Guild Wars 2

You get to choose a single skin when you buy the pack.

At the moment, that is the only way to get them. However, the way its worded, its pretty much guaranteed there will be other ways in the future. I’m guessing it’ll remain tied to outfit packs, however, to keep them “special”. Like, in a month or two maybe they’ll release a new outfit pack, and that one will also give you an Immortal weapon choice.

Outfits are “all or nothing”. You wear the entire outfit together, no mixing any other armor pieces. The most you can do is turn off the helmet (and on some outfits, the shoulders), but you can’t add another helmet or anything in place of that.

Outfits are in a separate “slot” and when enabled, they automatically override whatever armor you’re currently using. You could equip and outfit and change your armor 50 times and still look exactly the same. No rebinding or anything like that. In fact, outfits aren’t actually items at all, just unlocks for your outfit wardrobe, so you could also have 10 characters all wearing the same outfit at the same time with no problem as well.

You can dye them, yes. BUT, unlike armor, you don’t get to separately dye each piece of the outfit. You get a single color setting for the entire outfit. So you can’t, for example, dye your helmet blue but your pants red, the entire outfit has to be a single set of colors. Most outfits have 3-4 different color sections to them.

May happen tomorrow. Gem Store updates and all that, and I can definitely see how they’d want to add a few more new Halloween skins closer to the holiday itself.

If it doesn’t, then I’ll start to get worried. That was the item I was second most excited about from the Halloween preview (right behind the bat pistol). Be a shame if they decided to just never include it at all.

I don’t get it. I really don’t.

I see the complaints over and over again. I know what the complaints are. Gated behind HoT maps, can’t play the expansion content right away using the elite specs, ect. I’ll even grant that they’re valid complaints, at least in so far as that they’re accurate to the situation.

What I don’t understand is why the expectations are what they are.

Elite specs are HoT content. They’re part of the character progression of the expansion. Why is it that so many people expect and even demand that they be given them without ever touching the HoT maps? And then when that’s not the case, they raise a crap storm? What is it about GW2 or HoT in general that gave people the idea they’d be maxing their elite specs hour 1?

What expansion adds new stuff and then just gives it all to you before you even touch the expansion itself? Just download it and boom, you can get all the new skills right off the bat. Seems to me GW2 letting you get any of the elite spec at all without so much as looking at the jungle areas is beyond how most expansions would handle their new progression, and yet no one is happy with a start, they want the whole spec right here and now.

And yes, before someone brings it up, the elite specs aren’t “everything”. But they are part of the content. What makes them so different from everything else that people are willing to play HoT itself for the skins, the story, the raids, guild halls, whatever, but elite specs, nope. There was literally a topic yesterday where the entire premise was exactly that. Fine with working for everything else, but elite specs being locked in HoT is some inexcusable sin of design. I don’t understand why elite specs alone are singled out in such a way.

I get that a ton of people were super excited about elite specs. I was too. I get that it’d be fun to experience the content in a new way. But this goes beyond “well, it’d be nice”. This is “I need to experience it with my elite spec, period”.

Is it just because the beta gave everyone the elite specs right off the bat, so its a case of “well, I had it before so you can’t take it away from me now!”? Or is there something else that makes people feel like they “deserve” to get elite specs outside of the rest of the HoT content?

Particle effects would probably make it look too similar to the Tempest warhorn skin. Unless it was a lightning effect or something, for instance.

Don’t really think particle effects are needed. I think it looks fine without, and while you named 2 elite spec weapons which do have effects, there are more of them that don’t.

Unless something changed with HoT’s release, Thrashers do not heal from minions (or NPCs for that matter). I run a LOT of minion builds with various classes and spend a ton of time in the Silverwastes and have never once had a problem killing Thrashers, at least not solo. Even on my Ranger who DOES have pet control, I happily let my pet eat the damage from the leech field because it doesn’t do enough damage to be a threat to my pet (even less so now) and does nothing to help the Thrasher either. Its basically a free damage period.

The problem is more likely players who don’t know the mechanics. I’ve seen so many players try to facetank that field and heal the thrasher to full health.

