WvW, PvP, PvE item only Legendaries as well?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: starlinvf.1358
OP meant you need 70AR to cover the entire span, up to 50 which needs the 70AR.
The answer however is the Agony infusions for Infused gear. This pretty much means Armor will probably get an Infusion tier as well.
I only hope the new JP are many and diverse, and have a decent reward. I love JPs, but until now, every single one have left me with the feeling that my effort wasn’t recognized at all. JP chest are truly crappy, compared with other (way easier) game challenges, like champ farming, boss chests or SW chest train.
Well, they were built in a time before champ bags, world boss trains, and non-static chests. But once Rare gear started dropping like rain, the less then rare drops out of the chests felt very empty.
This makes me miss dual classing in the early parts of GW1. Lots of room to experiment.
My guess is the new tighter integration to the Arena Net portal…… which is usually how most game specific sites get screwed up.
The whole F2 skill is buggy, as it doesn’t execute consistently unless the pet is completely idle at the time. I think it suffers from the same code setup as the Sword Auto-attack, which blocks out of command inputs when the server is control of the creature (see kick and leap).
Pre events in lowbie zones are something of an exception, as the mobs die faster than most can even tag so a lot of us don’t bother.
Higher up though its becoming a problem. Last night doing VW we had about 20 of the 30 people at the south lane AFK up until the path opened.
Fully 2 thirds of the players were just standing there.My suggestions would be, give mobs drops back, that’s probably the only thing going to incentivize the afkers to participate. Yes sometimes people want to farm them, but that’s better than standing there making it harder for everyone while doing nothing.
Tweak pre events, possibly bumping the rewards for doing them.
And they could (potentially, although it would have issues) tier the rewards for the actual event, and make getting the best rewards dependent on pre event participation, or doing certain actions during the event.
Like killing a portal on the back half of the SB, killing ice spikes during the Claw, etc
Find way to reward people for better participation, and at least some will participate better.
Not all sadly, there will always be those who try to game the system, gain rewards from the effort of others.
Rewarding the 5 afkers the same as the one guy actually doing the event is a a bit of a slap in the face to the person actually doing the content.
Theres 2 big problems with Pres that still need to be addressed before any talk of incentive can be effective.
1. They need to rethink event scalability. Fixed scale means their too easy with lots of players, and active scaling means it becomes excessively difficult when too many players show up (or doesn’t scale up enough, leading to the former). This is the part thats almost impossible to deal with, since HP scaling is the only vector that even remotely works when dealing with a variable number of players. You can’t count on a minimum or maximum number of players in these situations, so scripting wise it needs to be doable for at least 2 people, all the way up to 100 people. On the task design side of the equation, thats literally impossible to balance correctly…. hence the reliance on HP scaling.
2. Practical Exclusivity through event placement and chaining. If you reward scale based on performance, players will proactively strategize to maximize reward output. This is what leads to problems with Tagging rewards. Ulgoth exemplifies this issue in spades, as the champ bags has lead to a pattern of zerging objectives one by one in order to maximize the number of champ bags each person gets. Its also developed the tagging etiquette that the zerg should slow DPS to allow everyone the chance to tag damage for maximum tag credit (which yields exotic champ bags). But tagging credit is % based, making it extremely sensitive to the HP scaling of mobs. Ever since world bosses got their HP doubled, theres been HUGE problem with reward scaling in both medals and champ bags where “less then Meta” DPS on a boss results in Silver or Bronze tier medals.
This issue, for reasons I still figure out, had simultaneously extended to all Champs when it comes to champ bag drops. Right now its abnormally difficult to get exotic bags when a zerg reaches a certain size, because of some flaw in the tagging rules. Right now, the only limitation I was aware of is % of total damage inflicted in the first 50% HP of the champ is what counts. But even with the relatively high DPS of a Symbol Mace/GS build, if I’m not in my full zerkers apparently I’m not doing enough damage in the ~5-8 seconds it takes to get the champ down to 50% health.
“Do not post petitions, “I demand an answer” threads, conspiracy threads, or comments about circumventing the rules.”
Still… he has huge point. This philosophy of “because of clipping issues” have failed them multiple times, since Outfits, which were touted as being an approach that would avoid such issues, are riddled with the very thing it was supposed to address.
Condi cleanse itself isn’t the problem….. its the nature of condition damage, how its applied, the rate its applied at, and how the cooldowns stagger its application.
In DD balance, you have several active defenses that can be used to avoid or heavily mitigate that damage, which properly scales with the number of ways that damage can be boosted. Dodge, Aegis, protection, and Armor vs Rapid attacks, crits and % bonuses. But what makes the play/counter play work is the ability to time burst attacks, as well as executing active defenses to deal with it…. the rest of the time can be spent maneuvering in a defense stance, allowing you to quickly respond to incoming attacks.
