Guild Wars 2

It is not allowed.

The only place where you’d noticeably benefit from auto-attack turned off is sPvP/tPvP and WvW, and you’re supposed to manually connect every strike in this case, because otherwise it would distort the competitive playing ground between those owning a keyboard/mouse/hotkey macro and those not having access to them. This would also blur the line with users getting creative what is or isn’t allowed, if only to gain that edge in the match.

After Gaile’s announcement on the matter, one of my more creative friends already created a 1-key macro that launched another software hotkey macro which launches another 1-key macro on the mouse, steps 2 and 3 being context-sensitive and able to be combined into different actions. For those that got lost in description, on average a 5-7 action combination got reduced by 2-3 keystrokes less - that’s fractions of the second needed to launch a whole CnD-backstab combo on a Thief, already with necessary positioning and movement. Essentially, this is an example of user "gaming" the system, knowing it’s not allowed and finding an excuse in "technical boundaries" outlined by the announcement post to make it supposedly legal.

For a more common example, engineer’s grenade kit. It’s common for players to get tired of spamming 3 dps-oriented grenade skills (including toolbelt), and grenade spam macros are all around the place. These are not allowed, even if the primary issue could be attributed to limitations of game design - task is tedious, possibly a health hazard to the player, and its generally impossible for the user to maximise the dps in a prolonged period of time (especially true for PvE encounters) without third party solutions.

Now a better question would be, would programming a macro to repeatedly apply the same keystroke be condemnable in outside-combat situations, such as not having to click a stack of 200 jugs of karma exactly 200 times, to use them all. This, I believe, shouldn’t be allowed or encouraged either, and in the meantime an interface solution should be passed to the programming crew, to allow us to right-click a stack of items and use them all a single option (wouldn’t apply to items with internal cooldown, such as spy kits commonly used in dungeons).

----

Now my 2 cents to developers themselves - consider sending a strong message, by banning no less than 30’000 users overnight, most notably d/d thieves and d/d elementalists using skill rotation macros to burst the opponent in inhumanly short amount of time. Current situation gives average users a poor impression of overpowered builds and professions, intermediate users a convoluted message on the state of game balance and their own skills relative to "top dog" players in their pvp matches, and advanced players a "wildcard" which says "multi-action macros are fine, nothing is done about them, use them or don’t compete in pvp". Warning people is not enough, please take a considerate action and make a public show of it. People deserve to know whether they were beaten by a macro user or better player, just as they deserve a reassured stance that playing the game without third party aid borderline on cheating is the correct way to play the game, and correct way to compete. In another words, you don’t want your players second-guessing themselves, eroding the moral fabric of the community and feeling resentment & doubt for NOT using multi-action macros.

The moment this consumable is nerfed (for instance, by giving it internal CD), Warriors will become a liability in Fractals. This will also severely impact ranged DPS profession builds, such as SB Rangers, SB Thieves, GS Mesmers and the like. Melee being mostly not worth it outside special circumstances is yet another can of worms. Overall, having to rely on consumables and build/tactic gimmicks is a direct result of how dungeons are designed, and how individual professions fit in them.

I’ve just hit over 400 completed fractals.

For the past 10 days, I’ve dropped a single vial (on lv20+ maw, presumably a bug) and a single shard (on levels 20+). I didn’t drop a single glob despite running 10-19 dailies. I’m not using MF gear. Other people with MF gear dropped 2-3 shards on their first 20+ run, and glob drops on lower levels were noticeable over the run of a couple days.

Rares, exotic and crafting materials drop rate doesn’t seem to be out of place, even with 0 magic find I’ve no troubles making a second 250-stack of ectos, in addition to funding 2 sets of exotic gear and a bunch of transmutation stones. I don’t really farm in open PvE zones so can’t comment on these.

A suggestion, if I may have any, is to normalise the drop rate of vials, globs and shards (boost their default drop rate, and make it not affected by magic find). Magic find is tolerable when used on lower (1-19) levels to boost personal wealth, however it shouldn’t affect personal progression and success in the fractals by awarding with very quick completion of 30 agony resist, whereas others (possibly contributing more in normal exotic gear) struggle to even hit the mark past 20 AR, because they didn’t get a single ascended ring from daily and can’t find enough shards, vials and globs to naturally progress, without grinding lower levels first.

While it is true hardcore guild teams might as well run with zero AR on all levels and get-by with use of resurrection orbs on Maw and Instant Repair Kits before boss fights, I don’t believe this kind of unintended game monetisation is the answer to malfunctioning drops of these specified items, in essence a "blocking bug" over a longer period of time preventing further progress with more casual, PUG-like groups of players formed spontaneously, where AR is a requirement to join and perform.

To people from Fissure of Woe and Vabbi: do yourself a favour and join us on Ruins of Surmia, community is healthy and can sustain itself in the longer run, but it needs more people. I’m not trying to start an argument here, all I can say is that you’ll be welcomed with open arms here if you transfer.

Carring a repair kit is still far more practical. This will become of increasing nuissance as more ascended gear pieces are introduced, and required to progress in latter difficulty stages. It’s not a "learn to play" issue, neither is it "bring back backup armour noob". Elephant in the room is still there, you can’t legitimately repair your armour without cash shop shortcut. Now what’s the deal with that?

