Guild Wars 2

Thom.1862:

“The last thing ele needs is another insanely complex chain. It needs, for once, a set of damage increases which does not depend upon a long setup chain that can easily be thwarted by pretty much anything, including a player not juiced up on enough energy drinks to kill a small child.”

This is the current chain that is already in place just juiced up a bit you against more damage?

nope, i’m saying it should be fixed so eles don’t require that when thieves can 2-button damage like that.

That would fix ele damage.

I really think this suggestion is hypocritical:

how do you square this:

Please keep the YouTube 13k hit out of this it was a one time effect with all the ducks in a row

with suggesting requiring yet another “ducks-in-a-row + ridiculous amounts of jolt cola” mentioned below:

Even with vulnerability stacked in D/D mode your only going to get at best 70% to 100% increase for about 2 seconds if you can manage to set the other player on fire, knock him down, and hit fire grab all within 2 seconds. This makes a 3500 point CIT into a 5000 to 7000 point crit on average in sPvP.

The last thing ele needs is another insanely complex chain. It needs, for once, a set of damage increases which does not depend upon a long setup chain that can easily be thwarted by pretty much anything, including a player not juiced up on enough energy drinks to kill a small child.

snizzle.6143:

I would prefer Toughnis + precision + power
So you get Crits, attack and defence. You dont need good heals because you have low life that can be easyly recoverd

The D/D threads suggest pow/tough/condition damage… but I have yet to see this on any gear, which is incredibly annoying, as it just “screams” “ideal thief and guardian gear” too.

Talks in-game indicate research is bearing out that precision >= power at high levels, though I have no substantiation of that.

So would that make the TA gear the best for offense (prec/vit/cd)?

and this is how devs get ideas on nerfing elementalists.

thanks braggarts!

Semprenaviguare.2936:

hello , i am Elementalist Spvp and Tpvp 40 , i have only play elementalist ,
i have + 1000 tournement played
i play a elementalist tank/dps 0 0 10 30 30 with berserker amulet and sigil of energie .
on can trip specialisation .
i am a normal player , i play D/D

99% 1 vs 1 my opponent cannot kill me , and if a player are very good he can maybe kill me after 3 minute .
i can tank a position vs 2 or 3 player + 1 minutes .
i can tank graveyard vs 5 players ( medium player ) + 30 secondes .
i can fight fight and kill in the same time 2 thief without target , just radom aoe , dodge , and can trip survive .
mesmer isn t a problem , aoe party , finish clone
necro isn t a probleme i can remove all conditions when i want
war isn t a probleme , dodge , miss , dodge , miss cc ,
guardien tank not probleme i can /danse he cannot kill me .
guardien spirit is the same of war dodge , miss dodge miss .
engiener not probleme , aoe .
rodeur is not very difficult
i can rez a player on invulnerability or finish him on stability or invulnerability
i can rez himself if a heal elementaliste pet pop when i am on brume .

just elementalist spe who a god spé .
i don t want elementalist nerf because i am very happy play this class

but the reality is only that elementalist is op .
i am not a god , i am just a normal player !

i think too Elementalist D/D spé can trip is op .
because this specialistion have not probleme vs all class .

on pve can farm all event solo
can solo champion
can solo donjon , legendary boss and pack of mob .
on spvp can solo lord with 4 adds
on www can escap a bus , can fight and kill 1 vs 10 players unstuff ( look darkphoenix , is very good elementalist but i know much elementalist who make the same ) .

he have no counter class on 1 vs 1 for kill a elementalist .
and on battle fight just swat elements is a very good support !

Did it ever occur to you that you are beating people most of the time not because of a spec being “overpowered”, but because of a vastly larger pvp experience?

Read this thread, most people encountered in wvw are underleveled, undergeared, inexperienced, or a combination of all 3, and are thus steam-rolled.

I’m not a pvp person. You could gear me in all legendary and still beat me, probably with scepter-focus. I will not be running to the forums demanding a nerf from being outplayed or directly countered.

