Guild Wars 2

Deathblossom: Restore full evade frame, add 1/4s aftercast animation, interruptable by dodge, but not by other skills. This would make it less of a deathtrap to use against thinking opponents while preventing perma-evade spamming. This also wouldn’t shaft people who use it for d/d condi builds (like myself) while making it a viable tool in a crit build (for the evade and repositioning)

Dancing Dagger – Base projectile speed up 30-50%, damage is fine, add +1 bounce to allow it to better function as an equalizer when outnumbered (which is it’s best use) and reinforce its syngergy as a great combo finisher. Possibly add GM Trickery trait support (for all thief skills) to apply ICD’d immobilize when applying cripple.

Cloak and Dagger: Totally fine. Does what it says on the box. Well balanced cost/utility/damage.

What if… just a crazy thought… We could salvage them for luck.

It seems like a pretty good be-all dump stat for anything that’s otherwise not useful.

I don’t think you get it. Crit-damage based damage is supposed to be nerfed. You’re not supposed to be able the put up the same DPS on crit builds as you were before, as crit builds were overpowered to the point they made all other builds effectively useless

Nerfing crit makes base power equally valuable, and increases the value of every other stat in the game because you can’t as easily cheese through everything by stacking in a corner and burning it down.

Saying that it penalizes valk/other builds because they “need to go zerk to keep their DPS” is missing the point. You’re not supposed to have the same DPS in those builds as you did before. The overtuned way crit damage was previously implemented led to the currently broken PvE metagame of “all damage, all the time” which at best trivialized content, and at worst required overtuned DPS races that made the problem worse.

Aedelric.1287:

Lions Arch is essentially an empty unused zone now with nothing in it for players to do, I say it will be rebuilt within a year essentially making the event a simple inconvenience and definitely not permanent.

Lion’s Arch will remain desolate for a long time, until it’s eventually infested with scavengers and brigands to serve as the Tengu lowbie zone in however many years from now Anet is ready to open their city and race to the player population.

LA will never be a functioning city again.

1. Stop delivering story in social media and websites. This story isn’t happening to me, internet guy who has a day off from work, it’s happening to my character, who has no access to these things. Stop expecting everyone in the world to have a facebook account. When I want information about your game, I visit guildwars2.com. There’s no need to further reinforce corporate co-opting of social media. It’s just noise at this point.

Information on the web portal should better fit its medium. I love blog posts like the talk about hobo-tron or the development mindset behind certain things. Those are articles about people in reality, for people in reality. I love to hear about what’s cool, for me, the player, about the next update. let the story unfold for my character, while I’m playing him.

2. Everyone is stupid, and nobody is effective. Look, I understand that this is a game about heroics where NPCs ultimately have to require player intervention for gameplay to exist. I get that. However, when the whole captain’s coulcil pulls a “naaah” even after the fiasco at claw island, the mari tests… and like a year of scarlet running roughshod over all of tyria? Nobody should have had to campaign to protect the city, it should have been gripped with fear for months already. Braham shouldn’t get to make decisions at all, within the context of his peers he is, self-admittedly, not fit to do so. It’s fine that he’s a big dumb guy, what’s not fine is everyone around him letting the big dumb guy decide things for everyone else. Marjory wouldn’t logically stand for it, nor would Rox.

3. More characters doesn’t automatically make everything better Seriously… how many brand new NPCs were introduced last year? How many of those were necessary to the story, and how many were interchangable? How many of them were just clutter or one-off villains that could have easily been replaced with one another? How many of them do you expect us to care about? Marjory/Kas or Rox/Braham could have easily replaced each other in all content, and been richer characters for the extra time spent with them. Ellen Kiel was a good idea on paper, but ultimately failed to have any impact whatsoever on the greater story, sidelined as she was. Magnus and the council? We’re supposed to care about these people why? Mai Trin, again, why create and give an entire dungeon to a character if you’re not going to develop her? Sadly, the best developed characters all year were Marcello and hobo-tron, and this is because they experienced real character growth over time that didn’t feel utterly contrived (this may very well be because they weren’t written in advance and actually evolved in response to content like real people!)

