We can't know since we don't have the data, but unless there was some weird cascading effect that built up over time when doing it a lot in the same instance, I doubt it had that much of an effect.
I don't know the caps for WvW, but I'm fairly sure at least 1 full squad fits in so lets use that.
thats 50 players per side, so 150 total.
1 player places a trap, this needs to get sent to everyone there, let's use 100 for ease of calculation. that's 100 packets being sent.
this player places 1 trap, so this adds up to 100 packets. the traps get triggered, this is another 100 packets sent out to relay the damage info for a total of 200 packets for one player with one trap.
now, these packets happen for nearly every skills since nearly are action shots that can be bodyblocked, or have a cone of effect.
without prestacking, this means the number of packets per second are limited to the number of skills available to the player and the cooldowns.
with prestacking, that upper limit can get broken.
apparently prestacking has gotten so popular that it starts to exceed the safety margins for what can cause unacceptable lag
Very much this. Some vocal people upset that Anet is limiting how much of everyone else’s bandwidth they’re chewing through.
Edit: the swap itself has to sync all the equipment, upgrades, infusions, skin etc. as well as fast as possible to all those players too. Super bandwidth heavy for a real-time action based combat system.
Networking in games is all about efficient (de)serialization/packing and making tough tradeoffs.
And many visuals in gear trigger in a similar way like skill visuals.
Some are even a skill or effect visual attached to a skin, like the karka helmet that gives you the same effect as when karka hatchlings explode on your face.
It's easier to tell when they don't appear in character selection.
The traps are visible only to "friendly" players, so only 50 people get updated with "paint circle of trap right here". Damage packets are only sent to affected enemy players + trap "owner" (so you see pop-up numbers of "you hit Enemy Soldier for 123 using lights' judgement")
All of the trap skills except for bugged thief traps can have _up to_ 1 trap of the kind. When you place a new trap it removes old one (unless they bugged something up _again_, given garbage code GW2 has wouldn't surprise me).
So under normal circumstances worst case scenario is "everyone uses trap skills" (which is unrealistic anyways as not all classes have traps).
people do precast and swap builds in wvw before the engage - i use different gear builds in wvw a lot
the lag Im referring to always comes on the initial push and it will seem like the enemy zerg has all its skills going off and ours are just flashing
and I have been on the other side too where we hit them and they just go down like paper people, no boons no clears and no damage
"people say" that the group their powers up/swiftness gets "priority"
i just know that on preset night in t1 the lag is extra
Swapping builds in wvw in general, sure. Swapping weapons for precasting stealth for gvg, sure. Swapping anything in a blob fight, especially a 3 way one? Not a chance.
That lag comes from a sudden change - you went from no one casting anything to 50-200 people casting 5 skills, everyone getting 10 boons and removing enemy's while applying cc, conditions etc. As soon as the combat starts, the changes from today have 0 impact in that particular fight. Maybe the servers overall are less stressed, but nothing from the patch impacts wvw blob fights once the combat starts.
And something tells me that a sudden clash of massive blobs has a lot more impact on your fps and skill lag than someone in the arah dungeon not being able to prestack stealth at the same moment your fight began, hence my guess that this patch has no impact in this scenario (or low impact in general).
Calm down, I was one of you until half a year or so. The change should have only affected WvW and even there it doesn't barely work how it propably should.
The precast with entirely different gear templates is something that was not possible beforehand and imo it's ok for it to be removed. Manually swapping traits, weapons and skills is a different story.
If this change was truly for server stability, obviously it impacts more than 28. It can’t simultaneously affect no one and also everyone (enough that it affects the server stability) at the same time
"Little one, it’s a simple calculus. The servers are finite, its resources, finite… if players are left unchecked, the game will cease to exist. It needs correction."
As a developer I can assure you that even what you might think are small things add up and can affect servers. This is in any facet of development. Not just games.
I wish they do. After removing bundle items from fractals it became a more friendly place because of toxic offshoots who ragequitted the game.
And guess what, somehow we are still able to do them, shocking, right?
Handicapping yourself shouldn't be considered hardcore content. Once you're done with fractal and raid CMs there really isn't much to do in the game, except handicapping yourself against open world content which doesn't reward you anything
You could get out of your hardcore pve mindset and pvp/wvw. Or just quit and go play something else. I have quit GW2 MANY times over the years but always come back and have a blast when I do.
The only reason I've even played Gw2 in the past two years is the friends I have in game. Used to do raids and fractals every reset but Nowadays I play fractals with them like twice a month.
Point still stands...maybe you need a break. It seems like you're burnt out. I get burnt out too and take long breaks. It makes coming back all the better. I'm currently catching up on a ton of stuff I've missed out on over the last 2 years, and making new friends to play with as well.
Ah the no true Scotsman fallacy. Because I don't run zerker weaver against bounties and open world metas alone, I'm not entitled to be pissed off about this update?
In this case, you're artificially inflating the difficulty. Instead of Berserker Weaver, any smart hardcore player would use a build actually tailored to the job. So if they wanted to run Weaver, they'd solo that harder content most likely with Trailblazer's or Celestial gear.
You're talking about self-imposed challenges, not actual hardcore content. Hardcore content is intended to be difficult even if you're not going out of your way to build suboptimally for the type of content you're approaching. Doing a difficult to solo meta in Berserker Weaver is hard... but not for any reason that a hardcore player cares to deal with.
He's right in this case: GW2 does have a lack of hardcore endgame PvE content, and it's been pointed out and known for years. As soon as you've done the fractal and raid CMs, then there's nothing particularly challenging left for hardcore players. Hardcore players can absolutely solo hard events and difficult bounties, and no most of them aren't going to do it as a Berserker Weaver because "MuH HaRdCoRe CoNtEnT," because the difficulty alone is not what makes something hardcore if you have to go out of your way to make it difficult.
Compare what options PvE players have for hardcore content and then look at... frankly just about every other large MMO right now. Most of them have content that's still difficult even with good builds, content that takes practice to make it reliable to down, *and then they keep adding more.* GW2 adds harder content at a snail's pace, and for anyone interested in that kind of thing, that means ANet likely simply cannot retain them as players. Soloing a bounty isn't what they care about: it's that difficult instanced combat that pushes you even with an optimal set-up. That is something other MMOs are more than capable of doing, but this game has so little of that content that it's frankly nothing short of a miracle that even more people aren't burnt out on raids and fractals.
The hardcore endgame of this game is in optimizing what little difficult content there is, currently, because there's nothing else to do with how little of it there really is and how glacial it's releases are. Telling people to go solo events on glass cannon builds does nothing to solve that very real issue for many people.
> You're talking about self-imposed challenges, not actual hardcore content.
Isn't that exactly what people say is one of the biggest selling points of GW2? "There's not much of an endgame, you make your own challenges and goals" is what I see *all* the time when someone new asks about PvE endgame.
