Unicorn Luna.5204

It breaks stun for yourself if you get stunned after casting and before it lands. It's a very weird application.

tl;dr: The one thing that would stop me from taking healer warrior to group content is the lack of stability share that's available. I made alac heal bladesworn work very well for my liking and I enjoyed it a lot. But practically I'd still take my druid or hfb for healing jobs simply because they can share stability and both can stability share on stun breaker utilities. Any other feedback I may bring about staff has been said by others already. I am very happy with staff but also I look forwards to it being polished and then hopefully improved from the common elements of feedback being given. Many thanks!

The willbender alacrity change was needed because it was giving 1.5seconds of alacrity every 5 hits during flowing resolve. The other specs that give boons on hit were not restricted in this way and had a longer base duration of said boons. The outrage on supposed willbender favouritism in this case is purely from a lack of understanding of people who don't even play it. It's kind of unfortunate that a lot of the feedback is coming from players acting in manufactured outrage. It's very clear that anet are taking feedback and are acting on it in ways they're coming up with which is as a creative team should be - not at the whim of the customers ideas in all things. It's not always ways the outraged players like and so we get more manufactured outrage at anet for not taking their desired instructions for changes which then translates to "anet doesn't listen to feedback", it's really quite astonishing how frequent this happens. After coming back from a break I've found some very interesting changes that have definitely improved the state of specs, classes and most certainly availability to use the classes we want for the roles and content we want to play. Reading all this outraged feedback just makes me feel sorry for the poor souls in the dev team who have to trawl through it to find anything worthwhile. Try constructive feedback rather than needless whining, you all sound like 5 year olds having a tantrum. Thus I trigger those I call out I guess, hit me with your confused reactions.

Hi there, I'm super grateful to be able to revisit old lion's arch, such a great blast from the past. But I'm unable to enjoy it properly as it's quite isolated from the rest of the world. I can live without gliding and mounts, especially as there's no fall damage. But I'd like to suggest two things that would enable me and hopefully others to get the use out of this map that they want. 1) Enable "Tyria Surface" as a layer when viewing the world map so that we can use waypoints to leave OLA. A significant factor for me in not using OLA is that there is usually an extra loading screen if you want to go anywhere else. To New LA then where ever your destination is unless you're using tomes. 2) Enable the popup to join your party in Fractals of the Mists to happen in Old LA if your party has entered from New LA anywhere on the map. Currently you can join your party in fractals from Old LA but you have to walk up to the entrance which requires using the key to load into north LA< waypointing down to fractals and then running in. No one would do this if their party is already waiting inside for them - just goto New LA. I really want to use Old LA more but these two factors prevent me from using Old LA in the common ways I use LA. I hope these changes can be straight forwards to implement if considered! Many thanks for Old LA nostalgia anyway!

I thought this was just me! I don't play fb very much, exclusively heal build. I notice that when i close a tome using the same key i opened it with that sometimes it will instantly open after closing. This usually seems to happen when weapon swap is NOT on cooldown. I believe I noticed the pattern that if weapon swap is off cooldown i should use that to close the tome to avoid this happening. I don't know if this is working workaround or a fluke as the issue is not consistent.

It's still good it's just not top dog with minimal effort any more.

