Virtuality.8351

*This post has been updated with an alternative proposal. See below.* PvE Power Weaver relies on the trait Superior Elements to achieve Crit Cap. With the upcoming balance patch on Feb. 14, the trait will: Allow you to inflict Weakness upon performing Dual Attacks, on a 4-second internal cooldown (ICD). Provide 15% additional critical chance when attacking foes with Weakness. Ideally, you would like your target to be affected by Weakness permanently, which is more often achieved in Raid or Strike Mission scenarios, with 9 other players spamming whatever skills they bring all together. It is, however, much less often the case in Fractals of the Mist or Dungeons, with only 4 other players around, bringing a significant smaller skill pool and thus less potential source of Weakness. If the Superior Element ICD is removed, Weaver players will be a lot more self-reliant when it comes to maintaining Weakness on their target, and thus a lot more consistent DPS output, with certain rotations that utilize more Dual Attacks, for example this one, in which they cast 2 Dual Attack skills (Earth/Fire then Air/Earth, also Water/Fire then Air/Water) back to back, well within the 4-second ICD limitation. Update: After considering Mauti.3520's feedback on the builds that goes with rotations with lower accessibility to Dual Attacks, here is an alternative proposal: Superior Elements Dual Attack skills grant yourself Quickness. Attacks under the effect of Quickness have increased critical chance. Quickness (3s): Skills and actions are faster. Critical Chance Increase: 15% Since Quickness is consistently provided by allies in instanced contents, this will easily bridge the gap between builds/rotations of variable access to Dual Attacks. On top of that, it will make Weaver's combat more fluent in open world and less hindered by all the forced movements such as Flame Uprising (Sword #2 under Fire Attuenement). It will also encourage players to try out more complex rotations for just how powerful the Quickness boon is. Let me know how do you like this idea!

And by the way, I am all for it and will support you if you want to start a new topic on this one, about which I also have something to say.

Not sure how you would assure no constant changes, given how the used ingredients are subject to the in-game economy. As such we are back to: constant adjusting here for such a minor difference is not needed. I would not. I do not develop this game. And if you follow the discussion closely, you'd see people agreeing on this proposal or having other thoughts about it do not request for constant changes either. They advocate to bring back the original leather refinement ratio and to regulate the market via increase in supply via manipulating drop rate and so on instead. And the very first paragraph you snipped already tells you that the difference might not be actually as trivial as you would imagine, at least not for the new players. People agreeing on wanting things cheaper? If this is about fairness, wouldn't making the other sets more expensive also work? ...which I'd have zero problem with since all of my characters are already fully geared. Though, I'd still advocate for the new players and go with the opposite direction. And again obviously you did not read the part you snipped at all. The post is not about individual armor set. I did not want to get into detail. Suffice to say, your base premise that medium ascended armor is the main or only demand behind leather is false imo. And again, which was not the premise but instead a straw man you brought up yourself. Might as well read again. Still you are missing the entire point of the OP, which is to provide a more equal footing and accessibility to equipment and hence contents regardless of the profession they choose for their first character. And yes, the disparity could be made up by the players through additional hours of grind, but the question remains: why should such disparity exist? Should it exist? What is the justification for its existence? Couldn't it be more friendly and equally accessible for new players regardless of their choice of profession instead of punishing them for it? It shouldn't exist. I never said it did. I said this is NOT an issue which needs addressing at the current time and quite frankly there is no permanent "fair" way to address it. To quote yourself: "leather is currently the most expensive, light armor was on release." In case you are not keeping track of the patch note, the exact reason why the the former is how it currently is and the latter became no more was the change of refinement ratio and the recipe. As long as it is not fixed, the disparity will remain permanent. And if it is fixed, well, as long as no additional changes were made to the said two factors above, the effect will likely be permanent. Honestly, you can have your own list of priority, which I respect. Though your arrogance to assume your counterparts position in an argument without reading their text and to deny the need for others does baffle me. Just could we at least have a more civil discussion? How was I uncivil? I disagreed on your arguments, you ignored mine. I explained why I believe that the current disparity is insignificant.And I explained why I believe your belief was far from close to the reality, which was later not addressed. How were things not civil? First of all you snipped the majority of my earlier reply and addressed none of them. Secondarily, to quote yourself: "I did not want to get into detail. Suffice to say, your base premise that medium ascended armor is the main or only demand behind leather is false imo.", which already indicates that you not only did not address any of them but intentionally not doing so, yet you still make assumption about my proposition while clearly did not read my reply since it was not at all what I meant. Third, while you addressed little of my rebuttal, I have been addressing most of yours, yet now I am accused to be the one ignoring their counterpart's argument. I just do not feel like we are talking to each other on equal terms.

