Kos Luftar
Member
Thank you, CJ!
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Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns |OT| Welcome to the Jungle...
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Starting to think introducing dedicated healing roles/specs was a pretty terrible idea, but maybe I'm wrong. Having flashbacks to how central monks were to everything. If I don't see a tempest/druid on my team, I'm disappointed. Grk.
The human female meta stuff is real. We originally took females in GW1 to be goofy and different. But in GW2 they outnumber all the other race combos to the point it seems more awkward than anything, especially with all the bewbie-leggy armors. Thank Goodness for Charr & Asura, else I might have to roll males.
The human female meta stuff is real. We originally took females in GW1 to be goofy and different. But in GW2 they outnumber all the other race combos to the point it seems more awkward than anything, especially with all the bewbie-leggy armors. Thank Goodness for Charr & Asura, else I might have to roll males.
UltimateIke
Member
Viable, but not optimal.
How about you use your fancy connection to have them fix the game
You are very much correct. In a single sweep it's kind of imported the old MMO Mentality into Guild Wars 2 where it barely applies, if at all. The problem now is, if Colin got on the livestream tomorrow and said "We see now that raiding was a shite idea, we're remaking the raid for 5-mans and revamping all dungeons as priority one", things have already changed on a community level. Dungeon runs would require healers and tanks (whether they need them or not; the psychological damage is there now), and if the tanking mechanic present in the raid doesn't carry over, people are going to flip their shit.
This is quite the conundrum, and I only hope they try to solve it now instead of digging deeper.
For what it's worth, my current plan would put me at 8 male and 10 females, which is as close to balanced as I've ever been in an MMO. The skew towards female is because I have two female mesmers, an Asuran and Sylvari. I went back and forth for a long time on whether I should gender swap my Asuran one to male, but in the end she's just too adorable, even though I had kind of a cool look for a male picked out. She's just too cute (and I can't see her looks going to my other female Asuran, a warrior).
If they add another profession, I'll likely double up on males just to make sure I have 10 of each.
LumpOfCole
Member
Fashion in this game is just fine if you are Master Race.
LumpOfCole
Member
Only if you play as bookah race.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
I'm really happy with my Dragon Hunter, I've been getting whispers from people commenting on how good it looks!
The thing is with transmutation stones is that you just have to plan it. You only transmute when you get your exotic or ascended gear. You replace gear so fast in GW2 that it simply is a waste to transmute while levelling.
I have some prepared looks for some of my characters that I have been playing with since before HoT. But I am waiting for the next balance patch to see what sort of meta builds materialize. In the mean time, by log-in rewards I get a bunch of charges, and I've been doing some more personal story on all 10 of my characters, so that yields some as well. I guess I also have to 100% the main cities to get some more, but I feel I quickly make a bunch.
But you can quickly lose them. One character has 6 pieces of gear, plus a backpack, plus 2-4 weapons, (+2 more if we're counting underwater), and so if you plan to transmute a couple of characters they can disappear fast.
Some other looks I am toying with ATM;
The thing is with transmutation stones is that you just have to plan it. You only transmute when you get your exotic or ascended gear. You replace gear so fast in GW2 that it simply is a waste to transmute while levelling.
I have some prepared looks for some of my characters that I have been playing with since before HoT. But I am waiting for the next balance patch to see what sort of meta builds materialize. In the mean time, by log-in rewards I get a bunch of charges, and I've been doing some more personal story on all 10 of my characters, so that yields some as well. I guess I also have to 100% the main cities to get some more, but I feel I quickly make a bunch.
But you can quickly lose them. One character has 6 pieces of gear, plus a backpack, plus 2-4 weapons, (+2 more if we're counting underwater), and so if you plan to transmute a couple of characters they can disappear fast.
Some other looks I am toying with ATM;
shysaursoft
Member
After thinking about it, I'm convinced Anet made a mistake in releasing a semi-conventional xpac. I don't know if it was pressure from NCSoft or just because they felt it was expected, or whatever, but the xpac was a mistake. If they had taken all the content made for the xpac and released it as Living World updates, spreading it out over a year, letting people unlock Elite specializations as part of the narrative, revealing each new map over time and letting players get used to them (and keeping the majority of players clustered around each new content drop so that it's easier to do), everything culminating in the rather impressive Mordremoth openworld raid fight (which IS really damn impressive)...
