Guild Wars 2

I can’t lie and pretend I didn’t enjoy this instance quite a lot because I did, but almost every mechanic in the path is designed as a PUG-buster (whoever earlier in the thread that noted you had better open the instance yourself since there’ll be rage quits galore was rather astute).

It could just be the ‘new’ factor but it was also rather long, as with almost all of the paths it doesn’t seem at all in sync with the prescribed rewards.

I don’t mean to rip on the poor dev who abruptly posted (I forget his name) but I would like to add that this explanation he provided for axing F/U makes less sense than a chocolate kettle.

If all three of the original TA paths are “What if…” scenarios, why in the world is F/U singled out to be replaced by this new “canonical” version? All three should be equally valid candidates for being replaced. If TA’s paths all started from the same plot thread then there’s no reason whatsoever to hone in on F/U over the the others. The mind truly boggles.

Wasn’t sure whether to put this in General or here…

It’s been my experience so far that the LFG tool is deeply flawed. Players repeatedly join groups without reading the description as to what the group’s looking for and wait until entering an instance before asking basic questions like which path we’re doing and so on. To compound on matters, the description script (which we’ve already established no one really bothers to read anyway) appears to be tied into the chat system and you can easily end up being suppressed just for trying to update it.

This kind of thing is endemic and it’d be painful enough without the abysmal “group merge” feature. I am curious as to what the thought was behind introducing this function? I would trust ArenaNet would appreciate my intelligence enough so that if I wanted to bring another group into my own PUG, I could just send them a /tell and ask. I really cannot see any purpose behind the group merge feature and I feel it is contributing in a major way to the drastic drop in group quality.

The tool feels very rushed and poorly thought out to say the least. If the group merge functionality could be turned off for now it’d raise the quality-of-life in-game at the moment by a factor of around nine billion.

I am in total agreement with Shemsu there are many options available to keep a player at far range (traps, pet cripples, a hard knockback, traits, an easy-access stealth for positioning, copious forms of Swiftness/movespeed etc.).

If among these many options you can’t find anything to make the bow work then maybe it’s just not the right weapon for you, but I’m unconvinced that the skills should be dumbed down based on the unconvincing arguments made here. A weapon with range alone is at a marked advantage in PvP.

I think of all words I would use to describe Porous Bones, prosperous is not one of them.

I don’t understand why it’s so integral to some players to bring down an event simply because they personally are having difficulty seeing the end of it. Is this just some kind of, “If I can’t enjoy it, no one will” thing?

Not to bring back to STO too much but in that game there was an extremely hard raid introduced, one where, because tests were held in the beta where our old team managed to clear it, the devs intentionally ramped up the difficulty out of sheer spite.

There wasn’t even the kind of care or thought or complex mechanics that are present for this dragon thing, it was just a PvE scenario that was long thought (by the devs included) to be virtually impossible to finish within the constraints of the game. For months (yes, months) people would speak of it in hushed tones, organise team attempts and try out hundreds if not thousands of strategies. Eventually, we passed it (though admittedly there were a few amusing false alarms prior thanks to creative glitches).

None of us in STO wanted that raid instance changed at all. It was really fun and refreshing to have at least one thing in the game that was mercilessly unforgiving, that really pushed you to your absolute limits. The rewards weren’t important (I can’t even remember if there were any bar a prestige title), what mattered is that this legendary scenario made the game feel whole, made it feel complete.

Manoa.5897:

Hamidon Raids in City of Heroes required a significant amount of players and a similar level of coordination. When they revamped Hami Raids to be more difficult and engaging, it took some time for the players to puzzle out how to take him down. The players pulled together, worked together, kept at it, learned the new mechanics and nuances. And once they figured it out, they were able to take Hami down consistently and reliably.

The GW2 playerbase still needs a chance to puzzle Teq 2.0 out. Don’t let less than a day of playing dictate whether or not the new Teq is impossible.