D/D bunker builds are a specific counter to glass-cannon and 1-trick-pony burst specs. Nerfing them only vindicates people who are looking down their noses at the devs of this game for allowing cheesy thief builds and portal bombing to go unabated (meanwhile somehow borking mesmer further in pve.. nice Anet!)

Another nerf to ele will be a third wide-miss for Anet as they aim for “balance”. (the first being guardian symbol of wrath and the second being the mesmer ‘blockable summon’ patch)

drtoph.4857:

The part that is the most annoying is not that the thief and necro whine about ele, that is expected, its the fact that the freaking dev is sitting there nodding his head right along with their qq. None of those people even main ele’s. If you are going to take advice from someone of balance, why not ask a top player who actually mains an ele what they think. Instead of the button spamming thief.

If this is true, the game’s going to go down in flames.

Their balance team needs at least one person for each profession who plays that profession actively. All balance decisions should be made with the input and consensus of everyone on that team.

This is by far the most complex game i’ve seen in a while in terms of just how unintuitive things are until you experience them first-hand in combat. People who have not properly experienced a profession should not be altering it.

I’m having a serious flashback to the late Ted Stevens talking about “the internet is a series of tubes” here.

My suggestions to fix OP’s issues:

1 – bake-in the swap-cooldowns in 30pt arcana, and replace that major bonus with an increase in conjured weapon charges.

2 – bake-in any arcana traits which are considered mandatory, and create new traits which focus arcana on the enhancement and use of conjured weapons (arcana becomes the “conjured weapons” trait-line)

3 – fix scepter’s skills so they fire missiles at the target which cause splash damage rather than center the over their head or at their feet. you’d think the insane cast and charge time would be enough.

if D/D gets nerfed that will be the second profession rendered utterly useless.

I tried guardian and it was BO_RING_

If anything we need evasive arcana blast finishers back. the amount of juggling needed with the 4 attunements is already insane.

on the scepter issue: once all those scepter moves actually WORK as blast finishers we should be in good shape on making scepter viable.

on the staff issue: evasive arcana really should not have been nerfed.

on the dagger issue: STOP SAYING IT SO LOUD, THEYLL NERF THE LAST GOOD BUILDS WE HAVE

if you swap to another weapon (I used staff) and use fire spells on it, then swap back to dagger it fixes the spell. I’m not sure why.

Found a workaround for it.

if you swap to another weapon (I used staff) and use fire spells on it, then swap back to dagger it fixes the spell.

I have latency in only double digits (ms) and I still see the burning speed issue.

It was fine last night.. now it’s consistently showing up on the beginning of the slide only rather than across the entire length of it.

it fubars the initial attack, and it fubars the potential to combo into might becuase you have to spend 4 seconds getting back to your own combo field.

EDIT:
if you swap to another weapon (I used staff) and use fire spells on it, then swap back to dagger it fixes this spell (burning speed).

Ehecatl.9172:

My burning speed’s burst happens at the start of the the trail rather than end about half the time. Makes my D/D set a pretty big handicap. But I believe my issue is already covered in the bugs list.

I can definitely say its not a lag issue.

It was fine last night and is not now for no particular reason.

I logged out last night after playing for HOURS with burning speed behaving dependably..

I logged in this evening and found my burning speed no longer ended with me standing at the tail end of my own fire combo.

I look behind me and it’s only covering half of my path of travel! After 45 minutes of continuous trying, I’ve only managed to get the full length combo field twice. (screenshot of the typical mis-behavior attached)

For dagger users, this pretty much borks the spec’s major source of might, removes the few remaining un-bugged blast finishers, and makes elementalist unplayable. (staff and scepter were already borked by the last patch)

I logged in this evening and found my burning speed no longer ended with me standing at the tail end of my own fire combo.

I look behind me and it’s only covering half of my path of travel.

For double dagger, this pretty much borks the spec’s major source of might.

I can’t play my elementalist like this.

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

This means the prices are skyrocketing

And guess why so many people can afford to buy such expensive ectos, while most players can’t?

Because sane people can’t go out and fetch them themselves

Irrelevant to my question. I did not ask why is there a demand for ectos, rather why only a minority can afford their current prices.

