Guild Wars 2

downtownal.9718:

At first I liked the Idea of Beacon fires, then I thought about it more and decided it is not a good idea. This is why, its like putting orange swords on towers and keep every time its attacked. Making small Havoc squads useless, and trying to take a keep without the opposing forces noticing imposable. I think the white swords are designed to be overlooked unless there is a scout or you happen to be watching the map, just so small groups have a chance to take an objective before anyone can respond. Maybe it could only be triggered if a certain amount of damage is done in a certain amount of time but the damage would have to be pretty lager say 20k.

How is it like putting orange swords on, exactly? And do you realize you just said that white swords are designed to be ignored? That makes absolutely no sense.

You seem to be making the point that havoc squads should be able to run buck wild all over the map with absolutely no counter, which is ridiculous. One of the counters to havocs is having scouts. Unfortunately not every server can afford to post up a scout at every tower and keep.

I mean I feel like responding is kind of pointless if you truly think white swords were “designed to be ignored” and that havoc squads/roamers should face no opposition whatsoever.

edit: Oh yeah, 20k damage is about two hits from a flame ram on a gate so it’s not a large amount of damage at all.

The “bonuses” suggestion is most def an interesting conversation I and a lot of other people have some thoughts on, but I don’t wanna clutter up this topic with it here.

What the heck is going on in this thread

I know this has been discussed to death and fallen on absolutely deaf ears, but let’s do it again!

First, troll guilds are annoying. We’ve got one on our server called Anal Razer Charrs or something. No doubt about it, seeing Garri claimed within 30 seconds on reset night by a guild you know will never have buffs running is super annoying.

Second, sometimes guilds have their buffs run out but they’ve still got a claim on a keep. It happens. Still though, in a crunch defending garri from the enemy it’d be nice to be able to throw buffs up.

The basic problem in both of these cases is that claiming the keep lasts until either the keep is flipped or the claiming guild claims something else on the same Borderland. Since the entire point of claiming a keep is to provide buffs (yeah, you get your guild banner there but no one has any idea who it belongs to because the game doesn’t say, you have to go to a timer site or something), claiming a keep should be tied to and bounded by duration of guild buffs.

My suggestions are super super simple:

1. If your guild is not running any buffs, you can’t claim the keep.
2. If your guild has claimed a keep, when your buffs expire, the claim can be overridden by another guild running buffs.

We can get more complex for sure but I think given how utterly inattentive downright, shamefully neglectful ANet is to the WvW game mode, simple solutions seem more likely adopted than complicated.

xihorus.2804:

Would the upgrade be available immediately after taking a keep or tower?

Also, don’t get me wrong -I still really like your idea. Coming from a smaller population server, though, I see two issues with it. First, if the beacon fire is available to all three servers it would heavily favor the server(s) with a higher population. I think an idea like this could be used more effectively to attempt to balance the matchup somewhat.

Second, allowing a player to light the signal fire encourages griefing. In the same way that enemies with accounts on the server they are up against will run into a tower or keep and burn supply on useless siege, or trigger unwanted upgrades.

1. WvW always favors the server with the higher population. I am not sure there’s even a way around it, or that there should be a way around it.

2. How would it encourage griefing? The signal fire can only be lit when the keep is contested. It works exactly like white swords do; the signal fires are replacements for white swords. I do not follow the griefing thing.

FWIW, EOTM seems like a pretty cool map to me, but seems much more about “champ/karma training” than WvW combat, which seems incidental.

The map is pretty awesome though. Widely varied etc., etc. If you’re into actual open-world PVP or something it seems like the place to be. Megaserver kind of hosed it though for any type of organized gameplay since you never know what instance you’ll wind up in.

Anyway, I am hoping that whatever is announced Jan. 24th, it includes serious improvements for WvW.

Kanebrake.6192:

xihorus.2804:

I really like your idea of beacon fires, but instead of an upgrade to a structure how about making a beacon fire a new type of siege equipment?