Hey Anet! I didn't watch the stream because I just don't really watch streams when they're on, I occasionally make time to watch uploaded versions when I get to them so I don't know if I'm missing relevant information that's not included in your post here. I'd first like to say thank for doing this and well done. In a way it's quite daring to do this as you're allowing yourselves to be accountable for what you do in the realm of balancing. What this does show is that you really do care about the players and would like us to understand where you're coming from. It's nice to have a few points officially cleared up. I'm deeply grateful for this and I admire what you're attempting. Unfortunately there is a lot of specific info that I was looking forwards to that wasn't included and what was included was quite general. This means that a lot of the balance philosophy is left under assumption and by definition of action. I'm mostly talking instances pve content for context. I note that a fair few people have talked about homogenisation and that is bad. But I feel that empowering players to play the class they want to is more important. I don't think enabling all classes to have dps/quick or alacdps/quick or alac heal build potential equates to everything being uniform. Class styles remain ever different. I think it's possible to deliver these things on all classes while keeping those classes and especs unique and with differing levels of accessibility. There was once a law that melee dps would be stronger than ranged dps but this no longer appears to be true. I tend to assume this issue was left out of this posting due to the contradictions in current balance. I think it is important to address whether this is still part of balance philosophy and if not, why. This may be difficult as it would also require apologising for not keeping to this in recent years. There are especs that by intention offer next to nothing in terms of healing or boon support, but relatively speaking the damage they do bring to the table is behind even some boon dps builds, let alone other damage builds. What makes sense to me is that classes with boon support and great utility should not have better dps potential than specs that are designed solely for dps. As with melee vs ranged I tend to assume this was left out due to contradictions in current balance. Condi vs power. In most cases that I've found it is simpler to deal damage as a condi spec than it is as a power spec. I've no idea how balancing that could be any less than a nightmare but it feels unusual for me to work really hard to push out power dps and then switch to a condi dps and essentially be letting stats do half the work for me. It's very similar to melee vs range issue for me in that you can place your DoTs and have the luxury to back off for a bit while they do the work. Power dps has no such luck because outside of mechanist and burst damage it's usually only keeping up before condi overtakes on the longhaul. The only way I could foresee balancing that and making it fair at all is if somehow all condi had a slower ramp up time and a larger number in the long fights. But then condi gets made somewhat redundant in short fights over power. Is power supposed to be bursty and condi supposed to be bigger the longer the battle? I like a lot that you want to make effective low intensity classes for those that need low intensity to play and enjoy the game. But I don't feel this should be at the expense of high intensity classes feeling subpar in relation, if anything low intensity should be less effective than high intensity, not ineffective just less. I don't feel effective low intensity specs should have the same high utility of a high intensity spec. I main guardian. I don't like firebrand because it's too much on one spec, but I play it because it's effective for the content I do and because it's one of the two specs expected as a support so if I'm not able to get a dps spot I'm sure to get in as quick heals. And because I love my guardian character. I've never given that much time to engi but I like holosmith and scrapper. I don't like mechanist for the same reasons why I don't like firebrand. It's too much on one spec and way too easily. If there is any one class that should have access too everything and be doing it well it's elementalist but I gave up on that some years ago because the time it requires to get re-familiar with is high and it gets changed so frequently too. Each class deserves to be effective in each area so that we can all play the class and style we want to. But I don't think anything should be so effective at low intensity that no one wants for anything else. I got refused on my heal alac druid recently from a strike group because they wanted heal alac mech. Of course there are issues with spirits being the alac provider but the fact that this can even be a conceivable reaction is due to how the classes were designed and balanced. If people want easy to play specs for a job, that should be fine, but it shouldn't be more reliable or more effective than a class that works harder. I hope the upcoming balance patch reflects your post and answers some of the issues I've mentioned. There is a tremendous amount of work to do in terms of balance in my opinion. Not a small or easy task, it's admirable that you're trying. I'm not sure anyone is really up to it, but I will remain optimistic, because you're anet and you're awesome.

