Cernow.3974

Playing in a blob, whether against other blobs or capping empty towers, might not be everyone's idea of fun, but nevertheless it is playing within the rules. Just like gank teams taking down lone roamers isn't everyone's idea of fun, but again it's within the rules. But condoning hacking / exploiting as a counter to a legitimate gameplay style you don't like is pretty pathetic.

Our WvW group spent most of last night's session chasing a determined guild group of 4 hackers around the map, trying to respond to their attempts to take various T3 keeps and garrisons by glitching inside and going straight to the Lord without needing to take down any walls or doors. Mostly we foiled them, but they did manage to take a few and it ate up a lot of our game time preventing them (no doubt part of their intent). Added to the lack of gliding in WvW at the moment, all in all it made for a really miserable and unenjoyable gaming experience. Anet need to start taking hacking and exploiting seriously. It's happening on a very regular basis now, distorting matches and a minority are totally ruining the fun of the majority who don't exploit. We need better tools to record and report and we need to see proper action taken. Otherwise people are going to lose interest in WvW. You can detect this mood is growing from what is said in chat. I feel it too. WvW is my favourite game mode, but I'm just not feeling like I want to participate in matches where the hacking is rife anymore. Not going to point fingers and name and shame as I know all servers have their offenders. Anet, help us to help you fix this situation please. Otherwise people will go elsewhere with their game time and that's less revenue for you.

There absolutely needs to be an option to toggle this off. It's so intrusive and persistent. And since SotO it's got a lot lot worse because the system doesn't even remember about the tips it has previously given you, so you're perpetually bombarded with unwanted warnings and tips.

My Guardian is offensive support (with offhand torch) primarily because shield really isn't worth the bother. Shield just doesn't bring enough to the table compared to other offhand options, particularly torch. I've not even considered using Shield on any other class than Guardian and it's a rare thing to see other players using. Definitely needs a rethink.

Why does everything always boil down to "pay not to play"? If you feel you're "wasting your time" on a gameplay mechanic, then either do something else you feel is worthy of your time, or better still suggest constructive ways in which the mechanic could be improved. Don't just suggest you want to throw your credit card at it. That's a lazy solution and doesn't help the game improve. And yes, the crafting system could use an overhaul. The actual levelling speed isn't that slow if you pick the right items to craft, but the required materials and steps can often be unnecessarily convoluted, excessive or fussy and there's a few material bottlenecks they need to review. They need to streamline things and update for the availability of materials in the current game. Plus overhaul recipes so they are relevant to the level at which they are gained and able to be crafted (so players can craft level appropriate gear more easily).

I would definitely recommend putting infusions on your ascended trinkets. Also, you can attune the rings at the Mystic Forge. to get double infusion slots on each ring. So, that's 8 infusions = 40 Power and some extra damage to the NPCs. It's not going to make you unstoppable but it might help a bit, especially when roaming where you can safely assume the vast majority of other roamers you run into are going to be full ascended and fully infused. Definitely worth working on an ascended main weapon next as that's something where you really will notice a difference.

Stealth that equates to invisibility is garbage game design. Not just in GW2 but any MMO which uses this lazy mechanic (so that's most of them then). Abilities which blind, obfuscate, confuse or distract are far more appropriate. But outright invisibility, especially long duration, nope no thanks. Any classes which rely on this gameplay crutch need a rethink and a rework. And the solution is not to force other players to build a certain way or require certain workarounds to counter it.

The usual pendulum swing over nerf. Such a lazy solution. Surely there's a middle ground? It was obvious something needed to be done about the repair farming. But not this. For a lot of support builds, doing a bit of repairing was a good way to ensure at least some participation. Making it essentially kills = participation hurts support players and anyone who isn't playing a build that can burst someone down. Surely the solution here is repairing alone should never give you better than a Bronze participation, but it should at least give you something. And the waste of supplies issue could easily be addressed by only rewarding the first X amount of supplies you use to repair any given structure.

