[Aquatic Elite Specs?]

I'd rather they actually bother to make already existing skills actually function underwater. There's still tons that are left being unusable, which can make entire builds non-functional for no reason.

For example, Chrono's wells are unusable underwater. Renegade is unusable underwater. Elementalist Conjured Weapons are unusable underwater. etc.

Which is just odd, because other wells work fine underwater, there's no limitation about elements underwater (Elementalist's Trident can use all 4 elements just fine), even the notion of "Land style attacks" is done in the form of Reaper's Shroud and the Holoforge giving their respective classes their regular transform skills no problem (Which suggests that underwater weapons aren't strictly necessary...)

Beyond that... An interesting concept for "Underwater Elite Specs" could be in the form of equippable "Kits" that replace an Underwater weapon in your equipment that give new underwater skills/weapons but for your specific class. Essentially like implementing new weapons, but in a controlled way that's done only via Specialization Collections (Then purchased from a vendor for additional copies to use different stats)

Which wouldn't be out of place, given how limited Rebreathers are (With them basically being just the free ones you get from leveling/PS and then level 80 crafted or purchased in Bitterfrost Frontier with a rare chance to loot one from the Sunken Chests)

[need help with skyscale saddle! got Question]

@"Sealamin.6549" said:Have spent nearly a week doing the Skyscale achievments, spent gold and have done the events only to find at the end stupid jumping puzzles needed for last achievment not one but many. I cannot do jumping puzzles for the life of me, have tried and tried. Not everyone can do jumping puzzles at least one's like Metrica province and the likes. I play Gw2 for WvW and my style of PVE I have never done Jumping puzzles because I don't like them and it is not my play style, looks like I will not being getting a Skyscale after all. Thanks for nothing.

You can skip the JP's by crafting the treats

[Devs should add an over arching story for their maps.]

For Central Tyria maps...

A lot of the lore and reasoning is hidden in the random dialogue you'll hear surrounding events, from NPC's standing around in towns/camps and from heart vendors themselves.

Some things are more overt, such as the primary wars each faction is engaged in (Kryra vs Centaurs, Hoelbrak vs Sons of Svanir, Black Citadel vs ghosts of Ascalon, Rata Sum vs Inquest, The Grove vs Risen) as well as some secondary battles involving Bandits, Dredge, Flame Legion, Separatists, Nightmare Court, Destroyers...

While some of the nuanced stuff is more hidden away behind conversations and readable items and certain events.

Once you get to level 60 though, the story of the maps you enter is given to you directly as part of the personal story chapters, with them ultimately having multi-episode long arcs tying several maps together (For example, the three Orr maps, followed by the LW2 maps, then HoT maps, then LW3 maps etc)

[The Warclaw Needs Some Love ( in PVE ) - [Merged]]

@kharmin.7683 said:But, he kinda did...

@Obtena.7952 said:It does matter ... it's the claim of the OP. His whole point is that we need to give it love. That doesn't make sense ... it doesn't.

Now, if he had an ACTUAL reason to change Warclaw, I'm all ears. But 'need' isn't it ... as you EXACTLY point out to prove my point; changes aren't made because 'need' most of the time ... and this time isn't any different.

Not really.

That particular quote is them ragging on the terminology in the title of "Need". In one of those "I'm going to take everything literally, because I've never heard of hyperbole or sensationalism as a way to get attention"

@kharmin.7683 said:And again

@Obtena.7952 said:It's not going all technical ... you don't think there needs to be a good reason for Anet to change something in the game other than 'it needs love'? That's an interesting but unrealistic belief. It's too much to even ask people for non-trivial reasons for changes? Seems like you think so.I mean ... obviously you think it would be a good idea to make more Warclaw more useful in PVE ... do you care to explain why?

That quote is literally them bringing up that there "Needs to be a good reason for Anet to change something"

Which is literally what I'm pointing out. A lot of their arguments are "Justify ANet working of this feature" rather than "I think that this idea is not good because of..."

Of course, there's the last line which is asking someone to explain why it's a good idea, but it does come off a bit odd given that they never really explain their thoughts on why it's a bad idea either.

@kharmin.7683 said:Here too

@Obtena.7952 said:Right ... and it's poorly thought out suggestion because there hasn't been provided a reason to do it.@Obtena.7952 said:It's the proponents of the suggestion that need to show it's a great idea to implement it. You got this backwards in a BIG way.@Obtena.7952 said:No let's be clear .. there are benefits; I'm not asking for thiose. I'm asking people to justify the idea to do it.

@Obtena.7952 said:I don't need to explain that; I'm not making a suggestion for change here. The burden to justify the suggestion is on the people making it. As far as I'm concerned, I'm satisfied at this point that we don't have a sound suggestion for improving Warclaw in PVE, especially based on the original premise of the OP that Warclaw is useless in WvW or any continued speculation of skin revenues.@Obtena.7952 said:... I don't even SEE what the OP thinks should be done to make Warclaw more useful in PVE since everything he suggests we already have in other mounts.

