Guild Wars 2

You cannot say for sure that dueling is in. For all we care, the command might just make him hostile to everyone in the area. Proper dueling support requires more fine tuning and interface work to handle duel invites etc…

Paulytnz.7619:

Duuuuude, Norn are not overweight, big boned or whatever label you want to give them. Neither does this armour make them look so – it’s all that extra padding to help keep out the cold, they do live in the cold areas after all!

Extra padding is for weak humans. A real Norn can sleep naked in the snow in the middle of a blizzard and he won’t catch a cold !

Tooltip is probably completely incorrect until the skill is available in a patch. If the info was really given in the livestream (didn’t watch myself), it makes a lot more sense.

And remember that all that grind was meaningless if those PvE skills had no room in your builds!

Ursan.7846:

21,000 * 7 = 147,000.

Thank you for your correction. There are still 800,000 more title points to go for.

Anyway, for all I cared the only skill that mattered was Save Yourselves and it was already pretty OP at rank 1. And it actually maxed at rank 5. If you give your faction points to your guild, you only need 420k points more or less.

There is also the potential of doubling that further with the double faction week-ends.

Ursan.7846:

42,000 from vanquishing (7 maps, around 300 creatures each, 20 factions per kill.)

Actually, it’s around 21000 faction points for vanquishing a 300 creature map. You get 20 faction per kill, and a vanquish bonus equal to 50 faction per kill.

The main issues I see with venoms are :
- lackluster effect when not shared with your party
- equipping venoms prevent you from taking needed condition removal and stun breaks

There multiple ways one can improve venoms then. Most revolve around the idea of buffing them without buffing venom sharing at all. Here’s a couple examples :
- Add a second effect on venom that activates on cast. For example, one venom could remove stuns, another cures 3 conditions etc…
- Applying a venom cures the corresponding conditions
- Make all venoms apply two conditions and only share the second one with venomous aura

Also, I’d change the Residual Venom trait because in my opinion, it’s not worth a grandmaster trait at all. The only reason we take it is because if we go full venom, there’s little else we can take that is effective. Proposals :
- merge it’s effect into quick venoms and create a new trait in it’s place. Doesn’t matter if it’s a venom based trait or not but probably should
- make it say “Venom charges aren’t lost when you miss an attack” and by miss I mean the full combo. Miss, block, evade, invulnerable and the like
- replace the trait with “Immunity training”. Applying a venom makes you immune to the corresponding conditions for a short duration (say, 10s for normal skills, 5s for the elite). Yes the elite becomes equivalent to 5s of stability.

frans.8092:

How would skelk venom help you more then, say, signet of malice?

Well it’s obvious, with the signet you’ll be missing the opportunity to roleplay a full venom thief.

Maybe if they didn’t rush to the support to ask a refund instead of waiting to see the new skin, it’d allow ANet to prepare and warn all the support on how they have to handle this specific issue?

Heck, some people were asking a refund like 5 minutes after ANet posted about those changes! It doesn’t take much effort to understand that, no, support would not have been up to date on that topic in such a short time I’m sure.

Incurafy.6329:

Withdraw on a 12 second cd? Yes please!

Who would takes Trickster instead of Bountiful Theft or the other Master Trickery traits anyway?

Antitoxin spray doesn’t work in sPvP though.

Btw, I think the “Residual Venom” master trait is hardly worthy of master trait status. The only reason we pick it is because it’s the only trait in that slot that improves Venoms. Possible improvement, add : “Venom charges aren’t removed by miss, block, evade and invulnerable”

Well, the heal can remain blockable and missable. If it means it heals more than all the other heals we have currently.

For a longer CD, even when using a trait, it sure deserves some advantage. The instant cast isn’t advantage enough when Withdraw does it too.

It refills your allies endurance bar too. It is a very good skill.

We have no idea how much it heals overall.

Well if the thief heal is a valid one player heal, it’ll be indeed a big deal once venom shared.

For a couple days until it’s hotfixed I suppose :p

Doggie.3184:

I honestly just wish they’d delete Venoms. I’m tired of them trying to fix such a lame concept and seemingly ignoring everything else because they’re so desperate to make them viable or fun when they never will be as utility skills. They only thing they could really do with it is put it on F keys like Steal.

I’m a little out of the loop here but, when was the last time ANet did ANYTHING to try to fix our venoms?

Side note, JonPeters implied in another thread that the thief heal skill was kind of a big deal. Wait and see I say.

