Guild Wars 2

XTR.9604:

My ele has 17k in marauder/zerk and over 20k in celestial lol… I don’t think the HP really needs buffed.

outside of decent spvp its irrelevant, go marauder or zerk against a half decent group and you will get smeared from a great height and be a huge burden for your team. On top of this you have the opportunity cost of you not going aura/heal, hence why dps specs are nowhere to be seen in the builds used.

i started pvp a couple months ago, last month i got to mid saphire as a support ele, this month i got to ruby. I can see however that my winrate is falling and i think its simply because ive reached the point where my relative skill is currently lower or unable to carry in a pug. No idea what this MM is, but feels perfectly normal to me for PUG groups, Pre Ruby you get a boost because of the no division drop and streak boost, in Ruby you don’t – whats the problem?

Ryou.2398:

Chasind.3128:

You’re an elementalist, not an Elsa
There is no good “ice” dos build
That’s the issue with new eles, they think they just have to play one element and think they’re 100% utilized
If you want a dps build then you’ll need earth/fire/lightning
You’re meant to cycle all ele elements, not just one and if you think otherwise then don’t play ele.

Facepalm, do people ever read beyond the topic anymore?

I was thinking the exact same thing.

The odds of this game dying in another 6 years are almost nil, because statistically big successful MMORG do not die. The obvious thing that will happen is that when the game starts to dip then Anet will starting developing GW3 and will announce this to keep the excitement up.

Dawdler.8521:

An ele with 13K hp is about as tanky as a Warrior with 30K hp so it balances out.

No it is not, because for that ele to survive he has to sacrifice both spike and sustain dmg to gain heal and toughness to stay alive at 13k. This is why healing is the only viable build in spvp, aka auramancer because playing at 13k with any other build is almost instant death.

likewise. Legendaries should take a very long time to get, and because of this its reasonable that a player can swap sigils on it etc so they can use that weapon all the time – until they see another legendary they want to go after. Ascended Weapons cost about 100g, we can make that in a week with little effort.

Weaker players bubble up further than they should because of the way the pip and division protection works along with streaks. Ruby and above is really where the model starts to work – except there’s a contingent of players in Ruby that are not strong enough for the league, but don’t fall back so they hover in ruby and imbalance fights. Mismatching aside (possible algorithm v population issue) , this is the core issue.

auromancer staff is ok, but at higher levels you miss the defense of focus, and dagger has better offensive options.

Grind is getting used by people on this forum that don’t really understand RPGs and have probably started playing mmos post WOW. RPG’s have allways been about collection and long term goals. What GW2 offers is this gameplay without the power race, and lots of ways to achieve it. What those players are trying to do is ‘minmax’ the path to something rather than doing what they enjoy doing and so they end up doing something they dont like, its their own fault.

ive taken a breath and I’ve realised that Anet are not going to make a clone, so yup would love Cantha and Aspenwood to be introduced – spent many an hour fiddling with builds for that place, great fun.

Anet have a long history of providing long term gathering goals, and GW1 had many forms including the HOM which was a great model (I still wear the gloves today) Some people don’t like it, but in the GW franchise the long term goal is not power but collections and prestigious items that take long term collection effort, and has become the mmoRPG of choice for those that love collecting and games that are not obsessed with proving yourself to be no 1 every 5 seconds. Those that do not get this should consider the goals that GW1 and GW2 have provided in the last 15 years, and the relationship between those goals and the ability for the game to offer something different in a competitive game genre.

All you are doing is justifying your dislike of something with the term ‘Menial’. Long term collection goals have been in RPG’s since day 1 in the 70/80s. People who enjoyed them then, enjoy them now. The difference in this day and age is people seem to think because they don’t like a thing it must be poor design (sits along the other fad of calling something a ‘gate’). Those demographics you refer to are the very players that enjoy what you think is menial, and the players Anet clearly see as an important part of the player base and they have the metrics and experience to see this.

