THE FORGE.7198

Removing a quality of life feature, asking people to wait til' unspecified date on next year to regain it back, and further being vague of how much "progress" each rune or max seven runes will reward the players? This is unacceptable. The blog post was a poor attempt to buy time and give temporary damage control, hoping that people will forgive and forget this during the next months. Do you honestly think people will stick around until next year, just to wait news about the legendary relic? Judging by the blog post, you did have no plans for legendary relic and are just buying time and forcing people to wait with poor man's version of the system that should had been ready at the upcoming launch. If you want people to stick around and/or trust your company, you need to come forward and give more details about the compensation. Forum should be place of discussion, so I don't want another weeks of silence about this matter from you and the developers.

I was thinking the topic of warrior on the other day and kind of felt same on many things you posted already. I been thinking lot of the warrior skills themselves lately (or utility/slotskills if you will): Banners: We all know the latest balance that happened with Banners in PvE side of things, but Banners weren't -never- even a viable choice in PvP or WvW game modes, which is "fine" in terms of balance, since one can make argument "Engineer turrets in WvW?" so warrior is not alone with one skill category being "useless". Physical: When the "big nerf" to all stun related skills landed few years back and took damage away from all physical skills (excluding Throw Bolas). This was nessecary thing in my opinion since I do remember things like elite Rampage "Throw boulder" skill critting like 16k dmg to someone and instant downing them, however... By removing all the damage from the physical skills caused them to be worthless, outside of the factor of stun, making bursting someone down with power damage be extremely dependant of landing the actual F1 Burst skills (More on that later). The problem of this kind of "mega nerfing x" has the problem that Anet doesn't put the taken power (dmg from stuns in this case) into anywhere else on warrior's kit. They could had done (remove dmg from stuns, but make all weapon skills and burst skills hit 10-20% harder) etc.. Shouts: Historically shouts had only been part of warrior's kit when they have wanted to play the "group support" warrior type of gameplay, which is fine. However shouts themselves -need- Tactics traitline and Grandmastery trait of "Vigorous shouts" to even be viable in competitive game mode because of the long cds. Sure, the new elite spec Bladesworn can use them more because of the ammo mechanics, but if we are talking about the core concept of warrior with shouts, it is forcing the player choice into this very small box, instead of giving much choice. What about the 2 other grandmastery traits in Tactics? What if we would like to give Quickness or Might to our allies? Well, too bad. You can't if you want to play with shouts. Stances: Now the maybe controversial topic of warrior. Stances have been historically a good tool for survival, even without picking the actual traits from Defense. Now stances in themselves are still good in what they do and what they are meant to do. They give that 4 second window to "trade blows" with the enemy and in general all stances are pretty good of what they do. However what if someone wants to go "all in" on stances? Well the traits regarding to stances it is very boring and passive and arenanet also knows this but hasn't done anything about it. First the middle trait, "Lesser Endure Pain", has 300s cooldown? Just remove that trait and give something interesting and usable there instead. Grandmaster trait? Gives 1 extra second to stances, vigor on stance activation and another lesser version of balanced stance when you get stunned with another 300s cooldown.. I say again, rework the trait and make it more interesting. Remove the boring passive effects. Signets: Signets have been popular in the PvE side of things as passive boost for stats, and in competitive a tool for elite spec like berserker to quickly speed up the burst, but in themselves, the signets are lackcluster at the best when comparing to signets that other classes have. And yes, I'm going to make this comparison even when it is elite spec: Mechanist's Shift Signet has passive boonshare with the pet, (when traited and elite signet) 30% movement speed buff and when activated, it has stunbreak, condi cleanse and long distance teleport. That is pretty loaded signet with 20s cd when traited and with elite signet. (Why does why does "Shake it off" shout has 60s cd while traited? I don't know, but anet must know). Anyways, then talking about the actual signet trait. It is in arms. Oh boy. The arms traitline convo again. Well the trait gives us stacking ferocity when using signets, reduced recharge time and passive lesser version of signet of might with only 25s cd. In a vaccuum, this trait looks great.. However why does every single class, other than warrior, have a trait that allows signet passives continuing while on CD? Surely this means warrior's signet are SO powerful that they must be superior to other classes signets? Well, suprisingly, they are not. Healing Signet: was nerfed wayback when, and nowdays even if was brought back the way it used to heal, the power creep in damage across the classes wouldn't really make it viable anyways. Signet of Might: Might and unblockable attacks for 6s, really powerful in certain situations, but it is that. Situational. Might can be accessed tons from different sources on warrior and does the unbloackable make it -that- good that one would always pick it? Historically, no. Not really. Signet of Fury: Full adrenaline bar. Factually the most used signet of them all, but it should do more. Why doesn't Signet of Fury give fury? Or something else? Signet of Stamina: One dodge roll back and remove all conditions ever made. But with 40s cd (untraited)? Not really reliable condi cleanse tool in competitive, where you might need to cleanse often. Dodge is nice but could just pick sigil of energy to weapons instead? Should be reworked to be more interesting. Maybe something like passively reducing movement impairing conditions etc. Dolyak Signet: Oh Dolyak.. "Reduces incoming damage" by giving tiny ammount of toughness that is generally worthless in pvp and wvw? Why not the raw 10% dmg reduction that other classes seem to have? The active components, 10 stacks of stab with a heal and stun break are fine for 40s cd imo. So.. Conclusion of all the skills: 2/5 skills on warrior are nearly completely useless and the other remaining require lot of balance or rework, either on the actual skill side of things or at the trait lines. Arenanet has lot of fixing with warrior, simply because of their former balance philosophy of "take take take" and not putting the power back to somewhere else. This has over the years left warrior to the state where it is now. Lacking behind other classes and a far cry of the initinial idea of the warrior. Until warrior is seriously reblanced or completely reworked from ground up, the question will -always- be the same, across the game modes: "Why do you bring warrior when you can bring X"

