GeraldBC.4927

I can see where you're coming from. I was tempted to suggest the exact reverse of this feature. Something that suggests squads in categories you haven't specifically opened, for people undecided on what to do and where to go at the time. Kind of like an all-tabs random-overworld section. Right now, you have to extend each expansion or season individually and then select the section within it before you see whether there's anything listed.

I wholeheartedly agree with all the changes listed. I never played holosmith before, but I'm looking forward to trying that. I'm also looking forward to trying quickness power harbinger. I already have a spare template and tried it out. It doesn't deal any damage, but I'm hopeful that the balance patch changes it.

The kind of people complaining it's 'too easy' and citing how long it took the world first guild (who got to practise the same bosses for months on the ptr) to beat them, like that somehow speaks to the experience of the average player, are not people who actually play the content they belittle so much. They only watch others do it on twitch. They specifically watch the world's top raiders do the content, the world's top raiders make the content look easy and that shapes the uninvolved viewer's impression of how difficult the mythic bosses are. Then, they take to the forums with that impression and claim it's too easy and that Blizzard should make the next tier or expansion harder, which they then do. "Noo its too easy you need to make it harder" is a meme complaint. It is entirely performative, a form of posturing and self-aggrandizement rather than an actual criticism. The path WoW has gone down should serve as a lesson that no matter how difficult you make your next tier, no matter how unforgiving you make the mechanics and enrage timers, no matter how many mechanics you stack on top of each other, no matter how much you randomize components to force people to organize on-the-fly (or rather wait for addon developers to automate it) it is never enough.

I'm happy with how the story turned out. No major twists, but that also means that some of the really stupid ones I was worried might happen were not a thing either. The weapons are a mixed bag. Some are good, some not so good. I think swords are fun conceptually but they need to be tuned way up so I can use them in fractal CMs without someone throwing a hissy fit. I have not touched obsidian armor and don't plan to for now. I am doing my weekly rifts, hoarding the essences and sometimes turning them into amalgamated essences just in case I change my mind. The new skins in the wizard's vault are good. I especially like that the new weapon skins seem hand-tailored for the astral ward look from astral armor and that wizard's cape.

I wholeheartedly agree with every point in the OP. I can't even add anything, he lays it out pretty well. When even snowcrows is biting its teeth out, I do not believe one second that this encounter was internally tested. There's no way anyone at Anet has actually beaten this boss, at least without either godmoding themselves or nerfing it for internal testing and then buffing it again for release. I will even give a few suggestions on what parts need nerfing specifically so that it becomes a CM you can actually reliably clear every week. Cerus' health pool needs to be cut in half. Remember that when designing a boss encounter, the more mechanics you force the players to play down, the more you need to reduce the boss' health to make up for it. The duration on the malice adds' cc immunity and resistance needs to be reduced to 15 seconds AT THE VERY MOST. I'd say take it further and make it 10 seconds. If you want, you can slam protection onto those temporary buffs to really hammer home the whole 'the add is hard to kill unless you carry it out far enough' aspect. But having to stand on the literal edge like you do right now is untenable. I'd say even requiring a 1200 distance is too much because you're basically forcing the squad to lean on the blink+portal crutch. The large gluttony orbs giving him 3 stacks is overblown, and the fact that at least 2 people need to soak each is weird as well. And the fact that they travel as fast as they do forces squads yet again to rely on mesmers. Cerus gaining a 5% damage increase PER STACK is too much. At this point, you might as well achieve the same result by not doing the damage increase and instead making him instanuke the squad the moment he reaches a certain threshold. I get that this mechanic is supposed to be a reference to Deimos, but Deimos only got a 1% increase per hand, and that's only if the hands actually reached him, which was easier to prevent than most of Cerus' mechanics are. The telegraph on the Envy attack is too short, especially when it's the add casting it. Also the attack doesn't quite line up with the telegraph. If you stand a little to the side of where it's supposed to start but opposite from where it travels, you still get hit by it.

I like them for the most part, but their damage is still pretty low compared to greatsword or the burst from staff, even more so if you compare them to the weapons other classes have. Reminder for the above: No, necro being stronger than npcs and sub-elite mobs is not good enough, the class actually needs to be on par with other playable classes like guardian, engineer, revenant, mesmer etc. Unless this can be achieved, you can't really call what the game has 'balance'. Also, I think some of the skills are way too sluggish, especially sword 4. There is no kittening way that cast time is 0.75 seconds, not even with quickness. This is a full 2 second cast and nothing will convince me otherwise. And yes, you CAN make the skills more responsive, I know you can because you succeeded in doing so with Sword 3. I'd like the sword skills to be as fluid as that. I'm looking forward to trying quickness power harbinger after the balance patch and hope the sword issues are ironed out a little better by then.

I agree with Liewec It's okay to have a weapon with really slow skills like necro greatsword. But if you make a weapon be really slow and clunky like that, the amount of damage those attacks deal better have some serious power to them. They better hit as hard as the animations would imply, and even in the reaper's post-buff state, they don't really do that.

