Guild Wars 2

Berserker’s for PvE, Celestial for WvW and when I need to adapt a build for something in particular on the fly (e.g. Crown Pavilion). I also have Settler’s, Sentinel’s, and Temple sets in my bank, but I rarely (if ever) use them.

The SB isn’t what it was, but with celestial gear, 6/5/0/3/0 traits, and Piercing Arrows, I had a pretty good time at least in PvE.

The “leader” thing weirded me out. Come to think of it, I don’t really know what I am to the group based on what we did together. I felt like we (as in the entire group) were rarely all together, and when we were, Jory more often than not was the one calling the shots, asking me for an opinion or whatnot every now and then so as to not make me feel left out. If DE 2.0 had a formal organization, even if only based on function, I’d have assumed it was something like this:

Jory: leader
Kas: 2nd in command
Rox: scout
Braham: support
Taimi: engineer (literally, apparently)
PC: guy that shows up every now and then.

Tyrian equivalent of Braille? Otherwise, it depends on how you qualify the part in bold:

“The dredge are intelligent and roughly humanoid with hunched postures and, due to their race’s history beneath the surface, underdeveloped eyes, to the point of nearly being blind.”

Source

I figure they have to be able to see at least somewhat, otherwise I don’t see how they can create the stuff they do by touch and feel alone.

I was looking for him when I was trying to complete one of my dailies. After running around for a while, looking over the cliffs to see if he might have fallen off or something, I just resorted to the Necro and Thief.

It would be cool if they removed him for an upgrade. As he was, he was really more annoying than challenging.

I much prefer how lore is presented in GW2 (i.e. not “shoved in your face”) versus how it’s presented in something like Kingdoms of Amalur. Interesting as the lore in the latter may be, when nearly every NPC and each of their relations brain-dumps extensive historical exposition in paragraph form at you, it can get a little overwhelming and tiring, and it just about killed the immersion for me.

CHIPS.6018:

1) Camp Raid.

1. It’s unclear why the Pact would get involved in this non-ED-related, “renown heart” hostage situation, but if they were, simply storming in with weapons drawn is very Vigil, but not Priory or Whispers (no offense to Vigils). A joint task force consisting of all three Orders is unlikely to just go with the heaviest-handed option right off the bat in this kind of situation, especially since the time limit is seemingly based on the Centaurs being enraged by an attack on their position than an immediate urge to execute most/all of their slaves for no apparent reason.

2. The presented outcome is very close to a “best case scenario”. Others have already presented other, more likely and tragic scenarios where the DKs not only escalated the situation, they made it far, far worse.

3. As others have already mentioned, if the DKs are infamous enough that a poisoned water supply can automatically and immediately be pinned on them, then they’re too well-known and publicized for the kind of op they are. The other “evil” factions could pretty much start using them as scapegoats for their own atrocities.

4. Watch the climax of The Gods Must Be Crazy for an example of how this situation could have been handled.

CHIPS.6018:

2) Inquest leadership

1. Again, not a Pact matter. Additionally, the DKs getting them involved in this whole thing (i.e. to protect Asuran families from Inquest retaliation) is counterproductive to even their own goals.

2. No one would really bat an eye at this. Being killed and hung on a tree is kind of small potatoes compared to what the Inquest are capable of and do on a much larger scale, including to their own ranks by the facility-load when they deem them expendable or their leaders worthy of a good backstabbing. You’d think the mountains of Inquest dead left in the wake of PCs doing exploration, going through their personal stories (as Asura), and running dungeons (e.g. Sorrow’s Embrace and Crucible of Eternity) would be enough to deter any more Asura from joining their ranks, but apparently not.

3. The DKs are again too well-known for the kind of op they run. With no friends or allies anywhere due to their actions, their intended targets, and the collateral even when things go their way, it’s really only a matter of time before someone gets pushed too far and decides to push back. When the DKs’ actions are well-known enough that people can automatically and immediately recognize their handiwork, it wouldn’t be a stretch for someone to set them up and take them out either directly or via proxy.

