Guild Wars 2

[Malaphax]

Not to ride the bandwagon of hate, but Anet's balance team seems to be mostly shit at their job.  They've been steadily nerfing power builds on most classes, and on warrior for example Greatsword PS is basically in the shitter now.  Which means you get to either run Full condi or condi PS, both of which require the expansion.  This once again contradicts their original goal to have elite specs be options rather than required, I've heard revenant without it's elite is also trash but I can at least forgive them on that front because that class requires the expansion anyways. 

I'll just continue logging in when they drop new content, but I have a feeling we're just going to limp along for another 3 months before the final episode releases and then the expansion drops shortly afterwards.  I also expect that expansion's elite specs to be either straight upgrades or at least very strong.  I just hope they don't come up with even more busted stat combos that require me to respec my ascended armor, because frankly I don't have the patience for that after crafting 2 sets. 

[kuhla]

I let it patch.... and now it won't launch and it has to verify game and repair..... nice.....

[Malaphax]

Final living story episode in 2 weeks.  Expect an expansion announcement at the conclusion of this content.  While a large portion of the expansion content has been leaked previously I'm still interested how long it will be between Living Story episode 6 and the new expansion.  I'd place my money on 2-3 months with maybe two beta weekends right before launch like we got with Heart of Thorns. 

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/living-world-season-3-finale-arrives-july-25/

[Malaphax]

 

[Malaphax]

I played some guild wars 2 this weekend and focused on getting more heart of thorns mastery points.  Some of the recent living story maps have 3-4 quick mastery points on them which is useful because I was actually running out of point to spend on the final level of gliding and whatever map specific mastery will come with this final living story update. 

I've also been running a few fractals.  They're still fun, they've made some additional changes even since I last played.  I'm getting close to purchasing the permanent mists offensive potion, I already have the defensive one.  I've managed to cobble together 4 ascended armor boxes (shoulders, boots, 2 legs) hopefully this means if I need another set of gear for the expansion it won't be too painful to make.  I guess the other minor goal I have in this game is to get this skin for my shield: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Caustic_Nightmare_Nettleguard_Skin

I'm fairly excited for the next expansion and if the rumors/leaks I've seen are true, we may be getting it in roughly 2 months.

[Malaphax]

Patchnotes: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-July-25-2017

Data-mining patchnotes (SPOILERS): https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6phckk/datamining_upcoming_features_from_the_july_25/

The new legendary sword looks... ok.  It's not as obvious as bolt, but it has a nifty stow/unsheathe animation.  I haven't seen good pictures/videos of the hammer yet. 
There are legendary trinkets now, we've known this is coming but I'm sure someone will enjoy it.  It looks like they get custom "auras" which have already been on several other trinket sets already.  I personally hate all the aura's I've seen so far, but I guess it helps keep ultra-hardcore players interested. 

Abaddon weapons (gemstore): http://dulfy.net/2017/07/25/gw2-abaddon-weapon-skins-gallery/

They also added a few more mastery insights/points in core tyria which helps make it easier to get all core tyria masteries unlocked.  I guess this means I can unlock the final track and get legendary crafting. 

[kuhla]

Changes that caught my eye! With exclamations!

• New Legendary Sword!
• New Legendary Hammer!
• Players can now turn in midair while jumping!
• New Fractal!
• The following legendary weapons now have custom projectile effects: The Juggernaut, The Moot, Bolt, Meteorlogicus!
• Enabled use of the minimize button in windowed mode!
• Abaddon weapon skins!

[Malaphax]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/expansion/

Looks like they don't trailer drop the next expansion with this episode, but I'm half-avoiding spoilers.  Sounds like it also gives people 1 week to play through the release without worrying about spoilers flying everywhere, I can appreciate that. 

