Guild Wars 2

mooseface.3025:

Hi all;

I enjoyed GW2 and purchased HoT. I’m not having fun with HoT. The fun I had exploring in GW2 does not exist in HoT. The multiple layers of elevation render the map useless. Venturing alone to explore is impossible as everything kicks your @ss in seconds.
The only option I have is to upgrade my weapons and armour and here lies the problem.
Now my game consist mainly of farming resources and crafting. With the scarcity of farming key crafting materials needed, combined with the ludicrous quantity of the same key farming material required and the quota imposed on us for how many key ascended items we can create in a day makes for hours and hours and hours of gameplay lost. After three weeks of gathering and using my cheapest option (balancing forging vs crafting) it still took me 2 hours to craft one ascended item.
THIS IS BS

So fellow players, is this what I am to expect with this game? I would appreciate your help and honesty because Im not gonna get honesty from the programmers of this game.

ty all

Its actually not that bad….. its just that most people are jarred by the major tonal shift in difficulty. There are only 3 things you really need to survive HOT maps.
- Knowing how to manage dodges and blocks
- Access to CCs for the break bars (which Especs give in spades)
- Learning each mob’s counter tactic

All of this can be done with Exotic gear, but having a full Asc trinket set makes the DPS side of things a bit easier. After a days of getting familiar with each mob’s behaviors and attacks, navigating maps aren’t too difficult. Once you get access to Jumping mushrooms and adv gliding, you can bypass 70% of them with very little effort.

Once you have the Especs fully unlocked, and familiarized with proper builds, HOT fights are only difficult when you try to take on too many Vets at the same time. Champs will always be a problem… but thats fully intended.

If you need help with Especs, look for VB HP or Event trains on the weekend. Mastery unlocks should also be a priority for Itzel 1 (Jumping Mushrooms) and Gliding 2 (Updraft), as those are your baseline mobility options. Just realize that you won’t be soloing HOT areas until you get fully familiar with how the mechanics in the region works…. so its its best follow Commanders/Squads doing map meta events for the Exp needed to fill masteries.

Trust me…. it only looks daunting, because you’re not used to mobs that can fight back. Now that build comprehension with Especs is a lot higher, HOT zones are pretty trivial to navigate. The only thing that consistently gives everyone trouble are the Chak Hives.

If you’re looking for specific advise, we’d have to have to know what class you play. I would highly recommend taking a tankier class for mastery unlocks, as that makes everything easier for your less durable classes later on. Guardians are always solid choice, and a Valkyrie Reaper build can survive anything the Modrem can throw at it. Squishier classes have a higher reliance on dodge and evasion; but if you’re proficient with Mesmers, those have a lot of diversionary tactics that will be useful in surviving. Thieves are also good if you’ve done at some PvP/WvW, as the burst and disengage tactics are highly effective. A well speced Bomb-gineer handles the place well too. Ele has lower margin for error, but they can deal with trash mobs efficiently. I wouldn’t recommend Revanent though….. their builds work very differently from other classes, and you don’t want to that learning curve piled on top of the learning curve for the HOT maps.

I’d also recommend looking into some of the WvW builds for each class, and model your builds on damage focused front liner setups. WvW demands a measure of durability, so those translate well for first time HOT players to give a little extra room for error.

sorudo.9054:

Ashen.2907:

sorudo.9054:

Ashen.2907:

Weird, I distinctly remember farming for years in gw1, for items linked to specific areas or mobs, and not getting the drop. Hundreds of hours, no luck.

Funny bit of trivia, “almost impossible,” means, “not impossible.”

what about the part that i have bin playing GW2 from the get go and no pre-cursor yet a snob who plays just a week get one dropped, that’s the true problem with loot here.

Yep that happens here too. No precursor yet for me either.

I was kind of responding to someone claiming that it was (almost) impossible to farm for something in a game with specific drops tied to specific areas or mobs, as was the case in gw1, and never get the drop.

Why does being a new player (having only played a week) make one a snob?

the snob part is more the “13 year old getting it without any effort at all”, at this point they should just give ppl who played in the first year a pre-cursor of choice even if it’s account bound.

Before HOT that might had made sense…… but it would still be a pretty poor idea, as it breaks some of the satiation value of an otherwise high value project. Participation trophies are psychological poison, as most of the time a person realizes they were given something without earning it. Before Pre-Crafting, getting Pres was just flat out too expensive for most people to pick up- and thus wasn’t worth the effort required when there were more useful investments for your gold (like Asc crafting). After
Pre-crafting was added, it caused 2 major shifts in the Legendary Market…. First, there was a more reliable way to obtain them, and were tradable, which created competition on the TP. Secondly, it was also a less obtuse way to get them- which made the process less daunting to players who don’t have a lot of money, and could incrementally work toward one using gathered Mats instead of gold.

Together, those 2 factors suddenly made Legendary collecting more reasonable in the minds of the average player. All they had to do was reach a point where they realize they have a small stock pile of mats to help get started, and it simply clicks that the process is actually attainable. I didn’t realize it at first, but many of the collection are intent on trying to push the player into exploring the TP, and leverage it to do crafting projects. This then directly or indirectly encourages players to learn efficient sources of materials, trading unwanted materials for needed ones, training them to recognize potentially valuable drops, and how to utilize gold in the game’s market place.

Simply giving players an extremely valuable item really does rob the sense of value it should have. But having it as a visible, but optional path via crafting, gives the player a lot of agency on when and how they want to approach it. It still being expensive hasn’t stopped players from producing them to either drop on the market, or for their own uses…. but a hugely positive side effect is getting players to utilize their stock plies of mats, and get them participating in the TP.

Rev has weak self heals by design. With Ventari, its expected that you are taking Healing stats as primary… without it, Jalis is strongest self heal (at 5k) with Myllax being a close second (4k base). The only way to work around it is to use Herald skills (Glint heal and Shield 5).

Is there a particular reason you’re camping Centaur stance?

No one mentioned Gwen? Or Yakington? Oswald Thorn? Koss? Or Mhenlo, Pimp Master General?

Morgan would make for an interesting theme as a Commander spec.

Ok, so heres the basic problem. Druid as a spec is effectively mutually exclusive from the majority of other Ranger loadouts, with one exception. The spec itself is geared entirely toward group support, sacrificing damage options in the process. Its also the only group support spec that focuses on heals rather then boon support; which run contrary to most of the game’s core design principles. It was created, tuned, and synergies specifically with how Raids were designed….. and ironically are starting to lose to Tempest, because that class has more inline support to compliment its healing.

This leaves only 2 functions for Druid, and are really the only reason to take them into raids. 1. They can better stagger their healing, but reatain 2 strong burst heals in emergencies. (which is inconsequential if your team is good) 2. “Grace of the Land” being a buff allows it to stack on top of might.

The one outlier in this situation is Condi Druid, because DOTs are less impacted by sequence breaks, and Ranger condi is currently insanely powerful in Raid meta atm. I’d actually argue a healing Druid fell out of the Meta, because the Druid’s main benefit IS GotL, and a Condi Druid can still bring 85% of its personal DPS while boosting the team DPS by a significant amount (near continuous 14-20%).

Heres where you’re having trouble. Core Ranger is this hodgepodge of individually strong facets, but terrible internal synergy compared to other classes. Druid exacerbates this problem, because its a mutually exclusive Group Support spec that the ranger can’t personally capitalize on (efficiently), nor does it bring personal protection to offset the loss of a defensive traits.

Another problem is Core Ranger needing paired traits to get competitive damage, due to 25% of their DPS being monopolized by their pet. Skirmishing is Mandatory in all builds due to the sheer utility of the QuickDraw trait, while a second trait line is dedicated to damage type. Full Zerks/Vipers is also pretty integral to their respective builds, as Ranger damage coefficients are lower then normal; giving less for the % traits to boost off of. Normally the 3rd trait line would be used for defense, but thats now taken up by Druid for access to its skills. So despite having access to heals, you’re giving up fairly reliable defensive traits to make up the damage loss, and then interrupting your damage output to use those healing skills. This is why Druids feel really squishy, while Core Ranger feels oddly durable.

No matter how hard you try to mitigate it….. Druid is a personal DPS loss, limits personal defense options, and only benefits a group setup. I’ve honestly tried every thing I can think of to make Druid work for Solo/Casual play, and it just doesn’t work to your benefit. You either give up too much damage to keep up with HOT mobs, or are really vulnerable to big damage that the HOT mobs dish out. If you operate with a group/squad, the benefits are worth the trade off….. but it makes you very dependent on other players to cover the damage difference.

On a final note: The Staff is designed to be almost purely utilitarian. Staff 1 gives a continuous source of healing to build energy for CA, but is underwhelming as a healing source. Staff 2 is similar in function, but with a different targeting system. Staff 3 is a Burst heal and Blast Finisher, and doubles as a travel skill for re-positioning in fights. Staff 4 is a geared mainly for WvW, clearing movement impeding skills, or pinning stragglers. Staff 5 serves the same overall function as Wall of Reflect.