Ivonbeton.6814:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Unifying-the-FotM-playerbase/first#post779585

I’m sorry to say, but on my server LA overflow practically doesn’t exist. This is a band-aid solution only for overpopulated servers, and quirky at best. When people choose a server they take “roots” and grow a community there, don’t expect people to transfer servers just to be able to play fractals.

I’m opening this thread to discuss the effect of the november the 15th dungeon update (http://wiki.guildwar...ki/Game_updates).
I actually love the update in itself as it made many dungeons look much more appealing and enjoyable to me.
What I actually find insane here is his effect on the Arah dungeon.
I’m sure we all remember the old Arah farm where a party used to kill the 1st two bosses in Forgotten path in 4-5 mins to get dungeon tokens.
After that update, the two bosses now drop 10 silver coins each (14 with an omnomberry bar) and one Bags of Wondrous Goods each, which contains 3 dungeon tokens, a Drop of Liquid Karma (400 karma with no karma booster) and a Bag of Gold (2-3.5 silver coins).
This means that in 30 mins a party can do 7 runs, gaining 28x7 + 6x7= 2.38 gold coins, 5.6k karma (again, without considering any booster) and 42 tokens. This not including the chest the bosses spawn when killed, and the chance they have to drop a rare accessory with an exquisite jewel in it which is worth 40-50 silver coins in the tp.
The old farm was nerfed because Aned didnt like the way people were farming this dungeon, what about this?
I’m not saying this hoping they remove the update, but they should think about stopping this farm, for example removing the loot from those too bosses and adding it to the final chest.
Thoughts?

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/75606-arah-farm-is-back-just-much-worse/

I. No re-join option after DC

Dynamic IP? Check.
Network outage? Check.
Wi-Fi? Check.
Server problems? Check.
Bugs? Check.

I understand Fractals were designed on purpose without waypoints (zerg-die-res-zerg loop), introducing a system of checkpoints instead. No problems with that. However, no kind of instanced content (dungeons) should punish players for disconnecting by removing their progress and disallowing them to enter back inside.

If you believe that forced disconnects would be abused, simply spawn re-joined players at the most recent checkpoint in defeated mode. Another thing you can do is limit re-joining to once every 90 seconds (or longer, if proven necessary). That way the DCed person doesn’t lose progress, and it’s team isn’t undermined by the whole situation.

Last remark: Fractals get increasingly difficult over time, requiring more group coordination and effort. For "raid" players doing fractals daily, guild/friend network and personal reputation are everything - disconnection issues at the higher difficulty stages will inevitably lead to lots of unnecessary drama, as well as prevent future growth of it’s community by encompassing players from different demographics.

II. No repair NPC inside a fractal

This one can go both ways, depending on how Instant Repair Canister is handled in the future.

If you disable this cash shop item in Fractals, you’ll send a clear message that a dungeon group needs to be "good enough" to complete 3 (sometimes 4, with "bonus level") fractals in a row without armour repair by not dying needlessly.

If you leave things as they are, starting from tier 3 onwards (tier 2 in PUGs) Instant Repair Canisters will become part of the "competitive ball", and all players refusing to use them when their armour breaks will be promptly kicked (once re-join is in place), if not outright blacklisted for future fractal runs on higher difficulty levels.

As it is now, a good mechanic making Fractals challenging and interesting can be entirely skipped with either direct cash transfer or forced "gold sink" through gold-gem conversion. Last time I checked, cash shop items were introduced to provide convenience, aesthetics and better time management chasing the fun stuff in the game.

Sadly, gold-gem conversion and cash shop items from daily achievements are no redeeming feature here, they merely serve to blur the line between acceptable and unacceptable practices, by gaining popular support. The following leads me to believe, that fractal dungeons were actually designed with Instant Repair Canisters in mind.

Last thing this community needs is gw2’s "endgame" labelled as "pay-to-win" over forums, blogs and other media channels. We don’t want that kind of publicity. For a reality check, try a full fractal run with armour unequipped, either on the upper difficulty levels of tier 1 or tier 2/3 directly - if not outright tedious, it will prove plain impossible.

Bring less of these "events".

I wasted round 20 hours total on phase 1 and 2, till late night hours, stalking official forums, third-party event guides and gw2 wiki to find the information on when and how bugs will be fixed, as well as general directions of rather confusing event (phase 1).

I’ve been also told that I need to complete phase 1 and 2, in order to complete phase 3. This original idea (which was later scrapped) probably meant that it wasn’t feasible for the average user to complete event chains leading up to finale more than once, if at all possible (thus, no multiple-chests-per-account exploit). In retrespection, however, I’ve been lied to in this case.

On phase 3, I had appointments and couldn’t make it exactly on time. I arrived at my PC 2 hours from the event’s start, and to my horror tried to login for 30 minutes straight to game desperately, allowing the event to end practically everywhere, even on overflows.

As a rational person, I expected "multi-hour" event to last for at least few hours, but as it turns out again, population on american/global servers outweighted interests of european/african and SEA timezones, scheduling the peak concurrency time exactly at noon (12 p.m.), PST. Clearly, working people and minors of said timezones were blatantly shut down from participation in the finale, which they’ve likely worked hard to earn access to during phases 1 and 2, based on information from official channels.

Given the time & effort given to previous phases of the event which went straight to nothing, I expect nothing less than a formal apology on this debacle. No, I’m not asking for the reward chest, or punishment of people who looted the chest multiple times. That is your responsibility now, dear Anet, in terms of "damage control".

