Guild Wars 2

PowerBottom.5796:

Alin.2468:

The suggested build is bad, it does not work. That is not a support build at all.

Yes, it removes conditions with shouts, but the cooldown on shouts can not provide elementalist the status of support.

Choosing Cleric or Mender amulets can not provide status of support to ele, because all that healing (from major stats) goes mostly to self healing, not party healing, therefore… no support in healing.

In best case scenario (build provided) an elementalist is a selfish bunker with 29 useless spells for himself to troll around on a point.

Have fun.

Wrong on so many levels…. Just w8 till the league finals, I’ve already talked to many top-players and they all said that their team is definitely gonna run a D/F clerics-ele.

Maybe D/F cleric or mender but if top level teams use that spec it will be with aura share which your build doesn’t have. Your build is not a team build.

Varezenem.2813:

Disallowing class stacking also forces those who play a specific profession into a specific build and like you said they would be punished for wanting to play what they are more familiar with.

Don’t see why especially in unranked you just get put in matches without another guard on your team.

Reverence.6915:

Holy moly server lag!

So I wasn’t the only one.

jheryn.8390:

morrolan.9608:

jheryn.8390:

Ayrilana.1396:

Revenue from pre-sales generally aren’t recorded as revenue until it is realized. It’s usually booked under an account such as deferred revenue since it’s technically a liability.

I agree, but these days ‘generally’ is a big subjective word.

Many companies will realize revenue when they want it to hit rather than when it should. Ethics in this area is very fluid these days. This is true particularly of larger companies.

And accounting regulations are quite strict to avoid exactly that situation and ensure the financial results are understandable to stakeholders.

And you believe companies adhere to those regulations? You believe they don’t find ways around them or ways to circumvent them? Curious.

I am in no ways saying ANet or NCSoft does that, but many companies do. To think otherwise is naive. Watch the news.

Suggest you read up on public companies and their requirements.

It does seem ridiculous that they nerfed quickness rezzes and make this change.

LetoII.3782:

Sounds about right.
Though if everything is already decided and no actual input is sought that’d pretty much be the other betas.. So who cares which group the “testers” are drawn from?

Given the apparent timeline for the overhaul (3rd quarter or early 4th quarter this year) I would have thought this was more a proper beta where they will go away and make changes after it, so the guilds chosen do matter. PvE guilds testing WvW is probably why we got all the PvE crap in HOT in the first place. If this is true it just shows that they cannot learn from their mistakes.

Chaba.5410:

Is it not obvious? They want to make the game mode appealing to more than just WvW players. Good luck to them, but I don’t think it will work.

Thats how we ended up with the HOT changes in the first place and look how that turned out.

ZeZerT.4068:

That’s exactly what bothers me the most. To me, it means that it’s a decision and not a technical problem taking their time.

I dunno to me its just a reflection of the lack of resources for WvW even now when its supposedly a priority.

jheryn.8390:

Ayrilana.1396:

Revenue from pre-sales generally aren’t recorded as revenue until it is realized. It’s usually booked under an account such as deferred revenue since it’s technically a liability.

I agree, but these days ‘generally’ is a big subjective word.

Many companies will realize revenue when they want it to hit rather than when it should. Ethics in this area is very fluid these days. This is true particularly of larger companies.

And accounting regulations are quite strict to avoid exactly that situation and ensure the financial results are understandable to stakeholders.

Ayrilana.1396:

I just read the earnings report and nothing in there stated that it performed poorly. I know that some people are disappointed with the expansion but there’s no need to twist the earnings report towards a direction that itself doesn’t even support.

NCSoft state it in the earnings call.

Khyan.7039:

crussell.8504:

Question is, why do people care so much about how much profit NCSoft makes or doesn’t make? Let’s face it. With the current state of the game and the engine it’s built on, I reckon within the next 2 years tops GW2 will be about as popular as Kim Jong Eun’s hair style. Which is pretty fab if I do say so myself.

