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Kolzi.5928

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  1. I am very surprised they decided to go with another 2hand weapon instead of offering a proper power offhand. Engineer offhands are so weird. Cool, but weird. I would never have expected a shortbow, but they could certainly do some interesting things with it - like attaching weird inventions to arrows so you can place them far away.
  2. I, for one, greatly prefer the idea of a pistol over a longbow on ele. Elementally charged bullets sounds cool as heck, and we will have three offhands to play around with for builds using it. Hopefully they can get a more visceral feel onto this weapon as opposed to scepter, which has always felt a bit limp-wristed to me. Not that I hate longbow as an idea, but pistol is just way more interesting to me.
  3. Glad to see some reaper changes, they look pretty respectable. The change to deathly chill is a little weird - it's a buff to condi reaper burst, obviously... I'd just have thought you might actually tune up the damage of it. Since you are trying to differentiate "Chilled to the Bone!" in pve (since it has always unfortunately shared a bit of a role with the charge skill on the flesh golem), might I suggest that you add a chill combo field to CttB? This would give it some nice synergy for condi reaper at the very least, in letting you gravedigger inside the frost field a couple of times while on greatsword (plus pulsing a few extra chill stacks, and thus bleed stacks, in the area over its duration would be good), and it is quite thematic. I know shouts don't usually leave aoes behind, but it's an elite shout that has long struggled to find its place despite being pretty cool. You can bend the rules a little, surely.
  4. These seem like good changes mostly, I am very happy to see mantras get their flavour back. I noticed you culled most (or all?) cooldown reductions from traits, which is fine, but some traits seem to be left woefully underpowered as a result. I'm looking at conjurer in particular... all it does now is give you fire aura when you pick up a conjure? That would be sad even for a minor trait, never mind a major. Guardian hammer changes are welcome, that weapon has long felt a bit weird/basic. I see you also tweaked mainhand dagger on necromancer which has had the same problem, but I am still not really sure what the point of it is supposed to be. It seems you are leaning more into the life force generation aspect of it, is that all the weapon is really supposed to be? A way to quickly generate life force before swapping to something else? Reaper changes are nice but frankly I do not think they will be enough to get reaper to the sort of dps levels it should have in pve. Shouts getting buffed is nice as the shouts have felt a bit underpowered, but the spec as a whole also needs work. I would really like to see a bit more willingness to buff reaper, it has been in the dumps for so very long - power reaper especially. I would also like to see condition reaper given some support as I do think it plays a bit uniquely from other condi builds for necro and that is worth preserving. Some stuff I would like to see is deathly chill having its bleeding buffed for the condi build, and some other buffs (perhaps to greatsword damage?) targeted more at the power build side of things. Chilled to the bone could create a frost field, which is arguably a little outside the normal purview of what a shout does but an elite needs to be able to stand out a little. That would have nice synergy for condi builds in particular and help it stand out from flesh golem for pve, which it doesn't really do very well right now, as both are just damage and defiance break. Even though you clearly do not want chronomancer to be giving both alacrity and quickness, I feel it is a huge shame and loss of flavour that the spec that was built around these (and literally created alacrity before it was even a boon) has to pick and choose. Perhaps an option would be to have a chronomancer at least able to sustain both boons on just herself, if not others? edit: I really think that warrior could benefit from having adrenaline and flow decay delayed by a few seconds after combat ends, at least in pve. I can understand if you think having them drop off quickly in pvp is important, but it makes fighting enemies that don't live long enough a pretty bland or even frustrating experience on warrior. There was a delay on losing adrenaline when the game launched but it was removed, I assume because of how berserker's power used to work where you were encouraged to just sit at max adrenaline permanently, but that is hardly an issue now (if that IS why it was nerfed).
  5. The trade-offs weren't really achieving anything balance-wise though. All they were doing is making certain elite specs feel worse to play. Making core specs viable would be nice, but it shouldn't come at the cost of ruining how an elite spec feels, and those trade-offs weren't even making core specs viable anyway. In my opinion, the attempts to balance this should be made through powerful core traitlines, so that giving up a third one is a significant loss. Yes, that will be difficult to pull off... but even if they fail at that, it'll be better than how things were before, with the arbitrary restrictions being forced onto elite specs.