It was the same in STO when they released the first pseudo-raid (“The Hive”) in years. People were instantly lighting up the forums bemoaning that it was impossible and needs toning down. You would face something analogous to twelve or thirteen Lupis that you’d need to burn down within a short time limit.

Within a day or two it was doable. Organized groups realized it was a simple DPS check and smashed it first time, and even PUGs can handle it happily with at least one solid DPS team member or even just a tough mob anchor. Today it’s farmed for endgame gear and those cries that it was broken are long forgotten.

I enjoyed Liadri as well quite a lot, I hope this is just the first in a string of legitimately difficult releases!

Neeho.3859:

The assumption comes from Devon, specifically, " I can’t claim they will ever be 100% equal all the time, but we would like it to never be the case that you are choosing between playing WvW and getting good rewards. The two should be one in the same."

It also comes form common sense, as they are 2 completely different playstyles. If I kill a mob once, I will ALWAYS know how to kill that mob. On the other hand, I can kill your group right now, and you can rez up, and the next time we fight, I will guarantee that someone will change something. Every encounter is different. People learn; AI is, well, AI. One is more exciting to me than the other. I would rather not do everything in relative safety, even if I get hit by, say, stun warriors and s/d thieves while gathering at a node.

Since just visiting the Jumping Puzzle is clearly putting you out, and you seem to have grand ideas about how people (or cyborgs that look like people) can learn and adapt like we’re all living out 1983’s WarGames (starring the ineffable milk-eyed Matthew Broderick as a proto-DJ Squalls poised to hack the planet), I’ll go ahead and teach Neeho.3859 a weird trick to double his income while out doing True WvW™…

Press “F” on their bodies once your blue dorito says it’s safe! :-)

By the way, can you even tell what a stun Warrior or a Sword Thief looks like in your One True WvW? Do they do courses on that stuff at WvW School, or is it just a kind of, “Autoattack on sight” thing? So many questions…

Gburzak.7035:

The price of the precursor didn’t double as a result of recent changes. Prices of all precursors have drasticaly gone up early on 27th August, before any details of the revamp were revealed, most likely as a result of well-coordinated flipping.

The price of Storm is actually slowly decreasing since the update. GW2 spidy is your friend.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29176

Not just this (which is spot on, by the way) but people were trying to speculate on Storm because regardless of how well the changes may have been received, there was guaranteed to be increased interest from players. Same reason there were bidding wars over the Bard for a while.

The old version of Furious Interruption was a solid idea I think; stop a cast and counter with a crit. The problem wasn’t the idea it was that the Fury was very short-lasting.

The new version is flashy and a lot of fun, but we don’t get as much mileage out of Quickness as do some other classes.

Perhaps we could revisit the old version again, or maybe compromise between the two? You could gain the Fury for an interrupt and the Quickness (with the ICD on the latter) for a hard stun.

it doesn’t really make sense to me. i’ve played C-list MMOs that had working PBEs (multiple ones actually) with extensive patch testing before they dared release anything on live.

i don’t understand what the devs expect’ll happen when they keep offloading completely untested content onto the game’s sole live shard.

the problem is that anet has been too kind to people on ancient or very low-end machines. the game’s still running on DX9 and it massively prioritizes CPU power over any peripheral GPU, probably because casual players on low-end machines are more likely to have stronger processors than graphics cards.

even then, the engine’s resource management is horrendous. even with your GPU gathering dust, multiple CPU cores are wasted because the engine is optimized solely for single-thread management like it’s still 2005 or something.

there’s no consumer hardware on the market that can run this game at a consistent 60+ in any and all areas. your performance is tied almost entirely to your clock speed, something that’s far harder to upgrade than a GPU, and once you’ve clocked to ~4.5ish (enjoy that hefy liquid cooling price tag to boot) you’re pretty much done.

anet basically tried to aim for way too wide a market and ended up pleasing no one.

anyone remember the scene where professor slughorn is by the hill with harry and gives a eulogy to hagrid’s big kitten pet spider i think that’s how we’re all feeling about DED right now

i will pour out a fifth of henny for you, deadsie my friend~

Queensdale has always been like this really, the bigger problem is more the way players don’t get downscaled hard enough to make low level areas non-trivial. It’s a good area for smashing out monthlies as well.

