PseudoNewb.5468

GW3 could take inspiration from Monster Hunter instead. I think there is a way to translate that to a more casual MMO setting. Monster Hunter can be challenging, but it is not as soul crushing as souls games. But you have similar aspects of taking on large enemies with big attacks that can slap you down the street.

Perhaps a lot of the boon balancing / and stripping issues is because boons are quite decisive with how they affect the outcome of battle. Boons give a massive advantage if there is lopsided boon application, and strips can be decisive if both sides brings boons, but one side gets the right boon stripped. Basically one button can turn an even battle to I win if timed right with boon application or strip. Boons being powerful means strips are also powerful and both boon providing and stripping become extremely sensitive to balancing issues. So Anet is seemingly trying to remove them from both ends of the formula. But they are doing it in a piecemeal way which is causing all sorts of problems. Like with removing a bunch of sources of alacrity, but having to chase down the next class that provides a bunch of it. Or chasing down sources of boon strip. With concentration, you have to hit boon sources and duration hard. But people will just take more and more concentration if they need more uptime. It really just makes support role more and more specialized rather than reducing the amount of boons. So... instead of targeting their sources and duration, wouldn't it be easier to simply make boons less effective overall. Make them less decisive in PvP in WvW? So instead of taking PvE alac builds/traits and making them something completely different in WvW and PvP so that alac can be balanced, why not just broadly reduce the effectiveness of alacrity? Say change alacrity to reduce recharge by 11% instead of 25%. It still means one player with alacrity will get a second round of skills faster than players without, but it still leaves room for execution differences to level it out. It also means that having alacrity, or stripping it won't be the sole reason why a fight is won or loss. Do the same for quickness protection and resolution, and boons and strips will simply be less important vs other factors. It is kind of the same idea with stability. It was strong and negated so much of the combat, so it had to be re-designed to balance it. Just tone down the boons effect and naturally the game can be less focused on how much is too much boon application or too much boon strip. Still important but not such a dominating factor.

Actually, the Guild hall update in the same patch, changed something you expect to be called once based on game mode, into something that can be applied to each player independently of game mode. The entire skill balance configuration has now become dynamic and updatable on a per player basis. I imagine that the triggering and duration of the downstate invulnerability is closely related to skill and game mode balance, so the fact that the potentially broke a bunch of game mode balance assumptions to get the guild hall working, makes you wonder how much the code got chewed up to implement. If the only side effect was a single oversight on downstate invulnerability duration, then I'd say that was a job well done. Although I don't know what the value of being able to set different balance modes on individual players are. We only see that in guild halls for now I guess. With how coding is often done, if you assume something doesn't change, you will code it knowing that it doesn't change. To convert it into something that DOES change, you probably have to re-work a lot of it. So adding individual game mode balance to players in a guild hall, seems like a low impact, but high risk change. I hope it is can at least be appreciated, on an academic level, that this update contains a potentially large reorganization of 'bad' back-end code, even if it's impact on your play is very low. Perhaps the true value of this code update is in streamlining the iteration of balance decision for the balance team. The guild hall updates was just a nice addition that some people can enjoy. I do wonder now, with it fixed and all. Does the way your downstate work, reflect your game mode you set on yourself in the guild hall?

It says 'fun' but, that makes it seem like it might not be that impactful... So here is my idea of what a 'fun' thing can be (in the form of a patch note). New equipment slot for support items Supports items provide the effect of summoning an ally for one minute every minute while in combat. Support items do not function in WvW, PvP, Strike CMs, or Raids. There will not be a legendary support item. Fire Elemental Powder, Jade Armor, Pocket Jade Armor, Sunspear Paragon Support, Raven Spirit Shadow consumable items are now support items. Ogre Pet Whistle is now a vendor item and currency to purchase new support items that summons various ogre pets. Prices for the consumables have been adjusted to reflect their new status as equipment. Double click any consumables you currently own to convert them into the equivalent items, as equipment they will not stack. All current players can also claim a free support item from the following list by visiting <Legacy rune support supplier> in Lions Arch. Lich minion support Pirate parrot support Ogre rock dock support Asura golem support To address server load, while a support item is equipped and while in combat, your mini pet is disabled. Allies summoned by support items have had their health and damage re-balanced.

