Westenev.5289

Everyone who says "it's designed from the start" needs to rethink what the meta was pre-hot. There were no water spirit rangers or venom heal thieves (people used to kick these classes on sight), it was always dps and dps support (usually Fire ele + Warrior mightstacking bannerslave). The closest you got to support was bannerslave, thief/mesmer dungeon skips, or equipping a staff on guardian for swiftness.

Player utility aside, making a character change their dominant hand is meaningful character customisation. I'll always support character customisation. xD

Does the world ALWAYS have to be at risk? We've had an escalating plot since day 1, but the lws5 prologue gave me a taste of what gw2 could be if it spent time developing characters and just paused from all the doom and gloom. I hate marching to war to save a world of characters I don't know nor care about.

Exalted Drinker. Looks like I have the name of a Norn. 😄

I think the problem is that one player can provide max stats of whatever to a group. For example, a lot of builds can provide alacrity (Revenant) or quickness (Firebrand), so what happens when you get a class that can provide both at a 100% uptime (chronomancer). This is most egregious with might, where basically every class has the ability to hit the 25 might limit. There is no benefit to classes that generate their own might, or to stack classes that produce it, since one player is likely already broadcasting 25 might to the group. Plus, a group has limited health, and Anet is fond of big health bars and big damage, so stacking healers in a group and turtling a boss is never going to be a viable strategy. I think if we're ever going to see original player driven meta's, we need Anet to design combat in a way that isn't so linear (Mechanics + DPS > Everything Else).

Honestly, the reason why I hate Breakbars (or the lack thereof) is because it removes any metric to affect the boss besides DPS and the ability to dodge floor telegraphed attacks that are likely covered by an aura of unicorn puke as bright as the sun. That being said, soft cc is kinda spammable, especially in a group of 10-50. I'm pretty sure perma blind application would be kinda OP.

I consider myself a player who likes to help other players. Although a lot of the problems I solve probably could have been fixed by typing /wiki, I think that misses the more human element - things like rumors, theory crafting, preferences, experience, in-game assistance, etc. Honestly, I think it's a little cold when people respond to "how do I XXX" with "READ THE WIKI!" or "GO WATCH A GUIDE ON YOUTUBE", because sharing the MMO with a fresh player is probably one of the most fun aspects of the game IMO.

Pretty sure it was a raids nerf, to stop ele's broken large hitbox dps. Thanks raiders.

I, for one, relish the chance to kill humans in the mists. Stomping sunspears and frightened ascalonians brings back memories of simpler times. ... I swear Detha hates humans, given how they are usually the enemy.

Pirate ship meta taken to the logical extreme.

The ministry of purity approves this message.

I only played a bit of virtuoso, but I'll try to share my unexperienced opinions. My main questions going into this was: A) Is there any build verity? In that regard, I think the elite spec is a complete flop - there was only one trait on each line that really made sense to take (222, "Mental Focus", "Phantasmal Blades", "Infinite Force"). The bottom traits seem to encourage a condi bleed focused build, while the top traits seem to focus on defense... but I think the traits are funneled too hard into one style of play rather than situational/conditional advantages. B) Was the elite spec fun to play? HELL YEAH IT WAS. I loved throwing around daggers all over the place, and the lack of clones made mesmer feel so smooth. The animations made skills feel powerful and satisfying to use (the shatter skills felt amazing xD). Was pleasantly surprised that we could keep daggers out of combat. C) What happened to clone skills, specifically sword 3, and down state 2? Honestly, I love the leap/teleport on sword 3, but I'm not so hot on what happened to mesmer downed state. I kind of feel like virtuoso needs that downed state clone, or some way to use blades in downed state?

I mean, if Anet just hands out gear that can take on any stat, I imagine what remains of the gw2 economy would tank...

And I think it's sad people have to resort to doing that.

If you want help making a lore friendly or themed name, plenty of people are willing to help with that. You'd really be surprised what names are still free. I just wish there was an easier way to check usernames avalability before I "create" the character.

NGL, I'd love a legendary aquabreather. Aquabreathers are the bane of my existence in the krait fractal, where people often run the level 60 level up breather because who wants to pay for an ascended or exotic to be stronger in dead content?

What a lot of you seem to be forgetting is that the Commander took the sword (which was an aspect of Lazarus). We had already found an aspect of Lazarus in caudicus's room in episode 4 and gave it to the shining blade for "safe keeping", and here we are suddenly encountering a shining blade agent collecting these artifacts? Seems a little sus. I probably wouldn't want to hand over the aspect without an explanation either.

If it's red, it's dead. I've long since stopped questioning the morality of the commander's (usually) unprovoked murder sprees.

Did this story again recently, was laughing at how the bullet hell mechanics were so bad I died after respawning again and again. Probably a l2p issue though, but I think mesmer (chronomancer) struggles to heal through artificially extended battles (ie. Do x before you can deal damage).

I kinda agree with this sentiment. Classes like Weaver or Engineer who don't really need to weaponswap aren't really effected and it's nice I can give them free shiny swords, but my Thief swaps weapons like they're going out of fashion (pistol/pistol, dagger/pistol, sword/pistol, staff, shortbow - they all have their uses). It's frustrating because every time I unequip my dreamer (which was made specifically for my thief, before that I used an exotic shortbow), the sigils and infusions spew into my inventory and I have to fix that every time I want to reequip my shortbow. I face a similar situation with Mesmer greatsword (a "maybe" weapon you don't always want equipped), but I have lots of ascended greatswords so that is no big deal. It'd be nice if we could put sigils and infusions on weapons in the armoury, or retrieve them as character bound objects that could sit in the inventory.

February is a bad month for me because of real life commitments; with a november release I'd at least be able to play over xmas. Real life kinda killed the hype for me, but that's not Anet's fault.

I mean, they could do what they always do - a six month timeskip to some sort of meeting to decide where to go next, sometimes interrupted by the villain of the expansion/living world season.

I dunno, I feel like dungeon tab should stay the way it is, considering how people tend to use shorthand code like "P1, P2, P3," to find groups. It's used more than some other tabs, I'm sure.

If anything, I feel like the LFG needs cleaning again. "Mentor" and "Roleplay" should probably be the first in a long line of many to be removed or put in a "miscellaneous" tab.

I mean, some of my best memories of games like halo have been from sitting in the passenger seat. It depends on the map design and the weapon controls - if the turtle played like the tank from visions of steel, for example, I think it has the potential to be fun.