascension in S1-S4 was challenging to get (pre S5, when it was also under a time limit)

Coconut.7082:

but the discussion started as comparison between amount of effort required to get reward per game mode, and the facts are: You can get any/most PvP/WvW rewards simply by AFKing, you cannot do that in raids unless you buy them.

Yep that’s how it started and then someone twisted it into “you are saying that raids require higher skill level than pvp modes”, which I never actually did claim.
I never expected this to turn into a “who is better? a pro pvper or a raider?” kind of argument because that comparison is just silly.

That’s on Anet though and their terrible design of the reward system.

Exactly. Players are asking for legendary armor to be available through other types of content, like pvp and wvw, that’s totally understandable. But the current reward systems simply won’t work, they need to come up with a far better reward system that incorporates at least some amount of skill before adding something like Legendary armor as a reward.

Maybe some day they’ll figure out a good reward system.

Astralporing.1957:

You can have good ele builds without fire or air. I gave you examples of ones (which you promptly ignored).

That’s a different role (Healer role) of course it won’t use Fire, there was no reason to comment on that.

And that trying to recreate those builds without elite spec traitlines will be either flat out impossible, or be a significant nerf to that build within its role.

Of course, but it’s equally impossible to re-create those builds without their non-elite specs. There are some builds where Elite specs actually define them (Aurancer healer, Chronomancer, Druid, Herald) Where the elite spec is the actual “master” trait line, in other builds, the core specs are what define the build and the elite spec is the “best third option”.

It’s simple, finding use for the under-used core specializations is more important than nerfing Elite specs in order to make those under-used core specs look better.

Simple answer: not everyone likes fighting other players.

Every single ele build that does not include tempest traitline can be made stronger within the same role by exchanging the least important traitline for elite one.

Exactly what I’m saying. You are exchanging the least important spec for an elite one, while the important specs are still more powerful than the elite specs themselves. I believe that’s because their original system was designed to have 2 specs maxed and not 3, back before the specialization patch. So while the original specs are balanced under that system, the elite specs were designed to be the 3rd one on your bar.

Each time they develop an armor set, they have to develop 6 different sets (male and female versions for each armor class), so when you talk about the time to make a single armor set you are really talking about the time to make 6 armor sets.

Although that’s true in terms of development time, if we include the cost of the armor vs the cost of the outfits the two of them are in reality similar. Spending 800 gems for the armor gives you access to a single armor weight, not all three of them, while the 700 gems for the Outfit allows you to use it on all armor weights. You’d need to pay 2400 gems to get access to all 3 weights, which is a very heavy price to pay.

If you think of it that way then outfits and armors are the exact same in terms of skins required to make them. Maybe they could create single weight armor sets, if making all 3 weights is the problem, like the Mistward set which is only available for Heavy.

What a bunch of nonsense. If I can create armor for Unreal Engine 4 using apexcloth in maya then they can for sure do it with whole team. There is a serious problem with that team, that is the only explanation, cuz it’s not hard to do at all, and it doesn’t take so much time for sure.

It’s probably the armor creating tools that are problematic and cause delays. A good mod creator for Skyrim said it takes him about a week to make a full armor for that game from scratch and he does everything solo. Even if you add the different race versions required for Guild Wars 2, 1 week vs 8 months is a serious difference.

I think it’s more of an internal creation problem (maybe engine issue?) rather than an artist issue.

Luciferior.4802:

Can we at least hope this Group leather farm will actually be *Active players farming?

They said it will be challenging so there is hope that it won’t be something you do in a zerg or while afk.

Greener.6204:

Outfits don’t need to accommodate other pieces, and I’m sure there are more issues out there which also lead to why outfits are far easier to produce than armours.

They are far easier to produce than armors that’s true. But giving players more options wouldn’t hurt would it? Although the first step towards making outfits better would be allowing us to hide the shoulders. I’d buy way more outfits if I could hide their horrible shoulders. Second step would be allowing the armor helmet to show up when you hide the outfit helmet.

I’d settle for these two, better than nothing. Even just hiding the Shoulders would help a lot.

