Firebeard.1746

I know it seems like such a little description and Anet probably barely put anything on the description of each legendary, but I'd like to be able to just read through the lore on the legendaries I collect. I actually really want to know more about my Ascension as it seems to copy the designs found in Tarir and I find it very mysterious. I get that the journey to earning it was supposed to be about proving my prowess across many different professions in PVP, but I don't feel like I learned much about its origin and what it means.

Technically you can equip 4 at once, I didn't realize you could use the same main hand in both slots for a really long time after I came back in 2018. Also some people may have made 2 sets of 2 if they were dual maining classes that use sword. I personally find it way too tedious to swap gear around toons, so I only swap gear when I'm dropping a build from a character so I wouldn't be surprised if there's many people who play like me who have extra legendaries ( I don't because I'm not that far).

Maybe, just maybe there are things they love about it and hope will be fixed. Problems don't have to be permanent, and there are lots of grievances to be had, the major end game modes have not seen much iteration at all (WvW, raids + fractals, PVP). If Anet doesn't want to support those modes then they need to offer alternative rewards that are similar in OW content, which seems to be their major focus. I actually LOVE the OW content, but haven't really had the cycles to play it against other things I want to earn for my account/characters.

There's a lot that this game gets right -> OW & gear progression are its biggest draws. It turns out to be a bit deceptive as it devolves into raid or die, which is a gross disappointment for me at the moment. Why, you might ask? without going into much detail, if you care about legendary armor if you're a gear progression completionist, it's raid or die. And raiding in this game isn't fun. Even if I could pull a static together to fairly casually collect the LI for all the armors over a couple years just focusing on the easier bosses and paying for carries on the harder ones, that just doesn't sound fun. If I had more time I'd math out playing a focused hour or so of raiding vs WvW and/or PVP a week and show the massive disparity in efficiency, but trust me it's there. insult to injury is that the envoy armors took way more dev time than any others and for some reason anet thought it was a good idea to put the final form of the trinket legendary combination locked behind raiding. More raid or die. While I don't appreciate the armors because they're not very flashy when out of combat and I'd rather not have a piece of poop with its own solar system over my head, it's insane to me that raiders get TWO VERY special things when some of my most toxic experiences in this game have actually been around raiding. And even more trying to have rational discussion with its members in other places. I'm furious they get such special treatment literally being the biggest jerks in the community. My condolences to the raiders who aren't. I'm not talking about you and appreciate the few of you I've run with, but you're a magic pony and pretty kitten rare. I came to this game to get AWAY from that crap, not to be expected to bathe in it more. I also heard a rumor that I haven't been able to verify that the devs said strikes are less engaging than raids and therefore aren't valuable. If that's the case, that's the most inept attempt at being data driven that I've ever seen. Strikes have never filled a niche, not even a close one to raids, so not giving them their own niche when doing that comparison is absolutely tone deaf. What they should really be comparing is the number of people still raiding after getting everything they need for the legendaries in raids vs those. doing strikes. I stopped doing strikes because they weren't valuable after I heard the legendary armory announcement. Heck, i've been more casually doing fractals than strikes and probably received more ascended gear/hour played than strikes. They have plenty of other problems too I could go into, but don't want to make this post any longer than I have already. But I played them fairly religiously before the LA announcement, hoping for a saner approach to larger group content from the devs, and now I feel like I was part of a twisted, rigged experiment, all meant to serve that little group of jerks I love so much and waste my time. I also don't understand why it would ever be a raiders vs. strike community mentality: what they really should have captured is aggregate involvement anyway, because they could easily mimic other MMOs with slightly different versions of the same content for both groups. Even though SL has been mostly a bust, Blizzard has been iterating on its systems in contrast. The wowhead article I've read on Mythic+ says that players are incentivized to help others with lower keys because of valor points. Pushing my own key this week, it appears to be true. I've actually been practically carried and never gotten this much random help from the community before. I want to see how far I can go this season. Also blizzard has been massively iterating on their open world content. It's still not GW2 parity, but they're trying to make it better. The treadmill doesn't phase me anymore when Anet expects me to play 20-40hours a week of a single game mode in order to earn a legendary armor set in a decent amount of time and I don't enjoy raiding in this game. I can PuG much more easily in WoW even as a relatively popular DPS class in raids, which is a testament to how bad the pugging scene is here. Also I'm looking forward to what D4 brings. I've been wanting to do more casual MMOs and seeing as how it won't have raids, I look forward to seeing what it brings with very similar systems to GW2.