  6. This has nothing to do with that, you're just making up arguments whilst ignoring what is actually being said. What I am talking about is a smooth introduction to the mastery system which allows you to figure out how it works easily at a point in the game when you're already being overwhelmed with new systems and currencies, and that makes it easy to get a very basic game function that honestly shouldn't be locked behind a mastery, but is (auto loot). But above above all else, a change that fixes the perverse incentives of the current mastery layout which actively encourages you to spoil yourself on the games story in order to get those points. I don't understand how you could accuse someone else of not knowing how the game system works, and yet completely gloss over that issue.
  7. They're off-limits because you should finish season one first. That's why I'm suggesting that season one gets mastery points, so people do not feel starved for them and be encouraged by the games design to skip content... you're not making any kind of argument here as to why mastery points in season one is a bad idea. You shouldn't need to use a guide to get your first batches of points, that's just bad game design. I've already done the math, clearly showing how you still need to interact with the other mastery points in the system even if they added the ones I suggested. So no, you're just making a really bad slippery slope argument along with for some reason throwing in attacks on me, suggesting I don't understand how the game works. Core tyria mastery points are not well designed for guiding people to various points in the game. They're incredibly clumped up in tiny areas (like fractals and silverwastes), attached to content that is loaded with spoilers and arbitrary, extremely expensive collections, and the UI is not well designed to use them as a guide towards content. You yourself suggest that they're easy to get "if you use a guide". It's not really doing the job of a guide properly then, is it? If you're that worried about the amount of mastery points being too high, they can just reallocate some instead of adding (this is extremely unnecessary but whatever). Maybe we don't need so many in silverwastes or fractals, or whatever. The point is that there should be a smooth period of getting mastery points when you are early in the mastery system. That's how it worked until the season one release, and the season one release has disrupted that, I am suggest a simple solution. All you seem to be able to offer in response is some vague complaint that "The mastery points won't mean anything", something I've already shown to be incorrect with that mysterious power known as math.
  8. I'm very happy to see the arbitrary limitations put onto elite specs get removed, especially having distort back for chronomancer. I actually am a bit surprised to see virtuoso get distort as well, I thought it made more sense that virtuoso lost it... but I am not complaining. Was daredevil just overlooked in this pass? Swipe replacing steal feels pretty random and pointless. I do not like the scrapper changes. I hope you consider finding another way to balance the spec. At the very least, I am not sure how a stationary sneak gyro is supposed to work... I guess it's just a copy of shadow refuge? Ugh. Overall though, the patch looks great from a pve perspective (though I understand that's not the focus), hopefully you revisit the scrapper stuff so it can be amazing.
  9. Let's analyze those 82 mastery points. 16 of them are located in season 2, so that is by all reasonable metrics off-limits to someone who has just hit 80. Another 7 are in the silverwastes, and one is in dry top, which should also be off-limits for the same reason. 18 are located in fractals of the mists. I would argue that fractals, even low level ones, are not somewhere that a new player should be immediately diving into. It is also worth pointing out that there are a number of fractals (including ones containing mastery points) which are direct spoilers for the story of season one. So these are also not great choices for new players, even if they are directed to them. At this point, we've already crossed 42 points off the list as being reasonable to approach for new players. There are six which are tied to collections which are *definitely* not reasonable for new players to achieve, and another one is from buying a truly absurd amount of cultural armour which is also not reasonable for new players. There are two explorer achievements which are both massive undertakings to do without an external guide, which I would argue also makes them not reasonable for new players. We've crossed off another 9 at this point, for 51 that are not appropriate for new players. Conservation of magic and transfer chaser each award one, but they are spoilers for season 3 story content. World completion gives one, that is a massive undertaking that we can't point to as a reasonable goal for new players. So we now have 54 that are not appropriate for new players. You get eight for completing the personal story and one for completing all the dungeons in story mode. You also get one for hitting level 80. These are obviously pretty reasonable for new players. The hidden garden jumping puzzle contains one, kind of arguable how fair this one is without being directed to it. So that represents 10 mastery points that are reasonable and one that could be if the system were changed. 9 are scattered across the open world as mastery insights. These are reasonably attainable by a newly 80, however I would argue it is not reasonable to assume a newly 80 is going to find all of them (incidentally, the mastery insights from IBS dragon response missions need to be removed from being visible in the map normally or adjust visually somehow, because they look the same as core tyria mastery points when you haven't collected them and thus are very confusing to new players). Tequatl, karka queen and triple trouble are not really reasonable for new players to be expected to get right now, but if there was a better system of pointing players towards them, KQ + Tequatl at least would probably be fair and there'd be a decent case for triple trouble as well. Between them, they represent 8 mastery points (5 of those in the relatively inaccessible triple trouble boss fight). So in the current system, you have 9 points which all new players will get and a tenth which is not unreasonable to get (the dungeons one), and 9 insights of which a lucky player who isn't going out of their way to hunt them down using the achievement ui might find... four or five. That's not even enough to learn auto loot... Are core mastery points actually particularly meaningful? Do we need to be elitist about core Tyria masteries? They're basically just an introduction to the system. Also let's be clear, even if you do all the story achievements to get all the points possible from story (which is a fair effort) - under what I am suggesting, personal story + season 1 + season 2 would still only amount to 35 of the 49 points you need. You will still need to go hunting at some point to finish off your masteries. You just have a reasonable way to spend your filled-up exp bar while progressing through the story and might actually unlock autoloot in a reasonable time frame.
