Guild Wars 2

• Lumber Cores? (Ascalonian Lumber Core, Palm Lumber Core, Alpine Lumber Core, Arid Lumber Core, Krytan Lumber Core, Coastal Lumber Core) – These are basic crafting materials for scribes that you get from harvesting nodes. Seems like something that should be in the storage to me.

• Ore Cores like Feldspar Core? Same thing as Lumber Cores, but from ore nodes.

• Badge of Tribute? Another Scribe crafting material. Running between the WvW Merchant and Scribing Stations is a bit annoying when you craft Blueprints.

• All Guild Decoration Trophies like Sabetha Flamethrower Fragment Piece? This is more iffy and personal cause I can see the “Just use them” argument, but unfortunately sometimes you might want to keep them around, use them for a guild that doesn’t have a hall yet, or just not use them for guilds you’re in right now. There’s quite a bit of them and they’re taking up space.

Ah, OK. The achievements don’t list the story step in the description like previous ones, and it said “Final Battle” so logically I thought it’s in the second mission.

I tried doing the Ring of Fire achievement and I’m 90% sure it’s bugged.

There is no “Eligible for Achievement” buff in the last story instance for this anywhere. “Don’t get hit by the ring of fire” isn’t very descriptive, since there are a LOT of “rings of fire” doing the final fight, but I spent the entire fight at range, didn’t get hit by anything other then some charges and one stray fire bullet when a dog was shaking, but didn’t get hit by the expanding rings of the dying hounds, didn’t get hit by the actual fire rings they sometimes leave, didn’t get hit by any projectiles flying in the air and I still didn’t get this achievement. Heck, I even dodged the sword slam at the end.

I’d like to ask if there are any more sweeping changes planned specifically for PvE Thieves in the future. I have to admit that as one I feel that I’m being caught in the crossfire of PvP balance changes a bit too often to my liking.

I am also a bit unhappy at this change. I has my sylvari mostly the way I wanted her. (Female Thief – Twilight Arbor Head and Shoulders, Fiery Vambraces, Tier 3 Chest, Pants and Boots)
My only gripe was the lack of dyeable areas on my boots and the fact that I never could get my chest leaves to color just right, they always came out too dark. But it wasn’t really that big.

Now I’m honestly pretty angry. When I first loged in my sylvari looked like a white cucumber. I started messing with the dyes but I can’t get anything that looks close to what I had before, and I have extra annoyances.

1) I died the glowable areas of my chest armor Red. If I’m not glowing, they are red. If I am glowing they are PINK! My base sylvari glow is max intensity red! Where does the pink come from? It’s like it’s completely ignoring any part of my actual character and just glowing white, it looks horrible.

2) My chest armor is Green, and glowable areas are red. My pants however don’t have a separate dye for the glow! I can either have them be green and glow white-ish, or have them be red and glow pink-ish. T3 Medium Pants only really have 1 dye spot cause the rest is covered up by T3 Medium Boots.

3) My forearms used to glow a very pretty orange color because my inner glow was meshing with the green of my armor. Now they don’t do that, I can just have red elbows.

4) My boots had red vines on the heels (again, from my red glow). Now they don’t.

5) The whole armor used to be a lot more shiny, as if the leaves were slightly damp. Now they’re just flat.

The only good thing is that my chest leaves now dye a bit better.

Here are some screenshots.
Gallery of my character before: http://imgur.com/a/1P2XT#0
Gallery of my character after*: http://imgur.com/a/zDuLm#0
Pastebin with my old colors listed: http://pastebin.com/676bcd6T

• First 2 pictures are the initial login screen, other show in-game how the glow looks after I re-dyed myself a bit. Note that I can’t dye pants to just glow red or white without changing the color of the entire pants. Forearms and boots lost detail. Nothing is shiny. I glow pink when dyed red.

I’m also requesting a revert to this change. I understand that the intentions might have been in the right place but the end result is less then desirable. I think I’m speaking for a lot of people when I say that we preferred blending with out skin color instead of this.

Josh Foreman.8250:

1. The zones are too long

You are complaining about too much content.

What? No, no, no. People are complaining about the level length. Amount of content is something totally different. You made almost enough content to fill worlds 2 and 3 combined. That’s not the issue, the issue is that it was all crammed into world 2.

