maxwelgm.4315

No, just discuss it over during preparation time, let people know you are playing support so they can voice if they also are

Confused reacts are literally that: the person has no idea how to read and just goes like 😵

To be fair, GW2 has an insanely high skill ceiling in general, the combat gameplay is truly unlike what you'd expect from your typical MMO - so an abundance of skilled players is indeed hard to get and Anet has either given up or not trying nearly hard enough. That said, this post basically explains the prevalence of low effort builds even in P1/G3. We have a good, but very complacent and oddly cheating core of top bracket players, a mediocre middle ground of players of which at least a few are basically cheated out of their places in the top bracket, and everyone else just fooling around/farming PvE currency/disillusioned. This population makeup is always going to shoot for the path of least effort even in the higher tiers of play. Anet went all in on E-sports in the beginning and for some reason have turned a complete 180 instead of just course correcting into a healthy, large difficulty curve PvP mode which people could enjoy competitively - and anyone left now is oddly clinging to repeatedly gaining the same titles by playing duo with their friends and avoiding other friends. The saddest part, is that combat gameplay in GW2 is still just plain fun, and balance in fact is actually going somewhere nowadays. All the aspects surrounding the reward structures being linked to PvE and top bracket players having this odd surreal clinging to duo queue/ruining other people's games is what makes it sour.

Aside from what others suggested, keep in mind a DH with elite trap only has a single virtue cycle before running out of blocks - yes it's a very strong elite but they're mostly sitting ducks to being focused on if they fail the one burst.

Balance is actually so-so right now, not bad compared to previous years for sure. Duo queueing/wintrading and other usual suspects such as PvE farmers are what's currently bugging everyone out in PvP.

Topic title is "why you don't afk just because of a 200 point diff" then OP proceeds to emphasize repeatedly this was a strange one out of a match. It's also odd to apply the logic that comebacks can work with Plat+ players involved in the match. I don't disagree with it mind you and hate afks, but showing some kitten janky silver and low gold match would go much further into illustrating it than reasonably good players just playing the game as they should.

The playing with friends argument is so hilarious. Unranked is right there and you can even play with four friends at once.

Referring to "low platinum players" as if P1 is not basically all of the top 50 players atm is pretty funny. That said, Reaper does have limited use in that very top due to people being aware of CDs but balancing only for the top is a problem in itself.

It's all fine to claim well timed bursts are the true display of skill but bunkers can and will anyway easily hit high gold and plat due to the imbalance, so it can't be "pretending" if it's making people climb while spamming their barriers on point. In fact only the high level duos who avoid playing against each other (even worse imbalance display) will consistently outdo bunker comps.

Unsurprising after Dragonvoid were previous dragon minions wearing edgelord cosmetic infusions. Reusing assets is always a widespread thing in MMOs and perfectly fine but they have really outdone themselves since End of Dragons released with a lot of reuse and reskins. Of course, this is their modus operandi since the very beginning and they just perfected it into a science, as Konig points out. All things considered, the OP is just not properly directing their discomfort but it's certainly valid in that the art direction could use some flourishing. Reusing costly models and rigs is perfectly fine but reusing them in clever and inventive ways is precisely what causes the comfortable uniqueness of Tengu and Charr and the uncanny similarity of Kryptis and their previous model incarnations. In fact devs even cop out of this apparently knowing they couldn't make Kryptis have a cleverly unique look by simply having Nayos be a dream realm where the dreams of other worlds pass by and shape/influence the denizens of Nayos ("see, this world is a reflection of sorts of course there are crabs in here! Carcinisation mindset!").

I just got matched against a duo of "God of Arena/PvP" players (with current ~1750+ rating) while being in G2 with ~1375 rating. It's baffling that this is a thing and easily explains the winrates of "80 wins to 15 losses" that top 10 players have - they have not nearly enough on their level to play against and can opt out of playing against each other on top of it.

