Sarrs.4831

I've been thinking it'd be great to get a WvW legendary necklace with an extra enrichment slot so the mode actually has some decent rewards.

I'm quietly kinda hoping that the 'unannounced project' is Guild Wars 3, as a soft sequel in the same vein as PoE2. GW2 has a progression structure which you would be able to comfortably layer a new game onto.

I thought the look that he gave at the end of the trailer kind of implies that he knows whatever voice is speaking to him is not to be believed.

I grabbed the guild cape. It's cute. Not sure if I'll get the big cape.

> @"Burnfall.9573" said:

> **PvP only??**

> **WvW excluded??**

> -WvW is as important as PvP, why treat it with partial treatment with unsympathetic intolerance?-

> 'If you change nothing, nothing will change'

> WvW need those changes; in fact Anet owes WvW years of past due treatments of PvP to WvW.

> Instead of treating all game modes with all players fair, Anet instead force them to chose or else Punish them to deal with Toxicity at its maximum in WvW?

> Rinse+Repeat.....History repeats itself once again.

> As a reminder; **'If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad'**

The PvP exclusive changes? Are you saying that WvW needs *these* changes, or attention in general?

I'm not sure if many of these changes are particularly relevant to WvW. Maybe I don't play in the right groups but condi thieves and engineers aren't oppressive in the same way as in PvP. Rampage Warriors are a pita roaming though for sure.

Wouldn't be surprised if they're just not digging in to WvW changes until we get Alliances.

It might be kind of a weird perspective but I appreciate that the content's kinda slim. It gives me time to go and clean up all the stuff I missed in LS4 and PoF. Not at all invested in the story so far and I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse; being free to not care about something is a curious paradox when there's plenty of other things to do in the game.

Only problem I have with it is that I need to do a bit of the new content to unlock the home instance node and the new reward tracks lol and it's like... The story's a drag I just wanna do my other stuff, and I have the resources to put down on the home instance nodes.

Assuming that I'd start in January, and Alliances have already been released;

Short term (by March):

- Legendary neckpiece; add extra enrichment slots by hitting Mithril and Diamond. Big prestige reward for lots of effort invested into WvW. Concentric rings on the ground based on your metal level

- Improve reward rates; 30% would work well, I think. For WXP, track progress, and pips.

Med term (as they come):

- Add new masteries

- Remaster Golems and Dune Buggies to use mount tech

- Add new 'vehicle' siege which uses mount tech to make them feel like vehicles

- Unique bosses for each tower and keep

- Add strong incentives for winning skirmishes

Long term (by the end of the year):

- Legendary armor sets

- Third Borderlands map

The problem with "how would you fix WvW" is that a WvW designer can't _really_ fix WvW. Class design is part of the skills design team which is a team you collaborate with, but not you. Adding new especs would do a lot to reinvigorate the game, but that's not your job. The only tools you really have to try to improve WvW are objectives and siege, but those don't really have an impact on the game's fundamentals; siege can be seen as more of a hindrance than a blessing, unless you radically rethink what siege is for.

Can't tell what population rebalances are needed until we see the impacts of Alliances. I do think Alliances will have a substantial positive impact on the game, but in what form that takes, I don't know.

A while ago I thought a Golemancer spec for Engineers, which has a permanent Golem pet to replace the toolbelt, might be fun. You'd build a pet out of whichever utilities you use and it'll do its thing; you can command it to use Utility toolbelt skills. Whichever elite skill you take builds the 'base' of the golem; Elixir gives you a melee buffing golem, Supply Drop gives you a midrange golem with guns and flamethrowers, Mortar Kit gives you an artillery golem. Maybe you could have a GMaster trait that lets you hop into the mech and control it personally, like Taimi does, and you play like Dva.

Scruffy was just CC spam. Not really a fun fight. I like having hard boss fights tho tbh.

