[Almost 8 months since EoD trailer. When is the next teaser/reveal?]

@Fueki.4753 said:Arenanet most likely announced the expansion as some kind of emergency button after they realized that Season 5 is a massive failure.I wouldn't be surprised if they currently don't have anything that is ready for presentation.

When Anet announced the Season 5 as the Icebrood Saga they had much bigger plans for the Saga and no plans for an expansion.

According to someone from Anet: During working on Season 5 someone in (higher) management decided, as a surprise to the devs, to make an expansion. So they had to (somehow) cancel all/most unfinished work on Season 5 (and work on the expansion) but still try to end the story arc of Season 5 like it was planned.

So I guess, they did not announce the expansion because of a massive failure of Season 5 but because the decision of making an expansion was not made earlier. And probably because of that management decision Season 5 became this much bigger failure than if would have been without shifting all resources to the expansion.

[The Insane Cost of the Icebrood Saga Weapon Collections (Update - Still Insane)]

@Yasai.3549 said:I have ignored every single collection since Boreal collection.It's just not fun to grind for skins, period.

If you do not want the skins, then don't grind for them and do other things in the game that you like.

I think the only way that Anet can make grind worth while for the game is to simply introduce gear progression.Something past Ascended, and Legendaries will be upgraded to the next tier by default.

No, this is not a good idea.

A grind that can be ignored is much better than a grind that is required to experience content/maps/etc.

Without gear progression, people have no real need to grind anything

Exactly. This is a good thing in GW2.

[End of dragons and Endwalkers]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@"Balsa.3951" said:Lack of creativity and self-confidenceEnd of Dragons/ End of JediHeart of Thorns / Game of Thrones

Very embarrassing....

Yes, comparing "Heart of Thorns" with "Game of Thrones", which have nothing in common cotent- and namewise,

is

a bit embarrasing. ;)

Well, years ago during Season 1, Mike O'Brien said, he saw Game of Thrones as kind of a role model for the storytelling in GW2 and they want to achieve with GW2 the same suspense and feeling that nobody and nothing is safe. I guess, thats why they destroyed Lions Arch, and why the HoT-maps were dangerous (at release) and some (main?) characters died during HoT.

So, GW2 "Heart of Thorns" and "Game of Thrones" have more in common than "nothing".

[Easy Condi Tempest solo build]

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@"Zok.4956" said:I guess, then you are not the target audience for his "easy and non-complicated Elementalist build" if it is already easy for you.I prefer weaver over tempest. And yes, I struggle vs strong champions especially with power builds.

I play tempest because I struggle with weaver vs all bosses with every build. :)

Read again OP last post. He want something able to solo most things easily.

It seems he wants to have a typical solo-roaming build for WvW with self-healing that is tanky enough to survive a dps-burst from other roamers but still has some DPS, so killing a WvW tower-boss does not take too long. And he wants to be able to kill a DRM endboss or champion.

A tower can be solo-capped with a glass cannon build (if the player is able to mitigate the damage) and with a bunker or healer build (it just takes a little longer). And (as an example) I soloed all DRMs at their launch-day (yes, even the Thunderhead-Peaks one with the scaling off the roof before the nerf) with my fresh air dps tempest with marauder-gear. They are somehow annoying but not hard if you look at the mechanics.

Maybe the OP should start with a standard WvW-roaming build. How much tankyness he needs and how much facetanking he wants is his personal preference and skill. Thats why I wrote (if he goes with a condi build) he should mix viper and trailblazer until it works for him (but he better should not mix power, healing etc gear with that).

Or maybe the best solution for the OP would be to make a bunker-build and a dps-build and then switch between the loadouts/templates with hotkeys to use the best one for the situation.

[Easy Condi Tempest solo build]

@Aigleborgne.2981 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

@"TheQuickFox.3826" said:Trailblazer stats provide decent condition damage with great defense.Viper stats provide highest condition damage.

I would say, use only Viper and replace it with some Trailblazer pieces if you need more defense.

For shorter solo-fights in PvE, solo play in OpenWorld maps etc., I would not recommend a condition build. Because the fight is already finished before you have ramped up all your conditions and then you waste damage and it usually takes longer compared to a DPS build (berserker mixed with marauder for example, maybe also soldier) to kill things. The shorter the fight, the better the survivability, usually. :)

EDIT: For PvE-solo-play and also WvW-roaming I think a fresh air tempest build with marauder gear is still a good and valid option that can have good survivability and is not overly complicated.

