Guild Wars 2

Derom.1205:

Maybe it’s an odd question but does the game make you feel powerful?

For me this is actually the first mmo that really show you, yes you are a walking death machine. I mean it makes sense, from a in-universe perspective the player is someone who can kill dozens of normal people with no problem.
Though some people will probabaly say otherwise.

What do you think?

No. Not in comparison to games that are fully designed around power fantasy. I always find these opinions interesting, because the game model is the direct opposite of that.

Subtly including a lesbian relationship between two characters designed with bodies with genetics that would make Greek gods jealous isn’t exactly being a pioneer nor are they the first to do it.

It’s promoting liberal values while being safe, because Americans make a stunning exception when it comes to homosexualality presented to us in the form of two really hot girls kissing.

What’s not being safe is male on male relationships.

What’s even less safe is transgender, because of how vicious the average American reaction is to any form of gender bending or direct challenge to the lanes of gender roles. Transgender community has always gotten it a lot worse.

Beyond that, it’s very difficult to subtly add a transgender character and have people become aware they are transgender without being so blatant about it that it comes off as putting them on some kind of pedestal to be looked at like some kind of sideshow freak.

Supreme.3164:

Alekt.5803:

Lol. Was OP playing staff ele?

You get insulted most times when not playing healbot

To be honest, everyone gets insulted at some point for something or nothing, just due to salt and people not being able to handle losing.

I enjoyed ranked and unranked before the League system, because to be honest, even if you lost, the people who went all baby rage were in the minority.

Now…

I never hear her say it, because I can outrun a centaur.

Why make these part of the slot machine on rares if they aren’t in the loot tables to begin with?

You have recipes for exclusive skins already in the Mystic Forge. Why punish people who want the old skins, forcing them to gamble? What is the gain in that?

I’ll explain the fight every time I am a commander if we aren’t hitting the break bars. I can’t help if people don’t know the in game terminology if they don’t speak up and ask. It’s just not feasible to give an explanation of what CC is every fight.

So yeah, from that perspective we need a tutorial, but let’s be real. GW2 is a casual game and quite a lot of players have the WBT mentality of just auto-attacking and waiting for credit. They are looking to be carried while they chat with their friends, which is cool in WBT, but it’s always going to be a problem if the game continues to add meta events that require advanced participation.

Commanders just have no way to deal with people not pulling their weight in a public event, nor can they be given a way, as it would be subject to too much abuse.

Vinceman.4572:

Osu.6307:

I hope it’s just bad RNG on my part, but is anyone else seeing REALLY awful loot from the daily chests? I’ve done 6 tier 3 dailies (18 total fractal chests) since the update and have gotten pathetic loot. Just a couple fractal encryption keys and maybe 1-2 rares.

T4 is the way to go, not T3.

The problem with this is you need close to full ascended to do a large enough range of T4 fractals to consistently complete dailies.

If the solid drop rates on ascended boxes are limited to T4, then it kind of wrecks any sense of a progressive reward system.

I mean, really, you invest money to craft ascended armor and weapons so you can get to T4 and start being rewarded with….ascended armor and weapons which…you can use to gear your alts! Hooray?!

If the reward system was something like….

Tier 1 – Low jewelry drop rate.
Tier 2 – High jewelry drop rate, low armor drop rate.
Tier 3 – High jewelry drop rate, high armor drop rate, low weapon drop rate.
Tier 4 – High jewelry drop rate, high armor drop rate, high weapon drop rate, upgraded AR infusions with either additional stats or cosmetic elements.

…then, you could reasonably progress thru the fractal system without feeling forced to craft ascended pieces and still having some form of desirable loot at T4 that wasn’t just for gearing your alts.

If ascended armor was also an option for a high amount of fractal currency you could only get at in varying amounts in T2-T4 fractals, then this would also add a more consistent approach to progression.

You could leave the weapons as just RNG, since they aren’t make it or break it from an AR slot perspective, but yet are the most desirable ascended item due to their increased weapon damage.

I have only done it a few times, but I don’t see any issues with the fight itself. I don’t have all the mechanics objectively analyzed , but none of them couldn’t be intuitively avoided.

The only issue I’ve had with the fractal is the Last Laugh mechanic. Other melee besides my daredevil just don’t have the endurance to be able to consistently dodge the blasts in often rapid succession and the blasts do enough damage to remove a significant chunk of your HP. You can also get stun locked by an unfortunate chain of closing timed blasts. Increasing the delay on the blast and maybe, preventing overlapping explosions from doing increase damage would go a long way in making the mechanic more balanced.

slamfunction.7462:

So then, let me ask one more question: Is it “merely coincidence” that John Smith has not answered me, or the community, with any explanation within 24 hours of this post being created? Since you like to pick apart my issue, let me be more specific: Is it merely coincidence that he hasn’t replied on how the involved parties (may or may not be a dev, directly) knew to begin dumping the items in question, and steadily lowering the price over the course of a month, or two?

No, not at all, but once again, you are implying that there is only one definitive answer to this question and that’s just John not responding, because he is hiding something or another.

Another very plausible answer is that you are being kind of a kitten and he doesn’t particularly want to answer, since he’s not bound to.

I mean, some completely anonymous poster writes up an overzealous accusation based on no solid evidence and then demands answers? Who do you think you are? Besides pretending to be a righteous prosecutor on an episode of Law and Order.

Troll me all you want, but i’d like some answers, and i can assure you that it wasn’t “dumb luck” or “intelligent marketing”, or even “leaked patch details from a previous patch”. I can assure you of these things, because as a community, we are so driven for any “bone”(of information) that ANet throws to us, in terms of news, or progress on this game, that as soon as one person knows it, it goes viral both here, and on the subreddit.

No, you can’t. You can’t assure me of ANY of those things AT ALL and that’s why I am being satirical here. You have no solid evidence at all. Nothing. Zero. It’s nothing more than conjecture.

It CAN be lucky speculation.
It CAN be a developer casually talking about a new feature in a public setting that eventually got around to certain profiteers.

You are a LONG way from a developer sharing information for a cut of profits or a developer with some kind of hidden account flipping assets for his own gain.

I understand Arenanet employees are bound by NDAs, so why would they do that? Why risk their jobs? You say real money is involved, but its only involved in the sense of a devaluation of the currency that players used to buy their gold. You can’t take gold and liquidate it to straight cash directly; there is very little net benefit here besides the acquisition of in game currency, something not everyone cares a whole lot about. I’m sure in all those of episodes of Law and Order someone mentioned something about motive and it being important.