What if Balthazar died by being tickled. Not much a god of war, is it? The game should expect you to be a competent player if your character is supposed to be competent, I think. The game shouldn't be shy about saying "hey you should pay attention to what's going on, maybe this boss will take you a couple of attempts"; that's fine also, oneshotting every boss makes the story have very little impact, I think.

I totally get it when ANet says "it's really hard to design 'fair' boss fights when there's such a power range in gear". If some of this stuff is too hard, I kinda wonder what kind of gear people are wearing? I totally get it if I'm in a focused set of Ascended gear, fully infused with the correct infusions with a BiS set of sigils and runes, with multiple legendaries and a second Ascended gearset that grants more defensive stats... And the people who are saying 'this stuff is impossible' are in a mishmash of greens and yellows with no stat focus (and there are lots of people who do this!).

> @"Zenix.6198" said:

> At best its a mobility boost while traveling between nodes.

That's really the understatement that bothers me. Moving between nodes is a pretty big part of the game; it's a big enough part that some classes have carved out roles on the back of their ability to move between nodes.

Detection moving to goggles, and goggles gaining Resistance, seems fantastic to me. Stunbreak and resistance with detection as an option makes goggles seem like a really powerful offensive tool for a build that doesn't bother with condi cleanse.

> @"Zenix.6198" said:

> Outside of some rare fringe-case scenarios, this will literally only be used to maybe stack some boons while traversing the map (and praying you dont get into combat while doing so)

Boon-stacking is really, really good though. Tempests with Warhorns could jack up the power of a group drastically. Any Elementalist which previously didn't have RTL slotted can get it now. Not to mention being able to lay certain effects before combat begins and switching weapons before you enter into your 'proper' set (healing effects don't actually put you in combat, and staff heals are great). It'd honestly be insane to let any of these classes do this in PvP; arguably even WvW should prevent it.

> @"Nimon.7840" said:

> Removing cripple application might implicate, that terrifying descent will also proc on soft CC's. Else this feels like a change with no reason behind it.

Insidious Disruption will not cause Torment on soft CCs. That would be two similar-purpose traits on the same tier.

Insidious Disruption sleeper OP. Causes you to apply Torment when you cause a blowout when you level up. Farming Lab has never been so efficient

It's almost a complete waste of time. Only worth doing to unlock the post area, and only worth grabbing the 3 chests for Eitrite Ore in there. The event itself is too easy. Auric Basin is an easy meta but if you get rolled over by one of the enemies that the Armor is supposed to deal with, you just straight up die most of the time. Mordrem units as a whole are dangerous; high-rank snipers and assassins straight up delete players who aren't paying attention. Bjora Marches enemies are not scary even without essences, and essences turn them into a joke. The Icebrood Saga is supposed to be scary and inhospitable, back that up with gameplay. Boneskinner is prime example; it's so weak it gets phased before it can even gank a Vigil soldier, it's a joke.

Ramp up the difficulty and the rewards in each stage of the assault. Cut the duration of the prep phase to 2 minutes and raise the speed you build defenses at. Cut the duration of the defense phase to 4 minutes and forcespawn a champion to attack each shrine (with more added by scaling)(don't be shy about making them _very hard_ champions, we have the essence attunements for a reason). Add a champion defending each of the shrines, and add a champion defending each set of ballistas (again, make them dangerous). Icebrood Colossus you can leave as a pinata, but the event then has to proceed to a full-on assault somewhere; "reinforcements have arrived and are pushing west, escort them to Svanir Fortress XYZ, use DERVs to smash the gates, get inside and murder millions of Svanir and a big boss".

Oh and make the monsters give loot. You give us a shiny +50% Magic Find booster that we need to grind out essence for and then you turn around and tell us that it does nothing for this entire 20 minute long meta-event. What the hell.

It's kinda telling when the best part of the patch isn't the new map or new meta; it's the new daily system that is moving players into specific LS3/4 maps to scale them up and make _those_ metas work. Saidra's Haven and Noran's Homestead were both scaled up to spawn champs when I did them earlier! Immelhoof is deadlier than anything in Icebrood Saga so far and he doesn't send you any creepy whispers.

