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[Jest Chillin]

Well it's a little bit of both. There's still plenty of people who enjoy the combat system that Wildstar employs and of course their design goal of bringing hardcore 40 man raiding back to the forefront is quite popular amongst that crowd as well.

And whether or not ESO can pass for ES when fully zoomed in.. that game is pretty much dead in the water. It's not what ES fans really wanted and it's definitely not what MMO fans want. Could find a niche if it was F2P but with a sub.. it's going to flounder.

 

[Hawkian]

Neither have release dates yet right? Just 2014 sometime?

I hope they're both good honestly. Competition forces quality. But I find the payment models each one is adopting to be just completely bewildering. They're each settling to be yet another entry in the modern subscription-based MMO market and compete most directly with FFXIV, rather than launch as an honest-to-god alternative to GW2. I guess there's a confidence factor from pedigree for Wildstar and license for ESO, but haven't we seen countless examples of how dangerous that confidence is? And obviously I'm not in the target audience for either game but it's just inexplicable to me, because a sub makes me go from "hmm, why not, might check it out after some impressions" to "unconditional nope," and I'd feel that way even if I didn't have a game I already liked in the genre that I can play for free.

 

[Mxrz]

ESO will be F2P soon enough. I'll check it out just to see something of Black Marsh, but that is about it.

The daily routine in GW2 is getting to me. My goal has always been to have each class at 80 with best-in-slot gear. I'm getting close to that now, but this home stretch is proving tedious. I've killed the butcher so many damn times, and those gtaveling mounds. Hrrrrgk.

 

[Jest Chillin]

With Wildstar.. they're aiming squarely for the disenfranchised Pre-BC WoW Raiders. So the sub is a part of that marketing. With ESO.. I honestly just think it's a Dev that's out of their depth that believes in the old widely held belief that Subscription = Quality. And of course, it's hard for a business to trust a possibility of income with a Cash Shop vs. guaranteed income in a sub model.

 

[Lunar15]

ESO will be F2P soon enough. I'll check it out just to see something of Black Marsh, but that is about it.

The daily routine in GW2 is getting to me. My goal has always been to have each class at 80 with best-in-slot gear. I'm getting close to that now, but this home stretch is proving tedious. I've killed the butcher so many damn times, and those gtaveling mounds. Hrrrrgk.

To each their own, but best in-slot-gear isn't really necessary for this game. But I understand it's more of a goal then out of necessity.

Only thing I can recommend is taking a break.

 

[Retro]

Well it's a little bit of both. There's still plenty of people who enjoy the combat system that Wildstar employs and of course their design goal of bringing hardcore 40 man raiding back to the forefront is quite popular amongst that crowd as well.

I will go to my grave wondering how the "hardcore 40 man raiding crowd" ever managed to dominate the conversation when they make up what is often an insignificant percentage of the population. I read an article on MMO Champion a while back that said something like 1% of the population had completed the non-LFR version of Cataclysm's final raid (Yes, they actually have a super easy version for their LFR system).

Way back during TBC/Wrath I seem to remember reading an article that put the percentage of players raiding at 5%, but since that 5% is loud as fuck and fanatically devoted, it's lavished with attention (not to mention a lot of the WoW designers themselves had no qualifications beyond "Raided in EQ").

So as popular as Wildstar might be to that crowd, how many of them actually exist and will leave their already established raiding scene for something new? Especially when that crowd has always been the one with raging nostalgia boners for Vanilla WoW, which Carbine has explicitly stated they will not be trying to emulate?

Wildstar is basically a bloated niche game.

But I find the payment models each one is adopting to be just completely bewildering. They're each settling to be yet another entry in the modern subscription-based MMO market and compete most directly with FFXIV, rather than launch as an honest-to-god alternative to GW2.

Don't fool yourself; both games are only sub-based to milk as much money from the most loyal players as quickly as possible, and as soon as the well starts to dry up they'll switch to F2P quickly. It's happened with basically every sub-based MMO released since Turbine showed how well it could work with LotRO.

Until the switch, having a sub will be passed off as a positive to "keep the casuals out," which is a big bullet point for the 'hardcore raider' crowd.

To each their own, but best in-slot-gear isn't really necessary for this game. But I understand it's more of a goal then out of necessity.

Only thing I can recommend is taking a break.

This is good advice, honestly. You're not paying a sub, so you can stop whenever you want and not feel like you're wasting money. And if you've got 'best in slot' gear, you won't come back and find your gear is completely antiquated like you would stepping off the gear treadmill for a month or two like in other MMOs. We'll probably see Ascended Armor before Thanksgiving, but that's such a minor stat increase that I doubt many people would be able to tell the difference.

 

[Levito]

I feel so behind, a year later and I still haven't done any PVP at all, and barely done any dungeons. haha

 

[hythloday]

I feel so behind, a year later and I still haven't done any PVP at all, and barely done any dungeons. haha

You and me both.

