Guild Wars 2

phaeris.7604:

It’s utter garbage and is unusable in www and pve.

oh, so it hasn’t changed then. i wouldn’t say unusable, just very underwhelming.

Now if they just made pets not evaporate within 5 seconds of any zerg v zerg encounter that would be great.

Cufufalating.8479:

I have them and, honestly, I was a little disappointed.
…
The problem, for me, was speed. I really hate playing without +25% speed, and without traveller or speed runes, and without a spare utiltity slot (due to the need for 2 traps and a stunbreaker) there’s just no way.
…
the traps themselves reveal you. It’s annoying and does limit the usefulness of the stealth. I was using Flame/Frost trap since thats what I always do so I personally didn’t find it added much for me.
…
there is a noticable delay between when you think the trap is set and when you actually get the buffs. That, coupled with the traps often dragging you out of the stealth made it feel pretty clunky.

Now.. with that said.. the Super Speed (which is +100% if anyone is wondering) is pretty cool and certainly something worth having.
…
I’ll go back to my sweet sweet Traveller Runes.

Shame. I would love to play traps in wvw in my guild roams but the 600 range kills it. My first thought when I saw these runes was addressing the lack of speed or swiftness, the stealth- breaking and the delay are the nails in the coffin.

I can’t see traps ever being viable in wvw until they have more than 600 range.

I came to the same conclusion – glyphs of storms is slightly better but they’re still not worth building around. The Elementals are pretty useless.

trap ranger sucks in WVW because the range on traps is only 600, which means 1 dead ranger once your lightning reflexes is down. traps are functionally equivalent to marks yet marks are 1200 range untraited, what gives?

then there’s the absurdity of condi utility traits being the crit %/crit damage trait line….

traps were already decent at small-scale roaming, it didn’t really need the stealth. 900 range for traited traps is all that was needed.

lolwut? All 3 elites are pretty good. If you want to see what crappy elites look like, look at Ele.

how to make both new players and the PVP community happy in one foul swoop? get rid of downed state.

so what are the triggerable skills for each elemental?

The thing I miss most about GW1 was the awesome, unparalleled in any game level of build and gameplay depth.

Something that this game sorely lacks. And no, before someone says it: adjusting stats through gear choices is not depth, and neither is dodge-rolling.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

You don’t consider new content every two weeks with occasional breaks for quality-of-life improvements to be Anet supporting the game?

LS is not real content.

How about the bug fixes that occur between those patches?

What bug fixes? The ride-the-lightning overshoot bug has been left unaddressed for about 18 months now. The official wiki is still full of bugs that have been there since release.

What about these forums, which they use to respond to players constantly on week days. GW1 didn’t even have forums to receive player feedback, updates were less substantial, and occurred less frequently. I love both GW1 and GW2, but more effort is clearly going into GW2.

The level of communication is also pretty bad.

GW1 had much bigger and better updates. How much actual content has been added to wvw in 2 years? Not much.

Carighan.6758:

There’s also DAoC, which until Trials of Atlantis (incidentally the expansion which drove the lion share of players away from the game) was pretty much full-PvP once you hit max level. That one was fairly successful, capping at ~400k players stable I think.

TOA didn’t kill DAOC’s numbers, WOW did. DAOC population actually went up after TOA.

Harper.4173:

It makes PVE much more forgiving – allowing people to survive much more and groups to perform better.

In the simplest terms – you’d lose more people if you didn’t have it than they did by having it in the game.

That’s exactly my point though – it’s a PVE feature that does not belong in PVP. You only need to look at how hard PVP has failed in this game to see why diluting skill levels down to the lowest common denominator doesn’t work.

How about – just make them as good as pets are in other games? They are already close to useless in the current game, with even more cleave being added (thief and necro daggers, classes that are already hard for ranger), this is only going to make them worse.

My preferred option would be to have the option to ditch them entirely or grant them a blanket 50% reduction of AOE damage.

scerevisiae.1972:

There is nothing more annoying in this game than fighting 1v2, getting one of your opponents downed, and then being unable to do jack kitten while the other casually rezzes his friend and there’s not a kitten thing you can do other than AOE and hope for the best.

On the other hand, that is probably the point of the system: Enforce the effect of numerical superiority.

Usually in MMOs this isn’t immediately obvious because players die “too” fast. Same in GW2, you can get downed really really fast in most situations. To counteract that, the downed system allows the team with the numerical advantage to recover their injured from the surprise attack.

That is pretty much the opposite of what a well-designed game should be aiming for. A smaller, more skilful force should always be able to overcome a larger, disorganised force. DS in this respect is very much an anti-skill feature.