I wrote this as feedback for Anet devs. I'm not really fussed what anyone feels about it, I'm not likely to come back and check on reples. If you feel similarly about what I've said then, cool! It might be helpful for Anet to hear about that. It looks like this forum is mostly negative rants about how alliances is bad. But for me it will transform WvW for the better, in a big way. I can not wait. I don't usually enjoy WvW because when I've tried to play it I've found it particularly stressful with all the people who usually dominate the social aspect of the game mode. WvW on servers usually appears to be the playground of the guilds and commanders who play there the most. They dominate the social structure and will be rude if you don't know something and treat you like you're an idiot. So I rarely in the past managed to play for long before I'd get frustrated and bored of the general attitude there and then leave. I actually enjoy the game mode as a concept though. This latest beta appeared to have the mostly PvE guild I selected paired up with mostly other PvE guilds as allies and opponents. I realise this would have been terrible for any serious WvW players or guilds but for me and some of the people I played with it was the best WvW experience we'd ever had. Being primarily PvE guilds it meant that expectations were low. There was no pressure to know everything and to perform at our best and very rarely did anyone behave like a scummy kitten. Fights felt balanced because we weren't either being steamrolled by a massively more organised team or otherwise in a stalemate of zergs circling eachother. Commanders weren't raging at everyone or blaming the firebrands and scrappers when wipes happened or things didn't go right or important points were lost. We just got on with it. We captured points, we lost points, we stopped things being captured, we got prevented from capturing stuff. We ran into enemies and had random fights. And it was without all this pressure and anger that I'm used to seeing in WvW and no requirement to jump on voice chat in order to participate in group play. It felt to me like how the game mode was meant to be and I really had a lot of fun with it. Knowing this side of the community I fully expect some negative replies and confused reactions. I realise that player versus player type content does appear to draw in the most aggressive attitudes in gaming, but they're really not the only ones who enjoy the type of content. If we're really really lucky Anet may have figured out how to carve wvw into a gamemode where those people get their satisfying top tier challenging pk battles with bad attitudes at eachother all day. And they don't have to put up with us filthy, fluffy, casuals who fight each other and then apologise for good measure. I don't usually agree with segregation but this could actually work. :S

Well I'll be damned. Guardian main for 10 years and I never once paid attention to those flames during combat, never realised there was a reason to. You're in fact correct and willbender does have flames but they're based on the virtues it has which have to be activated first. This information doesn't even appear to be on the wiki page for guardian! I guess it shouldn't need explaining anywhere because it should be obvious... honestly can't believe what I've learned about guardian and myself today. xD

I don't know how I didn't notice before but as you can see from the image, Willbender does not have its flames like all other guardian specs. https://imgur.com/DUVBzfq Cheers

Quoting myself as I'd like to add some feedback since having played it a lot more and it makes sense to keep it together. Plus helps me when I come back here next. I'll try as much as I can to refrain from making too many suggestions so that this is more straight to the point for the balance devs. My use of the word "appear" means: "I've done a bit of testing, I'm fairly sure I'm right about this observation but I could be wrong" I actually don't want to talk much about power/conditions or DPS since that subjects being flogged pretty hard everywhere. Mostly I want to talk about the support capabilities as a dps or a healer. I find phoenix protocol+battle presence to share alac(and regen) is a fun idea but there are two things making this not really be worth it for team content. Boon duration needs are ambiguous, you need more if you're fighting one target and if you have problems getting procs. But in many situations you don't need much boon duration to make it work - eg if you're playing well and even less boon duration needed if there's more than one target to hit. The other thing is that besides a weak permanent regen it doesn't provide anything else consistently to the group. I've tried this build in harriers as a healer, essentially my HFB gear in a WB build, it can work but the healing+boon sharing capability isn't much different to core guardian, the main difference being it's got alac, easy perma-regen and better mobility options through utility and virtues. Battle presence shares the alac from phoenix protocol but doesn't appear to share the F2 heal that occurs without phoenix protocol traited. I'd observe that the alac share must be intentional but the heal not being shared seems unusual if that is the case. There feels significant potential for WB to be an interesting healer if that worked - twinned with "Purity of body" from Honor traits could be interesting too but that doesn't appear to work on self or with battle presence, with or without phoenix protocol. Restorative virtues (.25 skill recharge on virtue trigger + some alacrity for the willbender) is a very strong trait and it would still be strong without the alacrity aspect as it makes WB very quickfire. Holy reckoning trait is a useful trait for solo play but is outshined by restorative virtues. Due to the lack of clarity around how battle presence works with WB F2 (sharing alac and regen but not heals,) it seems like battle presence could share might from holy reckoning F2 procs, but it doesn't appear to do that. All of this leaves Alac willbender as a boon support dps OR healer as rather lacking when stood next to other classes attempting to do the same thing. My wee bit of suggestioning prefaced by my design philosophy in this case, which affects not just support roles but damage too: I believe something along these lines below would help to define willbenders trait lines as DPS or support, at the least it would give competitive options when choosing traits. Holy reckoning would not be a clear bad choice except for perhaps solo play in non-dps gear. Restorative virtues would clearly be a supportive trait and wouldn't compete with holy reckoning as a dps trait. Phoenix protocol and tyrants momentum would be a clear sacrificial choice either way. Here goes!: -Restorative virtues: Add a duration of alac and regen that can cover 100% uptime with some amount of boon duration for the player and have that boon application be shared as a result of battle presence. Remove the .25sec skill recharge on virtue trigger. -Phoenix protocol: Remove alacrity and regen application on F2 trigger, remove the denial of F2 proccing heal, add denial of F1 procs, add the .25sec recharge on virtue trigger and add some might on F2 proc. -Holy reckoning: Remove the might and give this a crit chance or damage modifier. -Battle presence: Allow WB F2 heal to be shared. Allow WB F2 endurance gain to be shared if Purity of body is traited (and allow purity of body to work with WB F2 at all). I think that's all! Cheers for now!