The legendary weapon projectile effects are mostly shit.  I've seen complaints for moot and bolt, especially for warriors. 
They also changed fractal numbers, it looks like they always place the newest fractal as scales: 25,50,75,100, so nightmare got bumped down to 24,49,74,99.  I actually ran 100 Challenge mode last night, it was still fun and exciting, I hope the new fractal has a challenge mode of similar difficulty. 

They added a bunch of stuff to material storage, this isn't in the patchnotes. 

[Malaphax]

So the legendary hammer has a day/night cycle interaction.  During the day it looks "normal" and at night it becomes corrupted, since this hammer is orrian themed it makes some sense.  I still don't think it looks amazing but it's much better than going off of just the in game preview. 

 

[Malaphax]

I mentioned to kuhla that the newest fractal is fairly difficult.  I've successfully completed it at lower levels but not at level 100, and so I haven't unlocked the challenge mode yet.  Speaking of the challenge mode, it looks even more difficult. 

I've seen several people post that even the lowest level version (level 25) is hard enough that most casual players cannot beat it, which is probably accurate.  In fact the developers have already mentioned they plan on dropping the difficulty of the level 25 version.  Many people believe the shattered observatory fractal is basically a 5 man raid, not to mention they throw a special action key at you, which you need to spam in certain fights.  I still don't know all the mechanics super well, but I'll probably try to pug my way through 100 normal mode and see if pugging through 100 challenge mode is worth the time investment or if I should just stick to running 99 challenge mode instead. 
Sidenote: I thought fractal 99 challege mode was fairly tough, but I'm impressed with the community - I had a pug group that crushed through the entire fractal in 20 minutes with no wipes.  I guess enough practice and people will be doing the same thing with this new fractal. 

Here's a video for the challenge mode. 

 

[kuhla]

I do sort of appreicate how epic it looks though..... tons of shit flying.... big beams.... lots of movement needed.... feels proper "high level" compared to other games (aesthetically).

[Malaphax]

Yea, I mean the nightmare fractal was already a bit bonkers. You had bullet hell, multiple ground shockwave attacks, even a super weird reverse slam attack that trips you (I hate this attack, I'm shit at dodging it).  Not to mention they had the usual phases for bosses and one boss has a 4 man split that you need to complete in a short time frame to avoid an insta-death. 

The new shattered observatory adds: low gravity, low gravity attacks, an extra action skill (that also stunbreaks, provides aegis and does breakbar damage lol).  The second boss adds some cool stuff involving bouncing an orb 8 times to break the boss.  The final boss has too much health considering the multiple phases and weird attacks, like his medusa fear which involves looking away and jumping over a shockwave attack.
Overall if the nightmare fractal challenge mode felt like a 5 man raid, then the shattered observatory (normal) already feels a bit like a raid and the challege mode seems like a sincerely challenging 5 man raid.  I hope they continue to release high quality 5 man content like this, because I'm super impressed and very interested to see where they go from here.  Although it does seems like the storyline tying these 3 new fractals together has ended, but maybe not. 

Sidenote: If you complete an easy collection achievement in the shattered observatory you can turn on low gravity in the fractals lobby.  It's fun, and allows you to do the jumping puzzle in about 30 seconds with some nifty skips. 

[Malaphax]

New Expansion - Path of Fire

9 New elite specs (Guardian is support focused) - 4 mounts with different movement abilities and 5 zones, supposedly bigger than anything released before

Open beta 8/11-8/13

Launch 9/22/17

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/path-of-fire/

The site has specialization videos for each class.  I'll post Guardian and Warrior

Main announcement Trailer:

EDIT: There's some gameplay videos floating around from some gaming sites.  I have no idea if there are story spoilers but I doubt they'd let anything major go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M5-c8y5fGc

[kuhla]

36 minutes ago, Malaphax said:

New Expansion - Path of Fire

9 New elite specs (Guardian is support focused) - 4 mounts with different movement abilities and 5 zones, supposedly bigger than anything released before

Open beta 8/11-8/13

Launch 9/22/17

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/path-of-fire/

The site has specialization videos for each class.  I'll post Guardian and Warrior