This is back again to awkward forum policing and asking people to justify ANet working on the feature.

Since, reason has been given. Literally in the original post. They would like this change, as a result of Warclaw being not so great in WvW or PvE.

They still have yet to provide reasons why it's a bad idea.

So far their entire contribution to this thread has been:

"We don't NEED it to be better in PvE""Justify ANet working on this feature"

Which is not an argument.

Yes, we don't NEED Warclaw to be better in PvE, but that's irrelevant. Someone WANTS it to be, hence they made this thread and there have been positive posts in relation to if it was improved in PvE.

No-one needs to justify to ANet why to work on this thing, as that's for ANet to decide.

Now, we do have other people who disagree with the suggestion and actually give reasons. Namely things like "Some people would get upset if they feel "Forced" to do WvW in order to obtain a PvE effective Warclaw"

Well, actually, that's the singular argument put forth in regards to not implementing it.

Everything else has been "We don't NEED it" in various forms (I.e. "It is designed for WvW")

[The Warclaw Needs Some Love ( in PVE ) - [Merged]]

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@serialkicker.5274 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@serialkicker.5274 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Ben K.6238 said:No, it really isn't.

As a developer (different game, obviously), I'm not going to need to read through someone's defense of a suggestion on a forum to decide whether it's a good idea or not. Either I already know, or I'm going to refer to colleagues who are in a much better position to make a call on it.

What responses can be helpful for is getting a general idea of how popular the suggestion is, but once I reach page 2 and see the same two people going back and forth over semantics, I tune out and skip to the end.

If that's true, it's even more important to not be vague in the opening post. In the end, the best we can do should be done if we are serious about our ideas being considered.

There is nothing vague about OP. It's perfectly clear. We got warclaw in PvE, but it's underperforming in comparison to other mounts. People are asking Arenanet to do something about that. That's all it takes.

Whats so hard to understand about that the Warclaw is -not- meant to be a pve oriented mount? If you start giving it something useful in pve that is competitive with the other mounts, you can be kitten sure about the QQstorm that would be unleashed if you had go into wvw to earn it, because it would feel forced to have it for specific situations.

Anet made a mistake when they allowed it in pve to let people prance around with their new warclaw skin.

What's so hard to understand that the mount is already in pve and people ask that it gets improved, so it's not pointlessly rotting there?

Because its made for WvW only. Theres no but here. They simply allowed it so people could show it off with the new skins. It has absolutely zero use in pve and should stay so. If you give it an use, then people will qq about having to do WvW for it.

The thing is, if it was made for WvW only... Then they wouldn't have the increased speed on it in PvE, which implies they considered it being used in PvE beyond just sitting in Lions Arch showing off Warclaw skins. Nor would they utilize a competitive split for its energy and health.

If it was literally just a copy of the WvW Warclaw with its lower speed, it'd be more indicative that they didn't really care for its use. But the fact they gave an (Almost) reasonable speed as well as use competitive splits to preserve its function in PvE shows some level of consideration.

@Obtena.7952 said:Not at all. Do we honestly think that it's unreasonable to talk about why people want Anet to make this change? I don't. Somehow we aren't allowed now to question the ideas people have for how to change the game?

You're perfectly capable of questioning peoples ideas.

Just... Actually question their ideas.

Don't start waffling on about their need to justify ANet working on it. Ask them instead to justify why they want said change in the game.

Which is two completely different things. The former implies knowledge of ANet's workload and popularity of game modes with exact figures. The latter just requires someone to give information about why they thing a change would be good.

@Obtena.7952 said:The 'suggestion' is that Anet should do 'something' to improve warclaw in PVE because it's 'useless' in WvW. There are many reasons to question this, starting with why THIS is the change Anet should make because of the perceived 'useless' function in WvW.

It rather simple and quite logical where such a suggestion comes from to be honest.

Warclaw in WvW has been nerfed. A lot.

It is now in a state where it is not overly useful and basically nothing it does is very relevant over not using the mount at all.

Asking for the Warclaw to be buffed in WvW, would be asking ANet to go literally counter to their plans for the last year in which they have been systematically nerfing the Warclaw in WvW, reducing its damage, target caps, health and endurance.

It seems highly improbable that ANet would consider making the Warclaw stronger in WvW if they've been spending the last year literally making it weaker. (Due to how oppressive it can be in the game mode if it is effective, not to mention the rift it creates for newbies to the mode that won't have earned the mount yet)

Meanwhile, PvE has no shortage of useful mounts. As such, having the Warclaw add to the significant roster of useful mounts in PvE would not be counter to what ANet has been doing. In fact, given that they're updating the Skimmer to function as an underwater mount, one could say that it actually aligns with what ANet is doing which is improving existing PvE mounts to give additional use options.

So yeah... With asking for improvements to WvW Warclaw, you're arguing against ANet themselves whom have deemed it necessary to tune down the WvW Warclaw.

