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As enjoyable as this game can be, some of the multiplayer/fractal/group content is just unnecessarily confusing. There are fractals I’ve run where someone, typically a very patient comm/leader, is explaining the mechanics, marking things, calling targets, etc. I appreciate their efforts a lot, but it shouldn’t be this complicated. You’re given vague in-game instructions by the instance, and just expected to just work things out somehow. There are fractals I’ve cleared where I walk away going “I have no idea what the hell just happened, but I guess we won” and that is (in my opinion) not good game design or a rewarding feeling. It feels like a chore so I can earn daily rewards, and Dungeons are also super guilty of this. I get that everyone says “lol just read the wiki” and I do, but it’s obnoxious to have to study a lengthy article in-depth just to be able to survive what boils down to about 10-15 minutes of content. If this game has a major blind spot for me, it’s that so much of the end game content can only be experienced if a commander is keeping everybody locked in and explaining things, herding cats, and that’s a ton of pressure if someone doesn’t have the personality type to want to lead/teach all the time. Or maybe they’re tired after a long day of work, and don’t feel like logging in and explaining KO, OLC, or Boneskinner for the 100th time while wiping. Would it kill the devs to add an NPC who could explain the mechanics or give some hints for success? I'll give an example, what if Rytlock as an NPC was available to show a new player how to do basic damage rotations for Revenant (or its subclasses), and you could follow along with him and practice? Or a quest where you have to learn to use boons, and demonstrate the importance of upkeeping Quickness/Alacrity/etc. boons? For a strike like Boneskinner, you could have Jhavi give you a run-down on why Boneskinner is so dangerous, it could be optional if experienced players didn't want to use it. A little bit of learning could go a long way. I laughed when I got to EoD, and there's a training quest explaining how skill combos work and how cc/defiance break bars work. I was like, why aren't there tons of these everywhere, and integrated into all stages of the game? It's an effective way to educate players on the skills they'll need. With that being said, I understand killproof and static groups, since you’re able to side step this, and just get straight into end game content. I totally get why they’re popular. I spend much of my time teaching strikes, helping new training groups, or with quests, and it’s rewarding to see new players get it and succeed. I just wish there was more intuitive multiplayer content where newbies were able to rise to the occasion and shine, and to contribute something quickly. Open world content and metas seems to be best for this. TLDR: To summarize, it's as if GW2 will punish you if you don't already know certain things about the end-game, but it simultaneously isn't setting you up for success, and doesn't help you learn/master those things for the end-game. This is a hard contrast to leveling to 80, where the player experience feels beginner friendly/inclusive. I'm glad streamers like Preach are playing GW2, and helping to shine a light on this, because the devs need to receive that type of feedback. Jedah fucked around with this message at 21:38 on May 17, 2023 |
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May 17, 2023 17:22
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Mailer posted:
Totally agree with you. A personal story chapter which requires breakbar training is a perfect jumping off point. Like you said, just pepper the whole dang early/mid game with this kind of content, it can't be that difficult to add. A strong example I can think of was watching Preach stream, and experience GW2 with totally fresh eyes. You've got an experienced MMO player, naturally curious to learn about game mechanics, and how to eventually get into raid groups, end-game, etc. Preach did not know that boons were critical to party-based play, and that it can potentially triple your DPS. During his Teatime episode with Teapot, Preach called the game out for this, and he's 100% right. You can't have core mechanics which are key to success and not educate the player base. A person shouldn't have to go down a Youtube rabbit-hole of research just to learn how it works. It's almost as if Anet has already preemptively thrown in the towel, and thought, "our hardcore players who like our MMO already know how this stuff works, so why bother" and didn't consider educating their next generation of players. You'd have thought that with the Steam launch, they had a golden opportunity to give the game a fresh coat of paint. There's also the Special Forces training area, and its training golem, which could be utilized way better. I didn't even know the Special Forces training area was a thing until I started watching Anet partners/content creators, who explained everything. The game never pointed me in that direction, it's this area of the city which is basically sequestered away. Sorry for the long post, but you hit upon a lot of important topics. To your point about two distinct groups of players in GW2 - I guess that's to be expected of any MMO, and to some extent, can't be helped. That's why I spend most of my time training new folks, helping, contributing where I can - I don't want new folks to be discouraged. Usually if you're able to exercise a little bit of patience, people will eventually get it, and overall, I've had more success stories than horror stories. The main