It would have been better. Living World is better than a conventional Xpac, in my opinion. Anet was on to something with it, but yeah.
Game also needs a serious item and stat squash. But I ain't holding out for that.
It would have been better. Living World is better than a conventional Xpac, in my opinion. Anet was on to something with it, but yeah.
Game also needs a serious item and stat squash. But I ain't holding out for that.
appletoasty
Member
I don't think the tanking/healing mechanics in raids are a mistake, VG and Gorseval are fun and interesting fights that would not have been possible without a tanking mechanic. Haven't gotten to Sabetha yet but her encounter doesn't need a tank at all. It's not like they're squishing people into tiny boxes- any class can tank, any class can do DPS, any class can do condi... healer is an obvious exception, druid is the only class acceptable for that role. But it's getting to the point where some groups aren't even using a healer and roflstomping the raid bosses into the ground with half a full team.
This is less than a month after the raid was released! Think about where we'll be a few months from now. Some classes are better than others at certain roles, so newbie groups and pugs are asking for specific meta builds, but you're not barred from success by from playing what you want (within reason) if you find the right people to play with. That's always been true.
I don't see the psychological damage in the community. If anything it's the opposite, people are trying to shove the ol' zerker meta into this so-called trinity by crying for their healer and tank to take unnecessarily glassier builds so they can do more damage.
Raids are exactly what 10-person content needed to be in GW2.
This is less than a month after the raid was released! Think about where we'll be a few months from now. Some classes are better than others at certain roles, so newbie groups and pugs are asking for specific meta builds, but you're not barred from success by from playing what you want (within reason) if you find the right people to play with. That's always been true.
I don't see the psychological damage in the community. If anything it's the opposite, people are trying to shove the ol' zerker meta into this so-called trinity by crying for their healer and tank to take unnecessarily glassier builds so they can do more damage.
Raids are exactly what 10-person content needed to be in GW2.
Tempest auramancer healing is quite good as well. I know some guilds prefer using one.
And I agree. Raids are probably the best part of the expansion for me. Getting enough people scheduled to do it is rough but once we're actually doing it, it's fun and the difficulty is pretty well tuned.
Freeman76
Member
I agree, I've put nearly 2k hours into this game now, and most of those were pre Xpac. The way the original content was constructed was perfect for me, I don't think I've ever enjoyed exploring and taking part in a gameworld so much if I'm honest. The new stuff was OK, but exploration wasn't as relaxing as they put a lot of frustrating mechanics into it and not enough interesting things to work towards. Base game was pretty much 10/10 for me, the add-on 5 at best.
Love it or hate it, everyone has been saying how damn ambitious Heart of Thorns has been; MMORPG.com kind of hit on this when they gave it Expansion of the Year;
The whole company (or at least, the majority of it) was brought to bear for this release, and despite my dislike of much of it, there's still an overwhelmingly huge amount of content and changes here.
But here's the thing; if they had done this earlier, say a year and a half ago for Season 2, brought the whole company to bear for the Living Story instead of only a few small teams? They wouldn't have needed an expansion, and I'm with you 100%; they never did. Expansions split the player base. They have long droughts leading into them. The draw in spikes of MMO locusts who disrupt the economy, the community, the feedback and then disappear; you get their $50 for the expansion but they never stick around and remain profitable over the long term (which is what the game needs considering there's no sub).
Bottom line: People bitched and wanted an expansion, and I have no doubt someone further up the chain but not involved with the game's development thought it was a good idea. I also strongly believe that pushing for an expansion paved the way for the core game to go Free, which is a good move for players who want to try it but it also means we're committed to this endless cycle of waiting for the all-or-nothing model of expansions.
Agreed, the number of stat distributions is getting obnoxiously large and the nomenclature has never made much sense. Obviously I'd prefer they not have stats at all, but this is the game we've got and we're kind stuck with 'em, but at the very least they could streamline things a bit.