If the servers can handle the load, I think that each finisher should be able to proc effects for one of each unique type of field that the finisher passes through. Maybe only allow the field to generate 5 of each different finisher effects during it's lifetime too. This makes it much easier to coordinate and prevent the issues of combo fields fighting each other. If they where any more useful without this quality of life, then people will just complain about different fields nullifying or taking finisher effects from each other. The moment someone has to think, can I put down my field, or will it overwrite someone else's field, is the moment fields become useless in a group situation. Even without buffing the effects, this alone could create a substantial amount of power creep, especially for condition builds, if you can stack all the fields and finishers that apply damaging conditions. But this game has gone through phases of power creep, and it could survive finishers applying the effects from multiple fields. The fact that overlapping fields negatively affect each other just makes them bad to use. Just like how conditions stacks used to cancel each other due to stack limits.

People sleep on the fact that Both turtle slam and cannons do defiance damage. Turtle cannons can be spammed (there is NO cast time) + refilled with bond of endurance. You can drop 5 shells in like 1/4 a second and if you use bond of endurance the next 5 shells come out in around 3 more seconds. 10 shells in 4 seconds can be a huge opener against anything assuming you fill the turtle cannons before the attack window opens. The gunner can leave and empty turtle, and do regular damage rotation, or find another fully loaded turtle, then go back when the turtle is refilled. There is no combat restrictions for hopping onto the gunner seat. Anet, can you make it so that the interact to board turtle have different and increasing priorities relative to how many available shells are on each turtle? When there is a stack of turtles I have to wiggle around so much to try to find a fresh turtle and avoid reentering a turtle I just emptied.

I can't do #12 either. Edit: After daily reset, I did this as the first thing, other than clicking the login reward. It worked then. I hypothesize that the bush is incorrectly hooked up to some other daily limited task in Seitung. In fact opening the chest 12 disable the two other bushes, while the middle bush still does the incorrect selection animation and noise on interact. Maybe I can do stuff and see what breaks the bush. 2nd Update: It seems like doing chest #25 or #36 causes the middle bush to become disabled. But.. now I have to wait for another reset to narrow it down. 3rd Update: Ok after re-testing with the daily reset I have found out that the middle bush is disable after doing the chest 13. Hint: Hides on a balcony at the monastery. Which is odd because I was pretty sure I completed that chest after I tried #12 for the first time. maybe multiple different triggers disable the middle bush somehow.

I don't think the champs in this mini dungeon recover health, so I think any build can do this, if they are ok with respawning a few times.

I am pretty sure, last year (or maybe the year before that) the ace racer achievement double counted your race if you simultaneously ran the standard event race with the time trial also active. But that is fixed now. It only counts once, but you can still get the daily time trial chests and the event reward together in a single lap by activating both together. After the first lap of the day, the time trial will not give you anything else, but you can still start it every lap if you are also going for a personal best or world record time or something. Note that specifically for the Dragon Bash beetle race, trying to run the time trial at the same time as the event race, actually prevents your first lap from counting for the event race, so running the time trail simultaneously does not work for that race.

I imagine the same reason as why people might want to buy on Steam. Payment options (including stored cash).

