[DX11 Rendering BETA]

On 3/31/2022 at 2:24 PM, Big Red Candle.5186 said:

No, just wondering why its still considered beta when, for me, it works great.

Silly ANet, how could they forget that you are the only person who plays GW2? Just because it works for you does not mean it is working perfectly for everyone else just yet. Its still in beta because there are still some bugs that ANet is working on fixing in it

On 3/31/2022 at 3:02 PM, Legend of Rogue.5394 said:

I would never play GW2 if it wasnt for X11, LONNGGGGGGG overdue..... Seriously I was sick and tired of having a 3500$$$$ PC and getting 10 frames. DX11 Im getting like over 150 now and the graphics are way better now

I'm sorry but this is just kitten. A $3500 PC would not be getting only 10 fps on GW2 using the DX9 renderer. And beyond that, going from DX9 to DX11 would not give anyone 15x increase in performance. Making up numbers just makes it sound like you are lying

[Gen 3 legendaries]

5 hours ago, Sarius.9285 said:

many people, me included, build legendaries almost exclusively for the qol of always having that weapon with all possible stats available on every character 

This is why the vast majority of people craft/buy legendaries as well. But there are always that small minority of players that want the most expensive stuff just to show off how rich they are, so they think that anything they have dropping in price is a negative thing 🙄

[Mesmer patch notes 29/03]

1 hour ago, Lethion.8745 said:

Anyway, I was seriously expecting Mass Invis nerf and nothing else. They at least know what is wrong with Virtuoso even though the solution doesn't seem right. I'll take what I get. 

They don't give off the appearance that they what's wrong with it to me. The spec still has no identity. There's absolutely zero in it to compensate for losing distortion on F4. The heal skill still requires a target and you to face the target (an extra condi cleanse does nothing to address that). These are all things, among many more, that absolutely must be fixed in the June balance patch

 

1 hour ago, Levetty.1279 said:

Those CD reductions would be nice in PvE too. I don't know why they went to the trouble of splitting it.

This was a competitive balance patch. The whole patch was focused only on PvP and WvW. Other than fixing catalyst, the only PvE balance changes were a few ammo skills on warrior. Though the fact they fixed catalyst and still left virt design alone speaks volumes about their lack of plans to address this spec fully

[Use All on Dropdown Menu]

9 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

You do know you can buy spirits bags from mystic forge mechant and  open all on thos right?

I didn't know about that, thanks for the tip. Still, it would be nice to be able to use all tomes of knowledge from the dropdown menu without needing to do an intermediary step

[ArenaNet Studio Update: The future of Guild Wars 2]

Very excited for LWS1 to be brought back to the game.

 

I know that it was pretty for me frustrating playing through EoD story to see all of the LWS1 references that I do not understand, so glad to finally get to play the content

[Please make Equipment slots, Builds slots and inventory slots account bound. Or maybe have a one time profession change token?]

On 3/18/2022 at 11:53 PM, Veprovina.4876 said:

With the addition to a new elite for each class, they should have given us an account wide unlock of 1 extra equipment slot to compensate. Cause now you can't have one build for each elite which is kinda missing the point. 

The point was never to give you 1 template for each elite spec, it was to give you templates for different playstyles. That typically means different elite specs, but that was never the actual goal of the templates

[Skiffs are an embarrassment]

20 minutes ago, Maria Murtor.7253 said:

 

The thing is: I need to use them. For map completion and for the story. Currently, I'm playing through the game multiple times with all my characters. So I get reminded with each and every character about the complaints I have. Also, when I'm done with that I probably gonna go for the fishing achievements. So, yeah …

You have to use a skiff in exactly 2 steps in the story, but that is no different from any story post HoT where you have been required to complete (typically tedious) reknown hearts to advance the story. But pedantically you are correct.

 

However you don't need a skiff for map completion? You can swim just fine, or use a skimmer to zip around the water on the maps.

 

And the fishing achievement is a personal decision. Its not required by any means

[Please make Equipment slots, Builds slots and inventory slots account bound. Or maybe have a one time profession change token?]

I would love to see a profession change contract in the gem store. Or, alternatively, an item that lets you transfer character specific progression to a different character.

