[The amount of filler content in story is out of hand]

SotO is just terrible, like Dragon Response Missions levels of lazy. Not to mention that the content quality and quantity pales in comparison to LS3-L4 for a higher pricepoint.

LS1 and LS2 are excusable because some parts are still relevant today and they were still figuring out what they wanted to do with the game inbetween expansions and living story  AND they made attempts to improve parts of them.

Meanwhile SotO just feels like a slap in the face in terms of everything... maps, story, replayability of the content, rewards etc. If it was not for the blatantly pay-to-win weapon master and expanded weapon proficiencies, there would be next to no reason to ever play through SotO unless you are a new player and want to skip the LS4 Skyscale grind OR an extreme open-world-only-and-nothing-else player that would rather do the same boring event 2000 times than raids, PvP or WvW for the legendary armor.

[Thoughts on home instance node placement improvements?]

12 minutes ago, Nash.2681 said:

The concept of home instances itself feels a bit outdated to me. There was probably a dedicated intention what they should be, but besides some rare story appereances, they simply became a not-so-convenient to reach gathering location. I'd love to see the possibility (lazy: gem store item; better: a rather large ingame collection) to automaticly gather everything available in your own homeinstance and sent to us upon log in via mail. Like the current expedition contracts, just one for the entire home instance sending you a nice container full of stuff.

That's a good idea but a possible problem with it is that the choice of gathering tools affects the value of the resources you get by a lot. For example, with Glyph of Volatility, every node that requires a harvesting tool gives you an extra 6 Volatile Magic (on average), which can get turned into the equivalent of 2s 16c per node at the moment. So even if you have a node that gives you something otherwise completely worthless like Hatched Chilies, the tools make up for it.

[Thoughts on home instance node placement improvements?]

46 minutes ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

Every race can enter and gather at any Home Instance they prefer.  I don't see the problem. 

I, personally, prefer Dreamer's Terrace and my 'gatherer' is Human.  A long, long time ago I used Hero's Canton with my main Asura.

Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Shame I can't use the hearthstone or EotN portal to the other home instances without teleporting to their capitals.

[Thoughts on home instance node placement improvements?]

Homes in GW2 are not what most players would expect. Everyone of the same race gets the same exact instance and all they can do to change it is to unlock certain NPCs and gathering nodes.
Players who get into collecting home nodes soon realize that most of them will take several years of daily gathering with the most optimal tools to make up for the amount of gold you spent on them.

If we want to keep the current system and assume it's as good as housing can reasonably get, there is one issue: some home instances are simply a lot better laid out than others, so much so that gathering from nodes may take some races 2-3x as much time as others.

One simple solution is to simply improve the existing placements of nodes to make this less of a chore.

Another idea is to provide some universal player home instance alternative that are the same for every race and function effectively the same as the home district, but actually have some thought put into their design. I'm thinking something like the existing Passkeys, but for homes. I can see Anet being able to monetize this, too, so there is some incentive for them to do it. I'm not sure how many players actually care to engage with home instances, but seeing as 60% of the home gathering stuff is gemstore/black lion key exclusive, they definitely want to monetize this part of the game.

What do you think?

[Odd that gw2 hasnt added new races.]

6 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Imagine the poor soul that has to retroactively make all armor/outfits skins fit a new race model.

This. They don't bother doing it even for new gemstore exclusive faces, lol. If you'll check the Charr or Asura ones you'll see that half of their features either clip through most helmets or make hairstyles disappear entirely to make them fit.

That said, I don't think they will ever offer more races, because races in GW2 do not offer any meaningful gameplay elements so as to not disrupt game balance. There's certain unique cosmetic options and some may argue that size gives you an advantage in PvP or jumping puzzles. Besides aesthetics, the only meaningful difference in my mind is in home instances, where human and asura nodes look like they're carefully planned to be as optimal as possible, and all the others have been haphazardly thrown around in randomized locations. Also, there's no gemstore exclusives for different races, even if some skins (like the elf ears) offer completely different looks to different races.

[SAB Size Feedback]

I agree that some sections of the maps are just awful and serve no purpose other than to pad out the time. It takes me about an hour to complete all of W1-3 with the first 4 maps being glitched (that is, finding the glitches in the maps, not using exploits) but I'm sure it'd take 10-15 minutes less if it wasn't for just pointless padding sections like the raft (where I just go AFK  for 3 minutes and make myself coffee)
If I found glitches on W2-2 and W2-3 as well you can easily add another 20 minutes on top of that because of the long detours that are longer than the rest of the level.

[So is it just me or games got turbo stompy recently?]

PvP matchmaking is so awful that. I almost never get any close matches, 90% games I either stomp or get stomped 500-100. Bonus points for ranked matches where somehow my team either has 2 premade pairs or is 5 pugs against 2 premade pairs.

