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voltaicbore.8012

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Everything posted by voltaicbore.8012

  1. Agreed. The moment ele gets just a little too good at just a few too many things, it becomes something of a monster in competitive. Which is a shame, since with skill splits it's theoretically possible to have a weapon perform exceedingly well in pve but be nerfed more properly in competitive... but what we get instead are weapons that just kind of don't work anywhere. As for my own experiences with pistol, it worked surprisingly well with my meme earth-bleeding build; it seemed much easier to reach 40+ stacks of bleed. Switching to water for heals-on-hit felt okay, but the real disappointment was that fire stance wasn't that much better than earth on dps, which is ridiculous given how heavily burning should outperform bleeding with the right stats.
  2. GW2's competitive modes suffer deeply from this, yes. Ironically WvW was supposed to be the "safer" competitive mode, because unlike 5v5 in sPvP, there was supposed to be less individual pressure when you run in a massive WvW group. But if you happen to be outnumbered (which of course happens all the time, especially to a new player), there's precious little to learn from getting curbstomped. Only lessons: don't defend, and run from any uneven matchup.
  3. For your parameters, I highly recommend minion necromancer. You'll want to start with gear that combines condition damage and vitality, and as you level, keep going for those two stats but also favor sets that add a bit of power as well. That +condition, vitality, and power combination is the Carrion stat set others have already mentioned, and can serve you decently well at/around 80. This is how I'd run your build at level 80, primarily using scepter autoattacks. Although I have Ritualist stats, Carrion will still do okay. Doing so will consistently keep a stream of healing and barrier on you, as well as allowing you to apply (admittedly small) amounts of bleeding compared to other more tryhard builds. That said, it's enormously safe, with up to 33K HP with your minions constantly tanking for you and cleansing you of conditions. Also, if you ever want to do anything more than just autoattack, you do have access to higher level gameplay like corrupting boons and cc.
  4. Which isn't to say someone at Anet couldn't find a way around the issue, but it would likely require a lot more effort than it's worth. I, too, would like to replay personal story (perhaps even redo some choices) on some of my characters, but I accept that may never happen due to the coding issues.
  5. I meant in PvE. Like I said more big numbers coming out of teef in any of the competitive modes probably isn't going to happen (and if it does, won't stay that way for long).
  6. Aside from outright favoritism, I think at least in sPvP centered around conquest guardian's fundamental design makes it hard not to be easily useful there. Among other things, conquest favors classes that can have an extremely strong presence on the node (big high IQ surprise there, I know). The way I see it, guardian from day one has really excelled in having a strong presence (significantly helping allies in the area, severely punishing enemies pushing into the area, etc.). Thief is both mechanically and thematically the opposite - it's all about not being obviously and oppressively present, but instead choosing fights extremely carefully, finding good opportunities to dogpile on targets while minimizing risk to the thief, and generally being quite effective at exploiting where the enemy is not around. None of these things line up well with heavy clashes - a problem that's even more exacerbated in the non-roaming large scale clashes in WvW. While I don't see a bright future for thief's ability to stand face-to-face in combat combat in competitive, I do think Anet needs to look at PvE thief. In a lot of other games the rogue archetype has one thing GW2 thieves don't have as much of: big 'ol nuke "assassination" type moves. Sure, we have stealth attacks and stuff like Death's Judgment, but it never feels quite as dramatically effective as it does in other games, at least to me.
  7. Which, again, isn't what I was talking about, and is a perfectly valid way to play the game (not that you need validation from anyone anyways). You have made a decision about how far you want to push things, and nobody should impose a "well you should be pushing past that." I just think that if one can't be bothered to ask very simple questions and obtain extremely attainable answers (which again, @kharmin.7683, is a criticism you've shown doesn't apply to you), one can't sincerely say that one wants to improve their gameplay. Nobody needs or should improve their gameplay, so why pretend like you are? I personally think it's a social holdover, many of us have been socialized into thinking that the statement, "you don't actually want to improve" is always some sort of personal attack. It's not. This is a game. Not wanting to improve is fine, but I don't like the longstanding accusation that it's objectively difficult to find various avenues of improvement. I guess I'm pushing harder on this than anyone needs to because I see this "it's hard to even know how to go about getting better" as a longstanding misconception of the game. I consider GW2 very generous with information for the most part. Sure, you do need arc to measure a lot of metrics, but enough games natively lack such a tool suite so I don't hold that against GW2. I believe GW2 truly does have a low barrier to entry in many respects, and I don't like to see anything that runs counter to that narrative. Of course anyone is free to disagree with me, but that's just my take on it.