As for the old legendaries, I didn’t like them Because they could be bought, and like the new ones because they require long term effort. You just don’t understand or enjoy long term RPG goals that have an element of collecting about them

mmorpg differ from single player games, repeatable content is required because there is no mmo on the planet that can generate new content that is played once and last for years. MmoRPG players get this. As I said ‘menial’ is a term in somebody’s head’ You could say repeating fights in PVP is ‘menial’ you could say fighting any form of NPC is ‘menial’ you could say crafting over and over is ‘menial’, you could say walking anywhere is ‘menial’. I’m going through that list of collections right now, and I don’t find it menial, I see it has a progressive set of goals that I am aiming towards over a number of years, and I guestimate ive spent maybe 50k hours in RPGs over the years, so theres little I have not seen in 1 form or another.

This ‘menial’ thing is actually ‘I Don’t like’

ESO doesn’t have the classic model, it has the alternative progression model – and that has a whole different set of issues, and classic is broken long term – look at every mmo with classic progression and you see the same thing, impossible to balance (new players get a gear handicap which ofc is daft), forced catch up mechanisms, runaway economies, old content made redundant by new content etc etc.

I still don’t see the issue with HOT, mastery points, i completed the story line when I had competed the gliding and bouncy mushrooms goals (goals not gates), and now i have only 70 points and gradually increase when I fancy a session joining in on HOT events or solo event cruising. I don’t feel I have to go there, its just another choice I have along with Dungeons, pvp, Fractals, legendary building.

Guizao.4167:

Ryou.2398:

Guizao.4167:

Ryou.2398:

Ice is my favorite element and ive been wondering about builds for ice, open world, dungeons, fractals and maybe even raids. Any experience with this? Thank you.

There’s not ice element. There’s water element aka water magic. Ice is just an extension of it. Back at GW1 we also had water magic but it wasn’t weak in terms of dealing damage. But back at GW1 you could build a dps water ele…you can’t do such beautiful thing here. Although the devs kept some cool capabilities of water magic like applying vulnerability and chill, they decided to transform the elementalist in a “jack-of-all-trades”, which ultimately failed.

sceptor/focus was mostly ice dps though. I wouldnt call it a simple extension to water even staff and daggers have some ice dps as well, thats like saying earth cant do good condi dps because it has defensive stuff.

Geez no you didn’t get the point. There’s no such thing as ice damage. There are only two kinds of damage: Damage Per Second (DPS) aka raw damage and Damage Over Time (DoT) aka condition damage. Just because Ice Spike does damage it doesn’t mean it’s ice damage. In scepter you have Water Trident, it doesn’t do considerable damage but it does do damage, so is it water damage?
Right now there’s nothing like a reliable water dps build, this is not GW1.

well that would very much depend on your point of view, if you think like a damage meter then yup your right, but i can understand perfectly what he is referring too, a build that focuses on slowing/freezing as its core gameplay.

for me this would be a build where ice would give heavy cc across all 5 skills, but low dps – you switched to the other elements for dps – the compromise is the low dps and less heals.

Stand The Wall.6987:

TheQuickFox.3826:

GW1: Fort Aspenwood

i would buy a cantha expansion just for this.

I would also buy a Cantha expansion for this

ive got an old system, AMD FX4100 clocked, 8gb, gtx760 and i find i can play with max settings everywhere appart from wvw and the new zones, where i cut down the shadows, so i don’t think you need an uber system to play this game.

I would say that a fast cpu core > multi cores when you are looking at cpu’s in this case as many games including GW2 lean heavily on one core, so focus on that and the ability to overclock.

‘I fear Anet is in a death spiral: too much content to support, spread too thin. The recent, “we’ll pay you a gold for opening a black lion chest” was just sad, kind of drove home that currently, there’s insufficient dev mass to do anything.’

ah another guild wars is dying thread lol. Its interesting, there’s too much content, but devs don’t have time to do anything, where did the content come from then, its twisting my mind!!

Animism.9803:

The other parts of the legendary are already long enough without the individual HoT collections, the list of menial things to do in those is just too long…

it ’s legendary, its meant to be a huge journey, and i think Nevermore (as an example) is at a nice length.

Being ‘menial’ is a classification you have applied in your head, especially considering you have to visit all content in the game pretty much to complete the tasks and gifts – so all gameplay in GW2 is therefore menial according to this state of mind., in which case why are you playing?