By default, no tower or keep would display white swords. A player would drop a building site for a beacon fire within the walls of the tower or keep. It would require some modest amount of supply to build, on par with other basic siege. A tower or keep under attack with a beacon fire triggers white swords on the map.

The beacon fire would have a reduced siege decay timer (10-20 minutes), encouraging scouts and roamers to visit it to refresh. Failing to refresh the beacon fire causes the flame to extinguish, and white swords will no longer trigger on the tower or keep.

Another possibility would be to have automatic build sites at pre-determined locations within the tower keep, similar to the oils in keeps.

Thoughts?

This idea suffers from the same setbacks as the “no white swords” idea. That being that lower tiered servers just do not have the population to dedicate to scouting and lighting signal fires.

First off, there are two issues here.

1. I agree that xihorus’s idea takes too many people or too much time to get going. Building a piece of siege, happening to carry around that siege with you (like supply traps, stealth traps, etc.), knowing where to drop it, etc., all goes against the simplicity and the automation of the beacon fire idea. The core idea is that through an upgrade to the keep NPCs will light the signal fire on their own. Optionally, a player can light it.

2. The signal fire idea, if you read what I wrote carefully, helps to ease the burden of scouting. A single scout can scout garrison & the two towers simultaneously without needing to move. If he’s at garrison, of course. So it actually HELPS what you were complaining about. Also if again you read what I wrote, lighting the signal fire in this idea does not require human intervention. It’s automated via an NPC. Optionally a human can light it.

Finally, it looks like in the feature patch ANet has a couple of signal fire mechanics in the living story. That’s pretty cool. Maybe it already existed, idk, I don’t PVE much. It’d obviously have to be changed a bit graphically but exactly the same mechanic would work in WvW.

Just realized that Bay, at least, already has the in-game assets to do this. There are two huge flames over water gate. Turn those into the sky-laser thing when the keep is attacked and it’s done.

You could always ask on Blackgate’s forums http://gw2blackgate.com/forum/

Well, listen, Justin O’Dell is very active on the PVP forums and more power to him. Maybe he’s really into forums. IDK. This doesn’t have anything to do with him, really.

I mean I’m being a little selfish in that I posted an idea the other day that had a lot of convo, lot of positive feedback from others and stuff, and it would have been kind of cool if there was a dev around who could say, “Yeah neat. Not saying we’ll implement it ever, but neat!” Just to, like, effing acknowledge the conversation. So yes I’m whining a little bit.

But there are a lot of threads on here. People with good ideas who put a lot of effort into writing them up and so forth. I mean if nothing else just someone to “show the flag” for ANet and participate in the convo would be cool. I know for sure there are ANet employees who play this game mode, tagged or not. So why not say hi or something?

Black Frog.9274:

Every time I see “throw me a bone” in print, I always hear it in Dr. Evil’s voice.

I typed it in his voice too :P

oneply nailed it pretty much. It would be different if the devs weren’t posting ANYWHERE, but they do.

I’m sympathetic a little bit to the “just work on the game” thing but MMOs are a long-term time investment by design on the part of the companies that make them, and GW2 is no different. If you expect players to invest time over the long term then you kind of have to keep communicating.

How are those of us who primarily play WVW and participate in the forums supposed to interpret that?

Yes, I know they post every great once in awhile, but it’s never about gameplay or to communicate with us about changes, plans, direction. Even some freaking encouragement that they are thinking about this game mode, or at least reading the darn threads would be great!

Throw me a bone here ANet. I love your game but there are issues, and it would be great to know that there is SOME kind of activity going on behind the scenes. If there’s not, if you’re focused somewhere else, tell me THAT too!!

ARGH.

Sagramor.7395:

Making audio even potentially affect the outcome of an encounter is a bad idea since a significant portion of the player base likely plays with in-game sound off or at a reduced volume.

Audio already potentially effects the outcome of an encounter. Many has been the time I’ve been alerted to the presence of siege weaponry by the sound alone. All anyone is talking about in this thread is making it potentially BETTER for people who have in-game sound turned down or have a hearing impairment by making it louder or more audible from farther away. It’s amplifying the already-existing audio cues to coordinate better with these theoretical new visual cues being discussed.

