Guild Wars 2

Talking about SE and CiS is fine and all but I think it’s getting a bit off-topic.
This thread is only about the trapper rune stealth duration nerf and it’s effect on thieves. If you want to discuss changes to SE or CiS it should probably be in its own thread.

If it was Arenanet’s intention that I stop using traps and go back to other stealth utilities for my p/d condi build then someone could make it clear and I guess I could do that. It’s not like p/d builds are unplayable now, only the trapper version of it (which I really enjoyed).

However the reason I made this thread is because I don’t believe that was Arenanet’s intention at all. From what I understand they were nerfing guardian stealth access and thieves got caught in the blast. Therefore I thought of a way for thief to retain the old amount of stealth (which is not OP for a thief) without having any adverse effects on guardians.

As far as whether it was a bug or not, I don’t think meld with shadows ever affected trapper runes before so it might be as intended, but no one minded because they still gave a reasonable amount of stealth.

I also don’t think this was done as a nerf to thieves at all, just that thieves were in the collateral. Guardian has never had stealth before and wasn’t really designed around it. Dragonhunter getting stealth has probably broken some things and the nerf to trapper runes is probably perfectly necessary.

The thing is, thieves getting access to 3s of stealth is not remotely game-changing/gamebreaking. Thieves have many skills which actually give 4s of stealth if using shadow arts. Since, as far as I understand, it wouldn’t be overpowered in any way for trapper runes to give thieves 3s of stealth I thought one of the best ways to implement it would be to use the trait thieves already have. After all, it makes sense that if a thief, ranger and dragonhunter use the same rune for stealth, the thief would get slightly more that the others (with shadow arts), right?

@Jana I worry that buffing Shadow’s Embrace may have bad effects on thieves who stay in stealth for long periods, like d/p. It also doesn’t address how inferior trap stealth is compared to other stealths when they are 2 and 4 seconds respectively.
There are also other reasons to want a slightly longer stealth duration, such as Shadow’s Rejuvenation healing for more, or setting up basilisk venom (1s cast) and still having time to position yourself and line the shot or whatever.

Oh, and here I thought it was intentional and was trying to make a case for it.
If it’s a bug that’s even more reason to fix it. Thanks for posting it.

I have been playing with trapper runes for the past year on thief using a p/d dire build in wvw and even some pve, because it’s fun. When the runes came out I wasn’t sure because the normal stealth skills (blinding powder and shadow refuge) are very good especially stealthing allies, but trying them out I could experience the build in a different way and enjoy the stealth on demand.

I understand that there are reasons for nerfing trapper runes now that;
a) they are in pvp and;
b) dragonhunters.
I also understand that splitting them between pvp and pve isn’t really what arenanet wants to be doing these days. Also that the nerf is probably fine, or warranted, for rangers and guardians who get great benefit from traps to begin with (flame trap is strong in a condi build) and the stealth acts as only a bonus for repositioning and survival.

However, for thieves I believe this nerf is a little too much. Every access to stealth which thieves have provides 3s of stealth (CnD, HiS, BP, SR) and for a good reason; there are traits with effects which trigger every 3 seconds in stealth (Shadow’s Embrace and Shadow’s Rejuvenation) allowing those effects to trigger twice in a full stealth duration.

Additionally, traits which grant stealth to the thief (Merciful ambush and Hidden Thief) grant 2s, under the expectation that they are extended to 3s by the shadow arts trait “Meld in Shadows”. For the skills I listed above, they actually give 4s of stealth with this trait, which is really just a bonus. This can allow you to wait 3 seconds for the periodic effects to trigger twice and then still land a stealth attack.

All of this leads me to the nerfed state of trapper runes. At 3s they were still inferior to the 4s potential stealth you could get from other skills, but were still entirely usable. I don’t think that is the case any longer at only 2s. This (likely to be warranted and necessary) nerf to ranger and guard stealth access has had a disastrous affect on a thief build, which is not really particularly popular or strong (to my knowledge), but which I really enjoy.

Hence, I am writing this to make a case for a small but reasonable change. Simply allow the trait “Meld in Shadows” to affect trapper rune stealth duration.
In this way, only thieves, and only those with shadow arts, will get 3s stealth from these runes, and even the super-speed is still nerfed.
What are other people’s opinions? or maybe there’s something I missed? Thank you.

i just thought today, maybe it could be an easter special??

+1(x100), not sure what OP is talking about but I really want this skin (among others) to come back.
I didn’t buy it before since it was town clothes, which I couldn’t care less about, but now that it can go as armour skin I would pay 400-500 gems for it, like the other masks on gemstore.

please anet!