Because it’s players that care about Guild Wars 2 future.

I’m personally glad Guild Wars 2 is doing well.

But its not doing well based on those figures. They couldn’t sustain ongoing development on the base gem sales and the HOT sales are clearly disappointing and not enough to sustain the game until the next xpac.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Q4 sales are Oct, Nov, Dec, so almost entirely regular purchase, not pre-purchase.

• The first beta was in March (Q1).
• Sales boost in Q2, when pre-purchase began in earnest.
• Drop in sales in Q3, after the deadline to get the extra toon slot (register by June).
• Q4 sales (again, representing mostly post-release dates) are over 50% higher than Q2 (representing the peak of pre-purchase sales).

So no, sales didn’t go up because of pre-purchase; they went up in spite of the the 10% boost that pre-purchase provided in Q2 (compared to both Q1 and Q3).

Revenue on the xpac would only have been booked as revenue in the December quarter when they delivered the product. In earlier quarters they took the cash from pre-purchases but did not book it as revenue.

DeceiverX.8361:

As I’ve mentioned, the more interesting figure and subsequent analysis will be Q1 2016 compared to Q3 2015 (pre-HoT) and Q4 2014 (pre-HoT-hype from PAX).

Anyone claiming the expansion itself didn’t sell well is an idiot.

So NCSoft are idiots then?

Total revenue from GW2 only increased by 85% for that quarter, a quarter in which they sold a $60 expansion compared to gem sales for the previous quarter, it didn’t even double the sales revenue, thats poor.

I also note that many were rubbishing Daewoo for its predictions a couple of weeks ago yet the actual results are even weaker than those predictions.

Hammerguard.9834:

It’s not back. It’s dark red and I was pretty sure they did it on purpose. Makes it easier to see in all the glowing particle effects.

Its actually very hard to see against dark backgrounds.

Schtizzel.5497:

What Anet did change with this patch:

1. calling a friendly target = red (exact same color as before) crosshair
2. calling a target on an enemy = really dark red crosshair
3. the little arrow facing downwards above the character you’re are currently targeting = same color as their team color (red faction = red triangle, green server = green arrow and so on)

The new enemy target marker is way to dark to be easy recognisable. Totally worthless change in my opinion.

Agreed, the basic idea is good but yet again anet completely fail in implementation. Its quite amazing how they can do this all the time.

style.6173:

morrolan.9608:

Daniel Handler.4816:

From talks with friends, matches, etc. This season is probably going to be tempest, druid, herald, scrapper, reaper.

All other classes should hope for the best when it comes to innovative team comps. But beyond that start considering a class to play for the upcoming league.

There can only be five.

Tempest over thief? WTF!

There is a really strong sustain ele build that does good damage. You will be surprised if you haven’t seen it yet.

Whats the build?

Daniel Handler.4816:

From talks with friends, matches, etc. This season is probably going to be tempest, druid, herald, scrapper, reaper.

All other classes should hope for the best when it comes to innovative team comps. But beyond that start considering a class to play for the upcoming league.

There can only be five.

Tempest over thief? WTF!

X T D.6458:

Apparently it was initially included in wvw, but had to be removed because it was causing issues..

It was the fact that PvE masteries are not in WvW but they should add it to WvW masteries. But they have the functionality ingame just make another WvW mastery line just for it.

1. Population issues/server balance – move to a possible alliance system
2. Reduction in artificial means of fighting/defending ie. centre event, banners, all the tactics, redo centre area with this
3. Redo maps to be more strategic or actually have a genuine rotation of the desert BL and alpine BL
4. Stability rework
5. WvW rewards and making the mode more self sustaining
6. Redo guild upgrades to be based around WvW activity not PvE

Lord of Rings.5371:

WvW has evolved from its original structure due to the long term staled matches and Anet does seem to understand it evolution and some of the updates caused many displeasure and disappearance of players.