I will simply cease responding to you if you don’t want to actually tackle the issue here

…Which is people not being able to buy items from the TP due to those items being incredibly expensive, since a few grinders and TP manipulators have acquired small fortunes and thus have increased the price of items beyond what is within reach of the real players.

So there we see why farming is bad and thus needs to be limited by DR, plus why TP manipulation is bad and so should be limited in some way.

DR is great. It’s not enough, though.

All these people with “small fortunes” earned them by farming before the DR was put into place.

All DR does is burn the bridge the rest of them used to get to their “1-percenter” ivory tower.

Because we don’t have the ability to gather our own mats, we’re forced to buy from these de-facto monopolies produced by the imposition of DR.

They get richer, we get poorer, and we, unlike them, are forced to the cash shop to fill their coffers.

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

This means the prices are skyrocketing

And guess why so many people can afford to buy such expensive ectos, while most players can’t?

Because sane people can’t go out and fetch them themselves

Irrelevant to my question. I did not ask why is there a demand for ectos, rather why only a minority can afford their current prices.

Sorry, I will not allow you to simply toss out what I’m saying “by fiat”. I will simply cease responding to you if you don’t want to actually tackle the issue here, which is people unable to be self-sufficient due to an inability to fetch the mats they need themselves.

Erasculio.2914:

plasmacutter.2709:

This means the prices are skyrocketing

And guess why so many people can afford to buy such expensive ectos, while most players can’t?

Because sane people can’t go out and fetch them themselves, thus cutting TP demand enough to make the overpriced ones “not sell”.

When the option to “go get it yourself” is not there, you are a hostage to the TP.

Except ArenaNet just jacked up the demand for ectos and t6 mats by 5000% while leaving the drop rates and diminishing returns in place.

This means the prices are skyrocketing but nobody has the option to actually go out and collect them themselves due to Diminishing Returns.

No “fix” to the markets should ever be a sock to the gut of the individual player on the ground.

World of Warcraft – Cross Server Dungeon Finder

note: this did TERRIBLE things to the wow community. It utterly obliterated any sense of local communities on individual realms, encouraged ninjaing and other back-biting behavior, etc.

Cross-serverl dungeon finder is by far the worst thing to happen to any games.

Erasculio.2914:

Actually, the DR system is needed to stop farmers as much as it was needed to stop bots. Farmers add a huge amount of inflation to the game and thus increase the price of items for the real players (those playing the game to have fun, as opposed to those grinding the game to farm).

Please provide empirical evidence of this.

Farmers, like everyone else, need to participate on the open market, and must compete to sell their goods.

Individual players, on the other hand, when faced with DR, are forced to either the TP or the cash shop (then the TP) because they’re denied the capacity of self-sufficiency.

So with the bots gone, can we get the ability for real players to collect what they need un-sucked?

Basharic.1654:

Go figure, player scream they want tough content and then when presented with it they turn tail and run. In the 30 minutes you’ve been pouting you could have gotten back to where you were and uncontested at least one of those nodes. And why were you taking on the giant solo?

Because it can be soloed : )

They’re right though, the best events required large numbers which simply are not there.

Hopefully patches will add better rewards in the zone, because DR punishes Players because bots are present, and and ascended gear in FotM have punished the playerbase who don’t want to do FotM.

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

Are these threads going to start being deleted / combined? Because I’d like to read about something else on the forum other than just…

“Ascended is stupid.”
“They lied about their manifesto.”
“I don’t like grinding for things.”
“This game isn’t how I want it to be anymore.”
“Is anyone still going to play GW?”
“Is GW2 the worst game ever made now?”

We get it. Please stop making more threads, at least until we learn more about how they are going to solve the issues.

Or just read the AMA thread. They have learned their lesson , no more tiers.

He said the implementation of Ascended gear in only one area of the game was an obvious mistake. He said no such thing about agony

Actually, he did. Specifically this, in regard to one of the questions which included mention of agony vs skill based progression:

Chris Whiteside

In regard to gated content via gear then i think that this is something we are going to give more thought to.

nachtnebel.9168:

EgonVenkman.1907:

You are misinterpreting their words again…. They NEVER said grind = time sink. Those are your words. His words were:

“I think grind is repetitive game play leading to a goal where the activity of progression isn’t fun whether it not be fun initially or it suffers from diminishing returns over a period of time.”