horror stories I've experienced were trying to join advanced groups/CM groups. The hostility has skyrocketed to 10/10, accusations go flying, people starting vote kicking, etc. There are bad/immature players in any game, sure, but it's just downright dumb to join a PUG on LFG, whether you're in Training or Experienced, and expect everyone to magically play like a gamer god who is immune to making mistakes. That's what killproof and static groups are for, super high level gameplay. I've had someone kick me from a strike because "they weren't getting enough quickness uptime," but that same person ran away from me, and made zero effort to stack together as a party. It was as if I was supposed to psychically know where they were going to go at all times, and what their position was going to be. I've also had commanders announce "separate, separate!" during phases of boss fights, but people would still complain that they aren't getting boons. Why, exactly, do you need quickness when your focus should be jumping over waves of death that will downstate you? Unfortunately, I have to blame things like ArcDPS for this, a lot of PUG players will read the data in it and go from zero to irrationally judgemental in a heartbeat. But that's a whole separate can of worms and an effort post for another day.  where the red fern gropes posted:arenanet would prefer you to buy things from the gem store than worry your silly little head about all those things!! For all my criticisms, the gem store has incredible mounts. They know their audience, and they know how to get us to swipe, I'll give them that. Jedah fucked around with this message at 03:23 on May 21, 2023 |
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May 21, 2023 02:04
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Adhesive Gamin posted:I'm obligated to point out that 1. Arc has the boon table that could be used to show someone if they're the only one missing uptime by being off the stack, rather than relying on how much quickness they happened to think everyone had (plus the 'average distance from commander' statistic in actual logs) and 2. before meters, people used to just not take necros and rangers or things that aren't warrior or ele into groups because... eh we're pretty sure they do bad damage. Ah, thanks. That's totally a fair point and, and to be honest, I don't have experience with ArcDPS, so I'll defer to you here. Maybe the PUG player in question did not know how boon tables functioned in Arc, I couldn't say. Perhaps the lesson learned here is to have the lowest possible expectations of PUGs. I'm on the Steam version of the game, and kinda scared that I'll be flagged for running a third party app like Arcdps with GW2, then end up getting banned. Maybe that's going overboard and too paranoid. I haven't heard of any serious negative consequences using it. Still, better safe than sorry, I guess.
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May 21, 2023 04:30
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where the red fern gropes posted:the day people get banned for running arcdps is the day the entire raid community disappears You're probably right. Is there a reason it hasn't been officially sanctioned by Anet, or integrated into the existing game? ApeHawk posted:Preach literally spent loads of money trying to gamba a mount skin he really wanted instead of a small amount to get it guaranteed. That video is hilarious, and I don't think there's anything wrong with paying for cosmetics. He knew what he was doing and it was very entertaining. Preach got the Point-Tipped Corvus Griffon early in that video - that one is virtually striking and gorgeous. Locking quality of life upgrades behind the gem store is not great, though. Even Teapot, one of Anet's biggest advocates, was super annoyed that extra Build/Equipment slots remain locked behind a gem price. Jedah fucked around with this message at 15:54 on May 21, 2023 |
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May 21, 2023 15:52
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Praxis Prion posted:Is it worth it at all to buy the complete collection on steam for the living world content, currently $93.97, or just get the 2 main expansions? Isthereanydeal.com says the Complete collection has gone as low as 21% off ($78.97) on Steam, so it isn't the best discount ever, but still. The value for money is kinda absurd. Since there's no monthly subscription, your hundred bucks could translate into thousands of hours of game time. That kind of value proposition is hard to pass up. Where they'll finally get you is when you're hooked on the game, and seeing 10 irresistible cosmetic items (on sale!) in the Gem Store. Who is gonna say no to a gigantic plush turtle mount? Overall, though, the game is not pay-to-win, and easy on your wallet (for an MMO). Meeko posted:Anet has extremely dysfunctional management, and the core of the game was built around 10 to 50+ dumbasses showing up and dogpiling whatever big boss with as minimal toxicity as possible. Everything in the game is all about 'working together' so you basically can only help other players and can't compete for resuorces/can't investigate their gear/what skills they're using/etc. There is so much truth in this post. Particularly your comment about Anet having extremely dysfunctional management. If I'm not mistaken, for the longest time, wasn't one employee assigned to be their community manager, while wearing like 10 other hats at the same time? I'm a bit torn agreeing with you so much, while also endorsing that another goon should totally buy the complete collection. Is this Stockholm syndrome? 