Guild Wars 2

Scepter is now 100% fixed.
Thanks for this amazing buff!

…

I know this was a preview, but honestly, I have so little faith in the team.

Hello

I was really irritated at the end of this mission, because Caithe kinda just stands around and does nothing during the boss fight. Actually I got downed a few times, and she just kinda stood on my body and watched as the evil thingy killed me.

I think she spouted combat dialogue, but ultimately just stood there.

So far I’ve been pretty impressed with how responsive the NPCs are, especially with regards to bringing you back up.

I know Caithe has salad for brains, but I think her behaviour is unacceptable. It’s only a minor bug, but it annoyed me so much yesterday that I felt compelled to post about it.

Cheers.

Hello!

I accidentally messed up the World Summit episode, during Season 2 of the living world.

So when all the stupid leader people start telling you their concerns, I got bored and walked over to Queen Jennah. You can inititiate her concerns before you address anyone elses’.

This triggers the Mordrem invasion prematurely, and the quest kinda thinks you need to address the Charr leader, but also need to protect the leaders. During this invasion, you can talk to that horrible Asura leader and also address his concerns while he is cowering in a corner. Then he gets really happy and runs into the portal.

Sadly the quest then fails to progress because the Pale Tree is a stuck in a state of
‘Wait… let me show you something’ and ‘Please address this Charr’s concerns’, while cowering on the floor. The dialogue kinda gets messed up and it becomes impossible to progress.

Reloading and doing it properly fixes this

Man… I bet the tree lady regrets having the party at her house.

Fluffball.8307:

Aiglos.2907:

I always misjudge the present jump if silly Charr are around. I think they should be banned.

Over dramatic much? Jeez Louise. I think you should be banned for having multicolored armor, it’s distracting.

The sarcasm is lost with this one

I just feel Charr don’t belong in civilised society in general. Let alone polluting the jumping puzzle.

In all seriousness, I just wish they made every other character into a small, non-vision-obscuring model.

Pandaman.4758:

Aiglos.2907:

Additionally, I really hate those gusts of wind. I find it really difficult to keep an eye on the snowman, when I’m desperately trying to avoid the Skritt and the giant snowballs. It’d be nice if the gusts had a more obvious tell. Or if the wind could be removed completely, I’d be happier.

You only have to worry about the snowman that’s waiting right after the presents, the second snowman at the corner only blows people off if they get too high, but you don’t need to get that high to avoid the snowball.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Ok this makes sense.

I wondered why I got inconsistently blown of the disc.

I’m always scared of the snowballs, so I go high up the peppermint disc just to make sure… That’s probably why.

Still, a stupid obstacle

Thanks for the tip.

Yeah, I tend not to have issues with the snowflakes…
Although the occasional Charr or Norn sometimes overlaps my character and makes it hard to judge a jump.

It’s the worst at the presents section. I will always wait until the platform is completely empty before jumping. I’m fine with Asura, but anything larger, or anyone with wings is just completely distracting. I always misjudge the present jump if silly Charr are around. I think they should be banned.

As an alternative… it would make things so much easier if all other players were invisble/had their model standardised to something small.

Additionally, I really hate those gusts of wind. I find it really difficult to keep an eye on the snowman, when I’m desperately trying to avoid the Skritt and the giant snowballs. It’d be nice if the gusts had a more obvious tell. Or if the wind could be removed completely, I’d be happier.

Happy Anniversary!

Man… this makes me feel so old lol. I still remember seeing Gaile around in GW1!

There really should be an in-game event to commemorate this.

davpatgan.4567:

I realise that I’m probably in the wrong place for this question, but I’m new to this game so please forgive me. Is there any legitimate way to aquire gems other than with real money?

Yes

You can use the money that you earn within the game and exchange it for gems.
However… the exchange rate is pretty poor I believe?

No reason why it shouldn’t exist. Shame it doesn’t.

I have a feeling you’d be right at home with Dragon Age Inquisition. There is a part in the opening of the game where all the hair dressers get blown up. As a result, they have about 50 different styles of bald in that game…

As long as the military can see his attack circles, I think we might have an advantage? With enough stamina, should be simple enough to dodge roll his attacks.

Also depends on whether he respawns or not?
Whether he scales with the number of people fighting him… etc.

I’m not sure how much different your experience will be to mine, because you’ll probably have less traits when levelling than I did! I kinda ‘struggled’ from levels 1-30. Then I switched to a staff and never looked back.