Damage has already been done - now I merely ask you, to provide a higher-quality entertainment value in the Wintersday event chain. Not for "peak concurrency users", but for all of us, with families, obligations and life outside the game, regardless of where we live and how we play the game.

One-time events are great to start and end "event chains" (such as Halloween, or Lost Shores update), but they shouldn’t be tied to in-game rewards, especially rewards of such magnitude as phase 3 of this update. In the future, please reward participation in the whole event, not "turned late and contributed nothing" crowd which jumped from server to server rolling the RNG wheel lottery to obtain a precursor.

As much as this event has been fun & great in terms of loot for those who were lucky (no DCs, no crashes, no login issues), it fostered bad blood & envy in the players, dividing community instead of bringing it together. For a community-oriented company, bent on providing best social experience in the MMO world, this should be a first warning sign: don’t antagonise, divide and fragment your community with gear progression, badly-designed special events and ill-thought cash shop products.

If in doubt, please play your own game on a normal account, without developer priviledges and "insider" knowledge of how game is structured and is most optimally played. Experiencing these issues firsthand is the only reasonable way to understand the real issues your customers have, as opposed to synthetic metrics analysed through the rose-tinted glasses of confirmation-bias and self-appraisal.

PS. This is not a personal attack, excuse my strong wording. I merely ask for acknowledgement of legitimate issues. If this is a wrong thread, please move it to general feedback thread. It’s definitely not my aim to provoke a string of negative responses and thread derailment.

I’d also like to add, that while blog post update mentioned ascended weapons (possibly available for transmutation with legendaries, hence alleviating most of my complaints from point A) of this thread), only rings & backpacks were mentioned "expressis verbis" to launch on day 1 of the update - hence the confusion on this matter, and following suggestion on legendaries.

A) Legendary weapons - stat distribution type

Legendary weapons are currently universally tied to "power (main) - toughness (secondary) - vitality (secondary)" stat distribution, and are of the exotic item quality. We can transmute them freely at will with any other exotic weapon, to get the desirable stat distribution in case "power - toughness - vitality" one isn’t to our liking.

Seeing as recent blog post on Lost Shores update didn’t shed additional light on how legendary items will work post-update, just in case I’d like to suggest: allow us to change stat distribution of our legendary items at will, either through a mystic forge recipe or special NPC service (with or without fee).

As I understand it (your willingness to add additional legendary weapons in the future), your plan is to either add differently-looking legendary weapons boasting remaining stat distribution types ("condition - toughness - precision" for instance), or allow us to get legendaries with any stat distribution regardless of their skin through additional mystic forge recipes.

To my knowledge, however, obtaining legendary weapon (even post-update) will still be a much bigger undertaking than getting individual pieces of ascended gear, and therefore it would be problematic if we had to get few variations of the same legendary weapon just to satisfy our need for different builds, which happen to thrive on different stat & trait allocation.

B) Ascended gear - stat distribution type

Ascended gear is no exotics.

If there is no way to change slot type (offensive --> defensive, defensive --> offensive) of existing ascended equipment, let alone it’s stat distribution type once we can obtain full ascended gear set down the road, this will severely limit the diversity of play at high-end game content, by funneling hardcore crowd into "single best" build type for each profession, given how getting a whole new ascended gear set for every other build would be mostly impractical.

In turn, this might lead to negative discrimination based not just on gear tier for end-game content, but also the type of build in use (which is somewhat influenced by "endless" design of fractal dungeon, culling the originality and individual character of builds in favour of cookie-cutter, tested & proven strategies).

Gear progression itself is not a problem, but if it’s not handled properly as a system, the side effects on the builds people use, or the type of content they can freely participate in without experiencing discrimination will become a focal point of criticism in the future.

Please address this problem now & reassure community that you know what you’re doing, and that this won’t impact quality of play & social experience that this game currently provides to everybody, regardless of his build or gear in any type of content.

C) End-game gear in general - available stats

Currently, certain stat combinations (such as condition-precision-toughness) are not available for jewellery (only weapons and armour). In addition, stat customisation of backpacks is severely limited (lack of stat combination types, stat combinations available only on sub-optimal quality tier e.g. masterwork).

I’d like to suggest that you either allow every stat combination on jewellery & backpack, which can currently be found on weapons & gear (including Shaman which lacks it’s exotic equivalement) OR give us a way to create our own, preferred stat combination, including those not currently available in the game ("primary-secondary-secondary" stat system).

Again, this is important for diversity and unique flavour of character customisation in the end-game. Please don’t funnel us into a single "best" stat distribution on gear and single "best" build, you should do everything that you can to promote personal expression & freedom in your character progression system put in place.

Last-words complaint.

Ascended gear comes with "in-built" upgrade, which can’t be changed. I understand that you’ve hidden one upgrade slot on purpose, for the sake of simplicity - however, this will further limit the diversity and flavour of builds in the game.

Currently, full-exotic people can mix & match different jewels on their jewellery (e.g. power-precision-crit jewel on power-precision-toughness amulet), as well as insert either runes, jewels or crests of their choice to their armour and weapons.

In the world of ascended gear, however, this kind of freedom and diversity will shrink, because first upgrade slot is outside our creative control over our character, and there is no guarantee that additional "infusion" slot will make up for it in terms of unique flavour and diversity.