I've found the best way to keep enemies close is to ignore them. Just keep moving away from your enemy and they'll have a difficult time actually applying pressure without overextending; when they overextend, you kill them.

Picking up the Aberrant essences when you don't have any Quickness feels pretty neato.

The conversion rate from doing the new map is pretty bonkers, you can do the conversion a lot and get tons of whichever LS4 currency you want.

If you're locked for LS3 mats you're SOL I guess.

> @"Rauderi.8706" said:

> Really brings back those Eir vibes, doesn't it? :|

Eir's death happened along the main plotline, at least. This is just a dead end. The whole story of this patch is kind of a dead end.

> @"Knighthonor.4061" said:

> Yes I want this in GW2

> https://www.pinterest.com/pin/206602701642216339/?lp=true

That's literally a Warcraft orc! lol

You can't go on about wanting a unique interpretation of orcs and then take *literal warcraft orcs* and say you want them in GW2!

I'd like a bow. Roleplay as Sylvanas. My preference is short, but long'll do too. Maybe a melee deathshroud that focuses a lot on mobility rather than damage, or even on stealth.

Alternatively, a shield would be great. Goes well aesthetically with the axe and the scepter, a bit weird with dagger though. A counterattack that causes Fear would be fantastic.

Sure it's got a health cost now but it was so ridiculously hard to cast previously with the massive cast time, to the point of being basically unusable unless you were in stealth in rough engagements. The doubled passive is very promising as well; having Signet of Spite and Signet of Undeath active in Shroud from Signets of Suffering is not an unwelcome effect.

There's probably a weird signet build that just keeps regenerating somewhere in there. Full row of Signets (Vamp, Locust, Undeath, x), Signets of Suffering, Unholy Sanctuary and Shrouded Removal to turn Shroud time into healing time, Vital Persistence to improve everything Vamp Signet and Sanctuary are doing... Seems like it could get really silly.

> @"Anchoku.8142" said:

> I wonder how failures will be handled. Will a health shortage trigger Unholy Sanctuary? Will it fail to consume health if it fails to proc on a target?

I know that you can't cause yourself to 'die', so you can't cause Unholy Sanctuary to trigger.

> @"Einlanzer.1627" said:

> Most people seem to be excited by the idea of doing more skill splitting between PvE & PvP, but I'm not sure I share this. It feels a bit like band-aid fixing things that are facets of larger systemic issues. I think it's important to keep a holistic perspective on combat balance across all three game modes and avoid letting them become too siloed. Many things get missed when there's a hyperfixation on balance in one mode or another. There are a few examples I can think of right off-hand:

I used to think that little or no skill-splitting was a good strategy. I'm not confident it's the best approach going forward, especially if we want to have a reasonably balanced WvW vs PvE content.

> Historically, balance changes have been more concerned with PvP (even though PvP balance isn't particularly good). This has a few effects, but one obvious one is the assumption of shorter engagement times, which diminishes the role of the #1 skill and enhances the role of cooldowns in an encounter. One of the big "misses" here is the relative balancing of auto-attacks, which carry a lot more weight in PvE than they do in PvP. Since the auto-attack on a weapon sets the baseline damage pressure of a weapon in a longer engagement, a weapon with an undertuned #1 skill will **absolutely** underperform in PvE while it doesn't necessarily in PvP. This is something that at times has gone years seemingly without being noticed or corrected (such as Thief's P/P or Ranger's Longbow) and in some cases is still a problem in the game (such as Elementalist staff). The issue is there doesn't seem to be any coherent design philosophy around how this is balanced and managed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd be surprised.

Is auto-attack balancing a fair point of analysis, though? Should we be expecting ANet to perfectly balance *every single weapon* to be equally viable with others, when making sure there's at least *one* balanced weapon per class or espec would already provide between 18 and 27 viable playstyles for each class? Even that number, just looking at it, seems crazy to try to keep balanced.