With asking for improvements to PvE Warlcaw, you're arguing against the theoretical mob of players who'd be upset because they believe that the Warclaw is somehow now vitally important to obtain and thus feel "Forced" to do WvW to get it.

That is, if you skim over the possibility of ANet being able to add in ways to work on obtaining the Warclaw in PvE and thus absolve the concerns of those players before they even exist. Which is entirely plausible given that having something like a Reward Track in PvE to obtain the Warclaw to mirror WvW's Reward Track systems wouldn't be unheard of (To say nothing about the recent PvE maps that have included WvW features such as the map objectives to take which are a basis of the Warclaw collection anyway)

Really, the only blockade to bypass with improving Warclaw in PvE, is whether ANet feel that it's worthwhile to do. But that's for them to figure out, not us.

[When are the rest of elite spec trade offs?]

@Moradorin.6217 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Moradorin.6217 said:

@Kodama.6453 said:

@Moradorin.6217 said:

Sure, but by this exact logic that means that, for instance, Mirage had a trade off with Mirage cloak before the 1 dodge death-nail.(from another post)MC used to be 1s originally. It started out as 1 second because Mirage loses its ability to move away from danger when it dodges due to MC mechanic. In other words, MC has a build in trade off in which using MC as a replacement for dodge reduces mobility in the sense that normal dodge has a distance component (the roll distance) which in addition to providing 3/4 evade normal dodge also has the advantage of providing mobility (movement) away from combat range, AE ground rings, etc. However, MC is stuck in one place. It used to get super speed too to compensate for its lack of directional movement. People felt the longer evade frame was unfair so it was lowered to 3/4 (same as dodge) yet MC still lacks the movement component and also no longer gives super speed.

Now they removed 1 entire dodge from Mirage's energy pool.

Therefore, by the exact logic that you state gives FB a "trade-off" Mirage always has had the same type of trade off. That is Mirage gives up directional movement in its "dodge" being changed to a Mirage Cloak. Basically, Mirage loses being able to move out of danger as part of the combination of things that happen when it hits dodge key and gains the ability to ambush attack during its dodge, but loses the benefit of dodge roll being able to automatically move them away when they hit the dodge key.

Sounds like the exact same thing.That is: lose the ability to dodge roll like core, but gain the ability to ambush attack.

Only problem is we all know the "trade-off" for Mirage apparently didnt count cause they did the 1 dodge thing so in the end, although, I like your theory about "trade-offs", its either wrong or not being adopted correctly by he balance team. Either way its not working.

The reduced endurance is not the trade off for mirage in Anet's sense.And this is pretty obvious if you look into it, the one dodge bar is just for PvP, but PvE is unaffected.Trade offs are supposed to be there in every game mode, not just one.

You are right here, in Anet's sense mirage already had a trade off, since they were trading their "core dodge roll" for the mirage cloak.They didn't take 1 dodge bar away because mirage lacked a trade off, they took it away for balance reasons.

It is basically the same situation like scrapper. Scrapper's trade off is that they are trading their elite spec toolbelt skill for the function gyro. They didn't give scrapper the vitality penalty because they lacked a trade off, they gave the vitality penalty for balancing reasons since the newly added mechanic to convert all power damage into barrier makes scrapper really tanky as long as they keep attacking. The vitality penalty was supposed to counterweight that a bit by making scrapper a little bit more vulnerable to burst, if you can put their barrier generation on stop (like with cc, for example).

Mirage is the same thing. They thought that the offensive and defensive capabilities of mirage cloak was too much, hence why they took away a dodge bar to let mirage feel less "untouchable".And it also counterweights mirage's mechanics. If built for it, then a mirage can chain

more

dodges than core or other classes (maybe with the exception of daredevil), since they have the mirror mechanic, which also grants them additional mirage cloaks on top of their own dodge bar.

Mirage doesnt get more dodge than other classes even in pve. It gets the same amount of endurance regen and 2 dodges that last the same duration, but they lose normal dodge in exchange for mirage cloak. (at one point mirage got vigor which gave it more dodges, this has not been the case for quite a while)

What I was talking about about MC and tradeoffs relates to plans that CmC and the balance team have to make further changes to Mirage. You can see what Im talking about in another thread.

Here

Did you actually read what I wrote til the end?

Mirage

can

potentially get more dodges than other classes. Mirage has deception utility skills, look what these skills are doing.False oasis, crystal sands and sand through glass leave behind a

mirage mirror

. Picking these up will grant you the mirage cloak, which is essentially your dodge mechanic.Sand through glass also additionally evades on cast on top of mentioned mirage mirror.Then there is illusionary ambush, which will grant you mirage cloak directly without the need to use the mirage mirror mechanic.

Mesmer might have lost vigor on dodge, but they still have other sources for that boon.Like from the minor traits from dueling and mirage itself, one gives vigor when you score a critical hit, the other gives vigor for shattering.False oasis also provides vigor.