You haven't read what he wrote. He likes long lasting boss battles.

I actually did read what he wrote, but it seems you did not. He wrote "The reason I put in the healing power is because without it the self-healing is quite low and I tend to use that a lot in WvW and long lasting boss battles." to explain why he put in healing power in the build which is not a very good choice. And he also wrote "And ofc all kinds of PvE."

And he also wrote "I think it may be a nice build for players who are looking for an easy and non-complicated Elementalist build. This build is designed to make the Elementalist easy to play.", so it is not only about a build he likes, but about a build he thinks is a good build for others that want an easy Elementalist build.

I would not even bother about builds for anything else in open world because it will be easy no matter the build you will use.

I guess, then you are not the target audience for his "easy and non-complicated Elementalist build" if it is already easy for you.

[Easy Condi Tempest solo build]

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:Trailblazer stats provide decent condition damage with great defense.Viper stats provide highest condition damage.

I would say, use only Viper and replace it with some Trailblazer pieces if you need more defense.

For shorter solo-fights in PvE, solo play in OpenWorld maps etc., I would not recommend a condition build. Because the fight is already finished before you have ramped up all your conditions and then you waste damage and it usually takes longer compared to a DPS build (berserker mixed with marauder for example, maybe also soldier) to kill things. The shorter the fight, the better the survivability, usually. :)

EDIT: For PvE-solo-play and also WvW-roaming I think a fresh air tempest build with marauder gear is still a good and valid option that can have good survivability and is not overly complicated.

[Icebrood Saga Champions New patch 3/9/2021 SPOILER!]

@"radda.8920" said:i hope they will at least give us the opportunity to kill braham ourselves so that there is at least one positive point to this comedy.

Braham could "do a Trahearne stunt" at the end of the Saga. I think this would be a good solution to get rid of him before EoD. B)

[Icebrood Saga Champions New patch 3/9/2021 SPOILER!]

The elder dragons were downgraded from "forces of nature" (you can not argue with a storm, a storm just happens) into gods some time ago (like gods from the Greek pantheon) that talk, fight, cheat, abuse, think, etc. like humans and now Primordus is further downgraded into a wild animal (that can be tamed) and Braham is the tamer with a little help from his Norn-god-buddies. It does not feel like good story writing.

[Daily: Tengu Special: ANGTFT]

I went to Drizzlewood yesterday and landed in a map with the north meta near the final boss fight. I looted the few already existing chests in the citadel and after the boss fight I looted the final end chests and got the 20 for daily.

[Champions Chapter 3 [spoiler discussion]]

Jormag isn't bipolar. It isn't madness to want to be free from abuse. () Jormag's "madness" is trauma.

Maybe it is. But Jormag is also now trying to abuse others. That Jormag maybe was abused and is traumatized can be an explanation for this behaviour, but not an excuse.

[The Insane Cost of the Icebrood Saga Weapon Collections (Update - Still Insane)]

@Konrad Curze.5130 said:

@Sobx.1758 said:Here's an easy solution that I've found and for now it's working pretty well for me: ignore overpriced weapons/skins/collections. This way I was able to enjoy the game and not care about something that doesn't impact my gameplay in any way.

Then you realize that if you ignore the weapon collections, you waited months for 30 mins of new content, and after that you'll be back to waiting months for another 30

Yes, you are coming to a sad realization. I've been there. But it will get better for you, the longer you ignore those overpriced weapons/skins/collections. Just imagine what you could do with the extra time every day.

Somehow I can't see this working well for Anet...

I don't think this will work well for Anet.

[In case you're losing hope!]

@XenesisII.1540 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

@XenesisII.1540 said:He was surrounded by a super spreading boon balling zerg...

fixed that sentence for you. ^^

Naw pretty sure I'm right on the super speed.

But it did look like a boon superspreading event.

[In case you're losing hope!]

@XenesisII.1540 said:They do still exist!

No, it probably was one of the new mesmer illusions.

He was surrounded by a super spreading boon balling zerg...

fixed that sentence for you. ^^

[Would 'alliances' really work?]

