Guild Wars 2

For anyone curious – tested by standing and letting an opponent NPC whack the pet till death. Before the update, it was 9 whacks and dead (0 BM, no boons) after the update, it was 9 whacks and dead. I’ll assume they didn’t massively buff the flag sentry dude’s damage to offset the new pet health, and that indeed we received no WvW buff to pets.

Haven’t checked yet to see if there’s actually a boost in PvE. Thinking I may re-install Skyrim for something to do, and check back later to see how long till warriors get a “push this to kill everything on the map” button.

No – the pet HP boost does NOT go over to WvW. Logged in, tested, tried not to cry, then cried.

Sandpit.3467:

Ranger doesn’t work at all. It’s broken. Please fix.

This. 1000 times this. This forum is drowning in constructive fixes to ranger issues, and none of them have come through.

If you do a count over the last 4 months, the most repeated request across the entire GW2 forum is to make pets optional – and they won’t comment on it.

Rangers need – an active, not tied to pet/killing out pet condition cleanse that doesn’t waste our heal.

A fix to the longbow auto-attack. Just remove the range restriction, and we’re in business.

A fix to the sword rooting problem. No other class in-game has that issue – just us special little rangers.

And about a quarter million other things.

More to the point, they ONCE previewed the changes they were going to make in-game (ascended items, last year) and the bulk of the posters flipped their kitten, because nobody outside of the game locusts wanted it. Despite millions of posts full of negative feedback, they went ahead and did exactly what they were begged not to.

Why would they bother giving a heads-up again, if they don’t care about customer feedback? Drop it all in one go, do a quick (4 month, quick, hah) check for unintended features (ie: bugs) and ignore the consumers, as always.

Warriors got buffed – no surprise.

Rangers got nothing worthwhile – still no surprise. (They lied about fixing Ranger weapons – again. Still no surprise.)

Ele conjures got improved, but the core problems plaguing the class had absolutely zero attention. I’m kind of surprised there, since they actually received a buff.

Didn’t bother checking what happened with thieves, since broken class will still be broken.

Guardians got a mix bag. Meditations may be big news, if it weren’t for the fact that the current meta (wvw/pvp) is all about conditions, and guardian’s got nerfed on PoV.

Mesmer, Engineer, Necromancer I don’t play, so I’ve got no opinions.

I really do question if anyone at Anet plays any class other than warrior and thief. Couldn’t prove it by the content of the balance “fixes” or the way they build the new content (punish a ranger because they have a pet – which, despite being the single most requesting thing on the entire forum, still isn’t optional.)

The OP posted what we needed – now look at what we got. It’d be nice if any single person from Anet actually played a frigging ranger, but that’d be asking too much, I suppose.

I thought that this was the current method of the RMT freaks to deliver the “any legendary any time” that gw2wallmart bots advertise in LA. something to do with they can’t just mail the items for fear of bans all around, so you’re told to put in a specific buy order, and the RMT bot fills that order specifically.

I could be wrong. Only other thing that comes to mind is manipulation of the market by the few in-game people who control most of the gold.

Hey guys – just want to point out that I just now, in-game, have received my third copy of the first birthday present on the same character.

First one was late (character was made during the pre-start 3 days, got the present what would be about 2 weeks late) second one was a couple weeks after that. third one was today.

Flip side is that some of my chars haven’t received any present at all, despite being the exact same age as the guardian I’m logged in as now.

Someone might want to check what triggers the delivery of the birthday present. I’m getting quite a collection of the the Queen Jennah mini.

Later, eh?

Durzlla.6295:

Ragnar.1546:

I’d like to know that the time I spent on my ranger wasn’t wasted. Otherwise give me a token of regret and allow me to apply the current level of my Ranger to a new character of my choosing.

I did like my BM ranger prior to all the changes but it was just one blow too many and now my Ranger is taking up a character slot.

TOKEN OF REGRET!! I don’t care about fixing the class anymore, I want that wasted time back.

I would not be opposed to be given a “Token of we kittened up!” that rerolls your ranger into another prof…

Ele needs this same thing.

- Sword auto no longer roots you. (Even if they have to remove the whole leap-to-your-enemy-or-your-death function.)

- An active condition removal other than Healing Spring. Re-working Signet of Renewal would make the most sense. Change it to Passive: Conditions expire X% (10%?) faster. Active: Remove all condition from you and your pet. Recharge 30 – 24 traited.