There are all kinds of audio cues in this game which, if you hear them, alert you to what’s going on around you in some way.

When I click on the “Subscribe” link in a thread, it just takes me to the last post in a thread. I want to just get email updates for subscribed threads but there’s no way to without RSS wizardry.

joneirikb.7506:

Include a WarHorn or a belltower or something else fitting for the place, that works together with the other warning system.

I think making siege audible from a greater distance away is a a more natural way to introduce audio cues as an attack alert system. Siege on the NW outer garrison wall should be audible from NW tower, for example. Maybe not super clearly but if a player is listening for that stuff (e.g. scouting) they would hear it.

Tom Gore.4035:

Farzo.8410:

Tom Gore.4035:

You’re not supposed to hop between maps to bring supplies. In fact, Anet should just change it so that when you load into a WvW map you lose all supplies carried.

“You’re not supposed.”

Is this something ArenaNet have said themselves or is this just some wishful thinking on your side?

I don’t know, I quite like the map hopping to grab supplies to help another map, it gives a little bit more spice to it all. But I don’t think it should give priority into the other maps, it should just stay like this. If you want to map hop to help, beware of the consequences.

I admit it’s just my view, but I base it on the fact that disabling supply “smuggling” from other maps would place more importance on holding and protecting the supply camps, and make the war on each map more strategic.

I’ve in the past also voiced an opinion that players should not be able to carry supply in their pockets at all, instead having to transport it with dolyaks or as bundles, further bringing sieging in WvW closer to a real siege instead of “run in, cap before defense can react, leave”.

But yeah. Not gonna happen. The supply smuggling is something that might disappear sometime in the future, though. We’ll see.

I mean, there are portals between the borderlands & EB on the maps themselves so I don’t think your views are aligned with ANet’s intents.

Jski.6180:

Its not a bad ideal it adds more skill then simply having the map do the hard work for you. At the same time you give up being able to see some objective when your attking for other objective a good risk reward.

I would not mind seeing a “sound” system too where you can hear the sound of war when some one is attking a tower or keep. There is a system of sound from wvw weapons but the ranges on them is a bit too small.

This is also a good idea, increase the distance from which you can hear siege weapons. I don’t know anything about game audio so my question is, would this be possible without making the siege weapons deafening at close range?

Sagramor.7395:

• Rank 1: Gain ability to light signal fires of contested structures. (Lighting the signal fire would have a cast time (1s perhaps) making it interruptable.)
• Rank 2: Reduce cost of Siege Disablers by 25%. (perhaps 50%)
• Rank 3: Reduce cost of upgrades by 25%. (perhaps 50%)
• Rank 4: Signal fires are instantly visible on the minimap.
• Rank 5: Cannons ordered will be Master Cannons.

Whoa!! I love these!! I like that they’re more general purpose scouting stuff vice directly related to beacon fire concept at every level.

Props, this is awesome.

Lord Kuru.3685:

There is this impression amongst the general population that Anet does next to nothing to control hackers and trolls in WvW (true or not is irrelevant for this post).

The result is that players are more apt to send false reports, making it even harder for devs to deal with the real offenders. Here’s the reasoning with an example:

A player fights a warrior who suddenly at low health goes into mist form and escapes. Our player knows warriors don’t have the mist form skill and finds this fishy…

1. In one (theoretical) extreme — where the impression is that hackers and trolls are caught and dealt with instantly and severely — our player does not immediately assume it’s hacking. He first looks up traits, runes, sigils to see what the could have caused this mist form… and discovers the rune of vampirism. No false report sent and the player learns something.
2. In the other extreme, where the impression is that hackers and trolls are never dealt with, our player instantly assumes it was hacking and submits a report to Anet. If he sees it again, that triggers another false report. You see this all the time, where people post about hackers when it turns out the player was just uninformed.

The closer you are to (1), the fewer false reports devs have to deal with and the easier it is to catch true hackers/trolls. And the closer you are to (2), the more reports devs have to deal with, and the harder it is to catch real hackers/trolls.