[SAB - Janky Mechanics This Year? Fixed - Turn On Framerate Limiter]

The game mode is as janky to me as it's always been. Some jumps are weird because the collision is much larger/smaller than the object, some failed jumps let you double jump and climb, enemy melee attacks seem to project a 180° hitbox in front of themselves with a sweet spot right at the base of their weapon where they can't hit you at all, monkeys and assasssins hip-checking you by running 200 range next to you,  king toad not swallowing the gem occasionally, checkpoints sometimes not launching you, faceplanting on some bouncing pads instead of being bounced by them... the list goes on.

I think this sort of jank affects Guild Wars 2 as a whole but we do not notice it outside of SAB and some HoT adventures and LS3 jumping puzzles.

Edit: Oh yeah and sometimes you slow down because the game registers you as having entered combat if you have recently taken damage.

[SAB new weapon ammo system is nice, but the cooldowns are long]

Now both the Mega Bombs and Super Bow hold up to 3 charges that do not cost you any baubles to fire the upgraded version of the original weapon (Mini bombs, Slingshot).

The mega bombs are great, have a wider radius, can be planted, and deal double damage (100) to regular enemies and 50 to bosses and objects with a cooldown of I think 20s 30s instead of costing 5 baubles per shot like they used to. It's good for clearing trash but can't be (ab)used against (mini-)bosses any more.

The Super Bow's ammo skill for some reason deals double damage (50) to regular enemies but 25 to bosses and objects with a cooldown of 30s. Seeing as there's some enemies with 50 HP this might be useful but the long cooldown makes it prohibitive to actually make use of the upgrade. I find myself using Mouselook to make sure I don't miss my shots, but eh, the regular mini bombs are just as effective in those situations where I have a clear shot.

[Super Bow]

1 hour ago, Black Canary.4238 said:

Anyone knows how to buy the bow from the shop? Collected all 3 choya seeds and shop keeper still wont speak to me or sell it

There's a hidden shopkeeper you access by walking into the water at the start, and she sells the dictionary to talk to Choya. Afterwards you go to the end of the level to the Choya shop, and they give it to you for free.

[You wonder why new PVP players wont stick around when its just full of premades]

The game mode is so unbalanced that the top builds can basically solo 3 other players that are playing anything other than the top 5 builds. That's what's ruining it.

[Ammo on Mace 3 in sPvP/WvW but not PvE?]

Would it ruin the currently established DPS rotations or give condi rev 3k more DPS or what is the logic here?

[Man, but I didn't even get to BE disappointed by the new weapons]

If I knew new weapons were going to be this bad and Weapon Master Training wasn't paywalled behind SotO, I wouldn't have bought the expansion, tbh. You aren't missing anything.

[Help me pick a new profession]

Willbender if you want to overperform in WvW and PvP.
Reaper in PvP if you just want to spam stunlock the entire enemy team for 2 minutes straight and stall every 1v1 with shroud.

Then in WvW there's unkillable cele builds with ridiculous mobility like Catalyst, but not sure how high the skill ceiling for those is.

If you like spamming 1shots and invul invul invul invul block block block block, Mesmer is also a decent option from what I have seen.
AFAIK all these specs can bring something to the table in PvE, though with different layouts.

[Wizzard's Vault bag of coins got nerfed?]

15 minutes ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

And logic isn't your strenght too, it'll recap it for you :

- you do content, you get gold

- it complete some WV objective at the same time, you get AA

- You use AA to get gold

So in the end you got gold from the content + extra gold from the AA

 

Or you could do content that is actually worth doing and earn 3x more gold than the WV-promoted content + extra AA gold. 😛 Of course there are some decent metas inbetween, but most of the WV objectives are there to nudge you towards doing bottom of the barrel content, not content that is still amazing even 9 years after it was initially released.

I had a look at the wiki page https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wizard's_Vault/Easy_objectives, and it doesn't look like most of these objectives would get you even 1 extra gold combined unless you are very lucky.

[A class that can handle the jungle]

On 3/29/2024 at 7:21 AM, badyl.5831 said:

Hey I'm looking for a class that can handle HPs such as:

1. Vampire from VB
2. Mushrom AB
3. Tengu AB
4. Mushrom TD

I am currently playing mirage staff it is good in meta and when others around but I need class that can solo most "hard" PvE things such like Elites, Champions.

I would like it to be any of these classes

• Revenant
• Mesmer
• Necromancer

I have played a lot Guardian and Thief like them but I see they bored me. I won't play as Elementalist or Ranger.

 

My personal pick would be a herald because the amount of boons and damage reduction effects really carry them. The downside is that you'd want a hybrid/celestial build which is pretty expensive.  I recommend watching Lord Hizen's videos for some ideas; he creates builds that can solo even open-world legendaries. Maybe there are some budget (power) options in there.

[Wizzard's Vault bag of coins got nerfed?]

34 minutes ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

The thing you are missing is that you get the AA on top of the normal reward you're getting.

Yeah, and I'm talking about people using the AA to buy gold... Reading comprehension is not your strength, is it?