Oprah.1347:

Personally I feel that this is the complete wrong direction to go in. Not only does it put new players at a disadvantage when they first enter the mists, it gimps people who have not played for some time

In all likeliness, returning players will have a big stock of unused skill points to instantly unlock every new interesting skill. And I see enough complaints here about experienced players that get matched with new players and lose to mean that them having or not the new skills won’t matter much since you don’t want to play with them anyway !

It’s likely the total heal amount will be similar or greater than HiS though. It’s instant cast but has no stealth, it’s 45 CD vs 30 without trait. But it can be venom shared so …

Looks like a 45 second CD instant cast venom according to datamining :

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/23539-skelk-venom

glaphen.5230:

You can spam Cluster Bomb on yourself inside a group of enemies and heal 1197 a cast and do this every 3 seconds.

The more opponents, the more you can heal yes.

Up to the point you notice that :
- the more opponents, the more damage you receive
- actually, there’s a cap at 5 targets so it’s false that the more opponents the more you can heal past that point
- retaliation

WTB Flashing Blades http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Flashing_Blades

Thieves got a couple special attributes, not just Initiative. Thieves special attributes are :
- Initiative
- Dual Weapon skill #3
- Sneak attack that replaces skill #1 while in Stealth
- And of course, the as usual profession specific F1 skill

Please note that the 3rd special attribute of the thief class is inexistent without stealth.

There would still be the issue of PvE only runes and sigils you don’t want to see in PvP.

Since we are getting on finer points, too much AoE DPS, not enough AoE control I’d say. Why bother with control when :
- You can just AoE dps everything
- There’s too many mobs to control in the first place

GW2 main problem in PvE I believe is the gear and stat system. The disparity between the various gear sets is so through the roof that they cannot settle on how to balance the game.

ANet1 : I made it so that mobs don’t die so fast to those 5 zerk teams ! And they won’t die instantly at the first mistake too.
ANet2 : No wait, your new tuning killed my 5 Soldier team through sheer boredom.

The second problem with gear for PvE. The gear you can choose, except for an uncommon set with a tiny boon duration boost is a way for you to choose where you are placed in the trinity : DPS (power or condition), Healer, Tank. Except that, this is NOT the GW2 trinity! There’s no healer and no tank, so why? Where are the support and the control sets?

This is I’d say the biggest mistake in GW2 PvE. Gear should not have been role defining. The armor should have been just base armor, weapon base damage and trinkets shouldn’t exist. Traits, utilities and weapon type should have been the trait defining tools given to the players. Once that is done, the player dps and sustainability would be much less variable, allowing ANet to much better tune the PvE encounter difficulty to the point players will feel forced to make use of some really dedicated control and support roles.

Sledgehamster.8106:

Finally those who are having their armour skin removed have had no contact from Anet explaining why, it will just happen. Some of those players won’t visit these boards and it will be something of a shock to them. I really couldn’t hurt to email and apologise in advance now, could it?

Aren’t you kinda assuming here? They didn’t even remove the skin yet and for sure they know perfectly well who bought it. There’s nothing preventing them from sending an ingame courier at the same time they update the skin.

No the suggestion is to add a cast time where you aren’t invulnerable and you can cancel it without going into full CD, then the invulnerability would be given after as a buff at the same time as the virtues recharge.

Honnestly, if the main reason you have is because at times you cancel it by mistake, I’d say this suggestion is along the lines of asking your computer to display twice the “Confirm deleting this file?” before doing it just in case you made a mistake.

Sure, there should be some amount of protection against mistakes, but too much is too much!

But just having virtues recharge at the start might just be enough. Though it could be considered an unneeded buff to the skill.

Leonsky.3156:

1 – Teammates heal you and you no longer need the invulnerability and want to save the cast for later time

2 – Using Renewed Focus and while casting runs into aoe and cast is about run out and need to dodge before the skill cast is finished. Problem with this is you no longer get your virtues. ( Example – Dodging Molten Beserker Waves / Aetherblade Cannon Phase )

1 – Though luck.
2 – Maybe that skill isn’t the best to use in that situation then?

Mostly, I think you don’t understand how that skill works. You are supposed to be invulnerable only during the cast time. Why? Because you aren’t allowed to do anything else while you are protected. Same as blocking stances. Adding a cast time before the skill activates would also make it unusable in reflex to block an attack. All in all,
iIt’d be a major remake of the skill.

Leonsky.3156:

Uhh that’s not the point here. The point is that if you try to cast cancel ( By dodging) Renewed Focus it will automatically go into a 90sec cooldown making the skill useless. What i simply suggested was a way arenanet could change the skill making it so Renewed Focus can have a cast cancel along with a way to make it so people don’t abuse the invulnerability you get while casting it.