Runes and Sigils need to function game-wide as they do in PVP; account-wide unlocks. It's the last remaining barrier to real build experimentation. I'll go to my grave shouting that one if they don't fix it first.
I had a big long post typed up, going through all the details of your post and all the ways in which raiding as it exists in GW2 is a misfit, but you guys have heard it all before and I'm not going to change any minds. If that's the road ArenaNet wants to take the game and people are happy to follow it, then that's pretty much it for me and we'll be done here.
All I'll say on the matter is that I strongly disagree; not only did they fail to create "Guild Wars 2's answer to raiding" in a way that's cohesive and builds upon the principles of the game (instead, falling back to the most boring mechanics they could; tanking based entirely on an arbitrary stat and enrage timers), but I don't believe 10-person content needed to be in GW2 in the first place.
I'm sure people have enjoyed the raids, but this is honestly the first time ArenaNet has done something where I actively want it to be abandoned in the same way they casually dropped activities / dungeons / fractals / guild missions, etc. It's such an incredible miss-fire and a waste of development resources which are sorely needed for things that play to the strengths the game has and the differences that (used to) define it. I mean, there are parts of GW2 that I'm not into, and I don't play them a lot; I'm not big into PVP, for example, but I "get" PVP and why some people enjoy it. With raiding, I'm completely at a loss trying to figure out who they made the content for.
One of my big concerns is with dungeons getting brushed away and the rest of HoT being a giant repetitive farm, people are raiding because there's nothing else to do and that's going to skew the metrics. We've seen before how they'll use the numbers to justify changes but not grasp the underlying reason why, so... that's my biggest fear here; someone up top who's only looking at numbers is going to say "wow, everyone stopped playing everything else and went to raids!" without understanding that the issues with the rest of the game are responsible for people moving away from them.
Edit: Oh yeah, forgot to include this, I love stories like this; https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3zykeq/i_was_reminded_yesterday_how_fun_the_dungeon/
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
I made a tree guy mesmer and this is super cool, they're like a magic circus performer turned combatant it's a really awesome class aesthetic.
I had no idea they could dual wield swords and guns I thought they would just use more traditional caster weapons what an awesome surprise.
I had no idea they could dual wield swords and guns I thought they would just use more traditional caster weapons what an awesome surprise.
Greatsword Mesmer is a ton of fun, they use it like a casting 'focus', turning it into a ranged magic weapon.
appletoasty
Member
They use greatswords too as a ranged weapon and they shoot lasers
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Oh man I love laser beams, now I'm excited to try greatswords, I've been using a sword and pistol, but I'm only level 6 so we'll see what I end up doing with this character this weekend.
TBF that is what has happened in all of GW2 life .
what did people in the beginning do once they finished their personal story ? the same content dungeons and orr events and later fractals .
During the queens gauntlet/zephyrite ships event . people kept doing the same content over and over again .
during LS2 people again kept doing the same content over and over again ,first with dry top and later and even to this day, Silverwastes .
all of it repeated ( voluntary, nobody forces you to do said content )ad infinitum until the next patch came out .
I am not exactly sure why the repeatable raiding is now the bag that broke the camels back .
UltimateIke
Member
As excited as I was for Raids before their release, I can barely stand them now. They're a logistical nightmare.
Speaking of dungeons, Goku set a new Arah P2 solo record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUUifMxATkE
shysaursoft
Member
All the examples you mentioned were far more accessible and appealing, and could handle a much larger demographic. Raids are for, literally, the 1% of the playerbase that wants them.
Meanwhile, WvW, Dungeons, even Fractals, are getting no love...
Raids are a checkbox that gets checked because devs think it's what MMORPG players want, and raiding MMORPG players want it because they think that's what an MMORPG is supposed to have.
And that's why WildStar was the complete and utter disaster it was.
GW2 didn't need raids in this way. It needed evolution and expansion on raids ITS way, like Marionette and etc. Dragon's Stand is a phenomenal open world raid, held back by crashes and issues unrelated to the mechanics of the raid itself. Anet should have focused more on stuff like DS, I feel, that handle hundreds of players at a time.
