Cyninja.2954

> @"Obfuscate.6430" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > If this is just about appearance, what exactly is the reason that what we already have: aka permanent transformation tonics, is not sufficient? > > > > You are not going to get a new race this way. > > You are not going to get a new story-line this way. > > > > All I see are detriments to the current permanent tonics and even worse: at a severe development resource cost for near no use. > > I feel like somewhat what I wrote was not read, or is maybe hard to understand? . I am sorry it is confusing. Let me try to summarize. > > The ELITE makeover kit changes your character's skin only - that is the artwork used to cover the frame used to animate your character. > The ELITE makeover kit's options are based on, or inspired by things ALREADY in the story. (Awakened, Branded, Scars, Tattoos) So in short: you want story themed skin tones with specific depictions of potentially story related elements. Could be doable, yet how visual would this actually be? Around 90% of all visible skin on most characters is covered by armor, unless a player specifically decides to not use armor. Even the most revealing armors and outfits cover large portions of a players base skin. > @"Obfuscate.6430" said: > The ELITE makeover kit permanently changes your characters appearance. Tonics DO NOT permanently change your character's appearance and prevent you from using your mount and you can not customize it. Infusions must be fused with your trinkets, can have stats you don't like, can not be previewed and sometimes does not work with all hair, requires RNG to acquire or are bound to achievements, can be expensive and have disappointing results. The ELITE makeover kit DOES NOT REPLACE tonics or infusions but provides a unique total body makeover without any of the above draw backs. No, it provides an additional layer of work which would take a significant more work THAN those other 2 options. Tonics work the way they do because of the limitations in place. I guarantee you, if making tonics work with mounts and armor or outfits was work load wise feasible, it would have been done. You are assuming that what you are suggesting would work better than existing customization options, would take less work to develop and would bring less detriments with it. Very questionable assumption. > @"Obfuscate.6430" said: > The end result is more revenue for Arenanet and more options for players. Revenue alone is insignificant if it is not put into perspective of the workload required behind it. Let us assume this does generate more revenue even against competing similar work tasks, like extra faces, skin tones, haircuts, etc., you are still assuming this will generate worthwhile revenue when put in perspective of the work it would take. I could off the top of my head name 5 things which would generate a TON of revenue, which are just as unfeasible because to implement those would take a studio 3-4 times the size or more of what Arenanet currently has on staff. That does not make those ideas bad, it simply makes them unrealistic.

AoC is entering alpha this year. That's still a LONG way off from a release. So long that it might not even happen in 2022. The game does look quite nice, especially if the intended game play loop works out. NW was just now postponed a 3rd time to August 31st, 2021. The common experience of games which are continually postponed as well as Amazon Studio games is: at best mediocre products in both cases. Not saying people can't get hyped about it, some of the players from my WvW guild certainly are too, but really curb your expectations because so far, going by development red flags, this game is not out to be the groundbreaking experience many believe it to be. Pair that with mediocre betas last year and well Amazon Games has a lot of work to do. That said, sure a bit better PR would go a long way Guild Wars 2 EoD wise, something in between the time-span of HoT and PoF, not to long, not to short. Doubtful that NW or AoC will have the great effect on GW2 people believe. FF14 and ESO are currently direct competitors and those games have released trailers recently for this year content updates which were well received.

If this is just about appearance, what exactly is the reason that what we already have: aka permanent transformation tonics, is not sufficient? You are not going to get a new race this way. You are not going to get a new story-line this way. All I see are detriments to the current permanent tonics and even worse: at a severe development resource cost for near no use.

Simple answer for me: We know when the next balance patch will be latest: with EoD and introduction of new elites specializations. I can wait that long especially given the hype we might get IF new elites get previewed. So while I would love to have seen 1-2 balance patches in the meantime, I can live without. Bots and hackers on the other hand grow bolder and when unchecked spread further and further. Besides it looking bad to new players and making the game look bad overall, it negatively affects players in game modes (especially hackers). Have Arenanet do a massive ban wave, if only to increase revenue and force these players to repurchase new accounts, then ban those new accounts as well and just keep making money off of game purchases.

What are all these changes supposed to achieve? There will nearly always be a "best to use" rune for a specific purpose. In case of power damage while crit capped it's scholar for most classes even with some benefits versus some select other runes. There are specific cases where certain runes are better than scholar, most often related to achieving the crit cap, in other cases this is achieved via assassins gear over berserker. Nerf scholar and all that will happen is that a different rune will take its place as "best to use for power damage when crit capped". It's nearly impossible to achieve perfect balance to make multiple runes equally desirable unless you give them the exact same stats and make the 6 piece bonus irrelevant in all scenarios (because perfectly balancing this bonus would be impossible). Instead of nerfing scholar they should rather add 1 or 2 more rune sets which have the same baseline stats bonuses (Power and Ferocity) which would not achieve a diversion from having a best in slot rune, but would open up some variety for players who want non perfect alternatives (or even adequate alternatives for not <90% hitpoints). Then there is the issue of reaching the crit cap. If runes with precision were buffed, you eventually phase out assassins gear, one of the few gear combinations which some classes use next to berserker. Which would then again lead to complaints about lack of stat diversity on gear. Perfect balance is not needed for runes and sigils though imo. Why? Because PvE is not the only game mode in this game and not every rune/sigil has to be made desirable for PvE. We already have imperfect balance for PvE which is fine.