@ emoleas

Can you specify your farming routine? Maps, event rotations, timing?

I’d like to understand it better, in what manner game decides whether you’re a bot farmer or normal player. Theoretically DR was introduced to combat bots. Technically, it still needs adjustment. Practically, players need a way to get around it in legitimate fashion.

Grind is in your head, people. For the post part, I can do most activities in the game relaxed, without clinging to some artificial schedule or plan. It’s a relief after day’s work. I suggest you rethink why you play games, and this one in particular if it’s not enjoyable. No need handicapping yourselves if there are more fitting titles for your time.

Fivelakes.3985:

OK fellow fanboys, gather round, there’s work to be done.

The review is long and thought out, we need a plan...

First, someone look up who wrote this and find some other reviews from them and explain how it shows the person is bias and not reliable. Second, we need people in here to nitpick his wording, really try and derail the topic. They said grind a lot, what does that even mean? Also, he mentioned WoW once or twice, lets harp on that, don’t let them get away with having played WoW. Third, keep repeating that the game just came out so we need to give it more time. Patches, there are always future patches, time is on our side. Last but not least, we need to make it clear they don’t get it like we do, and that they’re not play the game right or the way Anet intended.

Alright, now get out there and defend this company!
Goooooo Anet!

Seriously though, I have actually never seen a largely negative review before. Not that I was looking. Anyway, good read, nothing new, but then again its not new. I agreed with some of parts, not others, blah blah blah. I’m gonna go back to imagining my fanboy huddle.

I’m sorry to say, but that does sound like persecutory delusional disorder.

You believe others are ready to jump on your throat and cricitize you for criticizing the game, and then to keep up this illusion behave like a persecuted person chased by an imaginable gang of fanboys.

That is not enough, obviously, so you subconsciously stylise your post in such a manner that it will produce aggravating and hostile responses, to feed into your confirmation bias and paranoiac tendencies.

@ Kwami, that’s nonsense.

"There is no FILO system for sale orders, it’s FIFO. There was a bug with TP previously, that made it work in FILO manner at random. The game also used to erroneously prioritise smaller sale orders over bigger ones. If you still run into any of these, these are bugs and will likely get reported over and over again until they’re fixed."

My earlier post in this thread.

@ AveryFarman

I suggest using the following sites for your own benefit:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/
http://www.guildwarstrade.com/
http://gw2wiz.com/
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/

There are more, yes, but enough is enough. Information on how to improve your condition in a constructive & productive manner is readily available. It’s up to you what you do with that, and how efficient you are at acquiring wealth.

@ Cerise

There is no FILO system for sale orders, it’s FIFO. There was a bug with TP previously, that made in work in FILO manner at random. The game also used to erroneously prioritise smaller sale orders over bigger ones. If you still run into any of these, these are bugs and will likely get reported over and over again until they’re fixed.

@ Rhyno

Warrior received a lot of attention early in the game’s development, it’s also a relatively straight-forward profession with less bugs, problems or complicated mechanics that would warrant a priority bug fix once game is released. It’s not about balance.

If you ask for my personal opinion on Warrior’s balance, I want to have useful burst damage bonus from discipline tree (+1% damage for 1 trait point, not +0.1% which amounts to 3% "more damage" at 30 points in traitline). I want our bugs fixed with traits (these hamper our effectiveness atm).

I also want greatsword reworked, to make hundred blades mobile and less cheesy, something akin to Guardian’s Zealot’s Defence rather that an immobile root with 24k damage. It’s simply not interesting to play, single most important reason I don’t use greatsword on my Warrior (I run condition damage builds instead, sword/shield + rifle, longbow for manual weapon swap).

@ Geikamir

Disregard that part before, I got extremely trolled by wrong skill tooltips. On my Warrior build I don’t even run that trait very often, because there is a better alternative for 10 tactics trait (leg specialist) with what I’m running atm.

@ buki

You and me, got extremely trolled by skill tooltips. If you apply Stronger Bowstrings trait, the skill descriptions are all wrong even if the only change to skills is 300 more range. There is no "burning" on 3rd skill, there is no doubled damage on 4th, there is no change on 2nd. It’s all bogus.

@ MajorMelchett

Generally speaking, general opinions are generally useless. Be specific please.

Warriors still get a mere 3% physical damage bonus to their BURST skills with full 30 points in Discipline (which is useless on it’s own - you invest in Discipline only for traits). Our best "burst" skill isn’t even an actual BURST skill (profession mechanic, a separate skill charged by adrenaline bar), but 100B gimmick on greatsword.

If anything, other professions are scaled down to the potential of Warrior, not nerfed. Warrior remained largely unchanged because his issues (save a single broken build) are comparatively speaking least important right now. Warrior balance problems won’t be addressed until more glaring issues (like Necromancer bugs) are resolved first.

It’s not that Warrior is getting a slack, it’s simply lower in the priority queue of things-to-do. Personally, I’m yet to see fixes to our Balanced Stance, Endure Pain, Stronger Bowstrings and Crack Shot traits. One of these is cosmetic, three of these are actual bugs reducing our potential in the game.

Before HB and/or greatsword at large is addressed, I want our core functionality restored, along with more useful bonus to burst damage from the Discipline tree. It’s funny how our best physical damage burst skill (Eviscerate) deals less damage than Thief’s backstab or Pistolwhip spam even after the nerf, all the while being bloodily predictable both in timing and in execution (usually when Warrior is desperate for that tiny bit of damage more).