Why would you cancel the cast with a dodge anyway? You are invulnerable!

One can say designing a boss that requires a map to be full is a bad idea in the first place. Either you don’t have enough players and so you cannot complete it, or you fill the map and all the extra people get thrown in overflow when they come too late and get deprived of any chance to complete it.

The flamekissed armor kind of comes “free” with 6 transmutation stones. The human cultural T3 armor comes on rare items with bad stats so you have to factor in the price of 6 transmutation crystals.

You think this is all about me? No it’s not.

But I’m sure a lot of people would immediately think when they see you pass by with that armor : “Oh look, I nearly forgot how much gold I wasted buying that T3 cultural armor when I could just have waited for ANet to release it for 1/3 the gold price! Thanks you.”

MrSilver.5269:

All I know is that I see VERY few people with the skin in game. The fairest thing to do is to allow those who purchased it keep it, and then re-release a new skin for others to purchase.

PLEASE don’t take something away from people that purchased gems to buy, overwriting existing t3 skins in the process.

Solution outcome :
- kittens off every player from group A that doesn’t want this set to exist
- pleases the VERY few players that got it
- kittens off every other player that wants it and didn’t buy it in time

Solution rating : 1/10 because you yourself said there’s VERY few players that will be pleased with it.

ronpierce.2760:

It’s no doubt some people will be upset, some will be irked etc. There’s no “perfect” answer. I’m just saying what is the most fair and the best option.

Purely subjective opinion.

ronpierce.2760:

Buyers who bought out of good nature should absolutely not be punished, simple as that.

Which is why they get a full refund from ANet. Restoring their old skins and getting back the gems used. Who knows, maybe even you can get them to refund the cash used to buy those gems?

This is getting nitpicky. If you go so far into it you need to add group 5 :

• Group 5: they don’t care at all for cultural exclusivity, they have absolutely no problems with the armor sold for gems, no matter the price, even if it’s a reskin. But they are absolutely against having an armor set sold for a very very short duration and thus becoming something extremely rare and exclusive for a lucky few who got it in time.

Your middle ground actually bothers more people than you think. Group A is still kitten ed off. Group B is now split into two : those that bought the skin in time and the others. Your middle ground solution results in :

- Group A : unhappy
- Group B2 : unhappy

- Group B1 : happy

So it’s worse than deciding plainly for group A or group B.

ronpierce.2760:

Actually favoring one side and screwing the other is not the best option. The best option would have always been finding a middle ground. Let people who bought it keep it. Rework and re-release a new set for everyone to buy. People who bought it would have been happy/relieved, people who hate it would only have to deal with a small handful of people who have it, and the only people who could really be TOO upset are the people who acted too slowly on buying it, but it would be the most globally fair.

Except that the group “we don’t want that armor skin in the game” will NOT be pleased by that solution and so your solution is not a middle ground but one that favors group B and ignores group A.

I don’t want the new skin, I want to keep my cultural T3 I bought one year ago already :o

(well not me but I’m sure plenty would be saying that).

The solution is simple. Simple but it won’t please everybody because it’s not possible. You got group A that say : “we don’t want that armor skin in the game” and you got group B that says “we want to use that armor skin”.

There is NO way to please both groups. All ANet can do is please one or the other. Group A arguments (cultural armor should remain race exclusive and not available for 1/3 the price on gem shop) fits better with ANet vision for their game so they please group A and take the armor from group B. It sucks but that’s the best they can do to fix their mistake.

Now, if ANet suddenly reversed their position AGAIN, they would be clowns.

Well I agree that sustainability is too high for an enjoyable PvP game without supports. The problem here is that everyone is self sustainable. In GW1 this was the role of the monks so to win the fights you had a pretty good plan going on : shutdown one target while you kill another for example. Or fake spike a target when in reality you go on another. Your fears for the Elementalist are misguided because, if something is changed to nerf all that sustainability, obviously it WILL imply massive changes in all classes.

I’d love if the PvP in this game had more of a DotA feel. In DotA, there is very very little healing available except endgame “% damage into life steal” effects for the carry. The reason I believe is because constant healing slows down the game and makes it more boring to watch.

There’s an exact same situation in Diablo III right now. For the expansion pack, the devs are heavily nerfing all the current sustainability stats (mainly, they kind of remove the % life steal) because players reached the point where they can refill their whole health in 2-3 seconds. And so the only way they have currently of making something difficult is a mob that spikes down the 100% HP in less than that. They don’t like that spikability, but without that players would be immortal. So they went back and completely changed the sustainability itself.