Conclusion: Right now, we are very close to (2). What would help is a surge of dev investigators for a period of time, putting player impressions of the system closer to (1), thus making it easier for devs to stay close to (1) even when the surge has ended.

Thoughts?

Nailed it IMO. Good analysis of the hidden costs.

Also a good example of the many issues stemming from ANet’s inexplicable lack of communication with players about WVW.

Jim Hunter.6821:

robotempire.2451:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I really like the original idea of the signal fire but I hate the idea of players having the option to light it. I think if you give a “light the fire” minigame for rewards you are going to see a bunch of pugs wasting time on that when they should be manning siege, throwing disablers, or getting on the commander.

It would hardly be a minigame. It could be a small event like escorting yaks or whatever, except only one person could initiate. It’d take like a second, and as I said in another post, if you put the beacon trigger in a spot that is naturally hard to get to when enemy is in the base, you won’t have to worry about it.

Besides, there is literally nothing else in the game that encourages people, during keep/tower attack/defense to get on the tag, nor are they encouraged to disable or man siege. Yak escort events don’t end, bloodlust doesn’t get locked down, camps don’t all turn invincible.

You think if you put a free prize button on a ten minute timer people won’t be scrambling to hit it when there are more important things they can be doing? If a keep is under attack having the free prize button is an unneeded distraction at the worst possible time.

If you want to reward the players scouting and upgrading then make the upgrades investments. When you purchase an upgrade you should get a little gold back per tick. The more you upgrade it the more you make back. If Anet does this I can pretty much guarantee you will have people sieging up keeps and towers and watching them like a hawk.

Shrug. At the end of the day your argument is really immaterial, IMO. People are gonna squirrel or they’re not. I am far less concerned about that than I am about the general state of the WVW game mode. I appreciate you providing feedback though.

The main point is we need an attack alert system that:

1. is not immersion-breaking as another poster put it;

2. still requires attentiveness to the environment;

3. rewards scouting in a meaningful way.

I’m pretty confident this concept here achieves all of those goals pretty soundly… at least on paper.

Anyway I am glad this idea got some attention from the playerbase. Just wish devs showed up in these forums more frequently.

Jim Hunter.6821:

I really like the original idea of the signal fire but I hate the idea of players having the option to light it. I think if you give a “light the fire” minigame for rewards you are going to see a bunch of pugs wasting time on that when they should be manning siege, throwing disablers, or getting on the commander.

It would hardly be a minigame. It could be a small event like escorting yaks or whatever, except only one person could initiate. It’d take like a second, and as I said in another post, if you put the beacon trigger in a spot that is naturally hard to get to when enemy is in the base, you won’t have to worry about it.

Besides, there is literally nothing else in the game that encourages people, during keep/tower attack/defense to get on the tag, nor are they encouraged to disable or man siege. Yak escort events don’t end, bloodlust doesn’t get locked down, camps don’t all turn invincible.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

I think the signal flare should be automatic. I know it works well in SW because of the sheer amount of players in populated instances, but we’re trying to address the issue of people not wanting to squat towers or keeps for hours on end, and the idea of a manual flare doesn’t help. As I’m moving around the map, and suddenly see a flare go up in the direction of a keep or tower, and the color signifies what objective is being hit, I know exactly where to go. Yes, there would be a learning curve, but it would be fairly short. This also allows anyone anywhere on the map to do something such as call out “red flare at east, check hills?” It’s immersive, and if it was actually implemented, I think would be kind of exciting. Even when maps are dead at certain times of day, there are always 5-10 wandering around or even those just there on crafting stations or merchants. Watching that flare light up the sky and calling it out makes those who would otherwise not pay attention to white swords, let alone constantly look at their map, be able to provide something valuable to those who are out there fighting.

This is, I admit, an idealistic view. Those on crafting stations or merchants may not be at all interested in even talking in map chat or knowing what the flares mean. But they might. But, light up the sky? People will eventually notice.