I always wondered about the Outfit vs Armor set production. If the problem is clipping then Chest and Legs are the only thing that needs to be combined and besides that some outfits allow you to disable their head part for example.

A good compromise would be to allow players to hide gloves, helmets, shoulders and boots of outfits and when you do your regular armor skin would appear. I don’t think that’s too unreasonable or something that would cause clipping issues since the vast majority of the clipping issues are between chest and legs.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t know what PvE builds you are running that you can’t get more out of elite builds than core ones.

The meta builds from metabattle usually, I think I gave enough examples in my OP.

IndigoSundown.5419:

If a build which includes two core lines is stronger with the Elite line than with any of the other 3 core trait lines, then the entire build is stronger. When people talk about Elite lines being stronger, they’re talking about the new lines’ impact on the total build, not whether the new line is stronger than every core line.

If the same 2 (or 1 in some cases) core trait lines are chosen by every build of a particular profession then aren’t those trait lines more problematic than the elite specs? That’s what I’m trying to say here, saying that Tempest is a problem because it’s mandatory and OP is missing how mandatory and OP Fire and Air trait lines are.

Doam.8305:

It would have been better to use the Ranger since that changes the role and is typically the one people use against power creep.
You didn’t mention Mesmer obviously because Chronomancer changes beans and instead adds on to the core class.

Note this part:
From a PVE point, they are NOT and I will go over some professions that I have experience with to explain why.

flog.3485:

Who sait that leather farm will only be for HoT players ? Mo didn’t say it. From now on it is just pure speculation

Well he did say that it’s a new farming spot so it makes sense it will be on the new map released with Episode 4 and LS3 is only available to HoT owners. Of course they might add a new farm spot somewhere in Tyria with a new event that rewards leather but I find that unlikely, although they might surprise us.

We see it all the time on these forums, how much of a power creep the elite specs are and how important they are to a build. How much better they are from normal specializations. But is that really true? Are elite specs really more powerful than core specializations? From a PVE point, they are NOT and I will go over some professions that I have experience with to explain why.

Let’s take the Elementalist first. In PVE meta builds use Fire, Air and Tempest, before Tempest the build always used Fire and Air, and before the specialization update when we could use more than 3 specializations, Fire was ALWAYS picked. Would anyone pick Tempest over Fire or Air? I really doubt it, so Tempest is NOT better than the core Elementalist specializations.

Let’s take the Thief. In PVE meta builds Thieves use Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes and Daredevil. Similar to the Elementalist, would any Thief trade DA or CS for Daredevil? In my opinion you wouldn’t, because DA and CS give more DPS and options than Daredevil. I use Trickery instead of Daredevil in certain situations, but never swap DA or CS out.

If you take a look at Warrior, the meta builds always use Tactics for Phalanx Strength. And of course Strength is the other second highest priority pick for Warriors because it has Forceful Greatsword. Would anyone pick Berserker over Tactics or Strength?

All meta Guardian builds are using Zeal and then if it’s a one-handed build it’s Radiance, Hammer build with Honor. Is Dragonhunter worth more than those? The answer is no, it’s not.

I read the “elite specs are mandatory” argument, have you ever played an Elementalist without Fire, a Thief without Critical Strikes, a Warrior without Tactics and a Guardian without Zeal? How is it that the elite specs are a problem but not mandatory core specs?

In short: In PVE, Elite specs are NOT more powerful than core specs, they are more powerful than the third core spec used to complete your build.

Sykper.6583:

Now I definitely want the raid wing to come out before the Armor is ready, have one of the gift requirements disabled.

That’s assuming the precursor is ready. Maybe they haven’t finished the precursor either and they will create it after they are finished with the Legendary.

It’s about time AB ML is fixed, such a simple fix is all that was needed.

I’m curious about this leather farm spot. The Jade Armor/Bow events in Bloodstone Fen were also somewhat of a leather farm spot, those events dropped the salvageable items for leather and cloth. Is this new spot going to be like that or something completely different?

I’m kind of sad about not getting Legendary Armor yet, but maybe Episode 4 will set-up the next Raid, give a hint about where it might be and about what.