 

Specifically being able to transfer LW/expansion story progression, unlocked WP/vistas/PoI/HP, and hopefully also bag slots/template slots to a different character. Losing all of that just to switch to a new main is something I'm not willing to do, but there are times I wish I could change my main profession

[Skiffs are an embarrassment]

I think you're being quite overdramatic. I don't personally understand the appeal of riding around on a skiff, or of a fishing minigame in an MMO, but other people enjoy it. And it doesn't impact how I play the game at all, nor does it impact how you play the game either. If you don't like skiffs you don't have to use them.

 

Regardless, they aren't an embarrassment. Could the mastery line have been a little more fleshed out? Yea, absolutely, but that doesn't mean that its bad.

[A suggestion to fix Virtuoso's heal skill "Twinblade restortation"]

5 condi cleanse is really really really strong for 1 skill to do, especially since its only a 20s CD. Other than that, your idea is interesting, though virtuoso currently has more blade generation than it can handle, so I don't think it needs any more.

 

The #1 thing that must be fixed though is the skill needs to be usable without a target. If that change is made, then the skill would be more or less fine as it is. Though I wouldn't mind seeing 1 condi cleanse be baseline on it, and have it cleanse a second condition if the blade hits something.

[I'm not buying EoD because Virtuoso is bad.]

12 minutes ago, Lincolnbeard.1735 said:

I started playing the xpac this week and while the maps are gorgeous they're a kittening nightmare to navigate, reminds me of tangled depths and black citadel, if it wasn't for the flying mounts I would have ragequit this in a heartbeat. To add to this the maps are away to big, they went with the bigger and more complex the better and ruined the whole kitten. 

Echovald definitely took some getting used to, still not entirely used to navigating around it. But I will say that ANet did greatly improve the minimap on echovald vs tangled depths, its actually been incredibly helpful in showing me how to get to where I want to go

[Virtuoso is a nerf to mesmer.]

Completely off the top of my head, so this probably is busted in some way, but it would at least be super interesting if virtuoso bladesongs were changed to be toggle-able effects. You could have up to 1 bladesong active at a time, and while its active every blade you generate would automatically seek out your target (in combat) and apply the relevant effects.

 

So you could have F1 toggled on and every blade flies out dealing power dmg. Or F2 toggled for condi damage. Having F4 toggled would let each blade be a block, with some ICD I'm sure. F3 would be the hardest to balance here as it would be completely busted without some pretty high ICD.

IDK, maybe just F1 and F2 could be toggled and F3/F4 would still be cast on demand or something. But this would solve the issue of too many blades and too high cooldowns on the bladesongs. And has an added bonus of actually changing mesmer instead of applying a pretty new skin to its skills

[Off-Hand Pistol vs Sword (Halp Plox)]

Which one is better depends on your build and what you are trying to do. Pistol attacks do have a higher CD, but they're not that high compared to most other weapons skills 4/5 in the game, they're just a bit above average. And with duelists discipline, you get a free 25% CD reduction on them anytime you use pistol 5, which helps with the cooldowns a bit.

[Virtuoso Weak Compared To Other Elite Specs?]

14 hours ago, Hallow.7368 said:

I never said you did. The guy I responded to said it has no boon output to which I said this class did not need a third alac spec or a second quickness spec. And I mean welcome to the world of weaver I guess? My first main and what got me addicted to this game was a pchrono. I still love pchrono and it's what I got my first ascended weapon for. To me virt feels fantastic. Quite squishy in solo content due to no clones, but to be fair I'm also in full berserkers with 3 damage traitlines. Virt could use maybe a little tuning but those classes you're talking about are pretty much just overpowered and that's all there is to it. The espec does not need any kind of redesign or new features though. There's supposedly a huge balance patch coming in the summer, so until then we don't know what direction anet have in mind. For all anyone knows virt's dps could be their ideal balance point for a pure dps and they'll hard nerf a bunch of other classes like they did with self sustain and some of scourge and firebrand for EoD launch.

Balance and class design are about more than DPS potential. Virtuoso's blades still don't interact with every core mesmer clone trait. Its a lot clunkier to use than any other mesmer build because your f-skills now require you to face a target and have huge cast times (this despite the fact they are no better than core shatters). The f-skills did not have their functionality changed at all except to nerf f4 underground by replacing distortion with block. Dagger is a 1200 range weapon whose skills and trait encourage you to use it up close anyway. There are more design issues too.