To the OP:

Play a Warrior. Any build that isn’t 100B full-damage spam. Competitive at that, or dungeons. There you go, no more Warrior bias ... but why would you do that, to realise you’re wrong and whined all that time for nothing? Yeah, let’s not do that and cling to a morally superior opinion of "Warrior OP, everyone else UP".

Lastly, there are many more things to contribute to a group than just damage. Damage is only 1/3rd of what you can do as a profession. Raw damage numbers and true damage over time are two different things, especially when you consider force multipliers like AoE quickness which don’t come into play unless you bring a Mesmer. Omg Mesmer OP, nerf! No, not OP. Get the bigger picture and relish it.

Then play a Warrior to experience the "supposed" Warrior bias that you advocate here, Rhyno. Play anything that isn’t 100B spam, which is a tiny percentile of available Warior builds, but which happens to smear entire profession with crap and give it bad reputation. Regardless, I just got trolled by extremely WRONG skill tooltips again in game. Duh.

Reviving people in AoE would trivialise dungeons beyond what it already was. Just because a balance update comes out, doesn’t mean every change has been verified only in the PvP environment before it’s approval. Overall, I pity the Mesmers the most.

Elementalist problem has deeper roots than just numerical skill balances, it’s about how hard it is to play with full efficiency in mind - couple that up with an extremely popular profession, and no wonder people are disappointed.

At least Engineers get away with the "underdog" status, because while they aren’t weak or nerfed (they’re pretty balanced overall, could use slight adjustments & bug fixes here or there), they aren’t very popular either (people who stick to Engineers know what they are doing).

Waar Kijk Je Naar.8713:

Demosthene.2195:

So far most "PvP-inspired" changes have been for the good in PvE, including today’s greatsword changes for the Guardian

Not for Mesmers. Phantasm recharge from 9 > 12 first, now from 12 to 20. Mesmers were already weak, and now they’re a burden to any team.

I guess I’ll figure that out today during my TA runs. Dungeon "tree" bosses updated, too. I never discriminated against based on profession, so I’m sure to get a Mesmer or two if lucky. The people I usually run into are Rangers and Necros, however, coupled up with a random Guardian or Warrior. Overall, I’m in agreement that Mesmer change wasn’t warranted for PvE - I felt they were about-right in dungeons as of late, and it’d be sad to see players quitting over this update.

I’m going to guess that you only play Guardian, because as soon as you play a class that is hit by a PvP nerf that directly affects your performance in PvE, you’ll come back to this thread and also wonder why there is no split. Things like this need to be nipped in the bud. If it goes on for too long, the consequences pile up (Again, Paragons).

I main a Warrior in PvE and WvW. In structured I play a little bit of everything, most notably Mesmers Thieves Guardians and Warriors.

So far most "PvP-inspired" changes have been for the good in PvE, including today’s greatsword changes for the Guardian - weapon is much more fluid now, making it more situational whether you should swap to another weapon set or not. Guardian’s hammer is next in line, I believe.

As for PvE/PvP split, there is actually one in place, except it’s poorly documented and not really advertised by Anet. Couple that up with poor, incomplete or misleading trait descriptions, and you’re in for a real treat in the "Omg I’m confused!" department.

I was worried already when Noobseeker was nerfed. I’m not even a Thief player but this seriously reeks of knee-jerk reaction - you nerf the key skill that makes it all work, instead of addressing source of the problem. In original GW1 at least you could throw out a nerfed/useless skill and replace it with something else, in GW2 breaking a single skill on your weapon skill bar might make a whole weapon set useless (which is what, a unique combination of 3+2 skills?).

This change alone won’t kill the Thief as profession, but it will definitely turn full-burst builds nearly useless if this trend continues. If your entire rotation depends on a once-every-45-seconds gimmick and suddenly just spiking the target down (in favourable conditions) is no longer possible (all the while your auto-attacks and staying power is completely kittened, because you traited for that SINGLE BURST out of stealth), you might as well make a balanced or condition build and forget glass cannons.

I’m not sure yet whether it’s a philosophical difference on the available build pool for Thieves on Anet’s part, or merely a quick "fix" to observe how things develop from this point forward. On an optimistic side, it would be interesting to see a greater build variety of Thieves in competitive environment thanks to this change, only later to see the nerf reversed when it’s obvious that it’s no longer warranted (e.g. meta has moved on and there are other broken Thief builds).

@ Branwin

Stat-wise, there are about 10 (not counting MF) primary types of armour/weapon, 6 types of trinkets (not counting MF). There are 2 MF armour/weapon types (power precision MF, power condition MF), 1 MF trinket type (power precision MF).

If you say "my favourite MF build", I take it that you simply focus around power & precision (berserker) or power & condition (either rampager or carrion). If you wanted to substitute stats from your MF build, you could easily do so with gear already available at the game, and even benefit from the third attribute line bonus (like crit damage on top of power & precision, or vitality on top of power & condition).

If there was no MF gear in the game, you wouldn’t feel the pressure to get it. The only unique component of your "MF build" is MF, to get more magical items from farming than other people not using it. Problem would be non-existent and no stat sacrifices would be made, if MF wasn’t introduced into the game.

