Awesumness.1823

We can watch and get progress on the drops but cannot actually claim them through iOS. From what I understand, there is related a flag game developers use when creating a Twitch Drop: We get the "progress but no claim" experience detailed in the latter section, so it appears ArenaNET may have left this flag ON when creating the current drops. This doesn't seem to make sense since the drops cannot "be used within an iOS app or game," and only hinders the Drop experience... Unless Guild Wars 2 was coming to iOS xD

I love the iteration. I'll happily take more frequent patches dialing in under-performers, than less frequent balance trying to nail "perfect balance" with massive changes. Thank you!

Good stream. Confirmed a lot of what the hyper engaged community has been saying, so it's nice to get this information disseminated directly from the devs to the broader community. Especially: Importance of Alacrity and Quickness in PvE. (🔁💨) Skill design tradeoffs and opportunity costs. (🎟🎟🎟) Bad/wrong choices. (🪓+🩸)

Please include reasoning (in either next weeks notes or Aug notes) for putting the extra 5% crit in Virtuoso traits instead of Dueling, where Chrono could access it as well!

The results are in! Congrats to all the winners, wildcards, and participants! Detailed review of everything here: https://hardstuck.gg/accessibility-challenge-recap/

Hardstuck and Accessibility Wars are happy to announce a new competition - We want to find the ultimate Low APM builds! This competition will be open to the entire community, and we are looking for DPS and Support builds for each profession, as well as any kind of secret sauce creative build you might have cooked up. Our goal is to make the game as accessible as possible to as many players as possible - We love playing the game, and we want you to love playing the game too. So then, what’s in store? PRIZES: We have 20,000 Gold and the Community Hero Title!!! Each profession will have 3 winners, for a total of 27 winners: Best DPS, Best Support, and Most Creative. Each of these 27 winners will receive 650 Gold and a Community Chest! In addition to those 27 prizes, we will be offering 10 additional prizes for runners up, honorable mentions, best highlights, and surprises - We will have 300 Gold for the 10 of you! We want to see some GAMING, so show us what you’ve got! RULES: We want to see builds with 20 APM or fewer! We want to see Damage or Healing bursts that require 5 or fewer button presses in a 5 second window! What is “APM”? Actions per Minute, or APM, refers to the amount of inputs you send to your computer within a minute - in this case, we are specifically talking about key presses / skill activations. For reference, a full meta Condition Willbender rotation can be upwards of 80 APM! Your favorite Power Reaper build might only be 10 APM! For DPS, you can get a rough idea of your APM by uploading a training golem log to dps.report and selecting the following options after upload. Add up all of your “Casts” (excluding auto attacks and auto-procs from traits, but including things like weapon swaps, attunement changes, and dodges for Daredevil) under the “Outgoing Damage” tab and divide that number into your time. For example, you have 40 “Casts” in 2.5 minutes, so that gives us a total APM of 16 (40 / 2.5 = 16). Let’s say you have a core DPS burst combo of 5 skills - can you get your burst combo off within 5 seconds, or chain your combo together by pressing 1 key every second? For Support builds, you might get an idea by looking at gameplay footage. For example, you are playing Heal Firebrand and you cast “Holy Strike” and “Empower” to fully heal your subgroup in a 5 second window. That’s 2 skills in 5 seconds! If you are playing Druid, you might cast “Lunar Impact,” “Rejuvenating Tides,” and “Cosmic Ray” in intervals of 1 second. You can also break down the fight into chunks of 1 to 2 minutes and add up the healing skills you cast during that time. We know this isn’t an exact science, and we want you to have a little wiggle-room, so all submissions will be reviewed by a marvelous panel of judges: MightyTeapot, UWV_Preston, BBBaconBoy, Kahmeena, and more! GRADING GUIDELINES: Did the player adhere to the overall 20 APM guideline? Did the player adhere to the guideline of 5 skill casts within 5 seconds? Highest DPS Boon output and Boon uptime Burst heal and passive heal output The ease of use of the build Overall creativity of the build The coolness of the clips submitted to the contest SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Account Name Up to 3 video clips highlighting why your build is the best - Training Golem DPS benchmark, Performance in end-game PvE content, fully rezzing 9 people at Keep Construct, Soloing Soo-Won in the Jade Sea, etc Build, Equipment, Traits, Food, Utility, Skills etc used in your build. This can be a screenshot, link to GW2Skills.net, or short video. Lastly if you are going to use the training golem showcasing the build for DPS please use the SnowCrows standard, which can be found at the bottom of this page. -When it comes to content you want to show and put on video for this competition, feel free to do whatever you feel is best to show off the build in whatever content you want. This can be Strikes, Raids, Dungeons, Golem testing, etc. Submissions will be open from April 9th to May 1st and the winners will be announced once all submissions are reviewed Submission Form: https://hardstuck.gg/accessibilitychallenge For more information about prizing, rules, or anything else you might want to stay up to date on, make sure to join the Hardstuck and Accessibility Wars Discord servers! We cannot wait to see the builds you can come up with, but until then, have fun practicing and theory crafting these builds - and remember, by participating in this competition you will be helping out the Guild Wars 2 Community!

