But its not like every bit of Exp is precious, nor are the resources tied to it at all scarce. I’m tempted to write this off as obsessive compulsion problem on the OP’s part; but most games go out of their way to train that behavior into their players… making it hard to let that mind set go.
But for your mental health….. you have to open your mind, and see where the real grind is. Its gold and Materials btw…… like LOTS of it. The average Legendary uses 36k units of Mithril and/or Elder wood in its construction…… and thats just one element of the process. Most gathering nodes only yield 3 units before exhausting. You get 1-2 spirit shards per hour as a random drop reward, can be gained by consuming Tomes beyond level 80, and can even be found as rewards for certain meta events…… and at most you’d need 200 to construct a legendary weapon. If went full bore on gathering mats, I can collect maybe 200-300 units per hour (unless I get super lucky with node spawns). Or I could get a lesser amount through salvage from loot drops, but also gain a decent amount of gold from events, rare items, and champ boxes in the process.
Having the mastery track frozen is an irritation at worst. And one that can be resolved by side tracking for 30-45 minutes out of the few thousand hours of play time I have in the game. So trust me when I say you have much more pressing matters to be “horrified” over, in our asinine quest for “progress”.
Thing is the expansion is already mostly downloaded for everyone that’s been logging in over the last few weeks. With the demos that went on last weekend and the one this weekend has already shown up some problems that they have fixed. I am sure a few more may pop up with the massive amount of code to make a game this size but they have been looking for and fixing problems already.
You’d be right…. except for Elite Specializations being what they are. Map content only covers code running that content… the assets, the rule sets, and game’s baseline engine behavior. But Especs are a whole different branch of Nightmare, being a highly complicated, highly conditional, and extremely interactive set of game behaviors that have to work correctly across all other content branches. While the rule set that drives these should be mostly self-contained, they have an indirect impact that can outright break a game experience when the content its interacting with wasn’t designed to handle what it does. In another post, I explained the Symbolic Wrath bug on Guardian, and how it resulted in a 2-minute Teq run with their 100k damage ticks.
Sparkfly Fen could have 0 zero bugs across the whole map, yet that 1 bug in trait behavior can break just about any Boss fight where multiple guardians can get together. A bug in map content only affects that map. But a bug in the trait system can easily affect game wide class balance/performance.
I’m a little disappointed that there are still people who equate “size” and “code” as if they were the directly scaled to each other. Minecraft is a game that was no larger then 4MB (under Notch’s development), and contained a world space bigger then most MMOs combined.
Account upgrades (as far as I can tell) were never giftable; only gem store “items” (skins, toys, etc).
I never noticed it before……. but I like it.
why oh why did you make the rev suck so bad?
Its tradition.
How would a refund work with the Ultimate Edition purchase? Would it remove those unlocked skins and items from your account? Remove the bonus gems as well? I’m curious.
Most likely scenario, it can strip those items off the account (and requires the gems be present on the account so they can be removed) . Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any tradable item with any of the PoF sets…. so that shouldn’t cause a problem.
Worst case scenario… they roll back the account to just before the code was activated, and reapply all “Gems for cash” transactions, so they can repurchase gem store items bought during the interim.
So, how exactly would swapping gear between builds work? Do you need 2 sets of every piece equipped all the time? What if some parts of the gear are same and some are different? If they use same items, it is extremely easy to swap out some item for new while in other gear tab, and forget it was essential for whatever build was hidden.
I don’t really see problems with having traits and skills saved as build and swapped easily.
Trait profiles and Gear profiles can be handled in separate menus, since a respectable number of builds are modifications to just traits anyway. The Build save feature in GW1 only saved skills and attributes. But then again, gear stats were not a concern (armor was baseline, and most people just kept a head piece with a different rune to match the build). We also had 4 weapon sets, so storing multiple weapons was less of an issue.
Honestly….. the Devs could solve a lot of existing issues by implementing Gear Sets that slot alternate items, using the same method and rule set from Weapon swapping. To get it out of the way up front…. the only way to really justify this, is them selling Loadout sets as a Gem store upgrade. The ability to sell this will improve the odds of it happening… but also justify spending real Dev time making it as user friendly as possible.
So with that out of the way….. the premise is pretty simple, given its based on how Weapon swapping works. You have a Main set, which constitutes all item slots as a baseline. You then slot items you have to change into the alternate sets. This is to specifically take advantage of the hierarchical ordering behavior in Weapon sets when they encounter an empty slot (ie, look at the other set to see if its occupied, and default to that item).
Using Chrono tank as an example- In theory, the normal behavior of 2 gear sets allow for a Default of All zerkers setup, while Set 2 contains all Minstrels gear for max toughness. Using the empty slot behavior, your main set can be all zerkers, but Set 2 only contains 2 pieces of gear (Legs and a Ring) with Minstrel Stats. Swapping to set 2 switches the Legs and Ring; but it see the empty slots, and defaults those to the Zerks gear in the main set. You could also get creative by leaving parts of the main set empty, and slotting the (differing) equipment in Sets 2 and 3, as a way to manipulate the defaulting behavior.
For the fringe case of Legendary gear; having a Legendary item in the main slot changes the UI for the alternate slots to display a “Select Stat” and “Select Rune” (if it happens) on right click, and will tweak the meta data while the set is loaded. If understand the structure correctly, this should only appear for empty slots…. and shouldn’t cause conflict if similar items are sloted into those sets.
I absolutely disagree with you. There is zero reason why you need to keep the loot on a >>DEMO<< character. If you want loot play normal.
There are plenty of reasons….. the biggest, and historically most difficult to reverse, is bugs and balance miscalculations. Just to give an example- the 2 minute Teq happened because a bug in Symbolic Avenger allowed Guardians to gain a 10% damage bonus for EVERY symbol the enemy was standing when they hit. Once the damage was ramped up, they were doing almost 100k per hit (including per symbol pulse) and just melted Teq’s HP in every burn phase.
Once this became common knowledge, people wanted to abuse it left and right. This puts Anet in a very hard position, because the argument could be made that its a Bug, and that its open season until Anet patches it. On the other hand, its clearly being exploited for easy gains, and can destabilize the economy if leveraged for loot farming.
