Guild Wars 2

Dara Potocska.8196:

Hey friends,

I just wanted to give an update that we believe we have identified why some of the missions with progression based objectives are launching as if they were already complete. However, fixing it is delicate work so we cannot provide estimates on it. Thank you all for your continued posts and information (and for those who use /bug and report issues there) as it helped greatly in chasing down the issue.

Also, I’ve posted to reddit – but we’re also working on fixing the WvW Challenge: Obsidian Sanctum mission as we’ve identified the issue there as well.

Thanks everyone for your continued support and reports!

Would continued bug reports be of assistance now that you have identified the issues?

Here is this week’s report.

We did an escort 8 yaks, it jumped to 8/8 upon activation. As promised, we had people watching it, having more than one person watching the mission as it activates does not stop the bug. We were able to re-activate it a few hours later (1-2), but it repeated the bug.

Also, a 10k rank jumped to 10k/10k upon activation. Please see attached screenshot. I did not fill out a bug report for these incidents, we were pressed for time.

I had the same problem twice. The third time it worked.

The two times it did not work, I had left the top of the tree trunk (boss area) to do other things while the countdown continued. The third time I stayed in the boss area on top of the tree trunk and the daily worked. I also took the shortcut worm the third time. Hope that helps.

Here is this week’s supplemental report in screenshot form. This mission bugged in a manner consistent with previous reports. Please read the above for details.

Some things of note:
-Last week I do not recall any bugs.
-This week, we encountered something strange. The Completion Bar went full upon activation for a brief second, then went back down to 0/3. This was for an escort 3 yaks guild mission – which then completed successfully as expected. I saw it happen again for a different mission, but forgot the type.
-Possibility based on intuition: Having a guild member open the guild panel, select the guild mission about to be activated, and then having another guild member activate the mission keeps the mission from bugging out? We will test the theory next week.

I think that this would be a great idea for a lot of reasons. The main being that it curbs toxic behavior in competitive gametypes.

-It encourages players to stomp their opponents in spvp rather than try and grief them by making them bleed out (you can argue it is smart gameplay, but it is a form of griefing in my opinion). They will move for the kill quicker rather than letting the opponent do it themselves. (An aside note: people already get kill credit for people dying both in spvp and WvW regardless of if their target is killed, stomped, or logs out. I do not believe this is incorrect and do not see how a Self-Defeat would be any different.)

-It provides an option for people in WvW who are being griefed by players emulating grawl in heat on their downed bodies.

-It, as already mentioned, lets you just flat out respawn faster when you have no chance in pve. This is much better than sitting around thinking, “this is stupid.”

Some suggestions: Make it an actively channeled skill – as in, you must hold down the #5 for self-defeat. Make it the opposite of the #4, you progressively lose more and more life as you hold it down, but it also ends the self-life-drain when you release the #5 (solving the prompt issue).

Some ideas for the skill facts, icon and text:
Skill Name: Surrender or Give up.
Skill Icon: A hand holding up a white flag.
Skill Text: Hold to lose an increasing amount of life. Release to end the life drain.

-Takes 3-5 seconds to self-kill a freshly downed player or has a 3 second recharge upon being downed (3 seconds before it can be used when downed) or both. Also, place a recharge on this skill, perhaps 10 seconds or whatever is determined to be fair so that someone can’t start self-destructing, interrupt a stomp with their #2 and then go back to killing themselves, denying an opponent their deserved stomp. Perhaps also have the use of this skill black out your 1-4 skills for a short time, so you can not just suddenly decide, ha, now I’ll use my #2 and you’ll never get your stomp! The reasoning for this timeframe is so players who have legitimately earned a kill can get that satisfying stomp in. It should not be a stomp-counter, but a grief-counter.

After taking some time to cool down, I’m still mad. I want to make this very clear to Arenanet:

I will not buy anything until you fulfill your obligation to complete the first expansion pack.