100% agree you about insufficient group finding tools. Fixing that alone would have a ripple effect and correct so many other aspects of the game. Just based on hearing other folks' experiences, the European server is better when it comes to the LFG system. Although it's a scuffed system as a whole, there's still a ton of PUG stuff going on of various skill levels. I personally haven't had this experience at all on NA. The NA LFG system is the wild west and unpredictable, the best experiences I've had were starting my own groups, or joining Trainings groups of new players and spending time with them and teaching them the encounter. On a rare occasion, a Hardstuck commander might be hosting something and coaching over discord, but it's by no means the norm (for me, anyway). As a slight change of topic, I got brave and messaged Sneb over the weekend, since I'm considering joining Skein Gang on NA. He was incredibly nice and chatted with me way longer than I expected. I only have positive things to say, dude was super inclusive and you can tell he cares. I think after looking back at a few of my negative posts on here, I need to step away from PUGs, and should probably join a community like theirs. Harrow posted:All this raiding/strike discussion is kind of deflating when I was thinking about coming back to play for a while Sorry, I'll take the lion's share of the blame for that. Describing it as "missed potential" is so true. As long as you're willing to avoid PUGs and focus on end game content with a static group/guild, I don't see any major reason why you shouldn't come back. The overall state of PvE is very good, there's like a dozen different specs which are viable and performing well. If you were ever thinking about an alt, this is the perfect time to jump back in. Jedah fucked around with this message at 20:00 on May 22, 2023 |
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May 22, 2023 19:51
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Mailer posted:To be fair, I bitch a lot about the in-game tools specifically because I don't live in one of the two timezones supported by raiding Discords. If I did you'd never hear from me because I'd be busy raiding. It'd be better if there were in-game tools (also removing the comm tag) and would lift the game up universally, but there are extremely easy options if you're in God's chosen regions. Can’t believe I haven’t inquired about the goon guild yet. I think I’ve even see y’all running around in the open world and almost asked if they had stairs in their house. I wasn’t serious about finding guilds until getting some characters to end game content, but now it seems to be the way to go. Which are the time zones best supported by discord? I’m guessing Eastern time for NA and that the European server(s) as a whole are alive and well? I don’t know if there’s an easy solution for fixing LFG. Probably not. If they won’t implement an automated group finding/creation tool, we’re stuck. I'm probably the millionth person to suggest this, but maybe they could add filters (similar to the Trading post) where you can sort players by some kind of metric, maybe it’s based on their achievements, gear, personal fractal level, agony resistance, completion of quests, some kind of character data, etc. I realize this could divide communities and ruffle some feathers, but it could work. While filters could be helpful and may match like-minded players together, it still wouldn’t fix the underlying problem that LFG (on NA) is basically dead. Around peak times during the weekend I see it come alive, but otherwise it’s slow. Other times, I'll be in Dragonstorm in a giant group, but no one has organized it - I'm just flying solo in a swarm of other players, not in a Squad run by someone with a tag. So yes, make the Comm tag free, charging 300 gold is beyond silly. LFG should be available to queue you while you’re gathering winterberries, Drizzlewood, or running a battleground, doing whatever it is you want - you shouldn’t have to sit there and refresh a list or actively think about it. You should just plug in your filter preferences and have the game auto match you with others who have similar preferences. A “set it and forget” approach would help immensely. Jedah fucked around with this message at 16:28 on May 23, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 15:59
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Eltoasto posted:Terrible idea unless you can also sort people by how fancy their outfit is. IBS Fast 5 - Need HS. Maid outfits ONLY or kicked. orcane posted:You mean sort them by how many infusions they're stacking? Sorta, I realize infusions are used for many things - but mostly it would be good to know a party member's Agony resistance for running fractals in LFG. Someone with zero/little agony resistance shouldn't be in certain fractals, so I think that's reasonable.
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May 23, 2023 20:25
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Lonk posted:I have been thinking a lot and maybe outside of some WvW, my time might largely be done with the game at this point. Very coincidental timing, Josh Strife Hayes just made a video related to this. He's talking about WoW, but it's the same idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXS30Jb1ww8 I'm still enjoying teaching new players strikes, helping people get their turtle, doing World Boss trains and open world stuff, but I don't know if I have the stomach for grinding Legendary equipment. I'll stick with Ascended gear and call it a day. I might slowly work towards Nevermore just because it's so cool, and that's enough of a long-term project.
