Firebeard.1746

It's 25% of the most recent expansion. I've seen it fail plenty post-nerfs and there were plenty of rants post-nerfs.

So in your mind, where does DE meta sit? IMO, it requires more effort to set up than a raid, has unique cosmetic rewards (and infusion), gives gen3 legendary progress. Does it accomplish this or not? I don't really want to defend DE meta, I feel like it should be instanced content, but I'm just wondering where it missed the bar for you here. Do you try comming it?

This is already functionally in game for everything except pve. The mistforged variants i believe are supposed to be "legendary", and pve players can get the mistforged skins without upgrading for a functional equivalent of legendary mistforged via transmogs on their envoy armors.

I think it's beyond strange that there's no visual upgrade to the WvW and PvP legendary armors when crafted. What other legendary, when crafted, does not change visual appearance, at all? Additionally, it feels strange that the most efficient visual mistforged legendary armor variants are probably to earn the PvE raid set then just buy the appearances and transmog them because of the high cost of components in terms of the limiting currency. Just buying the skins is half the cost (or even less if you don't like mistforged). I think the hackiest/easiest solution is that WvW and PvP legendary armors are mistforged by default and if you don't want the mistforged variant, you transmog it. That way, that more efficient method for getting competitive, cool skins by using pve raid armors is at least locked exclusively behind rank grinds and the bonus for crafting the legendary armor for competitive modes is you can circumvent the rank grinds. It's also beyond strange there's 2 sets for every armor class for pvp and wvw, when in reality the most everyone would ever need is one of each. Pve players don't have to make the painful choice to earn more of the hard currency to have something that looks cooler. Additionally they're rewarded 25 ap for getting all the sets. All this, just doesn't feel fair, from them having the most efficient route to the cooler looking competitive armors, to their armor visually upgrading when turned into a legendary Also is it any wonder why competitive modes have seen less play, sPvP in particular when its rewards aren't keeping pace with PvE?

Oof why? I think it's strange minimum times for the pve armors have been going down while pvp and wvw are still a massive grind.

Envoy will always be considered more prestigious than anything from OW because of the difficulty associated with it and the animations. Even though I have enough LI for my first envoy set, have crafted coalescence, I say let them eat cake. This game was designed to be casual friendly, causals should have a path to legendaries. Heck, maybe they'll raid more if they have access to the builds that are required via legendary stat swapping. Also, never do another meta like DE. If it takes that much experience/organization, it belongs in instanced content. I have refused to play DE meta with the communities that organize it (like Hardstuck and Skein Gang) because I feel like they would get more raiders with strong builds than a normal group and therefore carry, and in my opinion, I should be able to win metas with complete random strangers. And I haven't passed a single DE meta, even when the comm has tried to organize roles or lead. It's terrible design for OW content. It'd be fine if it was instanced.

There's this really old joke MMORPG means: Many Men Online Role Playing Girls I mean I don't play opposite gender, but don't judge. Generally men like watching female booty and online female characters are intentionally made to look sexy. And for women, well unfortunately there's enough idiots who expect women to play girls that you get harassed if you play a female character, so it's just easier to play a dude Play whatever brings you the most fun/peace, and don't be a creeper.

Given that Bangar never actually won a legitimate election and the Charr never universally accepted that result, it feels like you're projecting angst here based on an incredibly generic statement. People resisted Trump but not the fact he was president. That one quote, that one quote alone is all that you're using to do this projection. I do agree with you though, people often don't talk about things that matter, like how the economy is completely detached from reality and you practically need to be rich to have kids, and that despite their promises of saving us all if we just cut their taxes, the rich haven't saved us from this fact. Highest bracket in the 60s was 90%. Now it's the lowest it's been in decades. Estate tax is repealed. Still waiting for the dragon to share it hoard. O wait, it's blaming the immigrants it employs for all our problems.

Which current political situation are you referring to if you're not referring to that one? I'm just not quite catching where you're coming from. Also Ryland rising above Bangar is also nothing like the current way things happen. Doubt he'd wear a shirt saying "You can grab my ------", he was far more independent than the people in the current situation in the US.