Edit: Not like the objectives PvE or WvW dailies have you do are more rewarding than just running around for 5 minutes and killing random things, lol

[Wizzard's Vault bag of coins got nerfed?]

31 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

   Even if you're new you probably complete the main purchases in6 to 8 weeks. After that buying those bags was the main spending; the change represents ~6.2 gold coins less a week, going from 43.3 to 37.1 .Its a shame not only due the loss itself but because what means for the future...

The other rewards are nice, but the repeatable gold bags or 2g for dailies before the WV were never worth it to begin with. If you care about gold, spend those ~10 minutes doing a meta like Octovine or Dragonstorm or something and you will get ~5-9g instead of the 2g. Even AFKing in WvW for 2-3 ticks will probably give you more value than doing dailies for the repeatable gold bags.

[Wizzard's Vault bag of coins got nerfed?]

it's unfortunate but i say it was never really worth buying those to begin with... new players have up to 500g worth of other options, old players have better things to do for gold than invest 10+ minutes on getting 2 gold. Even in my best-case scenario of 7 minutes for my sPvP dailies, it isn't worth it.

[Why so much hurry in nerfing new weapon proficiency builds?]

They tried so hard to not push power creep with the new weapon proficiencies that they forgot to make them fun or even usable.

[Game balance changes feel AI generated]

31 minutes ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

Wait a minute, is this real?

I'm pretty sure it's a joke but it definitely feels like it. sPvP and WvW balance changes read more like a disgruntled Anet employee got salty over his overpowered Willbender fantasy being ruined by someone boon stripping and locking him down, than people genuinely trying to create a fair and balanced competitive game mode.

[Game balance changes feel AI generated]

8 minutes ago, KryTiKaL.3125 said:

Someone asked an AI not too long ago about reworks to Warrior and Berserker and posted it in that section of the forums and it actually came out with some fairly decent looking stuff. So I'll be honest...if the balance changes were AI generated, if anything, they would probably be better...

ANet does consistently confuse me with their approach to numerous things, balance being a huge one. I know they have metrics and data internally that they go off of...but truthfully if that is the only thing they are measuring their balance changes by then that is by far a massive mistake.

Note their initial rework to Warrior Banners and how poorly that went and what they came out with in the aftermath due to the, for lack of better wording, absolute blunder that it was. There is very clearly a disconnect in how they approach balance and class changes and how it actually may need to be done. Note their balance philosophy post a while back, outlining counterplay as an important aspect...and yet one huge thing we have seen them consistently do is strip away the boon strip in the game all while adding more boons which is just making boonballing stronger and stronger and much tougher to crack. Quite literally removing counterplay. It makes no sense.

That's something I also wanted to mention. They keep adding more boons to abilities that did not previously have them, while increasing the costs, cooldowns of boon strips/corrupts and lowering the amount of boons they strip... where's the counterplay they talk about? Just spamming more boons?

[Game balance changes feel AI generated]

1 hour ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

You know, I never even considered this. AI could be part of it. What if they AI looks for overperforming weapons/professions but the reason they're overperforming is simply because more skilled players play those? So then it's not actually overperforming because of it being out of whack with other weapons/professions but because of who plays them.

That was my suspicion with some of the changes, like Revenant Scepter's damage being nerfed and their pulsing effects getting delayed. I figured  there was just some amazing Ultimate Dominator V Baron of the Arena Top 10 player that dominated enough that they nerfed the weapon across the board even if the average player doesn't get the same use out of it. I know that in MOBAs it's not uncommon that some characters get nerfed to the ground because world championship level teams capitalize on them well, even if the average player barely breaks a 30% winrate on them.

Of course you might imagine how weird it feels when you spend weeks struggling to make a weapon or build work -- a build you do not see anyone else trying because of how bad it is --only to find that the developers found it too strong and decided to nerf it even more.
Or when you consistently see Willbenders faceroll 1v1 or 1v2 fights in PvP and WvW only to receive buff after buff...

[How about an underwater specialization?]

the problem with underwater combat is that you're locked out of over a quarter of all of your skills, and in return you get weapons that are all over the place and have skills that do not synergize with any build in the game; their effects are completely random, and you have strike damage, condi damage and healing skills on the same weapon in different skill slots.

[Game balance changes feel AI generated]

For clarity I play pretty much every type of content in the game, from open world, fractals (+CMs), raids, PvP and WvW. I have 2 of every class and I play 4 classes regularly in each of these game modes. With these, I alternate between different specializations and builds.

The last 3 balance updates basically made no sense to me. Nerfs to underperforming weapons and builds, buffs to overperforming weapons and builds, or changing build-defining traits in a way that makes certain specs completely unable to perform the role they were trying to allow with that sort of change. Claims that certain builds are overpowered in PvE and need to be scaled down when their benchmark damage is lower than the alternative builds for the same class. Increasing damage one patch, then reducing it below the initial value in the next...

There are very few meaningful changes that actually make sense, but most of the time they boil down to: "We didn't expect a class to bench 100k dps with this one synergy we never expected to work."

I am just confused.