Guild Wars 2

I’m still wondering why Smoke Screen doesn’t negate those projectile attacks by Sparki.

Maybe anet should reword the skill description in something like Create a smoke screen that blocks projectiles (or maybe not) and blinds foes.

“Shadow Return (Infiltrator Strike Toggle): This skill is no longer a stun breaker”

Was this really necessary? :\

oZii.2864:

66% chance to crit to steal 350 life and an additional 70 precision which would be around 3-4 crit chance.

I don’t see how this makes or breaks a build. S/P thieves and P/P are rare breads anyway. I don’t know I don’t see how this makes or breaks a build.

So you’re saying that, just when using PW, there’s no difference in proccing with a probability of 66% on every one of the 9 hits of the skill instead of proccing just on one of the 9 hits and then you’re done during a single skill use?

Xsorus.2507:

Just to make sure, i’m going to buy a new mouse today..It either works and i’m happy, or it doesn’t work, and i’m still unhappy.

It won’t work. I’ve tried with 2 mice on my PC (G9X and G700), and with the same mice on another PC (same result).

I’ve had problems with the left click since a lot of time ago. The most annoying part is when you need to rapidly target someone else (for example, you’re autoattacking someone and you want to quickly use a skill on another target) – more than 50% of the times the first left click fails to respond and you need to press it again to get the new target.

Which, especially in PvP, is extremely game-breaking (just think about interrupt skills).

And with one Wintersday patch I got the bug related to the autorun: the char continues running in a direction even if you try to stop it.

I’d like to post here this info to warn all pvp players.

After reading the RtL bug (losing HPs from water line on morphing self), I wondered if this would be the same with other morphing, offensive skills.

I just tested with the help of a mesmer on my thief: as soon as he used Moa Morph on me, I instantly lost the 2k HPs I had from Acrobatics line.

I didn’t have the time to check other bonuses from the other lines (like toughness, healing power, cnd dmg, etc.), but I think that’s the same: as soon as any player is morphed, he loses all the bonuses associated with trait lines.

keadlaw.6350:

Im not talking about stealth applied after your down. I don’t think having your stealth broken if you get downed while in stealth is unreasonable.

Well it’s as much unreasonable as being downed due to a channeled skill (or pet) which goes on in hitting us after 2-3 seconds that we enter stealth.

How about that?

Oneway.1453:

• Balance is minor compared to unintended bugs—even minor bugs. Players can forgive unbalanced, but intended, class mechanics; they can be likened to a difference in opinions. It is a discredit to your competence as a company to have unresolved unintended bugs. It’s one thing to have an accident, it’s another to be unable to identify and repair it in a timely manner. Fix them early and often.

I wholeheartedly agree with this point.

There can be no balance if a lot of bugs aren’t addressed and fixed.

I’m still wondering why the game is keeping bugs since the BWEs.

And, another point I’d like to add: the tooltips/explanations of skills/traits need to be a lot more explicit. Things like “heal for each point of initiative spent” should state clearly the amount healed. We shouldn’t have to bother to go to the mist, fall down/get damage, then check the amount of healing received, and then check how much that heal increases with healing power, for example. In this regard, GW1 was way ahed, every single skill was uber-clear in what it did, including scaling with attributes.

Hermes.7014:

It’s not a little step, it’s a full step forward.
These are the pictures of my test for comparison. You can notice the distance on the minimap as well. First picture is Short Bow max range using a Short Bow, second is Short Bow range using a pistol, and third is Pistol max range.
It may not be 700, but still the range specified for pistols is unaccurate and shorter than Short Bow’s.

I tested again, and I took some screens. I used a trap to define better the position of the character.

Behind view (SB-Pistol):
[img]http://i.imgur.com/sX4uZ.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/dLaUS.jpg[/img]

Lateral view (SB-Pistol):
[img]http://i.imgur.com/svFhr.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/STrck.jpg[/img]

Diagonal view (SB-Pistol):
[img]http://i.imgur.com/ANbNd.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/ISnQj.jpg[/img]

The effective difference between SB and Pistol is a single step backward, which is less than a single step forward (the characters move slower backward).

Another strange thing that I noticed: with the SB distance, all the main pistol skills did not hit the dummy, but the Head Shot did hit it.