You don’t even know how long the feature has been in development or when it was conceived. You have like 6th months worth of strange of prices you are tracing back to this single feature and you don’t even have that piece of information.

You aren’t here to discuss this issue. You are here to tell everyone exactly how it is even though you can’t.

And, its not only JUST the halloween skins. My community brought me up to speed on other incidents, just like this one. Such as the items on the TP that were collection items for an achievement called “Treasure hunter”. Apparently, the prices on these items soared, just before the announcement or patch was rolled out, where these changes went live.

Interesting incidents that are worth discussion, but those arent in your post, so what do you want me to say?

Again, trolling me, is trolling yourselves.

No trolling you is trolling you. For everyone else, it’s a satirical piece that highlights how imbalanced and overly zealous your point of view is at the moment. That’s a pretty valuable contribution to this thread.

I understand you are so passionate about the game, that any idea of deceit from a company you’ve come to love and trust is the foulest thing you can imagine. It may not even be something the company condones. It may just be some dev’s buddies who got some insight that led them to this advantage on the market. That being said, i believe that ANet owes its playerbase some sort of assurance that the issue has been found, resolved, and will be prevented the next time something like this could potentially occur.

Still falsely claiming you have proven something you haven’t. It’s not that I am not entertaining the possibility of it being insider trading. It’s that I am not flat out buying what you are selling hook, line and sinker and the way you have chosen to present this (and still are presenting it) doesn’t leave room for any consideration to this not being malicious actions on the part of an Anet employee.

So, call everything i say is a fallacy, but the evidence is in the community’s observations, which have been thoroughly documented, not only on these forums, but on the subreddit as well. I think we deserve some sort of fairplay assurances from ANet internally, as well as their rules on hacking and cheating.

And there is actually some interesting stuff there that’s worth looking into, but you are false portraying it as a bloody knife packaged with a video of murder being committed
and a signed confession and it’s none of those things.

Let me ask you this….can you, honestly, trust a man who uses an overly grand and dramatic writing style to make an accusation with little to no actual evidence?

Is it “merely coincidence” that he uses excessive amounts of quotations to imply coincidence when a direct link would not be deduced if the evidence was presented neutrally?

Is it “merely coincidence” that he uses a writing style with phrases like “I will let you answer that” or “Let me ask you this” that imply neutrality when he is also leading people to the conclusion he wants them to draw?

Is it “merely coincidence” that his writing style implies guilt has already been clearly established when the evidence presented could be explained with half a dozen or more benign and completely reasonable explanations?

I will let you answer that, but to me, this is just like writing on the wall that points to one and only one truth.

Zeghart.9841:

WoW is the pinnacle of it, but it also shows in their other games. Diablo is very similar, with classes having huge highs and lows depending on the season and without much diversity in endgame builds. Hearthstone is another game where they showed their balance mentality, basically deleting whole decks from the game instead of simply tuning them down. Even Starcraft which is arguably their most balanced game has always had problems and favored races. They’re much less obvious luckily, but they’re still there.

Just curious, can you qualify any of those statements with actual examples?

I would agree about WoW, but that game had a huge number of skills and classes; it was always going to be unbalanced.

The highs and lows of build swings have ironed out a lot in Diablo 3 since the new team took over. There was multiple builds for each class that could achieve reasonably high greater rift numbers. The lack of diversity is intentional; it’s not trying to be Path of Exile.

Most “problems” in Starcraft 2 were imbalance issues after initial expansion releases, but were later ironed out. The statistic for winnings per race in professional tournaments have always been, surprisingly, even across the board.

The only decks deleted out of existence in Hearthstone were one turn kill decks with win conditions reasonably achievable enough to get out of hand and make it to the pro tournaments. They have always had a firm stance on those decks, because they have no viable counters except your opponent screwing up or getting a bad draw.

They nerfed those decks by targeting single cards that were central to the one turn kill combo and it didn’t delete them out of existance. The famous Patron deck that dominated the 2015 tournament scene is still played in the pro scene as a “toned down” tempo deck; all other examples besides miracle rogue fell out of the meta, because of new cards being introduced.

They actually rarely ever nerf cards; they prefer to deal with overly strong meta decks by introducing new cards to counter them.

So…yeah…I don’t really see how any of this is more than a baseless “It’s cool now to hate on Blizzard” or one of those “Even though different teams worked on all these games, they are all incompetent (for reasons?), because they work at a company I want to hate” rants.

He makes some interesting points, but it’s more than a lack of competitiveness in a casual game.

GW2 is just not an interesting eSport to watch

Not saying that to bash the game. I love the game, but you got to know your strengths and weaknesses. Investing so much money to promote it as an eSport was mind boggling to me. This fact is clear as day to anyone who is into eSports.

What makes an interesting game is a mixture of reasons, but the prime one is the ability for viewers to actually follow the game.

Hearthstone is entertaining, because the RNG elements creates some really entertaining moments, but you can track each play the player makes, follow the game and understand the stragety.

Same thing with LoL and DoTA. You can track each ability the players use and understand it’s impact in the game.

Not the case with GW2. It’s too mechanically complex. It’s a flurry of different abilities all being used at the same time to create a cloud of particle effects that make it near impossible to seperate or trace what player did what and when. You have to pay close attention and you can’t reach for a beer, get up to use the bathroom or turn to talk to a buddy without missing a lot.

I’ve been playing the game since launch and I have no idea what the hell is going on in most of the pro tournaments I’ve watched beyond the final score.

Evan Lesh.3295:

ronpierce.2760:

Evan Lesh.3295:

What about Ranked do you want?
Is it standard models?
The type of matchmaking?
Is it the map selection? Now that the maps are updated, is this still an issue?
Do you want to climb the ladder until the the season resets?

The ladder and match making would be nice.

I feel like 24/7 ladder would create a lot of burnout. Plus there wouldn’t be time for big balance patches to settle before the season starts.

Regarding matchmaking, it seems that two camps are developing. What about ranked matchmaking do you prefer over unranked?

Yo, no offense, but this is why other games have Public Test Realms for players to test all the big balance patches out before the season starts.

I’m hard pressed to think of a game that has this long of a gap between seasons. Hearthstone has zero gap. LoL has zero gap. Competitive PvE Seasons in Diablo 3 and PoE has week to two week gaps. WoW Arena seasons ended every major patch and started back up a week after the patch happened.