 

[Jest Chillin]

I will go to my grave wondering how the "hardcore 40 man raiding crowd" ever managed to dominate the conversation when they make up what is often an insignificant percentage of the population. I read an article on MMO Champion a while back that said something like 1% of the population had completed the non-LFR version of Cataclysm's final raid (Yes, they actually have a super easy version for their LFR system).

Way back during TBC/Wrath I seem to remember reading an article that put the percentage of players raiding at 5%, but since that 5% is loud as fuck and fanatically devoted, it's lavished with attention (not to mention a lot of the WoW designers themselves had no qualifications beyond "Raided in EQ").

So as popular as Wildstar might be to that crowd, how many of them actually exist and will leave their already established raiding scene for something new? Especially when that crowd has always been the one with raging nostalgia boners for Vanilla WoW, which Carbine has explicitly stated they will not be trying to emulate?

Wildstar is basically a bloated niche game.

Well, what you're not taking into account is the posturing done by players. The hardcore raiders that actually fully completed content was low extremely low.. but the amount of players that participated in the content and view such content as a measuring device of "skill" was and is quite a bit larger. Remember that when Cata was released with the dungeon difficulty being quite harder than it was in Wrath, the response was largely positive. Only the most casual of player voiced discontent and Blizz simply used their ICC technique to satisfy that portion of the crowd by providing difficulty scale.

Wildstar will do respectable numbers. Initially at least. Then reality will set in and people will discover that despite thinking that hardcore raiding design is superior.. that they either can't achieve it or find it uninteresting and it'll bleed subscribers. What's key for them though is all the other systems being a draw. Exploration, City creation, etc... That's going to be the stuff that will keep people around. So in a sense, they did take some cues from GW2.. but whereas Anet went way more casual friendly in design... Wildstar is going for the harder route. It's not a bad technique at all. I just wish they would've gone with a B2P design. Unfortunately too many "I love hardcore raiding!"-types still feel like having a sub will mean higher quality content and less undesirable player types.

 

[Levito]

You and me both.

I didn't play a ton till right now cause it was hard to find the time, but I'm forcing myself to not buy so many damn games and actually play the stuff I already have. haha


Isn't tonight WvW night for the guild? Maybe I should finally try it.

 

[Hawkian]

The daily routine in GW2 is getting to me. My goal has always been to have each class at 80 with best-in-slot gear. I'm getting close to that now, but this home stretch is proving tedious. I've killed the butcher so many damn times, and those gtaveling mounds. Hrrrrgk.

That's a very ambitious goal, especially considering the way I gear out my characters. I imagine I probably still won't have accomplished that to its literal extent (back pieces too? D even 2 years from now.

Props to you for taking it on, but then again if it's getting tedious... maybe put a cork in it for a week or two and focus on something else?

Only other thing I'd note is, you mentioned doing HotW and AC exp many times- one imagines you're talking for the stats. Just wanted to make sure you know there are multiple ways to get all the stat alignments (well, except Celestial/Apothecary/whatever) that you might be able to employ to stave off getting bored.

You and me both.

You're fun in dungeons. Why not more? We even got Roxie to do Arah with us last night and busted out in under an hour!

Isn't tonight WvW night for the guild? Maybe I should finally try it.

Yeah, reset occurs at about 9:15PM EDT and things go a bit nuts. If I'm back from dinner with my family I'll definitely be running around a bit. It's possible Zed will be leading as well if he's on.

 

[Kos Luftar]

I'm going to be on tonight for WvW.
I'll be on Mumble and TS.

If we get a nice group on Mumble we can party up and follow one of use by Trageting that player. I am not a good commander but I wouldn't mind hoping on one of the BLs and just leading a small group of GAFs who takes camps, ruins and helps out commanders to take towers or keeps.

If that doesn't work out we can just all hop on TS and just follow one of the commanders.

 

[Levito]

Is the WvW meet up newbie friendly or should I do some homework first? haha

I'm still rocking a condition damage build for my Mesmer that makes her rather squishy.

 

[Proven]

Is the WvW meet up newbie friendly or should I do some homework first? haha

I'm still rocking a condition damage build for my Mesmer that makes her rather squishy.

I can't really think of any general tips other than to stick with the group and pay attention to map chat and your surroundings as much as possible. Awareness is key.

 

[markot]

Wild star is an awful wow clone sadly.

 

[Mxrz]

Only other thing I'd note is, you mentioned doing HotW and AC exp many times- one imagines you're talking for the stats. Just wanted to make sure you know there are multiple ways to get all the stat alignments (well, except Celestial/Apothecary/whatever) that you might be able to employ to stave off getting bored.

I do those 3 for the quick pathes & gold rewards. Tokens just sort of pile up outside of soldier/wvw sets. When they get into the 3000 range I'll go salvage a bunch for ecto/matter/inscriptions or forge some weapons.

 

[nataku]

December 10th balance patch preview

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview

Elementalist:
This patch’s goal for the elementalist was to increase the power of the Earth, Air and Fire lines, while taking away some of the need to go into the Arcane line. This was done by bringing up the base cooldown of attunements so that elementalists aren’t forced to go as deep into Arcane in order to get the old attunement cooldown %’s. In doing so, we decided put some of the most powerful Adept tier traits in Water magic and Arcane to the Master tier to avoid power creep that would have occurred by letting players gain powerful effects in Master and Grandmaster tier of Fire, Air, and Earth and still get the extremely powerful traits in Water and Arcane by only splashing in 10 points.

