LegendsOfTheWist.7591

I may be in the minority, but I didn't pre-order Secrets of the Obscure. When I asked myself, "Would you rather play SoTO now or in 6 months?" I found myself learning more towards a 6 month break from the game. I'll keep an eye of GW2, but I genuinely find myself missing Mike O'Brien's, "When it's ready," mantra. I'd rather play a polished expansion than "a diamond in the rough," that needs 6 months of additional iteration. That being the case, I'll consider buying into it in February if it improves itself, but the fact that it needs additional improvement and iteration immediately after launch is concerning. I'd rather pay full-price for a full expansion than 1/2 now and 1/2 later.

In terms of getting my thoughts out there, I feel very similarly. I'm very concerned about End of Dragon's ability to deliver sustained, high quality content with a high degree of replayability (not unlike Path of Fire). Lately, I've been questioning whether I even really want to know how EoD ends after how abrupt and messily they ended the IBS. I think ArenaNet has a core duality of problems. The first is that they over-invest into quality content. It sounds weird, but what I mean by that is that major releases result in huge swings in player excitement vs. player apathy. This sort of development style where everyone occasionally gets a huge shiny has always seemed unsustainable to me. Their unwillingness to compromise on quality has meant that it's become difficult to sustain communities based on extremely infrequent releases such as 1 fractal/raid every year (or every 2 years...) The second is their unwillingness to stick to their projects and build player communities around them. They're always trying to innovate, re-invent the wheel and do things differently. This isn't necessarily bad, per say, but it feels like ArenaNet is sort of conflicted about what type of game it wants GW2 to be and where it wants the game to go. They seem to have a really difficult time deciding which features are important to them and following through. I think Strike Missions represent a shift in thought; a compromise on quality for sustainable content creation. Sure, maybe we won't get fully fledged raids or fractals, but what a Strike is or isn't doesn't have a clearly established definition. Some of them are akin to mini-dungeons of sorts. Nonetheless, I think it's important for ArenaNet to figure out how to churn out sustainable, cost-effective content for everyone. That's my impression of what I imagine the core goal of End of Dragons to be (and why I'm waiting for them to follow through) ~ Summer 2022.

Matthew Medina talked about the abrupt ending to the IBS in a Guild Chat a while back. What he said, if I'm not misremembering, is that ArenaNet were "gifted" with the "opportunity" to do an expansion. It was about as passive-aggressive as I've ever seen him be. Frankly, if there were a planned transition from LS5 it wasn't to EoD. It was to LS6. End of Dragons threw a monkey wrench into the entire pacing, which is to say that there was no transition. I'm getting pretty tired of watching you two bicker, but wanted to toss my opinion into the fray. The truth is that for players that want to play through the game in chronological order which isn't an insignificant number, the jump from LS5 to End of Dragons isn't a "jump" - it's a leap of faith across a chasm of narrative abandonment caused by NCSoft's executive decision to pull the floor out from under ArenaNet's plan for the living story - Not EoD - LS6.

The game does have its flaws, but you can't expect a singular game to change to suit your individual needs. It's important to learn not to fall victim to the ever-present, "beast of possibility," -- we have an innate predisposition or need to want things to be a certain way -- they could have been, would have been, should have been... -- It's a mental trap that sorta of eats away at your free-time / to play; it's important to accept things as they are for what they are rather than accept things as they are, for what they "should" be... if that makes sense.

You're just burned out on the core game + reward structure loop. I am too. Something interesting I learned recently is that the brain circuits for dopamine / enjoyment and habit such as continued play are completely separate. Most people hit a threshold where they realize something isn't fun anymore, and that's really all there is to it. You're not going to recoup on fun because you're not playing End of Dragons for fun. You're playing it out of habit. The thing is, you're not going to find that "new" thing you're looking for inside of GW2. You can't expect one game to satisfy all your wants, needs and desires as a person or as a gamer. I've been playing sparse amounts of GW2 complimented by Path of Exile, Final Fantasy XIV, Hades, Celeste & Tetris Effect. The best thing you can do is break the habit and do other stuff. I'm also reading a lot more and satisfying my desire for lore, stories & world-building there. I'll probably pick up End of Dragons eventually, and it'll probably in a better, more balanced spot when I do so. Probably in Summer 2022, if I had to put a guesstimate out there. You just have to follow the fun. Not the habit.

