Guild Wars 2

Hmm. Doesn’t seem like unidentified dyes are changing that much. 65 silver right now.

Karizee.8076:

We hit queues on our Borderlands tonight and next week we will be in T4. The worst is over for our WvW, rebuilding has begun on SoR.

In the meantime we still have one of the best PvE populations, still hitting overflows daily and still killing Tequatl every day.

That’s why I have no intention of leaving SOR. We still have a great PvE presence, such that I’m always hitting overflow for the big LS events.

I plan on getting back into WvW once the season starts, so it’s good that more people are getting back into it.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Is there a full list of new traits and changes to existing traits? Because I could only find one new GM trait per class.

Link please!

Nothing mentioned for thieves for changes to other traits.

Jealle.1926:

didnt they say there were great changes coming for the thief back in januarys live stream.

Yeah…kind of wondering what happened with that. Feels like Thieves are getting the shaft when it comes to class changes.

Deadly Arts: Revealed Training – Gain up to 200 extra power when you are revealed, based on your level

This is okay I guess.

Critical Strikes : Invigorating Precision – You are healed for a % of the strike damage dealt. The current rate is 5%. Does not work on ambient creatures.

I really want to like this trait, but in a line competing with Executioner, I simply don’t see taking it. Maybe if you’re trying for a super tanky thief, but we don’t get much health to do that.

Shadow Arts: Resilience of Shadows – Stealth you apply reduces 50% incoming attack damage. Does not work against condition damage.

This is okay, but I really only see it being good when you’re trying to hide within Shadow Refuge. Since it’s only when in stealth, the uptime isn’t very good.

Acrobatics: Assassin’s Equilibrium – Gain 1s of stability when you are revealed. This is a high skill cap trait as you need to use it when you see a stun/daze coming and attack first to reveal yourself and gain the stability.

This is a stupid trait. 1s of stability is nothing, and this only works on reveals. So you basically have to reveal yourself to get a benefit which is generally a bad idea. This would have been much nicer if it was 1s of stability after dodging…

Trickery: Bewildering Ambush – Stealing applies 5 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds.

The only one I really care about. I might be able to make a pretty crazy stealing build. That said, you’re giving up the stun and the faster recharge on steal by taking this.

I was really hoping that they’d announce us getting rifles…

Altie.4571:

If some form of AOE range wasn’t a REQUIREMENT in WvW I would never have SB on. Simply is not that good, but when someone is standing on the wall, all you can do is aoe.

Too bad it’s hard to reach them with 900 range.

That’s annoying. They ended the Runes blog with some more updates on profession changes….and for thieves they just repeated the same thing we learned from the Trait blog.

Distaste.4801:

Coldin.2840:

Yeah. When I first read the trait, I was pretty excited about potentially getting some good healing out of it. It’s a shame that on closer inspection, it just doesn’t really stack up. +20% extra damage to any target before 50% health is just way too good for a sporadic small heal. Might be useful for big AOE stuff. Maybe for WvW zerg fights?

Seems like it might be a bit more balanced if it was put up to 10% of crit damage.

I don’t even see it being good in zerg fights because 900 range is a killer. Even if you stealthed into the enemy zerg the damage you take is going to far outweigh the small heals. In my mind any situation where it could be useful you’re either not taking damage so heals aren’t needed or your taking too much damage and the heals are useless.

Yeah. 900 does limit it’s usefulness. I keep hoping they’ll give thieves a 1200 range weapon, or a trait to change Shortbow to 1200.

Yeah. When I first read the trait, I was pretty excited about potentially getting some good healing out of it. It’s a shame that on closer inspection, it just doesn’t really stack up. +20% extra damage to any target before 50% health is just way too good for a sporadic small heal. Might be useful for big AOE stuff. Maybe for WvW zerg fights?

Seems like it might be a bit more balanced if it was put up to 10% of crit damage.

I’m not a big fan of the trait changes either. Basically taking out the small progression of stats and putting it way later. Looking at it, I don’t see why they couldn’t just fix it so you earn 1 skill point every 5 levels, starting at level 15. That would match up perfectly with the current system, and still prevent players from putting odd numbers in their trait lines.

This also means you don’t get to play with Grandmaster traits until level 80 which is when I find that a class starts to really come together. Especially for some classes like Mesmer, their abilities don’t really gain momentum until they have a bunch of traits working together. The higher level restrictions just feels unnecessary.

