Guild Wars 2

Hamfast.8719:

Vayne.8563:

Do you have any idea how many people who live in NYC have never been to the Statue of Liberty? They don’t think about NY as being the melting pot, or the gateway to America, they think about the fact that rents are too high and they work too many hours.

Ahh! I know it isn’t the point you are making, but “NYC” and “NY” are a couple of good examples. You see them in print like that all the time, but I can’t recall ever hearing anyone saying “NY” or “NYC” aloud. It’s always “New York” and “New York City”.

No set-in-stone rule for these things. “DR” just doesn’t sound right to me when I hear it said out loud. As far as I’m concerned, the DR is out.

i live here, we say nyc all the time.
people also say ny though not as much

people wont call manhattan nyc, because its only part of nyc.
essentially when people are talking about all 5 boros, the will say nyc.

ExiMaster.4820:

Knowing the really nice leniency and convenience of buying anything with in game gold, will there a high possibility the Expansion will be purchasable through the gem store?

Gems would become super expensive, and you would have to grind for insane amounts of time to get anything from the store.

almost every city gets nick names.
The only problem one may have with acronym based nick names, is if you think literacy is uncommon in tyria.

oh yeah, and nick names arent disrepectful.

Dastion.3106:

I’m actually in love with the new concept. Yes, I would have loved a new mainhand weapon – it’s what the class really needed. But I still really like how the Shield is turning out. A Phantasm summoning weapon that does more than just simply summon the Phantasm? Yes please. Never mind being able to do it twice quickly. I remember suggesting long ago that they make Phantasm skills do something other than just summon the phantasm, like iBerserker causing you to do a spin attack. I like the concept of an attack which creates a Phantom image that repeats itself.

As to Continuum Shift – it’s really good. Yes, it’s got a built in counter but it’s a counter you can control. They said they wanted to bring back some skill to Mesmer play and this is one aspect of it. By knowing the potential counter to your skill you can use it to your advantage. Drop your CF and then lay into whomever tries to attack it with reckless abandon – or hell, just gravity well them twice. It’ll take a lot of their CDs to ignore two of those. Don’t treat having your CF destroyed as a lose condition – treat it as an opportunity to position your enemies.

phys.7689:

lets be honest, none of our elites are worth the long cool downs.

moa, fairly useless in PVE, easily dodged/interupted in pvp, with a long wind up time.
the new elite, CC+damage, easily defeated by a stun breaker (dmg isnt even that high, use a blurred frenzy)
and time warp, definately the best option. 50% faster AA basically, but 50% faster AA isnt really all that, and looks like there will soon be better ways to dispense quickness.

This is silly logic. You basically said “yea it sounds good but it’s not” or “it’s good but it can be dodged/countered” to everything. You can apply that same ‘logic’ to just about anything in the game. Something having a counter doesn’t immediately define it as bad.

point is, our elite skills arent so powerful that casting them twice is extremely powerful.
you would probably gain more benefit using blurred frenzy, and some phantasms, or some utilities with the f5 than the elites

remember you have 3-6 seconds to do whatever you are going to do, wasting that time casting moa, is likely not the best use of resources.

Kindeller.3072:

Looking purely at figures yes, the options have been reduced but your ignoring the simple fact that the reason options have been eliminated is by condensing similar traits into combination traits that support each other. In order to properly maximise builds traits with similar functions or targets where always chosen.. for example you select meditation skills and traits which reduce cooldown and add benefits. Currently that would require two trait choices where as now you only need one.

Sure we’ve lost a trait or two, but we now have a simpler choice which helps clarify the build your aiming for. Working with meditations? Boom single trait to boost their use. They did the same thing in WoW in either cata or pandaland i cant remember.

In essence your not losing any skills or traits and the only build diversity your losing are builds that are random and not synergised which tbh you should be thankful for because it means it will be less likely you’ll have someone in your team with a stupid useless build.

kinda true, but not true.
some things arent incredibly synergistic, but are incredibly good to have.
like lets say being able to create swiftness and vigor at will.

then there are also things that are synergistic, but cross lines.

so yeah you lose many beneficial builds.

It doesnt provide greater diversity.

However they are also packaging it with a trait revamp to create better traits. Better traits is what may create more usable diversity

the goal is not really diversity, its simplification/accessebility.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I’m really not into “hard, challenging gameplay.” GW2 already has a lot of challenge in it, anyway. For instance, many of the LS2 achievements were plenty challenging, and there’s a lot of challenging jumping puzzles. I’m hoping the new HoT content has some PvE and achievements that are fun and relaxing as opposed to really challenging.

what is an example of fun and relaxing to you, any other games for reference?

The RickyAll.6039:

My gf is playing a Necro, as her 1rst character :c

I don’t mind copypasting, just I need to understand why am I doing that. Not mindless “Imma copy this build because it’s written on metagear dot soop dot net and wreck everything”, but understanding why it is best. I’m surely a “power player”, but the most annoying kind: the one that ask for questions

It’s a pity thought that tank build has no uses, i like being immortal, tank everything and stuff, but i understand that tank/dps/healer is not a thing in GW2. And it’s fine by me. If it wasn’t different than the usual I would not be playing it.

