Guild Wars 2

Harrier.9380:

I completely agree with most of you. The only problem is, you guys think in 1v1, while that was not the case in my post. Yes, Heartseeker spammers are easy to counter 1v1. Not so much however, when they’re in a pack. If 3-4 of those focus you, there is very little you can do to survive. They don’t even need to use Haste. I realize it’s not the case in tPvP, but quite common sight in 8v8.

And yes, I do agree that Quickness is one of, if not the biggest balance issue at the moment, be it S/P Thief, GS Warrior or SB Ranger. It needs to be toned down, and the PW change I suggested is supposed to go along with, not instead of Quickness nerf.

Problem I see with Pistol Whip is exactly as ClockworkOrange said. Without Haste it’s borderline useless, as everyone can dodge out of it after 0.5 second. You’ve just used 5 initiative to do 2k damage and can either break animation or spend the rest of it rooted, hitting the air.
That’s why I think removing the daze and making it usable on the move would balance the skill out nicely, making it actually useful without the Haste. Enemies would still be able to evade it, but there will be actually a chance to get all hits in.

Harrier that ruins half of the use of pistol whip. Half of a GOOD use of pistol whip is interrupting a skill and then following through with damage.

I have shadow stepped into a warrior who just bull’s charged a teammate, and interrupted 100b, saving my teammate while also doing a substantial amount of damage to the warrior before they rolled away, wasting the warrior’s cooldown.

Sword/Pistol is almost 100% based around control. Decent damage is only a bonus. Everything else is control. Weakness and cripple, daze and stun, blindness.

Besides it would be incredibly imbalanced if we could move around while doing pistol whip, they’d have to junk the damage and totally ruin the skill.

maybe they’re debating whether they should be rares or exotics.

I think exotics would be fair, but a lot of the people coming from WoW would think that’s “free epics” or ’welfare epics" and would complain about it and want only rares.

Let’s put it this way, I have an exotic weapon already, I don’t want to blow a transmute stone to be able to use a campaign finale reward.

Just like tier 3 cultural armor needs to be exotics rather than rares.

I disagree with Jeffrey on some things but I really seriously do appreciate the level of communication and 2 way dialogue that he and Bobby do here in this subforum.

Pyska.1457:

Guess i’ll wait and see if they change anything before i finish. Still amazed that they did it this way. Should at least get one exotic for all the work done and something your class can use, that’s not really asking for too much.

I’m wondering… there’s a section of weapons in the PVP locker called “pact” weapons that we can’t find anywhere in PVE ..

I’m hoping that the end game reward would be an exotic Pact weapon of our choosing (using a token system like in GW1). Make the weapons account bound so that if you really want you can hook up an alt with a second pact weapon say you’re dual wielding.

It would be fitting and satisfying for the campaign.

Possibly., I’m just saying that figure because it’s what I remember from GW1.

Roland Falantyr.3290:

lollie.5816:

gorgewall.4901:

it’s the Oceanics that throw it off..

Then their server has a weak NA team and a strong Oceanic team. Nothing more to be said.

Should’ve had separate servers. Why should we all suffer crappy matches because ANET made such a mistake? Don’t worry though. This game will be ruined if you all get your way and this isn’t fixed.

Reference SWTOR for self-righteous idealistic dev team telling the customers that their concerns are invalid.

Oceanic population isn’t large enough to have a robust WvW circuit. You’d not have enough servers to rotate enough.

Though with the way things are going, matchups are pretty static. Henge and Stormbluff Isle apparently team up to maintain the #1 and #2 spots, and so only #3 and #4 are rotating here at the top.

It’d shake things up if the #2 and #3 servers went after the #1 server, I don’t know why Stormbluff is content with being Cal Naughton Jr. while Henge is being Ricky Bobby, but hey, shake n bake right?

romsea.8539:

Could we stop this NA vs Oceanic vs EU bs, i think everyone got that the game is global by now (well almost everyone).
Let’s start discussing some good addition to the game instead.

So, region lock: limited access to the game is not a solution imo.

the more pve stuff
Buffing npc to the defender number: bad, people would immediatly rely on this to have low pc defense. doesn’t take into account a 2v1 situation
buffing npc to general population ratio: hard to balance, anyway buffing npc to the point that they can hold a zerg is not fun.

score fix:
Slower tic: doesn’t change anything
Score by pk: encourage low tactics and zerg vs zerg
change function of the time: possibly the worst solution people came up with, i’m not even going to state why
Change in population ratio: impossible to balance given that people come and go, doesn’t take into account a 2v1

Now to the good stuff imo:
Added limited high defense option to defender: good, can benefit to everyone, can come in various ways (thanks to Sharpclaw, no quote)
Better reward while defending/losing: good, benefits to everyone. (by Mr JP)
“Safe” acces to a tower/supply from borderlands: good, benefits to everyone (Mr JP)

Come on guys, i know you can do it

The ONLY fix is for every server to have a substantial amount of both NA and Oceanic players.