Imagine if this bug existed with Raids….. Just replace every DPS slot (or possibly the entire team) with Hammer Guardians, and clear DPS sections of a boss fight in mere seconds. Should they be allowed to keep the rewards, when they knowing exploited something that was well outside the performance margin? Or that loop hole found with a Karma vendor that sold you a free item you could sell for 2 copper. A bunch of people made thousands of gold off that.
Thats just on a production system, where intent can be more easily identified. But now we have a new set of code that hasn’t had large scale testing done on it, with a higher chance of bugs/loopholes that can be exploited for unintended gains. Some might not even be conscious of this happening, because there is no publicly documented baseline to know if it is or isn’t behaving “normally”. A player discovers a trait combo that puts out 200k DPS on an optimal rotation, but that same trait combo puts out 35k on a less rigorous rotation. Is the latter considered exploiting because they are using that trait combo? Or is it just a coincidence that they picked that trait combo, and hasn’t realized the damage potential possible if they just incorporated other skills?
Having the beta characters on a separate back end accounts isolates the unwarranted gains, while isolating them from PvE prevents them from exploiting something to give OTHER people those gains from group content.
And yes, I’m well aware how current arrangement is purposely disruptive to normal WvW/PvP activity. But with PvP you can compartmentalize beta players through the match maker (and monitor them more closely). However….. unfortunately for WvW, the big benefit here is that any balance issues with the new Especs will become rapidly apparent, given how likely many players are willing to abuse them in that kind of large scale PvP setting. But one scheduled weekend of disruption (which can purposely ignore GLEKO) beats several weeks of live of exploit abuse that actually does mess with the ranking system.
Quite disappointed, as well. I’m not a PVP/WvW player at all and the PVP/WvW builds don’t necessarily work for PVE content as well.
I was really hoping for a PVE test, like there was for HoT. It was interesting to go to cursed shore and kick around some champ giants to see how effective classes were with makeshift builds and to hype myself up more for unlocking them in the expansion
I haven’t played the game too much recently for, well, reasons I won’t go into here. Was really hoping the elite spec beta would get me excited about the game all over again. I love the game, I really do. And I want to get back into it, but dang.
This would be the perfect time to do random crap in PvP/WvW with no consequences to your main account. PvP doesn’t have a refit cost, but WvW uses your PvE gear…. which the Beta characters can switch on a whim.
If the issue is fighting Champs…. WvW has several in each map, majority of which are outside the normal travel paths of players. They’re also considerably harder, making them a better test bed for build limits.
If you’re goal is to “hype yourself up”… then I’d honestly say not doing yourself any favors. A lot of aspects of Especs in HOT where immediately were written off because they weren’t aiding DPS…. and it wouldn’t be until raids for those aspects to start making sense. Tyrian content wasn’t designed to stress players they way later content would. So despite being gratifying that you face rolled a mob that was never designed to fight tactics employed by Especs, it doesn’t teach you anything meaningful about what the builds are really capable of.
In fact… a lot of DPS builds that looked good in HoT Beta preview got their kitten handed to them in later sections of HoT. Yet today, we’re well familiar with the strategy needed. And many raid builds, which are intentionally lacking in certain areas, can be compensated for just by playing smarter.
The choice to keep the beta players focused in a small area intentionally forces them to interact, and generate useful data as a side effect. In Open World, they’d be too spread out, and not taking on big challenges that would highlight aspects of the game play to make adjustments for. Crystal Oasis was more of a content demo then anything else (especially since we lacked especs). But this weekend you’re asked to be a contributing member of a zero-effort test group…… at least try to pretend you care enough to tolerate PvP play with other players.
The game seriously need less people to hold up in their little corners, and start interacting in friendly and encouraging manner. And if theres one thing WvW needs right now, its people to put down their ego for a couple of hours, and join in the chaos. Its like my uncle used to say….. “Riots are always more fun with more people”.
49 Points needed….
Easiest MPs:
9 off the bat from Insights (map MPs).
3 From Triple Trouble (one for each head)
1 Wurmicidal Maniac (extra for getting all 3 heads)
1 Triple Trouble Meta (the whole set)
1 Karka Queen (easy kill on world boss train)
1 Queen Chrii’kkt IV in Dry top
1 Lion’s Arch Exterminator (also gets you Princess)
14 in Fractals, all of which can be done in Tier 1, and half of which are really easy to accomplish. (so we’ll assume 7 for the sake of argument)
9 from doing personal story (one of which is just hitting level 80)
1 from doing all of the Dungeon stories (which are easy mode)
1 For Tyrian Map complete (plus give gift of exploration)
1 for Hidden Garden JP
1 Killing Teq
1 More for his achievement set
1 For Silverwaste JP
4 for the Silverwaste bosses
1 extra for getting all 4
1 Transfer Chaser – easy but takes a little time
1 Ascended Accoutrement (craft a set of Asc armor for each weight class ~1125g; you can save money with dropped armor boxes or buying Asc armor sets through Raid tokens)(This one you’ll get as a side effect of gearing up your characters)
1 Ambrite Weapon Collection (88g)
Thats 46 without Living story achievements
Harder but attainable:
1 Lost badges (some commanders do this run for tips)
1 Koutalophile – Actually super easy; except for the WvW spoon (random drop) and Imperial Chef Yileng’s Golden Spoon (Asc trinket bought cheapest with guild commendations).
1 The Emperor’s New Wardrobe (645g… cheaper if you WvW a lot)
1 for Bandits Current events (a little time consuming, but goes fast with a group)
Anet only did it for weapons and armor as a band-aid reaction to players exploding in anger when it was announced Ascended gear would have 10% more stats than exotic.
I don’t think that’s why they did it. Anyone with existing ascended armor or weapons would have had to completely remake their armor to change stats; that’s always been an issue. Plus, various dev posts before|after the change suggests it was a response to stats being moved from traits and into gear.
All of that applies to trinkets and backpieces. And, as others have noted, there’s nothing intrinsic to the mystic forge that prevents using insignias|inscriptions for conversion.
Actually there is…. the output results. The Mystic Forge has a massive bespoke recipe list, with very few instances of wild card usage (which result in either a random item or multiple recipes for one specific output). To create a “one to many” recipe, they basically need to make a recipe for each affirmative item (like insignia) that will control the output results. The only reason armor/weapon stat swapping works the way it does, is by transforming a wild card input item to a specific item output. So any other weapon turned into a berserker stat WILL be a Zojja’s weapons (with a red skin) when it comes out.