Bladesworn will remain useless class in 2/3 game modes until major reworks are done to change this. First of all, when looking at any elite spec on any class, -usually- it is to bring a brand new playstyle to the class. Something that it hasn't had before, right? When looking at core warrior, it has always been the most versatile of the all core classes because it wide variety of weapons. You always had (and still have) access to power or condi (or hydrid dmg) based weapons, be they melee or short range. Now with Berserker Elite Spec, we moved away from the so called "building up F1 burst over time" into more fast paced, explosive damage role, where F1 burst skill could be spammed one after another in really fast pace, before reaching the cooldown period. With Beserker you had pretty decent options within the trait lines. One "row" was for power based damage dealing while middle one was more condi based damage, while bottom row offered some tanking/utility flavor to mix and match. Next we got the Spellbreaker Elite Spec, which main purpose was more PvP/WvW oriented, as it provided more crowcontrol, boon ripping playstyle, which usually isn't needed in PvE most of the time. Spellbreaker offered new flavor for the warrior, now letting warrior to have access to more powerful interrupts than before, giving that more counterplay, interrupt playstyle while still able to dish out decent ammount of damage. Now looking at the two previous elite specs and the core warrior by extention, they are all about dealing damage. Sure, you may build warrior with shouts and take banners to be the group support, but mainly damage is the -main- thing here. Why is that bad? Well the Bladesworn is also a damage dealing elite spec, so it has to compete with the previous elite specs, as well as against other classes and their damage dealing capabilities. Bladesworn was given new flow mechanic, which works same way like adrenaline does, yet the build up felt longer. But it was for a reason, because the F2, that has the new burst skills, had the ultimate pay off.... Massive burst damage! Or is it? Yes, in PvE, the numbers can get pretty "insane" numbers with the F2 skills, but in PvP and WvW enviroment, it won't see day of light as it currently is. Why is that? First lets compare some numbers (keep in mind that these are from the beta). First lets look at Bladesworn with full berserker stats and scholar runes damage in Dragonslash. PvE min dmg: 1,583 PvE max dmg: 47,668 PvP/WvW min dmg: 1,020 PvP/WvW max dmg: 2,472 Now let us keep in mind that these damage numbers -can- crit. These are just the tooltip values. But what is so bad about these numbers? Firstly, F2 on bladesworn will root you immobile, similar to deadeye kneel, which leaves your character extremely vunerable in competitive game modes as -any- type of cc or interrupt will cancel the stance and puts it on cooldown (not to mention draining your flow). "But just use balanced stance for stability and problem solved 🙂 " This is true, but is that worth the pay off? 2,500* dmg for a burst skill that you need to remain still for several second, without interrupts, to gain full stacks and execute the ability? To compare, let us look at core warrior with 1h axe with same stats and runes. F1 Eviserate WvW dmg: 2000 It's (nearly) instant damage, and without any traits, it has 8s cooldown before you can use it again, provided you got enough adrenaline to cast it at level 3 again. How about greatsword? F1 Arcing Slice WvW dmg: 1,336 (or 2,005 against foes with below 50% hp). What about other elite specs? Let's look at Berserker with axe first. F1 Decapitate WvW dmg: 2,237 And Greatsword: F1 Arch Divider WvW dmg: 2,598 Just looking at these numbers, the Bladesworn falls short on damage and execution front. To being able to justify it being a "sitting duck", the pay off needs to be way bigger than the current numbers are to justify using Bladesworn over other elite specs or even core warrior in competitive game modes. Next up is the issue with single-weapon-kit mentality with Bladesworn. Warrior at it's core (no pun intended) has always been master of weapons and weapon swapping. It even has entire traitline "dedicated" to the weapon swap. So why restrict it now? I'm not going to post the numbers of the F1 gunsaber here, since people can do the rest of comparisons themselves, however.. The point still stands that you are now shoehorned into 1-set of weapons that you need to combo with the gunsaber. That isn't healthy gameplay for the warrior and it doesn't flow well either. If anything, bladesworn should keep the F1 gunsaber but give also access to the 2nd weapon set as it always was with warrior. This would definetly make it flow alot better. TL;DR version: - Carefully adjust the numbers on F2 skills in WvW and PvP, to bring it to viable level. - Give ability to weapon swap to 2nd weapon set. Doing those two things will fix Bladesworn before launch and makes it viable in all game modes.

