“Trying to please everyone would not only be challenging
but would also result in a product that might not satisfy anyone”- Roman Pichler, Strategize
for those have have played for a long time ‘wall of RNG gambling’ = random drop. random drop isn’t an evil, its simply a way of making drops more exciting. And if you don’t get it, guess what, the world doesn’t end. Some modern players expect guaranteed drops and everything they can see when they think they have earned it.
you can solo all the content as it is, a companion would make that worse.
no heal, no toughness, long cooldowns, limited condi clears. Against any decent player they will avoid your burst then absolutely melt you. Burst isn’t pressure btw.
thats the point, the trade is unbalanced. Take water sceptre, you need heals so you swap to it…and get 1 heal every 20 seconds for 2000 health, with no other heal skills and sub par dps. That’s useless.
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as above, no need to rush, there is no gear race at end game.
Also:
-get the 3 gathering tools asap, you can buy them from most towns, if you like GW2 the endless version of the tools from the gemstore are worth their weight in gold, along with the copper fed salvager.
-Dont use the map if you can resist, explore and keep an eye out for any named npc or npc in the midst of conversation – there are dynamic quests all over the place that you can trigger.
-worth noting you get rewards for 100% map completion that you will want at some point.
if you need heal, you swap to heal..but you only get a small heal. water is not fit for purpose for healer, its also not fit for purpose for sustained dps, its in nowhere land. Swapping to water to get a heal is also not an attunement, its a click sequence to get a heal. A water attunement should be heavy healing + dps filler, not weak healing + weak dps filler, jut like fire is sustained dps + 0 heal.
slow and gentle in the right direction, its good to see Anet DO actually recognize the gaps in meta gameplay for ele.
drain the things that cause inflation – e.g blatant abuse of poor design (AB multiloot) and introduce more stuff that costs gold without creating a power race: utilities, legendary items, fluff, a new source of demand (housing!!)
The answer to the problem of balance and diversity is actually fast releases (im taking hourly/daily/weekly) therefore you can make extremely small tweaks constantly and react near instantly to game breaking balance issues. Job done. It takes a mature development model with great automated testing to do this however.
No, fast releases make problems worse.
Metas don’t resolve instantly, and they take time settle. Moreover balance changes themselves are made after careful observation and prolonged metric -gathering.
Making rapid changes is making changes without knowing the full extent of the meta. It’s like trying to shoot targets with a gun that has no sights. It’s random guessing that could make balance worse much faster than it will make it better.
Moreover there are other problems with rapid changes. Constant changes leaves the meta in a perpetual state of flux, which has negative consequences to the players. Why bother buildcrafting when your work is null and void after a week? It will also put off casual players who aren’t as interested in the meta as much as they are in just enjoying their class.
no the key is fast tiny changes, e.g increases the dps of one item by a couple, then a couple more etc. tiny gradual increments, its the way most smart dev houses are going- the alternative is big changes, and big changes generate constant flux, small changes dont.
For e.g, lets say the community made it clear that spec/build x has an issue, so now with quick incremental releases Anet can gradually change the offending build and watch the impact on the data. If it doesn’t work, tomorrow they reverse it and try something else. It was such a small change there was no major impact, there’s never major impact as everything is drip fed in constantly and player live testing drives out the best design.
Ps this isn’t a thing i’ve made up, top Dev houses aim for a potential of thousands of potential changes a day if they wish (i’m amazed myself by this)
nothing is locked behind 80, what you have is a lot of content before and after 80. This is what you want, its not mutually exclusive.
People wanting to rush to the end game are people who have learned the wrong behavior in other games to be quite honest. To use the old analogy they want to skim read the book to get to the last chapters. It id not the fault of the book that the reader doesnt care about the characters they read about at the end of the book..
You can never ‘solve’ the problem of offering large diversity and having perfect balance. This is similar to the classic development problem where getting everything 100% perfect is far far too slow to be workable – the world moves on why you dodder and tinker.
The answer to the problem of balance and diversity is actually fast releases (im taking hourly/daily/weekly) therefore you can make extremely small tweaks constantly and react near instantly to game breaking balance issues. Job done. It takes a mature development model with great automated testing to do this however.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563
I agree there, ember bay in particular is what the naysayers about AB talked about, much less verticality, and its very very dull in comparison.
its not brilliant, if everything is trivial to get then everyone gets everything, therefore everything becomes meaningless. As an extreme example, see WOW where everyone runs about with the same legendary, so ‘legendary’ becomes meaningless
the key word is ‘exploit’ identifying a flaw in logic and exploiting that flaw is not skill, in fact it usually indicates an ‘easier’ way of doing something so quite the opposite of skill.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563
well i will simply examine the next expansion to see if it looks like something i will like, no drama needed really.