Even after that, I will not buy any future expansions that do not include advertised content, but said content is promised to be added later. Only when the expansions have fully released all content advertised will I purchase them.

I will not support this decision. I fully realize A.net can close their ears and sing “la la la” because there are players that will continue to buy the product and my act of protest will likely accomplish nothing. However, I refuse to lay out the welcome mat and allow this kind of behavior to go unanswered. Not standing up to companies for acts such as this creates companies people complain about, but say they can do nothing about. This is what I can do.

I believe that $20-40 is reasonable, but – I will currently not buy anything released by a.net until they complete the content I paid for in the first expansion. I also will not buy any future expansions where content is not included but promised after release.

Here is this week’s supplemental report. You can read the text shown in the screenshot (in the bug report window) for further details. We did manage to reactivate the mission perhaps two hours later and complete it. The only thing strange we did was activate multiple missions at the same time. I’d post more details, but I want to shout a string of expletives at arenanet right now for the recent, unrelated swindling this company announced.

Know that this post is less about actually trying to fix the problem and more of a laughing-in-arena-net’s-face-for-not-fixing-a-3-month-old-game-breaking-bug-that-has-been-repedidly-reported-over-and-over-and-over. …That actually felt therapeutic.

How should I put this?

• you.

I paid for HoT. I even bought the $100 version because I believed in Arenanet. You had a good track record. And then HoT landed.

You released HoT without finishing the raids or legendaries, that is a kitten job. Now you’re telling me that something that I have been patiently waiting for will not come? Something that I actually paid for?

No more gem cards. Wait-and-see for the next expansion, no pre-order. You are on probation for false advertising, Arenanet.

We also encountered a bug with the WvW challenge complete obsidian sanctum.

We activated the mission shortly after entering the obsidian sanctum. Some of us attempted to run the puzzle normally, with me and another member making it to the location where we can portal other members who are jumping puzzle challenged. We portaled them up and continued.

One of our members rushed ahead and made it to the top and we received a message saying the guild mission was complete, but only half of us received the completion chest. Ironically, only members who were portaled seemed to be among the batch that received the chest – I and the other member who did the puzzle normally did not receive the reward.

We attempted to restart the mission from our position at the end of the puzzle, but those who did not receive the chest the first time still did not receive their reward.

Here is this week’s bug report, last week most of us were ill.

WvW supply lines escort 5 yaks jumped to 5/5 upon activation. As mentioned, this causes the mission to bug: unable to complete through expected methods and the mission can not be reactivated after abandoning (although we have been able to reactivate a day or so later, we have no idea what causes the ability to reactivate).

Also, many of us experienced (as shown in the screenshot) a “Can not connect to guild server” message while in wvw. When in pve, I noted that I did not receive this message.

1 -5: Listen and work with the community to make WvW better.

Another vote for Friday. I would say around 4pm PST (or whatever daily reset is) would make more sense then the times offered.

Here is this week’s secondary bug report.

1. WvW rank (10k) jumped to 10k/10k upon activation. We did not bother trying as this has historically meant that the mission has bugged and even if we did it properly, it would not complete or award rewards.

2. WvW supply Lines (8 yaks) also jumped to 8/8 upon activation. We did not bother trying as this has historically meant that the mission has bugged and even if we did it properly, it would not complete or award rewards.

I can only attach one screenshot to this post, and have chosen the 10k wvw rank to represent both cases. Please notify me here if the second screenshot would assist.

The Oasis powercore bug happened again, this time with the 5 turn in.

I also experience strange…lag? when accessing the guild panel during a guild mission. All the people on my friends list will “Flicker” online and offline, filling my chat with offline online spam. Last night it was especially bad, my screen went black twice with only the guildwars 2 mouse pointer (that could be moved freely). Each time was precedented by this flickering. Once I stopped looking at the guild mission panel, the crashes stopped. I believe this crash is related to looking at the guild missions while guild missions are active in WvW.