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Jun 4, 2023 21:39
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Meskhenet posted:as a convert. Thank you, great advice - this is probably the direction I'll go. Ra Ra Rasputin posted:Legendary armor and jewelry is a good goal to set because once you have legendary in those slots you can feel confident in auto-salvaging everything you acquire in those slots going forward instead of feeling like you got to hoard that ascended stuff for a new spec on a character. Also awesome advice, I just worry about the grind for acquiring it. Watching MightyTeapot's videos and seeing how much mental pain he's in as he completes legendary collections, I don't know if I've got it in me. And he's got to be one of the biggest Arenanet cheerleaders out there. It sounds amazing for its utility, and I wouldn't have to pick Winterberries for the rest of my life for gearing alts. Guest2553 posted:While we're sharing n=1 sample sizes, I found getting a few legendaries (3-4 trinkets plus a set of armor) made the game a lot more accessible with the freedom to experiment and try new things. I also don't feel like I'm gonna be super behind when I inevitably take some time off and the meta shifts. It sound really tempting, especially when I think about my main, Guardian, where I could see having full sets of Minstrel, Harrier, Ritualist, and Berserker, depending on the situation. I'm terrible at jumping puzzles and kinda sad they're in so many of the legendary collection quests, maybe I can bribe a Mesmer or ask some guildies to help.
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Jun 5, 2023 16:56
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I’ve tried about a hundred things to fix it, but ever since the last patch update, GW2 runs horribly and stutters. I can play on the very lowest settings, sort of, but it’s lossy and difficult to play. Like, you might get cleaved by Minister Li in the KO strike and not have time to react. Finally just threw in the towel and will have it diagnosed by a professional soon. Played for 1,300+ hours with no previous issues. Doom Eternal runs at 99 fps both offline and online on Ultra settings, to put things into perspective.
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Jun 21, 2023 17:56
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The popular Power DPS Spellbreaker build on Hardstuck or Snowcrows runs a hammer, and axe/dagger. You will spend a lot of time swapping between either weapon set. So Dagger is a strong choice overall for your legendary, and more versatile, I agree.
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Jun 21, 2023 22:09
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After spending way too much time trying to fix GW2 from running poorly, it appears it was mouse related polling issue. Apparently this is common in GW2. If your mouse's polling rate (or Report Rate) is set too high (mine was 1000) it can sink your FPS. Changed the mouse polling/report rate to 250, and it seemed to fix the issue. Polling/report rate is different from DPI, it's just a setting you can toggle in your mouse software settings. Hope this helps someone if they're having mega FPS loss and can't pin down why. AmbientParadox posted:
Dagger Necro is a lot of fun. A Weaver/Tempest alt could also benefit from it. Who knows, if Quickness Dead Eye becomes a thing on June 27th, there's another potential dagger build to try.
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Jun 22, 2023 09:54
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Maybe I missed a previous post about it, but Alac Heal Druid has been nerfed into oblivion. Hopefully this gets corrected soon, but you can see Mukluk during his stream - who loves Druid (and I do, too) - sinking into despair as he realizes Druid's alacrity/boon output has been decimated. It's as if they didn't play test it at all. He's sitting at 100% boon duration and can't keep alacrity up. https://twitch.tv/videos/1857171920?t=7303s Maybe there's some new Druid meta spec that none of us are aware yet, which may work around the issue, but so far, it's not looking good. Back to Healbrand I guess. Jedah fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Jun 27, 2023 |
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Jun 27, 2023 21:42
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Mailer posted:Really glad I got talked out of druid and into hb. Mukluk did a follow up segment about the new Alac Heal Druid, it's pretty depressing: https://twitch.tv/videos/1857483345?t=1106s When he breaks it down, it makes you wonder - did anyone bother play testing this? He's at 100% boon duration, and he can't maintain Alacrity, or many of the other buffs Druid previously provided. Heal Alac Mech is the clear pick now.