Hey, so the ascended crafting that was shown off in this stream just before; http://youtu.be/FsjhbHQEzDQ looked a bit confusing so I decided to condense it into a spreadsheet to simplify a little,
hopefully this can help some other people and maybe the wiki as well, since i don’t really edit wikis myself

I made 2 assumptions though, for the recipes we haven’t yet seen.
These are the spiritwoods plank, which I assumed would be the same as deldrimor steel ingots, but with equivalent tier woods instead of metal,
and also the deldrimor steel plated dowel, which I assumed to be 3 ingots + 2 planks like it is for every other tier, although it may well not be…

It’s based on crafting a greatsword and there is a materiel summary at the bottom,
Aside from the vendor bought thermo-something reagent, the other material prices are based on the TP prices;
the total cost is about 78.37 gold, and the price of vendor reagents alone (if you gather all the crafting mats yourself) is 53.85 gold, possibly more if my above assumptions are wrong

According to the above assumptions also, it will take 11 days minimum as there are 11 ecto based ascended crafting materials, 9 deldrimor steel, and 2 spiritwood planks

anyway, for those who are interested the spreadsheet is here, and any feedback would be really great;
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApLoV3Hk17W0dE5pNUhsemhBNVZ2eFk1OElJU212Wmc&usp=sharing

enjoy

So I’ve been sorrow’s embrace a few times over the last couple of days for a piece of armour with knight’s stats.
Now, for some reason, whenever I was doing the Nokk fight the game crashed and closed and send error report, the whole works.

I thought it was a computer problem the first time, ram or something, but it’s happened 3 times now, at exactly the same spot, I think it’s one of his gravity skill effects or something, since it only happened halfway though the fight.
That’s all.

Tell them to press 6.

more:

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Hello
so gw2 was working yesterday but I boot my computer this morning and it just crashed when I double click gw2.exe and came up with the gw2 crashed dialogue box, I attached a picture of it. the normal client log in thing doesn’t even attempt to come up.

I tried the -repair, redownloading the client from the gw2 website and attaempting to run gw2.exe after deleting gw2.dat and gw2.tmp (don’t worry I backed them up). and it always gave the same result.

also I tried to run game advisor, but that came up with a dialogue box saying
“Game advisor has stopped working.
Windows can check for a solution to the problem.
-> Check online for a solution and close the program
-> Close the program …ect”

Thanks in advance for the help.

I was doing some testing with the trait; shadow protector, to see exactly how it worked,
my findings:

• if the target has stealth and regen, then you grant stealth, stealth duration increases, regen doesn’t change
• if the target has stealth and no regen, then you grant stealth, the stealth duration increases and they gain regen
• if the target has regen and no stealth, then you grant stealth, they gain stealth but the regen duration doesn’t change
• if the target has “revealed” debuff, and you grant stealth, they do not get stealth or regen, whether or not they have regen already.

from this, I conclude that shadow protector will not grant regen to a target if they already have a regen on them, and will not increase the duration,
however other regens applied after the one from shadow protector will still add to it,

also, Hide in Shadows gives a 10s regen with shadow protector so it confirms that hide in shadows gives stealth first, then regen.

how much of this is working as intended, then?

the only changes I want are to see conditions and boons, and possibly the CD on your heal, since I sometimes come out too early,

as for being healed, I think if an ally drops a healing effect on you it is kind of wasted if it does nothing, but overpowered if it heals your health, so if it heals lifeforce (at a reduced amount or something?) i think this would be nice too. I don’t think it would be too powerful as staying in DS for too long isn’t really that good since many effects give you a buff for 3- 5s after switching into DS.

The skills are mostly good, life blast is awesome, doom is very useful, especially if you remember to use it often (maybe could increase duration but it might get OP), and life transfer is very nice, especially with transfusion trait.
the skill I use least is dark path, it’s just too slow, when I want to melee I can usually outrun the claw it sends out anyway, I think just making it more instant, like the guardians flashing blade would be fine.

For underwater DS though, :/ I hate underwater just because of it, the whole gathering plague/plague blast thing is just hard without seeing your condition monitor, and they replaced the only 2 DPS skills in DS with condimancer type skills, so life blast power builds just don’t work underwater, I would rather just have the land life blast and life transfer tbh, even as a condimancer,

as for “choosing skills” I don’t think it’s really necessary, DS is supposed to be able to compliment any build or weapon set with it’s own unique utility, so the idea of a condishroud for condimancers, and a powershroud for powermancers is a little entitled, condimancers have scepters and powermancers have dagger or axe for their main job

Skill 3 and 4 fit this utility idea really well, skill 1 gives any build a reliable damage output if they need it and life force in general can function as a second health bar for those who don’t need its offense.
dark path was useful to the point of being OP as a ground targeted teleport, but I do think it’s a little underwhelming in it’s current state,

I wasn’t sure where to put this but basically I was thinking about how I’m a little disappointed with the available headgears, as they are all very practical and serious, but not very charming.

This reminded me about festival hats, so with halloween around the corner, I just wanted to say I would like to see some festival hats in this game.
What I would like specifically is for them to be transmutable by default, like the HoM skins, and also for the “hat guy” to come back like in gw1, so we can get infinite access to our unlocked festival hats for all characters on our account, again like the HoM guy.

So, what do others think about festival hats, or what else would you like to see as part of the festival this october?

I think the first option is a good idea, I’ve often clicked on a colour to see what it will be like and wanted to easily reverse it afterwards. If you have the first one implemented you don’t really need the second one, as trying stuff out will be relatively easy.
even just having a “back one step” button would be fine, although it’s not that big a deal.

after the servers just came back up just now, I tried clicking “create” on the character select screen and am met with only a black screen and background music,

I left it up for a couple of minutes and it didn’t change, I also tried a few times, and it was the same every time

thanks in advance.