Eleazar.9478:

FrownyClown.8402:

Eleazar.9478:

Like why does hybrid for ranger means everything sucks while for other classes hybrid means kitten at condi,defense and power (cough warrior’s mace cough)

Because rangers core design is to be strong vs single targets while losing out on some defensive mechanisms other classes have.

I really don’t think it was designed with that in mind, since ranger only has an okay burst for power damage, (has some of the most pathetic coefficents with power) I think when they designed it they were like well let’s add a little bit of everything and it ended up sucking ass at anything that needed a specialized role (hence hated on in pre hot content and always looked over for organized wvw) granted this jack of all trades lends itslef to 1v1s well since you usually have some tools to fight with, and that’s why Cele lends itself to ranger so well. However hybrid barely works cept for niche stuff, it just bugs me when with other classes do to fun trait synergy you can use a weapon for either condi or power and go ham crazy

To get context, you have to look at the Engineer as a Hybrid class. Even when condi focused, it incorperates a lot of otherwise power centered tools because of its general utility. The same goes with Power builds utilizing Condi kits for its utility. Engineer does Hybrid design RIGHT, because they made sure every kit, including the weapons, had something useful to nearly every build you can think of. Flame thrower can be a condi weapon by combining the bleed-on-hit trait of Firearm…. which itself also has Juggernaut trait that generates might for Flamer thrower. And this is all despite the majority of its damage being physical. The Pistol used to have a trait that pierces, enabling the shatter shot explosion (again physical) damage to trigger multiple times. Tool Kit has a physical AA, a high damage + confusion crowbar attack, and a universally helpful block. Elixir gun has condi damage, but mostly use for cleansing; yet skill 4 is physical damage.

Xorakor.8795:

Okay, so if I would choose the Rev, what would I build? Full berserker?
If I would choose Necro, always Viper for Fractals, open world and raids? Or is Berserk on that still good, I heard about Sinister build too, when would I use that?

Depends…. if you only want one set, then Vipers armor with 2 sets of trinkets (viper and celestial/trailblazer) to swap between Fractals and WvW respectively.

If you go power build for any reason, marauders armor is highly desirable for the extra HP with minimal pwr/prec loss. (4 stat combos always have higher total counts, but a lower max cap). Maurauders HP bonus is practically a must for WvW, as you need that extra padding for front line survivability.

As for its overall state….. its clunky in open world due to the limited cleave in most weapons. And while the hammer is still one of the strongest overall tools, it gets less reliable if enemies focus on you too much. I haven’t had a chance to build up a full viper set, since I’ve been reluctant to commit to a build when the class acceptance is shakey…. but the Marauder builds do… ok-ish. You won’t be struggling, but doesn’t get the kind of solo high notes the other classes get in even their baseline kits.

This mostly boils down to the fact that Rev is a “Support as Primary” class, so their potential is hampered without other players nearby to compound off of. But having even 1 or 2 players nearby really makes the Rev shine, whether you’re brawling a group of mobs, operating backline damage, and of course support jobs and CC.

The only big advantage of Ventari is the projectile block….. but its incredibly situational since most incoming damage is ground target AOE bombs (which it does not block). Jalis is for Stability with Inspiring reinforcement…. which does help supplement Guardians, but can’t replace them.

Mallyx, however, is currently irreplaceable, because the real strength of Pain Absorption is the Resistance it gives to allies. This is the real key to how that comp works, because it allows the zerg to dive straight through the bomb (which is mostly bleeds, poison and Chill), nullifies the damage of nearly instant max condi stacks, and buys the Cleaner builds time to cleanse once through. The fact that Pain Absorption pulls condi stacks is a minor advantage, compared to the ~3 seconds of Resistance that allows them to survive the bomb. Especially considering how fast it reapplies condi stacks while you’re still in it.

Personally I’ve been using Glint/Mallyx for Glint’s healing skill and extra super speed in the opening juke, then swap to Mallyx just as we dive in.

Redfeather.6401:

I wish there was no cooldown on legend swap and they functioned like kits. And that energy didn’t reset on legend swap but instead there were skills with energy management effects.

The energy management is part of a weird compromise in usability. If 100% energy carried over on swap, the energy cost for their big skills (which are the ones we use more then anything else) would have to up as well. But if low energy carried over on swap, you couldn’t afford to use skills. The Energy management is to limit their burst potential on one skill set, while the Energy reset on swap is there to make sure you can use any skill immediately without forcing you to be over conservative in your previous Legend.

As seen with thieves, recouping resources through skills gives an insane amount of burst potential without a Timer to halt it. But at the same time, the timer renders the resource kind of pointless. Its a big reason why the weapons skills feel so clunky to use on Revs, as they use both… and it always catches you at the wrong moment.

Revs are conceptually built for sustain. But it doesn’t function right without group support, because they expend too much energy in bursting actions. If any change needs to be made, its the benefits of certain skills need to last longer so we aren’t constantly incentivized to keep spamming our big skills (and only our big skills) as much as possible.

IndigoSundown.5419:

ANet tried to go with only a few things which required a large time commitment, aka “grind,” at launch. The player base disabused them of that idea by racing to every goal in short order, then asking, “Now what?”

Thats kind of where a lot of Devs muck up now days. They focus on making the item a goal, but little thought is put into how its used after its obtained. This is why the “its just a skin” stigma was both valid, but kind of missed the point. If the final reward doesn’t change how we play the game, then it not filling a purpose. Cosmetics can change how we go about playing, collecting, etc….. but with most, sadly, dead ends after we attain it.

Compare that to Elite specs, which change all the game dynamics. Thats why there was such heavy demand to lower the HP cost, because it was too integral to how the game operates, and destroyed the pacing as its largely useless for builds until fully unlocked. Mastery Points on the other hand hit the perfect sweet spot in terms of progression method, with only a couple of pit falls in pacing due to its heavy reliance in maps.

With both of these in mind, the arguments about “progression” start to become a lot clearer. Its also sheds light on why many collections, despite having intermediate skin rewards, are not fulfilling. Like E-Specs, the value is only realized in the end goal, while the middle steps are just there to be in the way. Look at Precusor crafting in general… Phase 1 collection is actually fun, and gets you exploring a theme. Phase 2 is a frustrating grind and massive money sink, with no real thematic advancement. And by the time Phase 3 comes around, you’re still agitated from Phase 2, and try to power your way through the more complicated requirements as they usually involve at least 50% Group content (ie Fractals or Raids). For HOT weapons, Phase 4 for the first 3 can redeem itself with another adventure. But all the LS3 weapons, they’re just another series of token grinding.

But unlike E-Specs, skins don’t alter the game beyond whatever feeling you can have for the skin. In some cases the vanity gains are enjoyable (Pre crafting can produce some entertaining byproducts). But for many, its fleeting. And since the investment level is so high for many of these, the frustration a collection/cost can generate robs the item of its enjoyable qualities…. a sour reminder of your trials, and how you kept going because theres no clean way to back out once you start.

The time gate is not only completely unnecessary, its not even thematically relevant. It exists, because the players developed a habit of hoarding materials as they become difficult to find when demand spikes. So many of us sit on respectable stock piles of stuff…. and Anet fears we’ll blow through the new content too fast as a result. On the one hand they’re right….. but on the other, they created this hoarding problem by over-relying on crafting and mat sinks for all the new content. Its a vicious feedback loop, that increases in intensity every time they try to use it.

They need to put more thought into the end goals, so that the result has a lasting effect on the player… other then frustration, disappointment, and compulsion.

Ayrilana.1396:

Sounds more like blame shifting.

Then you’re not following the problem. Its not one event that created this… its a string of decsisions (by Anet) that cascaded into a whole series of problem, and Anet doesn’t respond to adjustments fast enough to avoid long term issues. I even pointed this out with the Leather inversion. They changed the recipe to eat up a surplus, but left it there until it eventually became a new bottle neck. The theory here is that common materials should be pretty close in price, because their consumption rates should be fairly level across similar recipes. Cloth wasn’t, because its demand was extremely high (ie representing 2/3rd of every Armor recipe), but production was incredibly low (only salvaged from ~20% of potential drops). Leather went into surplus because it was used mainly for one thing… leather armor. Metal remained level through this same process, despite being used in all weapons, and 1/3rd of the armor recipes, because its readily abundant between nodes, salvage, and has a better conversion rate of 2 ore to an ingot. They’re still a bit expensive at a little over 2s each; but those prices never swung as rapidly as the source restricted cloth/leather. Even wood is more expensive due to its conversion rate, but just as stable as metal due to their directly abundant sources.

