ShadowKatt.6740

Let's mind our bias' here. If Wintersday feels more human it might just be because Wintersday was carried over from GW1, where it was associated with Dwaywa and Grenth as the symbols of both purity and cold, and humans were the only race we had access to. Wintersday now has nothing to do with any of the gods and there's no reason wintersday isn't applicable to all. Every other city puts up a wintersday tree afterall. LA would be better.

Actually I'd forgotten about them, but yeah. And now that you've reminded me....I really hate those bastards. Partially because they do everything I do....and partially because they do it better. Why can't -I- get a triple Mind Stab?

I'll disagree. Some of them make sense to be in other places, others I agree with you. Wintersday SHOULD be in LA. It was in LA in GW1. LA is the major cultural hub. Wintersday should be in LA. New Year should be in Canthan, and before you can jerk your knee put your foot back down. We already have special maps for The Four Winds. We already have special maps for The Mad King. We don't need to require people to own EoD for there to be a map or just a custom instance of the Monestary in Shing Jea for the New Year. In the past it made sense for it to be in DR because Cantha didn't exist. Now it does, so the excuse no longer flies aside from "We don't want to" Which is basically Anets excuse for everything.

This has been a fascinating read, actually, both the for and against people And ther's a lot of people I would love to respond to directly, too many in fact, more than I'm wiling to put in the effort for, so I'll just say that I'm absolutely on the For side of this arguement, especially being a veteran from Guild Wars 1 where enemies were more intelligent, but I do think there's something that I either didn't see or missed as I read through this. Enemies in Guild Wars 1 were very smart for their time, and didn't have a lot of AI coding to their name. And I know this because I work with programming and I can recognize the way the NPCs moved during combat. Their range was actually VERY small. Close to attack range, move out of AOE circles, things like that. NPCs were not able to really position themselves. They couldn't really coordinate if a necromancer put down a well, and they never flee. They were actually really dumb. So what made them so smart? GW1 was unique in that the players got NOTHING special. If you were a warrior and you met a warrior mob out in the map, it had the same skills you did. Not exactly the same, of course, you have the freedom to build your way, but if you have a sword, and it has a sword, your skills will have a lot of overlap. That means that everything you're throwing at them they can throw right back at you. Now with two dueling warriors that looks like a lot of hacking, slashing, and stabbing, but throw a few other professions in the mix. Add a couple mesmers and suddenly there are interupts, Degens, controls, and again everything you can do they can do back to you. Throw in some monks. Now you've got a healer at your back. So do they. ANd you both have the same heals. That made Guild Wars 1 unique among all MMOs. Gear did not matter. Skills did not matter. You all have the same gear. You all have the same skills. So what does matter? Skill. Skill every day of the week and twice on Sunday. You have to be able to play better than the NPCs. You have no direct edge over them other than the fact that your brain is bigger than their programming.....usually. Even then, because the computer can always interupt faster than a human, the computer had edges on humans. Now we're in Guild Wars 2. We all have a variety of weapons with 5 weapon skills. We have a variety of utility skills that the enemies we face don't have. Things are actually WILDLY skewed in our favor because of that because we have abilities that the NPCs in the world have literally no counter for. They can do nothing to stop us, literally. They don't have the skills. BUT, it doesn't have to be like this. In Guild Wars 1 there were animals and monsters, and they had a collection of monster skills. But there were also a lot of mobs that had actual skills. Skales tended to be elementalists. Breeze Riders were mesmers. Zombies were Touch Necromancers. And thus things were move even. All we really need to do is, well, that. If you make an NPC with a sword, it should have the same sword skills we have. So if it's a soldier type NPC with a sword it should have Sever Artery, Savage Leap, and FInal Thrust. And just like that you've made it more on par with the players. It can inflict bleeding, it can chase down retreating players, and if you're below 50% health, that Final Thrust is gonna hurt like a B. This does not require ANY kind of advanced AI. A few lines of code and a little bit of rebuilding for the NPCs, and just like that you have a more interesting game. Now instead of having them in homogenious groups, make them mixed groups. A couple warriours, a guardian, ranger, and necro in a group and watch how players try to handle that. It worked before, it could and would work now. But, that would take work and we all know how Anet feels about work. But that's how you do it anyway. And if Anet wants someone to do it, my rates are competetive.

I think this thread has gone in completely the wrong direction. Completely wrong, from the start, right from the OP. The problem here isn't celestial stats. The problem here is LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE. Delete ALL other stats. Trash ALL the armor that isn't Celestial and make everyone run with the same stats. THEN, and get this, balancing the game will be so much easier since everyone will have the same output and all those players saying that they need to run zerk or viper so they can hit top tier DPS? Oh I love this: Instead of relying on your gear and stats to play the game for you, why don't you Learn To Play and Git Gud. Checkmate, skrittbrains.