His words are almost exactly the definition of time sink. Collection 250 t6 craft mats is not fun, it’s grind. Doing FotM over and over again isn’t fun, it’s grind. Killing mobs till you have enough gold to afford ascended gear isn’t fun, it’s grind.
If he uses the word grind he should use it in the common way: Doing something multiple times to (maybe) reach a goal.

An acceptable amount of time for a single piece of ascended gear would probably be 90 minutes. Everything longer than that is grind.

Well, you should be happy then, because if you read the AMA, you would see the following:

Chris Whiteside

nacho

With regard to minimal Grind, how is going from 5 Ectos to 50 Ectos for a piece of gear minimal? 5 T6 items to 250 T6 items, minimal?

Good point Nacho. We are currently discussing these particular items and it is fair to say that we don’t want have such big hikes in requirements moving forward.
Chris

cesmode.4257:

Karizee.8076:

Just go play any other MMORPG and you’ll come running back, arms outstretched, begging for forgiveness like a bad boyfriend that dissed his best girl.

I already have/am. Problem is, I am actually enjoying it too haha. I think, fundamentally, GW2 is far superior game and the best MMO on the market.

As stated in the original post, I can/would love to continue playing the game as I was, very casually. And then get to FoTM a few months down the road. I just hope there are players still running low level fractals at that time, because I can definately see FoTM being a good endgame. I just want to be able to experience it on my own time when I am ready.

My guess is if you take your time leveling an alt, by the time it reaches 80 fractals will be in history tomes.

Again, take the time to read the AMA’s.

Anet Team considers the way fractals were implemented, instructure, gating, and as the sole reward source for gear as a huge mistake.

In the following weeks they will be endeavoring to fix this.

shadymae.5349:

Not looking for a perfect game, just the game I bought called GW2. Don’t know what this game is anymore.

It’s still the same game. They made mistakes which they acknowledge, and which they intend to rectify and avoid moving forward.

it happens. This is why we have medical malpractice insurance… even good doctors cut off the wrong leg when overworked.

Ezeriel.9574:

People are farming fractals for all they’re worth, and they are worth a ton. With gold you can rake in, you can just save up and buy your legendaries.

It’s borderline exploiting…

…and with all the actual exploiting that can currently be done in fractals people are plowing through them as fast as they can before the exploits get fixed.

Devs promised to fix the fractious nature of FotM in their AMA yesterday. I’d give it a couple weeks.

please read the AMA responses from the Anet Team.

They address all of this, and say the way FotM was done as well as ascended gear was a mistake, there will be no further tiers, and future content will not be structured in the way FOTM is.

stop with the duplicate threads already.

Bornthisway.4609:

I am one of your players that literally has not logged in since the introduction of Ascended gear. Not once. I have four level 80s, countless Dungeon armors, different armor sets for a few of my characters, a character with optimal MF, etc. etc. I was highly disappointed that Plinx was nerfed as it seemed to be one of the only rewarding event chains in the game to me.
I truly hope Anet recognizes the mistake that they made in gating their content and encouraging fracturing the community and forcing us to grind. I will not play a game that treats its players like this one did before and after the initial introduction of Ascended gear, so I truly hope the apology comes with some serious reflection and ACTION. Ascended gear needs to be obtainable through crafting and through WVW, and that has to happen within the month at the latest.

Regards.

Read the AMA, Chris Whiteside and crew address all of those, and characterize the way fractals were implemented, both in gating mechanics and as the only source of ascended gear, as a huge mistake they will not repeat, and will endeavor to rectify with their next patches.

No, it’s not, and if you dig in the AMA you will see where Chris Whiteside himself says it sucks and they’re not going to do something like that again.

They said the following in their AMA:

The Ascended gear should have been there at launch, they regret introducing it at this point, and there will be no more “tiers”.

The way fractals are gated by gear was a mistake in retrospect and future content will not be like this.

The way Ascended gear was tied only to fractals was a mistake; they intend to rectify it asap.