Future mechanics are easily avoided the same way. Simply exclude pets and minions from whatever “you need to stop attacking right now” or “get out of range or the boss heals” type attacks.

Not to say that more pet control wouldn’t be nice. But it’d be more of a QoL / PvP / WvW issue.

There still aren’t?

Sigh. I brought it up during beta testing among numerous other points about the new pets, but I guess there wasn’t enough feedback about it to warrant a change.

Probably means wyverns are still garbage slow as well.

I don’t think there’s a single finisher on ANY of the new pets (at least there wasn’t during the beta), so most likely it was just something they overlooked. Or at least I’d hope that’s the case and they didn’t consciously make a decision to not include any.

The first few times I used the skill after it got changed I thought it was bugging out and not working at all.

I can see how the old effect was perhaps a bit too much, but they reduced it way too far. Its still a laser blast from space, it needs to look SOMEWHAT impressive. The new effect is just plain sad.

From the patch notes last night…

•Renamed the new minor, major, and superior Sigils of Speed, crafted by scribes, to Sigils of Agility.

Might be giving these a try myself at some point. I need more Fortifying Bond! Though I kind of like my current Sigil of Frailty for the extra vuln which also helps my pet, and 3 seconds of quickness isn’t going to be THAT impressive on pets.

Did you unlock Druid in the PvP lobby? I’ve heard various reports of people not getting their weapons when doing so.

I’ve also seen mention that some of those people who didn’t get it because of that were able to get it by unlocking another step in the elite spec outside the PvP lobby.

The old skill points were unlimited. You could get as many as you wanted via stuff like dungeon paths, champ bags, ect. The old skill points were converted to Spirit Shards. You got spirit shards exactly equal to every skill point you had in the old system.

The new Hero Points are a finite resource. You get a certain number from leveling up, a certain number from hero challenges (1 point per in the old maps, 10 per in Maguuma) and that’s it.

Surely you can see how they couldn’t convert a formerly infinite resource into a finite one and just give you all the skill points you had before as hero points. The entire system would be rendered meaningless for vets who built up any sort of skill point stockpile.

They didn’t “take them away”. They were changed to something else and remain very useful for basically the exact same things skill points were used for prior to the change. Which is crafting legendaries and other things through the forge. What you want to use them for no longer applies to what they’re intended for.

Wait a week or two until guides start popping up if you don’t want to “faff about figuring it out yourself”.

Or go play WvW instead.

Mekka.2385:

The event begin every xx:00 in Lion’s Arch Grand Piazza.

Its definitely not that set-in-stone. I sat in LA from X:50 to X:20 the next hour and never saw it happen. And another time I came into LA at around X:55 and it was finishing.

More than likely it happens either every hour or every other hour, but its on a variable schedule based on when that particular server shard first had the event, which means there’s really no way to tell when its going to happen in a specific shard unless someone was there the last time it happened.

There are 2 separate ways to activate this.

One is a button toggle command, which you need to keybind to a key as it has none by default. While holding the button it auto-targets ground spells to your target, and letting go gets rid of the function.

The other is an option in the Options Menu. Its near the bottom of the big checklist of targeting options (stuff like auto-target, melee targeting assist, ect). Checking it auto-defaults all AoE’s to your target.

I’d recommend the former, since its probably not something you want to use all the time.

I don’t really think the “well, armor sets take a really long time to make” excuse flies at this point.

Prior to the advent of outfits, they were putting out 3 new armor sets every couple of months for the Gem Store.

Going by that rate, we got roughly 6 months worth of armor skin development time for HoT at most (and that’s assuming they were putting the previous armor skins out as fast as they could make them), and considering how long HoT supposedly took to make and how pretty much the entire team was focused on it, that does indeed seem pretty bare bones.

Really hope we get the official changelog from Anet for changes from Beta 3 at some point. I understand it probably wouldn’t have been the best to put changes in the official release notes, since technically these are all brand new to the core game, but putting up a thread in each individual forum would be nice.

