Guild Wars 2

Me Games Ma.8426:

Edit: What if you’d do it like this? Start Continuum -> Signet of Illusions -> End Continuum -> Finish Signet of Illusions

When CS ends, SoI isn’t on cooldown and so wouldn’t be affected (i.e. full cooldown). But CS would be recharged when SoI finishes activating.

So the outcome would be the same as speculated above.

The problem with Healing Power is that it only affects direct healing, which is a fairly minor component of the overall Support role. Zerker is meta because you can completely ignore the Healing Power attribute and still provide a huge amount of support to your party.

I’ve made this suggestion before but I’d like to see Healing Power be renamed to Boon Power and have it affect Might, Retaliation, Protection and Regeneration (and have the baseline values for these boons nerfed accordingly). Not only would this provide a nice symmetry with the condition attribute pair, it could potentially give players who prefer a supportive playstyle a place in the meta.

Granted, with dungeons the way they currently are I wouldn’t expect anything more than 4 zerkers and 1 zerker ele with a zealot set on swap, but even a small amount of gear diversity would a big deal given the unapproachable efficiency of zerker at the moment.

Geekfox.4267:

See: Nvidia Forums – Anyone tried Guild Wars 2 lately?

How can they say that GW2 does not support 3D? They have a dedicated graphics option for it ffs!

Sounds to me like GW2 Support trying to pre-emptively divert blame before properly analysing the root cause. I just wish we knew for certain whose problem this is so we can put some pressure on them. Otherwise it’ll just end up bouncing back and forth until it’s forgotten, and that would be a huge shame!

Can confirm, shadow depth is broken in 3D and makes it unplayable for me. I bought my whole 3D vision kit specifically for GW2; I’ll be really upset if that investment is now wasted.

Sadly, this update has broken shadow rendering using NVIDIA’s 3D vision. It seems as though all shadows are being rendered on the same z-axis as the UI i.e. zero depth.

This game was the most beautiful and immersive I’d seen in 3D but I can’t play with it enabled anymore. I imagine 3D support is not a top priority but I really hope you can fix this problem sooner rather than later.

I’m just praying that it’s affected by Power Block.

But as always, I don’t expect my prayers to be answered.

I’m sure that everyone who reads this post already knows about the new Defiance mechanic and its corresponding UI, but for the vast majority who don’t follow GW2 blog posts and articles, the purpose of the breakbar is likely to remain a mystery.

If its maximum value scales with population, having half the people in the fight unaware of when to fire off their CC will make it very difficult to disrupt boss mechanics. Similar instances have occurred before and have resulted in a very toxic atmosphere.

Time is non-linear in the Mists.

The closest thematic equivalent I could think of is the Spirit Warrior from Dragon Age. I could quite easily see a light/holy themed Revenant working.

I think each Legend will provide access to a single healing and elite skill, and a choice of 4 utility skills, similar to normal utility skill types (e.g. Consecrations, Corruptions, Cantrips, Glamours, etc.). So we can slot 3 of the 4 utilities in an order of our choosing, with the option of slotting racials normally.

The question is: will a slotted racial be swapped out when you switch Legend? My guess is yes (unless you slot it for both Legends of course), but they’ll have to retain any existing cooldown to offset the fact that they don’t require energy.

Well, based on the new information we have, my predictions are:

• Hammer – Long-ranged control
• Staff – Mid-ranged skirmishing (damage with some control)

• Scepter – Long-ranged damage
• Axe (MH) – Melee damage and mobility
• Mace (MH) – Melee AoE damage

• Axe (OH) – Mid-ranged control and mobility
• Mace (OH) – Melee control
• Dagger (OH) – Mid-ranged damage
• Warhorn – Support (I’d love to see some spirit summoning here)

If we get sword, I think it’ll be the specialisation weapon. It just doesn’t feel brutal enough to me to fit with the core Revenant aesthetic.

Achievement unlocked: Grandmaster Trolling

Fay.2357:

Confusion simply isn’t worth it until one of two things happens. They can either revamp how it functions in PvE entirely, or buff it to absurd lengths that it becomes optimal.