But I am going too much OT :P

Thank you again for your replies and cya around!

you can sort of be useful as a tank, especially when people dont have every skill/trait/gear,
apparently aggro is sort of based around your toughness, and how close you are to the monsters, so having the highest toughness, and being close, while other players keep max attack distance will lead you being the most hated most of the time.

and all of the people you play with are friends. Also your girlfriend necro can provide some useful things depending on your party set up. blinds, heals, weakness.

You dont need to be as optimal as the guys here yet, unless you want to be.

Knox.8462:

Ramiel.4931:

Just when I thought this couldn’t get any worse, ANet manages to surprise me. What a disaster. I hope the Druid specialization is a nature spellcaster with plant pets, mesmer got shafted hard.

Giving a powerful skill a counter is being shafted? What? It lets you use your elite skill twice, what more can you ask for?

lets be honest, none of our elites are worth the long cool downs.

moa, fairly useless in PVE, easily dodged/interupted in pvp, with a long wind up time.
the new elite, CC+damage, easily defeated by a stun breaker (dmg isnt even that high, use a blurred frenzy)
and time warp, definately the best option. 50% faster AA basically, but 50% faster AA isnt really all that, and looks like there will soon be better ways to dispense quickness.

watching the stream i have a feeling at the end of the day, chronomancer is gonna be pretty weak, they sound very afraid of its potential right now, and will likely balance it accordingly.

however i like the f5/alacrity thing.
i probably wont use shield much though.

my feeling is that chronomancer will probably not be the hax omg spec at all. I think thats why they released it first. Start low, and build up.

MrWubzy.3587:

EazyPanda.6419:

-Snipped for length!-

Nicely typed. I dislike it when others use the word ‘grind’ in the wrong way, and it makes me harken back to the days of Final Fantasy II (IV) on the SNES. Grinding out those levels just to complete most of the sections…THAT’S grind. Having to speed needless amounts of time just to play the kitten game is grind. Not going after an optional skin/drop/shiny, that’s called farming.

And before somebody comes in and says, “Well you have to ‘grind’ to 80 to play Living Story!” Not really. But you also have Personal Story to do along the way. In Final Fantasy IV, there was no content to do while I leveled up. If there was (optional summon drops, equip drops) that was all OPTIONAL stuff, and I’d be farming for them. But my main goal was leveling to fight the boss or complete that section.

THAT’S grind.

uhhh i never grinded in ffII at all. i mean literally. i got enough exp to do everything just following the story. I think you just liked to be overpowered.

morrolan.9608:

spoj.9672:

I know its annoying. But i dont really see a way round it. Blame anet for introducing an abundance of skillpoints to the game. I think you are just going to have to suck it up. The system afterwards will be better anyway. People are just too used to getting everything unlocked through scrolls.

Of course there’s a way around it anyone at level 80 has all traits and abilities unlocked apart from the new elite spec.

As I noted previous Mike O’Brien PROMISED that no-ones progress would be reset.

forget promises, look at reality, peoples progress already has been reset.

• explorer stats ceased to exist (yeah they gave you some other stats, but if you were an explorer, you lost magic find, that you had to work towards in a new way)
• the fractal reset
• the second trait system pushed back unlocks to higher levels
  so if you were say 60, and had all your grandmasters, you got reset back until you reached 80

GW2 has been a reset progress game for some time. I mean its a good discussion to have, but frame it properly. This isnt new, this is business as usual.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

spoj.9672:

If you already have the skill challenges done you wont have to do anything. They arent resetting anyones map completion. The people complaining are those that literally just scroll leveled and unlocked everything.

Any reason you make this sound like it’s not a legitimate way of leveling a character? ANet deliberately added tomes and skill scrolls to PvP, and skill scrolls to WvW, specifically to enable players to level their characters this way.

nah you are forgetting something, the same time they added skill scrolls to pvp, they had already planned a system by which you had to spend 360 more skill points and 43 gold to get traits. per charachter, or you could go out into pve and hunt them.

Point being they didnt really intend you to be able to fully unlock a charachter without great cost or playing pve.

the old system doesnt fit in with the new system at all. Various changes/grandfathering lead to unintended results of players having charachters progress with out the planned effort.
Even if they do have a grandfather plan, speaking about it ahead of time will probably lead to people trying to game the system.

Thaddeus.4891:

Vargamonth.2047:

As I see, we have 700 points in primary attributes and class mechanic.
Each primary attribute gets boosted to 1k (so +74 points), and the class mechanics gets what we could take as another 150 points. This leaves 254 points that will be reallocated in gear.

We don’t know what’s going to happen with secondary attributes.
I wouldn’t expect to see those 700 points rolled into gear, and definitely we won’t get a 74 point default attribute.
We might get a 100 default attribute (which would leave another 200 points for gear), or even all those points completely removed, with or without compensation through gear.

Jesus why everybody make the same mistake everytime. Each line give you two stats, in total you get 1400 pts from trait line, not 700.

some of the stats are not available on armor, or at much lower rates.
3/5 of each line is a special stat.
class mechanic stat
boon duration
condition duration

since they have already shown that half stats of class mechanic wont be on armor, its likely that boon and condi will also not be counted.

they could count the other 2 lines possible stat contribution,

but come to think of it, they are probably not even going to do that they will probably just drop all secondary stat bonus points values. At the end of the day i wouldnt expect more than 350 bonus stat points total on armor.