Nike.2631:

So the patch notes don’t list the boons being granted by the traps. Gonna be testing this out shortly.

The patch notes didn’t list any of the changes to elite specs from the previous beta, far as I could see. All they listed were the descriptions for the weapon skills, profession mechanics, and utilities of each elite spec. Probably because, since they’re new to some people (and technically new to the core game period, since previous things were beta), having a huge section of “changes” wouldn’t really make sense.

Hopefully Anet plans on coming in and giving us a full rundown on each professions’ changes at some point here in the individual forums. I’m sure some of the stuff we can suss out on our own, but it’d be nice to have a comprehensive list of which changes made it into the live release.

I loved that patch note. Well played Anet.

Neither would work at all as wings. Butterfly wings are too small, and spinal blades aren’t even solid (and are also probably too small).

Its not in the wardrobe either, unless I’m just missing it, though I’ve looked through the whole list twice.

Hope they didn’t decide to cut it. Looked neat.

That workaround seems like it’ll do the trick nicely. As long as I set my computer not to drop into sleep mode, anyway, since I imagine that would disable those sorts of things.

I’ll probably still have to download SOMETHING when I get up (since I’m sure there will be patches within hours of launch) but at least I should be able to get the initial one out of the way.

Thanks.

So… midnight release. Yah. Great. But I have no interest in staying up and playing it at midnight. I need mah sleep, and would rather just wake up and experience the game well-rested and ready to go.

However, what I would like to do is leave my computer running and wake up to a fully patched game, so I at least can just jump right in and not have to wait around for that to finish.

However, in the past when I’ve left the launcher open on patch days hoping it would be finished, it never is. I always have to close and restart the launcher to get the download to “kick in”. Like it only checks for patches on first starting.

Is there something I’m missing that would let me have the launcher open and have it continuously check for new patches so that when I wake up I’m ready to go? Or am I going to have to go to sleep, wake up at launch, start the game to get the download going, then go back to sleep (or just wait until morning and deal with the wait)?

I can’t be bothered to specifically check every single one and record exact amounts (even though I’ve only got 6), but I know its nothing special on any of my characters. I’ve never done map completion on any one character, but rather have simply completed a small “sampling” of maps on each during the leveling process. I’d estimate each of my characters has maybe 7 maps fully completed, with a smattering of other progress in other various maps. I do tend to grab most hero points I see even when I’m not shooting for 100% completion, though.

I just checked my “most travelled” character and he has 133 spare points. I’m guessing most of the others are sitting somewhere between 80 and 120.

So… a start, but I’ll still be getting most of my elite spec points from HoT itself. Which is fine by me. I think it’ll be fun gradually building up thoughout exploring the HoT world.

There have been a variety of datamined things that have yet to show up as obtainable. Quite a few various skins for armor, weapons, back items, some new faces / hairstyles, that sort of thing.

While many of them may end up being in-game rewards rather than gem store stuff, I can definitely see them also doing a fair bit of them as gem store stuff as well. After all, the last few months have been really slow for BLTC items, and they’ve just recently done away with a lot of old stuff as well.

As far as additions to the maps themselves in terms of geography, events, that sort of thing… doubtful. HoT is focusing on the new areas, not the old, and I’m sure they would have mentioned it at some point if that weren’t the case.

However, there are some additions to the old maps in terms of mechanics and such.

One of the big ones is probably the new map reward system where doing events in old areas will reward you with bonus items based on which map your in. High level maps can get you bonus T6 materials (even lodestones), lower level maps can get you stuff like linen and such. There was quite a variety of stuff from what I remember browsing through some of them during beta.

This is exclusive to old maps (even excludes the Silverwastes and Dry Top), since new maps will instead be getting you map-specific rewards like Geodes and Bandit Crests.

Another is the Pact Tyria mastery tracks, which can get you various mastery rewards, access to stuff like precursor crafting, exclusive vendors, that sort of thing. And again is exclusive to the core game (can’t remember if they’ve mentioned whether it includes SW / DT or not) since Maguuma has its own mastery tracks.