Indeed. Would be a very small change implementation-wise, for a huge gain in build depth.

^ and the really silly thing is if you’re on a class that either has no interrupts or you burnt your interrupt and it’s on CD there’s not a kitten thing you can do to prevent the rez, as the health regain rate while rezzing is > rate you an apply damage.

There is nothing more annoying in this game than fighting 1v2, getting one of your opponents downed, and then being unable to do jack kitten while the other casually rezzes his friend and there’s not a kitten thing you can do other than AOE and hope for the best.

at the end of the day, Ele utilities are competing with cantrips, which add a great deal of survivability, and are backed up by great traits to boot.

glyphs offer very little survivability (currently) and worse, have really weak trait options. even after the changes, i still think glyphs (and signets) won’t stack up.

i’d really like to see tempest defence and lightning rod merged and a new glyph-oriented GM trait added.

While it sucks that it’s taken 2 years just to begin to address a balance issue that was obvious and well-communicated in the first month, it’s nice that something has been done.

The big issue has always been that Eles are so reliant on water/arcane traits and cantrips for survivability, and I don’t think even buffed glyphs will offer enough on that front.

I think what’s missing is another decent trait, as inscription is pretty unremarkable.

Not sure the signet buffs are enough to make them worth taking over cantrips because the loss of survivability is so great. There is also the fact that it’s a 70pt investment for a signet-aura build.

coglin.1867:

Seems extremely irrational to cry about how 5 people can rez a player faster then a single 1 can stomp them. It makes perfect sense to me.

Agree 5 people should be faster than 1, but it should be far slower than it is currently – rez time should always be longer than a standard stomp IMO.

This would also fix the (pretty ridiculous) situation where 1 person can rez another while standing in a lava font.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Elemental Attunement […] is pretty much a grandmaster trait at the master tier (until the day protection’s duration gets nerfed).

IMO the criteria for a GM trait should be: does it change the way you play? No, not really… so at least on that criteria, IMO EleAtt is about the right level.

In fact, i’d make the counterargument that EleAtt provides what I see as the baseline functionality and survivability of the class, so IMO it should just be integrated into the baseline class mechanic of attunement switching such that the buffs apply only to the caster, and then there would be a trait that makes the buffs AOE.

Devildoc.6721:

scerevisiae.1972:

Devildoc.6721:

4+ water and 4+ arcane are not at all mandatory

mandatory if you want to be good i meant. you can run 1/1/1/1/1 if you like, doesn’t disprove the point.

depends on game mode, and I’d argue that you have to be better than “good” to rely less on passive defenses from increased health from speccing higher into water.

The main reason for 20 in water is the active defences of the 15 water heal + 20 condition clear.

ryston.7640:

Oh.

Well, there was once this game called Guild Wars 1. It head tremendous depth of strategy. Selecting the abilities your player brought to game was sort of like constructing a magic the gathering deck. We looked forward to a future in which we could have that game, but with a z-axis.

So it’s sequel, guild wars 2, replaced strategy with button combos, simplified the teamwork and positioning elements, and completely gutted the abstract and potentially creative skill system with something simplistic, containing only a couple of viable options.

So compared to MMO PvP overal, it was alright. Had a few things going for it.

Compared to Guild Wars 1, it was a terrible discgraceful shame.

A lot of us sort of lump it in with the other big dissapointments of the time period: Starwars episodes 1,2,3. EverQuest 2, Diablo 3, I even think Tribes Vengeance was in on that one.

Maybe GW2 PvP isn’t so bad, but it sure is a dissapointment after GW1. So much so that it often fealt like the devs weren’t even honestly trying.

Quoting for truth; exactly how i feel.

I think Lightning Rod is still very weak for a GM trait – it’s essentially equivalent to Halting Strike, an adept mesmer trait.

The other big killer is that Ele has only 1 skill (2 on focus) per weapon that causes disable. This means this GM trait is about as damaging as Arcane wave, but on a longer cooldown, and (but for the weakness, woopedy-doo) is available as a mesmer adept trait.

Conncept.7638:

Quit exaggerating.

It’s way more than 95%.

lol! too true.

This game’s PVP will never be taken seriously while it is burdened by this ridiculous downed state.

Tman.6349:

scerevisiae.1972:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

scerevisiae.1972:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

scerevisiae.1972:

Personally I hate being forced to switch, it’s just so limited. I would have liked to have been able to build 1 and 2 element specialists as well as 4 element generalists.

Cause 5 weapon skills isn’t limiting ~.~?

no? every other class has 5 skills per weapon…

with interesting, well-implemented traits, 5 weapon skills could easily be every bit as good/flexible as 20.