If get burnt out, than I just choose to skip a season; Anet doesn’t need to be my parent for that.

That leaves the issue of the balance patches which really amounts to you forcing an obligatory long testing period on the PvP population instead of supporting a PTR where the people interested can check out the changes and figure out new builds.

Flumek.9043:

MadRabbit.3179:

Flumek.9043:

MadRabbit.3179:

Flumek.9043:

Im a bit surprised, theres something bothering me.

Raids are 10-man.

Why is power necro suddenly “the right to kick you because it’s not good and not meta” in old 5-man content??

I respect your PVE Raid experience, for pvp using the division system as a metric is more of a minus but lets ignore that…. did you simply overlook or forgot about the old stuff?

Power necro is and has been medium mehish there but certainly not kick worthy.

If you are clocking 10k as a power necro, then you are doing 1/3 less than my thief while bringing no party utility besides hard CC for breakbars, which my thief brings as well.

10k is absolute bottom tier DPS, even less than mesmers who bring alacrity.

I agree with the OP. It’s pretty bad.

youre doing 30k in the raid testing dummy with everything….youre doing i think 25k in a real raid…..and youre doing 15-20k in a 5man group…..a power necro i think nemesis had 14k but it has aoe capabilties

im saying dont mix 5man power necro with ideal testing zone planets allign 10man buffs

Are you aware of how percentages work?

Because so far, based on the numbers you are just making up out of thin air, you don’t.

I used old last known to me numbers for 5man.

I repeat. 5man. not your full raid buff and certainly not all the buffs which everyone said you cant even replicatein raids, so its an estimate and you need to always consider how reliable it is…. alacrity will boost fresh air ele, but not a thief autoatack rotation for example…
For raids reddit says 22k for all buffed power necro, so i think we estimate it safely as 2/3 not 1/3 of thief. So i shouldve said 12/18k for the 5man numbers, but i remember specificaly nemesis doing several 12ks with non perfect timewarp and with good timewarps he was over 14k.

And in a shorter fight the number will be higher with wells and the point of power necro is 5x target aoe and it has aoe blind every 20s – so as a direct example you can have a power necro replace a thief for the ascalon fractal where u kill those groups of guards inside walls.

Its not better, but it gets the job done and often safer.

Sorry in advance for picking on you, but I just don’t have much patience for people completely misinterpreting numbers and stretching the truth out of a bias to make their preferred build or class look stronger than it is.

First, the Reddit comments said an average of 20k; 22k was just the upper boundary. And that’s at unrealistic full buffs. (We’ll go with that number as the standard, instead of the OPs, since later posters provided screenshots)

Then, the numbers for the unrealistic full buffs for thief were quoted as 30k, when they were actually 35k on the Reddit.

THEN, that was reduced number down to 25k for the raid buffs when it was actually 29k (I rounded up to 30k).

THEN, that number was reduced down to 15-20k for 5 man groups (for….reasons?).

THEN, none of this factoring down was applied to the necro numbers and was just arbitrarily decreed to be 14k in 5 man groups, because some dude once burst for 14k in a group (or was that 12k?). This dude apparently achieved this number in a group with time warp, but it’s not being compared or weighted to what a thief in that same group would have achieved with time warp. It’s being compared to numbers for thieves that were created by a factoring down process that uses inaccurate numbers with the percent reductions just being made up by you on the fly.

THEREFORE, making a comparison of 15-20k thief DPS to 14k DPS makes it look like power necros do competitive DPS to a thief, when they aren’t even in the same ballpark. (A 7%-40% range of thief damage over necro damage)

Because using the numbers from reddit from unrealistic buffs, if I am doing 35k DPS and you are doing 20k, then I am actually doing 75% more.

If we put us both in the same 5 man party, where we are both sharing the benefits of the same party boons and vulnerability stacks, I am still going to do 75% more DPS (with some variation) than you.

That variation isn’t going to be like the 7%-40% range you just made up on the fly.

To make it even worse, false comparisons of the pros and cons of each class are included.

Necro’s AoE power is cited, but yet with no mention of the fact that thiefs are achieving this DPS with just staff auto attacks (which all hit cleave to hit 3 targets).

Well of Suffering is mentioned, but is not compared to Vault, which is a 5 man AoE staff skill with a weaker coefficient, but no cooldown.

AoE blinds are mentioned, but with no mention of thief AoE blinds in the form of Dust Strike and Black Powder, both also which have no cooldown.

On top of that, unrealistic scenarios that favor necros are brought up, such as thieves being in down state all the time while necros are not. That’s even close to reality, at least, not my reality. Being pretty good at my class and being able to leverage all the blinds, evades and dodges in daredevil, most of my DPS loss comes from reviving other players in down state (including necros a fair portion of the time). You are basically playing on the stereotype of thiefs being pure glass cannons with no defense, which is far, far from the truth when it comes to daredevils.

Finally, the issue of alacrity is moot, because alacrity isn’t enough to cover a 75% difference in DPS. They also posted the numbers where everyone had 100% alacrity along side the numbers where they did not and thieves were still in the 2nd best slot. The fact that we still achieve such high numbers without needing alacrity is a pro for thieves, not a con.

At the end of the day, I should not be doing that much more damage than you with my rotation when we bring the same thing in terms of utility (break bar damage, AoE, vulnerability, blinds). Power necros need to be buffed by Anet. Even a 75% difference over a 200% difference is still unacceptable.

But that won’t ever happen if people cloud the issue by arguing with, being straight with you, bullkitten numbers and weak arguments that just serve to try and make power necros look more powerful than they are at the moment.

Flumek.9043:

3) instead u kicked a 13k dps necro over a 17k thief that spend half the boss in downstate

Yes, i set the standards very low, but thats often reality.

You mean, you made up a fictitious reality with fictitious numbers to justify power necros not being bad DPS?

Flumek.9043:

MadRabbit.3179:

Flumek.9043:

Im a bit surprised, theres something bothering me.

Raids are 10-man.

Why is power necro suddenly “the right to kick you because it’s not good and not meta” in old 5-man content??

I respect your PVE Raid experience, for pvp using the division system as a metric is more of a minus but lets ignore that…. did you simply overlook or forgot about the old stuff?

Power necro is and has been medium mehish there but certainly not kick worthy.