And another is that some content in the old world is getting turned into Adventures, which means potentially different rewards, leaderboards, and the like. They haven’t mentioned specifics, but I remember them mentioning mini-dungeons and jumping puzzles, so who knows.

I imagine many of the legendary precursor scavenger hunts will also focus heavily on the old game, so there will be some renewed interest from that. We’ve already seen a few examples of it. Heck, maybe they will even end up adding some minor additions to the game world for those sorts of things.

I’d rather not have dye achieves.

I mean, on one hand, sure. It’d fit with other stuff and give dye collectors a little something extra.

But on the other hand, it would drive dye prices up by way of making achievement hunters buy up tons of dyes, and make it harder for people who just want to customize their look with colors they want to do so. Dyes are already significantly more expensive then they used to be with the changes to Unidentified Dye drops, I’d rather not add more factors that would drive the prices further out of reach of newbies.

The exclusive dyes becoming exotic would be fine, though not really necessary since on the TP you can just sort by price (95% of the exclusive dyes are more expensive than normal ones) and for searching for the exclusives in the hero panel you can just look at the bottom of the list, since all the exclusives come after the original dyes.

I am 100% opposed to legendary dyes with particle effects. Would create way too much visual clutter. Some of the current armors (Radiant >.<) are bad enough. MAYBE they could have stuff with subtle glows or different textures along the lines of the Zodiac armor / Luminscent armor, but that’s about as far as I’d ever want them to go with dyes. And even then, if they did that then those armor sets would be less special, so I’m not sure that’d ever happen either.

Whether or not they ditched parts of Scrapper during development is completely debatable, but there is absolutely no way that Hammer was in any way related to a “fuel” system for Gyros. Because if it were, then hammer would be literally required to use Gyros at all. Requiring you to use the one single elite spec weapon to actually use the utility skills wouldn’t fit with any design decision they’ve ever shown with any other elite spec. Different aspects of elite specs are meant to be options, not forced to be used together exclusively.

Even if the gyros were meant to be the profession mechanic instead of utilities at some point, it still wouldn’t work, because while at least it would be forcing Gyro utilities + hammer, it would still be forcing all Scrappers to use hammer.

I do feel that they left something out from the original designs. Maybe even that “blasting cap” idea from the datamine (though it should be noted that those things were from literally years ago). Would definitely explain the fire trails if the hammer was originally meant to be explosive. My main reason for that is not simply that the fire trails don’t exist any more, but that the current auto-attack has basically no effects whatsoever except for the little spark at the end of the final swing, which is pretty unusual.

My current race / class rundown is…

Male Charr Ranger
Male Charr Necromancer
Female Charr Engineer
Male Sylvari Mesmer
Female Sylvari Guardian
Male Asura Elementalist

So I’m going to be using my Revenant to fill some gaps in my current coverage. Asura, because I only have one of those. Female, because I only have 2 female characters and because my other Asura is male (need ’dat character voice variety). Asura also fills a gap in my armor coverage, since my only heavy armor wearer is female and thus I get the female armor models, and while my Asura will be female as well, they wear the male models anyway.

Suspicious Nija.6790:

But are PvE’ers not already stockpiled on hero points from hero challenges in pve?
If so then WvW only players are at a huge disadvantage compared to them.

This is not fair at all and also not consistent.
At this rate all Hero points should be deleted/resetted with HoT and everyone should start at zero.

In the interest of fairness to PvE players, we didn’t want to allow any WvW players who may have been stockpiling liquid world experience to instantly rank up a bunch of times and immediately begin unlocking the new expansion hero challenges the moment the expansion released.

Bolded the important part for emphasis. They aren’t worried about the normal hero points, they’re worried about the ones specifically from Heart of Thorns. Which, no, PvE players cannot stockpile. No one can, since no one can access Heart of Thorns content until the expansion launches. Hence the change. Everyone starts on equal footing for the new hero points and has to start earning them only when the expansion comes out.

Granted, the change is preventing WvW players from getting a bunch of the old points as well, but… that’s a side-effect of a good change.

