Guild Wars 2

It’s like they aren’t confident in their product. Maybe because all it contains are “foundations” instead of a real content and that content might come in later patches, like new legendaries which we already know won’t be all ready by the launch. It could be very well the same with e.g. challenging content – publish a blog post, make people hyped about the “incoming” content and release it after a year or so.

There’s not enough time for at least 7 blog posts (6 elite specs plus a mysterious challenging group content, unless of course that content is another “foundation” and won’t need a seperate blog post).

thomdane.3670:

So, if they gave the people that bought the game after release all the same stuff that people who pre-ordered received, why then would people pre-order? FYI: All games do this, or do you not have a Gamestop where you live? Even if you do not have a Gamestop, have you seen a commercial for any major game advertised that didn’t have pre-order only items attached? Dragon Age, God of War, Halo, Mass Effect, Call of Duty, etc, etc, etc. All games do this to entice players to “buy now”. Anet is not a pioneer in this regard, even among MMO’s. (please see SW:ToR, WoW, Rift, etc).

Except it’s not a pre-order, rather a pre-purchase. You have to pay for it before you even know what you’re buying.

For all players who registered the core Guild Wars 2® game prior to January 23, 2015 and who upgrade their account by prepurchasing and registering any Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns edition before Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns‘ launch, we will add one additional character slot to your Guild Wars 2 account.

kek, you still have to buy it before the launch to get an additional slot.

Novuake.2691:

Yeah I think I agree. 75% would have been a good start to see how it goes. Half as effective is just going to make Air/fire and similar very oppressive.

75% bonus to endurace regeneration would make your dodge regenerating in 5,7s instead of 5, not really much of a difference. On the other hand, 50% bonus makes it 6,6(6)s. It’s not that severe.

Jekkt.6045:

now that vigour is 50% you don’t even need renewing stamina because the scepter trait is a perm 50% increase.

That trait won’t exist after Tuesday. On the other hand warrior can now achieve truly permanent vigour but equipping signet of stamina.

Why not arcane precision? You don’t need vigour and this trait was severly buffed by being moved to adept. :^)

Entenkommando.5208:

But what kind of content would you want?
Are you satisfied by just doing the same raid instance 4327986 times because the item you want has a drop chance of 0.0000001% ?
That’s not how it should be.
And I’m happy that it’s not how they do it.

What’s the difference between that and running around Silverwastes with a pack of spades?

What’s the difference between that and killing VW 4327986 times?

People don’t run instances in this game for a very rare item.

What the kitten is with all those “xX” tags? Can anyone explain?

Anet devs said themselves that HoT will not have a typical amount of expansion content because it focuses mostly on creating a foundation for new mechanics. In other words, don’t expect expansion-worthy content but pay as much as usual or even more.

lordkrall.7241:

Content is not everything that counts though.
There are rather large amount of (big) things coming with HoT.

It is of course also worth pointing out that $50 is rather standard price for a AAA MMO expansion.

For a standard amount of content coming with a standard expansion. Right now it looks more like a glorified living story season 3.

Maladon.5760:

Value is subjective. Fifty dollars is nothing to an adult. For example…A man with a wife and three kids wants a burger for dinner. He ends up paying about $50 to eat his burger. If he wants an ice cream cone it will cost him around 10-15 dollars. Fifty dollars is nothing.

I think you forget that gw2 is a global game and not everywhere people earn as much money as in the so called western world.

Decorations for guild halls as an reward? I chuckled. Sorry.

Uninstall?

Exactly. For instance, Witcher 3 cost me about the half of its “western” price. Now, that means I got one of the best rpgs in the history for about 25 euro. HoT seems like a outrage in comparison.

Sober Oni.8290:

Let’s look at WoW for a moment shall we? Keeping things as cheap as possible the core game costs $19.99, and the lowest price for a subscription is $11.50, so if you play for a year that’s $157.99. This is ignoring expansions, the higher priced subscription plans, and so on.

GW2 is a one time purchase of $40, $20, or $10 depending on when you got it. $157.99 for a year versus a flat $40. The $50 price tag is fine.

Gw2 isn’t WoW. Unless you can use it for your own argumentation, right? Quite hypocritical I would say. Perhaps we should also get raids, gear progression and hardcore content?

Stark.1350:

Yes, pay $50 for a game that actually ends after, what.. 60 hours?

How many thousands of hours have you gotten out of GW2?

It takes about twice of that, 120 hours. Also, quality wise comparing Witcher 3 to Gw2 is quite silly. Unless you like looting pinata for thousand of hours.