The better approach was what they used for Blood ruby trinkets, except integrating it with the same type of UI used for the infusion extraction tool. This process doesn’t alter the Item ID (which is what the mystic forge is made for), but instead clears the meta data so you can reselect whatever stat the item offers, without altering the skin.
The last remaining question becomes “should” older stat selectable items have their selection expanded? Most of the stats are tied to their content pack….. HoT stats are only available from HoT items, and PoF stats would only be available through PoF items. But very few Tyrian items have the ability to access the full list of Core stats…. and of the few that do, were mostly retrofits of previously removed stats (like Explorers).
Stomp Enemies, and also be commanded to remote res an ally. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Function_Gyro
Its actually quite useful in open world, since you can command it to res someone, but still leave you free to attack.
To clarify, the cool downs are tracked per “type”, and essentially share the same cool down across all sigils that offer the type of triggered effect. Say you have Minor Sigil of Air and Major Sigil of Air on one weapon, but Super Sigil of Air in another weapon. On Crit, all sigils in the active weapon set will Roll for trigger. Depending on which one triggered will set the Cool down period in the back ground. If you were to immediately swap weapons to the Superior Sigil, that will NOT trigger until that existing cool down is cleared.
Having mirrored sigils between your 2 weapons sets makes them available all the the time, but doesn’t affect this cool down in any helpful ways.
Given the ease of monetizing UM, I think any loss in value of the tools is rather minor. It’s a free Magic Warped Packet/Bundle (forget which has better ROI) every few hours of gathering materials.
Lose value? I get UM everywhere I go now without even setting foot in one of the LS3 maps. I think they provide great value, freeing me to go where I want to do what I want, yet still earn currency towards what I want. Right now that is Obsidian for a legendary, and every bit of UM helps reach that goal.
As i said between brackets
Lose value? I get UM everywhere I go now without even setting foot in one of the LS3 maps. I think they provide great value, freeing me to go where I want to do what I want, yet still earn currency towards what I want. Right now that is Obsidian for a legendary, and every bit of UM helps reach that goal.
I wouldn’t count UM out just yet. UM was the center piece of LS3, and has a relatively high chance of coming back in LS4 given how broadly it fits into the world state.
They did say specifically that Gen 2 weapons would be released with PoF/LS4 but would continue to use the same system as e.g. The Shining Blade.
But those still require gift of maguuma mastery. What I’m expecting is alt recipes for Elona to produce a substitute gift, since that would immediately solve the Map Mastery element moving forward. It would also help to rename Gift of Mastery to “Gift of Tyrian Mastery”.
PoF is an entry point for new players…. so aside from Glider (which is really helpful with the Tyrian retrofit), you don’t really need to do anything besides maybe stock pile materials and gold for the new crafting projects. Everything else is self contained in the expansion.
I actually made an elite spec for the mesmer called the bard where they had shouts and offhand warhorn!
But we already have a Tempest. :P
Not without a low level engine overhaul. DX 11 could be possible with minimal architectural changes, but DX12 is an entirely different type of animal. Never try to lump those 2 together as if they were a progression of the API set….. because DX12 NEEDS a significantly different type of engine to not run worse.
That said, DX11 updates are kind of pointless given how the performance and visual difference between DX11 and DX9 is surprisingly minimal if your engineers are really good at DX9’s setup. On top of that, most of DX11’s advantages are in effects the game doesn’t really use much of.
Ideally I think we’d see better water effects and shadows, but for things like volumetric effects and particles, the cost of those are very high to use; and the sheer number of effects per scene in this game is incredibly high. If they were non-selective about it, there would be a noticeable drop in the performance average rather then a gain. On the flip side, it would finally put GPUs to use…… and then set them on fire with upwards of 100 effects triggering every second.
On the subject of DX12…. that requires multithreading in the renderer to actually be useful. DX9 is single threaded- and to this day, most games (including all but the newest DX12/Vulkan games) are either single threaded, or only partially multithreaded. Its something that has to be Designed into the Engine on an almost fundamental level; and not something you can simply “add” to an engine after the fact.
The game would be better balanced if we would have Dual Effect Attributes, as this would allow Anet to implement defensive effects that can work against the powercreep of power builds in form of giving us access to to defensive effects, like Attributes that can reduce the chance of receiving critical hits, making this way Weakness obsolete, so that it can be either reworked or removed.
it would allow Anet to implemente a defensive Attribute Effect with that we can increase our Endurance regeneration, with that on the counterside would become Vigor obsolete, so that it can be either removed or reworked.
A possible way to reduce the effect spam of conditions and boons, what will help in general to balance the game easier, if Anet successfully can reduce a bit the effect spam of this game.
This doesn’t actually solve the problem, it just makes the math more complicated. The premise of defense stats quickly pales in comparison to damage avoidance effects, which this game uses at the core of its combat system. Given a choice between reducing incoming condi duration, or cleansing it…. which would you opt for? Crit chance mitigation lowers the DPS average, but it also nullifies a whole stat which is based on probability (and the large number of effects which are triggered by that specific event).
The net effect hasn’t changed….. DPS average will be still ranked based on highest numbers. But in the process, you’ve also completely over complicated how the system works, and reduced the reliability of non-passive actions across the board. The only thing left at that point is to power creep in order to differentiate difficulty scales.
Serious? This game has more rewards for doing nothing than anything I have experienced, it’s literally inventory filling with loot every 20 mins.
And items do not inflate currency, only coin rewards do that.
I think you just need to look into how you can take better advantage of the loot you are getting.
Yea it fills ur inventory with trash. Nothing of value or use
Do you want a precursor every kill? What do you actually expect?
If I’m in a level 80 zone I shouldn’t be getting a bunch of useless greens and blues, especially underleveled gear. Just give me silver and copper at that point. And the stupid chests around maps should actually have a chance for good drops, not a blue pair of gloves and 3 empyreal fragments.
Those drops are worth silver and copper at that point, sell them on the TP or salvage them and sell the mats. They can’t just keep adding gold to the game.
Why not just handing out material bags or plain copper and silver? You have to spend on salvage kits, you won’t use those blues or greens, selling them as they are is much less proffitable than disarming them for materials and selling those anyways…
We’ve been down this route before…… Firefall and the JC Penny effect. Being a fair system is less important then being a system that “feels” good. And for the majority of players, who are visually driven, they needs to SEE objects amassing in order to “feel” like they’re making progress. You could easily make a more efficient system, but doing so cuts out the strongest secondary indicators that wealth accumulation is taking place.
