Guild Wars 2

Quarktastic.1027:

Funny how the soulbeast was the only one to get a perfect score. Rangers are (still) Aquaman confirmed.

Actually firebrand got a perfect too

Yep I’m that weird person who crafted all 3 underwater legendaries and personally enjoys underwater content a great deal. So as a result, I decided to take each elite spec into the water and test them against the jellyfish, tuna, sharks, and drakes in wvw. I would like to preface this by saying for the most part I am genuinely impressed with the fact that uw wasn’t forgotten about like it was in HoT and that the elite specs are mostly usable. But let’s focus on the mostly part now. There are some skills that are excluded from underwater that seem like they should be usable. Below I’ve rated how well the elite specs transfer to underwater and some notes about them.

-Spellbreaker 8/10
-why is the heal skill unusable? This single question keeps it from having a perfect score. All it does is remove boons and conditions so I fail to see why this is unusable underwater. If this was enabled, underwater spellbreaker would be perfect

-Firebrand 10/10
-perfect. both the tomes and the mantras can be used underwater nothing further to add

-Renegade 1/10
-oh boy where to begin? On top of STILL only having two legends even remotely usable underwater. Basically the entire renegade elite spec does not work underwater (rev is now 2/2 on useless underwater elite specs). Yes cats hate water, but that would be a terrible excuse for excluding another revenant elite spec from being usable underwater. The class is already bad enough, why can’t it get a break? I’ll award it one point to represent the bare minimum of effort to just make the f skills usable

-Soulbeast 10/10
-perfect everything works, no complaints. I love it underwater.

-Deadeye 4/10
-deadeye has a few too many locked utilities. Shadow Flare I can understand, but the heal should definitely be able to work (see spellbreaker). Binding Shadow could work too. instead of a knockdown, have it sink the target. Shadow Gust could have the same idea.

-Holosmith 9/10
-I love it underwater. photon forge still works. Every utility besides the elite is usable. Unlike the other exclusions though, its exclusion actually makes sense because it is a giant fire beam. It doesn’t get the perfect score because I’d still like to have the elite though (after all Goku could fire the kamehameha underwater more light less fire!).

-Weaver 8/10
-AQUATIC stance. AQUATIC and it’s not usable underwater. This is another one that is baffling. Water spirit is usable underwater and jellyfish pets can even drop water fields underwater. The exclusion of this skill from underwater use is another strange choice that I have to question. Otherwise good. can slot in 3/4 utilities and the excluded one isn’t really necessary

-Mirage 6/10
-Another class that has baffling exclusions. There are 3 shadowstep utilities and only one of them is usable? (illusionary ambush is allowed, but not mirage advance or jaunt?) The mirror util I can understand, but the other two don’t make sense to me.

-Scourge 7/10
-Another one with a few questionable choices for util exclusion. Sand swell and trail of anguish make sense both animation and function wise; however, why is t he elite usable uw and everything else isn’t? Dessicate and Sand Flare should definitely be usable and Serpent Siphon could be changed from a ground target to enemy target similar to others such as arcane wave.

Let me state again that I love the work done with the elite specs and will enjoy playing them on land and in the water, but as someone who enjoys underwater combat and sees it as one of the things that separates GW2 from other MMOs I would love to see these improved. If any of the elite spec designers read this, I thank you for your time and I hope you can take, improve, or be inspired by some of my suggestions above.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Maybe add an option to the options menue where you can choose “Auto-Salvage everything up to (basic, fine, masterwork, rare, exotic (except pres))” and then add a “salvage all” option to all salvage kits?

I like it

Ya I’ve thought about that too, but then I think is it really necessary? Ya salvaging a pre is a bad thing and could happen, but it’s also said person’s fault for salvaging an entire bag without looking at what’s in it, but if it there was a way to open up a dialog box and pick which rares/exos to salvage when those are in the bags that could maybe work

Done thanks for pointing that out

Exactly as the title said. Thought about this while reading a post where people were complaining about having to salvage too much stuff from meta maps such kitten and the HoT maps.