• Fire II – Burning Fire – This trait has a new effect. Use Cleansing Fire automatically when you have a number of conditions on you. 3 conditions. 40 second cooldown. Moved to Master tier.
• Fire VIII – Conjurer – Moved to Adept tier.
• Fire III – Ember’s Might. The effect of this trait has been changed to Burns you apply last longer. 25%.
• Burning Rage 25 – Increased damage dealt to burning foes from 5% to 10%.
• Air V – Soothing Winds. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Air XI – Tempest Defense. Decreased the cooldown from 60s to 25s.
• Earth 5 – Stone Flesh – Increased toughness while attuned to Earth Magic to 1.5/level (120 at level 80).
• Earth VII – Strength of Stone. This trait is now Gain condition damage based on your Toughness. 10%.
• Earth XI – Diamond Skin. This trait has been redesigned. Conditions cannot be applied to you when your health is above the threshold. 90%.
• Water I – Aquamancer’s Alacrity. Moved to Master tier.
• Water V – Cleansing Wave. Moved to Master tier.
• Water VIII – Arcane Abatement. Moved to Adept tier.
• Water X – Soothing Wave. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane III – Arcane Retribution. Moved to Master tier. Decreased cooldown from 90 seconds to 45 seconds.
• Arcane IV – Final Shielding. Decreased cooldown from 90s to 75s.
• Arcane V – Elemental Attunement. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VI – Renewing Stamina. Moved to Master tier.
• Arcane VII – Vigorous Scepter. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane VIII – Blasting Staff. Moved to Adept tier.
• Arcane IX – Windborne Dagger. Moved to Adept tier.

The following changes were done to reduce the necessity of putting points into the Arcane trait line.

• The base cooldown of the attunement that you just left is now reduced from 16 seconds to 13 seconds. Attunement cooldown rate now increases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now Attunements go from 13s to 10s instead of the old range of 16s to 10s.
• Base global attunement cooldown is now 1.625 seconds. Global attunement cooldown rate now decreases by 1% per point in Arcane down from 2%. The end result is that now global attunement cooldown goes from 1.625 to 1.25 instead of the old range of 2.0 to 1.25.

Engineer:
We wanted to maintain the engineer’s core roles while still increasing build diversity. We also wanted to take out some of the random effects for some of the class’s traits. The biggest change here is allowing Modified Ammunition to work with any skills so that an engineer, regardless of build, can look at putting 30 points into firearms. By increasing the swiftness duration on Speedy Kits, we hope to allow Swiftness to be maintained more reasonably without having to constantly be swapping between Kits. This change will also bring down the total up time for Vigor due to its interaction with Invigorating Speed. We don’t like classes having permanent Vigor, and this is one of the areas we needed to tone down the up time of the engineer’s Vigor.

• Explosives V – Incendiary Powder. Moved to Master tier.
• Explosives VI – Exploit Weakness. Increased the health threshold from 25% to 50%
• Explosives IX – Accelerant packed turrets. Moved to Adept tier.
• Firearms XI – Modified Ammunition. This trait now works regardless of equipped weapon.
• Inventions V – Energized Armor. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Inventions X – Autotool Installation. Increased healing percent from 1% to 5%. *
• Decreased interval from 10s to 3s.
• Inventions XI – Elixir Infused bombs. Increased healing scaling by 50%.
• Alchemy V – Blood Injection. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
• Tools VI – Speedy Kits. Increased Swiftness duration to 10s. This effect can now only trigger once every 10 seconds.
• Tools XI – Armor Mods. Changed this to now trigger on struck instead of on critical hit incoming. Reduced the cooldown from 25 seconds to 15 seconds.

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

• Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning.
• Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.)
• Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.
• Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s.
• Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%.
• Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%.
• Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3.
• Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness.

Mesmer:
The bulk of the mesmer changes are focused on two things. 1) Bringing up some of the mesmer support traits and condition removal traits. 2) Reduce dependency on certain trait lines. The changes to Mender’s Purity and Shattered conditions as well as the move of Dazzling Glamours are meant to accomplish the first of these two. The changes to Shattered Strength and Illusionist’s celerity are what we feel accomplish the second one. Before this change mesmers needed to place 25 points into Illusions for many of their builds. Now they can place only 15 points in there to get the Illusion cooldown which will give them back 10 more trait points to open up some new builds. Finally, we felt that the Mantra traits were fairly difficult to collect. Moving Mantra mastery to adept tier takes some trait pressure off of the Dueling line, allowing mantra mesmers to gain a good trait with only 10 points.