Except it's really not. I don't fully understand this WvW celestial god people are talking about, but I play with my fiancee, pretty much exclusively OW. I run complete celestial, she runs Occums, otherwise known as Carrion. And while I do have higher stats than she does in a lot of categories because she has literally ZERO bonuses there, her Power, Condi, and Vitality are all higher than mine. Because of course they are. The weird thing is that lets say that we balanced the stats and cut celestian down to the same numbers as everyone else. I would STILL have more in the stats she didn't buff, it just wouldn't be as much. So at the end of the day the OP still isn't getting what they want even if they get what they want. The only thing that's gonna make them happy is if Celestial is removed from the game, because now all those freeloading players like myself will have to pick a new armor that's more in line with THEIR view of the game.

Hey Hey Hey, no more talk like that. You'll make the people that hated HoT angry because they had to play Chrono because everyone wanted Chrono on their party.

I was curious so I went back to see the changelog and....you're right. In fact it was done basically immediately after launch.

As of right now, Yes. As of right now, No.

If it makes you feel better, ain't no one using that rifle 🤣

Why would the end game be Necro? Obviously the long term goal here is for everyone to play Guardian, and I would rather play Solitaire than Guardian.

Okay, since you seem most familiar, does Distortion also trigger On Evade effects and traits or is Blur getting a leg up here that we're not seeing?

Oh I couldn't even begin to guess. It might have way back when before traits were completely overhauled, but that was a loooooooong time ago. I don't remember anything from back then to be honest, except that it existed and I don't miss having to spend gold on books for traits anymore. But agreed, there's zero excuse anymore. Might even be deserving of its own thread to be ignored.

I'm a little bothered that mesmers still only have two options in melee, a sword and as of PoF an axe. I understand it though, we really shouldn't be in melee combat. But it does feel like if they're going to add weapons perhaps they should have started there. "Oh but the mesmer needs a support weapon!" Are you sure about that? I think the mesmer might actually need some other things first. I'm at a loss for why this hasn't been done already. When GW2 launched there was a LOT of unique, niche abilities that were tied to a single skill or a single trait. Over time though a lot of those were consolidated and streamlined. This was not one of them. There is only ONE skill in the game that gives Blur, Mes MH Sw 2, and the only reason I can think of NOT to change it to distortion is because they do not want it to benefit in any way from traits that also benefit distortion. So no cleansing on Sword 2, no granting aegis on sword 2, and that's just the two I could find on a cursory search. Sword 2 is kneecapped, has been for a long time, and for no other reason that no one at Anet cares, or more likely given the fact that Mesmers always seem to get shafted, it's left that way intentionally.

I wanna ask a weird question: Do you actually care about combos? I don't want to sound mean about it, but I literally never thought about combos for years. I never thought about them until EoD forced you to actually perform them for a renown heart and I actually had to learn how to perform them, and now with the Wizards Vault getting three combos is a common daily. Never thought about it, never tried it, didn't care. And then I learned how to combo, I do it for the dailies.....and I still don't care. I see absolutely no benefit to my gameplay experience by making combos. That's probably why you said they need a big rework and I'll agree with you on that but that's primarily because I see combos as being an absolutely pointless mechanic in the game. If they were to just remove combos entirely I doubt it would change a thing.

What's so special about Chrono? Why should they get all of them, at least all the boons I listed? Because they should. We're looking at the same picture from two different perspectives here. You're looking at it mechanically, I'm looking at it thematicly. Mechanically, you seem to (I don't want to make presumptions) want all professions and specs to be equal. And I understand that. From a mechanical standpoint, not wanting any spec to be underpowered or overpowered is a good thing and I even agree with it. Where I think we disagree though is the homogeneity. You want every profession to be able to boon and condition, to power, heal, cap, everything. And for that I disagree. Why do I think the Chrono should get all those? Because it's a time god, and as such it's better suited to the support role than the virtuoso. I think the primary function of the chrono should be to affect the battlefield, not the people, by speeding up time here, slowing it there, and rewinding it entirely. Speed for my team, slow for your team, and the rest just sorts out itself. Here's the really big thing and it's the thing that I get pushback on ALL THE TIME over. "But what about power Chrono? what about support Mirage? What about {insert build here]?". I am not saying you can't do it. I have years of experience as a game master in a variety of tabletop games and one of the things I always ALWAYS impress on my players is do what you want. If you want to play a gnomish barbarian then you grab the biggest greataxe you can and you start swinging for peoples kneecaps, little buddy. Is it gonna be the strongest barbarian? Of course not. Is it gonna even be on par with the half-orc barbarian? NEVER! So does that mean it's broken and needs to be fixed? N N OOOOO NN N O O N N N O O N N N O O N NN OOOOO Not every build needs to be the best at absolutely everything. Not only do they not need it, it is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE. If you try to make every spec capable of every build you will inevitably find that one is always slightly better than the others and THAT will be the only one to use. Instead, every spec and every profession should be REALLY good at ONE thing. This does not preclude the use of other builds. If you wanted to run a power build on the more supporty Chrono, then slap on dueling and domination and do it. If you want to run support on Virtuoso, slap on Illusion and Inspiration and do that. But don't complain when one doesn't do as well as the other when the other was specifically made FOR THAT PURPOSE! This is actually one of the things that made Guild Wars 1 so unique and made it work so well. Every profession was unique and because of that they were allowed to do what they did the best they could. Warriors did not need to heal; they had monks for that. Mesmers did not need to tank, they had warriors for that. Elementalists did not need to control; they had mesmers for that, and so on. And they were balanced, and it worked. That same mindset SHOULD have carried over here, but between the devs that are actually trying to make every spec work for every build and players who really demand that the healers should be able to fight and tank and the tanks should be able to heal as good as each other, no wonder the game is in the sad state it is. It's literally trying to divide by zero and the end result is what we have now.

