OriOri.8724

On paper it is 566% but in reality it is not even close to that much of a nerf, since it is limited by endurance anyway. But yeah it was a stupid change, it will just be unreliable and annoying to use. Not quite. Evasive mirror works on evades, not dodging. While dodging is a huge source of evades, mesmers also get several skills that allow them to evade attacks, notably BF but also sword 4, both of which are on short CDs and can be traited even shorter with dueling. Mirage also gets another evade on axe on a 10sec CD untraited. Combined with vigor and strategically using your evade skills, you could have been proccing EM roughly every 3-4 seconds on average even over an extended fight. In a quicker fight, you could easily activate it 4-5 times in a row, right off its ICD each time. Sorry yeah that's true. I just wanted to point out that just saying 566% nerf could be a bit misleading (for example, raising cooldown of fury on crit or vigor on crit by 566% would be a much bigger relative nerf).I see where you're coming from, but its not misleading at all in my opinion. Mechanically, especially if you play an elite spec (mirage gets extra evade skills while chrono has alacrity and IA if you want to run it), you could pop EM off back to back multiple times in a row, while killing the opponent quickly, and effectively have the ICD be 1.5 seconds for the entire fight. Even on extended fights though, proccing it every ~3 seconds is sustainable for a pretty solid amount of time. So I guess I will revise my original comment. Its a 566% nerf to the ICD when using it in a burst, but even over extended fights its still a 233% nerf to the ICD, which is still one of the largest nerfs this game has ever seen from a pure numbers perspective. It was way too heavy handed, and just adds yet another ICD to mentally keep track of as a mesmer if you wish to run the trait still. Which, taken together, means it was a piss poor nerf to the trait, and not the correct way to address it.

On paper it is 566% but in reality it is not even close to that much of a nerf, since it is limited by endurance anyway. But yeah it was a stupid change, it will just be unreliable and annoying to use. Not quite. Evasive mirror works on evades, not dodging. While dodging is a huge source of evades, mesmers also get several skills that allow them to evade attacks, notably BF but also sword 4, both of which are on short CDs and can be traited even shorter with dueling. Mirage also gets another evade on axe on a 10sec CD untraited. Combined with vigor and strategically using your evade skills, you could have been proccing EM roughly every 3-4 seconds on average even over an extended fight. In a quicker fight, you could easily activate it 4-5 times in a row, right off its ICD each time.

This would require them to have an idea of what they want to do with mesmer as a class though. And judging off of every balance patch since HoT came out, they don't have a consistent idea of what they want mesmer to be. Yeah especially seeing certain things going round in circles like scepter crazy buffs then nerfed back again in a similar way, and confounding suggestions having how many different versions... Just seems like a waste of effort. Feeling pretty jaded right now, not been for a long time but maybe with the nice spring weather (northern hemisphere) it's time to go extra casual until Anet sort this kitten out properly - though that could take until the next expansion or whatever. :/What they should do, even though it will be a large project, is sit back and think deeply on every class about what they want it to be, what they want it to be good and bad at, potentially even how it will play at a high level. They already, I believe, have done this, but the issue is they stopped there. They need to take that idea significantly farther, down to each traitline, weapon, and skill category for every class (and again, at a bit higher level, for elite specs as a whole). Scepter on mesmer is a great example of where this process has not happened. Its so lost. No one knows what it is supposed to be, design wise. Is it a power weapon? A condi weapon? Mid range or short range? Is it for dueling or not? Its kit is all over the place, and 'balanced' seemingly at random. Mesmer boon share (more specifically SoI) is another, near perfect, example of where this process has not happened, or at least where it wasn't effective. Instead of continuing to nerf our boon share in a manner that doesn't really address anything, the balance team needs to step back and consider if mesmer should be sharing every boon in the game with a single skill anyway, and the answer is obviously no. You can't have a class be both balanced AND fun unless you clearly know what you want that class to look like. And its pretty clear that they have no consistent idea of what they want mesmer to look like, it seems to flip several times a year.

This would require them to have an idea of what they want to do with mesmer as a class though. And judging off of every balance patch since HoT came out, they don't have a consistent idea of what they want mesmer to be.

EM cd change is a bit extreme. 566% CD increase all at once is a pretty insane nerf. Would rather have seen it bumped up no higher than 6 or 8, especially considering that mirror was removed from master of manipulation.