Condi damage works in the opposite direction. Its damage has a ramp up time, and designed entirely around sustain and upkeep. But defensively, you only have the option to purge, or not purge- and in the case of Resilience, to negate effects or not negate. There is no mitigating option. And since conditions utilize DD methodology as their delivery mechanism, active defenses are capable of preventing them from applying in the first place. If left unchallenged, condi builds can generate respectable damage….. but its sustain nature doesn’t mesh correctly with active combat style, as all characters spend around half their time or more dodging and repositioning, while waiting for an opening in the enemies defenses to attack.
All that considered, on top of Direct damage’s scaling potential, its ability to heavily capitalize on the momentary weaknesses of enemy defenses is the main reason its so popular. Condi tend to fair far better when the delivery mechanism is unavoidable…. which for this game is AOE and explosive style attacks.
I love the rationalization from some people too:
“Well, guardians are protectors and fight evil, and so they are protecting the whole world from an evil dragon by hunting it, it’s like the ultimate type of guarding!”
or
“It’s a specialization and the Guardians are specializing in dragon hunting and Braham is a Guardian and his mom is a Ranger, so it makes sense”
Like we aren’t all hunting dragons…that’s the whole premise lol.
I’m still on the page that the name Dragon Hunter can be applied to literally any of the classes with the explanations given, whereas all of the other specializations announced so far are pretty unique to the class. It wouldn’t make much sense calling a Warrior a Reaper or Tempest, but calling a Warrior/Ranger/Thief/Engineer a Dragon Hunter, that makes just as much sense as it does for Guardian.
At this point I think most have accepted it like I have.
Just feels like a cop-out to me.
Since splitting hairs about definitions……
Since the Elite specs are designed to expand areas the classes didn’t support, and a Guardian is mainly defensive/support; the logical choice is to give them an Offensive and Range option to add a role they currently lack proficiency in. Since a templar themed name would be too cliche, and guardians otherwise being protectors, they choose a name to strike fear into the heart of the evil they now pursue with zeal.
Hence, Dragon Hunter. Not evil hunter, or trash mob hunter, or defender against dragon minions, or even ender of dragon evil. They fight Dragons in an uncharacteristically offensive approach….. seeking them rather then waiting for them to come. Subversion is a powerful literary tool, and they make ample use of it in Tyrian lore.
Buy Linen-tier light gloves.
Throw them in the Mystic Forge.
Salvage the result.
Sell the Linen.
Why not cut out the middle steps, and just have an NPC sell bandit bags?
+1
Ascended drop rates are extremely low, and earning a ring can take a month… That’s 1 ring that will fill up 1/6 slots for 1 character on 1 build.
If by ‘earning a ring can take a month’ you mean one a day, every day…
I take it you don’t fractal.
as a lvl 13 fractal…. I’ve yet to see this daily ring drop you’re talking about. Or any for that matter. I’m even hard pressed to get mist essence, and I do runs at least 3 times a week.
Just for the record, mechanics aside – the Silverwastes JP was the most fun and entertaining. My friends and I laughed so hard at how many deaths and missed jumps occurred throughout the map. The coins in that area were fun as well. I disagree with some in that the JPs and the achievements should be difficult, not necessarily for everyone individually – as they can be difficult and time consuming – but accomplishable by anyone in a team. I hope they make more large area JPs – maybe incorporated with their gliders. Challenging is good. Too much of the game is boring and left behind after youwalk through one time.
Your company is what made all the difference. A lot of otherwise dumb, useless, or frustrating situations take a different light when theres an audience involved. Failure leads to mockery, mockery leads to attention, and and the attention usually takes the edge off of failure. But try spending 10 minutes of meticulous focus, only to have your progress wiped out due to a small error, and see if the feeling is still the same.
Thats the reason I made the comparison between Trolls Revenge and Drydock. The mistakes that cause you to fall in Trolls are mostly errors in execution, and possibly calculation. But at no point does it simply pull the rug out from under you….. you knew exactly what you did wrong, and what you should had done instead (more or less how people talk about Dark souls).
But Drydock purposely messes with your head, actively misleads you, and frequently nulls your progress without showing a potential solution. This is the trial and error aspect I was talking about. Everything from platforms too thin, to camera angles interfered with, to repeated use of gradients too steep, to the pure systematic process of elimination you have to go through with the Skritt tunnels, and difficult to reverse side tracks to go after the coins. Its steep punishment for often minor mistakes, and enough leaps of faith to the point where no longer sure if are supposed to jump or not. Much like the mordrem, they stack a number of cheap tricks, which you bang your head against until you eventually find the solution they expected of you… but more often then not, stumbled onto a design flaw thats easier then the intended solution. Thats what I hate about Silverwaste and Drytop’s achievements…. most of them are based on things with intentionally small margins of error, camera obstructions, and maliciously difficult to read terrain.
On the plus side, exotics are incredibly cheap to obtain, unless you’re looking for post-launch stat combinations.
I have actually wondered about this. Not taming them as such, but reasoning with them – trying to find a compromise.
The usual response is that they’re forces of natural and incapable of understanding us even if they wanted to. But at least two of their champions have been converted to our ‘side’, simply through being given an opportunity to understand other races.
