GreenZap.1352

I don't feel that Guardians are at all the same as paragons. You mentioned that both classes have shouts and wear heavy armor, but that's not why I liked the Paragons. Just like the Dervish and Ritualist, it was about the lore and culture of the classes. The problem with Guild Wars 2 is that when they streamlined the classes, which was positive to open them up to all races, they also removed the continent-based classes. Now, for example, all the humans, including my character, who is supposed to be a Mesmer from Elona, begin as Krytan. So, my character, who has an Elonian name: Archivist Dalzbeh (I like having titles in my character names, as with NPCs), has a transmog that looks Elonian, is not actually an Elonian according to the game rules, and is a "visitor" when I hang out in Path of Fire, even though he is supposed to be born in Vabbi. For me, Nightfall was the first time I kinda felt really engrossed not only for the African/Egyptian themes, but also because it was something new and more grounded in the sea of Tolkien-esque, Warcraft and JRPG MMOs. In short: I like that they opened up race/class combinations so that everyone can play whatever they want to, but that also comes with a drawback; human characters could have either been designed to be from anywhere, but ArenaNet screwed up and made everyone a Krytan through the personal story, unless you pick "don't know my parents" which is a huge cop-out IMO.

Ritualist, Dervish and Paragon from Guild Wars 1. Having them as their own classes instead of some of them being half baked into the Guardian class. Also; make a healing build actually work for Open World where you can support your group, keeping them alive, and give them boons and stability in for example Rift farming instead of having healers only viable in instanced content. I play Guild Wars 2 because I love the lore and the freedom of the game. If I want to do instanced content, there is other MMORPG's that does it way better. Guild Wars 2 beats them all in Open World.

I agree with this, but if ArenaNet wants to continue with Guild Wars 2, then the game need to be brought up more towards modern standards. The UI is in dire need of a redesign!

I am not sure if I am totally qualified to answer this question, but: 1) Achievement UI Fix the Achievement UI. It is a mess and impossible to navigate unless you are looking through the wiki for ways to unlock skins that you want. I would never have known about Funerary skins unless I browsed weapons and armor on the wiki, for example. The game relies way too much on the wiki to give players an idea of what to do. 2) Achievement UI follow up Regarding the Achievement UI, just make a quest log so it's easy to keep track of what is available for you to do. For those of us who have played for years, we understand that we need to look through the achievements, but for a new player? Nightmare! 3) Ovearching storyline ArenaNet needs to figure out what they want to do with an overarching storyline for their expansions. I like Secret of the Obscure so far, but I liked Guild Wars:Factions the most of all the Guild Wars games because Shiro was a great villain whose path was interesting to follow. The same can be said about Warmarshal Varesh Ossa in Nightfall. Guild Wars 2 has weird story telling, like forcing a group of characters (Divinity, Dragons) on you that Arenanet wants me to care about but I ultimately don’t because they are not fleshed out enough. Also, a mute player character would have been better since the voice makes my character into yet another boring Arenanet character that I don’t care about. 4) Ovearching storyline - Villains Guild Wars 2 lacks compelling villains that are built up throughout expansions. Now we have Kryptis that are boring FFXIV: Shadowbringers looking Sin Eaters rip-offs. I know that modern ArenaNet is not the same as those who created my two favorite games, Factions and Nightfall. Joko was great in Path of Fire, but they had to kill him off for some reason that made no sense. He's immortal goddamit! 5) Character models and graphical updates Definitely a character model update and general graphics (mostly lightning) update for the whole game so it gets up to Path of Fire standards. 6) Innovation vs roleplay While I generally want to applaud ArenaNet for innovating the MMORPG genre constantly, that innovation sometimes makes Guild Wars 2 suffer from a roleplay standpoint. The game feels very “gamey” a lot of times. The game doesn't hide that I am farming EXP in Secrets of the Obscure to get all the masteries done. It doesn't hide that I am farming mastery points or skins well beind interesting sidequests like in FFXIV. ESO is the king in my book for "immersion.” I’m not looking for that experience here, but maybe just try to ground our characters a bit instead of constantly throwing us into universe ending threatsa.la. Avengers or World of Warcraft. Guild Wars universe used to be more grounded. Remember Prophecies and the atrocities of the humans towards the Charr although we thought it was the other way around at first? That was good story telling. 6) Heart of Thorns was the best expac even for a casual andy like myself Shame that they gave up on the Heart of Thorns formula. I am a casual-andy and those maps were the best Guild Wars 2 ever had. Everywhere you went, everything wanted you dead. You were truly in a hostile and unknown jungle where you just tried to survive from day to day. Immersion! Then Path of Fire came, and we went back to the cuddly buddy road movie storyline that has plagued this game since its inception. Balthazar wants to kill every dragon now for... reasons! And we are standing in his way for... reasons. So we need to die as well. OOOOOOR, we could taken 5 minutes to talk with Balthazar and explained why killing of the dragons was bad idea for the survival of Tyria. Gods have abandoned Tyria for.... reasons, even Kormir! The lore really took a big hit that it didn't recover from in Path of Fire. I said before that I like Secrets of the Obscure so far and I do, but I am not really sure why we the "commander" or "wayfinder" cares about the Kryptis... ehrm... Sin Eaters... beyond that they want to take over the world for some reason that is not really explained. We are not the Warrior of Light or Darkness. We are just some random Tyrian, Canthan, Elonian, Asuran, Sylvarian or Charr schmuk that used to follow along with Trahearne. The real hero of the story. I also understand that everything depends on what funds are available to ArenaNet to pump into the game, but I just jolted down my ideas without regard to the cost or timeline to fix these things.