  8. I'm 100% on board with your disclaimer sentiment. To test fireball shortly after I got it, I went to Drizzlewood for the first time in ages and did the meta normally. Then, only on the first phase of the final fight, I tried fireballing to see what kind of damage it could do. To my pleasant surprise, it could easily crit for 10-15K per fireball since you can hit all three targetable points with one fireball. The numbers were of course not very impressive, given the slow rate of fire and that you'll quickly run out of ammo even using Bond of Vigor for refills. So I dumped all the fireballs and headed down to the surface to offer more legitimate contribution. That being said, I can see a lot of new, inexperienced, or in general less combat-proficient players being outperformed by the fireball (thanks to the get-pushed-around mechanics all over that fight). As such, if someone who has trouble dealing with all that knockaround wants to float and fireball their way to a better performance, I think that should be a valid option. Not the option I would personally choose, and I'd always recommend learning to grow out of it, but I'd still rather have that option present.
  9. And you seem all too willing to commit the common error of scope creep when things don't go your way. I certainly don't consider the game Serious Business, and I actually agree with your contention that most people aren't into metrics, improvement, etc. You simply made a contention earlier that "most actually do want to [improve] (but have no idea how)," and I sincerely disagree with that one concept. I think all the behaviors and preferences you advocate for (which I also agree represent most players) show that people don't actually want to improve their gameplay, they just want better outcomes. Which is fine! Just don't pretend like this acceptable majority of players actively desires improvement. As you say this game isn't Serious Business for most of us. The amount of "research" it takes to improve is absolutely minimal. We're not talking about comparing meta rotations for the most complex class and then practicing them to reach benchmark numbers here. It can literally start with the question: "could I be doing any better in X/Y/Z context?" That can lead to "how do I know how I'm actually doing in X/Y/Z context?" If you're too shy to ask in chat, you can just ask Google, which might lead you to lurk the forums/reddit. If you feel up to it, ask ANYONE in-game - be it your guild, or even just map chat randos - and you'll get the stock answers of snowcrows for builds/gear and arcdps to measure how you're actually performing. That's it. Literally all it takes is the capacity to formulate the question "how do I get better?" and then to Ctrl+V that into a box. Some "Serious Business" this "research" is. My point is that if one can't even be bothered to ask such easy questions and pursue such shallow knowledge (and thus remain ignorant of how to even improve), I sincerely question one's alleged desire to improve. All your bluster about "waaaah you're so sweaty, most people don't want to play like you" only seems to further contradict your earlier contention that "most people actually do want to [improve]."
  10. I think this essentially proves @Gehenna.3625's point, and I share their non-optimism. If a pve player actually cares about their performance, there is a high probability they would have sought out and installed arcdps (the only other option is the combat log, which... is just hard to use). The fact that the vast majority of players don't use arcdps is, to me, a clear indication that the same majority of players don't actually care about performance. They might pay lip service to the idea, or respond affirmatively when asked if they want to improve, but in reality they've likely not even considered taking a concrete step toward improvement. And I don't want to make this just about arc (although arguably I could, given that there's really no other set of performance measuring tools that come close) - all the other resources could be great first steps, and they are widely known and discussed in-game. The fact that most players will never touch any of those is, again, a sign to me that most players don't actually care about getting better at combat. They're interested in better outcomes, but not increasing their own contribution to such an outcome.
  11. While I've made my peace with the new sword setup, it's mostly because of those braindead reasons you talk about (you get BIG numbers on power builds for both sword 2 and 3 now, and you can still use 3 as an evade-on-demand if you so choose in melee range). It would have been nice, in my opinion, if we got some of these number boosts on the old sword that was a bit clunkier to use, but I at least had to think about it. As for the weaponmaster on sub-80 characters, sad to say I have no intention to try that, ever. I don't level characters anymore, I just spam scroll+tomes to insta-80. Others have mentioned having some better ranged options on some sub-80 characters, and I that's about all I can think of in terms of benefits.