Also I’m sure when Prophecies first came out people would have said much the same about the charr (who were portrayed a lot more simply back then – there was none of this lore with warbands and legions and ancient roman themes, they were a lot like the grawl – tribes of monsters who worshipped whatever powerful and scary thing came along.)
But the elder dragons have already shown a capacity for understanding us. In several of the Pact missions Zhaitan deals with you in very human ways, like using mesmers to spread dissent among the ranks and cast doubt on the leadership.
Jormag apparently has enough of an understanding of our races, or at least the norn, to be sexist towards them – only granting his power to the men. An indifferent force of nature wouldn’t even notice there were different sexes.
Actually you missed a number of subtle points that go strongly in the opposite direction. Its not the elder dragons are mindless….. they are highly intelligent, knowledgeable, and ruthless. This isn’t because they are incapable of sympathizing, they simply have no reason to. Its not much different then humans then not caring about Ants until they become a nuisance.
On a side note, of the dragons, Zhaitan’s has shown to be the most conditional of the corruptions. Kralkatorrik can corrupt things directly, as does Jormag, though the process is much slower. We know Mordramoth basically grows his own minions. But Zhaitan “needs” the husks of once living creatures to create its minions. The process also gives him access to all the knowledge once held by his minions, which is why his ability for subterfuge is as it is. Against a strong force, the undead are not particularly effective, even if they are durable…. so in order grow his army, he goes about it methodically. Gnawing away at the edges, exposing weakness, driving them into disarray, and then overwhelm and subvert them on one swift move. His ranks, once gained, are never lost; allowing him to spread his corruption like a slow plague.
As for the story of Glint, she was “freed” by the Forgotten. This indicates that her previous form and personality were similar to what it was before her stint as dragon champion, sans the crystal body. It was mentioned somewhere (that I can’t find the source of) her ability to read minds was helpful in communicating with the other races; but I don’t think it was the sole reason she empathized with them. (It sounds more like something that would make sense in the Pale Tree’s story)
And then theres the Charr. We knew from Prophecies (around the point of the Rin mission), its revealed that Ascalon was once Charr lands. Warbands were mentioned to be a major organizational structure for the Charr- but their significance as a “small group” wouldn’t be made until EotN (or in the extra missions I never played). But most importantly…. they were a Hoard. To compare them to the Grawl as “tribals” would be like comparing the Mongrel hoards to a bunch of road side thugs. And thats where they drew their parallels.. the Mongrels. Not much was known about their culture at the time, but it crystal clear that they were not only very well organized, but remorseless and ruthless in the face of their enemies.
people didn’t stop playing together cause of Heroes, people stop playign together, cause heroes oftenly become after certain builds were possible more effective, than players, or same as effective, like players cough Sabway, while being alot quiter, plus giving the playxer the advantage to set up for themself their gaming pace, which is an incredible advantage over playing with other players, where you permanently have to wait on someone, cause break, cause toile, cause, telefone, cause whatever else for an annoying crap that leaded to the group having to make a pause
if you want to play with other people, go into a god darn GUILD, but don’t enforece other people to play with others, only because you want to play with people together.
Everyone should have the free choice, how to play the game, be it either with people in from of a guild grup, or random people (Pugs), or if you do it solo or with NPC groups of your self made heroes.the game is absolutely not supposed to force people to play together with other people. the game is only supposed to one single thing – make fun, and how it does make fun for you, is absolutely up to everyone self.
If one person has no fun with it to have to run a dungeon path at the moment with other people, cause of having to wait for people until a group is complete and ready to go, that person should be completely free to do that game content also with heroes.
in the end are heroes a completely optional feature.If you don’t like them, don’t use them, simple solution, simple to grasp, one should think.
Todays technology shoud make it also possible to give GW2 heroes with a much better working A.I as also gameplay mechanics to give you as leader more and better control over your heroes, like for example giving to you the feature to switch at any time between your character and your heroes to play as them, cause they are anyways characters of your account with your made builds, so theres no problem about you switching out on the fly the character that you play to take over the control from the A.I manually, if needed. to maneuver the character for example out of an AoE quickly.
People already stopped alot more to play together, when Anet introduced the LFG tool , cause alot of peopel abuse it since then for a selling platform rather for stupid dungeon selling – that is seriously somethign, that destroyed a big aspect of incitement and cooperation between players to play with others, instead the amount of people who solo dungeons skyrocketed quickly into heights just to make some quick gold, much more efficient, than playing together as a group normally the dungeon…
Thats seriously something, that needs to get fixed first…playing group content as a group together, should be always much much more rewarding, than doing dungeons solo and selling them to lazy people who just want the most laziest way to get the dungeon master title and waste as less as possible tiem on the dungeon token grind to unlock equipment skins and the dungeoneer title/achievement rewards in form of some ascendent unique accessoires
The LFG tool and dungeons being so poor designed, that they don’t reward groups that play together significantly bette,r than solo players seriously has already destroyed much more for this game, than adding heroes to this game will ever do.
What trauma lead to such an anti-social stance for team play in an “MMO” of all things?
Brand new skins are still one ticket. The Dreamthistle skins are a re-release, and cost more just like all other re-released black lion skins.