A game is about 8-10 minutes. You can count that + taking into account the waiting time in the lobby + time spend before games really launch. It's why I'm questioning about Anet.After watching how these bots are working and giving all the details + reports, I still see them by 2 sometimes at every matches.There is something fishy about all of this, really... One other thing.I first thought to be a meme lord and comment:Mesmer is the true killer of PvP. But then i read your other post about how most Bots are Mirage´s. Soooo.... would removing the bots not result in ALOT less Mirage´s in low lvl play and therefor more new People enjoying PvP? Big ThinkYes, it would result in a lot fewer Mirages, but it doesn't necessarily mean that more new people would enjoy PvP. It could, ironically enough, have the opposite effect. The PvP population is fairly small in GW2 compared to the total number of players, and a not insignificant portion of that population are bots. Matchmaking already has problems (though Anet has done an amazing job imo of making it better) for really low ranked players, and for new players, getting them matched up well because of this low population, and removing bots would only compound the issue. For this to have any real impact on new players (I'm assuming here that the vast majority of new PvP players won't be that great when they start, I think its a fair assumption), they'd have to stick around long enough for matchmaking to figure out what their real skill level is, and for the population to stabilize so that the matchmaker can do its job, and then their experiences should start being better overall.

Twice now, when I get to the part with Braham in the branded village and then Koss takes the speaker from taimi and starts talking about the sunspear sanctuary, I have been disconnected. Both times, I was disconnected as soon as he finishes saying "Its been abandoned for years. For years!". Boom! Immediate disconnect on my end. First time, I logged back in, and noticed that the PoI was no longer marked as having been found on my character, and I had to restart the entire conversation with Braham and the merchant. ! Error Code I got

If I understand this correctly, your entire argument about Anet introducing high elves is because a separate game studio didn't put high elves into their own game?

Oh good list. I do think that overall damage output needs to be nerfed harder than 20%, and I also think boon spam needs to be nerfed into the ground. The best way to go about this is to start reducing the amount of things that skills and traits do. A skill might deal reasonable damage, but if it also dazes opponents, grants you a strong boon, and is on short CD then its still vastly overperforming.

I agree. I'd scrap item stats, but keep sigils/runes. I would maybe consider splitting sigisl into mainhand and offhand sigil and only allowing one of each type on 2H, but not sure on that. In that case, the mainhand could always be one which functionally makes you stronger ("You deal 5% more damage" / "You proc an area heal" / etc), while the offhand could be something which only indirectly gives your attacks more use ("Your AoE skills have a 15 units larger radius" / "when your heals heal only other targets, you also heal yourself for X" / such stuff).Runes are interesting as a choose-your-own-setbonus, though I'm not sure keeping them as 1-6 sets is sensible if they only have stats before the 6-piece. Since stats are being removed, it should all be something like: Rune of the MirageYour damaging ambush attacks summon clones after the attack connects.1 or 2 runes: 1 clone3, 4 or 5 runes: 2 clones6 runes: 3 clonesYes, there are runes which don't improve anything, but that's a reality once stats are removed, I could however mix&match this. I would however massively curb the amount of runes and sigils available, with the removal of stats 90% or so lost their reason to exist in any case. Make it an effective choice between 3-4 runes and 3-4 sigils for each class, that amount can realistically be balanced, too! The other big area I'd love a removal of options from is traitlines. Or well, not the lines, but the individual traits. My ideal design would be this:For each class, identify 5 "aspects" of the class. For example for Mesmer it'd be conditions, interrupts, avoidance, reflection and boons.For each aspect, 1 traitline exists to enhance this aspect. Within the traitline the layout is non-standardized. But, most are entirely passive, giving a collection of passive benefits which directly enhance the aspect of the traitline and that's it. Some miiight offer a choice, like the Daredevil line giving you a 1-out-of-3 choice for your dodge type. But it'd be the only thing you choose.You then pick which 3 out of the 5 class aspects your character should focus on. This in turn defines your build, instead of needing to list all picks, you say "Mesmer, Domination/Illusion/Inspiration".Elite specs bring in a whole new aspect, so naturally they're the traitline which also enhanced that aspect. These will again have few if any choices, but will have slightly more passive effets, and in fact in the traitline-UI list the skills they add as skill buttons for convenience. Example Mesmer again, Chronomancer is the "time-dilation"-aspect of the class, Mirage would be "burst". This is an interesting idea, but not that related to mesmer. You should post it in the general forum to get more feedback on it imo

Well that's the thing.. I actually like the abilities on the scepter, but it's just super annoying to actually use. It needs at a minimum a visual rework :) Art/visual complaints are perfectly valid complaints. But do you really think this is where the team should spend their time on guardian?

Kind of expanding on this, but would you guys consider posting the introduction to each forum chat sometime on Wednesday, and allow players to post questions before it officially starts on Thursday morning? This way, some people can get questions posted on time even if they have work on Thursday, it gives the ANet employees some more insight into what kind of questions to expect as well. I find this important, because even if someone posts Thursday night, depending on the popularity of the chat, an ANet employee might not see it and have time to answer it before the entire discussion is archived.