@Gudradain.3892 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

@Gudradain.3892 said:You need more worlds and smaller worlds to create an healthy and interesting competitive scene.

The mode is WvWvW and three servers fighting against each other or together will always be more or less unfair. Which is fun sometimes. But for a healthy competitive scene you need fair fights.

You can have GvG and 1v1 in WvW but these are only segments of the game mode.

No. I'm quite sure you just need more competitors to create healthy competition. Given enough competitors, it doesn't matter what the competition is because you will be able to match opponents of similar levels together.

No, that is definitely not enough.

You need rules for fair fights for a healthy competition.

Three servers fighting against each others at the same time can often be fun, but it is not fair. Never was. That is the reason, why in team sport (i.e. soccer) usually only two groups fight against each others in a match/game. And to be fair there must not be any population imbalances. Thats why in team sport (i.e. soccer) there is a fixed and equal amount of players on both sides and removing one or more players from one side is used as a penalty (because it is usually a big disadvantage).

In New World, for example, this is solved in a way that there are only two groups fighting each other at the same time and before a battle begins the groups collect/invite players until the groups are full (50 players per group), so the fights/battles will always be 50v50.

And then: Do you remember the time when Anet tried to go into eSports with sPVP? There was a competitive scene for a while. But then Anet did not really understand how to balance the different classes (hint: balancing also is important for fair and skill based fights) and that was one of many reasons why that was a big failure.

Alliances in GW2 are not a solution for this. To have fair fights in WvW the mode has to be changed so much that it would be more or less a new game mode.

[Would 'alliances' really work?]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Zok.4956 said:A lot of details about the alliance system are not communicated yet and we can not be sure if and how it will be implemented in the end. But there is a high risk that it could kill the game mode finally, instead of revitalizing it.Except what you describe as a critical flaw is... well...

competition

.

A competition who can game the system best or a competition who is more organized and can dominate its alliance/guild members and steamroll unorganized servers/players better?

As long as we do not have all the details (and see the whole system) its only speculation if there will be critical flaws that Anet has not adressed/solved.

[Would 'alliances' really work?]

@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

@"subversiontwo.7501" said:

An alliance, the proposed entity in the system, is just a guild.

It is a way to stick 5 guilds into one piece or to divide your guild into 5 pieces, however you choose to see it. The Alliance on a World is just like a Guild on a Server today. There is no major significant difference. Alliances can't kick players off Worlds anymore than Guilds can kick players off a Server. That is just nonsense. Whether its authority or power is just semantics.

Guild leaders (and their officers) can kick players from a guild. And because Alliances are like a Guild of Guilds, Alliance leaders (and their officers) can kick/remove guilds from their alliance.

And because there will be limits (i.e. players per allliance, per server, etc), the guilds that are now regularly bandwagoning to create the biggest and overstacked linked-servers will make sure, that in their alliance only likeminded guilds exist, to have a bigger advantage against other servers/alliances.

Why is that a problem? Working with guilds to improve yourself and work WITHIN the confines of the rules to be successful is a bad thing?

And all players, that are not in those alliances/guilds, will be placed randomly on other servers, that can not compete with the organized-big-alliance servers.

Why would you want to be a part of an alliance where your views don’t align with them? And there is nothing stopping you from putting your guild in another alliance.

So yes, players can't be kicked from a server. But they (and their guilds) can be kicked from Alliances. And probably will be assigned to other servers after the next relinking/reshuffling.

Yes, that is why it exists which allow people to align (alliance) with people that view the game in a similar fashion. Why is that bad?

I responded to "Alliances can't kick players off Worlds anymore than Guilds can kick players off a Server.".

However, big guilds/alliances dominating a server could be a bad thing, because it will change the game mode a lot. Because players that join the game mode but do not want to join those bandwagoning-guilds could be assigned to servers where they probably only will be cannon-fodder for the other servers. Like it is today on some servers, but this could be worse with alliances.

It is a pattern sometimes seen in other games with openworld-PVP (and WvW is Anets version of openworld PvP): If mega guilds lock a server down the gameplay stagnates and then players, that do not want to be in those mega-guilds, leave the game-mode.

