Guild Wars 2

I wonder if this is related to the bug where archdiviner sometimes becomes invuln to you if he cages you? That would sort of fit with the theory that it has to do with minion agro, which are 3 out of your 4 examples. (Lupi’s swarms, wrathlord’s wraths, and simin’s sparks). I might try and test some stuff on the SEP3 destroyer, since he’s (relatively) easy to get to and I’m curious if this is an arah specific problem or not.

Miku Lawrence.6329:

Am I the only one enjoying the latest LS fights?

I think the strategy is sound but I could have swapped to air a lot later and saved some time. Maybe swap blasting staff for stone splinters.

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567:

The Runes are from the Rite of Ascension in Augry Rock representing Elona Reach, Thirsty River and the Dunes of Despair.
Maybe the snakes refer to either the rite or Augry Rock itself.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hall_of_Ascension

Ah, thank you! That is an excellent insight.

Re: Similarity to the ouroboros loop – my concern is that it lacks an important feature. The snakes aren’t consuming themselves, which is key to the symbolism of eternity. Maybe it is related to or playing off the ouroboros loop in some way, but I don’t think it is an alternate version of that symbol, ie, a symbol of eternity.

I apologize if this has been posted before / is obvious, but I found this symbol while mountain-goating in the silverwastes and in piqued my curiosity. I realize it could just be a design for the sake of aethetics, but I was wondering if the resident lore experts recoginze it? I did a quick search for “snake symbol” on the wikis but didn’t find anything.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Is it even possible, given the changes that came about in the world?

The personal story attests to the fact that yes, its possible. Tybalt can be in the streets yelling APPLES FOR SALE to literally no one outside the crumbling ruins of the old bank. It’s weird, but it’s better to give players that story then take it out all together.

There are reasons it might be difficult, or even not worth the time, but “it’s not possible because of the changes to the world.” is not a good one.

At first I was annoyed about the male / female difference in the light armor tops. (Decent shirt on the guy, glorified bra on the ladies), but no butterflies for guys, or charr/asura at all? This is starting to get ridiculous. :s

spoj.9672:

They just jump on the bandwagon without a second thought. It kind of reminds me of nemesis’s following.

I’m sorry, but I’m not ok with you calling me sitting on my hands for 6 months “bandwagoning without a second thought.” Look at what I actually wrote. Zelyhn may have valid concerns. He may have legitimate reasons to dislike some people in dnt. It’s not my business. That’s my point – it’s not the public’s business. This random thread in which nike happened to post a joking remark about ele dominance in the meta, is not the place to play out this vendetta. This is a pattern that happens over and over, and to be quite honest Zelyhn is too often the instigator. I can wish that Nike would take the high road and not respond, but it’s only fair to ask the same of Zelyhn.

Again, he may feel his critique is justified but how is this helping. How is playing out this drama useful or constructive to the community.

Let me give you some advice, zelyhn. Stop looking at the chat box if it offends you so much. I did, and I’m happier for it. Stop looking for reasons to be offended. If someone said something that was directed at you, deal with it like an adult, in a personal message. Stop hijacking threads because nike said something you disagree with, and you feel you have to respond with a sarcastic, baiting remark rather then something constructive or meaningful.

If you actually care about improving the reputation of the community, realize what you’re doing is not helping. Maybe it feels good and validating and noble, but it’s not.

“rampaging mob of lemmings found me on their way to next door” – This is my bane when I solo the lich. Even when I think I’ve found an empty map they trundle up when the boss is round 10% HP, summon a million skeletons, the boss lifesteals back up and everyone dies to retal.

From a thief perspective, with that leurent comparison: the problem I was having is I usually use CnD to let my endurance regen a bit if I’m running low, but if I stealth on the horror he books it towards the nearest pack of mobs with his super swiftness. I’ve been trying to learn the timing of pistol-whipping his uppercut but it is sketchy as hell.

You’ll need to give people a little more to go on. What game types are you into? Dungeons? WvW? sPvP? What archetypes do you enjoy in other fantasy/rpgs? Squishy mage? All-in Brawler? Support?

Tell us what “fun” means to you, and we can give you some insight. Otherwise it’s a purely subjective question. :P

From my experience with the scream –
If you dodge, you’ll get an “evade!” pop up and take two stacks of torment.
If you don’t dodge, you’ll take some damage and three stacks of torment.

