Showing Posts For Kazuhiro.5809:
Flame Legion was largely written that way because there were no female charr in GW1, so someone had to back-fill the lore as to why and fill that darn plothole before someone broke a leg trying to contort around it.
Uh… wow, I NEVER thought of that. That makes all kinds of sense.
That last part is the problem. Why is white neutral? I’m not white. Clearly this makes me abnormal and not a “standard human.”
Again I sound like an SJW but Krytan-brown or mixed-race is what logically should be the usual color for humans. Making humanity largely white is a very clear decision and in my opinion a wrong one.
I like the humans in this game because they’re so hilariously beautiful. You have to consciously try in order to not make a human who looks like a model.
Nice to know that the races of Tyria have sorted out most of those ignorant racists and homophobes. But racism and homophobia could make some rather interesting conflicts and motives in future stories and contents.
I’m sure that, if forced, Anet would confirm that it’s because Tyria has sorted it all out and nobody cares. It is a very intentional decision on their part, not to avoid politics, but to make a statement that being gay really isn’t a big deal—why should the Tyrians care?
They’re not the only ones who are ready to move on from gay storylines being about sticking it to the homophobes, either. Look at Modern Family, a very mainstream (and very good) TV show with a pair of gay main characters. Those two characters are much more pointedly gay than Marjory and Kasmeer, but there has never been anything remotely close to a Very Special Episode in which they have to prove to everyone that their lifestyle is okay. At least I don’t think so—I don’t watch the show regularly.
Funnily enough, anet has no problem with sticking “and they’re misogynists” onto villains just because it makes them more “evil” and villainous—not one but two enemy factions have something against women: The Flame Legion and the Sons of Svanir.
(edited by Kazuhiro.5809)
Someone suggested that I post this here—partially because I’m interested in Anet’s answer to this.
I realize that the intentionally inflammatory title of this post makes me look like a crying SJW, but you gotta admit it’s noticeable. A good 60-70 percent of human NPCs are white, when most humans live in Kryta, and ethnic Krytans are very much brown, or at least they were 200 years ago.
SJWs call this whitewashing—turning things white because white is “default” and “relatable.”
Someone on Reddit said it much better than me:
Hsere 6 points 6 hours ago (6|0)Ehh, in some cases it does, but not here. Here’s the thing; the paleness of the GW2 Krytans isn’t just a lack of representation; it’s also a lore error. Usually with complaints like OP’s, I hesitate to agree — it’s a fantasy analogue to Western Europe, most people will be pale.
But Krytans are the descendents of a mix of settlers from Elona (GW1’s fantasy analogue to Africa) and Ascalonian (Europe analogue) refugees. So given what we know about GW2’s history, most Krytans actually should have Queen Jenna’s coffee-and-cream coloration, and there should be smaller numbers of really pale or really dark people. I’d also like to see more mixing of Ascalonian and Elonan architecture, culture, etc. in Kryta. But we don’t really get that.
Like I said earlier, with complaints like OP’s, I usually hesitate to agree. And that’s because the creator of the work (GW2, in this case) is generally being asked to alter (or sometimes even undermine) their world’s lore for the sake of inclusion and representation — which are, of course, good goals, but not the primary goal of the person telling the story.
But in this case, the opposite is true — we have a lack of cultural/aesthetic diversity not because of the lore, but despite it. So in this case, I think it’s much more fair to say that the writers/devs have made an error.
It also seems like a real missed opportunity to showcase GW2’s message of “we are stronger together than apart.” And that’s a shame.
Here’s another post from reddit:
[–]vonBoomslang [+1]? •w•? 43 points 17 hours ago* (46|3)
In GW1, Kryta was the place you fled to from Generic Fantasy Europe.
In GW2, Kryta is the new Generic Fantasy Europe.
[edit] I should clarify, this is not a rant – this is what I believe to be the reason for this change.[–]tawaradan [+1] 16 points 17 hours ago (21|5)
Seriously, this was one of the coolest parts of GW1 to me. You start the game off in a pretty idyllic, generic Northern European fantasy country… and then they blow that place the kitten up at the end of the tutorial, and all that’s left is a blasted hellscape, and everything from humanity after that drew from very different real-world sources than typical western fantasy fare. It kept things fresh.Seeing Kryta whitewashed so hard in GW2 was a major disappointment to me. Especially since we still had Ebonhawke and the ruins of Ascalon, so it’s not like they were forced to remove most of Kryta’s identity if they wanted to put in some Ascalonian architecture and people.
Mind you, for various reasons also discussed in the reddit comments, there are some reasonable explanations. Mainly, ethnic Krytans might not be as dominant of a population any more, what with their capital city being wiped out and all the other crap that has happened to them—along with the fact that Ascalonians were possibly a more advanced culture.