If they are on a host world, the link players can’t stay with them unless they bandwagon multiple times. (Incidentally that is why I don’t think we are going to see alliances) it continues to create imbalance in matchups despite links. Just look at the fact that BG has a full link server now. And they aren’t alone in that. CD was medium pop when the link took place.

server-links were a band-aid for population imbalance. but they did not really solve the population imbalance problem (because of massive bandwagoning after each server relinks) and they have created new problems (links and massive bandwagoning after server relinks destroy the remaining server communities).

For this reason, I do not trust Anet blindly to solve the problem of population imbalance with alliances before Anet shows us all the details of how it works and I can see it with my own eyes.

[Would 'alliances' really work?]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:An alliance, the proposed entity in the system, is just a guild. It is a way to stick 5 guilds into one piece or to divide your guild into 5 pieces, however you choose to see it. The Alliance on a World is just like a Guild on a Server today. There is no major significant difference. Alliances can't kick players off Worlds anymore than Guilds can kick players off a Server. That is just nonsense. Whether its authority or power is just semantics.

Guild leaders (and their officers) can kick players from a guild. And because Alliances are like a Guild of Guilds, Alliance leaders (and their officers) can kick/remove guilds from their alliance.

And because there will be limits (i.e. players per allliance, per server, etc), the guilds that are now regularly bandwagoning to create the biggest and overstacked linked-servers will make sure, that in their alliance only likeminded guilds exist, to have a bigger advantage against other servers/alliances.

And all players, that are not in those alliances/guilds, will be placed randomly on other servers, that can not compete with the organized-big-alliance servers.

So yes, players can't be kicked from a server. But they (and their guilds) can be kicked from Alliances. And probably will be assigned to other servers after the next relinking/reshuffling.

A lot of details about the alliance system are not communicated yet and we can not be sure if and how it will be implemented in the end. But there is a high risk that it could kill the game mode finally, instead of revitalizing it.

[Would 'alliances' really work?]

@Gudradain.3892 said:You need more worlds and smaller worlds to create an healthy and interesting competitive scene.

The mode is WvWvW and three servers fighting against each other or together will always be more or less unfair. Which is fun sometimes. But for a healthy competitive scene you need fair fights.

You can have GvG and 1v1 in WvW but these are only segments of the game mode.

[Frustration]

@Sansar.1302 said:Been solo roaming since 2 months after game went live ( have tried zerg play and smal scale too)Now these days ppl seam to trie to ruin any 1v1 or eaven 2 v1.

When I am running with a zerg we still ignore 1v1 duelists at the usual spots and also solo players and we don't care about them until they try to gank our tail or they try to take objectives we care about.

So, your generalized statement is an exaggeration.

[End of Dragons Development Updates - [Merged]]

@DarcShriek.5829 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

@Dondarrion.2748 said:My guild(s) are all looking ahead to NW and AoC and preparing for these games because those games

are

publishing articles that give some insight into what's coming.

New World is a good example, that you can use a lot of money and still make an uninspired game. The game was released, then un-released and put back to beta, than postponed ... last time I checked it looked like a stereotype of other already existing games.

I believe you're talking about Crucible being released and then unreleased. Right developer though.

Yes, your are correct. I mixed it up a little bit. New World was never publicly released. It was in May 2019 in Alpha stage and went from that back to development stage. After big changes in the game they entered Alpha back in 2020, but there was not much PvE endgame content. It will enter Beta stage in July this year, if it will not be delayed again.

[wvw has seriously no game experience]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@mzmz.6289 said:for healers can only heal for their teamAgreed, healers should be able to heal the enemy as well.

You know what they meant was that you constantly have to keep an eye on where your subgroup is (they are rarely sticky), which makes stuff like using your elite stability skill a pain in the behind, as it is applied only to those in front of you in a cone radius? ;)

If your subgroup is not able or willing to be sticky, they deserve no healing/stability.

[End of Dragons Development Updates - [Merged]]

@Dondarrion.2748 said:My guild(s) are all looking ahead to NW and AoC and preparing for these games because those games are publishing articles that give some insight into what's coming.

New World is a good example, that you can use a lot of money and still make an uninspired game. The game was released, then un-released and put back to beta, than postponed ... last time I checked it looked like a stereotype of other already existing games.

[Gandara server perma-locked]

@nthmetal.9652 said:

@Zok.4956 said:

@nthmetal.9652 said:If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

What exactely is the "duck" your are seeing? That the "full" and "very high" of Gandara are false and Anet has set Gandara intentionally to "full" because Anet hates Gandara?

