Guild Wars 2

The geode system is very similar to what was discussed here several months ago:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/A-way-to-get-people-back-into-the-open-world

Maybe Anet had it planned all along without our suggestion, but great to see world tokens implemented. If this map last as an end game area in due time, maybe the system will be expanded to include existing maps.

When in a fight this hasn’t been an issue, but when you’re chasing down a target and waiting to react when steal is in range only for it to go on CD, is quite frustrating.

While I appreciate the clarity, this miss/CD occurs when you’ve got a target and supposedly in range (max, no red bar on steal). This scenario can be recreated 100% on a stationary foe.

Is anyone else’s steal at max range failing and going on short CD as if it was out of range since the last update?

You may want to repost this in the Profession Balance section as devs seem to view/reply more often there.

I would say the extractor is working as intended as you can only sell default/unmodified items on TP.

On a side note, doesn’t the cost of the extractor eat into any potential profit anyway?

Unshakeable is a permanent buff which will always reduce the effectiveness of blind, vulnerability and weakness. Defiant is gained via unshakeable, and it ‘only’ prevents CCs.

There was a discussion on ‘how to get people back into the open world’ and I suggested reward-scaling DEs. The difference is that I believe these should scale very slowly, to reward adventurers/explorers who stumble across them and not to cater to trains/campers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/A-way-to-get-people-back-into-the-open-world/first

I think a proper range indicator will be quite useful as some moves do different damage depending on range. There’s no harm (apart from dev time) in having it as an option.

Looking forward to this!

Sky Gor: 7

I don’t agree with your formula of limiting players + better loot = epic encounters. I do agree however, that there is a real lack of epic PvE battles. For a game that is action-oriented, bosses and enemies are surprisingly static; how cool would it be to see the dragons rampaging around the battle area instead of sitting on the spot?

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

samanosuke.4508:

Recently, a couple of friends came back on to play, having left year right after hitting level 80.
We were in LA, and I was literally stumped on what we could do as a group. Usually I’d mix my sessions with doing dailies, world bosses, dungeons or pvp. Coincidently, all world bosses were on cooldown so I could not even show them off, and I didn’t want to throw them straight into a dungeon so soon. It then occurred to me that most content is either random PUG-oriented (world bosses, dynamic events) or hardcore party stuff (dungeons, fractals). It would be nice to have more party-focused content in the PvE world that can be accessed like the tradition ‘mission over the counter’ method.

You know you could have just gone out the gate and explore together? If you’ve a group together, it’s a lot of fun to just go to a higher level area and just explore there… Find some out of the way champs, do some events nobody else does because they’re alone…

In theory we’d go out, travel the world and have an adventure. In reality, you walk around looking for DEs, asking map chat if there are any events and mainly pass time gathering nodes. As a solo roamer, I love wp around doing DEs (I use to always escort the pact from east to west in Malchor’s Leap). In a group, it feels like I’m just dragging the group around with no sense of an adventure. DEs should compliment traditional quests in maps, not replace them imo.

My original point is that my newly returned friends and I just wanted to be able to do something as a group right now but felt our options were limited.

Anyway, this seems like a discussion for a different thread so apologies for going off-topic.

Recently, a couple of friends came back on to play, having left year right after hitting level 80.
We were in LA, and I was literally stumped on what we could do as a group. Usually I’d mix my sessions with doing dailies, world bosses, dungeons or pvp. Coincidently, all world bosses were on cooldown so I could not even show them off, and I didn’t want to throw them straight into a dungeon so soon. It then occurred to me that most content is either random PUG-oriented (world bosses, dynamic events) or hardcore party stuff (dungeons, fractals). It would be nice to have more party-focused content in the PvE world that can be accessed like the tradition ‘mission over the counter’ method.

Trahearne’s Wyld Hunt might not be to defeat Zhaitan, but let’s not forget that he has since become the Pact leader, which was formed for the purpose of killing Zhaitan.

Pre-Fractured, runs rarely felt overly long unless you were really unlucky. Now however, it feels like there’s too much balancing, and all runs feel either long, or very long.