Perhaps the people capable of consuming the feedback have tools to find the most thumbs upped or quoted posts in the thread. :) And since the thread has been open for ~12 weeks, they've been consuming feedback in chunks so the backlog isn't quite 1000+ posts :)

The same way Destiny 2 does? Don't monetize this specific feature because the community tools can scale for breadth and depth better while the game devs can focus on a better core product. Anet hasn't monetized me or my close friends at all since the change... We stopped playing. And if we come back we realize finishing our legendary gear, largely funded by $$$ -> gems -> gold, isn't really worth it so that's a missed monetization opportunity. We're likely to just play far fewer builds on our characters. Maybe we need to recycle our extra character slots into "duplicated" characters and fill them up with ascended gear to cover the builds we're missing? Ascended gear that's farmed from the content we play (fractals/raids)? No money injected there either. This is exactly how all my extended friends still playing the game are circumventing the template monetization. Deeper Dive: Previously, my wife and I converted $$ to gold for our legendary gear's mats. A full set of armor and two weapons is roughly 4,700 gold or $159. We had already done this once for our mains (mesmer and ranger). We were casually raiding, helping raiders progress (praise DeltaConnected and MarsEdge for mechanics logs <3 ), and on our way to getting the Legendary Insights required for our second set of characters, a rev and a guardian, before the axe fell. So the old way was no money spent on build templates, but $159 (not including weapon swap $$$) spent per character. Now if we come back we spend $0 per template because the native UI isn't worth the hassle, and $0 per character because there's no incentive to finish legendary gear and our preferred content will drop the bits of gear we need anyways? We need to character swap to get more than 6 build templates (skills+traits+gear) for a given class? On top of all this, the broken trust and confidence in Anet prevents us from spending money on arbitrary gemstore items or whatever neat item on the trading post. tl;dr I'm just trying to give feedback based on my experience :) The native template system coupled with the disabling of ArcTemplates has changed me from a $159+ per character player to a $0 per character player. Anet has deleted our rapport and I cannot bring myself to play or pay for any aspect of GW2. I don't even know if I'd trust them with a new game. widekittenHappy ?