If you are clocking 10k as a power necro, then you are doing 1/3 less than my thief while bringing no party utility besides hard CC for breakbars, which my thief brings as well.

10k is absolute bottom tier DPS, even less than mesmers who bring alacrity.

I agree with the OP. It’s pretty bad.

youre doing 30k in the raid testing dummy with everything….youre doing i think 25k in a real raid…..and youre doing 15-20k in a 5man group…..a power necro i think nemesis had 14k but it has aoe capabilties

im saying dont mix 5man power necro with ideal testing zone planets allign 10man buffs

Are you aware of how percentages work?

Because so far, based on the numbers you are just making up out of thin air, you don’t.

Flumek.9043:

Im a bit surprised, theres something bothering me.

Raids are 10-man.

Why is power necro suddenly “the right to kick you because it’s not good and not meta” in old 5-man content??

I respect your PVE Raid experience, for pvp using the division system as a metric is more of a minus but lets ignore that…. did you simply overlook or forgot about the old stuff?

Power necro is and has been medium mehish there but certainly not kick worthy.

If you are clocking 10k as a power necro, then you are doing 1/3 less than my thief while bringing no party utility besides hard CC for breakbars, which my thief brings as well.

10k is absolute bottom tier DPS, even less than mesmers who bring alacrity.

I agree with the OP. It’s pretty bad.

Dahkeus.8243:

MadRabbit.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

MadRabbit.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Well, with Alacrity, it will also improve both Revenant and Engineer which are close 3rd and 4th, so in that sense, they will surpass the Thief and the Thief probably end up in 5th place.

I don’t follow that. They are trailing both in the unbuffed and buffed category by a margin of 4-6k. If one single boon that is able to be cycled more than quickness can not only cover that gap and but surpass it enough to say, beyond the variation, that Thief is 4th place, then Alcarity is the most broken boon in the game, even in it’s nerfed form.

With the Chrono’s build, there’s a total of 20s worth of Alacrity. All the wells will be available again by the time the Chrono finishes the first Alacrity rotation. In a sense, there will be almost 100% Alacrity uptime for the Mesmer and roughly 80% uptime for everyone else. Which means that even the Guardian can surpass the Thief seeing how the Thief’s build is simply relying on autoattacks and Fist Flurry rotation. The Guardian with Alacrity can pop more traps for a more DPS burst. The raid might even be better off if they trade the Thief for a second Mesmer to have a 100% Alacrity uptime. I’m sure that the loss of DPS from the Thief is no big deal if every other profession in the raid gets their skills 33% faster.

You and Dahkneus seem to be in disagreement and I don’t have numbers to prove either way, so I won’t argue against it and I won’t dismiss it as a valid point.

But if it does turn out to be true, then I hope they look at finally giving a more benefit to thieves from Alacrity.

Numbers and proof!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4fnnfo/dps_comparison/
You can follow the engi links here back to a video of the 30k DPS (or, direct link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibRCp1vQpqc&index=1&list=PLMdLyt-5r_24ISvEQ2wmrk8b0Cpspa_WN), which is pulled off with 100% alacrity (which will never happen in a real raid unless you’re stacking mesmers for some reason).

Revenant isn’t even close.

Thieves don’t need alacrity for big damage (aside from venom share) and honestly that’s more of a benefit since we don’t need to rely on it for big dps like other classes do.

I was surprised at the numbers for condi, but the linked post seems to imply he did the test solo, which doesn’t factor in venom share.

Raizen.7981:

Do I have to pay you to read my posts before answering me? Oh boy, here we go again

I get it. You think that thieves will never ever find a spot in raid, but there is a lot of other written materials besides your forum posts that suggest otherwise.

No, you don’t get it. I’ve specifically said that you won’t join a raid, unless you’re really really lucky, or have a dedicated group

but most of my friends who do run in dedicated raid groups roll a thief in one of the DPS slots in their compositions.

They have DEDICATED groups, which is EXACTLY the exception I’ve mentio- ah screw it. You won’t read this one anyway

MadRabbit.3179:

Can we use some more improvements? I would agree with that, but this very doom and gloom perspective doesn’t match what I see.

Your perspective matches mine in terms of 90%, except raiding, where it doesn’t, since you don’t raid

But I appreciate you taking the time to try and kitten all over my enjoyment at thief’s clocking in such high numbers in the new DPS meters like I always figured they could with off topic discussion that had nothing to do with anything in my OP. Always happy to enable other people’s soapboxes.

The numbers, again, for the 3rd time, were there, since the winter patch. Also, since we’re talking PvE, and raids are pure PvE, how am I offtopic?

You are offtopic, beause I made a post stating that thieves are the second highest damage dealer at the moment. This is proven and uncontested. You aren’t contesting it, but rather negating it, because it doesn’t matter and you still have a hard time finding groups (which I am sure is true, but not discounting your lovely personality being a factor in that). I never made a post saying we’re best thing since sliced bread in raids now. You are using as an oppurtunity to crawl on your raid’s soap boxes, which I have been divulging in.

I do read your posts. I read what is there and I also read what is not there, which is why I am I getting tired of replying directly them and arguing with you. You are either ignoring details, omitting information or bringing up stuff that’s not contextually relevant to the issue at hand.

I know when I am debating someone who is focused on being right at all costs and not trying to come a fair and balanced perspective of where thief’s are at. You are trying to make your arguments stronger than they are, because if even if we come to some consensus they are bottom tier, we are talking about margins that are so low that they are still competitive for a raid slot.

Look at your break bar arguments, for example. One, you bring up Thieves Guild doing higher DPS than Impact Strike (something I don’t believe is mathematically accurate, but not prepared to argue that point, because I haven’t done testing). Contextually irrelevant, because Thieve’s Guild isn’t being used in the damage rotation above to achieve maximum DPS. Therefore, whether or not you have Thieve’s Guild or Impact Strike on your bar is irrelevant.

Second, you mention Impact Strike is on a 40 second cycle, but it’s a collective 432 points of break bar damage on a 40 second cycle. Now, throw in Fists of Flurry for 200 damage on a 20 second CD that’s part of our damage rotation.

Now, throw in Steal on Goresaval. The monster type is weighted to give you Blinding Tuft to activate the Knockdown in Staff or Head Crack, both of which do an additional 200-250 break damage (can’t remember the actual numbers).