• Domination XII – Confounding Suggestions. Changed to increase daze duration by 25%.
• Dueling VI – Protected Mantras. Moved to Master Tier. Increase Toughness from 400 to 600.
• Dueling VII – Mantra Mastery. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Chaos 25 – Chaotic Transference. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Chaos I – Chaotic Revival. Reduced cooldown from 35s to 10s.
• Chaos VII – Mirror of Anguish. Reduced cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Inspiration IV – Mender’s Purity. Now removes 2 conditions.
• Inspiration XI – Shattered Conditions. Increased radius from 240 to 600.
• Illusions VI – Illusionary Invigoration. Recharge reduced from 90s to 60s. Moved to Master Tier.
• Illusions VIII – Dazzling Galmours. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Illusions 15 – Shattered Strength – Moved to Grandmaster tier.
• Illusions 25 – Illusionist’s Celerity – Moved to Master tier.

Necromancer:
For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.

• Mark of Blood. Removed 1 bleed in PvP only.
• Signet of Spite: Removed one bleed.
• Spite 15 – Death into Life. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Spite X – Chill of Death. Increased trigger threshold from 25% to 50%.
• Curses IV – Weakening Shroud. Increase recharge from 15 to 25.
• Curses VIII – Banshee’s Wail. Increase cooldown reduction from 15% to 20%.
• Death 5 – Reanimator. Decreased cooldown from 30s to 15s.
• Death VIII – Reaper’s Protection. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Death 25 – Deadly Strength. Increased conversion from 5% to 10%.
• Blood Magic 25 – Blood to Power. Decreased health threshold from 90% to 75%. Increase Power from 90 to 120.
• Soul Reaping II. Vital Persistence. Increased reduction of life force drain from 25% to 50%.

Ranger:
For the ranger, we’ve adjusted the placement of some traits so that rangers should have more build combinations. For example, by swapping Nature’s Vengeance and Spirits Unbound so that rangers can have spirits follow you in tier 2, players can now opt out of the higher damage output from spirits and still have options elsewhere. We also brought up some Marksmanship and a Skirmishing trait to make power specs more appealing. We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits. Due to this, we’ve made adjustments to Wilderness Survival traits, and we’ve also brought down the passive of Sun Spirit and the active effect for Storm Spirit.

• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
• Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
• Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.
• Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
• Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
• Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
• Wilderness VIII – Oakheart Salve. Decreased the recharge of this trait from 20s->15s
• Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
• Nature Magic I – Circle of Life. Cleared up the text of this trait to clearly identify that it happens when downed, not defeated.
• Nature Magic V – Strength of Spirit. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%
• Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.
• Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.
• Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.
• Beastmastery VI – Mighty Swap. The might from this trait is now applied to you and your pet.
• Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.
• Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%.

Thief:
One of the issues we are working on for thieves this patch is the dependence on the traits which boost initiative. We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%. We have also somewhat reduced the effectiveness of high evasion thieves by reducing vigor up time and adding some cast time to the Shadow Return skill on the sword. This prevents these thieves from evading too much and too easily dealing with being disabled (stun, daze, fear, knockdown, etc.). Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait. This will reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again. The change to Infusion of Shadow is meant to stop players from gaining initiative by applying stealth while already in stealth. This should keep thieves from being able to recharge all of their power while idling in a very long stealth. We felt that using a lot of different abilities to maintain stealth is ok, but re-using the same ability over and over for almost permanent stealth was just bad for the game, especially when gaining large amounts of initiative.

• Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75/second to 1/second.
• Shadow Return on Sword. Renamed to Infiltrator’s return. Added a 1/4s cast time.
• Pistol Whip. Reduced the after cast on the first half of this skill by .25 seconds.
• Deadly Arts VI – Sundering Strikes. Increased the trigger chance from 50%. Remove ICD. Decrease Vulnerability duration to 6s.
• Critical Strikes VI – Practiced Tolerance. Increased conversion from 5% to 7%.
• Critical Strikes 15 – Opportunist. Increased trigger chance to 50%. Increase cooldown from 1s to 5s.
• Critical Strikes VIII – Signet Use. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Critical Strike X – Critical Haste. Increase trigger chance to 25%.
• Shadow Arts V – Infusion of Shadow – This trait functionality has been changed to “Gain initiative when you enter stealth.” 2 init.
• Acrobatics III – Vigorous Recovery. Reduced Vigor duration to 4s from 8s.
• Acrobatics IV – Assassin’s Retreat. Increased swiftness duration to 20s.
• Acrobatics IX – Quick Recovery. Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
• Acrobatics X – Assassins Reward. Increased healing scaling by 35%. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
• Acrobatics XI – Hard to catch. Moved to Master Tier.
• Trickery 5 – Kleptomaniac. Reduce initiative gain from 3 to 2.
• Trickery IV – Flanking Strikes. Move to Master tier.
• Trickery VII – Bountiful Theft. Reduced vigor duration to from 15s to 8s.
• Trickery VIII – Trickster. Move to Adept tier.

Warrior:
The overall goal here is to reduce the damage for the very high control warriors. This means reducing some dependency on going 30 points into discipline for Burst Mastery, making warriors spend 20 points in Arms to get the benefit of Unsuspecting Foe. We also reduced the damage on the hammer’s burst skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both. We also increased the readability of Skull Crack, which will allow opposing players to more easily react to it. Combustive Shot on longbow also saw some rework. It will scale better with adrenaline levels, and still provide strong burning per adrenaline level, but the raw damage was toned down slightly.

