Atomos.7593

I agree with everything here. This idea would be interesting, even just to see how guilds and strategies will adapt.

You mean Wells and Marks? Those are mostly Power damage. No. Firebrands are a good example of a class that has a lot of AoE condi damage skills such as in this build.People dont run that in WvW except maybe for Youtube laughtracks, its not something they commonly run. There are very few non-bunker viable condi builds in WvW because none of them can really compete with the insane damage of pure power builds stacked by zerging. Dire/trailblazer has been the only truly viable armor set for many years and it only works 1v1 and very small scale. Anything above 5 people is either power builds or minstrel supports, because the enemy run power builds and minstrel supports as well. Hell I've seen a literal 50/50 ratio on supports in 10 man groups, giving everyone a pocket firebrand or pocket scrapper. Unless you are really good at pulling out people (not that easy with perma-stab and all boons up) or they are really bad at it, condi barely even scratch those groups because it's cleansed as soon as it's applied.It may be commonly run or not commonly run. What I said here is that I find it extremely boring when the bunker condi builds are used to create a stalemate situation (as described in detail in my previous post in this thread) where both sides are unwilling to initiate the fight. I find this happens a lot between large blob fights involving guilds. Also as I stated in my previous post I have no problem at all with countering such builds. As a roamer, I have to often initiate such fights by myself because others seem to be unable or unwilling to do it themselves. Which is why I would find it interesting for WvW if such changes like the quote I made in my initial post were done. You mean Wells and Marks? Those are mostly Power damage. No. Firebrands are a good example of a class that has a lot of AoE condi damage skills such as in this build. You mean this: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Burn_GuardWhich is relying heavily on dropping Wall of Reflection in chokes to apply its damage, and can be most easily countered by pushing in melee (your own Firebrands drop their Resistance fields and the spinny sword, which is their hardest direct condi application, does nothing during the first critical parts of the engagement). A PvE-style Condibrand like the one you posted is dead meat in WvW: you're a fragile porcelain doll with no mobility that needs to be in melee range to apply your big burn stacks.Like I said in my previous post, I know it can be countered and actively do it myself. That's not what I was talking about in this thread, as I have clarified in my previous post here in case it wasn't clear enough. To make it even clearer that I have no difficulty countering such builds I'll describe a fight I had 1v1 with a firebrand guard yesterday on my scourge necro: While I was solo roaming and trying to capture a camp, the firebrand sneaked up behind and attacked me. It barely scratched me but since the player seemed to be keen on defending the camp I started fighting them. I pulled them away from the npcs to an open field fight where we had some fun. I even intentionally reduced my health to below 20% a couple of times with necro self-bleed and sacrifice skills in order to make the fight more interesting. As soon as I realized that the player was a firebrand using AoE condi skills (probably thinking that I wouldn't see these effects and would die in them), I started to actively dodge out of these areas. This worked so well that eventually I went back up to max health again. Unfortunately someone else came then and ended the 1v1 fight we were having by killing the player. The interesting results from the above show which profession is the hardest to kill with passive defense alone. This is the list:ElementalistThiefGuardianMesmerRanger | EngineerRevenantNecromancerWarrior It's quite obvious that Health/Vitality play a more important role than Armor/Toughness. Also Necromancer is the ONLY Profession that gets more from Toughness than Vitality (who knew right?) The problem with passive sustain comparisons is that they lack any practical context with which one could determine which stat is actually better for a build in practice. This is why: (Max Health/(DPS - X) = Time to Live X = the combined value of DPS mitigated via both active and passive defense including effects like healing and barrier. If X is = or > incoming DPS, then you can sustain indefinitely. It is impossible to quantify the impact of active defense or the variable rate of incoming damage in a way that could be applied to all scenarios. What is the value of dodging an attack without knowing how much damage the specific attack dealt, your current health total, and any number of other variables that apply to a real scenario? However, to continue along the lines of the simplistic comparison, consider the impact of healing. What happens if we assume that the number of "hits" the elementalist in the passive comparison can sustain is equal to the number of seconds they have to live? Toughness Elementalist: 3369 damage per hit, 11645 health, 3.46 hitsVitality Elementalist: 5084 damage per hit, 21255 health, 4.18 hits If, for example, I can heal for 3.4k/s then the toughness elementalist can sustain an infinite number of hits as each hit is mitigated by a slightly greater amount of healing. However, the vitality elementalist is still taking about 1.7k DPS that is not being mitigated by healing and will now survive for about 12.5 seconds. In our simplified example, healing-per-second = X. In a real scenario, the amount of healing required is less all damage mitigated via other means, active and passive. Without accounting for X, it is impossible to make any meaningful comparison between toughness and vitality.For what it's worth, I mostly prioritize healing power, vitality and toughness on my elementalist for a more defensive build. This combined with frequently using run speed buffs and debuffs on enemies, I find that I can survive in situations where normally it would seem unrealistic to be able to do so. It often takes 4+ players in WvW to kill me solo on my elementalist when I use this type of build.