Sense of scale also factors heavily into a response….. which had a major impact on the perception of Karma, despite its high value in Core Tyria maps. After a certain point, we lose awareness of the scale, almost ignoring it in the process. You could, for instance, convert karma into gold by buying items and either selling or dropping them in the mystic toilet for TP valuable items. You’re still making money, but output rate of the conversion process was too small to “feel” being worth the effort. As such, karma was considered “worthless” outside of a few very highly karma priced items. Conversely, the new back packs for the Abaddon and (and lesser extent) Aurora collections consume huge amounts of Karma per back piece…. and somehow we no longer “have enough of this worthless karma to matter”.
Look at the huge arguments surrounding the “Unidentified items” in the PoF demo. There has no be objective attempts to figure out what the average conversion rates into rare/exotic gear are, which would immediately make its profitability clear. Instead, nearly all the arguments are solely fixated on how bad the ID process “Feels” because we can’t quickly identify if there is an exotic item or not at a glance. In terms of functionality, this is almost identical to salvaging for Ectos (there is a drop rate, and it may or may not pay off); yet that key difference of the system’s visual cues (giving a sense of agency) seems to make it the polar opposite of what that system does.
The game doesn’t really want to rely on “clutch skills”, because you’d need something so powerful, Overwatch would be jealous. A few exist, but they only do so under very specific conditions… and nearly all of them are purposed with PvP in mind.
PvE, ironically, doesn’t lend well to these types of skills, because enemy attack patterns are too slow. You usually end up in a situation where a single hit is so big, you may as well just use your dodge roll….. or is multi-hit, which tears through single triggered defenses like they didn’t exist.
What proves to be more effective is normal skills being leveraged in clutch situations due to circumstances. Shield of Judgement, Mesmer distortion, most Blowback skills, Rejuvenating Tides, group stun breaks, and many more. They’re not explicitly designed to work in a clutch, and are just as effective in normal situations to either gain control, or regain control of a situation. What would make them “clutch” is using them at the right time to avoid a bad situation.
Compare to Rebound, which only “saves” you against one blow, only IF it would otherwise kill you, and restores HP to a set level. The only time it beats Aegis is if the attack is unblockable; and against condi, it could maybe buy you a half a second, where as a strong condi clear could avoid most of that damage in the first place.
So if you want clutch in PvP….. those happen all the time. Just make the other guy regret his choice of attack. But for PvE, the more projected attacks of bosses is much better mitigated through the multitude of general mechanics at your disposal. Or in a worst case scenario, rapid recovery of a screw up by bursting skills made for recovery.
First….. [&BCcEAAA=] There is a Magister in LA who you can talk to get recaps. She should send you a mail after finishing Pact Tyria, since the LS1 Recap is the next story to activate in the list.
Second….. I see a problem with promoting the next chapter too early, given how the LS maps are meant to be the focus for at least a couple weeks before moving on. Advertising them at the end of the story mission (which is how you usually enter the maps) then puts all the community focus on the new chapter, instead of exploring the current one.
Third…. Ideally, the spacing of LS4 chapters should be shorter then previous seasons; enough to where adding a trailer would be unnecessary. I would rather they write the chapter breaks to connect smoother, so the story easily flows from previous one, and not try too hard to push cliff hangers. Building the teaser elements into the story builds mystery (which is fun). Slapping a trailer at the end of an episode, that just barely finished releasing tension, winds the audience back up into a hype frenzy (which is bad).
Cliff hangers and “Next time” teasers runs a high risk of burn out if you keep people amped up for too long without catharsis. Have you ever noticed how really popular shows are more prone to being “binge watched”, while some episodic series with large overarching plots (like later Southpark seasons) can be watched in sporadic bursts and not loose its appeal?
1 Week is roughly the perfect amount of lead time for an episode announcement. Its enough time to talk about it, but not so long that it drags out longer then the modern attention span allows for.
Yeah, the only correlation between map completion and especs is the access to hero points. And with the low hanging fruit in WvW’s reward system, you can get enough proof heroics to unlock all the hero points in a content block for relatively low effort, and moderate time investment. Theres around 215 HPs in Core (split between the maps and WvW), and another 400 on HOT. You get them from Rank chests and skirmish chests, avg 6 proofs each. Takes about 30-40 min per skirmish chest, and you can easily get 1-2 Rank chests per hour for Ktrains, and double to triple that if theres a zerg fight.
Spend a solid weekend in WvW, and you should have no trouble outfitting on Espec. No mastery points required.
The current business model has a few divisions. F2P gives you access to all of the content in Core, but heavily limits how you can use them (as anti-spam/anti-goldfarming). The purchase of any Expansion upgrades your account to Base [equivlent to launch when the game was Buy to Play], removes all restrictions on the account, and unlocks access to that specific Expansion’s content.
The confusion tends to come up due to Arena net constantly changing its business model, as their initial approach to continuous content failed to keep retention. So this is the 4th or 5th revision since 2013, when the executives got spooked.
Now that we’re at the 2nd expansion, we have an answer on how they’ve decided to do multiple expansions….. a modular approach. Unlike WoW, which has a linear level cap, GW2 doesn’t need previous content outside of Core in order to function. Granted the story gets disjointed…. but that happened anyway, when they shifted the player’s role in the story after the Scarlet Wars (which you’ll never get to play again outside of the few Fractals).
So until they change their minds again….. the Base game is included in all Expansions, and each expansion has to be picked up separately. But they do offer a discount if you buy multiple expansions as a package, and the price of the individual expansions will drop over time to some minimum. But as a result, you only need to buy a given expansion if you want; and not need them to level up toward new Content. If you’re willing to wait, you can get them on sale later, and not be worse off outside of lagging behind on collections.
While not as ballsy as what they were going for before; this is the most stable sales model they’ve had to do date, and is extremely predictable on what you do and don’t get in the arrangement…. which was a problem when HOT first launched.