This. They’ve buffed the damage scaling in PvE but that’s not the problem. It’s the fact that mobs attack so slowly that you’re lucky if you get it to proc at all.

The ideal solution IMO would be to drastically increase the attack speed of mobs. Mordrem have a lot of multi-hit skills but I’m not sure if they count as several attacks (for the purposes of proccing confusion) or just one. Still, designing new mobs to have an increased attack speed would just create a schism where confusion is good in HoT and crap everywhere else, and unfortunately I doubt that ANet would go back and rebalance the rest of PvE (although there is precendent i.e. NPE).

But hell, if all they want to do is tweak numbers, then a single large buff to the duration of all player-applied confusion in PvE would be far more effective than damage scaling tweaks.

What’s your Power? I think when they previewed RR, it used the larger of the two.

Yeah that’s how I think the specialisations will work. Replace the last traitline (and the profession-specific stat accordingly) with a new traitline that uses minor traits which synergise with the new profession mechanic and major traits that affect the new weapon and skill type.

If this is the case, pure mesmer will be shatter spec which I think fits nicely. It always felt awkward to me that phantasm specs ignored the profession mechanic 90% of the time.

I don’t expect the Guardian specialisation to appeal that much to me, because the whole point is to change its playstyle and I like it the way it is.

The most obvious contender is a condi-spec, probably at range. So my prediction is the Avenger, wielding a longbow that inflicts Torment and possibly an AoE burning attack. New slot skills and profession mechanic is a little harder to guess…

Weren’t we told that Season 2 would reveal the identity of ‘E’? Is s/he just an abandoned plot thread, or have I missed something?

From what we were told, part of the motivation for the Gem Exchange UI changes was to simplify the process and avoid having to hunt for rounding breakpoints when converting gold to gems. Fine, good idea, mission accomplished.

However, these changes have now introduced the same problem when converting gems to gold. If I want to buy 1 gold, it costs 9 gems, but to buy 10 gold, it costs 84 gems. When I saw the screenshots, I assumed that this was merely a display issue and that the leftover silver/copper from the transaction would be credited as normal.

NOPE!

Anetpls

IllegalChocolate.6938:

We had to make our point clear with a 1000+ post and countless locked threads and negative PR on various gaming websites that would scare away any potential consumers in the feature while damaging the image of the company.

It’s go loud or go home I guess. If that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes.

It’s just a rule of life. I much prefer having civil discussions and believe that most disagreements can be solved this way. But when kicking up a stink is so much more effective, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

Shanks.2907:

There’s too much for me to even begin. Instead, I’ll just point you in the right direction.

Obal’s PvE guide
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Guide-DPS-Guardian-for-PVE/first

Shanks, the OP specifically asked for not high damage builds and prefers tanky builds. And for that, the anchor build still works great.

However, the reason that everyone on this forum will tell you to run max DPS is because it really is the most efficient way of playing once you gain familiarity with the content, for you and your party. Therefore if you’re not running DPS, expect people to call you selfish and a leecher.

If you don’t want to adopt the DPS meta, my advice is to find friends/guildmates to run content with, or advertise your party with “casual run, all welcome” in the LFG tool. That way everyone’s expectations are met: you get to play how you like, and the DPS meta groups get to play how they like.

Guardian skills are powerful but have relatively long cooldowns so you need to play defensively at first. Try to keep poison up to mitigate their passive healing and maintain pressure while kiting until you notice the tempo of their assault start to drop, usually after ~12-15 seconds.

Then it’s time for an aggressive counterattack. Fear chains, well bombs, Lich etc. Guardians are good at simultaneous offense and defense so if they start stalling for time (e.g. kiting, dodging, invulnerability etc.) you know you have them on the ropes. Good luck!

Artaz.3819:

process execution.8014:

ANet should really take the stun break off JI and put it on MI. That would really make skill selection an interesting decision for Guardians which hasn’t happened for a long time.

The problem with that is it would be an overall nerf since the cooldown for MI is greater than JI.

In theory, yes, but in practice JI isn’t often used as a stun breaker. Even if you did have it off cooldown, porting to an enemy while facing incoming burst is often counter-productive.