in August 2019 I took a break from the game to start tackling my games backlog. Around the time I was going to reinstall and try the new saga stuff, I found out arc templates were going to be disabled. I'm not a huge fan of the new UI and lack of save button (all changes are inherently saved? Oof). As I understand, updating the UI is a pain, so I'd like to propose a compromise: I'd love to just export and import builds via chat links like GW1. Traits+Skills+Gear all in a single link. This shouldn't require further UI code. Or let us use Arc again. It's not as elegant, it's not synced with the servers, it's not able to handle ranger pets or rev legends, but it scales for those that need it. Before I stopped playing I was on track to creating a tank and DPS build per raid boss on a single character, with some extra builds for bosses/roles that reward certain traits or stat combinations. I won't pretend to know the GW2 codebase, but a gear chat link need not bind to specific pieces of gear and may just say "Helmet is ascended tier X stats with Y rune and Z infusion" of which legendary gear should be able to stat/rune/infusion swap to accommodate. Then if there is no legendary gear equipped, the gear locker would attempt to use which ever ascended gear matches the stats. If nothing could match exactly... unequip the slot or leave it as is. Maybe that last fallback case would need some logic or a preference flag. Again, I don't know the specifics but whatever the solution is, it should let legendary gear scale beyond the limitations of the current UI, which are incredibly constraining. Want to talk money? From launch to PoF release I spent roughly $300 on gems and bought both expansions. Not a lot, certainly not a Whale or Dolphin. When I started raiding in March 2018 up until I quit raiding/playing in August 2019, I spent roughly $950. That's about $55 per month, 3-5x most sub model MMOs. But I was playing the content I liked, in the game I liked, with people I liked, in the builds I liked. Now, even if I come back to GW2, I can't spend money on anything in good faith because Anet has tarnished my trust. In my game journeys abroad, I tried Destiny 2. The more I played, the more I came to hate inventory management within Destiny 2 and I nearly quit. But then I found Destiny Item Manager (DIM), a community supported, open source, and officially encouraged (since 2016) tool for letting players AND it lets users . The template tools even let the user identify stat goals (I want X vitality, Y toughness) and it will attempt to autofill your gear from your bank to meet those goals. It's essentially like GW2Efficiency + move privileges via API + Arc templates + more. Free. From a browser. Multi monitor and tablet/phone users rejoice!I don't even like Destiny 2 nearly as much as Guild Wars 2, but I can only praise Bungie for their community support while I watch Anet burn bridges left and right with their biggest fans. widekittenHappy ?

Amazing show! Thank you everyone for all the positive feedback from the Friendliest MMO Community! :)

The spectators are using a camera tool to get that incredible production quality. Supposedly Anet will not support any community events using such tools.

(1) The OP of this thread did not post those links, so clearly they hadn't seen them.(1b) At the time I started putting together my post, no one else had posted links. I just ended up taking longer to press submit. I'm sorry that you find that inefficient. You claim it took you nearly an hour to copy-paste that post? Right. :DAlso you chose a pretty weird formatting for an answer to a 2-sentence post. Regardless of you seeing it or not, you still saw what 'reddit-OP' wrote about his work and it was a kittenhole move imo. Next time just post original links to the source like @"Awesumness.1823" instead of copy-pasting it here for no reason. Considering links break on here most of the time and even when they don't a lot of people ignore them. No. I greatly appreciate them quoting the stuff directly with credit given. Links were broken some time ago, the issue is clearly fixed, not sure why you'd bring that up now. Also people that ignore them usually refuse to read more than 3 sentences anyways. yay, generalisations! Or, just maybe, people don't want to have to click off to another tab. I know I certainly don't, especially on mobile. You're insulting someone because they dare actually post the information in the thread people are already in instead of expecting people to click away. Ah, here we go. Who am I insulting here exactly? What I said is as "insulting" as your claim that people are being too lazy to click a link or change a tab. You're allowed to make generalizations and assumptions but I'm not? people who don't click links are just lazy That's what you implied, there's no reason to not click a link and read the contents of the message. I explained my reasoning, you're the one asserting that because of that I'm lazy. But ok. There's no reason not to click the link and read the context, stop backpedalling now. :) I can just as easily say that someone who just posts a link to someone else explaining something instead of saying it themselves, and expecting other people to put in effort to go to and read the other post, is lazy. But I won't because I don't actually think that. Just like I don't think people that don't want to click on links to elsewhere are necessarily lazy. Everything you said since the start are assumptions as good as mine and nothing else, you seem to be pretty bored. Clicking on a link is still just clicking, nothing is "tedious" about it -mobile or not. Weak excuse.And all he did was just reposting what someone already included in the same thread before him.Can this back and forth stop? It's derailing the conversation. After the links and data was presented, the only posts with a thumbs up in this chain is the one calling out links on this forum are busted.