It is the only way to do it, that means, no “unofficial oceanic server” that means, spread out, and get some NA guilds on those past “unofficial oceanic server”s

This is a community issue. No amount of coding is going to fix 10 years of an ingrained mindset that the oceanic community needs to claim a server or two exclusively for themselves. it works in other games, it is not good for this one.

Cloud.7613:

Devildoc.6721:

@lollie and Cloud, since quoting always seems to be broken.

I am not saying you’re second class citizens. I’m saying that the mindset you have from other MMO’s is counterproductive here.

On most other MMO’s, oceanic people all being on one server means you have people to play with, both PVE and PVP, as it’s faction vs faction, not server vs server.

But this server vs server setup makes that all fall apart. You don’t have people to fight against if the majority of you are concentrated on one server.

Is that not excruciatingly boring to just roll the map uncontested?

Wouldn’t it be better if there wasn’t just a handfull of oceanic guilds on every server, just enough to put 100 oceanic players on each map on every server every night. Then your server would have 24 hour a day presence. Not only would you have people to fight against, but your server wouldn’t lose everything while YOU were asleep because you tried to chase NA players OFF your server (which DOES happen.. SWTOR I got called a vulgar term for female reproductive organs and told to move off the server my guild got assigned to because Oceanic players were “claiming” my server for themselves)

This means all the severs would have 24/7 presence.

Wouldn’t this be better than having 1-2 servers have the entire oceanic presence and lacking in NA presence meaning you roll the map uncontested when you play and lose the map uncontested while you sleep?

Broken? lol, you can’t be serious if you’ve read all my posts you’d understand that I want this to change, but at this rate, Sea of Sorrows(The one I’m on) Has action 24/7, just because players sleep, doesn’t make the Oceanic population anywhere near the NA population. Please look where I’m coming from before you include me in anything. Give an Oceanic player a reason to move, Because at this point, we already have action whenever we choose.

Yeah the quoting link on the forums is broken half the time only option I have sometimes is the perma link chain which doesn’t quote people in my reply.

Anyway, you’re still not getting it, yeah, SoS has 24/7 activity, but the servers you’re put up against, you know, the ones complaining about night capping, do not.

IE you have very few people to fight during your prime time, because most oceanic players are on Henge, Sea of Sorrows, and I think Isle of Janthir or was it Stormbluff Isle?

When you’re pit against a server that doesn’t have a significant oceanic population, you steamroll the map without competition. You fight NPCs.

What are you asking? For Americans to suddenly all switch to night shift?

Spread out, improve WvW for everyone.

bwillb.2165:

Did you miss the part where Heartseeker was already nerfed in the exact respect that you’re trying to nerf it even further? Even before the nerf spamming it wasn’t effective against good players, and currently it’s not even that effective against bad players. Trying to nerf it further just proves that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Pistol Whip is fine as is as well.

The ONLY problem that needs addressed here is haste. And that’s not just haste, it’s the quickness effect in general that needs a game-wide nerf. It’s currently a 100% IAS boost that can’t be removed. Cut it down to 50% boost, make it a boon, problem solved.

Make it 33% like the top IAS in GW1, and then you don’t have to stack so many negatives with it and can give it out more as a boon.

Saw an Asura Guardian named “Nye Invincible” yesterday. Just think of all the ways a guardian has to get protection.

“I’M NYE INVINCIBLE!”

yes I know it’s really Nigh, but the effect was still there.

Pistol Whip is fine as is, it’s already been nerfed. There’s a cast time before the stun that didn’t used to be there forcing you to immobilize before using it pretty much, players can also easily dodge out of it after the stun wears off, missing most of the damage.

It’s very easy to counter and a good opponent will break stun right after they see haste. I don’t even use haste anymore on my S/P thief because it’s so easy to counter. I can only use PW against well, bad players or downed players because it’s faster and more likely to be lethal than doing the finishing animation. Instead I use rage sigils and the critical strikes trait, and I do my pistol whips when one of those procs otherwise, then it’s more of a surprise. People don’t see an animation to recognize quickness there. It’s just SURPRISE MOTHERKITTEN! Not reliable, but fun when it happens.

It’s great in WvW where you do have bad players who will not react fast enough to not get slaughtered by it. Against skilled opponents… it’s dicey at best.