“as a dev, seeing that this new mechanic is not working in Any aspect of the game and is adding negative complexity to your system without solving anything. Why would you keep it in the game then? why not accept that it did not work as you hoped, remove it and replace it with existing mechanics (you already had so many to choose from, you had everything from Clear silence, could be added so “CC breakers removed it” for balance, to Dots bleed/burn/etc. and soft+hard CC. there was absolutely no need to “invent a NEW debuff”, especially when it didn’t solve anything and added extra clutter+issues).
____________________________
So here we come to the obvious solution (imho);
Remove ALL the clutter. Exactly as you suggest, take all the Dot skills and put them into 1, just call it “DOT” and in the describtion you can do all the (this is a fire, this is poisen, this is magic darkpower energy of doomgated terror, Mwuhahaha), and keep the skill effects so it looks cool.The same goes for Buffs: will post it in its own reply as its getting to long now:
Removing something and replacing it with nothing still leaves the original problem. We don’t have anything that effectively shut down player actions, and PvE doesn’t benefit when the trigger is something NPC AI doesn’t do much of.
Both torment and confusion work on this really fine line where they could be devastating in PvP, but theres not a good way to control its application. PvE has the exact opposite problem where AI doesn’t do the things that trigger it enough to be dangerous…. but there is a huge demand for more DPS sources for Raid meta.
Them moving both over to a PvE slant for static DPS means they’re trying to side line it so they can reexplore it later without having to remove it. Reaper Chill ran into a similar issue, because there is a major lack of control on how condi cleanse prioritizes order… and incidentally chill triggering bleed stacks had a couple of advantages (cover condi, and intensity stacking). Therwon’t deprecate either, because nothing else in the game fills that functionality (no matter how inadequate it is at the time). They needed more damage types to differentiate Mesmer and Revenant, and add new strategic options to the game. If they’re triggered damage output was really high, then they’d definitely fill that function in PvP modes.
But if the problem is Condi cleanse being so effective, that the only conditions that are useful are ones that front load damage…. then the problem is pretty kitten obvious. In fact…. following this train of thought, it reveals a whole slew of other issues about there being no punishing aspect to suppress condi removal.
We Need a new game play vector built around the idea of Blighting support. Not just boon strip… but punishing heavy condi cleanse, while increasing the number of condi damage mitigation methods in Core. The stuff you can toy with in both PvP and PvE are pretty substantial, and finally add an element of strategy to condi play besides constantly reapplying and clearing. Even as just a start, a new condition called “Blight” that triggers damage when Bleed, Poison, Burning, or itself is removed; paired with a Boon called “Hearty” that reduces the damage of Bleed, Poison, Burning and Blight. With Blight damage being direct damage, it doesn’t get negated by Resistance; with “Hearty” adding a middle ground between the decisive impact of condi clearing, and the expansive (yet short) mitigation given by Resistance. There are even greater options if you factor in barrier as a Resistance alternative.
so in short…. get rid of mounts and replace with perma-superspeed?
No. You are very wrong to summarize the post with just that.
How is it wrong? That encompasses everything thats implied with the mountless mount and “not waiting to get out of combat” to resume mounted movement.
Yeah, that’s the problem with the “realism” arguments. And I’d much rather have more control over my movement and be able to move like mounts do in WoW than to have this kind of “realistic” movement.
But homogenizing everything comes with its own set of problems. Players kitten about lack of diversity in various aspects….. until it actually forces them to do something different. You see the irony in this mind set?
Lack of familiarity is what lead to the most devastating changes from Beta 1…. the dumbing down of the AI behavior (which wasn’t that difficult to begin with), and the lowering of the difficulty curve across the game. In the time that followed, a major complaint about the game was how mobs offered no challenge or threat, because you could face tank them and autoattack your way to victory.
To remedy that, they took steps to substantially increase the difficulty in Heart of Thorns, not only making them statistically tougher, but also increased the synergy and diversity of their attacks and group comps. The immediate response from the players were “This is stupidly hard…. WTF would you do that?” Fast forward 2 years and multiple nerfs, and any half way competent player has little to no trouble dispatching the majority of enemies.
If mounts are going to feel like a distinct element of the game, and not just some uninventive upgrade to regular movement, then it needs to make us behave differently. I can’t be the only one that realize this is capable of opening the door for bigger things- allowing things that wouldn’t previously fit into this game, an avenue that now makes perfect sense.
I am very sad that the dyeable area is so tiny – very lame.
Its animal pigments, not a tiedye tshirt
so in short…. get rid of mounts and replace with perma-superspeed?
Spoiler alert….. stuff happened after you beat Zhaitan
Only if you’re using the crafting table, where it can draw from your bank directly. . For any mystic forge recipe, which requires you to be able to move it into inventory, you have to use the soulbound character.
Although there aren’t many recipes I can think of that use soulbound items directly. Legendary crafting requires you to salvage them for essence, except in the case of gen 2.5, where the previous items aren’t even used to create the next tier items.
Necro in the meta will depend entirely on how effective Barrier is for the new raid wings, as its the one Spec thats meant to easily stack it. For Core Necro, they’re awkward to use outside of condi bombing, as the core class doesn’t have a lot of utility or group support. Its essentially a very selfishly focused Dmg/Tank hybrid, with Boon strip that isn’t particularly useful outside of PvP.
However, Reaper spec perfectly slots into all the gaps in core necro, ramping up its offensive and CC abilities. Despite the changes in the last balance pass, its still competent for AOE condi, while Valks power Reaper is kitten near unkillable in Heart of Thorns content.
Warrior on the other hand is kind of a mixed bag due to how the raid meta treats it. They’re the go-to might stacker from Phalanx strength, and its condi DPS is respectable. But everyone really likes to kitten on Power builds for it (even before the nerf to one of the key traits).
But Spell breaker is looking pretty neat. On the surface people are already writing it off as a PvP only spec….. but if NPCs are going to be utilizing the new mechanics, SB has the potential to be either a strong suppression build, or could potentially be a new Bypass/DPS build. We’ll know more in a couple days once people have had time to mess with it.
It depends on what your meta is like. For Core classes, Greatsword, Sword and Staff are the 3 most utilized weapons since the game’s inception. Daggers gets utilized in on the Thief, and Dagger Ele; but both are considered pretty marginal, given the bulk of the game’s population was most invested in GS Guardian and Staff Elementalist. Behind that would be the 2 Bows, followed by Scepter, Hammer, Axe, Pistol, Mace, Shield, and Rifle in roughly that order. I don’t know where torch ranks on that, since I’ve rarely seen Rotgort used by anyone. Howlers another marginal legendary that I’ve seen in single digits.