You mean Wells and Marks? Those are mostly Power damage. No. Firebrands are a good example of a class that has a lot of AoE condi damage skills such as in this build.

This would make an interesting change to WvW at least, since the most popular builds in that mode seem to be only made to spam AoE condi in areas. I can't even count how many times I've seen massive blobs of guilds in WvW running around and stacking purely to spam AoE condis and heals, probably trying to never die and get easy kills from the players that fall for these condi traps. The mainstays for damage in WvW are still Hammer Rev and Power Scourge, still. Condi zerg comps do exist but they can have a hard time against enemy groups with a lot of cleansing from Scrappers, Spellbreakers, and Tempests in support roles. (Or you can play Burn Guard solo and try to catch people with lots of burning from reflects.) It's really not a condition meta overall, despite how much power condition builds enjoy in WvW thanks to gear with Expertise on it. Roaming, too, you'll see some bunkery condition builds (Torment Renegade/Herald, Fear Core Necro, sometimes a Mirage, Thief, or Druid as well) but they haven't edged out normal Power burst builds for Holo, Soulbeast, Daredevil/Deadeye, Spellbreaker, Sword-Sword Herald, or Reaper.I think that condi builds (even the AoE focused ones) that are not purely bunker based are fine. I have no problems countering them on my elementalist, necromancer or warrior, or just simply avoiding the AoE condi traps. Here I'm referring exclusively to the AoE condi skills that can be easily spammed in large groups in tight areas, sometimes resulting in a virtual stalemate between both sides where each side is too afraid to run in and initiate a fight because there are too many AoE condi effects blocking the only path. Some classic examples of areas in WvW where this frequently occurs are in the ogre camp and dredge tunnel entrances/exits. Perhaps these kinds of situations were not intended by the devs with how the skills currently work, but this is the end result anyway. IMO these resultant stalemate situations are extremely boring and require little skill.

This would be an interesting change for the AoE condi spam that currently occurs a lot in fights between zergs. Why anybody thought having many AoE condi damage sources would make for fun gameplay is beyond me. All I see from many gigantic guild blobs to deal damage is launches/knockback + AoE condi spam.

In general terms, increasing vitality seems to be much more useful than toughness for defence. However, sometimes the best choices for defence can depend on the class you are playing. For example, for a class that is able to heal a lot, such as the elementalist, I find that increasing healing power and vitality are the best options for increasing defence and survivability.

This would make an interesting change to WvW at least, since the most popular builds in that mode seem to be only made to spam AoE condi in areas. I can't even count how many times I've seen massive blobs of guilds in WvW running around and stacking purely to spam AoE condis and heals, probably trying to never die and get easy kills from the players that fall for these condi traps.

You can get a lot of gold by doing meta events in maps (such as Dragonfall), selling crafting materials like the mystic coins you sometimes get from daily log-in rewards, and completing reward tracks in WvW.

The designs suggested in the pictures in the OP of this thread seem to be the closest I have seen to anime style cosmetics.

This is what I was thinking. =)

Like others have said already in this thread, I'm guessing it might be because there's nothing particularly notable planned for Q4. Last quarter the underwater skimmer mastery and new fractal were probably exciting news for a lot of players, besides the usual living world episode releases. I hope I'm wrong though, and that there is something exciting planned which hasn't been announced yet.