IMO… if you’re down with the whole ruthless, “ends justify the means” kind of thing, and are already dealing with corrupt nobles, politicians, and other such powerhouses, organizations like Quantum from the first two Daniel Craig 007 films or HYDRA from the Marvel movies/comics would be better ideas to strive for. Why go around committing relatively small-time terrorist activities, hoping they get the results and send the messages you want, when you can essentially work towards getting important figures on all sides (or at least the ones that can be persuaded/bought/threatened) into your pocket and having them work for you, getting you the results you want even if only as side effects to the collective amassing of power and wealth? In other words, why grind for gold when you can play the TP?

ANYWAY… I think we’re so done with the original topic of this thread that if it was a horse it’d be whipped glue, and if it was a steak it’d be little more than carbon now. The whole Dark Knights thing really should be its own topic/thread since it pretty much has little/nothing to do with the Pact at this point.

This thread (so far):

1. The Pact should have known exactly what Scarlet was up to before even the players did for a fact, thus justifying their involvement versus letting the Orders (ignoring their relation to the Pact) and local forces deal with her as they effectively have for a year.

2. The Pact should have been able to torture out of prisoners held by the Charr and the Lionguard anything they didn’t know, such as the locations of alliance bases and Scarlet’s plans, assuming the Charr and Lionguard kitten at interrogating prisoners, and that the prisoners knew anything critical beyond “follow orders or I’ll kill you all and replace you with holos!”.

3. The Pact should have pulled an indeterminate number of forces back from cleaning up Orr and/or fighting ED champions and minions elsewhere to defend LA, because LA and its inhabitants would have been more immediately important than any of the other places and their inhabitants, and the combined forces of the Orders, Lionguard, and volunteers would have obviously been inadequate for that purpose.

4. The Pact should have known exactly when/where/how/why Scarlet was going to attack LA and have responded accordingly, i.e. by sending enough units to deal with the alliances’ “all-in” attack without setting themselves (and Tyria by extension) too far back later should Scarlet succeed in waking Mordremoth anyway, or elsewhere should any of the other EDs make a move.

5. The Pact is immune to legal/political/logistical repercussions. They can do whatever they want and whenever they want, simply because the PC/second-in-command knows better and wills it. He/she is incapable of making mistakes, and if he/she does, his/her reputation will make everything okay.

6. Scarlet and the leaders of her alliances would have had no way to account for or counter any of the Pact’s actions if any of the above came to pass instead of what did. They would have done things in exactly the same way, with no adjustments in strategy, positioning, timing, etc. if they noticed the Pact became a factor. Scarlet, however much of a genius she was, and her alliances, however established and organized they were, would have been beyond the use of scouts, spies, and intelligence-gathering themselves, which could include Dark Knight methods on a much larger scale.

Something like that.

Wanderer.3248:

I think this thread needs to be moved to the fan generated content forum.

Zaxares.5419:

This is starting to veer into fanfiction territory.

Yeah, I think the original topic has pretty much been discussed out, and nearly everything after has been fan fiction/personal RP trying to work around existing lore.

CHIPS.6018:

If they find us we would try to run. If they got us cornered, we will surrounder without a fight. No way we would fight our allies head on.

That’s assuming one of the “good” factions get to you.

CHIPS.6018:

But like I said we are confident in hiding our identities. And the Pact, unless it improve its spy ring and intelligence gathering, would have very little chance of finding out who we are. We would be impressed if they do. ^^

And we plan to stay low on their priority list. I know some of you value us higher than the Flame Legions by this point. But it should be obvious that the Flame Legions kills A ton more than we will ever do. The only reason the Pact will place us on a high priority is if the story writers say so.

Unless you have something to do with an ED or EDs, the Pact probably won’t even acknowledge your existence. The other factions whose families have been disappearing because of you, however, might pay a little more attention.

CHIPS.6018:

“OMG the Dark Knights kills children and families!!!”

Pretty much every single bad guy organization kills children and families, on a much larger scale. What’s your point?