Wyrden.4713:

NeXeD.3042:

Yeah I agree dagger 3 is like the worst attack we have who the kitten needs immobilize when we could just all stack in a corner

dagger 3 is insanely stronk for pvp tho

This is definitely one of those skills that would benefit from a PvE/PvP split. I never use it in PvE but in PvP it can spell certain death if you get hit by it.

A flat damage buff for PvE would be boring but at least it’d stand a chance of being used. Sadly I don’t think there’s much else ANet would change because they don’t like skills to have functional differences.

Lily.1935:

Hmm. if you are correct about this then the system it self is seriously flawed. For example, You shouldn’t have to replace the engine of a car because the heater goes out. under the same system, I can believe. It makes sense. But changing one part of how a few NPCs working and having that effect all of them? That’s a bit hard to swallow.

He’s right though. It’s the same reason that it took them so long to address ranger pet responsiveness. They had to painstakingly extricate it from the generic AI to enable player-driven pet commands to skip the command queue.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

At 25% health, when it triggers, you jump into death shroud. The life force Locust Swarm grants you is very, very significant.

This would be a hell of a lot of fun with the new Unholy Sanctuary. Auto-reset on death? Yes please :-D

Bloodstealer.5978:

Of course what your saying makes sense.. what I am getting at is.. you don’t have to buy those low level mats, they are easily obtainable.
In30 mins I can run around to at least 10-15 rich / iron / platinum nodes, log a whole forest of soft, seasoned and hard wood and collect all the mats from splash kills I need before I even consider running events, dungeons, buying from TP etc…and that’s just one ALT..

I think I’m missing something here. How is that different to collecting T5 mats to craft e.g. Krait Star?

ANet should really take the stun break off JI and put it on MI. That would really make skill selection an interesting decision for Guardians which hasn’t happened for a long time.

In the interests of strengthening support necro, I think an interesting idea would be to replace the too-buggy-to-use (and probably too-buggy-to-fix) trait Renewing Blast with a new trait tentatively called Dark Bond.

This trait would redirect all damage received by up to 4 allies to the necromancer while Death Shroud is active, but reduced by 75%. So you could effectively tank for other players by sacrificing your own Life Force.

This would give a much greater clutch feel to necromancer support while still offering plenty of counter play. I miss the feeling of throwing out a clutch Aegis on my guardian and I think this would help to bring that feeling to the necromancer.

Hayashi.3416:

The current system where rares smash into less value than masterworks is absurd.

This is the root of the problem that prompted me to create this thread; I’m not beholden to ecto as the solution. It just seems like a logical extension to the existing salvaging system. As I mentioned earlier:

The level 68+ restriction just seems somewhat arbitrary to me.

• If I salvage a level 70 masterwork dagger, I get mithril ore and luck.
• If I salvage a level 30 masterwork dagger, I get iron ore and luck.
• If I salvage a level 70 rare dagger, I get mithril ore and ecto.
• If I salvage a level 30 rare dagger, I get iron ore and …nothing.

To the people concerned about the ease of crafting low-level rares: yes, they are currently cheaper than the ecto price and there would be some money to be made for market speculators. But that’s no different to any market shift. Eventually the market would stabilise, with the most likely outcome being that the lower tiers of crafting mats increase in value to match those of higher tiers. And given the huge volume of the ecto market, this stabilisation would happen quite quickly.

Astral Projections.7320:

Have y’all forgotten that drops aren’t the only way to get rares? Rares at level 35 and on up can be crafted by all the professions. (Here is the lowest level for armorsmith. This is the helm, the whole suit can be crafted also: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gladiator_Helm)

If ectos could be salvaged from level 35 and up crafted gear, that would most definitely affect the market.

Thanks Astral, I did overlook that. But crafting for ecto is already possible using T5 mats. Therefore the persistent market impact of allowing ectos to salvage from lower level rare gear would be an increase in the value of the corresponding tier of rare crafting mats.

