Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Falconwing.8105

Members
  • Posts

    18
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Falconwing.8105's Achievements

  1. Hey CMC, Roy Roy Marks, and other related developers. Hope you guys have a good weekend and don't drown in feedback. So I have some thoughts about the guardian changes proposed here, although overall I like a lot of what I see. I like seeing Hammer getting adjustments to improve its overall playstyle, as it has been severely underused for years. I like seeing sword and greatsword buffs as it means more damage for the damage dealing builds, and it does even benefit condi willbender, especially when paired with the changes to willbender virtues. I certainly love seeing buffs to dragonhunter, although I still believe that the F3 even at a 50 second cooldown is still slightly too long for a virtue that is intended to be used more actively. My big question is about Offhand Sword. Offhand sword was introduced as the willbender specific weapon but has been regarded as very weak for use in PvE. I'll grant you that it has good performance in competitive environments, but I don't think that it's good for an elite spec weapon to be PvP only. With the buffs to focus coming in this patch it seems like power willbenders are being told that focus is just superior to offhand sword in every way except mobility, and willbender already has plenty of other tools for that. When can we expect offhand sword to be brought in line with the other stronger guardian offhand weapons? Regarding mantras, I originally thought we were back to the age old problem of never using the final charge on a mantra, but doing the math it seems like with 70% quickness duration on a condi quickbrand you get 17 seconds of quickness just from expending all three charges of potence. With a 20 second cooldown and a 2.25 second cast time (before alacrity) you need only 6 seconds from another source to have perfect quickness uptime. Assuming my math is sound that actually means that for potence the best thing to do is to spam every charge out. the same thing seemingly applies to flame mantra. mantra of solace, lore, and liberation however you would certainly want to be strategic on using their final charge, and using mantra of solace's final charge comes at a very heavy price for any quickness support build as it means getting an emergency aegis but hurts your quickness uptime if running liberator's vow (which, as far as I know, every quickness support is doing). But then, if you have alacrity and 70% quickness duration you should be able to use liberator's vow and one charge of potence to get 7.75 seconds of quickness every 7ish seconds so there's actually no need to use the final charge for potence at all in an ideal scenario. So... actually, yeah, at least for the two most commonly used mantras it seems like the design goal is being met. It does however mean that the final charge on solace is now an emergency button, which I guess is the intended purpose. So with all of that that said and assuming that I am understanding this correctly, I guess I'm scratching my head a bit at adding the page refresh to weighty terms. It's already the best trait for support builds in PVE and will continue to be used by firebrands solely for the sake of using mantras as often as possible for boon upkeep. A one page refund from using the final charge of a mantra feels kind of tacked on as a "sure, why not". Which I guess isn't a problem, and certainly I won't say no to a page refund, but it does make me feel like Stalwart Speed is going to be increasingly neglected in PvE. I suspect that trait will need to be visited down the line because its competing traits are just going to be that much stronger than it after this patch goes live. Anyways, that's my ramble about the guardian changes based on what we've seen at the moment. I think some of the mantra final charges could be adjusted a little more to make using them feel more enticing rather than just tacking on a page refresh. Also the swiftness on the final charge of mantra of liberation feels oddly short. I'm sure there will continue to be much discussion about Firebrand going forward anyways so we'll see where things end up in the Spring. Please buff offhand sword in PvE. The six willbender mains will thank you for it.
  2. This feels like a nothing change due to how Tyrant's Momentum works. This only benefits builds that take Phoenix Protocol or Deathless Courage, which currently don't really exist. (unless I am misreading this and it will also means Tyrant's is now also improved) Also whirling light still is shocking low damage. I was expecting it to be buffed a little as it seems to be designed to be a powerful dps skill for willbenders.
  3. I use dual swords and greatsword in wvw and open world pve. The places where dual swordbender suffers is mostly in places where condi is king, namely fractals and raids, or in wvw zergs where multihit and multitarget is very strong. In places where mobility and rapid chaining between targets is strong, dual swords start to shine. It's all about knowing your tools and where to apply them.