I’ve only encountered bleeds from his upper cut and whirl, though I don’t have any other explanation for the bleed you get at 6:08 then the shout can apply bleed randomly O-o.

First unlisted change I’ve noticed so far (which was mentioned above, but I can confirm it since it happened to me.) – At mai trin, if you relog during the fight and try to re-enter, the first console will not activate as long as the fight is still on-going. I assume this was meant to fix the tactic of relogging and having elen res you.

The problem is, the didn’t fix the issue where if one person is alive outside and the rest of the party wipes, you respawn in the arena with mai trin and thus can “res rush” her. This means that if you have a DC and elen res’s you, you’re stuck outside permanently (since your team will always respawn inside the area and continue fighting).

I’m sorry, but my patience runs thin when you want to say this is for “convenience” when the denominations are 400, 800, etc. And you just released an outfit for 700. Really? With a straight face your going to say that this new system benefits the customer? Just stop.

Own up to the fact that its a coercive tactic. I won’t call anet monsters for it, they are a business. But this charade of trying to play it off like it’s “better for players” is bull. Period.

XD I mostly credit that to the lifesteal food and sig heal, which makes it pretty easy to top off 10k health. Although, it wasn’t quite 100%, i did almost die to the phase 3 transition
>.<; .

I figured it was a rotation-optimisation thing. What I think I would dislike about staff off-wall is that getting off a good meteor shower in phase 3 would be rolling for rng. I’m not the type to push for records, I like to use strategies I can reasonably pull off first try without player error.

I want to go back to ele solos once I master thief offwall – I still get kitten on by phase 2 too often. I’ll try and clean up my d/f first and then think about how and offwall staff would work.

Purple Miku.7032:

What I’m mostly referring to is when I was going for a fast D/F ele solo a while ago, it was not possible for me to use swirling winds unless I just blindly guessed if he was about to do the attack. I had to double dodge and hope for good RNG which was just too rare.

Just wanted to say, you maybe already know this trick and didn’t want to swap into earth because you were going for a record, but one way you can deal with aoe phase is using ring of earth. If you dodge back once, stand still and cast, you won’t get hit. At least, so far it’s been 100% for me, and I know from playing thief my rng is not so great :x.

^ skip to 2:45 for the first time I use it. Obviously that’s not a fast solo, it was an overly cautious off the wall solo XD. At some point i want to re-do it without arcane shield.

Expectation: Know the basic pug strategies of the path, understand the encounters, bring basic class specific utility like blinds, reflects, or buffs.

Reality: Will be a noob hoping to be carried by experienced people – if called out on noobish-ness will say, “I thought exp meant explorable”.

This as been a pet project of mine, so I wanted to share it with y’all. It’s not a perfect run by any means, but I’m happy with most of the strategies I settled on. Enjoy, and of course constructive criticism is always welcome.

link to reddit thread

I think what they are actually asking for is a lower skill floor, not that it needs to be done faster. So for example, in the ooze puzzle, making it so you don’t have to put in both oozes at once. The challenge of doing both at once is still there, and skill in execution is still rewarded, but pugs who are struggling can “bang it out” slowly but surely.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

I didn’t read the first four pages but if there is one constant since launch, it’s that Anet don’t listen one bit about any demands concerning armor looks. I have never ever seen one reply from a Dev about armor looks not one. Yeah it turns me off too but I’ve given up on this subject. The old skirt pants trench coat and skimpy looks post we’ve seen them all except Anet.

And I can understand why. I’m sure anet is more concerned about what their gemstore spreadsheets tell them rather then what a vocal minority has to say on the forums. From just walking around lions arch, it’s pretty obvious that phalanx armor is one of the most popular skins for heavy classes even though it’s one of the most obnoxious examples of gratuitous gender-based discrepancies in a set of armor.

People buy skimpy armor for their female humans – it sells. And people tend to dress their males as “cool” rather than skimpy. I wish that anet would experiment with more equity between the male and female versions of armor, but I can hardly blame them for providing more of what is popular. At the end of the day they are a business.