Visually it's a pleasing map and the story is fine, although too short (I realise there's more to come). The main issue is that the meta event is a poorly implemented mess. The main issues are: 1. The cap on keys is ridiculous. I ran the meta three times in a day, which is not really that excessive and by the end of map 2 I was out of keys. On map 3 I earned zero keys, couldn't even loot anything at final boss. That's a disgraceful waste of play time. A cap on purchased keys is fine but keys should be 100% guaranteed from event completion / participation. Or alternatively, tone down the number of minor chests (usually full of junk) and make the limited keys more worthwhile to spend. The ratio of chests to keys is way out of whack and the cost of purchasing extra doesn't scale with the rewards. 2. The filter system is a total chore, a pointless and tedious mechanic. I want to enjoy the meta and not worry constantly if my filters are running out. Every single time I've done the map I make sure I'm at 30 filters at the start of the final boss phase and every single time they run out during the final boss fight. This is poor tuning and poor design. I can see no reason to take the purchased filters because they wouldn't last long enough. If there's a way to refresh the filters without returning to a recharge station then it's not made obvious. Is there some kind of mastery being added for filters? There needs to be. Or better still, remove the filters. 3.The final boss fight is a tedious, repetitive, unimaginative grind (as is the story version). I'm bored of it already after only a handful of runs. The mechanics are dull. It is also population dependant. All map metas are of course, but this one especially so. I think this will harm longevity of the map once the initial buzz is over. 4. Rewards are poor. It's a fairly quick meta compared to others (at least while population is high) but still not worth the time invested. I'm not really interested in endless mountains of unidentified gear. The chance of ascended items is nice (but seems very low) but the rest of the drops are rather dull. And on the vendor we have the usual lacklustre selection including yet more glove skins (why the gloves obsession?) and yet another hat skin that breaks / doesn't respect hairstyles (I get there's technical reasons for this, but if you can't fix the problem don't keep designing headgear this way). Overall, it's not a map I'm likely to keep coming back to, there's much better fun to be had elsewhere in the game.

Locking people into a certain type of mount for a race is no better than locking people out. People prefer different mounts because it suits how they can best control their character. Different courses favour different mounts too, so it's good to have a choice. But they absolutely should offer a full choice of all mounts for race rental. It probably still won't help the rentals win though because they likely won't have the mastery points or ability to switch mounts mid-race. But winning doesn't matter anyway, there's no extra rewards, it's all just for fun. I'm not so great at tight corners on the Roller Beetle, so I just slam into the wall, or manually dismount and get back on again. Sometimes this still wins, so I can only apologise to more skilful racers 🙂

I think the problem with the Skyscale is that it's not just a QoL mount, it has become largely essential for keeping up with other players in all sorts of group / squad content, especially map metas. So newer or some returning players will find on hitting 80 that it's rather a struggle to try and keep up via other mounts and methods. Mount diversity is one of the big gameplay strengths of GW2, but it also has downsides because of how it divides players and can lock them out of certain content. The Warclaw in WvW is an example of a good mount because whilst there's a bit of a grind to get it, you can still keep up with other players on foot with the help of a bit of swiftness. So, it doesn't totally hamstring you. The turtle and beetle grinds are fine too, no-one really needs them, they're somewhat optional. But the Skyscale is such a huge game changer in PVE that it creates a real gulf between those with and without one. I think they should lessen the grind a bit now. Yes, it has been rather a rite of passage, but since it's become so essential to keep up with the way the game is now played (in PVE) it doesn't seem right to make newer players go through all that just to keep up. Perhaps award the base Skyscale earlier in the grind and then let it improve via masteries, by reworking them a bit. Players who earned it the hard way shouldn't resent this, they've had plenty of use out of their mounts. Instead, just be happy that the other players you play alongside can keep up with whatever it is you're doing.