So all together, a Thief can burst a break bar for 832-882 without having to alter their composition to drop abilities that would otherwise boost their DPS. That’s what makes their break bar damage competitive. That’s what makes them competitive for a raid slot, because they have that and high DPS. That’s why my friends take them. And in a world without Slick Shoes, that kind of break bar damage is relevant.

The short cooldown cycles are relevant, because they can split the rotation on Steal and Impact Strike to burst a bar every 20 seconds for 400-600. I don’t know the regen cycles on raid monsters, but on standard champions and legendaries, 20 seconds is enough to contribute high break bar damage to every break bar as soon as it regens to full.

How do you not know all this? I don’t even raid and I know the math on this. You are the expert here, right? That’s where all this condescension is coming from. Why are you leaving this out as factors in assessing what a Thief can bring to the table?

Raizen.7981:

MadRabbit.3179:

because you decided before you even got into this that thief is trash tier.

Did you even read my posts? I’ve said thief is an incredible class, I just keep saying that it is bottom tier in raids.

MadRabbit.3179:

You dismiss the importance of our break bar abilities, because all classes bring break bar stuff, even the classes that net significantly lower DPS numbers. You don’t consider the gap that the absence of Slick Shoes causes and has to be filled, that it’s just not extra break bar damage, but the fact that we can not only do a lot of break bar damage, but consistently break bars as our skills cycle so fast and that our ability to break bars uses abilities that are part of our DPS rotation, not causing a net DPS loss when used.

You’re talking palm strike here. Because impact strike is a 40s cooldown that is waaaay weaker in terms of dps than Thieves Guild. Having 1 breakbar skill that isnt a dps loss is in no way that important that it makes thief desirable in any raid.

MadRabbit.3179:

And your main argument is that up until this point everybody wants Tempest, even though the patch has only been out for a couple days, which means we’ve only had brief access to the damage meters to showcase just how competitive we actually are publicly and the impact of the class nerfs hasn’t fully been realized.

You’ve only had brief access for a couple of days. The raiding community had these numbers figured out since the winter balance patch.

MadRabbit.3179:

Even if Tempest still is the most desirable, we will still have a stronger meta build for raids than other classes. Which there is 7 of and 10 slots total in a raid.

We literally have bottom tier meta. Damage dealer isn’t top damage. That leaves venomshare, who’s strenght, as you mentioned, is unknown, but still, 1 possible raid build is in no way a strong meta build.

MadRabbit.3179:

But that’s not the point of the thread. The point is that we aren’t as bad in PvE anymore as people have thought we were and we have some objective data to showcase it.

Again, everybody who reads patch notes and forums knew that thief was strong in PvE since the winter balance patch. If you only figured this out, and are not actually trolling me, then sorry for bashing you, but you seriously need to read forums more often.

Well, thank you for letting me know what everybody was thinking. I was unclear that you were speaking for everyone and not just projecting your own opinions.

But this response is pretty much what I expected. You’ve highlighted the negative and ignored the points that were inconvenient to you. A lot of them actually you just rolled over, which is why I am finding this back and forth to be less and less entertaining.

I get it. You think that thieves will never ever find a spot in raid, but there is a lot of other written materials besides your forum posts that suggest otherwise.

I’m not going to start raiding in a game where I don’t enjoy raiding to prove it, but most of my friends who do run in dedicated raid groups roll a thief in one of the DPS slots in their compositions.

Can we use some more improvements? I would agree with that, but this very doom and gloom perspective doesn’t match what I see.

But I appreciate you taking the time to try and kitten all over my enjoyment at thief’s clocking in such high numbers in the new DPS meters like I always figured they could with off topic discussion that had nothing to do with anything in my OP. Always happy to enable other people’s soapboxes.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

MadRabbit.3179:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Well, with Alacrity, it will also improve both Revenant and Engineer which are close 3rd and 4th, so in that sense, they will surpass the Thief and the Thief probably end up in 5th place.

I don’t follow that. They are trailing both in the unbuffed and buffed category by a margin of 4-6k. If one single boon that is able to be cycled more than quickness can not only cover that gap and but surpass it enough to say, beyond the variation, that Thief is 4th place, then Alcarity is the most broken boon in the game, even in it’s nerfed form.

With the Chrono’s build, there’s a total of 20s worth of Alacrity. All the wells will be available again by the time the Chrono finishes the first Alacrity rotation. In a sense, there will be almost 100% Alacrity uptime for the Mesmer and roughly 80% uptime for everyone else. Which means that even the Guardian can surpass the Thief seeing how the Thief’s build is simply relying on autoattacks and Fist Flurry rotation. The Guardian with Alacrity can pop more traps for a more DPS burst. The raid might even be better off if they trade the Thief for a second Mesmer to have a 100% Alacrity uptime. I’m sure that the loss of DPS from the Thief is no big deal if every other profession in the raid gets their skills 33% faster.

You and Dahkneus seem to be in disagreement and I don’t have numbers to prove either way, so I won’t argue against it and I won’t dismiss it as a valid point.

But if it does turn out to be true, then I hope they look at finally giving a more benefit to thieves from Alacrity.

Raizen.7981:

MadRabbit.3179:

Your scenarios focus so heavily on the negative

So heavily on the negative? Nah, I’m just stating a simple truth. Every class is the best at something. Thieves? In DD, we have 3 dodges and 2 leaps from vault. That makes a good DD the most survivable class in game. By far. I’m the last man standing in 9/10 of my raids. Problem is, our ability is self-focused, so we don’t bring something to the raid in terms of party utility. Since we’re not the top dps, and we don’t bring something to the raid, we’re hardly a first choice for anybody, in terms of dps dealing. Obviously, this doesn’t happen to dungeons, where our stealth is incredibly useful in many scenarios.

MadRabbit.3179:

consider how non-sensical they are
I don’t even want to debate with you

Well, you couldn’t debate with me even if you wanted to. Any person that throws “non-sense” without bringing a single argument, isn’t a person to be reasoned with

Because I have a pretty feeling how this is gonna go. I am going to try and give a more balanced and fair perspective and you are going to reject it immediately, because you decided before you even got into this that thief is trash tier.

You dismiss the importance of DPS in high tier fractals, which has importance, just not DPS timer importance.

You dismiss the importance of our break bar abilities, because all classes bring break bar stuff, even the classes that net significantly lower DPS numbers. You don’t consider the gap that the absence of Slick Shoes causes and has to be filled, that it’s just not extra break bar damage, but the fact that we can not only do a lot of break bar damage, but consistently break bars as our skills cycle so fast and that our ability to break bars uses abilities that are part of our DPS rotation, not causing a net DPS loss when used.

