Guild Wars 2

Do we know if any of the Six other than Abaddon knew about the ley lines?

I don’t recall precisely, but I understand it was either that he lead Khilbron to read the scroll that unleashed to magic, or that and he created the scroll.. or something to that effect. Either way this implies Abaddon knew about the ley lines and their effects.

I think that a ley line being under/near Orr makes sense. This could also imply that there’s a large leyline point near all dragons? Do we have any way to see this?

What about other Criss-crosses? Is it possible that there’s a connection between large human settlements (Istan anyone?) and ley lines? I have my doubts about LA being conveniently on top of a ley line intersection and that it’s purely a coincidence.

An intersection may also explain the way the Six were able to connect directly to Tyria. Perhaps they were drawn to that and not the power of Zhaitan?

I’m just throwing ideas out there at the moment but I can see minor connections.

Carpboy.7145:

Ok. The EP on a 30/25///15 is 7989 with full zerker/scholar. The EP on my 0/0/30/10/30 hammer/GS roaming build is 4901.3 with cavalier armor and lyssa runes, rest zerker. Its worth noting that site thinks the dmg multiplier from merciless hammer is permanent, and it also doesn’t include DotE

Go with 0/20/30/0/20 for Ham/GS. You’ll like it, trust me.

Annnnnnnd post of the year goes to….

THIS GUY.

Totally agree with this. Lower the ratio.

Make it 12 or 13. 15 is far, far too high. Makes ferocity almost worthless.

Just another example of ArenaNet not understanding their own game.

Has anyone thought about Crit damage food? The crit damage you get from it is almost certainly going to be dropped by over 50%.

Standard food formula is 100/70. 70 Ferocity = 4.666’. So we’ve pretty much lost 5 – 6% from that. Trinkets are being destroyed for their damage and more than halved.

ANet has no idea what they’re doing. Berserker will STILL be king. In fact it’s just become the ONLY thing that’s viable. Before you could get away with Valkyrie/Knights hybrids. Now? Full zerk or go home.

Cavalier’s and Valkyrie builds are dead because of this. Crit Damage food is now useless too. GG WP Anet. GG WP. You haven’t even considered stats that utilize crit damage but aren’t full-zerk. You’ve completely nerfed specs in WvW.

sobe.4157:

Your i5 will be the grunt for GW2 as far as fps goes.

Do you think the CPU will be enough to get 60 fps at high settings?

Base or OC’d?

locx.6412:

Anything past HD 7790 will bring 60+ fps if your CPU allows it. Don’t know which GPU you have now but assuming it’s a decent one you’re better off spending your money on a good CPU cooler and overclock it to max.

I’m building a whole new system. Currently running an i5 2430M 2.4GHz with a GT 540M. It’s a laptop, but I’m actually building a PC.

Cooler will be a Cooler Master Seidon 120V. I’ve heard good things about it.

Title says it all. Looking to grab one of these and pair it up with an i5 3670K. Anyone have experience with this card?

TurtleDragon.3108:

cranked.3812:

Can someone please post some videos of these no-skip/any class/any build dungeon runs? I would love to see a 1 hour CoF P1 run.

44 Minute CoF P1

kittening Rezardi, man.

Also, threads like this just reinforce my attitude of “ping gear on entry” and “dps spec only”. Unless you want to take 40 minutes on CoF, you need to run high damage gear. If you’re trying to run kitten like clerics, you don’t understand the game mechanics. If you’re trying to fight every single enemy in the dungeon without skipping, well… you’re honestly wasting your time. In terms of bosses? There’s no right or wrong way, but there’s “effective” and “ineffective” ways. For example, Melee stacking lupi with a feedback at phase 2 is effective, standing around trying to range him is ineffective and often draws out the encounter, leading to wipes.

No.

What are the primary service differences with this?

I know for a fact that the Pavillion has no Trait guy.

Actually, come to think of it, when is that getting fixed? Should I just ask for a refund?

We did it!

Woooo!

Make it require you to be a Legend in WvW.

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Yeah, force me in to WvW and I may start trying to “play the way I want”.
I think I may want to walk golems off the cliff just to see if they can fly, or maybe see how much supplies I can use by building siege equipment as far behind friendly lines as possible (keeps them safe that way). The ways I can “play the way I want” seem almost endless. ;-)

Whelp enjoy half the WvW map reporting you for that stuff and most likely getting banned for griefing.