Remaking fractals will take a lot of work no doubt, so how about reducing the number of fractals to 2 instead? All fractals can be split into either short or long, and have the boss loot reduced if necessary.

Fractals was something I had fun playing every now and again, but now I ‘dredge’ it… ahem.

No problem, I love throwing away valuables in the name of research.

I would actually like to use what I’ve ‘paid’ for: 2hr magic find in Kessex Hill. However, I left the zone after 2 minutes, returned to Kessex later and it was gone.

Really, how can you try and justify it at all?

The option to trade 100 spores for magic find is a total scam. Not only is it unclear on what you are actually getting for your money (2hr magic find), you lose it once you leave Kessex Hill. That’s almost 4g gone with less than 5 minute’s usage.

Call my a pessimist but I believe they will return at some point… with a price increase.

vincecontix.1264:

samanosuke.4508:

^ just took the S/P out for a spin and I agree that PW is pretty nice now. It’ll probably go nicely with sundering strikes – time to tinker!

Quick Pockets (init on weapon swap) has had a stealth nerf: 4 > 3 init.

in tpvp or pve? sp is totally broken at competitive lvl of play.

I’ve been using it in tPvP. I’m not of the level to judge the set’s competitiveness, but the faster swords result in better damage, and the faster init regen means it isn’t/doesn’t seem as ‘expensive’ to use.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

samanosuke.4508:

^ just took the S/P out for a spin and I agree that PW is pretty nice now. It’ll probably go nicely with sundering strikes – time to tinker!

Quick Pockets (init on weapon swap) has had a stealth nerf: 4 > 3 init.

It has always been 3

Ah my mistake, sorry. I had gotten it mixed up with hastened replenishment (4 init on heal).

^ just took the S/P out for a spin and I agree that PW is pretty nice now. It’ll probably go nicely with sundering strikes – time to tinker!

Quick Pockets (init on weapon swap) has had a stealth nerf: 4 > 3 init. I was wrong.

In theory that would work, but it’s not as simple as that because BP will also blind once from range. You will have to get rid of the blindness and then risk actually connecting c&d.

Interesting, i’ll give that a try… thanks!

I’d like to suggest a semi auto-attack option whereby you can hold a key down to auto-attack the skill (except ground targeted skills).

I’m not a fan of constantly clicking key 1 to do the combo chain, so I currently have it on auto-attack. However, sometimes it is necessary to stop attacking (target has retaliation etc) and the only way to stop attacking is to get out of range, change target or clicking neutral area.

I just watched the preview and I admit that the skill isn’t as bad as we thought, but that isn’t hard considering it was garbage tier to begin with.

It really irked me when the developed said “the CD is 45 secs, because all the other venoms are 45 secs”. So if venoms had a 60 secs CD, would this heal skill also be 60? Please balance the skill as a standalone skill – now what CD would you give it? How lazy can a dev get?
Warrior’s new heal is a stance on 35 secs CD. They currently have 4 stance skills – one at 45 sec CD and three at 60 sec CD. Why not take the average of the stance CDs (56.25) and apply it to the new heal? Exactly.

In conclusion, this skill does great heal, but is lazy, linear and boring in design.

evilapprentice.6379:

Skelk venom – Instant Cast
On use, the next 4 attacks leech health (dealing damage and healing you) and transfer 1 condition to your target. While skelk venom is active (while you have unused charges), regenerate X health per second.

Look at that, I just designed a venom heal infinitely superior to Anet’s version, without being silly and OP. It can handle conditions (something thief sorely needs), gives you a reason to actually use it over withdraw/HiS (via the leeching damage), and the passive heal that only lasts until you use all the charges adds a level of complexity and player control, bringing it somewhat on par with how innovative and different all the other classes new heals are looking.

It took about 5 seconds of thought (so it might need some tweaking), and playing a thief. Goes to show how inept their handling of the class is.

no, no, no!…. you basically copied my post from the previous page

Here are some improvement ideas, which includes some already suggested:
- Shorter cool down
- Shorter or instant activation
- Life Leech
- Passive heal
- Cures conditions
- Transfers conditions
- (crazy idea) Apply a random condition

Just to point it out, i’m not suggesting skelk venom has ALL these buffs to it.