But even if we accept one or more of these explanations, a lot of the human population is very white, and those who aren’t unmistakably white in color are much fairer than you’d expect from someone with an even split of Ascalonian and Krytan blood.
Mind you, Anet has also done a good job of diversity and all that other SJW bullkittenery in other ways—I’m sure everyone’s sick of hearing about how great Marjory and Kasmeer are. But compared to the first Guild Wars, we’re seeing some faux pas in their stance toward “people of color.”
(I hate that term.)
(edited by Kazuhiro.5809)
Could anyone do sheets for “Will circle be unbroken”-Bioshock Infinite ost ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e4Crth_Hb8Sure! This is the “full song”, that is, it includes directions to repeat when the song repeats and such. Some of the lines written out are also basically the same as previous lines but with slight timing differences, so I just wrote those out as well. There are probably still some duplicates but whatever.
Hrm. I ahd close to this one.
I’ve got On My Own from Les Miserables down. I have the chorus of Do You Hear The People Sing except that it has a couple of accidentals right at the very end. I don’t think the verses are possible because key change.
I have the chorus of I Dreamed a Dream down, but I am certain that the key change there is impossible.
If anyone has insights about those, I’d love to hear them.
Let me think. Build without stealth.
The build in the video is uber-kiting shortbow, which is actually a pretty kittening good idea—probably the way to go. A similar effect might be achieved with pistols, except not, because we can pretty clearly see the power of the cripple spam. Maybe try it with dodgetrops? And you’ve got the blind, too.
Nah. You’d get your kittenhole wrecked.
I’m halfway through and the guy doesn’t USE his sword/dagger in the video, but that was my next idea. With truly absurd skill, Flanking Strikes could achieve a similar effect to the dodge on Death Blossom spam, and if the kittens are looking ugly with stuff you can’t dodge, hit Shadow Return or Withdraw.
Now that we’re talking about Withdraw and maybe Signet of Agility and whatever instead of stealth, we’re talking about really making the most of the Thief’s mobility. Between Withdraw and Shadow Return we have some pretty cool “gtfo” abilities. Add dodgetrops and Roll For Initiative and we have way more kiting than other people are gonna have gap closers for. Not that you’re gonna accomplish much by kiting—maybe you might do it while waiting for your distance closer?
Either way I am not a fan of the “deepzy” venoms that this video uses. Scorpion Wire? A trap or two?
If we let go of our self-imposed vow of “never stealth ever” and just consider this a build that doesn’t rely on stealth like other builds do, then we get access to Tactical Strike which is pretty rad.
This is of course me thinking as a “fresh 80” with no real knoweledge of what’s nerfed, what’s OP, and what’s just screwed by the meta. But it’s an interesting subject because stealth really does not HAVE to be the main trick the Thief has…
At least in theory, if GW were super balanced.
(edited by Kazuhiro.5809)
LOL my guilds awesome, thanks for the chuckle trolls.
funny how after school hours i get the random immature comments on my thread.
Before you troll ask yourself, are you mad because your parents never put your picture on the fridge?
This fellow seems like a perfectly reasonable individual who we should definitely be giving advice to.
What about Flanking Strike isn’t working?
I could swear I’m nailing the timing for the dodge, but I still get hit a lot.
[Death Blossom] doesn’t hold your hand like Heartseeker does.
How is Death Blossom not ezmode? It’s pretty much a WoW-style deepz rotation, except for the fact that you need to use dodges and timed death blossoms to avoid those horribly painful charge-up attacks.
What is a Heartseeker build anyway?
it does have respectable direct damage on top of the bleeds. I think most people get hung up on the 5 initiative cost.
That is so not true at all. The point of a death blossom spammer is to get 25 stacks of bleed on a big fat AoE of enemies practically all by yourself, while being very safe due to dodging and stealth. The big AoE on death blossom is why I like this for mob stomping. Also, I frequently get a Rally to happen because I go down but the enemies have massive bleed damage on them.
More particularly, you’re off with your idea that death blossom’s direct damage is noticeable at all.
This thread is stupiiiiid
Just look at what you can cram into 0/0/10/30/30 – 2i on stealth, 3i on swap, 2i every 10s, 4i on heal, 7% chance to regain 1i on auto attack, 3i on steal AND a base pool of 15i. It’d just be silly.
I do this. Death Blossom spam forever.
@Kazuhiro
Thank you for the input. I hope the others have noticed there’s no griping about Thief Death Blossom (even though it is an evasion on top of its damage + bleeds), Cluster Bomb, etc.I hate fighting a good condition thief on my Mesmer (usually runs a bit light on condition cleansing) as you pop out of stealth, evade most of the time and then go back into stealth. It’s mean, but it also takes more skill than heartseeker so I’m not really against it.