> @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > > > What a short sighted thing to say. > > > > 1. Rewards and progression are not the same. Having meaningful progression in place, both in terms of reward structure as well as player development, instead of making everything available day 1 is useful in extending a contents lifecycle > > 2016-2021 is way more than one day, initial time gate are ok if not too crazy but as the content gets older at some point its better to favor the access for newer player rather than lock them down behin a no longer necessary timegate > Again, access would not be affected by your suggestion. I added in my edit how your suggestion would not affect this in the slightest in my earlier reply. Gating will happen based around necessity or perceived necessity of the community. This is unrelated to access of items. > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > 2. You are assuming fun and enjoyment of content is binary. A "you either enjoy it or not" state which players attain nearly immediately. You could not be more wrong. I would make the claim that many players find enjoyment in content they never expected simply because they were forced to try it. > > kinda is though if you are not interested in raid at 751st liencounter you gonna show your middle finger and say i'm out of it. if you're enjoying raiding you gonna continue en enjoy clearing bosses. i never saw anyone going to raid saying i need nothing from it and don't like it but come anyway. I've seen tons of players get increased enjoyment from raids week after week as they progress through multiple stages of experience. Guess we have had very different experiences with new players here. > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > 3. I would want players who look forward to raiding weekly, instead of grinding out their rewards in a huge upfront grind, then never touch the content again. You still seem not to understand or remember how those first 750 LI felt or went for you. > > well I started my first armor well after haing 750li as I wasn't interested in one until tanking so i'm not best to talk about that. but I wouldn't have raid for the sole purpose of making a legy armor in a first place especially if it takes 9-12 month :# > Fair enough. Still I believe having a meaningful mid to long-term progression in place is the best approach for many different players. > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > 4. You can doubt all you want. Do the math of how many LI/LD are available weekly, divide 750 LI and 150 LD by that amount, adjust for players not clearing all raid bosses from week 1 and you'll realize I am right. FYI 900/25 = 36/4 = 9. That's the timeframe it takes for someone to "finish" the requirements of LI/LD. That's also the timeframe the game has to make people fall in love with the content or not. Most players do not start out with a static or similar group. These 9 months, or more, are in place to ease players into the content, make them find other players to enjoy this content with and look past the rewards, wgile spreading out the rewards and achievements out evenly between them. Unlike your suggestion which upfronts all rewards in a meaningless super grind which dies none of the above. > > i never heard of players that weren't enjoying raid at LI 1-749 and stated to enjoy it out of nowhere at 750th, maybe you can redirect me to some so i can understand better why they change their opinion of raid after doing them 36 times and see no changes to it :p > alike any content you have a pretty strong opinion about it very quickly and being forced to repeat it over to get something out of will help you not enjoying it But the content is not the same. Each and every boss fight and the challenge to overcome it poses a new opportunity for players to enjoy content, build new friendships and improve at the game. Again, I've seen new players take great enjoyment slowly battling through each and every encounter, while improving the coherence of the group/squad and social bonds with the guild. We even have multiple personal accounts of how players got into raiding and slowly started to appreciate it, even from players who were very skeptical of raiding to begin with. > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > Your suggestion basically shortcuts reward progression in an assumption that players at the end of this reward progression will be at or in the same state as you are or other longterm raiders. Meanwhile you forget or ignore all the developments players make and experience during this time period which you are trying to cut short. Your assumption, and thus resulting suggestion, is flawed and not reflective of player behavior or experience. > > no my suggestion is to get rewarded for what you do and not how long you wait for it because I know it's better to encourage player that want to raid (for the raid part of it) to get in quickly instead of having them saying "F it no matter what I do I won't be able to go in descent group for three month" (which could help the community grow by joining it) rather than trying to keep player in for 9-12 month that will anyway that will tell you "F it i'm out of it since i got my 750LI" when you ask them to join(which in the end bring nothing positive to the raid community, except having a fake increase of the player base, as they leave it as soon as they can). > Any players who wants to raid will find groups not via LI or LD or even KP. > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > The ideal would be to have a every leg being available in any content/gamemode to avoid players being dragged in a content they don't like which is not enjoyable for both youself and the group around you. Sure, but that is a different issue and needs not be resolved with butchering the reward structure of one of the niche modes. I do agree though that offering alternatives to players who do not want to raid could be beneficial at this point in time.