Like I did with the original release of SotO, I will go into the new story chapters with an open mind and share my reception of the experience with others. You're really on a good track (or at least vastly better than before) with SotO and the first content release. I really hope it stays that way. I really hope you don't disappoint me. I expect to be entertained, not lectured.

It specifically says 'you may', so yes you can have multiple accounts. The rule forbids account sharing, not having alt accounts. I still wish that at least multiboxing wasn't allowed, so people stop leeching metas on 7-20 alt accounts at the same time. It's really annoying when you do DE and 20 people are just sitting on the airship the whole time.

It's probably an attempt to prevent brand poisoning, in case people decide to make offensive images with GW2 characters.

Either way, anything involving Southsun is a moot point, because it's so dead by nature that even the rerelease of S1 wouldn't dare touch it. Agree to disagree I guess. I think that development can progress way faster than you're willing to believe, at least if people actually sit down and work on it.

I wouldn't put much thought into that statement. Iirc a little over half a year before SotO's release, all there was to show for 'development' of it was a single sketch depicting some abstract black creatures. Far removed from the Kryptis models actually found in the game now. They had to make SotO pretty quickly as previous plans that they were better prepared for, were scrapped. The whole reason for the 3-month patch schedule is for Arenanet to keep themselves on their toes, because they have to be. They're developing each patch's content on the fly. Maybe they're more ahead now and in a better state in that regard with the fifth expansion, but there's only so much half a team can do in a few months. As a more obvious reminder: There is a reason why the new weapons, the main feature replacing especs in SotO, are only coming out next week as opposed to last year on release of the expansion. They weren't just sitting on the finished weapons and refusing to release them, they didn't release them because the new weapons' animations and skills didn't exist yet. They were only an idea at the time.

While SotO is progressing into its next content patch next week, the idea guys at Arenanet are probably debating what to make next. Expanding the compass on the map to feature 3 currently unused diagonal corners leaves you with 3 choices where to add something new. Whichever you go with, a good design choice would be to make it prominently feature enemies that drop totems. I will explain why. At this point, for many of the trophy types there are already rewarding map metas that you can focus on farming regularly if you are in need of trophies of that type. Need claws? Just go to Drizzlewood Coast, you're constantly killing Charr there, which drop claws. Need bones or fangs? Everything that has you facing off with Kryptis between Amnytas, Inner Nayos and rifts all over Tyria gives you tons of bones and fangs. Need dust? In Dragonfall, you frequently fight the branded, which drop dust. Need blood? The Blood Legion reward track in DWC has you covered. The only trophies that don't give you a map-meta option to focus farming them outside of just killing mobs oldschool, are scales, venom sacs and totems. Scales and venom sacs are for whatever reason pretty cheap, whereas totems always consistently keep a higher price. So my conclusion from the above, is that the best way forward from a game design perspective, would be something that involves a meta or other repeatable and rewarding content that features enemies that drop totems. In fact if we discount the blood legion reward track, we end up with 4 trophy types that don't have a meta that fills the niche for them: Blood, Venom Sacs, Totems and Scales. I personally see a trend between those: Hylek. Or something similar to them. The best instalment from this perspective would be something that involves going to war against some kind of amphibian or reptilian (scales) civilization, their culture and technology should be primitive and tribal (totems), and they should keep large, venomous pets (blood and venom sacs).

The question I'd like to ask is: Do they need to be 'future-proof'? The reason to get legendaries should be so you can flip them around willy-nilly, not to lock yourself out of playing the newest thing in the future. The latter seems rather anti-fun and if they're ditching that, I'd say good riddance. I was looking forward to grinding the new content to collect components and craft the legendary relic, but if it's true that we just get the legendary relic gifted for having legendary runes, then there's game mechanically no reason for me to do so. That's also the same reason why I don't mind power creep being locked behind new content, at least if getting there involves actually grinding the new content. Getting to share in the power creep is your reward for engaging with the new content.

Real subtle there, Arenanet.

The trick is to make your own squads, set a 40+KP requirement and also enforce it, even if you yourself don't fulfil it yet. Of course, this only works if you actually know the bosses and have a viable build to tackle them with. I recommend a boondps build, because then you're usually exempt from special roles. You can learn special roles once you have some experience. Yes, OG raiders will scoff at it, but that's because they don't want you to get into raids at all, they want the pool of pug raiders to be completely shut off from any new blood, which is stupid because 99% of them weren't clearing Xera on release day either.

You're actually looking into making power harbinger viable? Yes, great, perfect. I was wondering what the idea with that whole trait line was, it's not like anyone uses it for anything right now. If the strike damage trait lines get some major buffs, along with a proper ranged power weapon, necro might finally have a power quickness option. Maybe even a pure power option with a ranged shroud.

The new swords are basically just greatsword but faster. Why not fill up the one niche that was still open and make it a viable condi melee weapon to use for condi reapers?