But seriously though. Quit bloody crying. It’s a legendary. Rank 30 isn’t even hard to get. Not one little itty bitty bit. You might even like it. I didn’t enjoy WvW until I was at the Gift of Battle point of my legendary… and now alongside two others I’m running a prominent WvW guild on IoJ, and I’m a regular commander on my server. I love WvW now.

Legendaries should require a lot more work and a lot less gold. Make it require the Legendary rank in WvW and then we’re talking. Maybe add in rank 20 in PvP, Dungeon Master, Rank 30 in Fractals, 7,000 AP, finishing your personal story, 1k dragonite ore and whatever else can make it stupidly hard.

I like it. You guys will get used to it and come to like it. Think of those golem raids in water… or just getting lost in hoards of players in a zerg.

I guess I’m more used to it because we ghetto-tag in my guild.

Maybe an option to just turn it off or something? I don’t know. I think it’s nice.

And to those complaining that they added this instead of other stuff, the other stuff is surely coming, this was probably incredibly easy to do and they just added it with this patch. It was also in the beta.

Shiren.9532:

In T2 and below (probably even some T1 servers) queues only happen on a single map or two and a queue on all four maps is unheard of. So for those people this update is removing the number one incentive to transfer to a non-T1 server: no queues. Population imbalances are going to be even worse now.

Good. Keep all the fairweathers and bads locked up on T1 and T2. Let the real WvW keep taking place on T4 – 6

Kitta.3657:

It’s funny though that you can read in the same thread “it’s a game, it’s fantasy” as a reason for not having realistic representation of bodies but then you can also read “it’s not realistic to have fat people in a FANTASY world full of danger”.

My point was that if we wanted to play the “but surely fat people can still be in the game”. Despite being a fantasy game, Tyria still has certain guidelines it has to adhere to. It has a (mostly) well-written story with tonnes of lore behind it, which include Tyria adhering to, for the most part, the same laws of biology and physics that the real world does.

And when people are saying “it’s a fantasy game” they’re pointing out that it’s utterly ridiculous to put our real-life stigmas, labels and “privileges” in it. We have walking, talking lesbian plants and giant homosexual men who transform into bears. All of this is deemed acceptable in Tyria.

It’s a game.

“I’m so glad we’ve had the same 2 maps for over 18 months”

You’re forgetting that there is so many advantages to catas compared to rams. Catapults can damage more than one defensive structure. This requires the enemy to spend more supply.

Catapults are also far less susceptible to gate-bombs. Catapults can be used from a distance. If you’re using guild catas (equivelant of sup cata) it’s extremely more efficient than rams. You can get 2 guild catas up for the price of one ram. That’s a total of 8 guild catas compared to 4 superior rams, for the same supply. I’d bet 60g that 8 guild catas is a hell of a lot faster than 2 rams inner 2 rams outer.

You’re also assuming that it’s extremely rare for people to have Cata T4. This isn’t the case. Sure, ram masters are more common, but in my experience there is always one or two cata masters.

You’re also forgetting that going Catas then rams or rams then rams doesn’t allow you to set up an effective choke point, adding other siege if needed. In the case of hills, you’ve got a wall as a choke point. You can go up and take out their outer siege and their inner siege is largely useless. In the case of bay, the only way to take out that cata spot is with a rush or a trebuchet. Compare this to putting rams on inner…

You can see where all this is going. Sure, rams might be technically faster, but it’s literally a case of seconds. You’re exchanging a matter of seconds for a less defensible position, more supply and lower repair cost & time for the enemy.

All of WvW is situational based, but you’re wrong in trying to say that just because rams are faster means they’re better.

Radian.2478:

even ones that have legendaries and a lot of money

Because of course, it’s the commander’s responsibility to pay for every single piece of siege and not anybody else’s, because of course, they’ve already spent 100g on the tag and probably have more money.

I’m coming to the conclusion that you don’t quite get how WvW works.

Brutal Arts.6307:

But changing AI is hard and would require work and wouldn’t turn a profit in the gemstore.

This.