The way fractals are diced up into “levels” and punish people for helping their fellow players in lower levels was a mistake and they will do a better job integrating future content into the game’s core philosophies.

Moving forward…..rewards will be inter woven appropriately into the core systems and social aspects of the game, allowing the diverse societies or player types to work together by playing the content that they love.

my god, human beings, even in groups, are fallible. just look at congress.

In regard to what FotM is doing to the game: “Yes it was a mistake we will not repeat”

Chris

This is an extremely interesting question and as you know the path down the road for a solution is highly complex. In fact myself and Mo were discussing this this morning. So please forgive me if my answer is somewhat lite or comes across as deflective but i would prefer the surroundings of a pub or meeting room to really get into this one.
However:
I think online worlds are amazing in that they house different societies or player types if you like. I think it is only natural for players to gravitate to those who they feel are like minded, and i think it is also only natural and in some ways quite healthy to have a macro society or community that doesn’t always agree with one another. I think that diversity is exciting but it can also fragment so a method in which different groups of players work with others in synergy each enjoying their own diverse game play that is rewarding because of the game play is certainly a step in the right direction. Reading this statement you will no doubt be thinking that the FotM doesn’t utilize this philosophy and you would be correct. Moving forward progression and rewards will be inter woven appropriately into the core systems and social aspects of the game, allowing the diverse societies or player types to work together by playing the content that they love.
So in short something that is universally enjoyable as a progression system or a reward should be as accessible as possible and cater to the different ways our players consume the game but in a manner in which the Community of the world as a whole is contributing to each others overall experience.
If you would like to talk further then pm me and we can discuss in game.
chris

In regard to Ascended Gear tied to FotM:

….Our intention is to deploy ascended components and gear across the whole of the game rather than focus it in one particular location. This was a a mistake and one that we will not be making moving forward…

In regard to Obscene Mat grind on Ascended gear:

Nacho

Nacho

With regard to minimal Grind, how is going from 5 Ectos to 50 Ectos for a piece of gear minimal? 5 T6 items to 250 T6 items, minimal?

Good point Nacho. We are currently discussing these particular items and it is fair to say that we don’t want have such big hikes in requirements moving forward.
Chris

Hopefully the complaint threads can calm down a bit now?

Genesis.5169:

You want free things.
I want free things too.
We all can’t have free things though.

You coulda just said hey guys loots pretty bad can we get more.

Get a magic find set and stop finding things to complain about

The game is not the real world. In the real world resources are scarce. In the game world someone with adequate privileges can type in a command and “poof” anything they like in any quantity into existence.

So yes, in a game we can all have free things, in theory.

At this point I’m more concerned about how fractal levels punish people who cooperate and help others in lower levels with less reward.

It’s fragmenting the community.

PiranhaPT.4873:

And why can’t u just buy the colours that u want ? not like it’s expensive anyway .

All the color schemes I like involve either abyss or white. ~.~

Also, ever since they “fixed” the “accidental increase”, it’s been dropping a LOT less than it did on launch day before this “accidental increase”.

The prices have been skyrocketing because they over-nerfed the drop rate by a rather large margin.

For those who say the game is dying:

Galen Grey.4709:

Actually you can see that, check ncsoft quarterly financial filling.
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx

This includes data up to September I believe.

Anyhow did listen to it my and essentially ncsoft told its investors in that call that GW2 exceed its expectations. They sold 2m copies in the first 2 weeks and where expecting to reach 3m before the end of the year. And they did $14m up to September from the cash shop.

The game is doing great! they didnt do this because the game didnt perform, they did this to try to offer some content to everyone like they themselves said after all!

I suspect the demand for gem to gold transactions is tanking due to the flap over this latest patch.

I’m hoping the reddit Q&A session fixes this.

I’m still going with a combination of the follwoing:

something like 80% of america still out on their thanksgiving travels away from their gaming machines.

a good portion of the playerbase taken aback by and awaiting dev response on the whole FotM issue.

I logged onto my realm today (Devona’s Rest) near that waves dungeon (way the heck out there where claw usually lands) and saw within a 40 yard radius at least 15 people playing in the open world.