Before you reply, I’ll explain my terminology - by a "build" I understand a particular combination of primary stats (power, precision, toughness etc.), traits and skills. What MF gear does, is that it’s kittening your total pool of stats, in turn giving you MF (purely an economic motivation with no effect on the "build" itself and how it works).

I hope you understand my point better, and not reply with another knee-jerk reaction. Liking MF and the benefits it provides over players that don’t use it is one thing, claiming that MF gear provides "unique build opportunities" is another (the latter is also false, and that’s the impression I got from your post).

For all I care, they could remove MF altogether and increase the global loot rate, or quality of loot. Essentially, everyone would have "MF" without kittening their build (say, you want to focus on power toughness vitality, but it’s impossible because there is no MF gear with at least two of these stats, or the build would be completely dysfunctional if MF replaced any of the attribute bonuses from it). There you have it - MF creating less incentive for varied & interesting builds.

The truth is, game would lose nothing if MF was removed. In fact, people would subconsciously gravitate towards their favourite build, instead of feeling pigeon-holed into MF set "not to stay behind in the economic game".

Personally I’ve chosen to for an unorthodox build that doesn’t have all that much AoE to farm DEs or raw damage to tag mobs quickly (no MF at all), but I’m not sure how long it will last as I’m wrapping things up, finalising my gear and slowly accumulating wealth for my legendary.

I can already complete TA explorable with half my eyes closed, and open-world content + farming is orders of magnitude easier than that, making MF the most natural choice. If anything, I’d suggest to Anet that they increase the difficulty of DEs & dungeons, provide more incentives & rewards for group play, remove MF and make it worthwhile to farm lower-level areas instead of just sticking to high-level zones farming T6 materials mostly.

MF for consumables only is equally bad, as it promotes ditching any other consumable in favour MF ones. Removing MF from all items and consumables BUT cash shop boosters encourages "pay to win" philosophy of playing the economy. In fact, their only options are either leaving things as they are, OR removing MF completely from the game.

I’d like to see a third Soldier profession:

- code-name: Lancer
- heavy armour
- medium health pool (less HP than Warrior, more than Guardian)
- overall design: focus on mobility and pressure
- profession-specific mechanic: debuffs (passive "anti-virtues" debuffing what you attack, with the ability to activate them for AoE version of debuff or other special effects)
- new weapon type: polearm
- available weapons: polearm, longbow, shortbow, MH axe, MH sword, MH mace, OH Shield, OH dagger, OH torch (2 weapon sets)

Profession itself could be thematically based around Canthan culture, with Tengu thrown in the mix (material for future game expansion).

Phaze Delta One.2834:

You couldn’t pay me to use facebook or even go on the site. So if I miss out on something, I assure you, I wont loose any sleep over it.

All’s good until your potential employer blacklists you as a candidate on the grounds of not having FB account to spy on your personal metric for the last few years. Yes, companies do buy that information, since it’s property of Facebook, not the users of the service. People from HR department where I worked on 3-week practice spilled the beans. Not all details, obviously, but enough to stir your hair.

Apparently, privacy is a theoretical concept now, that belongs to academic books. Given how nearly all communication now is either digital or long-distance through any other means, it’s no wonder government agencies and corporations value information above anything else, especially when it’s so readily available. The cynic in me, they would be pretty stupid not to make use of that to their advantage over people.

Conflict stirs from lack of communication, and the said lack is a breeding ground for ignorance, xenophobia, nationalism and racism. Like it or not, a cohesive community with a single dominant language used for communication will have far less conflicts and far more understanding for other cultures, religions and nations within the said community, than a "melting pot" of cultures which live side by side with each other, but have no means of communication. If "don’t disturb them" replaces "state your business and ask what their problem is", and "don’t talk about them" replaces "get to know them better", then we have a problem.

You can’t have a multicultural society without unified language and code of conduct, because without that most basic ground for communication and problem-solving people won’t go that extra mile to learn a foreign language, study foreign culture or preach foreign gods. Instead, they will lock themselves up in their comfortable apartments with like-minded people and avoid those who they can’t communicate with in any reasonable way.

The moral of this story is, it’s in everybody interest to pick up basic English for communication. Once communication exists, cultural exchange can begin, and the multicultural community can thrive. If successful communication is not established, it will lead to all sorts of problems that "tolerance" and "acceptance" of others were supposed to prevent - sadly, you can’t tolerate what you perceive as a threat, and you can’t accept that which you don’t understand. You can neither tolerate nor accept other people, if you can’t communicate with them in any reasonable way.

Why English? Because it happens to be the global language of the Internet. It’s not priviledged or "better" than any other language based on some intristic quality, it’s simply best-suited to establish the most basic communication. If most basic communication existed and functioned properly, this thread wouldn’t even be created. Nobody would bring up racism, bigotry or xenophobia, because these terms would be part of history, carefully archived in old, dusty books.

Forget two-handed axes, there is not enough variety in that!

Here’s some serious stuff: POLEARMS!

Why? You get your two-handed axes back, in addition to all the other goodies!

If you go mostly for damage, and consider either toughness or vitality to keep you alive during your attack sequence, go for vitality (given low HP). Toughness shines combined either with vitality or healing power, depending on whether you want to survive insane burst or have a nice staying power in prolonged fight.