Edit: I forgot that I can’t put external images here, just click on the links to check them.

Siva Mira.3546:

IMO, they should add a mechanic that prevent “Revealed” from apply for 1/2sec when Last Refuge triggered.

Imo too, this is the most reasonable solution to this problem.

To increase the condition damage, you need anything that’s addressed as “+X to condition damage”.

Hermes.7014:

Pistols’ effective range is actually roughly 700, hence the range in Pistol skills description is a lie.

Out of curiosity I just tried now what you’re saying.

There’s a little difference between the range of pistol and shortbow, but it’s really a little step (tapping W very rapidly to gain maybe a 3-5 range), but not at all the difference of 200 that you’re talking about.

The funny thing it’s that even if in the game we don’t hit the target due to “out of range”, there’s no red bar under the pistol skills.

Let’s put it this way: toughness is a “long term defense” stat, while vitality is more of a “short term defense”.

That’s because of how the game calculates damage. It’s always Power x Wpn Dmg x Skill coeff. / Armor, where Armor is the sum of Defence + Toughness. At lvl 80, with a full exotic set, we have Defence at 1064 and Toughness at 916, thus the base Armor is 1980.

Now, let’s say that you add 990 in Toughness (via stats, runes, traits). You increased Armor of 50%. Doing a simple equation, you reduced every single direct damage that you get by 33%. If you increase Armor of a factor of 100% (1980+1980), you reduce the damage by 50%. With an increase of 25% in Armor, you reduce the damage by 20%.

As you can see, there’s a diminishing return between the increments on Armor and the decrease of damage received on every hit.

But every single damage you receive is going to affect the HP pools, which in turn is linked directly to Vitality, since at lvl 80 we thieves have 10805 + Vitality * 10 HPs.

If you go all toughness and no vitality, the pool will stay at 10805. So, for example, if an enemy inflicts you a damage of 1000 HPs on every single hit against your base 1980 Armor, you’ll be downed after 10 hits. If you increased the Armor by 50%, the damage inflicted will drop to 667 HPs, so you’ll be downed after 16 hits.

If you instead raise your Vitality, let’s say by 458 (+50% of base Vit), your HPs will go to 15385, so against that same enemy, you’ll get downed in 15 hits, just 1 less than the same % increment on Armor.

So that’s why Toughness is a long term defense: on average, you’ll need more hits to get downed, BUT you need a large HPs pool to arrive at that “down state” point, and that’s what we lack as thieves – a large base HPs pool.

But, here’s the interesting part, you’ll need less absolute bonuses to get a +50%: 458 on Vit compared to +990 on Tough. And that increase will be effective even against condition damage. And you can increase other stats more easily.

So, as a general rule of thumb, for thieves it’s better to increase Vit. than Tough., except in some particular builds, like the ones who give you a steady return of HPs with the use of Signet of Malice and healing traits/bonuses.

As Kindread said, you get +5% of healing power to the passive effect per hit, with base 100. The active use of the signet isn’t modified by healing power though.

As for the other 2 healing skills, Hide in Shadows gets a 100% bonus to its heal from heal. power (so with 1000 heal. power you heal 5240+1000), while Withdraw gets 50% from heal. power.

Running a bleed spec with Signet of Malice is quite entertaining, especially in 8v8 hot joins and in WWW, boosting your healing power/cnd dmg/thoughness, and choosing the right traits: it’s nice to see your hp pool going from squat to full when you trigger Dagger Storm.

STRanger.5120:

Ohh, guys. You don´t know? We can´t be killed, because we are invisible, sure thing…

/irony

- Activate any channeling ability, kill thief while in stealth, laugh. -

Soooo OP.

Stiv.1820:

Exactly, making the game extremely boring.

Why, do you think that atm the metagame is enjoyable with all these bunker/burst build?

It seems to me that the conquest game type is pushing all the players to the extremes, bunkers on one side, and bursters on the other, with nothing really useful in the middle.

And this, to me, sounds really boring, not the contrary.

Is this really a whine thread about thieves stomping while stealthed? Which, as other people correctly pointed, CAN be interrupted by aoe, no-target interrupting skills even while stealthed?