‘gold sink’ suggests your are putting more gold into an achievement than you feel comfortable doing. The answer is don’t do it unless you want to. Re limited incomes, your looking at it back to front, in GW2 all player has access to everything, even those with limited incomes – they get long term goals.
’rotations ’ and min maxing are the backbone of tightly tuned raids, the scourge or dynamic reactive game play and the source of a lot of opinionated and subjective antisocial behavior, public damage meters bring fuel to this fire. We have had games like wow for a long time now, we can see the damage meters cause.
Anet have found a middle ground where there are viable raids without meters – so why the desperate need for meters now, i would hazard a guess bored raiders who want to play the numbers game.
nonsensical? its a reward for progress, and it appears to be a very desirable reward going by this thread – which is the best kind of reward. There’s no ‘fault’ here its a thing that is part of the reward package you get in GW2.
This is more self entitled nonsense – i see i thing and by golly i deserve it – even other games have it! Whats next, gliding? fractal mastery buffs? al the other things unlocked through Masteries? in fact lets get rid of masteries, lets have no progress/reward model?
Player X thinks ‘dps’ is really important and uses a meter, and is very opinionated about it. Player 2 values balanced gameplay and is less concerned with min maxing 1 stat and more concerned with the overall group progress, including boon distribution etc. Player X tries to change how player 2 plays, or worse tries to force the issue.
And this is why DPs meters are a bad thing (unless personal only)
the trick to having fun in pvp is to remind yourself that its ok to lose if the fight was fun, and take a break as soon as it gets frustrating. Too many pl.ayers go emo if they lose not realising that great fights > ranking points ultimately in a game.
We have dueling in WVW, this is already a PVP/PVE environment. Job already done.
10v10 could work with larger maps and faster spawn times, been done plenty elsewhere including GW1. 5v5 has a good feel about it as well, we have room for both.
jigsaw puzzle is not really a good one, it has a single definitive answer. Build diversity is the opposite of this. You want diversity of solutions that are not fixed with the winning position being a satisfactory state that has required skill and coordination to complete. Unfortunately ‘tightly tuned’ raids that have dps ceilings etc are examples of jigsaws.
The type of Jigsaw that would represent this satisfactory diversity is a jigsaw where the pieces can be combined in many different ways, and the final picture can vary but still be recognizable Tightly tuned raids this is not.
In terms of rads therefore, you need to get rid if dps race style fights (diversity busting force min max stat simplification) and relax/broaden the criteria for success. You then need to retrain players who are tunnel visioned into trying to simplify an encounter into criteria they can visualize, i.e stand here, max dps there and have raid leaders that look for general skill levels and builds and ‘co-ordinate’ rather than dictate. Not an easy thing and requires a change of approach where the encounter is just as important as winning – harking back to rpg board games where losing games were often as fun as winning ones.
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water = lower dps but heal to compensate, earth its mitigation, air it should be single target and cc – fail there.
The overall issue however is gaming modes like raids and other mmo put an inflated value on dps, not versatility, because you cant min-max or stack versatility. Add on top of that people who have learned that min-maxing is all that matters and you have a double pronged problem that enforce each other.
Not only that, but other healing and CC builds do not sacrifice as much DPS as Ele does to take on those roles. It really doesn’t make sense. Water’s auto should do 75% or so of Fire’s auto, not 40% like it does.
I would agree with that, at the moment with sceptre( for example) you swap into water fire of a solitary heal, maybe a cc then get the hell out of water asap as that auto is terrible. Instead the combination of water spells should be effective taking into account heal and dps such that your output doesn’t fall of a cliff with cool downs if you choose to keep in it.
Looking into water scepter alone, i do not see why the auto does not do the same damage as dagger lightening one, it doesn’t cc, it doesn’t heal. Its a great test case, why is it lower?