The disparity is smaller in metal and wood, because those sources are not heavily restricted. Thats reflective of a working supply and demand system.

The weirdness is mostly about how the story handled the characters…. in that, its more like stuff happens around them rather then directly to them. As a result, there isn’t much in the way of personal stakes in the Story battle Mordy, because you don’t really have much interaction with it prior to the fight.

I can’t really articulate this fully… but its that the HOT story was written as novel, and we’re supposed to put more emotional weight in the struggles of our companions. But HOT is the 3rd book in a series; and it presumes we know enough about the characters in this part of the story.
That doesn’t really work when most new players don’t understand the characters established in LS1, and HOT doesn’t have time to do a shorter version to get players up to speed. Thats a problem when you’re putting the narrative focus on those characters, but the audience has no time to get attached to them.

If we look back at the Pact portion of Personal Story, the fight with Zhaitan felt unfulfilling because the “lead up” to the battle was great, but the battle itself ended mid-note. During most of that story, Zhaitan was “felt” in everything that happened… even if he wasn’t specifically, you still believed he was watching your every move, and somehow managed to be one step ahead of you through the whole story. That sense of an ongoing mind game is what stood out about Zhaitan as an enemy, and highlighted by how every loss of life shift power in his favor. Even if it felt forced at times, you still got the sense of things being an uphill battle as you try and solve the puzzle of “how do you kill a dragon?”. At this point its no secret that the last section of the Zhaitan fight was cut due to time; and that pretty much confirmed everyone’s feeling that things were leading up to a bigger ending. You had every motivation to want that fight to be personal… and right when the excitement of the situation started to peak….. you sparkle him to death with fireworks for 2 minutes.

Which brings us to Mordremoth. It had a lot of the same story beats as Pact Tyria…. but there was one key difference. Mordremoth didn’t feel like the real threat through most of that story, because the threats weren’t directed at you, so much as it was directed at your companions. The only thing that you felt was the time pressure to do certain things…. and that pressure was disrupted with the how the map stories constantly distract you with their situations. Which, ironically, is a far better story when seen from the perspective of a Pact Commander trying to salvage and rally the Pact Fleet, and ignoring the personal story completely. These are 2 divergent character paths that were glued together, but still distinctly separate parallel arcs. Thats why the chapters in VB start out strong- but when you start breaking of to do your own thing with the Egg, the pacing starts to feel off.

This is a type of situation that should had called for a Second character to run parallel with the Player, as a way to keep continuity between the different sections. Its the same dynamic with the Player and Treherine when they took up the Marshal and Commander ranks. While one was out in the field doing something, the other would be complementing that work with another task. This idea keeps the player aware of both sides of the story, and eventually converges again to decide their next move. But in HOT, the player spends most of the story sections detached from the Pact, and even most of his companions. And when the companions are around, they’re the ones doing most of the story work.

And thats why the fight with Mordremoth feels less personal, despite you having a one on one fight with it at the end…… the player wasn’t actually the main character for most of the story. At the same time, the Dragonstand Fight is a lot more satisfying, because the Map Meta in VB, AB and TD all organically converge toward this one event…. as the remains of the Pact Fleet, your new Allies, and all the “Commanders” pull together to confront the Dragon where it lives. This was the fulfillment of what we expected with the Zhaitan fight; and as Mordy tries to belittle and intimidate you, it makes you appreciate the opportunity to bash its face in, in person.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fires_of_Balthazar_Skin

This was literally made to complete the Balth outfit.

Narrrz.7532:

Zaoda.1653:

I wished Chuka and Champawat was a longbow legendary I was gutted when I heard it was a shortbow skin. Mainly because I NEVER use shortbow – I find the range/distance of the skills really lame, and the skills not good enough. If it was a longbow skin, it would have gone so well with my ranger

The Longbow of the sunless is the only longbow skin in the game that fits with my guard at all. Been farming that thing for so long now…

I went with this for Guard.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/9/9e/Azureflame_wielded.jpg

I stuck with the original Guardian motif, so it seemed fitting to have the Spirit bow be the thing that shoots arrows that are literally the physical manifestation their virtuous light. And if that wasn’t convincing enough….. I collected every single wood log (all 3000 of them) myself. (not as any act of conviction…. but because Ancient wood was crazy expensive at the time).

….

The term “ANET logic” is defined as “an action or decision that accomplishes a goal that either doesn’t fix the underlying issue, and/or overcompensates to create the exact same problem in another area of the game”. Their design process is plagued with blind spots that even players are quick to figure out; and many of their attempted remedies fail to understand an underlying problem… often making the situation worse in the long term. A series of small scale solutions being applied to a systemic issue, and inevitably exacerbates the underlying cause to cartoonish proportions.

AFK farming is NOT the actual problem….. its the fact that there is a glaring disparity between demand generation and source generation. And rather make adjustments to either, they opted to insert a Farm that was too difficult to use as a farm, not engaging enough to be worth doing in its own right, and were upset when players discovered a more effective, if lesser version of what they designed…… then killed it, rather then learning something critical about why the AFK farm developed in the first place. The leather farm was flawed on several levels, and directly violates a number of key design points within GW2’s philosophy….. it literally fights the game to get the players to do one specific thing, and the players are keenly aware of it. The groups don’t naturally coalesce because of how the gauntlet was designed, and actively expects players to do the opposite of what a gauntlet is designed to do- and the only way to work around that is have a Commander surrogate for a point of focus, that would normally be done by a map event. It lacks a clear goal to build and release tension that makes for an engaging event; leaving nothing for the players to be easily swept up in and have fun while doing the farm. Thats why the AFK farm went AFK….. the only interesting thing to happen is Imellhoof (aka AFK Check)- and hes on a 2 hour timer.

……..

That last potion might seem tangential; but it explains their attempts to fix these issues, and why they never work the way they claim it should. The designers focus very heavily on the End game part of a game system, but never put enough attention into the portions that lead the player up to it…. and its this part that they end up dumping all their gating systems, once they realize the system they designed is full stop at that one end point.

Which brings us to attempt 1 to fix the economy and promote crafting…. Ascended Gear. The recipes for this were obvious attempts to drain the TP of all the mid tier mats that were piling up since release. In fact….. there was never supposed to be anything beyond Exotic level equipment. But due to the bottleneck of T6 Fine mats, most players opted to get their gear from Dungeon tokens, and avoiding crafting in general. T6 Basic mats were still kind of rare, and still had practical uses… but consumption rate was low enough for a TP supply to have somewhat normal trade.

However….. Leather and Cloth was always an oddity in this system. With the primary source being Salvage, both mats were shackled to the drop rates of said items. With half the drop tables for gear salvaging into metal, both cloth and leather had a below average production rate. The current leather prices are an inversion of, and created by the exact same circumstances, that lead to huge increases in cloth prices when Asc armor was introduced. The underlying problem is the input rate being bound to low drop rates, and that the recipe demand being specifically skewed toward needing a disproportionately large amount of one type.
Cloth prices were a 3 fold problem…. 1. ALL armor recipes required cloth lining, and all insignias required as much, or more material then the actual armor pieces themselves. 2. Eles have been in the top 3 of every meta since the game launched, and Mesmers have been somewhat popular due to their unique skills. 3. The vast majority of cloth only comes from Salvage.
The reason Guardians never faced this issue is the general abundance of metal sources, and the lower amounts needed to craft equipment (2 ore to an ingot, compared to 3 scraps for cloth/leather). Kitting them was cheap.

Leather had the exact opposite situation at the time. The salvage rates were equal to cloth, but leather had other minor sources (bags, drops). But it was only used in Med armor, and all 3 Adventurer classes were unpopular in a lot of end game metas. With nothing demanding it, Anet tried several times to do one-off attempts to drain the supply…. but it wasn’t enough given how quickly it piled back up again.

Just to speed this along…… the introduction of Champ bags was basically their way of getting around the drop table/DR problem, by using it as a bonus roll that was guaranteed to drop something of value when killing a champ. It also had a higher rate of T6 mats, in order to provide enough supply and encourage people to start high end crafting projects. This directly lead to the surge of interest in Legendary weapons, as getting the neededT6 mats was now reasonably possible for most players.

Fast forward to last year. Leather is still in major surplus, but cloth is bottlenecking all of Asc armor crafting. So in order to do something to the leather supply…. they made 2 changes. 1. T5 Leather now takes 4 sections to refine. 2. Add leather to Insignia recipes, more then doubling the material cost for each one produced. But the biggest injury was Exotic Insignias, which are used in Asc and Exo armor crafting alike… from 5 Bolts of Gossamer to 4 bolts + 10 Hard leather squares. The mistake here…. Hard leather (T6) sections were not at the same surplus levels of T5 and below; because they were being used in other areas of crafting. Yet Ironically, Gossamer is in surplus right now, because Damask’s bottleneck was a high recipe demand for silk.