The irony is a lot of condi builds rely on on-crit procs, so non-critable bosses would be horrible for condi builds.

kyubi.3620:

Even then there should be variation within the dps builds in questions that would be a +

Phalanx warriors, hammer guards, reflect mesmers, PF/weak spot eles, and offhand training ranger all say hi. There are a number of builds that fall under the category of “meta” for all classes and they range from heavy support (both buffing AND defensive utility like projectile reflects/blinds/cc) to best personal dps. This includes not only trait choices but weapon and utility skill choices.

Another thing you can do if you’re in a pug – where not everyone is using skale venom – is use glyph of elemental power for weakness uptime.

D/F as your main weapon set is definitely the way to go (though keep a staff handy). The first thing I’d start with, as some people have recommended, is take the vigor on crit trait in arcana. Adjust your playstyle to be more defensive. Don’t get greedy with the might-stacking – if you need the condi cleanse from magnetic wave, save it! What spoj said also is good advice – on the tough bosses like mai, archi, mossman, use that 300 range to full effect.

Make sure you chain swirling winds and ring of earth with other projectile defense, instead of wasting it with overlaps. The guardian or mesmer will probably assume it is their responsibility to reflect, so save yours for after they cycle through wall, sheild of avenger, feedback, etc. If you still find yourself struggling, begin swapping in defensive utilites. Arcane shield is your go to, but you can also take mist form. If all else fails, swap in an energy sigil.

And as was said above, blind blind blind that trash. Glyph of storms in earth attunement + lightning hammer can be a pug saver. You can use the hammer static field the way guardian uses ring/line or warding to cc the trash just as it gets to you.

Bojoo.7819:

i want to wear female armor version on male

And I often want to wear the male version on my female.

Particularly with the upcoming halloween outfit, I hate that my guys, chars and asura are going to get some unique looking goat legs while my girls are stuck with high heals. The vigil light armor is a slick looking muscle shirt on the guys, but more like a sports bra on the ladies. Phalanx armor is the most egregious discrepancy, imo, with full body coverage for guys and a boob window + mini skirt and garter on the ladies.

Fundamentally I don’t have a problem with skimpy armor for girls or for guys (and hell yeah lets have some more skimpy guy armor!), what I really want is the two sexes to have a similar look. I get that gendered fashion is a reality, but there’s a difference between reasonable and gratuitous discrepancies. If a set of armor is fully covering on the male version, it shouldn’t be showing a bunch of skin on the female version.

Zui.9245:

rfdarko.4639:

The closest I got on a ranger orb solo was about 900 away.

I was using max healing power, mango pies, etc. I had the the regen signet and the spirit of nature traited to follow me. I used guard to place the fern hound about half way along and traited for more pet healing power and heal on f1. I started off with a GS leap and used about-face/lightining reflexes. I also pre dropped 2 healing packs from the med kit comsumable a little past the fern hound.

That was all i could come up with not being a ranger main, but suffice to say it would be tedious and difficult to reproduce if its possible at all. Easiest method is to just re-roll norn.

~900 range away? Did you use a Medical Pack consumable to pre-drop some 1000 life heals? If not, that could possibly be enough to make it.

yes, i did.

The closest I got on a ranger orb solo was about 900 away.

I was using max healing power, mango pies, etc. I had the the regen signet and the spirit of nature traited to follow me. I used guard to place the fern hound about half way along and traited for more pet healing power and heal on f1. I started off with a GS leap and used about-face/lightining reflexes. I also pre dropped 2 healing packs from the med kit comsumable a little past the fern hound.

That was all i could come up with not being a ranger main, but suffice to say it would be tedious and difficult to reproduce if its possible at all. Easiest method is to just re-roll norn.

@Kas, I posted because you said: “My advice, would be to just enjoy the game, and not try to ‘understand’ these forums.” Which sounds like a much broader assessment then addressing specifically the people who chose to argue badly.

It frustrated me, because often well thought out arguments are overlooked, where as poor arguments are picked up on, ripped apart and left at that. There has been plenty of good discussion about the problems in the end game, but the posts that get attention are the ones which challenge literally the claim that there is “no endgame what-so-ever”. My frustration is both with the people who make these bad arguments which confuse the discussion, but also the people focus on only pointing out fallacies in those obviously exaggerated statements. It makes the discussion about those bad posts, and puts the valid criticism in the background.

