Joraan Adenard.2061

WHY does Anet keep designing HP sponge bosses ? Increasing the health pool does NOT make a fight harder, just more tedious and overall LESS fun. Add fun, challenging mechanics instead, NOT more HP. Gyala Delve final boss is a slog and is incredibly tedious to fight, and probable one of the worst designed fight in the game because of it. PLEASE DONT make this a standard from now on. Also : WHY do we need 4 players to complete the puzzle ? As a daily, if you get only 2 players that suck at jumping puzzles, the fractal becomes impossible to complete. You can't carry, you can't skip. It will just be an incredibly frustrating daily. It feels like Anet just doesn't know how to design fun encounters anymore.

During a boss fight, the music's volume is always going up and down, seemingly randomly. It's getting seriously annoying. I thought it might be linked to dialogues because it's especially noticeable during Soo-Won's fight (which is dialogue-heavy) but now I have dialogues and effet almost all the way down and music all the way up, and there are still moments when I can barely hear the music and others where it's loud and clear. Any solution ?

Except that's not a pistols problem, that's a kits problem. The fact that pistol is the chosen weapon for high DPS basically means that the other options are considered worse when performing an optimal DPS rotation. If the pistols weren't viable, another weapon would be there instead. Now, the fact that you mainly use your kits instead of your equipped pistols just means that your kits are better than your weapons, not that pistols are bad. If the debate was about giving weapons a more important role than kits in the Engineer's arsenal, then you'd have a point and I would agree with it. However, this thread is specifically mentioning that pistols aren't viable compared to other weapons. My post pointed out that it's not only false, it's the opposite.

- Engineer : condition and condi-alac mechanist meta builds use pistols, main-hand and off-hand - Necromancer : condition and condi-quickness harbinger meta builds use main-hand pistol - Warrior : power dps bladesworn meta build uses pistol - Mesmer : condi-quickness chrono and condi-dps mirage meta builds use off-hand pistol - Thief : boon daredevil and condi-alac specter meta builds use pistol as secondary weapon set for extra CC So all professions that can use pistol use them in PvE as part of their meta builds. That's not even considering PvP/WvW builds which i'm not familiar with, and all other variations of PvE builds that players can come up with. All in all, pistol seems to be in a very good place !

+1 The orbs themselves deal basically no damage now, they shouldn't be reflectable/destroyable. Only Grand Finale should be. As it stands, as long as your enemy casts a reflect/invuln at least once at any point during your rotation, your Grand Finale damage is ruined.

Even if all the 4 orbs are up and rotating, when I use the Grand Finale skill, it will often only launch one orb (the last one summoned generally), leaving 3 remaining orbs rotating and a Grand Finale skill on cooldown, which significantly reduces the damage of the skill. It is supposed to launch all activated orbs at the same time.

Music SHOULD be fixed in Windswept Haven and Isle of Reflection. The only choices of music are core cities or SAB, there's absolutely no way to hear region-specific music when entering these two halls, which is baffling.

Content doesn't die because of difficulty (unless it's severely over-tuned, and Anet has shown their willingness to make it not the case). Content dies because of underwhelming rewards. As you said, after repeating something a few times, the level of fun decreases (it doesn't go away completely though, we play a game to have fun after all). What keeps people running the same events over and over again is the rewards that offset the decrease in the fun-factor. Triple trouble doesn't attract much interest because it has a combination of requiring organization and underwhelming rewards compared to more recent meta events. Serpent's Ire is dead because its only meaningful repeatable reward, the hero choice chest, is daily-gated and can be obtained by completing the forged event which is not only easier but also fits better schedule-wise in a meta train. Give worthwhile rewards and Battle of the Jade Sea won't die anytime soon, especially if you spread the rewards throughout the whole 2 hours you need to participate and give some kind of fail consolation rewards. Even better : remove the necessity to prepare the map and complete events for the buff, making people join in for the actual meta event only.

Lost Precipice and Gilded Hollow have to option to turn on or off a wall around the arena. Windswept Haven has the option to put a hole in the middle or no. All of those can be done through the "boundary" dialogue on the obstacles coordinator. There is no such option in the Isle of Reflection. Why ? P.S. Also, no canthan music in the Isle of Reflection ?!?

I agree. It is very hard to love a story that you've had to play through 9 times. Hell, I haven't even watched my favorite movies 9 times and they're short and excellent. Does Anet really want me to end up hating it ? Also, on a MMORPG perspective, why incentivize players to repeat the story, which is solo instanced-content ? Logically, I think incentivizing the repetition of group-content, either instanced or open-world metas, would be a better way to make this game feel alive ? The choice to add this requirement for the specialization collections is disheartening and doesn't make any sense to me.

I dont think the difficulty is the problem. Having difficult content in open world creates epic battles and a win is seen as an achievement by the whole group. During the runs that succeeded, I have seen great community moments. This meta IS achievable by most. It doesn't require hardcore players, just an organized squad and players who listen and know what they bring to the table. The major problem is the reward structure. To get rewarded for running this map, you need a win, nothing less. Events during the map preparation are poorly rewarding and failing the final fight nets you nothing. It is the only long meta in this game that doesn't reward the players throughout. Dragon's Stand : better rewards for each event, noxious pods spawning at each outpost, good rewards after a successful tower phase. Dragonfall : better rewards for each event, chests during menders and first 3 escorts Drizzlewood Coast : participation system, rewards evenly spread out during the whole meta with some small bursts of rewards after the two big fights Silverwastes : incremental rewards after each successful outpost event Dragon's End : you need to spend 2 hours in the map and, get peanuts for your participation and, upon failing, a few coppers. Players do not like wasting their time. Failing wouldn't be so bad if we at least got something worthwhile for our time, while succeeding would give the best reward and an epic experience. As of right now, failing this meta doesn't incentivize trying again and aiming for better, it incentivizes leaving the map and never coming back.

This should have been there at launch. Anet has adressed similar issues in the past, it's baffling that they've repeated the same mistake again !

Any profession can be played in any content. That said, some professions/builds are better than others in specific situations. The profession forums have valid complains but are more often than not hyperboles of what's really happening. The best profession you can pick is guardian, it has amazing builds in any content and has been treated like a golden child by Anet since the beginning of the game, so it's the safest bet. Necro can have amazing dps as a condition build. Power necro is good because it's safe and reliable, but it has lower dps than other professions. Still, it can be played in any content, including the most challenging. I wouldn't go for ele if you plan on doing group content for the simple reason that it takes you 3 times the effort for the same results so people tend to underperform unless they're very skilled. Groups might not like you underperforming. Warrior is also very good and in demand, particularly for raids as a banner offensive support.

Agreed. This is however a known issue. My post was referencing the perceived problems by Anet and how they should have fixed them instead of the nonsensical "fixes" that happened yesterday. There is more work to be done to make this spec feel good and fluid in many contexts that arent a static boss that doesnt fight back, starting with facilitating the process of reaching and maintaining max stacks.

That is another problem, yes. The nerf to Empowered Empowerment not only reduced damage, but also sustain, which was completely unnecessary.