Ten player raids without a raid finder is a logistical and social nightmare. Even WoW gave up and just add LFR that fills the slots with queued pugs. But it can do that, since the various addons you can get practically play the raids for you, it's just a matter of how well you follow popup directions and calls. But I digress.
Repeatable content isn't the issue. It's what raids do that is the issue. They act as a germination point around which a certain kind of culture crystalizes, and then sits like a kidney stone, doing very little good for the overall organism.
I'd rather they have actually worked on WvW, and I don't even WvW.
Edit: Beaten by Miktar on most of my post, but I do want to point out that most of the things you listed with the exception of the Silverwastes existed 2-4 weeks apart; as soon as you got tired of something, something new was coming to take its place. That's why the Living Story worked so well, it was constantly giving you something new to look forward to without much of a wait before you got sick of what you're doing now. Stuff like dungeons, Fractals, WvW, PVP, etc. complimented that by running along side it as something to switch to (or vice versa; the LS was a nice change of pace if you were all about WvW / PVP / Dungeons). With the expansion model, we had the longest content drought since launch and all of the stuff you ran for fun between Living Story releases was all the game had to lean on.
Dragon's Stand feels like the natural evolution of the game. We started off with big, open dynamic zones with lots of players, then zones with dynamic meta events with lots of active players (Orr, then eventually DT and Silverwastes), then big world events like Tequatl 2.0, Marionette and the Battle for Lion's Arch. DS feels like all of the lessons from that rolled into one; a big, dynamic zone with a singular meta for lots of players that leads into a big event fight. It's just a shame that instead of it being the big show-stopping event it should be, the fact that it's on a ridiculous schedule and the constant bugs, crashes, and taxi issues even two months after release have driven people away from it. GW2's thing was "big dynamic stuff everyone can do together," and DS feels like the natural next step for that.
Raids with their instanced, 10-player capped collection of boss fights, feel regressive when you look at how the game has evolved over the last three years. It's literally, as you say, a checkbox that gets checked for bullshit reasons. I'm not saying people can't have fun with raids or that they should feel guilty for enjoying them, because that genie is out of the bottle. But when you look at the big picture, they just don't belong here.
appletoasty
Member
They are though? All 4 of the new HoT maps have meta events that require players to organize themselves and work together to succeed. Silverwastes, Tequatl, Triple Wurm, and to a lesser extent Dry Top are the same idea. They never stepped away from massive multiplayer open world content.
But yeah, this game desperately needs a raid finder.
Eeeeh, NO !
I haven't experienced raiding in GW2 yet, but as a player who just experienced Dragon's Stand recently because I don't have much time to play since the end of Halloween, let me tell you that it is extremely far away than anything related to raiding or any kind of organized group content I experienced in other games.
In the farmed state where it is now it's even miles away than the awesome first impressions I heard about when HoT came out.
Frankly, visuals aside, that, or the Harathi Hinterland event-chain, I barely saw the difference, follow the tag, get the loot, repeat if necessary .... I'm kind of bummed I didn't experience it sooner really ....
Megaservers are a cool thing, but the 'Taxi' mentality it created, forced upon players, and made worse with how LS2 and HoT maps are designed needs to die, and the sooner the better.
On a happier note, and to bounce back on the fashion wars talk from last page, this is what I've been working-on these past few weeks ! (And if you don't like female Norns you're a terrible terrible person D: )
Thanks Flax (I know, it could have had a better use ....), Quartz crystals, Potatoes, and Spinach, Wintersday put a bit of a wrench in my well-oiled farming machine, but Gifts and drinks helped a lot in the end !
Still 3 to go ! >_<
Nemesis121
Member
New Year, some altered looks...
Engineer..
Helm off..
Helm on
Get to Rev later..
Engineer..
Helm off..
Helm on
Get to Rev later..
Nice! I really like that set. I only have the longbow though.
appletoasty
Member
PvP changes for next season.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-for-PvP-League-Season-2
RIP amber player farming
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-for-PvP-League-Season-2
RIP amber player farming
shysaursoft
Member
That's the point. I think the Marionette style open world Dragon's Stand style raids, are /better/ than 10 man supergroups. The raiding in GW2 is *exactly like raiding in every other game that does it* with the exception of Destiny. And so, as a retired WoW raider who doesn't want more-of-the-same... yeah.