• Strength 5 – Reckless Dodge. Increased Damage by 25%
• Strength III – Great Fortitude. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%.
• Arms IV – Unsuspecting Foe. Moved to Master Tier.
• Arms VII – Crack Shot. Moved to Adept Tier.
• Arms XII – Last Chance. Increased the threshold form 25% to 50%. Reduced the cooldown from 45 seconds to 40seconds.
• Defense 25 – Armored Attack. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 10%.
• Defense XII – Spiked Armor. Reduced the recharge from 15s to 10s.
• Tactics 5 – Determined Revival. Now correctly displays the amount of toughness.
• Tactics 25 – Reviver’s Might. Now applies 3 stacks of Might instead of 1.
• Discipline II – Thrill of the Kill. Increased Adrenaline gain from 1 to 10.
• Discipline XI – Burst Mastery. Reduced damage increase from 10% to 7%. Removed erroneous adrenaline gain fact.
• Earthshaker. Reduced damage by 20%.
• Staggering Blow. Reduced damage by 23%.
• Skull Crack. Increased the cast time from 1/4s to 1/2s. Updated the animation and effects of this skill to be more clear.
• Combustive Shot – Increased pulse duration to 3s. Increased burn duration per pulse to 3s. Normalized damage per pulse. Updated pulses per tier to 2, 3,and 4 respectively for tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

Man, that took forever to format.

 

[Ashodin]

December 10th balance patch preview

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview

oooh what

My thoughts in italic

Guardian:
Tanky and supportive guardians are in a strong position in many gametypes. We do feel that damage guardians are not as powerful as they could be. While we don’t want guardians to be as strong offensively as some of the other classes (given their powerful defensive abilities) we opened up more offensive guardian builds.

Zeal V – Shattered Aegis. Damage instead of Burning. NICE
Zeal VII – Zealous Blade. This trait now scales with Healing power (2%.) AW SHIET YEAH SON YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Zeal XII – Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%. DAMN SON MOAR CONDITION DAMAGE
Radiance V – Searing Flames. Reduced cooldown from 20s to 10s. Awesome!
Radiance X – Powerful blades. Increased damage from 5% to 10%. AW SHIET
Valor V – Retributive Armor. Increased conversion rate from 5% to 7%. MEH
Honor VI – Pure of Heart. Increased scaling with Healing power from 25% to 40%. GODDAMN WTF ANET HOLY SHIT SUCH POWER MUCH HEALS
Virtues VIII – Supreme Justice. Number of attacks going from 4 to 3. WHAT! HOLY SHIT FUCKING CRAZY
Symbol of Swiftness: This skill now applies 4 seconds of swiftness per pulse, rather than 8 seconds if you have no swiftness and 1 second if you have swiftness. AWW YISSSS

WOW THIEVES

We did this by shaving a significant amount of initiative gain from these traits while simultaneously boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%.

STATIC INITIATIVE BUFF

HAWKIAN POST IF YOU ARE OK

 

[Proven]

The patch preview is a pretty big shakeup to the meta, especially in WvW...

For Thief I can easily take Bountiful Theft along with Trickery now, while only dropping Thrill of the Crime.

Warrior still have their tanky defense build now, although I have to wonder if the Crack Shot change will cause more people to splash Rifle into their offhand. I need to go back and read the fine print to see if the Longbow changes buffs my condition build or keeps it on par.

Guardian changes slightly buff my current condition damage build right when I was considering gearing it into a more offensive build. I think I'll keep it for a bit longer and just try using Greatsword or Hammer as my switch from Scepter. Scepter and Torch are still the fastest hitting weapons for Virtue of Justice, I think.

Mesmer changes are interesting... They seemed hamstrung on keeping clone generation from becoming too easy to trait for, but at the same time everyone feels that they're practically mandatory to run the class. I'm wondering if they should just put a 5-10 second internal cool down on Deceptive Evasion like they have for the Necromancer dodge trait. Maybe then they can lower its trait cost.

 

[Hawkian]

boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%

boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%

boosting the generic rate of initiative gain by 33%

i will be unstoppable

mmm they're fixing pistol whip back too... this is whetting my appetite.

lots of new complexity to consider for eles. looks like it might be a decent time to check out my ranger too.

 

[leng jai]

Pretty good changes for Mesmers there. Mantras are slowly becoming usable.

 

[Jest Chillin]

Maybe it's just me but a boost of 1 every .75 seconds to 1 every 1 second doesn't seem great at the cost of the Initiative gaining traits. And I'm not even a Stealth dancing Thief. The boost on Health regen is nice though. I still think it's going to be rough going for me though since they took our boon ripping down to one per flanking strike and increased the ini cost. ;/

Overall.. not excited. We'll see how it works in practice though.