Daggers are great and quite effective. However, I’m really lazy. I hate doing fast ‘rotations’ and I hate really fast button presses, which seems to be the most effective way to use daggers.

Staff was extremely simple, because it was a matter of just spamming lava font, with some of the other skills thrown in. It’s fairly easy to circle around a mob without being hit. They died fast. My way of playing probably isn’t good practice, but I found it so easy and I really enjoyed my levelling experience from this point. Staff also gives you reasonable mobility…

I think a lot of our effectiveness does come from traits though… so I don’t know whether you will struggle a bit more than I did? Maybe someone with recent levelling experience can help out here.

I mean, this is just my personal preference, but once I got hooked on staff… I’m reluctant to change.

Lolz, I expect nothing.
No reference to elementalist elites.

If anything, they’ll probably remove glyph of elementals and FGS in order to improve usage of Tornado.

Hello!

It’s a very cool idea but sadly there is no such aforementioned class or weapon type in this game.

The boxing gloves illustrated in the video are for ‘Costume Brawl’. Basically, you can have different ‘costumes’ that give you a fun/silly set of skills to fight against other players with. Really it’s ’just for fun:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Costume_Brawl

But yeah, otherwise there is no martial arts based combat style in the proper game

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Trahearne is a plant. He has cabbage instead of brain. Of course he will lead people to their death. He has absolutely no idea how to command.

Truer words were never spoken….

In all seriousness, I do hope that Trahearne gets corrupted and then we have to kill him. Then really happy music plays while everyone dances on his corpse.

That would be great.

Headcase.4618:

Here are some differences between the two games I think are worth mentioning;

1: In GW1 you could only have two ppl in a party (not counting henchmen or pets) where in GW2, you can have five.

2. In GW1 you can only rez fallen party members with a resurrection signet and, unless you get a morale boost, you can only use the signet once.* GW2, however, does not require a signet to revive players and you can do it as many times as you want.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that playing GW1 really makes me appreciate what I have in GW2, flaws and all.

*unless that changes after pre-searing.

Errr yeah, that’s literally right at the beginning of the game and only a a ‘tutorial area’. You should play further into the game

You can have up to 8 party members in GW1 (depending on your location in the game) and 12 in two special missions.

There are multiple reusable resurrection spells/skills in GW1 that you can only get after pre-searing. Plus they also introduced resurrection items after the last expansion was released.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

fireflyry.7023:

GW1 was better.

GW2 is great but it’s also becoming more and more like every other MMORPG on the market with every update.

/2 cents

Respectfully I must disagree about Guild Wars 1 being better. I recently bought, within a few months, Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North to earn those achievements and those fancy, flaming gloves.

I have to tell you, it takes real effort and boredom on my part to log into the Prophecies. I’ve gotten to the around four or five mission from the end of the story line. Did all the side quests too. Yet, even so, I’m bored out of my mind.

I also got to as far as past ‘ascension’ in Factions as well with my ritualist. Got bored with him too and deleted him. Getting zergs by mobs every time I took a step was not fun at all.

Of course, I was using hirlings at the time. Heroes have made the missions a pinch, but still. Having to micro-manage them all the time. Them and their pets, and mine.

Maybe I’m just playing the wrong class (ranger – beastmaster), but I’m so not into Guild Wars 1. So much so, I wish there was a way I could ask for a refund. . . .

Respectfully, I must disagree with you on this

It kinda seems like you’re hating on GW1 because you’ve rushed through and not really given it a chance? I totally appreciate your opinion on finding it boring, post-searing Ascalon in Prophecies was notoriously boring for me! However, the game really comes into its own from Nightfall/EoTN.

I think your comments about the heroes/pets are misguided. Their AI was fantastic (in most cases…) and the fact that you could choose their skill bars meant that ultimately, their performance was down to you. Choosing their skill bars was hardly a laborious task and I personally enjoyed finding great team synergy. Failing that, there were several ‘meta’ builds that you could copy and win the game with. Out in the zones, heroes (and henchman) would pretty much take care of themselves with very little management. So I’m not sure what your management issue is?

I think Prophecies suffered from pop-up syndrome pretty badly, and Factions had zones that were tightly packed so I do think that these were tedious in places. However, the other expansions drastically improved upon mob design and numbers. Mobs became much more complex but reduced in number, which made every encounter pretty exciting for me. I personally found that it was really satisfying to see your party take down tricky and irritating mobs.