However, I conceed that Dragon's Stand and such styles of maps *need work*. They're not fully-formed ideas or systems, just sketches of ideas, simplistic and rough.
Don't get me wrong. For the people who've never done old-school raiding, it's cool they're getting to try it for themselves. I wouldn't want to take that away from anyone.
I just wanted GW2 to be the game that did things differently, which is naive I know. But it kept me engaged for three years. The xpac however, along with a few other things, have convinced me ArenaNet is going in a different direction than I personally would have liked. I wanted more SAB, I wanted more Dynamic Events that enriched existing maps, I wanted the emphasis to shift towards playstyle away from stats (and they just kept adding stats), and so on. I have a list of 'I wanted' as long as my arm, but the details aren't important.
I'm still playing GW2, I don't do that asinine thing of ragequitting a game and then haunting it's forums and communities, but GW2 has dropped way, way down my priority list of games to play. Which is fine - I don't expect a single game to provide me with infinite and ever-changing entertainment. There's plenty of cool things to play while waiting to see what happens with GW2.
1 hour and 43 minutes
appletoasty
Member
You guys, I MESSED UP...
That's a great skin, congrats. You'll make the money back in a few weeks if you're playing regularly, don't sweat it too much.
If anyone wants to come hang out in IRC during the livestream we're in irc.rizon.net #gafguild. (If you don't have an IRC client, use http://mibbit.com/, it's decent)
LumpOfCole
Member
Hah, looks like I'm locked into Diamond if that Amber change alone is getting implemented next week. Time is a cruel mistress!
I just hit the 200 gold achievement today and I've been playing hard for a couple of months now. That definitely seemed like a painful amount of gold to drop in one go. I'm going to sit on it for a little bit and see whether I'm able to talk myself into using it or sell it back to the TP for some profits.
Re: the IRC thing, have you guys considered using a Discord server? I've been using Discord as a Mumble replacement slash general chat hangout for a group of Dota/gaming buddies for a few months now and it has been really good for us.
We use discord for raiding. IRC is just a thing we can idle in at work >.>;
Ah, ok! I only ask because I actually do the exact same thing. I've also been using mIRC since, I think, the dawn of time and to this day I still don't know how to connect it to multiple servers at the same time.
The LS added a bunch of weird new stat distributions that I couldn't imagine using but HoT's new gear at least brings Condition/Boon Duration back into play after they were removed (alongside all the other stats) from traits. There's no Ferocity major set yet, I expect Season 3 will include some bizarre ferocity/vitality/healing stuff.
LumpOfCole
Member
Incoming Gold Fusion Dye / Timekeeper Weapon themed characters.
appletoasty
Member
They didn't say much other than they are supposedly working on polishing existing content this year, ty anet. Finally. Hopefully this means new fractals? WvW changes? More raid stuffs? Cautiously optimistic.
Sounds like Tuesday will be big, with a blog post from Colin on what's to come this year as well as a pretty big patch including some legendary collection bugfixes.
Sounds like Tuesday will be big, with a blog post from Colin on what's to come this year as well as a pretty big patch including some legendary collection bugfixes.
Rubi you need to actively put your guests to use as host. Poor Lena is just sitting there and has been for the last 30 minutes.
I wonder if next tuesday will actually show their plan for content in depth and not width. If there are not examples of this in every core game mode, I'm going to stay.. sceptic. I'm probably going to stay sceptic until we have a new fractal, and it's not just words or "plans". How much time has it been since the Thaumanova fractal? Forever?
Edit: Oh my gosh core gliding?!
I wonder if next tuesday will actually show their plan for content in depth and not width. If there are not examples of this in every core game mode, I'm going to stay.. sceptic. I'm probably going to stay sceptic until we have a new fractal, and it's not just words or "plans". How much time has it been since the Thaumanova fractal? Forever?
Edit: Oh my gosh core gliding?!
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