Death Blossom’s evade is wonderful and it does so much for me all the time. Like I said, I could swear I nail Flanking Strikes and it doesn’t work.
I hear mixed stuff about Death Blossom, but it sure is working well for me. I think it’s the best there is for stomping trash mobs—aside from maybe the bow—and I get to pull some pretty cool shenanigans because I’m carrying around Shadow Refuge.
One more stupid little complaint, Flanking Strikes and Death Blossom make me accidentally jump off of walkways all the time.
Quick Pockets. 15 char.
blah blah fully restore initiative
say whaaaaaaa
My utility skills tend to be:
Signet of Agility because refilling the dodge meter is amazing.
Skale Venom because as far as I can tell having this on you sucks what with 50% reduced dodge regen and I don’t actually know what “fumble” is.
Ice Drake Venom, see above.
After playing around with Shadow Arts, I have now learned the foolishness of this build.
I would still, however, like to experiment with a Thief who is plain and simple built to murderize.
My level 74 thief is my first character, and I am super happy about being a Thief! Here are my thoughts.
I find Flanking Strike and the spear’s 2 to be incredibly difficult to actually dodge with, even when I could swear I nailed the timing.
I am disappointed by the fact that there is no benefit to using only one weapon. I would have liked some kind of fringe benefit, like maybe a reason you might want to have sword/empty hand to switch to just in case of a highly specific situation.
I find detonating Cluster Bomb in midair to be kitten useless.
I frequently screw myself over by hammering Death Blossom, whereupon the “queue up your skill casts” mechanic from the first Guild Wars causes me to do one more Death Blossom after I wanted to stop. Same for Flanking Strikes.
Yeah, I thought it was rather sad that there’s no reason to having nothing in your off-hand. Some kind of highly specific fringe benefit would be nice.
Talking about mobs that start channeling their actions while you go in stealth. Typical are the centaurs that go into defensive shield stance. They stay like that for 5-6s and during that time, they stay turned towards you perfectly whether you are stealthed or not. More annoying are the attack channeling mobs like harpies doing their rapid shot lookalike or the flame legion chars with their flamethrower. Those channels last long enough that you’d think by instinct that stealthing would be a great defense against those actions. And it’s not and it feels off.
Funny but this effect is inconsistent for me. Sometimes it happens that way, but not always.
Regardless, I understand your point now.
EDIT: I have never, ever had that problem with a charged up swing, the ones that use that greyish “power attack” animation. What DOES kitten me off is that there is one type of mob… Ettins I think… that have an AoE on that attack that reaches BEHIND them.
The fact that you can “stack up” ability casts just murders me.
“Oh kitten I used one death blossom too many, oh kitten now I’m gonna just use a dodge to get out, oh kitten now it’s telegraphing an attack and I have no dodges”
I have the ability queue problems too, most MMO’s have taught me to spam keys so breaking that habit is hard. They need to add a .5s slop timer so any ability presses in that .5s after an ability is used aren’t counted.
It’s a favor to people who were hardcore Guild Wars players. Seriously, being able to cast something and then queue up the next thing was wonderful.
It’s playing OTHER games, like TF2 and Orcs Must Die 2, that trained me all wrong. My usual m.o. in TF2 is to hold down the trigger and focus on pointing my gun where it needs to be pointed (guess which classes I play). So I tend to hammer Death Blossom so as to burn through multiple Death Blossoms quickly and then move on to doing something else.
The problem is that I do this by HAMMERING it, and so when I want to stop, I have one queued.
I agree with your idea except that .5 seconds is pretty kitten long for some skills, and Death Blossom is one of them. The animation for Death Blossom is probably .5 seconds. Maybe have an option for disabling queueing entirely?
So because dagger/dagger has no interrupt, mechanics should be changed so that thieves can use stealth as a solution to everything? Just pick the right tools for the job.
No, the reason why mobs should stop tracking stealth thief with their looong channeling skills is because it feels incredibly wrong that it happens plain and simple. It’s weird, it feels off, it feels like a bug. They track your position with 100% accuracy no matter what you do while they should be completely unable to see you.
What the Fausticorn are you talking about?
They stand perfectly still going “he’s still here I know he is I’m gonna kick his kitten #8221; which has the side effect of making them kitten easy to backstab, which is unrealistic but a nice gameplay thing.
Before, they said “oop, he disappeared, better instantly start walking away because he’s obviously going to leave me alone now”
Well it could be to offset the fact that you don’t appear on ones screen when you come out of invis turning your “3” secs in between disappearing into 1 lol. I really don’t know about what your asking but it is irritating getting killed by an invisible target so no one feels bad for you.
First, QQ moar. He is talking about PvE targets, not your sorry kitten
Second, no one wants to hear you cry over a thief crushing you in WvWvW.