Mirage definitely can chain more dodges than most other classes, especially in PvE. As I mentioned, daredevil might be an exception as another elite spec that is heavily focused on evading and dodging.Just by picking the deception skills, you get

Mirage had a trade off from the start by replacing the dodge with a new mechanic, that doesn't change even if mirage is getting more changes. It is actually not surprising, mirage's design was bound to cause trouble, I think many people were expecting that much. If they have to do more changes to mirage, then because of balancing reasons, but in general mirage already had a trade off installed. It just turned out that this trade off wasn't strong enough and mirage keeps to be a problem child.

Utility skill w MC n it is not gaining Mirage cloack on Dodge != At all. WHy? Because in order for MC to cause ambush dmage or anything other than an evade frame you ALSO have to have the ability to acually ambush attack which takes endurange and ONLY happens when you hit the dodge key it does NOT happen from utility skills that give MC. Having MC cloak just means u get an evade frame, and IF the MC was from hitting the dodge key you also get ambush attack. So no thats not more dodges. Only evade frames attached to utility skills that do little else beyond providing an evade frame. Thief also gets a utility bar full of evades potencially as does ranger and many others. So what. That isnt more dodges. Dodge is when you hit the dodge key, NOTHING ELSE.

Ambushes are available whenever you gain Mirage Cloak. It is not tied to specifically dodging but the mechanic of gaining Mirage Cloak and the evade frames it provides.

The only reason why dodging provides the ability to use ambush skills is because the dodge roll ability is replaced by gaining Mirage Cloak.

Though, splitting hairs on "Dodging" vs "Evade frames" seems like a terrible basis of arguments (For both of you...)

Dodging is specifically using the dodge button and endurance. Its availability is only affected by Endurance gain (Vigor and certain traits can increase its regeneration rate, Weakness reduces its regeneration rate, some skills such as Ranger GS Auto Attack final hit or Deadeye's Sword stealth attack can also generate flat endurance while Sigils of Energy and Runes of Adventure generate percentage endurance)

Evade frames is on a variety of skills, notably being most common for Mesmer, Thief and Ranger whom have evades built into their Sword skills as well as utilities that provide evasion frames (Such as Lightning Reflexes, Withdraw, Roll for Initiative, Sand Through Glass, Illusionary Ambush). With Mirage getting some additional potential evasion frames from utilizing their Mirrors (Though, they're clunky and awkward to utilize especially given how you use the actual skills that generate them. Even more so in PvP/WvW where enemy players can destroy them by walking through them)

[Potent Superior Sharpening Stone]

My guess is it's the output tanking the price.

For the materials of 2 Superior's, you create 5 Potents.

Means that the market is easily flooded with Potents.

Even with the current pricing of 9s for Superior and 12s for Potents it's still a net gain of 42s per Potent craft.

[Obtaining gold isn't fun, and this is a problem.]

Here's me, amassing gold as a byproduct of just doing my things...

Basically everything in the game throws loot at you and you can salvage/sell it and earn a decent amount of gold.

But honestly... There's not a whole lot to spend gold on in the first place. You can buy some shiny skins off the TP and... Uhh...?

From what I can tell, the most popular use of gold is buying stuff to chuck into the mystic toilet in order to obtain precursors to then sell for more gold to buy stuff to chuck into the mystic toilet...

[need help with skyscale saddle! got Question]

Doing hearts in each map with multiple characters nets you 5 per heart, per character (So with 3-4 hearts per map that's 15-20 per character) this can be done once per day per character. (You can use the Portal Scrolls bought from the Volatile Magic vendors in order to port to the maps for characters whom haven't unlocked them yet)

Doing map completion rewards 25 per character (Except in Sandswept Isles where you only get 5 Diflourite Crystals)

You can buy 5 of each currency sans Mistborne Motes, every day, from the vendor in Dragonfall using Volatile Magic.

Trade Contracts can be farmed by doing PoF HP's, the ones where you have to fight a veteran, once per day per character.

Kralkatite Ore, Inscribed Shards, Branded Mass and Lumps of Mistonium can also be obtained through their maps unique chests (Sunspear Cache, Kournan Supply Cache, Dwarven Chest and Mist Touched Cache respectively) once per day per account.

Kralkatite Ore can also be obtained from harvesting from Brandstone meteors.

You can also farm Bjora's Marches for Eternal Ice Shards and exchange them for these currencies.

[Class struggle to bring new players into the game(PvE)]

@Lily.1935 said:Everything is viable in open world. A healer thief is viable. That's not an argument as the players want to be able to transition into harder content with the style of play they have come to love. And to tell them they have to play something completely alien to what they wanted to do they're more likely to just quit.

Except... Player participation numbers disagrees that players want to transition into harder content.

@Lily.1935 said:You guys are so ridged and resistant to positive change for the health of the game it makes this impossible to discuss real issues with its design.

It's not that I'm resistant to positive change, it's just the argument that is being made for the "Real design issue" is fundamentally flawed.

It's based on the premise that players are joining the game with preconceived notions of what the classes can do based on nothing but their name AND wanting to get into hardcore endgame min/max raiding AND then being surprised than in min/max endgame content you can't just roll up in whatever jank build you slapped together for funsies.