(edited by vesica tempestas.1563)
I think that’s fair point, when you take how competitive the staff is against other weapons out of the equation (spvp in particular) and look at your guide with the viewpoint of simply trying to improve/maximize your staff game play then its good stuff.
i agree if there’s one thing GW2 does not get right its the weight to the character when jumping, it is tolerable but a bit strange, especially when you are doing a jumping puzzle.
we cant have everything that everyone wants though, and 4 years content out of a game is pretty good compared against any other genre. Re existing zones, they do, e.g gliding, new events, storylines in existing zones, but we as customers also demand new zones, new skills and thats k*tten the balance comes in. floaty damage meter to me is not high in the priority in a mmorpg, and my point was really that GW2 makes as a good a job of keeping existing zones live than any other mmorpg – testament to that is that you see people constantly in all zones. Try same in games like WOW and its like a ghost town, everyone is farming the latest content.
Unfinished and yet probably the most polished mmo out there and is 4 years old in a genre with mmos actually very rarely fade away in comparison to any other genre, in fact the lifespan of a AAA mmo is going on for 10 years+ I suspect you have not played GW2 very long as you argue for the very things that GW2 champion (e.g horizontal growth etc etc. What MMORPG would you say gives you all these things you refer to?
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it used to be people played games until they found it boring then mvoed on, nowadays there is always something to blame instead, its an ownership thing.
water = lower dps but heal to compensate, earth its mitigation, air it should be single target and cc – fail there.
The overall issue however is gaming modes like raids and other mmo put an inflated value on dps, not versatility, because you cant min-max or stack versatility. Add on top of that people who have learned that min-maxing is all that matters and you have a double pronged problem that enforce each other.
i was replying to someone else.
’ think they don’t run the staff because it takes 10 times more learning time than another weapon’
is not how high end pvp works, people cannot afford to pick weak builds, and will always switch and learn the best builds.
‘in gw2, as a staff ele, you really can’t use range to your advantage as much as the ranger can. So i never really consider range while making builds.’
Exactly, and the staff build is focused on long range, and the benefit of that range is offset, as is aoe. Otherwise you would be saying that staff is as good at ranged as it is at melee and is good at aoe as it is at melee damage. Clearly this is not the case., and could never be the case or it would be OP.
you think one thing, the vast majority of the community say otherwise and have a far greater collective knowledge. Your not the only one that has played staff for thousands of hours, and mages for far far longer. Staff is a fun weapon, but it has its place.
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I’m just wondering if someone could answer this for me. Why would Anet sell skins in the Gemstore that rival or exceed the looks or a Legendary skin? Legendaries are supposed to be the pinnacle of all items in game. They require a lot of time and currency investments to craft. But now, I’m looking at a really awesome Crystalline backpack. I want to buy it, but I already have the Ascension.
The way I see it, if Anet is going to sell something extraordinary in the Gem Store, that would take away the need to get Legendary skins. If this Crystalline skin came out before the Ascension did, I wouldn’t have bothered farming and grinding PvP for it. The same could happen if Gem Store weapon skins were as good.
I appreciate that Anet did release a Legendary back item. And I also appreciate that Anet is selling a really high quality backpack skin. But I think that if you’re aiming for quality, the Legendary skin should always be better. I suggest someone revamp the Ascension and make the auras larger, or increase the particle effects to make it truly worthy of being a Legendary skin.
attractive skins on gemstore or a sub, how would you like to pay for the game?
played through new zone, won millions in XP…however because i don’t have raid masteries all that xp that is flashed up on the screen, including the bonus xp I get and the xp from chests is lost. iI’m not rewarded that XP that the game advised that i have earned. Why is xp gain in a new zone tied with an old raid ?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563
he has probably forgotten about this post as well i expect :P
i agree staff is about playing at range, which is not what small arena capture the point spvp is about, quite the opposite, that’s why the other ele weapons are more effective.
The simple question you can ask is how is the aoe ability of staff offset in spvp? The answer is a classic one – the reduction of sustained single player combat abilities which is ofc a well known counterbalance. Being competitive with aoe and single target at the same time with the same build would be OP and would result in massive proliferation of the build amongst high end teams. That has not happened and the collective wisdom of the GW ele community recognize this though meta builds.
^^ and this is the point, the goal of spvp is always to play in great balanced group pvp and a trait of this is not fights where you are left to aoe freely or kite out of trouble continually, that’s relying on players playing badly. In reality what matters is communication, players that know to keep- moving at all times, and observation, for e.g when someone is free to lay aoe down. All of which counter staff spvp.
That’s not to say staff is not fun and has a place in casual spvp, but its wrong to say its relatively effective because it has weaknesses that are an integral part of the build (aoe v single target)
in a game with limited end game goals, Legendary armor with its ability to change stats is going to be important for long term playability, so rather than extraction tools I would like to see legendary armor asap for all game types (and multiple sets at that)
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563
your not going to coax people into raiding really, people know what raiding entails and they either want to commit to it or not. All that is needed is unique legendary armor for raiding, and different legendary armor that can be gained through other means, job done, win win for all.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: vesica tempestas.1563
To be clear, this is not about skins. Please don’t conflate the issue with that aspect.