EoD is the worst expac ANet have done to date. What more is new??

If I remember correctly; all of the HoT HP's were soloable if you had the correct builds. Mushroom Queen is annoying because you fight in such a small area, but as long as you had bursty Power builds you could roll over most of the HP's (bats, robots) by yourself before they could do anything to you. Personally I liked asking people for help with HP's because that made the game feel more alive and social and as always GW2 community were awesome and someone always helped you out. Also there were constant HP trains going on so getting the HP's were a non-issue if you didn't want to/couldn't solo them. I don't remember Verdant Brink being too difficult? Tangled Depths were the one I remember being difficult to both navigate and had a lot of deadly enemies roaming everywhere. But that also is what makes me love those maps! You didn't complete them in one sitting like you do with the EoD maps that are mostly just vast empty space with no real content no replayability and boring meta events. HoT really nailed the "being lost and alone in the dangerous jungle" feeling. It also birthed a lot of cool looking armor styles on gw2style.com, something EoD didn't/have not yet manage to the same degree. My take

Agree with what you are saying. The core game prepared us badly for HoT but the core game (I purschased at release) also never made me stick to GW2. I always got bored after awhile in core. HoT was the expac that got me to fall in love with GW2 with it's somewhat less "chill" feeling that core was overabundant with. HoT feels like the pacing is better. Like we are actually in danger of losing to the bad guy. The expac also feels more focused and the new addee mechanics are fun. And as I said before; I'm super casual and terrible at souls-like games and Nioh, but I really, really love HoT.

Heart of Thorns was the best expac ever made for GW2. Real exploration and danger around every corner. Maps that were replayable (still are). Maps that were not boring and flat and required investment to learn how to find where to go. Basically the opposite of EoD's boring maps. I am the most casual GW2 player that only plays Celestial non meta builds (Like Wizard (only staff) burn firebrand) and HoT is the best expac this game has IMO. PoF and EoD were huge downgrades and dissapointments over Factions and Nightfall for me. Especially the writing, the overly used tongue-in-cheek, and what they did yo my man Joko was unforgiveable. I really miss villains like Shiro, Joko and the charr-human conflict overall. GW2 has good story but it's way too fuzzy wuzzy at times. Bangar was awesome but he was quickly destroyed. For next expac, please more HoT-like map/diffixulty and definately less EoD.

I always 100% unlock the map first; WP's, Hearts, Poi etc. After I do the story or what's up there.

Damage is still so low though... How would you know if the damage is too low if you haven't even taken a build out yet? You can do what you want, can't do much for you if you're not even going to ask questions beyond, how make sword good. Ok, if you want to I'd love if you could post a GW2skill build page so I can take a look at what big damage you are referring to.I've had an idea of using Deadeye with S/D and see if it works better just haven't unlocked Deadeye fully on this character yet. Problem with Torment is that we are playing a Power build which means we don't have increased condi damage and mobs doesn't really move around that much which makes Torment less effective than using it on other players.

Damage is still so low though...

Hi I used to play S/P long time ago but was interested in making S/D work but it just does so little damage (singel target) against PoF mobs ? It's tanky though so it has that going for it at least!

Are you going for an optimal build for open world or trying to make S/D work? You can take Shadow Arts up to Cloaked in Shadow and stagger out Cloak and Dagger in crowds. I use Sigil of Draining everywhere with Tactical Strike, the blind on the front side will still leech, but it's nice with Choking Gas also. Rune of Surging is fun and can clutch heal sometimes. Rending Shade is nice if you're being alert about target buff bars and the fear can interrupt multiple targets if it goes off, and it also takes full boon stacks like Larcenous Strike, but Cloaked in Shadow is probably better overall. Trying to make S/D work for Open World/Solo story. I know that people say that "everything works in OW" but IMO that is not the truth. If you can faceroll elites in PoF on one Class/Build and struggle on another because of lack of damage then "everything does NOT work in OW ". Reaper has been such a faceroll speedy clear build for me that I got spoiled :P

Ok, so I've tried playing S/D Power DD now with SB as utility and while it's flashy and looks cool spinning around and evading (and you don't die) the damage is so just low compared to my GS Reaper that it's not even fun. Dunno what to do with this build. I don't want to use staff really even though I'm considering it..

Hi Sorry for the dumb question... but can someone please explain to me why S/D core/daredevil/deadeye is not good for open world/solo?I would love to pair S/D with SB for solo playing but everywhere I look it's P/P, D/D or Staff DD. Is S/D really so bad you can't make it work against more challenging mobs?If you can roll with it would you go Power or Condi? cheers guys