4. Too many subplots Dude. Really. We spend about 10 hours every two seeks on the living world. I think that fact alone justifies that story having the same sort of laser-like focus that the personal story did. Random side narratives might broaden the content, but the weaken the story. Image how much grander the southsun arc could have been if you’d spent a whole year on it. Imagine how much grander any single one of scarlet’s alliance sub-arcs could have been if you spent a year on it. Rapidly switching gears might give you a chance to show off a bunch of flashy stuff, but it weakens the story, and creates more asset production work for less narrative impact.

I still don’t understand removing the repair cost.

Are we being encouraged to fail?
Are we getting a return of the excellent morale penalty system from GW1 to replace repairs?
Or is this just a good way to justify removing some of the uncontrolled gold faucets from the game?

It’s extremely rare tat I +1 a post, but this one deserves it. A concise, humorous, and thorough examination of what was wrong with the LS plotline without being overly preachy or caustic.

It was a wild ride that got good at the end and then dropped off, but we can do better. I have faith that the next chapter WILL be better because of the mistakes we suffered through.

Molten facilities, with Mari as a close second.

I really like the smaller group instances, as most of the zergy stuff feels really silly to me. The MF was an amazing instance in its own right, but the way that it bookended what came before it, the reams of unique and useful loot, and the utter finality of the ending (blowing up the facility) coupled with the fact that yeah, you eventually did destroy them all… it was just a great update. Never once did I feel like I was grinding achievements. I was in stead making runs for loot and blowing up bad guy lairs. It was awesome.

Mari, on the same front, was just a masterfully designed fight that took the best parts of zerg fighting (zergs of players versus zergs of mobs) and small group instances (pockets of players versus boss enemies) and blended them together in a way that was really fun and just felt… right… like what a GW2 world boss fight should feel like in stead of 80 people ranged attacking a giant bag of HP.

Special mention for SAB though. I LOOOVE me some SAB, but it’s its own little world and that fact makes it slightly lower than the above content.

Personally, I LIKE the temporary nature of the content, and especially like the temporary nature of the rewards it grants.

That’s something MMOs by and large miss in this day and age. Yeah, sure, you have the mighty frost sword of greebledark the mad, because you stopped him from freezing the plains of hyperdaisies. That doesn’t carry much weight when that same “threat” exists in perpetuity for the remainder of the game’s life time. In ten years, greebledark will still be threatening the hyperdaisies, and your sword won’t be a neat memento of a piece of history for which you were present, it’ll just be another crappy mid-level sword.

I have (and love) skull shoulders and a flaming book from Mad King Thorne’s first appearance in GW2, the oldest limited release skins in the game. I love knowing that these mementos will reamin with me for years, so that in seven years, when we’ve killed all of the dragons and the new big bad whatever is threatening tyria, some newbie can say “where’d you get that?” to which I can reply: Let me tell you a story about something that happenned nine years ago, when Lion’s Arch was a burgeoning trade hub, and the elder dragons still menaced tyria.

Already I’ve had the chance in fractal groups to tell the mighty tale of the molten facilities, and I love those moments. They truly make me feel like my character has a place and history in the world.

That’s what the LS is about to me, the idea that, even though its destiny is preordained, that we have characters that have a chance to live the real history of the world. That tiny fact is what it’s about, and honestly, if you’re playing a theme park, aren’t you playing it for the narrative and shinies? This is some of the best implemented narrative and shinies setup I’ve played. It doesn’t require me to grind boring content or log in for twelve hours a day or find 50 people and grind a raid for months just to see the next part. It only asks that I show up, and do my part, on my schedule, within a two week window.

Would I like better writing or more intricate/challenging scenarios? Sure. But that’s all been getting progressively better! LS isn’t a failure by any means. It’s the reason why GW2 is the only themepark MMO I have any interest in playing.

Honestly, the outfit/headgear separation seems completely arbitrary. Add an outfit checkbox and slot to the interface for each gear slot. Allow them to be toggled individually. Suddenly welding together pieces that are already functional as separate entities just so you don’t have to put a little more work in to the interface (after already putting so much work in to the interface) is a total cop-out to get the system out the door.

