Guild Wars 2

I find it boring if no one ever defends. If there are no enemies, what’s the point?

thrag.9740:

I was more so joking about the fact that we finally have a record of ascended dropping from the highest level chest. I’ve been watching this update each night, and waiting to see when we would see the first.

Ah, my bad.

thrag.9740:

The drought is dead!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18IHVJao5j85KOp6lBTOgO8qs4VYD3Xty-jKPZo8o-Q4/pubhtml

In all seriousness, hidden update? We will never know.

The drought doesn’t look dead at all. Only 5 ascended boxes out of 742 daily chests. That’s only one more than last time I looked. No, it is still in full force.

Bhima.9518:

I don’t think you are reading that properly. Armor and weapons are all well below 2% in that data, with weapon boxes topping out at 0.3%. 4.2% is for golden weapon skins, not ascended weapons and 11.9% isn’t even in the table… maybe you are looking at the ring droprate?

You are looking at the wrong tab. Make sure you are looking at the Pre-23/10/2015 data, not current drop rates. That horrible 0.3% number you quoted is how things are now. Compare that to how it used to be and cry.

UnbentMars.9126:

Well…yeah. They are adding raids which have been stated to have a 15% chance drop rate for an ascended box per boss (so ~2 group members will get ascended loot per boss per week). Even at it’s height, fractals were nowhere near that rate.

This is, frankly, extremely wrong.

Fractals gave a 31.6% chance every day if you did 50/40/30/20. A single 15% chance once per week can’t even come close to comparing.

The ascended chest drop rates have not merely been “decreased,” which implies something reasonable might have happened. No, they are less than one tenth of what they used to be. A much more extreme word is warranted. Like “obliterated,” or “nearly eliminated.”

I’m not joking; the numbers back it up.

I noted this in the feedback I posted from BWE2.

Pelto.9364:

gone – including the secret room.

There is still a secret room, however… It’s a bit tricky to get to, but worth finding.

doombreaker.3710:

First of all: why would you be interested in the chance to don’t obtain a chest in 3 days? What does it tell you if you do fractals every day?

You’re interested in the chance to not obtain a chest in 3 days because that is the most straightforward way to calculate the chances of getting one or more chests in three days. If you’ll note, he mentioned both, and they are the inverse of each other.

For example, if there is a 32% chance of getting a chest each day, that means there is a 68% chance of not getting a chest. To calculate what your chances of getting at least one chest after three days is, you have to multiply your chances of NOT getting any chest at all each of those days. That is, 0.68*0.68*0.68 = 0.314. Then you take the inverse, which would be 0.686, and that’s your chances of getting at least one chest: 68.6%.

Dovienya.6597:

What do you mean 1 in 3 chance of getting an ascended box per day? Do you mean per tier? Or if you do every tier.

I meant if you did 50/40/30/20 (16 islands), thereby maximizing your chances, you would have a roughly 33% (1 in 3 chance) of getting an ascended box each day.

Dovienya.6597:

I understand that mathematically, its reasonable and logical that I happened to fall into the unfortunate 2/3 every single time- an outlier-but I’m wonder if anyone knows what the actual drop rate was per tier.

As Bohantopa above mentioned, I used [KING]’s numbers. (Look at the second tab: “Pre 23/10/2015”)

Level 50: 11.9% chance of an armor box, 4.2% of a weapon box. (16.1% total)
Level 40: 6.9% armor, 2.3% weapon. (9.2% total)
Level 30: 4.2% armor, 1.8% weapon. (6% total)
Level 20: 3.7% armor, 0.8% weapon. (4.5% total)

This works out to:

1-((1-0.161)*(1-0.092)*(1-0.06)*(1-0.045)) = 0.316

= roughly 32% chance of getting an ascended box if you run 50/40/30/20 for the day.

That certainly doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed one every three days, I’ve gone a full week and a half of doing 50/40/30/20 without an ascended chest, and I’ve also gotten two in a single day before. It can be pretty streaky. But getting one every 3 or 4 days was pretty common for me.

Tomiyou.3790:

Considering your input about dropping ascended armor chest in 21-50 fractals, i believe they most likely pushed these drop rates into 50+ zones, since they are harder.