The thing is that ANet’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, if they normalize whatever’s left of champ ‘difficulty’ then completely green newbie players’ll end up overwhelmed, at the same time champs should really all be equally challenging no matter where they’re found. There’s also the obvious crux with giant snowball zergs trivializing all open world boss mechanics too.

Vixena.3821:

You guys are kind of the worst of the farming bunch. I always resurrect, help others who also want to farm, and encourage others to do well. If I don’t like my arena anymore, then I simply leave and don’t make a fuss. Gauntlet isn’t intended AT ALL for just farming.

I had a guy actually say to me yesterday that the arena he was at was full and for me to go away. I made sure to stay around, get into a match, and fight for as long as possible. He left not too long after that.

I think we might have encountered the same unpleasant individual lol. I’m the same though I try to give people advice and cheer them on and stuff. If I really want to do a long stretch of G4 tickets back to back I just go find somewhere quieter, it’s not really a big deal.

The arenas are a privilege not property, I don’t ‘own’ any of them and if someone else wants to use their tickets they have exactly the same right as I do to spend them wherever they please and for whatever reason.

Amun Ra.6435:

Bovinity.8610:

To ANET: I found Swiftness (or having some kind of mspeed buff) was maybe a little too effective overall. Possibly in future encounters you could have a hard movement debuff that stacks in intensity per hit, with each condi clear removing one “stack”.

This is actually true. As long as you’re not doing the “run at the edge of the room” tactic that people were pushing early on for some reason, ANY kind of runspeed is completely overpowered for phase 2.

Perma crippling a player does not make for a more challenging encounter. They could actually come up with better boss mechanics instead on depending on one-shot mechanics.

Well the thing is she didn’t slap on any conditions bar Cripple (and another I can’t remember) so it was fairly trivial to clear. Maybe if there were more cover condis it’d encourage players to break out of regular builds and take more removal. (10 points for Mender’s Purity to completely null the Cripple when it even landed was not earth-shattering)

I found Liadri quite enjoyable and I’d really like to see more stuff like her in the future

To ANET: I found Swiftness (or having some kind of mspeed buff) was maybe a little too effective overall. Possibly in future encounters you could have a hard movement debuff that stacks in intensity per hit, with each condi clear removing one “stack”.

Athidae I was thinking of going condi Mes for the 8 orb achievement, I’m curious how you managed to keep clones up though?

edit: to clarify I mean in part 2

I think a lot of people playing GW2 would have an aneurysm if they were raised on SNES/Genesis games where everything was a OHKO and if you didn’t make leaps of faith you’d restart the entire game lol

Celtus.8456:

Didn’t watch the full video, but I agree and this often frustrates me. There is definite inequality in the animation telegraph, readability, ability to react/counter, etc. of each profession.

In my mind, elementalist (but air scepter 1-3 is really lame spam), guardian and warrior are all pretty fair and easy to read and react to. Though there are some instant abilities for these, I think they are not significantly powerful. Generally all, or most, of the abilities for these profs are avoidable if played right.

Engineers are sometimes readable (it is nice that their kits change on their back), but they currently spam too many conditions that it becomes difficult to really have a fair and controlled situation against them.

Rangers I suppose have many readable abilities, but they are so passive and spam based currently that it doesn’t matter. Most people know when a ranger is shortbow spamming them forever, but there isn’t always something they can do about it.

Thieves have some good ability telegraphs, but it hardly matters because they are in stealth half the time, and when they appear their attacks can take most or all of your hp (especially if you dont have CC removal up).