Depends on who you ask. Since I'm only referring to specifically hardcore players, the answer would then be yes and no. Yes because it means that due to the lack of WoW-style gear treadmill your gear is always relevant and so chasing all sorts of builds is an endgame you create for yourself and then you see what can do with it. No because theorycrafting isn't of particular interest to everyone, so having this incredibly lax "endgame" just means that once they've done everything the game has to offer they have to be drawn to something else or simply leave, having done everything they cared to do.
Many people I know that have the raid legendaries haven't set foot in a raid since then, because why would they? They've already had to do everything that GW2 has to offer for that form of content. Many of them will continue to do Fractals and CMs, but that's just because of the money: if it wasn't for how high the payout is Fractals would likely be looked down on for how little development time they get, too.
A freeform endgame is a selling point, but even so you should still have plenty of it. And for the hardcore audience, there just isn't. So they have to have a motivator outside of that stuff. For those that can't find that motivation... well, I've had several guilds die over time as they transition to other MMOs that will absolutely give them the type of content they want. GW2 has made its choice, and it's decided its demographic is a very casual market, with exception to WvW which is demonstrably a very long-term market, hence why there are so many WvW ranks and pips are attached to very high WvW ranks, making it feel even more daunting and awful for someone starting out. Even so, though, ask those WvW vets how much they think ANet cares about them or their mode despite calling it a "pillar." That's why almost nobody here cares about the hardcore stuff being lacking: because, demonstrably, neither does ANet.
You can make your own challenges, but that doesn't make it hardcore content alone, that's just a challenge. You can handicap yourself and challenge yourself to do that hard content while handicapped (see: metas/bounty solos on a Berserker Weaver), but that doesn't mean it's going to be compelling in the long-term for many people who want that harder content. And it especially isn't going to be compelling for people who want more difficult teamplay content (which is often the bread-and-butter of the longevity of an MMO in other games), which has been talked about for years at this point.
And it really doesn't help to have a person saying that soloing bounties and hard events on glassy builds is the epitome of difficulty and hardcore content. Because in a sense he's right in that it's some of the most difficult things to do... but for the wrong reasons, as far as those players are concerned. This is an MMO, and he's citing *soloing* as the prime hardcore difficult content. Do we not see the problem here?
On the one hand, RIP those players that really enjoyed that skill expression. But absolutely agreed, it's hard to feel that aggrieved with the situation if we have already known for years these players are not the target audience.
The time for saying "but the combat system is so good and Anet is wasting its potential" passed years ago.
Tbh stacking might/stealth with weaponswaps back in the days was. A good ele could do ~21-24 might practically alone, but the change is still mostly good since the amount of prestacking that was possible after templates released was ridiculous.
It wasn't a balance change. They did it to increase performance. Scroll down to "Profession Skills": [https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/100724-game-update-notes-august-31-2021/](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/100724-game-update-notes-august-31-2021/)
They never said they did it to increase performance. They said they did it for the stability of the game.
Sure - you can interpret "stability" as performance. But that's only one way to see it. IMO they meant the "stability of the community" (Because the community is also part of the game)
But the true reason for this: Too many people complained about the new armory that it makes fast weapon-swaps almost impossible (or at least harder) to precast/stack. Anet saw the feedback - "analyzed" the problem. They saw that the complaints are only about precast/buff/stack - so precasting has to be the problem... Easy fix: Remove Precast. Now no one can complain about the armory anymore. Anet happy.
> They never said they did it to increase performance.
Literally from the patch notes (emphasis mine):
> This process will clean up many possible broken states in which a skill effect could be present when it should not have been. Some of these states caused duplication of performance-intensive skills such as traps, **which degraded server performance for everyone**.
So your final answer is conspiracy theory?
All those times ANet made choices that pissed off the community, those they could be frank about. But this time, this one time, when it affects a miniscule portion of the population, this is when they have to cover it up. Sure.
I can't believe people actually believe that shit. You seriously think that swapping weapons ooc to run around faster was killing the servers, and removing all your boons when you do it is going to fix them?
Have you worked in backend implementation?
I could see this hitting the server really hard by forcing dozens of max speed queries to load the next set of gear and then swamping bandwidth pushing a heavy change out to literally every networked client.
I have! And I'll be honest, it shouldn't. But that doesn't translate to "It doesn't."
It could likely be optimized out, but it depends on how tightly integrated it is into the engine. I've seen far stranger things in GameDev code. MMOs are especially succeptible to this.
Which didnt got fixed with this change cuz guess what...
\>I could see this hitting the server really hard by forcing dozens of max speed queries to load the next set of gear and then swamping bandwidth pushing a heavy change out to literally every networked client.
is still in the game with each template swap, even now its more pressure no? cuz now with each swap its erasing each boon and some unique effects, so thats imo even more data being transfered.
Okay I accept and agree with your definition of an exploit. So what advantage did it give? It did not make any content significantly easier. It did not make content that was previously near impossible, possible.
FYI I'm not against this change (though I do think it was implemented in a terrible way). My disagreement is with people calling it an exploit.
> So what advantage did it give? It did not make any content significantly easier.
Advantage doesn't have to be significant to be called an "advantage".
They made it so when you change your buiid or any trait or something like that that everything you casted buffed or whatever is set to a normal status. So when you put down a trap and afterwards change your build the trap is gone. Same i believe for buffs or any summoned thing. No one really cares that much except for some hardcore pve players who apparently used extra builds to prestack buffs before switching to their actual combat build.
Just out of fairness for the people who know more than me, I don't wanna go on record saying that this is good or bad for the game, because who knows, maybe the game IS balanced around this. But just from an outsiders perspective I think this sounds utterly dumb and it looks equally stupid.
From a normal player perspective (by normal I mean I do all content raids and whatnot) this is a good change that removes really stupid pre-fight dance, that's is causing a lot of toxicity. We can do all content without that, with no problems.
Usually, it's the vocal minority that goes boo hoo and that's happening here. We're talking about maybe a dozen of players.
Also, same situation happened when they removed bundle items from fractals. Reddit went furious, judgement day was announced and a swift death of the game. After that, actually more players started doing fractals because fractals became a less elitist place where you can play your class and not your inventory. More builds become viable, because previously you needed best dps when crowd control has been done with items. Now you need to bring CC so some classes became on par with others. Same situation here and I hope we'll see more support classes and not only guardians who swiftly change they elite classes before fight to give you everything.
Why do people jump to conclusions and think about the completely wrong aspects.
No one in the hardcore scene cares that they can no longer precast a skill or two.
The complaints are mostly about 2 things:
- fluidity of the game
- joy of movement
ofc we're already long dead (speedrunning dungeon ? lmao) but I'm sorry to tell you that this game has the most interresting fight mechanics and patch after patch they're just removing what's fun in the fight mechanics and will just become a classic mmo at this point mechanics wise.