  12. Short answer to the OP: no, I don't think it would effectively counter power creep. As others noted, I think it will make encounters too hard for low skill players, and offer nothing other than an annoying delay of the inevitable for skilled players. I think the easiest solution to offer players some semblance of I-need-to-maybe-think-for-a-sec challenge is the teams of mobs a number of people have already noted. While HoT may have introduced some of the more devastating mixed teams of mobs into OW, Anet was doing teams of mobs in dungeons long before that. Even the humble Ascalonian Catacombs in story mode has some surprisingly effective mixed teams. There's 3 elites in one hallway that if you're not careful and are running a glass build without really knowing what you're doing, can cc then dogpile you pretty easily. There's another team of 15 normal mobs along with a boss - these normal mobs of course die when you touch them on a glass build, but there's enough of them (and they spawn in waves) and suddenly your 6 stacks of stab is instantly gone (or your measly pulsing stack of 1-2 stab) all while you're getting loaded up with condi and some power hits. The mobs individually in these groups seem to follow a fairly set pattern, but their ability to really ruin your day when they work as a team forces you to do something - bring a bubble, full counter, more than 1 stunbreak, LoS, etc. Once you do that something, the fight becomes super easy. But you still have to do something other than blindly faceroll if you're soloing this stuff.
  13. Nope. I think a big part of why dedicated WvW people are so attached to that mode has to do with how un-casual the commitment is. Most people that I know who enjoy WvW aren't just popping in and out, and are 100% not there for the rewards. We've seen it before - putting a reward PvE players want into WvW only results in PvE players showing up, being salty that they're "forced" to do WvW, then leaving anyways, and WvW players hating having so many useless, un-dedicated PvE carebears clogging up the queue and just being bags for the enemy. I'm not saying Anet shouldn't be interested in making the competitive modes more attractive to more players, but just having one mode imitate another seems bad.
  14. What part of the story sends you to WvW? I'm pretty sure it's not story, but likely some other achievement that's sending you there. Nvm I'm dumb - it was in the thread title. I've been so accustomed to season 1 not being accessible anymore that I automatically exclude it from all story-continuity considerations.
  15. This is a big part of why I find the expansion/LW maps far less charming than the core ones, over the long term. A well-designed ruin with maybe a vaguely worded text box - that's all it takes to give off the "I can imagine things happened here" vibe. And it doesn't have to all be ruins and ancient history either - something I often refer to is a random, fully furnished house you can walk into in Rurikton. It's just one house, not like every single door in the entire city is openable or anything. And yet, a single space like that can really go a long way in making the world feel like people actually live in Tyria, instead of the entire game world being a one-dimensional backdrop for the player to pass through. But as people have noted in the thread, that kind of stuff just isn't going to happen anymore. Some of it is the release schedule, as @Konig Des Todes.2086 noted; individual maps just don't get that sort of attention (even in the core maps, it feels like attention wasn't evenly split). I suspect though that @Harper.4173's idea is even more significant - the kind of people who cared to actually tell those less-lighthearted stories or do the environmental storytelling just aren't around anymore. It's a shame, really. I think environmental storytelling - while certainly more challenging than a more direct storytelling style - nonetheless would allow Anet to more easily escape the Marvel-esque style it seems stuck in now. Oh well.
  16. The core maps do this quite well, but I think the environmental storytelling has really lost a certain measure of depth over the years as well. Sadly I think the level of care that Anet can afford to put into little corners of the map not related to some meta event or reward... just isn't feasible anymore given the scale of the game and what players have become accustomed to over the years.
  17. Now I feel cheated by Anet no longer making new elite specs, what a lost opportunity! Welp, in my head I'll make my warriors all Melee'ers instead.