I don’t see this as a problem. Rare crafting recipes aren’t used for levelling up crafting disciplines so this wouldn’t negatively affect the levelling experience. In fact it would make low-level loot even more worthwhile, because now you have valuable rare gear and valuable rare mat drops. And isn’t that what rare loot is all about? ;-)

Olba.5376:

So if we could salvage Ectos from exotics and rares of any level, shouldn’t we also be able to salvage T6 mats from all equipment, regardless of quality and level requirement?

I get that you’re using hyperbole but I don’t agree with the point you’re trying to make. Ectos are already a generic “goop of power” that is common to all rares, regardless of item type. The level 68+ restriction just seems somewhat arbitrary to me.

• If I salvage a level 70 masterwork dagger, I get mithril ore and luck.
• If I salvage a level 30 masterwork dagger, I get iron ore and luck.
• If I salvage a level 70 rare dagger, I get mithril ore and ecto.
• If I salvage a level 30 rare dagger, I get iron ore and …nothing.

Allowing low-level rares to salvage into ecto makes the system more consistent, not less.

Evans.6347:

There are a few of these situations actually, Keeper ascended recipes comes to mind.

I assume we’ll get another go at gathering these recipes in the future.

Urgh, tell me about it. One of the most interesting stat combos and it’s practically non-existent in-game.

Really hope we can get these recipes again sometime soon. My guardian just doesn’t feel complete without it!

gobax.6185:

Looks like you do not know basic economy.

Incorrect.

Currently ectos sell for 40silver and is one of the most traded items. Meaning it is a good gold sink. The listing fee of those selling it somehow holds the value of gold in game. Ofcourse not only ectos but others as well. Im just saying it is one of the items that contributes the most.

Correct.

If ectos becomes available to everyone like the absurd idea you are proposing, its value will dive since the supply will increase and since low level players do not need ectos the supply will tremendously increase while the demand remains the same.

Incorrect. As I said earlier, the increase in supply will be marginal. What proportion of rares did you find while levelling, relative to the number you’ve found since hitting 80? From my experience with my own characters, I’d estimate maybe 0.1% and I don’t even farm. Not exactly “tremendous”.

Besides, you’re asserting that low-level characters will never have a need for ecto, which is also incorrect. What do you think happens when they hit 80? Any ecto they acquired while levelling (assuming they hoarded it) would be gone within an hour.

I’m not saying that supply won’t increase at all, of course it will. It will just be negligible.

Haishao.6851:

If we could extract ecto out of low level gear their price would drop to about 1 silver, making your idea pointless.

Again, why do you think this would happen? Of the number of rare drops in-game, I doubt more than a tiny fraction are low-level. The increased supply of ecto from this change would have a negligible effect on the economy, but would have a huge impact on my feels while levelling alts.

Destroy the economy how exactly? Because of all those players running around farming champ bags on their alts?

Oh wait hang on there aren’t any…

I’m interested in hearing peoples’ opinions on removing the level restriction on items that salvage into Globs of Ectoplasm. Currently, only level 68+ items salvage into ecto. What purpose does this serve?

It devalues dungeon tokens earned from AC, CM, TA and SE and severely reduces that feeling of excitement when finding a rare drop while levelling. It’s already fairly common practice to delay opening champion bags until hitting max-level (or have your main do it if on an alt). The existence of player workarounds like this are, to me at least, a pretty clear indicator of a problem in the design of a game system.

There might have been a time when this level restriction made sense but it’s no longer relevant. With the introduction of new levelling items in the Feature Patch, this is only going to get worse. Imagine getting an exotic drop on your level 35 alt and thinking, “Oh yeah! Oh wait hang on it’s only worth 18s…”

Broseph.9283:

5) You could even make it regional. “Complete Krytan events or hearts to fill out this reward track and earn Krytan themed rewards.”

Again, I am looking for simple ways to spice up old content. I personally love the PVP reward tracks and I wish that I could do something similar in PVE. I could be wrong, but I believe a system like this might make sense in the game world. It might even be possible to hold this feature until a class hits 80 in order to not overwhelm new players and cater specifically to the veterans.

This is a clever and elegant suggestion that I think could be smoothly integrated by being unlocked via map completion. Once you’ve completed a map, the minimap UI gets a progress bar and a little map completion star that you can click on to view the details of the reward track.