And the second thing I do not get is that you are talking as if my proposal and the solution to the problem of your priority are mutually exclusive, which begs the question: just how much developmental resource do you suppose is it going to take to change the ratio of refinement?

...which I completely and sincerely agree on, but also is completely irrelevant to the topic.

Not sure how you would assure no constant changes, given how the used ingredients are subject to the in-game economy. As such we are back to: constant adjusting here for such a minor difference is not needed. I would not. I do not develop this game. And if you follow the discussion closely, you'd see people agreeing on this proposal or having other thoughts about it do not request for constant changes either. They advocate to bring back the original leather refinement ratio and to regulate the market via increase in supply via manipulating drop rate and so on instead. And the very first paragraph you snipped already tells you that the difference might not be actually as trivial as you would imagine, at least not for the new players. People agreeing on wanting things cheaper? If this is about fairness, wouldn't making the other sets more expensive also work?...which I'd have zero problem with since all of my characters are already fully geared. Though, I'd still advocate for the new players and go with the opposite direction. And again obviously you did not read the part you snipped at all. The post is not about individual armor set. I did not want to get into detail. Suffice to say, your base premise that medium ascended armor is the main or only demand behind leather is false imo.And again, which was not the premise but instead a straw man you brought up yourself. Might as well read again. Still you are missing the entire point of the OP, which is to provide a more equal footing and accessibility to equipment and hence contents regardless of the profession they choose for their first character. And yes, the disparity could be made up by the players through additional hours of grind, but the question remains: why should such disparity exist? Should it exist? What is the justification for its existence? Couldn't it be more friendly and equally accessible for new players regardless of their choice of profession instead of punishing them for it? It shouldn't exist. I never said it did. I said this is NOT an issue which needs addressing at the current time and quite frankly there is no permanent "fair" way to address it.To quote yourself: "leather is currently the most expensive, light armor was on release." In case you are not keeping track of the patch note, the exact reason why the the former is how it currently is and the latter became no more was the change of refinement ratio and the recipe, which others have also brought up in this thread. As long as it is not fixed, the disparity will remain permanent. And if it is fixed, well, as long as no additional changes were made to the said two factors above, the effect will likely be permanent. Honestly, you can have your own list of priority, which I respect. Though your arrogance to assume your counterparts position in an argument without reading their text and to deny the need for others does baffle me. Just could we at least have a more civil discussion?

Not sure how you would assure no constant changes, given how the used ingredients are subject to the in-game economy. As such we are back to: constant adjusting here for such a minor difference is not needed. I would not. I do not develop this game. And if you follow the discussion closely, you'd see people agreeing on this proposal or having other thoughts about it do not request for constant changes either. They advocate to bring back the original leather refinement ratio and to regulate the market via increase in supply via manipulating drop rate and so on instead. And the very first paragraph you snipped already tells you that the difference might not be actually as trivial as you would imagine, at least not for the new players. And again obviously you did not read the part you snipped at all. The post is not about individual armor set. ...which are still additional grinds. And still you are missing the entire point of the OP, which is to provide a more equal footing and accessibility to equipment and hence contents regardless of the profession they choose for their first character. And yes, the disparity could be made up by the players through additional hours of grind, but the question remains: why does such disparity exist? Should it exist? What is the justification for its existence? Couldn't it be more friendly and equally accessible for new players regardless of their choice of profession instead of punishing them for it?

No problem. It is not the difference between the costs of ascended armor of different stat combinations, but instead the costs of ascended armor of different weights. As stated in the OP, the berserker set is only brought up as an example, and perhaps even a representable one due to its prevalence. As for the leather farm you brought up, well, now that you mention it, the proposal might actually make AFK farming (if that's what you mean by "leather farm" since there has been quite some discussion taking place about it recently.) less desirable due to reduced demand, and hence price, for leather. Personally, I do not care about it that much, but if it does helps...well, then, glad to help?