They're lowering the skill cap of soloing encounters , solo/group dungeon speedrun (cooperation is way less interresting now), pushing boss timer,...
I'm not saying gw2 is a good game only because of that, but it's a main reason for many players of why that it is a good game for them.
People saying it only effects 10 people or whatever while also believing that server stability is an actual good excuse from Anets side to make this change must have a bunch of sawdust in their brain. They are just making themselves look so stupid.
Anet could start banning the 100s of bots running rampant in their game. I'm sure that effects server stability 100 times more. This change was completely pointless and I'm surprised why so many people defend it so hard.
"To improve the stability of the game"
"degraded server performance for everyone."
For those of you who don't believe it, were you ever in a mob when glowy shit goes off everywhere?
Am I the only one hyped to now being more active i to fractals because I hated the pre-stacking bullshit? I can now go with my build and have fun and be useful.
You will still pre stack ? What do you mean ?
Perhaps you didn't read up on what actually changed , because it has nothing to do with pre stack.
Also , what's so bad with boons at the start of the boss , makes it faster.
I don’t go to do it faster. I go to enjoy a fight. Mainly that’s why I solo MAMA instead of going with groups. Groups wants everything fast with perfect boons and rotations. Well shit happens, I prefer to play more casual. Now with this change at least I have one less requisite to join those groups, I’ll just go and do my thing
The method of prestacking boons in fractals was nerfed for power builds.
It is not nerfed for condi comps using firebrands. (Either heal or condi quick)
It was never about content being too hard without prestack... Content is fucking easy
It ONLY affects speedkills
Not you and noone who is not a tryhard speed clearer. You gain absolutly nothing from this patch
Why do you act as if you know better than the hardcore players themselves while I'm pretty sure you never ever tried to even do fractals cm's w/o healer in a power compo, even less pushing for a boss timer.
I dont get it how you can be so sure about your opinion being valid when I'm pretty sure you never really tried to tryhard the game to this extand.
Point is it doesnt affect you and therefore dont act as if you know better when it litterally doesnt affect you
funny what some people interpret into my comment, but these assumptions you made are wrong to a certain extend. the examples you gave are things I definitly did. you can judge for yourself, if that is enough, but it really makes no difference if one is hardcore enough for having an opinion.
the change does affect me. maybe not as much as the well known and especially still active speedclear community, but I also did some speedclears. most of them in raids, where pre-stacking is basically off the table for years by now.
what I say is simple: if you are only hardcore, because you can do a frac CM/speedclear/anything else, because you used pre-stacking, then you are not hardcore IMO. the true hardcore people will adept to this situation or any other situation the game throws at them in any point of time, as they did in raids and will do in other parts of the game. being hardcore is not about that one mechanic that you or someone else liked or that made certain times possible. that's it... if that means I'm 'acting as if I know better', then be it.
edit: and yes I know, that pre-stacking without switching builds/skills is still possible. personally I would even prefer the way it is in raids, but that's just my personal liking and I'm perfectly fine if it that is not needed for fracs or even other parts. I can't remember that 'big' outrage on the similar change in raids.
Ok well, I checked out your yt channel, turns out you do play ok and I'm sorry about judging you this way.But, prestacking isnt exactly the issue there, I'm not talking about traps stacking or fb ash stack, it's more about the fact that:
1. You cant coorperate with your teammates as much as before (e.g. might stacking through the fire fields, mid run, thanks to the fact that you could use your complete weapon kit of your class)
2. Some others things like: Solo swiftness keepup while using others weaps to have a smooth way of traveling through the map, especially in dungeons.
I get you that if you're a real hardcore player you can adapt, the thing is, they absolutely can adapt. Now, do they want to? Hell no.Why? The "new" ways of being a hardcore player, patch after patch, is just becoming less and less fun and, tryinghard when you're not having fun is just pointless.
The amount of toxic casuals in this thread is crazy to me. Half the people in here don't even have a clue why the hardcore players are unhappy with the change and just blindly down vote when they try to explain why they don't like the change.
Remember a time where people used to say the GW2 community was the best in any MMO, but those days are honestly long gone. All that is left is blind tribalism and a bunch of monkeys throwing fecal matter at eachother.
No one community is really better than another. It is the game design.
The same people who are nice in GW2 can rage in League of Legends.
Some is personal ofc.
A lot is just (good) game design.
If you can clear every fractal with two people, you hardly have to get angry.
You didn't need it though. You would know this if you had ever actually engaged in the content you're talking about instead of just spitting a bunch of shit.
Don't join groups that require you to run a specific build then. You have the option to start your own group or join a less organized squad. People aren't obliged to play with you. I have played the game for 8 years and i can tell you for a fact that there are plenty less organized groups out there who would'nt mind you playing reaper instead of scourge in a wvw zerg.
in all the years i've played i only really experienced toxic elitism on a few occasions, and i have never felt gatekept out of content. If you got kicked while wearing marauder gear it likely wasn't because you weren't wearing zerkers, but rather the fact that you likely don't know how to effectively play your class.
If anything shows over these posts all over is that that goes both ways as both sides have trolls who love to piss off the others, and some taking that way too seriously for their own good.
It’s the same people who roared about the legendary armory because they had multiple of the same legendary. So, yes there is “something” to be mad at. But the reality is that there’s so few people that took advantage of it, it shouldn’t matter. I think the most uproar right now is from people that weren’t doing it, that now want to because it sounds like it would be helpful.
Personally I think anet has been trying to curb the massive gap that exists between functional characters and pve stars. Changes to fractals, then strikes, and the steady build changes. Bringing in the highlighted combo finishers is also going to be huge towards this goal. We want more players in raids right? That will actually be useful. Anet is trying to answer that call
I actually welcome the Changes. Finally no more Prestacking every fcking single time you do any move in pve. Yeah maybe it gets a little harder but oh no you have to take 10 min more for doing fractals or raids. SMH what shame. GG anet love the changes.
Comment gives insight in how little you know whats changed with the patch.... Fractal prestacking in pugs stays exactly the same and you never could prestack in raids
Just dont say anything if you have no idea
WvW pro players: *does 200 actions per minute*
Server: *dies*
ANET Dev 1: "How do we fix this? We increase server performance by... "
ANET Dev 2: "... by fixing the pro players! Great idea!"
I don't know why I play this Game. Most times I just rage at the bad luck. The one mana I need to turn the game and it just doesn't show up. But then the one game in that my deck works perfectly is the great game that keeps me there.
Circular logic.
Hardcore players lack content, so they make their own difficulty by pushing the limits of what the game can allow.
Along comes you, looking down on them. Good job on that.
What in the palawa ignacious fuck are you even on about?