Since Anet wants the future legendary rune to be an expanding with future effect expansions, as all legendaries do, I was thinking of a way that legendary rune/relic progressions could be integrated and provide partial legendary functionality for people who have pursued these legendary crafting trees. The idea is that collection of 6 legendary runes, which will provide significant progress towards the legendary relic can be a precursor item, but also be an item that also acts as a gizmo that provides partial legendary relic functionality. Partial legendary relic functionality could be an item that dispenses versions of all the base relics that can't be salvaged or forged. Lets call them ethereal relics that can't be turned into any other material. This would allow a player to fill their inventory with their preferred relics for each character, and then the functionality of swapping relics will work quite easily in the existing gear loadout. If a player needed to get a different relic for experimenting or because they cleared their inventory for space, they would have to fish out this item to re-buy the missing relics. This may be a bit of a hassle, but would provide the player ethereal relic replacements with no or minimal economic cost. Significant progress towards an new legendary relic can be easily provided as a placeholder precursor item, even if the legendary item and recipe sheet isn't fully finalized. The costs of alternate ways of obtaining the precursor, the cost of obtaining the other components, and the final legendary functionality can be determined at a later dates. So it seems like the precursor and this gizmo can be one and the same item. This shouldn't be a problem for the systems in the current game, as there are existing gizmo's that can be put in the mystic forge as evidenced by the Gleam of Sentience crafting tree. One the legendary relic is crafted, the player would have no need of the ethereal relic merchant so it it ok for it to be consumed in this manner. I don't have a set of legendary armor or legendary runes right now, nor do I have an infinite upgrade extractor, so I am at the mercy of destroying runes or expensive consumables to change runes on my gear. Personally I am happy that this new slot means I can swap out those effects without destroying anything. But other players, does this merchant gizmo seem like a good replacement for not being able to get the 6th slot effect on legendary runes? Game systems wise, this precursor/gizmo doesn't seem like it would push the game to do unheard of thins, and it seems like it would be quite safe to implement. An achievement could tracks the number of legendary runes you have, just like twice-told legend tracks if the player have 2 of the same legendary. This achievement can reward the precursor/gizmo at 6 runes the some bonus materials or something at 7 runes. In the future there can be alternate ways to get this precursor if only the legendary relic is desired. It seems like this gizmo could be implemented quickly as it is just a merchant, and a second version of all the base relic (this does add more item ids, but I don't think that is a big deal). So it could be given far in advance of the full development of the legendary relic. In my opinion this wouldn't be a huge burden or risk to the game to develop. Does anyone else think there might be problems with this? Regardless of any of the Ideas out there, it is up to Anet to ultimately figure out what they want to do. I just want to provide some ideas and suggestions and see what people think.

Sorry, I have no Idea how to describe a criteria where "Dragons of the end" fits with the previous titles... A way to describe the pattern so far is [noun] of [noun(s)]. With the first noun being related to a position/location. Pluralization of the second noun is variable simply because it is improper to pluralize 'fire' that is implied to be continuous. Before End of Dragons the pattern could be [noun] (made) of [noun(s)]. But that is up to interpretations as "Hearth of Thorns", can be interpreted as, a heart made of thorns, or (the) heart (center/roots?) of a patch of thorns (the jungle/Mordremoth). "Path of Fire" likewise can be interpreted as a Path made of fire, or (the) Path (of destruction) left by a fire (Balthazar). If we get really interpretive. even "End of Dragons" can be used to say, End ofby Dragons. If we decide that the use of "of" is an attribution of authorship. That is an uncommon use for "of" but it is somewhat valid. After all, this end was orchestrated by two dragons (with help from a third lesser dragon). Titles in general are ambiguous and usually stripped of much of any clarifying words. So there is kind of an art to using that ambiguity for literary effect. I think "of" might also just be a fun word to play around with. If the story is moving into demons, and include the Realm of Torment and River of Souls, I say, "River of Demons" could be a legit name. It can either be interpreted as a large flow of demons, or A river controlled by demons, and it follows my previously stated pattern of [noun/location] of [noun(s)].

+15% critical damage is worded poorly, since "Critical Damage" is actually a derive attribute that this trait does not affect. It also uses the ferocity icon to confuse you even more. Properly worded it should read, +15% strike damage on crit (while in shroud). So it acts similar to something like "Close to Death" except that the the condition is being in shroud and successful crit, instead of an enemy health threshold. This is quite a bit stronger than a 15% increase in the derived "Critical damage" attribute. So it caused a lot of confusion and the combined changes were seen as a fairly hard nerf when read in the patch notes, but in practice was somewhat of a neutral QoL improving tradeoff.

Perfect, more objectives to get capture credit for. Since defense credit has become very hard. K-train for life.

.Just do a roll after launching spectral grasp. Don't admit any fault to whatever happens to the ally standing behind you at the time.