I just don't think that there is a large enough volume of people whom fit that specific criteria so as to require essentially a complete overhaul of the entire combat system and many skills.

For reasons like "It's called Guardian so should be Tank!" despite GW2 being an MMO that is reknown for its lack of trinity design (Meaning, there aren't tanks in most of the game)

[What is your favorite map in Guild Wars 2 so far and why?]

Wayfarer Foothills.

It's a nice map. There's some greenery, snow and ice. With a nice mix of everything from Shiverpeaks - Minotaurs, Dredge, Jotun, Sons of Svanir.

It is also quite nice to look at. All of the vistas are places where you can just get a good view anyway.

The map is so good, I 100% it on all of my key farmers for the chance for another key as a reward.

Honestly, my only qualm about it is how awful the Help Lodge Keeper Kevach heart is. With the keg tossing and water splashing being buggy af and the wurms and kegs from the cave being worth like 0.00001% completion. (Also, defeating the Veteran Wurm event doesn't even give any progress to the heart)

From the HoT/LW3 maps I'd say Bitterfrost Frontier.

It's a nice zone. Icy and cold, like my heart.

It's also quite lucrative, with all the chests and the boss rush meta event.

My qualms with it are the utter uselessness of the Svanir Hive, Wayward Cave and The Bitter Cold areas are and the Hot Springs event. Like, outside of the literal 1 story quest segment that takes you to the three areas they're literally pointless (Svanir Hive is useful up until you've no reason to visit the heart vendor) and the Hot Springs event is fairly chaotic for little reward (Not even particularly good heart progress either)

From PoF/LW4 maps, Desert Highlands.

It has a nice mix of biomes. You've got the initial deserty area. To the east you've got brand crystals (With NO brandstorms!). To the north you have mountains. To the north west you've got snowy mountains and to the south west you've got the beach and waterfall.

There's a number of interesting things in the zone too. Such as the random village of Choya that is a heart, for some reason. The exploring of the ruins over in Fortune's Vale. The strange building in the Enchanted Bluffs. The Tomb of the Primeval Kings...

My main qualm with the zone is it's laggy as all heck... Makes it really not fun to do anything there. (Also the Jeppa escort is buggy too, where after the 3rd stop she'll teleport halfway across the map for a few seconds. Which has actually caused her to die one of the times I was doing the event... Meaning I had to rush across half the map to the middle of the event in the Awakened camp in the Salt Flats and revive her within the 1 minute timer AND then she teleported back to where she was supposed to be and so had to run all the way back there before she got killed again...)

[The Warclaw Needs Some Love ( in PVE ) - [Merged]]

@"Obtena.7952" said:So if a suggestion comes here and it can't even pass muster from the quagmire of player responses then there is ALREADY a problem with it because somewhere in there ... there are sound discussion points and concerns. If those are just dismissed with "oh hey you're not Anet so whatever" ... well, GL with compelling Anet.

If by "Quagmire of player responses" you're directly referring to your individual responses in this thread...

Then I don't think there's much to fear about them being "Dismissed"

If people (Plural) were actually raising sound discussion points (As in, actually referring to the suggestion and not just asking OP to justify their suggestion within ANet's workframe) then sure, having them "Dismissed" would be a concern.

But so far, this has not been the case. There have been a few valid points raised about how it's not a necessary change, how the mount is intended to be for WvW primarily etc.

However, a significant portion of this thread has been simply whining about trying to justify something that only ANet has the capacity to do.

@"Obtena.7952" said:I mean, the fact is that there isn't even a solid recommendation on what the change would be .. it's just "Hey do anything with it in PVE" ... that's even a questionable as a suggestion to begin with.

Then, maybe you should read some responses in the thread then?

Several people have provided feedback about what could be changed.

@"Obtena.7952" said:It's actually really easy to dismiss that, especially if you think it's a bad change for the game because the vagueness renders it completely open to all criticism.

What?

How is it a "Bad change for the game" when it's vague?

You're literally talking about how the vagueness doesn't even present a clear impact but also trying to sell this vagueness as "Bad for the game"?

@"Obtena.7952" said:Bottomline is that it's a poorly presented and content-lacking suggestion that has no merit to begin with that is likely more about complaining that Warclaw is useless in WvW because of all the nerfs to it.

It's better presented and containing more content than a majority of the posts in this thread that are against it which are simply just avoiding all discussion potential and just arguing "Justify the change(s)!"

These posts don't even contain things like "What could be bad for the game if Warclaw was improved (vaguely) in PvE" and are hinging on their only form of value being "If ANet cannot manage their time and workload to any standard and therefore we don't get other subjectively higher priority things worked on" which is a completely asinine arguement unless it is made by someone who literally works at ANet.

[Discussion: What makes an Elite Specialization good?]

@rdigeri.7935 said:What is it you respect about Elite Spec design, disregarding personal bias? When do you call it good, even if it happens not to be your taste?