Other considerations: pick your weapons first, traits second, iterate - it may be that the traits & skills you chose are better suited for a certain gear combination than the others, despite your original idea on gear customisation.

Conditions deal damage over time, and to kill your target you need time. The build you propose, trait-wise is a glass cannon, which relies too much on the element of surprise and enemy error to deal with them. I have difficulties picturing this build have any chance against defensible point defenders (warrior guardian engineer), mesmers or 2v1 ambushes.

If you want the best of both worlds, condition damage and staying power, try this cheesy build first and then customise it further as you go - http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYEQNAoYVlcmKPHdy7E+JFCXBL0TxXNWaFkpuHclWJfA;TsAg2Croay0koJbTumkNt+YEw8AA

Bad link blabla - just copy-paste it to your browser. It’s a tool for PvP builds with separate tabs for skills, traits and equipment.

If one is smart with money management, has good situational/map awareness and cooperates with organised teams of players, WvW is quite a money-maker - enough to pay the bills and get you going with siege engines. Still, don’t take it for granted because sieges are an organised effort, and sharing gold with your fellow friends/guildies + ferrying supply together is part of the game.

JemL.3501:

The only ones who think that are the kittenes which die 24/7 but they like to gain exp, karma, money and items.

How about an option for the kittenes:
remove all benefits from wvw and take away the repair cost then
or
stop dying and being bad

It would be bad because they’d still take up precious space for other players. Imo, treat everyone as equal and let them decide for themselves if WvW floats their boat or not - if not, no tragedy, this game has a lot to offer, even if many of us got it specifically for WvW.

The game’s philosophy of combat and profession design is controlled chaos. Instead of going through the motions, you constantly adapt to ever-changing situation, coordinate with your team on the fly and exploit new opportunities.

Game doesn’t punish you for playing, but for playing bad - and that comes from wrong assessment of the situation you’re in, endangering you and your team, potentially leading to failure.

Even then, game is nice enough to let you respawn and face the challenge again, having adjusted your weapons loadout, skills and traits, or even going back to town to repair equipment.

Trying to impose an arbitrary order in the game, pigeon-holing entire professions into "healers", "DPSers" or "tanks" or particular builds based on that false distinction is simply wrong.

Khristophoros.7194:

The active on Healing Signet has a casting time so it’s not even good in the builds you’re talking about. The passive is but not the active.

The active is bad. That’s the problem.

I’m talking about the skill in general, not it’s active part. Skill itself works as intended.

Defy pain is your anti-burst weapon, practically always available in WvW engagements. Esssentially, it buys you time for an evasive dodge, popping the actual defy pain or swapping weapons and entering shield stance. Same with automated balanced stance, it prevents hard CC if you let your guard slip and didn’t proc the balanced stance skill on time. These two traits combined really make a difference.

1. You work as a team
2. You are not supposed to keep yourself alive in melee range indefinitely, but switch from ranged to melee constantly and swap places with other team members on the fly
3. If you run a 5-signet greatsword build with berserker gear, you got no right to complain

You’re not really meant to activate the signet in the first place. It’s an emergency scenario, and carries high risk.

For general WvW, you want at least one ranged weapon - rifle for beginners, longbow for advanced players. Both of them work "good enough" with power builds, before you ask any silly questions like that.

For starters, get a power/toughness/vitality set, it’s compatible with any weapon choice. Healing skill: healing signet if you want to keep up pressure without stopping for heal, otherwise mending.

Utilities - some form of CC/gap closer (bolas or bull’s), remaining "must-have" picks:

- signet of stamina ("two skills in one", frequent dodging saves your butt more times than you can humanly count, you can pop the skill to remove condition spam as well - absolutely necessary utility skill if you went with healing signet instead of mending),
- fear me (to buy yourself time when you get swarmed in melee)
- endure pain (when you get badly focused)
- balanced stance (to remain effective in fight and make an escape in case it’s going badly).

Shouts are worth a go when you trait to gain health every time you cast a shout. Banners are worth a shot as well if you trait for them also. No-brainer elite is your signet, to move fast and hit hard. In team fights or during siege, consider swapping it temporarily for elite banner.

Runes and sigils of your choice.

Mainhand axe, mainhand and offhand swords, rifle, longbow - the very domain of condition damage builds. Quite a lot of diversity here.

Tip: get Sigil of Earth asap.
Tip2: high crit complements your condition damage nicely.
Tip3: you need to survive, and with default health score it’s best to go for toughness and condition removals.
Tip4: don’t listen to naysayers - try it out and see if it floats your boat first.

The time it takes you to activate a traditional heal is the time wasted, that could otherwise be spend to dish out damage in the thousands, especially with condition/precision builds that rely on frequent dodging and high defence to come up for their shortcomings in the other areas. Healing signet is just perfect for these, but mostly inferior for any other Warrior build, unless otherwise stated.

Why the distinction: pressure/condition builds lose a lot by not attacking their target even for a split second. Burst damage and control builds do not lose much by not auto-attacking their target for 2-3 seconds, if they can set up a damage spike shortly after.

Have you considered swapping sigils of blood with sigils of earth? Would be a waste not to make use of condition damage gear and nearly 100% crit rate. What I haven’t been able to pin down is whether having sigil of blood on mainhand and sigil of earth on offhand would cause the both to ’cannibalise’ each other (only one of them triggering at once). On test golems in the mists both trigger with steady weapons, but the point is how well do they synergise exactly and if there are any trade-offs. Have you been able to figure that out?