Level 2-1 is pretty freaking long. Levels 2-2 and 2-3 are even bigger. You could split those in half and have 4 good levels with a nice break for people, but instead halfway through people go “OMG, there’s more? When does this end? Make it stop!” And after that they get to something like the Gong Pagota…

Players need more breaks and stopping points in things like this. When SAB first game out, me and my friends were playing it and we for pretty tired by the time we reached the end of 1-3, but that was fine for the most part. 1-3 was maybe a bit too sharp of a difficulty spike compared to 1-2, but not something you can’t overcome.
This time we had it not even halfway through 2-2. That word should have ended a little after the mini-boss. We were groaning the rest of the way and we’re pretty “hardcore” players. It didn’t help that going upstream the river in 2-1 drained most of our endurance and sanity the first time.

Who said that there need to be 4 words and each one has to have 3 levels? If you have some good designs then use them, but you have to give players breaks. Also, one hit kill traps in normal mode? NO! Just no! Who thought that that was a good idea?

Martin Kerstein.3071:

Depositing coins into the bank is no longer possible.

Mmmm…. could I ask for this feature to come back in a later patch? (since I realize it’s probably too late to do anything about it now).

I like depositing gold in my back so I don’t accidentally spend it. I already had an incident once when I bought a pair of Heavy Tier 3 Cultural Boots on my Thief :/ (this was before you added a warning before buying those. I still have them in my bank as a reminder and in hopes that I can get my money back one of these days…)

Bloodgruve.6038:

The 3 second Revealed seemed to fit just right with CnD to Auto Attack chain. The 4 second Revealed screwed this up, now we need to let the 1st Auto hit on a second chain before we hit CnD again. It’s just messy and rough.

This. Previously there was a fluid and well fitting combo. Now it’s rough and looks like no one playtested it at all.
Also this was supposed to be a PvP oriented nerf, but from what I gathered PvP thieves don’t really care, while PvE Thieves like us got hit by a truck that has giant rippling effects beyond just being out of stealth longer.

As a PvE thief I am very much disliking this change, for several reasons that I’ll try to explain in my post.

For starters, like everyone already mentioned in this thread, this is a DPS decrease. Thieves in PvE already are inferior to warriors is almost every aspect, and now we get a more or less 25% DPS nerf.

Second, anyone that’s playing a thief will tell you that 3 seconds was EXACTLY the time it took from the moment your backstab to hit to get off a 3 skill autoattack rotation to the time the swing on Cloak and Dagger hit again. That combo felt really good and really fluid. It is now completely ruined. You have to get off 2 extra autoattacks, and often the third will kick in because it activated really fast after the second. Trying to use C&D reliably in the middle of your autoattack chain feels really clunky. In practice I’ll probably have to wait for 2 autoattack rotations now instead of the one. That means half the normal backstabs, half the might stacks, half the condition removal, half the time I don’t get my faced smashed in my a mob etc.

Please look into this ASAP. This isn’t a issue of stealth anymore, this is an issue of the viability of the thief. This is an issue of good design. This is an issue of things feeling RIGHT when you play.

Right now this feels absolutely horrible. I’d rather have a 1/2 damage nerf on backstab then this because numbers are numbers, but everything would at least feel the right. You need to make all the blocks fit and feel good, and THEN tweak the numbers. This is one of the design philosophies at Riot Games. You have a character feel good, make the skills fit together and have it be fun, then you tweak the numbers. Changing the Revealed Debuff to 4 from 3 seconds breaks EVERYTHING about the most commonly used thief combo.

I rarely post anything relating to balance, because I don’t know better, and numbers are just numbers. But when I see something that’s not just a number change, but a huge, glaring design flaw at it’s core then I have to speak up because I care about games being fun.

Here are some potential trait milestones for you to aim at. Think about these and pick what you think is best for you.

Deadly Arts 10: Vunerability on Crit. Not bad if your geared includes a good chunk of precision.
Deadly Arts: 15 points gives you weakness in poison. Weakness is a strong condition and you can apply poison with dagger autoattacks and steal… and also apply it by the truckload with a shortbow!
Deadly Arts 25: 10% increased damage when an enemy has a condition… so 10% damage increase all the time.

Shadow Arts 10: Regeneration on stealth. If you’re using a dagger offhand and plan on going into stealth often this is nice. (it also works on you)

Acrobatics 15: This is almost like “you can dodge 3 times instead of 2”. Very strong.
Acrobatics 20: Initiative regen. Initiative is your limiter on skill usage, so more regen is great. 1 per 5 seconds is a lot.