GW2 has awful mob design… If anything, GW2 is far worse for saturating maps with tedious mobs. Plus, they all seem to function in almost exactly the same way by running up and scratching you. Skill diversity in GW1 meant that mobs could have a range of skills to use against you. As such, I would argue that fighting enemies in GW1 was far more engaging than it is here.

Story wise, GW1 wins hands down for me. It had proper cutscenes with a fairly engaging story, as opposed to the lazy ‘two characters stand still on a static screen and talk for 5 years’ approach (GW2). Well… Prophecies was a bit hit and miss, but otherwise the games drastically improved their presentation.

Also, perhaps being a beastmaster isn’t the class for you if you’re against micromanagement. Personally I’d go with an elementalist so you can nuke things

Again, not trying to hate on your opinion at all, but just giving my two cents

I dislike many of the new changes to leveling… but you know, the free boosters, kits and random pieces of equipment are pretty cool. We never had those before, so I think that there are positive aspects to these changes

However, I do think bunching up the skill points and bunching up stat points and presenting them as ‘rewards’ is a bit blah for many reasons I won’t go into. I hate ‘fake’ rewards.

Oooh! Also, with regards to the new pieces of equipment, I hate that you can’t salvage them! I spent ages trying to work out why I couldn’t salvage some of my gear lol. I dunno, maybe they were trying to prevent people exploiting the rewards by salvaging out the runes and stuff?

Can’t really convey my feelings… but it’s akin to someone giving you a really nice box of chocolates, but you later find out it’s out of date, or they’ve helped themselves to the best ones. Like a ‘half-hearted’ gift. Baah, can’t explain what I mean lol.

Ah well, at least it’s something I guess

Yay! It always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when Gaile posts something outside of Account Support! You rock!

Just out of interest, how soon will the NPE be in a state where it’s working more as intended, so ‘appropriate’ feedback can be provided?

I’d just like to say that I really don’t like the way stat progression is handled right now… I preferred incremental increases because it just makes logical sense. I think that trying to grant stats in bulk seems like a very shallow way of introducing a feeling of progression.

Also, I think it would be advisable to introduce traits much earlier because I’m finding levelling alts really boring right now If this were my first time playing the game, I’d be wondering why the combat system was so tedious for the first 36 levels. There is obviously a lot of depth once you start unlocking traits. However, it comes so late that I’d genuinely quit due to the initial boredom. Maybe this isn’t the ideal NPE?

Just thought it might be nice to give my main concerns

I’m quite new to the Necromancer, but I’ve noticed that all my minions are lagging behind me quite considerably a lot of the time. Such to the extent that I’ll get into a battle and they’ll kind of stop and not do anything. I need to literally pull them right into a mob for them to start attacking…

Shadow Fiend and Flesh Golem appear to be very reluctant to enter a battle… But sometimes they’re really on form and really eager? And they will charge in quite valiantly so…. I don’t know what to think?

Nkuvu.2570:

The funny part?

Recapturing Nebo Terrace from the occupying centaurs is a cake walk. All the champions and elites run away, leaving some regular squishy centaurs to hold the town.

Actually yes that’s very true. I imagine they wanted to make the ‘defend’ part challenging, but probably coded it very poorly in haste with absolutely bizarre scaling.

Retaking Nebo is fine, as stated

Well… it’s either some iffy balancing by the devs or poor tactical decisions by the centaurs.

She should really consider…
branching out into other people :P

…

I tried.

Hope it gets fixed soon

Thanks for your post

From these images, I think it’s obvious just how much the Centaurs want Nebo Terrace.
Look at how much effort they’re putting in!

Who are we to stand in their way?

The Centaurs are also liars when they say
“Weakness makes me sick!”

I’ve applied weakness on countless centaurs and I’ve yet to see any physiological changes going on.

Is this intended behaviour?

Would love a dev to confirm if possible

Faltag.6034:

Not shown: Me getting slaughtered seconds later at the hands of more than ten veterans, five elites, and three champions. I have a theory that it’s supposed to be like this, though. I can’t imagine why, but maybe it’s meant to fail.

Not sure why this image made me laugh.

Might just be the unnecessary
“Stay down!”, from the centaurs.

Hello

So you have that quest where you make your final choice in terms of the Order. I am almost certain that I chose the Priory on my Sylvari Ranger, but I never got around to completing the quest before the update.