At this point I'd probably pay a subfee if it meant raid bosses came more frequently and CMs were repeatable. Or even $60 per wing. What I cannot do right now is confidently buy gems and know it'll fund raid content or even non-Gemstore content. I'm to the point where I'm paying sub fees in games with worse gameplay just because those games have more frequent raid-like content drops. That's ok. I wouldn't. :DAnd that's fine! :D The same way some people choose not to buy Box o' Funs/Boosters/Repair Canisters/Lootboxes from the gemstore, you could choose not to buy a Raid Pack. I think it would be pretty neat to buy a Raid Pack that had something the size of the Freezie raid along with a base Weapon/Hat/Mount skin matching the raid's aesthetic. Then upon completion of the Raid's CMs, a fancier version of the skin would be unlocked with more dye channels/particle effects/details/footfalls. I believe these reddit posts have the data you want: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/ckqmvw/a_thorough_overview_of_ingame_rewards_from_hot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/cnm14q/a_thorough_overview_of_rewards_part_ii_gem_store/ Spoilers: the comments go into more depth how the issue is not just quantity in gemstore vs quantity in game rewards.

Honestly I don’t know what you really expected from the game. We have known from the start of season 3 that they wanted to focus on open world content. High end instanced content have never been a focus of the game because you can play the game, ignore raids, ignore fractals, ignore dungeons (lul) and still make gold, gain AP while acquiring skins.In fact the only time raids got proper raid development was about the time when sales were dwindling the most, so that was obviously not good and they have never been able to consistently release both instanced high end content and open world at the same time. The hard truth is that you also have no guarantee they will use use the money generated by a subscription to fund the raids because they could very well use that money to develop more open world content, or WvW or PVP. Ah, I failed to quote "You know gw2 needs to make money to exist, right?" My post is just answering how Anet could easily extract $$$ from me. But I agree with you, I don't know what to expect in terms of Raids and WvW (another gamemode I used to enjoy before my WvW guild disintegrated) because there's no clear commitment. The Open world and Story content doesn't keep me engaged but that's okay. I'm not sure if there's going to be another raid and I'm not sure when alliances are coming... and I'm not sure I'll be able to get my friends to play again even if these features come. If this content is in the game one day, I hope I can muster the will to play it. Until then I'm churning though a deep game backlog and trying other MMOs with new and old friends. Last year at Pax West Mike Z told me his favorite part of GW2 was the community. At first I didn't quite agree but after getting more involved with the raid scene and meeting some of the nicest people I've ever met online, I'm starting to see what he meant. The previous ERP got me hyped to play again and try raids, and now I'm getting the chance to give back to the raid community and it feels damn good. I'm not really holding my breath for anything at the Aug 30th announcement, but I hope to personally thank the devs for all the effort they put into the game on behalf of of my dissolving community. The game isn't dead or dying without us and we hope the game continues to thrive. tl;dr A multi-mode veteran converted into a raider. Nothing desirable in gemstore. Will pay for raids/WvW. Raid/WvW community died. "Just Leave" meme feels okay :)

At this point I'd probably pay a subfee if it meant raid bosses came more frequently and CMs were repeatable. Or even $60 per wing. What I cannot do right now is confidently buy gems and know it'll fund raid content or even non-Gemstore content. I'm to the point where I'm paying sub fees in games with worse gameplay just because those games have more frequent raid-like content drops.