Everyone will quit or just move to open world content?

Laraley.7695:

It’s not like anyone will bother to even spawn fgs now.

And the “buff” to fiery rush was that it ignores moving impairing conditions. Huehue. Fgs will not even be a mobility gimmick after this change. Good job there.

Jski.6180:

What you dont do that!? I mean removing soft cc effect on movement ability may push d/d ele into more mobility then say a thf who is effectively that way now. If you make the cdr no longer on hit but build in always for rtl it may be to easy for eles to get away.

I guess no movement impairing effect on burning speed (600 range, 15s cooldown, easy to get in combat on khylo) will suddenly make ele much better in mobility deparment. Please, be reasonable, it’s not like warrior’s leaps won’t get changed.

Right, because we can get staff and both daggers at the same time.

Comparing new rush with rtl, it’s just a sad view.

holodoc.5748:

cough git push —force cough

They use P4.

Apply only to allies? Don’t we have enough of those traits in water magic?

Nike.2631:

If you define PvE as dungeons and nothing but, sure.

I thought zerker “problem” occurs only in dungeons/fractals. In the progressive and tolerant open world everyone plays what they want.

MattyP.6954:

It’s sad because there is very little actual player choice when it comes to gear. In a game that prides itself on character customization, the fact that most player choice is illusory is quite sad.

And what that choice will give you? Will it change the gamplay if I now have 70% of my old dps but twice as much effective hp?

Or just remove it.

Sagat.3285:

Casual player: This challenging content could have been easy for me
Non casual player: This easy content could have been challenging for me

When you try to please all you will satisfy neither (most of the time) that happened with Black Desert as well even the casuals are tired of the RNG grind,tanky easy trash mobs etc. only superior in graphics and customization at least in Korea right now. To those saying the game is intended for casuals you can’t really prove that, it is casual but it wasn’t intended so they just rolled with it and weren’t familiar with the possible results, now they are I’m not saying it will/could become hardcore but definitely anti casual/active.

@Thread Stop using other mmos if you are being biased.

I’d like you to stop dividing community to casual and non casual players because it has nothing to do with how hard this game should be. Casualness implies only how much effort you want put into a game, not how good you are. I’m a fairly casual player who plays less than 2 hours daily and yet I would really appreciate something more challenging than looting pinata.

tigirius.9014:

Some of us are hoping the Zerker will be the thing of the past once this launches because it does nothing but detract from actual strategy.

Can you elaborate this?

lordkrall.7241:

Triple Trouble and Tequatl is also still challenging to many players.

It’s challenging to below-average players.

If anyone considers tequatl of triple wurm as challenging then this game is lost. If the upcoming expansion won’t bring anything new for the better-than-average players then they will simply get bored.

scerevisiae.1972:

I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’ve never played it.

He’s quite right. That profession is never balanced properly, it’s either overpowered or underpowered and anet balance team has no idea how to make that class tick. The next patch will swing the pendulum to the underpowered side for about a year.

Elemental Attunement is getting nerfed even if they wouldn’t make it GM trait. The reason for that is reduced boon duration which you currently get from putting points in arcana line. The protection uptime will go down.

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

12 would be difficult, but 9 is definitely doable
http://dulfy.net/2014/07/11/gw2-elementalist-pve-class-guide-by-haviz-and-zelyhn/#Pre-fight_rotation

There’s no point in blasting more than 9 times since that’s the size of the queue. Fury, as most boons, stacks up to 9 times.

Iris Ng.9845:

Pre-stacking might before the fight will allow to stack up to 2 minutes of fury.

Not unless you have at least +33,(3)% fury duration.

Just wait 3 more years for another elite spec to have a choice between 2 of them.

Eurhetemec.9052:

If they don’t, HoT has failed to some extent.

Right now, the “endgame” PvE is to a large extent the dungeons, and it’s also the most reliable (if not technically fastest) way to earn cash money.

If that’s still the case in HoT, well, kitten . The “challenging PvE content” should, if they’ve done it right, be both of those things. So the problem will only be if people are excluded from that content for being non-Zerker.

HoT won’t have any new dungs and most (if not all ) of the content will be open world. To equate endgame with dungeons is too far-fetched since those are nothing but a farming scheme which you can perform pretty easily in silverwastes where gear diversity is pretty extreme for everyone’s liking.

Supreme.3164:

Can I get Robert Gee for ele too?…the ele community can pay the transfer

Believe in Karl.

Dub.1273:

Have I missed how Invicta is spelled with C?