- Range restriction removed from longbow.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Master_of_Damage

bring him back.

Kilandros.2098:

I think SB should be 1200 and LB 1500 base and that the increased range trait be changed to something else. Ranger is, after all, supposed to be the ranged heavy hitter.

truth here. Also, +1 and 15 chars. rawr.

As someone else said – Anet should hire this man.

-GW1’s level of skill selection and build complexity. (Hardcore M:TG fan here. GW1 is one of extremely few games that did skills/character building right.)

-Story would have to be by bioware. (preferably the dragon age people.) Dragon Age: Origins stands out for me as the absolute best writing ever to be found in a video game. (This applies to both dialogue and the actual events taking place.)

-Combat HAS to be gw2 style. Without jumping/active movement/dodge, I’m not sure I could tolerate in-game combat now.

-The world should be built by Bethseda. Nobody else, anywhere, does it better than they do. Let them expand the lore, as well. Libraries full of books that can be READ, to immerse yourself in and learn about the world.

-Skyrim style crafting system.

-Full camera options, like every game other than GW2. FoV slider, camera height adjustment, first person view are all essential.

-GW2 trading post.

-GW1 targetting system.

Namu.5712:

Anet will never implement a system that doesn’t screw over a group of players while the other group gets hundreds of gold worth of drops for doing the same thing.

I have a friend that has gotten over 10 precursors both from mystic toliet and world drops. In my year of playing I have seen 1! and that was from Mystic. And that was after probably over 1k gold over a period of time.

The RNG in this game makes many people just hate playing in general.

You also have the folks, like myself, getting disillusioned over the perception (and I admit, it’s only perception) of severe unfairness in the RNG. A guildy I’ve been playing with daily has gotten a precursor every single day for the last 8 days. We play the same times, doing the same events. I’ve earned ~ 3 gold. He’s gotten 8 precursors. I’d say we’re both on the extreme of the “luck” graph – him consistently at the high end, myself consistently at the low end, since pre-launch.

More than any other factor in the RNG, THIS is disheartening.

+1. This is possibly THE most requested thing on the entire forum.

The ranger, if they ever fixed any of it’s issues, would hands down be the most fun to play. As it is, it’s painfully broken, and I can’t bring myself to run with him.

Elementalist should be there too, but they were nerfed into uselessness, and again, can’t bring myself to play him.

Those two win for most fun, but their execution has been so terrible, they don’t see playtime for me.

Least fun would be the warrior. I’m playing him right now though, because sometimes being the OP king of everything is the simplest way to get through stuff.

Undersigned, this may be a wall of text (I’ll edit when I’m done.)

The LS has been virtually nothing but RNG boxes and gem store whoring since they started it. At this point, I’m not surprised that many people are giving up on that. A reward system that only rewards you .000001% of the time, well, would you do any other activity at all if the payout was that seldom? Probably not.

This most especially applies to the newest LS, where the rewards are colour changed reskins of existing in-game items. Read that again – they’re weapons that are already in the game, but they’ll be blue instead of the current purple.

So, other than grinding more AP with the LS achievements, the rewards aren’t there. They could be – they could have done the reward system in a way which actually rewarded people (think GW1 endboss tokens for 1 weapon per character, or the current dungeon tokens for armour. Instead we got lottery style rewards. Lotteries are a voluntary stupidity tax, and rational people generally don’t take part – certainly not in any dedicated manner.)

For the living story itself – they’ve been, to be very blunt, poorly written. It’s been stuff tacked into the game, normally with little to no reason for it existing, other than for Anet to say “Look! We add stuff regularly! Look at all the content!” This would be cool were it fun content (F&F dungeon), but mostly it’s just more AP farming.

Honestly, I have no clue what the motivation was for anything in the LS. Dragon bash, because you always celebrate that which is going to destroy you. Everyone remembers the “National Socialist Celebrations” during WW2, right? Err, yeah, I guess not so much. Silliness.

Voting for a leader – lolwut? Why, and why now? Because, CONTENT! Yeah. Look, some steampunk pirates came from nowhere with a hate on for everything, most especially Queen Jenna. Now, after we dealt with them already, they’re back, because, CONTENT!

The F&F dredge uprising at least made sense.

I’ll leave off there, or else this will become a mutli-post wall of text pointing out the lack of lore-based reason for pretty much ANY of the LS content.