Did you read my posts? The beacon is automatic. The WvW ability ranks simply add the ability for a player to do it themselves. If they don’t, then it will happen automatically.

joneirikb.7506:

But somehow leave it possible for an organized group to interrupt and kill guards before they could set of the alarms.

I was thinking the beacon-lighting thinger would be in a place that would be difficult to get to once the enemy was inside. So in garrison, maybe in those “cubbies” across from north inner. In the towers perhaps inside the lord’s room. This way there’s a natural way to inhibit the “repeatability” problem another poster stated, and also a way for groups to counteract the beacon if they get inside fast enough.

skyhawk.5149:

I like the beacon fire concept, but why the scout mastery rank? The way i understand it, you want to reward scouting (which i am perfectly fine with).
But wouldn’t it be a lot faster to simply call out in map chat X number attacking X objective, or just a knocker no need to come?
Also the rank 5 idea can be easily abused no? You can just repeatedly contest the objective, and repeatedly light the fire for the rewards. If it were bad rewards then wouldn’t the system be a waste of time in the end?
The only way I can see the rank mastery working is if the signal fire also gives the keep some kind of buff or extra NPC reinforcements, otherwise if a scout is sitting in a tower/keep and an enemy comes instead of waiting 20seconds to light a signal fire that might not even be seen by some, he can just call out in map chat.

Obviously the scout would both type it out in map chat and do the little mini event or whatever to light the beacon. It’s just a way to reward scouts and increase the effectiveness of each scout, not a replacement for communication.

And yeah it’s definitely repeatable, but who cares? In a long garri siege for example contested will go up and down many many times. Each time might be an opportunity for the event to run. So put it on a 15-minute cooldown for the player. I figured someone would point out the repeatability but personally I do not care at all about it. The situation in WvW with scouting — unbelievably important yet totally unrewarded activity — is so bad that I’m ok with someone getting, say, 5 heavy loot bags every 15 minutes for scouting. If they want to milk it, what does it matter? It’s such a phenomenally horrible way to farm money or crafting items that it can’t possibly matter, especially relative to the current state of WvW.

sephiroth.4217:

The beacons are lit and the riders of Rohan shall come to thy aid!

Yeah I have to confess I was inspired by the Warning Beacons of Gondor in LOTR.

Zenith.6403:

You could make the yaks more durable if they were invulnerable until caravan escorts are killed.

I like this. Much better than “escort disappears when yak is killed”.

X T D.6458:

the point is, speed is key, thats why white swords are important for responding, trying to determine where a signal fire is coming from doesnt increase response time

No one is debating the fact white swords make responding way easier. What I’m saying has two parts:

1. White swords is a cheesy, unbalanced attack alert mechanism that devalues the role of active scouting far too much;

2. The game mode still needs an attack alert mechanism, just one that is balanced and makes sense in the context of the game.

The beacon fire concept achieves the second point.

—

I had another thought. It could even be a method to reward scouts. Let’s modify my original concept and say the invincible NPC can light the fires after 30 seconds in a keep (15-20 in a tower), instead of 10-15. Add to that another WXP ability: Early Warning. By getting at least Rank 1 in Early Warning, the player can now interact with the beacon fire lever in the keep or tower. This is all off the top of my head but:

Rank 1: The player can now activate the beacon fire when the structure is contested, and do so 15% sooner than the sentry. (There’s some math to do here, this is just a quick sketch. But if sentry can do 30 seconds, player can activate beacon 25.5 seconds after contested.)

Rank 2: The player-activated beacon fire is now visible from 20% further away. (In the original suggestion I said 15,000 units, so now it’s visible from 18,000 units.)

Rank 3: The player can now activate the beacon fire 25% sooner than the sentry. (If the sentry can do 30 seconds, player can activate in 22.5 seconds.)

Rank 4: The player can now select a particular color for the beacon fire. (Probably the same colors as commander tag. Could be used to indicate particular gates under attack or something? Not sure about this one.)

Rank 5: The player will now receive <some kind of award> for their service in lighting the beacon fire. (This should be a valuable reward, not WVW tokens or ascended crafting items. Maybe 3-5x heavy loot bags.)