1. Hard mode for story
They are making advancements in this part, by adding hard achievements in the story, and challenge motes that make the story instances a lot harder. Story instances since LS2 have more replayability than the old personal story which is a good way going forward.
They could add something similar to old personal story but the it would require a serious re-work to make the instances re-playable (you can’t reactivate them like the LS episodes) and I don’t think it’s worth the trouble to mess again with the personal story.
So what they can do, and hopefully continue to do, is add these challenging achievements and challenge motes to future story instances and there is no reason to believe that they won’t continue this path.

2. Hard mode maps
As I understand it, what you are asking for in the third paragraph is to host hard mode versions of open world maps? In that case the main problem will be the community split, it will make harder to find players for either of the modes. I don’t think it’s worth the effort. All the new zones added in the game since release had higher difficulty than the Core Tyria. Which is another thing they can do with minimal impact.

3. Hard mode instances
Dungeons are rather dead so I’m not sure if upgrading them is worth it. It’s funny how in the old days players were asking for an easy mode for dungeons and now players are asking for a hard mode for dungeons. How things change.

Fractals already have a higher difficulty setting. The problem with Fractals is the scaling doesn’t affect most aspects of the encounters, it only scales damage and hit points, which means a T5,T6 and so on Fractal tier would be easy to implement but rather pointless.

Raids are new-ish in the game. The easiest way to add that extra challenge to them is by making the achievements associated with the encounters repeatable. The “hard mode” version of Bandit Trio is by not using the environment, the “hard mode” for Sabetha is leaving one cannon alive for the entire fight and so on. There are achievements for these but they do not offer anything repeatable so they are only done once.

As for the solo part, you can already try to solo anything… and aside from Raids and certain dungeons that require a fixed amount of people, everything can be done solo. Adding a solo version of a Raid would require it to not be the same encounter but rather a significantly weaker one, I wouldn’t call defeating that version as a sign of awesomeness.

Basically the answer is the same for everything concerning hard mode. Instead of adding a hard mode version of old instances/story/maps, make NEW things that are harder. Win-win. The main issue with that is that difficulty must have a proper progression, which is one of the major faults of the game atm.

OR the alternative is to make some of the achievements repeatable with some extra added rewards. That way for example the LS2 achievements will be done more often, making it easier for newer players to find people to do them with, since some are really hard to solo.

sophiewhite.3149:

i feel like your purposely ignoring my comments because it doesnt fit your agenda.

In my very first post I used these:

So using CURRENT systems

and

I’d love to read about an alternative method of getting Legendary Armor involving PvP and/or WvW that actually takes a tiny bit of effort and requires a tiny bit of skill, because the current reward systems of PvP/WvW do not exactly require skill.

The old Ascension (pre S5) did require an amount of skill to get because it was time limited. You had to get to Diamond once and Ruby 3 times in order to do the Division crossing achievement, and get enough wins with 3 different professions, within the time limit, to acquire the Ascension. Then they broke everything with S5.

Can they make hard achievements in PvP? Of course they can.
Will they add such hard achievements in PvP? That’s the question.

I never talked about what they can do. I was talking about what they currently do.

Rednik.3809:

Discussion originally started when you tried to make a statement that raids are actually require higher skill than pvp modes, and tried to prove it by comparing most basic level in them with most advanced level in PvE. Which is kinda hilarious.
Can you say that qT/DnT/SC/etc cant actually win in official ESL world cup in spvp? Or defeat some top guild like old RG in wvw clash? I don’t think so.

No the discussion didn’t start there, you are mistaken or are trying to change it on purpose to suit your needs. It started here, at least the part that concerns me:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/raid-selling-own-lfg-right/page/2#post6474372

Claims against the prestige of Raids because people can buy the Raid kills. But since a fraction of a tiny minority is selling the Raid kills, it’s irrelevant.

Also, I never compared Raiders to top PvP players, I compared the rewards of Raids with the rewards of PvP. And as I said multiple times, getting any of the PvP rewards does NOT require you to win an official ESL cup, it requires afking in a corner. While getting any rewards in Raids requires to actually beat the content, or be one of that fraction of a tiny minority that buys them, which as explained above is irrelevant.