So if every single bad guy organization kills children and families on a much larger scale than the Dark Knights, what makes the Dark Knights think their efforts are going to change anything, especially since their op is “relatively small” as you mentioned in a previous post? In other words, what exactly do you do that is so much scarier than what any of the other “evil” factions already do on the daily, and on a much larger scale?

CHIPS.6018:

Perhaps I wasn’t clear, but that’s exactly my point. There are always “good” and “evil” factions within a civilization. No matter how kind, respectful, honourable and high moral we are, these evil factions will always exist.

So basically the Dark Knights failed before they even flayed their first innocent… because no matter what they do, they will always be opposed. There will always be “good” and “evil” factions within a civilization, after all.

CHIPS.6018:

Then we look at history. All these ancient races always end up fighting against each other, or within themselves, and so the Elder Dragons wins at the end.

Last I checked, Zhaitan took a giant 2 up the kitten and hasn’t gotten up since.

CHIPS.6018:

So once again here is my question: If we allow all these enemy factions to stabs us in the back while we deal with the Elder Dragons, how certain are we that we will win?

Ignoring the fact that the Dark Knights would be that very backstabbing enemy faction in the given scenario.

CHIPS.6018:

Once again look at history. This has never happened. And so the Elder Dragons always wins.

**COUGH**Zhaitan**COUGH**

CHIPS.6018:

To beat the Elder Dragons, we must form the largest united front the world has ever seen. That is the only way we can achieve the impossible. To do this, we need absolutely everyone to obey us.

The Pact is already the largest united front the world has ever seen. As for getting everyone to obey you, ask any “evil” faction how their attempts at making that happen for themselves have been going.

CHIPS.6018:

There is pretty much only two ways to make people obey you: They either love you. Or they fear you.

As I said in my first paragraph, these enemy factions does not love us. In fact they probably will never love us. You can talk your brains out with your nice, respectful, honourable and high moral, it won’t matter. They don’t care. You cannot melt their hearts. This is not a child’s story.

So the only way left is to fear them. And so like I said:

“We cannot have our version of the “Stone Summits” stabbing our backs. This is unacceptable. That’s why the existing “Stone Summits” must be ruthlessly and mercilessly crushed, and future “Stone Summits” be so scared of us that they never even appear.”

So what happens when you’re faced with a faction, “good” or “evil”, whom you can’t threaten/torture/murder enough to fear you (perhaps because they’re equally if not more ruthless), and whom perceive you to be the “Stone Summit”? What happens if, say, Palawa Joko decided he would very much like the EDs to succeed for whatever reason (e.g. kittens and giggles), and felt that the Dark Knights were getting in the way of that?

CHIPS.6018:

As for Ascalon vs Charr:

1) Skinning dead is very different from skinning alive. But either way Charrs literally eats Ascalonians. Can’t top that now can’t we?

2) Ascalon have tons of spies and scouts deep into Charr territory. Never did we see them attack harmless Charr villagers. Not once did they even mention killing Charr civilians.

Charrs have no problem killing every human woman and children they find. Ask Gwen if you don’t believe me.

3) Charr males already outnumbers, by a lot, the whole Ascalon army. This much is obvious. The point is Ascalon should have used conscription.

4) Without the Searing (illegal nuclear weapons, in GW standards), the Charrs won’t have beaten Ascalon this “easily”, if at all. Ruthlessness, merciless, immoral and illegal clearly gave the Charrs an advantage here.

1) Ascalonian pelts probably never caught on in Charr fashion circles. As for eating them, who’s to say the starving Ascalonians post-Searing didn’t chow down on the perfectly good Charr meat left over after they skinned them?

2) Gwen sure survived a long time in the hands of Charr that have no problem killing every human woman and child they found.

3) Whom would have still been effectively nuked.

4) And they STILL didn’t win, even after taking the nuclear option.

CHIPS.6018:

Who knows? Maybe the place where they phase out of Tyria into have limited resources, and they can only feed their own people.