Yeah. As far as the world is concerned, Mordreth doesn’t exist.

Is there any explanation how Dragons got their names anyway? Were they given them by Tyrian citizens, or do the dragons always have those names and it’s spread through their corrupted champions?

NinjaEd.3946:

What’s up with people wanting rifles? Bad enough we have pew/pew with 0 mobility/evasion skills, you want to hulk a rifle around leap through the air sniping people? Not very thief themed…

Can’t engineers literally leap through the air with their rifles?

Not sure why people think rifles don’t mesh with thief. We already have pistols, and I’d look more a rifle as being a sniper rifle rather than a minigun.

Xenesis.6389:

NA Gold league cuts off at the top 6…
So no SoR won’t be in gold.

Oh. That’s good…I think. Not really sure how we’ll fare in Silver to be honest.

Game reason: Because spore samples are still required for recipes.

Logic reason: Because the spores got spread up in the air and are still slowly falling to the ground after the tower’s destruction.

So, I’ve been hearing that despite that massive shifts in population from SOR during the last season of WvW, the server is still going to be in the Gold League. Even though this means that SOR will likely not stand a chance of winning against any of the other servers.

Is this really true that SOR won’t be moving down to silver? It’s really a shame that the deck got so stacked against us in season 1, and due to the scheduling, it simply got worse as the season progressed.

Looks like Doc Halvern didn’t make it.

Yep…that’s not happening. I have weeks worth of those things…

Story – Pass 9/10. They did a pretty good job of tying up most of the loose ends, while still leaving questions to be answered in the next season. They also set up a good group of NPCs to follow as we continue in the LS.

Events – Fail 4/10 The Prime Hologram fight was really fun. A cool laser light show boss with a bunch of mechanics. My only problem with it was too much health during the first phase, making it rather boring.

The knights on the other hand started out okay, if a little zergy, then moved to annoying when they did drop loot, to just plain frustrating when groups rarely even get past them to Scarlet. That one change of stopping the zerg basically ruined the whole event because the knights don’t properly scale to small numbers of players.

Kalavier.1097:

Klonex.4562:

>.< we had 5 people attacking blue (including me) while red had 120 and green had 145. it was too funny. then the majority gets mad when we fail the event.

One thing I wonder about when seeing the mob is “Does everybody have the calibration” because otherwise they deal no damage.

Like I said once, we were like… 10-20 low on Blue, so the rest of the area SWARMED blue. 120-150 at blue means 100ish people doing nothing, and if the event scales to be tougher? They are just making it harder.

I don’t know if it scales to be tougher. Maybe the knights get more health or damage resistance, but as far as I can tell, nothing much really changes. The main issue is that these knights don’t scale down. They have just as much when 10 people are fighting it kitten people.

The prime hologram appears to have the same issue, even though I’ve heard people say it scales too. Really, it just seems like both bosses have fixed amounts of health, which is why zerging them worked so well in the first place.

I’d rather have Arenanet fix this event so it doesn’t require this 50 person cap, the event scales down when less people are there, and they give use a fair amount of loot for spending 20 minutes in a boring DPS race.

Aza.2105:

ens.9854:

Chicago Jack.5647:

nyqwist.2360:

there’s really no way for us to know if this is was really intended.

It shouldn’t be intended. If you interrupt a blackpowder, it should always cost them 6 lost initiative.

Nobody is interrupting black powders. Even if people were trying to interrupt them, the cast time is far too short to do it on purpose (maybe if you live on top of the servers?)

Interrupts are only ever “planned” on heals. The rest of the time they are being used offensively for setups and interrupting essentially random skills. Losing initiative would basically allow classes to spam all their CC, a strategy that ALREADY dominates thieves, and drain a thief’s initiative with no counter play.

Perhaps they should increase the casting time of black powder and other thief skills. I agree with you, interrupting black powder isn’t intentional. My opinion is the interrupt mechanics are very poor compared to gw2. Most interrupts have long casting times in comparison to the skills one might think of interrupting.

Sure. Increase the cast times for thief skills. Just make sure you do it for all the other professions as well.

The miasma events simply aren’t timed well with the main scarlet fight. If you’re trying to take down the Knights and Scarlet, there’s just no time to do the Miasmas. Even the various champions are difficult to do. That’s the main reason they’re not being completed.

mtpelion.4562:

it certainly appears that it is nearly impossible to fail the Assault Knights (pre-patch anway, haven’t tested it since).