I don't condone cheating, but I kinda feel like it's Karma: the MM clearly built a team to win. How many matches have you been in that have just felt like a waste of time? Like just the other team's start -> people DC'ing. I've reported AFKers and literally seen them on my team a week later. This MM literally set the cheater up for absolute failure, both in terms of his team (afker/dcer) and the other team (pros). How about Anet deals with other forms of match manipulation at the same time? How do you know one of the "pros" didn't queue a smurf account to guarantee a win? This is ignoring the fact that even without that the MM clearly set up one side to lose.

I saw a commentor on reddit mention an interview where strike participation was discussed, but perusing reddit didn't yield anything. has anyone seen this video and if so, can they link it?

They did not say new. They said updated, more specifically for performance and DX11. Don't overhype. This community overhypes itself so much they set themselves up for disappointment. I know some people who firmly believe we're getting underwater raids in Cantha and I personally feel like if that's true, it's absolutely missing the mark. Not that I don't want UW combat fixed, but I feel like there's so much this game needs that's literally the last thing it needs.

Aside from the other things people have posted. This MMO is actually really grindy if you choose to engage it regularly & play efficiently at all. The content drops for just about any game mode are sparse enough that they easily become repetitive. In fact optimized play for both cash and/or legendary progression is VERY grindy. The breadth of content could save it, but like I said, its design doesn't encourage breadth in play.

I agree with your title (and final statement), but I don't believe you've done very many dungeons if you think they don't have annoying tedious puzzles in them.

I think they should prioritize social aspect both within and without. I don't have the energy now that I did then to do that sort of thing. I haven't personally played FFXIV, but I've heard good things about their community because of systems they've implemented to encourage people helping each other out in raiding. Though I don't feel like you can wash content creator's hands so easily, even though I agree with many of your points. A major complaint about vanilla has been that for DPS it's mage or gtfo, and that's a content creator problem with them over-emphasizing mages as a great DPS class (other DPS classes work fine and some even have versions of CC that work on monsters that polymorph doesn't, and other types of utility to boot, hunters being king at agro control). The game didn't change, but the internet did. It's influenced and impacted MMOs and their original formulas. Vanilla iterations of old games are a great example of this.

It feels like this forum is just a bunch of trolls. the 2 "confused" faces on your response are people basically trying downvote you to draw attention away from your OP. XD. Good call, you were totally right.

On your first point, that you learned everything outside the game, I'd say this is a plague for raids the MMO world over. Raiding used to be talking to your guild mates, playing to people's strengths and playing with people you liked being around. It was a real community building experience. Now, they've become "watch all the content creator videos and then play" it's research first, experience second (and you're basically a cog in a content creator's machine when you do), it used to be both experience and research while ACTUALLY playing the game when i was active in WoW in Vanilla/BC. Content creators have actually destroyed what used to be a community building activity within your guild. And honestly I can't even call GW2 raids, actual raids. Raids imply massive groups and operation at scale within a guild. 10-man static groups are not raids. Raids were supposed to operate on a community wide scale within a guild originally in MMOs. MMOs have evolved to be a little less tight knit, but devs should focus on getting players to understand each others strengths and work together, not watch videos to be a cog in a machine. I would call GW2 raids "random 10-man PVE challenges" To your second point, WoW actually has a generic guide for each role for each encounter in game. Yes you can watch the videos, but it definitely helps having the game clearly tell you how the content works and general ideas of what you're supposed to do. It's not always super specific about HOW to do your role, but they are specific about what's expected and even boss attacks, etc. All of that makes PVE in WoW much more approachable. What really makes me sad though is they could have turned Dragonstorm into a real raiding experience, but they didn't. If they removed the WP, it could operate like a large-scale PVE encounter like real raids are supposed to be imo. They could have also added no downstate CMs. And even CMs that make the encounter harder.