Adamantium.3682:

Can I make a guess? Was it related to Alacrity? Without looking into the exact uptimes of each gyro under that short-lived change, I’m guessing with enough uptime of Alacrity a Scrapper may have been able to have two of the same gyro up at some point?

Having two would be physically impossible regardless of the cooldowns, since the utility slot is flipped over to the gyro’s self-destruct skill as long as the first gyro is alive. Only way to summon a new one is to blow the first one.

Still entirely possible Alacrity is part of the cause of the reversion back to “on death cooldown” though. Avoiding 100% uptime could definitely be a concern even without doubling up.

Nilix.2170:

They can be healed. I remember healing a Gyro with Cleansing Burst. Mathematically, I don’t think it comes up on top. With group content of over 10 people and Cleansing Burst having up to 5 targets, I’d much rather that Burst go to a player than to the Gyro.

That’s already how it works. Heals always prioritize players first before pets / minions. The gyros will only get healed if there aren’t 5 player targets in range of said heal.

All bundles in the game are unstowable, so this would likely take some major engine work to accomplish (unless they can easily separate kits from bundles). Not that I’d be opposed to the idea, but I don’t know how realistic it would be to do all the effort just because its “kind of annoying”.

I would fully support RTL get an evade. It’d make thematic sense for the same reason it made sense on Ancestral Grace (you can’t really damage energy) and give the skill a little extra something.

Anything else, though… no.

Ancestral Grace needs to be ground-targeted because its main purpose is repositioning and healing allies. Neither of which you could do at all if it was enemy-targeted. RTL is primarily a damaging gap closer, so its just fine being enemy targeted.

As for a blast finisher, ugh. I am utterly sick and tired of the incessant begging for more and more and more blast finishers on Ele. Eles have plenty of blast finishers already. I swear some Eles won’t be happy until literally every skill they have is a blast finisher.

Everything with the name “Nevermore” and some kind of relation to Ravens is almost certainly a reference to Poe’s poem in some way. Either directly, or based on other material that referenced it as well.

Its not exactly a common thing that could just be coincidence. No one just randomly says “never more”. And having a raven in the mix just cranks the “no way its a coincidence” meter up to 11.

I’d rather have a beam that’s going to be easier to use in all situations than have a harder to use, dodgeable projectile just for the sake of fancy legendary effects.

Maybe they can make #3 turn the player into a raven for its duration. That’d be pretty amazing.

The whole reason Anet took so long to reveal the release date is so that it was 100% set in stone going to happen on that day. So there’s no reason to worry.

That said, I do take some offense your idea of forcing the devs to work around the clock just so that your own precious plans aren’t “ruined”.

In exchange for a 40+ second recharge, sure.

Its because turret actives aren’t like Ranger F2 skills where you directly make the turret do the attack. Rather, it simply makes the next attack (or attacks) the turret does naturally change to the active effect shot instead of the normal one. With a time limit to use said attack before it switches back to normal, so you can’t just preload an overload attack and let the cooldown run out and get another one right away.

Since the turrets won’t normally attack if there aren’t enemies nearby, you don’t get the overload when no enemies are nearby either.

Its definitely intentional, since they’ve done things like reduce the time limit before an overload shot “goes away” (you used to be able to get Rocket Turret to use 2 knockdown shots it you used it right before it fired, same with Net Turret IIRC).

WHY it works like that? Who knows. Just one of those strange things about the game and different skills. Some work this way (turrets, elementals, certain Necromancer minions IIRC) while others will use the ability directly when you use their active skill (other minions, spirit weapons, ranger pets).

FI works great on… Scepters? What am I missing, because last I checked Scepter had no interrupts… or are you just saying the Quickness benefits Scepter in general?

sirjarros.4107:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

Rocket Charge will have the leap play at start rather than finish (like other leaps) and isn’t going to be so erratic once you’ve closed to your target.

I’m a little bit confused on this. The behavior of leap finishers that I am familiar with — for example Heartseaker — as well as blast finishers — like Rocket Boots — is that they activate when leaving a field and when landing/arriving in a field.