And your main argument is that up until this point everybody wants Tempest, even though the patch has only been out for a couple days, which means we’ve only had brief access to the damage meters to showcase just how competitive we actually are publicly and the impact of the class nerfs hasn’t fully been realized.

Even if Tempest still is the most desirable, we will still have a stronger meta build for raids than other classes. Which there is 7 of and 10 slots total in a raid.

So your truth is not hard truth. It’s just a very negative, unbalanced point of view, doesn’t take into account recent changes and still has yet to be proven in the future.

Maybe, I’ll be wrong. Maybe, I’ll be right.

If you want to argue that Tempest might be deserving of a nerfs, because of how much damage it can bring in addition to it’s utility, I won’t argue that. Probably

But that’s not the point of the thread. The point is that we aren’t as bad in PvE anymore as people have thought we were and we have some objective data to showcase it. The days of “gtfo thief” in speedrunning fractals and dungeons are gone, even if we might need some more work in weak areas for raids.

And this is only the power build mind you. It’s hard to do effective tests for the venomshare builds, so it’s still debateable how strong they are.

Raizen.7981:

MadRabbit.3179:

Raizen.7981:

Being second DPS while being unable to provide any utility to the party simply means that elementalists will always be picked over a thief. Unless the group is looking for a random dps dealer, or you’re in a raiding guild who doesn’t mind bringing a thief, you’ll never have a spot in a raid group.

Well, one, I don’t raid, so I don’t care.

Two, raids are still only a fraction of the PvE content and don’t offer really anything except the love of challenge; the monetary rewards just aren’t there unless you count Legendary Armor.

Three, even if I did raid, I don’t believe this very negative and absolute statement is true. Keep in mind, I have a 80 elementalist I mained for years and so I am well aware of the differences between the classes. What elementalist doesn’t bring is ways to consistently do damage to break bars, particularly on staff, which thief does due to the physical skills on low CD or low CD basilik venoms with venomshare.

Of course, our break bar damage has always been overshadowed by stuff like Slick Shoes in engineer, which got nerfed, so bringing a thief for break bar contributions is a lot more enticing than what it was before. I am sure time will tell how this plays out with people who care about raids.

Four, wtf? I mean, seriously wtf? We still clock in DPS higher by significant margins than seven other classes in the game, making us very, very desirable in fractals and dungeons and you completely ignore as you focus on the issue of us not being as good as elementalists at the moment? Talk about the glass being half empty.

1) then your post is invalid, since nobody gives a flying duck about dps parses in fractals or dungeons, which are total facerolls
2)good point
3)everbody brings breakbar skills. The PS war 90% of the time runs headbutt. The fact that we bring a bit more hard CC than other classes is totally irelevant in most raid runs, and even if it does actually mater in some well organized runs, that DPS gap between tempest and thief STILL makes tempest more viable, if we’re being total snobs and counting every drop of dps
4)Every.single.kittening.raid.run is looking for tempests. Nobody says LF DD. Everybody either says “need dps” – mostly bad pugs, or “need tempest” – rest of the world. As somebody who has been raiding for a while, my main dd gets raid spots 10 times less than my support PS or my support herald which i both totally hate playing

Well, then I consider this post to be invalid, as I don’t care about any of it.

But…I’m happy. You aren’t. Good luck with that.

Your scenarios focus so heavily on the negative without taking a step back to consider how non-sensical they are to begin with, I don’t even want to debate with you.

Orpheal.8263:

wall of text that puts my posts to shame

Why does the entire PvE game, all the balance decisions and all the value of the classes now revolve around the addition of optional challenging group content that didn’t even exist for years prior to 6 months ago?

You also left out our ability to break bars, which is our biggest group contribution, in addition to doing high damage.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Well, with Alacrity, it will also improve both Revenant and Engineer which are close 3rd and 4th, so in that sense, they will surpass the Thief and the Thief probably end up in 5th place.

I don’t follow that. They are trailing both in the unbuffed and buffed category by a margin of 4-6k. If one single boon that is able to be cycled more than quickness can not only cover that gap and but surpass it enough to say, beyond the variation, that Thief is 4th place, then Alcarity is the most broken boon in the game, even in it’s nerfed form.

Raizen.7981:

Being second DPS while being unable to provide any utility to the party simply means that elementalists will always be picked over a thief. Unless the group is looking for a random dps dealer, or you’re in a raiding guild who doesn’t mind bringing a thief, you’ll never have a spot in a raid group.

Well, one, I don’t raid, so I don’t care.

Two, raids are still only a fraction of the PvE content and don’t offer really anything except the love of challenge; the monetary rewards just aren’t there unless you count Legendary Armor.

Three, even if I did raid, I don’t believe this very negative and absolute statement is true. Keep in mind, I have a 80 elementalist I mained for years and so I am well aware of the differences between the classes. What elementalist doesn’t bring is ways to consistently do damage to break bars, particularly on staff, which thief does due to the physical skills on low CD or low CD basilik venoms with venomshare.

Of course, our break bar damage has always been overshadowed by stuff like Slick Shoes in engineer, which got nerfed, so bringing a thief for break bar contributions is a lot more enticing than what it was before. I am sure time will tell how this plays out with people who care about raids.

Four, wtf? I mean, seriously wtf? We still clock in DPS higher by significant margins than seven other classes in the game, making us very, very desirable in fractals and dungeons and you completely ignore as you focus on the issue of us not being as good as elementalists at the moment? Talk about the glass being half empty.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Have you read the disclaimer?

Ofcourse, as always with these tests there are some flaws that we couldn’t avoid while testing, for example according to this chart a Thief does the same DPS as a Dagger/Warhorn Tempest, with “realistic” buffs, which is ofcourse not true because in these tries neither of them had any Alacrity while in a raid you would have some which would benefit the Tempest much more.

Yeah, I did and that’s why I’m not claiming we are equal or better, even though we came out ahead by 2k in the realistic tests.

You also cut out that last sentence…

But we feel like these numbers are reasonably accurate and good numbers to aim for if youre trying to improve yourself.

…which is an important sentence and a sentiment I agree with.

And we’re only beneath elementalists by a small margin.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

Also, disproving the myth that warriors are such incredibly high damage dealers in PvE. Glad that one is getting to put to rest.