Idea is rather simple. Take a salvage kit and use it on the bag icon to salvage everything in the bag. The salvage could be handled by having it salvage from left to right until either nothing is left or the kit runs out of uses. Ectos could be a problem though since they can be salvaged from a rare or exo and in turn be salvaged itself so if anyone has a good idea for handling that post it. Posting this to the GW2 reddit also in case either post gains some visibility.

Link to reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/478i17/possible_idea_use_salvage_kit_on_bag_to_salvage/

Selbbub (Bubbles backwards) There now you have bubbles and the name starts with an S

NoxInfernus.2361:

Now maybe we have a way to get to Wizards Tower (assuming they drop a few updrafts between the shore and the tower)
Please?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wizard%27s_Tower

Except it won’t. I found a void in Kessex which let me swim under the map and port up to the highest point on any map and that was the first thing I tried to go to. Besides not having collision in the first place (try ground targeting the structure) there is also an invisible wall in front of it so it’s impossible to even reach in the first place.

batudivrik.7564:

Anybody get an answer for the pet bug in pvp?
its 1 week now without a pet and its annoying when the pvp weekend is going on

Try going underwater in PvE and setting pets there that aren’t the new pets

Taku.6352:

Gz you’ve juste kitten yourself with half of your traits and weapon skills not working properly and losing out on a significant portion of your utility/dmg.

Ranger without a pet is never going to happen and you’re just better of playing some other class to satisfy your needs.

Yes because clearly I don’t want any pets. It’s not like I bug reported it and spent 30 min running around trying to figure out why it happened when I logged in and then tried to replicate it so I could report it properly and have it fixed. Oh wait no I did :P (hopefully this will make obvious sarcasm obvious I hate sounding like a jerk). I just found the situation humorous since I saw so many petless ranger requests from so-called rangers I thought I’d let them try to replicate the bug and see how horrible it actually is to run around petless. My least favorite experience was raiding without them and not having a pet res when the vale guardian destroys everyone

I have the fix. Just go underwater and set your pets from there. Annoying
I know which is why I bug reported it. I’d say best solution in the future is let us open up the pet selection window even when our pet is stowed

http://imgur.com/2q7dcoa

You can clearly see I have taken damage and my pet is not activated. I have achieved the impossible and become a petless ranger. How did I do this? Simple. First make all your terrestrial pets the new pets (wyverns, smokescale, bristleback, etc), then you enter a pvp arena directly from PvE without going into hotm. Go into character select and back into your ranger and BOOM no pet. Be warned you cannot open the pet selection window from here so the only way to get your pets back is to go underwater and set them there since you can’t get rid of the aquatic pets to my knowledge.

sprhavkdogi.9408:

Don’t know how it occurred, but when I logged onto my druid earlier all my terrestrial pets were deactivated so I had no pets. Because of this, I was unable to actually open my pet selection screen and slot them unless I went underwater where I was fortunate enough to have one pet there so I could open the pet selection screen and set all my pets. I don’t know how to recreate it right now, but I will try since this is a VERY dangerous bug to be a ranger without any pets

I figured out how I did it. What you do is you have to use 2 of the new pets as your terrestrial pets. Then you enter directly into a pvp arena using the game browser without going to HotM. Then go to char select and all your pets will be gone because pvp removed them

Don’t know how it occurred, but when I logged onto my druid earlier all my terrestrial pets were deactivated so I had no pets. Because of this, I was unable to actually open my pet selection screen and slot them unless I went underwater where I was fortunate enough to have one pet there so I could open the pet selection screen and set all my pets. I don’t know how to recreate it right now, but I will try since this is a VERY dangerous bug to be a ranger without any pets

Darkness.9732:

5 min druid discussion at TwitchCon in the air

With Anet’s track record with rangers this is completely my belief. Gaile I want to trust you, but my distrust of the attitude for rangers we’ve seen makes me doubt this. When saying the ranger is not good is as prevalent a joke as moose abuse in livestreams. When one of the more vocal devs champions bearbow, the build that basically ruined the ranger community, on these livestreams. When an article offering some legitimate criticisms about this attitude and some possible ways to address it comes out and is taken down and not by the writer’s choice. I think it is completely justified to still be a little concerned and take this statement with a grain of salt.

