Skotlex.7580

IMHO, ANet went stray when they started diverting sources into other projects and sort of "neglected" GW2 development. NcSoft didn't like this (mostly because the market isn't what it used to be, mmos are no longer as profitable as during their boom), they stepped in, cancelled those alternate projects, reduced staff and made them focus on GW2 alone. From the company's perspective, this was a blow to their morale. From the game's perspective, GW2 hasn't seen this active development since the hectic LS1 days. ANet may have lost around half of their staff, but the number of people working on GW2 has definitely gone up. So, talking strictly about GW2 development, I'd say things are focused quite all right, and how not, if ANet's future now depends entirely on GW2 thriving?

Several des have stated a couple of times that they rather ship new content than revamping old things like dungeon because they can develop new content so much faster in contrast to fixing existent stuff from years ago. So, it's just reasonable that they went this way with their considerations.if ANet truly meant to fix dungeons, it would be by redoing them from scratch. Would you be fine postponing the next three or four living story updates in order to get reworked dungeons to current standards (in order to revitalize them)? I am pretty sure ANet has had internal discussions regarding this, and making new content is always more profitable than reworking past stuff beyond bug fixing (which leaves super old code out of the question).

deleted, internet hiccups.

It's only WvW where clones need severe survival aid. In PvE they already have -95% damage from non direct target sources. In PvP it seems it's okay as it currently stands. Perhaps the better fix would be to apply the PvE setting (damage reduction) in all game modes, that would allow clones a survival chance when showered in scourge bombs during large scale WvW. Maybe except in PvP, where such a change would need more consideration.

network bug...

network bug...

network bug...

Both specs can be DPS oriented. The differences between tempest and Weaver are more about:With tempest, you need to stay close to your target or overloads become useless. You also need to camp an element for 5 seconds before you can overload, this can affect DPS if you are trying to use earth/water overload. A DPS tempest will be using fresh air pretty much guaranteed to not kill its DPS. With Weaver, one has to plan ahead of time for skill usage, in order to effectively use combo fields. Getting access to skills 4 and 5 is also more complex, and this is troublesome as these are usually survival skills. To keep up DPS, one has to remember the dual attuned skills which have been used already, and switch to the combinations which aren't yet in cooldown. However, unlike tempest, one can choose to engage in melee or range according to preference. My suggestion is to get the hero points to complete both specs so you can play around with both, and see with which you have better affinity.

This. Making dungeons more popular will cause a greater number of people to bump into their bugs and this would increase pressure on ANet to fix them. Sadly, that code is beyond salvation. There are still bugs that can trigger and block all instance progress, it would be bad if players were trying to farm dungeons and had to deal with said blockers. The most activity dungeons will get is when it's their time for a daily rotation. I would prefer if they removed things like "daily activity" so that daily dungeon runs appear more frequently, but I suspect some people actually like activities and are equally happy when the daily tab brings people in. :/

Proof that ANet is not a greedy company out to milk their player base to the last of their coins disregarding the future of the game: the lack of swimsuit outfits. If money was all they cared about, GW2 would progressively look more like Tera. :D

My only gripe with tempest is getting interrupted during an overload. I'd rather remove the innate stun break and replace it by stability, and then swap that trait for one to make overloads become stun breaks, I think that would be better. Or change it to something else, it seems strange to make overloads a stun break when chances are you'll get interrupted during an overload, not before casting it. <_<

for levelling, anything will do. After reaching 80 and heading into the jungle (if you skip LS2), than it matters more to have a support build to save your partner while they discover the joys of the jungle such as pocket raptors or smokescales. Something that can provide group protection plus healing would probably be the most noob friendly support you can provide (and that can be provided by herald, ranger, engineer/holo/scrapper, as far as I can recall).

I think there was a greater number of people that approved the change to skill 2. Before it was pretty twitchy as one had to pretty much double press 2 every 5 seconds, the new version is much more relaxing. Granted, it may make targeting harder in some scenarios.

The current version of stability is far less powerful than the old one (unlimited immunity until it ran out). However, the game has gotten too spammy with both cc and stability. I doubt anything will change greatly from what it is (beyond tweaking numbers), but I do think it would help to change the way the game plays. For example, what if we remove stability, but in exchange using a stun break gives you an unstrippable boon that makes the character immune to cc for 5 seconds (or whatever length is appropriate)? That sort of immunity would protect against CC spam (but only to a limited degree, stunbreaks are in general much less frequent than CC skills).