It's pretty good actually if you plan for it as Scourge. Most Scourges go insta-die or insta-snowball on mid by sitting on top of the point instead of circling around and forcing enemies to waste cooldowns, so of course Cerus or Antitoxin will be far better on those cases. If you do actually stay alive for long enough you'll be turning into BOOBA mode right about when there's no CDs left for enemies to defend that much. I would personally change Hunger to be incremental (so each stack grants 1.25% of the current bonuses or something like that) but the bursty version at the moment is still usable (if only a bit short so you will need to git gud at "pre-bursting" condis).

In between Wind Riders, Phoenixes, many cases of gigantism (turtles, tigers, sharks, bears, etc etc etc.) and Tengu, it makes the most sense in fact that Charr have evolved naturally alongside these other races. They just kind of started using tools and had enough leeway to dominate their environment, not unlike humans.

"option 1" bet would be the Janthir Islands too. Especially with SotO hinting at other Mursaat tribes and that they may be native to Nayos, it wouldn't be too far fetched to have these Nayan Mursaat visit the (assumed) landing site of the others or also for Kryptis to have plans for that place. If the Mursaat hail from Nayos after all, there might be a way to open a permanent/huge rift there and we could have both Janthir and a Dragonfall style Nayos map in the same package. My "option 3" however would be that indeed they just pick a desert wasteland north of Maguuma but also put Nayos literally on top of it perhaps with part of the realm having being transported into the skies there. Either way I agree that they're definitely hinting at adding Nayos in some shape or form, and unless they change to fully different world maps, Dragonfall or some fog around the borders has to be the way to go.

This is funny to read because it made me think of how large the contrast in GW2 is with respect to GW1. In that game mobs actually had the same build structure and susceptibility to statuses/interrupts as you, only with added "Monster effects" and "Monster Skills" augmenting their capabilities. But the levels, stats and skills were exactly as our own which made combat really strategic no matter if it was PvE or not. I guess this wouldn't fit so much in an action RPG proper like GW2 but inheriting certain design quirks from GW1 must have hurt the current state as well. Not that this will change, it's been a decade, but yeah you can see where some of the gap comes from in between PvP and PvE.

On the matter of fractals, I'd like to point out that the commander is the one that first says "oh...so they are like fractals?" and only then the Wizards go on with this terminology, but here and there they still use the word "simulation" more specifically. I think Isgarren was creating pockets of the Mists in a way that's not really like the Fractal instances we go to. Some key differences are that the beings there are fully sentient and not just echoes of pasts and/or potentiality. I think both the fact that Isgarren can simply create pocket dimensions and materialize them in reality and also the fact that our PC can only see this as being fractals was just the fastest way to show just how powerful the Wizard's court is, and they might not dwell too much on it going forward. Showcasing Isgarren and the wizards as actually powerful is important since we just wrapped up our adventures as champions of an Elder Dragon - I strongly agree that it's good Kryptis and Wizards alike have their own motives and are not "forces of nature", but they couldn't be simple bandits and knights after the previous plot either.

Raids are a deeply social activity. You can't "no-friend" it or avoid that aspect, GW2 just doesn't try to mask this like other games do with raid finders and such. It must really be stressed to the point of being redundant, raids are a social activity. The fights are indeed not hard and you may know everything that you have to do as an individual, but you still need a group of regular people to play with and enjoy the mode to its fullest. PUGs are to be seen as a temporary, hack, or short term solution and will never replace the quality of actually joining some discord or whatever you want to do to become buddies to a minimum of 9 other people you can raid with. Other than that fractals are designed to be very pug-friendly and if you want armor you can wait for the next mini-expac which comes with a solo friendly open world PvE armor.

Why, then, hang around and play GW2 though? FFXIV's design exists and is going on in full steam, well, in FFXIV. There's no reason to bring it here and the fact you can "carry" even challenge mode fights is not an "issue", it's just a consequence of the gameplay and fight mechanics which obviously cannot be trivially carried over to (and especially from) another game. I really hope "copying stuff from ff was the smartest thing done in a while" is not referring to Kanaxai but to something else like HTCM, because Kanaxai is pretty much a bad Trial boss. Devs should start from the assumption we are in GW2 (it even sounds stupid writing it but seems like it has to be said), and anything that comes from outside as inspiration shouldn't be straight up copied (again, this should go without saying, wtf).