Sardath.8524:

Razor.9872:

Sardath.8524:

Grind or no grind, the masteries have been implemented awfully. Why would I care or try to grind them after I completed all the meta events on the four maps? What’s the point in trying to get extra accessibility/qol improvements on a map I’m bored of playing? Tie this up with the immersion breaking/mobile phone wannabe games called adventures and you’ll make plenty of people upset.

I don’t get it. There is no point in trying to get extra accessibility/qol improvements on a map that you are bored of playing. So why would you grind for them? They are just there for those who wish to have them and are willing to continue experiencing the jungle/raids to do so. What is the problem?

I’m not. I’ve stopped playing all the HoT maps after I’ve experienced the meta events. That’s the problem. They are gates to parts of content you already experienced. They should incentivise you to play, but they don’t.

you say ‘gate’ when actually its simply a goal. The incentive for achieving these goals is the very content you are bored of, so whats the problem?

I do not want to buy nevermore from TP , I want it to be a huge journey, so when i get it people know i worked for it (reckon i’m a year off from getting it as of now) – that’s what legendary items should be about.

Q) ‘Is this for real? I’m now expected to do all the achievements for mastery points just to craft a single of the legendary weapons?’

A) Your not expected to do anything.

Moyayuki.3619:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Moyayuki.3619:

When I say “stats”, I mean things like Berserker, Cleric, Soldier, etc. I was in Verdant Brink one day to try to get Daily foraging done, when I was absolutely slaughtered by a dart-shooting frog. Chatting with people in the map after that painful death, I was told that Berserker isn’t the best for HoT, since it’s meant for pure damage and not survivability. When I then went to ask in map chat what was the suggested stat to go with for HoT survival, no one gave an answer. So, that’s why I am posting here, now.

Any advice on this? And is there a stat that can work with any class, for surviving and getting through the HoT maps?

Thanks!

I play cloth zerker ele so stats don’t really matter (13k hp), but i do switch to defensive utilities while i’m in there and have to pay attention with my dodges etc.

But what would be the defensive stats that would help with surviving the HoT maps and mobs? That’s what I’m trying to get out of people because no one has given me a straight answer.

i go high dmg, but then utilities and skills to avoid dmg, for e.g magentic aura to reflect, chill to help kite them, some heals, and be really careful about wasting dodges and accidently pulling more mobs thanb you can handle, then its high burst to bring the mob down.

being ‘casual’ has no bearing on skill. for example the average age of mmo players is 30ish i believe, and probably have less time to play, but have skill and experience that cross transferred from other mmos they have played in the past.

as for danicus’s points above, you did not understand Zoltar correctly – he said players should pick their battles and all Anet have done is given you options, so if you struggle, then you can opt to be more defensive or avoid fights – which is ofc exactly what you want.

Moyayuki.3619:

When I say “stats”, I mean things like Berserker, Cleric, Soldier, etc. I was in Verdant Brink one day to try to get Daily foraging done, when I was absolutely slaughtered by a dart-shooting frog. Chatting with people in the map after that painful death, I was told that Berserker isn’t the best for HoT, since it’s meant for pure damage and not survivability. When I then went to ask in map chat what was the suggested stat to go with for HoT survival, no one gave an answer. So, that’s why I am posting here, now.

Any advice on this? And is there a stat that can work with any class, for surviving and getting through the HoT maps?

Thanks!

I play cloth zerker ele so stats don’t really matter (13k hp), but i do switch to defensive utilities while i’m in there and have to pay attention with my dodges etc.

mm battle undersea, find cavern system, leads to almost lovecraftian underground cities earily lit by glowing mushrooms, and deeper still, destroyers awaken – i’m up for that

ooh and a crumb of lore about the human gods pls, why did they leave!

Cyninja.2954:

Allanon.9072:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Allanon.9072:

Did you ever heard of Megaserver ? If not google and you will see why there are always ppl around .

what a sad life you must have to want to try and pull someones happiness down to your level of misery.

Wow some of you must get the kitten out and get some air just told op why there are always ppl around this community turned toxic as kitten.

Yes you did answer the TCs question of why there is always people around. A question he never asked by the way.

You did so in a very condescending way, pair that with your thread history on the forums and it becomes quite evident that you are part of that toxic community you are complaining about.