Don’t rush it, justr apologise, state that it’s coming, and roll it out with an LS update after you’ve dotted the Is and crossed the Ts.

Go ahead and make the toys endless tonics as they are the only part of the town clothing system that wouldn’t otherwise fit with the new system, but the clothing should continue to adhere to the rules of clothing, become armor skins, or otherwise retain every bit of its old functionality.

Nobody cares if they have to wait a little bit for this to happen.

Area denial skills have no place in area control games! harumph harumph!

Cheese builds are any build you are using when you’ve beaten someone who isn’t good at losing graciously.

People who worry whether or not they are playing cheese builds are wasting time they could have spent winning fights, or at least getting better at them.

I think the new unlocked trait system and ferocity cahnges are the start of a path that will provide for more meaningful role-based combat.

The reason behind abandoning the trinity was to avoid needing to wait for “key classes” and “key builds” right?

Well, lets assume that as we move forward we can have traits, skills, and weapon sets (preferably with a template save option like GW1) that will allow each class to fulfill each critical group role.

Currently, there’s a little of this in the system, but certain classes are just so far over the top in one specific role that others can’t fill it (ex, guard support)

I think, where we’re headed, is that you’re going to need a support and dedicated control to succeed in new content, but that the traits and utilities and weaponsets are being tweaked and given new abilities so that anyone can easily swap a few points and fill that role.

I like to think of it the way that my ranger played in GW1. Rangers were excellent toons because they had working builds to fill just about any spot. Tank? pet build. AoE? Shatter barrage, Single target? take your pick in the bow tree? Melee? Bunny thumper. CC? Broadhead shutdown. Heals? Spring/Echo/spirit.

I played these builds and a lot more, but unless the group I was with was some form of elite build snob (and those groups will always exist, no matter what, even if it’s only a 1% mechanical advantage) I could take that toon and fill any hole in the group, and do it well enough to finish the instance.

I think, in the future, we’re going to see a GW2 in which 5x DPS simply won’t work any more, but in which those DPS players can easily hot-swap to another role in stead of waiting for another toon.

DarcShriek.5829:

In truth we are the dragon champions, that is why we have no free will in the event.

Well… some of you anyway…

Honestly, i think it’s just a matter of the fractal being one event too long. The individual events are interesting and challenging.

I’d like to see it brought down from:
Door>Bomb/turret>Rabs>Boss

to

Door>Bomb/Turret/Rabs>Boss

Basically, in stead of always doing rabs, you either get rabs, the bomb, or the turret, then go on to the boss. I think this owuld balance it out time-wise while keeping the most unique parts of it intact.

The door puzzle has never been impossible, people just got used to doing it the exploited way. The fact of the matter is that this, like a lot of content that is being added/changed requires some diversity in the party. Anet is (rightly so) moving away from an all-DPS mentality, and this was one of the first instances of content done in such a way that bringing a more balanced party is important for success, while not requiring specific classes to fill those roles.

Trying to keep a game intact where you can just DPS through everything with minimal effort is a losing proposition. Dredge is too long, but it isn’t too hard, a lot of people are just trying to fit a square peg in to a round hole be assuming that everything in the game can be done with a pure DPS group.

This is Anet’s fault for designing poor content and gear systems that rewarded doing just that, not the fault of the players for taking advantage. However, Anet is making the right moves by balancing away from that pure DPS meta. Asking dredge to be simply made more friendly to the existing broken meta is moving backward.

RedStar.4218:

It wouldn’t bother me if Achievement Points weren’t a big joke to start with.

If today you got all (and I do mean ALL) the achievements, you’d be at 11280 points. A year of doing all the dailies and monthlies gives 8620.
It’s one of the biggest time gate in this game.

I’m pretty sure that’s the entire design behind achievement points as they exist in this game.

They’re a measure of how much unique content you’ve done more than anything else. Daily/monthly rewards are a small fraction of the average user’s achievement points, wheras the majority of these points comes from LS metas, dungeon tracks, JP and puzzle checklists, etc.