Finally, there’s the frequency of the stuff. We’re getting recycled story bits, over and over, so often that if you take a week off, whatever you were working on is no longer in game, and there’s a brand new set of unreasoned silliness to complete.

People can get burnt out on that kind of thing easily, as the (many) threads like this one show.

EDIT: I’ve ignored SAB, because to me that’s not content. It’s a mini-game in the game, and were it taken on it’s merits as a platformer and compared to existing games, it’d get, at best a 3/10. It’s a pure nostalgia driven mini-game, whose rewards are ugly and ruin immersion for anyone who enjoys the fantasy setting.

Zanryu.3417:

Both options are horrible.

“muh exotics no longer wurk omfg mah gear sux!”

There still is NO grind required to play the game effectively, exotics are more than sufficient to do every single piece of content this game has or likely will ever have.

“b-but Zanryu muh fractals”

Dailies will allow you to earn laurels, which will allow you to purchase various Ascended trinkets of your choice. I currently have full Ascended trinkets without having to actively grind them out because gasp I did dailies by playing the game!

“But I have to grind for exotics omfg!!! Anet sed no grindz!”

Exotic was meant to be something that would take a fair amount of time to acquire, however as has been a usual trend the playerbase was underestimated. In order to give people a thing to actually strive for they introduced Ascended. It’s not gamebreakingly stronger and can still be acquired by everyone, albeit a longer period of time and more effort to acquire.

tl;dr

Casuals stop crying about Ascended weapons and stop worrying about what other people have. The weapons are fine as is, just put in some work.

This is fine, until you enter small scale WvW. At this point, you have the option of rocking BiS gear, or being dead. It’s a pretty binary thing, that.

In an ideal world, the ascended gear would have identical stats to exotic, aside from the extra mod slot for AR.

Two things,

One, stop complaining about things that don’t affect you. Really. I know it’s the internet, and it’s hard, but try.

Second, there would be no champ farm (or minimal champ farm) if other activities paid off as well as the farm does, in the same time frames.

Tequatl doesn’t – the work is all out of whack for the reward. The meta bosses do, but they’re on timers, and the whole once-a-day thing kills that. Dungeon rewards got beaten into the dirt. That leaves the invasions, which could be good return, but only if you have a horde with you.

So, people who want cash (after all, it costs ~400G to get some crafting disciplines from 1-500, for the treadmill weapons) they’ll be doing what’s most profitable. Most profitable =/= fun.

EDIT: my spelling is horrible without coffee.

Yeah, finished it off. Behe, maw, covington, fire shaman, fire elemental, golem didn’t count. Shatterer did. Ergo, had to be a dragon.

This is the lemongrass guy – he’s a troll. Stop feeding….

NVM – figured it out. The “kill a world boss” resets every day, and, from what I can tell, Wurm/Behe/Maw/Covington/Fire Shaman do not count. Has to be a dragon.

K, i’ve done the “find the dragon things” in frostgorge, steppes and sparkfly. All that’s left is getting credit for fighting tequatl, that I’ve done dozens of times now. With 0 credit. Do we have to WIN?

wtf?

Grok Krog.9581:

All cleave effects only hit 3 targets. AoEs hit 5

I’d like to see pet DPS unnerfed in PvE. Spirits/Pets less squishy in PvE.

Sword auto interruptable at all times via other skills/dodge

Zephyr’s Speed brought down to at least a 15 point minor trait

My bad. It just seems that my guardian hits a whole lot more in front of him than my ranger does.

Re-roll a warrior or guardian. Bam, meta.

Also, fix our cleave effects to hit more than 3 targets. Every other class with cleave hits 5 – why not rangers?

- make it so dodge interrupts the sword attack chain.
- pet F2 skills work instantly.
- merge eagle eye and piercing arrows
- make pets optional.
- make pets optional.
- MAKE PETS OPTIONAL.

If we could remove the pet, and have the 40% damage returned to our weapons, I’d make my ranger my main again in a heartbeat. As it is, each of my other classes is more welcome, and does far more damage, than my ranger.

The pet is a handicap, and has been one since release, and I honestly don’t see them fixing it.

You folks complaining about guesting – you’re aware that it’s mostly your OWN server’s people who are taking slots in the main map, right?

Guests are the last ones out of overflow, and (afaik) don’t have the “join party member” option. The system ALWAYS pulls server residents from overflow before it pulls guests.