> @"Fangoth.4503" said: > slow progression is straight bad as: > 1 - it forces players that don't enjoy the content and not willing to progress to access their objectives (leggy armor) to fill lfg for 9-12 month when they could just spend a week doing escort cairn mo over and over then go back to their favourite content. > 2 - it forces new player willing to learn and do a boss 10 times a day to improve to still have to wait 3 month to have the li/kp that prove they killed 10 times the boss 3 month ago. > > What do you rather have in your group? player that are willing to improve or players that don't care about their rotation and about mechs but want their legendary armor but are forced to stay forever due to the gated content??? > > And I personally doubt it take any sain person 9-12month to realise if they enjoy raids or not. it take at max a week or so (if not a day)... > What a short sighted thing to say. 1. Rewards and progression are not the same. Having meaningful progression in place, both in terms of reward structure as well as player development, instead of making everything available day 1 is useful in extending a contents lifecycle 2. You are assuming fun and enjoyment of content is binary. A "you either enjoy it or not" state which players attain nearly immediately. You could not be more wrong. I would make the claim that many players find enjoyment in content they never expected simply because they were forced to try it. 3. I would want players who look forward to raiding weekly, instead of grinding out their rewards in a huge upfront grind, then never touch the content again. You still seem not to understand or remember how those first 750 LI felt or went for you. 4. You can doubt all you want. Do the math of how many LI/LD are available weekly, divide 750 LI and 150 LD by that amount, adjust for players not clearing all raid bosses from week 1 and you'll realize I am right. FYI 900/25 = 36/4 = 9. That's the timeframe it takes for someone to "finish" the requirements of LI/LD. That's also the timeframe the game has to make people fall in love with the content or not. Most players do not start out with a static or similar group. These 9 months, or more, are in place to ease players into the content, make them find other players to enjoy this content with and look past the rewards, while spreading out the rewards and achievements evenly between them. Unlike your suggestion which up-fronts all rewards in a meaningless super grind which does none of the above. Your suggestion basically shortcuts reward progression in an assumption that players at the end of this reward progression will be at or in the same state as you are or other long-term raiders. Meanwhile you forget or ignore all the developments players make and experience during this time period which you are trying to cut short. Your assumption, and thus resulting suggestion, is flawed and not reflective of player behavior or experience. > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > well I guess you're playing on NA. EU lfg are mostly made with LI for w1-4 and kp for w5-7 > as you say all boss (except trio) gives kp so doesn't matter if you gives the opportunity to to have more LI as kp will still be a proof of knowing X or Y boss LI and KP both get used as a crutch in searching for a certain quality (mostly experience) in a player. If you remove the time-gate on LI/LD you both remove the necessity and/or probability of players having fought different bosses, being able to grind a single boss essentially, as well as any meaning of LI/LD gating. If LI/LD serve no more purpose in trying to determinate a players experience level, which is already evident for W5-7, of what use are they in making parties? I'm going to let you figure out the rest as we move on from here how the community and LFG searches would react. Again, please move past the obvious reasons and put some consideration in why certain things are being done as well as how changes would affect these issue in the future. Removing LI/LD weekly gating would no NOTHING as far as accessibility for new players is concerned. In case you need an in-game example and similar situation: look at what the removal of KP in fractals did to the LFG. So the entire argument that removing LI/LD weekly caps would in any way benefit this specific situation just goes out the window.