I think the main problem facing raids in GW2 is that there's very little incentive for experienced players to overlap with inexperienced, learning or players running progression raids. People stick to their statics and cliques to a fault. EU definitely has a way better pugging culture than NA, but both have an epidemic of raid-sellers. It's not a good look. It took me 40m the other day for someone to whisper me to tell me to check out XYZ guilds or discords (I was curious) so I logged in on an alt with an old 80 character and hit up the NA LFG. I'm not optimistic that Strike Missions will remedy this overlap. It's easy to teach players that listen, read, write and communicate mechanics. It's not easy to teach players content when you want to "fix" their builds and the way that they play the game because it implies what they're doing is incorrect, broken and wrong. Most players will react defensively or with hostility, and even if they change their builds, they won't put the time into learning how to practice and play them correctly, at which point the only thing you've done is antagonized them. The challenge is in creating a scenario where having inexperienced players are as equally as valuable as experienced players. I think the main way to do that is to make some Strikes less about DPS and more about mechanics. Ultimately, the burden would be on ArenaNet to maintain the fun-factor while preserving simultaneous opportunity for mechanics and DPS; making each portion (5) players on DPS , (5) players on mechanics - feel valued, appreciated, respected -- that they have a valuable job to do that has a meaningful impact on the fight; and more importantly, that job has to be fun for them. Think about it like the Ring Around the Rosie element of the Dragon's Stand lane finale where the zerg (inexperienced players) are running around killing preservers and you have more experienced players killing the Mordrem Commanders. There's something for everyone of all experience levels to do. If ArenaNet wants to make raids as something that people see as accessible then they need to use raids as an experience that brings players of different skill levels together instead of dividing and turning Strikes or Raids into an exclusive experience. ... and yes, I have raid/fractal experience; 1250 LI ~ 3x Armor Sets, LNHB, DWD, FG, Eternal, DD/SS, VitV, CoZ etc.

Ai is designed to be a condition damage boss in a game-mode that's primarily designed to cater to power compositions via sheer accessibility. With power DPS compositions you have terrible DPS uptime against the boss. In T3 and lower getting break-bars down is mega-challenging. They will not be consistently broken; CC will be wasted on the sides, the T4 experience & CM experience (even solo CM experience) is fundamentally incompatible with inexperienced players. Trying to compare the T4/CM experience of Sunqua Peak with inexperienced T1/T2 players is akin to comparing a water rocket to a rocket ship and leave Earth's Orbit. Ai is an extreme irregularity, and given the prevalence and the ratio of solid/competent/meta-builds to "new player builds" and the heavily skewed ratio of power > condi builds Ai really shouldn't have so much HP to T1/T2 - nor should she have all the same mechanics as in T4, but it is what it is.

If you'd like some casual help from someone experienced, I'd be down to help on weekends. I don't play much anymore, but I have intimate knowledge of pretty much every problem-area. I can fill most missing roles; DPS, Healer, Support etc. I'm very relaxed most of the time and down to give suggestions, walkthroughs, build-advice -- whatever. I'll generally just try to let people run T1/T2 organically unless people ask for help or comment as little information as needed to get people through (I don't like overwhelming players).

Fully agree with Shadowmoon. Without any context this is a worthless thread. There are a lot of average T4 players that are not team players; they kinda wander around and do their own thing running homebrew builds that do very little damage or offer little group utility. I've seen a lot of signet builds over the past several years where I've just noped the heck out of the group realizing that they're going to tolerate things like Death Carapace or Adrenal Health - things that don't qualify as "DPS," except in the lowest standard possible.

I value my naptime more.

I'd be really disappointed if it got removed. It rewards players for paying attention and mastering terrain/movement sensibilities. All of the patterns that are required to do the T3/T4 wisps can be learned on T1/T2 if you reset the nodes often enough. Players can also take innate swiftness/stun-breaks and incorporate them into their builds because there's a mistlock singularity before Mossman. I actually really enjoyed learning all these little niche tips/trick to get more comfortably through content.