I will continue to collect information and report it in-game and here on the forums. When it happens again next week, I will take a screenshot and present it here.

Today, as a 6-7 man group, we had two WvW guild missions bug out on us.

1. The “Oasis collect 3” mission immediately jumped to 3/3 power cores turned on (on the guild panel) upon activation of the guild mission. There was no reward or personal chest. We turned in 3 power cores and did not get credit (personal reward or guild credit). This has happened repeatedly. Usually, when this happens, when we abandon to restart this guild mission (when it bugs in this manner), we are unable to re-activate the mission (The button can be pressed endlessly without effect.)

2. Obsidium Sanctum challenge: We began this challenge without activating the mission. Two of us reached the near-end of the puzzle (the other end of the broken bridge). I activated the mission and portaled the remaining members up. As we approached the last building (the one with the puzzle end chest on top), we got the notification that the guild mission was completed (no one had touched the chest) but no one got personal rewards. A few of us ran up to the top and opened the chest, still no personal reward. We re-activated the mission and portaled the remaining guild members to the top where the chest is. Upon portaling, we again got the guild mission completion notification – I had members run to the chest to loot it before the notification vanished, but it made no difference; there was still no personal reward.

In-Game bug reports have been filed for these bug-occurances, but it has been well over a month since we first encountered these bugs and reported. As such, I thought it best to come onto the forum and post in this thread to expedite the de-bugging process.

We have also, routinely, encountered bugs where WvW guild missions have completed without actually completing the objective. This is random and we have no idea what causes it. Sometimes personal reward is given, sometimes it is not. Guild credit, however, is consistent. This has been observed while on inner of Air keep during a WvW Capture and Hold Keep. There have been others, but all I can remember at the moment is the air-keep-incident.

If we can be of assistance in squashing these bugs, please message me in-game as I do not frequent these forums. I believe that, for this week at least, there is a high likelyhood that we can replicate the “Oasis turn in 3 powercores” jumping to 3 / 3 cores turned in upon mission activation.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Feedback:

1. Patch is a bit smaller than I expected in terms of class balance. Specifically,

Engineer:
-The new trait is practical for flamethrower specialists like myself. However, that quickness boon can mean you kill yourself 50% faster against retaliation. What I mean is, if you are using Flamethrower 1 and your target(s) get retaliation, you can suddenly take half your health (7500+ damage assuming hitting 3 targets 10 times each for 255 retaliation damage.)
-The change to the sneak gyro is fully justified. However, could work be done to ensure that stupid gyro actually follows the player instead of wandering off in random directions or standing around?
-Scrapper Purge gyro is unfocused. It’s utility bar skill is a condi clense (defensive), while the toolbelt is a poison field (Condi-offensive). The toolbelt or the Utility skill should be reworked to compliment each other.
-Engineer has a lot of unused skills. Gadgets and turrets need a rework – I can not remember the last time I saw an engineer use any of these skills.
-Ranger’s “Search and Rescue” got a massive buff while the Scrapper’s Function Gyro is awakward to use (This was brought up by another poster in the engineer forums). Could the Function Gyro be set to be used untargeted? It is especially difficult to target allies (even ones in your own party) in the heat of battle, which is required for use of the Function Gyro. If it was set so you could use it on the closest downed player in range by pressing F, it would be greatly improved.
-Elixir S should provide invulnerability to conditions. If I use a skill that makes me invulnerable but unable to do anything else but cower, I should not continue to take damage from sources. I consider this especially true because, in my opinion, conditions are overpowered for reasons stated below.

Necromancer:
-Corrupt boon on an already powerful autoattack was uncalled for. My necro hits for 8k condi damage with the auto attack without the corrupt boon. He also is quite survivable. Condi damage builds can be built to do extremely high damage with extremely high toughness and vitality – compare this to berzerkers who give up such defenses for high damage output. This is my argument for taking the corrupt off this autoattack. The dagger and utility skill I do not see a problem with, as they have a cooldown, the autoattack is broken.