In general, the player that diversifies their play and chases the more esoteric and limited time awards earns more achievement points than the player that just takes the path of least resistance and farms the dailies/monthlies. This is the player that has actually achieved more in terms of real gameplay experiences met and conquered. I don’t see how this is a problem, unless you’re of a mind that you should be able to have everything as soon as it exists, which destroys any long term incentive to play the game at all.

Well done skins IMO. They’ve got hearts, but still a certain meanness to them that makes them appealing outside of the kawaii/jokesuit obvious uses. I’m pretty happy with the weapons I’ve got, but these are a great balance between “has hearts on it” and “looks like a functioning weapon.”

Unlike the dreamer/Quip skins, these still look like something I could use to deal damage.

Can we get versions with the other three card suits? I have an idea now.

The difference is that Crit damage was far out of line for the same cost as every other stat in the game. You don’t get a multiplicative advantage in terms of damage or support utility for investing in boon or condi duration, you get a linear advantage that has similar power as using that same stat space for power, vitality, or toughness.

The ferocity change was needed simply because the crit damage stat was paying far too much in terms of utility for its low cost.

Thief:

So that’s it huh? What about our laundry list of

• unusable underwater skills
• plain out awful traits
• still too high reliance on critical strikes (new ferocity modifier will not change this for theives, but actually make this problem worse.)
• Extreme imbalance of condition removal options between shadow arts and acrobatics
• ever-dwindling build diversity
• complete lack of condition build support via traits
• venoms being pigeonholed in to a single lackluster support build
• traps still being completely useless

I’d encourage taking a hard look at everything on the thief table that isn’t either stealth or sneak attack related and going “does this hold up when compared with similar abilities, traits, or interactions which other classes are capable of?”

The answer in nearly every case is “no”

Thieves are already some of the best combo utilizers around. How about working that niche in to more skills and traits to increase thief viability while preserving the opportunistic philosophy the class is designed around?

What about taking the long list of horrid traits and fixing them up with “when you combo” and “when this field activates a combo” type effects? What if venoms and traps benefitted in unique ways from our own and other combo fields and finishers? What if we had traits in acrobatics that facilitated more non-typed condition cleansing? What if Deadly arts was less ADD and became worth building a template around?

Whatever she’s doing, it’s going to go horribly, HORRIBLY wrong.

She’s under the impression that she can build a weapon to challenge a dragon, and has successfully built a device to bring said dragon to the field of battle through coercion.

Only half of this plan will work. Scarlet will succeed in bringing forth whatever whispering doom messed her up in the first place. She will not succeed in fighting it, she will die, and in the process create a whole world of new problems for the rest of us to clean up.

Also, Remember Scarlet knows something about Caithe, something secret. I implicate Caithe in this somehow. She has been suspiciously absent since Twilight Assault. She’s up to something and is going to Deus Ex our Machina before its all over.

I knew that cattlepult was rigged. I want my money back!

“Elite Boss”

“Mass Event”

“Field Battle”

“Zone Challenge”

Also, They should probably have a distinct UI color/element to set them apart, and use the “hey you, help!” type of crier NPCs to alert players everywhere in the zone.

You know, I came here expecting a rant about how condi builds take too long to kill stuff on timers, but in stead found one of the most reasonable and easy to implement solutions to the object problem that plagues the whole game.

This is a pretty good idea!

I got the helm. World first!

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I don’t know, but I think it may be broke. I went to several of the ‘Energy Probes" last night and couldn’t do anything with them.

No, they has just already been cleared/looted and were waiting to respawn. Each one gives you about 30 seconds to collect from it once it has been broken, then takes about ten minutes or so to respawn.

You can either wait around for it to respawn, or roam to different maps and try your luck elsewhere. It helps to use a group or guild to watch several zones at once and tell each other when probes come up.

Sarie.1630:

PopeUrban.2578:

Good, this game hands out too many free achievements. We need more titles/achievements that require difficult feats, with reward points to match.

This is a well designed achievement. It encourages you to actually try to do well at the event, in stead of chasing some meta gizmo that can actively hurt it. (I’m looking at you tequatl chest/failure achievements)

Any achievement encourages YOU to do well, but it doesn’t mean other players will want to play ball just for your achievement to ping.