Will Rocket Charge behave this same way? How you’ve worded your information above sounds like it will only activate on departure from a field. This would be horrible, as placing hammer #5 at range and Rocket Charging into that field to cause the finish was highly effective and pretty darn fun!

Thanks for all the hard work Irenio. You guys must be excited and exhausted at the same time as launch approaches. Can’t imagine the level of intensity!

During the beta, you couldn’t leap through a field to get a leap finisher. You had to be inside the field when you landed to get a proper leap finisher. If you passed completely through the field during your jump, whether you were outside or inside of it to begin with, you’d get nothing.

What this mean is that now, like all (or most) other leap finishers, you’ll get a finisher when you land if you pass through a combo field at any point during your attack.

So you’ll still be able to leap into Hammer #5 for a combo finisher. But you’ll also be able to, say, jump OUT of a lightning field that one of your gyros just created at an enemy 300m away and get a combo finisher that way.

Function Gyro – K. More frequent uses is nice for traits that rely on Function Gyro and just using it in general.

Hammer combo – Sounds great. Aftercasts were definitely a killer.

Rocket Charge – Aw yes. Being able to stick to your target better AND being able to leap through fields and not just land on them to get your finishers? So good.

Shock Shield – YES. I’m going to take partial personal credit for this one, since I didn’t see too many other people mention it. But this should make the skill so much more useful for actually blocking stuff when you need it.

Gyro Stuff – Lovely changes. I’m sure some people are still going to hate them for the pure fact that they’re AI minions, but I for one enjoyed them well enough as they were, and these will definitely make them a lot more useable and interesting. Improved uptime and better at their jobs to boot? Noice. Oh, and LOLforum filter. Even the devs can’t escape from the evil fourty-five second kitten.

Impact Savant – Cool beans. Its actually useful now. Perhaps a little too useful, but we’ll see.

Grace of the Land – Interesting change.

Lingering Light – I kind of liked the old version simply because it allowed you to build more astral force in melee range of multiple players. But I suppose the new version might do the same (if the heal is counted as coming from you, which it may be since it uses your healing power) and the Blind is neat. Interesting change. Hopefully it getting changed also means that Astral Wisp is getting some love and would perhaps be too powerful if this trait stayed the same, though that may be wishful thinking (but hopefully not).

Glyph of Unity – Hopefully its getting more than just a range increase. The range is one big problem, but its certainly not the only one.

Glyph of Empowerment – See above.

Glyph of Alignment – More condition duration is great. Definitely one of the changes the skill needed, IMO. Not sure I like the drop of burst damage, though. I suppose maybe the poison will make up the difference, but it will still make the skill worse for tagging.

Ancestral Grace – Being an evade wasn’t really necessary IMO, but I’ll take it. Getting the skill to drop you out as soon as you hit your destination definitely WAS necessary, though, so heck yes.

Avatar changes – Definitely liking the boost to direct damage power growth. Not sure about the reduction for healing, though. Especially with the new cooldown that’s been added, I don’t really think getting into it too fast from healing was a real problem, basically only from Staff 1 (which I think should have been adjusted individually to fix that). The cooldown itself is a fine change. Actually think keeping half your bar was completely unnecessary, but OK.

Lunar Impact fix is appreciated. Nerf was expected since it was almost perma-daze with Moment of Clarity.

Bristleback F2 being Spike Barrage is neat. Being able to trigger it at an opportune time will be handy. No mention of fixes / improvements to the aim on said skill is disheartening, but I’ll just keep hoping its coming anyway.

There’s some nice changes here to be sure, but hopefully there’s more to it than this. Which I assume there will be, since your earlier comments said that you’d try to get some of the more concrete changes outlined for us.

Like wyvern attack speed. Don’t keep mah dragons useless ;.;

EDIT: Oh, and thanks for the prompt response Irenio. I know you said you’d try to get some more info earlier on, but I definitely wasn’t expecting it so soon, I was thinking it’d come later in the week. Cheers.