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Jun 28, 2023 06:45
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I'd posted some Mukluk clips, but discovered the links were breaking on mobile. Here's Mukluk's thoughts on the new class changes in the patch. This is well worth a watch. He covers Druid (his main) and several other PvE support classes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_FPtsRo118
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Jun 28, 2023 15:22
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:I feel like Anet has a widely different view from the playerbase when it comes to boons, Anet seems to think it's fine for a new intended support build to have 20-50% uptime on boons with full boon duration and all utility slots used, while they also create supports that have 100% uptime on many boons with much less investment needed and it's obvious which one the playerbase is going to bring everytime. Totally agreed, and it seems Mukluk has a similar opinion. Anet has designed boons in PvE in such a way that support builds are now mandatory for content, but the goalpost to be a successful support build keeps changing (and in a negative way). If your group could be doing triple their damage, and taking significantly less damage because of boon application, that's something PvE players will dig in deep in order to accomplish. That genie is never going back into the bottle. Just make Alac/Quick baseline skills for PvE for support classes. Tweak the numbers so it's harder to obtain 100% boon uptime in PvP. That seems like a good place to start. More PvE players will want to play support builds in general, and more groups will successfully clear content. Anet should be incentivizing players to be excited about support builds, not disincentivizing them. Okay, sure - so a few individual classes would need to be tuned for balance reasons, but I feel like the positives still outweigh the negatives. What we have now is an entire class identity being sacrificed just to be a boon provider.
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Jun 28, 2023 16:05
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Mukluk made a support heal Druid build: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YESqj6sP7Q It doesn't provide Alac, but it does provide a lot of boons and emergency heal skills. It's sort of like a stand-in heal scourge. While his healing build is quite strong, I'd still say it's situational, either you're:
I tried pugging today as just "Heal Druid" with no Alac, and immediately got push back, so that probably isn't a great idea.
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Jun 29, 2023 02:00
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Did y'all see the newest patch notes? Didn't see this posted yet, apologies if it's a repeat: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/132961-june-27-balance-follow-ups/ quote:Scourge
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Jun 30, 2023 19:54
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Meowywitch posted:I just want to be a witch. Whichever class is the witchiest. Necro? Harbinger, Scourge, Reaper are kinda witchy. Power Reaper is super strong and cozy. Can’t go wrong there. Harbinger is arguably closest to a witch class. It's a witch class with guns. They brew elixirs. That's pretty witchy. You also could argue Druid is "earth-witchy" but, unless you're playing DPS Druid, I cannot in good faith recommend going down that rabbit hole. Jedah fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Jul 1, 2023 |
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Jul 1, 2023 04:29
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Here's a fairly recent video about a witchy class, Harbinger. Looks like a fun, high-damage, condition build using dagger, pistol, and tons of elixirs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4D5Ud-LYCg No idea how the latest patch updates will impact this, though. Everything is kind of up in the air balance-wise.
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Jul 1, 2023 17:08
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Condi Virtuoso may as well be dropping pianos on enemies, it's benching 41k right now and feels totally busted. After Alac Mirage got nerfed, I repurposed my gear for Condi Virtuoso instead. Even with exotic gear and only a handful of ascended gear, it's still super strong. If you're looking for a solid ranged DPS class, I highly recommend it.
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Jul 5, 2023 16:49
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CODChimera posted:People in game were saying DE, which I assume is deadeye, was op I want to try Power Quickness Deadeye next, although it's as durable as a napkin, it's still pumping out 40k as a boon DPS. The fact you can run it in pure Berserker/Assassin gear is mildly infuriating, since my Druid is forced to have literally 100% boon duration and her Alacrity still falls off. CMC and his merry band of balance devs are not very good at this.
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Jul 6, 2023 05:08
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where the red fern gropes posted:the company literally cannot stop shooting themselves in the foot New thread title? Also, have y'all read the official GW2 forums? It's such a mixture of strong emotions, great ideas, detailed player feedback, data/logs being posted, etc - and Anet responds to basically none of it. lol
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Jul 11, 2023 14:19
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Mailer posted:I just learned they apparently nerfed the turtle? I don't even think they're intentionally shooting that foot. I think they typed "Balance all the things!" into chatgpt and that's what we got. Just some weird random assortment of changes that create issues that didn't need to be solved. MightyTeapot may be a bit responsible for heal scourge getting nerfed into oblivion, he'd been singing the praises of how broken the class was for months (if not years). The devs are friendly with him and frequent his chat, so he definitely has their ear. It became a trademark build of his, and for good reason - it was ridiculously powerful. Similarly, the devs are probably watching Lord Hizen's content, since he routinely breaks the game. The amount of solo PvE content he cleared as Mirage was hilarious and busted. He made a video about stomping everything with the siege turtle, too. Actually a lot of his builds are still viable, he always finds a way to break something, and we love him for it. I can't explain many of the other changes. Rangers are still furious about the Alac Heal Druid changes, and I'm no exception, but we're so close to July 17th - I want to see how things play out after the patch. It is not an exaggeration to say that I'm one of (maybe) a handful of heal Druids I've still seen in public games. Folks are abandoning ship and playing Healbrand, Heal Mechanist, or Condi Druid instead.