How DARE you. This is the INTERNET! This is no place to be polite. Actually, in response to a few of your points, and I'm being lazy so I'm not going to reformat everything to do so, I just wanted to push back. On the subject of damage, you're actually right and that's half the problem. In a bounty mission like that, fireball damage is pretty pitiful. So those skyscales plinking away at the bounty aren't helping and that's the point. They're doing just enough damage to get credit, but not enough to really contribute. It wasn't going down with their "help" in the air, and obviously the warrior in discussion wasn't going to do it solo. But this isn't necessarily a skyscale problem as it is a player problem, BUT is is only a problem because the players are allowed to be lazy in this way. Had the skyscales not be turned into combat mounts, or never existed, then they would have at least had to be on the ground soaking up damage or better yet, participating in the fight. But that leads me into another one of your points that this singular event shouldn't be taken as a reason to do anything. If it was a singular event, you would be right. This is a singular example of a much greater problem. Even the OP listed two: The bounty in the desert, and the meta in Silverwaste. But those are two of many, many other cases. Not just people lazily getting bare minimum participation in events on their skyscales, but also absolutely wrecking events in low level maps where low level players are simply trying to play the game. There are a lot of issues and they are all centered around this mount and the design choices that have come with it. And while the discussion around it is probably moot, it is still worth having.

We can't do that either???? screw this, uninstalled.

The number of times I've been sniped out of the sky I could count on one hand. BUT I also don't sit there and wait for them to shoot me either. I'm actually on board with having more snipers or the like in the game. PoF had lots of mount traps on the ground to at least make you wary or observant if you wanted to rush by raptor. So absolutely add more snipers that target skyscales in particular, and make them lethal. They should be able to one-shot a skyscale that doesn't have Turtle Health Boost, afterall they do give you a warning you're being targetted. I think it would also encourage people to learn more of the layout of the maps, Fly low and fast, use the terrain for cover. It's a good idea, you have a good idea there.

Shocker. People don't know what they want, and if you give them what they want they will be unhappy. See, this is one of those hard, nasty truths that you learn as you grow up and grow old: Just because it sounds good doesn't mean it is good. Chocolate cake for breakfast sounds awesome until you actually do it. Binging a new show all night long sounds awesome until you already do it. And even things that otherwise would sound good, like going for a 10 mile hike when you are not in shape sounds awesome until you do it. Experience and wisdom are not universal constants, and so it falls on those with the experience and wisdom to guide people who have not gained that yet. As stated above, flying mounts SOUNDED great, and in fact we already had gryphons which did allow up flight but it was flight with a big caveat. You needed a place to take off from, so its use was situational. Of course, when you COULD take advantage of it it was amazing, but it had a time and a place. But that wasn't good enough. People wanted permanant flight. Unlimited flight. Six directional helicopter flight, and thus we got skyscales. And after we got skyscales....well, I'm not going to rehash everything I said, you can reread it above. But the point is that the players begged for it, and they should have been told no. That's not cruelty. That's not malice. Players in general do not take the larger picture. They want what they want but they do not generally consider the consequences outside how it will affect their individual experience. So someone else has to. The developer has to. The engineers have to. The creative team needs to. That's their responsibility and their duty. And they failed at that. So here we are.