How is it established? I play Power WB and DH as they're my favourite styles. No, they're not out DPSing classes played by people who know how to play them well. Yes I'm able to do more than enough DPS for any of the content I do - and I'm not talking about OW. In terms of pulling their weight, they do that well enough. They just don't top DPS charts unless I'm with players that are not performing at their best. Willbender isn't the only class espec that brings very little for the team and its alac share build is definitely well behind anything else providing alac as they can all do that with more boons and DPS or heals - but this discussion is on power builds so that's a conversation for another day. Functionality speaking, both could be improved, but so could every class and spec. My questions to you is: What about cmc being balance lead establishes that power guardian and power classes will suffer for the next couple of months? What do you mean by they will suffer? If power-classes+power-guardian will suffer for the next few months due to this, why will they stop suffering in a few months? What would you actually like to see besides offhand sword turning sword 3 into a dual attack? We all know longbow could be improved and that hammer has never been particularly useful outside of niche situations, this is not a new thing. I don't really agree that retribution and unscathed contender need a redesign but what redesign do you think they need? I do agree power guardian could be improved in some areas. The bottom line is it's not winning any DPS races on a speed run but it's able to pull its weight in any encounter the game has to offer. So my final questions are: What is it that makes you feel so strongly? Where is the suffering? Is benching lower than other classes really that bad? You noted that some other users have thoughtful feedback that's worth mentioning, are you being thoughtful with how you engage people in this discussion?

It's the bit where I said: Definitely a support dps shouldn't be equal or better damage potential to a pure dps but also a pure dps with significant utility or survivability shouldn't be doing more or equal damage than a pure dps that doesn't. Case in point: We agree but you're asking me to answer the question I already answered, silly billy! reaper doing low dps is a problem since its utility is not that useful compared to other dps specs.

So much agree! I'm actually a huge fan of hybridising in mmo's but I feel gw2 goes way too far in allowing that. Definitely a support dps shouldn't be equal or better damage potential to a pure dps but also a pure dps with significant utility or survivability shouldn't be doing more or equal damage than a pure dps that doesn't. A ranged dps shouldn't be better than a melee, etc, etc. That just makes sense to me and I'm certain anet have explained along these lines in the past, which would make the ranged pmech out of line. Grouch has said they're looking at it and in general they're good at addressing things even if they don't necessarily address things in a way we agree with (For example, why the hell isn't ele the Queen of all dps?) and if they don't see a problem with the current state of this then I can only imagine they've gone mad or that Dev main favourites is upheld tyrannically, doesn't seem like anets way though. October balance patch and upcoming design philosophy statements will go a long way to helping us with clarity. It's a shame we don't get a more live conversation with devs about these things but I suppose they have to converse about it themselves before they bring it to us.

As I thought! Thanks everyone. Particularly Konig for the detail. I'd forgotten about the season 2 world changes, for some reason my brain lumps season 1 and 2 together, lol. I'm glad they stopped doing this for the most part but I can't help but feel there's something to be said for having the vanilla versions accessible somehow. I really want to hang out in the original LA (the original gw2 LA I mean). Anyway, I digress. Thanks all!