Oooooh, so this is like a sale event? They go from 5 Tickets on sale to 3… I see now. That’s actually pretty clever. By all means, carry on then.
Its not sale as “discount”, but sale as in “in stock again”. BL skins work on a odd rotation, where every time a new skin set is released, the older skin sets go up one tier in price. They do this for a myriad of marketing reasons, as the entire speculation market dumps tons of resources into building a collection of skins for later resale.
Right now is the best time to buy the skins with gold, as being on offer has caused the prices to temporarily tank with all the Undercutting. After all that extra supply is gone, the price will go right back up to where it was before.
The fractal update post mentioned the matrices and dark energy required for future legendary crafting. Do you guys think this will translate into new legendary weapons as well?
They confirmed new Legendary weapons a LONG time ago. It was announced around the same time Mastery Tracks were announced, as they are going to be linked in some way. So far we only know they are back porting it for existing Legendarys, but the requirements for the new ones have only been hinting at needing things found exclusively in HOT.
One of the reasons, no doubt, is that ‘wards’ is not a utility skill category. So no elite specialization will get wards as their utility skills, just like no elite specialization will get symbols or marks as their utility skills.
Before HoT and the Revenant, there also weren’t movable fields, cascading attacks, or any of the more unique utility skills like Rite of the Great Dwarf or Vengeful Hammers.
If your argument is that wards will never exist (or weren’t thought of) because the current game didn’t have them is the type of logic that would invalidate any new ideas or forward progress. The whole POINT of a sequel with new tech is to increase the play options and content, not re-hash the same old stuff.
Guardian Hammer 5 and Staff 5 ares specially classed as “Ward”. So its not like the category never existed, or never had a mechanic associated with them.
Secondly, none of the things you listed about the Rev’s mechanics were conceptually unique to their introduction. The backend method used to the more process efficient is new, but we’ve had examples of Cascading attacks (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tribune_Burntclaw), moveable fields (Banners, Mr Sparkles, Commander tags), vengeful hammers are at best 2 projectiles, or at worst a pulsed AOE field, Rite of the Great Dwarf is just a hard buff with a visual effect.
Yes, they’ve made advances….. but they aren’t as sweepingly unique or completely novel as you believe they are. The problem that a lot of us see, is that they were supposed to be incrementally advancing the underlying tech for years now. But instead of moving completing these advances, a very common response to a lot of potential game play advances were met with “Our engine can’t do that” or “we can’t modify the engine enough to make that work”; and of the projects they did start, more then half are left unfinished, only partially implemented, or perpetually promised as “coming”.
More food for thought….. Super Adventure Box is basically a hack of their physics system, and exploited several bugs in order to do what it did. Now that they fixed it, SAB doesn’t work right anymore, and has to be revamped to replicate the behavior. This means SAB didn’t add any real tech advances.
About the only potentially legitimate front end tech updates were from Tequatel Rising and the addition of the jump pads. Zypherite aspects I consider a minor hack, since they utilize server controlled movement to achieve their effect. Moredrem attacks are combinations of existing effects found almost exclusively in player skills, so thats not an advancement either.
The only significant attempts to update the tech have been tied to Fractals and Heart of Thorn…. and HOT has only been in heavy production for how long now? They’ve gotten more work done in the last 6 months then they’ve had in the last 2 years prior…. and the majority of it being things thats been in need of fixing since the game launched in mid 2012.
Probably. Legendary weapons require WvW badges, but edge of the mist gave us a viable alternative to obtaining them on uncompetitive WvW servers.
Kind of like of all their scavenger hunt ideas, initially they’ll try to shuffle us around to under utilized game modes, eventually stop upkeep on them, and introduce an alternative so they don’t have to fix the underlying problem of the primary method. This won’t stop the intrepid players, but they will pay a higher cost as a result.
In a twist of irony, by focusing so kitten rewards over the last couple of years, they got exactly what they wanted….. everyone following a schedule. And as the inevitable conclusion that such a system spirals towards, the players have become over satiated, and the rewards no longer fill the void that it tried to fill from the lack of engaging content.
So much of the game’s basic mechanics are woefully under utilized, or left in need of refinement; yet they’ve focused almost exclusively on gimmicks (that don’t even reuse mind you), that we’ve come to burn through them faster as the content drought becomes more severe.
Bottom line is that anyone should be able to have access to best gear without being forced to do something you don’t like (if i can buy it at TP, even expensive it is fine).
This here we call entitlement. The same argument could be used for anything – “I don’t like doing x content, but I want the reward for x content. This is not fair!”.
I’m not opposed to alternative methods of reliably getting ascended armor and weapons, though, and I feel those alternative methods could bring alternative skins with them. However, I can’t see not liking crafting as a valid reasoning.
Wanting different methods of getting stuff so you can engage in activities you enjoy in a game is hardly entitlement, which BTW is the most misused word on the internet these days.