So, one thing that has concerned(?) me for a while is the utility aspect of legendary armor. The ability to swap stats, without having to go back to the mystic forge, or craft another set, but while you are playing (out of combat obviously). This is a clear advantage in convenience, over all other armor.
But I hear you say, it’s not a big deal, because you’ll still have to swap runes! Two points:
1. If it’s not a big deal then it doesn’t matter if non raid armors have this ability, does it? Because all you guys care about is the skins right? We’ll never change runes anyway because it’s too expensive is the classic comment.
2. What happens when ANet finally get around to solving the rune issue?Since these armors are currently just prestige items, and skins are the only thing that matters (cause that’s what I’m always told), the armors other feature – i.e. it’s utility function – should not be locked away in raids.
Why does only that game mode get this utility?
the stat swap is the perk of legendary items. Your trying to make this into an issue for raiding when its not related – raiding is merely another source of legendary items (although i believe legendary armor should be achievable by other means.
iv learned over time that loyalty to a server and making it work for you gives more depth to a game allows you to form better relationships and connections to engage with the game and game world. Flitting between server to search for some elusive ‘win’ defeats the whole point of mmo in my opinion. e.gh fighting for ther server you have been on for years, where you know people and the vibe versus fighting on the latest server you are on to win a thing.
that would be an interesting flavor for ele ^^, agree with this.
I’m not sure how you will beat any halfway decent thief with staff, it has all the weaknesses of D/F against thief and the only upside is a bit more CC that you will never get off when fighting a good thief.
to put it simply, pick the right tool for the job, and you are only as good as your tool.
Have you read the guide?
See, first of all, it isn’t of essence to try chasing the thief around with your mouse to land your fields on them.
If you’re a thief and you’re fighting a staffie (or any other class) if you want to win, you’ll eventually have to come out of hiding to deal damage, no matter how good you are. A good staff elementalist will recognise that chasing you is pointless and will instead wait for these moments where you try to attack. In these moments, a good staffie is able to neutralise your damage and return heavy damage while temporarily keeping you from running away. In short: the staffie is making you pay for the damage you want to deal. Combine that with the fact that thieves have very little access to stunbreakers and you have a succesfull strategy.
Please don’t say “a bit more cc”. The staff has waaay more effective cc’s than the D/F could ever dream of.
As a thief, if you never get cc’ed by a staff ele, it isn’t because you’re a decent player, but because the staffie you’re fighting is REALLY, REALLY new in it!An equally skilled player will not allow you to cc them in AOE. I like and enjoy Staff, but it is not up to par in spvp against equally skilled players who are watching what you are casting and what cooldowns you are on. You also have to consider the opportunity cost to the team by not picking a stronger build that has more skirmish options.
Put i this way, usually when i spot a staffie I pressure their faces off with glee. Ask yourself how you would beat a staff ele in his tracks and you will see the problems.
What i just wrote (see previous comment) applies to your comment as well. But i’ll add this: It really doesn’t matter if you know every cd i’m on, knowing them doesn’t mean you’ll be able to interrupt/negate all of them if i know what i’m doing. If this was possible, gw2 wouldn’t be that interesting for high-end players. The idea is to use the knowledge of your oppontents skill use efficiently, and that’s waaay harder and that’s also what every player in the community tries to achieve.
Besides, keep in mind that i’d also be watching yours (at least the most important ones).Again: Seriously, don’t you think i’d think all these obvious things trough before I even start a guide? I know the staffs alleged weaknesses, not only because it’s all that ever gets whined about!
So yes! I’ve asked myself plenty of times how i’d beat a staff with most classes, ESPECIALLY THIEF, i’ve recognised the problems, and i’m trying to show people how i try to minimize the mignitude of these ‘problems’ while making it not affect your prefered build.Al these asides, I’m not talking about builds, i’m talking about staff elementalist in general. If you’re talking about my berzerk build in particular, what do you mean with “more skirmish options”? Please elaborate.
you keep talking about your guide (which is a good guide) and your personal knowledge as if this solves the fundamental issues which is that like for like, EQUALLY skilled players can only be as good as how close your chosen spec is to the perfect setup for the chosen arena, which in this case is small group melee pvp. As for skirmishing, i’m talking about being able to take a point from another EQUALLY skilled player, or playing 2 v 2 close combat, or being able to fight back when you are called as primary target without running away, or being able to burn down a mobile single target who knows how to avoid your telegraphed attacks etc.