So, returning to my ranger yesterday, I went to the quest marker and was really surprised to see that I had now magically undertaken the Vigil quest: A Flower of Death?

I really hope I’m not going crazy. Has anyone else experienced something like this after the update?

Note, I’ve never played cooperatively with anyone. Err that is, I’ve never joined anyones’ personal story instances.

Awww, we were nearly onto something!
Never mind :P

But the diving goggles thing is quite saddening

I thought they were caught in a landslide?

AtlasSi.9130:

All you need is an arrow and someone to hold your hand every step of the way…just like they recently put into gw2 for new players. It’ll be great!

You stole my idea!
I want this in the forums pls.

Feet were obviously too confusing for new players to deal with.

I think that is an excellent idea.

To build upon this, I think the ‘more posting and formatting options’ bar should be locked until the post count is high enough also.

Guys, I don’t think new players could have coped with the complexity of the story and their brains may have exploded from over thinking!!

Lol
So true. Such a great video.

Wait… new players unlock their third utility skill at level 35???
…

I really can’t fathom these changes at all.

There are elements that I like and dislike about the changes…

There are some really cool additions, like being given a piece of level specific armour when you reach certain levels. It gives a minor feeling of progression… although I feel that they are trying to distract you from how convolutedly stupid the levelling is.

‘Statistical progression has been cut into chunks’. They are trying to force a feeling of progression, but instead they’re just making the process more convoluted than it has to be. I understand that incremental progression is obviously… a slow grind? But at least you’re growing with every level! It feels natural.

The thing that I hated most about the new trait system was that you had a large number of dead levels. Doing the same thing with stats is a bit… weird. I’ve yet to play around fully with the system, but there’s just such a fake, plastic feeling about levelling. It’s hard to explain what I mean! But it no longer feels like a natural, fun process. Indeed, it felt dire from the introduction of the new trait system.

Anyway, with regards to the new player learning experience, I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. How dumb do they think people are? They may as well take away weapons for the first 15 levels, and get players acquainted with talking to NPCs to gain experience points. With the developers’ trains of thought, we should be grateful that they didn’t make the initial levelling experience ‘on rails’, where your character is automatically controlled by the game for the first 20 levels.

That, and really silly things like pushing like the Elementalist earth attunement unlock to level 22. It’s ‘fake’ progression. It’s like
“Look how cool this game is! You gain access to a super powerful class skill!!”

When really, it’s something you should have had 15 levels ago. I don’t buy that they’re trying to improve the new player experience at all. Everything they have introduced in this regard is patronising and a really cheap attempt to convince people that levelling is fun. When really, you’re unlocking things that really should have been there to begin with.

I wasn’t sure where to post this, so I thought I’d try here. If not, please do move it

So I’m aware that you can trade in leftover Fortune Scraps to someone… the Black Lion Weapon guy.

Anyway, I’m sadly 2 away from a ‘Catcher Skin’. Was just wondering whether Fortune Scraps would ever drop again in the future, now that we have Festival Tokens? If not, I’ll just trade them in for boxes

I love staff for general PvE. After I hit 30, I switched to staff and never looked back. I had a very positive levelling experience from that point.

Honestly, lava font, fireball and flame burst just absolutely slaughtered mobs. Although I had slight difficulties against destroyer type enemies, everything else was a cake walk.

I would say that it does encourage a lazy style of play… but if your only interest if just sweeping through areas, then I personally found staff to be ideal.

With the terrible new trait system I don’t know how different your experience will be, but if you find something that works for you, I would personally stick with it. Don’t be afraid to experiment (and I’ve tried!), but I’ve always gone back to staff in the end.

Has anyone else had it where all her grenade barrages focus entirely around you, no matter where you move?

A few minutes into the fight, I noticed those little grenade circles. I really hate them because there is so little time to dodge! It’s like I start bleeding the second the circles appear, but I digress!

Anyway, dodge roll… Circles appear again. Dodge roll, they appear again. Get downed, the circles continually appear over me. Move locations with mist form, circles appear again, but luckily there are enough people to rally me. Run away from both her and other people, but the circles still appear on me! So I decide to run far away from the fight and she targets me one last time, before stopping.

I’d like to think I was imagining it, but I only noticed hostile smoke fields and the timed bomb targeting other people. The grenades were always localised to my location?