Mesmers are a similar problem, their telegraphs are masked by stealth and illusions (I know, that is sort of the point). Mesmer Greatsword #1 really bothers me, as does scepter #1. I really would like to see all these ‘laserbeam/lightning chain (as in ele air scep)’ attacks removed/redesigned as they really just seem to be spam. As for mesmer scepter 1, the mesmer flailing its hands to produce damage on a target somewhere, with little warning to the target, is just annoying and lame.

Which brings me to the necro. The necro, from what I have noticed, has the most of these ‘hand flailing’ animations. The only noticeable cue on the target’s side is a green puff of smoke and maybe a skull. Couple this with the rest of the necro disaster in the game currently, and I find it extremely annoying to play with.

Call me biased, but I think it is much more fun to fight against professions with fair and readable animation telegraphs.

I agree with all of what you’ve said however I should point out that you may be thinking of a different skill to Mes Scepter #1 since it’s not really reputed for its damage and it shoots a big purple ball at the target.

18k has always felt like my sweet spot though that’s on Staff and not my OH weapons.

Follidus.8027:

Those indoor plants, are you a gardener?

This made me giggle so bad

yeah this update was great + a good direction imo

Fancia.3746:

words

rangers are the kings of evades just after s/d thieves lol what planet do you live on.

try s/d with points into wilderness

there’s a lot of people who never owned a NES/SNES/mega drive playing this game

dps ele might be a bit rough but what i did on mes was go for the one with the highest damage first and then the healer.

mostly a tank ‘n’ spank but you need to kite a lot. maybe switch scepter for dagger so you have a bit more mobility.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

I appreciated it as well. I also though her conjuring up a Whisperblade out of nowhere was an impressive display of her power as a Mesmer. Now if only I could do the same thing…

that mezzie feel when you can’t pinch whisperblades from your own summons

i liked the line about “mesmer magic” when she was teasing logan thingymadoo too

Kaphei.7096:

Try socializing with players who are also watching the matches. Have fun, cheer those fighting. Get into the spirit of the festivities. Let yourself get submerged into Tyria.

i think you’ve forgotten friend games aren’t about having fun they’re about obsessively grinding out achievements and ripping through content as fast as possible lol

most weapons are too thick and cartoony

Healix.5819:

The hammer duel guy isn’t very nice. If you’re out of melee range, he does a whirlwind in a line with no wind up that can 1 shot you. The problem is, he randomly does it while you’re in melee range. His main melee attack is a slow 1-2-3 where the 3rd 1 shots.

I was on a low level alt thief though, so… may not 1 shot.

The dual pistols guy did so much less damage in comparison. So little in fact that it was if he wasn’t even doing damage.

it’s hardly a one shot and the whole point is that if you’re at range his travel time is a windup of sorts.

Dont.6985:

shimmerless.4560:

just popping in to say that the level of sportsmanship and class displayed by both jade quarry and dragonbrand (particularly the latter) has been pretty terrible so far. for players never seen outside of zergs/full guilds they’re sure fond of the /emote commands.

This coming from the user who partied my team, and had a rage fit after dying.
Thank you for the memorial screenshots.
If you’re going to comment on other people’s attitudes, check yours first. Lool.

/cheer

^ what this lovely fellow conveniently forgets to mention is that he alone did the whole /emote spamming corpse sitting thing as i was running to help a friend from his guild mate and ended up being swarmed by a zerg. 100% unprompted as i have no idea who he is/they are nor do i care.

similar situation with the same server i was pursued halfway across a BL towards our spawn before being caught off by the second server’s opposite-moving zerg. cue body camping /emotes etc

if one survives or wins an outnumbered scenario and decides to gloat with /emotes i’ll shrug. however when one has a massive numbers advantage and antagonizes strangers for no reason my patience has a limit. it’s the biggest problem with wvw at this tier right now.

it wouldn’t really phase me it just boggles my mind how it’s happening when said players severely outnumber me/us, i mean what are they so proud of?

just popping in to say that the level of sportsmanship and class displayed by both jade quarry and dragonbrand (particularly the latter) has been pretty terrible so far. for players never seen outside of zergs/full guilds they’re sure fond of the /emote commands.

political correctness sucks

SlothBear.9846:

FA fights very hard and I have much respect for them even after a day, but numberswise this is not the matchup they really need to be in. You know what I’d like to to see is BG/JQ/TC.