So doing content (Raids) versus afking in a corner (PvP).

Rednik.3809:

If you can’t see the difference between very-very narrow slice of PvE and whole game modes – I can’t help you either. Because if I will stop pointing finger at raids only and start talking about nobrain farming trains and activities in PvE… well, you know that comparison will be kinda one-sided, and not in your favor.

What in the world are you talking about? Anyone and everyone can indeed get any WvW or PvP reward without putting any kind of effort, their reward systems are designed so you don’t need to actually be good at those game modes to be rewarded.

You said that the same is true for Raids because you can buy the raid kills. However it’s people like you who say that a very tiny minority is raiding, and a small portion of that tiny minority is selling Raid kills. So we are talking about a small fraction of a tiny minority. How is that tiny amount of players who are getting the Raid kills through an easy method devaluing the “prestige” of Raids?

I’d rather ask here instead of making a new thread because it’s about the legendary armor:
Anyone else thinks that Legendary armor is going to be like an expensive Outfit?
And what I mean with that is, if each piece is created with animations that work when you enter combat, it will be really hard to combine an animated piece with a non-animated piece, reducing any kind of skin variety.

sophiewhite.3149:

so your saying you can afk in spvp and get to legendary 3 times in a row?

You don’t need to get to Legendary 3 times in a row to get the Ascension… now that they changed how divisions I’m not sure how the division crossing achievement work.

maybe not challenge mode but thats only 1 fractal. check around reset. raids only are populated monday. then it dies.

You compared the activity that attract more players than everything else in the game combined, with Raids. You can check and compare Raids and Fractals on their reset days.

Of course it’s populated on Monday and then it dies, remember how Raid rewards are behind a WEEKLY lock? Remove the lock and you’ll see way more players running Raids during the week, but that would probably cause more problems than it would solve, there is a reason it’s there.

Astralporing.1957:

Prestige? sPvP tournaments probably. There’s not much of a prestige to be had in raids. They are exclusive, but not prestigious.

So… something like a sPvP tournament for Raids would be prestigious? Like that Raid challenge with different teams trying to clear the Raid wings with a set of rules?

sophiewhite.3149:

you ask for data showing the raiding population is low. why bother asking. anet doesnt release it.

Low compared to what exactly? By following your logic all parts of the game other than AB ML have low population.
Ever checked the LFG how many people run Challenge Mode 100 Fractals? How about Arah P4 runs? Any other dungeon run? T3 fractals? Non-AB HoT maps you might find 1 listing tops. Judging by the LFG the game is dead and only AB ML is what people are running. They should rename it to Octovine Wars 2. That’s a far more extreme issue than the popularity of Raids.

i get you dont like pvp or wvw. thats fine. but having a very wanted item locked behind a extreme minority of the playerbase is dumb.

I play both pvp and wvw, I already got the Ascension before S5 started. The reward systems for both pvp and wvw are terrible and allow players to earn any reward of those game modes by not actively playing those game modes.

Rednik.3809:

In raids you can buy 1 fullclear with AB-farmed gold, then tag stuff in training groups, get shards or even boss kills, and buy whatever you want with shards.
And?

If you can’t see the difference between buying a Raid kill (how many full AB-ML to get enough for a complete Legendary Armor set?) and afking for free and getting a reward then I can’t help you.

Rednik.3809:

You know, saying that fighting against a few lines of script is actually somehow requires more skill than fighting against alive opponents – this is hilariously funny.

It is indeed funny but that’s the sad reality of the situation. The main issue is that in WvW/PvP you don’t have to actively fight opponents. In PvP you can lose and get all the rewards, just afk at the start and boom you get nearly full Ascended armor set, and since you don’t need to reach some high division to get rewards you’ll have to fight only really low skill players to get that too. A Raid boss is a much more “skilled” opponent than the average low Bronze player, who is equal in skill to a Moa in Queensdale.