I worry that the devs will take your advice (or already have), to not try and understand these forums when it comes to end-game criticism. That they wont look beyond the easily dismissed hyperbole to the true source of growing discontent. If there is a reoccurring theme that comes up in complaints, there is probably some actual problem, whether or not the posters are articulating it well.

Anyway, I get that you weren’t meaning to say all forum posters exaggerate to the point of factual inaccuracy. And pointing out bs is valuable to weed it out of the conversation. I’m glad that it’s turned out well in this thread. But too many times I’ve seen really good discussion ignored and detractors pick up on the easy targets. I think it’s part of the reason communication has broken down between anet the dungeon community.

It’s easy to tear down fallacious arguments, to ridicule them. (Like the post Gaile highlighted).

If we care to be constructive, we shouldn’t just leave it at that. We should try to understand why people feel there is no endgame, when there is factual evidence to the contrary. Why are people who loved this game – theory crafted and strategized and competed for record dungeon times in this game- why are those the people leaving?

There is a lot of frustration fueled exaggeration that goes on. And yes, people need to take responsibility for the way they argue. But to take on the most poorly worded and hyperbolic statements at face value, and not go on to address the valid criticism behind that negative sentiment, is cheap. If we want to be literal, there has been no new 5-man tuned content for 10 months, and from what we’ve been told there will be nothing more in the near future. I think that is enough to warrant concern if you are a dedicated pve player.

It’s incorrect to say there have been no new dungeons since launch. And when you argue from a hyperbole, people are going to focus on that and tear it apart. So let’s stick to facts.

About 2 months after gw2’s launch, fractals of the mists were added. Whether or not you want to call it a dungeon, it fills the roll of challenging instanced 5 man content with unique skin rewards. This was an excellent addition, and made me incredibly excited about the direction endgame pve was headed.

Then the living story began. Over the course of 2013, 3 new dungeon paths were added. 2 were temporary, but they were cannibalized into fractal shards. Most of the dungeon content added during that year still exists.

Towards the end of the year, however, there were a number of decisions that soured the dungeon community. The biggest disappointment arguably was the fractured patch, which did not open up any higher tiers and reset personal level progression. Despite this, hard core groups rushed to the new 50 to compete for spots on the announced fractal leaderboard. This leaderboard still does not exist. The mistlock instabilities, which were touted as the reason for the overhaul, proved to be an annoyance at best and progress preventing at worse when certain instabilities and shards were combined. Few if any instabilities provided interesting, tatics changing challenges.

The second blow was the aetherpath, which promised to be permanent, but also replaced an existing dungeon path. We found out that forward-up would be deleted less then 24 hours before the patch went live, from a tangential remark in a dev post on a minor sub forum. This really soured the reception of the new path, which combined with some other problematic design decisions (I have a post about here) has made it one of the least popular dungeons paths.

Fast forward to 2014, through the conclusion of season one and the first chapter of season 2. So far, we have seen no new dungeon content. In a recent interview from a developer, we also learned that there are no new paths currently in the pipeline.

What we have here is a decline in focus on 5-man content, and seemingly a loss in connection with the desires of the dungeon community. We went from the promissing addition of fractals a mere 2 months into the games launch, to 2 good but temporary new dungeon paths, to 2 controversial reworks of existing content, to a 9 month dry spell with nothing to look forward to.

This post was a lot longer then I originally intended, but I don’t want the legitimate frustrations of dedicated pve players to be lost in exaggeration and hyperbole. Dungeon runners aren’t leaving for no reason, the trend is there and this past year has been a huge disappointment.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

My only question… Does iwarden work!? Mantra of distraction!? Is it true!?!?!?

I was testing the unblockable projectile fix on spider queen since arah p2 seems to be well and truely bugged and..they still bugged out on the mini spiders. And sometimes the terrain seemed to cause them to hesitate. Seems like the same as before the patch but I’ll have to play with it more.

And yeah, you cant block spider queen’s spit so I assume it really is gg for untraited wardens.

Hi Ryan,

I wonder if you could clarify something related to this change. I like to solo, but sometimes those solos take a while and I’m at risk of DC’ing during the run. With this change it sounds like the instance will close immediately if I DC. Will this be the case? Or will there still be a window to retrieve the instance?