It depends on what you mean by "Good". There are many E-Specs that are "Good" in the sense that what they provide is balanced relative to the rest of the game, but I'd not call them "Good" designs.

Meanwhile there's also the opposite, E-Specs that I'd consider "Good" design, but what they provide to the game overall can be lacking.

@rdigeri.7935 said:-Is it giving access to things the class lacked?

This can be a positive factor for an E-Spec. Especially when it creates the potential to play a new role within a class, such as how Druid enabled a Support build for Ranger

@rdigeri.7935 said:-Should elite specializations move away from the core, or make you re-explore it by providing a new lense?

I think good design for an E-Spec should move away from core. So that it doesn't feel like "Core 2.0" and feels more unique.

@rdigeri.7935 said:-How big an impact should they be on your build compared to core traitlines?-Can it even be generalized, or the case is always different? Is there any objectivity to this at all?

I'd argue that they should have a similar effect on your build to core traitlines. But have a larger impact on your gameplay.

Like, I think the design in which they completely reimagine a classes core mechanic are the best designed E-Specs. Since the focus is providing you a new way to play the class so that it feels like a new class but with some familiarity.

I'm really not a fan of the design where they simply powercreep a class up to a new standard by tacking extra things on top and occasionally nerfing them back down by jamming some negatives onto them.

@rdigeri.7935 said:What are some good or bad examples of this in your experience, and why?

I think that E-Specs such as Scourge, Berserker, Deadeye and Chronomancer are some decent examples of core mechanics being replaced.

• Scourge ditches Shroud's Transformation mechanic in favour of F skills.
• Berserker gets a new mechanic for how they access their Burst skills with charging up to enter Berserk mode.
• Deadeye goes away from the standard steal mechanic and gets the mark skill and the associated Malice mechanic.
• Chronomancer has unique shatter skills that have some differences compared to the core ones.

However, they're not perfect designs and they do some things poorly.

• Scourge's lack of Shroud Transformation means it doesn't synergize as well with all of the traits that are constantly being shoved onto Necromancer that empower them while in Shroud (Even more so with the hilarious anti-synergy that Harbinger Shroud provides). Which one could argue is more indicative of the way Necromancer is being designed is not very well thought out.
• Berserker has their class mechanic tied to their Rage skills to maintain, making them dependent on their utilities AND they get a stat penalty on top for no reason.
• Deadeye's mark still plays very similarly to steal just with a specific stolen skill. Almost as if you were using the regular steal and getting the Blinding Tuft every time.
• Chronomancer shatters aren't all that unique and still function in a similar fashion of F1 = Power damage, F2 = Confusion stacks, F3 = Daze.

These designs means that while they are going a good direction in terms of creating unique playstyles, they are not fully utilized and sometimes still provide the exact same gameplay as core but with some number changes or are hampered by janky designs.

On a similar note, I find that E-Specs such as Druid, Firebrand and Renegade were good examples of enabling new build types.

• Druid allows for Ranger to be played as a Support/Healer.
• Firebrand allows for Guardian to be played as a Support/Healer.
• Renegade allows for Revenant to be played as a Support with boonshare.

But again, these are not perfect designs.

• Druid just tacks on its Celestial Avatar mechanic onto the base Ranger mechanic. Then later got the 20% pet stat reduction to try and balance it out.
• Firebrand gets Virtues 3.0 as a direct upgrade to core virtues (This is made worse by the Loremaster trait that means activating them doesn't even sacrifice the passive effects which is the only reason why core Virtues aren't spammed on CD)
• Renegade still plays very much the same to core Revenant with only exchanging the F2 skill for a new set of F2, F3 and F4 skills. The legend swapping mechanics and available legends remain identical to core Revenant (With addition of the Kalla legend)

This means that while these E-Specs are great in terms of how they enable you to build the classes. They also feel like they're just doing so by powercreeping and adding in a bunch of stuff to the class rather than changing how the class plays.

It feels like you could have had a similar effect on the build availability by simply improving the core specializations traits to allow for more supportive functions and that these E-Specs were just trying to bypass that and as such got loaded up full of extra stuff.

[The Warclaw Needs Some Love ( in PVE ) - [Merged]]

@"Obtena.7952" said:They don't ... but if they are serious about their suggestions getting implemented, they WILL justify them properly AND defend them when people question the suggestion. I mean ... do you think Anet is LESS lenient with these suggestions or MORE than players will be on the forum? If a player can't justify their suggestion to people on the forum, how meaningful do you think their suggestion is going to be to Anet?

ANet is more lenient. Since they judge things based on the facts.

Players, can and do yell and scream "JUSTIFY YOUR SUGGESTION!!!!!!oneoneone!!!!eleven!!!!!" and compare it to taking the same resources and development time as another thing that that individual player would prefer.

Rather than actually looking at a suggestion for what it's worth.

@"Obtena.7952" said:I mean, look at the original post here ... Warclaw needs to be improved in PVE because it's useless in WVW? That's just sensational and doesn't address the root problem anyways. Do you think Anet will look at that and go "oh yeah, GREAT idea!". That's ridiculous.