Main announcement Trailer:

EDIT: There's some gameplay videos floating around from some gaming sites.  I have no idea if there are story spoilers but I doubt they'd let anything major go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M5-c8y5fGc

 

[Malaphax]

Most of the elite specs seem at least moderately interesting.  I'm going to end up with yet another level 80 boost (I haven't used the one that came with Hot, it's still sitting in my shared inventory slot lol), and I have 103 level boosters piling up in my bank...
I might just make a few alts and boost them, use them as mules maybe.  I have 2 ascended weapon boxes from fractals, so I should be able to pop out 2 daggers right at launch and swap the stats to whatever I need. 
I'm mostly a 1 character guy, my limited experiment creating an engineer and thief didn't go anywhere, and my ranger is level 80 but I have zero pets and no map exploration on them.  I wish that map exploration could be unlocked account-wide somehow because I have no intention of unlocking all that shit on my alts.  I guess I'll just boost a necro to 80 and park him at the bank or something. 

Sidenote: I should consider looking for a guild again.  I have plenty of guild hall upgrades cluttering up my bank, and it might be nice to get some people on voice comms for harder content or maybe even doing a raid or two. 

[Malaphax]

Video of a few skills in action.  I'm seeing some massive AOE skills across several professions.  Necro looks somewhat support oriented as well.  I really like the revanent/renegade visual effects.

Seems like several partners had limited access to the content and there should be some videos/highlights worth posting when I get a chance to look through some of it later. 

[Malaphax]

Here's some info on the firebrand stuff.  There are multiple skill casts with aegis and healing.  I have a feeling this might be the second healer or dedicated support similar to druid.  I have a feeling it will be more aegis and less overall healing. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6qyzlc/firebrand_stuff/

Some people are thinking this will be a good combined with seraph stats (precision, condition, boon duration, healing)

[Malaphax]

I clicked through a few press preview videos and listened to some basic analysis from some people that were allowed to play the new expansion already and their thoughts on the Warrior/Spellbreaker elite spec.  Universally this spec is designed for pvp.  It's a direct carryover from shutdown mesmers in gw1.  Very little of the skills and traits have strong use cases for pve environment.  The devs basically confirmed this and said that warriors already have berserkers for pve content. 
On the bright side I won't need to change my build/gear when the new expansion comes out, on the downside this elite spec isn't something I'll use much considering I don't pvp in this game. 

General Beta News
First beta 8/11/17 - 8/13/17: This will open up the first map of the new zone (starts right after the latest living world release).  Elite specializations will NOT be unlocked.  So this is mostly a teaser of the new zones.  Expect any progress made in this beta to be rolled back before launch. 
Second beta 8/18/17 - 8/20/17: This will add elite specializations in PvP and WvW ONLY. 

No news of a third beta but if it happens (doubtful) expect it to be fairly close to launch and contain a few balance changes and final tuning of the elite specs. 

I'm mildly interested in the necro and their new elite.  It sounds somewhat support focused with a new mechanic: barrier.  Of course the downside of creating a new character is having to get world exploration - I guess I could just grab lion's arch and then use them in the new expansion zones... hmmm.  I've also been interested in ranger/druids but I have to figure out what's needed to pull that off.

[kuhla]

imgur - https://imgur.com/a/KBwBS#BlxNVDG

Looked at some of the firebrand stuff. Lots of range at 300 or less means lots of stacking. There is a lot of quickness and the trait line especially with the Imbued Haste and Quickfire traits. I can definitely see builds focusing around boon duration and keeping quickness up as much as possible.

[Malaphax]

It still sounds like druids will be main healers, but both firebrand and scourge looks like they have interesting support and off heal roles.  Firebrands smaller heals, but loads of quickness might replace support chronomancers.  Scourge seems to be able to stack might and provide barriers which would be an alternative to a phalanx strength warrior, depending on their own damage. 

I think they're doing a decent job of fleshing out different roles for each class instead of just raw damage. 