I hope that you’ll never get stomped by a thief that uses Black Powder as a “sure” finisher, which is even way better than stealth-stomp (it negates guardian’s pulse, necro’s fear, etc.), or you’ll get out of your mind.

Should thieves whine if they get downed, use the #2 teleport and then get killed by a GS warrior that just presses the #2 HB key?

I don’t get all this hating regarding the thief profession, it’s not even remotely the OP class that people tend to think it is…

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Wow

Infiltrators strike and shadow step are 2 hands down best skills in the game. More so infiltrators strike, an ability that teleports you too your enemy, immobilizes them, then after you kill them/or get in over your head, lets you teleport back AND remove conditions. If you think this is worthless I feel terribly terribly bad for you.

You’re right, IS is an incredibily useful skill, and with a functioning stun break would be even better.

Problem is, it’s the only sword skill that atm is useful: sword dual skills are a joke, for damage you have to rely just on autoattack, with dagger off hand the daze has been lowered in sPvP to 1.5 and mesmer runes/stun sigil doesn’t add anymore to daze duration, dancing dagger has been nerfed to death so S/D now inflicts a ridicolously low damage, with pistol off hand we’ve never had a lot of reliable damage output, and we have to go still with haste, etc.

And I’ve played and loved (or tried to love) a LOT sword builds. S/P then S/D, but they’re now inferior to D/D backstab or bleed builds.

Bashalot.3962:

Skill 2 is a gap closer and a stunbreaker/condition clearer for 5 initiative. I guess I don’t PVP so I wouldn’t know the value or the lack of in PVP, but in PVE it helps to have an on demand stun breaker with no cooldown.

Again, as I said a lot of times, IS is NOT a stunbreaker, even if it says so.

Go to a Moa, get dazed after you use IS and shadowstep back: you’ll get teleported but you’ll be still under daze.

Go to a troll/ettin/any mob who stuns/knocks down, and port back: you’ll port back, but you’ll still be stunned/knocked down.

The stunbreak part of the shadowstep is broken on IS.

Flayfirst.4735:

I wish I could pull people off of walls with it though!

You can. I used to pull down enemies from walls when Scorpion Wire was at 900 range, you just need to learn the exact timing.

Einlanzer.1627:

It’s actually very common that I’ll use Hide in Shadows to try to dump aggro and it just plain doesn’t work.

Not to mention, in sPvP, when you dump Shadow Refuge down the drain because you don’t lose aggro from the stupid Sword of Justice “pet”, which negates all 3 pulses of the skill due to buggy “lose aggro while in stealth” code. And then you die.

I’m sorry but who thinks that D/D condition build it’s just a 33333 spam, it’s just plainly wrong.

Mind you, I was long time ago a lover of the S/P build. Then I tried out the S/D, and fell in love with it more than S/P. After this patch, the effectiveness of S/D went down the drain, and since I really hate the gimmicky backstab build, I went to a D/D bleed build.

True, Deathblossom is used a lot, but you can’t spam it forever, and after 3 uses you need to come with backup actions that are not straightforward/braindead. Moreover, one needs to adapt to his opponent, and just spamming as soon as you start the combat the 3 key, most often than not will give your opponent the edge in the fight (ofc, I speak regarding good opponents).

It’s sad, however, that all the builds involving Sword have been nerfed to death. Yes, one can use them with good results even now, but it’s undeniable that they’re not that effective in comparison to builds which use dagger as main hand.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Trust me if you try to take this to a court of law, you’ll fail. Advertisers have gotten extremely good at deceiving customers while still staying within the legal boundaries. In this case, they actually didn’t falsely advertise the product to you at the time of purchase and there’s nothing in the body of advertisement that assured customers that the product would stay a particular way forever (other than maybe it’s genre type).

Well, I’m not a lawyer, and I’ll take your word as truth about false advertising.

But I hope you’ll admit, at least, that there’s been a deceiving here. I myself bought the game basing the decision on 2 facts:

1) It’s from Anet, the developer of GW1, which got no vertical progression in terms of items.
2) They repeatedly stated in their so called Manifesto (both on video and written) that in GW2 there would never be a treadmill/grind for stats.