 

[Ashodin]

Taking this time to let you guys know the Kickstarter for my game went live: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paladium/apexicon-fantasy-puzzle-combat

Plus the GAF thread about it is up too:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=707819

And I really love the Guardian changes...

SO GOOD

I'm totally going to be playing with Zealous Blade for sure now, with all the healing it does!

 

[irfaanator]

Still think AH guardians are the way to go in pvp, but this could be interesting. Not sure how though.

 

[Complistic]

Necro changes are all pretty minor. As they should be. Necro is in a pretty sweet spot right now.

 

[hythloday]

I should give my necro a more serious try one of these days.

On another note, I really like the banter between Kasmeer and Marjory in Kessex Hills when you're just standing there.

 

[Taffer]

Necro changes are all pretty minor. As they should be. Necro is in a pretty sweet spot right now.

Reanimator just won't die! (Appropriate I suppose, but still...)

 

[Weltall Zero]

WoW holidays, at least when I played (stopped during Cataclysm), were the same thing year after year after year with minor changes (i.e. a new silly item for Christmas). A lot of them like Halloween, Easter, etc. didn't even have that.

God, I still remember one particularly bad Christmas when the yearly gift was... a toy gun... with limited ammo. Shots themselves did nothing, and once you depleted all shots, it couldn't fire ever again. I don't think I could have come up with a sadder present if I tried.

In my opinion, you can't even mention WoW holidays in the same breath as Guild Wars holidays; they don't even hold a candle to what we get (for free, no less).

Completely agreed, which goes back to my question: what the hell are GW2 holidays being compared to, in order to be labeled a disaster?

A man after my own heart with that SCIV comment. I had a Genesis growing up so I didn't get to play it until much later (Bloodlines was an incredible consolation prize though).

Castlevania IV was one of the first games I got for my SNES, after having played quite a bit of both Castlevania 1 and 2 for the NES (but finishing neither). It truly felt like a huge leap forward and a showcase of the SNES's beastly capabilities. I've lost count of how many times I've finished it. I played it on emulator not a handful of months back and it's still as addicting as ever.

I just dont get why, even now, mmo devs are soooooooo focused on making us grind.

Because there is a limit to what speed they can put out content and otherwise people would complain that they don't have anything to do.

Sometimes I forget that not everyone that plays GW2 is a perpetually unhappy, dissatisfied, entitled, whiny, Queensdale-train-worshipping, WvW-is-all-that-matters-and-PvE-people-should-die-in-a-fire, wet blanket.

I know that the whining on the official forums constitutes a vocal minority, but sometimes it's nice to be reminded that it's okay to like the game, faults and all, and liking it doesn't mean you're somehow brain-damaged (as someone on Reddit politely told me).

But that's the nature of the beast isn't it. If you like it, you're a "sheeple apologist", no matter what. Kinda wish people who didn't enjoy playing a game, would just stop playing it.

Stop making sense! It's antinatural!

The daily routine in GW2 is getting to me. My goal has always been to have each class at 80 with best-in-slot gear. I'm getting close to that now, but this home stretch is proving tedious. I've killed the butcher so many damn times, and those gtaveling mounds. Hrrrrgk.

I hope you (or anybody else) don't get offended by what I'm going to say, but I still don't understand the concept of "goals" in games and "working" towards them. It's alien speak to me. There are already so many good games out there (hell, good games I OWN) and so many are released each year, that even if I played all I wanted just for the sake of playing, I would not be able to get my fill before I died of old age. Really, it's that simple; amazing games are made more quickly that I can play them. Why would anyone waste their precious, precious free time doing something they don't enjoy, for no tangible reward whatsoever?

Perhaps that's the reason that I love roguevariants so much; I never have to ask myself if I'm playing because I like the gameplay itself, or if I've fallen for the "progression and rewards" traps. With permadeath, the answer is obvious.

 

[Victrix]

http://gw2efficiency.com/

If you aren't a registered user of that site I won't run dungeons with you, sorry

 

[Mxrz]

I hope you (or anybody else) don't get offended by what I'm going to say, but I still don't understand the concept of "goals" in games and "working" towards them. It's alien speak to me. There are already so many good games out there (hell, good games I OWN) and so many are released each year, that even if I played all I wanted just for the sake of playing, I would not be able to get my fill before I died of old age. Really, it's that simple; amazing games are made more quickly that I can play them. Why would anyone waste their precious, precious free time doing something they don't enjoy, for no tangible reward whatsoever? .

I like having a goal to work towards in a mmo. My friends are what keep me playing day in and day out, but having a set goal I want to accomplish within the game adds some weight to it. There's a happy balance in it, and its only when I stray too far into one extreme that it can feel frustrating.

 

[leng jai]

Now that I got over the excitement about Mender's Purity getting a buff and Illusionist's Celerity being more attainable I'm back to WTFing at Anet.

They somehow keep ignoring the fact that the real problem with Mantra's is the charge time. They're also seemingly oblivious to the fact that the scepter auto attack is slow as shit and the torch phantasm is one of the most useless skills in the game.