> @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > > > @"The Fear.3865" said: > > > > > @"Fangoth.4503" said: > > > > > 25gold an hour isn't that much anyway. magnetite/gaeting and ascended gear should be weekly. Gold, exotics, li and kp should be per kill so people are not timegated for li/kp and raid income would get a bit closer to pve farms. the biggest issue would be people farming cairn or mo and get 2 gold every 1.5-2 min and i guess it can be countered by reducing the reward if its repeated too often. > > > > > > > > LI should remains weekly rewards, it would be unfair for peepo farming raids for years. > > > > LI should be time-gated otherwise players would just farm the easiest boss over and over. Before you counter me about players currently being able to do that, realize that doing so takes about 3 years for the first legendary armor set. Having LI not timegated to weekly would be harmful to raids. > > not at all, i stopped to raid for the LI long ago, when you reach 750LI and 150LD they are just worthless so it's not an issue having player able to earn them faster and armors would still be timegated behind provisioner token. no harm done to raid at all. > but not having a catchup mech is harmfull for raid as newcomer have their "experience" timegated even though if they kill vg over and over for a week they can reach a level above pug average for this boss You are assuming that there is no value in: - slow progression or gating which can lead to players cooperating over a longer time - overcoming more than 1 boss and learning multiple wings instead of farming a single fight over and over - there is no value in anticipation of rewards which are off in the future I'd say those are some very harmful assumptions for each and any content. Easily witnessed in other areas of this game, say achievements or new maps, where players rush their goals and then abandon the content. The fact that you stopped to care about LI/LD after reaching certain target values, which currently take a minimum of around 9-12 months, is meaningless if you do not attribute any value to the time you spent in acquiring those first LI/LD. What you are essentially saying is you found no value in the initial time you spent on raiding, gained no value from that time and as such the gating should be removed. Removing LI/LD weekly gating is not about the final LI/LD you gained, but the ones at the very beginning. You are off already assuming players will enjoy content and thus continue playing said content while you are taking one of the main reasons why players would engage with said content to begin with which I find very weird.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said: > Second, they were sending mixed messages about that "niche" content. Sure, they were saying that it's the content for the chosen few, but at the same time they were clearly expecting most mainstream PvE players to be funneled into that content. They _wanted_ raids to be popular, and to become **the** endgame for **all** PvE players. So, i believe the "elite" and "for the chosen few" remarks were just kind of PR speech, but not their actual desire. That's pure guess work on your part and in no way reflected in either the initial statement about raids, nor at any point in time. You are making this claim trying to justify your own displeasure with raids and at the same time absolutely not providing ANY facts to support this. Raids being conceptualized as niche was there from the very start. They were literally advertised as challenging group content with the expectation that this type of structure and organization would be required. That speaks for its self. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > First, Anet is always hyperoptimistic about any of their new content. They were praising their build templates as well, if you haven't noticed. You may also not remember, that LS2 was a big success that clearly shown that Anet was fully capable of developing this game without expansion and releasing an expension-level content through LS. And it has been such a "big success" up until the very point they revealed they were working on HoT. If you look at dev statements, it would be very hard to find a part of this game that _isn't_ a success. And yet here we are. Yes a developer praising their work, who would have guessed. Meanwhile LWS2 was followed by nearly 1 year of no content during which the studio was working on HoT and player devotion was driven by expectations, much like the current expectations for the next expansion. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > Third, when they were saying that, they were still during the initial wave of popularity any relatively new content gets. Ultimately, though, that popularity didn't last, and eventually raids became more and more niche, way beyond Anet's expectations. So niche they finally realized it's hard to justify supporting them any further. Raids were always niche. The statements made by the developers were always in praise of better results than anticipated. You can try to turn this how every you want, but just some food for thought: the current champion releases and reduced content for the Saga have been a thing for approximately 3 months, 5 months if we count the last major Living World release of Drizzlewood Coast (and that's still a minor amount of content even if players might be unhappy with the size of the Champion episodes). Meanwhile players are heavily feeling the content drought. After 3-5 months. Now imagine how niche communities feel with lack of content for YEARS. Raids became more and more niche and lost their player base due to content drought. Much like WvW and especially Spvp have too. At this moment in time it's amazing that there is even any niche players left. If the niche communities were approaching this game like a majority of the only open world or story crowd, this game would have been dead ages ago. Meanwhile the worst financial results were achieved right after a different period of this games development when the focus was ONLY on living world and no expansion was announced. To be honest, I find it mind-boggling that there is even a fraction of payers left who assume this game would be better off without some devotion to niche content, no matter if raids, fractals, WvW or Spvp.

> @"Linken.6345" said: > > @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said: > > I know this is an old thread, but it bears mentioning: With a future expansion coming up, it is probably a good idea to build up a healthy cushion of karma. Unless Anet's design philosophy changed, then there's going to be a lot to buy once the new maps come out. > > It is probabely going to gated by another currency like pof trade contracts for example. It's probably going to be both, just as how there are tons of Karma+X based items in Season 4 and the current Saga.

> @"Dawdler.8521" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > FYI: the benchmark for semi useful performance of builds with all boons bottoms out at 25k absolute minimum, 30k dps average and 35k+ dps for good builds. Should you require ideas or inspirations for builds, do feel free to check at least metabattle and read through some of the descriptions of the high ranked builds there. > Yeah that really depends on the purpose. > > A condi build which can do like 5k dps on a golem is absolute super OP cancer in WvW according to the forums. > Which build would that be? Condi immobilize druid? If I assumed a berserker/assassin/sinister, 3 signet, rifle warrior was in any way a WvW build, I would have made the connection to WvW. Not seeing a WvW build here though.

> @"Touchme.1097" said: > I can't see how a full DPS team can survive an Underground Facility with Social Awkwardness, Fractal Vindicators and Sugar Rush, , those Dredges hit so hard today that I can't pug it in T4. I think the balance issue should address some of the instability+fractal scale combination that make the game too hard of a challenge The majority of damage is ranged. Bring reflects, don't face tank melee attacks, group and kill enemies. Use boon corrupt if necessary. Done. Underground facility is not a hard fractal no matter the instabilities.