Dual.8953:

I did some testing with the code, it seems the skill may have a higher heal potential then any of our other heals. This is assuming the heal in the spec is a single hit instead of overall.
Skelk Venom
6332 overall if per hit
1583 if overall
Withdraw
4683
Hide in Shadow
5805
Signet of Malice
3275
Anti-Toxin Spray
4275
This was on my Cleric’s set (you may ask why a thief has a Cleric’s set, short answer, experimenting. I have a Knight’s, Valkyrie’s, Berserker’s, Carrion and Soldier’s set too)

You can do 3 withdraws (healing a total of 14049) by the time skelk venom cools down. Signet of Malice was arguably the weakest/riskiest heal we had, and instead of improving it, Anet did a copy+paste+change numbers.

I understand that’s how it works (I own a legendary) but I don’t like it being auto-updated. It just doesn’t make sense that I shouldn’t have to care when a new tier comes. I’m also level 500 weaponsmith and huntsman but these weapons are not future proof.
My suggestion of mystic forging a legendary to upgrade the stats to a new tier is just so that new content actually effects it, without it being a major grind. If they had implemented this for the ascended tier for example, it could be something like legendary weapon + bloodstones + dragon ore + empyreal (easy).

If they ever release another tier, I don’t think Legendaries should be auto-adjusted/given a free ride. Instead, to bring the Legendaries to the highest tier, they should have to combine it in the mystic forge with new tier materials.

I played a thief in Dark Souls and absolutely loved backstabbing and parry/riposting. When I started playing GW2, I really wanted to be a parry thief but alas, there was no such skill. I would love to see it implemented on sword offhand in the future so that I could D/S and relive the play style.

There was a time when PvP rewarded gems so don’t rule out the possibility.

Usually I would wait and see for myself when changes are made before voicing my opinion, but in this case, Skelk Venom has terrible written all over it imo.

The CD is 45 seconds untraited, which makes it the longest healing skill CD (ok, it actually is a tie with Sylvari’s Healing Seed skill).

Venoms are usually applied before battle so that you can get the next stack quicker. There is 0 reason to go into a battle with this pre-stacked as you will almost certainly be attacking at full health. 5 attacks will go in no time, especially if you burst.
The only potential comes from venom sharing but even this has it’s disadvantage, as you have to trait it and properly share with party during battle (as mentioned above, pre-stacking is useless).
As it stands, my feelings are that as a solo heal skill, it puts you at risk with it’s reliant on attacking and long CD; as a group heal, it is situational and requires traiting (unless you already do venom share builds).

Some interesting counterarguments to tokens and I agree with some points.
In an ideal world, everything in this game should be fun, but fun is subjective and it’s too easy to just say “make it fun”.
Map minis is a good idea, but that alone will only appeal to a minority.

Let’s step back a little, and think about the problem: Maps are empty (unless there are boss events or champ trains) and DEs are ignored (unless linked to bosses). Right now, would you honestly say you will stop what you’re doing to help someone else ‘escort the cow’? Few might, whilst many will ignore. We should try encourage people to say “yes, please!”

This is something I also thought of recently so, needless to say, I am all for open world tokens.

Here is my reasoning:
Successfully completed events reward karma, exp and ‘gold’, but none of these are unique to dynamic events. Experience is pretty much worthless at endgame; gold can be earned more efficiently elsewhere; karma can be farmed but you can do world bosses for loot + karma which is arguably better.

Suggestion:
DE should reward tokens to buy new skins or items. I know we have a plethora of tokens already, but I really think this idea will require a new token type as not to undermine dungeon tokens. These DE tokens should be continent dependent, so if you want Ascalonian-esque skin, you’ll need to do DEs in Ascalon.