Trickery 10: Buffs while stealing are nice.
Trickery 15: Some people love this, I don’t find this that great because it just increases the max and I prefer increasing regen, but this does make it easier for you to stay over 6 initiative for the damage boost from Critical Strikes.
Trickery 20: Even more buffs when stealing and also ripping buffs from enemies.

Wouldn’t Ruby Orbs in armor give you more of what you want? (Power, Precision, Ctir damage)

You can also get those last 50 Power points from traits, though finding and actual useful trait will prove to be difficult.

Sometimes when I open the TP/Gem Store for the first time after loging into the game sometimes I’ll just “improperly log in” or something like that. My gem total doesn’t show up, hovering over anything in the TP doesn’t show the tooltip and I can’t sell or buy anything.

I can fix this closing the game and reloging, but is there any more permanent fix?

I just tried doing this route and… whoa boy. Mobs come so fast that it’s impossible to handle them and they come infinitely. At first I’m pretty sure we had at 5 or 7 groups of 3 veteran mobs each stacked together on the waypoint.

Please do something about this. This is just unfair.

Talking to Levvi is not part of the quest chain with Noll.

After geting info from Noll, go to Kessex Hills, Wizard’s Clef (south east of the map). Find Canach in a building west of the Garenhoff PoI.

After that return to Inspector Ellen Kiel in LA.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Slayer

• This is true as the game is right now, but we haven’t seen the expansions. It stands to reason that they’ll add more ranks to those that are easier, and more monsters in new areas of those types of monsters less common in existing areas.

Even expansions won’t solve the problem of giants for example. Also I personally think that achievements that are available now should reflect the state of the game now.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Hero
Skillful

• I don’t think it’s that much. I have 300 skill points and only one level 80 character, and still hasn’t completed the map. The rest are 25 or lower. Then again, I have 15 characters.

To max this you need 1000 skill challenges. There are 202 challenges in the game right now, so that means near 100% exploration on 5 characters. That’s just a bit unreasonable in my eyes. I realize different achievements will have different difficulty, but I have gripes with certain achievements that force you to play different characters for an extended period of time. That should be more of an option then a necessity in my opinion.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Been There, Done That

• I’d just remove the WvW points from explorer. Looks like they are already looking into the chantry’s point.

I agree that WvW is problematic. Several guild mates were near 100% for a long time and just needed WvW points. I was fortunate enough to explore that during the 1 day rotations. They solved the problem by server jumping, but that’s not going to be feasible soon. It REALLY sucks to be blocked by something that’s not really in your control :/

MithranArkanere.8957:

Hint Completion

• You need at least one character of each profession to get them all, but you can get them all.
  I have them all .

I have all the hints marked. I made alts to unlock hints based on primary professions. My achievement is stuck at 77/83. See attachment.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Explorer
Legendary Collector

• Not all titles are meant to be acquired in just a month.
  Many of them are a very, VERY, VEEERY long term goal.

Sure, not saying this should be removed, decreased to 1 rank or anything like that, but I just hope it’s 1 rank per legendary because having to get multiple legendaries for a rank later on would suck. And you just get 5 points for it, come on. In general I think “points” should be rebalanced to scale up depending on the difficulty of the achievement some more.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Speedy Reader

• Oh! Didn’t know about this one.
  I guess I’ll try to d it when they fix that.

To be clear, I don’t mid hidden achievements, but I want to see them after I unlock them to have some proof that I achieved them (that’s kind of the whole point of achievements, right?)

MithranArkanere.8957:

Weapon Master

• Yeah. That’s really annoying. Conditions should count. When stacking conditions from both weapons, it should count for both weapons.
  Damaging boons like retaliation should count too.

All damage should count. If you get exp for a kill it should count.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Community
Thirst Slayer

• Nah. It’s actually not single drinks, but points.
  For example, a Flask of Gladiator Swill gives 9 points per drink.

Wait, really? Hmmm… this changes things. Problem is this isn’t listed in item descriptions. Some items don’t count at all! This is a very unclear achievement :/

Slayer
Some achievements in this group really need to be reduced to fit the amount of enemies that are available in the game. Getting 1000 undead kills is trivial, but getting even 10 giant kills is a big achievement (since a lot of giants are risen instead).