Test it.

This is actually even more annoying in the battle versus the Prime Hologram.

Basically, if any platform only has 20-30 people, they have a very low chance of defeating the hologram. There’s frankly no downward scaling, meaning that a smaller groups get screwed. And the teleporters don’t have any concern for how many are on a platform, so won’t split players up evenly. 30 minutes fighting against Scarlet and knowing you simply have no chance is just an exercise in frustration.

For as much as Anet wants us to “split up” and not zerg, they certainly don’t make events that actually reward that behavior. Only punish when you don’t bring enough people to the table.

You know, I’m kind of annoyed that thread was posted in the SPVP forum, and not in the Thief or Profession Balance forums. Moreover, it was only open for a days, and filled with posts from non-thieves. That’s simply not good feedback on which to base any decision.

I’m also getting annoyed about these DPS checks. It just doesn’t suit group content when your numbers and player types can’t be managed. These events need to scale for a lower amount of people for those servers and overflows that simply don’t have the massive numbers.

My overflow was managing a decent run at them. Got all of them going down steadily, then at about 50%, Blue jumped back up to full.

We still managed to get Red and Green killed. Once the event ended in failure, I received a chest containing 6 champ boxes. Other people reported getting 1-2 cores of different types. (Not sure if Blue’s cores were there).

All in all, feels like a huge nerf to the loot.

Shouldn’t pistol whip deal more damage than the auto-attack? It costs initiative so it can’t be used forever.

With the knight’s no longer dropping ANY loot, the cores are going to jump way up in price. Hopefully they get this fixed soon.

Raistlan.3604:

Magische Boek.2530:

for thieves

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jISCpxqScaY

How are you guys not getting bombed way earlier? I have Signet of Midnight and hit Haste right when the cutscene ends and she covers the entire width of the floor in front of me in orange before I can get close enough to shadowstep/steal to her.

Is this just a case of getting lucky with when she does her first attack?

I don’t know. I can say what I did, and that may or may not work.

Cutscene ends. Move forward, dodge her first bombs. Shadowstep towards her and start a stomp. Dodge to the side to avoid the AOE, use Haste, then spam F. You may have to burn another shadowstep/steal here, but if you get start the stomp started right after she knocks back, with Haste you may have a chance.

Well…I really couldn’t get the Shadowstep strategy to work. Even teleporting away, I’d start getting shocked and it would interrupt my finisher.

I did get it by following Dulfy’s tips. I basically dodged to the side, hit Haste, and spammed F. I still got shocked once, but then I managed to get it off.

This does seem very buggy. Most people are saying one has to be in a group, but I know I’ve done every other boss fight (including a few knights) with just getting a few tags and still getting loot.

Hopefully Anet can fix this before the weekend, since it really drops the rate of return for doing this event. Obsidian shards are nice and all, but not at 40 minutes per 3 shards.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Coldin.2840:

Honestly, while I would like these events to have 3 groups spread out between the knights, it does seem like the best way for the player is zerg one at a time. You’ll probably miss this achievement, but in return you’ll get 3 chances at power cores, and you know you’ll face Scarlet with a full group.

This is how we did got to Scarlet, and it’s guaranteed for that…not for the achievement sadly. We zerged each one with everybody on the map, and we finished the last one with 5 minutes and 38 seconds left on the clock.

That’s the thing, it’s much better to ensure you get to Scarlet than to try for the achievement. The loot is just too good to pass up.

Honestly, while I would like these events to have 3 groups spread out between the knights, it does seem like the best way for the player is zerg one at a time. You’ll probably miss this achievement, but in return you’ll get 3 chances at power cores, and you know you’ll face Scarlet with a full group.

Doggie.3184:

Coldin.2840:

Doggie.3184:

Stealth didn’t work. Shadowstep did. Incomming Thief nerfs.

Could you elaborate? I couldn’t seem to get close enough for long enough to finish her off.

I just ran up to her (in stealth but don’t think it mattered) and started finisher. When entire area turned red I Shadowstepped out of it and Shadowstepped back when it ended and she got eaten by a Wurm.

Cool. I’ll try that next time.

Doggie.3184:

Stealth didn’t work. Shadowstep did. Incomming Thief nerfs.