Words in Latin are pronounced with extra emphasis on one syllable and in this case it’s in-vic-ta. Perhaps it’s the reason.

The expansion will mostly focus on an open world content where it doesn’t matter what you wear as long as you have fun.

Why do you care if you get any team support if the hot content will be just an open world where it virtually doesn’t matter what you play as long as you like it?

If you take only gear in comparison (which obviously you would because you argue against a gear, not a build, right?) then fully geared cleric’s has about 50% of fully geared zerker while granting him 33% damage reduction (so the zerker guy receives 50% more damage) as well as 1000+ healing power.

Eponet.4829:

Phantasms are already the dominant style throughout pretty much every aspect of PvE, to the point where nothing else actually worked. It’s a trait that buffs shatters, which are only commonly seen in PvP.

Buffing an underused playstyle creates more viable playstyles, buffing an already dominant type reduces the viability of anything else.

The only build that anyone ever sat on a single element with was fire with the staff, and that only ever happened in dungeon groups. Every other weapon combination already swaps attunements like crazy. Even staff does if you value CC, healing, reflection, and condition removal.

Do you realise that there are only three builds archetypes for ele in PvE? And of those three only one will remain viable for speed runs. The one that sits in one attunement. Elemental Attunement is used only in PvP, just like Illusionary Persona. Both are never used in PvE and only one will be used in the future because for some bizzare reason it got baseline’d together with like 4 other traits.

This is a very articulate diagnostic dissection of the problem OP. I can only clap before my PC and hope Anet will finally implement some kind of a solution to tackle this problem.

Eponet.4829:

Switching elements is already important to the class. Making it baseline would reduce build diversity by punishing elementalists from focusing on one element (Other than fresh air builds) when it’s already one of their weaker options to the point where only one very specific weapon build can get away with it in one particular game mode.

So what about Illusionary Persona? That trait is hardly phantasm build friendly yet it’s going to be baseline.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The whole trait preview is a big IF. Most of the buffs done to other classes were followed by “numbers are being adjusted, they’ll probably be lower” comments.

Numbers are not functionality.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Aurashare builds have a lot of potential. You’ll be able to offer fury, (swiftness), protection and stun/ chill/ 10% damage reduction a lot more often, with the changes in air and water traits. That’s free frost auras, shock auras, weakness and damage. If we scrap air for arcana, that will translate to less offensive support for EA or for evasive arcana.

If they would change powerful auras.

The old builds with massive cleansing will lose evasive arcana, but they’ll have enough protection (with EA + elemental contigency) to scrap the 10 points earth for the “selfish” aura prot they currently pick, which will allow them to invest on, say, fire for massive fury or blind support.

This old build already started to move out of the meta.

DiogoSilva.7089:

People only want Elemental Attunement to be baseline because of its high protection duration, which single-handely makes elementalists viable (in pvp). Everything else about it is good, but not necessary-good to justify being baseline.

Considering that our new grandmaster minor trait at earth is going to give us 20% damage reduction while in earth, plus a free stone heart/ diamond skin, players will no longer require EA to be viable. Also, the buff to blinding ashes, one with air and the tempest defense + lightning rod combo will help cover the elementalist’s defensive needs.

EA will no longer be necessary to put our baseline defense at a viable level.

That being said, EA is still avery interesting trait, better designed than Elemental Contigency, and I’d rather have a nerfed version of EA at master tier than its pseudo-tank variation.

There’s also a regen that removes 1 additional condition while swapping to water.

Mo Mo.1947:

Let’s remember that everything ever will change about the stat system with the disconnection of stats from traits. So whatever preconceived notions you have about how people run their armor stats right now are completely irrelevant to the new system and however they will choose to incorporate stat adjustment.

Also it’s worth considering that while they are trying to preserve as many of the old builds as possible, they are also opening up the possibility of new builds.

Open your mind to new possibilities instead of treating metabattle.com like a prescriptive holy text.

Exactly. Now you won’t have a single stat point put into healing power without having a gear that gives it. Which means this trait is even more worthless and should compete with zephyr’s speed as well as lingering elements. The competition is getting tough.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Repeating something that’s obviously nonsensical doesn’t make it true. If your logic held, everyone would wear identical gear in PvP/WvW.

Effectiveness and a playstyle are not the same.

J Eberle.9312:

Too good for my food.

J Eberle.9312:

Srry I thought it was pvp.

J Eberle.9312:

#Assuming ISentPowerFood

Are you that logical on a daily basis?