Revenant:
-I think the shield healing nerf was a bit much, but understand why. My Revenant was extremely survivable. More testing is needed.
-Hammer 2 needed that nerf and might need a further nerf on top of that. Consider 10 energy cost, but test it carefully.
-Sword 3 has a lot of pathing issues. Against a foe who’s back is to a wall, the attacks will sometimes suddenly stop. It also can not be used against certain targets, such as wvw walls and the stationary vines (the ones with the toxic field around them) in silverwastes.
-Sword 2 frequently has its projectiles “Obstructed” by nothing.

Mesmer:
-Alacrity was a bad balance concept in the first place. It affected siege in wvw and gave the mesmer insane skill reductions.
-Shatter skills are too powerful. Add a 1 second cast time to F1 and F2 shatter skills. As it stands, mesmers can create 3 clones and spike you for all your health out of nowhere (stealth) with no tell or warning. This is broken when compared to other classes.

Ranger:
-I had an old build that used “Guard” to enable permanent swiftness. The cooldown change to this skill destroyed the practicality of this. I wish to point this out.

Guardian:
-Dragonhunter Longbow 5 MUST be nerfed. It is beyond broken in wvw. The only escape is to use an invincibility skill, which is rare (Elixer S on Engineer, Mist Form on Ele, Renewed Focus on Guardian, etc) or a teleport. Only certain classes with certain builds are able to escape from this difficult to read attack. Make it so that stability functions as expected against the barriers placed by this skill – allowing you to trade a stack of stability for escape.
-Dragonhunter can be extremely survivable. This is the focus of the guardian, but you may wish to examine if it is too much. (Shelter-F2-F3-Renewed Focus-F2-F3 + Utility skills).

Thief:
-Daredevil can kill people with dodgerolls. I created a thief build that can dodgeroll at least 11 times non-stop creating mini-caltrop fields and throwing conditioning daggers (lotus training). Couple this with a superior Sigil of Stamina, and you can dodge-roll a near infinite amount of times (Found to be absurdly powerful in camp taking in wvw). (add a 10s Cooldown to Sigil of Stamina to solve this problem) To emphasize how broken this is, my noobish wvw guildmates who are sub-100 wvw rank ran this build with me. The three of us WRECKED camps and players with ease. The other two are effectively rally bots, some of them still stand still to activate a skill, rather than continually repositioning. Please look into this.
Example of build in question: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqYVn8lCFOhdOBePBkmiFqiaO73+w37C+gtrLCCgDA-TBCDQBOZ/BKqMAAPBAEpEkgq/gFleH7UAoH9BECQxcA-e

Ranger:
-Still testing, but so far looks good. Search and Rescue might be TOO powerful and need a 60s base cooldown.

Elementalist:
-Scepter needs a re-work. I am sure there are other members of the community who play elementalist who have better suggestions than I. However, I wish to state that attacks such as dragon’s tooth (Ele Scepter fire 2) and (Ele Scepter Water 2) should have their attack animations sped up.

2. Commander Functionality
-This is a GREAT change! The ability to assign makers to people and locations in the world is a complete game changer for the better!
-A suggestion for Quality of Life of Commander functionality: add a check box that allows the commander to hide his commander tag from people who are not in his squad. Often I find myself running in WvW or even in the open world and want the new functionalities, but do not want to disturb the map by having my tag always visible. In addition, this might alleviate some concerns wvw commanders might have – that tagging up makes your group visible to spies.