Personally, I lean more toward the idea that, since it is already a mess now, might as well try to "unfix" it ;)

For a veteran player, perhaps. Yet, please do also keep in mind that this post is all about advocating for new players to provide a more equal footing for them regardless of whichever profession they choose as their first character. Not to mention the profitability of one of the major and perhaps most accessible open world farms, Silverwaste, is highly dependent on player MF value, which new players generally do not have as much, and the disparity could thus for them become more significant than you'd imagine. First of all, the proposal here is not to "[doctor] around an individual item and individual price basis in regular intervals", but instead provides a holistic view over the relation between crafting system and market of ascended armor, which is arguably one of the most important factor that drives market demand for leather. The Berserker set here is only brought up as an example, regarding its prevalence and thus its representability, and it is clearly stated in the OP. Secondarily, a major part of the charm is that the developers actually care about the experience of players. The more or less "no-grind" design philosophy. The level 80 cap that does not raise with each expansion. The idea "horizontal progression". And it is not just about those grand, systemic stuffs that ArenaNet has promised the players and keeping it since launch. It also comes to things as detail and insignificant as to reduce the chore for players when gathering from the synthesizers in the guild halls by making all plant based ones one-shot and wood two shots. And the market of critical crafting materials that is traded in tens of thousands daily is certainly nothing trivia, nor is the experience of new players. It is why the developers even took the effort to introduce the guide achievement. The point you made that this issue does not warrant developers attention simply does not stand. Not to mention that what is requested in the OP is clearly not to "constantly make changes".

You can only change stats instead of weight via MF.

Except that in fact the most significant historical factor of crafting material prices was not difference in demands for ascended berserker gear of different weights, which is more or less constant, but the refinement ratio of the material to craft these items. And if you look back into the market history, it is almost always the medium set that costs the most, if my memory serves right. Sorry, not sure how I glossed over the ascended for fractals part. Pretty sure the market imbalance you are referring to started because they messed with it by adding leather requirements for patches when they should have just reduced the amount of leather sources. Leather was dirt cheap before that. It swung hard and became one of the most valuable crafting materials after that. They should leave the market alone and maybe add a one time collection for your first set of ascended fractal armor.It wasn't your fault but instead more of mine. I did not made it clear enough in my first edition of the post. After your reply I updated it and hopefully people would get my point more easily. And yes, it was indeed the said patch that caused this issue. Here I agree with ArchonWing.9480 in another comment above that it was way over-corrected.

Agreed. Everything about Preparation is awesome excep that 3 s delay. If there must be something that functionally differentiate it from the Trap skills, it should be anything but.

Since now everyone has two equipment template, I'd advise you to try out P/P and P/D on one and P/P and SB on the other. P/D offers you a more dynamic play style against single target enemies. The set also grants you two fail safe option against melee enemies with #3 and #5 if you run out of dodge or other means of mitigation, provided that you still have enough initiative points. You can always switch back to the other template out of combat for mobility on SB. If you prefer things to be even more dynamic, try melee. Use Sword and Pistol against regular enemy mobs. There is a guide that details how it works. Against single target that cannot be crowd controlled, use Dagger/Dagger instead. Almost none of the group utilities that you named (except healing) is dependent on attribute points, and all of them are situational in instanced contents. Therefore you will still be doing great DPS while providing any of those. As of healing, the profession is generally considered a subpar healer, so it is advised that you avoid specializing yourself into such role. You might have also come across raid builds designed to be boon support. Those are highly situational, limited to few specific bosses and require quite some investment in boon duration equipment, which is just not as useful for this class elsewhere, so you might as well get DPS gear first. Try out both. But I'd recommend to try out melee with staff first. There are two variants, one for open world and the other for instanced contents.

Except that in fact the most significant historical factor of crafting material prices was not difference in demands for ascended berserker gear of different weights, which is more or less constant, but the refinement ratio of the material to craft these items. And if you look back into the market history, it is almost always the medium set that costs the most, if my memory serves right.

GW2 seriously needs to advertise its PvP/WvW. Few MMOs out there actually handle combat right, and while GW2 is one of them, the majority of its player base is consist of PvE gamers. I'd call this a great shame.

Take the Berserker sets for example, which are the most prevalent in PvE. Here are the prices for the material to craft a full set of Zojja's armor in each weight. Heavy: 245 ~ 255 gMedium: 280 ~ 290 gLight: 270 ~ 275 g Since too many have mistaken the point of this post for ideas around specific stat combination and/or individual armor set, allow me to rephrase it. There is a 35 to 45 g disparity between the costs of a full set of ascended armor of each weight, which does not seem to me justified, particularly for new players with their first character of adventurer or scholar classes, who are required to spend more time or gold to obtain their very first set of ascended armor as their entrance ticket to fractals. Maybe the issue can be solved by lowering the cost of one of the major components in ascended armor: Cured Thick Leather Squares, which the medium armor set costs the most and the heavy armor set costs the least. If the number of Thick Leather Section to make one Cured Thick Leather Square is reduced back from 4 to 3 as it used to be, that would help reduce the disparity of cost between different armor weights. What's the communities take on this?