Now, go back to bashing things you don’t understand…

xephire.8324:

stale.9785:

You know, I can see where it could be enjoyable, with some minor changes. The closest WP shouldn’t be contested – a 1 minute run during a 15 minute fight is a ball breaker. Matter of fact, 15 minutes is kind of short, and really the biggest difficulty to it – stretch it to 20 or 30 minutes.

If they fix the bug with the blue wave of death (the actual death/knockback isn’t synced with the blue wave), and did the above two, it’d be an entirely enjoyable experience. As it is, it’s far, far too much work for the lack of reward offered.

I wonder if you fight tequatl for the sake of having a fun experience or you’re just completely on loot. So yeh they gone through all the hard work to make it hard and you say meh loot not good enough so i don’t care if its hard or not.

My issue is, as it stands, on my server, it’s NOT fun. We just had a teq event, and there were less than 40 people there. I was one of TWO people actually using the turrets. Essentially, we were doomed to failure at the outset.

Now, as it is, the difficulty is high enough that people are already abandoning it outside of peak playtimes. Were the loot significant I could see people doing it for the reward. Instead of a RNG chance at a unique weapon, maybe get a token that can be traded for 1 weapon (account bound on aquire, soulbound on use) like the GW1 final mission gave.

I like the general idea of what they’ve done, but the way they’ve done it leaves it as something I’ve already accepted I won’t be completing.

It’s not even that much attention it needs. Little things. Timer should be longer (20 minutes, minimum, 30 ideal) the visibility of the AoE fields in the water needs to be adressed, and the blue wave NEEDS to be synced with it’s KD/damage.

Would also be nice to either 1) have the turrets be manned by NPC’s, or 2) some other idea to keep people from Akitteng on the bloody turrets.

My suggestions were more in the way of bugfix (well, aside from the timer). The invisible poison AoE circles and the unsyned blue wave are both blatant bugs.

Timer is just a nerf, since my server hasn’t him lower than ~80%, yet. Given the time, I’m sure we could get him, and mostly survive.

The WP request is linked to the timer. Wasting a minute running back to a fight that lasts a mere fifteen minutes is bad. If the timer is longer, the further WP is ok – with the current timer, they really ought to uncontest the local WP.

Just my humble opinion

My beef is more over things that are minor, and with some tweaking would turn what’s nearly impossible into something that’s enjoyable.

(Note, I’ve no problem with any boss other than Teq – I think the dev’s did a fabulous job with the rest of them.)

-Teq’s timer should be longer – nearly double, I’d say, based on what my server has been able to put out.

-The AoE in the water (poison) needs to be more clearly visible – the red circles are nearly invisible when they’re in the water. Surprise insta-death areas are no fun. Give me an actual chance to dodge them, and I’m game.

-The blue wave – it’s damage/knockback doesn’t match it’s animation – makes it impossible to jump over, and even dodging is questionable. Get that synced up right, so that the damage/knockback matches the leading edge of it.

-The closest WP needs to be uncontested. Losing a minute just running back, out of a 15 minute fight – that’s just bad design.

-Adjust the loot to reflect the fact that the difficulty is that of playing dark souls with one hand, while soloing arah with the other. It’s an insanely hard fight – it should have an insane reward. A token for making a soulbound dragonbone weapon, maybe? (One token, one weapon, make the token account bound, the weapon soulbound on aquire.)

With those tweaks, I’d say Teq could be the most epic fun thing in the game.

You know, I can see where it could be enjoyable, with some minor changes. The closest WP shouldn’t be contested – a 1 minute run during a 15 minute fight is a ball breaker. Matter of fact, 15 minutes is kind of short, and really the biggest difficulty to it – stretch it to 20 or 30 minutes.

If they fix the bug with the blue wave of death (the actual death/knockback isn’t synced with the blue wave), and did the above two, it’d be an entirely enjoyable experience. As it is, it’s far, far too much work for the lack of reward offered.

Things I would do to “nerf” tequatl:

-Double the timer.

-Make the AoE circles actually visible, instead of the colourblind friendly, can’t-see-them-in-the-water, invisible death areas they are now.

-Un-contest the WP nearest him. Losing 1 minute travelling because people have been conditioned not to res downed (not dead, DOWNED) players is bad.