Current drop rate research doesn’t support this, although they are rare enough it is hard to say for certain just yet. Out of 438 recorded daily chests, only 3 armor boxes and 0 weapon boxes have dropped. Two of those were from level 21-50. One was from a single-island daily. None were from 51-100.

Linken.6345:

the design intent was to give people that have a shorter time to play be able to play fractals so 1 instead of 4.
Logicaly then the reward have to go down by 3/4th aswell.

You don’t get ascended boxes by doing islands; you get them by doing dailies. You have to do 5 dailies (11 islands) to maximize your chances of getting an ascended box. In the past, you would have done a run of 50/40/30/20 (16 islands). So maybe you have a basis to argue that the drop rate should be 32% lower per day, since you are running fewer islands per day.

(I’ll ignore for a moment that this limit on the number of islands run for daily rewards is imposed on us rather than by choice — another kind of nerf. I would rather run 16 islands if it meant full rewards.)

Even so, the actual drops rates are far worse than that. Under the old system you had a roughly 1 in 3 chance of getting an ascended box per day. Under the new system, you have a roughly 1 in 30 chance of getting an ascended box per day. A 90% reduction in drop rate.

That’s the difference between putting a new gearset together every three weeks versus every 6 months (assuming you’re lucky enough to get a different piece each time).

It used to be you could expect an ascended chest maybe once every three days on average if you did 50/40/30/20 each day. With the new drop rates, it’s closer to once every 30 days on average if you do all 5 dailies. It really is a massive nerf.

It used to be if you did 50/40/30/20 each day, you had about a 31.6% chance of getting either an ascended armor box or a weapon box, and ascended rings were so common that you’d likely get 2~4 per day. Not getting at least one ring was unheard of (less than 0.5% chance).

Now if you do all the dailies, your chance of getting either an ascended armor or weapon box is under 4% and you have a 34.5% chance of not even getting a single ring. Not even a single ring.

THAT is what’s broken, not gold rewards, not irrelevant stuff like completion chests or skins. Ascended drops have been nerfed so hard into the ground that rings only drop twice as often now as ascended chests used to.

Fix that.

I like the new maps, but they’re so big I feel like I’m playing alone now…

Has anyone gotten anything after reaching fractal mastery 4? When I had fractal mastery 1, I was getting ascended rings every day from the dailies, but ever since reaching fractal mastery 4, I haven’t gotten so much as a single ring from any of the last 13 or so fractal dailies I’ve done. Could just be bad luck, though. Too soon to tell.

Just hearsay, not official, but I heard he wasn’t supposed to be selling those super cheap +3, +6, +9, +12, +15 infusions. For example, in a period of less than two days, the price of +10 infusions on the Trading Post tanked from 80g to 40g. That’s my best guess as to why he’s been disabled.

It makes me feel like I’m swimming through the air like a fish. I think it’s a bit odd, but I don’t have any strong feelings against it.

The proofs of heroics are soulbound, but last I heard, the chests they come from are not. So just don’t open the chests and then transfer them to whichever character you like. Still inconvenient, but not as much as what you’re doing.

I’ve been getting ascended rings from the daily chests. I haven’t gotten an ascended chest yet, but I’m guessing that’s where they’ll come from.

The encryption boxes don’t seem to give good rewards. I put 30~40g into keys and boxes after reaching fractal mastery 4 to see if it was worth it and ended up 15g short in the end. Now I only open boxes with keys I get for free and sell the rest.

You can waypoint into structures you do not own in the new WvW borderlands. Ideally whoever owned the structure would own the waypoint, but at the very least I would expect the waypoint should be contested if an enemy owns the structure. As it is, you can bypass the walls and engage the tower or keep lord directly, removing nearly all of the tactical advantage of controlling these structures.

I really question the use of staff in a condi build. I would personally go sword/torch axe/dagger:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQRAsf3YjEqQ7KWuC2rAVLWYEM4m6Utr2MuqVZAmCwlLAUxKpA-TpRAwAsLDA4IAIe/hOHEgAnAAOPAAA

(I followed the same convention of putting in Runes of Orr where Runes of the Trapper should be.)

Feel free to use Bristleback instead of Lynx or Healing Spring instead of Troll Unguent, as you like.

Note that traps give you 3 seconds of stealth and Natural Convergence conveniently takes 2.5 seconds to cast. So cast it from stealth. Don’t forget to proc Ancient Seeds after you cast Spike Trap, Natural Convergence, Entangle, or every time your wolf knocks down your foe.