This would be the 2-3-4 servers in total population, but I think all three have fairly similar fighting styles and seem to enjoy open field fighting a lot. I would expect a ton of skirmishing and relentless keep pushes (TC is tenacious in that respect…what JQ could do if everyone we had fought as hard). I think that would be more of a three way.

Not intended as disrespect to FA, you guys are fighting harder than you should be able to pound for pound that’s for sure. =)

i would not say TC is reputed for their open field fighting (can’t even recall the last time i saw it off the top of my head) but that’s just me.

to the tarnished coast guild of 20+ who tried spawn-camping FA last night while SoS had our keep:

ganging up on FA may seem like a winning proposition until it becomes too dangerous for any of your players to cross the river : ~ )

good old primal mezzie magic still beats the fancy elemental or zephyr aspect magic, my friends … (you can blink through the waterfalls )

i always think of that louis ck bit about the passenger he was sat next to when the free wireless went offline on his air travel: “he immediately said, ‘pff, this is bull’. it’s amazing just how fast he became entitled to something he didn’t know existed until all of five minutes ago!”

do you even want the item in question, op? would you have remotely cared if they never made the item in the first place?

gold is flowing like water these days and as others have said, 15g really isn’t that much for a unique item.

there are many things one could call unjust in gw2 but this is not one of them.

The trait was already good before.

Some tips always keep a defensive cooldown in the kitty, stay away from stairs and sharp inclines in WvW (we don’t play well with the z-axis) and even when going full shatter try to give your illusions some time on the field to unload at least once.

Another strong combo I like with MH Sword if I’m on the retreat is to iLeap, Swap and then hit Decoy to exploit the root and the confusion factor.

In the immortal words of Seven Mirror, “I don’t care if they nerf me to the ground, dude. I don’t care if I’m just a clone — I’ll be one kitten clone, hanging around in your face, doing 3 damage, all day”.

How does that maxim work when it’s Mes v. Mes? Does the space-time continuum explode?

Illusions has a lot of very strong globally useful traits whose placement could stand to be looked at (iElasticity comes to mind).

Most of the time you want boon strip on shatter, Disenchanter or Null Field is also great. Against DPS Guards try to keep high mobility and save your dodges for their Hammer Immob and the GS pull.

What they should’ve done from the start is make it so that more Confusion ticks just increase the damage you’ll take if you’re consistently mashing abilities. So if you’re only hitting a skill every few seconds, the damage taken is rather mild no matter how many stacks you have, but it increases to its damage ceiling the more abilities you’re hitting.

This way players wouldn’t feel ‘stunlocked’ but at the same time they don’t get a free pass to just ignore the condition and mash buttons altogether.

bhagwad.4281:

I’d just like to point out that we shouldn’t speak of thieves and mesmers in the same breath when it comes to stealth. The latter has one skill that stealths for three seconds and there’s no danger of an attack unlike with a thief. Then there’s mass invis on a 90 second CD.

Thieves on the other hand are what you really have to watch out for. Their attack from stealth is their bread and butter.

You can get pretty substantial stealth uptime on a Mes if you trait for it.

bobross.5034:

as a thief, it makes for interesting play in wvw. when I pop a SR, opponents try to knock me out or aoe me. I try to dodge or move to the sliver of sr unaffected by aoe. It really is more fun this way for both sides.

Yeah I’ve always liked the little minigame that comes with it, I’m a roleplayer I have to feel like I’m really being hunted through the streets lol.

tigirius.9014:

It’s my Captain’s Yacht from Star Trek Online, I accidently transwarped over here while trying to get to New Romulus to help defend an atmospheric attack on their homestead.

xD

Jokes on you, you didn’t have enough points in Driver Coil to get here that fast scrub!