> @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > > > That's not a problem in this game because even though the game is designed from the ground up with active damage avoidance and mitigation in mind, the threshold for success is so low and the options for gearing is so wide that it's not that critical for players to actively avoid and mitigate damage anyways. > > > > > > Except it's not that low, I know that's personal experience, etc. But I disagree with that attitude. Some of my strats for making foolproof groups revolve around not counting on people. interestingly enough I did WoJ as a DPS yesterday on a more traditional comp and lots of people died and it didn't do any better than my 3-healer juke groups. And honestly, when I've done WoJ in some random PuG I wasn't leading most of the time the group fails. I feel like that's proof enough. In the Pugging world I'd say it's anything but forgiving. Maybe if you have a static doing the content on a regular basis it gets better. I did have ONE impressive group of the many I've tried, but they seem like the exception more than the rule. > > > > and thus we have the reason why gating is happening by experienced players. > > > > The vast majority of players are incompetent unless they've actively tried to improve their game understanding and performance. Not having to go against the games basic design or having to revert to sub-optimal "carry" builds, and even here there are strong accepted builds which can carry hard enough, is exactly the reason why players vet. > > > I'd say you have a flaw in your design if a majority of the player base struggles. Though I believe a good portion of that is self-inflicted. Not everyone can do twitchy glass cannon. Though that FoR DRM CM.... > Ob absolutely, I fully attribute many of the issues we have to the games design, no matter how brilliant or fun it might be once a player has adapted. Guild Wars 2 main player performance issues stem from: - the vast freedom of build possibilities. Both in regards to traits, itemization, skill selection, etc. all the way to weapon selection. This freedom makes for an amazing build system compared to most other MMORPGs. It also means players can absolutely f-up their builds unless very experienced - the non existent trinity makes this game stand out, even among other games with dodge mechanics supporter by a trinity system. It takes a lot of practice and dedication to adapt to this games combat - a far to easy core world. Which makes sense as to not scare off players, but then comes right around to bite them in the behind once actually challenging content gets introduced I wouldn't go so far in saying a majority of the player base struggles. I personally believe a large part of the player base simply does not care. Many are perfectly fine and happy with just logging in and doing some relaxing pve and open world stuff. The main difficulties arise from wanting to transition from this world to more dedicated content.

> @"Messenger.7450" said: > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > Defensive stats have been marginal at best and especially for encounter where you can avoid most of the damage anyway. You can still do over 10K DPS with defensive stats which is more than sufficient to complete the CM successfully. The issue is where you have players doing as much as a power DH that is just auto-attacking. That is one of the reasons that groups fail the timer because they do poor DPS. The other reason being failing mechanics which also impacts the first reason as well. > I'm taking that "You can still do over 10K DPS with defensive stats" with a big grain of salt. How much defensive stats are we talking about? Whatever sacrifices you make of offensive stats to get defensive stats (and vice-versa) is pretty palpable in-game. > In a raid comp, sure, you can do that because of all the shared bonuses others give out- but should LS DRM CMs be up to the level of raids? Is that something the game should demand of players? > There are condi builds in full trailblazer doing over 25-30k dps without issues. I'd say having 2k toughness and vitality qualifies as quite a bit of defensive stats. There are power builds which splice in some toughness or at the very least marauder gear and still reach 30k dps. Full Marauder gear is approximately a 10-12% dps loss versus full berserker, so that additional vitality too would qualify as a lot of defensive stats. > @"Messenger.7450" said: > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > I keep reiterating this throughout my post because the boss isn't that bad when it doesn't have boons. If the boss doesn't have boons then you kill it faster and it does less damage. Every single group that I was in that attempted it did it with the boss having boons almost the entire time. I did see your post with you noticing a difference but the issue is still with your DPS. I gathered from your posts that you were playing a ranged berserker which is a problem. > In regard to the boons problem, I return your sentiment in the latter part of your response above: "Please don't conflate my issue with yours.", especially where I looked into boon stripping. > As for my ranged Berserker, I'll stick to him since the issue I have with the fight are the dangers of fighting up close and the damage Ryland and the rest of the fight puts out- which fighting at range really helps mitigate- and that darned Elite Frost Legion Shaman. The issues you are facing on ranged berserker are: - ranged combat will in general lead to less boon uptime unless the entire group goes ranged and even then would require some of those classes run sub-optimal builds - rifle on warrior is a pretty bad weapon for damage to begin with > @"Messenger.7450" said: > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > It's an obvious statement which had to be made. Players have a tendency to blame everything but themselves for failures. > Doesn't mean that in this case they're wrong. Again, is Snowden Drifts DRM CM failures really the fault of players? Or is it too hard on its own, especially compared to the other DRMs? If it is to hard or not depends on what the developer were going for difficulty wise. Strike missions, raids, fractals, etc. all have varying degrees of difficulty. The fact that Snowden Drifts CM might see less completion could simply be working as intended. That does not invalidate the statement that a lot of players attribute failure to other factors than themselves. > @"Messenger.7450" said: > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > You're conflating good DPS and pure DPS builds. You can do good DPS (10K+) without a pure DPS build. > With a raid group? With specific comps? You need to stop assuming that any type of decent performing build in this game is automatically a raid build. The benchmarks for raid builds are out there and they are 3-4 times higher than 10k dps. Even without offensive boons, which contribute around 30-40% of the performance, builds can easily hit 20k without any boons. Now does this mean that any hotchpotch thrown together nonsensical build will do that too? Probably not. > @"Messenger.7450" said: > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > There are several attacks that the boss does and they're all predictable and avoidable. The primary set of attacks that down most players that I was grouped with is entirely predictable and well telegraphed. > As if that's the only thing happening in the fight... > Ryland has literally 3 attacks which he loops: - 3 melee swings with a frontal cone cleave with some sporadic icicles falling (easy side stepped or walk through him) - a circle aoe around him (should be dodged but can be walked out of if low on dodges) - he channels multiple icicles to fall *safe spot right in front of him) That's literally all that is happening in this fight, if we exclude the small breaks to kill portals and adds during which Ryland is not engaged. > @"Messenger.7450" said: > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said: > > Just like the point above about this that I had addressed, this was about you making it out as if it cannot be done and not about the percentage of players who have and haven't been successful. > Said by someone who also said "There's no data on the breakdown on who have done it in pugs." > > > The fact that they had attempted to fix it so the boss wouldn't get boons. The fact that they added a consumable during LS5 that provides CC and it'd be difficult to understand why they would intentionally make it so using it would remove the bar and still give the boss boons. Especially since using the consumable has no issues one other breakbars in the games so why would this one be singled out to be different? I thought that was fairly evident in my post. > How is your point "evident" when they haven't fixed it so the consumable you mentioned **doesn't suffer from the exact same glitch**? > **Why wasn't EMP vs Ryland's breakbar fixed at the same time as breaking Ryland's breakbar without it?** > And it doesn't matter that for you (or for me, or for anyone else, or for all of us) that EMP _should_ work. What matters is that in practice- in actually playing the game NOW- it _doesn't_. Or this is working as intended. As in: intended behavior to surprise players and make then react to NOT using the EMP. CCing him without EMP works just fine.