I’ve yet to see a change in game that hasn’t been taking the easy option. I mean, sure, Ferocity makes a little more sense in terms of balance and primary ferocity gear sounds awesome, but that’s hardly the problem with zerk meta. It comes from garbage AI.

Either give us Elite Dungeons (fractals doesn’t count) where the AI is complex and difficult, often requiring varying abilities (blinds, timed CC, aegis, condi clear, stealth, condition damage, etc.) or adjust all dungeon ai.

[giggling intensifies]

I think what is trying to be said here is that this nerf changes absolutely nothing.

Nobody is really complaining about a nerf to DPS. I mean sure it sucks Balthazar’s Balls, but let’s be honest, this just means for an efficient party everyone HAS to go full berserker to make encounters take a reasonable amount of time.

This hasn’t decreased Berserker spec dominance, it’s simply just reinforced it. This doesn’t make support, control, tanking or conditions any better. This has just gone “now zerkers will do slightly less damage”. That doesn’t fix the problem.

Nerfing straight DPS specs will never solve the problem. The problem of Berserker dominance lies in the enemy AI, Stats and general enemy encounters

Now I can understand, to an extent, why changing straight crit damage to Ferocity could make sense, it allows for slightly better scaling and brings crit damage in line with every other stat. From a purely spreadsheet based perspective, it makes sense. It still doesn’t accomplish what their apparent aim was, to decrease dominance of zerk specs and allow for further party comp diversity.

I think it depends on the change. If they nerf crit damage into the ground, then yes, I totally agree. If they destroy the zerk spec, let us change it.

If it’s really not bad like maybe adding a 100% crit damage cap or something then I don’t think this is necessary.

Oh BOY! I can’t wait for the complete halving of crit damage on zerk gear!!

You know it’s coming. They’re going to nerf it into the ground, not because it needs to be nerfed, but because the other specs are so disgustingly useless.

I know this is speculation, but let’s be honest, we all know it’s coming. This kind of fix wont boost other specs, only enforce zerk further.

JonPeters.5630:

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

I’m about to say what’s already been said here, but I feel the more voices the better.

Do not nerf berserker gear or Power/Precision specs

This will not fix the problem. It will only make it worse. Remember that if you lower how much DPS a berserker stat puts out, it’s incredibly likely you’ll also nerf the damage a non-berserker spec is putting out.

Buff other playstyles

Introduce new mechanics to the PvE scene. I can almost 100% guarantee you’d see a split of 2 power DPS, 1 Control, 1 Condition DPS and 1 support if you changed the way bosses worked to be suitable for those. Don’t just buff conditions or lower the amount of stacks of defiant an enemy has. Remove defiant, make enemies far more vulnerable to conditions, add mechanics like “on-crit retaliation” so that if you’re criting a great deal, you need a support character to help.

Decrease the health of enemies and introduce new ways to fight them. The problem isn’t that DPS Spec and zerk gear being so dominant, it’s that the other specs are so utterly weak and completely unnecessary that bringing them is a waste of a slot.

There is thousands of interesting, yet simple ways to improve the mechanics. Adding procing stability, add crit-based retaliation, swap the HP sponge with toughness sponge.

Again, I repeat do not nerf berserkers, rework the mechanics.

I think it’s high time we got an official response on this.

This entire discussion is kittened.

“Nightcapping” is completely relative to where you live. I’m from Australia, so that means players in EU prime or NA early morning are nightcapping.

Complaining about nightcapping is complaining that the entire world doesn’t live in one single timezone and operate on the same schedule. It’s blatantly kittened and arguing that there should be more or less points given or whatever your solution based on your timezone is blatantly childish and selfish. This kind of attitude is the self-centered “Me me me! The world revolves around me and mine!” attitude of children.

Lore forum.

Also, Dervishes from GW1 had similar attire and moved just fine. There is real world attire that is no different? Half the female armour in game is the same?

OmniPotentes.4817:

I played how I wanted………and got kicked off the team.

You probably joined a group full of people that didn’t want to carry you.

Adding my support to this. Anet can say that a server is very high, despite it’s WvW pop, but come on. You can’t base server population on players who get on for an hour, do their daily and then jump off.