I don't think "hate" is any factor. I wonder what you're trying to achieve by putting me in that corner. Hate is something that actually takes a lot of effort, consumes and wastes energy, and I don't think this has any room for that.

Ok, I rephrase "hate" to "does not like". My point was: Do you think that Anet runs their populations algorithm on all servers and then, intentially and manually, sets Gandara to "full" regardless of what their algorithm computes?

So no, I don't know. Maybe it's simply neglect?

Yes, I think Anet probably neglects Gandara, like Anet neglects all other servers and the WvW-gamemode.

Maybe I'm completely wrong, and Gandara, despite all the hints we have pointing to the opposite, is actually full and our population just distributes very, veeeery evenly, so that there are never queues (well I am exaggerating here. Of course we sometimes have queues. Very small ones. During primetime, and not during the last weeks - but generally moving even big groups was pretty easy during the last months). And we're just so slightly above the full threshold, that moving between maps 50-man-zergs is indeed easily possibly. Yet somehow we never dip below the "full" threshold anymore, despite guilds transferring off the server and no one new being able to join.And of course our players are all pretty bad, so that we can't win fights. That aspect is very easy to explain generally. There is a lack of commanders (we're not the only server suffering from that), which means a lot of activity is pretty unfocused.And maybe, just maybe, the average Gandaran player is so bad, that even the PPT is bad, right? Bad enough to not make it past T4 when we have no link (but we can make T4 and even T3 when we do have one).But you have to admit, that's a lot of factors that have to combine together to give the picture you imply, namely Gandara being actually a full server which does work exactly as I describe above.

Or you take the simple explanation.

The simple explanation would be, that your "anecdotal evidence" is not evidence and that your perception is biased, you expect too much, and you want to see a pattern/connection for unfairness against Gandara.

Maybe you do not now when your fellow Gandarans are playing and where they are on the maps when you play and what they do.

Some example: My server is "very high" and linked with a "high" server. Very often when I play I have the "Outnumbered" buff and often when there is an enemy ktrain blob we are not enough to defend and they just flip our garri. I do think sometimes, a linked-server that has very high+high should have more population. An when I was in matchups against Gandara, I felt as if there were a lot of Gandara players all over the map - more players than on my own server. This is also just a subjective observation, of course. But Gandara never felt like an empty server.

Or at least that this criterion of being "full" is inadequate for the gamemode.And that doesn't only go for Gandara.

A lot of things are inadequate for the gamemode and the link-system itself is not a good system and this leads to a lot of players/guilds bandwagoning after a relink to overstack servers to make bigger blobs.

We as players do not know Anets thresholds for "full", "very high", "high", "medium" and "low". But I do think that (with the exception that BB will never be "full") Anet uses the same thresholds for all servers.

I know it can s..ck if a server does not get a link. Been there. But I do not think that Anet treats Gandara differently than the other servers.

[Gandara server perma-locked]

@"nthmetal.9652" said:If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

What exactely is the "duck" your are seeing? That the "full" and "very high" of Gandara are false and Anet has set Gandara intentionally to "full" because Anet hates Gandara?

[Gandara server perma-locked]

@"nthmetal.9652" said:gw2mists tells us, that not many registered players are on Gandara, compared to other servers. We have no reason to believe that the amount of registered players on gw2mists from Gandara is for some reason significantly lower than that of other servers. But of course you can draw that conclusion, despite no evidence given.

Just because you do not see a reason for a statistical bias is no evidence that the numbers from gw2mists are adequate samples for all the population of all servers.

People register accounts on gw2mist because they want to. As a result, registered accounts on gw2mists are not a random sample https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_sample for the whole WvW population because of selection bias. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

I believe that's how you build a conspiracy theory

exactely. seeing something in numbers without scientific evidence or by doing statistics wrong is a "good" starting point for a conspiracy theory like "Gandara is full because Anet hates Gandara".

Apophenia is also typical of conspiracy theory, where coincidences may be woven together into an apparent plot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

But if you accept the facts present as actually being connected they suddenly point to a population problem.

You did not present a lot of facts that could prove your point. Maybe you have a different understanding of "facts".

Added: But I do agree, that Gandara seems to have a population problem, because the server is so overstacked, that as a result it is "full" most of the time.