Adotiln Urthadar.1823

Anet, implement the most basic accessibility features in 2024? Doesn't sound feasible.

Yea, you can't accept daily/weekly/special rewards if it would take you over the cap.

As several Bonus Events are awarding Astral Acclaim, I was curious about what would happen if accepting the reward would take you over the cap of 1300. Turns out the AA disappears into the void and you get nothing.

The Weaver's Prowess nerf is baffling. cWeaver was already a relatively weak build and now it's even worse.

Spirited Arrival is a weird place to put more might as it competes with Windborne Notes. Seems like it would be simpler to just double the might on CA skills or something. Also disappointing to see no warrior changes, seeing that quickness berserker is clunky, low damage and has no utility. Plus the arc divider change killing off greatsword makes it super boring.

All of this from a PvE perspective only: Loving the pulsing alacrity on Tempest, will finally feel like a reliable support. Baffled by the buffs to power weaver - an already very strong spec. Should be something like ~1300 even before any benefits from the new weave self are considered which puts it in real danger of totally eclipsing the condi build and maybe even catalyst (why play classes with slow ramp-up if pWeaver is burstier and has similar long-term DPS). Power levels in general are absurdly high at the moment, we need nerfs not an endless series of buffs. The pWeaver buffs are especially confusing when Scrapper and Reaper (two of the weakest DPS classes) get relatively small buffs (if Reaper gets buffed at all). On the subject of Reaper - why on earth are the notes so vague? Other specs get precise coefficient values and Reaper gets "additional damage, stun, and condition duration, and grants you additional boons". 0.5s icd on Tomes is brilliant, really want to see this in a few other places (circular projectiles on Catalyst, Facet of Nature etc) Very happy to see further walking back of the irritating "disadvantage" concept by giving Daredevil its Steal back. Rifle deadeye buffs are nice, but this is another very strong build getting buffs where I just feel it would be healthier to nerf the alternatives instead. Great to see that Mark isn't removed when getting downed any more, can we maybe do the same for Catalyst energy? While I don't begrudge Bladesworn getting some QoL, it feels quite rough that it's the focus of the warrior changes - Berserker is almost certainly the worst eSpec in PvE right now and a miniscule increase in the damage of Arc Divider isn't going to do a kitten thing - in fact the sundering leap change might actually be a nerf! On a larger note - why do 99% of the balance changes only affect power builds rather than condi? There isn't a single condition damage change in this entire patch and I don't recall there being one in the last one either. We seem to be rapidly moving back towards a meta where condi is completely worthless.

That's just player research though, no? Clearly the specific research items aren't being salvaged from coats but I don't think that implies it's intended.

It's possible this is intended but it seems unlikely. Ascended armour pieces seem to salvage into ~450 research notes each, but chest pieces only ever yield 275. I would guess there is a base amount of notes you get plus a "roll" for more, and chest pieces aren't rolling for the additional notes.

Feels like DPS firebrand is going to be really boring to play now. Without being "locked" into tomes for a set period of time, you won't have any reason to use a weapon set other than Axe/Torch, and many of the F1 skills are going to be basically useless as it will all be about maximising damage/page so logically only one skill will be used (more only if you have excess pages).

I'd be interested in knowing where you stand on previous efforts that have ended up removing tools that could have been used for balance. An example would be making might and fury generation "automatic" in group content by having basically all classes provide some passively (though this hasn't been achieved yet). In my opinion this just gives you less things to balance around, and along with things like minimising attacks that benefit from large hitboxes, or making almost all boon-provision AoEs identical size (PBAoE 360 units), it feels like it leads to a homogenisation and denies classes from having a niche.

With the proposed changes coming on the 4th of October, Well of Bounty is losing the ability to provide regeneration. This is currently the only source of group regeneration that Specter has (single-target scepter skills don't count), and in combination with the shroud nerf, will severely reduce the potency of heal specter, which is already a pretty niche build.

Ele changes look good, nice to see staff getting some attention, even if I'm sad that the fire auto is retaining its clunky animation. While holo and scrapper are thankful for the buff, I don't understand how you can justify another buff to power mechanist - it's already having a devastating effect on group diversity and now it's going to be even worse. Additionally, I don't understand the condi mech nerfs at all. They should end up putting cMech really close to pMech in terms of damage so why would you ever play it? Very happy to see that Blast Gyro is no longer able to sabotage people who've neatly grouped up enemies! It's good that Mirage is finally getting nerfed, though I wonder if the axe build has been hit too hard. pVindicator buffs feel like they're in the wrong place? It's already barely a DPS increase to use swords in addition to greatsword and now it might even be a DPS loss. Sad to see higher skill-ceiling play get no reward. Similarly, it seems that the pDeadeye buffs help out dagger more than they do rifle? So we might end up in a situation where the much more complex rifle build is barely better to the very simple dagger builds so again... why bother? While I think there's more good than bad in this patch, I don't understand why some classes get sweeping buffs whereas others get the tiniest increases (seriously, why on earth are you scared of letting reaper be viable?). I would have also liked to see some more actual condi buffs. Adding 10% to the power damage of warrior's sword seems incredibly pointless.