  18. I agree, and OP doesn't seem to subscribe to this perspective at all. I don't play WoW (never have, probably never will), but some of the most memorable content I've seen about MMOs are longform WoW videos from creatorswith interesting (usually hilarious) perspective. And they're just playing classic WoW - no hardcore, no nothing. Just the same quests, dungeons, raids, and whatever else everyone has to do on the journey to level cap. What makes that content interesting is the creator's narration, perspective, and editing skill. There's no needlessly complicated concept of finding-the-individual-within-the-collective-experience required. I think the only widely marketable things about GW2 are its combat and great consumer value. Don't get me wrong, I love so many more things about this game, and am heavily invested into it. But in terms of making content that might actually mean something to someone who doesn't already love this game, I'm not sure anything else is really going to connect.
  19. Then it's pretty clear you're out of luck, sorry for your loss. It's a hard lesson to learn, but an important one I guess - learn to recognize scams, and don't be so willing to just hand out all kinds of information to people you don't know. First tip: pretty much zero businesses of this scale will send email from a domain that is not their own. Even if it's actually a Gmail account underneath, businesses pay Google to have the domain appear as email@their-business.com
  20. Yeah I was kinda worried about this when OP just straight up put out his entire email address into the first post. Was hoping that was a thing of desperation, but it seems like their nose for scamming is just not developed.... like at all. @neco.2568 I guess there's always a slim chance that if you let (real) Arenanet support know you got phished (but somehow managed to retain control over your logins anways?) they might be able to let you back in. But if you tell them the story in the way you told it to us (not understanding what key things like chargebacks are, not really giving a good sequence of what happened when, etc.) I wouldn't expect them to help you. Best of luck with the process.
  21. Okay so it sounds less and less like hacking, and more like your dad didn't recognize the purchase. What happens a lot is this: the bank/credit card company sees a transaction called "ARENANET" on your dad's card, sees that he doesn't really spend money on games, and then sends him an automatic text saying "hey man did you buy ARENANET?" Your dad doesn't even know what ARENANET is, so he just presses "no" on the text message, and the credit card company did a chargeback. Was the purchase (HoT/PoF expansions) the one you made shortly before you were blocked?
  22. You're mixing up terminology here. By "blocked" I assume you mean that once you put in your login details and attempt to login into the game, Arenanet is blocking you from actually entering the game. When you talked to support about it, they told you about the chargebacks. What the rest of us are thinking about when we talk about you being blocked out of your account is this: if some hacker gained access to your account, bought a bunch of stuff, then did chargebacks, how did you manage to actually do all this password-changing/phone number stuff? Usually if your account got hacked, the hacker changes the logins so the original owner totally loses access to it. If you were able to do all the account security things you said you did, that means the hacker just Logged in as you, didn't change any of your login details, bought a bunch of stuff and charged it back, and then just... left, still failing to change your login details. Which is not how this kind of story usually goes.
  23. So as everyone knows when you buy something from game company A with credit card B, B actually pays A money on your behalf, and you get whatever you wanted to buy from A. Normally you have to pay B back later. A chargeback is when someone calls up the credit card company and say "hey I didn't actually want to/authorize that purchase" and so B actually takes back the money it previously sent to A. This happens a lot with hackers and games, because usually As soon as the hacker makes the purchase, the game company provides the product and can't take it back/take it away from the hacker. Since the hacker now has what they wanted from the game company (and the game company can't take it back), they initiate a chargeback. This means they now owe $0 to the credit card company but still have the in-game item that they initially purchased. The end result is that (a) hacker gets stuff and pays $0 for it, and (b) Anet gave the hacker free stuff AND is maybe charged a fee by the credit card company because of the chargeback... and also has a hacked account to deal with. At this point I'm not sure what you can do. If you don't own the cards that the purchases were made on and can't undo the chargebacks (which might not be a good idea anyways if the hacker made HUGE purchases), that's it.
  24. I think this is it. I've been running a staff druid for some time now, and I still have all the same tools to deal with DH. The easiest one is just to sacrifice one pet to trigger traps on an empty node that the sad lonely DH is guarding, while I'm actually multitasking and doing something else. If I do happen to get speared and pulled, Signet of Stone basically lets me walk away for free, added bonus if they wasted a True Shot into it as well. Of course that's just for one particular flavor of ranger, but I get the feeling that whatever set of tools you had which made DH lose relevance for a long time are still there, and still just as usable.
  25. Agreed. The only two QoL things I'd like to see have to do with managing these infinite gathering tools, and maybe an account-wide fishing tackle box as well.
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