Mistwraithe.3106

Hmmm. Herald can also have https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Facet_of_Elements running all of the time when out of combat so it is fairly easy to have perma swiftness. But whatever works for you, I love the way GW2 gives so many build options.

It's a bit rude to be copying people so blatantly like that.

Evidence suggests the developers are fine with it being around 2g/MC, they have a lot of power to change things if they weren't. There are both supply and demand sides to the equation. I suspect demand for mystic coins and clovers has gone up because the Wizards Vault and SOTO open world armour will be encouraging more people to craft legendaries, and this was surely deliberate by Anet (crafting legendaries is a good long term goal in game so it makes perfect sense for Anet to encourage people to dip their toe in).

I agree it's likely autoloot. Try it with autoloot turned off perhaps.

The change has given the Runecrafter's Salvagomatic more value that's for sure. I think making it take Lucent Motes was a sensible plan, they were otherwise fairly worthless and it did need to be core only ingredients. I would also be happy with them reducing the cost slightly though by reducing the number of Lucent required or introducing other ways for Lucent to drop.

I am almost certain they said exactly that in the Janthir Wilds pre launch announcements and discussions, that there would be 300 (or similar) decorations on launch and then more would be added during the year.

The money you paid 12 years ago was to allow you to play the game in those first few years when only people who had paid could pay, plus the other bonuses paid accounts get. If you didn't play the game much during those years then essentially you missed out on most of the benefits of having purchased the core game. That's really on you and is also very foreseeable. Virtually every game launches at a high price and then is available on special for lower prices in the coming years, or the core game gets bundled with DLC, etc. There is nothing surprising here if you have any familiarity with computer games (and tbh other products too, even products like new TVs are most expensive the first few months after release and least expensive just before the next model comes out). Bad luck I guess, but it was your choices to buy the game and then not take advantage of that in those early years. It is also your choice now to get hung up now on a sunk cost or whatever poor decision you might have made 12 years ago. Sounds like you are determined to dwell on that despite the various comments people have made. That's fine, your choice, but there isn't really any point in continuing this thread, you've already said you aren't going to change your mind.

I was a bit disappointed it was ranked only. I've played a bit of PvP here and there but am only level 17 or so and you can't play ranked until level 20. So much as I would have liked to try Push out I couldn't...

I know you already mentioned that Celestial is expensive, but if you are going to get a few pieces of gear that aren't damage focused then IMO celestial is always the way to go, it just offers more stat points than the other options. Having 70-80% damage focused (eg Berserker) and 20-30% celestial will noticeably reduce your damage output but not massively and it will give you more survivability if you want an extra buffer for when you make mistakes. You can buy ascended Celestial rings and accessories from the Laurel vendor using laurels you can get from the Wizards Vault plus gold and ectoplasms (which you buy with gold). Ditto with Berserker rings and accessories BTW (you can't get condition damage Vipers stuff so easily unfortunately).

The $59 you paid for core is a sunk cost. I understand why it's frustrating but it is what it is and you can't get it back. Your decision is what to do now and in the future. If you enjoy playing GW2 and can afford $30 then I would buy HoT+PoF (or wait for a sale, can be 50% off). That will get you a lot more GW2 story, gameplay, elite specs, gliding, mounts, etc. If you really love GW2 (doubtful given the tone of your message but you did both posting so maybe) then there are other options to consider including the complete Dragon Saga which includes HoT, PoF, EoD and all living world seasons - it is rather more expensive tho so probably not applicable. If you don't enjoy playing GW2 then time to move on really.

Regarding Celestial, I am surprised that they didn’t just reduce the points Celestial gives in WvW by 10% (as a starting point) instead of removing concentration and expertise. Not saying they are wrong, it will reduce boon spam a bit and could do interesting things to the Zerg meta. But it will also mean a much bigger gulf in how some builds behave between WvW and PvE.

Fair enough. I did have a sentence in my post saying that I was fine with the main priority balancing team goal being making all professions be viable. This is a bit of a no-brainer to me. My concern is essentially HOW the balancing team tries to make all of the professions viable. An extreme version would be for them to make all professions identical. Done, perfect balance. Clearly the balancing team isn't doing that at all, far from it. But it's a spectrum with identical professions being at one extreme (silly) end and wildly different professions with no similarities at the other end. We're only debating where the ideal target is within the middle part of this spectrum. I want it to have a few more thematic and functional differences between how the professions and elite specs operate than the balancing team seem to. I can't help feeling they are sometimes taking the easy way out by heavily nerfing or removing interesting and thematic abilities, rather than thinking a bit harder about how to retain the differences but in a balanced way.

Mesmer and Thief portals bypass far more mechanics than Scourge transfusion does...

It is a bit complicated so OP has a point. However, this link is great at pointing out what you get from all the different expansions and living world seasons. Thanks for posting it. Buying JW is probably a reasonable starting point BUT it doesn't give you any elite specs. The HoT+PoF bundle is the best value for money to get elite specs (2 for each profession) plus you can unlock full gliding and more mount functionality. You should make yourself aware of what the living world seasons are and how you acquire them before you spend much on expansions like HoT+PoF or EoD. If you like the story or want lots of content to play and you are going to buy multiple expansions then you should be aware that the Elder Dragon Saga Complete edition exists which bundles in all the living world seasons too. I believe it's the cheapest way to get everything prior to SOTO, assuming you wanted to get it all of course.

Yeah, I was about to say the same before I read your post, I have had just one door appear in front of me.