  4. It's a staple heal weapon in PvE and used in zerg builds in wvw. Seems fine to me.
  5. I've been running condi willbender as a DPS in fractals and raids recently and it's not really that bad. It does seem to struggle a bit on 100 CM (not entirely sure as to why) but it's very solid on the others. You can drop signet to bring an extra sanc, to bring SYG, to bring Advance, or even more CC like rolling light for Artsariiv. For raids it's solid on a number of fights. I especially like it on Xera, but it's shockingly effective on Dhuum. I imagine the power variant also works well on Q1 and doesn't run the risk of accidentally opening the lamp, though i have yet to test it. I don't like it on Conjured Amalgamate or Deimos though. It certainly has less utility but it isn't lacking in utility and the damage is still good even if overshadowed by virt and mech.
  6. Heh, I knew people would feel like this about the turtle before too long. Yeah I don't use mine hardly ever. It feelts pretty pointless most of the time.
  7. Yeah, if you buy an account at $15 (about 1200 gems) That's only 451 gold right now. The 20 mystic coins alone is 34 gold at current TP rates, which means the account pays for itself in 13 months just from mystic coins, and this isn't accounting for laurels and crafting mats and access to dailies and such. Buying an alt account pays of faster than a lot of stuff on the gem store like unbreakable gathering tools or the copper fed.
  8. I want to clarify that I don't play fractal CMs daily. I hardly play them at all. In practice, this change will add more mystic coin options for me than I was previously using, up to a potential 88 coins in a month from logins, strikes, and daily ley line anom. For people that don't play fractal CMs this does give them better coin generation. I think it's safe to say that this covers a majority of the player population. For the game's economy as a whole however we should look at this on a group scale. Right now the minimum number of coins you can get from fractal CMs is zero, right? The maximum you can get in a day is 24 from 8 bosses. We went and used the data sets that [fast] set up and came out to an estimated average of 2.4 coins per player per day, for a group total of 14 coins on average per day. That's 98 coins estimated to be earned by a group of 5 fractal CM players in a week. (to give an example, across 166 data sets for Skorvald [fast] reports getting 58 mystic coins, so we based our math on that.) Now let's compare that to Strikes. It's a hard cap of 10 coins per week per player, and there's 10 players in a strike squad, for a weekly total of 100. That means that a full strike group and a full fractal group are producing nearly the same amount of mystic coins per week on average, but fractals are entirely RNG dependent. I know that realistically not all of these players will sell directly onto the TP, but that kind of thing is very hard to math out. If none of these players sell directly to the trading post, nothing changes. If all of these players sell directly to the trading post, then it still stays relatively stable But let's talk about the individual since that's how I started this. Right now in a month I can get 20 mystic coins from daily log ins and 28 mystic coins from daily kills of the ley long anom. I don't do PvP tournaments and I cannot guarantee how often daily mystic forger comes along. I also can't really predict mystic coin drop rates from normal fractal runs, so let's just say I'm getting 48 mystic coins a month now compared to the 88 I'll be able to get starting in 16 days. Right now a fractal CM player can also earn those same 48 mystic coins in a month, plus an additional estimated average of 67.2 mystic coins from 224 CM boss kills each month, for an estimated total monthly coin income of 115.2 coins. So it's a big nerf to individuals, but not much change at all for groups and possibly the economy as a whole. I think this is definitely how Anet is approaching the decision. Also I have to stress that due to the sudden appearance of brand new legendaries mystic coin prices will skyrocket solely because people will be using coins for making the new legends. The mystic coin market will be in considerable flux for a while. tl;dr: so long as the same number of squads play strike missions each week as parties do fractal CMs each day, it's possible that the change to fractal CM drops won't have any large consequence on the mystic coin prices on the trading post. someone please tell me if my math is still wrong. EDIT: I have been informed that I did not consider the doubled cost of mystic coins to buy mystic clovers. That is definitely going to have a large impact on mystic coin supply. I do not think that this specific change should go through.