So whats Anet’s answer to this economic FUBAR? Alternate sources of Asc armor via tokens in other game modes, and bypassing crafting completely. Which they later doubled backed on to add a crafting requirement to a reward, from a game mode that doesn’t facilitate crafting in its design.

……

Zanvolt.9406:

Even more so its a result of the not so great afk detection gw2 has. You’re determined to not be afk if you use a skill, or move. You can do both without actually being present at your keyboard. On the flipside you can be afk kicked while doing neither of those things, but still giving the game input, like chatting or using a crafting station. If the game required actual input for you to not be considered afk, it would solve a lot (though not all) of the afk farmer issues. Helping futher fix issues would be for a small timer, something like 5 minutes, for the game to consider you afk, after this period you stop getting any rewards, but not being kicked from the game for the full hour we have now. At least then everyone would have to farm the way engineers were, needing to be there at least once every 5 minutes. (Edit: removed quote because it was messing up the post somehow?)

Thats only treating the symptom, not the cause. This is the Chain of events of that lead to this current situation….

Up to addition of Fractals and Ascended gear, there was very little practical use for anything less then T6 mats, other then promoting T5 to T6. To promote the lesser tiers upward (which would had been the practical solution) costed too much due to the tiny supply of Dust as a rare drop-only material. Anet has absolutely no plan to deal with low tier goods on the TP, as players leveled to quickly to make use of, much less invest, in a good set of leveling gear.

While this was going on, very few people were involved with crafting at the T6 level, due to the general scarcity of T6 Fine mats due to their drop rates. Dust was a massive bottle neck, and generating T6 mats in general was difficult due to how Diminishing returns can, and still does kick in pretty quickly on Tyrian maps. (I’m going to assume everyone here understands the level relevant drop tables) Once people realized certain mob dense events were the only way to get mats in even marginally useful quantities, players would (and still do) try to fail events to get certain event chains to spawn on the lowest timers possible. Grenth was very popular for this, once enough of the pubic realized the potential and got on board the fail train. But because of how quickly DR kicks in under these conditions (and weak understanding of its existence by the public), it would take some time for people to get enough LvL80s to rotate for farms. Yet despite all of that, the drop rates weren’t nearly fast enough to meet anything beyond basic crafting demands…. leaving the multitude of Anet’s high gold sinks unused. 250 T6 Fine mats was nigh impossible to farm yourself…. and god help you if needed lode stones in the recipe.

The irony of that state of affairs…. this is partly how Anet intended things to work. What they hadn’t expected was how low the bar had to be set to get people started on crafting in general. The typical casual player can’t generate enough mats for trade to cover the stuff they needed for a high end crafting project…. so many would give up in a couple of months, with the eventual apathy toward the long term projects leading to players quitting. The Game story wasn’t engaging as it needed to be, the experience a little disjointed, the class designs varying wildly in power and entertainment, and the game’s format (which only shows its benefits at high levels, and across multiple characters) was a foreign concept to many players at the time. It was just really hard to find the Game’s primary loop, and a shockingly large % of players never even made it to lvl80 before losing interest….. and a lot of that (which is still a problem to this day), is Anet failing to provide a satisfying experience in the intermediary sections of game activities.

……..

The bigger underlying problem with the utilities is that we can’t mix and match like other classes. I’ve been using Rev on and off in PvE and only just started in WvW, and its quickly obvious that most builds tend to rely on only 1 utility in each Legend (usually the one with the highest energy cost), leaving the other 2 as purely opportunistic.

The whole reason this usually ends up being awkward is that each skill set (including weapons) exist in a vacuum, and aren’t designed to synergize internally. Part of it has to do with the Rev being considered a pure support class (back liner), but mostly its their attempts to simplify balance by designing it as presets. And more then any other class (in theory)…. Rev synergy does have the potential to compound out of control, if its force multipliers were internal instead of external.

A 3rd legend doesn’t solve the underlying issue, as its the disjointed skill/trait interactions that are causing the class to feel the way it does. What the Revs need for general PvE is for one of trait lines (likely Shiro) to gain better momentum with more enemies in the field. Mallyx in an offensive config does this through AOE; but Shiro lives in this dissonant state where his traits are clearly designed to take advantage of his attack rate to ramp up damage, but it caps out too quick to do well as single target, and his damage gets diluted quickly with multiple targets. On the one hand the cap is there purely for sPvP balance, but it leaves PvE players very few options for handling mob groups at close range without loading Mace/Axe (which means condi gear) and Mallyx for the AOE.

Shiro’s kit (Sw, Trait, and Utilities) needs something that can build up and burst med sized groups of mobs, or a trait that can turn Jade wind into a finishing move, converting vulnerability stacks into damage.

Its a weird situation because of the players in general. A huge complaint from a while back is that there were no intermediately goals to most of the end game reward skins; often citing “sense of progress” as the reason why they didn’t like the setup. But the reality, as you pointed out, is that players treat investments very differently when theres a cash/material cost involved in the process.

Because of how colossally expensive it is to do many of these collections, players have developed a habit of Stock piling what they need BEFORE they start, on the chance that they’ll lose interest, or come across a better opportunity in the mean time. Its the only way to keep our options open, when theres this expectation of “minimum cost” to everything we do… Especially with their reliance on time gates for all the newer content, and an inability to recoop/repurpose costs if stopped half way.

The problem with Skins being unlocks, is that the the intermediary rewards will very likely go unused. Just looking at Pre-cursor crafting, some of them give fun or useful items (like Chromatic Ooze tonic), while the Experiment skins (which purposely look unimpressive) go unused….. in fact, the weapons themselves tend to go unused because you need to salvage them at some point, and don’t want to lose track of it.

The summation of all of this is perfectly exemplified in Cooking as whole. It produces a lot of “dead end” products that no one will proactively want to use, and a crap ton of intermediary materials that only have value in the production of a higher tier recipe. This wouldn’t be as big an issue, if not for the fact that you have to store these materials if you can’t use them…. and bank space is at a huge premium.

The problem they have, and one thats fundamental to how the reward systems are designed in this game, is that the intermediate items in the long process have no useful value. But in a dissonant position, the players also demand the process produce items as “proof” that they are making progress toward their goal; but if immediately useful, motivation to complete the collection would be much, much lower.

For instance… the Caladbog collection (which is repeatable) can produce a cheap, easily re-purposed Ascended weapon, for each character thats finished HOT. This is potentially more useful then Legendary weapons, because you can change stats on it with minor effort… but also change the entire weapon class. Now compare that to pretty much any Pre-Curosr Crafting collection that has you crafting 250 “basic weapons”, and 500 in spare parts, and then 10-15 each of T2-5 weapon parts, 1 each of T7… all so you have the ability to craft a 2 Trophy items (worth 2s each) out of another 50-60 gold worth of material…. neither of which is used in the next crafting phase, that requires another 70-100g to make another 2 types of “perfected” components created in the last step.

The legendary production process needs to be rethought to use a better incorporation method, if they insist on keeping the kind “crafting/collection” gating they’re using track progress. The more direct solution is to reduce the number of items and skins down to a couple (initial, pre, and Legendary, and then use shaders to create variable states of the item’s progress. But while this reduces the item/skin clutter, its relies on shaders…. something I’m unsure the Devs are willing to use with how they’ve scaled things back for LS3. It seems to be reserved for Legendary items, and a few special cases where they add particle effects.

Wondrouswall.7169:

You should look into our base damage and coefficients then. If Anet did more PVE-side tweaks to power weapons, then maybe Rangers can have some semblance of a DPS option rather than sub-optimal viability.

But instead, they make odd – even stupid (to be blunt) – choices like increasing Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy by 100% in PVE only (for…?) and giving Whirling Defense a damage boost.

The big problem is that they stubbornly hold to the idea that the Pet is a reliable source of damage, and it comprises 25% of the class’s damage potential at any given time. Ironically the reason Condi tends to be so good on Ranger is the fact that A. Condi damage has a universal coefficient (meaning it can’t be arbitrarily adjusted per class), and thus B. the damage output is determined entirely by how condi stacks works….. which, incidentally, Rangers can do a lot of, given how nearly all their skills have some kind of condi component. Awhile back when they were doing the stack changes, Ranger got an indirect buff due to the way they compensated for Condi potency… but it was still pretty mediocre until Raids introduced targets with enough HP for Condi to properly ramp on .

Power builds center on their cooldowns, which makes them very easy to track and execute on most classes. But with Condi, nothing short of champs lasts long enough for the rotation to matter; which makes it feel very awkward and with poor cadence in the average mob fight. A lot of Mesmer builds follow this same principle, as illusions are ammunition, and it takes time to generate them.