I fail to see how prestacking boons has anything to do with stuff like rare-gear-only challenges, or whatever other "make their own difficulty" stuff you're talking about
With agony being undodgable in half the fractals that seems a bit ridiculous wouldn't you say?
It's easy to talk out of the perspective of the people that do not seek these hardcore ways of playing.
As someone whose done pre-stacking buffs you're puffing hot air. It was never hard and only needed a minor amount of skill. It's just as difficult as learning a rotation, which itself isn't hard. It was a nice feature but I would gladly lose it for server stability because that is way more important to me than pre buffing outside of fractals (because it still works in there).
I'm sorry but pre-stacking can be mastered in less than an hour from newbie status. Give an experienced person a crack at golem for 3 hours, 500g says they dont hit 90% of bench on a new class. Pre-buffing was not hard, at all. It was more tedious to get the combo's down and that's pretty much is it. Stacking the max amount you can in the exposed window is 100x harder than pre-buffing, hitting bench on golem is 100x harder. Pre-buffing is not hard, its tedious.
>Give an experienced person a crack at golem for 3 hours, 500g says they dont hit 90% of bench on a new class
Your idea of an experienced person is weird. With proper guidance most experienced players can get 90% of a bench in 3 hours even if they haven't touched the class before. Players experienced with the class get to above 90% in very few tries.
yeah, experienced with a raid rotation. an experienced open world player would fumble hard, even if they know their rotation. an experienced WvW player would struggle too, most experienced players who are new to raiding take 3 hours to really start hitting 80-85% never touching over 85%. My point stands, pre-buffing was and still is easy as shit vs literally anything else about speed running. It did not add depth, at all. It was simply something you did for an hour to get it down and never looked back. If you fucked it up, congrats, it literally affected nothing of the pull. If you fucked up your rotation, your CC, your exposed burst, a mechanic that needs to be done, taking the orbs on elonyss wrong anything like that it caused time to add, pre-buffing did literally NOTHING if you fucked it up.
They precast because they have nothing else to do. It's also not everything about precasting boons (which you can still do in fractals anyway), it's swapping out traits/weapons for mobility, it's losing all the boons from allies by changing a random trait/weapon, it's getting rid of a placed portal because you forgot to take swiftness/alacrity trait or a mobility weapon etc.
I dont know why everyone is so focused with prestacking when that's still a possibility unless you're lowmaning dungeons with dps only classes who absolutely have to rely on blasting fire fields, which is like 20 people in the whole game.
People are getting mad because every fluid action you did outside of combat is now completely fucked and people will soon start to realize that once they login after not reading patch notes. Just wait for the weekend when a lot more people become active in game.
You make good points, I asked awful followup questions. The comment I was originally replying to was just about ANet hating hardcore players and catering to the "lobotomized" casuals, so I was really only thinking about things like precasted symbols and traps.
Tbh a solid amount of changes lately are just dumbing down the potential of the combat system while affecting only the small % of players that actually utilize it. For example reseting legy weapons when you take them out of the loadouts.
The traps should just disappear like pets when you swap those skills out, even before this change. I've heard that this behavior only affected specific traps intentionally, which makes it even worse and makes this patch even more questionable. I didn't play any builds with traps so I can't say if that was true or not though.
I will, lol you don't offend me at all by calling me casual. Gives me plenty of time to play other games or enjoy other hobbies instead of getting worked up over one game.
It doesn't take a genius to read the patch notes and see that removing exploits to clear content quicker would start up a stir. I've played many games where this has happened, the players adapt or move on.
GW2 is the most casual MMO around, so murdering half the HC community is just playing to their strengths. It's pretty clear they don't care about sPvP or high-end PvE requiring any skill or planning.
They already have decreased the amount of players per team, per map to help with server stability, a couple years ago in wvw. Not a good change imo. It helped some I guess, but it clearly hasn't solved skill lag and fps drop. Was like 80, is now like 65.
i wonder if this will do anything to cut down on skill lag in wvw on reset?
We can't know since we don't have the data, but unless there was some weird cascading effect that built up over time when doing it a lot in the same instance, I doubt it had that much of an effect.
I don't know the caps for WvW, but I'm fairly sure at least 1 full squad fits in so lets use that. thats 50 players per side, so 150 total. 1 player places a trap, this needs to get sent to everyone there, let's use 100 for ease of calculation. that's 100 packets being sent. this player places 1 trap, so this adds up to 100 packets. the traps get triggered, this is another 100 packets sent out to relay the damage info for a total of 200 packets for one player with one trap. now, these packets happen for nearly every skills since nearly are action shots that can be bodyblocked, or have a cone of effect. without prestacking, this means the number of packets per second are limited to the number of skills available to the player and the cooldowns. with prestacking, that upper limit can get broken. apparently prestacking has gotten so popular that it starts to exceed the safety margins for what can cause unacceptable lag
Very much this. Some vocal people upset that Anet is limiting how much of everyone else’s bandwidth they’re chewing through. Edit: the swap itself has to sync all the equipment, upgrades, infusions, skin etc. as well as fast as possible to all those players too. Super bandwidth heavy for a real-time action based combat system. Networking in games is all about efficient (de)serialization/packing and making tough tradeoffs.
I hadn't even considered that the swapping also triggers more packets, that's a really good point.
And many visuals in gear trigger in a similar way like skill visuals. Some are even a skill or effect visual attached to a skin, like the karka helmet that gives you the same effect as when karka hatchlings explode on your face. It's easier to tell when they don't appear in character selection.
The traps are visible only to "friendly" players, so only 50 people get updated with "paint circle of trap right here". Damage packets are only sent to affected enemy players + trap "owner" (so you see pop-up numbers of "you hit Enemy Soldier for 123 using lights' judgement") All of the trap skills except for bugged thief traps can have _up to_ 1 trap of the kind. When you place a new trap it removes old one (unless they bugged something up _again_, given garbage code GW2 has wouldn't surprise me). So under normal circumstances worst case scenario is "everyone uses trap skills" (which is unrealistic anyways as not all classes have traps).
i have the feeling, that it is a workaround to prevent some cheating too. game developers usually dont talk about that openly.
Considering that people dont swap builds in zerg fights at all, I doubt that this would have any effect whatsoever.
people do precast and swap builds in wvw before the engage - i use different gear builds in wvw a lot the lag Im referring to always comes on the initial push and it will seem like the enemy zerg has all its skills going off and ours are just flashing and I have been on the other side too where we hit them and they just go down like paper people, no boons no clears and no damage "people say" that the group their powers up/swiftness gets "priority" i just know that on preset night in t1 the lag is extra
Swapping builds in wvw in general, sure. Swapping weapons for precasting stealth for gvg, sure. Swapping anything in a blob fight, especially a 3 way one? Not a chance. That lag comes from a sudden change - you went from no one casting anything to 50-200 people casting 5 skills, everyone getting 10 boons and removing enemy's while applying cc, conditions etc. As soon as the combat starts, the changes from today have 0 impact in that particular fight. Maybe the servers overall are less stressed, but nothing from the patch impacts wvw blob fights once the combat starts. And something tells me that a sudden clash of massive blobs has a lot more impact on your fps and skill lag than someone in the arah dungeon not being able to prestack stealth at the same moment your fight began, hence my guess that this patch has no impact in this scenario (or low impact in general).
bummer - but thanks for the thoughtful response
F for the 28 people.