Not only will skilled opponents recognize you using haste and then break out… they will also know you can’t dodge for 5s and have free reign to beat the bejeebus out of you.

Vexus.5423:

Using Daze into a Pistol Whip, is like having free half-second Basilisk Venom every time you are skilled enough to pull it off. They cannot move, or use any skills, and have to eat damage a little bit. Combined with an Immobilize, it turns into a 2 second Basilisk Venom where you get all your damage into that target with absolutely no recourse during the Daze. Good players will escape your burst. They will wait for Haste before using their stun breaker. They will eat the normal PW’s first couple attacks and dodge out. It’s meant for high level gameplay yo!

they can move and even dodge while dazed, and that’s the thing that mitigates the damage, not breaking out of the stun.

Chakuna.6325:

Devildoc.6721:

If you’re using Thieves for a condition damage class you’re kind of doing it wrong.

fyp

I’m seeing too many posts about the SB being a condition weapon for a thief; 3 stacks of bleeding and poison damage? lol… Choking Gas is primarily meant for healing reduction and weakness, the condition damage is just a bonus, and Cluster Bomb is primarily meant for AoE direct damage, again, the condition damage is just a bonus.

Obviously Pistol MH and Unload need a revamp, just using Trick Shot out performs Unload atm and it has no initiative cost, cast time and it’s an AoE type auto-attack.

Imo they should give P/x a kiting/evasive direct damage play-style.
Give Vital Shot Vulnerability.
Give Sneak Attack more direct damage, Confusion and or Cripple/Chill, something other than condition damage.
Give Unload Cripple or Chill, same, if not more damage, it’s extremely lackluster atm
Get rid of Body Shot and give us something creative and relative to this play-style.

Shortbow’s direct damage is abyssmal, and no it doesn’t outperform pistols on a single target. Pistol autoattack actually does more damage than trick shot when the bleed is factored in and unload does as much damage as 2 cluster bombs and doesn’t have the long flight time.

Pistol has good damage aside from requiring bleeds to maximize it, what it’s lacking is mobility and the ability to effectively kite, and the skill that stacks vulnerability is a waste of initiative. That’s why I said sneak attack and unload stack vulnerability instead, and the #2 becomes a cripple. I won’t waste 2 initiative to put on a vulnerability for 5s, but I will use 2 initiative to cripple for 5s.

So your intent is that the fight is a DPS race and that the player should never take damage or it’s intended that the player loses if the player gains aggro?

IF that is the intent. Perhaps give a little more time between the AOE trash and the harpie spawn, to give time to swap equipment out of combat, remembering that an elementalist and engineer cannot swap weapons in combat.

If you’re using dual pistols for a condition damage build you’re kind of doing it wrong.

signet of earth, mist form, signet of air (was trying to keep ahead of him so I didn’t have to dodge melee attacks (unfortunately that doesn’t impact strafing speed). Remember it’s a level 14 quest, so you can’t expect people to have all of the utility skills unlocked.

I’d just gotten the trait for arcane shield at 25% health, I probably could have slotted that since it IS several separate hits and not 1 big one hit ko. But again, this is a level 14 quest, for people doing it on level that would not be an option.

Oh, one other thing I should mention, the first part of the quest features a ton of weak destroyer mobs, IE, aoe fodder. That’s the reason I was using staff rather than a scepter which I’d normally use against a tough boss (focus provides more tools to deal with ranged attacks)

So I deal with aoe fodder first, and then right after I’m fighting a veteran than can 1 shot me.

Not good when you can’t swap weapons.

It’s comparable to the effort put into a GW1 campaign, and GW1 campaigns rewarded top of the line unique items with maxed stats.

Guild Wars hasn’t been about grinding your way to top gear, gear with equivalent stats to the best of the best was always easy/cheap to get.

It’s also a comparable effort to completing 400 of a crafting profession.

Magoslich.6857:

Try using daggers instead for more burst? I haven’t done this fight so I dunno how hard it is but if its a race against time then staff might not be doing it. Eles do have lower base health and toughness and I wonder if that might be a factor.

Are you using the healing skills from water with staff?

Yup, I threw both heals on the NPC to try to buy more time, I think I had him down to 1/3 before I started having to kite, I dodged 2 fireballs, reflected a third, and then got 1 shot by the 4th.

I don’t like using the daggers in PVE due to the fact that they have about 0 defensive capabilities.

@lollie and Cloud, since quoting always seems to be broken.

I am not saying you’re second class citizens. I’m saying that the mindset you have from other MMO’s is counterproductive here.

On most other MMO’s, oceanic people all being on one server means you have people to play with, both PVE and PVP, as it’s faction vs faction, not server vs server.