Makes me sad

Malkizid.3925:

I’d love to see them do something with Skrittsburgh. The king says they’re trying to build a real city, so lets see it. I think it’d be great to have a place that showcases the heights the skritt can reach when there’s a bunch of them together.

I would really like to see something involving Skrittsburgh. They could have a totally not plagiarised theme song! Something along the lines of….

Life is like a hurricane
Here in… Skrittsburgh.
Something, Something, Something, it’s a… Skritt-blurr.
Might solve a mystery
Or rewrite history!

Skritt-Tales! Woo-oo
Everyday they’re out there making
Skritt-Tales! Woo-oo
Tales of shinies…

or something.

skullmount.1758:

This sounds awfully familiar

Err, I have no idea what you’re talking about cough cough

I would personally like to see an entire series of living world content devoted to, arguably the best race in the Guild Wars universe, the Skritt. I’m thinking maybe there could be some kind of Skritt rescue society, who respond to various issues in Tyria that no other organisation really considers, such as mysterious disappearances and kidnap. So my totally not plagiarised idea:

So it turns out that an orphan girl has been kidnapped by a woman who is really obsessed with like… orichalcum? The woman has discovered that there are rich orichalcum veins in a particularly dangerous part of Orr, but it is only accessible by a small hole, which only a child could fit through. In the meantime, the girl is locked away in the evil woman’s fortress.

So anyway, the rescue society finds out and opts to send two Skritt members (let’s call them… err Bernard and Bianca) to investigate and bring her back. These Skritt secretly have a crush on each other. So we happen to come across the pair, who are being attacked by something? We save them and become involved in the adventure.
Eventually it turns out, that the woman is actually an evil Orr dragon in disguise, and wanted the orichalcum ore to like… power up a super giant dragon robot. Incidentally, the girl has made friends with the super giant dragon robot and she’s all like

“You are not a projectile device, you are who you choose to be”

The dragon robot then becomes good, and attacks the evil Orr dragon. However, the Orr dragon, enraged, attacks the orphan girl. In a brave and loyal act, the dragon robot sacrifices itself to save the girl.

We then step in and fight the dragon. The Skritt deliver the finishing blow and they have a passionate moment together. However, Bernard gets corrupted by the dragon’s soul, and there is cutscene of him giving a very evil grin. However, the characters don’t know this, which sets the stage for follow up stories. Kasmeer and Marjory decide to adopt the girl.

Or something.

Reganov.3569:

Just in case some of you hadn’t read it
Taken from Wiki; http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_2

And at Fort Trinity, in Orr, Laranthir of the Wild, having heard tell of a connection between Scarlet and the dragons, has petitioned Marshal Trahearne of the Pact to send an airship to Lion’s Arch to investigate.

Oh… I hope that the airship gets attacked by a dragon and everyone but Trahearne survives.

Or maybe he could be gravely injured, and the playable character is forced to kill him in an act of mercy. However, as it is quite cold, he is recycled for firewood. Everyone then sits next to the campfire and has emotional flashbacks of the personal story, to the tune of ‘Fear Not this Night’.

Then everyone has a healthy salad in his honour.

Slow, ‘stally’, lack of mobility and disproportionate cooldowns come to mind!

Just kidding! Erm… it could be cool I guess?
Assuming they don’t go by the awful standards of the current focus fire attunement skills.

Maybe a reasonable saving?

I will say that this change has made me more willing to try out daring and exciting things. I’m really stingy, so I always avoided playing WvW because I didn’t want to pay repair costs… Which sounds ridiculous! But it’s amazing how this change has had such a positive impact on my personal enjoyment of the game.

Kelly.5293:

1. My beautiful Wings of Dwayna that i worked hard for – Now called Berserker’s Bandit Longbow of Bloodlust !!

But Beserker’s Bandit Longbow of Bloodlust is such a beautiful name!

Shame to hear about this btw, but I did find it slightly amusing.
Sorry man

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Can we also get some kind of ping from the people at Anet that they are even listening to the things said in this thread? It honestly feels like there is a whole lot of “hope it gets buried on the forums” which is really upsetting.

I won’t let that happen!

There has been some very constructive feedback in this thread. I do hope that some of it forms the basis of sensible tweaks/alterations to this very messy system.

Speaking from a logical perspective

I think the key reason is that they need to be very careful about what they post.
I’m sure before the team posts anything concerning the game development, it is heavily scrutinised by the ‘higher ups’. ‘Developer X’ may want to post desperately about some magical changes to rangers (lol), but the higher-ups may tell him not to, under penalty of death.