Rewarding explorers:
DEs should have reward upscaling, similar to how enemies that have not been killed for a long time give bonus exp when killed. What this means is that heavily farmed or easy events will give the bare minimum reward whilst untouched events will slowly scale up [reward]. Reward-scaled events should have an icon, so if someone stumbles across one, they could try solo or entice people on the map with something like “Scale 3 event at X waypoint”. The scaling speed will have to be slow/balanced though to prevent people from intentionally waiting for events to scale before doing them and dismissing basic scaled events.

I think just by providing us with more dyeable areas on existing armour would allow us to be more creative with our looks.

I used the tripwire once in pvp skyhammer (placed over breakable floor). Managed to get one guy early on, had a laugh, then it was useless for the remainder of the match.

I could see some uses if it tripwire/needle had 1-2 second active time: In pvp, it could encourage cap-defending; in wvw, it could help break up groups running straight to you/your group (like ele’s unsteady ground).

I like some of the suggestions and reckon some skills need reworking, but some of the ideas here are borderline OP.

Shadow Refuge is fine and should not be a ‘get out of jail free’ card. If you remove the AOE visibility for enemies, it will literally have zero risk for such a rewarding utility.

Traps definitely need a buff but I’m not too keen on random placements. For traps such as tripwire, it should be visible once triggered and still active for 1-2 seconds.

Basilisk Venom – one of it’s main appeal is it’s low CD (45 seconds) so any changes that will increase this is a bad thing IMO, although it should be buffed having been nerfed several times already.

Disabling Shot – definitely needs reworking so that it will actual evade when activated properly. I’d keep the distance short though as it’ll be OP as an escape chain if combo’d with regular dodges.

Black Powder. I haven’t heard many complaints about this skill and I think your suggestion is OP. If the AOE follows the opponent, he/she will literally be disabled for the duration it is active with no means of removal (as blind will be applied at every pulse). I can already see how annoying this would be.

Synesence.7546:

Shadowstep idea for Dagger: Have Dancing Dagger just hit one enemy, and if it succeeds, it teleports the thief to it’s target. 600 range.

You mean like this skill, which already exists but has a 900 range and blinds?

Maugetarr.6823:

Since the weapon skill IR is going to be changed to not allow it to avoid the following hit after a stun, I’d just like to go through our alternatives (stun breaks) and look at their opportunity costs.

Blinding powder: not a true stunbreak, but an alternative to the current IS/SR since it negates one hit + stealth. 40 second cooldown. Worth it, but I already slotted it in an effort to increase my survivability.

Shadow step: Arguably our best true stunbreak. Already had it equipped when running sword because sitting through any stuns as a thief usually means death. 50sec CD. I have a feeling the cooldown is partly balanced around the condition removal, but I will never use it for that purpose. Its utility as a stunbreak far outweighs its removal. It would be nice to have a shorter cooldown on it since it is 2 breaks at best compared with other classes stunbreaks of relatively close cooldown times which grant stability negating all stuns during that period.

Infiltrators Signet: Very limited utility as a stunbreak. When someone stuns me its usually followed by a close range big attack. The last thing I want to do is shadow step into them. When I slot this, it’s for the offensive capabilities it adds to D/D.

Shadow Trap: This was decent for a 2 month period. It required you to plan ahead in a fight and plant it before you went in if you were going to use it as a stunbreak. Using it in combat is only useful offensively due to its short rollover time. If the rollover time lasted 25-30 seconds I could plant it during a fight and possibly turn the fight around when stunned. I realize that it shadow steps you to your opponent like ISignet but combined with traits it can blind them and stealth you followed by a short offensive boost. Please look into lengthening the rollover time.

Haste: I will never use this a a defensive stunbreak since it completely negates sustain after use. Endurance is taken away and evade frames seem to be reduced as well. If you use it, you’d better be able to kill your opponent in the next 2 or so hits because the follow through to the stun and a few auto attacks which you can no longer dodge will most likely kill you.

RFI: Pretty decent functionally. 1 dodge which removes movement impairing conditions and returns enough initiative to use C&D or maybe a Shortbow IA. Cooldown is way too long for me to consider slotting it. Half of the current CD would make me consider it.