  10. You say this is not an issue, but I have been playing with someone new to the game over the past month and I can assure you, it definitely *is* an issue. She was capped on exp a lot of the time whilst trying to hunt down more and more masteries in ever more obscure places - at times even spoiling herself on story beats in the process. There should be an obvious path to follow when you hit 80 and are working on your first few masteries. At the moment, that "path" is like... go to the silverwastes and hope for rare spawns, or try to do achievements in fractals, or skip straight past the first season of story content to do the second season. The mastery insights scattered around the world are the only ones that aren't part of this, but there's only a handful and they're scattered all across the what... 25 core tyria zones? In my eyes, your mastery points (or at least, your earlier ones) should come to you naturally through gameplay. Not from looking in the UI to find which zones have insights and bee-lining for those. edit: Plus I really do not understand why anyone would actually oppose this? Adding a mastery point reward to existing achievements could not possibly take much developer time.
  11. The issue is not if there is "enough", the issue is where they are located.
  12. The main sources of core mastery points at the moment are fractals and living world season 2. Before the release of season one, this worked fairly well as the story content you would go into right after personal story was giving you points. With the current setup, you have to go through four (eventually six) full story chapters before getting a single point from doing them. Of course there are points scattered around at mastery insights and the like, but that won't get you too far in training your masteries and you will almost certainly hit a wall as a result. Your only options at that point are to skip ahead to season 2 stuff or doing things in the silverwastes, spoiling future directions of the story for yourself, or to jump into fractals. I enjoy fractals as much as the next person, but I don't think people should feel pressured to go into them just to complete low level masteries, not to mention the potential of actually spoiling the story for yourself by doing fractals as a number of fractals deal with the main story. My suggestion is just to copy the season one model: one core mastery point for completing a chapter, and another point for completing all the achievements within a chapter.
  13. I can't describe how glad I am to hear this. What is actually happening in the game people play is so much more important than youtube benchmarks of golems. There's plenty of data out there about what's actually going on in the game world and that should be the focus. Not to say that what top end players can do should be completely discounted, but it shouldn't come at the expense of everyone else's gameplay. I didn't make a big deal out of the mirage changes, but they did feel very much out of left field compared to almost every other change on the list. I still think adding some condi to the phantasmal warlock, even if you remove some condi elsewhere to balance it out, would make a nice change to the staff mirage's playstyle. With this changed approach in mind, I hope that one of the things you'll be revisiting is the staff for elementalist. Many people want a powerful long ranged weapon for ele and that is the only option right now - and personally I always found it a satisfying weapon to try eke the best out of despite not being one of those mythical best players in the world. Either way, I think this when combined with the other changes gives me a positive outlook for how you will be approaching this stuff going forward.
  14. I just noticed this and want to chime in. I actually like that you have to stand still for true shot. I would prefer you not to change that. To me it makes the ability distinct and emphasizes its powerful feel. The mobility tradeoff is also part of what allows (or should allow) it do high damage. However I do think the dragonhunter longbow needs buffs... but simply buffs to damage. I suspect it will need a little more than the autoattack buff listed in this patch, although I do think how bad the longbow is tends to get a little overstated at times.
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