Can we have new Charr faces/hairstyles for both genders at some-point during the "The Icebrood Saga"?And possibly for Norn as well since both races are bound to be prominent part of the saga and lets face it, both races could use some more love in customization side. :) PS: Faces and Hairstyle addition request mentioned above was made thinking them as new "Makerover-kit" exclusives! I for one would be happy to spend some cash to buy gems for a kit if we could get new customization options!

There is a thing that has been bothering me awhile when acquiring new skins for glider. Each time I have seen a glider that I have liked I have bought one, especially if its suits the character's style ( #fashionwars2 ) and us having the option to color the gliders give really unique feeling flavor when gliding across Tyria. Yet sadly same cannot be said for the backpack versions that we have. As an example, my current favorite glider is the "Legion Jetpack". As seen in the picture, it is currently on its default colors, which is a match on the backpack version.However the "jetflame/powercore" and the casing of the glider can be colored while the backpack cannot. So, to dear Arenanet:A quality of life improvement that I suggest would be to give us option to color those backpacks, that have glider version of them with a dye channels on them.In general it would only add for the fashion experience, to let us run with our colored back item and jump off the ledge into a matching glider.

I do agree at some point, since dungeons were fun content that -anyone- could do on the fly (given you had the appropriate level requirement for each dungeon).Sure counter argument could be "But there are low level fractals that are open to everyone" but as a new player, you need to unlock them by rising your personal fractal level, which honestly isn't hard thing to do, but the point being "accessibility", where dungeons are open from the get-go.

My vote: option 5: none of above. Invest the time into fractals or anything else that gains greater benefit from the same effort. Don't worry about bugs unless they prevent most people from completing the dungeon or can be exploited. I see your point, but having buggy dungeons that haven't "aged well" are still first things to new players who come to the game. In MMO's in general it is the dungeons that are the repeatable content for people to do, and yes, we have fractals at the end game for that aspect in Guild wars 2. But I recently brought two of my friends into the game and leveled up a new character with them in the open world content until we reached lvl 35, where we went to AC story mode and later the explorable paths. One of the paths bugged so we had to start the said path over and my friend was having a weird visual bug during the cutscenes in the story path, which brought their question of the game's quality "Is this what the dungeons are like", which I had to admit that yes, they include very, very old bugs that haven't been fixed. I hated to say that to them since I would rather see my friends (new players) being excited for the upcoming dungeons while leveling up, leading to fractals and raids at later on but it was "killjoy" experience for them to see that "this is what this games dungeons are like".

And to add for the conversation, lets throw in ideas how to make dungeons more interesting. I think a challenge mode that would give reward like ascended crafting material would help people to challenge themselves with friends more.The challenge mode could include finishing dungeons at certain time <- This especially if Anet would look into the bosses and bring some of that modern tech to their mechanics.

As a veteran player, dungeons might feel "irrelevant", old, outdated content which nobody barely does anymore, when we have fractals and other open world content with their own map rewards. But for a new players, the dungeons usually are first experience of a "group oriented content" that they experience in the game.As new players they rarely have understanding of the end game content and dungeons that they experience could have huge impact of how they perceive the game. Dungeons haven't aged well, when it comes to old bugs or the rewards they give. Of course many older players might remember the old gold farming in dungeons before it was changed to the repeatable achievement gold reward we have today. Do you think Arenanet should revitalize dungeons, so people would want to go there more often? Maybe update the bosses by reworking them from the scratch, introducing new combat mechanics what we have access now days in open world and raid content? Would that bring you as veteran player back more often to try dungeon path that you haven't done in a long time?