  9. My very first post on this forum back at launch (on my original account) was complaining about Ranger Sword. 9 years later I still don't like Ranger Sword. I've honestly stopped using it for most content because soulbeast dagger isn't that much lower damage and it's way more fun to use.
  10. Hmmm, you should probably have run Skirmishing then because that's a lot of crit damage you're losing out on, which is a lot of healing you lose. At least in situations where you want to guarantee 100% crit chance. I agree with all of your points overall, but you definitely weren't getting the optimal experience.
  11. Good morning, Ranger is by far my most played and most enjoyed profession in Guild Wars 2, and over the years it has gained many good options that enabled it to perform better and better when played with other people. Back in 2012 I remember getting kicked from a party in Twilight Arbor for playing a Longbow Ranger with a Brown Bear pet (not even memeing, this was actually my build). In 2015 we get the druid, which suddenly opened up a valuable party option as a team support. In 2017 we got the soulbeast, which allowed rangers multiple ways to approach PvE content as a damage dealer. Today we see the condition, the power, and the hybrid soulbeast all performing very well in party compositions, and despite years of fine tuning the Druid still clings to its tried and true Raid role, even if it sees less use in other content. Going into End of Dragons I knew that what Ranger still needed out of an elite specialization was something that resolved the last remaining issue that the class has, that being its poor performance in group fights in WvW (and to some extent in PvP). Throughout 2020 and 2021 I spent hours grinding out PvP matches to complete Transcendence and Ascension, and the one thing I noticed is that even Valkyrie Core Ranger could fold in prolonged fights or fights involving multiple opponents with large AOEs. And while Soulbeast has always been threatening on its own in WvW it ends up not contributing much to large group play in that cornerstone game mode of GW2. So clearly there was a recognizable niche of gameplay design that needed something to fill it. So with all of my expectations laid out, let's talk Untamed. First off, even though I knew that this was clearly designed around PvP content I still wanted to give it a run in a Raid environment. After sitting down with my squad and going through a quick run of all of the traits and skills that Untamed offers, it was clear that very few of them could match what Soulbeast or even Core Ranger offered as a damage dealer. The ideal scenario for a DPS Untamed would be to have your character Unleashed at all times for the 15% damage bonus (at the cost of 10% more incoming damage), but doing so means you're not really playing into the mechanics of the class. This did not feel like the full potential of the Untamed and overall worse than just playing Soulbeast. So I tried playing it as a tank with core ranger spirits. This... really isn't worth doing. I've seen some weird tanks on Vale Guardian, including a thief running Vigilant stats, but using a mixture of marauder and knight stats on an Untamed still didn't address that the spec doesn't have much damage mitigation. Sure, I had a lot of protection uptime and a high health pool and innate damage reduction, but only one block with a greatsword and two dodges. Not really worthwhile to run compared to the tried and true Firebrand or Chronomancer. Even when I have tanked as a druid I could still offer boons and healing to my party, whereas the Untamed offers none. I do not recommend this spec for Raids or Fractals. But I expected this to be the results given that it allows Soulbeast and Druid to still fill their roles in PvE while the Untamed reigns in PvP modes. However, this wasn't my experience either. When designing the Untamed the team confusingly shifted the pet controls so that the ability to recall my pet is no longer able to be bound to a key. So I can send my pet in, but I can't call them back without swapping or putting them on passive , which doesn't really solve the problem. Additionally (Mukluk's video on the Untamed shows this off if you need visual reference) it does not appear that pet CC abilities interact with Fervent Force. For a spec that is supposed to focus on the bond with your pet, it's weird that this trait only works when the player uses a CC skill. And I ran into the issue with using Hammer where when I wanted to do damage and Unleash myself, I didn't actually have my CC abilities because they are on the Leashed version of the hammer kit. So I needed to use my pet CC skills which, again, don't trigger Fervent