With HoT/Especs, that didn’t really change much, despite the minor shuffle of weapons in the meta.
If you’re getting ready for PoF, the top investments for Thematic synergy is Predator for Deadeye, Astralaria for Guard/Mes, and Incinerator for Speallbreaker/Soulbeast. If you’re going sword for Holosmith, Shining blade is now the obvious choice for cool factor…. although the potentially for a Light saber-ish collection for Holosmith may be good enough to satisfy most people.
If you’re not too keen on Incinerator, you can try waiting on the Gen 2 Dagger thats likely to drop in LS4.
It should be under the UI section of the keybinds, since its not classed anywhere in the combat and movement sections.
Its not worthless… its presumes you don’t have quickness uptime. HoT and Raid meta was a massive power bump due to how Chorno and Druid affect Team comps. Prior to that, quickness wasn’t considered useful as you could rarely get more then 6 seconds and rarely more then 20% uptime (in ideal conditions). Those traits were much better spent on sustainable sources of damage increase. Oh yeah… there was no team comp before Raids…. only DPS builds and Not-DPS builds
Did mesmer and loving the new power build buff (trying to get assassin gear/focus) but don’t know what build to be aimning for atm
If you plan on raiding, Chrono has a Quickness/Alacrity build that also serves as the Tank by changing out some gear. While not as powerful offensively as the shatter builds, its very serviceable in open world, and makes you extremely popular at world events. Sometimes I’ll follow around low level players and drop quickness during fights…. easy way to make a few new friends. :P
There still some shuffling going on with the meta, as the community is trying to figure out how recoup boon duration in light of the balance pass….. but Chrono support is 90% Berserkers. Chornotank is just berserkers with some minstrels mixed in for toughness. But the biggest difference between power shatter and Chorno modded for illusions, is that Chorno has way better sustain damage, and doesn’t die if the fight lasts more then 7 seconds.
Don’t read too heavily into the forums any time theres a balance patch…… legitimate concerns tend to get drowned out by people who are mad that they’re cheese methods don’t work anymore; making it really difficult to hold an intelligent discussion about game meta. Within 3 weeks, the new meta will start to shape up as people start prepping for PoF based on whats observed in the beta weekend; and all the raging about this balance pass will be overtaken by arguments about how OP/UP the elite specs are going to be.
As for learning a new class… I would highly recommend taking on something with a more difficult setup, but is not critical in group comp for Raids. (Assuming this discussion is about you eventually joining raids)
And in terms of viability…. unless Anet just outright nerfs Phalanx, Warriors will continue to be meta for its easy group might stacking.
On average their the same, ~8 hours of play time per track. But sPvP is more volatile due to win/loss avg, and whether or not there’s a tournament running. Queue times can also set you back if you plan on using boosters.
WvW is more consistent, but theres a ramp up time with participation to get the reward track up to max tier. Depending on time of day, and the current activity level of your server, it can take between 10-30 minutes get T6 participation. But once up, it takes a reasonably small effort to maintain it; and as long as you harass guard posts, capture camps, or run with the zerg, you never have to worry about the decay timer. This consistency makes it the ideal situation to pop boosters, and can indirectly help gain reward track (slightly) faster.
But before I dive into that…. I would recommend the following:
- Do both sPvP and WvW in parallel, but use 2 different characters. On one character do a couple sPvP rounds a day to get the Daily rewards, which contain pvp reward track potions. Even though this progresses a separate reward track, you can advance this very casually by only spending ~30min a day (2 rounds) on it. Its quick enough, and will typically knock out 2-3 of the 40 reward ticks to get the end reward. (Don’t forget to get the PvP reward track guild buff).
For WvW, the efficiency of boosters are much higher due the very consistent ticking of the reward track. Unboosted it takes roughly 8 hours to finish a reward track…. but with minor bonuses (guild boost 10%) knocks that down to 7.2h. Exp boosters (but not the birthday/login ones) can boost the reward track gain (50%)… but their really expensive to run, giving only 2 hours each. At the current gem prices thats 25g each booster.
Despite not counting toward the reward track… I would still recommend using the Birthday/celebration boosters, as they double the your WvWXP, and thus rank gain. This is critical for playing in WvW for extended periods, as Ranking gives you points for character upgrades in WvW. These substantially increase your utility in the game mode, and makes its easier to get points and keep participation up. Faster ranking also gets more rank reward chests (coin, badges, and loot). You also get bonuses for Skirmish rewards if your rank is high enough (1 bonus pip at 160); and the Skirmish rewards are where real pay out is now (including small reward track progress).
For both of these, theres a seasonal Buff called “Call of the Mists”, which show up whenever Anet is hosting some kind of PvP event. This bonus applies to both sPvP and WvW, and boosts the reward track gain by 15-25%, depending on how high profile the event is. The sPvP League Season is a big one…. and I would definitely advise participating in them if you like sPvP. The reward tokens can be put toward discounted ascended gear, and is an opportunity to knock out the one-time reward tracks for extra mystic clovers.
Mastery points are intentionally grouped to a completionist effort….. so you pretty much have to Dive into Story chapters, Map exploration and Achievements to get them quickly. HoT mastery tracks in particular are Access gates… so to get Mastery points outside of the main story arc, they lead upward in a type of Metroidvania style approach where certain MPs require you to have other mastery abilities unlocked.
The intended progression path is Story missions and Map Participation achievements to enable the mobility skills, which opens to being able to reach channeled map MP, followed by Challenge achievements (Adventures, Boss Achievements, and completing Map Meta achievements), and then “Back Tracking” when you have advanced mobility skills to reach hidden MPs and Achievements that you couldn’t do the first time around.
For Tyrian Mastery points, the majority of them come from Achievements. Doing personal story (including living world), maxing out crafting disciplines, collections, Special Boss metas, and living world story completion achievements. Recently they added 9 Channeled mastery points around the higher level Tyrian maps…. most of which are at the end of Jump puzzles. The Achievement panel will have an MP icon next to categories that offer MPs, and will be listed on the specific achievements that award them.