 

[leng jai]

I like having a goal to work towards in a mmo. My friends are what keep me playing day in and day out, but having a set goal I want to accomplish within the game adds some weight to it. There's a happy balance in it, and its only when I stray too far into one extreme that it can feel frustrating.

Don't worry, having goals and a sense of progression is a staple of MMOs and one of the main differentiators from other genres. MMOs traditionally have a weaker story, worse gameplay and less polish but it's compensated by the fact that it has a huge communal aspect and character investment. Playing an MMO without goals defeats the purpose for a lot of people.

 

[jersoc]

December 10th balance patch preview



Man, that took forever to format.

of-fucking-course they keep the passives :|

combat seriously is in need of help.

Kindled Zeal. Increased conversion from 10% to 13%.

like seriously? who gives a fuck about that. change how a skill works or add one. 5 skills is becoming yawn. also lol, condition guards.

 

[Retro]

of-fucking-course they keep the passives :|

As much as I agree with this (and was saying as much well before launch), I can't help but feel like they have enough on their plate trying to find the sweet spot for the Living Story, tweaking WvW, etc. to make such a large change to a huge part of the game.

The way traits are handled is my biggest "high level" complaint with this game. What we have now works well enough that it doesn't ruin the experience for me, but it could be so much better. I'll dig up my old post in a sec, I'm on my phone.

Edit: Here it is, though it's kind of old: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1tpMfbjGfAbnS98_9MiZ7NoSaEd7UscSMKJP_bFkD7Nw

 

[crimzonflame]

So Necros suck?

 

[Retro]

So Necros suck?

Not really. Though I'm sure the official forums would disagree,* I don't think there's any profession that sucks right now. Necros got a nice buff over the summer, and they've been steadily getting tweaked since. I don't play one (I don't like casters or pet classes, even though the pets are optional here), but people who do seem to enjoy them.

* The official forums will always disagree with something.

 

[crimzonflame]

Not really. Though I'm sure the official forums would disagree,* I don't think there's any profession that sucks right now. Necros got a nice buff over the summer, and they've been steadily getting tweaked since. I don't play one (I don't like casters or pet classes, even though the pets are optional here), but people who do seem to enjoy them.

* The official forums will always disagree with something.

I was reading the official forums this morning trying to get tips on leveling and there's nothing but posts stating that Necros are the worst class. They managed to convince me.

 

[Mxrz]

So Necros suck?

Necros are Jesus in WvW. Dunno if the new balance will hit them hard, don't play mine enough to follow specific traits by name. But I wouldn't mind if conditons were toned down a tad.

Balance is tricky. I base my stuff on what I run into in game. Right now, Engineers seem too good with the ability to build tanky, but keep crazy dmg output & all the frickin' immobilizes. Maybe I just need more practice on the matchup. But If nothing else the sheer number I run into since the last patch is way up.

Forums are zerk or uninstall. Way too easy to get caught up in that stuff if you spend too much time there. Necro was probably the easiest class I leveled after 40 with a couple of the traits. Marks and minions start hitting like a truck, near perma swiftness, two-life bars, and so on.

 

[Gaz_RB]

http://gw2efficiency.com/

If you aren't a registered user of that site I won't run dungeons with you, sorry

 

[lazorexplosion]

I was reading the official forums this morning trying to get tips on leveling and there's nothing but posts stating that Necros are the worst class. They managed to convince me.

Not one of the top tier PvE classes, absolutely for sure one of the top tier PvP and WvW classes. So it depends on what you want.

 

[Complistic]

So Necros suck?

I feel incredibly OP in my rabid conditions set and my Zerker set is fun to mess around with as well. Does ridiculous damage in deathshroud. Plus its not as fragile as most zerkers because you're mostly at mid ranged and you have an extra health bar in deathshroud to fall back to. Zerker daggers does fine damage too if you're comfortable getting into melee range. Daggers also fuel deathshroud super quickly.

The rabid condition build is my favorite though. There aren't really tanks in this game, but A rabid necro is about as close as you're going to get to it. (Dire necro would be better with the vit, but you lose a lot of free bleeds) You are an absolute aggro magnet for some reason. Even in large zerg encounters I usually find the boss following me around the battlefield and walking past most people. If you do get hit, you've got a boat load of health that the necro naturally has, and rabid gives you a lot of toughness and again if you're really in trouble you enter deathshroud and you can fear the enemy away with a nice 3 or 4 second long fear.

Now, just tanking is boring, luckily a scepter/dagger necro with Blood is Power and Epidemic can crank out some absurd dps after a few seconds. Pretty simple math, you can usually get 15 stacks of bleeding going reliably. Sometimes more, but its hard to maintain more than that. At around 150 tick a bleed, that's pretty good, stack some might from your team or blood is power and you're looking more like 170 a bleed. Thats a lot of damage just from bleeding. But you also figure in weapon damage (fairly minor really) poison, and burning if you're traited for it and you're now looking at about 3k - 3.5k every second. From a distance. with a ton of armor.