That’s more than was there a week ago.

There are more people on in my guild than there were a week ago.

I presume people are coming back from thanksgiving.

Merthax.5172:

I think it’s the uncertainty about what direction the game is headed. People are waiting to know more.

This, AND I, like many others, have taken the week off to travel, so my gaming equipment is 3,000 miles (<——) that way.

Azelroth.6801:

To the people that are experiencing bad loot.

Have you tried farming whilst in a full party? Try this method to see if it helps with your loot (don’t wear MF whilst doing so).

Then after a sufficient break to reset the DR. Try farming in a group WITH as much MF as you can. Please report back after that and let me know how you went. Thanks!

that sounds positively stupid. You should not have to do tap-dances to get loot from mobs.

Hopefully next week when they’re back from vacation, we’ll see a hotfix for this that also removes DR.

oh god.. please no more fractal dungeons.

Enough of that.. the gating is already destroying our community with JUST ONE

Q: What is being done to re-work fractal “levels” to prevent encouraging players to exclude those who don’t have a high enough level?

Death Reincarnated.3570:

CONS

- Game bugs. Yeah, some of them are annoying more than others, but wish that ANet representative put little more incentive/effort in addressing the issue(s).

It depends upon the bug, but I actually like game bugs.

I find it very humorous when I end up in strange places, flying across the countryside, casting a spell and ending up teleported somewhere else, etc. It reminds me it’s just a game, and provides some comic relief.

dreztina.4820:

Games are almost always better with bots. The only time they are a problem is when encounters are set up so that bots can monopolize the spawn and make it impossible for anyone else to do. Considering that isn’t an issue in GW2, I miss the bots.

I don’t care about inflation or money selling or anything like that. The only reason companies are able to make doing that is because of how stupidly long it takes to get items in mmos. The bots wouldn’t exist if the game developers didn’t create the demand.

The pve farmers don’t care about that because they are just doing what they love, and they benefit from bots getting banned because their crap is worth more.

Sadly, those of us who don’t enjoy farming get the short end of the stick with prices that are 10x what they were with bots and no items of our own to sell to make up for it.

It’s dumb, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Most people who play MMOs are just pve’ers who love farming all day long and don’t like competing with bots, and MMO companies sure as hell like cutting out the companies making a profit off their game.

They can’t properly balance the economy with bots around.

Bots necessitated the DR and other aspects which made it harder for anyone to farm.

If they manage to stabilize the bots at a low enough number, they can increase the drop rates and fix things.

Amos.8760:

plasmacutter.2709:

protips for inventory management:
1 – you can and should salvage anything white or blue that you don’t use with salvage kits

I’ve been finding it more cost effective to vendor those items and then just buy whatever mats I need off the TP.

typical queensdale blue vendors for 3 to 7 c.

typical swatch of cloth or piece of ore will go for between 17 and 34 c.

salvaging then TP-ing the resulting raw materials will always be preferable to vendoring unless its a green.

Other tips:

while you can “kite around” various mobs in the beginning of the game, they get faster as you go to higher level zones.

While some kiting is still utilized, its’ best to learn to use your weapon and skill combos to control encounters, prevent damage, and learn burst combos early.

Traits matter, it’s best to take at least one survival tree for at least the first 10 trait points before moving to offensive trait lines.

LOCO.1785:

plasmacutter.2709:

Who said it wasn’t going as well as hoped?
I saw plenty of people joining, the game was thriving despite the “ebb” of the initial launch “surge”, and nobody I met had any complaints.
Then this patch it. NOW it appears not to be “doing as well as hoped”.

That’s my only conclusion for why they felt they needed to change their whole game philosophy. Their investors didn’t like the figures they were seeing and felt they needed to step in and change the model to something that might bring in more cash.

I wouldn’t say the game was thriving before the last patch either. It seemed like it was on the decline, but still healthy enough.

And here I thought the community growth was stabilizing. You can’t really declare a decline 3 months in. You’re still dealing with the surge-ebb cycle that always happens the first 3 months of a game’s life.

For instance, it was in much better shape community-wise at this point than rift was.