It's interesting as well that you bring up specific weapons with issues. PP is an open-world, self-might-stacking weapon-set which shouldn't necessarily be viable for endgame content for the fact. Longbow has a specific mechanic that *does* let it produce high damage under the right conditions, but PvE content's stacking strategy rarely provides for that condition (and also worth considering that Soulbeast overpopulates their rotation with the right Beastmode). If these were weapons that were supposed to do specific jobs, like a Deadeye's Rifle, and they just plain didn't fill that role, that'd be one thing - but these are weapons on classes which have classically had other, very good options.

> Other examples are the efficacy of control effects & stealth which are also balanced around PvP and therefore the assumption of short engagements with quick deaths/quick resets. This leaves most control effects as well as Stealth feeling underpowered in PvE. Stealth should be a fun strategic utility in PvE when instead it's mostly just used to get big damage on an opening attack. Shouldn't there just be a general design rule that control effects and Stealth last x% longer in PvE than they do in PvP to accommodate the difference between mobs & players, and wouldn't that help reduce the need to try to balance individual skills between PvE and PvP without touching their damage components? After all, shouldn't mob statistics be modeled after player statistics so skills can work in the same way for both?

Stealth already has this split, I think; to the best of my knowledge, stealth-granting effects will always grant one second less in PvP/WvW than in PvE. Even then, knowing how to generate tall stacks of stealth and use those stacks to skip mobs is a treasured skill in PvE and fundamental to a lot of skipping and boss soloing.

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis in general when control on mobs does precious little. There are so few mobs that actually play evasively to a degree that you'd want to control them, and usually this is more annoying than something you think about too heavily. Does it matter whether Executioner's Scythe lasts 2 seconds or 4 seconds when the Soul Spiral immediately afterwards will kill any normal or 50% any veteran mob anyway?

> Secondly, a huge portion of the unhealthy power creep in the game revolves around two things - a.) the over-proliferation of boons, and b.) the mechanical changes made to conditions since launch. In my opinion, these are not PvP issues but are game-wide issues. Condition damage scaling is too high with durations that are too long, so there's a reliance on overpowered mechanics to combat it. For example, most condi-clearing skills and traits are overtuned as a way of dealing with high condi damage and Resistance negates all condi damage instead of doing something sensible like reducing it by 50%. In PvP, this forces players to build around being able to deal with incoming conditions. In PvE, it means that too much condi damage goes to waste, making it generally inferior to Power builds rather than simply a bit more specialized like it should be.

Boon proliferation being an issue in PvE is an interesting idea that I am not sure about.

Condition damage and durations being high is a feature, not a bug. Epidemic more or less requires long condition durations for any PvE content to be challenging.

> It really feels like most of need for skill splitting between PvE and PvP is to deal with issues that are more foundational and needing to be corrected either with mob mechanics/AI or with generalized differences such as the control one above.

But do people *want* challenging open-world monsters with complex AI? Even if you implement that complex AI, won't the differences between the power levels of those monsters and the players create a different balancing problem and just put you back at square one?

While I'd like it if moving legendaries between characters was a bit less painful, they're ultimately not there for the convenience. They're there for appearance.

I'm just hoping they fix the bugs, give sPvP its proper implementation (I thought it'd be quite straightforward but apparently it isn't; not knocking the devs here, I'm sure they're doing their best), and add a toggle to automatically change you into a specific build when you enter WvW/PvE/PvP.

I have no idea what to make of any of the monetization; I'm honestly not particularly stressed.

> @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> I have problems with viewing vistas. The camera movement when showing the scenery makes me really nauseated. I just close my eyes before I start the view and count to 10.

Personally I just never watch them. I don't get sick or anything I just don't care lol. Just hit escape to get out of them as soon as they start and you get your map completion objective done.