I think you’re giving anet too much credit here. Right up to HOT they have demonstrated very little understanding of the mode at all. The overhaul will tell if they have a better understanding after the HOT failure.

Mainhand axe or mace to go with off hand shield.

And for utilities please in the name of all thats holy no more AI based utilities. There should be none for any class every again.

There is silence about every aspect of the game, there is almost no communication coming out of anet whatsoever apart from authorised releasese from Gaile Gray and Colin Johanson.

Of all time? Of course not.

While I don’t particularly like BnS, the PvE is kittene and I prefer objective based PvP to DM, it does occur to me that balancing GW2 on a 1v1 basis would result in better balance overall.

I see Helseth is playing Blade and Soul. If anet thinks its acceptable to have leading players streaming other games over this break then they’re idiots, they should be trying to keep players in the game.

Who is ‘we’? I’d rather the Kodan.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

msalakka.4653:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They said there will be more elite professions later. You’ll need those Hero Points then.

God I hope not. They already can’t balance the existing ones. The last thing they should do is shovel out more of this crap.

There will be more, and it sounds like people will be able to trait for more than one at a time.

Reward Tracks and Elite Specializations
For now, characters will only be able to equip a single elite specialization. Doing so will be as easy as it currently is to swap trait points; simply exit combat and select your new elite specialization, or do it in Heart of the Mists for PvP. We made this system to build upon it, so let the speculation about future specializations begin before we’ve even revealed the first full set!

I think thats just poorly worded, other communication from anet has implied only 1 elite will be able to be specced at a time and with the current elite being locked to the bottom trait position it strongly implies that only 1 will be able to be equipped once they expand the number.

Ackzar.9156:

Any thoughts on the Rune of Water for PvP builds?`I tried swapping it out for my Rune of Hoelbrak, and so far my results are looking pretty good. The heal you get from your healing turret is getting a good bump, especially if you go into inventions traits, and get the energi amplifier (when you use F1, R, R, F1). Other than that, your might uptime is still pretty decent, and the other boons you get from elixirs are pretty good too?

(For those wondering, this is the build I used to test. It’s not the best, I know. But it does the job:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhqrYBWwzLQ7FLTGl4zcABQ42lMhF9cX37NA-TJBFABA8AAK4CAIeZgk2fAA )

Having elixir c is probably overkill. Use e-gun and you still have some condi removal and more healing.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

There are bugs in every game. The best thing you have to do is learn to work around them and not cry because you don’t have everything served on a silver plate.

One of the problems is that the fight takes so long with no resume options (only restart) people may not have the time to sit there and play for hours to eventually get it. Not to mention the fact that if you have to leave to repair you have to do the whole quest against with the other tedious fights.

vesica tempestas.1563:

its strange that it bugs out every single time for you but most have completed it, what class and build are you using?

There have been a large number of complaints about the bugs in the fight and anet has not addressed one single complaint. I only ended up doing it by getting in a group and even then we had players killed via bugs and only just managed to finish it with 2 alive.

Given who is apparently in charge of balance ATM there is no plan.

choovanski.5462:

kdaddy.5431:

Ladies and Jets i will sum it up,

L2P against DH

or just play scrapper & only pay attention when the enemy is condi. you can just blindly spam rotations vs power builds & win easily.

Speaking of fantasyland…………………

choovanski.5462:

DH is a damage spec with minor support. it has good ranged single target damage, and short bursts of CC and AOE damage. it has a defined role and play style. but it is very beatable, hence why it’s not seen in pro teams.

I would have said its a CC spec, being based around traps and all. Leaving aside the fact that its not OP at a high level I would say the traps should do minimal damage, being largely cc and the bow should do the damage.

Exedore.6320:

Dragonhunter isn’t a failed experiment; it’s a failed design.