Hero
Skillful: Change from “Amount of skill challenges done” to "Amount of skillpoints earned. Adjust values if needed. Currently you’d have to do all skill challenges on 5 characters to max this, I think that’s asking too much.

Been There, Done That: Just kind of related – Remove the POI from the inside of the Chantry of Secrets. It causes a lot of bugs relating to getting the 100% completion reward.

Lifetime Survivor: This achievement is just bugged and doesn’t work, so…

Hint Completion: There are 77 hits in the game, but this achievements lists 82. It’s just like the pre-patch explorer titles. Please fix.

Explorer
Legendary Collector: Wow, 5 tiers? I hope 5 weapons is the max and not 10 or 15… It’s not bad that it’s more then 1 item, but I think it should reward more points.

Speedy Reader: If you finish a hidden achievement it should show up on the list!

Weapon Master
If you kill something with a condition it won’t count. That’s a huge problem for condition builds just like destroying structures. Also several weapons are offhand only (shields, warhorns, torches, foci). It’s very hard to get any kills on these weapons.
I propose that these achievements are changed to award points for every enemy killed to the weapons you currently have equipped. It’s almost impossible to kill enemies with certain weapons and stat combinations :/
Additionally, if you’re dual wielding the same weapon then you get 2 points toward that weapon. Adjust the values for single handed weapons accordingly.

Community
Thirst Slayer: Isn’t 100,000 a little excessive? :/

Activities
Some of these achievements on this list could use a different description that will better inform what has to be done.

Kegmaster: Keg Brawl Skills? Do you mean achievements? Skills are the things that are on my bar, right? How can I master them?

Linsey, could you confirm or deny that the Magic Find stat has any effect on the outcome from the Mystic Forge?

@Malediktus – there is not, or at least we don’t know about it yet.

Just to be clear, The Shaterer, Tequatl the Sunless and Claw of Jormag (not to be confused with Jormag) are Dragon Lieutenants. There’s also the Elder Dragon Zhaitan in the level 80 Dungeon Instance. That’s pretty much it.

Bang Bang Bang

So, I’m level 80 and finished exploring the whole world. Now it’s time to plan everything out and turn my equipment from “whatever gold/exotic that I found” to something that fits my grand plan.

…except I don’t have a grand plan yet. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what would be the “best” build for Explorable Dungeons and general PvE and I just don’t know.
For every argument I have in one direction I can have a counter argument in another :/

What do you guy think Thieves should build end game?

Just to give some perspective: My current build is Dagger/Pistol and Pistol/Pistol with 0/30/20/20/0 traits. (I do change up my weapons quite a lot)
Since my equipment is a random assortment of whatever I have about 750 in Power and Precision, 300 in toughness, 450 in vitality, 250 condition damage (this is including trait bonuses).

I’m one of the most survivable characters in my group of friends when we do story dungeons. I always spend the least on repairs. I take Thieves Guild always. On PvE I take Singet of Shadows and Ambush, on Dungeons I swap out SoS for Shadow Refuge.
I like my 20 points in Shadow Arts for increased stealth duration and regeneration while in stealth. The 10 point trait in Acrobatics that reduces falling damage is also awesome on PvE for someone like me that always wants to end up in the wierdest place. It would be really hard for me to give up those traits.
I took Deadly Arts because the traits looked nice on paper. +20% damage here, Plus 10% damage there… problem is (and this is a big reason why I can’t decide on my final build) pistols don’t have great damage without improving the bleeds. Going melee in dungeons is suicide versus bosses so I was sticking with Pistols.

I originally wanted to find some Power/Precision/Vitality (or Toughness) gear, but no gear, save for Knights offers a stat combination like that, and Knights major stat is Toughness not power. Then i realized that jewelry combined gives more stats then armor does, and jewelry is MUCH more limited. This was before I realized that going Power/Precision might not be the best course of action for ranged damage.
And I’m also worried that whatever survivability stat I pick might not be enough. What’s the difference if I have 500 toughness if I still die in 1 hit regardless?

… so yeah, I’m the kind of guy that overthinks things WAAAAY too much and enjoys long, smart discussions.
Right now I THINK that I’m going to make Condition Damage / Power / Vitality equipment. I’ll respec traits to open up the possibility of Venom Sharing and take 2 venoms (+ Shadow Refuge / SoS). What do you guys think?