My suggestion is to get on Metabattle and use any of the meta builds there after reading how to play them. This game is really old. The people who are good at it have years of skill and combat knowledge on you. Just copy them and tweak if you think it will benefit you if necessary. When i came back a couple years ago I thought I was being smart running my own build but starting from metabattle gave me a leg up. Also, it will be your job to carry matches given how bad the matchmaker can be + all the toxicity that can happen in any given match, so being your strongest can't hurt.

I'm quoting both of you so I have both of your attention: what are your respective Magic find stats? I feel like there's been places I've been noticing MF having an impact that aren't mentioned on the website and I'm curious if I can find better empirical evidence than simple anecdotes I experienced when there's been random community MF buffs.

I appreciate your appreciation, and I try not to be a tacky MF.

Yeah and I'm not refuting any of this, I actually agree with it. I play an HB now for a reason. But at the time, heal tempest is what worked and it's what I had, so I used it to climb, Infusion seems to have taken my comments on why I don't like the glass cannon meta and why I used heal tempest to climb levels to mean that I'm full sustain and support it, which just isn't true, both now and in this thread. I've also explained to OP earlier in the thread why the community would never call their comp "meta"., The only thing I've said is I won't judge other's choices if that's what they run in a private group. Once you get to t4, there's enough good DPS that the drawbacks to HB just don't exist. I've also already stated I don't have a good alternative to the glass cannon meta: I don't feel like encounters that weren't balanced this way are fun. It's just a hard fact of PVE in this game that there's no way around.

1) You initially only have resources for 1 character at a time, otherwise you're doubling your climbing time. So it was between healing or not healing. I was comfortable with elementalist when I started, so that's what I did as healers were rarer. Again, I didn't have a ton of control over comp, nor was it worth the effort. This is kind of a prime example of newer players and veterans speaking completely different languages. Alot of times vets don't know how to work with players where they're at or even understand where they were coming from. I didn't even have a character slot for guardian when I started fracs. 2) It's more than 2k DPS if a heal tempest knows what it's doing. You can also slightly buff other members with additional strike damage using lightning overload. You have more freedom to do stuff like that if there's another support, if there's more pressure, then you basically stick mostly to fire and water attunement. 3) HB falls flat on its face with bad DPS, it's possible the HBs I ran with were bad, but the Aegis has cooldowns, there were times I focused on as close to being a power DPS tempest in harrier's gear and it was more than obvious an HB is reliant on high DPS to make things work. And as I stated before it's not uncommon to be playing with players doing whatever with their builds (and they may be taking more survivability on purpose because of trying metas and having it fall flat on its face for them while climbing in a lower population environment). My recommendation to anyone finding themselves in this position while climbing is plaguedoctor's HS with krait runes. The game also doesn't really do a good job teaching players how much damage to do, so I really wouldn't fault a noob with 2k DPS, I might privately whisper them with some suggestions, but I wouldn't have a hernia either.