Honestly, I never correlated the Charr with current political situations. I'm guessing the reason you feel so triggered is because you're part of that situation and maybe, just maybe, the art here is strong enough to make you realize that the things that happened in real life are so ridiculous it emulates the Charr storyline. Just look at a strongman in a different country (Russia) and think about how many dead people from the rising generation he's caused in the context of a population decline (putin is basically destroying his own people for his own glory). Strongmen and dictators often get into power making promises to the common man that are appealing (and sometimes even work when they do them), but at the end of the day, you can tell they only care about themselves and it's more dangerous to have them in power than a democratic government with some issues, because at least then, you have hope of change without all the death. I'm glad a 3rd party candidate is shaking things up in Utah and ranked choice voting is happening. Those will be what save us, not narcissists who fulfill a few promises but in the end are only in it for them. The dude had lists of our foreign agents in an unsecured location. If that's not bad for national security and our safety, I don't know what is. There's also been tlak of nuclear secrets as well. And missing documents. He probably sold them. You need to wake up. I don't think the parallel was as strong in game as you think it was. Bangar is not Trump nor did I ever equate him as such (in fact, I think he was way smarter, if you're asking me to compare). It struck a nerve because you know you're on the wrong side. And my response is "sorry, not sorry, you should probably learn from this"

Counterpoint: mantras are also something that triggers around you. So basically they're just telling everyone to play mesmer/healbreand + any other type of mobile support. Also auras work the same way. Looks like they gave druid some more mobile support options as well. They're basically saying "stop playing this in competitive play anymore" which feels awful. I'm fine with nerfs when nerfs are warranted, but my pet peeve in mmo balance is when devs take it upon themselves to nerf professions into oblivion without give them no new niche to fill and/or make them ineffective in their niche. They're basically saying "eff your class and all the time you put into it". Imo, if scrapper was a competituve support then that should still be a viable role.

I only run my scrapper for superspeed in river of souls, otherwise I don't touch it with a 10 ft pole. i was hoping having a new balance guy would fix things, but now I'm convinced he was the one nerfing catalyst for the top 1% while the rest of us refused to play it. Are mantras ground targeted? How many other support abilities are ground targeted? The only comment I have is that perhaps instead of forcing how well skills operate, you make it toggleable, on a per-skill basis. Right now, chrono sees almost no usage for its support boons, and part of that, I believe has to do with the fact it still uses clunky ground-targeted wells. There are a few places where it's nice, but in 80-90% of cases they're inferior. In fact I was flabberghasted catalyst's orb was ground-targeted for this reason. Critical ground targeted AOEs are one of my biggest pet peeves in MMOs.

Well, sort of. OP probably doesn't have time to do all of these at once but they're all useful: S2 is awesome for extra core tyria mastery points, they're the hardest to come by. S3 for Aurora S4 for Skyscale and Vision IB saga is probably the least useful, but you'd probably want at least dragonstorm, and E1/Bjora for the Ice shard HI node. And in fairness, the IB saga strikes are super chill 10-man content, so if you're into that, there's value in all the episodes. So as you can afford it, choose wisely OP if any of these appeal to you.

LWS 4, hands down, the skyscale, while a little clunky to learn, is one of the best mounts, period. It's basically the swiss army knife of mounts. It can't do everything the best, and isn't the fastest, but because it can do everything, it's the best for navigating new terrain or terrain you're not super familiar with. I would say at least 1 episode of IB saga so you can get ice shards in your Home instance. That will make farming the currencies in for the skyscale easier.

If you're patient they might just give them out for free. They gave out all LWS out for free last year during season of the dragons, and I believe Season 4 has been free 3 times: 1) upon release (this is actually always the case, it's soft FOMO, because you don't even have to do anything, just log in when during the month or so release period, 2) Upon release of episode 6 I believe? They gave out all PoF episodes for free leading up to the release of E6 because they're all needed for the skyscale. 3) again on the season of the dragons. I know it's frustrating. I occaisionally throw money at this game because it does so much right I never want anet out of business, so it's never really been an issue for me, but I get the frustration. I've called for them to make the episodes free many times just because I do believe it's an incredibly awkard experience for new players.

Can you just log out, fix your skills and re-enter? I thought in PoF if I logged out and went back to the instance thingy and it took me right where I left off. I abused that few at least a few achievements.

Amen.

