Guild Wars 2

the GW1 system of rewarding a significant portion of skills (or in this game, traits) via quest lines worked really well there, why is the GW2 so retrograde?

staff skills are slow and not very responsive, yes.

another thing i’ve noticed playing from australia the game isn’t very well-tuned for higher latency connections compared to other games.

i’m well-used to the game’s sluggish controls by now but it’s a major turnoff/disadvantage for any kind of competitive play.

While pretty, this game doesn’t hold a candle to the first game for skill&mechanics design and overall coolness. All the stuff that made GW1 a unique, cerebral game got left out.

This is why B2P for a MMO is a broken model – once you spend the $$$ to buy the game, they have little incentive to keep players happy – they want you to spend regularly in the gem store or stop playing completely to keep their network costs down.

The best way to bleed players is to focus virtually all development resources on producing stuff that can be bought through the gem store, so non-buyers get bored and leave.

And this is exactly what they do.

IMO Anet overthink their maps. As in, their maps would be better if they didn’t tweak the geography to limit/allow siege placement in exactly N good locations.

It is the sandbox/dynamic element of WVW that makes it fun, IMO they ought to get maps to a playable level (no terrain seams, unseen obstacles, falling through the world etc) and then out it out there as a “beta” map, and then let it evolve organically from player feedback and usage.

he’s obviously on stackgate.

finally someone has found something that rangers do better than another class in WVW.

ArcticPanzerWolf.7692:

I’ve been digging Blinding Ashes. I’m running a 6/2/0/0/6 staff build with Blinding Ashes, Burning Fire, Burning Precision and Elemental Surge with all Arcane Utilities and Arcane Mastery. The Burn/Blind up time is excellent, especially given the passive Burn application from Burning+Arcane Precision, Flame Barrier and Burning Fire. I love the synergy with Elemental Surge, giving me access to two AOE Burn/Blinds on 24 and 20 second cool downs and a single target Burn/Blind on a 16 second cool down.

The blind is on a 10sec global cooldown – you don’t get AOE blinding, even with skills that apply AOE burning. And that is the real problem with the trait – that the blind is not deterministic, it is applied randomly for AOE source of burning.

If blind was applied on all applications of burning (ie: a per-target CD or per-cast CD instead of global CD), then BA would be a good trait.

As a single target blind on a global 10sec CD IMO it is rather crap – eg: guardian has an trait that applies AOE blind on virtue of justice that refreshes on every kill and it’s at the adept level.

→ BA needs a buff.

Aerathnor.8305:

Absent Minded.5821:

If we had faster pets and birds that could scale walls instead of flying up the stairs I would be sooo happy.

Rangers sending birds to take out enemy AC’s… Finally a place in WvW!

+1

Aside from rangers gaining some WVW usefulness/uniqueness, it would be good for ACs/siege to have more counterplay anyways (over and above simply counter-sieging).

Taygus.4571:

zenleto.6179:

Mesket.5728:

…and new players will take more time to learn the game…

How is this bad? Levelling is so fast in this game that you can easily get to 80 and not have a clue.

The problem is that, with this trait system.. you’re going to get to lv80 and know even less about your class!

This. Would have made much more sense to get trait points earlier and to then space out getting individual traits.

i just watched the stream and my mouth dropped open when i heard someone say warriors are weak to conditions. WTH? warriors deal with conditions better than any other class in the game. not just through stance, cleansing ire, dogged march, shake it off passive+active, but also through high passive regen.

The first match I played when I died I was forced to play some ridiculous 4 skill mini-game that had nothing to do with the actual combat, and I thought to myself, wow, this game is kitten.

i think many of us would just like to see the conjure mechanics reworked to the point where they don’t feel clunky as kitten in PVP and don’t lock you out of your 20 class-defining elemental skills.

hihey.1075:

Energy+Battle is great on DD. Actually I think it’s the best setup for both Defense+Offense.

dude, energy and battle are both on-swap sigils, and so share the same CD. it is pointless to run 2 on-swap sigils, or 2 of any other of the same type of sigil.

this is basic info.

IMO Ele just needs choices. Still way too much dependence on arcane+water+cantrips. All of the new traits suck.

Ranger is fine for solo and small group stuff – it’s GVG and zerg situations where ranger really sucks. Hard.

The core issues are: lack of AOE, and lack of group utility.

Aside from that, their traits are pretty badly organised – too many bow traits, traps in a line that doesn’t make sense, generally too many filler traits.

Oh, and the pet still sucks.

How about: first shot from stealth pierces armour (treat all targets as if they had 1500 armour).

Then give SB a stealth move.

BlusterWolf.2103:

but but by doing this means Anet openly admit that their ranger mechanic design is a total failure QAQ

…but it is a total failure. Some games have good pet classes, but this game is not one of them.

It takes 30 trait points to attunement swap at 9 sec, default swap is 12 sec.

HappyCandy.8041:

/!\ Mystical Dragon Finisher /!\

Get rid of the finisher(s) and I’ll watch your video. Finishers are for baddies.

gawker.8340:

You’ll hardly find an objection here. It seems logical that Jaguars run faster than men.

Not to mention birds. Or why birds can’t attack people on walls.
poor design is poor.

Lettuce.2945:

I wasn’t joking. Stop, drop, and roll trait. You are welcome.

Artificially making 1 class more susceptible to a condition in order to justify a total crap trait like SD&R is terrible game design. Not to mention, dogged march (warrior adept) is twice as good yet costs half the points.

Dude they have a different GM trait, they’re not the same build.

Elitist.8701:

This leaves me with about 2200 armor, which is pretty glassy, but at the same time Im only hitting 1.3k lightning whips, so not really glass damage.

welcome to Ele!