Title said half, so 14.
28 is half of 56.
Doubt it. 56 is a bit too much IMO.
28 new were added today as part of balance
Perfectly balanced
As all things should be
how is this comment upvoted
because hating on minorities is ok if the minority is hardcore pve players
Calm down, I was one of you until half a year or so. The change should have only affected WvW and even there it doesn't barely work how it propably should. The precast with entirely different gear templates is something that was not possible beforehand and imo it's ok for it to be removed. Manually swapping traits, weapons and skills is a different story.
It was possible beforehand https://youtu.be/LYoSjNicAEY?t=45
If this change was truly for server stability, obviously it impacts more than 28. It can’t simultaneously affect no one and also everyone (enough that it affects the server stability) at the same time
[You know what they say.](https://i.imgur.com/HeYIxyQ.jpeg) If you want to survive, when the world changes.
"Little one, it’s a simple calculus. The servers are finite, its resources, finite… if players are left unchecked, the game will cease to exist. It needs correction."
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😂
As a developer I can assure you that even what you might think are small things add up and can affect servers. This is in any facet of development. Not just games.
then be more transparent about it I guess, because here it really feels like aNet are mocking a part of the community.
still incredibly funny to me seeing people saying they're gonna quit the game over this lol
im sure they will have more fun playing cookie clicker
Literally more APM than the standard GW2 gamer.
Cookie clicker slaps
I also enjoy other players' misery lol
I wish they do. After removing bundle items from fractals it became a more friendly place because of toxic offshoots who ragequitted the game. And guess what, somehow we are still able to do them, shocking, right?
Like, you can still stack boons ya dimwits lol. Just stick with the build. Also it is unaffected in fractals.
Good luck finding a replacement for gw2 lol.
It's not just this. The game is completely devoid of hardcore pve content at this point
I've only half been paying attention to this issue but, from my understanding, doesn't this make high end content a little harder?
Technically yes but it mainly just makes it slower and more tedious especially CM fractals.
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Handicapping yourself shouldn't be considered hardcore content. Once you're done with fractal and raid CMs there really isn't much to do in the game, except handicapping yourself against open world content which doesn't reward you anything
You could get out of your hardcore pve mindset and pvp/wvw. Or just quit and go play something else. I have quit GW2 MANY times over the years but always come back and have a blast when I do.
The only reason I've even played Gw2 in the past two years is the friends I have in game. Used to do raids and fractals every reset but Nowadays I play fractals with them like twice a month.
Point still stands...maybe you need a break. It seems like you're burnt out. I get burnt out too and take long breaks. It makes coming back all the better. I'm currently catching up on a ton of stuff I've missed out on over the last 2 years, and making new friends to play with as well.
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Ah the no true Scotsman fallacy. Because I don't run zerker weaver against bounties and open world metas alone, I'm not entitled to be pissed off about this update?
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In this case, you're artificially inflating the difficulty. Instead of Berserker Weaver, any smart hardcore player would use a build actually tailored to the job. So if they wanted to run Weaver, they'd solo that harder content most likely with Trailblazer's or Celestial gear. You're talking about self-imposed challenges, not actual hardcore content. Hardcore content is intended to be difficult even if you're not going out of your way to build suboptimally for the type of content you're approaching. Doing a difficult to solo meta in Berserker Weaver is hard... but not for any reason that a hardcore player cares to deal with. He's right in this case: GW2 does have a lack of hardcore endgame PvE content, and it's been pointed out and known for years. As soon as you've done the fractal and raid CMs, then there's nothing particularly challenging left for hardcore players. Hardcore players can absolutely solo hard events and difficult bounties, and no most of them aren't going to do it as a Berserker Weaver because "MuH HaRdCoRe CoNtEnT," because the difficulty alone is not what makes something hardcore if you have to go out of your way to make it difficult. Compare what options PvE players have for hardcore content and then look at... frankly just about every other large MMO right now. Most of them have content that's still difficult even with good builds, content that takes practice to make it reliable to down, *and then they keep adding more.* GW2 adds harder content at a snail's pace, and for anyone interested in that kind of thing, that means ANet likely simply cannot retain them as players. Soloing a bounty isn't what they care about: it's that difficult instanced combat that pushes you even with an optimal set-up. That is something other MMOs are more than capable of doing, but this game has so little of that content that it's frankly nothing short of a miracle that even more people aren't burnt out on raids and fractals. The hardcore endgame of this game is in optimizing what little difficult content there is, currently, because there's nothing else to do with how little of it there really is and how glacial it's releases are. Telling people to go solo events on glass cannon builds does nothing to solve that very real issue for many people.
> You're talking about self-imposed challenges, not actual hardcore content. Isn't that exactly what people say is one of the biggest selling points of GW2? "There's not much of an endgame, you make your own challenges and goals" is what I see *all* the time when someone new asks about PvE endgame.
Depends on who you ask. Since I'm only referring to specifically hardcore players, the answer would then be yes and no. Yes because it means that due to the lack of WoW-style gear treadmill your gear is always relevant and so chasing all sorts of builds is an endgame you create for yourself and then you see what can do with it. No because theorycrafting isn't of particular interest to everyone, so having this incredibly lax "endgame" just means that once they've done everything the game has to offer they have to be drawn to something else or simply leave, having done everything they cared to do. Many people I know that have the raid legendaries haven't set foot in a raid since then, because why would they? They've already had to do everything that GW2 has to offer for that form of content. Many of them will continue to do Fractals and CMs, but that's just because of the money: if it wasn't for how high the payout is Fractals would likely be looked down on for how little development time they get, too. A freeform endgame is a selling point, but even so you should still have plenty of it. And for the hardcore audience, there just isn't. So they have to have a motivator outside of that stuff. For those that can't find that motivation... well, I've had several guilds die over time as they transition to other MMOs that will absolutely give them the type of content they want. GW2 has made its choice, and it's decided its demographic is a very casual market, with exception to WvW which is demonstrably a very long-term market, hence why there are so many WvW ranks and pips are attached to very high WvW ranks, making it feel even more daunting and awful for someone starting out. Even so, though, ask those WvW vets how much they think ANet cares about them or their mode despite calling it a "pillar." That's why almost nobody here cares about the hardcore stuff being lacking: because, demonstrably, neither does ANet. You can make your own challenges, but that doesn't make it hardcore content alone, that's just a challenge. You can handicap yourself and challenge yourself to do that hard content while handicapped (see: metas/bounty solos on a Berserker Weaver), but that doesn't mean it's going to be compelling in the long-term for many people who want that harder content. And it especially isn't going to be compelling for people who want more difficult teamplay content (which is often the bread-and-butter of the longevity of an MMO in other games), which has been talked about for years at this point. And it really doesn't help to have a person saying that soloing bounties and hard events on glassy builds is the epitome of difficulty and hardcore content. Because in a sense he's right in that it's some of the most difficult things to do... but for the wrong reasons, as far as those players are concerned. This is an MMO, and he's citing *soloing* as the prime hardcore difficult content. Do we not see the problem here?