Could you elaborate? I couldn’t seem to get close enough for long enough to finish her off.

Yeah, I’m a bit disappointed with how transparent it is too. If my camera is zoomed out, I can barely see it.

I’m surprised the Grove has an overflow. I don’t think it has the most convenient layout. Overall, I like Rata Sum better for doing crafting and using the Trading Post.

Likely Taimi will be out of this current story. Braham and the Player both tell her to not go looking for Scarlet in the city. I imagine that she’ll show up towards the end, after Scarlet is defeated, and then be more prominent when the next part of the Living Story starts. Afterall, we still need to get Canach involved somehow too, since he’ll probably be our token Sylvari.

I’m starting to get to this point. I’ve made 1 ascended already, and 1 exotic. I really don’t need to make anymore, but I’m up to 3 stacks of blades as I hunt down the Heirlooms. I hope they will give some other use for these blade shards, even if it’s just trading them in for little things.

ZBeeblebrox.4928:

Coldin.2840:

Naevius.3185:

What is it now, account bound until you equip it? Or until you choose stats?

Account bound till you choose stats in my case. Though Dulfy’s site claimed it remained Account Bound even after picking stats.

Maybe less effort than other backpieces in some respects, but those also don’t require 15 Damask.

Neither does this. Use the leatherworker recipe that takes 15 Elonian Leather. Like 15g. Compared to a full 250 stack of t6 mats that you need for the mystic forge backpieces… yeah, this is easier. And cheaper.

That feels like just side stepping the issue. So one armor crafting can make it slightly cheaper. It’s still a lot of resources and money.

I’ll put forth that all ascended back pieces should be account bound. Same with Legendaries really. I don’t understand why they need to be soulbound considering the resources that goes into them.

Naevius.3185:

What is it now, account bound until you equip it? Or until you choose stats?

Account bound till you choose stats in my case. Though Dulfy’s site claimed it remained Account Bound even after picking stats.

Maybe less effort than other backpieces in some respects, but those also don’t require 15 Damask.

Just a small request, but for the effort involved in making the Ascended Spinal Blades, couldn’t they just stay account bound even after equipping. It was an account wide effort to make them after all.

Ben K.6238:

She reminds me of Snaff – no class in particular, just works with golems.

Scarlet ain’t likely to reform. Once you’ve been claimed by an elder dragon, you stay forever altered even if the dragon dies.

Other issue is that Rox has too much motivation to kill her for any such reconciliation to work. Rytlock is unlikely to rescind the order, and Rox would remain a gladium forever if she doesn’t carry it out.

Just a joke. That’s all.

I imagine with all the negativity towards Scarlet, once she’s gone, she’ll be gone forever. That said, I’m glad Arenanet is still giving her a good send off, instead of just having her disappear.

So, other Sylvari could be. Canach maybe? There haven’t been many new Sylvari introduced. Guess it could be just like our new Asura, and be someone that comes out of nowhere.

Rizalee.4593:

? – Sylvari

Clearly it will be a reformed Scarlet. :P

This is pretty lackluster. Basically Signet of Malice, but has to be activated and only works on 5 attacks.

That said, it could be interesting paired up with say Pistol Whip. Stun your opponent, heal and evade during the flurry portion. Or maybe tie it together with d/d Lotus Blossom.

Still, I’d probably rather just use Signet of Malice.

MatthewMedina.5419:

Yes, that moment was a flashback to what had just happened. In hindsight, it’s possible some kind of screen filter or effect might have made that clearer. If you look carefully you can see that it does go from night to day, but it might be subtle enough to be missed.

When in doubt, use Sepia!

Kiro.3164:

Sometimes people take /wave as a threat lol. Any emote is the equivalent of a threat actually. PvP is PvP.

Any emote is a threat. Running around is a threat. Walking around is a threat. Standing still is a threat. Dancing is a threat. At least that’s how it appears sometimes in 1v1.

Chris.3290:

I appreciate courtesy in the JPs, especially Ob. Sanctum; but posts like this make me want to wait behind waterfalls with my guardian and spam banish.

I don’t understand the logic to this post. You appreciate courtesy, but when someone makes a post asking for it, you suddenly want to ignore all courtesy?

That’s a pretty major disconnect.

Yeah, clockwork veterans and champs over in Dreadhaught didn’t have this buff at all. Maybe it only applies to invasions happening in certain maps.

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking it…