I apologize? I don't post on the official forums much. Generally, I consider these forums over-zealously moderated, but I can understand why such a rule exists. I'll keep that in mind for future reference. I try not to make a habit of posting too much, but I enjoy helping players improve their understanding of the game when possible.

You know, I logged into my alt-account for the first time in a few months yesterday. I had hate mail from this thread in it. I had nothing better to do so I whispered the player, talked with him and learned a few things. He was a WvW player that wanted to run a "One Size Fits All" build. Tougher PvE content isn't suitable excessive defensive traits. His traits were a mess. He was running 3 stun-breaks and excessive condition-cleansing with Fire/Air/Weaver - Mist Form, Armor of Earth & the Burn Cleanse Cantrip (fighting Fire Djinn). He was running the grandmaster "Blind Foes whom you burn," while fighting Veteran Djinn (defiant & immune to blind, generally) over the more offensive skills.I suggested to him that he should try casting Glyph of Storms in Earth Attunement for the pulsing AoE blind/storm. I suggested that he run Fire signet in place of one of his stun-breaks, as well as dropping one of his offensive trait-lines (Fire/Air) for Arcane/Defense. Doing so would allow him to take evasive arcana which would turn his dodge in water into a condi-cleanse and his dodge in earth into a blast finisher (as well as Arcane/Shield proc on %)I also suggested that he could consider taking earth traits for the "Diamond Skin" Grandmaster which effectively makes you immune to conditions so long as you can keep yourself topped off (most of the damage from Fire Djinn is from multi-stack burning application) which will get cleansed at 1s intervals +90% HP/Ele. Using Durability Runes on Weaver? Weaver is all about abusing dual-elemental utility to deal high burst damage or control enemies; setting up burst windows. When you over-compensate with defense you're left with no meaningful offense to reduce the number of enemies you're fighting. Eventually they got to the point where they could handle a Djinn. We talked briefly about the importance of breaking their break-bars to melt them. Obviously, dealing with more difficult mobs on an offensive Weaver build (designed for WvW) is going to be a bad experience. He was lacking in % power damage modifiers (Persisting Flames > Blinding Ashes). This is exactly why we have build-templates now; to swap between WvW/PvP/PvE traits on the fly. He was seriously lacking in damage which was making poor use of his ascended marauder's stats and sword-main hand. They were getting really, really upset about sword going so far as blaming the sword for being garbage and PoF for putting a garbage weapon into the game. As it turns out, the problem wasn't the content. The problem was the way the player was interacting with it, poor build decisions, excessive defensive traits/utilities and poor positioning (grabbing 1-2+ Djinn is something Elementalist/Thief is going to struggle with) no matter what sort of build you play sans like Trailblazer's Sw/F Condition Weaver. He was running 2 stun-breaks and a condi-cleanse (on top of the fire-cleanse trait in fire) and trying to brute force "Defense is the best offense," vs. some of the toughest mobs in Path of Fire. As an Elementalist, adjust your traits, adjust your utilities, but smart, fluid, intelligent play focused around offense is your best defense.

Marauder's if you can get it. Intelligent, well-timed skill-use and well though-out rune/sigils can make a big difference. For example; Stamina/Frenzy sigils can be useful.

The thing is, people with a casual, role-playing mindset in PvE in GW2 tend to struggle the most. They want to play GW2 plug-in/play and that's fine to an extent, but it's not really a way to play the game that's conducive to having a smooth gameplay experience because, while it may be your character, you're not growing significantly in strength via gear in GW2. You've gotta learn how to cohesively build synergy within your passive (armor/weapons, runes/sigils + traits) and active-gameplay (skill usage, activate combat, dodging, direct damage mitigation, stun-breaks and expected gameplay responses). When you're lacking in both your character is a deaf mute.