But this server vs server setup makes that all fall apart. You don’t have people to fight against if the majority of you are concentrated on one server.

Is that not excruciatingly boring to just roll the map uncontested?

Wouldn’t it be better if there wasn’t just a handfull of oceanic guilds on every server, just enough to put 100 oceanic players on each map on every server every night. Then your server would have 24 hour a day presence. Not only would you have people to fight against, but your server wouldn’t lose everything while YOU were asleep because you tried to chase NA players OFF your server (which DOES happen.. SWTOR I got called a vulgar term for female reproductive organs and told to move off the server my guild got assigned to because Oceanic players were “claiming” my server for themselves)

This means all the severs would have 24/7 presence.

Wouldn’t this be better than having 1-2 servers have the entire oceanic presence and lacking in NA presence meaning you roll the map uncontested when you play and lose the map uncontested while you sleep?

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Let Zott absorb the fireball opening. I did this in one try with a thief without being downed or kiting.

He was dead. He doesn’t last very long.

I would get the harpy down to about half health before the NPC was laying on the ground and the harpy was after me throwing fireballs.

gained to level 20, got new gear, new jewelry, new weapons, slotted signet of earth for more toughness, and mist form.

Tried again.

still got downed in 1 hit by it once I ran out of tricks to avoid the damage.

managed to get it low enough by that point that i could finish the thing off while downed but seriously, that barrage needs to get toned down. Make it all 1 hit so that it can be mitigated by blindness or a block, make the barrage spread out over a large area but only 1 fireball per area so you aren’t hit so many times at once, something please.

seriously talking about finishing a mob off is censored?

The veteran destroyer harpy 1 shot kills on every single attack from ranged.

The fireball appears to hit several times at once, called fiery barrage.

This skill can go off faster than your endurance can regenerate.

This is from my combat log, I ran out of endurance to dodge, tried blinding the mob, and was still instagibbed by the next fireball.

Not cool.

Let’s be realistic with the difficulty Jeffrey.

Even tried it again with magnetic aura, still not enough.

One hit kills are stupid.

Vexus.5423:

There are skills called “stun breakers” which allow a good player to escape from a stun easily. For a Thief, it could be Withdraw, Shadowstep, Roll for Initiative, Infiltrator’s Strike (I believe this works too), probably more. Each class has some stun breaking mechanic.

Daze has no such thing, it simply prevents the guy from doing any skills for the duration. Very powerful in the right hands.

Let’s break it down for the new guys:
- Immobilize: Character is unable to move or dodge. Current action is not interrupted. Can use skills, can teleport, can attack, can go Stealth, can go into defensive forms, can pop defensive skills, can be broken with Steal, can be broken with Stun removal skills.
- Stun: Character is interrupted, unable to move, unable to use some skills. Cannot use weapons to attack, cannot dodge. Can use certain escape utilities or stun breakers.
- Daze: Character is interrupted, unable to use any skills for the entire duration. Can move and dodge normally.

You can see how Immobilize is good for slowing a fleeing target, Stun is useful for keeping someone in place while you bash on them forcing their stun breaker to be used, and Daze is useful for preventing your enemy from doing anything for a while, as well as interrupting their abilities, triggering a long internal cooldown for a skill being interrupted.

4s Mace Daze off Guardians is awesome, and you hit them with that before stomping them to prevent their knockback.

most people’s stun removals are on long enough cooldowns that they really don’t become much of an issue.

Vexus.5423:

Daze is not well understood by normal players. It shuts down the use of all skills for the duration. So if you Stealth, apply Devourer Venom, Tactical Strike with Daze, and then Pistol Whip (maybe even haste?) you have a completely helpless player for half the time there. Or just use it for the Daze. 2 seconds where the enemy can move but not cast anything is so powerful. The ability itself seems to revolve around denying the enemy attacks. You get a single denied attack – the Blind – if you’re bad and hit in the front. You get 2 seconds of no incoming damage from that player if you are good and Daze him. In a stand-off kind of fight against good players, this can be used to great effect. It’s not as ‘sexy’ as big numbers from Backstab or the Pistol stealth skills, but it’s very tactical in use, thus the name.

Stack it with another friend’s Daze on the same target and come on.

All skills look ‘just OK’ solo. Combine with others for amazing effects.

Pistol whip stuns which means no movement OR actions..

Now the 4s mace daze? That’s good, that’s long enough for more than just a pistol whip.

But 2s daze.. well what am I going to do with it with a S/P setup? if I follow up with stunning them.. why did I daze them in the first place… they’re stunned.

All 4 of the S/P skills deal with control: immobilize, stun, daze, and blind.

