Jimbru.6014

Trying to think positively about the Spotter change... - Spotter giving pulsing Fury makes it a regular automatic source of Fury with no extra clicks or dependency on other abilities. Basically, it makes Fury one less thing to worry about. - That's helpful for LI builds, or other builds that already have too many buttons to push. - It's useful for soloing, or for small group situations where you might otherwise be lacking in boons. - It could help fill any gaps in Fury uptime in larger groups. - If you're part of a regular group, like for raiding or whatever, you being able to provide extra Fury uptime might give your partners more freedom to optimize their own abilities and make the whole group better. That's just some ideas, anyway. We'll just have to see how it plays out. The Might change to Druids, I'm OK with that because if it's possible for groups to have TOO MUCH of a particular boon, it's Might. Almost every class in the game has mechanisms for generating either self or group Might, plus runes and sigils of Strength if you swing that way. So for Druids to give up a little Might for these improvements, really isn't much of a sacrifice.

Hire new devs and require them to actually play the game they are responsible for. Every class should have a dev playing it in depth and representing the class in balance discussion.

Explainer from someone who was there for the original LS1: LS1 was originally designed to be one and done content, the ultimate FOMO, much of which happened as events in the open world, never to be seen again once it was finished. Needless to say, Anet devs at the time (almost none of whom are left with the company today) didn't appreciate having their months of work played once and deleted forever. Their internal rebellion, combined with highly negative player feedback, forced Anet to change tack with LS2, resulting in the current episodic Living World structure as we have it today. But that left LS1 hanging in limbo, and Anet actively ignored it for years, claiming repeatedly that it wasn't possible to bring LS1 back. Well, they lied. Under new management, with Steam release on the horizon, and with the realization that EoD doesn't make sense without LS1, Anet has in fact converted LS1 into proper Living World episodes, and the first two have already been released. The rest, including the parts where you meet Taimi and Scarlet, are scheduled and on their way. When it's all said and done, LS1 will be a free and permanent part of the game available to everyone. As it should have been in the first place.

But it's perfectly PG OK for a closeup of Smodur sticking a knife through Cinder's throat, and then Ryland headshooting Smodur? Seriously, if you're gonna get your panties in a bunch about dirty jokes, how about getting upset about all the other PG stuff in the game too. Starting with all the gratuitous skin showing on female humans, just for example. 🙄

What they're doing to the elite specs in this patch is a good example of why so many rangers (including my main) still play the same basic core power LB/GS bowpet build that we've been playing ever since the earliest days of the game. There's no point playing anything else because you spend all the time and gold to unlock a new spec and set up a build, then Anet comes along and changes it for no good reason.

A major part of the problem is the state of the GW2 world versus the state of playing in that world. Whether or not Anet wants to admit it, GW2 is not a medieval fantasy game. The GW2 world is a high tech world with modern and futuristic battlefield threats. It has firearms, ranged magic, artillery, tanks, Vigil megalasers, golems and mechs, the list goes on. Every boss and even many trash mobs have ranged AOE and CC effects sometimes taken to completely ridiculous levels, as anyone who has fought Dragonstorm or been one-shot by a Mordrem Sniper knows first hand. In the real world, starting in the 17th century, the real equivalent of the ranged firepower we see in GW2 caused combat to move more and more to dispersed formations emphasizing mobility, range, and concentration of firepower to survive. Conflicts from the mid 19th century up to World War 1 repeatedly proved that mass formations and melee combat were obsolete as primary modes of combat. Yet in GW2, where we face the threats of a real 21st century battlefield, we are constantly forced by the nature of boons and healing into melee range dogpiles. We're trying to fight modern battles with medieval tactics because that's what the game forces us to do. That imbalance between the kind of world that GW2 has, versus the tactics that the devs keep trying to force on us, is a major root of the game's problems. The devs act like GW2 is a medieval fantasy of swords and sorcery, when the reality is that it's a modern world with modern battlefield threats. The very idea that anyone is still carrying bows and melee weapons and using mass combat in a world like GW2 is laughable, and until the devs finally get their heads around that and adapt gameplay accordingly, the problems will continue.

In case you're not paying attention Anet, you've got 19 pages and counting of people telling you not to take this live. Listen to us for once. This patch is BAD.