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Jul 11, 2023 18:33
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Actuarial Fables posted:I've been running heal druid in fractals/raids and honestly it hasn't been as earth-shattering as I thought it would be. It's definitely more effort to maintain alacrity and you're unable to do so out of combat, but for the most part it hasn't changed how I play. There's some definite issues (having to spam CA and pet skills/swaps to maintain boons means they might be on cooldown when you need them), but it's not as unusable as people say. The 33% increase in base alacrity will help, but I think they'll have to do something more to make it attractive. Nice, that's genuinely awesome to hear. Outside of raids, it seems like Druid was such an underplayed class for the longest time, maybe that's why we got Condi Druid to attract new folks. I'm using this Snow Crows build since it was recently updated. Been practicing their CA form rotation a lot, using the same gear, infusions, etc. To your point about Alacrity, Druid has become my highest APM class by far, even beating out Virutoso and Spellbreaker. Generating as much Alacrity as possible is a lot of button pressing, that's for sure. I think that's why there was an earth-shattering response from the community. Heal Druid used to be super cozy to play, you'd drop some spirits down and focus on using the right skills at the right time. Now, it's a ton of work - it's a lot of buttons to press, boons to upkeep, there's a tight window of Alacrity where it can fall off, and there are some encounters where the CA bar just doesn't charge up quickly enough. It's also weird to have a strict "rotation" with CA form just to maintain Alacrity. In contrast, Mechanist presses a Mech Command button from time to time for Alac. Bladesworn uses an attack which triggers Alac in a gigantic radius. Why is something so easy for certain classes, but so difficult for Druid? It's guaranteed to scare folks away. It's bad design. Jedah fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 19:09
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Actuarial Fables posted:Given the history of CA's buffs, I feel that it's not too weird for there to be a rotation or a need to constantly duck into CA (used to be to maintain the GotL unique buff, then to maintain might, now it's both might and alacrity). The length of time you are in CA just for buffs, though, is definitely weird. For me, an Alac rotation could make sense if other classes had to put in similar effort to achieve their goals. An Analogy: If the goal is to get to the top of the building, Druids are forced to walk up the stairs, while other classes (Mechanist, Firebrand, Bladesworn, Deadeye, etc.) can take the elevator/escalator. For example: post-patch, I played my Alac DPS Mechanist and applied Alac without even thinking about it. I made sure the Mech stood on top of me/the squad, and the character has approx. 62% boon duration with buffs. I'm (slightly) embarrassed to admit that even with auto-casting my Mech command skills, Alacrity uptime was fine in strike missions. No one noticed any gaps in Alacrity downtime. With Druid, there are times you're just boned and can't easily access CA form, and praying that your Alacrity won't fall off. Isn't that, you know, kind of a massive red flag? I like your idea for the Alacrity trait - that could be a step in the right direction. Or what if particular weapon skills/combos, like our Staff skill 5 + 3 combo applied Alacrity? Or casting Warhorn skill 5? Better question, when did Guild Wars 2 become Boon Wars 2? Can't we just click a button and move on with our lives. Why do boons have to become the focal point of all these conversations? I'm just as tired of it as the next person, but it's a necessity in the end game.
Jedah fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 12, 2023 22:07
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Adhesive Gamin posted:Boons have always been strong, but I suspect the average player is running into groups that want proper comps more often due to EoD pushing people into Strikes and the Dragon's End dps check. Agreed, I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s plaguing the end game - in my experience. Maybe allow the Jade bot’s offensive/defensive protocols into instances to help narrow the boon gap, that would give more accessibility to alac/quickness, and folks wouldn’t be so obsessed with achieving 100% boon uptime. I say this because ironically, classes need quickness and alac on themselves just to achieve their full boon uptime in a squad. The protocols would require some tuning, but it’s a start. Everyone might cry “power creep!” - But that’s already happening anyway, especially once all the weapons are unlocked. I’m all about making the game accessible and inclusive and this whole boon thing needs to be put to bed. Isn’t releasing an expansion a perfect time to reset everything, and to go back to the drawing board?