Eldrake.1543:

Dhuum shows up and insta kills Scarlet so hard she ceases to exist in any form and shape.

That one could actually happen.

redslion.9675:

He meant that before buffs warriors were severely outsustained by most builds. That’s one reason why warrs were so easy to beat.

A shame though since in my opinion, the reason the PvP in this game is so boring is because there’s too much sustained healing in the game, not too little.

But changing that would probably be too massive for the tiny PvP balance team and would destroy PvE in the process.

Killed away from camera by a random Skritt while she was rampaging through one of their caves for evil purposes.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

to me, a healing skill is only overpowered if it allowed a casual, average player to become godlike, cannot be defeated etc. healing signet does not achieve that, therefore healing signet is not overpowered.

So, a healing skill is only OP if a casual player that uses it is impossible to kill. Interesting definition you got there but a tad optimistic.

The ratio “bad analogy”/“forum post” in this thread is through the roof :p

ANet made a mistake, it shouldn’t have released this armor set. They issued a recall, you’ll have to deal with it and move on. There could have been a lot of reasons to recall a set. Copyright infringement, quality problems, game crashes, damaging the ingame economy etc…

In this case, ANet concluded that the set is incompatible with the vision they have for cultural armor sets, so it is removed.

Who would erase a T3 armor set look like just anyway ? They are so expensive oO

Reesha.7901:

Personally, I think the most fair solution would be to let the people that already bought it keep it. Both human and none human.
However, since that apparently isn’t an option, then I think the same rules should apply for all. If Norn, Sylvari, Char and Azura players lose the current look of the Flamekissed, then obviously, the same should apply for the human players.

Yes because it’d be worse than leaving the armor for sale. The damage of the armor presence would still be here, but on top of it you’d have created some super ultra rare skin that people know won’t ever be sold again, and only the “lucky” few who bought it instantly after recognizing it was a Cultural T3 Human armor for very cheap for all expecting they’d get to keep it no matter what.

Guild Wars 1 leveling was excellent indeed. I do find the speed a little slow in Prophecies but perfect in Cantha. The latter leveling part was an extended tutorial. Leveling is fine IMHO in a tutorial since it allows the players to learn little by little about the game without getting overwhelmed with all the features at once from level 1.

Guild Wars 2 is I’d say guilty of failing that. Leveling is too long for little good reason and new players get overwhelmed with nearly everything at once before they even reach level 10.

bluejay.6739:

I agree with you that removing this was a mistake, they stated some time before the game’s release in a dev interview why they did it.

To make skill capture viable you have to have LOTS of skills. Apparently the large number of skills was a balancing nightmare and major resource drag and they stated to avoid those problems again they would not have the number and variety of skills in GW2 that they did in GW1. I wish I could find the article for you but it was a really long time ago.

A shame the game is nowhere near balanced as it stands :o Totally not worth it.

bluejay.6739:

I also think that most of the mistakes in the game are implementation problems rather than mistakes. Getting rid of the holy trinity was not necessarily a mistake. Putting NOTHING back in to replace the holy trinity was. For instance, if ALL fights required the group coordination of Tequatl it would be ok. You don’t need class roles if the fights have roles built into them. Unfortunately that is the only fight where this has been properly done.

I think one of their biggest design mistakes was not allowing players to wear cosmetic armor in combat. It basically made this type of equipment worthless and hurt their own sales while reducing character customization.

The two biggest mistakes in the game is the spam powered gameplay (skills and evades) and the builds made from the stats on your gear.

jheryn.8390:

I actually think it would stof. If something changes and you don’t accept it, that is called denial. That isn’t healthy! LOL

Of course, there is nothing wrong with doing what you can to reverse or change what has been changed for the worse. We don’t have to like change, but we do have to accept that it happens. What we do with it after that is up to us.

That’s not denial, that’s called disagreeing with the evolution of a game and a franchise I loved. That’s not unhealthy, that’s standing up for me and not following the sheeps down the standard treadmill MMO genre.

In fact, I do believe it’s more healthy to have a no statistics evolution MMO past the tutorial part. GW2 having lost it’s way just means I’m not giving them any more money nor playing their product until they fix that mistake.

A good solution for making people do the preevents, is not to give better rewards for them. It’s to make them timed, failable and if they fail the main even doesn’t start at all until the next cycle

THAT will get people to do those quickly.