It is when your baseline is lower then the lowest common denominator. As it pains me to say this, crafting is the lowest common denominator in the game- Because it funnels wealth and supplies from all aspects of the game toward its self-justifying purpose of being one of several interlinked money sinks in the game. As a result, it has a singular barrier for entry….. the ability to generate wealth and access to spirit shards; both of which are available in ALL game modes. Everything else you simply buy off the TP, causing you to participate in money sinks designed for PvE, and the supplies it can generate.
Its mechanically fair, as you’re not denied access for not participating in another game mode. Legendarys are also mechanically fair, because it involved all major content in version 1 of the game, or could bypass it entirely by simply trading for one.
So really the only forced requirement for max stat gear (ascended) is a zero skill challenge activity (crafting), whose purpose is a wealth sink, and gives only marginal bonuses to all but one game mode, and that one excluded game modes doesn’t even make use of it, but feel that the barrier needs to be lowered further because you’re questioning the efficiency of a system purposely designed to be anything but efficient- all because you want the slightly higher stat number then the rest of the system operates off of….. Yeah, qualifies as entitlement.
If your argument was simply “Ascended gear costs too much too produce”, I’d agree with you completely, and list reasons why. But of all the issues Ascended gear has, having crafting as a reliable method of producing them is NOT of one of those issues.
Well, the big problem right now is that only a few classes have intuitive trait synergy. And the Guardian, by a wide margin, is both the easiest to understand, and has among the strongest cross trait utility synergy (meaning every trait line can either directly or indirectly affect the majority of skills available to the class).
So far, the Elite specs appear to be very self contained. The implications of this are actually very weird feeling between the classes. Classes that have strong cross trait synergy will be ok; as well classes that have strongly independent traits. But the ones that will hurt the most from this are classes which have scattered synergy.
Engineer is one such class, as each line is dedicated toward specific subsets of the class, but the class’s build methodology heavily incorporates mixing these mechanics. Tools is practically mandatory as several of their strongest utility traits are found there. However, the remaining trait lines are theme focused, but very mechanically lop sided when it comes to functional distribution. In the current setup, a build requires 2 traits lines to support one function, but the secondary functions of those trait lines otherwise go to waste. But whats weird is that a 3rd trait should fit to support 2 full functions, but for some reason doesn’t work that way in practice. I suspect part of that is the heavily reliance on utility slots for basic functionality from Kits- which leaves very little room to stack utilities for secondary functions. If Forge is as self contained as I suspect it is, it’ll allow Engineers to get more mileage out of the remaining 2 trait slots, but will have fewer practical options in the process.
(edited by starlinvf.1358)
Does anyone here watch Trailer Park Boys? The two antagonists, Lahey and Randy are obviously gay. But nobody gives a kitten. Those characters have so much more to offer than their sexuality. Its not their defining trait. Because who should give a kitten if they’re gay or no?. They’re not special for that reason, you know, because of equality and what not.
Lahey and Randy are not “obviously gay”, which is how that entire joke operates. The “ambiguously gay” gag is typically built around idea of a person or group who display behaviors normally associated with a particular group, but not displaying any of the explicitly defining behaviors that would classify them as such- or at the very least “not acknowledging” it themselves. The emphasis I put on “not acknowledging” it is important, as its distinctly different then aggressive “denial”, which is acknowledgement of the subject. In fact, this joke works best when it doesn’t have a punch line, since the ambiguity is a major part of it.
A sub-category of this is the “Bro-mance”. Bromances display every aspect of a romantic relationship EXCEPT the sexual aspect. The level of execution varies; But when done well people simply assume their gay when the characters actually aren’t. And this is what irritates me about Seth Rogen…. Overall, this is huge part of his Schick. But everytime he tries to “work this angle” it comes off as try hard, causing the joke to lose potency. Comparing how it played out in Pineapple express verses how it played out in The Interview, the bromance jokes in The Interview would had been a lot funnier if they didn’t push them so hard.
But a major indicator that Randy and Lahey executed this joke so well, is that if they revealed they actually were gay, it wouldn’t be met by any fan fair at all. Most people would simply shrug and say “guess they were gay”.
Oddly enough, this joke isn’t anywhere near as easy using women as the subject.
Thats why we have Glint baby now. It’ll be the plot to Nightfall all over again.
The ENTIRE discussion about challenge is so complicated, and rooted in so many fundamental aspects of the game, that one simply can’t make the claim “this needs to be harder” without going into several pages worth of explanations of whats actually going on; as opposed to the superficial “I beat this too easy” explanation most people use.
I say this because the fastest way to make dungeons hard is to double the HP of everything, and increase their attack speed….. but it doesn’t fix whats wrong on a fundamental level. All it does is keep statistically overwhelming the player until its mechanically impossible for them to keep up.
What works best for me is to have Post Processing turned off and to have the Character Model Limit set to Lowest. I can usually see fine with those two set that way. But yeah, an effects slider would be nice to have.
The better solution would had been to make attacks less flashy, and put more emphasis on things via animations. But animations are hard, and flash effects are cheap and easy to implement.