Xaylin.1860:

apharma.3741:

Also some people seem to be forgetting the part of the F5 skill that leaves a vulnerable sprite which from what they said on the podcast is most likely not got a lot of health if putting some AoE will destroy it and bring the Mesmer back to the AoE.

I’m curious about this, too. It could easily make F5 useless in WvW or large scale PvE. But I guess we have to hope for the devs to find a balanced CD / durability of the nexus or whatever it is called.

well, it may be based on mesmer stats, like clones/illusions: aka you may need some toughness to dispense your powerful buff combos.

after hearing the skills, while chrono is definately entertaining, i dont think its OP at all. you got a fairly low damage phantasm, a long cool down 5 skill, without a ton of damage.

and you have the f5, which sacrifices all your clones/phantasms in order to pull of a nice trick, which is generally not going to give you more damage than just doing a mind wrack, and way more difficult to pull off, you can in fact come out with a net loss, and an enemy can essentially use it to manipulate you.

its more of a utility class, and its big benefits will likely be team support/special operations. An extremely well played one will probably do pretty decent damage, but an average played one will do crappy dmg. And the combinations of strong traits with better synergy in other lines, will probably make them excel better at their chosen purpose, than chronomancer except in its field of expertise.

The biggest deal right now? most teams will want mes to go chronomancer, because it provides unique effects that no one else can provide.
lowering recast on powerfull skills/combos is something that most high end teams wont want to be without.

but it wont make you a better condimancer/direct dps/interupt/ from what we have seen so far.

StormHawk.9862:

In HoT, do we shatter illusions even if we’re not a shatter build?

Like, would it be effective to shatter illusions even if we’re not a shatter build rather than just keep them up(which gives them a chance to die) for the extra passive damage they do? Cause apparently in the Twitch stream a week ago, they said that it’s not a healthy way to play and they WANT us to shatter illusions. Does this apply to non shatter builds as well?

actually you were always supposed to shatter, if your recasts are ready. Or if your illusions will soon die anyway. Now with alacrity/traits you have more ways to make your recasts ready.

the difference between pure shatter builds and other builds, is they shatter at different paces, for different reasons/effects.

now, a lazier way to play is just never shatter, but i would assume you lose some utility/effiency, compared to shattering at the perfect times.
That said its probably of minimal benefit, versus the loss on bad shatter timing

Profanity.6829:

So we get a shield with cool skills… so what the hell do we put in MH? A ranged condition weapon or a melee direct damage weapon?

I’m not really fond of hugging people in melee with my light armor (and mostly zerker gear), and i like some other optoin as conditions as my ONLY ranged option for MH…

We already have so many OH options:
-Sword (Direct damage/ Melee)
-Pistol (Direct damage/ Ranged)
-Focus (Direct damage/ ranged (sort of))
-Torch (Condi damage/ Ranged)

Why on earth did we get kittening FIFTH OH-weapon with only 2 MH-weapons? Where is my frigg’n ranged direct damage MH-weapon! Devs even playing Mesmer?

short version, they liked the concept of a clock shield.

but keep in mind chronomancer isnt shield centered, just use the weapons you always used,

id love a new mainhand, but you seem like you would be just as disapointed if it was a melee weapon.

GS is your direct dmg mainhand option btw

Orochimaru.4730:

Why is it that these beta portal keys are only being dropped in PvE?!

Yet again anet is completely ignoring WvW and sPvP players!

Some of use spend a lot more time in WvW than farming in SW or DT, but here you are forcing us to do more PvE!

why would people who dont want to pve, want to play a pve beta.

Astralporing.1957:

Healix.5819:

First, let’s categorize skill points. There are two types, ones that were legitimately earned and those that were farmed.

Not sure if a troll, but if you think that getting skillpoints from sPvP, the way devs wanted sPvP players get skillpoints, was for some reason illegitimate…
Unless there were skillpoints that were obtained with some kind of a glitch or exploit (and i haven’t heard of any), every one of them is legitimate. Those from scrolls and 80+ levelling as well.

the wording is poor, but i think the idea is correct. Basically anet decided they were too liberal with skill points which messed up them being used for skill progression.
This is why they started pricing additional skills at like 25, and had traits with such high skill point costs (360 for all traits)
making it super easy for old players and too hard for newbs, who actually need it.

they basically by limiting it to skill challenges and leveling, they can keep it accessible and expandable.

they are seperating out the class progression, from the post 80 grind part of skill points, which makes sense

spoj.9672:

If you played since release surely you have some skill challenges done in the maps while you were leveling? Which means you will be fine.

As for giving all current 80’s everything. That wont work. Hero points are supposed to be a finite number. So if you havent done all the skillpoints already and you get everything unlocked for free then you are going to have more hero points than any new characters. Which breaks the idea of a fixed amount of hero points per character.

Honestly i dont get the complaint. It would take about an hour at best to get those 65 extra skill challenges for one character. Suck it up its not the end of the world.

theres no way its an hour.
less than a minute per skill point isnt realistic
you might be able to do 3 hours.

Bovan.9481:

Is P/P really a thing?

Anyway that’s a bit of a close minded way to look at things. You have additional traits now and several other traits opened up which look very promising. The lost damage can easily be made up somewhere else.