Competitors will go head to head as they tackle a simple but uncompromising ruleset: Nine-manning the raids, including all challenge motes, with no downstate. A panel of talented casters, artists, and community members have pulled out all the stops to make this year’s ERP a truly riveting spectacle. Witness the raids as you’ve never seen them before and don’t miss Guild Wars 2 history in the making. Interested in supporting the tournament? It’s not too late! Follow these links to learn more: Matcherino!tl;drWhat: The Elitist Raiding Party PvE Raid TournamentWhere: https://www.twitch.tv/mightyteapotWhen: August 24th 4 PM BST and 25th 4 PM BST (links show different timezones)Rewards: $2,800+30,000 gems150,000+ gold.See you there :)

Freedom to role play in story and mechanics are exactly why I think raids are some of the best content in GW2. The Commander's story doesn't grip me much and I rarely need to tinker my build to complete it, leaving it low impact and forgettable both in narrative and gameplay. I greatly appreciate the effort put into raids and I hope they get more advertising and exposure as they are some of the only content that keep me, my SO, and my community in game. We eagerly await W8!

See you in the ERP!

The way we’re currently thinking of it is that, pre-Aurene, mortals understandably perceived Elder Dragons in the way you mention, thinking of them as forces of nature—but that our principal characters inevitably have seen Aurene as a person (if you follow the distinction I’m making), as well as Glint, Vlast, and even, most recently, Kralkatorrik. As a result, they’re re-examining some of their long-held assumptions. For example, all Tyrians used to refer to an Elder Dragon as “it”; as they get more visibility into the inner life of Elder Dragons, some Tyrians are coming to refer to them with gendered pronouns where appropriate. (In all candor, treating the EDs as people rather than impersonal forces also allows us to therefore use them as actual characters in our storytelling. A hurricane doesn’t have motivation or reason or emotion or a soul; a character does, and is thus a kitten of a lot more useful from a storytelling perspective.) Are there any postgender beings or societies in GW2?

You may find a lot of useful beginner chrono tips in these videos: and gearing chrono for W7 progression. They may have old patch knowledge but they have timeless wisdom :)

I'm not a huge fan of Living World but season 4 in particular felt weird: Aurene dies in episode 5. Neat.Anet to hosts a talk at EGX about how it wasn't just a plot device and showcased a few Anet Partner's reactions: Big feels, Anet's really going all out this season.Requiem ~2 weeks pass in game? Big sad.Aurene is revived and we stomp Kralkatorrik. Okay.I shared Deroir's perspective of "hype" around Aurene dying as the game rarely makes me feel loss or failure and I love me some tragedy. Watching the EGX talk made me think "damn, there might be even more loss to finish off Kralkatorrik. This is going to be awesome! I really hope Taimi is next!" Then the very first thing we do in episode 5 is revive Aurene and the rest of the episode is just grinding Kralkatorrik into a fine mist. The biggest loss is the lack of dialogue from Rox and Canach. But maybe I'm misremembering. LS5 seems free from the LS4 baggage and maybe even elder dragons altogether which may be neat. "Previously expansion exclusive content" (Raids and/or Elite Specs?) coming to LS sounds neat. Most of my community is metaphorically packing for The Long Vacation... I may still log in to claim the episodes but I likely won't play their story content until I can binge it around the next raid release. LS4 (and 5) may not be for me but I thank Anet for overcoming their challenges and delivering content to a playerbase that largely enjoys it.

I used to love opening the Champ and Utility bags on my lower level character and mass salvaging/selling stuff. Even if this added cleaning time decreased the hourly "profit" of raiding to be nearly the same as the current UNID drops, it was cathartic. Whether only perceived or actually realized, the nerfs don't disturb me as much as Anet's lack of communication. It feels like Raids are going the way of Dungeons, Fractal CMs, and Guild World Events: silently discontinued.

Thank you for the communication. <3 Just for clarification: We’ll be able to convert LI -> LD and LD -> LI permanently? If the ability to exchange them back and forth permanently is true, will there still be a cap of 168 exchanges for LI -> LD? [sPECULATION] Since they removed the previous option, they might have actually removed the way it was tracked/capped at 168... So everyone eligible might get a fresh 168 cap :o

Removing LI to LD only delays my Coalescence by a week and it's likely the reintroduced exchange will be too late but I greatly appreciate the communication. Raids are my favorite content and anything to make their experience better is a big plus <3