Dinosaurs.8674:

In this situation, D/W is better DPS than staff. In fact, it is the best DPS in the entire game.

We’re averaging in the 33k-35k range with staff in the thief forums. Got any numbers for that? Max boons, max party buffs, 25 stacks of vuln.

babazhook.6805:

As to Acro as a standalone line over DD , I do not see it yet. It might work but than every class has that issue.

Probably never. What makes Acro work at all is the synergy with DD and the dodge skills and the high energy bar that DD provides which nets you higher energy regen from the vigor and vigor buffs.

It’s just too much to lose to ever get rid of D/D.

The numbers were still close for me with Marauders Armor, Zerk Trinkets, Assassin Weapons. Couple thousand less on average.

Nice. We have the same setup. Our numbers were close, but I didn’t realize seaweed salad made that big of a difference.

I am trying to figure out if Air is better over Bloodlust atm. It’s something I have never been quite sure on.

BlueDragon.7054:

Dahkeus.8243:

BlueDragon.7054:

Shovel Face.4512:

Update: Ran with all raid buffs plus food and best possible teef dps set. Was able to reach 30k. An Ele friend I brought was able to reach 33k but without food

Which golem were you using for the tests?, Do all the golems have the same thoughness?, I didn´t try them all.

I don´t know if this is good or bad but I was getting like 33k dps in the 1 million golem easily without tryharding the rotations. It can go higher with seaweed salad probably, I was using the +power+ferocity food.

What build?

@ MadRabbit: Yea, you’re right. With that rotation, I’m 31-32k.

The usual staff build, burst 38.7k, sustained like 33.1k. But as I said it can go higher with optimal food and adding full might infusions.

What is your sigil and rune setup?

Esquilax.3491:

They wanted to nerf 2/10/x because it was mostly fast and easy. Now we gotta slog through the longer ones multiple times.

^ from a novice fractal player perspective.

But you don’t. That’s the thing. If you do a Tier 3 fractal, you get Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 rewards all at once.

So let’s say hypothetically you have a level 50 personal reward, then you get 2 suggested fractal dailies and 3 Tier 2 fractal dailies. You do 5 fractals in total and you get the Tier 1 rewards in addition to that.

In the old system, you would have had to do 6 fractals total to complete the dailies.

So in the new system, you do less fractals and get more rewards. It speeds up the legendary backpack collection, because of how many more pristine relics you can get in a day in the new system once you start to doing Tier 3 dailies.

The only downside is you can’t game the system to just do swamp over and over again….which is not a downside in everyone’s eyes.

sidecarpilot.3468:

They just turned fractals into annoying content forcing players to run specific stages… that’s what this update did.
Before the update you could rush a full daily run 77-67-56-40-32-x-x-10-2 in less then a hour and get some decent daily rewards out of it. Now, you need to run at least 3 fractals in Tier3 to get about the same rewards while being much, much longer/harder/annyoing content.

So, gj Anet, you’ve been failing since HoT, and you keep on doing so…
Been playing this game for well over 3 years and it has been nothing but dissapointment for the last year…

Yeah…because what we all really want out of a video game we are playing for fun is to be as efficient as possible and to do swamp over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Korochun.5862:

MadRabbit.3179:

What exactly is your point here? You said Acro was pointless; I argued it’s not.

Except you are wrong. DA/CS/DD is still far superior as a PvE spec to Acro/DD/Anything, including solo content. Whatever sustain you gain with Acro while soloing a Champion for absolutely no good reason does not make up the 30-40% DPS loss from giving up DA or CS which will let you kill that mob that much faster. You already have unlimited survivability in PvE with 7 chained dodges, more with staff.

Acro was meant as a PvP tree since rework. It has literally nothing for PvE content.

Except I am absolutely not wrong. You are trumping up the extra damage percentage the multipliers in Deadly Arts provide and that extra damage just doesn’t matter unless the champion can die before you run out of defensive resources. There is no second place award for getting a champion to 10% health and dying as opposed to 50% and dying. You die, you waypoint, the mob resets. That’s the hard reality if you want to fight big game on your own. 7 chained dodges is great, but it doesn’t matter. That’s 7 attacks you can evade back to back and if you can’t restore the endurance to keep up for a long period of time, you still fizzle out.

You can’t always do that with a pure damage build, particularly champions that are either blind immune or have the reduction in blind effectiveness.

You give up extra damage by taking Acrobatics over the multipliers in DS, but what are you getting in return is nearly an inexhaustible supply of energy. You can effectively double your endurance regen and hit 15 energy a second due to the synergy between the increased endurance bar from Daredevil, the minor traits in Acrobatics and the food buff.

There is no offensive rotation on any HoT champion you can’t outlast with the tools provided in Acrobatics and Daredevil, even really overtuned mobs like Bladedancers and Shadowleapers.

Don’t like it? Want to go damage focused? Can be just fine with it? Sure, fine. But to say, Acrobatics providing nothing for an open world is just the height of one dimensional thinking and misinformation. You can avoid everything, you can outrun everything (now, even without dash with the expeditious dodger changes) and you can disengage and shake aggro at any point.

I play both DS/CS/DD and Acro/CS/DD all the time. I know the limitations of both like the back of my hand and I still alternate between them because they offer different things.

NuhDah.9812:

My point is solo content doesn’t have to do with balance which was the topic of we were discussing. You can solo through the story to level up with glass canon too. Leveling is part of the game but you can never balance the growth of different classes, all you can do make all viable during the leveling content. And safe to say, the leveling content is easy enough so you won’t have too much trouble with any spec.

Okay, thank you for that point. However, it’s still just relevant, mostly, because you keep sidestepping my points that are inconvenient for you. There IS tougher monsters that you can solo, these monsters do require more defensive rotation than a glass cannon, the point of Acro is to provide more defense, player’s like me take it for that very reason to be able to kill monsters like that without help, it has a place in this game and the new buffs slightly improved it’s ability to help do that.

You originally stated that buffing Acro doesn’t mean anything, as if the spec should have been ignored all together and they shouldn’t have tried. It clearly does mean something.

Not working on our PhDs

NuhDah.9812:

Well I say casual player since how much time it takes you to deal with solo play doesn’t affect others and you can do that without optimizing you build, armor or gameplay. You can make your gameplay more forgiving with the benefit of longer time spent on doing your solo things. But when other people come into play you need to be at your best if you’re gonna be a wanted/needed member in the groups anyways. Optimizing gameplay for solo content isn’t really something you want if you care about balance and also diversity in play style.