Years ago I spent a year in a Korean MMO that did a pretty simple trick with critical hits that players could easily recognize, visually gave weight, and was always fun to watch. All they did was take the current animation, slow it down for the first half (to visually simulate a wind up), and speed it up the second half to make it look faster, pitch shifted the hit sound for more bass, and added a small amount of screen shake. Suddenly an otherwise normal attack feels like it just hit like a truck.
But they went the extra mile with crit chains. Your normal attack sequence is based on 3 hits, and had a certain chance to crit. But that chance increased significantly following a crit- allowing you a good chance to chain 3 crits back to back. They added second animation set that would trigger if the first hit in the chain was a crit, leading to strong setup animation in the second hit, and a major visual flourish if the crit chain reached all the way to the 3rd hit.
The lesson here is that a more conservative approach with visual effects, and a smarter plan to using the visually astounding ones, would had gone a long way to making less feel like more.
A lot of these complaints seem to be geared toward “single player RPG game” mentality. But not having the sheer brain power needed to dissect the insane balance implications of the MMO format, I’ll point out this one thing about the Story mode…..
You simply can’t be the center of the world and still have consistency, when there hundreds of other people also being the center of the same world. The personal story was ill-conceived from the get-go, just because of the MMO rule of hero dynamics. Simply put, choices can’t be meaningful if everyone gets to make different ones.
I’d like it if Henchmen or Heroes were in GW2. And if people don’t like them, don’t use them.
They said the same thing about Heros in GW1….. And as expected, as soon as the 3 hero cap was lifted, people simply stopped partying with each other for all but the most specific farming activities.
People who don’t like bike riding don’t have to use them….. but the ones who do muck up the commonly shared systems, and visa-versa. In other words, we have no option to ignore it, even if we have no intention of actively using that option. This is why we call it collateral damage.
But whats even more sinful about this “don’t use it attitude” is that it never works both ways. Ascended gear drove the prices of non-T6 mats through the roof….. but if you don’t like it, don’t use it. HOT required a new Trait system…. but if you don’t like it, don’t use it. The game is balanced around PvP, but breaks PvE in the process…. but if you don’t like it, don’t use it. The game favors burst DPS over sustained defense… but if you don’t like that, don’t use it.
But thats not the dumbest thing about this whole discussion. We can’t even trust companion AI to behave in a consistently useful manner…. so why would you would to rely on them even further? They’d have to be so incredibly statistically unbalanced to make up for it, that people would be carrying pocket legendary mobs that would scale even more out of control in groups then they would individually.
This is probably why…..
This is what happens when you try to cater to eSports…. your game fails at both eSports AND regular play.
But then again, it would had been immensely helpful if they just put more effort into making combat in the different game modes more consistent with each other. The linear, high magnitude math didn’t do them any favors either.
Rather then join a stacked server…. join low tier server, and raise it from the pit of filth it wallows in, into world ranked WvW force, and watch the unwashed masses claw over each other to try to stack your server.
Or be MLG pro and pay fight guilds to join that server.
But honestly, their WvW ranking and match making system needs some work. I think the top 3 tiers are tired to of seeing the same match ups for months on end.
Opening the Chest is character flagged, but the chest itself tracks participation per event. So this thing you’re doing to look for a chest after a disconnect doesn’t work, since they won’t open for anyone who wasn’t involved with the event as tracked by the local instance.
As for the stability problem, Teq and Karka queen both have a loooong history of bug regression surrounding audio buffers and particle effect overload. The former is hard to mitigate because its something with the game’s sound engine; but the latter can be helped some by reducing the player rendering count and some LOD tweks.
then we have a possible stealth nerf on our hands?
Then it would a conflict of interest to have events a fixed schedule if no one is allowed to know the schedule, yet still want people to do them as part of the daily routine. The entire purpose of the world boss schedule is to help populate the maps periodically. Notice that the places that don’t have world bosses go completely unused outside of map explorers. Lonar’s Pass, Timberland falls, Brisbane wildland, despite having notable event chains in those areas. Come to think of it…. I haven’t seen them in the rotation for event completion dailies.
I’d argue Skrittsburough needs to be added to the schedule, because the meta event there does lock people out of map completion elements.
It’s not a conflict of interest. I think you meant to use another term but I’m not sure. The schedule is on the wiki accessible in-game by typing “/wiki world boss” in the chat window wich brings your interest browser to the change. When they did the change to a fixed schedule, that schedule was announced via the patch notes and possibly a blog post.
I don’t know what non-world boss maps have to do with my post or even this thread for that matter. Same for your line about event dailies.
Skrittsburgh is not a world boss so it would make as much sense to add it to the world boss schedule as adding blade shards to the account wallet for currencies. From what I remember from that map, it’s not on a schedule but you need to do the events to start the meta. Off memory it was something like clearing out mobs at the entrances.
It made perfect sense. The express purpose of World bosses is to move players to various maps, rather then camp them waiting for one event to spawn, and fighting to cram into the active map before it goes into Overflow, whose local conditions have no event on them. The daily reward is designed to have them stick to the rotation.
And the point of adding Skrittsborough is “so the map gets more traffic”. Prior to the schedule, no one did Mega Destroyer or Mount Maelstrom volcano events, and the area spent over half the time “flooded with lava” that kills anyone entering it. This was a huge boon to that area, since the pre event chain is extremely difficult to solo.