Ricochet and Invigorating Precision in the same tier sucks, but I’m not expecting Invigorating Precision to stay as it is. It’s extremely powerful for PvE but we were never able to take it because it competed with Executioner. In the new lines we can freely take it at no damage loss which is just insane.

EDIT:
Oh one thing I forgot to mention. I’m immensely looking forward to trying a P/P condi build with Pressure Striking and Trappers Respite.

if P P isnt a thing, its a sign they need to rework something. Every weapon set is supposed to be a thing

MelGT.8326:

phys.7689:

yeah but you have to look at what your giving up.

domination? 10 dmg percent while vuln, 15% illusion dmg, 25-50% minwrack dmg. interupt traits

dueling? blade training, numerous condi buffs, deceptive evasion (shatter fuel) harmonious mantras stacking dmg buff, phantsmal fury

illusions? all shatter buffs 15% faster cool downs on shatter skills (includes continum shift, which will probably have super long cool down) phantsmal haste.

power wise, these trait lines pack a huge punch, there will definately be builds that would be better of with these synergies.

HOWEVER they will be lot less interesting.

Why do you think you’re “giving all that up”? As far as I’m aware, you keep the first four trait lines, and only the last one gets swapped for the new elite specialization.

So instead of Illusions, you’ll probably have something like “Chonomancy”. You’ll still have Domination, Dueling, Chaos and Inspiration. I could be completely wrong, that’s just my understanding.

i believe you can select any 3, including elite, but the point is you will be losing some powerful traits/synergies if you drop any line.

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

in my honest opinion, skill books was an error. they never expected so much champ runs, they admited that with bloodstone dust.
skill challenges was supposed to be the easiest/fastest method for obtaining skill points, followed by leveling.

Then they did a pretty bad job with that as all I’m doing is roaming in wvw (no champs there) and the occassional dungeon and I have tons of SP rolls – which I need though for crafting ascended gear, legendaries and superior siege. So if SP challenges alone were supposed to be the only income of SP (besides lvl up after 80) all of this wouldn’t work.

phys.7689:

so now they are separating the two resources. hero points only for skills, with a finite number, and no reason not to fully unlock, and djingots for post 80 item progression/gold

It is a “better” idea with two hinderances: wvw and pvp, there really are people who don’t do pve. So it’s not “Play like you want” but “Play like we want” and that’s the problem here. It’s one thing if people create a character after HoT and need to do this stuff, another to “take them away” what they basically already did. And that’s the point.

Although someone just said that nothing will be taken away and I’m a bit confused anyway, so maybe all works out. Still pvp and wvw are the stepchildren yet again.

IMO is nice to get things in spvp, but its completely uneccessary. You get everything unlocked in spvp.
Part of the progression for PVE related things should be about actually doing some PVE.
Now WvW is understandable, they need skills, but cant get em without setting foot on foreign soil.

as far as the skillpoints for high end stuff, thats part of why they started giving out skill scrolls, for the stuff you need after 80

thats why they are making djingots, with the plan that you get them as often as you get skill points now, post 80.

Jerus.4350:

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Sounds awesome, but is anyone else pretty worried about the power creep effect with the new trait buffs and now things like this? Eek. (I know I’m a party pooper)

the old traits is the new normal for powerlevel. I dont think Chronomancer will be 100% more powerful, and its likely that its skill ceiling is higher to achieve similar results. you would be giving up some powerful stuff if you have to drop a specialization.
focus reflects?
deceptive evasion?
shatter cool downs?

what are you going to give up that has no value for these abilities? Its definately more interesting, but more powerful? perhaps not.

Aye, not talking just Mesmer, but more everything all put together, seems like the big picture we’re going to be much more powerful in the sense that as a 5 man team we will be doing more damage and have more defenses. But, I’ll shut up now and stop being a buzzkill I just hope the devs have a plan to address it.

ehh they will likely rebalance all hp/downscaling, and upscale level 80 areas. the new place is supposed to be built more difficult, so it probably will be. We shall see

Ordika.9513:

phys.7689:

Ordika.9513:

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

the people worried are the one who did not do skill challenges, but used skill books, or just leveled a ton of times

And rightfully so, don’t you think? These things are in the game so why aren’t they worth anything all of the sudden?

Don’t see why, you have the skillpoints so you should get the equivalent in Hero Points. I did not think source was an issue when reading the two blog post. They were only mentioning the change from SC to HC so that the idea of what happens to all the Hero Points you would get past max are converted to mats.

they dont have a max.
you will get 400 for leveling from 1-80 and the rest come from skill challenges. Its not a straight cap, at like 640 or something.

now they may change the system, but for the future? really shouldnt be like how skill point scrolls made it.

Didn’t they say you would only ever need X so once you have those and spend them on the circle, anything else you did to acquire a HP would just give you mats instead.

from what i heard your hero points = 400 from getting 80, + the amount of skill challenges you did

skill points = converted to djingots for the mystic forge recipes and vendors who used to want skill points.

Eurhetemec.9052:

phys.7689:

i dont think any require non skill challenge events. Some are easier when people do an event, but there is always a way to get to them i am pretty sure.

For every class? To get to them AND attune to them? I’m skeptical.

yup, pick a skill point and a class and ill see.

i have gotten all of them on two of my charachters, the other 6 missing a lot. and i was alone most of the time.