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Jul 13, 2023 13:44
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Thank you Ra Ra Rasputin, that was pretty much my sentiment, too. That's why I used the analogy earlier between granting boons, and people trying to travel to the top of a building. Some classes have to walk up the stairs, while others take the elevator. Their destination is the same, but the amount of effort they put in is vastly different. It is objectively bad when an Alac DPS Mechanist can auto-cast their Alac-granting skills and keep pace with a Druid's Alacrity output, and the Druid is working ten times as hard. Not only is the Druid working ten times as hard, it's also removing choice and strategic decision making. Did you need to cast Glyph of the Stars in CA form, and suddenly save the team from a wipe? Whoops, you just blew your CA form on granting Alacrity, so now you've gotta wait for it to recharge before it's available. But wait, it gets even worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BAZp5ncuNQ
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Jul 13, 2023 17:22
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..btt posted:That makes sense. There's a lot of rough edges around higher-end pve. Like getting any feedback whatsoever on your performance without using 3rd party tools. Agreed. It seems very strange that on the one hand, CMC and the dev team are actively, rapidly balancing the game around providing specific roles/boons (ex. Alac DPS, Quick Heal, Alac Heal, etc.), but we still have to download a third party add-on and know how to configure it/use it, just to monitor our own performance. They're releasing an expansion, would it kill them to add an in-game, baked-in squad boon table and DPS meter? I mentioned this a few pages ago, but there's also no "training ground" for practicing DPS rotations (assuming you are new), maintaining boon uptime, etc. and yet you're expected to know these things to perform well in the end game. The training golem is a good start, just add some extra options to it. If Blish can make a DDR mini-game to teach class rotations, Anet can certainly do something. I dunno, add some quest rewards so people had some incentive to go there and try it out. Given the lack of game-provided tools/resources, is it really a surprise that there's such a giant gap between the highly skilled hardcore person running CMs, and the casual person who just needs to kill Minister Li in a strike mission to get their turtle? This is why I spend most of my time training strikes or helping new folks, a little bit of coaching and explanation goes a long way. That "aha" moment when a group of brand new people dominates Whisper of Jormag feels very rewarding. Jedah fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 20:12
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Deformed Church posted:I mean, maybe bickering is the wrong word, but there's obviously frustration and friction in buiding groups, because there's no way of identifying yourself as a certain role outside of going "i'm this role, do you need this role" or "we need this role, are you this role" and then the subsequent "do you have space for me yes/no" and cycle of rejection or failure or whatever, that would be solved in most MMOs because I would just click the "i do this, put me in a group that needs this" button. The interactions you get from playing the game together are not the same kind of interactions as you get from figuring out if you're even able to play the game together. Yes, 100% with you on this. I was hoping the expansion would improve the ancient LFG system (can you even call it that?) and implement something similar to what you're describing. To compensate for how bad LFG is, I made separate characters to fit any group role. There's a bigger discussion to be had here about the Commander tag, too. It should be free. If they won't go for that, throw the Commander a bone and give them some small, extra request rewards. Commanders have to sort boons in groups, kick idle people, advertise for party members, call out mechanics, often drop ascended food/banners/buffs, etc. They're herding cats and doing a huge favor for the group. Why is this very basic function locked behind a high gold price, and having tokens from WvW? Silly.
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Jul 15, 2023 15:33
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ptroll posted:That said it absolutely shouldn't be required for raids and strikes, everyone should be able to make raid squads with markers and stuff. Agreed. I know next to nothing about PvP/WvW, so I don't have an opinion there - I should have clarified that I was just talking about a free Commander tag for PvE. Catgirl Al Capone posted:yeah it's kind of messed up that if i set up a casual strike squad in lfg i can't move people into the party compositions myself by default This, exactly this. Deformed Church posted:Commander tag also has a lot of social/psychological utility even for basic stuff, I know you can technically form groups with a mentor tag or none but having a tag makes it noticeably easier to entice people into bounties and overflow map instances for metas. You're on to something here - why not just change the properties of the Mentor tag to have the same abilities as a Commander tag, but it's exclusively for PvE? Commander tag could be more of a WvW thing then. I know exactly what you mean about tagging up and herding cats, getting into adventures - I just want greater accessibility so more folks can do this, too.