They don’t have to “play ball” when the achievement is well designed and doesn’t encourage doing things that directly conflict with completing the event. In this case, the achievement doesn’t ask you to do anything but be good at the event. other people trying or not trying to get it has little effect on your attempt, other people attempting to win does (positively)

If people are intentionally throwing lanes I’d recommend reporting for harassment. It’s gotten more than one person disciplined for trolling tequatl turrets.

Squee Squashington.5189:

PopeUrban.2578:

Furthermore, until fights like tequatl, queen’s gauntlet, high fractal levels, etc. the game wasn’t pushing content toward a very specific set of more hardcore players. not being able to complete the content, and not being able to access it are two different things. You don’t need to grind a million prerequisites or even win anything to access every bit of content in this patch.

So let’s take content designed for “hardcore” players and push it on entire server populations of players of varying skill levels most of which don’t do 40+ fractals or kill Teq more than once per week, if that.

I’d respect your desire for more challenging endgame content if that weren’t the worst logic I’ve ever heard.

That’s just it, the marionette event isn’t “hardcore” by any means. It’s no harder on a per group basis than a lot of world events. Within a week players will be conquering it as easily as the Balthazar temple event or Claw.

The flaw here is that it doesn’t adequately split or scale for population variances, creating some no-win 1 man lane situations at random. That is an oversight, of the sort arenanet makes far too often.

The Wurm on the other hand is intended as permanent Tequatl level fight, and it is serving its purpose.

Finally, just as there are some patches that are primarily narrative driven easy instances, there will also sometimes be patches that are primarily hard boss events, primarily dungeons, etc.

Over the past year we’ve seen plenty of support for various playstyles, several systems to ensure less active or skilled players have reachable goals and alternate methods or content. The problem is that everyone wants their specific favorite playstyle to take the focus every single patch.

The entire game was not built specifically for me, or for you, or for the esports enthusiast who plays in the mists all day every day. It was built for all of the above.

I know several people who think the narrative instances are a similar “waste of time” and thus, they skip them. How this is any different is beyond me.

Heralds. What are they doing these days? Weren’t they supposed to help with this? What happened?

Seriously guys, use the heralds to:

Tell us context sensitive LS directives

Give us alerts of boss pre-events so the entire player base doesn’t have to default to out of game tools (Precedence: the LFG window)

Give us a rough time estimate of when the current phase will expire.

Mr Ko Killer.7206:

It’s not even about how difficult It is to get said achievement, but how kitten they make the descriptions, it tells you one condition that needs to be met….out of like 20 different ones. That’s the one thing I’ve hated about LS, and thus, I don’t even play the content until at least a few days have passed, so I can go read Dulfy’s site and Dulfy can tell me everything Anet felt wasn’t necessary to let you know, but rather wanted to throw you through a loop and come on forums screaming BUG NEEDS FIX NAO!

A bit of a joke is it not?

This is true, communication could be better (and they could get a move on with that system Colin talked about so being led around by achievements is’nt how we experience the LS content)

Squee Squashington.5189:

They do when you market content towards an entire player-base not just the elitists.

This is literally worse than the combo-field killing blow daily, as well as the worst world event since the Teq revamp…

How is this relevant?

Achievements are not content, the fight is the content. Achievements are rewards, and what’s more there is already a system in place so that people who can’t or won’t do specific LS achievements can get the time limited meta rewards just by doing a few more dailies.

Furthermore, until fights like tequatl, queen’s gauntlet, high fractal levels, etc. the game wasn’t pushing content toward a very specific set of more hardcore players. not being able to complete the content, and not being able to access it are two different things. You don’t need to grind a million prerequisites or even win anything to access every bit of content in this patch.

I agree, open world fights need audible cues on part with the existing boss fights to clue passers by in to the mechanics.

Trial and error is ffine for more limited content like instances or guild bounties, but when there’s a limited server-wide window, there should at least be a chance of a group of players succeeding the first go round if they’re all good enough to listen and follow the cues.