Ordika.9513:

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

the people worried are the one who did not do skill challenges, but used skill books, or just leveled a ton of times

And rightfully so, don’t you think? These things are in the game so why aren’t they worth anything all of the sudden?

Don’t see why, you have the skillpoints so you should get the equivalent in Hero Points. I did not think source was an issue when reading the two blog post. They were only mentioning the change from SC to HC so that the idea of what happens to all the Hero Points you would get past max are converted to mats.

they dont have a max.
you will get 400 for leveling from 1-80 and the rest come from skill challenges. Its not a straight cap, at like 640 or something.

now they may change the system, but for the future? really shouldnt be like how skill point scrolls made it.

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

the people worried are the one who did not do skill challenges, but used skill books, or just leveled a ton of times

And rightfully so, don’t you think? These things are in the game so why aren’t they worth anything all of the sudden?

in my honest opinion, skill books was an error. they never expected so much champ runs, they admited that with bloodstone dust.
skill challenges was supposed to be the easiest/fastest method for obtaining skill points, followed by leveling.

Also the main use of the skill point stuff after leveling was for the post level 80 game. the system wasnt working as they planned, people werent even using skill points to unlock their skills.

so now they are separating the two resources. hero points only for skills, with a finite number, and no reason not to fully unlock, and djingots for post 80 item progression/gold

Eurhetemec.9052:

phys.7689:

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

you never have to wait for a skill point, if someone else is doing it, you can join in.
having to play your charachter for 3-5 hours before reaching maximum power level really isnt that crazy an idea.

Oh.. ok, so I was doing a skillpoint yesterday it was in fireheart rise and locked behind an event, I had to do 3/4 of the event before that skillpoint became accessible. that was about 15 mins.

Also when the mob had just been killed you have to wait around 30 s for it to be up again, so yeah, you have to wait.

On topic: I’m getting all my characters to 65 SP challenges – it’s okayish and with some I wanted to do that anyway. But it is grindy (6 characters for me) and given that a lot of us have suffered the trait system the past year it’s a further disappointment – of course it’s way less grindy than the trait system but I somehow want an acknowledgement that leveling characters under the current system is a pain in the kitten .

what skill point in fireheart rise.

dunno about 30 second thing, i was map teleporting after completing and someone restarted the npc before i could map out and i was placed in combat.

The SCs vary dude.

Some are insta-pop (or don’t even die).

Some respawn after 30s+.

Some are always up (attunement ones).

Some require events, etc. etc.

i dont think any require non skill challenge events. Some are easier when people do an event, but there is always a way to get to them i am pretty sure.

Ordika.9513:

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

you can break that wall without having to the event. you just have to do it yourself instead of waiting for the npcs.

you can also walk up to temples for skill points, pretty sure i had to ninja multiple ones.

let me test the castrum one right now

No, I can’t -I tried and then did the event.
But yeah, test it.

There is also the skill point that is locked behind the Covington event.

Also I have seen it mentioned in this thread that progress will be reset. I thought I read that if you already had all the traits and skill unlocked, you would get all the points you need once the reset happens. In other words you would be all set from day one without having to redo anything.

they are going to refund you hero points based on your level and the skill challenges you completed, then you will likely rebuy all your skills and traits.

the people worried are the one who did not do skill challenges, but used skill books, or just leveled a ton of times

covington one isnt locked you can just walk in there whenever you want. there multi entrances to that boat

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

you can break that wall without having to the event. you just have to do it yourself instead of waiting for the npcs.

you can also walk up to temples for skill points, pretty sure i had to ninja multiple ones.

let me test the castrum one right now

No, I can’t -I tried and then did the event.
But yeah, test it.

northwest corner of the island, you can just walk up to it.

Jana.6831:

Ayrilana.1396:

I just did world completion (well except for two remaining zones) all of last week. None of the skill point challenges are locked behind events and this is my 7th time doing world completion. I actually did Fireheart Rise last Friday and had zero issues.

Out of curiously, which skill point was locked behind an event?

South of Simurgh Timberland, I think. No it’s Noxious Castrum – the event is up on EU right now. It was behind walls and you needed to do the event (which luckily was just up) to destroy the walls. And then you had to kill a bunch of mobs.
Edit: And basically alot of skillpoints are locked behind events: Skillpoints at temples, behind champs etc. You can always try to stealth your way around but still it takes some effort.

Edit²: This also for phys – didn’t realize you two were asking the same question and wanted to answer his and quoted you..

Edit³: Maybe some nice people did the event before you got there – but I can assure you that there was no way to that SP without doing the event.

you can break that wall without having to the event. you just have to do it yourself instead of waiting for the npcs.

you can also walk up to temples for skill points, pretty sure i had to ninja multiple ones.

let me test the castrum one right now

yup just checked it, you dont have to have them break the rocks, you can go around and walk over a peice of land.

Jerus.4350:

Sounds awesome, but is anyone else pretty worried about the power creep effect with the new trait buffs and now things like this? Eek. (I know I’m a party pooper)

the old traits is the new normal for powerlevel. I dont think Chronomancer will be 100% more powerful, and its likely that its skill ceiling is higher to achieve similar results. you would be giving up some powerful stuff if you have to drop a specialization.
focus reflects?
deceptive evasion?
shatter cool downs?

what are you going to give up that has no value for these abilities? Its definately more interesting, but more powerful? perhaps not.

commnagrom.8637:

phys.7689:

Gibson.4036:

spoj.9672:

Its only an issue if you want everything including the traits and skills you never use.