Yeah that's a fair point. Having managed to get to 1/3 in the jumping puzzle after a lot of failures, I thought I'd best look more closely at the Mystic Forge costs before deciding if to keep putting myself through the jump torment. Given the disparity between what I have in the bank and what I'd need to farm or buy, it seems the jumping puzzle is the least of my worries. It's not about approval, just a better choice of options. But Luthan's point above is a good one, Winter's Presence is fairly hardcore for reasons of cost anyway. Anyway, Winters Presence aside, I think the main problem (for me) with the festival jumping puzzles is the timer. I've done most of the open world puzzles as intended (albeit with a rewinder), including Searing Ascent and Arm of Abaddon. But in those I can go at my own pace, there's checkpoints and the rewinder. But this isn't possible with the festival jumping puzzles. I don't really get why they need to be on a timer.

Then the issue has a lot to do with scaling. A 10 personal premade will usually have everyone playing their role to the full, knowing the mechanics etc. You're usually not going to get that with a map full of 30-40+ randoms. But it seems even if you do have a well-organised 40+ (but not premade) it can still fail all too easily. I was involved in one failure at sub 5% when all the preparation stages went smoothly and an experienced commander explained the final fight clearly. Good buffs, balanced group composition under sub commanders, you name it. Everyone played well, no wipes, few if any deserters (because it seemed to be going so well), all the phases cleared properly as intended. And yet we still came up short because the tuning seemed to scale it beyond the dps check it had decided was appropriate for our numbers. We did everything correct (or so it felt) and still had all our time poured down the drain. That's poor tuning. You have to bear in mind that this isn't raid content, it's open world. Yes it's the conclusion of an expansion pack story, so players expect something epic. But a fight can be epic without being ridiculously grindy or punishing (which is something I feel this game tends to lose sight of in certain places). A good comparison would be Drizzlewood Coast, which is another meta with a big time investment but a much higher chance of success (don't think I've witnessed this one fail if it gets as far as Claw Of Jormag stage). I think they got Drizzlewood just about right and Dragon's End wrong, especially considering DE caps out a story arc that most players are going to want to complete, so you can't just make it about meta farming.

I've completed this once in about a dozen attempts (pug). Having completed it once and got my achievement, I have no intention of going back, unless there's changes, because the failure rate is simply too high and the chance of getting literally nothing out of a big chunk of invested time isn't worth the bother. I don't think the problem is lack of player knowledge or skill, it's just that success (outside of a premade) is way too dependant on factors such as number of players (time of day etc), huge amount of time needed compared to a lot of other metas and the extremely strict timer. One simple change that could be made is to relax the timer. By all means reduce the rewards if the target time isn't reached, but don't give players absolutely nothing if they fail at 5% or even 1%, that's just huge disrespectful of player time investment. There's not much point in people posting into a thread like this by saying "but I completed it in an organised group". Well of course you did. All content can be completed by an organised group. The frustration is that a general pug, often even with commander tags and healthy numbers, will fail far more times than it will succeed. And that's poor content tuning.

If you're looking for something general purpose and don't want to reroll to another class, what I would suggest is looking for a set of gear that you can respec your engineer into any of the Engineer elite specs (or indeed core) and still have a viable build. If you have Ascended armour and jewellery then you can use exotic weapons without much loss of performance until you settle on whatever weapon / build suits your playstyle the best. If in doubt, 1 would go with Power oriented gear because there's strong Power builds in all of the Engineer elite specs. Don't forget you can always re-stat Ascended armour and weapons in the Mystic Forge fairly cheaply and easily. Ascended jewellery less easily, it depends. Often you have to re-acquire via Living World. Which is why I tend to put whatever stats I feel I will always need for survivability (like vitality and perhaps toughness) on the jewellery, allowing me to adjust the armour stats later if I need to switch between Power, Condi or support. Personally I never build glass cannons, so never go full Berserker (yeah I know, will never top the dps charts but I value flexibility). You could of course just go full Celestial which will make you a jack of all trades, master of none, but still be perfectly viable for most content. I did this on my Firebrand and it's worked out really well. But Firebrand probably suits Celestial more than most classes and I'm not so sure I'd do it on my Engineer. Perhaps those who have tried Celestial on Engineer can provide better insight?