With a new expansion comes lots of new players, and the return of old ones. While End of Dragons is undoubtedly great, conversations with friends and family have brought to mind the ways that Guild Wars 2 is still failing to accommodate players with various disabilities. Below are a few examples that have been in the game basically since launch. While this was par for the course when GW2 was released, it feels like it's falling behind when it is getting major releases in 2022 and is still full of issues. Motion Sickness I don't know how widespread this is, but I've got the impression that more people are having issues with motion sickness in this expansion than previous ones. With the game taking control of your camera much more often, it feels like this is causing issues for some people. Similarly, my partner finds the way the login screen shifts as you move the mouse to be actively nausea-inducing, to the extent that they have found themself trying to select characters as soon as they can before the background can load in. A real shame considering how gorgeous it is! Visual Processing This is something that has got worse over time. The PoF era in particular was in love with filling the screen with glowing or flashing visual effects. It's often stated that visual clutter is a problem in this game, but even aside from that a lot of the effects being used make it difficult for some players - I know a few experienced raiders who find wing 7 in particular difficult to look at in times with its heavy use of brandstorm effects, and in particular the way that the floor tiles appear and disappear between phases at Adina. Some of the new skill animations don't seem properly affected by skill LoD, and there are a multitude of existing effects that cannot be consistently toned down, even with LoD and postprocessing options. And partly related - I've also heard people say they find tracking the fishing bar quite difficult, sometimes even inducing motion sickness, which definitely ruins the relaxing gameplay typically associated with fishing. Colour-blindness Frankly, the game is appalling for colour-blind people. I think every single person I know with colour-blindness has had some issue with seeing parts of the game, so it's definitely widespread. I've had some raid encounters where success and failure basically comes down to "Let's hope the colour-blind player doesn't get this mechanic" Audio While audio cues are great, there are times when an audio cue is the ONLY good cue that is provided. Additionally, there are no proper subtitles in the game, and not all dialogue appears in the chat box, forcing you to read a small stylised box floating over someone's head that may even be in motion. In EoD there are a few cutscenes where there is dialogue, but no subtitles. UI Not a lot of detail needed, simply that having an almost totally-uncustomisable UI prevents players from making adjustments that they may need to play the game properly. Sustain This one is perhaps less obvious, but the recent (much-needed) nerf to battle scars seems to have brought with it a game-wide reduction in sustain traits (and Tormenting Runes). To the best of my knowledge, none of these traits (except battle scars) was used or causing problems in high-level PvE, PvP or WvW, and many of them were on classes that were otherwise pretty weak. I can see the argument that these traits were too powerful, but they were also an incredible tool for players who have slower reactions or limited mobility, who otherwise may not be able to avoid a lot of the damage the game throws at you. This change will have made the game significantly harder for such players, just because some other players were able to solo content too easily? I bring this up in part because I know there are people at Arenanet who care about accessibility, and it is a disappointment that such a wonderful game is continuing to fail to accommodate large groups of people.

So the recent reset change made it very annoying to test in the special forces training area as swapping any traits or weapons would clear your buffs from the console. To fix this, the console now re-applies the boons/buffs that you set up on an interval. However, if any boons are applied it will strip any other boon currently on you at the same time. For players that want to test self-generation of boons such as quickness or might for their group, it is common to apply alacrity to yourself as this boon will usually be assumed in an organised setting. Of course, this now means that every few seconds you will lose the boons you apply yourself, making it impossible to actually test unless you bring a friend along to apply alacrity for you! If every version of this reset change breaks something and needs some weird hacked-together solution, maybe it wasn't such a good idea in the first place?