I was thinking this would be a viable choice. Sure, there are enough mastery points to unlock everything without paying a dime, yet some players just can't put in the effort to complete all masteries. I've been going for months at a time with a locked exp bar since I couldn't bother with the activities required (some of which are pretty much hidden in the achievements panel). Had I been a more impatient person and had it been possible, I would have bought the mastery points remaining to unlock my experience bar. It's a non issue for veteran players, and it gives a choice for newer players to be able to complete their masteries. Not to mention that they require to fill the exp bar to spend said points, so it's not like they are skipping all content.

That's probably the domain of kourna (or jahai bluff), try gaining access to either of those points, specially sun's refuge as mentioned earlier.

I would take a mathematical approach: balance is when all trait lines / utility lines / professions see equal play time when taken in consideration across all game modes. If a specific traitline dominates matches in a certain given mode, then it needs either toning down or.. bring up a much less frequently used traitline to create diversity. Of course, numbers can only identify what's underplayed or overplayed, how exactly to buff/nerf the choices is a whole other matter. Listening to experienced players might enable one to discern the cause of the issues, but the best change probably doesn't have any actual way to be objectively found. Hence, be objective to determine what to change, be subjective to determine how to change it. It may be that this is the reason perfect balance has never really been achieved in videogames.

We must remember that dungeons have low demand, and probably we don't need to add reasons to spread out the game's population further. The way the dailies are set up now (including the LS3/4 ones) allow players to congregate on specific maps. So I'd agree that it shouldn't be needed to uncontest dungeons in order to enter.

I do agree that the current design punishes certain type of players, namely those who have tons of alts and/or play multiple game modes. The current default implementation mimics what we had before build templates, meaning we didn't actually earn anything until we buy slots with gems (unless you stick to a single game mode, then you earned two build templates and one gear template). Personally, I'd make build / gear template expansions account wide, so that buying one will add it to all current and future characters. It's of course reasonable to increase prices if this passed. But... now the situation is reverted, the new system would punish players who don't alt. What other solution could exist?

Trinity wouldn't work for GW2 because the most popular PvE content is open world, and that's full ad-hoc grouping, you can't organize team composition that way. In my opinion classes are all possible to build as self reliant, it's just that players don't gear up that way (few people use toughness in PvE). Many prefer to spec full glass and rely on others to heal them when down. Others have before said that this reviving mechanic is what makes the game too easy: once you have enough people, no challenge can fail as long as they can res up each another. On the other hand, speccing for a support build makes regular content boringly slow (little point in having, say, a support firebrand when there's no nearby player to buff), so that may push players further into full damage specs. I personally would spec for a hybrid between damage and support, the only way to be of use to others without taking forever to solo things. Yet I am aware that a full damage oriented build will do at least 50% more damage. If my support can let said players stay alive whereas my absence would mean them spending more time downed, then it's reasonable to have support amid the chaos. Fortunately, build templates have allowed me to have two setups for open world: one for when I am alone (focusing more on power with a bit of self support) and a second for group events (focusing more on a hybrid of damage and support). Sadly, this only works for people who PvE exclusively, since PvP / WvW would need even more templates. My suggestion to improve PvE content difficulty is to increase the downed penalties, so that dying is actually a threat. I would also prevent reviving while in combat (like in WvW), as I see still too many people lay down dead waiting for a charitable soul when it's almost always a lot easier to respawn and return to the event. And for the love of all things holy, improve scaling of core Tyria events. Not only are they laughably bad at large scale, it gets to the point where it's hard to even get credit after an event. Getting those dailies done in lower level maps is such a horrible chore because of this.

Would adding a "consume all" option to level up tomes help? I doubt most of these people spamming "level up! " do it out of a desire to annoy others.

this bit should totally count in the "instant cast high damage" issue, because most of the time the receiving player has no way to see the incoming attack. Either make stealth slower than a player with swiftness, or add some visual cue so players have a chance to see the incoming attack. Or lower stealth duration for skills, or change thief stealth attacks to be utility oriented rather than pure damage. There are many potential ways to address the issue.

If it would also allow me to gather my home/guild instance, this would be an instant seller. I don't always have time to play, but when I do I'd rather focus on the fun stuff, crafting / gathering doesn't really count.

It's been mentioned plenty of times. ANet has stated they have big rebalance changes planned for the future with competitive modes in mind, but they haven't divulged what they will be. So, guess we can just wait and hope ANet doesn't misses the mark when said balance patch arrives.

nope, nothing has changed, nothing needs to change until they release another set of elite specs. Hot alone has enough points to Max out both elites, so what would be needed to change?