I took Quick Draw because two Splitblades or two Bonfires are very strong, two Serpent’s Strikes or Stalker’s Strikes are very good defense when you need the evades, or two Hornet Sting/Monarch’s Leaps can save your life and give excellent mobility. Ambidexterity is a no-brainer if you run sword/torch axe/dagger, and Empathic Bond is a must because the build severely lacks condi removal otherwise, outside of Druidic Clarity.

The suggestion to put damage when a trap triggers to force a Reveal sickens me because it pulls some very legitimate builds down in flames just to get at one gimmicky troll build that isn’t even very good.

Yes, I agree that it should not be possible to kill without ever leaving stealth. That’s pretty cheesy. But your “solution” is worse than the problem.

Consider putting a 0.5 second Reveal when the trap is placed, not when it is triggered.

Here’s why:

I main Thief and I think people who suggest putting a token amount of damage on traps to force a Reveal don’t understand how reliant Thief is on being able to control their own stealth. Getting randomly Revealed because someone stepped on a trap when you weren’t expecting it can be an instant death sentence. That sort of thing turns your own traps into much more potent weapon against yourself than the enemy, as all they would have to do to ensure they kill you is keep stumbling into your traps.

I agree that killing while in permastealth shouldn’t be possible, but kindly take into account that pistol/dagger condi trapper is a legitimate (albeit boring) build that stands to lose a lot from the well-meaning solutions that are being bandied about in this thread. Most legitimate trapper builds are already frequently applying Revealed to themselves in order to do the bulk of their damage. The primary utility of traps in these builds to make up for the lack of stealth on the weapon set. A typical rotation might be to open up with a sneak attack from stealth (five bleeds from pistol #1), throw in a couple auto attacks, dodge roll, then drop a trap for stealth, reposition and repeat. Such a build would instantly become borderline unviable if the enemy stepping on a trap Revealed them, yet if the trap had a very short Reveal on placement instead of trigger, it would be unnoticeable in most cases, with the notable exceptions of when you’re trying to chain stealth in order to escape, run past an enemy zerg, or hide in a keep.

That’s why I suggest that if something must be done, at least make it so that Thief traps apply a non-stacking, very short duration Reveal when the trap is placed rather than when it is triggered. Force a Reveal, but leave it up to the Thief to choose when he will be Revealed by using an ability. Most traps take a half second to place and a second to arm, so a half second of Reveal would be appropriate. In practice, this would mean the Thief is generally visible for about 1.5 seconds before the stealth from Trapper runes kick in. That’s enough time for an enemy who is paying attention to note the presence of the Thief, possibly attack him, see the position of the trap, etc.

It gives some counterplay to Ghost Thief while hopefully not being a massive nerf to legitimate builds.

I mainly WvW and one of the many reasons I don’t play SPvP very much is because almost every WvW build I use doesn’t translate over very well. Some are even straight up impossible. I feel your pain from the other side, but I would be very disappointed if WvW were forced into the SPvP model rather than the other way around. I guess I can’t blame you, though; no doubt the preference is largely a matter of which of the two you’re most familiar with.

On the bright side for me, at least, once the Guild Hall Arenas come it looks like I’ll finally be able to duel my friends with real builds instead of being forced into SPvP ones!

The smoothness of Dash is an incredible improvement over last BWE. I have to say, I was super disappointed in Daredevil when I first tried it in BWE2, but I had a blast playing it this time around. Amazing how much better Dash feels during gameplay now. Good job.

Expected:
While using a full set of Superior Runes of the Trapper, once a trap is placed on the ground, you should get superspeed and stealth. Being interrupted, changing weapons, or starting a stomp should not deprive you of superspeed and stealth once the trap has been physically placed on the ground and the ability goes on cooldown. If interrupted, either the trap should not be placed and the ability should not go on full cooldown, or else nothing should prevent the superspeed and stealth once it has been placed.

Actual:
If you are interrupted, change weapons, or start a stomp during the small window immediately after having placed the trap but before the trap arms and procs superspeed and stealth, you do not get superspeed or stealth, despite the fact that the trap is placed and the ability goes on full cooldown. This makes traps feels buggy and unreliable, and does get you killed in battle in a way that feels unfair, rather than due to skillful play on the part of your opponent.