 

DPS could be top of the charts but that wouldn't mean the design was sound.

[Please lower the shatter cds on virtuoso.]

I never said anything about no travel time, just no cast time. Please don't argue against changes I'm not even proposing

[Virtuoso Weak Compared To Other Elite Specs?]

8 hours ago, Hallow.7368 said:

That's good. Not liking it =/= bad. They gave basically every other new spec access to alac/quickness and mesmer already has 2 specs with alac and one of them has quickness too, it doesn't need another. It NEEDED this proper power spec. There are plenty of spots for pure dps specs in the game.

Just what? We weren't asking for another alacrity or quickness spec, so I don't know why you brought that up at all?

And as a pure DPS spec, virtuoso still does less damage than other specs that have actual utility on them too. It isn't even good at being pure DPS. And that doesn't address the fundamentally unfinished design it has.

 

I just wish ANet had talked to mesmer mains when designing it. Even if it was designed for non-mesmer mains to enjoy more, its mesmer mains who will be able to tell you what will and won't work, especially considering it has to have synergy with core mesmer

[Please lower the shatter cds on virtuoso.]

Removing the cast times on bladesongs, making them not projectiles, so they can't be reflected, and restoring distortion to F4 would go a long way towards addressing major problems with virtuoso.

 

But its sad that some of the best ways to fix virtuoso is to literally bring it up to core mesmer level of usability

[Virtuoso Weak Compared To Other Elite Specs?]

Virtuoso feels weak because its core design is flawed and unfinished.

[Virtuoso not really burst rather amazing sustain (Final Analysis)]

4 hours ago, Thornbury.4179 said:

So the thread title is "amazing sustain" and Otto posts above "It is really lacking in sustain".

 

I'm generally finding this build more survivable than most I've tried, but I do occasionally get overwhelmed (E.g. the HP Ministry of Archives in Soojung Heights just rinses me).

 

What sustain elements should I be using? Shatter 4 is a nice block and Sword 4 blocks too. I have the runes to heal on block which helps, but wondered if I was missing anything in my playstyle to increase sustain?

If you want sustain use chrono or mirage. Virtuoso is designed to have no sustain. And losing distortion on F4 is one of the biggest sustain nerfs I've ever seen in this game. Its insane how poorly thought out that was

[Please lower the shatter cds on virtuoso.]

7 hours ago, Sodeni.6041 said:

3) SO TRUE!

I don't understand how the devs didn't think about all the nerfed condi potential of staff and scepter without clones that apply conditions. Those two weapons feel so useless on virtuoso.

They did think about it. Virtuoso is supposed to be a power based build. Then the devs quarter backtracked and tacked on condi traits for no reason, and now people think that it was designed to support condi, but that's just not true.

 

The design is broken

[Anet thinks that Virtuoso doesn't summon Phantasms.]

15 hours ago, Skyroar.2974 said:

Fun fact: the Virtuoso NPC is dual-wielding daggers.

Now that just stings Anet

[Virtuoso is so satisfying to play]

16 hours ago, Levetty.1279 said:

At least you can carry on overwriting your cloens to trigger related traits, another way Virtuoso is worse then core.

Agreed.

 

People can enjoy it if they want to, but at the end of the day, the spec design has a bunch of problems in it

[Virtuoso is so satisfying to play]

17 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I like the design so how can you say its unfinished. This and Untamed are my most played specs after EoD launched, I did pop back into chrono but realised it does less damage -_-

I mean...... I've gone into detail already in this very thread explaining how the design is unfinished. Just because you like it doesn't mean it was finished

[Sword Swap Timer]

Neither does an icon in the buff bar unless you are hovering your mouse over it? The only indication it will give is when you have less than 5 seconds left when it starts flashing. But again, that is a much smaller icon, whose place on the buff bar can change. Its a lot harder to look for it than to just look at your skill bar and see if the swap is still available

[Sword Swap Timer]

I always find it easier to look at the #3 skill button to see if the shadowstep/swap is available or not. I find it a lot easier to see that then to look for a much smaller buff icon whose position can change on the buff bar