-Fix the blue wave of insta-death so it’s animation matches it’s location. Also make it only hit for the 2000 it’s claimed to be, instead of insta-gibbing people.

I’d also love to see him NOT have defiant/unshakable, and instead of the stupid turrets (I hate, loath and despise the environmental weapons in this game) make it required that some people are using CC skills on him. Matter of fact, remove all the gimmicky crap, and make it so that a mix of healing, CC, condition damage and raw DPS are all required to win – that would be interesting. Right now it’s just stupid.

I still say they should have found some happy medium between “makes dark souls look easy” and the old one.

From personal experience, I thought if you weren’t fully booned to survive, it WAS an insta-kill. Nice to know it’s just a game bug.

See, I’m the opposite of most posting in this thread. In my view, Teq is kittenedly over-the-top in terms of difficulty, but the new bosses are just about perfect. You can die, and if you’re not paying attention you most certainly will die, and it’s possible to lose. That’s about perfect for me.

The “do a highland jig while juggling flaming tigers and doing brain surgery with your left foot on a rollercoaster” level of insane that is the new tequatl – that’s just wrong.

You know what? Make it something that people who are level appropriate for the zone (level 65, I believe) and not using consumables and in TS can beat.

IF they needed to make a boss this ridiculous, it should have been an all new one, tucked off in some far corner of a lvl 80 zone. Not the first dragon most players are ever going to encounter.

Remember the moaning about AC? Notice how nobody every runs path 2 anymore – ever? Because the effort isn’t worth the reward? Yeah, it’s like that – but worse.

Dawdler.8521:

Elite content?

Tequatl is in a mid-level zone and the “first” dragon boss many new players encounter – a world boss version of the Claw Island mission. How exactly is he even supposed to be elite content to begin with!?! I understand if it would have been bloody Jormag, but not the noob dragon.

Next thing people are going to come with the same argument as AC… “Oh but you dont need to be 80 in exotic gear, you can beat him with level 55 characters in greens, us elite players do it all the time!”.

Can a boss be hard? Sure, we like difficult content. But Tequatl is too hard for the zone he is in. People that cant see that are completely blind. They could have made a new Zhaitan world boss in Cursed Shore like this and alot fewer would have complained!

This guys is quoted for truth. If they needed a boss of this difficulty (and the near 100% failure rate so far says it’s overdone) it should be a new boss, tucked away in some corner of one of the lvl 80 zones. Not the first dragon fight most people should be able to do. I say should because as it stands, it’s nearly impossible.

Since it’s content that is actually impossible to accomplish on my server, I’m in the “Nerf it” camp. It should be something that a squad or two can do – not the current "jump through hoops, then do the watusi, while singing “sweet caroline” and juggling flaming chainsaws" that it is right now.

I’m not even trying for the achievements – it’s just absurd. I know they’ll tone it down some in the coming months, I’ll get it then.

You know, I like the other bosses, but Teq is just way over the top. The timers are fine, the extra HP and better damage is fine, but the sheer scale that Teq requires is absurd.

Think about it – it took the best server getting almost 100% organisation to beat it – once. They haven’t managed again, and nobody else has done it at all yet. This is absurd.

Tengu, Krait, Centaurs, that order of desire. I could live with some form of genocidal disaster that removed the skritt and quaggans from the game.

Hey all,

This has been suggested before, but I’d like to bring it up again – the vertical position of the camera in GW2 is just bad.

IMO, there should be a slider that allows you to pull the camera position up/down, so that at max vertical rise, the skill bar would be just underneath your character’s feet.

Attached is a screen of current max zoom (1920×1080) and the sheer amount of ground showing behind my characters feet is unnecessary. Moving the camera centre up would allow for more environment/sky, and would (imo) make for better gameplay.

Also, for the “it’s only two weeks crowd” let’s assume that, yes, you have the 50-60G of materials you need (per weapon) already. Now you just need 20 of something you can only get one of per day, per account. That’s 20 days.

I take a look at the characters I play regularly, and to get back to where I am right now, having best in slot everywhere, I’m looking at a absolute minimum of 320 days. Assuming I don’t miss a day. To get back to the level I’m at right now. Do you start to see the issue here?

I can knock that down, give up on all my alts, and play one character. That puts me at a mere 120 days, assuming I don’t ever skip one, to – again – get back to where I am right now. This is what a treadmill is. You keep walking to stay where you are – if you stop, you fall off. This is uncool.