So what’s to stop the Dark Knights from doing something similar (i.e. running away, hiding, leaving everyone else out to dry) if they eventually find that their shenanigans have basically had the same effect the Aetherblades, Inquest, Nightmare Court, etc., had on the various Tyrian governments and organizations? What they do they do when they find that because of their actions, because the “good” guys expended considerable resources trying to hunt them down, the Pact’s power becomes diminished as a result, causing them to stumble/fail against the EDs? What do they do when the world is crumbling around them and everyone they’ve made enemies of, which in this case would be EVERYONE (i.e. ALL the “good” and “evil” governments/organizations), including the corrupt nobles that funded them, wants nothing to do with them save to capture and kill them out of revenge? “They had it coming for trying to come after us”? “We were only trying to help”? “Oh well, let’s go hide in the Mists”?

CHIPS.6018:

They still lasted longer, as a civilization, than anyone else from their era.

Is there any reason as to why they didn’t or couldn’t share with the other races the ability to phase out of Tyria? Because, you know, had that option been available to everyone else, things might have turned out differently. No one would’ve had to give up their magic, and many could have been saved during the EDs’ last trip around the buffet lines.

The Mursaat… the race that betrayed everyone else the last time Tyria unified to bring down the Elder Dragons, and that is as far as we know down to one guy. Yeah, their plans worked out real well for themselves.

lakdav.3694:

Even more amusingly, some misguided Pact members would look at all the suffering these so called dark knights commit, and decide that the Pace is not doing enough to protect innocents. So they start thinking of creating a subfaction not bound by Pact politics, to deal with such dangerous deviants…

It’s interesting to note how quickly the Dark Knight idea went from “good intentions” to “literally-Hitler” within like a page or two. It could actually make for a good, new “evil” organization in the game, now that I think about it…

If there was to be a vigilante organization in Tyria that conducted medical experiments, genocide, torture, and terrorism, and that creatively defined “honor” and “morals” to answer for its own actions… yeah, we’d so be hunting them down. I’d look forward to seeing how potentially three-dimensional they’d be compared to the game’s existing “evil” organizations, but make no mistake, they’re going down.

And amusingly, if they don’t bring any Elder Dragons into their activities, the Pact still probably wouldn’t get involved.

First the Rise of the Tengu mini-expansion, now this! I hate this day! D’:

As far as we know, zerker is still going to be #1 in terms of dps after the patch. Celestial may have a place in WvW, but not in PvE as long as the name of the game is dps, dps, and more dps. I went from celestial to zerker about a month ago, and unless I’m in WvW/EotM, I can’t go back.

Fits some sets better than others.

I could run you through if we happen to be on around the same time. I usually don’t have any issues running through solo, though that may be because of my pet(s) being good diversions. Add me if you like.

You could also potentially complete the chain with a small party. I was in a random party that eventually built up to five (we hovered at around two or three for a while) that somehow managed to complete the chain and clear all of the events and bosses up to the dungeon. The last boss took some effort and was very close, but we made it with two or three people still on their feet.

I remember when the event chain brought us to the steps… we were all like:

“Uhh… doesn’t this usually take a zerg to complete?”
“We’re so kittened. We’re SO kittened.”
“Kitten it. Last thing I do before I go to bed. YOLO!”

Fire and Air on my shortbow for the extra punch and the lawls from the different death animations mobs have being fwooshed or zapped.

For WvW, I may slot Fire and Torment.

I would like to unbind my spirit(s), but I can’t get myself to give up Marks 30 for it. I’m currently running a variation of the 30/25/0/15/0 meta build, and I have to have my Piercing Arrows for open world and Remorseless for dungeons.

IMO Spirits Unbound is nice to have, but I could do without it as long as I don’t position my spirit(s) somewhere stupid/suicidal. Also, it’s nice to be able to use Nature’s Renewal remotely, i.e. drop Spirit of Nature near downed players and/or NPCs and activate NR while moving/drawing fire.