These patch notes are admissible evidence that the balance team does not play the game for which they are responsible. Or at the very least, they don't play it enough to know what really needs changed and how.

I would definitely recommend that a new or returning player at level 80 do just enough of Verdant Brink in HoT to unlock their glider, and the prologue to PoF to get their first mount, then go back to following the story line. Those two things won't give you any major spoilers, so you can still enjoy the story while having a much better quality of life.

Welcome back. The world boss train is always running, just hop aboard. 🙂

If you want a traditional boomy mage type caster and also like playing healer type support, Tempest is a great option. It has good weapon options (I use scepter/warhorn + staff), its Overload mechanics are both blasty and easy to understand, and its shouts and healing abilities give it plenty of both soloing sustain and group support. Another caster type that works well and uses a staff is the mesmer. Staff mesmer and mirage builds are some of the dead easiest in the game for soloing, and they have buffs for group support as well with their autoattack, Chaos Vortex (alacrity!) and Chaos Storm.

To me, it feels like Virtuoso is very one dimensional. If you look around the various build sites, Virt has basically one really strong DPS build (Rampager condi) with other "builds" being just variations on the theme.

While I like the general direction things are going, I do have a few concerns. - The possible overkill of everyone having the ability to provide buffs, leading to muddling up builds and roles even further than they already are. - Many of the things talked about in the June 22 announcement seem like small things that could have been implemented one or two at a time at during the regular maintenance patches, instead of saving them all up for one HUGE game-altering balance patch that is sure to have troubles just due to its size.

Positive suggestions for home instance items: - EoD nodes for daily gathering, including Jadeite and Soybean. - Jade bot workbench. - A bookcase that collects all of Snargle's books as we find them, like an expanded version of the bookcase in EotN.

Kasmeer and Marjory are not overused; if anything, they are under-explored relative to their amount of screen time. It seems to me their relationship started with Marjory being dominant, the strong one, or however you wish to describe it. But as Kasmeer has matured and become more confident and independent over the course of events, Marjory's dominance has lessened and they're still figuring out their changed dynamics. I'd like to see more exploration of their relationship and how they manage to stick together despite their troubles, instead of just the "It's fine...really" hints we keep getting. Braham is Braham. He is so polarizing that I won't even talk about him. Taimi is actually one of the game's most complex characters. Beneath her Asura arrogance and brilliance, she is fundamentally a teenage girl (she was born in 1313, was 13yo in LS1, now 22yo in EoD) who has been too busy helping save the world to really deal with growing up. As such, she is baffled by her budding feelings for Gorrik, among other issues. Add in the complications of staring down a lethal disease at a young age with way too much left to do in her life, and you understand why Taimi practically radiates urgency about everything she does (except taking care of herself). All in all, she is one of the better characters in the cast, though I do often wish Anet would turn her volume down a notch. Gorrik is simply a dork. He is obsessively brilliant but socially clueless. He is fundamentally a good person, but harbors a dangerous amount of unprocessed emotions from his time with the Inquest, losing his brother, Annka, and feelings for Taimi. He would love nothing more than to be alone in his lab studying bugs instead of chasing Elder Dragons, dealing with personal feelings, and all that other complicated stuff, but must reluctantly play the cards life has dealt him. I know people exactly like Gorrik and even see some of myself in him, which to me makes him a perfect character, and I hope Anet keeps him around and develops him further. Rox hasn't yet finished her arc. She started as a gladium with a still-undefined relationship with Rytlock, developed through events and her friendship with Braham, and found her true self with the Olmakhan outside the rigid structure of the Legions, so there are still many loose threads to be explored with her. One being the evolution of the Legions post-IBS; lessons about family from both the Olmakhan and Ryland's tragedy should definitely be felt in Charr society, and Anet would be criminally stupid to not follow that up. Snargle is awesome. He lampoons so many things all at once, yet is completely serious about it. I hope Anet keeps him around. In fact, I think a bookcase with all his books that we find would be a great home instance item. Blish and Mai Trin both had potential to be two of the best characters in our story. But both were needlessly killed off by bad writers, so I won't speak of them further.