+1 exactly. Misery loves company as they say.

optionally spending your money on something that you subsequently realize you don’t enjoy is not being ripped off, its being stupid and not researching properly and not taking responsibility for your own actions.

exactly, the issue is people trying to impose the ‘optimal’ build on others., many would gravitate to the optimal over time, but they would be free to play with the builds as they go to try new things out.

let me guess, GW2 is dying?

Allanon.9072:

Did you ever heard of Megaserver ? If not google and you will see why there are always ppl around .

what a sad life you must have to want to try and pull someones happiness down to your level of misery.

how does you not liking the things they added equate to ‘ruining’ the game.

Adding 4 lengendary skins doesnt ruin a game
adding a handful armor skins does not ruin a game
elite specs is only a must when you play with people who ‘demand’ you pick stuff.
No in game sliders, this was not taken away by Hot.
Pathetic short stories did not ruin the game.
only 4 beautifully designed zones did not ruin the game.
There was balance issues before, and there will allways be balance issues – this is an aspect of mmos.
Dungeon rewards are fixed.
certain stats being special awards for Raids did not ruin the game.
Heavy Grind, this is subjective, if your stupid enough to so soemthing you think is ‘Heavy Grind’ your not in control if your own behaviour, this has nothing to do with HOT, it just offered more for those that want it.
No Lore for revenant did not Ruin GW2.

Listing a huge list of things you subjectively don’t like does not ruin a game.

the empathy is not strong in this one ^^

if he has done world exploration 7-8 times that is hardly a ‘platter’

I am a firm believer that it is ‘convenience’ that has rotted the heart out of most mmorpg, but i think the OP’s suggestion has merit, if you have explored the entire map a few times you have paid your dues as it were and it seems reasonable to offer the gift for a fee after you have completed a few times.

put it another way, why stop at ascended, this ability to swap stats could have a couple homes:

Legendary
Ascended
Exotic
Rare

Legendary makes obvious sense as the place to give the greatest flexibility since it is the most expensive by far to craft.

I disagree, have 1 ascended blob-stat set is dull, picking an ascended set should be a careful decision which make it more engaging and interesting. What would help however is a build manager to instantly swap between builds and armor sets.

On the other side of the coin, a legendary should give more than just another skin, so its nice to award that effort with a little extra – long term this is what legendary armor will bring as well, in which case this ascended discussion is moot.

There is no problem with the engine, the game is gorgeous and relative to any other mmorpg it is performant, I would much rather the devs focused on new content. Sure if you run HOT with 4GB of memory then it will struggle – but then again this is 2016.

^^ thats a good way of pointing out to OP. a mmorpg is not a solo player game, its a game that servers a community.

4 – PvE
4 – WvW
4 – PvP

is balanced (obviously, anything else is not)

Nocturnal Lunacy.8563:

So having to do each living story 3 or 4 times in order to get all the achievements and hence the mastery point isn’t repetitive? Seems like a lot of you like them korean grindfests and think that this isn’t grind here.
Having to do and redo bosses isn’t grind? Having to keep doing fractals isn’t grind?
I’m sitting with full exp bars on all the available masteries but still earning exp is just a waste of time. But there’s no grind there at all is there? Too many fanbois and whiteknights here to accomplish anything.

the question you need to honestly ask yourself, is what is ‘making’ you do things you do not want to do?

Djinn.9245:

vesica tempestas.1563:

wvw can be casual, pvp can be casual it and they take no effort, you simply do what you enjoy doing. Walking up to a wvw vendor and buying a thingy take no effort, walking up to a vista takes no effort. etc etc

WvW and PvP might be EASY – if there are no opposing players when you walk in and you can accomplish your goal without conflict, that would be easy. But for those who don’t enjoy PvP conflict, even the potential for that to occur makes those activities UNfun. And since a majority of the Daily list are WvW and PvP, that means for those players who simply dislike PvP conflict and want to avoid it, the Dailies are heavily weighted against them. Of the remaining PvE options, if one is a World Boss and you don’t have that kind of time, that further restricts your choices.

Therefore Dailies are weighted against casual players.

you dont have to win pvp to get achievements. aside from this not liking a thing does not make it non-casual friendly, this is just an abuse once again of the word casual. Casual player play pvp,wvw,zones,instances.