This feels like the dhumfire patch. And what I’m afraid will happen is that there will be qq, anet will start to nerf mesmers in other ways to try and compensate for the change, but then eventually nerf the scepter and mesmers will be left weaker then they were before the buff (like what happened to necromancers). The community reaction now reminds me of when dhumfire was first announced – some excitement, but a lot of top tier players condemning the change.

This is probably a pie in the sky wish, but what the hey! This is something I’ve wanted ever since they introduced tiered rolls.

Fractal Practice Mode

When entering FOTM, the pop up screen would have a second drop down menu – defaults to “reward” mode, but you may click it to select “practice” mode. You can then select the level as normal. Once inside, you can talk to dessa to choose a single fractal – from any tier, including the boss fractals. The mobs in these fractals would not drop loot (I can imagine people farming the molten duo for champ boxes on level one) – this is just for practice.

For speed-running/tournaments, soloing, and tactics development this would be a huge help. Maybe the audience for this change is to small to warrant spending development time on, but if it could be easily done in the next fractal update it’s something i’d love to see.

I’m not sure what causes this bug, but it’s been around forever. What has worked for me in pugs is:
-When clearing the 4 champs, make sure the last one you kill is close to the door you came in.
-After killing the champ, immediately run out past the gate. Use stealth if you have it.
-Begin clearing the mobs working your way into the room.

This should prevent the mobs from infinitely respawning and Tarleov will be able to walk to his rock.

maha.7902:

The reason it flopped is because it strictly requires co-ordination, simple as.

I don’t think it’s that simple because as you say -

maha.7902:

The problem is the rewards for it don’t justify the challenge – and the fact that it takes like half an hour to complete for 2g, tokens and 0.000000000001% chance to get a skin is also why people don’t bother.

I think people would coordinate if there was incentive to do so. Which is why I listed rewards as the major thing holding this dungeon back.

The fact that there are hardly any videos of tactics may be more a symptom of the reward problem. Organized groups have very little incentive to spend time developing strategies, because they could make just as much or more money doing the farmable paths. If the path gave rewards more in line with the time and coordination required, groups would learn the path. They would make videos, tatics would become common place, and you’d see an evolution like you had with the at-launch dungeons from “this is impossible!” to “this is way too easy”.

Basically we are in a cycle of: no-one does the dungeon → no videos/ tactics → every play through feels like re-inventing the wheel → not worth the effort → no-one does the dungeon. I think with proper reward re-balancing that would break the cycle, and people might come up with tactics that make things like the ooze puzzle less annoying.

It seems to me that anet views the whole Aetherpath endeavor as a waste of time. They develop a new dungeon path, and all they get is complaints. They probably view metrics that show it is the least run dungeon path in the game. Clearly the community doesn’t want more challenging content, they just want to farm the easy stuff, right?

I think there are a number of issues with the aetherpath that prevent it from being popular, but they have nothing to do with its difficulty. I want to highlight some of the ones I see and encourage people in the community to contribute their own. Hopefully, anet will be able to learn from this list, address the mistakes, and be more open to developing new instanced 5-man dungeons.

I’ll start with the big one-

Rewards

Colin Johanson

Every time you finish a dungeon you get tokens you can trade in for reward items that you want, rather than having a small chance of getting it as a drop, because it’s more fun to always get rewarded for finishing with something you want to have!

This was from a blog written in June 2012, explaining some of the PvE design decisions in gw2. It pretty succinctly sums up why people have a problem with the reward system TA aetherpath. The unique weapons skins for this path are locked behind a ridiculously low chance to drop. Whats worse, they can be bought on the TP, which means you are better off farming easy dungeons to save up the gold for the skin you want rather then playing the content it comes from.

All of the at-launch dungeons have a token system which gives you guaranteed progression towards unique rewards. You get to choose the skin you get, so it will be relevant to your character. You may also trade in your tokens for generic, salvageable rares, which gives value to the tokens without making the unique skins tradeable. This is a good system, and it’s clear that it was designed with an understanding of how frustrating rng loot chests can be. I’m not sure why anet has moved away from the token system, but I think it was a mistake.