Sarlack.4096:

FWIW, I play ranger ONLY…

i think i see the problem why you think ranger is not quite badly underpowered (in WVW)…

Junkpile.7439:

scerevisiae.1972:

on the positive side, Archeage is looking awesome.

Actually looks like total kitten. Combat is like straight from runes of magic and graphics are about same level.

each to their own. I’d take a good sandbox MMO over themepark anyday.

easily the main one:

• stagnation because of neglect

breaking it down:

• no meaningful class changes, it’s GWEN or GTFO.
• stagnant build meta, most people still using same build as last year.
• failure to address the zerg > * problem.
• killing matchup threads, almost as much fun as the actual game.
• lack of support for GVG format.
• reward giveaways in sPVP.
• frustration of dev resources being wasted on bloodlust camp changes that noone really wanted.
• rampant EOTM karma-training.
• pop imbalances because of incentivised server transfers to maximise $$$.
• GW2 pop declining.

on the positive side, Archeage is looking awesome.

Larynx.2453:

Why is bringing boon strip not a better answer than nerfing might?

because nearly half of all classes can boon strip?

Sadly, all the balance effort has gone into D/D yet again, and other weapons just ignored.

Am still waiting on the day that i can roam with my staff ele and not be at a tremendous disadvantage vs certain classes/specs.

Am still waiting for the day when I can equip a focus and have it feel like it offers something to make it worth considering over /D (besides novelty value).

Same goes for signets, glyphs, conjures.

I think any balance discussion of Ele should be focused on the things that AREN’T performing, instead of continually focusing on D/D.

I have no issues killing DS Eles on my S/D thief.

Gratz on trying on trying something different but TBH condi Ele is pretty terrible. It’s not really original either, the original Da Phoenix Ele was effectively a bunker condi Ele.

Diamond Skin still remains OP vs other condi classes, but useless everywhere else.

necro is a fine class and surprisingly versatile. don’t roll an Ele, they are horrible to level.

Whenever there’s a massive swing towards one rune set, it’s pretty obvious there’s a problem.

Conversely, there are just as many crappy runes around as before the revamp, so am left wondering what was the point?

0/0/0/4+/4+ is the meta, and has been since release.

Worth mentioning that LF is the worst offender for the dreaded stuck-in-ground bug that continues to plague the game.

I don’t think responsiveness was ever the problem – it’s that F2’s cast times are way too high across the board. Most pet F2s should be in the range of instant-0.5sec.

How about: make GW2’s implementation of conquest not the worst implementation of conquest?

for small man that’s probably fine, but for anything larger than 5v5 you’ll want closer to 3K armour and 18K+ HP.

Not a lot has changed really – the new traits haven’t really made any impact at all. Anyone serious about performing well in PVP/WVW still specs 20+ water, 20+ arcane and 2-3 cantrips.

Similarly, the icons for conditions and boons are minuscule and badly placed because we’re supposed to be able to see them in combat. Clearly this approach does not work because of how spammy the combat is, together with overly flashy particle effects.

phaeris.7604:

It still amazed me that mesmers were put on the medium hp tables when they have such amazing escapes/invis/evades/blocks etc..

This. I can spec almost full zerker on my mesmer and yet be harder to kill than my 2700 armour Ele with 3 cantrips.

Don’t get me started on the damage:survivability ratio of my shout warrior…

Bump for great justice.

grifflyman.8102:

Just give us a new scoring system based on population and give us a score DECAY. The longer you hold something the less points you get.

I think you mean the other way around: The longer you hold something the more points per tick you get.

The other positive changes they could make are:
1) dilute the rewards for taking objectives by the number of players who participated (discourage zerging).
2) make every kill count towards the score (re-balance scoring & ticks) to promote player clashes over karma training.

The one addition to WVW I’d most like to see is a PVP/PVE dungeon along the lines of Darkness Falls in DAOC, which changes ownership based on which server controls the most X and essentially functions as:

• a reward for the leading server, and
• a balancing mechanic that removes some of the dominant server’s players from the battlefield.

Firebaall.5127:

It’s cute that sPVP players dump on WVW players.

sPVP is not a skilled playfield. It’s about mob mentality at best. The side that zergs the capture points the most wins. HotJoin is about using that format to make the most out of the available rewards. sPVPers are watered down PvE players any day of the week.

WVW players are laughing at you guys making the distinction. Anet is laughing at the players who represent 100 percent of their paycheque who think their opinions matter.

Fixed.

I think their WVW strategy is to let WVW atrophy in order to funnel more players towards the bellyflop that is sPVP.

Since release there has not been a single thing added to WVW that I have enjoyed or benefited from as a player. Is it any wonder i’m cynical?

Take Root is great for soloing and small group stuff – much better than the regular ele elites, except for situational meteornado.

There have been threads and threads and threads about focus being sub-par and tons of good suggestions about how to improve it over the past 18months, but apparently quaggan backpacks were more important.

But yes, focus needs swiftness for QoL reasons, and air #4 seems like the best candidate.

As for it lacking character? so does mace for both heavies. So does staff on necro

Ranger LB dps is all in the auto attack, at least you need to o press buttons on other weapons. Necro staff is perhaps the most differentiated weapon in the game, not sure where you’re coming from there.

actually i find LB to not be too bad… it’s boring, but it’s not terrible, it just lacks character & there are too many traits for it.

If I were suggesting changes for it, i’d make it 1500 range by default (for differentiation and to eliminate a trait in the power line), and improve barrage to be instant cast and with a shorter CD and shorter channel.

The biggest issue i have with F2’s is their appallingly slow cast times in many cases – 1.0 – 1.5 secs. These slow cast times are rarely justified by the strength of the effect.

But on ranger i’d rather see a balance pass over the weapon skills and utilities before trying to better balance the pet F2s.