Where is it stated that that is their purpose?
Actually, people did do the Mega Destroyer meta. It’s just at the time he did not provide a bonus chest. It also was not done as frequently as others as it wouldn’t show up on the old timer until you were either on the world boss itself or an event before it. Similar to how Foulbear wouldn’t show up on the timers until you started attacking the houses.
Oh, and one thing. It was never flooded with lava. It may have been for a brief time after even failure but not by the exaggeration of “over half the time”. The pre-event chain was incredibly easy to solo. I sometimes did it when bored.
You must have a super build, cuz I spent a few days on and off during the game’s height before LS, trying to clear the volcano, and never seen any regular traffic. I only made it through because I happened to came back when it was clear. I didn’t care how, I just blazed through while I had the chance.
they may have shaved it. I think Lighitng was 1.1, and fire was 0.8, but I can’t remember if that includes weapon strength or not, or if it has an internal WS value. Level scaling could be a factor too.
How can we be alone together, if we aren’t “together”?
Is that you Donald Trump?
I would say no, just because the last thing I want is the flood of XBL players turning an already borderline dysfunctional family that is this forums, into a fully dysfunctional family that is XBL.
But thats just me and tin foil hat.
Uhh, adding this support wouldn’t magically port Gw2 to xbox. All this would allow is to post your game clips to the now built in Windows 10 Xbox app.
Windows 10 users will have an “Xbox” account, and so everyone can use the xbox app to add and talk to each other. Similar to Steam, Curse, Skype, and many others. The Xbox app however is built in (I like that), and has a cool social aspect to it in the way that you can easily share cool gaming moments that maybe isn’t worthy enough of going through the hassle of putting it up on youtube and linking it to your friends.
Clearly don’t know where I come from, do you? But at any rate, I have a skeptical level of value for anything that uploads video, but doesn’t encourage the development of proper editing habits, or directly encourages the “I like to hear myself talk” syndrome. I give some leeway with “I’m talking because I think silence is awkward”, because thats mostly a learning experience.
But then you won’t buy the crafting slot upgrade, so you can take artificer on all characters, so you can condense all those lucks into rare lucks for less clicking. Besides…. that clicking is the most exercise you’ve had in months. :P
I keed, I keed.
I would say no, just because the last thing I want is the flood of XBL players turning an already borderline dysfunctional family that is this forums, into a fully dysfunctional family that is XBL.
But thats just me and tin foil hat.
I think the answer depends a lot on the specifics you’re going out of your way to avoid telling us.
But I think it’s unlikely they would completely remove a mechanic that’s vital to a whole profession simply because it’s bugged. Or unbalanced which is what I suspect you mean.
More likely they’d rebalance it so that’s it’s still there, still functional but doesn’t cause whatever issues it’s currently causing.
But if it’s as difficult to notice as you say then Anet can’t do that, or anything else to fix it, until the rare exceptionally clever player/s who are the only ones capable of noticing it deign to tell them what it is.
I personally believe it is balanced since it’s been there for 3 years unchanged.
I’m just wondering if anyone else thinks Anet would actually remove something that’s secretly been there for 3 years just because it’s technically not intended/documented. That’s what I think they’d do.
Ranger Pet AI has been garbage for since launch. Its poorly documented, it hasn’t been changed in 3 years, they claim it working as intended…… but I would hardly call it balanced.
If the recent JPs are any indication, the new JPs will span the entire map. At least with Lion’s Arch and Troll’s Revenge, they’ve finally realized consistency of rule is the key to a legitimately challenging jump puzzle.
Don’t get me wrong…. its long, and its evil. But at least it doesn’t force you to double back or restart check points because they wanted to incorporate “trail and error” into the design.
The silver waste JP and badges were an utter exercise in frustration….. because in many places, you couldn’t tell collision properties of an object simply by looking at it. It also forced you to a perspective guessing the placement of objects, forced to you traverse objects that cause you to slide off or hitch due to physics and map geometry, not having clear indication of your traction point, and the trail flowed as smoothly as being stabbed by a bent fork. Not to mention the massive amount of wasted space that is the 75% of the map that was dedicated just to the Jump puzzle route.
As general rule of logic, new mechanics tend to utterly brake old content not designed to support it. This goes double for Elite specializations, as they are expressly designed to subvert the existing PvE meta, and be used against other enemies who also utilize new mechanics that match them.
I take it you’ve never played collectable games, or MOBAs. Both of these are examples of planned obsolescence, whose previous incarnations are superseded, or often easily defeated by a newer mechanic. In order to maintain relevance, old systems have to be updated to the new system in order to account for the new mechanics in the balancing scheme.
So unless existing dungeons get a ground up Encounter revamp, then the new Elite specs are either incompatible, or vastly superior to the existing mechanics that govern it.