I don't want GW2 to turn into a plug/play walking simulator that's designed for people that, deliberately, don't look both ways before crossing the street. I'm fine with the game having some more casual, exploration focused areas within maps, but this game's community often makes me feel like it wants to be rewarded for failing. In 90% of my interactions and experiences with newer, more causal focused players their builds are an unfinished, incomplete mess with an assorted, hobbled together combination of armor-stats, random runes (lacking T4/T6 bonuses) and whatever innate sigil is on their weapon. This is completely independent of their active skill choice. It's pretty much like filling up your car with apple juice and expecting to take it on a cross-country road trip. Instead, inevitably, they break down on the side of the road or start raging about how the game is too hard because they're wearing tupperware training wheels. Lots of casual players just seem to want GW2 to be this plug and play experience where they unlock their Soulbeast, their Dragonhunter, whatever, and GW2 auto-designates their build based on their weapon choice. The expansions are endgame content designed for players that make deliberate build choices. They're not places where you should be running around if you struggle to kill veteran mobs. They're placed meant to encourage and facilitate open world cooperation. This isn't a single-player game; if you choose to play it that way and you're struggling then you're making an active, concerted choice to struggle.

It really just depends when you queue up for Fractals. People that run CMs tend to want slightly more specific compositions because minimizing boss phases minimizes the corresponding number of mechanics, and generally reduces the complexity of boss attack patterns that only occur at pseudo-enrage timers. The T4 + Rec groups really aren't all that picky anymore unless you're doing like 3-5k DPS with the Firebrigade boon cocktail. The best thing you can do is really to just make your own groups. You don't "need" any specific class to do Fractals; it's just about boon-access, how you're going to scale your group's damage, and mitigate instabilities or fractal specific anguish. I did a regular 99 Nightmare w/ no boon supports a few weeks ago and it was some of the most fun I've had in quite a while because people had to play well. I've done Mai Trin on my Engineer in T2 progression on my alt account spamming condi-cleanse / healing turret, & Elixir Gun's Super Elixir / Acid Bomb and fumigator (3). The reason people ask for Firebrigade (Meta/Non-Meta) variants is because it covers the widest array of options with the least degree of stress, anxiety or communication.

Yeah, I agree. I don't like running 100cm anymore because the boss just darts around so much. It really puts a big damper on what sorts of builds you can pug it with. I definitely agree about only breaking her bar in the middle. I think it's really misleading to even have a break-bar on the side with how huge it is.

The thing about T1/T2 players is that they're generally very weak in analytical and pattern-recognition skills. They panic instead of calming themselves down and observing whether the attacks occur under certain conditions, in certain patterns or have various static vectors such as Sunqua's final boss. Generally speaking, rather than talking or discussing amongst themselves they tend to assume that the encounter is "broken," "too difficult" or "badly scaled." Whether it's 23/24/25 or 48/49/50 in T1/T2 these Fractals are meant to be benchmarks, litmus tests, for whether you're ready for more challenging fractals. It's okay not to be ready. When Fractal Instabilities start coming into play it really does help to have a better understanding of how to take advantage of swapping your traits. Whether your group needs a little more healing, a little more condition cleanse, crowd control (CC) or stability. Lots of players these days take to blaming a lack of dedicated support classes. It's more difficult for them to accept that they have the tools to solve their own problems and look towards dedicated support classes to be their problem-solving panacea. The problem is, when they rely on a dedicated support class like Healbrand or Alacragade, they don't learn how to contribute towards a group-wide solution. "The Lost Knowledge" of Fractals is understanding how to acquire more sustain or support-utility independent of support builds at a minimal damage loss. The thing is, you shouldn't really consider DPS the be-all/end-all paradigm for Fractal progression. What are your problems? What are your solutions? Where are they? How do you work together to make best use of your individual build, class and "identity" to eliminate specific problems? Dedicated Supports are a relatively new part of GW2. The game functioned without dedicated supports from 2012 to October 2015 w/ Heart of Thorns. It's all about intelligently using your traits and utility skills to provide momentary support; anticipating and preparing for problems ahead of time. The problem isn't Fractals are "too hard," - it's that players don't know their classes. When I was leveling my Engineer on my alt account and did Mai Trin in a T2 group I was cleansing conditions like a madman with Healing Turret & Elixir Gun (Super Elixir, Blast Finishers & Fumingator). It's not that you "can't do X, Y or Z" it's that you're unwilling to look more deeply into your repertoire of class traits and utilities.