I guess they want to avoid posting something, which later proves to be inaccurate and then have the community blow up about it. They don’t want to raise anyones’ hopes, or disappoint anyone either. Even if the devs posted with the best of intentions, if they posted something that didn’t come to pass, I am sure that many people would brand them liars/evil/moo faces etc. This has happened quite a lot in the past!

Obviously, there is the courtesy of posting ‘we are looking into this’, which would be appreciated. Again though, it goes back to the issue of

“Dev Y said that you were looking into Elementalist issues!!! You totally lied and failed to deliver with this patch, I’m quitting GW2 forever now trolol!!!”
(and let’s be honest, this happens a lot).

However, as they have mentioned in the past, they do say that they are constantly reading the forums and ‘just because you don’t see a red post, doesn’t mean we don’t care!’. It’s obviously the ‘blanket formality statement’ and I’m not being completely gullible because I am sure it is impossible to filter through everything. However, I do genuinely believe that they do pay attention in many cases.

Whether they actually act on all feedback is a different matter. Whether they actually post on a particular case… is a different matter also. I love feedback! I love seeing the dev’s post and I want to see more. I think the OP makes a very valid point. However, I just don’t think it is realistic to expect more than we are getting for aforementioned reasons.

However, I do think it would be absolutely ideal if we saw more dev input.

I think the fundamental issue is the PvE game mechanics? Mobs hit too hard and too infrequently for defensive stats to truly be worth much. Currently, there are many ‘active defense’ options, which means that if you are skilled enough, high damage will always be optimal. Even if unskilled, I don’t think toughness/vitality would allow for significant margins of error because… things hit hard and they don’t do much else.

However, in cases of attrition and sustained attacks by mobs, I think the defensive stats are better in these situations. So personally, I think there needs to be a bit more mob diversity that would facilitate different roles? Or maybe… small, occasional persistent effects that require vitality/toughness to deal with.

No need to go completely nuts or anything, but something truly meaningful would be appreciated.

vikkival.2459:

Is it really that hard to level without traits?
I’m one of those players that never really touched traits but I level decently by just exploring the maps and doing events.

The only thing that bother me is losing all of my points for a measly 5 points but I guess that’s the way it is with the new system shrugs

No, just very boring indeed

Progression felt a lot more natural with the previous system because you were getting progressively stronger, assuming you were keeping up to date with your trait points, which most people do! By level 30, you could have accessed a minor and major trait.

Doesn’t seem like much, but the significance is really that it makes playing more fun! It adds a bit more build diversity when you’re levelling in the early stages. Whether it’s a reduced CD for a weapon set or a significant boost to a particular set of skills, it’s a ‘reward’ for levelling up and makes playing more fun. At least for me.

With the current system, you’re effectively stuck in a rut until you hit level 30 and even then, you’re only really getting stronger every 6 levels or so.

If that doesn’t affect you, then that is great! But I liked the feeling of becoming progressively stronger and being able to make meaningful improvements to my build early on.

This current system just makes levelling extremely bland and a very boring experience. This could be off putting for new players. Even someone completely new to the game would wonder why things only get interesting build-wise at level 36.

However, I do love the instant trait switching! That is great

There is a lovely thread in the elementalist forum which I was tempted to plagiarise from :P The focus has some amazing skills, and some diabolically terrible ‘wth were they thinking’ skills.

It really does need improving. I feel that the focus is particularly painful to bring in PvE, where I really want mobility to help me move around the map and the power to actually kill things. I only really that the focus would shine in a high damage environment, where defense might actually be useful?

I agree with the OPs suggestions.
I do think some form of healing should go on the weapon. Not sure where

I do also think maybe they can add some sort of secondary activated leap on something like ‘gale’. Knockdown a foe, then press it again to leap to their location or something.

I can see pros and cons.

Tbh I have always thought it was a bit silly that I could pretty much just spam an attack mindlessly until I connected. Maybe instant reveal might be too strong? But I think the OP suggests something quite interesting.

You pay an opportunity cost for missing, and I think that this is fair. It doesn’t necessarily take you out of stealth, but I think it would encourage a bit more skillful play at the very least.

Honestly, I really think that this should have been introduced from the very beginning. I imagine people have been spoiled by how generous the stealth mechanics are right now.