> @"Firebeard.1746" said: > > @"Obtena.7952" said: > > That's not a problem in this game because even though the game is designed from the ground up with active damage avoidance and mitigation in mind, the threshold for success is so low and the options for gearing is so wide that it's not that critical for players to actively avoid and mitigate damage anyways. > > Except it's not that low, I know that's personal experience, etc. But I disagree with that attitude. Some of my strats for making foolproof groups revolve around not counting on people. interestingly enough I did WoJ as a DPS yesterday on a more traditional comp and lots of people died and it didn't do any better than my 3-healer juke groups. And honestly, when I've done WoJ in some random PuG I wasn't leading most of the time the group fails. I feel like that's proof enough. In the Pugging world I'd say it's anything but forgiving. Maybe if you have a static doing the content on a regular basis it gets better. I did have ONE impressive group of the many I've tried, but they seem like the exception more than the rule. and thus we have the reason why gating is happening by experienced players. The vast majority of players are incompetent unless they've actively tried to improve their game understanding and performance. Not having to go against the games basic design or having to revert to sub-optimal "carry" builds, and even here there are strong accepted builds which can carry hard enough, is exactly the reason why players vet. Suffice to say, my personal experience has been drastically different than yours on strikes. I'd say excluding static runs or heavily stacked guild runs, my experience has been 8/10 successful runs on WoJ or Boneskinner, excluding a first wipe at Boneskinner until people find their dodge button again, on average. Then again I usually join KP groups and will take a look at the roster and setup, both to see how good a job the commander does if it's not me as well as to offer a class/role missing. Even the "pugging world" has stark differences in success and player experience even without requiring a static or semi static team, which often can carry this content and just fill up the roster with some extra bodies.

So let me get this strait, you did 40 test runs to see if exchanging 1 items stats from berserker to assassin was worth it? On a rifle warrior build. Running sinister trinkets and berserker runes. On a 3 signet build with not a single condition damage ability either on the rifle nor on your utilities. Okay. Hope you at least had fun. FYI: the benchmark for semi useful performance of builds with all boons bottoms out at 25k absolute minimum, 30k dps average and 35k+ dps for good builds. Should you require ideas or inspirations for builds, do feel free to check at least metabattle and read through some of the descriptions of the high ranked builds there.

> @"Samnang.1879" said: > > @"Ashantara.8731" said: > > > @"Samnang.1879" said: > > > Can we have like a story related to the emperors and empresses of China? No more dragons please, I'm sick of killing them... > > > > Well, the expansion's title is "End of Dragons", so naturally it will be about the Elder Dragons. > > Hopefully it ends in the first 10 minutes of gameplay, and we can move on to a different theme/storyline :# Please don't make a thread when you get disappointed by the expansion story line. That's what you are doing: literally setting yourself up for disappointment. The expansion is called END of DRAGONS. The title literally spells it out: by the end of the expansion we MIGHT move to a new story line, not at the beginning. It would make absolutely 0 sense to name the expansion the way they do if the theme is done within the first few minutes. Basic logic one might assume.