Hell, you don't even need to pay real money for it. Gotta love the gold to gems for us broke people not if you're like and have after 4 years playing only 4 gold Then raid your material storage and sell materials mate. This is what I did since I am not interested in crafting or legendaries. I found that I got around 300 gold from just selling all of my mystic coins alone, which I received free from the daily log-in rewards, on the trading post. So much gold :O thanks for the tip :O didn't got as much but still 120 goldGlad that it helped. If you don't need to use them anytime soon, you'll keep getting a lot more from simply logging in daily so it'll build up over time for you too anyway.

No way I'd ever pay 1600 gems for this. Even the default mount skin looks better imo.

For the HoT expansion story, as far as I am able to remember, the only masteries that I needed to finish it were the basic gliding ones, bouncing mushrooms and speed boost mushrooms (for the last couple of boss fights). The rest can make all of HoT (and a couple of maps later in the game) a lot easier to play though.

Hell, you don't even need to pay real money for it. Gotta love the gold to gems for us broke people not if you're like and have after 4 years playing only 4 gold Then raid your material storage and sell materials mate.This is what I did since I am not interested in crafting or legendaries. I found that I got around 300 gold from just selling all of my mystic coins alone, which I received free from the daily log-in rewards, on the trading post.

Probably. But it's unlikely that ANet have the funds to make a new game. This is why I don't think GW3 will happen anytime soon. I don't think Anet currently has the resources or the desire to make a new GW3 MMORPG, which is why they have announced another expansion. I don't mind this at all and will be happy if there are only more expansions for GW2 still.

Something strange I noticed: I completed each of the non-living world stories on different characters. My elementalist did the core game story, revenant did the HoT expansion story and warrior completed the PoF expansion story. It looks like I will probably use a different character also to complete the upcoming End of Dragons expansion story too. I guess I just like playing lots of alts to keep things interesting for me. =)

Me too. =)

I don't have any problems with it. I like seeing community creations in games. I think it helps create community interest, reduces the need for devs to come up with new content of that type all the time, and it's nice to see the most popular ones being added to the game.

Same. The "talking heads" in the cut scene made the dialogue feel more personal and engaging to me than what we currently have. To me what we have now makes it more boring and I often just do something else while the npcs are chatting amongst themselves, by alt-tabbing out of the game. IMO ESO has a better dialogue system with NPCs than both of these ways though.

I agree, but this is why it probably won't happen. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/3981/eater-of-souls-fight-is-too-difficult Sadly that will probably be true, considering that there were also recent threads complaining it is still too difficult. I did enjoy the fight with Garm and Eir, until I realized to kill them you just have to do the same thing over and over several times. I guess I'll just have to get used to more bosses in the future that will only be health sponges and have repetitive invulnerable stages.

I'd also like the bosses in solo story instances to be less of simple health sponges. I found the bosses at the end of the HoT and PoF expansion stories to have multiple, extremely repetitive invulnerable stages along with lots of health. They were not difficult and I was able to kill them on my first try. This kind of mechanic for the bosses only made it long and boring for me. Seems as if it was done only to make the story feel longer, without having to use other more thoughtful and engaging ways to do this. I would have preferred for there to be more interesting mechanics in these fights, in order to make them actually somewhat difficult.

No. I don't have a "main" character either. I play the characters and classes that I enjoy (which tends to be a lot of them), and the characters that haven't already finished the content that I want to reexperience.

Some basic updated information on anything besides fractals and festivals would be appreciated by the players who aren't interested that much in these. Compared to other MMOs the communication currently is very little, and from an external point of view this makes it seem like the game's development is slowing down (even if it may not be actually true). It definitely won't get me to spend any money on gems since I have nothing to look forward to.

I agree on this. By the end of the Icebrood Saga I'm guessing we will have explored a lot of the main area of Tyria that is currently on the map. Somewhere new to explore with different landscapes and themes would be nice. This is one aspect I liked about the Dragonfall map which to me feels a bit different to the regular rest of Tyria that is currently available.