This is an modern complaint, a player with a narrow perspective on a mmo think the list should be chocka block full of things that just exactly automagically suits their own personal desire.

wvw can be casual, pvp can be casual and they take no effort, you simply do what you enjoy doing. Walking up to a wvw vendor and buying a thingy take no effort, walking up to a vista takes no effort. etc etc

Nocturnal Lunacy.8563:

So in order to get all the mastery points for central tyria you have to grind out the living story for them. This is ridiculous. It was anet’s own (Colin) statement that grinding would not be needed for gw2 and yet here we are grinding out everything. There needs to be more options for mastery points for central tyria instead of having to grind out the living story achievements. And most of them undoable solo and having to redo and redo them until they are perfect.
So many things like this making people leave the game. From the grinding to the state of wvw, the condi meta and unbalance. I’m surprised there are even players left in the game.

whats your mmo gaming background? i wonder if you are carrying some preconceptions from other games. you seem to think you need to grind stuff, but as others have mentioned the masteries are entirely optional, in fact if you simply play what you usually enjoy you will find you get those masteries over time in any case.

If you only do things you enjoy nothing will seem like a ‘grind’.

well the problem with OP’s post is that he tries to justify his comments by suggesting its ‘casuals’ that have problems, when being casual has got nothing to do with it, the real issue is that he personally doesn’t enjoy HOT. The L2P comments although cheeky are also correct , for example the thread that says HOT is unplayable solo is absolutely incorrect, most if not all who like HOT have done and do play it solo, and you can pull up a video of just about anything in GW2 in seconds to show you exactly what to do – step by step.

There’s also a failure by people complaining to look at the whole picture, which is that HOT is part of a full game, and over the full game the vast vast majority is in fact soloable, in fact those that wish for content that require grouping have a fraction of the content they want in comparison to those that want to play solo.

Not a bad idea, For me its all about the prestige, i’m working on Nevermore for no other reason that its a long term objective that you cannot just buy off the shelve and it provides rewards for various activities that I have not visited for a long time.

Fox Reeveheart.1890:

This was at release of GW2, I thought I could get ahead of the game, that everyone was simply go weapon/armor crafting of the class they were maining, which for the most part was true. Being among those first to sprint to 80, there was a short time where I was able to turn a bit of good profit, because there was no stable prices on anything. Then prices went stable and there was no point in crafting anymore.

Jump to now and I realize I have almost never touched my jeweler crafting since I maxed it. I can’t think of anything you do with crafting that is useful.

Jeweler has no 500 grandmaster either, so that leaves it a bit in the dust. I sit around and twiddle my thumbs and scratch my head at times, just wondering what point I have for jeweler crafting at this point.

Am I honestly missing something? I’m dumbfounded on what I can do here.

You got profit at the time, and achieves and gear, and you probably went on to do other craftign professions so its all good is it not? You weren’t worried about it when you start playing, or 2 years ago, or 10 months ago – why now?

theres loads of you tube videos on how to do it, its really not that difficult, but it pays to patiently clear mobs on way

‘The average age of someone who plays games is 31 years old. In fact, more gamers are over the age of 36 than between the ages of 18 to 35 or under the age of 18. They are also mostly men, but by a slimming margin’

considering computer games have been around from the early 80’s and we havent died yet

ooh got my interest too, cool thread OP

exactly my point, it caught your interest. If you dont want to do it , there is something more intresting in the game that appeals more. If your worry is that it may dissapear, that’s a different thread (but unlikely based on recent design with LS right)

‘Life’s a journey, not a destination’

Guild wars 2 performance is perfectly good as it stands in comparison to any other mmorpg out there, and its gorgeous. so there are 2 choices for the devs:

1. implement DX version X and make an already stable game even better, but at the obvious cost opportunity cost – new content.

2. Keep developing content in the knowledge that the vast majority get good to excellent performance knowing that as years progress technology will improve in any case.

its a no brainer.

So those arguing for Direct X apparently think that performance gain is more important than new content, or rather they are looking at something in isolation..

representing an xp gain visually but then not applying that xp gain to your character is is a poor design oversight, at the very least the game should not show the xp reward. As has been discussed before, allowing the xp gain to loop with a small reward at the end even if its simply contributing towards titles should be there.