Semantics. What's your problem with people asking for jumping puzzles to not be a compulsory part of these festival collections like Winters Presence? No-one is asking for the removal of JPs or the rewards for completing them. Just don't force players into content they either can't or don't want to complete by mixing them into these overall collections. Jumping puzzles can have their own unique reward if those in need of validation insist on them, just don't mix them in with collective achievements unless there's plenty of other optional routes to completion. Same could be said of the PvP-related achievements too as there's lots of players who struggle with that form of content for one reason and another. Options and choice, that's all it needs.

Winter's Presence achievement (and Winter's Presence Festival Collection for the shoulder skin) requires Wintersday Gauntlet achievement, which needs 3 completions of the jumping puzzle. I guess you could argue that this isn't the main seasonal achievement, which would be the annual Wintersday Traditions achievement which can be completed by completing 7 of the possible 8 objectives. But Winter's Presence is still an important part of the overall festival achievements which some players will be locked out of because of the JP.

Whilst I strongly feel that these sort of community events should cater for the widest possible range of players, it is also fair to say you can't cater for everyone given the nature of GW2's gameplay and content. However, jumping puzzles are absolutely in a category of their own and overall festival achievements should never be locked behind compulsory JP completion. Ever. If you suffer from accessibility issues most aspects of GW2's festival content are still do-able, even the choir bell ringing with a bit of patience. But jumping puzzles, nope. If you can't do them there's no workarounds (like portals and rewinders) in these instanced, timer-based JPs like Winter Wonderland and Mad King's Tower. Why is the supposed 'easy' Quaggan route in Winter Wonderland still on a pretty strict timer? If you take a fairly steady / methodical approach you'll run out of time. And why does the 'easy' route still end up at the same difficult final section that the other routes converge on? It's far from easy when you still face the same challenges as the more expert jumpers in the final sections AND have to contend with the inevitable visual crowding that comes with converging all three routes (why this design?). And if you fail in the final section, there's no checkpoint, you're right back to the start. Hardly much fun. Why not give easy mode players a checkpoint at the final campfire, and just reduce rewards for using it (if you absolutely MUST punish players)? I get that a lot of players love JPs and they should absolutely be rewarded for doing them. But please do not punish those players who either can't do them or get stressed out by them. This represents a lack of consideration. Players who can't do JPs don't want or expect top rewards for using an easy-mode route or checkpoints, they just don't want to be locked out of overall seasonal achievements because of compulsory jumping puzzles. Rethink this please.

Yep totally agree. All they had to do was move more of the damage from rifle auto attack into rifle #2 and rifle #5 and immediately you have a more interactive character that encourages forays into closer combat (if that's their goal with this whole nerf mess). I still think the positioning argument is totally bogus though. Mechanist still needs to move around as much as any other class to avoid attacks and cc. And a good Mechanist player will also move around the targets to keep as many mobs (or players) as possible in the rifle #1 pierce and grenade effects. If you just lazily stand there doing auto attack on one target at a time the dps is pretty mediocre. The fun of using rifle properly was hitting as many targets at once as possible with #1 and judging the best time to jump in for attack #2 and #5 or using cc effectively on #3 and #4. This is still true of course, but the rifle just feels clunky and ufun now.

More interactions isn't necessarily a problem, if they are meaningful, tactical interactions and not pointless micro management. I think their reasoning behind putting more emphasis on positioning is totally bogus. Mechanists still have to observe the same rules of positioning as any other class or build. A mechanist, whether ranged or melee, still has to dodge out of attacks, aoe and crowd control. They aren't played as some passive stand there behind a rock and let the pet do all the work class. And if a minority of players were doing this in certain situations, then fix that, but not by hurting the entire class with a horribly punitive mechanic. But was it really? Ranger pets are far more varied and flexible in their roles. Necro pets are versatile too. The Mech isn't particularly versatile, just pretty good at the limited role it had. So, why are mechanists forced to do this pointless dance with positioning their mech when Rangers and Necromancers don't have to do it with their pets? I'm not suggesting they should btw, before Anet get any ideas. And I'm not saying this from a position of jealousy either (I have a Ranger which is my other most played character alongside Engineer). Just curious as to why the mechanist has been singled out?