Alternatively just make each rank reduce the time the player has to wait to activate the beacon, like the “Mercenary’s Bane” ability.

How about instead of bringing back white swords, make it so that keeps & towers have beacon fires/lights that will get lit when the keep is under attack? These beacon fires would be bright enough to be seen from say 15,000 units away. I think this is better than the white sword mechanic because:

1. A map icon that indicates a small attack is pretty cheesy and doesn’t even really make sense in the context of the game scenario. A beacon fire makes much more sense in the scenario.

2. The beacons would make it so keep scouts could keep an eye on towers, and vice versa. This means scouting is still extremely valuable — just as valuable as during the “Sneak Attack” event — but increases the coverage area for a single scout.

You might even able to do fancy things like having the beacon fire be lit by a special guard who spawns the instant an attack starts and is invincible. Then he takes like 10 or 15 seconds to make it to the beacon fire. Or it could also be part of the “Reinforced Walls” upgrade.

So since “Sneak Attack” is coming to an end I was thinking about another “experiment” I’d like to see.

How would gameplay change if yak speed & HP were increased by 150%, and camp captures took twice as long?

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. I know the tendency on the internet is to just shoot things down immediately without thinking about it, but I would really like some help in thinking through what the practical impact would be of this change.

In short, 1). the supply camps would be much harder targets, and 2). keeps & towers would get a lot more supply, which means upgrades would happen faster.

I think it might make havoc groups even more of a valuable asset than they already are.

Torsailr.8456:

At this stage it’s probably considered “in development” and they won’t be allowed to talk about it so don’t expect much in the way of a dev response.

I absolutely HATE this about ANet.

I feel kinda bad because you obviously spent a lot of time putting together your thoughts on this, but no one has responded.

For me personally this kind of imagineering is cool and all, but without more communication from ANet there’s no reason to believe there’s any reason to talk about this stuff.

The thread in the subject line

So what was the outcome of this? There was a lot of conversation around this but I have not seen anything tangible from this beyond the Sneak Attack event (which doesn’t actually address solving population imbalance, only treating the symptoms of it).

Has there been any off-forum conversation from ANet (videos, blog posts, Twitter, etc.) on this topic? Any updates? I’d love to hear how ANet is researching the problem, not just empty reassurance they’re “working on it.” If they’ve done this, can you please share the info?

Thanks.

xDudisx.5914:

robotempire.2451:

Atherakhia.4086:

every single other AE int he game is limited to 5

mass invisibility. not saying it’s comparable but just sayin’.

That is an elite skill on a 90s cd compared with a normal weapon skill on a 15s base cd

I said it’s not comparable. I was just pointing out that “every single other AE in the game is limited to 5” is not true.

Buffy.9246:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I still think it’s sweet of TC and BG to look out for JQ like they have been. Enemies but still holding them up in the tier because they enjoy fighting them. That’s true sportsmanship and although I’m no longer on NA I give my condolences to BG and TC for doing such an honorable thing.

I think it was because no one wanted yaks bend in t1. Tc/bg would 2v1 them to death.

just an anecdote but I don’t buy your last sentence. that is not what happened when TC moved up to T1, at all.

Atherakhia.4086:

every single other AE int he game is limited to 5

mass invisibility. not saying it’s comparable but just sayin’.

robotempire.2451:

Gaile,

I’m positive there are data-driven reasons for this. I know the vet players are in the minority. That said…

You guys have GOT to start giving veteran players escape hatches out of these newbie-friendly UIs and user experiences. Escape hatches need to become a first-order concern.

What I mean is, if you’re going to re-design UIs (gem exchange, opening Black Lion chests) and player experiences (trait acquisition tied to world completion) specifically to alleviate player confusion, then I really need you guys to start considering how you can stop irritating me when I want to play the game I"ve been playing for two years.

I see absolutely no reason there can’t be “custom amount” inputs on the exchange thing as it stands now. I want to be able to buy traits for my low-level characters with trait points from my 80s. I want to just open up a bunch of Black Lion chests without a 10-second animation for each one.