- You had good self-esteem up until you entered an explorable dungeon or decided to try WvW.
- You’ve shot at someone with a bow in WvW and had an existential crisis immediately after.
- You’ve felt forced to decide between being a “tank with a butter knife” or a “glass salesman with a scalpel”.
- You’ve had to develop psychic powers in order to successfully dodge when using a sword.
- Your acrophobia flares only when you have a sword equipped.
- You’ve associated most patches with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
- You’ve developed a godlike tolerance for pain after one and a half years of the aforementioned patches.
- You’ve screamed such things at your pets/monitors:
“Stop! STOP! Come back! NOOO!!!” /party “I’m sorry guys, we have incoming.”
“Attack! Stop wagging your tail and attack! ATTACK!!!”
“Stop fluttering around and attack! Today!”
“Lick my wounds! LICK THEM! No, don’t just stare at me!”
“He’s telegraphing a huge attack! Come back! Withdraw! Retreat! Run— nevermind, just limp back like you are.”

Two things Rox’s quiver has going for it versus the ascended quivers (for me):

1. That tilt to the right makes it look more streamlined (since our stowed weapons are tilted at approximately the same angle) and functional (since we draw with our right hands/claws/twigs).

2. It fits in better with most of our leather trenchcoats. The ascended quivers have a sort of “exquisite” appearance/texture to them, which makes them look somewhat out of place when most everything else looks worn and frayed along the edges.

I remember the first time I saw Rox:

“Whoa, your eyes, they’re kind of frea— wait, you’re a ranger! Wow, another major NPC ranger! Hey, what’s that you have on your bac— GASP! That quiver! and that bow! But mostly that quiver! I WANT IT.”

Before Victory or Death got nerfed I have to admit doing it more than once wasn’t very appealing. It was long, filled with bugs, took quite a bit of time and effort to complete, and rewarded rather poorly, hence the difficulty in getting people to do it again if they’ve already done it.

Now, though… bugs aside, it’s actually somewhat trivial in terms of difficulty, and I say that as more of a casual player.

I know the feels. I think it took me over a month (maybe two) to:

1. Wait for the dungeon entrance to be uncontested (not terribly hard);
2. Look for four other people who also need to kill Zhaitan (once in a blue moon);
3. Hope the group sticks together long enough to start the dungeon (things usually break down here).
4. Hope the dungeon doesn’t bug at the helicopter (maybe if we all jump off the airship…).
5. Hope the dungeon doesn’t bug anywhere else (kittens, fluffy kittens)
6. Broadside Zhaitan like a boss (please no more bugs no more bugs please)
7. Are we all here? Did we all get it? Yes? YES! (whew)

Anyway, I’m always down for a Zhaitan beatdown if I’m on and have time. Add me if you’d like.

Shakkara.2641:

I thought I was smart to deck out my alts that I don’t play too much in Celestial gear. I thought I was smart, cause I thought that no matter how much Anet altered the game in the long run, those characters would be safe from nerfs cause they had the most versatile equipment that would fit any kind of build.

That was exactly my thought process on Celestial gear. I figured regardless of how my class, skills, and/or other gameplay mechanics got nerfed, I would always have sort of a fall-back in my gear. I didn’t think the gear itself might get nerfed into the ground as collateral while the gear that was actually getting targeted would only get sort of nerfed.

All that said, to be fair, we don’t have anything solid to speculate on right now, so I’m not going to flip as if all the calculations presented so far are fact.

Due to personal time constraints, I think it took me close to a year to deck out my main in Celestial gear. If the nerf works out as feared… it’d be incredibly discouraging to say the least. I would probably eschew further gear acquisitions that are time-gated and/or require massive amounts of resources. It’s just not worth the risk.

I’d take Kakashi’s ninja dogs over that. It’d be an Elite version of [Sic ‘Em] (not functionally, but it’d have a similar name), where a bunch of dogs pile and clamp onto (i.e. immobilize) the target while we… I don’t know… [Maul]… it…?

556 deaths in 1072 hours over 484 days. A good bulk of those deaths were due to my old guild’s naked CM runs. -_-

I can work Kudzu into my guy’s look. Admittedly it’d be easier if he was a Sylvari, but I can see it done with some choice dyes here and there. Dreamer? I can probably do with it some Humiliation Dye and a Pink Quaggan Backpack, but for the amount of time and effort it takes to craft a Legendary… no.