Making a significant chunk of Mechanist dps depend on buggy mech AI, server ping and micro managing a deeply flawed and restrictive radius system is beyond broken. If nothing else, it fails one of the primary rules of game design, to make the game fun and enjoyable. It needs to be reverted immediately and then a better way of balancing the mechanist developed and properly tested (or feedback actually listened to during testing, because it wasn't on this occasion).

Well perhaps the only potential positive to come out of this clumsy nerf is to highlight just how clunky and erratic the mech's AI and pathing is. But even if the mech's AI was much better, this need to micro manage where the mech is at all times would still make for horrible gameplay. It's just a thoroughly wrong solution to a problem that should have been addressed in a way which didn't break the class. Wouldn't it have been better to shift the emphasis from rifle auto attacks, to say skills #2 and #5 and keep the rifle animation 3-shot as before? And then shift the mech's emphasis from its auto attacks to Explosive Knuckle? There was already a range on Crisis Zone and Barrier Burst anyway, which meant if the Mechanist wanted to benefit from those buffs they'd need to stick close to the mech. All in all, this is a deeply clunky solution that has broken Rifle Mechanist as an enjoyable class. And and all for what? To appease a few whiners, mostly in WvW / PvP? Why would anyone have issues with how Mechanist was performing in PVE? Most Mechanists seem to contribute perfectly well to groups and metas, they aren't automatically lazy, unskilled players just because they prefer a ranged 'pet' class. I'm sure some will say "just play melee and your mech is never out of range". Well actually I've tried mace + shield for several hours today and the mech is still quite often out of range because of the AI / pathing issues and erratic targeting if you don't micro manage every mob you want it to fight. And besides, I don't enjoy melee builds much, mostly because I can read the fights better at range and the melee stack gives me a headache due to all the visual chaos. We shouldn't be forced into melee because the devs can't be bothered to code a more elegant solution.

Perhaps Zuru could look after Pei's great-uncle upstairs as the poor man seems to have memory issues and seems to ask who Pei is every time I head to the crafting tables via the portal. Give them a distant corner to chat endlessly in and we'll all be happy 🙂

The 360 radius is so ridiculously small that the buff switches off for all sorts of reasons that are out of the player's control, not least the mech's poor AI, rubber banding, being knocked about by crowd control, not being able to actually identify where your own mech is in the middle of a crowded fight due to poor visual cues, not knowing that the range check is about to happen just as you dodge roll etc etc. Reward the player for positioning? Just LOL really. The player has no control over so much of where the mech is positioned. So rather than having players observe fight mechanics, dodge and react etc, you'd prefer mechanists to waste their time baby sitting their clunky, broken mechs, often unsuccessfully because of all the problems? The radius MUST be enlarged. 600 would be a bare minimum but there'd still be issues, 900 would be fairer. Better still, scrap this radius entirely and find a more professional way to balance the mech. The radius must be made more visible and ONLY the radius for the player's own mech should be visible. We do not need to see the radiuses that apply to other players' mechs as it just makes a messy situation even worse.- who on earth thought this was a good idea? Or was it the change was so poorly implemented no-one bothered to properly filter out other players' markers? Any build that needs this level of micro management of a core feature is a broken build. Period.

Leaving aside the discussion as to whether the radius is ridiculously small (it is, but still), before putting in this change they should first have improved the mech AI, provided better tools for controlling and positioning the mech and provided some customisation options so we can distinguish our mechs (size, colour, tag). And being able to see other mech radius circles, what's that all about? Why would anyone want to see this, it's just yet more pointless visual clutter in a game which is already rather notorious for visual clutter during combat.