Even if they fall completely withing the boundaries of law to avoid a flase advertising suit, it’s still an unethical behaviour (unless we define “ethical” as anything that falls just inside the boundaries of law).

Don’t you agree with this point?

Bruno Sardine.2907:

Agreed… but it was also the fault of the readers to assume these things as concrete to the point of being law. I would’ve preferred that they tried other options before opting into this path, but I can’t really say I’ve been betrayed because no actual promises were made other than “we promise to give you services if you pay for them and follow a certain set of conditions” (aka the EULA).

You’re right about this, but then again, as previously stated, it still remains False advertising.

Which is, in most (if not all) occidental countries code of laws, punishable, even if the contract states otherwise (i.e.: there isn’t written anywhere, in the final contract, that the company will deliver the promises spoken out loudly in their advertising campaign) .

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

As for ascended gear, to reiterate what Chris has said (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside), it’s not intended as a treadmill, but rather as a tier of rewards that can help bridge the gap between Exotics (a few hours of effort to acquire a piece) and Legendaries (hundreds of hours of effort to acquire one). They’re currently only available in the Fractals of the Mist Dungeon, but we’re going to be adding new ways to acquire them, both inside of WvW as well as elsewhere in PvE.

If the only gap is in the hours required, AND before Legendaries and Exotic had the SAME STATS VALUES, why in Balthazar name the Ascended tier (and thus the “updated Legendaries” too) have higher stats than the Exotic one?

Will you stop at least once to treat us like idiots?

Mackdose.6504:

Derk.3189:

Lol, that’s completely wrong. The items have about 15% better stats that will apply to every other aspect of the game save sPvP.

That doesn’t make it a requirement to anyone but children and elitists.

Yeah, sure, like in WvW. They removed the Orbs that gave exactly a 15% boost to the server with all Orbs, which was, in Anet view, “too much”.

And now magically this ascended crap hasn’t become a requirement? Lol.

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

This is something that existed prior to ascended gear, and was something that we saw happen all the time in GW1, even without any sort of gear progression. Some players, typically people who play the game a lot, tend to only want to play with other players that play like them. They require some sort of proof to get into their party, whether it be displaying your Lightbringer Title, equipping or linking some type of gear, or using some other method of showing that you have already done and are experienced with the content. While ascended gear might be the new excuse, this behavior happens regardless.

While this is not really something that we want to encourage, players do have the choice to play the game in the way they want. We can’t force those players to be all-inclusive in who they invite to the parties they create, and to be honest, doing so would probably make people even more unhappy than they are now, and lead to a lot of undesirable behavior.

And since you weren’t happy with this kind of behaviour, you thought well to add another gating system, namely the FotM level.

No one, at least on my server (Far Shiverpeaks), is looking for people to run previous dungeons. No one is writing a single line in the map chat except for that “LFM/LFM fotm lvl X”, while just a couple weeks ago it was an alive chat where people talked with each other, giving infos, etc.

The most friendly LFM that I read this evening was a “LFG fotm lvl 7, will do lvl 6”.

Now, Mr McLeod, please, stop bullkitten us. You’re acting (not you personally, all you Anet reps here on the forums) like a child who ate the biscuits that he shouldn’t have eaten, got caught in the process, and tried to find all kind of excuses to justify himself.

You’re all already the target of (much deserved) disappointment, with these kind of posts you’re just trying to disappoint the majority of us customers more and more.

Instead of writing these kind of posts, just try your best to let Nexon understand that GW2 isn’t catered to the korean grinding mentality market. That wasn’t your view. That wasn’t OUR view.

And I say Nexon because I can’t honestly believe that Mr O’Brien would pull such a bait & switch/false advertising campaign after all those years of GW1 and of developing GW2. There must be something else, and that else must be Nexon with their narrow, narrow mentality.

The PvE part of the game now it’s just a fotm grinding. The sPvP/tPvP after this last patch it’s thinning every hour, you’ll know that for sure from the number of tournaments starting on average every minute (and that should not be a surprise, given the fact that regarding PvP this patch was a joke). I didn’t check WvW, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it got a downward hit too.

Stop this, asap. Unless you want to see this game die in 6 months.