Blade Syphon.4325:

PopeUrban.2578:

Good, this game hands out too many free achievements. We need more titles/achievements that require difficult feats, with reward points to match.

This is a well designed achievement. It encourages you to actually try to do well at the event, in stead of chasing some meta gizmo that can actively hurt it. (I’m looking at you tequatl chest/failure achievements)

Except this achievement has almost no bearing on your individual skill what so ever. If the other people on the platforms fail, you do not get credit for the achievement, even if your platform kicks butt, takes names, and you dodge everything ever.

If this was a personal thing of “You need to kill the champion and generator without taking damage on your platform to get credit”, I’d be inclined to agree with you.

Having to wait on four other groups that you can’t help or interact with to complete their platforms in order for you to get credit on yours is not an intelligent decision, at all, especially for content that’s temporary.

It’s basically forcing people to either have the luck of the saints in order to pull these off, or more accurately, give players a reason to come back every day to do a daily achievement for the LS to get credit for the meta, which in turn makes Anet look good in front of NCsoft and their investors, as they can turn around and say “look at how often people are logging into the game!”

I’ll counter that achievements like this one actually do a lot more to raise the general skill floor, and I really believe that they do. People who are there simply to farm an achievement get fed up and leave, while people that really want to work for it are encouraged to not just be good at the event, but to be awesome at it.

My personal opinion is that all achievements should commemorate not just doing something a lot, but doing something well. GW2 is unique in its use of achievements since the chests, and so it comes down to “where do we put the achievement point reward” Group events, despite being ‘drop in’ affairs are still cooperative content.

As long as the point reward is reasonable for the difficulty, I don’t see a problem with it, provided the desired achievement has a reasonable shelf life, and isn’t absolutely required to unlock other content.

Also keep in mind that this is day one of a new encounter, and like any new encounter in any MMO ever, the first few days are simply going to be FUBAR while people learn the fight.

Jahroots.6791:

Hmm. This could suck unless the end reward is quite generous. And even so, Anet’s messing with one of the cornerstones of RPGs. Kill something, loot its corpse. Over thirty years of beautiful tradition, from Gygax to Sakaguchi!

And for the record, GW2 players go loot-crazy because they’re starved for good drops. If we got good/pretty/useful things across a variety of content there would be no need for dedicated farming.

This is true, however the luck/salvage system did a LOT to fix this. With 110%+20% MF, I see several rares a day from just normal drops. I got that 110% very easily, by simply choosing to invest in my MF by salvaging all my greens, and its paid off pretty well. The trick is making those rares as exciting as all the cool skins on exotics, and better communicating the importance of luck and MF to newer players.

Kentaine.4692:

Wow… what a weird stance for Anet to take. I’ve always felt like failure was a failure in the past. Every time scarlet invaded I felt like it was a failure because by the time I got to it the achievers had already started farming them. And the only reason they farmed them was for the chests, not the blues and greens. Getting blues and greens has never felt like a win to me, it just helped offset the failure.

Honestly, I never cared about failing a scarlet invasion BECAUSE of all the loot it awarded, and neither did anyone else. The only time people bothered to win them was when they had to to achieve a desired award (the achievement) past that, the vast majority of the player base simply farmed it because it was an easy way to make a lot of fast blues/greens and champ boxes.

Decisions like this prevent that situation from happening. There are already plenty of farms in the game, and Anet has gone on record that they have no problem with the currently popular champ trains.

The bad decision here is that champ trains are often more rewarding for time spent than spending that same time defeating a boss. Farming should be a viable option, but winning a boss event should pay out roughly equivalently upon completion, with the added bonus chance of getting unique boss loot.

Complaining about failing the event because “other people are bad at it” is a pointless endeavor. Having loot based on success and success only ensures that the people at the event are there because they want to win, and encourages bad players to get better at it.

Overall these sorts of decisions, while potentially hazardous in the short term for my personal pocketbook are a boon to the overall health of the game.

Good, this game hands out too many free achievements. We need more titles/achievements that require difficult feats, with reward points to match.