Gehenna.3625:

HiddenNick.7206:

Guys… I’m still pretty skeptical about AN supposedly claiming that they don’t want any progression in there game. All those quotes you gave me are saying more or less that better stats are not going to be locked behind grind or difficult content. And people who never wanted any progression understood that as they liked.

There is nothing about stopping progression shortly after launch.

There is nothing like the claims of EQ:Next developers who strictly said that there will be no vertical progression in there game. And they are trying to sell their game with that! It’s not inconvenient for marketing by any means! It’s used rather as a sell point. So that’s why I can’t understand the acquisitions about AN changing their mind to sell more copies of their game.

This was the whole discussion when Ascended gear was announced. It hit like a truck for a lot of people who thought Anet wouldn’t do gear tiers. Anet then turned around and commented they never said they wouldn’t. They told us there could be more tiers but everything at a very slow pace and they said the level cap would get raised.

All in all, they didn’t say they were against gear progression but basically said that they’d slow it down and do it in such a way that, pardon the interpretation, every idiot could do it. So far they’ve been true to that.

Remember, absolutely everything BEFORE that implied there would be no gear progression. It was brought up post ascended, as they desperately backpeddled to not look like complete lying tools – which made them look like complete lying tools.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Gobhoblin.7582:

Ashen.2907:

Some of the PVE only skills tied to titles did provide a significant amount of power. They were easy mode approaches to powerful builds as top end builds without PVE only skills were capable of levels of performance at least comparable to PVE only builds.

You and I remember it quite differently. Lets agree to disagree, and let all these good folks get back to arguing about GW2, shall we?

I did give specific examples. Whatever your memory was of that, those skills existed and if you entered the meta game in PvE, you were expected to have them..and by many have them maxed out.

Anyone who played GW1 and has done things like DoA knows that Lightbringer levels were a requirement… but what I think he’s trying to tell you is that whatever happened in GW1 is irrelevant for GW2 and the manifesto and as a consequence for this discussion.

Now, I haven’t followed all posts here but is that relevant for this discussion?

GW1 did have grind but it had stuff I really wanted. GW2 has grind but for me it has no purpose so I don’t do it. I don’t mind grind always but the statement that they don’t want to make grindy games is a nice statement but I don’t think they managed to do it.

It’s not worth trying to parse – Vayne will always say whatever makes Anet look best at the moment, even if it’s a direct contradiction of what he said yesterday. Sometimes he’s right, more often he’s wrong – he’s always argumentative about it.

EDIT: also, please note that there was no obligatory grind in GW1 until the end of it’s cycle – EOTN. Factions had it, in theory, but only if you wanted to top out a skill. Nightfall had it, again in theory, but only for topping out a pve only skill.

Grinding should be for cosmetics, not power. Having “he who plays the most will always win, because gear trumps skill” is counter to what the game was advertised as.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Seriously? I mean SERIOUSLY? I just don’t understand all the QQing that happens in MMOs these days! What the hell has happened to MMO society that you all have this sense of self entitlement? Why must it be I want this NOW or I am going to pitch a cry baby tantrum? God FORBID you have to WORK for something?

Do you walk into a work environment with ZERO experience DEMANDING that you be given a management position IMMEDIATELY?

NO!

So why in the world would you expect the best things in a game to be any different? SERIOUSLY?!

Maybe it’s a generational thing… I started with UO the EQ and many more after that… and before you all start talking about oh here he goes with his uphill both ways in the snow argument… no offense but… games used to be MUUUUUUCH harder… to the point that getting the best things would put most of the GW2 community into the fetal position whimpering for their momma…

I EXPECT to have to work to get what I want and by god I do just that… grow up and get over it… put on your big boy pants and spend the, OH NO, two weeks it takes to craft your ascended weapons… Jesus even when I say that it makes me laugh…

Dude, I don’t want them now, I don’t want them at all. There’s a difference. If they must be in game, then Anet should man up and do it the way they’ve always done it – make them trivially easy to get. They’re not, because the original GW1 people all left, and got replaced by folks only interesting in your wallet.

Best-in-slot is supposed to be easy to get, because it’s supposed to be about skill, not gear. Who understands the game better, not who gets the extra 20% damage because they had more time. This has changed – now it’s “he who grinds the most will win”. If you can’t see why this is bad, I can’t do anything to help you.