For years now, balance patch notes have been known for their occasional slip-ups and strange statements (who can forget the infamous “purity of purpose”?) But there seems to be an increased occurrence of these patch notes not merely being misleading, but completely incorrect. Since the long balance patch drought was broken in May, there have been a number of instances where the notes claim significant changes have taken place, but that simply haven’t. The second note of the most recent profession changes update claims that combo fields will now prioritise your own fields. This would be a massive improvement to the usability of a number of classes and combos therein, and one that I was incredibly pleased to see. This… didn’t actually happen. Based on everything I’ve heard and experienced, combo fields work exactly the same as they did before in all cases. This strikes me as concerning because it means that a change managed to make it into both the preview notes, then the final notes, while not actually being in the patch at all. It’s possible that the update worked in the test environment, but not in the live game for some reason, and will be fixed in a later update. However, this has happened before. If we look at the May 11th balance patch, the notes say that boons were changed to have a maximum duration, while stack limits were removed. Again, this didn’t happen – or rather, the maximum duration was applied, but stack limits were left in place. This change effectively screwed boon application on two fronts, making some skills that apply frequent, short-duration boons like Time Warp much weaker. This has never been acknowledged, and over three months later, it looks like the devs have just forgotten about it and moved on. It is astonishing to me that such a thing can happen – presumably if the change made it into the patch notes, the balance team believed it was a good idea and that they could implement it. The fact that it never actually got released, and no statement was ever made about it suggests a serious breakdown in communication. If the balance team were not including it in the release, why did they allow it to appear in two sets of patch notes? If it was bugged, why hasn’t it been fixed after three months with no acknowledgement? If they changed their mind, why didn’t they inform the players? While these inconsistencies may not matter to a large part of the playerbase, they do matter to the most dedicated players. To give another example, the most recent patch also fundamentally changed the firebrand skill Ashes of the Just. The change effectively killed firebrand as a DPS build outside of organised groups and wasn’t mentioned in the notes. The closest thing we have was a note in the June 8th patch that it “now properly attributes its damage to the source for each stack of the effect.” At the time, this was another patch note that simply didn’t happen but now what are firebrand players supposed to think? Is this the intended effect that wasn’t included in June, or is it just a bug that will be fixed soon? People may want to regear, change groups comps etc. because of this change, but we have no way of knowing whether it’s here to stay because the patch notes cannot be considered a reliable source of information! Patch notes are one of the most convenient, simplest ways of communicating what has changed in game, but I know people who no longer bother reading them because they don’t trust them to be correct. I would urge the people responsible to take a look at these issues, or at least let us know when mistakes have been made. I recognise that it’s not practical to respond to every bug in every patch, nor to guarantee that the notes include every single change (e.g. firebrand axe and thief pistol autos have reduced cast times, plaguelands has a combo field indicator when it isn’t a combo field), but for these “headline” changes I don’t believe it is unreasonable to expect some degree of consistency.

I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere, but could we please remove the new downed state skill being visible to all players? Already chaotic events are even more of a mess of AoEs now once people start getting downed. I would also be interested in understanding why the skill was changed at all - the previous version couldn't be used anywhere "competitive" so I don't see why it was necessary to nerf it.