This is the big thing keeping aetherpath from being popular. But there are some other, smaller aspects that add up to major frustration.

Unskippable Cutscenes
The sparky and slick cutscene is the most egregious. I would also count Caithe’s dialogue at the start of the path – it’s not strictly speaking a cutscene, but we should be able to interact with her to interrupt her dialogue and choose a path.

Replacing Foward-Up
This is not something that currently effects the dungeon, but it gave a bad first impression. Rather then doing a simple QoL fix on the final boss of TAF/U, Anet chose to remove the path entirely. This was done with only a few days warning, and and justification given seemed half thought out at best. Instead of excitement about new content, the dialogue on the forums leading up to the patch was soured by this frustrating turn.

Padding
Everyone may not agree with me on this, but I believe there are a bit too many filler trash-mob rooms. There are some interesting encounters and puzzles, but getting to each major objective feels tedious. The solution many of the at-launch dungeons have is to make some trash sections optional – skippable. If they want to move away from skips, I believe they should trim down the dungeon to its meat and potatoes. Keep in trash sections which introduce mechanics (like the run between sparky/slick and the foreman in which you blow up the generators), keep the puzzels, but cut out the rest.

This post is already getting pretty long so I’ll let others contribute what they see as issues with aetherpath. I want anet to know that there is an audience for challenging 5 man content, and that aetherpath is not a good metric of that audience because of other surrounding factors which kept it from being a success.

I’d much rather they introduce new, pvp exclusive skins rather then add fractal skins into pvp. I like the fact that when I run into someone with fractal skins, I know he’s a veteran of fotm. It would also be cool if there was a set of weapons/armor that showed you are dedicated to pvp.

Stormdancer.4972:

“We don’t want to provide a wide FoV because our art is pretty and you should see it up close”

“We don’t want to provide a 1st person view, that would let you see the pretty art up close, because… reasons.”

Basically this. It’s obvious that camera changes aren’t on the short list of things to do, they didn’t make the cut. Fine, I can get that. But don’t make up bs excuses that contradict each other.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You want to know what I relate the biconics to, with a little sadness? The castaways of Lost. Because they were just as flawed a concept, because there were just as many writing and pacing mishaps, and because there was just as many “okay, that was actually pretty good” moments in that show.

My point was less about the characterization itself, and more in how we experience those characters in game. Whether you find job-o-tron endearing or annoying, they way you encounter him is organic – he is living his life in the in-game world, and we run into him when our paths happen to cross. By sitcom characters I don’t necessarily mean silly and throw away. I mean that we are experiencing the events of tyria through these characters and much of the plot comes from character drama – like you would when watching a TV show. When I’m playing an mmorpg, I don’t want it to be like a TV show – I want it to take full advantage of the fact that my character is IN and A PART of the world, and I have an opportunity to interact with charterers in a more natural way.

Whenever I’ve heard anet talk about the living story strategy, they describe it as “like a tv show”. I wonder if this has influenced the writing at all. In a TV show, no matter how grand or fantastical the setting, the story is in the cast. They are the lense we see their world through; their struggles are what drives the plot. But in an open world RPG, we are already IN the world. We can experience the events ourselves, watch and interact with developments as if it was a LIVING world. Job-o-tron feels like he is part of a living, breathing world. I come across him when it makes sense to, and he evolves and shows different sides of his personality. The biconics are more like sitcom characters, and following their narrative feels a bit arbitrary for many of the reasons the OP listed.

Missy.7356:

Would take me longer since Id have to get to lvl 10 first :p

Nope, as novaan said, they drop at level one now. Scale 1 fractals can basically be bumbled through on upleveled characters in less then an hour.

Missy.7356:

Lets not forget EoTM was added which is just a karma train, that would allow you to get to rank 5 in one evening. since you gain more wxp from that area than from wvw itself. One evening doing something you dislike via 5 evenings? Thats a weeks gameplay for some, doing something they dislike/find annoying/loathe.

Except you need to be rank 14 to get the gift of battle so….maybe its more analogous then you think? And the fractals only take 5 evening because of the time-gated daily chest. Its only an hour or so an evening vs a full evening of karma training.

“The rank requirement for Gift of Battle is very low and you’ll likely get it at the same time as getting the necessary badges.”