It just seems redundant to have the stealth skill do something I can already do out of stealth, If I need to interrupt I headshot or pistolwhip depending on range. Only reason the mace daze is so useful is because it has a really long duration for this game. Otherwise I’d just assume pistol whip them.

That’s why I’d rather tactical strike for s/p be something we can’t normally do, like rip a boon off.

you have shortbow for ranged condition damage and honestly more utility.

Direct Damage thieves don’t have a good ranged option. They have the slow whittling down of shortbow, or unload spam which has extremely limited kiting ability (only via a trait)

The key thing is, “night time” active players, you know mostly oceanic players, need to spread out amongst the servers. The problem is they have this mentality carried over from other MMO’s where they need an “unofficial oceanic server” where they all bunch up on.

This is a community issue and the oceanic community needs to discuss this.

Decide for themselves… is it really that fun to roll the map virtually uncontested during their prime time when north american players are sleeping?

So while most sword thieves don’t use a lot of stealth anyway, the sword stealth skill needs some work.

It’s just an auto attack with blindness or daze applied to it depending on position.

Now this could be useful for Sword/Dagger thieves who don’t have a stun, don’t have a daze, and don’t have a blind.

But for Sword/Pistol thieves? The skill is worthless. I will daze an opponent… and then end up stunning them anyway… what was the point of the daze? So that I could auto attack them without them attacking back? I also have a blind, what’s the use of the blind from tactical strike?

I just can’t fit it into any situation unless I’m dead out of initiative.

IMO sword/dagger thieves should have the current tactical strike, but sword/pistol thieves need something else. Maybe sword/pistol thieves’ stealth skill should remove a boon, instead?

That way sword/dagger thieves gain something sword/pistol thieves normally have when they stealth, and sword/pistol thieves gain something sword/dagger thieves normally have when they stealth.

It’s set up so that both condition thieves and power thieves have options.

A power thief could go dagger/dagger, dagger/pistol, or sword/pistol (I don’t really consider sword/dagger an option) for melee, and pistol/pistol for range, that’s supposed to be the way it works anyway, but pistol/pistol needs work (mainly body shot, and head shot imo) You can kind of go shortbow for range, but shortbow direct damage is pretty weak.

A condition thief can go dagger/dagger for melee and pistol/dagger or shortbow for range.

If you switch and make dagger/dagger purely a direct damage setup, condition thieves have no melee swap.

If you make pistol/pistol purely a condition setup… power thieves have just awful ranged damage.

If anything, I’d work on pistol mainhand as a power ranged weapon, removing the bleed from the auto attack/sneak attack (adding the damage in as direct damage), hell, rename the vital shot to body shot, then change body shot to leg shot, and giving it a cripple (changing the ankle shots trait perhaps to something else). Give unload 3 stacks of vulnerability for 5s, head shot just plain needs to do more damage, yes I know it’s an interrupt but it’s just stupid that I’m shooting someone in the head yet it’s the lowest damage I can possibly do. The sneak attack can stack vuln instead of bleed.

I’m fine with explorable modes being hard, they are supposed to replace raids in other MMO’s.

I’m mostly concerned with the reward in them, the few times I’ve done explorables I’ve been disappointed with the rewards for all that banging your head on the wall. I know tokens were increased, but that still leaves the fatal flaw of explorable dungeon rewards: What if you don’t want the dungeon skin? You’ve designed dungeons to be run by highly organized guild groups… and yet in a lot of guilds you’re not going to find 5 people who all want to run the dungeon multiple times for the skins. You’ll have 1 or 2 people that want the skin dragging 3-4 people along with them and basically wasting their time and giving them repair bills until you have the instance on farm.

THAT SAID… I think story modes are across the board, overtuned, especially on level.

Story mode should be designed around your under geared PuGs, but Bosses are still 1 and 2 shotting people.

1 example I can say for specific is the final boss of Honor of the Waves Story Mode… his flock of seagulls attack pretty much downed the target in the group whenever he used it, and you couldn’t dodge all of it, you’d evade a few of the birds but still end up downed every time he turned and used it on you.

Story mode should be pretty easy, if the rewards need to be pushed back, so be it, but almost across the board they felt overtuned for what they were intended to be, for casuals while they were leveling up.

Charrlatan, Level 80 Ash Legion thief on Jade Quarry

what DO these trophy items do anyway.. are they found in your home instance?

It’s just a buzzkill to have quality of life impacted on both ends. It can be tedious to farm what you need for gear or advancing crafting professions and at the same time, just playing normally is impacted by all the broken events and skillpoints.

It’s as if Arenanet WANTS us to stop playing.

Case in point, sometimes I go up to frostgorge to see if the dragon event is up.