Arshay Duskbrow.1306:

The MMORPG, as a genre, is fatally diseased. It’s suffered the worst fate any group of things can suffer: one hugely, wildly, incredibly successful thing (WoW), which has begotten an unending torrent of me-too cash grabs.

I completely agree with this statement. There’s nothing else “to move on” to.

The games now are catered for the masses, which require just repetitive and boring tasks that involve no skill or difficulty at all to get the new +X item as a reward, and to reiterate such repetitive tasks in an endless spiral of non-gaming.

We’ve seen this thing in FPSs, in console gaming, and now in mmog. It’s a sad, sad truth.

Eveningstar.6940:

The point is this: It’s possible that the manifesto was just unrealistic to begin with. The manifesto describes a game that barely resembles an MMORPG. But the game itself is very recognizably an MMORPG. Quest hubs, theme-park style zones, a high level cap, gear upgrades while leveling, unlocking new abilities—it even as a rudimentary talent tree (the Trait system). GW2 is an MMO. It’s going to have some form of gear progression because it was designed like an MMO.

I felt that I should tell something about this point.

And that something is this: what we call the Manifesto is, in pragmatic terms, advertising. “We will publish a game that will be X, Y and Z.” Customers make a decision to buy the product using that advertising as part of the available information at hand, before the product is out (other things may be graphic appealing, classes available, infos about combat mechanics, etc.).

It’s the same things if they’d have introduced different classes from the one advertised, or a different graphic style, etc. At release or after the release.

Now, my point is that this is called false advertising. And, mind you, this is punishable by law in most countries too. For good reasons.

If I buy, for example, a car that is advertised to go just on water (hyperbole, but it’s just an example), and after 3 months the manufacturer tells you that after that period you need to use gasoline, it’s false advertising. We can make a lot of such examples, but I’m sure you get my drift.

And, usually, a company who makes false advertising, loses all the acquired “faith” from its customer base. That’s the least, apart from law enforced punishments etc.

To the core, this is the real problem: Anet made false advertising about cap stat items, and that’s enough to be “mad” at it.

Or, alternatively, they could limit the +X% Stun upgrade to only actual stuns. So we could go with just the mesmer runeset, bringing the daze to 1.995 seconds for the +33% Daze duration, and freeing up a slot for another sigil, to raise somewhat the damage of the weapon set.

Well, Dacromir, the problem however is the fact that now (bug? intended? we never know with anet…) the sigil/runes do not function, if not, we’d have a 2.25 secs daze instead of a 1.5 sec.

And that would be fine, imo. However, due to the problem with sigil/runes, now we can use other sigils/runes, trying to improve a little the damage on the set. But I feel that doing so is similar to swimming against the current, too much effort for a very little reward.

Mrbig.8019:

It never happened with Shadowstep. Most probably a bug.

Stun breakers work on daze exactly like they work on stuns.

Well, I can assure you that the SR on IS doesn’t break anything except the stun.

Are you dazed? You port back with daze still on.
Are you knocked down? Same as with daze.
Etc.

BTW, did they fix the return part of Shadowstep? Or do we still return to a fixed-range point back, and not the starting point?

Mrbig.8019:

Basically, now they changed the thief with a necro in the current meta, unless exaggerately skilled.

And of course, if that player is exaggerately skilled as you say, he’d be a lot more efficient/useful playing a necro.

Mrbig.8019:

Stun breakers work on daze just like they work on stuns.

Well, that’s not true.

If I’m dazed, and I use the Shadow Return of Infi Strike for example, I go back to the starting point, BUT the daze it’s still up. And SR it’s a Stun breaker.

Turbolence.3842:

Dacromir @Mrbigtac
Only those who love this build can understand the irritation to the current nerf. It’s funny that now the other thieves, surely burst, happy not to have been fundamentally affected by the nerf say: Well be honest your daze and your build was Op .. ahahaha
However, do not be discouraged! I wanted to ask you, you will continue to use this build? w

I can answer you, if you don’t mind: why should we run again S/D?

1) Daze on Tactical Strike – gone from 2s base to 1.5s base. AND daze sigil and mesmer runes don’t work anymore on the daze. So we’ve gone from a 3 sec daze to a 1.5 sec daze. +10% dmg on Tact Strike isn’t even noticeable.