As for Ranger power builds specifically, their perpetually hampered by the Pet’s “theoretical” DPS being part of their calculations for total DPS and skill coefficients. This is why most of their skills are lacking in direct damage, making their DPS bursts (which most power builds are based on) weak in comparison to pretty much every other class in a direct damage build. But since pet damage isn’t reliable, and can’t be commanded to unload over the span of 2 seconds…. not to mention AI being completely reactive, and most of their attacks being stationary; thus leading to a constant need for them to keep relocating between attacks, exacerbated further by the shoddy path finding behavior. This reliance on a damage source that only does its job 50% of time, unless the target itself doesn’t like moving (ie not constantly switch targets due to the fickle aggro behaviors), is whats really holding the power builds back. The long term DPS is there…. but the long term DPS doesn’t matter, when the overall goal is to make the target dead before it can launch its second attack.

But this low coefficient due to the damage source split causes a lot of problems with the Traits themselves, as well as external % buffs…… our base numbers are low enough, that the typical 10% multiplier benefits the Ranger “less”, unless that trait can be shared with the pet as well. This is pretty well evidenced in the fact that Ranger stat and damage boost traits are proportionally higher then other classes -getting 12-15% modifiers instead of the usual 5-10, +150-300 passive stats where others would cap at 160, and buff stacks being almost twice as potent in the core line, and being almost on par with especs.
Ranger weapons also have a bad habit of lacking focus; as the condi component is integral to the DPS balance of a skill rather then additive. The only 2 weapons that understand themselves is the Longbow and the Torch, where every other weapon is half condi/half physical, and generally lacking in both. I guess maybe the intent was for Ranger to always run hybrid stats… but nothing about the game play or the math rewards that behavior, since crit damage scales to 3 stats; and while condi scales to 2, it needs a third (prec) solely for the purpose of procing traits and sigils. Since direct damage scales poorly overall due to coefficients, but Condi scales consistently with gear load out, its easy to understand why one is so popular over the other, despite the abysmal gold cost to do so.

It just keeps coming back to the role of the pet, and how utterly unreliable it is given how its handled. While I don’t advocate for its removal, the pet’s movement system and attack characteristics need a massive rework so they can properly chase targets and reliably land blows. In terms of current game mechanics, they’d need the mechanical equivalent of super speed and quickness on a regular basis, to work around the AI’s tendency to get tripped on archiving target adjacency. At the very least make their basic attack non-stationary.

Glimrac.2164:

I’ve been playing for a few weeks. There is a LOT to learn that doesn’t seem to have been covered as I played through the game to lvl 80 on my first character, a warrior (personal story done and HoT story finished yesterday).

Here are the terms in this thread that I don’t understand yet:

blasts
stability
fractal CM
condi
T4 fractal parties
blob
defiance bars (checked the wiki, lots of info there but will take me a while to process)
breakbars
trinity
combo fields
bubble

None, or very little of this is mentioned in the Tips for New Players posted I searched for online.

Is there a good thread that lists some definitive or supremely helpful guides for new players?

Thanks!

This is right here reveals the real short falls…….. Most of the game’s mechanics are NOT “deliberate” in usage, so many will operate without the player knowing what its doing. Also, the majority of the game’s content doesn’t really need them to know much….. that is until you get into Meta mechanics (primary Raids and Fractals), where the Math specifically exploits odd traits of the underlying mechanics.

Complicating this further is that Builds are highly conditional, and Force multiplicative in indirect ways….. no other MMO I know of does this kind system while still trying to use “stat boosting” gear, because they tend to run contrary to each other in concept. This creates a lot dissonance among new players, because its only “in” the intricate interactions that any of these values start to make sense. Knowing all the mechanics does jack-all if you’re build’s stats are matching…. and pure stats don’t perform at a fraction of their potential without the traits force multiplying it.

This is the entry point to understanding how the game work at its core….. and its been muddled over the years due to unfocused design choices, and multiple experiments in the live environment that were never cleaned up until HOT forced a design focus. Its not “one thing” thats causing that problem… but years of Accretion that have literally evolved the game beyond its original design. Although, I do want to put a huge amount of blame on sPvP, as the fall out of that game mode is usually the reason PvE balance stopped making sense. Looking at Especs, which were fundamentally about upping the power scale by a whole order of magnitude, eventually got driven into the ground in response to sPvP match ups. Even after the split, “this designed for, but not balanced around PvP” concept of skill design is usually why PvE builds rely on as few skills/traits as possible, since most don’t have the kind of impact needed for the HP/Dmg scales of things like Raids. PvP diversifies because the enemy can adapt…. Raids and PvE in general are about Min/Maxing, because theres nothing that needs adapting to once a specific rotation is set. With both of that in mind, its pretty easy to see why WvW has so many problems- because its the only game mode that needs to scale Defensively, but everything else about the game rewards scaling offensively. Just look at the last patch concerning all the Stab skills….. we need way too many stacks to be viable in WvW, but anything over 5 is almost invulnerability in PvP. And then PvE doesn’t even utilize it most of the time, except in boss fights that explicitly designed around it…. and to make matters worse, you have things like the feral mordrem that dish out hard CCs in half their attacks.

I can keep digging further, but it’ll take several hours to delve into how a series of design choices based on Player feedback, starting with Beta, eventually lead to where we are now. And to save people time… the diversity of the player base is half the reason they’re afraid to focus for too long, because it always seems to blow back on them. (See HOT and encounter difficulty, followed by Raids).

Maethor.2810:

I am not a PvPer by any stretch, so PvP and WvW terrify me. There’s something about it that just makes my anxiety skyrocket whenever I am in the borderlands, even when I stuck my head in there just to see if there was a zerg/organized group around to run with.

But I find that Edge of the Mists is actually easier for me to deal with. There is slower reward track gain than what you get in the WvW borderlands, even with boosters, but that might be something to look into. There’s frequently zergs running around just capping locations and there’s the occasional skirmish.

Just another suggestion to toss in the hat with the others.

Most PvEers freak out over the idea that an enemy is stronger or smarter then they are. Theres also a very aggressive approach to encounters, as players are extremely opportunistic…… This is also true in PvE modes; except no one really cares that we’ve killed enough things to the point where its considered Genocide.

Death in PvE is so rare, its presumed the game would had to cheat to make it happen. But death is so common in any pvp type mode, that death is just means you have to walk back to a place.

This whole situation about why something is the way it is can’t be boiled down to a single disparity in encounter design. There is a massive web of design relationships in every MMORPG, as its built on several layers of abstraction to which players are opnely encouraged to exploit. GW2 wanted to break the mold created by WoW, and is based on a game that not only had more cohesive rules, but uses in-line force multiplication are its core. WoW maintains tight controls on Team comp with its house of cards Trinity setup…. but in GW2’s design, groups scale substantially for every player in proximity of each other (a trait the Modrem also have in many HOT events, but don’t leverage the same way we do). You can easily see this in why Raids force parties to split up, or why HOT’s major events involve Siege and defense archetypes.

There is so much going on, that simply saying “mobs having different skills from players is bad design” is an unacceptable level of ignorance to how systemic the issue really is, or how were Players are largely responsible for creating this problem in the first place.

ThomasC.1056:

Don’t get me wrong : I’m not against challenges. And I’m not losing against Ro Venombite. Actually, when I see her shatter two or three times, and come back at 100%, I just sigh and move on. She doesn’t really harm me anyway with her skills.

I’m pointing her as a caricature example of what I think is bad design. Here is what I’m seeing with my pessimistic eyes. Draconis is a high level map, and players there are expected to come with high level gear and skills, so devs are doing power creeps in NPC’s in order to provide “challenge”. Hence, white mantle, perma-frozen Bitterfrost, CC all around, and now, On-steroids Mesmers.

Designing content for “players” inevitably results in “bad design”…… players never fight fair, not even against NPCs. To make matters worse… players tend to lose when put on a level playing field against AI; which is 90% of the reason modern game AI has the strategic complexity of potatos. This goes double for MMOs, because theres an expectation that NPCs “must” behave a certain way, or we can’t “counter play” them correctly.
In GW1, they had added a routine to AI that makes them leave an AOE damage zone….. and immediately every class that had access to AOE but didn’t think to load CCs cried foul. When GW2 was in early beta, the AI also had this same behavior, and it made for some really dynamic fights due to all the movement….. but players hated it because they scattered too easy, making it hard to AOE bomb them. You’ll also quickly notice that all single target skills are effectively worthless in open world, because its too inefficient, and gives NPCs (with their now typical Oceans of HP and “Hit like a truck” damage) too much room to counter attack the player. And given the huge disparity with the damage coefficients, zerks meta was invented on the fact that faster TTKs are safer then defense against attrition.