Greatsword is a low-skill weapon that is practically useless in PvP versus competent people. In PvE it lacks the control elements to tackle dungeons and be a real asset to a group, but it’s pretty darn good for cleaving easy mobs in dynamic events.

If anything, we got "nerfed" enough when our burst damage buff from discipline became practically obsolete. After that we still got nerfed on a number of our key skills, and at this point we’re probably as "balanced" as a profession can get in this game.

One-hit K.O. burst against full-damage DPS Thieves, Elementalists and other vermin USED TO be our profession-specific mechanic. We don’t have that now, our only hope is stacking vitality/toughness and packing 9-10 CC skills just to keep the damage up with enemies teleporting/leaping/stealthing all over the place. Other builds work but they’re inferior to heavy CC support we provide to our team in tournament sPvP.

If any of you still view Warrior as OP, roll one and play in tournaments. You’ll quickly realise just how obsolete greatsword is, and that the class has highest skill cap despite it’s simplicity on surface. It was like that in original game already when the very best Warrior players happened to be best players in the PvP part of the game overall.

Lol be happy I’m not a game designer, else entering WvW queue would cost 25 copper to 40 silver upfront depending on level, and all the silly crafting nodes, PvE mobs, vistas and skill points would be removed.

Queues on crowded servers are abysmal as it is, even without lazy people using WvW as "free" waypoint, "Tradepost & armour repairer on demand" or "another PvE zone to hunt mobs and collect trophies".

Thank you very much, legitimate WvW players sweating all day so YOU can enjoy server-wide benefits, will do perfectly well without you abusing WvW and making the queues even bigger than they already are.

Sir Lemming.3495:

@logg & SiNos: General lv80 Exotics have the same stat distribution, thats true. In this perspective AC and CM items are really just skins. Still illogical to me.

@Demosthene:
WvW exotics are lv 60? Thats new to me.
Well… thats not nice either. I looked forward to the promised equality where you can reach the ‘same’ gear with any game ‘mode’ you the player chooses.

I start to feel that this is an inconsistency and should be treated like that. There are absolutely no lv 80 exotics for WvW?

I was just informed that the “badges of honour” WvW merchant does indeed sell you lv 80 exotics, but they won’t become available for preview until you actually hit level 80. It’s said to require a massive amount of badges, though – which by itself is fine, because it’s something to work for and a level 80 character with fully customised traits, decked out in full rare gear has only ~4% less total attribute points than the same character decked out in exotic gear instead.

Warrior (when properly built) is very resilient to all forms of CC and can become nearly invulnerable for a set period of time (trait with automatic "endure pain" <25%hp, endure pain and balanced stance skills, shield stance on shield offhand - roughly 13 seconds of invulnerability in a row). Overall, Warrior is better-suited to survive sudden bursts of damage and CC/stun locks.

Guardian deals much better with continuous pressure, through application of blind to it’s attackers, passive and active regen skills, block/pushback/projectile defence skills and similar. Overall, though, Guardian shines at protecting others - his potential to shrug off consecutive bursts or CC/stun bombs aimed at him is much lower.

Both "Soldier" professions (Warrior and Guardian) are vulnerable to prolonged condition spam, even if they’re specifically built around removing conditions.

Necromancer is pretty squishy unless built with high toughness in mind, his high HP pool combined with condition manipulation and various CC skills allows him to outlast his enemies, however, in a prolonged fight, and generally turns all forms of conditions thrown at him a futile effort, if he times his skills right. He is vulnerable to continuous physical damage pressure and stun/CC locks, however.

Elementalist, when heavily invested in the Earth attunement and Arcane talents, is pretty durable against all forms of direct damage, while dishing it out with continuous bleeding stacks. Usually Earth attunement is paired up with some investment in the Fire spells, to maximise the potential of condition damage and spread more AoE spells. His bane regardless of build is condition damage and stun/CC locks.

I could write more, but as you’ll find out every profession has something up it’s sleeve - Thief for instance, on a dagger/dagger set can constantly vanish in stealth or enter the "evade" animation through death blossom, becoming invulnerable to all kinds of damage, making an otherwise squishy profession surprisingly dense and durable, ofter outlasting it’s opponents.

Every child is different. When I was 4-5 I was intelligent enough to beat the campaigns of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, mind you a strategy game that required you to put forward a plan and execute it, or reevaluate it if it didn’t work.

I’ve also played the original Civilisation game at the time, passively learning English language and getting a grasp of the world that was a bit more interactive than a TV documentary or a book.

So yeah, while games definitely aren’t a good substitute for books, movies, sports or recreation, they make for a great complementary medium if the parents are actually involved in the process, instead of treating computer games as the convenient spacegoat for their own failure in parenting their children.

9. Don’t delete your first character without first sending your backpack,goggles to your new char

Could someone elaborate? I’m not much of a PvE player, I’m merely building my toon for WvW at the moment.

Don’t quote me on this, but I believe the official response was to report for offensive name, since guild tag and guild name are checked as well in the process.

In PvP lobby, there are practice golems, and AI bots to fight with. Steady weapons are good for proccing "% chance on crit" weapon sigils, runes and traits, because you deal very low damage and can test their effects clearly, without being distracted or killing the practice target prematurely. It’s also good for testing damage-over-time conditions in general.