3. Additional feedback
-My guildmates have often mentioned how they would like to be able to reset their wvw points, and would be willing to do so for gems. Their suggestion often is along the lines of a low gem cost for the first reset, with increasing costs per reset (between wvw tournaments). However, since wvw abilities are reset before each wvw tournament, I suggest a small fee of 50-100 gems per reset (with the ability to reset turned off at least two weeks in advance of an upcoming wvw tournament – this is so that vocally entitled whiners, shame on you filth, can not complain that they just reset their points and want their gems back.)
-My guildmates also would like to join more than the allotted number of guilds, and recommend an incremental increase in gem costs for the luxury of being in a large number of guilds (ex: 200 gems for the first, 300, 400, etc).
-If the “Teleport to friend” fails (or even better, enable a check to see if the use WILL fail) to teleport you to your friend, it should NOT consume the item and NOT teleport you anywhere. My friend is currently teed off that he has burned two teleport to friends to try and get into Dragon’s Stand so he can get a ranger pet. The first time the teleport to friend worked fine, but the map reset after defeating the boss, leaving a map FULL of angry players. The second time he tried to join me after the defeating of the boss, but nothing worked (party / squad join friend in Dragon Stand and teleport to friend). The second time, and other instances where a player tries to join a map that is full, are the basis of his frustrations.

I hope this feedback is useful to you and your co-workers.

In the majority of hot join games you play you will see 3v5, a score of around sub-100 to 300+ with two spectators. Once people start losing, they switch to spectator and wait for an opportunity to join the winning team. This is a reality that can be observed by pressing “Play Now” if anyone doubts the validity of this toxic situation.

Here is a solution I wish to present :

(1) If a player switches to spectator from a Red or Blue team in a “Play Now” (Excluding private servers which may toggle this option) server, they may not re-join until the end of the match.

(2) If a player joins a game in progress that has equal numbers (ex : 3v3), they may choose their side. Once they have done so, they enter a single-slot cue. Once another player has entered the cue for the opposing side, both players are placed into the ongoing match.

Example for #2 : Billy joins a game with a 3v3 in progress. Billy chooses blue team and waits. Roger joins the game and wants to join Blue but can not because Billy is in the cue for Blue team. Roger instead joins Red team. The moment Roger joins Red team Billy is put on Blue team and Roger is placed on Red team. The match is now a 4v4.

The reason for these measures are to ensure that players that “Hot-join” are provided with fair games. Players wishing to do dailies will not be disrupted as these settings can be turned off for private servers.

Hot-join should not be for dailies if the game wishes to attract new players to this game-type. The current cultural reality of sPvP hot-join is a shuffling game where the players who understand the system have taken a ‘volunteer’ bonus for unbalancing the teams and ensuring their win, or are on the winning team, and those who are new are frustrated fighting uneven odds.

Stating that this is the reality is not productive unless an argument can be made that this team switching and unbalancing of teams to ensure volunteer bonuses holds some merit (Dailies can be done in private servers that are established for such). Thank you for your time, and I hope others have input on how to rectify this problem.

Bug report : Staff #5 Sublime Conversion acts as an unlisted waterfield. My friend created the field in a stronghold game and I, by force of habit, blasted it with my Engineer Flamethrower #2. To my surprise I got a waterfield blast combo! We did it again and confirmed it.

Also, during that stronghold game, we tested the Druid’s ability to keep the lord alive. My friend was able to keep the lord alive against a ranger and a reaper by himself : he also kept himself and the lord at full health.

I have a question that I would appreciate a Dev or Customer Service response.

I have GW2 and would like to apply a HoT Upgrade to it.

HoT comes GW2, but does this mean I can open a second account with the free GW2 coming with the expansion?

If so, that would be great! I have real life friends on Emery Bay that I would love to join for WvW sometimes, but my home server is Sanctum of Rall. I don’t want to leave my WvW ingame friends on SoR, so I have been thinking of buying a new account the next time GW2 goes on sale just to join my real life friends for the occasional WvW outing.

Please tell me if this would work. If I don’t get a reply, I’ll ask Customer Service privately, but I figured some other people may be wondering the same thing – making this topic better addressed on a public forum.

I have a suggestion for the undecided Gadget Trait in the master line.

Volatile Gadgets : Your gadgets create an explosion on use.
-Gadget recharge is reduced.
-Damage and AOE range TBD
-Blast Finisher

This trait creates a damaging Blast finisher on yourself each time you use a gadget. It would also count as an ‘explosion’ for synergy with the “Explosives” specialization.