Are they though? Since I'm already on a roll with the metaphor comparisons, here's another: Cell phones. You've got a cell phone, I assume. I have one. Most people in the first world which is probably where you're playing Guild Wars 2 have a cell phone. Did you know you don't actually need a phone to get through life? You won't die without one. But how do you get a job without a phone? If you don't have a phone, you can't get a job because they can't contact you. It's an optional part of life that is actually required if you want to get by. Mounts are much the same way. Excluding Amnytas which I already mentioned you don't need a mount to do things. You can run from point A to point B, and while YOU aren't using one, everyone else is. So need to get to an event? Well the event's done already. Did you make it to the event but now you need credit? Good luck amidst all the jade cannons and siege fireballs. But no, you're not required to use a mount for any of the OW content, you're right, you're right. You just can't get it done without them. Or exactly what was just said above, but I'm going to echo it just to amplify it that much more. But if you're that bothered you can at least take solice in the fact that you won. It's not as if the mounts are going away, and skyscales will only continue to get more and more powerful. They'll probably add a second seat to it in the future to satisfy those people, and I'm sure the next mastery we get will give it faster charging fireballs so it can siege even more. Because the consequences be damned! This is the state of the game now.

Ah, and here we have that age old dichotemy: Those with foresight and those without foresight. I'm gonna hit you witha metaphor. I want to spell that out because I want ABSOLUTELY NO CONFUSION as I do this. You, and the OP of this thread, are complaining about having their feet cut off because of gangrene. Just in case you need a bit of foundational context for this, diabetes patients are at high risk of gangrene from poor blood circulation and it tends to happen in the feet first. So you're complaining about the fact that gangere is taking place and now amputation is necesssary. And this person was the one that 6 years before now was warning that if you do not change the eating and lifestyle that there were going to be dire consequences, probably diabetes, which could lead to a whole host of other problems later on down the line, which could include poor circulation, gangrene, necrosis, and possible amputation. Do you see how one of them dovetails into the other one? See those with foresight, myself included, are capable of looking not at the immediate reaction today, but the potential ramifications weeks, months, years down the line. It's an exercise in congitive ability, logic, critical thinking, abstraction. To look at something and say "If I do X, Y will happen, but what about Z?". In this case, X is Skyscales, and Y is a really cool mount to fly around on. But so many people never even considered Z. Z is the fact that now that you have a skyscale map design is basically worthless because you can literally fly over and skip everything. Don't need roads, don't need maps, don't need to navigate. Just straight line. You could replace the map with an empty blank canvas and nothing would change. It also means, as we saw with Amnytas, that if you do make a map with skyscales in mind it will be literally inaccessable to anyone or anything else, so now you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. And this is on top of the fact that we already had a wide variety of mounts. And the skyscale renderd all of them useless. "But wait!" I hear you cry as you jerk your knee so hard you dislocate your hip, "The skyscale hasn't replaced all the other mounts! They still do things better than skyscale!" That's not the point. Raptor is more maneuverable, jackal can portal. Skimmer can float, roller beetle and gryphon are fast. But none of them do what the skyscale does: EVERYTHING. They can cross vast swaths of land, hover in place, climb, cross land, sea, and air. They are the jack of all trades mount and the statistics bear that out as the skyscale is the most used mount. And that's why Anet has been pandering to the skyscale so much. Even the seige turtle wasn't immune as it was touted as the combat mount with a driver and a gunner so you could stay mounted and engaged, and then they gave that to the skyscale as well. And if you do a cursory search on the forums you'll find people begging for skyscales to get a second seat as well for passengers, because why should ANY other mount be able to do something the skyscale cannot? The only reason they haven't demanded the skyscale use portals is because none of the portals actually go anywhere. See, this is where game design comes in, and this is why game designers and engineers have to be smart. Because every time you add something to the game you need to think of the broader ramifications of your actions. There's a similar conversations happening right now over in the professions forums with people wondering when the core specs will be brought up to par with the elite specs, because the developers when making them kept upping the ante and creeping the power so now if you're not using an espec then you're just wasting everyones time. That's not right. The specializations, and I'm going to remove the "elite" part of that, were never meant to make the core specs irrelevant. They were supposed to provide options, choices, but never replacements. But they did. Skyscales were supposed to be a new, fun mount, dragon themed to go with the dragon fight, but they ended up replacing so many other parts of the game until we landed here, getting right back to the OP of this thread. Now, because of Anets choices we have people who aren't even playing the game anymore. They just fly to the event, skipping everything from point A to point B, and then just hover in place pressing 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2, and why not? Obviously no one in charge cares about what's going on, in fact they seem to encourage by adding more and more to skyscales. So not only is the genie out of the bottle, but Anet is granting IT wishes instead. So in conclusion it because not enough people both in the player base and more critically in the dev team had the foresight to see how this was going to affect the game and thus here we are. So to summarize what has been a long enough diatribe already I'll just paraphrase what someone else said above: We told you so.

Skyscales are probably the worst addition to the game. Hands down. Period. But, it's done. The genie is out of the bottle, and Anet has shown they are all about making the problem worse.

I don't PvP, and even in WvW I mostly carry it for the passive condition reduction. Never actually tried it, but I mean, that's brilliant. I have to remember that.

Does that work on players? I just assumed it wouldn't.