Everyone is in here in this thread gnashing their teeth so I’m sure this post will get glossed over, but you guys are honestly wearing out my patience for this game. Everything is really slow and annoying now, which is not what I loved GW2 for up through like the April patch. I know, you need to grow the player base so more people buy more gems, etc., etc., but all I’m asking for here is that veterans are given equal consideration on these UI/UX overhauls. Keep your newbie-friendly UI re-designs, they’re fine for what they are, I get it. Just give us escape hatches.

Just to respond to myself, a good example in the real world where companies build “special” UI feature development into work estimates is with accessibility. The number of users who need accessible features (screen readers, high-contrast colors, keyboard/tab navigation, etc.) is really small, but it’s an important contingent of users.

“Veterans” of GW2 — which apparently is the very low bar of figuring out how to post on the forums? — are the same way. Maybe a relatively small number (probably not, but I’m being generous) but an important contingent. Take us seriously. Build the time into your work estimates to include also designing small, integrated bits of flexibility so those of us who aren’t intimidated by input boxes can continue playing the game we want to.

Gaile,

I’m positive there are data-driven reasons for this. I know the vet players are in the minority. That said…

You guys have GOT to start giving veteran players escape hatches out of these newbie-friendly UIs and user experiences. Escape hatches need to become a first-order concern.

What I mean is, if you’re going to re-design UIs (gem exchange, opening Black Lion chests) and player experiences (trait acquisition tied to world completion) specifically to alleviate player confusion, then I really need you guys to start considering how you can stop irritating me when I want to play the game I"ve been playing for two years.

I see absolutely no reason there can’t be “custom amount” inputs on the exchange thing as it stands now. I want to be able to buy traits for my low-level characters with trait points from my 80s. I want to just open up a bunch of Black Lion chests without a 10-second animation for each one.

Everyone is in here in this thread gnashing their teeth so I’m sure this post will get glossed over, but you guys are honestly wearing out my patience for this game. Everything is really slow and annoying now, which is not what I loved GW2 for up through like the April patch. I know, you need to grow the player base so more people buy more gems, etc., etc., but all I’m asking for here is that veterans are given equal consideration on these UI/UX overhauls. Keep your newbie-friendly UI re-designs, they’re fine for what they are, I get it. Just give us escape hatches.

Xyonon.3987:

Yup, the current mimic is just terrible. I tried it a few times, especially against theives. However it has nearly no impact. A blink, portal or anything else is just worth more. Think about arcane thievery – it’s about the same, but it feels just better. You really feel how you trade 3 condis for 3 boons. Better buff that a bit and change mimic to A REAL SKILL MIMIC!

Yeah. Or, you know, just give us the old Mimic back? Ok it didn’t really mimic in any meaningful way but 4 seconds of reflect is a pretty good skill. It just seems like such a random, massive change.

NeXeD.3042:

Plague you might have a case, but ds… no just no. This has been said many times but some people use it to flash stability, retal, fury, weakening shroud, heal on ds exit etc.

Ok, that makes sense.

But Plague, definitely. It’s not like the stability sticks around there, probably by design.

Double-clicking via keyboard or mouse should not be possible on Death Shroud or Plague. A double-click wastes the cooldown so much.

You guys fixed this problem on Focus 4 for mesmers, and as far as I know DS and Plague had these cooldowns before September 9.

Curunen.8729:

While I don’t care about patches or the state of the game anymore, just playing casually for what it is – but having said that the change to mimic is one of the most ridiculous, nonsensical things I’ve ever seen.

Bubble shield had such a cool animation and it gets replaced by a mediocre boon removal with a pathetic animation by comparison.

Only 2 solutions IMO:
- restore the bubble shield
- replace staff #4 with bubble shield (this might actually encourage me to use staff again)

By “bubble shield” do you mean the projectile reflect? And by “mediocre boon removal” are you referring to Mimic? Because it doesn’t even remove the boons. It just copies them from your target to yourself… doesn’t strip from the target.