2) Dancing Dagger -50% damage. It was one of the most useful damage skill on S/D apart from autoattack, and the only ranged option without swapping set. The ridicolous part was that against 1 target the damage of the skill wasn’t a problem, and even against 3 or 4 targets it wasn’t that much of a problem (maybe nerf the dmg of 15/20% TOP). The real issue was the double damage against just 2 targets. Which is still higher than against 1-3-4 targets.

3) C&D – same as 2, a whopping -33% dmg nerf, which puts the damage output of the S/D build more and more subpar.

I don’t want now to make a detalied math count on how much damage S/D lost on average, but ofc it’s clear that it’s HUGE, as if this set needed it…

Anet doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to balance the thief. They’re doing everything to force us to throw away the sword as a weapon.

First PW nerfed by 15%. Then C&D -33% and DD -50% (which, as pointed out before, nerfs a lot more S/D than D/D), these numbers imo are really too high and “random”, what will be the next nerf? Any skill at -66% dmg? -75%?

Meanwhile, Backstab is untouched with its 2.399 skill coefficient, AND a little buff to the stealth ability of the thief.

Now, honestly: why anyone should ever bring a thief in tPvP? We’re pidgeon-holed in just 2 roles: burst with main hand dagger, or condition spamming. And, TBH, there’re now other classes who can cover these 2 roles way bettere than the thief.

Mythilas.7325:

I don’t feel anywhere near the hatred for this move that some of you are displaying, but I do have some reservations about it.

From today’s post by Murdock:

“By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players, we can add personal progression without making the game feel like an endless treadmill of gear that is just out of your reach.”

Doesn’t the above statement seem a little contradictory? Even reading it in context, it doesn’t make sense to me. You create new mechanics that can only be dealt with by “gear progression” and then say that this creates a sense of personal progression without creating a gear treadmill. O_o

Am I missing something?

Logic: he’s doing it wrong.

This is another slap in the face to all the players who bought GW2 under the promise of no gear treadmilling. It’s simply offensive to a rationale-minded person.

Angel.1435:

I thought ANet had said they LISTENED to the community? I’m sure if we had a poll, the % of people who DON"T want ascended gear would far exceed the ones that do.

I tried to open a poll-thread on its own in this forum. Just to get a simple “yes/no to ascended gears” from the userbase.

A moderator decided to merge it here. If you check there’re quite some “yes/no” replies in this thread: they’re replies to that other poll thread. And of course it’s been killed by the zelousness of a moderator.

I can assure you, though, that the trend was clear: the NAYs were outnumbering heavily the AYEs.

“…about these new items as I am!”

This is obviously the last paragraph of the news post made by Linsey Murdock. Since the other thread is very long, with single users posting multiple replies, I just had a little idea.

Let’s see, for real, if anet really “listens” to the players.

Just make a single post and nothing else in this thread, replying at the “hope” of Linsey, with a simple “Yes, I love the new ascended items” or “No, I hate the new ascended items.”

And let’s show anet, at least for us people browsing the official forums, how many are the nays and how many are the ayes.

My vote is:

NAY

Siphaed.9235:

I ……WAS…….RIGHT!

Okay, so I said it was going to be a 5% difference and it looks to be more of a 4% difference.

Still, it’s only a ring slot and back slot items. …..NOT A BIG DEAL!

It’s 8 (EIGHT) %. So you’re utterly wrong. Did you finish school at all?

To all those who say that the increased stats aren’t impressive and/or significant: are you that deficient in 101 math skills?

If this is the road taken by anet (and yes, the “a” is not in caps, not this time, they don’t deserve it at all), we’ll arrive at a certain point with full ascended gear. They’ll mantain, for sure, the same difference in bonuses from exotics/legendaries for all the pieces.

So, let’s see at the difference with a set that gives Power. The Ring has about 8% more Power than the Exotic one (to all the deficient at math, 68-63=5 points of difference, 5/63=0.0794 rounded -> +7.94%).

This means that a character who will run in full ascended, against a player who uses the same stat types on exotic, will get a +8% in Power. And this means, simply, that in WvW he’ll deal +8% damage in respect to the one who runs with exotic, because the formula is Power*Weapon Damage*Skill Coefficent/Armor. The same goes for Vitality, Toughness, etc. And I bet that the ascended weapons/armors will have a higher damage range/higher defence than exotic ones, thus bringing the difference more in favour of the ascended owners.