In WvW you let others do the fighting while you follow and use aoe skills to tag as many people as possible for maximum rewards. Which is the same as in the open world PvE. In both cases individual skill means next to nothing, while in most cases those “lines of script” require all players to pull their weights and it’s much harder to get carried, unless the group is good enough to low-man the encounter and carry the trash. How many groups are actually capable of doing that?

sophiewhite.3149:

and if they do make content that can only be completed by a minority (raids are that currently. most players dont raid) then itll just be sold until its lost all prestige like raids are right now.people can still be carried through any level of difficult content if the others are good enough. you seem to think this is only a problem because raids are “easy” for exp players. newish players struggle rather hard which is why the raid population is so low.

First of all not everyone buys Raid kills.
Second, for the average casual player Raid kills are expensive, so it takes some grind to get that gold to buy the Raid kills.
Third, funny thing when talking about “prestige” while some ask for Legendary Armor to be available in let’s say WvW. In WvW you don’t even have to grind gold to buy anything like Raid kills, you just follow a tag with your level 2 character in white gear and get all the rewards offered by WvW. So using CURRENT systems, you’d need to press 1 on your keyboard and get Legendary Armor, how prestigious.
And how would Legendary Armor from PvP work? It takes absolutely no skill to get the Ascended set in S5, since you are rewarded when you lose. As for the Ascension, you could back during S1-S4 pay to get carried by a group of pros. And after they made it clear that you can still get it, it’s only a matter of time, you don’t even have to get beyond Sapphire, just get the division crossing achievement by crossing to Sapphire and in a few seasons you’ll get the Ascension. Again, prestigious indeed.

At least there is some amount of effort required to get the armor from Raids, either doing the encounters themselves or grinding for the gold to buy the Raid kills. I’d love to read about an alternative method of getting Legendary Armor involving PvP and/or WvW that actually takes a tiny bit of effort and requires a tiny bit of skill, because the current reward systems of PvP/WvW do not exactly require skill.

Fourth: got some data showing that raid population is low?

Just wait until the new elite specs are announced and they nerf non-elite specs because the new ones will have similar features to the new elites.

Like for example nerfing Acrobatics specialization on Thief because Daredevil also had dodges and evades.

Ayrilana.1396:

They actually made it more bearable for many players as last year you needed to do 100 interrupts.

Last year you needed to do 20 interrupts just like this year. It was the first year of the Lunar festival (2015) that required 100.

I think it would be nice if they dropped it to 10 interrupts although this year I find it easier because less people play Dragon Ball so the teams aren’t full

The bosses of Ember Bay are laughable easy and on a really short cooldown, they don’t “deserve” to have better rewards. They don’t even take time to kill, their pre-events usually take longer than the actual boss events, so making the pre-events more rewarding is better than making the bosses more rewarding

Usually late December/ early January is when the developers, like a lot of other people, aren’t working but taking a break. It has been like this for years, this period of time to have the least amount of releases, and it’s absolutely normal.

Mr Greggles.5908:

Even when pulled correctly, she seems to de-agro for no reason at any stage of the fight.

And here is the problem with your argument: “pulled correctly” means fighting her inside her room. Any other way used to pull her away of her friends is not a legit method of killing her, therefore any issues that appear from that method is not a bug, it’s a feature.

The other problem with veteran instances (after the community split) is the rewards. The game is notoriously bad at balancing effort/reward, which means these higher difficulty instances won’t have any kind of worthy reward. Same as how so many posters said to run content with lower quality gear to make it more “challenging” as if that’s a valid solution.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

This game had 4 years of easy, no effort PvE.

That’s not 100% true because some of the LS1 mobs, and other mobs that appeared after release, like young karka, were actually more challenging opponents. It was sad that the LS1 mobs were removed so this illusion that the game “was always easy” is what remained, but truth is, even during LS1 there were more than enough challenging open world pve mobs in the game.

I like playing games of dragon ball because it reminds me of old school FPS games, it’s rather refreshing in that regard! During the week there are far less people to play, but during the weekends it’s much more fun to play. More players = more players of variable skill levels, it’s still random but at least there is a better chance of getting into a better game.

The trick in winning is forming a blob and moving together. The team that forms the best blob, that stays together and hit the same target, will win.