gkoogz.3089

Yes, but the critical error is that you have to play PvE.

PvE problems make me laugh. Just do the Bitterfrost PvP track and get 100 berries per completion. EZ

Reminds me of Google Play Store updates. I remember back in the early days of android they'd produce detailed lists of all the ways apps changed. It was extremely cozy and I loved seeing the notes. Now it's just "bug fixes and improvements" like they don't even care. I feel your pain.

I have two sets of infinite tools and I've really come to adore them. It's just a nice QoL that makes your account feel cozy. I have a set of volatile magic tools for one character and then a set of Choyas that came with Prospector/Herbalist/Forester glyphs built in, but in random configuration so that it produces extra mats of the other types. I keep one on my PvE main and one on my WvW main so I don't feel pressured to move them around or use shared slots. For other characters I just put on consumable tools because who cares. But if you are more dynamic than me, i can see how the unlimited tools would cause some stress. But you'll find a system that works for you.

Do t4.

It's not changing. I like that they've held their ground against addons. To see what a hell it would be if they allowed addons, just look at WoW. Asmongold just did a stream where he almost broke down crying at the arms race between the addons and the raid designers. He came to the conclusion that it would be best if they just straight up banned addons. That being said, I do wish I could disable the XP bar at the bottom.

Oneshot Stunlock is Call of Duty level, where you turn the corner and the first one to react wins. I get it, you like Call of Duty. That's on you, that's your choice, and many people do. But anyone who has played GW2 PvP for a while will tell you the game wasn't like this before, and it has become like this due to power creep. In this environment, burst damage is the only viable DPS tactic. Let's take a look at the current top DPS metabattle builds as a sample: Power Melee Stancebeast - glass burst pigstomp Burst Gyro Scrapper - glass burst nades Power Chronoshatter - glass burst shatters Power Hammer Cata - ok, an actual bruiser. 3/4 of them are literally just glass burst. That's your choice of DPS in pvp. So now you get exclusively ultra burst specs, on mesmers because they can not only burst but have the invuln to resist enemy oneshot bursts. On scrappers because they not only burst but have superspeed and stealth to resist the enemy oneshot burst. And soulbeast because right now they have a shadowstep pigstep burst, and a sword invuln to cheese away. And btw the cata is only viable because it uniquely has access to two 3sec invulns on its utility bar. That's why the game is now Call of Duty tier. It's just invulns vs oneshots. (And by the way the supports are only ones who can provide aegis or stuns, more cheese). It's not intentionally like this -- it's like this due to negligence. It's because over the years power has crept upwards, and invulns have creeped upwards like with the introduction of Distortion on all the different mesmer specs. They HAD to introduce literal invulnerability buttons onto Mesmers because as a class Mesmers did not have enough actual mechanics to counter a radical power crept environment. So they gave them more cheese. Invulns have grown in importance as the power has crept upwards, beacuse, again, in a radically higher power environment the only solution is literal invulnerability, because Guild Wars 2 class and skill balance team did not create any other tools, and failed to properly balance the numbers, and this is the cope that remains. That's it. That's all there is left. Burst and invuln/stealth. Take your pick. Btw, you don't get a pick, only a class with both can succeed. All the other mechanics have fallen away. Condi is on life support. Anything else, any interesting skills or mechanics, they've all fallen away beceause the only viable strategy when you encounter a foe is to oneshot them or invuln to avoid their oneshot. That's power creep. No longer is it a numbers game really, or a strategy game. It's a reaction time game. Ok, fine, so you like that, and that's ok. But Call of Duty is a very different game, with different pacing than what Guild Wars 2 used to be, or even what they intended GW2 to be. It's power creep, and it's like this due to negligent design. It is possible for the game to be different. And you don't see it because of a fundamental lack of a vision of what it could be or how the game used to play. I don't blame you. The devs also have this fundamental lack of vision.

I would say the #1 thing I've noticed is the powercreep. The TTK is now ultra short. I never used to even consider "TTK" (time to kill) as a concept in GW2 PvP but with the soulbeast pigstomp cheese, and others, it's now reaching frightening levels of damage, I'm talking 2-4 seconds, like 8k -> 6k -> 4k dead if you are out of position and get hit hard. I've noticed it especially with Reapers, I don't know why this class sticks out, but if I get hit with a reaper elite freeze, you're just DEAD. There's not much you can do because the power levels are so high and there is not much of a solution to long stuns.

ARENANET: READ THIS ARTICLE AND LEARN https://www.wowhead.com/guide/diminishing-returns-in-pvp-6024

One thing that really gets me is that the power creep of rangers, but also other classes, over the last few patches has created a toxic interaction between stunlock and oneshot. The ranger power creep over the last month has taken this problem to crisis levels. Either a hammer warrior or reaper freeze disables you for 4 seconds, and there is a ranger that just pigstomps you dead and there's nothing you can do. This game needs a solution like WoW's Diminishing Returns where consecutive disables are shorter each time on a global level. Guild Wars 2 has never seriously addressed the stunlock problem, it was never such a problem when the DPS was lower, and they even did address it at one point when they removed almost all the damage from disable skills, but the problem in Conquest is that there is no solution beyond stability and stunbreaks, which are scarce, to stuns which are common, and becoming meta for that reason. TLDR the combination of disables and powercreep has made teamfights unenjoyable, because if you pair a long stun with a soulbeast, there is literally no solution in the game.