Notes:
I am using Thief traps, specifically. I have not tested this with other classes yet.

apocom.3172:

knyy.6427:

apocom.3172:

Howl.2498:

Sigil of Energy: Claims to restore 50 PERCENT (a bar and a half) of endurance on weapon swap. Only restores 50 energy (one bar).

50% endurance is 1 bar. We have now 150% and its not 50% of 150%. Same with signet of agility and hard to catch.

50% is not 1 bar. 50% is 50% of all your endurance, which would be 1.5 bars. Therefore they changed the description of Signet of Agility to gain 100 endurance. There is a difference between 50% and 50 endurance.

Plz read this:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endurance.

There is no 100 endurance, only 100% endurance. And we do not regenerate 5 endurance per second, we regenerate 5% endurance per second. And now we have 150% endurance, so 50% is still 1 bar.

There is 100 endurance. In fact, Endurance Thief clearly states that it restores 50 endurance on steal, not 50%. Compare this to the sigil, which says it restores 50%. The two are different.

Or, rather, I am claiming they should be different. Remember, I am filing a bug report, which claims that the way things are is wrong. So stop arguing how things are, and start arguing how it makes more sense your way than my way.

While I understand your argument, saying that it restores 50% out of 150% is borderline nonsense. I bet if you ask 1000 people the question, “if you have 3 bars of endurance, what is 50% of your endurance,” they will overwhelmingly respond, “1.5 bars.” All I’m saying is that restoring 50% of your endurance should restore half of your total endurance, not one third. To do otherwise defies all intuition.

Hepcat.9045:

the one thing that drove me nuts playing DD spec was that every backwards dodge I did left me facing away from my target at the end.

It might just be me, but I liked this. I found it frequently convenient to dodge roll away, then use Withdraw to get back into melee range.

I play WvW almost exclusively, so all of my feedback is in the context of fights with real opponents.

BUGS

Underwater Dodging: Unhindered Combatant doesn’t work at all under water. In fact, it does literally nothing except consume endurance, making it even worse than a normal dodge. Lotus Training almost works, doing the spin, but instead of moving, it roots you in place, which is a highly undesirable quality in an underwater dodge. Bounding Dodge, however, works perfectly underwater, and the giant blue bubble is awesome!

Unhindered Combatant: I really want to love Unhindered Combatant, but the dash often has a really awkward hitch both at the start and especially at the end that makes me cringe every time I try to use it. I wish it were a lot more fluent to use, as fluency is practically the selling point of this elite specialization!

Bounding Dodger: Sometimes this doesn’t dodge in the direction I am pressing. For example, I have had it go forward/left when I am pressing only forward, or sometimes it goes backward no matter what I am pressing. I am not quite sure why this is.

This might be the case with the other dodges, too, but I have not played them as extensively as Bounding Dodger.

Sigil of Energy: Claims to restore 50 PERCENT (a bar and a half) of endurance on weapon swap. Only restores 50 energy (one bar).

THE BETA ITSELF

The Beta Components Loot Box does not include any Runes of the Trapper. With the Trading Post disabled, I can’t buy any, nor is there much of a chance I’d be able to craft my way up to level 400 without the Trading Post, either. On top of that, I can’t send mail to myself, and my friends say they can’t send me anything either. So to my great disappointment, I find myself stymied at every turn and completely unable to test out the build I wanted to try.

Sad face.

DAREDEVIL TRAITS

Unhindered Combatant: The length of the dodge tends to put me out of melee combat, which would be amazing if I were a pewpew ranger and not a thief… In practice, this causes me a considerable loss in dps while simultaneously subjecting me to a lot more damage, as my enemy cam usually hit me, while I have limited options for hitting them.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, though, as I have yet to try pistol/pistol with it, and now that I know how it works, I might be able to find a playstyle that does take advantage of its unique nature. I need to experiment with it more. But for now I’m using Bounding Dodger.

Bounding Dodger: Works great. The Leap combo finisher is perfect with Black Powder.

Impacting Disruption: I tried building around this trait, but I couldn’t get it to proc more than a couple times in a medium-length fight, adding a negligible amount of damage for the amount of effort it took. I might just need more practice, though.