> @"Rodrick.1942" said: > > @"Nephalem.8921" said: > > > @"Rodrick.1942" said: > > > You're right it's a soft dps check, however it's also a race to see who can keep their breath until last sec. FB need to spam resistant to ignore condi from adds, endless stab to counter cc, and have ren to help to heal group by using Kala elite skill or have a hybrid scourge to spam barrier/ condi spread. > > > > > > it's one of the fractal I like because it forces us to change the way to play fractal, some build that people never think about it before become a thing (eg : condi herald ) > > > > In which bizarro world is condi herald useful in fractals? sorry but no, condi herald is not helping anyone in instanced content. sirens reef is so hated by a lot of the fractal community because you cant really speedrun it. portals dont work with the chest and the cannon event is just annoying. The endboss isnt the problem. SA makes it incredible annoying and stab doesnt even work vs most stuff. > > 4necros + druid was never meta. it was a brainless way to complete them half afk but considerably slower than a decent comp with quickness and actual meta strats. > > The meta in every mmo is dps. you only bring the support needed to survive. even in trinity games they dont take a healer if it isnt needed. > > @"Firebeard.1746" Are you using arc? it shows way more than just dps. also healing, boons and cc. you can measure the usefulness of a build quite easy with it. there is a difference if you just complete the fractals or if you complete them in 20min. especially when some players completed them literally 1000 times. > > speedrun, annoyed, can't see the value of some off meta build. > > go back to cms then, if you don't like to try new stuff. but don't expect Anet will keep announcing the similar design content all the time because people like me > > still exists in gw2 . While I am open to off meta builds, condi herald is indeed not in any way ideal or beneficial for Sirens. You neither have a decent stat set, which requires you to spread out over different stats which in turn would diminish your actual contribution boon or condition wise. Nor are the boons that beneficial. Fury and might are not that hard to come by, nor is protection if desired while at the same time not providing the one boon revenant is actually useful for: alacrity. This could be mitigated IF there was an actual decent condi and boon duration item combination, but alas there is none. Nor is herald that great at condition damage to begin with relying on your mace autos for a majority of your damage with minimal cleave. If you run Mallyx, you are not running Ventari which could help with bubble, if desired (and similar to Mai, bubble can take out a lot of pressure for weaker groups if used properly). Nor are you providing Kalla elite, which you yourself mentioned as useful skill. This can't actually be mitigated unless going Renegade or some core revenant build. There are off meta builds which can carry really hard on Sirens but condi herald is not one of them and that is absolutely unrelated to CMs or not. EDIT: As to the topic at hand: > @"Firebeard.1746" said: > I just would like some wind knocked out of the sails of the everyone is dps meta. No, you literally do not want that. Let me explain: The common misconception that class balance is to blame for the dps meta is just that: a misconception. This game is designed from the ground up with active damage avoidance and mitigation in mind. What this means is that good players are more than capable to mitigate all or nearly all damage via pure skill. In any case where this is not the case, defensive skills and boons are taken. The games design from the ground up is responsible for the dps meta, not class balance (though balance can affect how easy or difficult certain encounter can be for certain classes). IF the developers actually designed an encounter WITHOUT focus on damage, and most encounters are not that focused on damage to begin with as to make the damage requirements difficult to meet, you would end up with fights similar to: Xera, Deimos, Dhuum, Qadim 2, etc. Essentially fight with a ton of extra mechanics which players have to deal with instead of just dealing damage. Now take a guess which fights are most difficult for non static players to tackle: the ones where more than only dps is expected and players need to fulfill specific tasks. Even 100CM meets exactly that criteria. The main mechanic to overcome is positioning and crowd control aka defiance bars. Expert players are more than capable of running this CM on differing classes, meeting the cc requirements and positioning so that damage to group is minimal (even running without healers). Weaker players can not and are either locked out of the fractal or dependent on running the most run meta class as to ease success. What you actually want IS fights designed around damage and nothing else, because every class in this game can meet dps requirements from a balance perspective.

There are work around options to pressure. In essence a system which: - does not create pressure on daily participation or is flexible in its rewards (some such systems are already in game. For example reward tracks. They can be made to always provide a similar amount of progression towards a designated reward irrelevant to the point of acquisition in time outside of game) - does not incentivize less participation in other content, this can lead exceedingly fast to burnout (no matter if fractals, wvw, spvp, tutorial raids, open world, etc. All would be affected "if" players suddenly spend 4 hours per day in raids. As a matter of fact, this is just what many fractal gods experience after actually reaching god and running the content daily for years- subjective opinion) - does not provide exclusive loot which makes success mandatory. For example: LI/LD make success mandatory in raids. As such pressure is high to get as many as possible before a reset. Gold on the other hand is not mandatory, yet is the most fluent and interchange-able resource in game and as such could also be very desirable Off the top of my head, and not accounting for this being a solution: We could have a reward track similar progression which allows for reward accumulation outside of regular clears, potentially daily capped in contribution if daily rewards are desired, which pays out at the end of the week. Strike missions already operate on a similar system with their first 3 dailies per week rewarding crystals (yet allowing these dailies to occur during any point in time of the week). The rewards gained would need to be non LI/LD and just additional "common" loot (aka Clovers, Gold, Materials, etc.) as to not create exclusive reward pressure. This would keep pressure to raid daily lower as well as reduce pressure to raid successfully. The rewards would merely be acquired over more time. This could be expanded upon with weekly resets of the track or capped progression per week, redistributing the necessity to complete raid bosses over a large period of time. Obviously with more and more such system in place, the reward structure become more and more convoluted, which poses a problem of its own. **TL;DR**: The weekly reward cycle has it benefits and detriments both to players who have reached the reward as wells as those who have not. Always keep that in mind.