“The final episode of Points of Interest will start in 3 hours” Quoted from GW2’s fb fanpage latest post.

Well it looks like Anet has until the end of that show (5 min into the POI will probably be a more realistic spot) to mention when, if at all, they will give the full druid reveal. I can already tell this will not go well if not handled now. I know i’m finally starting to lose my patience and I’m sure others are running low on it too.

As rangers we know that, but the community as a whole has not since we have not been marked in the meta for a long time. We have been noted by metabattle as being in the great section for the past few months, but not good enough to be part of the meta at the top with ele, war, guard, mes, and thief. Ranger and engi were only moved up there today (note the modified one day ago). I find it hard to believe you have not seen the “no necros or rangers” lfgs that seem to be everywhere in the dungeon and fractal sections these days. I don’t lfg much personally since I have a guild to run with but I do occasionally look at them in the hopes of finding the funny ones.

That’s right. No longer can people say rangers don’t belong in “metazerk” groups. All those dungeon lfgs saying “no rangers” now officially don’t have a clue about rangers. It only took 3 years, but the power and usefulness of a ranger has been recognized by the community.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_S/A_LB_Spotter

Weep those tears of joy we’ve had to hold in for 3 years as you read “this build is part of the current metagame” for dungeons/fractals.

Now we must feel pity for our necro brethren who have suffered alongside us as outside of the meta until HoT comes out and reaper brings them in with us (or kicks us out) as they are the only class lacking a “meta build”

Is there any reason beta toons can’t open explorable dungeons until they’ve run story first? Makes it more of a hassle to test my beta toons in dungeons

I am going to take a revenant and jump in the water. I am still most curious to see how revenants fight underwater, especially Ventari. Anyone else curious how an underwater revenant will work? After all we still need to be able to run hotw p2/p3 on them right? RIGHT!?

Therodin.2970:

One persons suggestion was pretty good i felt like, they suggested that they start out with this new static idea at fotm 1 and then as you move up they increase until eventually ending up back at the original setup somewhere around 70. That would open up fractals to people with not enough time but would still have the randomness and the extra difficulty that comes with that randomness for people who wanted it at the higher levels

Yeah this was my suggestion. A couple of my guildies and I had talked about having this be a thing when we started studying into the fractal changes. Apparently my idea got buried by other responses, but I’m glad you noticed it. Ya the solution seems simple enough. I know they have the tech to make different levels give different numbers of fractals because before the fractured update. All odd numbered fracs would roll 3 then all even-numbered fracs did 3+jade maw. I feel like using that tech will still allow fracs to be difficult while also allowing for ease of access. As I said before one frac is not difficult when I know what that fractal will be. Oh we’re doing cliffside? I’ll bring a bunch of AoE cleave and/or blinds. We’re running dredge? I’ll just bring my thief. Yes maybe the instabilities could possibly counter these such as stealth lasting half as long or dealing half damage with melee, but I think three years of GW2 has made it painfully obvious that players will find a way to optimize this system so creating less variation on the fractals we run is only going to make them easier for us. Naturally we are going to find the fractals that give us the highest reward in the shortest amount of time.

Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind easy rewards, but those already exist in dungeons. People already complain that the game doesn’t have enough challenging end-game content. So the solution is to make the hardest instanced content easier? Yes I know Anet is promising challenging end-game content in HoT, but I don’t want to rely on them. I like fractals. I consider lvl 50 a challenge every time I run them on any of my 9 toons with the appropriate ar. Anet if you read this I support what you guys do and I love this game. This is why I’m trying to do what I can to protect one of my favorite things in this game.

So to repost my idea from before (also the TLDR part for people):
-lvl 1-20 fractals we get the one static fractal that was suggested in the stream to allow for players to learn the mechanics
-lvl 21-50 fractals we get one static fractal then one other frac picked at random afterwards to slowly increase difficulty
-lvl 51-70 fractals we get one static fractal then two random fractals similar to what odd numbered fractals did before the Fractured update.
-lvl 71+ fractals have one static fractal then three random fractals almost like they are now. Players will get the maximum challenge out of these fractals and potentially the greatest rewards.