They've also announced they're rebalancing food/utility consumables.  it sounds like they're finally going to tone down condition duration/damage which will most likely bring power back up to parity with condition damage in high level PvE.  I'm expecting we'll get a balance patch a bit before the launch of the new expansion so we'll probably have a weird meta when the expansion hits and it will eventually shake out a bit later. 

[kuhla]

3 hours ago, Malaphax said:

I think they're doing a decent job of fleshing out different roles for each class instead of just raw damage. 

I feel like this was achieved at one point and then abandoned.

When I was running the "shout guard" build (which was popular at the time) I felt like my role as team support was well defined. I would shout often to strip conditions, provide retaliation or stability. I was traited heavily into virtues that procced on hit so the party always had at least 1-2 buffs up to help mitigate incoming damage, throw out aegis periodically, small heals, etc. There were a couple of neat tricks in the bag like the reflect wall. Damage was mainly left up to the others.

I would totally go back to playing shout guard but it was universally decided that zerker guard is the only meta worth your time with dragonhunter traits. Killing things faster is better than staying alive longer.

Even with this latest change, it looks like quickness is a big part of firebrand, which again, is about killing things as fast as possible.

[Malaphax]

Yea and there was a shout warrior build as well which I enjoyed for a bit, but once you realized that healing power was a garbage stat and that it didn't scale it wasn't quite as fun. 

Technically Warrior is a support class, between might generation, banners and empower allies they're basically a buff bot that also does mediocre dps.  I have a feeling some of these new elites will be "support" in that they either help with might generation or provide barriers/heals or quickness in addition to respectable dps. 

I think the full zerker all the time mindset has in some ways faded, but dps is a very serious priority for both 5 and 10 man content because of enrage timers (the new fractal first boss has a dps timer segment).  Also keep in mind that while metas are a good guideline to emulate, they're not the end all be all.  I don't think guild wars 2 will ever lose it's dps focus completely - that's partially baked into it's design at this point, but we will see more unique support/buff options as the game goes on.  It's easier to take a warrior with mediocre dps because of the buffs they offer than another ele that just does pure dps, even a perfectly played dps class can only affect themselves, while a buff class can buff 5-10 people even if they have mediocre damage.

[kuhla]

Working on the new zone. Visually and mechanically I think the newer zones are still pretty good but aesthetically they are getting progressively more and more rediculous.

Also everyone is reposting this guy's videos from today. I dunno who he is. He does not have one for Firebrand yet but there is one for Spellbreaker.

 

 

[Malaphax]

Yea BogOtter is a gw2 youtuber.  He's the only one that did a decent job of mousing over every ability and traitline for all the classes when he was at the press event.  People are trying to use his videos to theorycraft as much as possible before the launch, especially considering next weekend's beta will not include the elite specs. 

I think the living world zones were well done, most of them were large enough to enjoy and had some semi-interesting mechanics.  The last one's unique mechanic seemed lame so I didn't go for it.  I have not completed each living story map 100%, but I have explored most of them and acquired most vistas and hero points.  Not sure if it's worth it trying to 100% them. 

Someone posted a decent picture showing the size of various maps and how they compare to the new zones we're getting in PoF.  This info comes from the leak a few months back so it is technically a spoiler.  But realistically it just shows where the zones are and how large they are. 

[Malaphax]

Patchnotes: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-8-2017-3

New sound effects option so you can turn off quip/dreamer sounds.  That's actually pretty nice.

THEY REWORKED SPIRIT WEAPONS
They took away the loot-stick. RIP loot-stick (2012-2017) you will be missed.

Warriors got some random ammo system skills that no one uses and some minor tweaks to a couple traits.  Our patchnotes are the smallest of every class, I think they're shorter than the world polish patchnotes.

EDIT: Nevermind the warrior patchnotes are a bit busted - pastebin: https://pastebin.com/VXRaFAeu

Gif of the new world map: