Guild Wars 2

Jennah is written in the books as her own character feeling and experiencing things (like the Kralkatorrik’s mind incident) by herself and all that. An illusion wouldn’t be able to sense and express those things.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Besides, you have six dragons and five playable races so it wouldn’t match up well enough anyways.

That’s when Largos come to match with bubbles! (really, I need Largos as playable and I need it now! U.U).

And… Tengu could match with the possible seventh celestial dragon I guess…

But you’re right, while there are important connections between specific dragons and races, it isn’t like each dragon is the personal responsability/nemesis of each of them.

On the other hand though, each of them, even if not treated as nemesis, could give us insight on extra ancient lore from different races: fighting Zhaitan gave us access to the sacred city of humans, with their temples and priests; Primordious will likely be surrounded by ancient Asuran tech; Mordremoth could lead us to the place where the seeds to plant Pale Trees come from or something similar; Jormag is where the oldest Norn settlements used to be (though I don’t know if they ever had a city as important as Hoelbrak before), if his campaign through the mists continues, I guess we could explore the origin of the Spirits of the Wild. Charr would be the only one left I guess, unless another ED comes from the East or the unlikely scenario that Kralkatorrik flies back to his sleeping location. DSD could cover lore about Largos, Quaggan, Karka and Krait.

roamzero.9486:

Lokheit.7943:

roamzero.9486:

I’d rather it be swapped with Shadow’s Embrace

Shadow Embrace for free would be too much I think (maybe Shadow Embrace with an inner cooldown, but that would hurt a lot thieves that rely on it to clear conditions).

Then just swap it further down the tree with meld with shadows, making meld with shadows a 5pt trait.

It’s still for free without needing to chose that or the other. If I had to chose the reduced IoS or MiS as 5pt trait, I would prefer IoS and is a great synergy between the main mechanic and the tree mechanic. I don’t see Shadow Embrace being available without wasting a slot unless the nerfbat makes it pointless.

roamzero.9486:

I’d rather it be swapped with Shadow’s Embrace

Shadow Embrace for free would be too much I think (maybe Shadow Embrace with an inner cooldown, but that would hurt a lot thieves that rely on it to clear conditions).

Coloxeus.3480:

i didnt had a chance to record all our duels… but i think AikijinX has more wins… if i will include my double S/D 5 lose streak well i think S/D is impossible to beat this Thiefsmer build imo… gj mate

Hehe, the editor has the advantage of omit losing streaks :P But it honors you to speak about them.

AikijinX.6258:

Hey guys this is the Thief in the video. If you’re interested in my Thiefsmer build check out my build here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thiefsmer-Build-Video/first#post2790274

To answer your question @Lokheit I was using taking advantage of all my Thief stealths, Via Hidden Thief trait(Shadow arts), and Instinctual Response Trait (Trickery). Utilities: Hide in shadows/ Shadow Refuge/ Caltrops/ Skale Venom/ Bassilick Venom. I do not implement Blinding powder, although i can.

Thanks, I’ve been thinking about adapting this runeset to my current sharer build for some time because I really want to use dual pistols and this is a good excuse, though as I said I’m not sure about making that step as I’m almost sure this will be nerfed soon (and the runeset isn’t available in PvP).

I think Spider Venom would be better than Skale, the total damage through ticks is much higher (skale gives you a very slight spike over it, I think it isn’t worth it for the skill cooldown and 30 seconds of poison >>> 5 seconds of 3 torment, that basically is 4.5 bleeds if the opponent moves) and you can negate a lot of passive healing with it. Honestly I think the only utility venoms worth using are Spider (specially on sharer builds as it benefits a lot from leeching) and Devourer. Ice Drake and Skale are on garbage territory IMO.

Just out of curiosity, what was his utility spec? He seems to have a lot of stealth for a P/P.

Was he using stealth on steal in combination with steal cooldown reduction + daze trait? And I think the blind on stealth too? Seems like a good combo with Perplexity runes. He was stealthing a lot (I think he got HiS and BP too?).

The Thiefsmer build seems like a good way to make P/P interesting and I’ve been wanting to use P/P on competitive picture for ages, too bad they will probably end up nerfing it and that it isn’t a real fix for P/P that needs a fix as a set instead of some runes you can specifically exploit with it, so I don’t think I want to get too excited trying it just to see it nerfed with P/P still being bad.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Lokheit.7943:

There are 2 ways of using D/D (with variations to each one, but they are the base):

- Zerker, focused on CnD+Backstab and Heartseeker both as damage dealer and as tactical evade and gap closer.

- Massive evasion condition builds. Here you will see HEAVY use of Death Blossom along both trait and utility caltrops.

The thing with initiative is that as it allows to exploit the skill you want, you basically restrict yourself to those ones to get the most optimized numbers you can get, so on zerker except for tactical ocasional use, you will rarely see Death Blossom as it’s better suited for Carrion Thieves.

I hate that people automatically assume that all condition thieves run Carrion…

/mysterious

Well, Apothecary and similar specs have some use too on Thief (though better when mixed with Carrion). Rabid and Rampager are complete waste of atribute points on Thief. Never use those on a Thief. Really, never.

I’ve sugested this before too, though with a decrease of 1 initiative from 2 on Infussion of Shadow to compensate for giving it “for free” without needing to spend trait slots.

This way:

- You no longer die because of a trait that you’re forced to pick.

- The 5 pt mechanic, as in many other cases, works combining the profession mechanic (initiative) with the trait tree theme (stealth). You can see this in multiple trait lines.

- It gives more freedom to pick traits (if you had doubts between IoS and remove conditions when stealthed, you can now have both).

- It serves as a semi-nerf for builds that exploited the 2 initiative gain to spam heartseeker over Black Powder fields to get insane amounts of stealth, so while helping players as you’re getting rid of Last Refuge and letting them have IoS in adition to another trait they wanted, you’re limiting the effectiveness of that combo that is very abused currently, so you take a bit while giving another bit and everyone is happy.

There are 2 ways of using D/D (with variations to each one, but they are the base):

- Zerker, focused on CnD+Backstab and Heartseeker both as damage dealer and as tactical evade and gap closer.

- Massive evasion condition builds. Here you will see HEAVY use of Death Blossom along both trait and utility caltrops.

The thing with initiative is that as it allows to exploit the skill you want, you basically restrict yourself to those ones to get the most optimized numbers you can get, so on zerker except for tactical ocasional use, you will rarely see Death Blossom as it’s better suited for Carrion Thieves.

Dahkeus.8243:

Put it on while learning the class, then take it off.

Instant cast of shortbow #5 alone makes this worthwhile.

This.

You save more time even if you press 5 a couple of times in quick succession while moving the cursor until you get the right max distance than having to press, place the green circle and then press again. It also makes Cluster Bomb or Shadow Step and other skills work much faster, and you want them to work fast.

Have it while you learn your distances, but then turn it to fast cast and everything will be better and smoother.

While you level, S/P is an excellent setup. Except against Dredge that are inmune to Blind, if you only spend initiative on Black Powder (tip: even if the field disappears, don’t use it again until the Blind condition is gone from your opponent, as PvE enemies have very slow attack animations, this will give you extra seconds without wasting initiative so you will be able to keep useing BP longer).

redslion.9675:

Lokheit.7943:

redslion.9675:

Hey, is there a chance Sylvari are alien beings?

Well, they wouldn’t be the first alien species among playable races from GW2 or even GW1…

You mean humans?
O_O

Yep, mentioning GW1 was a giveaway :P

Humans are aliens on Tyria, they came through the mists with the help of the gods and started spreading through Tyria. We don’t know why exactly those humans left their original world, but we know they weren’t from Tyria.

IMO Mesmer is a great partner (specially for my venom sharing Thief as I get full potential from all the extra leeching). They have some great tricks together (and I love using Cluster Bomb on ethereal combo fields for shinny spheres!!).

redslion.9675:

Hey, is there a chance Sylvari are alien beings?

Well, they wouldn’t be the first alien species among playable races from GW2 or even GW1…

Dagraan.2854:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh5zjK7ITpQ

i thought it meant this, videos a little old but it still works.

That video was already posted.

Btw, there is a fun part where he randomly spreads trait points and doesn’t pick any trait at all to show how powerful Thief is.

But then when he is playing you can clearly see he isn’t using that random trait distribution (if you look closely, in the random one he didn’t got 15 in Trickery, but in gameplay he had the extra initiative, and he also had at least the trait that adds 3 boons on steal selected, so he was really using a proper build to boost his 222 spamming instead of something random like he pretends).

And that video is old, that one was nerfed multiple times. Not to mention that back in the day it was only effective against siting ducks that didn’t care about their surroundings. Nowadays I still laugh hard when I find one of those and I throw a simple snare at them to make them waste all their initiative in a panic attack (that’s what L2P means, learn how to counter something so simple like that, and how to move and pay attention instead of sitting in a corner throwing spells and then getting angry because you didn’t evade/snare a super simple strategy).

Jaja muy buena, que trolazo!

Too bad my usual build is too stocked with things I need to place Scorpion Wire just for this.

I’ve always disliked a bit that map because it gave Fear and KB a lot of advantage (insta deaths) and our only option was to steal from a Necro to get that too. Didn’t though about those holes and Scorpion Wire though. But I still think it’s a scenario that rewards too much certain type of effects that not everyone has the same access on competitive builds.

And this is lore because…

They did a prevew during PAX and showed the new achievement list for the event.

An interesting part is that it was in the “bosses” section instead of the “living story” section.

Yesterday I was thinking about this and had an idea:

We know Zhaitan is made out of more dragons, so what if Tequatl originally was a part of his body that became too strong and become his champion? But he is still considered part of Zhaitan’s body so he could regenerate his essence using Tequatl’s body (sort of like Wolverine or Deadpool being able to regenerate from parts of their bodies in Marvel), so until Tequatl isn’t really killed (instead of just fleeing to the sea) Zhaitan has a chance to come back. And this is why he is featured in a LS specifically for him with a redesign of the fight.

Power provides the best dps overal (around 6.6% better), and with “on crit” internal cooldowns, the difference on crit percentage, with Berserker being already high, won’t matter much.

Go zerker if you have doubts between both.

Honestly, Assassin was a waste of a space for something that does mostly the same than zerker but worse, and that space could’ve been used to adapt the PvP version of Knight (Vit, Power, Precission with Vit as primary) which would’ve been great to mix and match with zerker gear to get numbers closer to the PvP zerker amulet.

This looks really cool, but there is one big problem:

- The waypoint is contested and you need 1 minute to get back to the fight.

I know from numerous failed attemps at Temple of Grenth, that when players think it will be boring to come back walking, they simply stay there and wait to see if there is a reward for them, which means the event is scales for X players, but most of them aren’t fighting and everyone else can’t do anything against an event scaled for more players that are really fighting.

Even if you normally res, sometimes when the event is near its end, there is a chance you will be too far to get the reward so sometimes you don’t go to the waypoint if you think the event could end before you arrive.

This can be a big problem, specially if they’re increasing the dificulty and making the big guy run after 15 minutes. Player greed and lazyness is a factor that has to be counted and putting the waypoint too far will make this event unsuferable like Grenth when most players are doing this.

PS: I hope if they add achievements for controlling the turrets that if you help defending the turret you get the achievement too, or players will be trying to make the zombies kill the turret controller so they can get the achievement themselves.

It can definitely help to balance some Carrion, but Carrion is still pretty good for Thieves (way more than Rabid that has zero use for us).

The ones that will benefit a from it are Rangers to complement some Heal/Tough/Cond equipment.

A tab like this would be great for BLTC purchases:

You buy Aetherblade Heavy Armor or Mad King Costume, then instead of a mail, it is unlocked in the tab and you can get pieces of it whenever you want, effectively replacing GW1 NPC with the same pourpose that has been asked to return to GW2.

Short time after backpieces started popping around in the game, I got the “Ghosteater’s Hide” From AC (I was looking for it and was lucky to get it really soon). Basically because 2 of the stats (power and con) were good with my Carrion equipment, and because even if it hasn’t any visual appearance, I liked to have the skin of that thing as a cape.

So after the brief introduction, now I’m with a named exotic Backpiece, with a stat combo that I’m not sure fits in any of the known named stat combos.

Will items like this one be available for the “click and respec” change that other equipment got? Or will be automatially respec into a new stat combo?

Daecollo.9578:

300 to 900 or 1200.

Please don’t take the protagonism of other people’s threads with your crazy op talks.

This is why most here are complimenting this thread’s ideas and everytime you start a sugestion thread we go with the mindset of “oh great, a Deacollo sugestion thread! let’s have a laugh at today’s OPness idea!” (in fact we don’t say oh great as at this point it’s too much).

300 to 350 isn’t a bad idea as sometimes you miss the share by a bit. Even 400 could be fine I guess.

900 or 1200? yeah, well… let’s remove the max of 5 targets too!! Even better, let’s give it to every ally in a PvP map!

Do you know that even banners and shouts only have 600 range? And it makes sense that they have that range, how would you explain sharing your venom unguents to allies where we can’t even shoot an arrow?

Simplicity.7208:

So zerk is still better? It was my understanding that we got diminishing returns on investing in one stat, so the % DPS increase between 900 power and 1000 power was much greater than that of 3000 power and 3100 power. Wouldn’t it be better to spread yourself more evenly between power/precision than just full on power kitten? Perhaps a half/half of zerk/sin gear?

No, unless that you consider the mathematical fact that adding 1 to 2 you increased your damage by +50% and adding 1 to 10 you increased it by +10% (which means at a certain point it will be better to invest in a lower line). But there isn’t any DR.

All your power is directly added to the original 916 (so +916 Power doubles your damage). Ignore the “Attack” stat as it is never used in damage calculations (that stat is average weapon damage + power, if it was used for this instead of Power*WeaponDamage*SkillCoeficient Power would be more balanced with Precission).

For Precission you have to ignore the initial 916, divide all the extra Precission by 21 and sum 4 (base crit chance) to the result to get your crit chance.

Ensign.2189:

Lokheit.7943:

Berserker is like Assassin but giving priority to Power. Which makes it vastly better.

100% Berserker gear with 0 buffs will deal 3.5% more damage than a theoretical 100% pure Assassin.

Assassin scales better with boons and triggers your procs more often.

Hyperbole does not serve anyone well.

It’s 6.6 percent better on Exotic equip, not 3.5% with the data I have. Still not a big difference (as there is a considerable Power investment, I may have exagerated a bit as I’m usually coparing both atributes on Condition builds), but it benefits way more from Fury and from trait lines.

About the triggering, most of them have internal cooldown so both basically will trigger them at a very similar rate.

I could even give that at the end they will be similar sets (though Berserker is still better) as I didn’t calculate the differences before posting, so maybe the difference is no SO big.

But the point remains: This was a wasted opportunity for PvP Knight adapted to PvE (and a Vit-Pow-Tough set offers more versatility to mix and balance Zerker+Valk builds) and instead we got a poor man’s Berserker that doesn’t add anything new to mixed equipment.

Mystic.5934:

power is not way better than precision. for pure damage, it is likely better. I haven’t confirmed the math myself, but let’s say it is for now.
precision increases your chance to crit.
I don’t know about you, but when I crit, I tend to apply bleeding, gain vigor, gain endurance, and hit them with a aoe fire ball, which effectively doubles my damage.

Read the whole post as it explains that part too (btw why would you get conditions on Assassin equipment that has zero Condition Damage).

Berserker already gets those effects at an excellent rate, most of them have internal cooldowns so once you get over certain percentage you’re not optimizing it, and Power drastically overpowers Precission on the damage department so much that there are very few cases where getting aditional on crit effects compensates (specially since you’re triggering them too with Zerker).

There are builds that get trait and sigils benefit from crits, but even with a lot of them, you optimize it better with a good enough Power investment. If not, you’re just throwing aways stat potential.

Daecollo.9578:

It might have 3% Critical Damage per piece and not 2% Critical Damage.

If it works like every other PvE equipment (1 primary stat, 2 secondary) it will give as much as other sets or it would be OP (and I doubt it would be Primary).

Burning could be added to some venom, though “Ice Drake” doesn’t seem the right one for that (maybe “Fire Imp Venom” or if you want both on the same Venom, simply rename it to “Drake Venom”).

I like the Quick Venoms idea, I’ve though about it before in fact as stuns really affect my venom sharer build as I lack any stun breaker in favor of support skills. Many 20% utility reduction have an aditional effect maybe it could be the might and 20% reduction fused on a single trait as a stunbreak may be too good on a combination though, then we get a new trait, alchemist focus or something sounding like that so a stun breaks makes sense with the trait name.

Currently on my Venom Sharer support build the thing that really affect me is a good stunlock. Those can destroy me, so being able to use a Venom to break it would help a lot.

What BuddhaKeks said. There is a lot of lion symbology on Europe’s history and Lions were on Africa for that time. Same here with Tyria and Elona.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Any recipe learned through an item will not be affected! Again, if you double-clicked an item to learn a recipe, that recipe unlock will NOT be reset. If you want to make something from one of the exotic recipes you had learned but it had been reset, simply put the ingredients into the discovery window and make it.

Wasn’t there some way to simply check which 400 level items (for example Rifle, Longbow and Torch from Carrion, and Longbow and Shortbow from Berserker) you already had and automatically give the retroactive experience?

I don’t have many unlocked, but people with a lot of lvl400 discoveries wasted a huge amount of T6 materials, and now will have to waste even more to get the experience.

Basically those attacks are there so you have a thirds button during early stages of the game before you get your first offhand weapon.

There is no benefit on sticking to it.

This was a huge opportunity to get the PvP version of Knight with Vit as a main stat into PvE.

That would be good to balance some builds as you get Vit as the main stat, while still investing on Power and Precission, so it would be a good adition to current sets mixing Zerker and Valk.

The new stat sets to replace crafted equipment with MF are a bit of an opportunity waste to introduce new stat sets.

Mathematicall Power is better than Precission (even with maxed Critical Damage, it’s still better to give Power all the atribute points you can before starting to spend on Precission).

Berserker is like Assassin but giving priority to Power. Which makes it vastly better.

There are builds that make good use of Precission in certain professions, but most on crit effects have an internal cooldown and Berserker already give a steady enough chance to crit for those effects. Eve the ones without internal cooldowns are far for enough to compensate the damage boost of picking Power over Precission.

This was a good opportunity to make the PvP version of Knight (Vitality as main stat) in PvE. In adition to some good possibilities to mix stats in certain setups. Assassin has a cool name but is a complete waste of resources as anything you could do with it, you can do much better with Berserker.

PS: To know exactly how good Power is to Precission, if you do the derivate to distribute 1000 atribute points (not how the game works but it illustrates this) between Power and Precission, the result is that Max damage is gained by giving all points to Power and then substracting some points from Precission (resulting in a very small percentage of anti-crits that heal your target) and giving them to Power for max average damage.

In this case the difference isn’t so big because in PvE you can get more than 60% Crit Damage (if it were like PvP there wouldn’t be any sort of debate).

This would change if the “Attack” stat (where weapon damage is summed to Power instead of multiplied by it as it currently works) was used on damage calculation, but as the game is, Power curbstomps Precission.

Honestly it would’ve been better if they simply made it so you automatically got the extra experience from having those recipes discovered, but I guess it won’t matter much on the long time /shrug

Red Falcon.8257:

It’s wrong to say that “Power > Precision period”.
Power gives more DPS, but Precision gives more Burst in the short term.

No it doesn’t.

If you do the derivate for distributing 1000 atribute points between Power and Precission, the Max damage comes when you give all 1000 points to Power AND ADITIONALLY substract some points from Precission (resulting in a really small percentage of anticrits that heal your target).

That’s how poor Precission is compared to Power. Precission is good when you already have a lot of Power (always higher than Precission) and also Critical Damage (so consuming 3 stat lines).

There are some cases (none of them on Thief) where Precission is good to empower a build, but even then, it’s more optimal to take a lot of Power to amortize the Precission invested.

Jumper.9482:

I suggest a remake to Body Shot. This was suggested previously by another user, but I feel a good way to take it would be to make it a small radius (160-250ish) blast which burns nearby foes for a short duration. This would enable P/P and P/D another condition to punish players in melee range as well as blast a Black Powder for stealth, enabling Sneak Attack. Balance the initiative cost so that it is only effective situationally, using a black powder that was used to blind an important attack, for example. We wouldn’t want to see a boring 521 521 521 repeat rotation.

As I discussed in the original thread of that suggestion, there is a big problem with adding burning to a Thief weapon skill and that’s initiative.

A burning is like throwing 8 bleeds to a target. Initiative in principle is balanced in a way that as it substracts from your other skills, it is compensated, but this causes certain problems. One of those as we all know is that our weapon skill CCs either last 0’25 seconds or roots you (or requires a stealth rotation that has been nerfed). This is another one. If it wasn’t spammable it wouldn’t be a problem, but adding to a P/D bleeding rotation a sudden burst of “8 extra bleeds” that you can quickly put again if cleansed breaks it.

About the blast part, I’ve sugested that other times, and it could be very interesting to make P/P a conditions set. In my sugestion Body Shot would become a melee range skill that blasts your opponent away (only push without interrupt, and as it only has melee range, you can’t spam it to control an opponent attack) with the blast being represented by the very potent recoil. And as if you damage your target, the blast gives you revealed instead of stealth, you either chose to use the skill effect or the blast.

But burning on a weapon skill would be too good. Recently I was doing some calculations and even with some “fake cooldown” (making the skill go through 2 phases or making it burn only on blinded targets) the initiative cost to balance it would be extremely high for it to be viable (burning with intiative is a case of either extremely OP or I will never use that crap).

The other ideas sound good. Perplexity opened some minds about something most of all wanted when the game started: some confussion on headshot. As being CCed has poor synergy with triggering confussion, it’s not like you will spam it, and will bring some utility to the skill.

Making Unload do more damage the more conditions the target has sounds good too. Carrion builds still punch well enough, and while you won’t be able to use 3333 synergy traits (like ini on crit, except maybe some case of Rampager, Rabid and Carrion mixing like nemesis Necro if the numbers look good enough), the purposse isn’t to spam but instead to abuse what your other skills did balancing your skill usage, so if the numbers are treated correctly it could be good (and add some synergy between the bleed on the auto-attack and Unload).

Power >>>>>>>>>>>(100*>)>>>Precission in terms of added damage. Even with maxed Critical Damage. Total waste of a combination of stats with Berserker out there (even builds that benefit from crits at the end are better with Berserker as they get an stable enough chance to proc and most crit proc stuff have internal cooldown).

Evans.6347:

I still don’t agree that Scarlet has an absurd high IQ. She certainly doesn’t act the part and so far she has fallen for incredibly predictable traps (the queen being an illusion for one).

What she has is, as said, the inept ability to see mechanics and processes. All of her ‘studies’ involved processes and mechanics in one way or another.
General engineering, metal casting, fire arms and demolitions, poisons and then the Asuran colleges, which for all we know let her pick a choice of study which complemented her natural ability.

And yet no asura ever has been able to such a feat. If they let her pick a choice of study, then why no other asura has done it if you can go for what your talents work the best for? Are you telling me no asura has dreamt of the bragging rights that completing all colleges suppose?

She has either surpassed all her masters or left them begging for her to stay so they could pass all their knowledge to such an extraordinary student.

That current events make her look stupid is about the writing (a huge lot of people predicted Scarlet would attack and the queen would be an illusion, it isn’t like the scene itself was anything complex and deep), but even if the character protrait isn’t as intelligent, the background they gave to her makes her so outsdandingly intelligent.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Technically, Ceara wasn’t born with a lot of knowledge. No sylvari truly is. Ceara was born with high IQ. Which, IMO, is no different than one human born with a low IQ, and another with high IQ. Ceara’s a fast learner who awoke with knowledge of how interlocking systems work (and seemingly, that’s it).

No, she didn’t born with knowledge, but her IQ is simply the most outstanding one we’ve ever seen (at least that I can remember), and stomps any other IQ feats by comparison just by completing all asura colleges, each one in such a ridiculously low amount of time.

As I said, it would’ve been fine if she had this thing for tech and all, and went through the madness path without breaking every existing mold, just showing excellent skills at her thing, but the way they wrote her as a “can do anything” character… now the door is open for anything coming out from that tree :S

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But (losing devil’s advocasy), an army of super plant soldiers? Huh, interesting idea.

If they can evolve this fast, it could be a very frightening idea depending on what path they would take (and our current “mutated” sylvari went horribly wrong).

Truth is, if a potential super army were built for good, it would be great in the fight against the dragons, but as our playable characters aren’t super evolved sylvari, it would mean we play the “weaker members” of the race when we control them.

Dustfinger.9510:

As Konig said, one genius sylvari doesn’t necessarily mean they all are.

I didn’t say they all are, I said this raises the bar and now there is potential for that and more because Scarlet is canon and she is the most outstanding IQ we’ve ever seen, making an unprecedent evolutionary leap from her own race (this is closer to a mutation than simply high IQ if you consider how big it is and her feats) that puts her even far ahead of the most intelligent asuras.

The good thing about this is, while the gauntlet was possible for all professions, but not for all builds on all professions (I gave up on certain achievements because I refused to craft new equipment sets only for that, I hope next time it’s “pvp style” like other activities so we can use free pvp amulets), here we’re all equal, so that makes the bar the same for all of us. I think I can really make this (unless it is “Rytlock’s Critter Rampager” difficult, that thing was a challenge on apocalyptic levels!).

Most Thieves have a Shortbow on swap as it is our best secondary wapon (as intiative is shared between both sets, we need something complementary in our second set, instead of the rotation of nukes other professions have on swap, so the Shortbow as is a perfectly balanced weapon is great here).

Here are some of the things Shortbow brings:

- AoE auto-attack (which means a lot of loot bags in PvE events and WvW zerging).
- Best combo finisher in the game (spammable blast finisher) that can be transformed into a great tagging and damaging attack detonatinc it (more tags = more loot bags!).
- An “oh crap let’s get outta here!!” button (also called spamming 3 for some seconds of invulnerability and replacing yourself when you see all those red circles over you with your stamina depleted and no way to go.
- An AoE poison field (more tagging!! more loot bags!!) that before the nerf to Lotus Poison was a great source of group defense with Weakness.
- A way to travel faster around the map.

Aditionally to that, this weapon has some cool things on the hands of the Thief:

- Your auto-attack unicorn will run from target to target.
- You can have a slow moving high flying unicorn that can shatter into more unicorns!
- You can “ride an unicorn” using Infiltrator’s Arrow (you don’t ride it, but you travel to his position).

A ranger visual advantage is to throw 5 of them at the same time, like throwing a chariot of unicorns.

As others said you should first decide how much you will use SB on your Thief. It is very useful, but at the end it is up to you to know where you prefer it.

If it can create a being so incredibly intelligent that makes asura humble (and I used asura and humble together), who knows what it is capable of?

Before that I though the Pale Tree was following human being’s patterns to mold her children (while not confirmed, I though it may have to do with Ronan’s family buried close to it, though we don’t know then why Mallyck looks similar to known sylvari), and that’s why they were human bodies made up with plant components (and that’s why for example they have genitalia even if they don’t need it to reproduce).

But after Scarlet… there is no way a human would be as intelligent as her (this has a lot to do with the “sue-ism” on her “can do anything” character but like it or not, as she is canon, it means that’s where the bar is oficially set now for every possible new sylvari).

Could new generations of sylvari born with the same level of intelligence, could they start borning stronger and bigger than any known race too? Might this be related to the dream and as they get to know new races, the tree has new models to take and that’s why Scarlet was so intelligent, meaning that we could start seeing mutations of the ordinary sylvari?

We had pretty much set what we though the potential of a sylvari could be, but because Scarlet exists, she breaks the mold and now technically, if a writter wants, he can create super powerful sylvaris of all kinds as we already have a “can do anything” kind of super intelligent sylvari (this is one of the principal problems with Scarlet, she is THE MOST intelligent individual documented so far, on a race that isn’t even 30 years old, and faaaaaar more intelligent than any other sylvari which implies some form of anomally or mutation).

I’m an X-Men fan and what I’m about to say feels really wrong but… is it safe for Tyria to have that tree out there with the potential of creating those super beings? I know a lot of sylvari chose to be good, though many of them were teached before being born specific rules about the world (though it is possible that simply by discovering the world, they might be generally good like other races, and there is Mallyck’s case too), but currently we have a 100% of “super sylvari” going mad and creating chaos and destruction. Granted this is mostly because of that experiment, but she was very rebellious in the first place, even working with the Inquest.

In some way, if Sylvari are meant to defeat dragons, it makes sense that they keep evolving and becoming stronger and capable of more things (though the evolutionary jump Scarlet took is way too big)… but the first super evolved one was a disaster, and we don’t know what following super sylvari would do. Or worse, imagine if the Nightmare spreads further and we start having super sylvari fully commited to the evil side… if an anarchic one was capable of so much destruction imagine what an army of super evil ones would do.

Without Scarlet those questions wouldn’t exist. Even with her they could simply be ignored and the writter might imply this is a once and only once anomaly with no further explanations (which may be the case), but the thing is, if she is canon, that’s where the bar is set for any Sylvari even if this isn’t ever explored.

Honestly I think they should’ve though the consequences of creating Scarlet as canon. Or at least with giving her that background. There could be other hundred of ways for her to end up seeing how the universe worked and going mad and starting her anarchic plan, but instead she was created as the most intelligent being on the whole planet, capable of things Asura would need 3 lifetimes in a very reduced amount of time and asimilating knowledge from most cultures.

If she exists, more can. And with a race so young this could be just the tip of the evolutionary iceberg.

The biggest problem is that this is a playable race, but if we start getting super evolved sylvari, then our playable characters are “class b” from their own race, and if those super evolved ones start being a big problem, we might end up needing to attack the pale tree, which migh be genocide against a playable race.

All this wouldn’t be a problem if Scarlet simply had “X and Y very important feats but completly coherent and that doesn’t make her the most intelligent creature on the planet in ways that put to shame the asura colleges” that one way or another conducts her to the same “I saw how reallity works and too much info makes me go mad” result.

Burn the tree? Y/N

I wasn’t aware of that one (and I have all POIs, probably rushed that one or forgot what I saw), I knew most “potential entrances to new content” (at least if they ever do proper expansions) but didn’t notices that one, and that has some things in common with places like the Bandidt fortress with several invincible champion bandits too.

Being in the middle of a map instead of a border it has lots of potential as at any given point they can open an entrance to a new plane from there.

Yeah, and Malyck too, somehow I forgot about Malyck.

I will restrain myself from mentioning the hundreds of arguments about the tree not being a dragon champion.

Well, we know that the table itself isn’t a lie and we met both the centaur writing it and the human planting the seed of the tree during GW1, at best the tree for some reason could be teaching it to her kids while really she wants them to be nightmare… but that makes zero sense. Our characters and other sylvaris really believe that’s the way to go, to the point it would be impossible for the Pale Tree to suddenly reveal herself as evil and make the slaughter the other races as they really believe the tablet is good (and it doesn’t seem like the sylvari have some kind of inner restart button to manipulate them, or the tree would’ve used with certain sylvari already). Why telling them to follow that tablet if the tree is evil and really wants the opposite?

And the tablet isn’t there to show other races they’re good. They are good because of the tablet and then other races see them being good without even knowing about a table.

Unique trinkets are unique mostly because they represent very unique artifacts (I think there are even blue to orange trinkets that are unique too, not sure right now).

I think when we finally have Jewelry 500 those won’t be unique (though it’s possible that they’re limited to a type of infusion).

Ok I didn’t see those patch notes. It makes sense and this the easier solution.

So… then the 200 gems gift idea from the dat files was scrapped? (I would gladly give 10 mini jennahs and boosters for that :P).

Today I logged int because according to some datamining on reddit, there was a possibility of a 200 gems gift for logging during game annivarsary day.

Instead I found that all my 5 characters received a b-day gift… when I already had them 3 days ago because I created them during headstart.

Was this intended or bug? I am exploiting if I use my 5 extra b-day boosters?

Was the 200 gems something that was scrapped? Can I throw my 10 mini Jennahs and 10 boosters to the Mystic Forge for 200 gems :P?

Is this happening to others that had their characters created during headstart?