And just like that you have 4 scales for rewards also. I also didn’t mention that 51+ as its own reward tier seems rather large when the other two tiers have 30 or fewer scales tied to them

I am going to just get out there and say it. This is a really bad idea.

I will say a lot of the other proposed changes such as selectable fractal weapons when above reward level 50 and making the golden fractal weapons exclusive to 51+ along with making them only changeable with a mf recipe was fantastic. I loved that.

So now I will get to my problem. I hate the idea that the fractals are static. A large majority of the fun and challenge of fractals is you have to be able to adapt to a wide variety of scenarios (i.e. the build that works amazingly well in Uncategorized may not work as well in Snowblind). This forced players to adapt their strategy to different fractals and be prepared for anything. Yes we dread the snowblinds and the volcanics, but I’d rather keep fracs the way they were and charge through them instead of running the same fractal over and over. If I wanted to do the same thing again and again I’d run dungeons.

Before anyone starts, yes I understand they are doing a rotating daily that may force people to run something different. However, there is no randomness to this. We know exactly what to expect.

Okay so enough of me complaining. In order to not make this just another forum post of someone complaining wildly and not having an idea here is one. My guildies and I have been coming up with a simple solution to this. Crazy thought, but what about keeping the static fractals to low levels only. That way people can still learn about the fractals while they level up. However, at higher levels they slowly add on more fractals. (i.e. 1-20 you run one static frac, 21-40 it picks two fracs from the list, 41-70 three fracs, 70+ the original 4 fracs). It’s simple, elegant, and still maintains a low barrier of entry for people new to fractals while still maintaining the difficulty of higher fracs.

As someone who has been running lvl 50 fracs basically since the fractured update I can assure you only one frac is NOT HARD. I apologize if my wording was a tad too strong, but I could not find a better way to convey the message.

TLDR: One frac is not hard, how about scaling up the total fracs run as you reach higher levels? Everything else is great

Roy is it safe to assume that the weapon revs gain from their elite spec is either a spear, harpoon gun, or trident? The rev’s “complete set of core weapons” has been revealed and revenants are still a useless stone underwater.

Nick Ogersbane
Server: Dragonbrand
I am mostly a PvE player, but I have dabbled a lot in PvP and WvW since launch

However, I am an officer of another guild and I will likely be repping them a significant amount of the time. So it’s your choice on whether or not to send the invite with this in mind. I will understand if I do not receive one

I also name my lynx sausage lynx, but I name my wolf that I pair him with Duran Duran because hanging out with a pet named sausage lynx all day makes him hungry like the wolf

I also forgot to mention, as stated above, spirits can have their skills interrupted while turrets can’t

I also have to point out that getting rid of spirits unbound will be a major mistake. You state that you want to increase build diversity while keeping current builds intact. I can understand how looking at it in a pvp lense spirit ranger can still serve its role as a bunker (which honestly makes it a horrible excuse of a turret engi which does the job 100x better). Turrets are not only tougher than ranger spirits, they also last longer without going into cd (want to compare 60 seconds to 5 minutes?), can provide the same types of boons using experimental turrets and more, can attack the opponent which provides more dps, turrets can be picked up to reduce cd or blown up to give an easy blast finisher and extra damage as a parting shot which can’t happen with spirits, and the heal turret is actually useful as opposed to the water spirit
But no one is discussing the PvE side of it. I run a spirit ranger so that i can provide support to my team and increase our overall dps. In particular, i run it in areas such as fractals and SW where i need to move around a lot.
You also removed two spirit related traits completely. I don’t know how many people have mentioned the loss of Vigorous spirits which increased spirit health and made its passives trigger twice as often along with spirits unbound.
A potential solution is to make spirits unbound a grandmaster trait that borrows the spirits activate their effects when killed from nature’s vengeance then move nature’s vengeance without the effect when killed down to a master trait. Let’s also not forget that Anet intentionally moved spirits unbound down to a master trait in order to allow more spirit builds when it used to be a grandmaster trait. so why not move it back?
The other solution and what I hope was considered when the decision to drop spirits unbound was made is that the druid specialization will include this trait which will make all of my above arguments null and void