DAREDEVIL SKILLS

Bandit’s Defense: Works great against NPCs who don’t move, but I found that in real combat this skill frequently (as high as half the time) does not knock down the person that triggers it.

I also wish the block could be canceled into an attack, as the best use of the skill seems to be as a low-CD stunbreak, and sometimes I don’t want the full block duration.

Impact Strike: I find this frustrating to land sometimes. Probably a matter of practice.

STAFF

Staff Strike: This doesn’t do enough damage, and if the enemy is moving at all (which is always the case in WvW), you’re not always going to even hit with the whole sequence. Combined with the fact that a single backstab is better than the whole sequence, while being much, much easier to hit, I feel like it’s not worth using unless you have no initiative, no endurance, can’t weapon swap, can’t heal, and all your skills are on CD. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but, yeah, the damage is pretty disappointing. Expect to get wrecked if you use this much.

Hook Strike: The knockdown seemed unreliable, even against enemies without any form of stability.

Also, the damage is sooooo low that it’s a real waste of Evasive Empowerment (which I didn’t use for this very reason).

But when it does work, the 2 second knockdown is delicious.

Debilitating Arc: Nice and fluid. This is how Unhindered Combatant should feel.

There’s no obvious forum where this should be posted, so I guess I’ll put it here.

The “Secure Your Account with SMS” prompt that appears on login does not seem to have a way to permanently dismiss it. There is a “Remind me Later” option and a “Sign Up for SMS” option, both of which lead to undesired outcomes. I will never sign up for SMS, yet the only other option, “Remind me Later,” has the highly undesired behavior of asking me again, over and over, despite the fact that I’ve already expressed disinterest.

Kindly provide a way to prevent this prompt from continuously spamming users who are not interested. Thank you.

I know d/d has fallen somewhat out of favor in recent times, but it’s still my favorite playstyle in wvw. After playing all day today, my general feeling is that my build has gotten noticeably stronger with the new patch. So consider giving d/d another look.

The following is originally based off Yishis’ d/d build, but since Descent of Shadows got rolled into Cloaked in Shadow, I found myself with an entire trait line open that didn’t necessarily have to be Acrobatics, so I ended up choosing Trickery.

See Yishis’ Outnumbered videos for much better gameplay and commentary than I could provide. This build plays much the same as it did pre-patch, except that you also get goodies like on-demand Boon Rip + Daze and bursts of Quickness.

Valk armor, except zerker chest. Berserker weapons and everything else. Traveler Runes. Dagger/Dagger and Shortbow. Fire and Air sigils on both sets.

Utilities: Hide in Shadows, Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Shadowstep, Daggerstorm.

Shadow Arts:
3) Shadow’s Embrace (remove damaging condis in stealth)
1) Shadow Protector (gain regen on stealth)
1) Cloaked in Shadow (gaining stealth blinds enemies + reduced fall damage/blinding powder)

Critical Strikes:
1) Side Strike (7% increased crit chance on side/back strike)
2) Practiced Tolerance (ferocity based on precision)
2) Hidden Killer (100% crit chance when attacking from stealth)

Trickery:
2) Flanking Strikes (quickness & fury every 60s on a side/back attack)
1) Bountiful Theft (rip 2 boons & vigor)
2) Slight of Hand (daze on steal and reduced steal recharge)

Omnomberry Pie or Slice of Candied Dragon Roll. Hardened Sharpening Stone.

After a few fights fumbling for the wrong key, I found it relatively easy to get used to in the end, and I do like it better this way. I’d be disappointed if it reverted.

I prefer a lean look, and I hate the trenchcoat/skirt thing that is forced on medium armor Charrs. I’ve only found two medium chestpieces that I like.

On my Ranger, I use Whisper’s Secret Longvest, Krytan Leggings, Inquest Boots, and optionally Krytan Armguards. I keep the helm, shoulders, and backpiece hidden. The skirt is thankfully short, and I like that a lot of fur is visible.

Note that there is clipping on the tail, but I mask it by making that part of the armor a similar color to the tail, so it’s not terribly noticeable if you aren’t looking for it.

On my Thief, I use Trapper Coat (Cultural Tier 3), Krytan Leggings, and Duelist Boots. I keep the helm, shoulders, gloves, and backpiece hidden. This is the one and only chestpiece I’ve found that doesn’t have any skirt component at all.