It was mocked when first previewed and BWE1 showed that the idea didn’t hold water. In order to salvage it, Karl (the same guy now in charge of balance) buffed the crap out of the numbers while leaving the flawed underlying mechanics. That’s how we arrived at the current Dragonhunter. It’s a mess and needs re-designed.

Is he actually in charge of balance?

Fivedawgs.4267:

Tomiyou.3790:

Fivedawgs.4267:

Dojo.1867:

You don’t get it. I don’t neccesarly disagree with the league/patch cycle. However if this means that there is no competitive mode at all in the meantime which is a month then the system is flawed.

There should be a competitive alternative. Like a soloqueue ladder that does not use the league system but displays in leader board. If something like that is not possible then they atleast should reduce this month to like 4 weeks. You really think the month will make them balance the game better than if they watched closely for 2 weeks and actually reacted with small balance changes? Inb4 no balance patch at all. If you are pro, 2 weeks are enough to adept. If anything it would be more fun to watch a meta that is not completely set in stone yet with a few surprises.

If you think a month time will increase meta quality then I would just like you to remember last seasons meta and prove you wrong.

First you are ok with the break being 4 weeks long = 28 days but you can’t stand a 31 day break?

And also unranked can be competitve given that you have a good winrate.

I think he is trying to say that Anet is screwing up hard, by first promoting the game as Esports, then disables ranked queue for a month!!? Right after patch, when the balance is suppose to be tested, and you can’t test balance in Unranked, cause the amount of bad players in unranked is extremely high, even with good winrate. How many other actual Esports games do you see disable ranked queues for a whole freaking month??

I know what he meant and I have conceded what you failed to see is the op saying :
*Like a soloqueue ladder that does not use the league system but displays in leader board. If something like that is not possible then they atleast should reduce this month to like 4 weeks. *

So what, its obviously a typo, it doesn’t take away from his basic point which is correct.

Peterson.8345:

runeblade.7514:

Stand The Wall.6987:

ArchonWing.9480:

It may be entirely possible that hammer trains were unstoppable in the past, but I do recall pirate shipping already being a thing before the stability change. I understand CC should have value, and maybe you felt left out.

But….

Can anyone clear me on any sources…..

Was any of this intended for World vs World? Did they actually say something on the lines that stability and trains were too strong in WvW? Do you think the stacks of stability granted per skill was considered?

The way I see it, it seems to be centered around PvP and WvW just seems (as usual) as collateral damage. I don’t find that particularly sound even if there are arguments in favor of this.

I think the stab change was two fold, but since esports is getting so much attention (heh) the change was probably primarily focused around that.
Arent you supposed to defend anet with that forum specialist title?

The stab change was purely for WvW.

sPvP has felt no change from the stab skill except for pulsing 1 stack stability. You can’t stun an enemy with 5 stability stacks unless the team is all hammer warriors and the player doesn’t dodge anything.

The stab change was to reflect developing new CC system with break bars seen on NPC bosses and to coexist with upcoming pulsing stability changes with HoT stuff (reaper’s shroud stability for example)… at least that’s what I think
…and as runeblade mentioned, this change did not have significant impact in sPvP, but it changed WvW very much…

Yep it wasn’t for WvW they were trying to chnage the way CC worked in general

Supreme.3164:

As others have already pointed out : warhorn sits midway between dagger OH( absolute dmg) and focus(absolute defense), it has more defense then dagger OH and more offense than focus.

So it ends up doing more but worse at each, hence why it is poor in high level play.

Timston.1976:

I’m pretty sure it was the Jan 26 patch man. I don’t think another one is coming

I thought the idea was that they had time to make an emergency change before next season if they had to, so there might be 1.

ProtoGunner.4953:

It takes a 1-2 months of daily play to max the masteries for all your characters. How is this a grind?

1-2 months of long play sessions maybe.

StickerHappy.8052:

All the people saying “this is unranked”

Stop deluding yourselves there are a lot of bad players in ranked too.

Never saw any ranked match as bad as the match in the helseth video above.