In the other posts there's always mentions of "powercreep" and how the old fractal bosses just die immediately, but indeed - people don't realize they're actually dodging things and doing mechanics regardless, such as in 99CM or even 98CM. I can only suspect most people thinking Kanaxai is an actual challenge used to only play DPS on their T4s+CMs and had a competent HB+Renegade solve every single mechanic for them. But the solution to powercreep is absolutely not turning bosses into hard hitting slugs, especially because the games are profoundly different - FFXIV hardly ever has anything more than a mindless rotation outside of maybe a couple classes during their burst (and even then, little adaptation on the fly is ever needed and you can stick to sidestepping), and it has no dodge mechanic. Not using GW2's own thing is really frustrating no matter what people think of the other fights.

As mentioned above, it wouldn't surprise me if Titans were derived from or directly related from the Kryptis, or vice-versa. Also Kanaxai is definitely one and they seem to have "Houses" and therefore somehow organized in a hierarchical fashion. We might end up finding out there's some pocket in the Realm of Torment or elsewhere in the Mists where a "Demon society" emerged. Keep in mind demons in the GW multiverse can originate in many different ways but almost invariably form in the Mists. In GW1 the Realm of Torment did have "organized" Demons that fell under the banner of the Greater Darkness but the quotes matter as they of course didn't use actual terms like "Houses" or even talk much at all. And there were more definitely chaotic demons there like the Dreadspawn Maw whose wants and needs are more Lovecraftian/undefined in nature. But nothing says that there couldn't be a proper (albeit twisted) civilization there as well. The Margonites did managed to have a city of sorts right inside the Realm of Torment.

Very importantly, it is Anet's job to fix the encounter, or even better to not have put out a messed up encounter in the first place. That said, to put it into perspective, Kanaxai has nearly as much health in CM as 3x the Sorrowful Spellcaster (at 15 million). The very first thing they should have done was to have proper differences in between the phases, actually changing both the visuals and the mechanics every 13 million HP or so. Then introduce checkpoints alongside each phase so people have the option of going for the title by killing it all in one go or be able to reset without restarting every phase in case they die. That would already be a solution that wouldn't require changing the CC but would have required properly designing a fractal (and not a strike) boss. If reducing HP is a must because they are not able to redesign a fractal after 3 years without releasing any, then just change the CC achievement straight up and reduce the amount of defiance bars that pop, it's not nearly a big of a deal as people make it out to be. And while we're at it, how about showing eligibility for the title on your bar like every other single encounter has done so far? Heck, they could even add a defiance bar to the ghosts that steal your boons and count that towards the achievement, while also allowing some counterplay (which I guess is forbidden for this fractal though, they seemed adamant about making it a bad FFXIV boss).