Then it would a conflict of interest to have events a fixed schedule if no one is allowed to know the schedule, yet still want people to do them as part of the daily routine. The entire purpose of the world boss schedule is to help populate the maps periodically. Notice that the places that don’t have world bosses go completely unused outside of map explorers. Lonar’s Pass, Timberland falls, Brisbane wildland, despite having notable event chains in those areas. Come to think of it…. I haven’t seen them in the rotation for event completion dailies.
I’d argue Skrittsburough needs to be added to the schedule, because the meta event there does lock people out of map completion elements.
It’s not a conflict of interest. I think you meant to use another term but I’m not sure. The schedule is on the wiki accessible in-game by typing “/wiki world boss” in the chat window wich brings your interest browser to the change. When they did the change to a fixed schedule, that schedule was announced via the patch notes and possibly a blog post.
I don’t know what non-world boss maps have to do with my post or even this thread for that matter. Same for your line about event dailies.
Skrittsburgh is not a world boss so it would make as much sense to add it to the world boss schedule as adding blade shards to the account wallet for currencies. From what I remember from that map, it’s not on a schedule but you need to do the events to start the meta. Off memory it was something like clearing out mobs at the entrances.
It made perfect sense. The express purpose of World bosses is to move players to various maps, rather then camp them waiting for one event to spawn, and fighting to cram into the active map before it goes into Overflow, whose local conditions have no event on them. The daily reward is designed to have them stick to the rotation.
And the point of adding Skrittsborough is “so the map gets more traffic”. Prior to the schedule, no one did Mega Destroyer or Mount Maelstrom volcano events, and the area spent over half the time “flooded with lava” that kills anyone entering it. This was a huge boon to that area, since the pre event chain is extremely difficult to solo.
Thats the Charrzooka…. which apparently got turned into a Rifle to use existing animations, despite being twice as long as the charr using it, causing it to clip into EVERYTHING!!
You know what would make Drones epic? Ranged attacks which don’t root the minion.
But given the name “Forge”, my money is on dropped bundles that you hit to build them. I hope I’m wrong, but “hitting it to fix it” is one aspect of the Engineer (see Tool kit) not a lot of people are aware of.
There are 2 potential options…. Medi/Shout hybrid, or pure shout builds. The hybrid offers a lot of good sustained offense, with only minor issues with defense sustain (not good at dealing with back to back hard CCs). The shout build is core support, making you almost unstoppable defensively, but trades some burst damage, and puts higher reliance on your base stats.
If you’re not good with managing skill rotations, the shout build is easier to handle, and offers built in Condi cleanse when running Pure of Voice. If you’re planning long term exotic, Dungeon Zerks armor and Asc soldiers amulet, and your choice of trinkets. Trinkets are fairly cheap to produce for off stats, and the soldiers amulet gives a large amount of Tou/Vit for relatively low cost of laurels (even cheaper if you go WvW and uses badges), can be reused later on another character, and may find use again if the HOT meta even partially lives up to its promises. Trooper runes synergize well, but aren’t mandatory. Because PoV competes with Writ of Persistence, its recommended to run GS, Sword/Focus to maintain the highest possible mobility to offset the DPS and support loss you’d otherwise get from Mace Symbols. Altruistic Healing and Empowering Might then pair up to fill the healing gap. If you have allies nearby, the boons from shouts also proc AH for respectable healing bursts.
If your more confident, the Medi build gives you more offensive power to help tackle tougher enemies on your own. Combines Smite condition, Judges intervention, and Retreat with a Mace/X-GS weapon set for decent mobility, and insanely strong opening attacks, while still giving you minor condi cleansing power and one stun breaker. The DPS build is Valor, Honor and Zeal to trait Monks focus and both Symbol traits. I run this as my main build now, since its good for farming, easy trait tweaks for different situations, and lets me run shield so I can farm ambient mobs for weapon mastery achievements (pretty much the only way its gonna happen).
A variation to this is Valor, Honor, Virtues for better group support (an option for extra stun break) while offloading more of your damage potential to AOE burning. This virtues build with torch can generate insane burn stacks on hoards of trash mobs, but it trades off potentially stronger GS rotations.
Note that if you plan on using even remotely expensive runes, DO NOT use karma armor. Always use dungeons, as their cheaper then crafting, but are still salvageable.
Is that PI not working a confirmed feature, or a bug? I’ve checked this not long ago, and fall damage reduction is always on, but they added ICD to the effects because people were abusing it in WvW for easy AOE on defending at gates (see Warrior).
Guard have enough blocks as is. And with block being as powerful as they are now, I’d rather see the Shield get better synergy with its group utility role, being its intended design and all.
Right now the shield’s utility has 2 extremes between PvP and PvE. Some PvP players like the push effect of Absorption being omni-directional. But for most PvE players, it runs into major design conflict by being a back line support weapon whose strongest functions (projectile block) would be more useful in a front line configuration. But with the push effect knocking all the target out of melee range, its more disruptive then helpful in its current from.
There are 2 simple changes that could majorly improve this without heavily impacting its utility. Swap the push effect between 5 and 4, OR have the push effect on detonate.
As for baseline, Absorption needs to last longer, considering it roots the player, and doesn’t stop melee opponents from simply walking in and wacking you.