This keeps being thrown about, and it is very misguided.

The new unlock tracks are linear. That means the skill you want to use may be the very last skill to unlock of its type. To get the grandmaster traits unlocked in a specialization, you’ll be unlocking all of the adept and master traits along the way.

I will guarantee you that you will be spending points on skills and traits that you never use.

yes, but will you be spending enough that you need to get skill points?

one spec is 60 points, there are many people have never even experimented with certain lines.
skill wise, 25-30 points, i know thieves for example who never want to touch a trap.

now, i personally would want all skills eventually, but skill challenges is far from a bad way to earn skills. It was meant to be the fastest way, but they messed that up with the champ bags.

i do understand where you are coming from though. I just dont see too many simple solutions.
perhaps they will change the system.

Honestly I think if they set it up to give you any skill points in excess of the 65 you need as the currency and just decreased the drop rates of skill point scrolls across the board then that could give it a good compromise.

EXAMPLES:
1. characters with 65+ hero challenges get all 65 hero points they need for core specs, and any over 65 get you extra “skill point currency” and any skill point in their skills panel, as well as any future hero challenges in the “Core” zones, also become this “skill point currency”

2. characters with <65 hero challenges complete get as many hero points as they have challenges complete, then get more hero points from their skill point in their skills panel until they have 65 hero points, any excess skill points, in addition to any future hero challenges in the “Core” zones, get turned into “skill point currency”

3. characters with no hero challenges complete have their skill points turned into up to 65 hero points, and any excess skill points, in addition to any future hero challenges in the “Core” zones, get turned into “skill point currency”

The only problem i could foresee from this is earning Hero Points for future specs, like the elite specs, which could honestly be solved by making Hero Challenges in the expansion all award the hero points needed for the new specs.

they want to have a finite supply of hero points. and a fixed amount as max for everyone, that changes effortlessly as they add content.

also, your system assumes everyone has all skills/traits unlocked already and need it back.
many people have odd combinations of traits and skills missing.

Gibson.4036:

commnagrom.8637:

Also this is a dangerous precedent for ANet to be setting and people to just be going along with it. What if they change something even more crucial and everyone has to get set back to level 1? Would everyone just “suck it up” and relevel their character? Hell no, they’d get angry and flood the forum with posts about how its not ok! Well to many of us this is EXACTLY what arenanet is doing, setting our character back and making us do EVEN MORE work just to unlock everything. That’s why people like me are angry and taking to the forums, so Anet KNOWS that they need to do something about it or their are going to alienate their player base!

Yes.

Resetting progression violates an important trust that players extend to developers in a game like this. When that trust breaks down, people eventually stop playing.

Players will not spend time progressing their characters if they are anxious about the possibility that they will be set back.

I feel sorry for those who spend large amounts of gold or time unlocking traits under the current system. Most of my characters were created before the current travesty of skill acquisition.

That’s probably where some of the disconnect is here. When people say, “Yeah, but it’s better than the current system”, I can only think that they didn’t know the system we had at launch. So they replaced a working system with one utterly broken, so it’s okay to fix that by putting in something just a little broken?

And all of this points to ArenaNet not really understanding an important lesson. Introduce new systems for new content.

When players asked for a system similar to elite skill hunting in GW1, they weren’t thinking that ArenaNet was going to go and make them get a trait they already had access to by doing zone completion. If ArenaNet had instead added a half dozen new grandmaster traits to the game and required a zone complete or a specific dynamic event to acquire them, it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad as what we got.

Same with trait acquisition 3.0. They could have made sure every level 80 would have the core skills and traits with 400 Hero Points, and then required us to go do Hero Challenges for the new Elite Specializations. Strict WvWers would still be annoyed, but it’d make a lot sense to be making the argument “Hey, you only need to do a handful zones of skill challenges to unlock your ES” than it is to be saying, “It’s only nine to ten zones of skill challenges to get back to the unlocks you already earned.”

this is not the first time, they set the predecent with fractals, and many players were silent about it.

anyhow they may have a plan.

petespri.6548:

No, I was only able to get about 1/3 of them. My focus was not on skillpoints, it was getting to events on time and not missing them.

but you need to map complete 7 zones just to get all your traits. that alone is 38 skill points.

oh yeah if you are still missing 2/3rds your skills, you are actually ahead of the game.

438 hero points means you will go from missing 2/3rds to almost completely unlocking every trait, and every skill for the profession. you may be missing like 5 things

petespri.6548:

Pro- not as bad as old system, freedom on where to explore.

Con 1- wvw people are screwed
Con 2- not alt friendly since it isn’t account bound. Time to think about honing my play time to two characters at most.
Con 3- if you have jumps through all of the events of the old system, those now count for nothing. kittened about that… I spent 1-80 following a trait event line all over the map and now it doesn’t even count??!

you did all the trait events, and you didnt pick up 65 skill points on the way? even though they were sometimes right next to you? and you needed 67 extra skill points just to get your proffesion skills unlocked?

heck doesnt the map complete requirements alone get you like 40 points?

Jana.6831:

phys.7689:

you never have to wait for a skill point, if someone else is doing it, you can join in.
having to play your charachter for 3-5 hours before reaching maximum power level really isnt that crazy an idea.