Force. I'm of the opinion that this individual trait is not worth using. And I also found that I disagree with my own initial impressions of the Unleashed Version of the hammer from last Friday. Originally I didn't like that only the Hammer gets new skills while Unleashed and all other weapons get nothing, but now I don't think I like that the Hammer gets Unleashed either. It's a weird, clunky dance of needing to manage two states of pet skills, two states of your hammer skills, your pet's health and pet swap, and swapping to a second weapon set when needed. Essentially, Untamed feels like having to juggle two states of every mechanic that Ranger has access to, except for utilities. It's similar to why I don't enjoy Revenant gameplay all that much. Maybe I'm just a bad player, but this isn't enjoyable for me. I will say that I think the Utility Skills are fine, but it's very weird that none of them are a stun break. In PvP and WvW you NEED a stun break, and I'm used to running two when I play ranger. Also, Ranger has always had low access to Stability, and this spec only gives a new source of Stability with Enhancing Impact. Am I alone in thinking that Dolyak Stance would synergize very well with what the Untamed is trying to do? Because I found myself wishing I had access to Dolyak Stance quite a few times. And the Heal Cantrip is too volatile for my taste since its at its most effective when your pet isn't in the thick of combat. If you're both on low health you need to swap your pet and hope it doesn't get burst down before your heal actually activates, otherwise you get back a much smaller amount than you'll need. There's also no additional blocks provided to the Untamed, so it seems like you're expected to just tank the damage through damage reduction instead. That still is going to lead to quick deaths in WvW team fights. Soulbeast at least had the option of you merging with a black bear for stronger sustain in team fights. Lastly, I want to say that the particle effect that covers the Untamed looks really bad. The coloration and the vine effect combined is extremely ugly and unappealing. I'd rather we get something like what Herald has, where the untamed image appears under the feet of either us or our pet depending on which state of Unleashed I'm in. Or maybe an icon over our heads? I grew to tolerate the Soulbeast effects even if I still don't like that I can't disable them for myself (I mean, come on, I can look at my HUD and see if I'm merged or not. The particle effects do nothing for me) but I cannot stand the infusion level effect that completely covers my character to signal whether I am unleashed or my pet is. This is a terrible aesthetic. I see what the team is going for here, and I think it's on a workable track. However, based on my (admittedly limited) experience with the Untamed, it does not answer the question it was designed to solve. Not yet at least. The Pet UI is clunky, the Unleashed mechanic is clunky, and it still lacks critical tools that would allow it to truly shine on the front lines in the Eternal Battlegrounds. Right now, Soulbeast not only feels more fun to play in PvE, but it feels more fun to play than the Untamed in all areas of the game.
  12. Second Question: why can you not use mounts in Darkrime Delves? why is that the only spot on the map where mounts are forbidden?
  13. I'm curious about the lack of Boneskinner involvement in the story. The impression I got from the trailers and the PAX presentation was that the Boneskinner was a story boss and a part of the story's narrative. Was this just a misunderstanding on our part or can we expect more Boneskinner stuff later in the Saga?
  14. Overall I enjoy the concept of the meta but for its length it has an odd amount of downtime. The pacing of the defenses is just a bit too slow, and I'm starting to notice that the bombs are not actually a threat to the shrines. Would it be possible to either adjust the time of the first third of the meta to be a bit shorter or to increase the active defense time by adding more enemies? Maybe have a champion show up every now and then? Overall the vibe I get is that this meta is intended to be a frantic defense against the elements but I think it's tuned a little too low to match that feel. Just some thoughts, hopefully this was helpful.
  15. I have a suggestion for WvW fall damage. Why not create a new upgrade line like you did for gliding and the warclaw? Have it tier up to different amounts of fall damage resistance and have the final tier be a CC effect like what Warrior currently has. It seems to me that this would be an effective way of keeping the mechanic in WvW without adding it to traits or skills.
×
×
  • Create New...