As if that wasn't enough, necros have epidemic, which allows you to transfer all the conditions from your target to nearby targets. The skill has a 12 second recharge rate. With a 25 bleed stack target, which is common in most parties, I'm now transferring ticks as high as 4.5k a second to up to 5 targets around my main target. And thats just bleeding. Not to mention all the other conditions.

Anyway, that became longer than I originally was going to write. But i sorta started having fun with it. Necros r gud.

 

[lazorexplosion]

People totally under use siege golems in small groups. If you're not in a big zerg you aren't carrying the supply to drop 2 flame rams at a gate, and that makes a gate take so long that you're likely to have people respond and stop you. But a golem you can just build at a supply camp or even take from a waypoint and run to the target. With just 4 random roamers around you can have a golem and a ram, nuke the gate down and have the tower well before anyone can stop you. 8 people can take a keep if you pick the right moment to go for it. So good, especially out of peak times when numbers on the map are low. I used to wander helplessly past towers all the time, now I've been flipping a bunch of them.

 

[Retro]

I was reading the official forums this morning trying to get tips on leveling and there's nothing but posts stating that Necros are the worst class. They managed to convince me.

I have taken the liberty of breaking down your post to show where things went horribly wrong;

1. "I was reading the official forums."
Unless you're using the dev tracker, this is generally a Very Bad Idea™. It's basically on the same level as hitting yourself in the testicles with a mallet in that it not only hurts you, but future generations of offspring will be affected as well.

Hawkian did the math a while ago and though I can't find the link, the developers have commented how most of the negativity is tied to ~100 accounts just constantly posting negative shit. Since the game is B2P, you don't actually have to pay a sub or anything to post at the forums, so people who bought the game once can bitch about it indefinitely.

2. "Trying to get tips."
The Official Forums aren't there to help each other out; they're there so people can bitch about things and call developers stupid, dabbling in arm chair game design and occasionally flirting with a useful suggestion (lost in a sea of negativity). Maybe once in a while someone threatens someone's family (videogames are serious business, after all) and gets banned.

The Necro players on GAF are already rushing to your aid, see posts above.

3. "Necros are the worst class."
To the people on the official forums, anything that ever happens or exists is at some point 'the worst possible thing ever'. Graphical glitches are disasters, connection issues are cataclysms and class balance issues are on level with genocide.

4. "They managed to convince me."
In the same way zombies convince people to also be zombies; by inflicting huge amounts of brain damage.

Friends don't let friends visit the official forums, not just for GW2 but for any game. All you get is the opinion of a very small percentage of players with an axe to grind. Even GW2 Guru's forums would be better, and that's really saying something.

 

[crimzonflame]

hehe thanks

 

[hythloday]

It's not just official gaming forums, it's just about any forum about a product or service. From a customer service standpoint, people are much more likely to speak up when they are upset about something than they are to speak up when they're pleased. At my job when we get a complimentary letter from a customer it makes our day. Happy gamers are possibly spending more time playing the game than they are posting about it.

That said, official forums for any game are usually awful.

 

[Gaz_RB]

I have taken the liberty of breaking down your post to show where things went horribly wrong;

1. "I was reading the official forums."
Unless you're using the dev tracker, this is generally a Very Bad Idea™. It's basically on the same level as hitting yourself in the testicles with a mallet in that it not only hurts you, but future generations of offspring will be affected as well.

Hawkian did the math a while ago and though I can't find the link, the developers have commented how most of the negativity is tied to ~100 accounts just constantly posting negative shit. Since the game is B2P, you don't actually have to pay a sub or anything to post at the forums, so people who bought the game once can bitch about it indefinitely.

2. "Trying to get tips."
The Official Forums aren't there to help each other out; they're there so people can bitch about things and call developers stupid, dabbling in arm chair game design and occasionally flirting with a useful suggestion (lost in a sea of negativity). Maybe once in a while someone threatens someone's family (videogames are serious business, after all) and gets banned.

The Necro players on GAF are already rushing to your aid, see posts above.

3. "Necros are the worst class."
To the people on the official forums, anything that ever happens or exists is at some point 'the worst possible thing ever'. Graphical glitches are disasters, connection issues are cataclysms and class balance issues are on level with genocide.

4. "They managed to convince me."
In the same way zombies convince people to also be zombies; by inflicting huge amounts of brain damage.

Friends don't let friends visit the official forums, not just for GW2 but for any game. All you get is the opinion of a very small percentage of players with an axe to grind. Even GW2 Guru's forums would be better, and that's really saying something.

Well said. Official forums are usually cesspools.

 

[Kos Luftar]

He is joking. That man is usually up for dungeons at any time if he is online and with anyone.

 

[Arkanius]

He is joking. That man is usually up for dungeons at any time if he is online and with anyone.

A dungeon slut basically

 

[Kos Luftar]

Awesome drunk wubwubing last night. Forst with hawk and the. with Zed Zebes (etiolite) and Roxie.

 

[gamergirl85]

Awesome drunk wubwubing last night. Forst with hawk and the. with Zed Zebes (etiolite) and Roxie.

Ha it was fun but I had too many drinks. Really hate the queues, takes too long to get in on Fridays now.