No, what's ridiculous, is players harping on and on and on about justifying a suggestion to ANet as if they're actually in any relevant position to be able to understand how the developers work.

Even with something arbitrary like "Warclaw needs to be improved in PvE because it's useless in WvW" could lead to ANet deciding to change how they market the Warclaw and WvW. Making it usable in PvE and putting in gimmick things such as maps where Warclaw skills can be relevant (Like how they occasionally put Sand Portals in to make the Jackal not a complete and total waste of time, resources and skins compared to the Raptor) and enable PvE progress to work towards unlocking the Warclaw mount.

Or they could not. That all depends on what ANet decides to do. Not what players playing gatekeeper on the Forums decides that ANet should do.

@"Obtena.7952" said:To be honest, the whole thing just feels like a thinly veiled complaint about Warclaw nerfs, not an actual suggestion to make it more useful in PVE at all. In fact ... I don't even SEE what the OP thinks should be done to make Warclaw more useful in PVE since everything he suggests we already have in other mounts.

See, an opinion based on the merits of the idea presented by the OP.

Was that so hard? Did you need to spam 3 pages worth of "JUSTIFY SUGGESTION!!!" to reach this point?

Honestly, there's a lot they could do with the Warclaw to make it useful in PvE while having a niche compared to other mounts. As I actually outlined in my first post in the thread.

Beyond that... They simply could make it on par with the likes of Raptor/Jackal. Another standard ground mount that functions as a universal "Average joe" mount with no specific advantages.

They don't have to, of course. But they could.

Doing so would make some people happy that they get to ride on their Warclaw in PvE without being disadvantaged compared to if they swapped to basically any other mount.

It could have other effects too (Such as more people seeing the Warclaw and wondering where to get one and then trying out WvW, more people buying skins for Warclaws because they spend more time using the mount or because they finally bothered to earn it) but only ANet will be able to make reasonable assessments of the likelyhood of this.

There's plenty of scope for what is possible with the mount. The one thing that's for certain though, is it's not up to players to have to justify their suggestions to random forumers who won't even actually address the merits of their suggestion in a reasonable way.

[The Warclaw Needs Some Love ( in PVE ) - [Merged]]

@"kharmin.7683" said:Valid suggestion, sure. Practically any suggestion can be deemed valid. The reason that you state for justification may be less valid. "that people want it" ? Anet needs to determine whether enough people want it to justify the change. I'm not sure that anyone here on the forums would have those metrics, so in my opinion this needs a different, better formulated justification. /shrug

Yeah, but it's up to ANet to determine how justified it is for them to work on things.

Forum users don't need to justify ANet working on things.

After all, forum users aren't even representative to the game's population as a whole.

Literally, all that is required for someone to make a suggestion on the forums is to make it. Then people can discuss the merits of the idea (Or derail the thread into a massive argument about justifying a suggestion apparently...).

Of course, a lot of suggestions meet with "I'd rather have ANet work on something else (That I personally prefer)" as a typical response.

But at the end of the day, it's all on ANet to see what they want to add to the game, feel is profitable for them to add to the game, feel they can spare the time to add to the game based on any suggestions that are made. They're the only ones that can justify any of these things, since they're the only ones that have all of the relevant information such as overall player activity in the game, workloads, vision for the game, costs for time spent working on a feature, number of departments required to work on a particular feature etc.

[The Warclaw Needs Some Love ( in PVE ) - [Merged]]

@"Obtena.7952" said:If people actually want their suggestions to matter though ... they have to do better than this, especially if it's going to be under scrutiny on the forum by players that don't want that change.

Why though?

Why do they have to justify themselves to the forum police?

What right to the forum police have to deem themselves adjudicator's over the worth of a suggestion? Are they employed by ANet? Have they got a contract where they filter suggestions to ANet based on how unanimous their agreement is?

At the end of the day, this is literally just a discussion forum. People make posts, suggestions, opine and discuss things.

If someone makes a suggestion, all they need to do is make it. There doesn't need to be any "Justification", they don't need to provide a comprehensive list of ANet's profit margins and the expected growth from ANet implementing their suggestion.

They just need to be like "Here's an idea I think is cool" and then people discuss whether they like that idea or not, or provide their own input of how it could function.

ANet then may or may not deem the idea worthy to spend time on. Without any direct correlation between what people's thoughts are on the topic.

For example, there was a thread not long ago about the icons for the Malnourished and Diminished effects. The poster essentially just said "I'm colourblind and it's hard to see when food/utility has worn off". That was all the justification required and ANet promptly reworked the icons to brand new ones (An apple core and a broken wrench)

Did we NEED that change? No. Was it a PROFITBLE USE OF TIME? No. Did ANet figure they had the time to spare on it? Yep.

[The Warclaw Needs Some Love ( in PVE ) - [Merged]]

@Obtena.7952 said:I'm asking what the justification is for this idea

Justification is that people want it.