I highly recommend focusing on the HOT achievements first, because those need groups to advance the map meta, which you’ll need to get access to Adventures (each one offers an MP for Silver and Gold). Adventures are a Pain, but you’re practically required to get at least silver in most of them to get enough MP to max everything out. The MP from Gold acts as a surplus to slightly ease the burden of other, difficult to open/do adventures.
The Raid and Ancient Magic tracks are for Raids and Living Story Season 3 respectively…. they are part of the HOT group, but not a requirement for finishing the 4 initial mastery tracks. However, both pieces of post-HOT content offers a significant surplus of Mastery points that you can use toward the main HOT tracks. LS3 has very low barriers for attaining them…. one from the story mission, 4-5 channeled on the map, and around a half dozen from achievements. You need to expend a quarter of those on Ancient Magics, as those contain abilities necessary for the maps… which leaves you a large number of left over points to fill out other HOT tracks. Raids are significantly harder, due to the high difficulty barrier; but I do recommend at least unlocking the track (by killing Vale Guardian), as this will block the Spirit shard reward for Maguuma roll over XP until all mastery tracks in that group are completed.
The Guard staff is a Support weapon…. and players tend to not grasp support concepts anywhere near as a good as attack/defense skills. Thats not to say the Staff doesn’t have problems; but its shown by this latest round of balance threads that they aren’t even aware of the 4 things its been good at outside of being a loot stick.
The real glaring issues are ultimately with the Autoattack and Light Orb not really having clear purpose or synergy, causing them to come off as passively used because their there. Given how the Staff only sees thoughtful use in PvP/WvW, they may as well redesign both skills to be more directly useful in both modes…. or specifically leaning toward WvW, so it has utility beyond the pre-fight stacking.
Just as an example, have the Orb of Light’s targeting/movement mechanics changed to be similar to Astral Wisp. This has the advantage of being fast enough to trail through a friendly group for healing, while eliminating the bigger issue of terrain collision. It also enables a guard to attach an Orb to a target in order to stage the Detonation skills. With Detonate now having Light Aura as part of its effects, this becomes a reliable way to trigger/time it for group retaliation once combat is already heating up.
For the Auto attack, have the Staff trait grant stacks of Outgoing Boon Duration per hit, so it enhances their other support utilities when using staff mid-brawl.
If you’re only pressing 2 keys…. I can’t even begin to explain how wrong you’re doing it. Mesmers juggle a lot of skills…. which is why the dress like clowns. On that same note, engineers purposely make things overly complicated, just so its clear when people are pretending to understand something they really don’t. The i in iPhone doesn’t stand for “intelligent”. :P
Yeah…. it won’t exceed 400 units, as thats a universal limit on controlled movement. I’m expecting perma-swiftness, but not super speed, since that would break the function of gauntlet scenarios. Although, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the mounts got a skill that grants short bursts of super speed. The potential for gatekeeping advanced puzzles would be good to pass up.
Worth a read up.
Bandcamp probably, since they have LS soundtracks on there.
The fundamental truth….. all Raids suck. You can’t make a good raid so long as Raiders insist on demanding things they are already familiar with, and decry everything they aren’t familiar with already.
I will take usefulness and viability over “flavour” any time of the week.
As would I, the former is indisputably more important than the latter. But that isn’t the point, the point is, was it necessary to remove this functionality? Was there some conflict of mechanics that didn’t allow minions to work on the guardian?
No there was not, they were perfectly mechanically sound. In fact they had the potential, if ever balanced correctly, to fill an incredibly important roll among the guardian skill set as sub-in allies. Guardians have an insane amount of buffs and utility which are tuned to work with a team to the point that they are largely worthless while solo. And all of that class content, enough for a half a dozen builds, instead goes completely unused in anything but structured group content like dungeons, PvP, and raids.
No…. the problem was, and always has been, that AI unreliable due to a mayrid of issues ranging from response time, path finding, and power scaling. For the longest time, Necro minions were not viable due to being incredibly fragile against even vet levels of AOE damage…. much less Champs or PvP, where they’re collective damage could have a notable impact. Ranger pets also suffered this same problem, except 25% of the class’s base line damage was rolled into the Pet by design.
With the Untargetted Damage reduction change, they become a source of sustain damage. But look at how the trait enhancements work for both Ranger pets and Necro Minions. Rangers had a whole trait line dedicated to boosting the base line stats of pets, making them perform better….. still poor by comparison to other classes, but not a total waste of time. Necro minions are weak individually, but collectively do respectable damage, and have a multitude of passive support effects that directly benefit the necro besides doing damage.
Spirit weapons have a weak base line damage, and plagued with the usual AI path finding problems. Their utility functions were slow and unwieldy, and consumed the weapon in the process…… so you had to choose between sub-par damage/support of the auto attack (which was slow to cycle, and couldn’t timed or directed), or use it as a consumable utility with a longer cooldown to other comparable, stronger, and traitable skills at their disposal. The utility functions of the weapons were arguably its only competitive aspect; yet it was never worth slotting given the huge number of better options a Guardian could run.
The only way to make Pet AI viable is to make its benefit completely passive, or to tune up their response time with an extensive control suite that would have to exceed what the Ranger has…. because as it stands, the controls on Ranger are barely adequate to keep the pet from becoming a liability. And to even accomplish that, it effectively monopolizes their primary class mechanics.
To “Balance” Spirit weapons, the whole companion/control system needs a complete overhaul and a whole new control scheme…… and if lead designer for Rangers, whose class mechanic IS Pet AI, can’t be kitten d to find a solution for the central theme of his design caused by a globally systemic underlying issue ….. then its just better to just migrate it to one of the 5 system that have proven to do a better job, and revisit the whole thing later once Irenio pulls his head out of his kitten and starts addressing an issue should had started addressing in 2013.
There is a skill recharge AND a count recharge.
Both, seems less clear, and silly
If you read the patch notes, you’d realize his a huge improvement in general utility. Its modeled after mantras, and operates under a single tool tip rather then 2 distinct skills. So rather then having to wait for a full CD cycle, you get a charge back every 15 seconds, and can fire once every 5 until you run out of ammo.
The lore isn’t fully fleshed out yet (a lot of it pinned on Rytlock’s trip to the mist), but essentially Revenants make a deal with Legendary beings in exchange for tapping their power. Its also heavily implied that a Rev can hear most of them talking, sometimes arguing with each other…. and it takes a fair amount of disciple to sort through them.