Chaith.8256:

Everything’s back, it’s unranked season!

Signet guardians and spirit weapon dragonhunters are back… :-D

More feedback: the balance changes seem rather inadequate considering how many issues in class balance exist and how many weapons are unable to be used because they are so poor. The player perception is the balance team has shrunk to an unacceptable level.

SkyShroud.2865:

I think they abandoned the CDI. There were several CDI that never came in the end.

They were abandoned when Chris Whiteside left.

Leohart.4610:

Well Heart of Thorns seemed rushed, so perhaps the next one ArenaNet won’t rush it and as a result, it’ll have better content?

HOT took ages to make so if it was rushed its a resource problem.

Looking at Colin’s latest post on reddit I think the implication is that story updates will only happen in xpacs now:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/440m4i/what_does_quartaly_updates_mean_for_us/czmk22d

This is how bad unranked is, Helseth reviewing an unranked match he was involved in. The other players are unbelievably bad:

Pyriall.1683:

morrolan.9608:

Can it work? No, next question. It amazes me that it received no buffs in this balance pass. How many devs do they have working on balance anyway.

They are grossly understaffed.

So many balance issues and it appears that almost none of the devs working on balance for HOT are working on it any more.

mov.1246:

Hello Guys,

I am the only one who is getting tired of the Scrapper?
I mean, its really a great gift to our class and it provides exactly what we always needed.

But i am the only one who think that scrapper is boring and faceroll to play? I love the classic rifle/grenade engi, and all topics in the forum are just about Scrapper.

Nope I love it, love playing it in pvp and love it in WvW smaller group skirmishes. I like other engi specs as well though.

kdaddy.5431:

tico.9814:

Anet if you guys want this game to be esports it’s time to let conquest go. Not only the balancing is horrible but this game has the worse game mode for esports also which doesn’t help with the balance at all. Time to get a piece of paper and start from scratch.

Please stop,

If you want to complain about balancing,patching,bugs, and a few other things thats fine. Conquest is a great system and imo mobas are lame.

Would i like to see other type of game modes for fun? Of course but conquest has the most layers of any type of PvP.

Where to rotate, are people counting heads(the guy who leaves mid to run far and theres already 2 people killing 1 and still jumps in) are you targeting, do players builds complement each other, do you fight in the circle, do you fight outside the circle?

Conquest is the closest thing to a real sport when it comes to a video game because you have the ability to create a shaq type of player who dominates in the circle or to play from the outside like a steph curry. Its probably really hard for games and casual players because everyone wants to see the stats/bars/numbers so they can crunch.

PLease though if you dont like conquest then dont play it because i refuse for death matches and mobas to be the only way to play PvP in games.

Well said, conquest has a simplicity in its rules but depth in its tactics. Like the best games.

However I would like to see other game types. Don’t see why they can’t use the current maps for a DM mode just for example.

Senario.2038:

I would agree, Conquest is a “stand on the point” game mode which honestly isn’t a good fit for esports. It promotes people playing the tankiest builds available and nothing will change that as that is what the game mode promotes. Unlike other games where varieties of class types are favored due to differing roles in taking objectives this one is just “stand on the point”.

The way its done in GW2 is not a ‘stand on your point’ mode. Its a rotation mode.

Can it work? No, next question. It amazes me that it received no buffs in this balance pass. How many devs do they have working on balance anyway.

The build is fun in PvE and low level PvP but nothing else. It won’t be worth it in higher level PvP so its not OP. I tried using something similar in WvW and the results were not great.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Rezzet.3614:

a greatsword would be greatly appreciated

Honestly I really hope it’s a power or support 1 handed weapon so that shield can actually be used. The shield skills are pretty good but the only possible 1H weapon is pistol which is condi, and if you’re going condi you have to take pistol offhand for blowtorch. Axe or dagger maybe kindof fit thematically?

Yes I think a one hander to go with shield as well. Maybe axe.