Why do you think I'm running full sustain meme? or encouraging it? I initially picked heal tempest because whenever I ended up in a pure DPS comp (no dedicated healer), we would never succeed when I started in T1s. An extra healer is rarely an actual liability while climbing. And outside of T1 and T4, there's a lot of weird crap going on (people may not be running true DPS builds, but beleive they're DPS, or just be really bad). I have no regrets full carrying some of those groups ( and even occaisionally out dpsing the bad dps I was with). Getting through content doing what works is what makes sense for most players. You try getting full meta comps in ANY decent time in t2 and t3 using players who only play in those brackets. Normally in the off-hours I played, i was lucky if I even got a party together in any decent amount of time. But if you feel you have to attack players choices, please, by all means keep going, and talk down to them. If you think I was explicitly trying to party with HBs, I wasn't, it's just what happens when you take what's available while climbing. In T2s and T3s, you easily become a beggar and can't be a chooser given the low population in those brackets. I was very clearly stating I had switched to full glass cannon meta being the support and explaining why sustain isn't necessary. The ONLY thing I would do differently if I had to start ALL over is perhaps run a plague doctor's scourge, I think it'd be far more effective and hard carry even better. If you're asking why I don't like the hyper DPS meta, it's because it's deceptive. There are mechanics in the fights. In just about any other game, you can't out-dps them. Or at least not initially until ilvls come into play. In this game there's so much freedom in stat and trait selection, it gives the illusion that it's okay to pick something more durable and people easily fall into those playstyles to balance their builds against mechanics. There's nothing wrong with people wanting to play chill. In fact some other MMOs have much more chill rotations and there's less mechanics being thrown at you at once. Plenty of newcomers may be used to chiller and may prefer it. It becomes a gros wake-up call when you start getting lectured by others and they're literally dying and you think they're the bad player because you know what to dodge and can survive things they can't. XD. You don't even get what the other players are talking about until you try it (and your party actually does it well. There's LOTS of bad DPS out there XD. ). And I guess that's my other complaint with the hyper-DPS meta. There is a minimum skill for pulling it off and if players don't meet that bar, you're SOL. Other games, most of the time, it's people just have to play mechanics and it will be over. You don't have this issue of forever fights, because it's understood how many pure DPS to bring. Some games have very uncomplicated DPS rotation (or at least very reasonable skill floors) and the two of those things combined mean fights actually end (baseline # of DPS + reasonable rotations). So in just about any other game, it's expected to learn mechanics and play them, not just hose them down so fast you can't see straight XD. It also feels cheap. Like the mechanics written into the game don't mean anything when things die so fast you don't experience the mechanics.

For DPS, absolutely. For healers and tanks (or anything taking a significant amount of damage), take it with a grain of salt and do what works best. Sometimes groups need more survivability while learning and a lot of the builds focus more on damage as much as possible. But even doing that, you want to make sure you're not sacrificing any offensive boons for your group.

I hate the hyper DPS meta for PVE in this game. I don't have a good solution though, because as others have pointed out in other threads, anet doesn't do a good job of making encounters that aren't nightmares otherwise. I actually moved from MOBAs to an MMO so I could do PVE more, but find myself playing the PVP modes more and am wondering what I'm doing. I probably would have quit by now if I didn't have an IRL friend getting back into the game. And he's doing WvW with me XD.

I think OP and everyone else are talking about 2 different things. @OP: I broke down and moved my harrier's trinkets to a guardian and made a heal brand. What I learned playing PuG meta with it is that you can literally kill bosses in 1 breakbar burn phase now (and if not, something close to it). Everyone here is talking about hosing the bosses down as fast as possible as being "META." According to the community, that is "META." Anet is leaning harder into this meta with their enhanced exposed debuff. What you're posting about is probably "Fault tolerant" and is probably a comp you built with friends that seems to work well. YOu may even have to play mechanics more, but you're fine with that. I won't attack anyone for doing what works for them and playing professions they enjoy. While my experience has taught me that heal tempest is a stronger healer, but you don't need those heals if you can stab/aegis a group through a burn phase or 2 and suddenly the boss is dead because you gave more offensive boons. I used to wonder why HB was meta while pushing my tempest through the fractal tiers because I noticed that when there was a lot of pressure, it seemed grossly ineffective. Well it turns out I was the problem. HB isn't designed for throughput, it's designed to get people through just enough burn phases to ROFL stomp bosses while providing offensive support. By not providing that DPS, I was actually a tax on the group. XD. In fairness though, I was running arcdps and before getting to t4 alot of the "DPS" players in my groups were highly ineffective, so everyone probably needed me on that tempest to carry us through. But in T4, there was no reason for me to run tempest anymore, it was a liability in group formation. Your comp has alot of survivability, but it's more than what is needed if you have a good level of DPS.

You mean how they removed an ambush from mirages? And ambushing is part of their design philosophy? There's not really a ton of counterplay to stealth, that's one of the reasons it's so broken. In just about any other game, damaging a stealthed opponent reveals them, stealth is usually just a mechanic for getting a good opener. Here there's way too much of it to go around. In this game, you literally have to hamper your build to have any sort of "counterplay" by taking a usually useless utility skill. Heck, with the resistance nerf, the engi goggles are practically useless outside of reveal. It also doesn't help you catch up to them.

Eternal ice shards are way easier, especially if you don't mind strikes. The conversion on them to S4 currencies I'm certain was intended as a catch-up mechanic

Good to know!

delete me