Features that improves swords on Warrior was added to Blademaster back in 2017, but yes, before then there were no trait that enhances it. Ahh, yeah, my bad. Vicious Lacerations would beg to differ. Said trait has not existed for 7 months. Tranquil Benediction is meh but still. Said trait has not existed for over a year.Damn you are right! Seems we both got screwed by patches lol

Features that improves swords on Warrior was added to Blademaster back in 2017, but yes, before then there was no trait that enhances it. Vicious Lacerations would beg to differ. Tranquil Benediction is meh but still.

just coming here to say that the videos are quite a joy to watch. please keep on updating <3

Evidence to support that 20% of gamers are disabled elderly people incapable of completing an incredibly easy race? I'll wait. By indulging into a figurative number, I believe you completely missed the point, which is that there are indeed disabled and/or elderly people out there having a hard time completing contents that could grant them access to items or abilities that would improve their QoL in game. There is nothing wrong to advocate for them. And YOU miss a point made by someone else above. If you design a game based on the absolute lowest possible standard... there would be someone that exists that can't complete every existing aspect of this game. Some people are bad platformers, we need to remove all platforming from the game. Some people are incapable of competing in pvp, we need to remove all pvp from the game. Some people are incapable of the reflexes required to dodge appropriately, need to remove active dodging from the game. Some people just straight up don't have hands, need to remove any aspect of the game that requires the use of a keyboard and mouse. Stop attempting to force game design for a small percentage of the population. ...which, in case you have not noticed, was a combination of slippery slope and straw man originally brought up cNd.1096, instead of what the OP was ranting about. Simply compare the following statements: Honestly I do not even know why people agree with cNd's apparent false rebuttal so much. Perhaps people just want to troll OP for venting. Though the position of the OP actually reads more close to something like this: "It is a good thing that people enjoy the mount race, but when to attain a certain degree of success in the activity becomes the necessary prerequisite of functions that could greatly improve peoples QoL, it becomes problematic and thus extremely frustrating for people with technical difficulty." The necessary prerequisite, which by definition is not optional, was apparently why OP felt being forced. I simply do not see the OP was actually advocating for the removal of race, or as you mentioned in your post, platforms, pvp, the dodge function or whatnot, which is indeed a point, but also just another slippery slope. And it is simply not a necessity for those things to be removed in order to solve the issue. There is a difference in design consideration between simply lowering the difficulty for everyone and improving the accessibility for those in need, and it is possible to improve QoL for people who are suffering from disability and other conditions without turning everything into a killjoy. For an obvious example, set the prerequisite to Bronze medal instead of Silver, and maybe further make Bronze more easily achieved by expanding the time limit, so that even people with technical difficulty can at least access the underwater skimmer function with better ease and perhaps redo this less. By doing so, the experience of regular players are hardly negatively impacted, and you improve the accessibility and QoL for those people actually in need. And if you happen to have read another popular thread I recently started, you'd actually find that I am against lowering difficulty for quite a lot of things and even advocating making certain contents even more difficult than their current state in the comments.

Hang on...I thought Regeneration from sources with highest Healing Power ignored the queue and came into effect first. Isn't that how it's been working?

Unless you are particularly into condition damage based builds, I would recommend Berserker/Diviner hybrid. Herald can easily maintain permanent 25 stacks of Might, Fury, Swiftness and high uptime for many other boons with this setup, and Renegade can provide permanent Alacrity, Protection and many other boons just as well. Personally, I do not find either of them worse than full Berserker in open world, if not better. Since ascended trinkets are relatively easily available, swap your Diviner trinkets for Berserker ones when you feel like putting out more personal DPS, and switch them back when you want to support your allies better. As for instanced PvE contents, there is also demand for Alacrity in Fractals so you would also fit for purpose with this setup.

Evidence to support that 20% of gamers are disabled elderly people incapable of completing an incredibly easy race? I'll wait. By indulging into a figurative number, I believe you completely missed the point, which is that there are indeed disabled and/or elderly people out there having a hard time completing contents that could grant them access to items or abilities that would improve their QoL in game. There is nothing wrong to advocate for them.

Regarding connection quality and the negative impact it could cause to gameplay, I'd like to just remind everyone that, latency and ping spike are two entirely different things. For example, I regularly get 250 or so ping but only occasionally 1k+ ping spike. Therefore, I have come to the point that my reflex takes latency into account, since it is most of the time steady. For some people, however, they regularly suffer from both, which could lead to terrible playing experience. Though, as I stated above in another comment, that I still believe technical problems is to be better solved with technical approaches instead of design consideration. If there are enough people having the same issue speaking up about it and maybe initiate something (I'd recommend to start a new thread about it), the developers can look into it and hopefully alleviate the problem.