They’re not going to make a major change like adding more aspects to Druid at this point or any in the future. Druid is done, barring small adjustments and the like.

There may or may not have been other ideas for Druid in the past. I wouldn’t doubt that maybe there was a season-based aspect approach early on, perhaps, thanks to datamining and such. But they clearly cut it down to one aspect for a reason, whether that was because it was too much work, because multiple aspects added far too much to the class, or because they simply decided a pure healing spec was more the direction they wanted to go.

The current Druid is very well put-together, with its themes. Staff is light / sun / earth based, Celestial Avatar is moon / star based. Polar opposites of one another, same with the glyphs. They clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making the current Druid a cohesive whole, which shows that what they’ve chosen for Druid is what they’ve settled on as a permanent elite spec and not just “temporary, we’ll add more to it later”.

XDeathShadowX.2619:

The thing I’m most wondering right now is why is it that the 2 specs that only got 1 BWE are both under the same dev? At the very least if you’re only going to give them 1 week make it so the same dev doesn’t have to work through the loads of issues and feedback that are destined to come in on their first run. I’m sure there are a lot of people working on the fixes but still.

Yah, sticking Irenio with both of the “1 BWE only” elite specs is definitely a head-scratcher to me. Have a metric ton of feedback on both the elite specs you’re in charge of and get it all done in 3 weeks, good luck.

Much as it kills me to suggest it since they’ve all improved massively thanks to multiple BWE’s worth of feedback and testing, any of Tempest, Chronomancer, Reaper, or Dragonhunter should have been last with probably Scrapper being in the first batch. Just to spread the workload around a bit.

But then, I’m not a game developer and I certainly don’t know how the elite spec development and testing went, so my opinion doesn’t mean much.

In addition to the continued small downloads over the past few months that we’ve already gotten, I rather expect them to release a sizable patch next week sometime (maybe on Tuesday like they usually do) to get a lot of the other stuff ready, so that the Friday patch is manageable.

But we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

So mostly everything about Druid is getting adjustments it seems, even if they aren’t being detailed. That’s good.

BUT…. I see no mention of any adjustments to the new pets. Please tell me you just neglected to mention those, and not that they’re staying as they were.

I assume the reason it doesn’t is because Barrage has its own animation / graphics rather than drawing its appearance from the “default” arrow, so even weapons that change the default (like Kudzu) have no affect on such skills.

I wouldn’t be opposed to them changing it, but it could be a bit too much trouble.

Paulytnz.7619:

Lol I am sorry but I just have to say it:

Anet rewards key buyers by giving them the bird! I think that’s a hint to stop wasting money on them.

Aw, I wanted to make a “giving you the bird” joke. Ninja’d.

So I’ll give you this instead.

I am so happy we’re finally getting new Halloween weapons. Particularly of types we don’t already have weapons for.

’dat bat pistol. DO WANT.

Pumpkin hammer is pretty cool too, but doesn’t really fit any of my characters. Maybe I’ll get it anyway and throw it in my Engie, she already has the pumpkin rifle as well even though it also doesn’t really fit her theme. Heck, she’d be the one getting the bat rifle as well (though that one DOES fit her theme, which is animals) so maybe I’ll just have to deck her out with a full set of Halloween weapons. Not like I’d have far to go to reach that.

Can’t tell what the focus(?) is supposed to be. A ghost of some sort? Looks interesting, though.

Bat shoulderpiece sounds interesting, but it doesn’t look like they actually showed it off in the preview.

Definitely didn’t expect the butterfly wings to be a Halloween thing, though in hindsight I suppose the color scheme works. Mummy backpiece looks interesting, though I need to see it from behind to really tell, need to see what its holding. Bat / dragon wings are hideous >.>

Really hope these weapons and backpieces are reasonable to get and not super-ultra-rare “Mini Gwynefyrdd” level stuff. Please Anet, don’t add cool Halloween skins and make them impossible. I’ll cry.

I’d be surprised if HoT didn’t provide a few new stat combos. Maybe Forsaken will be among them, especially since it already exists in limited fashion in the game anyway