I think an AMA should be about asking ONE question, and get ONE answer. Something like a FAQ or so, THEN you can create little discussions out of it - if necessary at all. When I see reddit - a, in my opinion, horrible place in many aspects - there is so much nonsense to collapse that it works not better or worse than any other bulletin board style of boards. If it's a following question on something already answered, then it could be done using the regular quote feature. But every person adding one-liners, such as "+1", "yeah me too" and "KAPPA" is not something I want to have to collapse in the first place. Excelsior. But you can collapse it, even if you don't feel like you should have to. You cannot do that here, its just scrolling indefinitely, hoping to see an answer to the question that might appear 5+ pages later. There is no rational argument for this system being better.

As long as you don't cancel the episode AMA on reddit. As much as people, for no good reason, like to complain about those AMAs being on reddit, reddit is an exponentially better platform for AMAs, since you can collapse entire comment threads, and go straight to the areas of the conversation that are relevant to what you want to know. This forum simply is not capable of that, and is exponentially worse at AMAs than reddit is.

Ultimately I think it's okay if elite specs are just plain better than base professions, so long as we add at least a couple more elite specs per profession. When there was only one per profession, making them better than the base profession was a serious problem, because "use this one spec or you're missing out" isn't exactly an interesting decision. With two elite specs per profession, it's a bit better, especially because most elite specs have multiple ways they can be used well. Increase that to three or four, though, and I think we're in good shape. Sure, ideally the base professions should still have a place, but ultimately I'm more interested in having good build variety than I am in where that variety comes from, if that makes sense. I agree that as we get more and more elite specs this problem will start to sort itself out more. I also think that releasing 1 or 2 elite specs on their own, outside of an expansion, would help immensely as it would get us more elite specs faster. I generally also agree that its okay if elite specs are better than core spec, however part of the reason that some elite specs are so oppressive is because those single traitlines offer everything, offense/defense/support, and are better at all 3 than core traitlines are. Take chronomancer for example, it offers insane support, while also offering us better damage (now) and insane personal sustain. Or berserker, which has been dialed back a lot now, but when released had huge damage and also huge sustain due to primal burst skills counting as T3 burst while only needing 10 adrenaline to use. This is the fundamental problem with many elite specs, they offer too much of everything. They need to be dialed back to a single focus, like most core traitlines are. They are either damage or support. Either personal sustain or group I have to admit I don't entirely agree with all of your points, but this one I definitely do. I'm not a professional game designer, not even close, but after a lot of years playing and thinking about games, I've started to think that most RPGs could be improved by removing boring choices. And personally, I think a lot of GW2's stats are boring. I'm not a fan of "just plain do more damage" stats, so naturally I don't love Power or Condition Damage; combine that with Power being functionally worthless unless it's also paired with Precision, which is lackluster unless it's combined with Ferocity, and there just isn't much of interest do to there. By extension, I think traits, runes, and sigils do have the potential to be interesting. Many aren't right now, but traits and items that let you actually do new things or that meaningfully modify how your existing actions work are interesting build choices. If I had my way, GW2 would scrap stats entirely (much like GW1) and focus more on increasing the gameplay variety that sigils, runes, and traits offer. That won't happen, of course--it'd require a total rework of the equipment system so large it'd almost be a new game, for one thing--but hey, I can dream. I think that the stat system is fine, its GM traits that aren't. GM traits should change how you play a build, look at Holosmiths for great ones. Ideas that I think would be really interesting would be stuff like All boon strips are now boon corrupts, but skills/traits that strip multiple boons now have a lower limit (eg, disenchanter would only corrupt 3 boons with this trait instead of hte 5 that it strips normally)A portion of all healing you give is dealt as AoE damage in melee range around you. Your projectile attacks are now unblockable, but their max range is reduced by 300 unitsWhen an attack is blocked, its CD is reduced by 20%When you kill an enemy, all boons on you get their durations increased by X secondsShatters have their CDs reduced by 50%, and have their effects cut by 50% (50% less damage for MW, CoF has its duration cut in half, distortion has its duration cut in half, diversion has its duration cut in half, CS has its duration affected as well but probably keep the 1sec minimum for F3/4/5)Stuff that changes how you play, and can be tailored to specific encounters. I think that a large part of why we have such uninteresting GM traits is because there are so many of them. 7 traitlines for each class, with 3 GM traits in each line, with 9 classes is 189 different GM traits that have to be designed, with the goal of every single one of them changing how that class plays the game, while still being unique, and most importantly not overpowered with any other trait combination you can think of.