And to add irony to insult, the Devs double backed on this kittenty encounter design for HOT…. and immediately suffered unbelievable backlash from playing complaining about how everything is “too hard to fight”. Pre-HOT mordem were an exercise in cheap CCs to fake difficulty… But Post-HOT when normal mobs got break bars, actually provided a good design, because there was ample counter play if managed your skills correctly. Mordem elite also used a lot of skills that were very similar to players; only with wider AOE and longer projections, so positioning mattered in a fight. Players were so poorly trained for these conditions, that they utterly decimated until the CC portions of Elite specs were available (which wasn’t on release due to how the point cost was set up).
But HOT would eventually fall victim to the same potato AI in central Tyria….. because those mobs lose all difficulty once you learn what their counters are. So again… the only enemies which still dangerous are the ones which can 1-shot you with little warning. But if you increase the power the AI, and have them employ even simple tactics against the player….. the player gets frustrated with an enemy thats unpredictable. Which brings us to why RAIDS follow the WoW design model of environmental hazards and DPS racing, relying on classic trinity and house of cards team comp; rather then an AI based encounter design, where the enemies move intelligently to be a threat, and the challenge is in corralling them in the right places. Players just outright despise group content where even minor uncertainty exists, just as much as they hate content where route memorization isn’t the primary path to victory.

If you haven’t realized it yet…. players will often say they want one thing, mean something else, and will chastise you for giving them what they asked for, but not what they were thinking. But the problems run even deeper still…..and it has to do with Ranked sPvP…. the thing which all Class design is balanced around, no matter how not like sPvP the content is. Its why WvW has always been a mess, why older in Class designs none of the CC skills made any sense until HOT pushed them over the top, and why any half way worthwhile skill gets nerfed into the ground.
Most of the design choices aren’t fundamentally bad…. but their almost always kitten or abandoned on their first implementation because players are incapable of thinking beyond their myopic world view of their preferred game mode. I actually like WvW as much as I like open world… but I despise sPvP and Raids because players started turning it into an elitist kittenfest. And before they were abandoned to push Raids… dungeons had the same problem with speed run sub-community. But they also got that way, because Dungeons were the most efficient gold farms due to Diminishing returns in the Loot system.

You mean like these?

Rauderi.8706:

I’ve always found it weird that a society so based on academic renown wouldn’t have the wisdom to have surnames. Their databases must be in shambles.

Fortunately, to solve the problem, my gal from Dynamics has developed a Secondary Identification Nomenclature that will ensure her name is properly preserved for posterity!

Considering their massive Egos, a system where their names that are unique and registered, so as not to be stolen or copied by future (or even current) generations of wannabes, sounds exactly like something a society built on an academic driven economy would want to do. As for the database? Crew registries are the norm, so why waste effort logging the accomplishments of those who aren’t or will not be accomplishing anything?

I wouldn’t call it build diversity though…. its more like the game demands specific things, and 1 of them is shoehorned specifically to give the Ranger something to do. Rangers are “useful” in all game modes…. but their build “diversity” suffers severe tunnel vision. You don’t have the room to muddle with ideas like most of the other classes do….. and thats largely because they allocate a whole trait line just to get 1 Trait…. Quick Draw. That single trait accounts for the biggest portion of you’re performance gains, and without it, you’re not going to be effective enough in endgame scenarios.

Kantid.3571:

Alternate variant: make able to open any selected bag in separate minimalistic window. So you do not need to hold all your inventory open – but only one bag.

Yes. Because theres a point where too many hot bars is you playing a game about managing hot bars.

sazberryftw.3809:

I’m a bit confused about why getting exp has anything to do with raids? Can someone explain

Just to catch this all up.

In the early days, excess levels became skill points. You’d spend them on utility skills… and eventually just piled up with nothing to spend them on that weren’t related to the Mystic Forge (which were bottle necked by materials then by skill points).

When they were gearing up for HOT’s release, they dropped exp roll over rewards and shifted the currency needs to Spirit shards…. which came in the form of daily rewards and random drops. Down the line, they reintroduced Exp roll over rewards as a spirit shard, provided you have maxed out all existing mastery lines in the region.

The problem with HOT is that its has an after the fact expanding Mastery line, which requires you to update your completion to regain the spirit shard generation if something were to be added. Raids and Ancient magics are all considered part of the HOT mastery track line up, but aren’t readily visible unless you’ve have met the prerequisites to unlock them. In the case of raids, you have BEAT one of the bosses just to START working on that mastery track.

Until then, all exp which would normally go toward filling mastery tracks contributes to nothing. This is actually an extension of a problem within the system itself; which also blocks progress if an active mastery track is filled with exp, but you forget, or can not spend the mastery points to complete it.

So for people who haven’t or don’t want to participate in Raids, this blocks the ability to use roll over exp as spirit shards. For people who haven’t unlocked LS3 chapters (which are a requirement to gain access to those maps, and the mastery track line), Ancient magics can also block it as well.

Black Iris Flowers.3418:

Sarrs.4831:

Yes but how does it suffer. On a play-to-play basis, what precisely about the amount of conditions and boons is making the game difficult, unfun, confusing or unhealthy?

Visual clutter and the sheer amount of different conditions- condi clear skills can’t keep up.

If condi clear could keep up, then its nullified as a damage source. Considering it meant to be an entire wing of build dynamics, and whose damage is explicitly designed to bypass armor, your solution is to remove 1/3 of all builds from the meta to reduce the number of icons you need to look at. And no…. reducing the number of condi removal effects only makes their impact more significant. The Control conditions/boons are extremely polarizing as is; and the DOTs are meant to be stable pressure via damage.

This same problem also exists in Power builds, but we take it granted because the mitigation methods are more intuitive.

Players don’t think they have agency, because the timing of these skills are very tight….. which is ironic considering GW2 community is often accused of being too casual.

Djinn.9245:

starlinvf.1358:

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Black Iris Flowers.3418:

OriOri.8724:

I’d be happy if it got just the following changes:

• A counter for how many items you can place down out of a clear total. As you get near it, it grows bigger and turns red, possibly starts flashing if you place down more siege. I’m tired of people who won’t listen to me in team chat continue to place down new crap even while the old, upgraded stuff is disappearing in front of their eyes. Replacing a mega cat with a regular one is a downgrade, why the kitten would anyone do that?
• Delete the objects with the lowest health first if you have surpassed the siege cap. Same as above, I’m tired of people just placing down dozens of new objects every round, and they end up deleting my upgraded snowmen, catapults, and few ice walls that are near full health instead of deleting (or, gasp upgrading) some first tier siege that is almost dead.

Making it harder could be fun, but honestly after the first few times I only do this for the daily when it comes up so I don’t mind it being easy. To me, its not worth my time unless the rewards were buffed.

I genuinely did not know there was a siege cap for this, thank you for the information!

If there is one it’s so big I didn’t even notice it either, I’ve placed toys all over the place and didn’t notice them disappearing.

It actually takes more effort to lose this game than to win it.

It gets very noticable when you have 2 players trying to build forts away from the center. Princess Doll Hamlet, Citadel Hill and the Rata Sum maze are popular for their terrain advantages; and you’ll quickly notice Catapults on the Opposite side disappearing, because one guy has 20 catas on the same hill.

Why do you build forts? Just for the heck of it?

Its actually a heavily conditioned habit most gamers have………….. higher density = better performance. We stack in dungeons, we focus fire, we have AOE ranges, we try to keep enemies in clusters to take advantage of splash attacks.

The problem isn’t that Forts are a bad tactic….. its that players don’t realize they need coverage on 3 sides, and load too much of a limited resource into one area. 3 forts (if coordinated well) can kill waves faster by lowering the travel time of Cata shots. But the way pugs do this is extremely haphazard; and their constant building is causing them to fight each other to keep defenses up.

I’ve even ran across player, who after 3 years of holiday events, didn’t even realize that you upgrade defenses by using materials. Others didn’t realize upgraded weapons did more damage. And most still don’t know you can regen health by standing next to the center.

Because a couple of knowledge players are able to compensate for the bulk of newbie mistakes, it doesn’t impact the mode’s success rate, and thus most players are never forced to learn those mechanics to succeed. Compare that to Raids, where farting at the wrong moment causes a full wipe; or even world events where non-attrition based objectives are usually what causes them to fail. (I’m looking at you Teq scales)

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Chiccotot.7296:

They are rats, so they have claws.
They used to live under ground, it would be logical for them to have claws to dig out dirt and such.

Skritt are rats.
Asura are not. They are more like Gremlins than anything else.

Skritt physical appearance is actually more in common with bats then rats. Most people make that mistake because most people only recognize bats by wings…… but the face and ears have right tells.

MoarChaos.8320:

No way to change the amount of transmutation charges you’ll need currently. They truly need to add an option to the right click drop down.

A 20+ long drop down list? In which you have to know the name of the item without being able to preview the style…?

More annoying then the full volume Troll Mini and its heavy breathing?