> @"sokeenoppa.5384" said: > > @"Antycypator.9874" said: > > KP, LI/DL and should be once per week, but other rewards (Gold, Shards/Crystals, exotic items and chance for Asc item) — daily. It's still low income compared to specific OW farms or FoTM, but I would probably do raids more, because I actually enjoy raids. > > > > > @"sokeenoppa.5384" said: > > > That would be ~700 gold/week IF player would do full clear every day. Imo that sounds kinda balanced when compared to other gold farming methods. It would also perhaps make raids less dead content. > > > > > > Edit: just correct me if i said stupid about the gold from FC, i really dont remember anymore how much it is ? > > > > It's 25 encounters (rewarded): > > W1: VG, Pre-Gorse, Gorseval, Sabetha > > W2: Sloth, Trio, Matthias > > W3: Escort, KC, Twisted Castle, Xera > > W4: Cairn, MO, Samarog, Deimos > > W5: SH, River, Statues, Dhumm > > W6: CA, Largos, Qadim > > W7: Sabir, Adina, Qadim 2.0 > > Total: 25, so 50g + additional bonus [doubled rewards from 2 random wings] = 62-66g. > > I counted the exotics and other loot in that aswell. They add up fast. It is after all one Guaranteed exotic and some yellow uni gear if im not mistaken. But still 100 was a bit of an overkill. 80-90 depending about rng sounds more correct. Actually 100g is about right on average. The pure gold reward is around 60-66g. The reward in guaranteed exotic items is between 7.5 - 25 gold (depending on the exotic items. I calculated 0.30 to 1g per reward. Average should be a bit higher given often at least 1-2 valuable sigils are in there). The Magnetite Shards and Gaeting Crystals are 15g and 18g respectively (at each 150 gained). The CM rewards are 10 gold on top. That is without any ascended loot factored in or potential infusion or other sell-able drops. I personally don't mind either way. I know enough players who clear raids multiple times per week. Some even multiple full clears. Only issue I would warn against is players with a completion OCD burning out or creating more pressure to raid after the initial raid clear or creating a situation where experienced raiders are given less motivation in helping out. As it stands, a major reason why some players raid beyond their full clear in other raid squads to help is is exactly because raids don't offer continuous daily rewards.

> @"lare.5129" said: > By current way make some mats non acc bound I interested to predict that we will get here In general, predictions are based on some type of assumption which is in some way grounded in data or analysis. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predicting What you are doing is not predicting, you are purely guessing. Which is fine, but not grounded in ANY type of current or past developments. Doesn't mean they might not come true, just means your assumptions are without basis. FYI, the patch you quoted, and subsequently the patch which allowed for more ways in acquiring funerary incense still within the measures of PoF, was introduced when they reworked the entire PoF reward system. I doubt we will see such a patch again, but who knows.

> @"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said: > My prediction? Stays the same. This. I fail to see how these recipes need updating. Did the HoT recipes get updated with the release of PoF? No. Same situation here. Also @"lare.5129", you left out the conversion of Crystalline Ingot to Funerary essence, which while time gated, makes this resource entirely acquirable via HoT. So again, no change needed even "if" PoF were to die out.

> @"Voltekka.2375" said: > That makes no sense. You used these infusions for some time, now theyre of no use and you want to get your tickets back cause you probably want to spend those tickets on something else (leggy armor?). Unfair. This. 1.) Usefulness the WvW infusions are not useless nor have they become useless. They are of less use now on the same character which does have legendary armor, but that does not magically diminish the use they provided in the past, nor the reduced use they might provide now on additional characters. 2.) Effect as suggested by others, full interchangeability brings with it issues. You might not like that fact, that does not make this fact disappear. Being toxic towards players who point to this fact in no way make your argument stronger 3.) Expectation we have had past situations in this very game where possession of multiple of the same item was diminished and even made obsolete with additional new options of quality of life upgrades (Infinite Gathering tools, Salavage-O-Matics and commander tags respectively). The developers did not provide any reimbursement to players, in this cases players not even being at fault for the change in "value" of the item, expecting something in a player self caused situation is very far fetched

Vote: No. It's called power creep. At the same time, what most people do not realize, removing choice (and adding an additional tratline is just that: removal of choice) in general leads to more boring content. Yes, choice does not always need to be positive or welcome (say not being able to get every single trait you want), but it generally leads to more interesting decisions because the decisions have value. Once you have 4 traitlines, what is going to prevent the next person to ask for 5 traitlines? What argument will you use to tell them their idea is wrong, when 4 traitlines was okay? The argument that this will open up more builds paths, and thus is beneficial to the game, is flawed. What this type of change does is remove choice and homogenizes builds, so yes, it removes outlier builds by mere fact that less choice is available (this in fact removes builds from the game, it does not add any). This is just as useful as removing all traitlines and making all builds identical (which would be the logical conclusion of this idea taken to the extreme). That would essentially make no build unviable, and remove all choice and "fun" from builds.

I guess it's for the same reason I sometimes would want to ask people on the forums why they create troll or unnecessary posts: for some it's entertaining, other pass time with it, again others it's busywork, for some it is a compulsion and pretty much ever reason in-between.