Can we get some cool armor skins that don't look like heavy armor? I feel like all the cool recent ones Ice reaver, Etherbound, Water Dragon All look like heavy armor. Unfortunately I didn't like foefire much because it doesn't seem to sit well on male Characters (its hip placement only makes sense on a female character), so if you're going for something more caster-looking, I'd recommend the Pharoah outfit (with maybe more lighitng effects) or the frostfire outfit as inspirations. It feels like the art team is great at making heavy armor sets (even the decade armor looks this way) and I'd like to see more caster themed piecemeal armor sets. There's probably room for leather looking appearances too, but I don't usually play those types of toons, so I don't have good suggestions. Also while mentioning the pharoah costume, I'm going to call out it doesn't look as good on femaile toons, its main draw is its luster, but you guys went for so much skimpy on it, it doesn't show off its strength and just kind of looks lame on female toons.

Most of your observations are spot on. I would agree the number of 1-time roles hampers to ability of players to effectively raid after stepping into them. That being said, if anet were to change raid design, it would hurt the current raid community because they enjoy the complexity. Maybe the solution would be to alternately release strike cms and raids, keeping standardized mechanics in strike cms but branching out more in raid. You may change your mind about not continuing. It's a one-time cost. Maybe you'll be different because you have friends in another game, but once i learned the encounters i've kept raiding because i enjoy it on some level. once you learn the encounters, the g/h isn't bad and you have to be really bad for the legendary armor progress to not be worth it compared to WvW or PvP. I want to have a complete collection of legendary armor of each type as an altoholic. My first forays into raiding in this game were absolute hell. But after i got used to it, i started noticing how cool some of the encounters are. Even though i haven't done Dhuum much, i feel it's one of the coolest raid encounters i've ever done, only rivaled by Argus the unmaker and i can't decide which i liked more. The feel if the Xera fight is quite amazing and even though it's one of the more difficult encounters, it's up there with Dhuum and Argus.

I don't think so. Based on my understanding of gen2, but as i already have that line, I'm curious if i've missed something.

Has there ever been something in game with legend/legendary in the name that hasn't involved legendary acquisition? I completely agree it's a strange in between place. I think it's legendary, but you're right, i can't really be hyped unless they clarify.

It's definitely not healthy for mirage in raid. I doubt that normal mirage players were getting anything close to the numbers to justify a 25% reduction in damage on the axe ambush. Mech has been the go-to condi anything right now, so it was kind of shocking. The staff nerfs don't make much sense either as warlock is a DPS loss and normally only used for clone generation. You're right though, OW is fine. I don't play mirage in OW anymore though.

I have good news, and bad news: Good news is, anet is trying to give every class a viable condi or DPS build + some form of boon support. So even if you can literally only play 1 class, in theory, you should be good. Also good news is this game is extremely alt friendly, so it's not that bad even if you need to switch (ascended gear is account bound, legendaries account wide, exotics are usually cheap, masteries are account wide, so are mats/bank) Bad news: They're not perfect at it and will still occasionally screw over builds. LIke I have 0 clue what they want from Mirage in the coming patch. Just start playing what you enjoy and most of the time you'll be fine as long as your gear/traits match your role. If it's really bad swap, but I never had anyone whine at me even when i played sub-optimal setups in terms of fotm professions.

Nerfing mirage does nothing to improve build diversity, and as it stands warlock wasn't a great skill anyway: Staff is a condi weapon it doesn't do condi damage. So not sure why this "buff" was needed for leveling, or even how this buff is equivalent to what's being taken away. If people were still playing mirage, it's only because they hadn't taken the time to make other viable builds to replace them. And miralac was seeing almost 0 usage when I was occaisionally raiding. And that's literally the only reason I've been playing mirage is 1) mesmer is my fav class, 2) hadn't taken the time to figure out condi virtuoso yet. Just when I think you guys are getting your act together (helping ele) you do something that makes me realize you have no clue what you're doing. What is mirage's niche now? Why would people play it other than they don't have the gear put together for something else? Also, you're just decreasing PoF sales with this nerf. Making the mesmer elite spec less useful is 1 additional reason to not buy it for long time returning players or newer players.

Yeah. And I can't even begin to understand why they wiggled axe into this nerf to justify a leveling buff for staff, like WTF? Is ambushing even worth it when they nerf condi duration by 25%?