That's it. That's all the justification it needs. Some people want it, therefore it is a valid suggestion.

Beyond that, it's up to ANet to decide how worthy it is to spend time implementing it or to ignore the suggestion entirely.

They will decide if it is something they think is a worthy addition to the game, will net them increased profit, will affect players in a positive way.

It's not up to us as players to have to justify ANet's workload, nor can we since we literally have 0 idea what each developer is working on at any given time, or how long such tasks might take, or if they even have been working on this before the suggestion was made.

All we can do as players, is voice our opinions on whether we would like it or not. Which will help ANet gauge the level of interest of such a thing.

[How bad is it?]

Depends on your goals.

Necro is strong in open world PvE.Necro is good in PvP.Necro is okay in WvW.Necro is decent in Fractals.Necro is okay in Raids and Strikes.

Necro sucks in optimized min/max ultra-nerd level raiding.

[skyscale of ice! need help question]

For the Raising Skyscales achievement (3rd collection) you can buy the 12x Pieces of Skyscale Food you need and 1x Grow Lamp off the TP instead of crafting them.

For the Troublesome Skyscales achievement (4th collection) you can buy materials to craft Extra Pungent Skyscale Treats which can be used to skip a part of the collection.

[skyscale of ice! need help question]

They're all over the map. Hard to miss 'cause they're always freezing your butt when you're trying to do anything there xD

[skyscale of ice! need help question]

Living World 3 Episode 3: A Crack in the Ice

[skyscale of ice! need help question]

Just go to Bitterfrost Frontier and get frozen by one of the Ice Storms or Ice Elementals there.

[Bring back dungeons.]

Having dungeons be more relevant could be cool. They can be pretty fun.

I think the issues are;

1) That they will likely end up being full of Thief/Scrapper stealth spam to just run through most of the dungeons which is honestly, really lame and defeats the entire purpose of the dungeon when all you do is zerg the bosses and ignore literally everything else.

2) Putting a reward behind Dungeon Frequenter would need to be SUPER valuable in order to get people to actually bother to run the 8 unique paths in order to do the achievement given that the actual dungeons themselves give nothing of value.

Honestly, a system similar to what Astellia Online has could be a way to spruce up dungeons in a way where you actually play them (Which is what newbies typically want to do anyway) AND you get some rewards worth the time invested.

Essentially, the way it works in Astellia, is each dungeon run has a scoring system based off time spent and number of enemies killed. So if you wanted max rewards, you'd kill like 90% of the enemies in the dungeon, while completing it quickly to get S ranks in both categories which gave you tons of loot from the final boss as a result.

As far as what the "Tons of loot" could be in the case of GW2... I dunno... Tokens for ascended gear or Legendary materials could be a good incentive.

[What's your most hated map in Guild Wars 2 so far and why?]

Dry Top.

It's just so awful to traverse, especially without Skyscale... Also, the meta being a sandstorm that makes it hard to see anything doesn't help.

Beyond that... I think it's a tie for literally every map that has Brandstorm in it, because Brandstorm is the stupidest and most annoying thing. Which is a shame, because branded areas look really cool, it's zap just zap that zap getting zap constantly zap hit zap and zap set zap on zap fire zap gets zap REALLY zap old zap really zap fast zapI know that you have the Skimmer which can alleviate it, but the Skimmer is a really freaking lame mount to use. Also, I hate the way that the lightning saves itself until you land and then instantly zaps you. Like, really? The storm is sat there waiting for me to touch the floor?

[Are guardians popular because of its theme or because of how good they are?]

Guardians seem to mostly be popular due to how good they are in all game modes in multiple roles.

In fact, they're the ONLY profession to be pretty good in literally every single role. Power DPS, Condi DPS, Boonshare, Healing, Tanking. (Though, they're not used as Tanks very often, they can however perform the role to an adequate standard due to being one of the most survivable classes in the game even when in full damage gear when played well)

Not only this, but they have been consistently this good for a long time. Not like other classes that have periods of being really good and then get smacked with the nerf bat and become mediocre at best...

Personally, I can't stand Guardian's theme. I'm not a fan of "Paladins" or that particular theme of "Righteous Warrior" or "Divine Protector"... Seems really lame to me. The whole idea of upholding virtues goes against my Chaotic Neutral instincts, where I like to do what I want because I feel like it rather than be bound by "What the right thing to do" is.

I.e. In a fantasy setting, I'll be just as likely to save someone from bandits as I would be to actually be one of the bandits mugging someone it depends on what I feel at the time and how the situation suits my overall agenda (Of course, I sometimes slip into Chaotic Evil and will both save the person from the bandits... Then mug them myself so I get all the loot from the bandits AND the random stranger...)

So I'm more drawn to the themes of Mesmer (Rogue/Mage hybrid), Thief (Rogue) and Necromancer (Dark Mage). Classes that won't be as surprising to make morally questionable decisions. Who's abilities can border on evil when used inappropriately or good if used altruistically...