Heck, they already have regional reward tracks in the game! Migrate the logic to PvE but with renown/DE-completion-juice contributing towards progress instead of rank points, tie in some UI hooks and you’re done!

Olvendred.3027:

I definitely don’t think that cluttering up the game with new, specific currencies does anything more than promote the most efficient farming method… which is really boring and doesn’t at all encourage people to play in varied ways.

I agree that new currencies aren’t the best idea; fortunately we already have somewhat niche currencies that could be expanded upon quite cleanly:

I think a simple and obvious currency would be the dungeon tokens for each region, e.g. Completing DE’s in Ascalon rewards you with Ascalonian Tears, Kryta rewards you with Seals of Beetletun, etc.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

timmyf.1490:

Why is Dry Top better for this? Well, you need Geodes for lots of recipes and skins. So you have to play those events.

If you went back into old zones, added a bunch more dynamic events, added map-specific progression, and gave map-specific rewards, I bet you’d see a lot more players in those zones as well.

The trick is that the rewards need to be 1) exclusive or 2) comparable in gold value to other forms of content. And if #2 is economy-breaking, you NEED #1.

Just my two cents.

You bring up a good point, if every map (or region) had there own geode like currency, and that with it we could trade them in for stuff even level 80 could use. It would make going back to old zone and doing events even more fun.

I think a simple and obvious currency would be the dungeon tokens for each region, e.g. Completing DE’s in Ascalon rewards you with Ascalonian Tears, Kryta rewards you with Seals of Beetletun, etc.

Additionally, I think a novel use of Karma would be for temporary buffs that give a +X% region-currency find. Sort of like the reputation blessings in GW:EotN. So you could spend e.g. 5000 Karma for a 30-min buff that grants +50% Deadly Blooms while in the Maguuma Jungle.

7/10 but only because the cordless phones in my house were manufactured by Uniden

I have two sylvari

• Aneirin, a male ranger
• Arianell, a female elementalist

OP, I have to ask, how many build variants did you try for the fight? I can see a shatter mesmer having a difficult time but phantasms would surely work a lot better. An iBerserker or iDuelist would be a lot more effective than trying to pull off a triple shatter in the thick of that fight.

I’d like to see a solution that works sort of like Defiant-in-reverse:

• Unshakable grants CC immunity.
• Unshakable creatures hit by CC gain a scaling number of Defiant stacks that disappear after a short while e.g. 2s.
• If players can strip all Defiant stacks before they expire, the boss loses Unshakable for a short time e.g. 2s.

So for a dungeon boss, you might have them gain 3 stacks of Defiant meaning that all 5 players must land their CC together to successfully interrupt a skill (or 4 CC’s and a blind to negate an attack), but open world bosses could have a sliding scale of Defiant stacks that represents e.g. 50% of players in the fight.

Thematically I think it fits nicely and is intuitive that while a lone Mesmer could stun a Veteran mob with a single thought, it would take a huge combined assault to stop Tequatl.

I can also see it helping with co-ordination because all PUGs would need to know is: when you see Defiant pop up, hit that Earthshaker!

I think both ANet and the player base have reached a good point as far as hype goes. Well the developers sometimes go a little overboard on livestreams but as far as actual marketing goes they’re keeping it a little more understated than they used to which is a good move IMO.

And the players are also being realistic; optimistic but cautiously so. Obviously it’s difficult as fans not to be a little excited but I think we’re prepared for the possibility that Gates of Maguuma will be a little underwhelming. It’s sad that we had to have this beaten into us by a long string of disappointment but at least now ANet actually stands a chance of meeting our expectations.

I’ve seen previous suggestions to rename Healing Power to Support Power and have it act in a similar manner as what the OP suggests. I kind of like the idea although I haven’t thought it fully through.

Regen already does it, I’d be happy to see Retal do it instead of scaling with Power, and the others I’m sure could be retrofitted fairly cleanly. Not sure how Might scales with other stats though Carighan (except for Boon Duration ofc), can you elaborate?