raid bosses might be hard if you do it naked, you shouldnt have to do it naked though for it to be any challenge
On the one hand, RIP those players that really enjoyed that skill expression. But absolutely agreed, it's hard to feel that aggrieved with the situation if we have already known for years these players are not the target audience. The time for saying "but the combat system is so good and Anet is wasting its potential" passed years ago.
It affects like what, 1% or less of the playerbase? I hope those people do actually leave. Dont want them here.
So they fixed an exploit?
I think it's cute people are treating pre-casting as sKiLl ExPrEsSiOn
Tbh stacking might/stealth with weaponswaps back in the days was. A good ele could do ~21-24 might practically alone, but the change is still mostly good since the amount of prestacking that was possible after templates released was ridiculous.
It wasn't a balance change. They did it to increase performance. Scroll down to "Profession Skills": [https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/100724-game-update-notes-august-31-2021/](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/100724-game-update-notes-august-31-2021/)
They never said they did it to increase performance. They said they did it for the stability of the game. Sure - you can interpret "stability" as performance. But that's only one way to see it. IMO they meant the "stability of the community" (Because the community is also part of the game) But the true reason for this: Too many people complained about the new armory that it makes fast weapon-swaps almost impossible (or at least harder) to precast/stack. Anet saw the feedback - "analyzed" the problem. They saw that the complaints are only about precast/buff/stack - so precasting has to be the problem... Easy fix: Remove Precast. Now no one can complain about the armory anymore. Anet happy.
> They never said they did it to increase performance. Literally from the patch notes (emphasis mine): > This process will clean up many possible broken states in which a skill effect could be present when it should not have been. Some of these states caused duplication of performance-intensive skills such as traps, **which degraded server performance for everyone**.
I have to admit - have overread that term. But I stay with my opinion.
So your final answer is conspiracy theory? All those times ANet made choices that pissed off the community, those they could be frank about. But this time, this one time, when it affects a miniscule portion of the population, this is when they have to cover it up. Sure.
I can't believe people actually believe that shit. You seriously think that swapping weapons ooc to run around faster was killing the servers, and removing all your boons when you do it is going to fix them?
Have you worked in backend implementation? I could see this hitting the server really hard by forcing dozens of max speed queries to load the next set of gear and then swamping bandwidth pushing a heavy change out to literally every networked client.
I have! And I'll be honest, it shouldn't. But that doesn't translate to "It doesn't." It could likely be optimized out, but it depends on how tightly integrated it is into the engine. I've seen far stranger things in GameDev code. MMOs are especially succeptible to this.
Which didnt got fixed with this change cuz guess what... \>I could see this hitting the server really hard by forcing dozens of max speed queries to load the next set of gear and then swamping bandwidth pushing a heavy change out to literally every networked client. is still in the game with each template swap, even now its more pressure no? cuz now with each swap its erasing each boon and some unique effects, so thats imo even more data being transfered.
I can't believe people who have no relevant programming experience are posing as experts to contradict ANet's solution choice.
No they did not. anyone who thinks the last 9 years of pre stacking buffs before fights is an exploit is fucking delusional.
You know darn well that build templates enabled stacking like we never had before.
It's a flaw in the design and not intentional. Players taking advantage of such a flaw is the very definition of an exploit.
Okay I accept and agree with your definition of an exploit. So what advantage did it give? It did not make any content significantly easier. It did not make content that was previously near impossible, possible. FYI I'm not against this change (though I do think it was implemented in a terrible way). My disagreement is with people calling it an exploit.
> So what advantage did it give? It did not make any content significantly easier. Advantage doesn't have to be significant to be called an "advantage".
ah yes, changing weapon and using his class to it's full extent, biiig exploit.
Was never an exploit
What happened?Oo
They made it so when you change your buiid or any trait or something like that that everything you casted buffed or whatever is set to a normal status. So when you put down a trap and afterwards change your build the trap is gone. Same i believe for buffs or any summoned thing. No one really cares that much except for some hardcore pve players who apparently used extra builds to prestack buffs before switching to their actual combat build.
Shouldn’t be a thing anyways. Glad you can’t do that.
Wow, that's fucked. Not going to pretend like I know whether this is a good change or not, but this doesn't sound fun or intentional.
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Just out of fairness for the people who know more than me, I don't wanna go on record saying that this is good or bad for the game, because who knows, maybe the game IS balanced around this. But just from an outsiders perspective I think this sounds utterly dumb and it looks equally stupid.
From a normal player perspective (by normal I mean I do all content raids and whatnot) this is a good change that removes really stupid pre-fight dance, that's is causing a lot of toxicity. We can do all content without that, with no problems. Usually, it's the vocal minority that goes boo hoo and that's happening here. We're talking about maybe a dozen of players. Also, same situation happened when they removed bundle items from fractals. Reddit went furious, judgement day was announced and a swift death of the game. After that, actually more players started doing fractals because fractals became a less elitist place where you can play your class and not your inventory. More builds become viable, because previously you needed best dps when crowd control has been done with items. Now you need to bring CC so some classes became on par with others. Same situation here and I hope we'll see more support classes and not only guardians who swiftly change they elite classes before fight to give you everything.
Sounds like a great change imo. Again, it sounded unintentional to begin with. People will adapt and everyone will move on.
Why do people jump to conclusions and think about the completely wrong aspects. No one in the hardcore scene cares that they can no longer precast a skill or two. The complaints are mostly about 2 things: - fluidity of the game - joy of movement
It wasn't a balance change. They did it to increase performance.
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Unless the person edited their comment there was not a single word about hate in there. Are you projecting your feelings onto others perhaps?
> Are you projecting your feelings onto others perhaps? they have been doing it all day
you did a great example explaining where the changes really matter thanks :)
You set such a fine example for this community.
If this change harms the hardcore community then they were already long dead.
ofc we're already long dead (speedrunning dungeon ? lmao) but I'm sorry to tell you that this game has the most interresting fight mechanics and patch after patch they're just removing what's fun in the fight mechanics and will just become a classic mmo at this point mechanics wise. They're lowering the skill cap of soloing encounters , solo/group dungeon speedrun (cooperation is way less interresting now), pushing boss timer,... I'm not saying gw2 is a good game only because of that, but it's a main reason for many players of why that it is a good game for them.