I can almost guarantee that if we based a server’s overall population upon the WvW ranks it be next to 100% accurate. Why is it that I can go to LA on IoJ and see maybe 20 people across the whole map, but guest to BG and see nearly a hundred, sometimes more?

I mean, lets be realistic, the servers are not all “very high” population. I’d be more inclined to say that they have a very high frequency of tourist, where a tourist is the people who don’t actually play more than an hour or two when they jump in.

I’d like to see the actual stats for this, but unfortunately Arenanet continues to hide a lot of the specifics. I want more black and white with this stuff.

I have the same issue. It hits in spikes and seems relatively inconsistent.

Playing from Aus. ISP is Optus.

I can say that it has NOT been fixed for me.

My guess is there is a particular data centre near anet that’s causing the problem.

I’ve run for 30 to 50. Over 20 fractals. Not a single skin. Not one.

I’ve had an ascended weapon chest with Rampager’s stats, so it’s not all bad. Pre-update I’d usually get one every 5 – 10 48s. Sometimes less. The reward has definitely decreased.

Pre-patch the estimated chance was ~24% for 48s, ~12% for 38s and ~10% for 28s.

Post-patch things seem to be about 10% at 49.

It may be worth creating a spreadsheet on this, if someone has the time.

Did anyone ever get Texmod to work with GW2?

Arah Heavy legs now clip with most greatsword when they didn’t previously. Not sure if the model change was intended or not but it’s incredibly annoying. Please revert this.

This is or Human Males that I’ve noticed it on. All body types

Anyone know if this works on tequatl?

SkyChef.5432:

He forgot how structure initialized in C++ and messed up decimal counting w/ structure counting. And now it’s a mess to fix it. /s.

Hahaha

It happened in GW1 and it’ll happened in GW2.

There’s nothing wrong with selling spots, as long as they don’t exploit to get through the dungeon.

They’re selling the services of soloing (or duo-ing) the dungeon.

Not that it’s really a problem for me, but one year later and you still can’t do this.

C’mon anet, get it together.

Title says it all. Post ’em.

Why would you even announce a feature that you have literally no plans to actually release while the update is still up, or at least within a reasonable timeframe?

I mean, the fractal weapon chests aren’t even in the loot tables of the game, yet you announced them. This is just… I don’t even. Come on guys, you know better than this as a company.

This is literally what you’ve said:

“Hey guys! With this update we’re adding this awesome new thing… haha gotcha there! Maybe next time, chumps!”

If you aren’t ready to release it as part of the update, don’t announce it as part of the update. It would be like saying precursor crafting was coming with Ascended Armorsmithing. You clearly aren’t ready to release it, so there’s no point in announcing it.

I understand you wanted to wait for additional data before introducing the new leaderboards, but come on. You can at least try to test your stuff. Clearly the whole system wasn’t even ready to collect data. With the weapon boxes, they apparently aren’t even available until higher levels which you haven’t even released yet.

Next time, just remember that a little rewording could have gone a long way.

“Hey guys, with the coming changes to fractals, we’ve got plans to introduce a new leaderboard, the current system isn’t quite ready yet, but it’s coming as part of the new changes and levels we’ll be rolling out to fractals over the coming months. Stay tuned!”

and

“Hey guys! We’ve introduced a new Fractal Weapon Chest. It’s not available at the current levels, but when they’re released, it’ll be a rare drop from the daily boss chest.”

Not that hard. I’d rather be disappointed that it’s not there with the patch, but know it’s coming, rather than be borderline lied to.

Thank you, Based Devon.

FC your response time best be faster than that throughout the week! You almost lost SM and your keep to a bunch of Wolves

Best of luck to everyone this week, looking forward to some fair fights. Hoping this ends up as a close match

Ascended Gear Acquisition

Currently, ascended gear acquisition takes long enough, but it tends to be very tedious. As it currently stands, all ascended gear is time gated. This is the problem, not the fact that it takes time. Ascended gear -should- take a month or two to get a full set, but this should be from players completing certain tasks or some other means of crafting, not time-gating.

The process should be the same sort of thing as Legendaries. In theory, you get get one in a matter of hours or days, though in practice it takes months.