IMHO Joon is a villain nearly on the same level as Scarlet Briar. Joon is one of the smartest people in Tyria, but beneath that, she is an arrogant, petulant child angry that she isn't the Empress, and making Cantha dependent on her jade tech is her way of becoming a shadow ruler. If I was actually allowed to control my character's story, Joon would be dead and Mai Trin would still be alive, pooling what she learned from Joon with Taimi and Gorrik, and we'd figure out how to save Cantha ourselves. The Elder Dragons are meant to be bigger than mortal understanding, figuratively and literally. So if their dialogue seems simplistic at times, I'm willing to accept (to a certain point) that we just have a limited view of them.Though I still can't believe how Jormag (the smartest Elder Dragon who was always one step ahead) ended up just walking into the end of IBS.

Get rid of in-combat movement speed being slower than normal running speed. It's just an annoying and unnecessary way to force us into combat with every kitten trash mob we happen to come near.

I've seen it speculated in other threads that ANet WANTED EoD maps to feel empty, so EoD map instances have different population limits than the rest of the game. Don't know if it's true or not, but the idea is out there. Also, the observable truth is that EoD isn't as popular as other content, for various reasons already under much discussion in other threads. Basically, EoD is a place to go and grit your teeth until you get what you want from it, then you go back to doing what you actually enjoyed doing before EoD came out. People do metas, strikes, and I've even seen HP trains. But outside that, you'd better be ready to put up a commander tag and use map chat to form groups, because there's just not enough people in EoD maps to reliably complete events otherwise.

I have done the "Defeat Tae-Sung" dynamic event multiple times, completing the event and getting rewards for it, but for some reason I am not getting credit for it in the Seitung Harbor Shenanigans achievement. Not sure if I am doing something wrong or if the event is broken somehow.

Disclaimer: I have the Dungeon Master achievement, so I have done all the dungeons, all the paths. I am NOT a regular dungeon runner; I only do dungeons for dailies, when I need a specific thing, or when a guildmate asks for help, because the rewards just aren't worth it relative to other things I could be doing with my game time. So, with that said: I think that if ANet wants to bring dungeons back to life, the single best thing ANet could do would be to have the sets, runes et al from the dungeon vendor actually drop in their respective dungeons with a reasonable drop rate. Maybe even give the end boss a guaranteed drop of one superior rune/sigil or set piece. That way you can run dungeons knowing you'll get something worthwhile for your time, and you can use the dungeon currency you accumulate to buy those last few frustrating pieces that just won't drop (we've all been there). Thoughts?

This. The standard of victory should be "group alive, boss dead". Everything else should be superfluous. If there is a timer on the encounter, then obviously DPS is more important, but at the same time, I think the meta DPS counters often miss the forest for the trees in that regard. They get so focused on perfection that they forget that this GAME is supposed to be...y'know...fun?

I just spent a good hour searching everywhere in Hoelbrak that I can think of, with no luck. I'm really thinking that the book is not in the game, for two reasons: 1. As a festival achievement, the book would have to be someplace where a "normal" player -- someone relatively new to the game without mounts -- would reasonably be able to find it. 2. Countless experienced players who know Hoelbrak well have been actively looking for the book and not found it. Therefore, it must be bugged or otherwise not in the game, or it almost certainly would have been found by now.

While having our own DPS meter instead of having to rely on an addon would be nice, I question if adding another load to an already spotty interface is a good idea. Either way, I've never been a fan of players being able to see other players' data, so if ArenaNet can give us something functional and private and make ArcDPS and other intruders go away, that'd be great.

Someone mentioned LI builds in relation to dealing with mechanics. LI builds actually have an advantage over meta piano builds in that regard, because they don't have long complex DPS rotations to start up and maintain. LI builds can break stride for mechanics and pick right back up with DPS much more easily. Boom, boom, boom...oh, a mechanic! Dodge this, breakbar that, get in the green circle...OK, mechanic done. Boom, boom, boom...

YES. Having trouble getting a certain hero point? Shout it out in map chat, or put up a group in LFG. Or just join the regular HP trains when they're running. And in case you haven't gotten the years-old news, individual servers only matter in WvW. The PVE world is a megaserver. Everyone on NA is playing with everyone else on NA. So to say "There's nothing in LFG on my server" shows a lack of understanding how this game works.