*10 in total, 5×2.

every other class has 5 skills per weapon.

5 skills per weapon.

5 skills.

per weapon.

gg.

Which is why he points it out that using “…it’s just so limited” and ’I’d like to specialize in one attunement’ in a single thought is silly.

you’re conflating “limited” solely with #skills when I was clearly referring to builds/playstyles.

being forced to play Ele as a 4-element generalist is clearly more limiting than being able to also specialise in 1 or 2 elements.

Devildoc.6721:

4+ water and 4+ arcane are not at all mandatory

mandatory if you want to be good i meant. you can run 1/1/1/1/1 if you like, doesn’t disprove the point.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

scerevisiae.1972:

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

scerevisiae.1972:

Personally I hate being forced to switch, it’s just so limited. I would have liked to have been able to build 1 and 2 element specialists as well as 4 element generalists.

Cause 5 weapon skills isn’t limiting ~.~?

no? every other class has 5 skills per weapon…

with interesting, well-implemented traits, 5 weapon skills could easily be every bit as good/flexible as 20.

*10 in total, 5×2.

every other class has 5 skills per weapon.

5 skills per weapon.

5 skills.

per weapon.

gg.

+1 both should be ground-targeted. Almost every other AOE in the game is, and it would increase the skill required to land the skill.

Phoenix could then become a homing projectile.

Feedback:

• Elemental Contingency – still nowhere enough to make anyone choose it over Evasive Arcana.
• Lightning Rod – it’s certainly an improvement but pretty ineffectual – IMO current effect should be merged with Tempest Defense, which by itself is still a very weak GM trait. Replace with a new Glyph GM trait.
• Blinding Ashes – well-deserved change.
• Storm glyph changes – probably brings it to the “right” power level for a utility skill (though probably still not worth using in WVW due to crazy # of retal procs). I still think Glyphs on the whole lack the trait support to make them worthy of losing all the survivability from cantrips.
• Elemental changes – a good improvement, but I still doubt GoLE will ever get used.
• Signet changes – signet/aura build still requires very heavy trait investment (all 14 points) and loses a hell of a lot of survivability.

What was missing?

• 4+ water, 4+ arcane still effectively mandatory
• Still a lot of crazy-bad traits littering the trait trees.
• Focus improvements
• Conjure rework (no amount of buffs will make them usable while they have such clunky mechanics)

This is from a WVW/roaming perspective.

Cries Of Sorrow.5864:

scerevisiae.1972:

Personally I hate being forced to switch, it’s just so limited. I would have liked to have been able to build 1 and 2 element specialists as well as 4 element generalists.

Cause 5 weapon skills isn’t limiting ~.~?

no? every other class has 5 skills per weapon…

with interesting, well-implemented traits, 5 weapon skills could easily be every bit as good/flexible as 20.

Personally I hate being forced to switch, it’s just so limited. I would have liked to have been able to build 1 and 2 element specialists as well as 4 element generalists.

In the wvw roaming scene, Sc/T PU is already very strong.

Agree that Sc is the worst of the mesmer weapons but I’m not sure this is the right change.

PhDusk.2590:

The idea of being 1shot by a thief does not fun at all, please dun give anet bad ideas.

Downed state is the reason why thieves can have high burst — downed state is intended to be a second chance. Removing downed state would necessarily involve increasing HP and/or reducing burst across the board to achieve roughly the same time-to-kill.

I fail to see the wisdom of making elites compulsory. It reduces the available depth/diversity of the game for no upside. They weren’t compulsory in the first game either, despite being on the whole more more powerful in GW1.

I’d have chosen another utility even with the current (pre-nerf) elites. Ele elites are terrible.

Deified.7520:

I mean personally I think the downed state is the worst feature to have in a pvp game and I personally think it attributes to this game not being taken seriously in the esport scene, but I’ve given up on hoping it would get disabled. However at least balance it or attempt to. Right now it’s just this horrific mess where some classes are HUGELY situational and some classes are not.

Downed state (DS) has been complained about since beta. My highly unscientific guesstimation of those that PVP based on forum responses would be that roughly 25% hate it, 25% like it, and 50% don’t like it but have learned to live with it. I certainly know of PVPing friends of mine who don’t play this game because of how much downed state turned them off.

For me personally, i’m in the hate category. I would otherwise describe myself as a hardcore PVPer but I don’t PVP in this game at all (only WVW) because I hate downed state so much I can’t stand PVP in this game.