OP, the stealth mechanic has changed a bit. Instead of aggro dropping completely, it essentially pauses aggro so the mob doesn’t reset. So when you come back out of stealth, the mob is still going to go for you. This is my understanding on why they changed it because enemies were resetting. Undoubtedly for boss fights, it’s rather irritating if you drop SR on your group and the boss resets.
Some people like the change (I do) and others do not. There are some other threads floating around this forum discussing the matter.
As for the mobs still hitting you in stealth, were they using a channeled ability? Channels go right through our stealth like a laser guided missile. I’ve had a few times were I thought a mob shouldn’t be able to hit me but did anyways. It’s been acting strange lately.
I agree with this post.
First, that I love mobs not resetting. Holy crap it was so terrible to use my heal only to see the Veteran or whatever I was attacking de-leash and start walking back to its patrol.
Second, that there are certain things that go RIGHT through stealth for some reason, so really.
The fact that you can “stack up” ability casts just murders me.
“Oh kitten I used one death blossom too many, oh kitten now I’m gonna just use a dodge to get out, oh kitten now it’s telegraphing an attack and I have no dodges”
I’ve been having great success with Death Blossom.
Caltrops(utility) are a fairly big AOE, stack bleeds(yay!), and cripple. Get those things off at a choke point or inside of an enemy zerg and it really hampers them and does a good bit of damage. If you can keep an enemy in the caltrops, those caltrops alone can keep up a 10+ stack of bleeds. So they are a powerful area denial if people avoid them, they disrupt movement if they pass through them, and a killer if they sit in them.
Wait wait, “real” caltrops build up bleed stacks while people stand in them?
What the Faust am I doing not taking it? Thanks for the tip. Here I was just using “dodgetrops” as I hear they’re called to help me kite veterans and such nonsense.
I’m trying condition thief with heavy Shadow Arts.
5 Initiative gain from using my heal skill, 3 for stealing, 2 from 2 from cloak&dagger, and a few more for standing around in stealth equals major spamming. I’m just using this to stomp mobs, of course, so I don’t really know anything.
I feel like this would also be cool with P/D?
Hi everyone—budding Thief here, first time posting.
I’d been death blossoming through pretty much the whole game because it really is the way to go when it comes to stomping mobs—I could take on ridiculous odds if I used my dodges right. I also just thought the synergies clicked together nicely.
When I hit level 60 I decided I wanted to try something else, so I dumped everything into Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes, with the theory that those are the two death-dealing skills, so I may as well go with them and see what happens.
I don’t really know what weapons this is for, because to be honest I just built this way on principle; Let’s see what happens when I go all-in with what look like the most deepzy skills!
I don’t really know what this build is for. It’s impractical to stomp trash mobs and whatever with Black Powder > Heartseeker > Backstab or Cloak&Dagger > Backstab. And Pistol/dagger is condition damage. My feeling just from experimentation is that cluster bomb spam does lousy damage, and that it’s meant for the big fat AoE and the bleed.
So I’ve been doing unload spam and Flanking Strikes.
Here is what I came up with:
Sundering Strikes or Mug. Sundering Strikes seems like the choice for synergy, but Mug actually deals DAMAGE that isn’t contingent upon other kitten happening.
Venomous Strength. I have two poisons on my bar, so turning them both on for 4 stacks seems nice. I don’t actually know how Might works—does Combined Training give more damage? Either way, Venomous Strength helps me out with Daggerstorm as well as spamming 3.
Residual Venom. My feeling is that this synergizes amusingly with Skale Venom.
Furious Retaliation. Fury rocks.
Combo Crit Chance. For 3-spamming.
Executioner. Because “below 50%” seems like a pretty easily met requirement for that kind of big reward.
Thrill of the Crime. Because swiftness rocks, and fury rocks.
As far as I can tell, this is close to the best possible setup for just dealing straight-up stabby damage. Flanking Strike seems like the best stabby damage without using cheesy PvPish tricks for Backstab. Unload spam is the same because unload spam is just meant for single target damage and combo field abuse.
Of course, the build is sort of lousy at unload spam because it doesn’t have very much initiative.
I don’t really see people insisting that endgame thieves MUST use one of three builds like is the case in other MMOs, and that is refreshing. If anything, Mesmer is that way, and I’m sad because I loved Mesmers in Guild Wars and I really miss the way I could just use my Mesmerness to pretend to be any other kind of caster, and the way I could use Echo to spam confusion-type effects around, and whatnot.
Looking forward to hearing thoughts!
I’ve owned this game for a long time, and am only now able to use the machine that can run it. I’m super excited about this, I’ve been waiting to be able to play for YEARS now, and from what I’ve known and what little I’ve tried I’m sure I’ll love my experience.
I’ve been wondering, what is roleplaying in GW2 like? Are there a bunch of roleplayers, how do they get in contact, where should I go to find them?