Thematically, this trait is very flavorful with the Engineer’s crazy inventions. It also goes with the direction A.net seems to be going with the Engineer of making the class the “Blast finisher guy.”

Stephen, is there anything we can do on our end to help you diagnose this problem? Anything at all? Record videos of the events? Send DX-logs? Travel to Bellaveue Washington so we can help at your HQ?

I have had lag-spasms since the ‘Airplane’ patch.

Whatever Arenanet did in that patch, made things unplayable. Pre-Airplane patch I had no issues. Post-patch I suffered rubberbanding of allied players and 1-5 second server delays where nothing moved on screen (then suddenly everything sped up to catch up). These lag-events occur with a frequency of several seconds to five minutes, I would estimate.

WvW is unplayable. I ask for official investigation into the matter.

I tested and you can only see names through walls with postproccessing on low or high. ‘None’ does not enable this bug.

It is a simple thing to fix. Put Toypocalypse in the “Dungeon” category instead of PvP. Put it in the “Looking for Group” menu.

There really is no valid excuse for saying “It must be this way.” This is lazy developer syndrome and a company that preaches progressive thinking in MMO’s will not be excused for this behavior.

And bacon-flavored ranch.

I can confirm the same bug. I do not know if it is a display or actual loss of 200 toughness. It does feel like I am taking a lot more damage.

Can this topic be looked at by A.net, please? The sticky on the top of the engie forum says that bug reports should be posted in the bugs forum; if it will speed along the correction process, can a moderator move this thread to the correct forum?

Before this gets locked, here is what I have learned from encountering two hackers. Take as many screenshots as possible, as fast as possible. Report the player for botting (closest applicable).

Open up your friends list – open blocked list. Screenshot who is on your blocked list, THEN block the hacker. Screenshot your block list again – you should have the account name of the hacker.

File a report at Exploits@Arena.Net – this is the only e-mail provided to me by a moderator that locked a thread where I encountered supermen that could literally jump over wvw keep walls.

I find it disgusting that we can not call out hackers on public forums. It is stupid and detrimental. Please pass that along to your manager, Forum Moderator who locks this thread.

As per the title : what is the developer’s stance on going to character select (or hitting Alt-F4) to prevent the enemy team from gaining war-score through a bloodlust stomp?

What is the development team doing in regards to this issue?

In what manner can Bloodlust be improved so it is less of a “Winning team wins more” tool?

I am getting tired of people in hotjoin for the same reasons as the Origional Poster. Everyone always joins the winning team. If they’re on the losing team, they spectate until they can fight their way onto the winning team. If you do not believe that this is a problem, play a hotjoin game and watch how many spectators there are when the losing team is down a player.

I don’t care about the losing team getting more, less, equal rank points. I just don’t want these degenerates to get rewarded for stacking games. There has to be a solution. Something like : at the end of the match, the server calculates how long the match took, and how long each player spent on the winning and losing side and in spectator and awards appropriately. That’s just an idea I came up with, so I challenge you developers who might be reading this post to come up with something better. Until then, I think I’ll leave hotjoin and only play on my Guild’s server where we can drop-kick hot-joiners who stack for the win.

Things I would like addressed in order of priority.
1. Dredge. (This is civil disobedience. This fractal is all that matters.)

Brainstorming to improve the dredge fractal :

• Change the fractal to an infiltration type mission where you are disguised as a dredge. You are given new 1-5 skills like a transformation to face the encounters.
  1. Have an “alert” meter. When the meter fills, the dredge are aware of you, your disguises drop, and the fractal continues in its normal state. There will be points further into the fractal where hidden Whispers Agents that can re-disguise people once.
  2. 1-5 skills provide distractions, misdirections. Ideas include : “Toss dwarf relic” creates an object that a nearby dredge will move to and destroy; “Voice Projection” throws your voice to the target area, raises the alert level, but draws dredge in an AoE to investigate; “Reassuring Gong” you play the gong to reassure nearby dredge, lowering alert level.
  3. Actions that further the party’s movement through the fractal, such as standing on buttons, destroying walls, etc, raise the alert level – perhaps only if there is a dredge nearby witnessing the action? The party must co-ordinate their skills to distract, misdirect, in order to maintain their disguises. A bonus is awarded in an achievement, a chest, or both for navigating the fractal to the boss without causing an “alert.”