The winner is whoever gets their cheese off on first contact. You either oneshot the opponent, or stunlock them / activate your 3s invuln and hope that someone else on your team has a oneshot (they will). TTK (time to kill) is now 2 seconds. This game is becoming actual trash.

So never. Got it.

And it's not even close.

Dude, nobody said you have to upgrade to Soto. The account limits are clearly abusable without soto. In fact, they are so abusable that most of the wealth in this game will likely be multiboxed accounts reaping mystic coins and bags of coins. It's that simple. ArenaNet by limiting the number of rewards per account have basically opened the doors to the entire economy of the game being dominated by people willing to open legions of accounts, setting vault to pvp only, then playing 1-2 pvp matches per day on each account. Why would I play 5 hours on the same account, and get no rewards, when someone could play 30 minutes on each of 10- accounts, and get 5-10x the rewards? ArenaNet has designed an incentive structure that highly--and I mean RICHLY--rewards people who creates throwaway accounts.

If I have 5 hours of time, (and assuming the weekly is ~1 hour) I am now HIGHLY incentivized to play 1 hour on each of 5 alt account rather than 5 hours on my main account. That's the problem. By capping the extremely lucrative rewards on 1 account, you basically HIGHLY incentivize people to log onto secondary accounts to get them again. I've already heard schemes of people opening 20 accounts do the rewards continuously.

So they got rid of daily log in but made it even worse -- if you open a second account, you can easily get extra cheap Legendary Starter Kits, cheap 90 bags of coins, cheap 60 mystic coins, cheap heavy crafting bags. These rewards are once-per-account so dedicated players get screwed while it's a bonanza for multiboxers. What a nightmare of a patch.

Wow that's terrible. And they aren't even good maps either. Remember the HoT and PoF days when the maps actually had soul, depth, and new assets? Skywatch is only half successful because it reused all the good assets.. Amnytas on the other hand.. what a disaster of a map.

All these years later and people still crowd to the HoT metas, maps are full all hours of the night, coordinating in map chat. SoTo metas are already dead and usually fail due to low player populations. Could this release be any more catastrophic? Could these new maps be any less inspired, more vapid, empty and lacking in S O U L ?

Completely agree, couldn't say it better myself.

I agree that SOTO has been a catastrophic, unmitigated failure. Two maps, both of which are low effort trash. Skywatch is just reused assets that I bought years ago. Amnytas is just two assets, a marble wall and a pillar with an orb on top, copy pasted into cubes. The standout feature is.... skyscales? Which we have had for 4 years? Now the effort I spent a few months ago to get it is trivialized? Thanks, I guess. Rifts? They happen at the same location and you kill 5 mobs.. The only randomness is if you get a Glutton or Despair. Great. Thanks. Relics? A "new" feature that is actually a massive, unmitigated downgrade from what we had before. Wizard's vault? A "new" feature that is actually a massive, unmitigated downgrade from what we had before. Whoever is making decisions at Arenanet needs to look at their organization and ask how these "ideas" ever got to even a concept stage when they should have been laughed out of the room. Whoever said they need to rerelease an old mount, destroy the rune system and destroy the daily system as "features" should be straight up fired.

Relic system is trash, I mean actual massive downgrade preschool drooling terrible trash. New rune effects are lazy, and terrible. The interesting ones require insane conditions to be met, aka useless, and half of them are "on elite", which is also useless. They need to go back to the drawing board and make actually interesting runes because right now Thief or antitoxin are essentially the only viable ones, maybe 1 or 2 of the condi ones.

With the old daily login reward, laurels were a currency tied to days logged in. AKA reward just for playing. Now that laurels complete for Astral Acclaim with all the other better rewards, laurels are now UNACHIEVABLE. TRASH. COMPLETELY POORLY DESIGNED TRASH. TRASH. SHAME. SHAME.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:GW2-mastery-regions.jpg Uh, bro. People forget that HoT and PoF had like 14 full size maps for $40. Plus full elite specs. The Living World was free if you logged in and got them. Now for SoTo it's like 1.5 maps for $25 . And I say 1.5 because the Skywatch map is shameless asset harvesting and Amnytas is essentially one wall texture and one pillar copy pasted into lazy cubes. It continues the laziness and decline of EoD which gave us like 5 maps for $40, but at least we got the specs which added substantially to core systems. If you actually consider $ per map, SoTo is ridiculously, like 2x or more more expensive. And we aren't even getting any core system upgrades, in fact they are uprooting and simplying and reducing if you consider Relics and Login changes as actually sort of a backwards step like most people do. I guess I will be generous and say SoTo is 2.5 maps because they felt gracious to give us a single one later... I don't blame Arenanet for raising their prices in Joe Biden's collapsing economy but still, the decline in their output is undeniable.

Yeah, you missed the one where if you fear someone they slow down slightly. HAHAHAHAHHAA

because everyone will choose Theif. +5% dps simple as.