Dawnbreaker.6215:

Black Iris Flowers.3418:

OriOri.8724:

I’d be happy if it got just the following changes:

• A counter for how many items you can place down out of a clear total. As you get near it, it grows bigger and turns red, possibly starts flashing if you place down more siege. I’m tired of people who won’t listen to me in team chat continue to place down new crap even while the old, upgraded stuff is disappearing in front of their eyes. Replacing a mega cat with a regular one is a downgrade, why the kitten would anyone do that?
• Delete the objects with the lowest health first if you have surpassed the siege cap. Same as above, I’m tired of people just placing down dozens of new objects every round, and they end up deleting my upgraded snowmen, catapults, and few ice walls that are near full health instead of deleting (or, gasp upgrading) some first tier siege that is almost dead.

Making it harder could be fun, but honestly after the first few times I only do this for the daily when it comes up so I don’t mind it being easy. To me, its not worth my time unless the rewards were buffed.

I genuinely did not know there was a siege cap for this, thank you for the information!

If there is one it’s so big I didn’t even notice it either, I’ve placed toys all over the place and didn’t notice them disappearing.

It actually takes more effort to lose this game than to win it.

It gets very noticable when you have 2 players trying to build forts away from the center. Princess Doll Hamlet, Citadel Hill and the Rata Sum maze are popular for their terrain advantages; and you’ll quickly notice Catapults on the Opposite side disappearing, because one guy has 20 catas on the same hill.

To even consider the wardrobe approach, they’d have to break them down into categories and set them up to fit into one or more slots in a UI system. I can identify at least 3 initial groups…..

- Surface skins (recolors usually)
- Aura (which emit from the center of the model)
- Particles (winter’s presence, night fury, etc)

Some of these over lap with legendaries- but I doubt that’ll cause a conflict given how it already stacks them without issue.

There are pros and cons to the current unstructured system vs a wardrobe like system, but realize this will heavily impact how they do future rewards that involve them. Look at how they did commander tags.

Thats not how you spell “Raids”. The only reason Dungeons still exist is for legacy rewards.

Essentially the Dungeons suffer from a hand full of mistakes in their encounter design; and to which were completely obsoleted with the ESpecs and changes in CC mechanics. Dungeons are mostly an exercise in Attrition…. which is why Zerks meta thrived there. Fractals and Raids are an exercise in mechanical control and execution, which is why they are harder to design, and more difficult to scale. However, that required diversity in strategy means power creep doesn’t override the Scenario, and you can make adjustments to the encounter without having to change everything. Thats how Fractal Instabilities as a concept manages to work…… the tasks are unchanged, but the pressure and build requirements can be made radically different with an environmental effect.

While they can still recycle most of the assets, every dungeon would need at least 2 out of their 3 explorable paths completely redone to add new mechanics to the fight sequences, and account for the sizable power jump created by ESpecs.

Black Iris Flowers.3418:

From the sound of it you were only doing this puzzle for the mastery point- there’s plenty of excess in the game you can get instead. Have you done the Quirky Quaggan Quest one in Bitterfrost? It’s really easy, just finding the 7 pieces of the poem- Dulfy has a guide

Except the acquisition of mastery points, and the abilities you get by spending them, have nothing to do with each other. Neither is the Exp grinding to fill the track before you spend the points. Its no secret its an artificial gating system designed solely force players to experience a “hindered state”, which the Mastery abilities eventually remove…. all in the name of perceived “progress”. Compare that to things like the HOT legendary collections, where the scavenger hunt at least has symbolic significance to the outcome.

The gripe here, which I agree with, is that many mastery points are purposely placed behind abnormally difficult content for the sole purpose of forcing players to do them at some point. There was actually some logic to Mastery abilities and their unlock order in HOT maps, which used a Metroidvania style puzzle meta with the mobility unlocks, thus giving you the ability to tackle progressively larger areas to explore. ….. yet you don’t see any of that with the LS3 maps, as they are intended to be sequential, and thus don’t require back tracking.

While I do like the Metroidvania style of map exploration, I never found the method of the Mastery point system to ever reflect a learning process. In fact, it being a an Exp bar that fills doing literally anything, and the spending process being free form, represents the exact opposite of a mechanical learning system. It just removes the gate thats blocking your progress, and often trivializes a previously insurmountable obstacle. The mobility masteries ultimately fail in that regard, because most aren’t actual execution challenges, but mere aids to another mechanic.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/HOPE

HOPE is an acronym for Hylek Optimized Projectile Experiment.

Hero points replaced the old skill point system, and spirit shards were added to fill the role of currency. This all leads into the Specialization update. Both Traits and Utility skills are now rolled into a track, which you use Hero Points to unlock.

Core Specializations can be unlocked by reaching lvl 80 (they give you enough points to do so). The extra points gained from map completion can speed up the process, but aren’t technically needed. If you get Heart of Thorns, this opens an Elite specialization for each class, which you use excess Hero Points to get started. In both Scenarios, you have a fairly large amount of leeway in hero points, and do not need to do world complete in either to fully unlock an E-Spec track.

You want to have access to E-Specs, because they are almost universally a form of power creep (Druid is a special case) over a pure Core Spec build. The HOT specs in particular are designed to fill in a weakness inherent in each class, and substantially improves their capability to deal with the higher power curve of enemies found in the expansion. Even if you rarely ever go into HOT maps, the E-Specs make each class feel a lot more complete.

You’re also going to want to get HOT now for 2 reasons.
1. Gliding has endless utility throughout the current game (both Core and HOT); and you want to work on it now while the HOT maps (which you need to do for mastery points) are still somewhat popular.
2. You will not get new Living Story chapters for free if you’re on a core account. Considering you can get Ascended gear for cheap on the LS3 maps and Raid tokens (which you can’t access without HOT), this can catch you up quickly and cheaply to the new Ascended Base line.

The achievements that award them will have a Red dot next to them in the achievement panel. The World boss ones (Teq, Shatter, Triple Trouble) have a few each, world Complete I believe gives at least one, both the Maguuma waste maps have a few each, and South Sun as a bunch as well. The rest are tied to multi-task achievements, collections or one off puzzles.

The boss ones are probably the most difficult to get… but the rest are just time consuming. Do personal story, do the Fractals ones in T1, and unfortunately a bunch are tied to LS2 (which will cost gems). There 67 Points total, but you only need 49…. so that gives a little leeway, even without doing any LS2.

However…. without LS2, there are several difficult/expensive collections you’ll have to do cover the difference. You can get 8 points just by doing each LS2 chapter, and 8 more for doing the Mastery achievement in each.

Curunen.8729:

It still takes time to level, unlock masteries, unlock gated sigils/runes/insignias/inscriptions/recipes/items, gear up to full ascended (even multiple sets for different content. Nevermind changing your mind on stats half a dozen times and having to re-gear (again costing more time and gold).

Having said that once you are fully geared, there are several end game choices – wvw, fractals, dungeons, raids, open world pve, or even spvp where you don’t even need gear just spend time learning the game.

But part of the beauty of this game is freedom to do what you like whenever you like – for example I sometimes like to aimlessly wonder through pve maps for mindless “zone out”, if I’ve had a particularly long day and want to not think about anything.

That and forum arguments about how X game mode is being treated better then Y game mode.

Blude.6812:

IMHO everything should be able to be sold somehow, or be salvaged. Too much stuff is just ends up being useless and has to be destroyed.

You can sell them to NPCs, and use asc salvage kits. The entire decision to segregate the player base is to incentivize the F2P players into buying the game. This is stacked on top of the response to a significant number of complaints about Tyrian content being Pay2Win (buy everything you need using Gems to Gold exchange), and the game not rewarding long term goals.

Thus, the most desirable items in the game now have a Time/Effort cost, rather then a straight gold cost. It also precludes some of the economic upsets created when the meta establishes a new “Best in class” item.

Ironically, Anet is already attempting to “solve” the trash stock piles through Accretion and salvage prerequisites. Why do you think they completely devalued Asc gear over the last bunch of updates? They are adopting it as the new base line, and will be using Mastery points and/or Infusion slots as an easy reset for future gating requirements. Look at Artifact power in WoW: Legions…. or Sockets in Diablo…. its a frame work for planned obsolescence

Guizao.4167:

Vukorep.3081:

Conjured weapons are bundles, multiple of the same bundles share their cooldowns.

imagine a warrior drops 2 banners, picks one up, uses aoe fury and swiftness, drops it, picks another one and casts another aoe swiftness, then picks up the first banner and casts fury and swiftness back…

and yes, tons of burst cc with specific conjured weapons, including also, using shield for 6 seconds of invulnerable (which reminds me, why dont people use this instead of arcane shield? :P)

And do the shield’s other skills compensate for something?