DarcShriek.5829:

What do you mean no plot? It’s simple, two women get together to destroy a large phallic symbol that’s spewing toxin everywhere! Yeah, it’s kind of anti-male.

Oh… gods… I never thought of it that way, but now that you’ve mentioned it… and we were inside it! Nooooo…

Swagger.1459:

Then we shall crawl out from our graves as risen and run with mighty undead beasts of the wild to reign supreme over all other professions!

I wouldn’t be surprised if the NPC Risen versions of us are kitten and have none of the problems we have.

Sword root? Pfft, Risen Ranger’s sword roots you!

The shortbow and greatsword aren’t as good as they used to be? Zhaitan has granted Risen Ranger the beta shortbow and greatsword.

Pets are broken? Risen Ranger’s pets can be summoned, stowed, or swapped every 20 seconds, and can also evade attacks.

Spirits are too passive/weak? Risen Ranger’s spirit would disagree.

It’s 50%? That explains the lack of huge numbers one would expect of a 150% increase in damage. -_-

+1 on removing immobilize. Makes so much sense for LR to have it that it hurts. I hate having to pop HS or add Prayer to Kormir to my skill bar just to remove immobilize.

As for the damage component possibly being removed as a “balance”, I think the only thing I’ve ever killed with it was a grub in Queensdale, and I wasn’t even intending for it to, so I really don’t care.

SirJack.4760:

No active condition removal and unless you spec into Nature and bring Spirits Unbound, it’s another stationary Heal.

How is this supposed to be a good skill? Stationary heal spots are generally bad in Dungeons and WvW due to mobility being a key factor. Being forced into a defense oriented build isn’t going to help us get into groups either, and my experience with spirits is that they die faster than they can be useful.

(Shrug) Last few dungeons I ran people requested Frost Spirit (with Spotter) and we pretty much always stacked. In those circumstances HS would still probably be more viable, but given our lack of practical information about this new skill, specifically how much it heals per attack and per activation, and what (if anything) it might synergize with, all we know without a doubt based on its description is that it lacks condition cleansing.

enkeny.6937:

If you use spirit build, you will use HS, because you must heal your spirits. water spirit can’t heal your spirits…
Best use in dungeons for support, when there are others fore cure and regeneration.
It will be another skill you must learn how to use it effectively.

Based on the skill’s description, its active component (Aqua Surge) should be able to heal your spirits (provided they’re in range, of course), though you’re right in that the passive won’t do anything unless your spirits attack (i.e. by using their actives).

This paired with Spirits Unbound after the 12/10 patch may be worthwhile to spirit builds. It would basically be a group-oriented version of the Necro’s Summon Blood Fiend. My main concern is the lack of condition cleansing compared to HS, though I suppose the chance to heal on attack may offset that (unless you simply get nuked with conditions). As for losing the water field, maybe I’m almost always playing with scrubs, but it seems very few people around when I play even know what a combo field is, let alone what to do with one. o_o

Here’s a picture of mine:

Name: achensherd
Main Character: Allen Chen
Current Region/Server: Tarnished Coast (NA)
Interested Activities or specific things you want help with: Socializing, PvE, story missions, and dungeons/FotM if I know I have an extended amount of time to spare.
Active: Very sporadic at the moment, but I’m generally on at least a little every day.
Additional Comments: I just transferred to Tarnished Coast from Dragonbrand, so be gentle. I’ve been wanting to join this project/guild for a long time now, but got pulled into another guild by a friend the last time I had a chance to (I don’t like to be in too many guilds at once). However, since that friend no longer plays, I’m freeeeeeee!
Do you want to be a member of the guild Legion of Honour Y/N: Yes, please.
Are you happy for people to contact you directly (whisper/PM) Y/N: Yes, by all means.

I use the SB because of its dps, speed, and reliability as they relate to one another. Higher fire rate = more chances to hit = fewer chances for obstructions/misses = more reliable versus the LB in the same respects, at least based on my play style (in PvE). I gave the LB a couple of chances since the last patch, and even with the buffs to it along with the nerfs to the SB, I still find the SB to be the better weapon overall in the aforementioned respects as well as being less situational/clunky.