You don't. Zero-requirement groups go absolutely nowhere because you always end up with people who either aren't even trying or who are outright griefing you on purpose. It's always a clown fiesta that can't beat a single phase, and the next time you have to start over with your prog because there's always several that don't have the resilience to stick around for more than one session. The only way to break into group pve content in this game is through deception. You need to genuinely know the bosses so you can convincingly play them down as if you already had KP, then you need to find ways to deceive people who do have KP themselves into taking you along. From there, it's just a matter of 'fake it till you make it'. If you go about it honestly, you'll just remain permanently gatekept out of it.

I actually agree. SotO with its introduction of the rift grind sounds like the perfect opportunity for introducing an overworld legendary ring.

They WERE targeted at the weapons. At least in the case of rev GS, thief scepter and probably more.

In the same vein you could speculate that the only reason players superficially never seem to encounter a female Mursaat is simply because female Mursaat refuse to speak in front of non-Mursaat. So the only ones you hear talking are male.

It's not just hostile to new players, it's also hostile to everyone else who hasn't done CMs for literal years. It feels a lot like the people pugging for fractal CMs want CMs to be a closed system where no-one new joins their community. Similar to how raids used to be, but way worse. GW2's community is uniquely gatekeepy, especially in fractal CMs. It's not even about experience, they just want old players. If it were about experience, the amounts of UFE asked for in LFGs would be a fraction of what they are. At most, people would ask for 1.6k UFE (completing all 4 CMs successfully 10 times) or for one of those extra fancy no-healer runs, 3.2k UFE (completing all of them 20 times). But instead they're asking for 10k, 15k, 20k, 60k, the numbers are getting bigger and bigger as new CM runners accumulate UFE. Oh you got 5k? Well screw you, every lfg asks for 10k now. Oh, you're approaching 10k? Well, now every lfg is asking for 15k. I'm not even remotely close to 15k and yet already I'm seeing more and more asking for 20k. I can only infer that this shift is aimed at keeping out someone else who has already surpassed 15k. If you're turning away people who have done everything successfully 40+ times over, it ain't about experience anymore. At this point they might as well ask for Unstable Cosmic Essences since the thing they really want seems to be people who have been playing for years.

Why get this defensive on something that's so obvious? Yes, the amount of gold to be made on alt accounts provided they're eligible for wizard's vault is massive, way bigger than what login rewards used to be. To claim otherwise is just dishonest.

All I'm seeing here is "Ugh, don't you know that they wrote up some excuses for the drivel that would follow later?" And all I can say is that this doesn't justify what was done afterwards. It doesn't even justify the article itself. If bad outcome B was caused by prior decision A, that doesn't automatically mean that B is good, that just means that both are bad and A shouldn't have happened the way that it did to begin with. When the Commander meets Kormir in her library, she explicitly states that the gods have determined that everything they do only worsens the situation in Tyria and that they cite this as their reasoning for the exodus. So in tandem with apparently everyone on the planet, the gods in GW2 also agree that the gods are useless and do more harm than good. It's like I described in the more abstract version: In the second instalment of the franchise, everyone is in sudden agreement that the gods are universally bad, including the gods themselves. It's almost as if someone involved in the narrative design of the second game has an axe to grind, either with the gods as a set of characters or with GW1 as a whole. Adelbern was a hero of the people who overthrew the tyrants that preceded him and then successfully fended off the Orrians and the Charr alike. Did he potentially make a mistake at one point? Sure, but there is a vast difference in a character's portrayal between "We should stand and fight for our land" and "I would rather doom my own people to forever haunt this land than to let someone else take it." Every line relating to Adelbern in the second game - much like with Balthasar - whether it is by Charr or humans or even third-hand documents found in the world - only belittles and denigrates him and omits anything positive about him. Again with this common theme of "everything in GW1 bad!" in the second game's narrative design. The Vabbians had a prosperous country with lots of beautiful monuments and a thriving populace both in the sense of farmers as well as nobility. There is no reason for this to change even under Joko's rule. Not just that but it was completely and utterly destroyed by the dragonbrand and subsequently the forged. Everything about the new Vabbi is so dry and dull. It is an absolute atrocity and a disservice to what Vabbi could be - and has been in the first game. Joko conquering most of Elona didn't even have to be framed as a negative, the Mordant Crescent didn't have to exist. They could have just had the Sunspears assist Joko with his campaign against Vabbi, Kourna and Istan as a quid pro quo for helping them during Nightfall, when all the nations of Elona had either betrayed or turned their backs on them. The Commander suddenly dropping the goody-two-shoes shtick specifically to not free Joko was out-of-character and unnecessary. You get railroaded into rescuing Livia when she's stuck in a White Mantle fortress, despite her talking down to the Commander. Arguably it would make more sense for the Commander to leave Livia rotting in her ward and release Joko from his cage instead. Joko had already been established as a benevolent ruler in Vabbi, so the foundation for something better was already there. They just refused to use it. Considering that during development, there were sitting GW2 devs bragging on twitter about how they never played GW1 and wearing that like a badge of honor rather than a testament to their lacking professionalism, that impression is far from unreasonable. "But in 'Muh movement of the world'...." I hear you say, but you forget an important detail here: Nothing stopped them from either changing the article, ignoring its contents or simply not including those blunders in it in the first place.