Rytlock is the first Rev to use this particular type of magic, despite there a being functionally similar precedent with the Ritutalist. Rits communed with the spirit world in general, which includes mist energy…. but it was mostly with lesser beings, or those with Ancestral ties to Cantha who willingly offer their help. As far as the story is concerned, Rytlock currently represents something like a Prime Revenant….. the “liaison” between the Mist heroes and Tyria. Technically its because hes the only Revenant to officially exist at the moment. Its only been through his efforts that the Legendary figures offer their cooperation. And judging by some dialog, a few of them aren’t entirely happy with the arrangement.
As to why there are so few?…… Revenant’s class structure uses each legend to design a Specialization theme around. This limits them to 1 trait line, one set of utility skills, and favors a specific weapon. As of HOT, when Revs were introduced, each class only had 6 Specializations….. 5 core, and 1 Elite spec. With PoF, each class gets an additional Espec… and will be the pattern for each expansion.
With PoF, Revs are getting “Renegade”, enlisting the help of Kalla Scorchrazor (descended from Pyre Fierceshot). Being famous in Guildwars isn’t really enough to qualify as a Mist Legend; as apparently the way the Mists resonate with reality has the strongest echos in spikes of magical energy, or collectively large emotional energy surrounding specific events. Strong personalities tend to retain them when they pass into the mists… but those who pass during such events seem to be further empowered by it. If you read the plaque on Kalla’s memorial in Black Citadel, you can get an idea of why she made it as a Mist Legend.
Mallyx was a General of Abbadon, and almost ascended to his throne after the God fell. Already residing in the mists when he was defeated by Heroes of Guldwars 1, its presumed he was imprisoned by the Forgotten in the realm of Torment. Its unclear how he would get access to Mallyx if his prison was guarded….. so it could be an indication of a weakened state of the God’s military forces, or he was given access by his Keepers. Either way, its clear that Mallyx was enlisted by force.
Glint on the other hand is obviously willing to help, as was Jalis and Ventari.
(edited by starlinvf.1358)
My opinion on raids is that they are unnecessarily difficult. Not necessarily from the actual fights but the time limit that they put on them. It has really created a high barrier to entry for the majority of players. Most of the fights would be doable (with some practice) if not for the timers as well. It has created a pretty poor community where:
a) Players are forced into meta builds/comps simply to meet the time allotment. So in order to even be considered for a raid, players may have to completely re-outfit themselves to hope to clear even the first boss. Players that are in full Ascended conceivably contribute very little depending on their builds. That sucks.
b) A clear divide between raiders and the rest of the PvE community is created.
c) Tolerance for new players learning a raid is non-existent these days. Alienated people from even attempting it.
You really end up needing a dedicated raid group, or a pug filled with experienced players. You can’t just casually round up 10 guildies and hope to kill even the first raid boss. That’s pretty crappy considering this game is sorta designed to have a low barrier to entry on pretty much everything else.
I’m all for difficult raids, but make it on technical abilities like dodging and placements (which they do already as well) and remove the time constraints.
Which brings up a good point. They could easily create a difficulty tiering based entirely on Time to Clear under their current system, without having to inject mechanical hindrances like they did with Fractal Instabilities. In fact, missions in Factions and Nightfall were time trails, to which they added a Hard mode on top of later for higher rewards.
The adjustments wouldn’t be hard to figure out. Keep the current reward structure for partials, but set aside 5 shards as the Speed clear bonus. Speed clear bonus is based on the current time limit. Next change the Rage timer….. rather then effectively being a near guaranteed wipe, have it ramp up over 3-4 minutes. That should be enough wiggle room for a PUG group (that had any chance of finishing) to make it to the end. If they can beat that, they get the 10 shard standard reward.
This does 2 very important things for a novice or training group……. First: Its still the same base line difficulty, but it opens the margin for error, and allows them to move on if they don’t want to retry for the Speed bonus. The rewards are effectively less then 75% wipe, which encourages pushing for speed runs…. but doesn’t foster the kind of frustration and animosity a flat wipe does. Second: The englonged rage phase still puts pressure on the group to make the kill to survive, but emphasizes even more attention on the fight mechanics to stay alive long enough to matter.
A lot players hate Overtime in Competitive games, because of the chances for an upset at the end of the match. But if you think about it, this shifts into a more aggressive mind set so long as the odds of victory are attainable. This is where aggression actually means something; and a crushing blow against the enemy ends the match on a high note. Where as a crushing blow when the timer still going isn’t definitive, and leads to spending that time taking as little risks as possible.
Apply that thought process to raid comp, and you start to realize that skill rotations are just a function of conditioning… and is a huge reason as to why so many players can’t handle deviation from the established formula. Competent players can make adjustments to recover….. but the game goes out of its way to punish them for it. That doesn’t promote improving skills; all it does is focus on making things as predictable (ie: as Safe) as possible.
That becomes your dividing line for Raid Meta. Speed runners will still be elitist jerks, and continue to be like they’ve always been. But you now have segment of mid-tier raiders who are gaining experience with the mode over time- but not create this situation where a mid-tier run feels like a total waste of time. The mechanical difficulty doesn’t have to change (in fact, its preferable to keep it consistent); but starts to become more friendly to training groups (which needs to focus more on mechanics anyway), and gives enough wiggle room for players who haven’t pinned down the DPS portion to not immediately be the reason the group has to /gg half way through, even though they could still make a kill if push hard enough.
(edited by starlinvf.1358)
Does “Ammunition” count for all #1 skills or just projectile? Seems silly to limit a ranged weapon but not worry about “fatigue” on a melee weapon…
Its only applied to certain skills that need the ability to be used in quick succession, but still limit its spam potential. The majority of skills that got ammo were ones that suffered from odd pacing due to single use cool down, but would OP as a hell if the Cool down was too short.
A lot of Classes have this problem, where they’ll break between fights to let all their Cool downs finish before starting a new fight……. that really breaks the pacing when the skill is used often, but doesn’t recharge in the span between fights. Thats why anything less then 8 seconds is considering always useful, while anything over 15 has to justify its use. What Ammo is trying to do is give you the ability to use certain skills that are useful in both reactive and proactive situations, but not forcing you to choose one or the other. In most cases, skills that have potential for engage or disengage will usually be relegated to disengage, because its the safest way to use it; unlike engaging, which is a gamble, where you just bet your only escape option.