Furthet Verticle Progression:

I’d honestly say that the next form of vertical progression should be infusions, trait points, 4th non-elite utility skill tier, permanent potion effects (i.e. run coe 100 times to get permanent t1 pot buff) or something worth working for, that doesn’t feel meaningless. Currently ascended armour is a tiny stat boost for tonnes upon tonnes of effort. It feels like a tonne of work for nothing.

Progression through other means

Okay, so beyond the attribute point quests, your stats were pretty much set at level 20, but some people played for over 7 years. Why?

Title Progression.

It worked in GW1, so do it for GW2. Introduce proper titles that require effort to get. Some of the harder achievements to get (500 fractals) award no title, yet there is titles for pressing F 25 times (Finders Keepers). Add worthwhile titles and rewards thag are hard, but reasonable, to get. Nothing like the WvW ones, those are rediculous. Add a title for fractals, for soloing lupi, for getting 5k kills with a shield, for finsihing all the mini-dungeons with no armour on. For soloing a keep lord in WvW, for anything that is difficult but achievable, or that is a long term goal that has a sense of progression beyond ability points.

Do this and you’ll retain your hardcore community with titles and keep your casuals with the 2 week updates.

The Juggernaut has ties to FoTM. The Colossus is it’s precursor and the guy in the middle looks like the Colossus from the Cliffside fractal. The Hammer also looks like something you’d find in Fractals.

Kudzu is more likely to be of Sylvari origins.

Meteorlogicus is probably Asuran, given the name and the looks.

Bolt appears to be Orrian or something.

Those are my best guesses.

What of Balthazar and his supposed opening of portals into the Mists?

Or has everyone forgotten about that?

Any correlation?

I think you need to git gud

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

This is not considered a bug.

The Fractal Skin Box is not dropping for the Fractal levels currently available (up to level 50).

It’s not accessible to anyone at this time.

Wow. Just… wow.

Why even include it in the patch notes? This is maximum level kittened and an awful design change. Make it from level 40+.

Downskee.2650:

im back

u should call me mage back

Dirty, dirty, dirty Condi Spam Engi.

OP this was 10/10.

I agree. Ditch Scarlet. Cut her from the game completely or at least resolve her. Just… end it. If she’s in any content she shouldn’t be (read: Wintersday) take her out. Just… do it. I’ve done game development before. I know you can take her out of content in a matter of days. Maybe a day. Just… leave her out of our precious, beloved, sacred wintersday. Please…

And on the temporary content… The temporary content is good, as long as it’s nature is based entirely around story and is non-instanced. Maybe leave some remnants from stuff like this. Things like dungeons should stay in the game, while things like the big change to Kessex Hills should probably go away or have a progressive removal.

The problem we’re seeing is they’re in… and then POOF they disappear. It doesn’t feel like a living world if suddenly those things go away, with nothing left behind to show it existed.

I’m almost certain that the vast majority of the Fractals community and to an extent, the Guild Wars 2 community, does not like Scarlet Briar.

Scarlet Briar has no place in the Thaumanova Reactor. Period. The community has constantly cried for her story to end, yet now she is permanent. She is a permanent character is fractals.

I beg this question; If the Abaddon fractal was chosen, would Scarlet be included?
I think we all know the answer and though I wont go into detail, I’m sure most people now understand that the Abaddon fractal was never, ever going to be made.

I think it’s time for ArenaNet to listen to their players and fix their errors. Make a change to their ways. What am I proposing?

Rewrite the Thaumanova fractal. Just remove her entirely. She doesn’t need to be there and she’s tainting perfectly good. There is no shame in admitting bad design and story choices.

Remove her, even if it’s after the living story update ends, just remove her from fractals. Don’t force her upon us every time we have to do Fractals. It’s not fair on your players. This is probably the biggest slap in the face we’ve ever had. We cried out for months about her.

This is your community calling out to you. Remove her from the Fractal.

Matthew Oswald.3082:

(b) all our cinematics have the ability to be skip-able. Sometimes someone forgets to flag a cinematic as skippable :0

I can think of at least one that needs some fixing. CoE Path 1, ending cinematic, where the Submarine punches through the wall. Please fix this.

I believe there’s another 1 or 2 dungeons that do the same thing, but this one comes to mind and I have to watch it every kitten time I do CoE P1.