I have to repeat my post from the other topic in this forum about the CM, because I dearly hope Anet does not think for a moment they have correctly "disrupted" anything other than the fun of doing daily fractal CMs with experienced groups. The mechanics of the other fractals are CM are not only better and more impactful but also much larger in number and variety. It's plain out dishonest to say this is an improvement in preventing stack and slap fights when all 3 previous CM do this better than Kanaxai does (what are anomalies, what are orb phases, what are Sorrows and Fears, what are eye lasers, what are CC phases, what are spreading shockwaves, what are disappearing platforms, and I could go on and on). Anyway, here's all of it again: The fight is very lackluster compared to other CMs. Look at any of the previous 3 fractal CMs and all the bosses have well delimited phases with sometimes even visual changes in between and a whole ongoing "in-gameplay storyline" such as the case of Arkk and Ai. Kanaxai is the exact same fight as NM while having more insta death mechanics, which is pretty disappointing. Knocking out Ai from the 100th fractal spot when she's the one to have an actual second phase exclusive to the CM is pretty underwhelming from a thematic standpoint but most importantly from a gameplay standpoint too. I strongly disagree the fight is busy, difficult or punishing - the constant spreading is creating the illusion that you are always on the move when in reality there is no other CM fractal where you have so much downtime - you are waiting the numbers mechanic to end while trying to heal it up, you're waiting for the eyes to pop next to the edge of the arena because of their unreliable timing and actual coverage, you are waiting for people to finish the 66/33 World Cleaver without anything else to do meanwhile, and so on. They've already gotten spread mechanics correctly in Kaineng AND Sunqua so it's baffling they pulled it out so badly here. Targeting all allied entities for boonstrip is a hilarious oversight that's just a consequence of the overall lack of "love" that was put into this. Someone really wanted to develop a strike but was forced into releasing a fractal. Again, all fractal CMs focus on quickly swapping around mechanics and progression as the boss HP lowers such that it feels impactful to get through each phase. Here there's not really many additions past 66%/33% and the entire fight feels same-y all across the 10 or so minutes it will take to burn through the 40+ million HP. In summary this fractal actually made me quite unhappy. It lacks the presentation that Sunqua Peak CM had and made it really impactful (and bearable to go through everyday in farm mode), while not really having engaging gameplay to make up for the lack of theme and storytelling. It can be modified to look more like a proper fractal 100 CM, but currently it's just meh next to its siblings Arkk and Ai.

I have gotten the Nightmare Aspect title with a group of gamers and everything from my previous point stands. The fight is extremely dull with good players. The 33% eye mechanic is practically a punishment for getting that far: "now everyone has to look outwards and wait for Kanaxai to do their dance every 20s!" - Dark Ai is far more engaging and that is also a CC and phasing-bug fest, but at least it was its own CM-exclusive boss phase with original visuals. I'm not really planning to add this to a daily rotation anytime soon if they don't do major changes.

The fight is very lackluster compared to other CMs. Look at any of the previous 3 fractal CMs and all the bosses have well delimited phases with sometimes even visual changes in between and a whole ongoing "in-gameplay storyline" such as the case of Arkk and Ai. Kanaxai is the exact same fight as NM while having more insta death mechanics, which is pretty disappointing. Knocking out Ai from the 100th fractal spot when she's the one to have an actual second phase exclusive to the CM is pretty underwhelming from a thematic standpoint but most importantly from a gameplay standpoint too. I strongly disagree the fight is busy - the constant spreading is creating the illusion that you are always on the move when in reality there is no other CM fractal where you have so much downtime - you are waiting the numbers mechanic to end while trying to heal it up, you're waiting for the eyes to pop next to the edge of the arena because of their unreliable timing and actual coverage, you are waiting for people to finish the 66/33 World Cleaver without anything else to do meanwhile, and so on. They've already gotten spread mechanics correctly in Kaineng AND Sunqua so it's baffling they pulled it out so badly here. Targeting all allied entities for boonstrip is a hilarious oversight that's just a consequence of the overall lack of "love" that was put into this. Someone really wanted to develop a strike but was forced into releasing a fractal. Again, all fractal CMs focus on quickly swapping around mechanics and progression as the boss HP lowers such that it feels impactful to get through each phase. Here there's not really many additions past 66%/33% and the entire fight feels same-y all across the 10 or so minutes it will take to burn through the 40+ million HP. In summary this fractal actually made me quite unhappy. It lacks the presentation that Sunqua Peak CM had and made it really impactful (and bearable to go through everyday in farm mode), while not really having engaging gameplay to make up for the lack of theme and storytelling. It can be modified to look more like a proper fractal 100 CM, but currently it's just meh next to its siblings Arkk and Ai.

I somehow don't think OP has been soloing Mordrem from Maguuma with single dodges or farming PoF champion events by themselves. That kind of perception likely only arises from doing Core map completion and, core maps should be attenable to vanilla-only accounts which have no access to any elite spec - in other words, those maps are good as they are.