-Future work to pursue -ONLY- after the dredge fractal is addressed-
*Make Ascended rings salvageable into Globs of Mist essences.
*Make globs of mist essences purchasable for Fractal Relics or Pristine Fractal Relics.

In WvW there is almost no reason not to log the moment you are downed to prevent a stomp. None.
1. You will have to respawn anyways if you’re roaming. If you’re in a zerg, it is likely they will move on, or die right next to you. Unless the WvW cue times are long, you can just re-join.
2. It is a final finger raised in the direction of your opponent.
3. If you log to prevent a stomp in WvW, you prevent the enemy team from getting a point or three thanks to the addition of bloodlust. This is INCENTIVE to log out to prevent a stomp and should be addressed.

For these reasons, WvW has lost its fun for me. Whenever I feel like banging my head against this brick-wall, it usually ends up with a log-fest followed by alt-f4.

I should not be locked down for 10+ seconds just because I refuse to play with my 6-10 skills all set for condition removal. No class should be able to deal that much condition damage with that long a duration. No class should be able to re-apply so many confusion stacks so quickly.

If you will not listen, then consider doing this : Make burning stack in intensity. Make poison stack in intensity. Make regeneration stack in intensity. Make everything stack in the same ludicrous intensity as Confusion.

Confusion is supposed to be a short-duration, anti-chain-skill condition that punishes people for not making their attacks count. It is applied over and over and over with Runes of Perpelixity, clone-shatters, and mesmer skills. Add into the mix a targeting nightmare of wrestling with the UI to correctly target the mesmer in the middle of combat and you can see the problem.

Fix this bullkitten. Arenanet, you are better than this. Stop creating overpowered runes. Stop making ideal stuff. Make balanced stuff.

Arenanet, take notice. These are good ideas.

Engineer:

• Napalm Specialist. Burns you apply last 33% longer.
  - I do not know of anyone who uses this, or why they would. I play an engineer as my main character. I use a flamethrower and rocket boots to apply constant burning but I have no desire, or need, to use this. If this trait increased the duration and increased damage to burning foes by say 10%, it would be worthwhile. If it increased the duration and condition damage, it would be worthwhile. This trait needs something additional to justify the grandmaster slot.

• Alchemy 15 – Transmute. Increased % chance from 8% to 100%. This effect can now only trigger once every 15 seconds.
  - I think the proposed change is too powerful with a 15 second ICD. A ICD of 30 seconds puts it in line with similar traits. The Warrior’s Shrug It Off has an ICD of 30s. The Thief’s Pain Response has an ICD of 30. Both of those traits are very similar but have a conditional trigger.

Thief:

• Signet Use : Reduced initiative gain from 2 to 1.
  - Thieves use deception skills to stealth themselves and gain initiative. The current state of Signet Use puts it on par with Infusion of Shadow in regard to initiative gain. To gain the two initiative, they must sacrifice the bonus the signet gives. There are few, if any, thieves that use mostly signets. I disapprove of this proposed change, it will harm your effort to promote build diversity.

• Critical Strikes 15, Opportunist : Critical hits have a 30% chance to restore 1 Initiative, ICD : 1 second.
  - I believe a lot of thieves consider this trait mandatory. I recommend changing it to a 100% chance on critical to restore 2 initiative every 10 seconds. Without some change, all thieves will consider this trait a necessity. With the coming change of 1 initiative regeneration per second, this may be a good time to revise this trait. No other class has a trait that reduces cooldown times for skills on a critical hit; this trait is unbalanced in that regard.