I ask if anyone has the spawn time. If I’m like an hour away from spawn, I stick around and farm trolls, as I still need some berserker gear, or I might craft some berserker gear to sell.

20 minutes in, you know, not even a full magic find boost, your drops fall off.

then to really kick you in the crotch, spin you around kick you in the butt and leave you in the mud, the claw of jormag event is broken.

One thing I hope Anet considers as far as their fairly strict naming policy..

Using a celebrity or historical figure or copyrighted fictional character’s name or intentionally mispelling it in a way that’s not a parody might be something that has to get changed…

but I hope that PARODY names that took some wit to come up with are let slide. It is fair use if it’s a parody.

A Human named Clint Eastwood might have to get changed (liability and all that)

But a Charr named Clint Beastwood? I really hope that can stay.

I kinda prefer the way it is. Dragons have a high amount of loot (potentially anyway) and if they’re farmed too often that would be bad.

Also here’s the thing.

Everything loses its fun with repetition.

In Skyrim, my first few dragon fights were a lot of fun and exciting.

But after awhile, it got to where I was literally fighting a dragon every time I fast travelled.

That kills excitement.

It goes from “OH SNAP A DRAGON!” to “Sigh… ANOTHER Dragon? I just killed one 5 minutes ago”

Seriously. People farming for drops or even farming a particular dungeon don’t impact the player bases’ play experience hardly at all if at all. Unless they’re botting, they’re actively participating and playing the game. So what they make a little more profit than you intended.

Know what impacts FAR more people’s play experiences? The at least 1-2 broken skill points per map, and as many if not more broken events.

They never get fixed, they only get reset on update days. Claw of Jormag, broken, Melandru temple, broken, dozens of skill points broken. Personal story quests broken.

Yet here you are finding a way each patch to nerf some farming method.

I’d rather people be able to farm drops until their eyeballs pop out of their sockets, it’ll have some effect on the economy but it’ll likely be in the favor of the buyer, that is to say, the casual gamers who make up the majority of your playerbase I’m sure. But hey, at least people could complete maps, participate in events, and finish their stories.

shingui.4197:

I think, one of the things that is really needed, is an F2 ‘scorpion wire’ type ability, that steals from range.
Easily implemented i would think: the player throws a wire to the enemy and the player gets the stolen item (think of it like a grappling hook in zelda games).

aside from that, i do believe thief could do with some more class based utility skills. Perhaps removing shadowstep from sword and the utility skill, and then replace it with a universal shadowstep/return skill? with a longer cooldown probably to compensate.

No, keep infiltrator’s strike. It’s one of the only decent condition removals we have..

Icarus Pherae.4680:

abbadon was most likely for the gw1 nightfall antagonist.

I came up with a nice guild name I think someone should take. The Skrittsburgh Stealers, just give props where they are due haha

That would be a good one, it’s like 3 puns in one.

Looks like the guild has already been made, I want an invite!

Jack of Tears.9458:

So, Devildog, your response to his effetus whining was to whine yourself?

Good job.

Now, when we come back down to reality, both RP names and funny Pun names take time to come up with if the person is putting any thought or time into them. I can come up with a handful of stupid puns easy as I can a handful of random sounding names … doing neither one makes you better.

To people who appreciate creative, punny names and come ready to have fun with that, then those names are great. Honestly – as a long time roleplayer – I can say that some of the rp crowd really need to lighten up … if you don’t like the Sylvari “Roamin Noodle”, because it breaks your immersion, don’t try to rp with her. Chances are she didn’t come in planning to rp … though maybe, just maybe if you take a chance and reach out and try … maybe you’ll convert her and she’ll want to roleplay. Or maybe she’ll be a great person OOC and you’ll be better for having met her.

Those people who love Racially Appropriate RP names will appreciate those names allot more than people who don’t care. It’s those people the names are picked to relate to and impress – they’re the target audience, not the guy or girl what hates rpers. Though I think anyone can appreciate a genuinely good name. For these people the act of making a name isn’t a ten second verbal spill … they probably do mean something, fit some image, convey the impression they want without having to even talk. Their nametag is the first thing that sells them to other rpers, afterall.

And I can guarantee nobody else has my name; it may not be “the best”, but it is exactly her.

There’s no reason this thread has to, or even should, become some kind of masculine Name Wagging contest … you were both out of line.

Of course nobody else has your name.

Names are unique across the entire game.

Even Xxx Sephiroth Xxx is unique in this game.

Dunno how you have 15k health in full berserker’s and ruby equipment. It’d be more like 13k.

bwillb.2165:

Sold.2173:

Just want to say Thank you to Arenanet. By not giving us free excotics/epics/whatever, your making people work for their gear. By not having high quality items rain out of the sky for every crybaby thats playing gw2, your letting people that leveled crafting to 400 benefit from having done it.