Oh.. ok, so I was doing a skillpoint yesterday it was in fireheart rise and locked behind an event, I had to do 3/4 of the event before that skillpoint became accessible. that was about 15 mins.

Also when the mob had just been killed you have to wait around 30 s for it to be up again, so yeah, you have to wait.

On topic: I’m getting all my characters to 65 SP challenges – it’s okayish and with some I wanted to do that anyway. But it is grindy (6 characters for me) and given that a lot of us have suffered the trait system the past year it’s a further disappointment – of course it’s way less grindy than the trait system but I somehow want an acknowledgement that leveling characters under the current system is a pain in the kitten .

what skill point in fireheart rise.

dunno about 30 second thing, i was map teleporting after completing and someone restarted the npc before i could map out and i was placed in combat.

spoj.9672:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Illusions

Infinite resets?

will only give 1 loop, if you use it to reset your shatter, it goes on cooldown, when you unshift, you are back to the full cooldown.

Papish.5806:

Even if it is a shatter it is still only one extra cast of f5. F5 does not reset CDs, it puts everything as it was back when you first activated it before the revert. Which means…
-cast f5 and do all the things you want to do
-f5 ends and you were back to how you were when it began
-you cast sig(now on cd) and f5 is no longer on cd
-you cast f5 again(while sig is now on full cd) do your stuff and it ends buttttt, when it reverts you back your sig will be back to how it was when the second f5 was cast(so full cd)

ahhh this is true..

Gibson.4036:

spoj.9672:

Its only an issue if you want everything including the traits and skills you never use.

This keeps being thrown about, and it is very misguided.

The new unlock tracks are linear. That means the skill you want to use may be the very last skill to unlock of its type. To get the grandmaster traits unlocked in a specialization, you’ll be unlocking all of the adept and master traits along the way.

I will guarantee you that you will be spending points on skills and traits that you never use.

yes, but will you be spending enough that you need to get skill points?

one spec is 60 points, there are many people have never even experimented with certain lines.
skill wise, 25-30 points, i know thieves for example who never want to touch a trap.

now, i personally would want all skills eventually, but skill challenges is far from a bad way to earn skills. It was meant to be the fastest way, but they messed that up with the champ bags.

i do understand where you are coming from though. I just dont see too many simple solutions.
perhaps they will change the system.

ronpierce.2760:

Valento.9852:

Plot twist: F5 activation will not revert F1-F5 skills, I’m sorry if you thought you could spam perma-revert with infinite skill usage.

I don’t think people are understanding him….
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Illusions

This resets Shatters.

Continuum Split, signent heal resets split, and the return resets the signent heal that resets shatters.

However because it is a 2 part skill, I don’t think split will be resettable in that time frame. Might be a non issue. We’ll see.

i think they’re changing the signet, they got rid of the trait that did that, coincidence?

Thypari.9043:

phys.7689:

f skills probably wont be considered to be spells.

Doesn’t matter signet of illusions resets shatter skills.

they may have killed that signets functionality/changed it.
the got rid of the trait that did that.

Eurhetemec.9052:

phys.7689:

Eurhetemec.9052:

I am concerned, yes.

The big concern I have is that they will force me to go back through the game do dozens or hundreds of skill challenges. All of which are utterly trivial but take say, 2-4 minutes to get to assuming you have a nearby WP, and 1-3 minutes to do (as you may have to wait), so say 5 minutes each, and that means each 12 is 1hr, and I might need, say 180 across my characters to get back to where I am now, so that’s FIFTEEN HOURS of my bloody life, gaining NOTHING else (because no loot etc. from these), just to catch up to where I’ve been for years!

You better believe I’m concerned!

you never have to wait for a skill point, if someone else is doing it, you can join in.
having to play your charachter for 3-5 hours before reaching maximum power level really isnt that crazy an idea.

I’m already at maximum power level. So asserting that I am not makes no sense.

I’m talking level 80s here, all with all skills purchased, all traits known (but it will hit sub-80s too, harder in many cases as alts tend to have more Skill Scrolls spent on them). Only one has significant world completion. I’ve looked and it looks like I will need 180 SPs across the lot. That’s horrifying.

So explain to me why it’s okay to force me to do content that:

A) Is trivial (there is literally no challenge to any of these skill challenges, especially for a L80 in exotics+).

B) Gives no rewards (it’s irrational to assert that “you can do what you did before!” is a reward).

C) Is time-consuming.

Just to let me get back to where I already was? When other people, simply because of their choice of gamestyle (i.e. enjoying world completion) do not get punished in this way?

(As for waiting, well, last I checked there were some Skill Challenges which took a minute or two to reset, and a lot of others where, if they’re being zerged, you cannot reliably get a tag because the NPC or whatever gets killed in under a second, so you may have to go through multiple spawns)

If this is what they’re doing, they’re effectively punishing a large group of players who playing the game the way they wanted to, even though that is the whole idea of GW2, according to the devs. If I’d known I was going to have to go back and do bunches of Skill Challenges, I wouldn’t have spent so many Skill Scrolls etc. on y’know Skills, I’d have always done Skill Challenges for those SPs, and I wouldn’t be looking at a 15+ hour block of doing pointless, boring content to obtain things I already had!