I like it. I went solo against a Toxic Portal and downed a nightmare court. Damage from the surrounding mobs forced me to retreat and heal up. A Krait went over and healed the guy I downed and he returned to the fight. I had a real fight on my hands, not a “Press 1-5 to win” game. I had to pay attention to what was going on. I had to blast away the other mobs to finish off a nightmare courtier. This made it challenging!

That said of that fun and engaging fight, I echo the prior statements of this thread : only certain mobs should have a downed state. It should be rare, perhaps a bit less than what is now. This is a good experiment of the Developers, I applaud their testing of new ground.

1.) Class Balance

2.) Game Polish (Bug, latency, framerate)

3.) Guild vs Guild and guildhalls

Milk the map! A community invited event clear!

Hello! Milk (The Guernsey Milking Coalition) will be sponsoring a community invited event at Brisban Wildlands this Saturday! Our goal will be to do as many underplayed events as possible! Here’s how it will work :

We will meet at Mrot Boru Waypoint (Center-Southmost portion of map) and run a lap through the map, stopping for each event and champion near our path! Look for the commander tag of Iliyia Cena.

While we will not intentionally be working towards map completion; this is still an excellent opportunity to open the area for later exploration, and level a character in the range of 15-25! You are, of course, free to leave the ‘event zerg’ and catch up later!

We hope to see you there at 7pm!

Server : Sanctum of Rall
Time : Saturday (8/31) 7pm Server Time (PST)
Place : Brisban Wildlands
Waypoint : Mrot Boru Waypoint (Center-Southmost portion of map)
Direction : Counter-clockwise heading east
Commander : Iliyia Cena

Milk the map community invited event!

Hello! Milk (The Guernsey Milking Coalition) will be sponsoring a community invited event at Timberline Falls this Saturday! Our goal will be to do as many underplayed events as possible! Here’s how it will work :

We will meet at Talus Waypoint (South-west corner of the map near Malorean Wilds) and run a lap through the map, stopping for each event and champion near our path! Look for the commander tag of Iliyia Cena.

While we will not intentionally be working towards map completion; this is still an excellent opportunity to open the area for later exploration, and level a character in the range of 50-60! You are, of course, free to leave the ‘event zerg’ and catch up later!

We hope to see you there at 7pm!

Server : Sanctum of Rall
Time : Saturday (8/17) 7pm Server Time (PST)
Place : Timberline Falls
Waypoint : Talus Waypoint (South-west corner of the map near Malorean Wilds)
Direction : Counter-clockwise heading east
Commander : Iliyia Cena

My advice for your first time through is to hang in the back and watch your party closely. There may be times where your party will want to stack in a certain spot (Twilight Arbor Up path), or run past several groups of NPC’s without fighting (several dungeons), or wait for people to get into position before speaking to a NPC (Citadel of Flame path 2). Pay close attention for Called Targets, party movement on your mini-map, and directions given in chat – then find a way to watch all that without being eaten by angry NPC’s.

For equipment you should be wearing a set of all exotic. Groups that DEMAND that you be a certain build/equipment/profession should be avoided like a toxic plague; especially on your first few times. Anyone can make it through a dungeon if you can harness the full potential of what your character is equipped with. If you join a public group, and are unsure of what to do, state that it is your first time and would like instruction; then stick close to the person who guides you. Dodge out of red circles, they are even more deadly in dungeons than in the open world.

Finally, have fun! It’s a game, it’s a learning experience, this is something a little different. You’ll get the hang of it!

I also recommend an engineer. Look at the Flamethrower and Grenade kits. Those two can output a lot of damage if you play them right. My advice would be to build a level 1, take it into the training grounds of structured PvP, play around with builds for a while, test it out against the npc’s in there, and use that to gauge if you think it fits your playstyle and you want to take it further and make this character an 80.