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Jul 15, 2023 19:51
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xZAOx posted:HoT story is much better than vanilla, but vanilla zones I much prefer. Vanilla zones I always find fun with hearts and puzzles and exploring. Yes, Tangled Depths in HoT is one of the most polarizing zones I've seen in a video game. Some folks passionately swear by it and love it, even calling it peak map design, while others despise it. Personally I avoided it as much as possible after completing it once. The other HoT zones are great, though. That being said, Tangled Depths can be fun if you can catch a Hero Point train in LFG, and a commander will help a squad of 50-ish folks navigate the zone using their Raptor/Glider. The same could be said for the Chak Gerent meta event, as long as you have a squad/commander with a tag and can stick near the group, it's a fun event and not too stressful to navigate.
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Jul 17, 2023 15:06
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whydirt posted:The actual play environement of Tangled Depths is cool, but the minimap for it is actively harmful for navigating in it. My favorite thing about New Kaieng is going to questing zone, Garden Heights, around where they introduce the jade bot, it has a bench, a ton of jade batteries, and offensive/defensive protocols in close proximity. A very good pit stop to stock up on 2 hours of open world buffs before doing a bunch of non-instanced content.
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Jul 17, 2023 16:38
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jokes posted:Griffon and Raptors are the Only Mount for me. Unless I'm forced to use the others, I'm only using my chocobo or my griffon. For as many gripes as I might share with in our thread, the Griffon has gotta be my favorite mount in any video game ever. Jealous of your raptor/chocobo, that's an awesome skin. I'll never understand how a 10 year old MMO still has the best dang mount system. Does anything else even come close? Bunny jump + Jade bot glider boost + Griffon jet plane across the map feels amazing. I mean, all the mounts are good, roller beetle has a place in my heart, too. I can't say enough positive stuff about the mounts. Jedah fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Jul 18, 2023 |
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Jul 18, 2023 00:03
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New patch day. How's it been for everyone so far? I haven't experimented with Alacrity on Heal Druid yet, but Mukluk is streaming on twitch , finding bugs, and testing stuff, if you're curious. xZAOx posted:This system is "only" 6 years old as someone else said, but in general, because the genre decided to stop innovating after the EQ/WoW style made so much money. Thanks, that makes sense, good explanation. That's the one area of the game where GW2 is untouchable, 11/10 and my favorite - mounts. It sounds like Skyscale will be more accessible in the expansion, that's a move they should've done a long time ago. SlothBear posted:This and the jackal superlaunch have extended my enjoyment of this game by so many hours. Oh dang, this is so freaking cool - I have to try this now, somehow I never knew about it.
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Jul 18, 2023 20:11
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Ra Ra Rasputin posted:This seems to be most people's experience with the new CM and my own experience too Even an apex predator and spec living at the top of the food chain, Condi Virtuoso, cowers beneath the power of Anet's poor design choices. We had a guildie who kept dying during this, we just let her get it all out on discord and didn't even say a word. Totally get it.
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Jul 18, 2023 23:06
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Truga posted:isn't that just power mechanist I feel like everyone should try Mechanist. Being inclusive to players is so important, and it's a class that folks of varying skill/ability levels can play, pickup, and quickly enjoy. As someone who had a very serious injury in the past, and had to undergo physical therapy, I'm thinking of folks who aren't able to perform a lot of actions per minute, maybe they require low APM, maybe they have a disability, arthritis, or multitude of others things, etc. For this reason it's one of my all-time favorite classes.
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Jul 19, 2023 23:52
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Blockhouse posted:
Yup, Bladesworn is super strong. I'm terrible at it and play Spellbreaker instead, but it's still good. Check out Lord Hizen, a ridiculously good Bladesworn player, and an expert at breaking the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzYb_Dsc58M&t=73s
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Jul 20, 2023 17:53
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Just saw this and I might have to try Catalyst now. I know basically nothing about Elementalist, but this looks pretty fool proof for a beginner. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jGrKrEedag
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Jul 21, 2023 15:13
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 00:49 |
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I was unemployed for like a month and that's how I got my Skyscale. Not even exaggerating. Make getting the Skyscale easier, but leave in the good parts, like when when there's a baby skyscale, and you play the flute for it. That was super cute and has to stay.
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Jul 21, 2023 17:48
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