Thank you, arenanet, for not babying me with free gear. I love you guys.

Doing the entire personal story is a hell of a lot more work than leveling a crafting profession to 400.

Considering the difficulty of some personal story quests, I’d agree. Crafting is just grinding, personal story quests will kill you several times, hell, it might kill you so much that you have to quit them to repair and come back later.

Not to mention finishing in a dungeon.

It’s not a silver platter.

It’s equivalent to the work required to get max stat greens at the end of GW1 campaigns at least.

Pirlipat.2479:

What would you want as a reward, considering that this dungeon is the ultimate challenge and that you can’t use any gear you got there in PVP?

The key thing is, the skins are not universally appealing, so you need to make it worth people’s while if they aren’t going after the skin.

I suggest more coin and the ability to buy ectos and lodestones from the dungeon vendors, which you can sell or use in crafting.

People ran Domain of Anguish for 4 years. People ran Underworld and Fissure of Woe for 7 years. They never gave any statistically better gear than you could get anywhere else.

Domain of Anguish gave gemstones which were high value trading items or they could be collected for Tormented weapons (which could be dedicated in the hall of monuments), and Underworld/Fissure of Woe got you obsidian shards and globs of ectoplasm, used in crafting obsidian armor sets (in Fissure of Woe) that could be dedicated in the hall of monuments, and they were also high value trading items.

You could sell tormented weapons or the armbraces that were exchanged to get them to other people..

So yeah, people ran these high end areas for dosh, even if they didn’t want the skins.

Dungeons right now, you only run if you want the skins.

jstarnes.2716:

I’m more looking at does a power/precision/cond damage build make sense for a thief? I’m looking for a DPS character but thinking gear with those 3 stats might lack survivability

That’d be the rampager set if it’s crafted, but I believe some dungeon sets also have that stat matchup.

It’s currently what I use, due to the nature of our ranged weapons requiring some condition damage to be effective and IMO, thieves can’t take a hit even if they’re fully stacked with toughness and vitality.

Thieves rely on mobility, a little bit more dodging than other classes (with acrobatics), and blindness to survive.

Unfortunately blindness is terrible against champions.

Another setup a lot of thieves use that is also a glass cannon set is berserkers. Highest crit damage, however you won’t benefit from the bleeds and poison on shortbow, venoms, or pistols.

The stat mix I’m actually shooting for at the moment is rampager’s armor and coral jewelry, with a berserker’s sword and pistol as 1 set and rampagers shortbow (or dual rampager pistols) as off set, divinity runes (more crit damage and such), and here’s the thing where it gets a little weird… replacing the exquisite coral gems in my jewelry with exquisite beryl gems.

The result is a mix that gives me yes, 30% less crit damage than full berserker’s but 33% more damage from conditions, a little bit more crit chance (about 57-60% crit chance), and +1000 health over full berserker’s.

Something I’m going to try anyway.

Garenthal.1480:

Devildoc.6721:

Evil Neato.2470:

For me, the worst part of the Human and Norn stories is that the main characters just feel like total do-gooder wusses. There is no “renegade” sort of route. Even if you choose something like Street Rat and Ferocious, you’re some happy pleasant do-gooder. It just feels bad.

I remember this one Norn story where I actually listened to a guy threaten to kill me that had killed a bunch of people in some cave, and then told him some sappy heroic do-gooder line about how I wasn’t going to kill him or some nonsense.

I just really miss traditional RPG story telling where you can actually have that “bad a__” (p.s. someone wanna tell me why ‘bad’ + a 3 letter word for donkey is censored?) kind of feel to a character if you want to go that route, rather than being locked into a total do-gooder no matter what you choose. It just feels like even if there are 3 options, right now all they really do is say something a different way without any real effect.

Charr is a LITTLE bit better about that. It’s never about being a hero or a good guy, it’s about doing your duty.

‘Duty’ is something that should apply heavily to humans as well, though for some strange reason the charr have shifted from being one thing to something completely different and thus humans are shoved into the boring trope of being the eternal victims who love Queen Jennah.

Well duty is a little different when you’re in the military, which Charr are ALL military.

Humans are all civilians.

They may have a “civic duty” to their queen but that USUALLY isn’t so rigidly defined beyond paying your taxes. The fact that the queen asks private citizens to do duties is a little wonky, to be honest.

Charr receiving orders to go here and do this.. totally fits in that they do what they’re ordered to do, they’re soldiers. You do your duty or military discipline falls apart, and without discipline the entire military collapses.

So when you get ordered to go arrest your own father, you go and arrest your own father.