So we just got a new Claw of Jormag fight released, as well as the assault on the frost citadel, so I thought I’d give a bit of (hopefully) constructive feedback on the different parts of the meta, though it will mostly be negative I think. I think there is a lot to enjoy about the earlier parts of the attack on the citadel. The preparation is fairly standard stuff, but there are a few cool things once inside.The Phalanx design is good – creating a barrier to players that needs cc to break, while artillery (ice giants) and snipers shoot over them is a nice addition and very thematically interesting. The blog post mentioned the ability to create more cinematic moments by having more control over the players’ positioning (and thus camera) and this comes into effect for the room with the tank when it slowly rolls into view as we engage the frost legion forces. After this though, it feels like it starts to go downhill. The blood collection room is a decent place for a repeated fight with an icebrood construct, but the experience is ruined by the huge numbers of mobs that spawn. Returning to the blog post, there was a mention of “innovating with player roles” that I’m guessing was supposed to come into play a bit here? If the intent was to have some players dealing with the trash mobs though, the scaling completely thwarts this – the additional enemies in this room are FAR too tanky to be worth the time killing them (they usually take almost as long to kill as the icebrood construct itself). So the experience here is one of being constantly bounced around between a million different knockbacks that no amount of stability will prevent. Between the ice giants and the catapults (which are easy to destroy, but are rebuilt by the engineers almost instantly, and the engineers are far too tanky to bother killing) you’re barely even able to fight the boss. Things don’t improve after this – you run down a long corridor filled with enemies that aren’t worth the time to kill but cause serious problems to anyone behind the zerg – and out into the new Claw fight. Visually, this is a very nice arena, with the Claw looming imposingly above the battlefield and pelting damage down upon players. Unfortunately, this is all just set dressing. As the cannon scraps are not instanced, a handful of players instantly grab them and leave everyone else with nothing to do. It took me a couple of runs to even realise where the cannon scraps appeared as they were gone so quickly. To make matters worse, some of the Claw’s attacks are seriously overtuned. The large “ice bomb” that covers an area in frost looks great, but the huge size of it, and constant ticks of chill and damage just cut off massive areas of the arena (that your current objective might be inside), and risk “trapping” players in the AoE with no real recourse. Chill is such an oppressive condition it feels needlessly harsh to have it applied so frequently. The Claw also has an “ice laser” attack (that once again, looks great) but the AoE for this ability appears practically the same moment that the attack hits, and the damage is enough to instantly down most players – I’ve seen this take out half a squad before, with no way to have prevented it. In contrast to the earlier encounters in the Citadel, the direction is also pretty lacking here: both times the Claw is shot off its perch, it happens the very second the event concludes. Time in which players are usually ressing each other and picking up loot. As such after a fair few runs of the meta, I had to remind myself to consciously look at the Claw, as I realised I’d never actually watched it be shot off. Side note: While I believe the bounty system from PoF has a lot of potential, it feels like too often the ley instabilities are just slapped on a basic mob rather than create something interesting to fight. By contrast, the addition of a couple of novel attacks as well as the instabilities on each of the tribunes makes them feel much more engaging in my opinion. The final fight on the Claw then feels very disappointing. As someone who enjoyed the Drakkar fight, this felt both similar and yet far less interesting.The “headline” attack from the claw is to push back players and then to release a chilling ice breath that players are supposed to hide from behind boulders. In practice though, neither of these attacks is anywhere close to threatening enough to waste time not DPSing, so squads just completely ignore it and revive anyone who gets downed by the ice breath (which is rare). What IS dangerous, however, is the multitude of mobs that spawn at the back of the arena who are ready to instantly nuke any players unfortunate enough to try playing the encounter the way it was intended.When the Claw finally breaks free, it becomes even less threatening as all it does at this point is paw aimlessly at the ground vaguely near the squad, causing the entire fight to just fizzle to a close. I feel that most of the problems I have with both the frost citadel and Claw encounters are that the mechanics don’t reward you for completing them: killing extra mobs in the citadel is often a waste of time; avoiding the claw’s breath attack isn’t important and just takes time away from attacking the boss, etc. As such the feeling of these fights is such that the mechanics often feel like they’re just an irritation, rather than part of the encounter. In the case of the citadel icebrood construct, this feels like just a case of poor tuning/scaling. The Claw fight is disappointing because the game has done many of the same things before, and much better – the original claw fight is better directed, Drakkar is more engaging to fight, the Vinewrath even has a better “hide behind the walls” mechanic. There is a lot of good stuff about these encounters, so I hope this comes across as genuine feedback rather than an attack.

Title pretty much. None of the firebrand tome skill ids are whitelisted on the API, so gw2armory (and by extension sites like Snow Crows and Metabattle) can't generate tooltips for them.

Are there any plans to look again at the revert functionality? When it was first talked about it was said to revert to the time the build was loaded. Having the "revert point" instead set to when the hero panel was opened makes the entire system practically useless.

I agree with many of the comments here - as disgusting as the monetization is, and as stupidly low as the limits are, the best QoL tweak this system could have would be the simple addition of a "load" button. It's so clunky that in the current system we cannot make adjustments to our builds/gear without "corrupting" one of our templates.

An issue I personally see is the nerfing of outlying classes that dominate a certain playstyle (such as firebrand or what scourge used to be). In my opinion these classes are not the issue, it is rather that all the other classes that could fulfil those roles are bad at it. Continuing to nerf firebrand will not make other support classes played more, it will just kill the support role entirely. This seems to have been bourne out somewhat with the destruction of Scourge, as without it teamfights are more like a collection of duelists smashing against one another, rather than what I had come to think of as a teamfight in PvP. In essense, I would much rather see buffs to the weak classes rather than heavy nerfs to the strong ones (within reason).

Given that the official implementation of build templates looks awful, would you consider allowing Delta to continue publishing his build template functionality through ArcDPS?

Yea health regen or maybe just increased healing would be much more on-theme as a "balancer".

I would assume that insabilities were intended to be a drawback. Or at the very least, a drawback if not dealt with perfectly. I think NPNG feels ok to me - if there's an issue with it, it's more to do with how rare boonstrip is: Only spellbreaker, revenant, necromancer and mesmer can do it and all have to give up a lot to do so (hell, chrono can't even do it properly any more as they don't count as a clone).

This information has already been told to us - there are 4 living world teams and they are still aiming for the 2-3 month release cadence.