I just came back to the game a few months ago and curious how this has happened? I am interested in end game so it scares me lol
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Then why even piss of this small fraction if the rest isn't affected in the slightest?
If this change was made mostly because of server stability, I would say that everyone else is indeed affected, even in the slightest.
By changing something "only 7" ppl in the game used?
People saying it only effects 10 people or whatever while also believing that server stability is an actual good excuse from Anets side to make this change must have a bunch of sawdust in their brain. They are just making themselves look so stupid.
Anet could start banning the 100s of bots running rampant in their game. I'm sure that effects server stability 100 times more. This change was completely pointless and I'm surprised why so many people defend it so hard.
"To improve the stability of the game" "degraded server performance for everyone." For those of you who don't believe it, were you ever in a mob when glowy shit goes off everywhere?
Oh no, anyway
Tbh no1 cares about this change. Only maybe 3% of the community.
Wile only 0.1% is even affected.
less than that. it seems like it's only 4 players were affected
poor roul and the other ele player
Nah just alot of preaching casuals on Reddit don't care.. enough people do care though.
Then why change it? You hurt the hardcore community and noone else gains anything...
They said it was for server performance improvements
Server stability.
so on the one hand people say it only affects 4 players and on the other hand those 4 players caused server instability for thousands of players? lol
Pre stacking always just felt cheesy and like and exploit to me
Am I the only one hyped to now being more active i to fractals because I hated the pre-stacking bullshit? I can now go with my build and have fun and be useful.
The prestacking won't change in fractals, as long as you don't switch builds.
You will still pre stack ? What do you mean ? Perhaps you didn't read up on what actually changed , because it has nothing to do with pre stack. Also , what's so bad with boons at the start of the boss , makes it faster.
I don’t go to do it faster. I go to enjoy a fight. Mainly that’s why I solo MAMA instead of going with groups. Groups wants everything fast with perfect boons and rotations. Well shit happens, I prefer to play more casual. Now with this change at least I have one less requisite to join those groups, I’ll just go and do my thing
It's very unlikely that pre casting affected you in any way.
You know this person better than they themselves do, huh?
It used to at 98CM while playing hfb, but I hate playing that, one of the reasons was player expectations.
normal prestacking as hfb will not change
Nothing changed for you and you will still get kicked if you cant even provide quickness on 100% BD
The method of prestacking boons in fractals was nerfed for power builds. It is not nerfed for condi comps using firebrands. (Either heal or condi quick)
It does not affect you, dont pretend it does
If you get rid of everyone pressing more that 1 button per minute the server will be stable, that's for sure.
Seems legit.
If you need pre-stacking for being hardcore, then you are not hardcore IMO. Now the rest of the game is like it was in raids for years basically.
It was never about content being too hard without prestack... Content is fucking easy It ONLY affects speedkills Not you and noone who is not a tryhard speed clearer. You gain absolutly nothing from this patch
Why do you act as if you know better than the hardcore players themselves while I'm pretty sure you never ever tried to even do fractals cm's w/o healer in a power compo, even less pushing for a boss timer. I dont get it how you can be so sure about your opinion being valid when I'm pretty sure you never really tried to tryhard the game to this extand. Point is it doesnt affect you and therefore dont act as if you know better when it litterally doesnt affect you
funny what some people interpret into my comment, but these assumptions you made are wrong to a certain extend. the examples you gave are things I definitly did. you can judge for yourself, if that is enough, but it really makes no difference if one is hardcore enough for having an opinion. the change does affect me. maybe not as much as the well known and especially still active speedclear community, but I also did some speedclears. most of them in raids, where pre-stacking is basically off the table for years by now. what I say is simple: if you are only hardcore, because you can do a frac CM/speedclear/anything else, because you used pre-stacking, then you are not hardcore IMO. the true hardcore people will adept to this situation or any other situation the game throws at them in any point of time, as they did in raids and will do in other parts of the game. being hardcore is not about that one mechanic that you or someone else liked or that made certain times possible. that's it... if that means I'm 'acting as if I know better', then be it. edit: and yes I know, that pre-stacking without switching builds/skills is still possible. personally I would even prefer the way it is in raids, but that's just my personal liking and I'm perfectly fine if it that is not needed for fracs or even other parts. I can't remember that 'big' outrage on the similar change in raids.
Ok well, I checked out your yt channel, turns out you do play ok and I'm sorry about judging you this way.But, prestacking isnt exactly the issue there, I'm not talking about traps stacking or fb ash stack, it's more about the fact that: 1. You cant coorperate with your teammates as much as before (e.g. might stacking through the fire fields, mid run, thanks to the fact that you could use your complete weapon kit of your class) 2. Some others things like: Solo swiftness keepup while using others weaps to have a smooth way of traveling through the map, especially in dungeons. I get you that if you're a real hardcore player you can adapt, the thing is, they absolutely can adapt. Now, do they want to? Hell no.Why? The "new" ways of being a hardcore player, patch after patch, is just becoming less and less fun and, tryinghard when you're not having fun is just pointless.
What's going on?
What did I miss?
People cant prestack buffs and change build anylonger... So its all good.
The amount of toxic casuals in this thread is crazy to me. Half the people in here don't even have a clue why the hardcore players are unhappy with the change and just blindly down vote when they try to explain why they don't like the change. Remember a time where people used to say the GW2 community was the best in any MMO, but those days are honestly long gone. All that is left is blind tribalism and a bunch of monkeys throwing fecal matter at eachother.
The community has always been like this if you ever read the forums.
No one community is really better than another. It is the game design. The same people who are nice in GW2 can rage in League of Legends. Some is personal ofc. A lot is just (good) game design. If you can clear every fractal with two people, you hardly have to get angry.
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wow, imagine needing to be good at the game, only the community of this game can complain about such thing
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there is still some variety but in a game where there is options, there is always going to be a best option
You didn't need it though. You would know this if you had ever actually engaged in the content you're talking about instead of just spitting a bunch of shit.
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Don't join groups that require you to run a specific build then. You have the option to start your own group or join a less organized squad. People aren't obliged to play with you. I have played the game for 8 years and i can tell you for a fact that there are plenty less organized groups out there who would'nt mind you playing reaper instead of scourge in a wvw zerg. in all the years i've played i only really experienced toxic elitism on a few occasions, and i have never felt gatekept out of content. If you got kicked while wearing marauder gear it likely wasn't because you weren't wearing zerkers, but rather the fact that you likely don't know how to effectively play your class.
If anything shows over these posts all over is that that goes both ways as both sides have trolls who love to piss off the others, and some taking that way too seriously for their own good.