I’m going to have to give the axe another go now, though, since it now has the same range as the SB. The last time I sPvPed (albeit not recently… at all), I did notice I opted for the A/WH combo a lot more than I did for any of the bows.

My RNG is bad, but it isn’t as bad as one of my current guild mate’s. He hardly ever gets anything, even mats. His bad luck eventually became quite well-known in the guild, to the point where people would purposefully show off what they got after world events and then go, “I hope ____ isn’t reading the guild chat right now lol”, to which he’d go “NO, I’M NOT!”

Bismuth.3165:

But come on guys, we have to admit, we all have a kevlar inside all of us.

Questioning is one thing. Kevlaring is like:

The closest I’ve had to a Kevlar was a guy during a FotM run who argued with everyone over stunning the Ice Elemental out of its healing state. According to him there was no such thing, and that we were all newbs for thinking that there was. It took not stunning the Ice Elemental and someone quoting from the wiki to convince him otherwise, after which he was just silent.

Well, at least our Kevlar listened… eventually. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I encountered the OP’s Kevlar… anywhere… doing anything.

I do feel for the guy who’s actually named Kevlar, though. :P He’s probably all wondering why no one’s allowing him on any FotM runs anymore. XD

Switched to this build from 0/10/30/0/30 while keeping my Berserker’s armor with Divinity runes, SB with sigil of Fire, S/WH with Energy/Bloodlust, and Celestial trinkets, and so far I feel like it produces similar results sans pet dps. Guard + Nature’s Voice frees up one skill slot in my case (I was using SotH and SotW, both of which are now somewhat redundant), so now I’m running with HS, Guard, LR, QZ, and RaO. SB range sucks now, but I’m generally running close circles around my targets anyway trying to keep their backs to me, so in practice not much has changed.

I miss all the SB and Jaguar/Raven crits from my previous build, though.

If melee > ranged, why does the LB decrease in damage the closer I get to a target? :C

Seda Khold.5428:

So the general sentiment is basically “nearly all buffs but not enough”?

It’s never enough. Even if Barrage could take out two zergs a second, we’d still whine about being rooted while casting or something along those lines. :P

Septic.4869:

Search and Rescue doesn’t revive downed allies.
Wtf is the point in using the skill anymore?
Pretty boss unjustified nerf.

“Defeated” allies, but yeah… that still reduces the usefulness of this skill.

That said, this is overall the best-looking patch we’ve gotten, like, ever.

I didn’t really have any problems with Trahearne myself. It was mainly in retrospect (particularly after reading some of his lines) that I noticed he can come across as glory-hogging. During my playthrough, I either didn’t notice or care; I’m not into that kind of attention and/or responsibility anyway. I admit I didn’t really like him initially, but I can easily attribute that to his replacing of Tybalt in my case, which to be honest would’ve probably applied to anyone that was to fill that void as quickly as the plot demanded. In fact, after a while I kind of liked the little history/lore buff thing he had going, especially during Ossuary of Unquiet Dead.

The ONLY thing that I didn’t like about Trahearne was his voice, primarily during his supposedly morale-boosting speeches. The very first instance of this that I can remember is in the Pale Tree’s vision, where he inspires some Pact troops to… go take out some Risen… or something. I thought what he said was indeed inspiring, but how he said it just didn’t move me. When he actually started doing it, I was pretty much always, “Man, I get you, I just don’t feel you.”

I feel like Trahearne’s character’s kind of expendable at this point because his knowledge of Orr/the Risen/Zhaitan are, in a way, obsolete. However, as Narcemus pointed out, the only reason the Pact exists as it does is because of him, so I suppose he can’t be going anywhere. And with that being the case, Konig’s idea about there being High Commanders leading the Pact in his stead against their respective Elder Dragons would work, and would also allow him to recede into the background enough so as to not fuel any more “Trahearne Hate” threads. :P

“GLF3M CoF Exp 1 Rangers only! Everyone else GTFO!” :P