I find OW HoT a bit more difficult than PoF, tho I agree that PoF can overwhelm you with mobs. Putting difficulty aside, I know a lot of people love PoF but as someone who did both for the first time recently (last 2 years) I really love the HoT zones. PoF feels empty in comparison (probably partly by design, it does have quite a bit of desert) and lacking in interesting events going on. I struggle a bit to understand exactly why - maybe the emptiness, maybe the stronger mobs in HoT, or the stronger bosses/hero points, or that HoT has more other players, or it might be the much stronger metas in HoT. Probably a combination of all of these I guess. HoT just felt more like an ongoing struggle against Modremoth and the mordrem whereas PoF feels a bit boring in comparison.

The options were meant to be about relative importance. Given for simplicity I only gave 3 options it isn't a big surprise if some people's opinions don't mesh with any of them.

I posted something similar in the October 8 preview post but there are 500 replies on a diverse range of topics there and I'm curious how people feel about this particular topic. It feels to me like the current balance team doesn't value profession flavour and diversity all that strongly. Their main goal is presumably to make it so that all professions are equally viable and can perform a decent range of things. I feel this is largely sensible and probably fine BUT I think they also need to have a secondary goal of making sure that the profession flavour remains strong. Too often in recent times IMO the balance team has run into a profession/elite feature which is unique and provides a lot of flavour (Scourge Transfusion being the current example) and their solution has been to rip away the core feature which gives it the flavour and uniqueness. The long term effect of doing this is that all professions/elites lose a lot of their identifying flavour and end up more homogenous or cookie cutter. I want the balance team to regard that flavour and uniqueness as critical and for them to try as hard as they can to find solutions which balance outliers while still retaining as much as possible of that flavour. Am I alone in this?

As others have said, your choice is broader than just Ele vs Revenant. It's heavy armour (Rev, Warrior, Guardian) vs light armour (Ele, Mesmer, Necro). Both sets have lots of viable builds. I did WvW heavy armour first and Revenant is my strongest class but I've found Warrior a bit frustrating. I'm doing Raid light armour too now and really enjoying playing Ele and Mesmer (I expect Necro will be good too, I just haven't had a chance really). I think between the two I would probably choose heavy just because Herald (Revenant) is such a good elite profession when you are learning, the ability to do OK damage while giving out permanent quickness and all those other boons is very strong. The counter argument is that Mesmer is probably the strongest profession in the whole game right now (between Chrono and Virtuoso) but they are harder to play well than Herald IMO.

The Transfusion change has already kicked up a huge firestorm but I'll add my voice to it anyway because the change is poor balancing IMO. For a start the justifications for the change are poor. They state that it's a particular painpoint in WvW then apply the same heavy nerf to both WvW and PvE. If it's a big problem in WvW then do split changes. Don't use WvW problems as an excuse for big PvE changes, that's nonsensical at best or duplicitous at worst. Secondly, as others have pointed out, the proposed change pretty much kills heal scourge. The build otherwise lacks healing and boons - barrier helps but there are other classes with barrier and better healing and/or boons. The main point of difference for heal scourge was transfusion which gave the build a reason why you might take it despite it being weaker than other heal builds by the numbers. Lastly, and most importantly for me, it's removing flavour and diversity. For the last year there seems to have been a push to remove flavour and homogenize all professions so that they are increasingly similar to each other. This is the laziest type of balancing IMO. Imagine if the Starcraft balance team adopted this philosophy? No one would play it. It's critical for game enjoyment that the professions retain their own flavour and diversity. The balance team needs to stop taking the easy route of removing all of the unique features and instead work out how to scale the strengths of those features so that they remain viable but aren't overpowered. Yes this is harder but it is also literally your job.

Essentially, if your character is in serious danger of dying and dodging and doing lots of damage isn't going to be enough to avoid this danger then Cele is likely the best choice you have. If you are a DPS in a raid squad then this does not apply - positioning, dodging and relying on your healer WILL be enough to avoid the danger (and of course you need the DPS to perform your role). If you are a good player doing most open world content, including many champions, then dodging and using your other skills on a full dps build will also be enough to avoid the danger (and of course you will kill the enemies faster with your DPS build). A non-exhaustive list of situations where you are in serious danger of dying and dodging and killing fast won't necessarily be enough to save you is: PvP (potentially), WvW roaming (because the other guy is likely just as good at dodging and killing you so having a sustain edge can be critical), you are a new or less experience player trying to push into more challenging open world content (for you), or you are an experienced player trying to solo legendaries.

There are two categories of new players you could be meaning. Players who are new to GW2 in general are obviously biting off a lot if they think they can get into PvP immediately. Naturally gifted players or players with PvP experience in other games might get there but others are in for a hard time and I think that's probably fine. The second category would be players who have played GW2 for a decent amount of time and do OK at various PvE content. Then they try PvP. If PvP is to thrive then this second category of new players needs to not face too vertical a wall. It's just logic that if virtually no players cross over from PvE to PvP then eventually PvP dies. So you need this crossover. And in fact the bigger the crossover is the more PvP thrives. So I wouldn't just dismiss discussion about how to assist this second category of players new to PvP.

I would prefer they had a personal open world and story instance difficulty option which scaled your own power but nothing else (so everyone can still share a zone). I like the difficulty of HoT and like working with friends while exploring whereas in PoF bringing a friend takes it from being easy to being trivial.

I don't see any "almost" about it, I think Anet never should have given the living world episodes away for free to current players. It's economically silly to give something away to your current playing customers (which will include all of your keenest customers who would be willing to pay the most) and then try to charge new players (who will on average be much less committed to the game) instead. That's the reverse of how it should be and is why generally speaking an expansion (for any game) starts at a high price for the current players and then gets discounted later. So yeah, whether it was mini expansions or some other model like just straight up charging for living world episodes, Anet should have changed their model long ago, and if they had it is likely IBS would have been completed properly.

Yeah, the EU is very bureaucratic about some things but they can move quite quickly at times too.