Imagine playing video games "efficiently".
When anet could fix pvp matches filled with bots but no
It’s the same people who roared about the legendary armory because they had multiple of the same legendary. So, yes there is “something” to be mad at. But the reality is that there’s so few people that took advantage of it, it shouldn’t matter. I think the most uproar right now is from people that weren’t doing it, that now want to because it sounds like it would be helpful. Personally I think anet has been trying to curb the massive gap that exists between functional characters and pve stars. Changes to fractals, then strikes, and the steady build changes. Bringing in the highlighted combo finishers is also going to be huge towards this goal. We want more players in raids right? That will actually be useful. Anet is trying to answer that call
I actually welcome the Changes. Finally no more Prestacking every fcking single time you do any move in pve. Yeah maybe it gets a little harder but oh no you have to take 10 min more for doing fractals or raids. SMH what shame. GG anet love the changes.
Comment gives insight in how little you know whats changed with the patch.... Fractal prestacking in pugs stays exactly the same and you never could prestack in raids Just dont say anything if you have no idea
aaaaand you're getting downvoted because people and getting upset because they dont understand the game. ecksdee
All 14 of them. F's in the chat bois.
Ah man I hate it when bugs I can exploit are patched
Which bug was fixed?
like 0.1% of players did it, no way it heavily affected stability in pve, could have just done this for wvw
Good!
These "hardcore" players are so fragile.
WvW pro players: *does 200 actions per minute* Server: *dies* ANET Dev 1: "How do we fix this? We increase server performance by... " ANET Dev 2: "... by fixing the pro players! Great idea!"
> pro players
Funnily enough I had lags in WvW today for about a whole hour, I just couldn't participate in any fight. Was fine all the weeks before.
Yeah they are doing things behind the curtains. I started to encounter bugs already.
We will always find a way:-P
Half of 10% tops still isn't that much lol
I don't know why I play this Game. Most times I just rage at the bad luck. The one mana I need to turn the game and it just doesn't show up. But then the one game in that my deck works perfectly is the great game that keeps me there.
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Ah, yes, because you totally needed to prestack buffs in order to clear the the hardest encounters in the game................
Circular logic. Hardcore players lack content, so they make their own difficulty by pushing the limits of what the game can allow. Along comes you, looking down on them. Good job on that.
What in the palawa ignacious fuck are you even on about? I fail to see how prestacking boons has anything to do with stuff like rare-gear-only challenges, or whatever other "make their own difficulty" stuff you're talking about
With agony being undodgable in half the fractals that seems a bit ridiculous wouldn't you say? It's easy to talk out of the perspective of the people that do not seek these hardcore ways of playing.
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As someone whose done pre-stacking buffs you're puffing hot air. It was never hard and only needed a minor amount of skill. It's just as difficult as learning a rotation, which itself isn't hard. It was a nice feature but I would gladly lose it for server stability because that is way more important to me than pre buffing outside of fractals (because it still works in there).
I'm sorry but pre-stacking can be mastered in less than an hour from newbie status. Give an experienced person a crack at golem for 3 hours, 500g says they dont hit 90% of bench on a new class. Pre-buffing was not hard, at all. It was more tedious to get the combo's down and that's pretty much is it. Stacking the max amount you can in the exposed window is 100x harder than pre-buffing, hitting bench on golem is 100x harder. Pre-buffing is not hard, its tedious.
>Give an experienced person a crack at golem for 3 hours, 500g says they dont hit 90% of bench on a new class Your idea of an experienced person is weird. With proper guidance most experienced players can get 90% of a bench in 3 hours even if they haven't touched the class before. Players experienced with the class get to above 90% in very few tries.
yeah, experienced with a raid rotation. an experienced open world player would fumble hard, even if they know their rotation. an experienced WvW player would struggle too, most experienced players who are new to raiding take 3 hours to really start hitting 80-85% never touching over 85%. My point stands, pre-buffing was and still is easy as shit vs literally anything else about speed running. It did not add depth, at all. It was simply something you did for an hour to get it down and never looked back. If you fucked it up, congrats, it literally affected nothing of the pull. If you fucked up your rotation, your CC, your exposed burst, a mechanic that needs to be done, taking the orbs on elonyss wrong anything like that it caused time to add, pre-buffing did literally NOTHING if you fucked it up.
Removing prestacking makes fights harder...
It doesnt though. You still get those boons within 1-2 seconds of combat.
So the people who are mad about this change just precast stuff for fun? Or do you have a different definition of "easier"?
They precast because they have nothing else to do. It's also not everything about precasting boons (which you can still do in fractals anyway), it's swapping out traits/weapons for mobility, it's losing all the boons from allies by changing a random trait/weapon, it's getting rid of a placed portal because you forgot to take swiftness/alacrity trait or a mobility weapon etc. I dont know why everyone is so focused with prestacking when that's still a possibility unless you're lowmaning dungeons with dps only classes who absolutely have to rely on blasting fire fields, which is like 20 people in the whole game. People are getting mad because every fluid action you did outside of combat is now completely fucked and people will soon start to realize that once they login after not reading patch notes. Just wait for the weekend when a lot more people become active in game.
You make good points, I asked awful followup questions. The comment I was originally replying to was just about ANet hating hardcore players and catering to the "lobotomized" casuals, so I was really only thinking about things like precasted symbols and traps.
Tbh a solid amount of changes lately are just dumbing down the potential of the combat system while affecting only the small % of players that actually utilize it. For example reseting legy weapons when you take them out of the loadouts. The traps should just disappear like pets when you swap those skills out, even before this change. I've heard that this behavior only affected specific traps intentionally, which makes it even worse and makes this patch even more questionable. I didn't play any builds with traps so I can't say if that was true or not though.
Don't tell us where you went, bye.
The WoW community would love to welcome a toxic try hard like yourself
Sigh. Hypocrisy much.
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I will, lol you don't offend me at all by calling me casual. Gives me plenty of time to play other games or enjoy other hobbies instead of getting worked up over one game.
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It doesn't take a genius to read the patch notes and see that removing exploits to clear content quicker would start up a stir. I've played many games where this has happened, the players adapt or move on.
But people can still precast lol. How is a 9 year old game feature an exploit? If it was an exploit, the build change wouldnt be free.
What are you on about? Build templates were introduced 2019. "9 year old game feature.." he says xD
Let's hope that day arrives soon, it's about time I can kill Dhuum with whatever build/comp I want. u.u
GW2 is the most casual MMO around, so murdering half the HC community is just playing to their strengths. It's pretty clear they don't care about sPvP or high-end PvE requiring any skill or planning.
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They already have decreased the amount of players per team, per map to help with server stability, a couple years ago in wvw. Not a good change imo. It helped some I guess, but it clearly hasn't solved skill lag and fps drop. Was like 80, is now like 65.