Yes, maybe. Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly thankful that mesmer got the fundamental redesign it needed to remove the aspect of its own class mechanic fighting against itself. However, at the same time, there are still a lot of problems both with mesmer and with other classes. I don't think there is anything wrong with continuing to point them out, as long as its done in a constructive manner (ie "I find X wrong with Y class because Z reasons, and here is A, B, C ways that I think it could be addressed in a good manner") Not to mention, that just because we got this redesign does not mean that huge balance changes are done. Many people who play GW2 do believe that toning back every class, especially elite specs, significantly would make the game even better than it currently is

Personally, I think we have the best shot at getting the LWS1 festivals to come back, and maybe some of the boss fights, and that's it.

The devs have said, multiple times now, that even though many of them also want to see LWS1 make a return, the amount of work involved is non trivial. And as a company, Anet doesn't want to spend so much effort on content that is "old", they would rather develop new content. And I think you are misleading people as to how much of LWS1 was in instances. Twisted Marionette, Battle for lions arch, the breachmaker nonsense, saving people from lions arch and way more events were open world events, and they were a huge part of LWS1. Beyond that though, Anet can't just take the existing LWS1 instances and plop them back in the game. They won't work. If you remember, Anet had to redesign SAB after HoT was released because of how much the game's engine had changed, and SAB was no longer compatible with the current game. The same would have to be done for LWS1, every instance would have to be redone to work with the ucrrent game engine, not to mention rebalancing it all for the absolutely insane powercreep we have had since then.

Its a thing, and its more useful than flat out warping because its harder to detect. Just report them when you catch someone doing it. As soon as Anet finds the cause and patches it, expect a wave of bans

Sorry if this has already been answered somewhere in the 31 pages preceding this question, but how long has this been in development by the WvW team? Or, in other words, has this been why the WvW team has been relatively silent on changes to the game mode recently, while you guys were busy coming up with the details fo rthis change and getting it approved? I imagine this was no small undertaking, and a lot of people feel like you guys have abandoned the game mode, but if its because you were working on this complete overhaul I'm sure some people would be understanding of that

It does. It happens earlier, and to different extents, in different people, but it does make a difference over time. Luckily, GW2 is very casual, so unless you want to be top of the leaderboards in PvP it won't really matter too much for most players

I loved the new one and loved the old one, and was born quite a bit before 2016. Just because you didn't like it doens't means that no one is allowed to like both.

Map - I love it, I think its a really fun map to explore. Very impressed with the scale of it as well considering how quickly it came out. Overall very good map Mastery - Pretty much what I expected, but I do think its quite boring to not be able to pick up the new currency until you have this mastery. Its also uninspired. Hopefully the rest of the mastery track in LWS4 matches stuff like the druid magic mastery. Story - Very fun and engaging to play! Seriously, I think the story telling goes up with each release. Not going to go into any spoilers, but overall very good. Still hate Braham with a passion Instances - Pretty good for the most part. I think the last one was too long, and I didn't actually enjoy that instance very much. The final fight was also extremely annoying to play. Quite a long fight, at the end of an already long instance. And not a single safe space to stand if you wanted to check your phone, or go grab food, or use the restroom, due to those goddamn asura cannons. And the little lightning shits that the boss spins around on the platform to create the storm of AoE,s please for the love of god remove the pull on those! They were pulling me through mirage cloak, they would pull me even as I was trying to run away. For the life of I have no idea how a class without any teleports gets out of those if they mess up and get caught. Hell, if I was caught in one, I could use Jaunt to get out and at max range, teleporting behind it (so its moving farther away from me), I would still be close enough to be pulled by them. That's not a fun mechanic to me, I was really hoping it would stay in HoT. Other than those lightning shits, the only thing I think that could make this fight better is to disable the asura cannons near one of the little gates whenever you destroy each little gate. If only to give players a spot to go stand for a few seconds, which is needed due to the length of hte instance and the fight.

Honest question, how feasible would it to be rework teleport skills to have some wiggle room in their algorithms so that they can avoid most nav mesh problems? Because finding every single place where they get stuck and fixing it is a monumental task, and that's just for PvP, not to mention PvE or WvW. If you don't know, maybe ask the skill and balance team? I feel like that's the best way forward, if its possible to do.

WoW has been going strong for 13 years. GW2 is barely 5 years old. Its clear that a well run MMO can remain successful even after a very long time. I don't think there will ever be a huge need for GW3 outside of a massive engine overhaul, but depending on how late in the development of GW2 that is, it might make more sense to do it and revamp all of GW2 to fit the new engine than the have to start over from scratch.