See, there use to be a pve alternative for the gift of battle, it was the achievement boxes which gave badges of honor. Then anet changed it such that there was a rank requirement, which forced you into wvw. That was their original intent. They WANTED you to play different aspects of the game. The same goes for this back piece. It’s a scavenger hunt in which you have to do different aspects of the game.

I Am Dansker.7105:

Now if we are to use your argument, then the next episode is better to include a WvW specific item in order to upgrade (now only the skin) the back piece since this as you say, a scavenger hunt where we should visit all the elements of the LS.

Sure, tha’ts fair. I wouldnt complain if there was a wvw specific component. So? Thats a seperate argument. There can be both a fotm component and wvw component.

“This would be the same as the WvW skins being obtainable by first doing the WvW achievements and then go to FoTM to get the key for the chest.”

Except it’s not like that at all, the scavenger hunt elements are all PvE and surprise FoTM is part of pve.

“Regarding Gift of Battle requiring WvW ranks, you can still obtain this by barely setting foot into WvW.”

I can say the same about the relic requirement. A level 1 fractal is faceroll, probably on par with early story mode dungeons. It would almost certainly take less time to get 5 relics then to get the wvw rank required for gift of battle.

Honestly I’ll have a lot more sympathy when I can exchange my 100+ relics for dragonite. And a lot of wvw players defended the decision to tie the gift of battle to a wvw rank so…meh? “It will take you like a few days worth of eotm karma training wahwah get over it”. It will take you maybe an hour a day for 5 days to get the relic. Man up and do it or pay a group to low man and join at the end.

I’d love to do the final fight cheevos but I’m not wasting my time with literally 10 minutes of dialogue before each attempt.

There are a lot of things in your op I agree with, miku, I just think your balance specific message is getting lost in the other stuff. It’s good feedback, I’m just afraid its going to be brushed over by a dev looking for your problem with balance. I assume you want the damage reduction on greatsword to be pvp only? You say “damage nerfs”, but a dev would need to know 1) you are talking about warrior 2) you aren’t considering the f1 rework or axe 5 buff as fair compensation in pve.

If you just need to get stuff off your chest, I get that. If you are interested in giving feedback (which josh said they are open to listening to), I’d tease out the argument about what specifically you want split in pvp and pve, and save the rest of the complaints for a GD post. This is not me trying to split hairs, this is really me agreeing with you and wanting to make sure what you’ve written get’s seen by the right people.

You guys should actually read the article.

“And not wanting to grind wasn’t really the issue, either: Like me, she sometimes finds grinding relaxing. This is a person who helped me farm ridiculous amounts of materials for my title in World of Warcraft; she camped rare notorious monsters endlessly in Final Fantasy XI; she gathers Atma in FFXIV with only the occasional dark muttering.”

“My wife saw that her three choices were to gamble a lot more than she already had, farm a lot more than she already had, or pay up in cash, and she began to suspect that the system was deliberately designed to encourage paying up. …the bad taste it left was enough to drive her back to a subscription-based game.”

It wasn’t about the grind. It was about the fact that the grind for a precursor comes in the form of gold, which can be conveniently circumvented for hundreds of dollars. Personally I doubt precursors are implemented they way they are to bait people into gem-to-gold conversion, but I can absolutely understand why someone would get that impression.

Robinschultz.9652:

Allot of people tend to react a little out of control. I am using full ascended Beserker on everything plus infusions. My god kitten longbow Barrage was dealing more damage to the grubs then the rifle warrior and two staff spamming guardians that outside of their Wall of Reflection didn’t contribute to the group at all when it comes to DPS. So much for all Zerker I guess.

Besides dropping a healing spring at my teammates who were hit by the shamans arrow doesn’t count for contributing to the party either right? I didn’t tell the whole story.

I don’t think I said anything about your gear. I was talking about utility. You can bring healing spring with a gs/axe-axe build and cleanse while at the same time actively preventing damage with whirling defense and cleave. Your focus on your zerker gear just confirms more that you are too focused on your 5k lb auto attacks rather than supporting your team. You stealth yourself during the grub phase and then take pride in being the last man standing ressing your team.

And anyway, “the rest of my team was crap” is not a good argument for “my build is good”.