Earth Shield is in an awkward place. Its a defensive tool with Condi damage…. But its biggest problem is the AA chews through charges too quickly for minimal benefit. Given it mimics Ranger 1hSw attack style, I’m guessing the intent was for it to be a pursuit weapon to keep enemies close enough for Earth traits to trigger. The damage for the AA

The net result of this is the Ele not being able to capitalize on the strength of the CCs, and is giving up nearly all of their DPS to have access to them. And the 3 traits it can synergize with, Pyromancer’s Puissance & Bolt to the Heart, are direct damage builds, and Burning Precision (burn on crit) competes with Conjurer.

What I feel needs to happen is 20 charges should be the base line for all Conjured weapons, summoning the weapon should trigger the Minor master of its related attunement (With FGS triggering Arcane), and add another damage component to skill 4 on Earth Shield to bring it in line with the other 3.

The build is completely non-existant, because there are no Tome skills anymore.

Aside from being grossly out-dated, the general support symbols build is intended to work on Stationary targets. For WvW, this is problematic, since roaming favors mobility, and zerg hammers are used more for utility then defense/offense. Healing power on a Guardian has perhaps some of the worst coefficients on the skills that would benefit from it the most. Its also giving up valuable DPS, which you’re going to lack without the flat multipliers from Zeal or DH ( guard base line damage is on the low side).

More importantly, DH turns your Virtues into very powerful utility skills. Core Guards almost never touch their Virtues due lack luster effects, but Dragon Hunters use them constantly. Pull on F1, Mobility+Cleanse+Heal (and Immob if traited) on F2, and Projectile Barrier on F3 (which can cover stomps, or act as a secondary condi clear if paired with Fortitude). These 3 abilities alone is every reason to run DH in PvP and WvW.

The mindset for this game’s combat is significantly different from the EQ-standard of skill rotations. The active combat system (while still on the stream lined side) demands the player understand “conditional modifiers”, as this forms the basis of how the game’s Trait system and power scaling is accomplished. If you look at the traits, the strongest ones will play directly on game mechanic…. and its the ability to string these together that make this game a little difficult for new players from the WoW scene to understand.

The key difference between this game and WoW, is how WoW puts emphasis on Sustained everything; where as active combat games (GW, Terra, etc) put more emphasis on timing. Almost everything in GW2 revolves around near split second timing, as many skills have very short windows of opportunity, with limited uses per cycle.

Core Tyria is actually a massive newbie zone, now that even the Core class specs are almost as powerful as the Elite specs. Silverwaste is actually the Litmus test for HOT maps…. since its a cake walk for any player who understands a hand full of basic mechanics; but is utterly devastating to players who don’t know how to deal with CCs used against them.

That more then anything else is why Boosting is a bad idea for new players. Without knowledge of how a class’s defensive abilities operate, even the relatively less threatening soft CCs can crush them in short order. In fact… when Silverwaste and Drytop were first introduced, that was the exact problem people had with surviving the feral Mordrem. Those were the first mobs to heavily utilize CCs- and in-line defense traits/utilities were hard to fit in a build without giving up significant damage potential. They were tough enough to survive the typical alpha bursting many players were spec’d for, and could dish out enough damage to overwhelm a sustained defense…. that left the only option as damage avoidance. And even to this day, dodge roll and mobility skill are the only reliable avoidance strategies in Silverwaste. Oddly enough, the Mordrem guard are actually easier to deal with, since each one has a type of CC that can effectively shut them down. Compare that to the Feral Mordrem, which are only slowed down by CCs, and can recover from them quickly

There other things to consider as well….

How are you at handling high maintenance rotations?
Do you need a low skill threshold?
Do you need a panic button?
Do you want in-line utility, or Spec’d utility?
In terms of diversity, you need ready access? or are you ok with build limitation?
Are you ok with Defense management?

And what are your existing classes, and your general opinion of them?

The Warrior has strong build options, but they are always exposed in some aspect (usually to heavy condi pressure). They do exceptionally well in groups which can cover their vulnerabilities, but can be torn down pretty easy if their opponent can find and exploit their weaknesses.

The Engineer has nearly unparalleled inline utility and versatility (which is a huge boon in WvW); but their high end performance is centered on combo sequences, and easily loses momentum if you mistime your skills. Fortunately Scrapper is a PvP centered Spec, with the added durability it offers being incredibly useful in all game modes.

Probably just a pale skin Sylvari. The Sylvari are practically made FROM nature and magic…… you really can’t get any more High Elf without cloning tolkeneqse type fantasy worlds. They started design life as a Elves, but was later subverted to enable better interaction with other races, and avoid having to recton them as an “Ancient Race”. Even if they were to dump the Plant-like appearance, the lore benefited much more from them not having centuries worth of cultural baggage; with their greater population behaving like very articulate children.

That is unless your whole reasoning for Elves is an inflated sense of self righteous arrogance; in which case, Asura have that in copious amounts.. and pointy ears to boot. The one thing that kills it for me with Sylvari is the amalgamate English accent they use, with only 1 or 2 of the VAs side stepping the near constant awkward inflections. Unfortunately the ones running the player dialog suffered the most from this, contributing to their lacking popularity.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

This very idea has been hashed out at least a dozen times in these very forums, as well as more often on Reddit and elsewhere. The conversation is always the same:

• People who dislike bigger guilds think the system is unfair, while those in larger guilds aren’t necessarily aware that there’s an issue to discuss.
• Some think the system is completely fair because everyone is free to proceed at their own pace, because the entire game is advantageous to small guilds except in the case of Halls, because guild halls are entirely options, and (a popular argument) everyone is able to join a large guild to reap the benefits.

There really isn’t a good way of offering identical upgrade paths, while charging large & small guilds differently. There are all sorts of ways that can be abused and, at the very least, it’s immensely complicated to code & troubleshoot.

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I think a more realistic alternative would be to offer an alternative upgrade model, with lower costs but also fewer benefits. Any guild could convert from “budget” to “full” once (for a substantial fee, of course). For example, the “budget” alternative might only offer the 50-slot bank, 200 decoration max, repair & regular merchant, and not much else.

This would still be expensive for ANet, but would have the advantage of being simpler to setup and maintain. It wouldn’t put smaller guilds in a permanent crimp and larger guilds could choose to use the budget version, too or go straight to the GH with which we’re familiar.

Has anyone ever suggested having more then one 1 size of guild roster and guild halls? Smaller guilds get smaller guild halls, cost less to upgrade, and are capped on membership. Want a bigger guild? You have to upscale everything, and prorate the value of the existing guild hall when they move into the new one.

From an organization standpoint, its suicide to incrementally upgrade a guildhall to try to max out benefits as they grow…. so aside from complaints of it not being easily exploited, you’d think the results should reasonably match the size of the guild.

As for tertiary services, such as PvP and WvW upgrades, locking certain features behind a minimum size requirement doesn’t really pose a problem given how those groups tend to coalesce. A guild of 5 doesn’t need the ability to max out Claim bonuses for Keeps and Castles, nor have guild missions to capture them. But WvW guild of 100+ should have bigger, more difficult objectives for their harder guild missions, and the claim bonuses that would support that.

The only wild card in this scaling situation is the way guild commendations are used as rewards. If small guilds don’t have access to hard missions, then big guilds get a higher commendation payout…. but if its scaled to the guild size, then small guilds can be exploited to get them easier. Of anything guilds currently offer, the commendations are holding the entire system hostage.

The problem…. OP goes into a map and expects it be running. Its an organized event. And like any event thats organized (Teq, shatterer, TT, and just about world boss that needs a secondary mechanic), the people who organize it arrive at least 5-15 minutes prior to the event to setup the groups.

I also call BS in that its never filled. Theres a LOT of events competing for player attention; and the only one thats guaranteed to have people is Tarir because of the Multi-map farm meta. Outside of that, the daily reward limits create a world boss rotation that starts at 0 UTC, and staggers throughout the day depending on when people wake up.

For instance, Teq happens at Reset, and is always organized because you can get the event done without having to wait. Triple Trouble doesn’t see much traffic because of its higher organization requirement, and is typically only run by 4 guilds roughly 3 times a week each. Octovine is organized, but enough Pugs understand the mechanics that its not difficult to get them coordinated. If the Daily achievements have either a world boss, or an event completer on a map with a world boss, those maps will always fill up during the world boss event to fill those achievements.

In all other instances, certain time zones will favor a certain boss/meta if they over lap. If Teq and Shatter occur at the same time (which they do for OCE primetime), most pugs will go to Teq due to it having more rewards. If Octo and Dragonstand overlap, Dragonstand will struggle to find people, as will KOJ due to the preparations needing almost half a map cycle before Chak for success.

If theres no taxi advertisements in LFG, then theres no organized maps. If you aren’t willing to do the organization, and understanding PUG schedules; then there is no excuse on your part.