I would love Staff 4 to be the old Mimic. Chaos Storm is really powerful though, especially in a zerg. Maybe a trait to make Chaos Storm also reflect projectiles?

I loved every mesmer change except the change to Mimic. It was a good skill that had a very strong situational use which was essentially the same as Engineer Shield 4 (with a different after-effect).

The new skill is also situational but the situations it is effective in (esp. in WvW & PvP) is much, much narrower & much weaker. Now with the very strong ranger presence Mimic would have been much more widely used. Instead the skill was, effectively, kitten into near-uselessness when you factor in the opportunity cost of having this ability on your bar instead of something more useful.

Mimic is by far now the absolute weakest mesmer skill and one of the most redundant skills I can think of across my warrior, ele, necro, engineer & mesmer.

4/6/4/0/0

Halting Strike, Greatsword Training
All mantra traits in Precision tree
Your choice in Chaos tree

Greatsword + GS

Crafting is the easiest, fastest way. It’s also the most expensive.

MailMail.6534:

I feel like this isn’t the conversation we had when we knew Mimic was being changed in the first place…

It was the conversation we were having in my guild. I just happened to see this thread while I was raging about it in WvW so I chimed in.

frifox.5283:

robotempire.2451:

You’re running a build specifically for a single trick that takes you mentally out of the fight at hand. It’s a dumb gimmick.

Build? I think you meant “only two utilities”.

Pedantic. If people can use the word “meta” like they do in this game, I can use the word “build” to mean “the traits & skills you’re using”.

Anyway, yes it’s a dumb gimmick to toss out mantras, null field, veil, blink, and so forth, so you can have a once-in-a-blue-moon chance to maybe copy a buff someone has at what might maybe be the right moment.

Neptune.2570:

Old mimic would have been nice huh. On another note mirror has become my go to heal.

The reflect is just way too short (2s), and a heal is just way too valuable to use for a moment of reflection IMO. It’s really, really inefficient.

The only other reasonable option now to counter ranger spam is Feedback and traited Focus 4. Those are both decent options. But you have to get particular traits for the latter to work, and feedback is trivial to circumvent.

frifox.5283:

robotempire.2451:

First, six minutes of stability? What. How does that work? Can engis stack stability or?

It was a unique case and I had time to equip skills. Engi dropped his mortar that gave him 2 min of stabo. Mimic + Arcane thievery = 4 mins. Push/pull him away from the mortar. When he came back on his mortar my skills were off cd and I robbed 4 more mins of stabo.

I could definitely see a combo with Arcane Thievery in zerging. Necro pops lich/plague form (20 sec stabo). You copy + steal it for 40 sec of stability and then moa the poor guy to rub it in.

No, I’m sorry. This requires way too much clicking around and trying to find just the right person, all the while you’re being useless as hell, probably standing around, focusing on what buffs the person you’re clicking on has. This is the exact opposite of what you should be doing in big battles. It’s navel gazing and takes you out of the fight. It benefits absolutely no one but you unless you’re also going to run Signet of Inspiration, in which case… I don’t know. That’s awful. You’re running a build specifically for a single trick that takes you mentally out of the fight at hand. It’s a dumb gimmick.

I agree that it’s neat you can do this (if you can, sounds suspect but also glitchy enough to make it through testing) but “neat” and “is useful in WvW” are not synonyms.

Fay.2357:

The best part is that I’m sure they made this change because their metrics said that mimic was extremely underused. Unfortunately, they didn’t stop to wonder if this change was turning the skill into something that no one would want to run ever in any possible build…

If this is in fact the reason they re-did this trait, I guarantee the reason it was underused was because the tooltip was terrible:

“Manipulation: Absorb a projectile attack to be redirected at foe.

Duration: 4 sec
Reflects missiles."

No one used it because no one knew what it did. Most mesmers I talked to about this missed the “Reflects missiles” part at the bottom because they read the top, saw that it sucked & looked boring/useless, and never got to the “Reflects missiles” part.

Put Mimic back the way it was and fix the darn tooltip.