Kudos anet, you should be ashamed of yourselves, firstly because you decided to laugh in the face of all the players that bought GW2 believing in your “manifesto” (what are you, politicians?) and steering away from it in the worst way possible, and secondly because you put alot of effort to this non-sense gear grinding aspect while the sPvP is still a horrendous joke of a competitive mode, with no ladders, 3 (no, 4 now, yay!) maps, rewarding just more grinding even there instead of real skill and making the crafting professions in PvE completely useless if you don’t add recipes to craft ascended items (and even if you put, I’m sure that they’ll be something crazy like legendaries).

Celestina.2894:

I know the order of the whispers rifle has a silencer on it if I recall correctly, but I don’t remember if it looks exactly like that.

Thank you, I’ll go check in game.

Just to know: look at the human model with a rifle on the event page. Is already in the game a rifle with a silencer atm in the game? At least, that’s what it seems, a silencer at the end of the barrel.

I’m not an expert about Legendary skins (or all skins except the crafted exotics lol).

And then again, they write about the BLTC: Unique minis and brand-new weapon skins

So it seems that they differentiate on the event page between sets and skins.

This thing really baffles me, I’d love to see new skills, but I’m prepared for the worst… no, I’m not really prepared, I’m just scared that they can do a royal mess…

Then why should they differentiate between “new weapon sets” and “new Ascended loot”? It doesn’t add up…

On the event page, it’s stated With great risk comes great reward, including new weapon sets[…].

New weapon SETS? Does it mean that we really will be able to use new weapons (and thus, new weapon skills) on various classes? What do you think?

I’d like this feature to be enabled as well.

I’m not so sure about that.

However, the problem is that, as of today, some types of builds are more viable than other due to crafted equipment. For example, who would benefit more from crafting, a thief who goes for Backstab build, or a thief who goes Cond. Dmg? Or a Guardian who wants to go with Healing Power (obv I’m not saying that it’s the best choice, but it should be a viable choice), he’s stuck with Power/Tough as secondary stats, etc.

So, waiting too much for expansions and such, it means that someone is favoured than others in their char construction.

For expansions and such, they can add a TON of things even if they add this “free choice crafting” for rares/exotics, for example siege weapons blueprints, or weapon/armor skin crafting, etc.

Drauger.2158:

So what do you suggest ANET for their expansions to come?

Meaning?

As it is now, crafting is useful but very limited.

We can craft just 7 different Insignias/Inscriptions, and all of them with a fixed mix of stats (with the primary stat decided by the Inisgnia/Inscription too).

Moreover, all of these 7 Ins. have the Power stat inside, which, for various builds, it’s not that useful.

In my opinion, the crafting professions shouldn’t be just a “faster way” to level up a character, just by spending some money, but a more useful and integrated side of the game, allowing for more “grades of liberties” when a player wants to go with a particular build.

Even with the presence of Karma/Dungeon Armors/Weapons, the choice is very limited, not to mention the fact that there’re no Accessories available for Karma/Dungeon Tokens.

So, my proposal is this. Nowadays we craft a Rare using 15 Fine Mats, and an Exotic one using 5 Fine Mats. Let us crafters choose which stats to put in an Ins., down to the single one.

The “How to do that” it’s very simple: keeping in mind that the total of Fine Mats used should remain the same (i.e. 15 or 5), split the Fine Mats used in a ratio of 3:1:1 and link every single Fine Mat to a stat of the game.

For example, let’s say we link Blood to Vitality, Scales to Thoughness and Bones to Condition Damage.

If we want an Ins. with primary stat Cnd Dmg, and Vit/Though as the other two, we use 3 Bones + 1 Blood + 1 Scale for an exotic, or 9 Bones + 3 Bloods + 3 Scales for a rare (the ratio remains the same: 3:1:1).

This simple modification would render the crafting professions much more useful, would give a greater variety of equipments “tailored” on various, different builds, and imo would level to some extent the prices of the various fine mats (barring difference of availability for different mats).