The point I think would be to make pure supporters viable for people who enjoy the playstyle. At the moment you can have bunker/support or DPS/support but you don’t really get builds where support is the primary function because it just doesn’t have enough of an impact.

Hell, it might even get MM Necro top-tier viable…

People, please! Can we all just take a small step down off the Soapbox of Entitlement +8 and leave the poor analogy alone? I know Bobby was the one who brought it up, but he did so to draw some similarities between the two. He never asserted or even implied that the content delivery mechanisms are identical. Of course the analogy is going to break down if you take it literally. All analogies do! Talk about missing the forest for the trees!

You know what else GW2 doesn’t do the same as TV? Bombard you with ads every 10 minutes! Is there honestly anyone in this thread that would choose free “On Demand”-style content delivery if it meant that ANet was allowed to slap an AdWords banner down the side of your screen?

ANet makes money by drawing people into the game. Simply put, more players playing = more opportunities for sales. For ANet to be financially capable of releasing content, we need to continue playing. Even if you don’t buy any gems in a given month, simply being in the game contributes towards its health by helping make the world feel alive. If you weren’t around for an episode, you didn’t contribute towards it. Simply giving it to you for free would be unfair to the rest of the players who did.

hendo.1940:

The main pre patch builds were 10/30/0/20/10 and 0/30/0/25/15 but now the new meta is 30/20/0/20/0 or 30/20/0/0/20 dependent on whether focus reflects are required or not. 30 in dueling does still have it’s niche, but is not really as much of a thing anymore. If you run a lazy 10/20/0/20/20 build (note – this is just a catch all build, dungeon guilds expect you to retrait on the fly if necessary) then the lack of empowering mantras opens up ether signet as heal so you can open the fight with triple phantasms. 30/x builds can take signet mastery too so they as well can use the ether sig heal if they choose to. Then there is how ferocity hits mesmers the hardest since reflects are so reliant on crits, and their reflect builds can’t even take the full 30 in dueling so they lose precision and critical damage. So basically, Mesmer went from bad tier to flat out trash tier and we hardly ever even bother running with a Mesmer unless they have unique utility for the instance. If you want to carry a pug which is the one thing Mesmer is decent at – just use a guard and do it better. Mesmers are at the verge of becoming the second necromancer of the dungeon meta.

How is any of this relevant to changing the zerker meta and/or making support more relevant in dungeons?

1. Ranger
2. Elementalist
3. Mesmer

I’d like to see Flashing Blade drop some kind of control symbol at its destination, that pulses Cripple, Chill or Torment. IMO sword should be a dueling weapon but it currently lacks a way to keep the pressure on the enemy.

With all due respect Pyroatheist, the math is correct. x^2 is multiplicative. 2^x is exponential.

I’m referring to how most damage multipliers affect one another i.e. they don’t. If you do 1000 DPS base, and you have two 10% damage traits, you do 1000(1 + 0.1 + 0.1) = 1200 DPS. Additive.

Multiplicative stacking would be 1000(1 * 1.1 * 1.1) = 1210. And this is how Quickness works.

All that aside though, I accept what you’re saying about the usefulness of Quickness for mesmers. On the surface it seemed stronger than 4 secs off Duelist cooldown and a few more projectile finisher procs every now and then.

@EricTheThief
You’re correct, I was thinking of pre-nerf Quickness. My mistake. I don’t get your point about being able to capitalise on the proc though. Interruption is an active action; you would only do it if you intend to burst.

@GK
My understanding is that normal damage modifiers are additive e.g. 25 stacks of vulnerability = 25% increased damage. If vulnerability was multiplicative, 25 stacks would be 1.01^25 = 28.2% increased damage.
Also I don’t know what you mean about limited interrupt options. We’re only talking once every 15 seconds, on mobs with hugely telegraphed attacks. Counter Blade is on a 12s cooldown (traited) and that’s a single skill. Diversion, MoD, Chaos Storm, all easy to proc an interrupt.

So, FI is (ideally) a multiplicative 10% damage increase. Compared to, say, Close to Death, which is 10% additive (but passive) buff, I’d say it’s on par. Factor in the utility Quickness provides and I’d still say it’s quite strong.