What exactly is your point here? You said Acro was pointless; I argued it’s not. I provided examples as to why it’s not. You seem to be saying those examples don’t count for…reasons? You just looking to argue with me?

They optimize gameplay all the time for solo content. Most people level characters solo. They just nerfed all of HoT open world to make it more soloable.

Nor does it have anything to do with making your gameplay “more forgiving” at the expense of it taking longer. You buff for damage only, you go balls deep on a champion, you get him to down to 20% and then die, because you can’t out sustain his damage, it’s game over. You don’t have anyone to rez you; the champion resets to full. Dead is dead. If you can’t provide even evades, dodges and blinds to out sustain him, it just doesn’t matter how much damage you do.

It’s not that it gave more than 100% swiftness uptime to dash; uptime was already high enough that adding on 2 more seconds doesn’t matter.

It’s that with the correct food buff or a rune of the pack, it now adds 100% swiftness uptime to bound or lotus.

But that in and of itself, only matters if you are using Acro to solo harder content in PvE or play open world. (which thiefs do play PvE btw; only talking in a context where PvP is the end all be all doesn’t fly).

The buff isn’t strong enough to create new Acro builds, but Anet buffs are rarely ever game changing.

NuhDah.9812:

There was this problem with the power creep in the game, they mostly added to that. In the state of the game right now buffing Acro doesn’t mean much, I could say it’s an improvement only for the casual player. Taking acro as a spec won’t benefit anyone in the difficult pve content since it reduces dmg enough to make the thief even more unwanted in that kind of content.

0.o

Yeah, you don’t take Acro in groups, because you don’t need to. You can stack for damage, because you can exploit agro mechanics.

If you want to solo champions or solo group content, then how much damage you do is secondary to having a defensive rotation that can out sustain your target’s offensive rotation.

It’s far from being for only the dreaded “casual” players.

It’s all right. It’s mostly just too inconvenient to run and the rewards not matching the time investment. It still is; I don’t plan my life around a 2 hour fixed start time and if I do it at all, it’s just because I happened to be on when it started and had time to play.

I’ll probably do it a few times now to check out the rewards, but the rewards have to be really good to get me to stomach the boss fight at the end. It’s anti-climatic and very, very slow. If you have to design a mechanic to one shot people who go AFK during a boss fight, it’s a pretty good sign you made something kind of on the boring side. The whole thing is long periods of standing around waiting for the burn phase to cycle. Just awful pacing. People set up traders and crafting stations; that’s how slow it is.

I like it up until we complete the towers and then it’s a total snooze fest. Once I got all the Mastery Points, 100% zone completion and enough ore to last me awhile, I stopped doing it all together just because of the boss fight.

I really don’t want to do all the math again in another thread again, but you lose more offensive stats and damage to get the same amount of health that marauders provides by taking Valkyrie or Soldiers instead. This is due to Marauders pieces having higher total stats than Valkyries or Soldiers and having a much more balanced distribution of power, precision and ferocity.

Now, you can achieve higher survivability with Valkyrie and Soldiers than you can with Marauders, but I’ve never felt the need to have anything more than the bonus HP that marauders armor provides. I keep my trinkets Berserkers and my weapons Assassins.

reikken.4961:

Zenith.7301:

Fireball

strongest autoattack of the strongest weapon

wut

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, man. It doesn’t even come close to dagger lightning AAs. Even after the buff to fireball, it still has a higher coefficient, hits twice and swings .05 seconds faster.

On the rest, I don’t know what to say. I’ve been running my Daredevil mostly on the damage golems. I will do my elementalist later this week. I want to see what the different DPS numbers clock in on with the weapons before I have an opinion.

Most groups still have predominantly power, even post 50+.

There is a number of reasons to run a condi build, but the critical strike mistlocks aren’t one of them, since best in slot condi gear still stacks lot of precision, so you still crit off the direct damage components of condi weapon skills.

And to run a condi build, you pay a lot to do that, because it takes longer to kill trash and vets then it does a power build. Running one outside of high level fractals and raids is comes with a heavy downside; it’s very slow, because it takes time to build up condi stacks and reach your optimal dps.

I have been waiting three years for them to start compensating me for all these awesome forum posts I make, so the line starts behind me (and no, all the infraction points don’t count as compensation).

Dahkeus.8243:

Daredevil Staff
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQFAmEFOxGnYhmw2yTDn9kWAYCFBmrgbwRIA-TxAXgAPKB7V/BY/R5nogyI-e
Rotation: Autoattack and steal on cd

Working in one bound everytime the buff expires and using Fists of Flurry every time it goes off CD should squeeze out 2-3k more.

Have the waves of veterans at the end of the tunnel always been this intense?

Nonsense. Utter garbage. We are the top second highest damage dealer, only below elementalist. I confirmed it personally with the damage golems.

As far as soloing in open world, I run a CS/Acro/DD build and there is nothing I can’t handle. I can solo most of the HoT champions and I play as a commander most of the time in the map metas, even leading the zerg in tower rotation in Dragon Stand, doing most of the runs with zero downs or deaths.

Most people underrate them based on bad personal experience, because their surviability is built into their dodges and evades and that is skill based. Acro + DD has a lot of potential, but if you don’t learn the mechanics of the mobs you are fighting, can’t read telegraphed attacks and can’t time your dodges, you won’t get far.

There is no class in this game I enjoy playing in PvE as much as I enjoy Daredevil, but it can be punishing as a new player. But to say the potential isn’t there or the class is bad on it’s own merits in PvE right now….it’s just not true.

I wasn’t too optimistic, because I didn’t think the lack of new content would be enough for me, but I was surprisingly wrong.

Damage golems were HUGE. Omg, the theorycrafting community really needed this. I have already disproved a few things about daredevil damage that had been taken as common knowledge.

I think destroying the swamp fractal only state of fractals did a lot; even though, I have played all of them repeatedly, the idea of being able to find a group for soemthing besides swamp or molten boss excites me.

The same with dungeons. I look forward to running them again.

New rewards and all the HoT changes really made the content feel like less of a chore and fun to play again.

Even the changes to the Adventures encouraged me to finally get my last few mastery points needed to unlock all the HoT masteries today.

I approach the game now with a sense of vigor; well, done. I was really losing hope for this game. This went a lot way.