You’re not doing “the right thing” all the time in that situation, and you’re not always a hero.

It isn’t “free” epics for one, and GW, and GW2 aren’t about having to do raids for comparable gear. All exotics (and legendaries) are statistically the same, intentionally. They have to complete their entire PS campaign to get it, including a dungeon run, so.. 1 level 80 exotic weapon seems fair payout for it.

obviously such a system wouldn’t be in place soon, it’ll probably take a year.. but I seriously hope Anet considers it.

My Ash Legion Thief, Charrlatan, has a rogue’s silver tongue. He learned swindling people openly with a little charisma is just as effective as rifling their pockets and is much more sly than violence. It takes some real skill to convince people that they REALLY want what you want.

The best part.. they don’t expect a Charr to be a smooth talker, they expect direct and aggressive. By the time they realize they just got hustled big time by a Charr, he’s long gone.

CaveSalamander.9150:

How abouts pet names?

I like my Rich Gold Vein raven. I’ve also seen a Lawn Moa, a spider called Peter Parker, a drake named Godzilla Jr, Headcrab the devourer and a pig known as Bacon Mc Oink

I like the Lawn Moa one, that’s clever

I need to use Metal Gear Salad more but I’ve been playing Charrlatan and since they’re both thieves (yes I like thief so much I have 2..)…

I’ll get around to her later.

I also have my mesmer, Ms. Direct, and an Asura Elementalist, Zapp (it even fits naming conventions!)

You know, I have to agree with all the people who say set it up like GW1 where you get a top of the line weapon that has a unique skin.

I used my Forgotten Staff on my Ritualist for YEARS. It was a nice skin, great stats for my build. It wasn’t really coveted as an item for trade, because it wasn’t rare, but hey. Who says it has to be worth a billion ectos to be good for someone?

I’d have 0 problems with anyone getting 1 exotic weapon from completing their personal story. Giving them a token that lets them choose between several is even better.

That’d give it that real “Guild Wars” feel. When prophecies got such an end game celebration and reward, the game just felt more complete, you know?

Think about maybe having this done (and retroactively reward people who completed it prior) later on when you can. Have staffs that have the scepter of orr/staff of the mists skin! With scepters with a smaller version of that skin. Think about it, at the very least for the 1st anniversary of the game’s launch.

tolunart.2095:

Every MMO from 2005-2015:

New MMO Announcment: “OMG! They’re making an MMO about (theme)! This is going to be the best MMO EVER!”

First Beta: “(MMO) is so awesome! It’s so much better than anything I’ve played in years!”

Last Beta: Mix of “(MMO) is so awesome! I can’t wait for the public release!” and “I thought (MMO) would be good but the graphics/abilities/quests don’t live up to the hype.” Fanboy/troll arguments begin.

One week after release: “(MMO) could have been great, but they didn’t fix the problems it had in beta and now X, Y, and Z are broken. The game is full of bots and noobs, I got to end level and now I’m bored…” Declarations of utter failure begin.

One month after release: “OMG! They’re making an MMO about (theme)! That is going to be the best MMO EVER!” Quitter threads outnumber praise threads.

In this case the problem is VERY “fixable” unlike several other MMO’s that have came and went, the problems were so fundamental that it’d take years to improve the situation.

This is simply rewarding people for challenging content, Throw some more silver out of explorable dungeons, jumping puzzles (at least the first time you solve them), and group events. Make there be things that are NOT skin based available for purchase with dungeon tokens that are NOT Soulbound, like ectos, or lodestones.

Boom, dungeons are now rewarding whether you want the skins or not, and challenging content is rewarding in general.

The one thing I don’t like about that idea is, it’s still melee focused, ranged thieves don’t want to shadowstep to melee range of the target, especially when that target does melee range aoe that 1 shots a thief.

Strifer.3507:

For all those who still insist that the dungeons in GW2 is fun-centric and should not be reward-centric, then I’d propose that Anet should just remove all sorts of drops, tokens, gold, whatsoever in it and make it purely for people who think they can have so much fun doing it.

Common sense dictate that a plethora of players will whine and leave running dungeons altogether, and Anet can start working (or reworking) dungeon from there to make it so fun, people truly do it for the sake of fun; like how we do PVP just for the sake of fun.

Of course, common sense also dictates if they just balance the rewards system, it’d satisfied more player base and mindset than the 1st proposal.

(or maybe just have 1 or 2 zero reward dungeons and test to see if your fun-centric philosophy is truly workable; you’d know immediately if any one runs it at all. and then we can do away with rewards in all dungeons!)

People might run them once or twice but it’d prove the point that repetition decreases the fun value.