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I think ice 1 and air 1 need a boost, at the moment they are a low damage filler with no benefit for being low damage, which is part of the problem – you cannot sustain damage as soon as you swap out of fire.
Air 3 and earth 3 are another total waste, you apply a single blindness and you pay with the loss of an entire spell cast, devs need to understand a bit more about opportunity cost there.
225 gold for a stack and you can only get 20 a month talk about a gold sink. These should be more available and not that expensive.
so you can get 60 gold a month from doing dailies, then another 50 or so from rewards , then you have your 20 mystical coins. that’s free gold, the direct opposite of a gold sink.
Why would it get retired? its not ideal for ranked, but its a perfectly fine alternative that gives a mix of pve and pvp.
shouldn’t kill off a feature because of hacking, shame if that was the case.
I was trying to think up some positive ideas for WVW that would make fighting more attractive as i find the endless keep flipping and door bashing dull, so was wondering what you though about this idea. Any other ideas out there?
New Event ‘carry the faction flag’
Each side on each map has a flag which when carried into a new keep gives an immediate reward of X points. The further from home base, the higher the points. 1 hour cool down on reward. If the enemy captures the flag then they gain x points and the flag is returned to the owners home base and reward cool down is reset.
The flags are visible at all times on map.
The flag is safe in the home base but you earn 0 points for taking your flag to your base. The flag carrier cannot be speed buffed or made invisible/invuln.
The Flag is immune to capture by the opposition for 3 seconds if dropped and can be picked up by friendly players in that time.
Benefits :
- Flag carriers and keeps are a beacon for conflict/pvp content.
- When reward is about to go off cool down the keep that it is in is going to be an attractive target for both attackers and defenders.
- Possible new chase strategies, groups splitting off to slow enemy down, siege setup at choke points to catch flag carrying group.
Issues?
I’d be surprised if 50% of HoT owners even tried. And am quite sure many (possibly majority even) of those that did, did not go past their first few (failed) attemps.
I agree. I’m erring on the side of caution, but yeah it’s very unlikely to me that most people want to raid.
Agree, a lot of people would enjoy 10 man instances, but 10 man instances tuned to the point where a small subset of builds is viable and it becomes the classic raid model where you need to rote repeat the boss a large number of times, less so these days. A lot of people have been there done that.
As for the pugging experience, its a borderline awful gamble as per typical mmorpg: regular quiting, frustration, lack of patience (in particular), forcing people to play build x, bad attitudes/rudeness.
I’m not sure how you will beat any halfway decent thief with staff, it has all the weaknesses of D/F against thief and the only upside is a bit more CC that you will never get off when fighting a good thief.
Have you read the guide?
See, first of all, it isn’t of essence to try chasing the thief around with your mouse to land your fields on them.
If you’re a thief and you’re fighting a staffie (or any other class) if you want to win, you’ll eventually have to come out of hiding to deal damage, no matter how good you are. A good staff elementalist will recognise that chasing you is pointless and will instead wait for these moments where you try to attack. In these moments, a good staffie is able to neutralise your damage and return heavy damage while temporarily keeping you from running away. In short: the staffie is making you pay for the damage you want to deal. Combine that with the fact that thieves have very little access to stunbreakers and you have a succesfull strategy.
Please don’t say “a bit more cc”. The staff has waaay more effective cc’s than the D/F could ever dream of.
As a thief, if you never get cc’ed by a staff ele, it isn’t because you’re a decent player, but because the staffie you’re fighting is REALLY, REALLY new in it!
An equally skilled player will not allow you to cc them in AOE. I like and enjoy Staff, but it is not up to par in spvp against equally skilled players who are watching what you are casting and what cooldowns you are on. You also have to consider the opportunity cost to the team by not picking a stronger build that has more skirmish options.
Put i this way, usually when i spot a staffie I pressure their faces off with glee. Ask yourself how you would beat a staff ele in his tracks and you will see the problems.
(edited by vesica tempestas.1563)
the raids in GW2 feel very similar to raids everywhere else, and mechanic wise they are fun. However the negative social behaviors (impatience, rudeness, selfishness etc) are also similar, and for many we have been there done that. IMO they need to relax the tunnimng slightly, bring in line with GW1 style of raids and open up to more players.
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