It’s also totally unnecessary. Skills aren’t unlocked in a pick-and-choose way by spending Hero Points, they’re unlocked in Lines – so they could just keep anything unlocked, unlocked, and put some sort of other reward at the end of the line (for everyone – they’re already doing this with Elite specs, for example), giving a reason to spend those Hero Points.

so serious question, would you feel better, if they made it so you had all your skills, but you still needed to fully unlock all specs to get access to unlock the elite spec.

you would still end up having to do the same amount of skill challenges to unlock elite, the only difference would be, you have access to your skills ahead of time.

seems a bit pointless to me, but would you prefer that?

Thypari.9043:

“This skill essentially gives the chronomancer a reset button and allows for tricks such as casting any skill twice, avoiding a killing blow, or simply tactically repositioning yourself.”

I guess they didn’t playtest this at all. Together with Signets of Illusions and Mirror Images or dodge roll creates clones. It can be used infinitely."

• Dodge Roll (can be replaced with decoy) + Mirror Images > 3 clones
• Signet Of Illusions
• F5 Shatter
• Repeat and put spells in between you want to use infinitely

f skills probably wont be considered to be spells.

commnagrom.8637:

Gobble D Goop.4081:

Surely you dont use every skill and every traitline (I’m not implying this all at once-that’s impossible). There are likely some skills and even some traitlines that you just don’t use. If for example, you never use traps on your ranger, then dont invest points into traps until you get the HP that you need. If skills arent integrated into the same lines as traits, then you will be able to pick what skills you need (with some limit- it seems that skills/traits will require whatever is before it in line to get it) and the traitlines that you want to use. 400/465 (roughly 86%) will be the baseline for all level 80s. My best guess (we’re all guessing at this point) is that you can unlock 3 full traitlines and most/all of your skills with that.

The problem is that you can’t skip over skills in the new system, the skills unlock in tracks now instead of just picking and choosing which you want, jut like they are doing with traits…

the tracks are similar themed things.

so likely traps would be grouped together

also each specialization is grouped seperately, so if you never used say the vitality line, thats your 60 points right there

Rin.1046:

I just had a thought. The core engi will be getting a new F5 toolbelt skill for their elite, if I remember correctly. So it is not inconcievable that the core mesmer will get an F5 skill also.

I may have been concerned for no reason. I hope we get to try some of this stuff in the next beta.

i wonder if that was the core engi now, though.
That might have been an elite engi

tramwajarz.2369:

phys.7689:

tramwajarz.2369:

Rin.1046:

I really like the sounds of this specialization, but it does raise one question in my mind. With the benefits of the elite spec being so strong, will anyone ever create a build without it? Of course when other elite specs come along that might change, but it seems too strong to only use core specs. But maybe that’s the plan?

Of course it’s a plan. Base professions are being toned down to make specs look OP so people will be more happy to buy an expansion. And after a year we will see massive nerfs and the outcry will be delicious. I dunno how anyone can expect anything better from any company on the market.

nah, the old profs will still be probably the same power level wise, they will just be a lot more boring

However the usefulnes of some professions has nothing to do with power level but with execution and ease of use of similar features between them. This is why I feel like specs will be a must-go solution for everybody. And I’m not giving anet any benefit of the doubt, after last 3 years they succesfuly burnt all my hype.

honestly getting the most out of chronomancer looks like it will be a lot harder than the base professions, timing and management of cooldowns seems fairly important for it to actually be beneficial

ronpierce.2760:

phys.7689:

Rin.1046:

Emtiarbi.3281:

I remember that in an interview Anet said that they will look into the old traits and skills to make them good enough, lets hope for the best.

I hope so too. It will be a shame if there is no reason to build for the core mesmer again. That Continuum Split is pretty powerful on its own, I hope they can make the core mesmer just as attractive. To do this I am assuming the elite spec will lose some core mesmer functionality. It would be good to find out if that is the case and if it is, what will be lost. If it is only the loss of one trait line of your choice I am not so sure it will be enough.

But hey, it’s eqarly days. I’m willing to try it and see.

its not objectively stronger, mostly you lose access to complementary lines, you will be giving up synergy somewhere to use chronomancer

Well it KIND of is. It does grant additional baseline skills, which would in theory require less powerful skills and everything to compensate, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The baseline benefits of elite speccing almost instantly makes it necessary. I’m sure the traits will also look good. Being able to duplicate a scenario is incredibly powerful. (see old Alter Time on WoW mage, which eas eventually changed because it single handedly made it hard to balance mage.)

yeah but you have to look at what your giving up.

domination? 10 dmg percent while vuln, 15% illusion dmg, 25-50% minwrack dmg. interupt traits

dueling? blade training, numerous condi buffs, deceptive evasion (shatter fuel) harmonious mantras stacking dmg buff, phantsmal fury

illusions? all shatter buffs 15% faster cool downs on shatter skills (includes continum shift, which will probably have super long cool down) phantsmal haste.

power wise, these trait lines pack a huge punch, there will definately be builds that would be better of with these synergies.

HOWEVER they will be lot less interesting.

i think necro is going to get some powerful enemy debilitating skills. and ways to benefit players, with new mechanics.

chronomacer introduces alacrity, and implies mes unique thing is going to be cool down management for allies.

alacrity+quickness is a pretty strong combo.