Daggerstorm: Not a stunbreak, but as our only source of stability I’ll sometimes pop it and dodge cancel it for just the stability when fighting a CC heavy class.

That’s it and this list includes 2 non-stunbreaks. If you want to reduce the effectiveness of IS/IR, please look into improving our stunbreaks or attaching a stunbreak to other skills. Signet of agility would be a prime candidate as it would break stun and refill endurance instantly adding sustain to a plethora of thief builds. Take away the condi cure or something if you think it would be too effective, but that part only affects the functionality of a single ele dodge roll.

Thanks for reading. Sorry if I forgot any.

100% agree with this. In fact, I’ve pretty much repeated the same thing in a thread I just made (doh!)

I’m primarily a PvE player but recently I’ve started playing a bit more PvP and WvW and find that our stun breakers are, in my opinion, pretty bad. As I’m a PvP noob, I expect to be blasted for this statement.

So the utility Shadowstep is always on my bar no matter the setup because it is very versatile, but as a stun breaker I find it very awkward. I assume that the general idea for this skill is to use it enter battle, fight, and return if things go sour. However, I don’t think it works well that way because:
1) you have to preempt that you will be either stun and/or have conditions applied to you, and
2) it all happens in the next 10 seconds.

Because of points above, I tend to save it and use it in battle to escape/break stun (but by doing so you’ll lose out on condition removal as the return skill will just put you back where you were just stunned). Also, I find I’m not super quick to ground target my escape, but I accept that’s entirely my problem.

So we have other stun breaker utilities that pop on press (which I prefer) but they’re not so good. They are: Haste, Infiltrator’s Signet and Roll for Initiative.

Haste is not ideal as a stun breaker as it’s really an offensive tool and usually once you break stun you tend to want to gtfo.

Infiltrator’s Signet is a fairly good stun breaker, but again it’s an offense tool.

So the last one is Roll for Initiative, which is really good but IMO the CD is too high so I propose a change to it: gain only 4 initiative but have 45 CD.

Also, how about adding stun break to Signet of Shadows? Before you shout wtf, eles have a near-identical signet ‘Signet of Air’, which has the same passive and but the active blinds and breaks stun.

I don’t have the quartz node, so can someone confirm whether only the character that consumes the item gets access to the candy corn node or do alts also have access? Thanks.

Any EU servers with Balthazar open?

My main gripe with this map is the awful map paths. For example, I ‘dropped’ down to sea/ground level to get to an ori ore, but to get back up to civilisation, I had to walk around edges of the map until I could find a walk-able slope. (Or maybe I just haven’t explored all the paths properly…)

spacemayu.4817:

That was actually a month/a month and a halkittenhat it happened.

I was kinda hoping some of them would come back for the halloween event but none of them did.

Needless to say I’m the only one that kept slugging it in this game out of the original bunch.

OT but it’s as if I wrote that myself. My guild of 10 (RL friends) went down to 3 at the halloween event. I too, was hoping the event would have meant a return, but alas, they too went AWOL. None of them came on for Lost Shore. It really sunk in when I was doing those [] preview in the guild chat, and every time there was a follow up message “No one hears you”… sad laugh.

They will still shoot even if you’re in melee range, and you will more than likely eat all the shots.

If 1 vs 1, they are quite easy if you attack from range. At about 800 distance, you can strafe left/right to evade their shots.

For PvE achievement kittens, nothing has changed. You will still get the same amount of points you were getting before. These new PvP daily/monthly achievements are in addition to the already existing ones.

How can dungeon gear be obsolete when they are basically skins?

Joiry.2504:

Get new gear that mitigates the condition. No active skill on your part, just a new passive defense against the new condition.

What has this added to the challenge of the game?

I like to think of it as story-based progression, rather than strictly challenging content. From a story perspective, we are being attacked by a new, unknown enemy whom inflicts a new type of virus/strain. We can attempt to drive them away (beat the dungeon) without utilising any antivirus, but we won’t be as effective. That to me is very interesting.