I hate how it plays, hate how it looks, hate how it breaks the flow of the action, and especially hate how it totally ruins 1v2s and heavily favours the side with the greater numbers (the opposite of what well-designed game mechanics should be aiming for).

How anyone thought that being forced into a 4-skill mini-game when you die would be more fun/engaging than the main combat is beyond me. From my perspective it’s one of the clear reasons why competitive PVP has bombed hard in this game over the past 2 years and a core reason of why it will never be good, because DS is just not fun.

IMO instead of kittening around and essentially bribing players to play PVP with handouts (and I note, PVP is still very unpopular), Anet should seriously consider making DS optional (eg: in custom arenas) and seeing how players react.

Rym.1469:

So far, double sigil is a problem only on Thieves, so…..

air and fire are both on-crit sigils, when one fires it puts the other on CD. using them together is pointless.

I just wish they’d gone for the long-duration, no-stealth-in-combat implementation of stealth you find in other MMOs.

I still find ranger pets mostly useless punching bags of highly questionable usefulness. I’d like to see pets brought up to the point where they’re actually useful first. As it stands GW2 holds the mantle for worst implementation of a pet class ever.

Can we have a pvp game mode that doesn’t have downed state/rallying?

For me it’s poorly-designed because the game mode just isn’t very fun.

The things that kill fun for me:

• downed state/rally mechanics. Not appropriate for a PVP game.
• standing in circles being more important than winning fights

Distaste.4801:

2. Mechanics, class balance, and depth. ArenaNet went for a streamlined simplistic system for esports and balanced around fast action. The problem of course is that fast action doesn’t leave tons of room for strategic or skilled play. Their continued class balance is absolutely laughable and when PvP players see that a dev can’t handle the most obvious of class balance changes quickly, they leave. The game just lacks a lot of depth that provides for counter-play. The slower caster times and casting knockback in say WoW allowed for some good counter play. The tons of different skills and mechanics in LoL provide lots of depth and the casting times/animations for lots of skills provide enough time for decent counter play.

and this ^ — a general lack of any kind of cerebral depth to the combat, spamming abilities outperforms build-crafting and careful use of abilities, no real counterplay, very few real build alternatives.

What disappoints me most about this game is that GW1 had build and tactical options in spades and the combat & build system had a real cerebral depth and quality to it that this game just doesn’t.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Chukree.1756:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I’ve adjusted the position at low resolutions to always be below the targeting UI.

Hey Evan, I am sorry, but it is not fixed. This is a clear visualization of how serious this issue is. (this is a hot join game I joined to test,.)

Sorry, I meant I’ve fixed it for a future build. Things like this cannot be fixed without a build, and this isn’t hotfix material. You’ll have to wait a while.

A full UI for moving stuff around sure. Even something basic like reading offsetX, offsetY, widthX for each window type from a config file would be a significant improvement that provides a lot of player value for minimal work.

I play at high resolution on a large monitor and GW2’s UI is IMO really horrible for that kind of setup — opponent’s HP/status, self condition and self boon information is located in 3 different locations (which on a large monitor is impossible to read all 3 info sources in a single glance).

On top of being located in separate places, the icons for conditions and boons are tiny.

Not to mention every decent MMO since UO has had individually movable/scalable UI elements, why not this one?

The argument that you should be able to read boons/conditions from the rendered view only does not hold up in a game with as many large & spammy particle effects as this one.

IMO warrior LB is a lot stronger than ranger LB for WVW due to much stronger AOE, & more useful CC. i think that says a lot.

all excellent suggestions IMO.

i particularly like the idea of GoLE producing an aura, some nice potential synergies there.

the only thing i would add is that glyphs feel like they need another trait. perhaps drop the new damage-on-interrupt trait to master level and add a GM glyph trait?

IMO SB is easily the ranger’s weakest weapon as it doesn’t do anything well, has no AOE, low defense/low mobility, just enable auto-attack and go to sleep. But hey, if you like it…

sword/?, axe/? are probably your best pairings.

BrunoBRS.5178:

it’s on the condi line, but it’s also on the toughness line, and guess what, GS is a very defensive weapon. thieves tend to get 300 condi damage that they absolutely won’t use just because they want steal recharge. every profession has a trait line like that.

He’s right to be pointing out that it’s poor design for the traits of a skill to be in a traitline whose stats do not benefit that skill, because it is poor design.

What disappoints me most about the ranger changes is that Sword #1 wasn’t fixed, and they didn’t do something about traps.

secondary professions would be awesome, this game lacks depth.

not soon enough. anything more than a month between balance patches means the game doesn’t take itself seriously enough to be worth playing. IMO.