This is a well designed achievement. It encourages you to actually try to do well at the event, in stead of chasing some meta gizmo that can actively hurt it. (I’m looking at you tequatl chest/failure achievements)

Because arenanet decided a while back that failure should feel like failure.

Just like every other world boss left in the game, loot is given based upon success (normal world bosses) or partial success and progressing phases (elite world bosses like teq/worm)

The lack of loot is to keep you focused on the event rather than looting, and just like teq, winning and getting even crappy rolls is still work a good chunk of change (though that chunk could be a bit better)

I’m going to need about 20 dolyaks, a whip, and does anyone know where I can rent a shaman?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Searing_Cauldron

Its the only way to be sure.

You never stopped to wonder:

Where does all the loot sold to NPC merchants go?

Why do all of the NPC merchants look like minimum wage employees?

How much do those merchants pay for your goods versus their list price on Gnashblade’s market?

How much profit have you lost for convenience, and where does it all go?

#TeamKiel

Stormy Dragon.9210:

PopeUrban.2578:

The problem is that she’s written as functionally insane, while simultaneously displaying such an impressive command of tactics and manipulation that it’s just utterly unbelievable.

Problem is that until her ultimate plan is revealed, we can’t really tell if she actually is functionally insane, or just seems like it because without knowing her goals we can’t judge the sense of her actions.

So far I like Scarlett, but I must admit that a large part of that is because I’m assuming this story is going somewhere that will eventually cause it to all make sense. If it turns out to just be a shaggy dog story in the end, my opinion will likely swing dramatically to the negative.

It doesn’t matter.

See, in the eyes of the audience (us) appearances are the character. Similarly, when Scarlet’s entire “master plan” is revealed, with much pomp and flash, and she starts strutting around all straight laced and less stupid-haired, that would still appear to be written against type again.

There is a fine line here. By not giving the audience any inkling of inside information or clues to scarlet’s endgame, that endgame may as well not exist. By showing us what she “saw” and then hastily saying “okay MAYBE she saw” and also not making any references to this crucial character data in the actual game what is the audience left with but appearances?

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and is a fictional character, guess what, it’s a duck. If that duck turns out to be a gerbil in a duck suit all along, the audeicne will just go “That’s a stupid ending anyway, why is the gerbil wearing a duck suit?”

Stories aren’t stories at all when you don’t actually tell them and that’s been the sin of the LS up to this point. We haven’t been told the story. Not that we should have been privy to the master plan, but we should have been clued in that there IS a master plan, and have some sketchy foreshadowing to go on. Want us to believe Scarlet is more than she seems? How about giving us a glimpse of Scarlet actually being that person once in a while?

A story sitting in Bobby Stein’s notebook is not a living story, and it’s also not the story of Tyria. It only becomes that when it’s communicated to the players, and integrated in to the world itself through written prose or peferably as ingame content (no offense to Ree and her ten billion novels that I can’t find the time to read)

Not getting the whole story is not the same as not getting any of the story, and… well… take a look at the new LS trailer. We haven’t been getting any of the story. Even the marketing material looks like a weirdly disconnected series of random events.

I’m still sick of hearing this argument.

Look. Nothing you get from world completion is necessary to play any part of the game. If you don’t like the requirements for it, then skip it.

It’s a star over your head and a part of an overpriced shiny doodad. Those who want shiny doodads must be willing to do what it takes to earn said shiny doodads. If you don’t like the requirements for world completion… then why are you trying to get it?

I don’t like sPvP Occasionally I’ll play a match or two, but I find closed match fomat in this game stale and boring. This, I’m not really interested in Pvp dailies, monthlies, titles, etc.

Similarly, I have a few people in m,y guild who have no interest in ever setting foot in WvW. Those people essentially decided they didn’t need the WvW armor skins (until they were handed out for basically free via achievement chests) or world completion bits.

You have the option of a great many kinds of rewards in this game. The PvE Purist has a larger and more reliable selection of rewards than the WvW or sPvP purist. If you don’t want to do the content, then make peace with not getting the reward.

This isn’t an elitist viewpoint. It’s a realist viewpoint. By virtue that something exists does not necessarily mean you are intended to acquire it. If you want it THAT BADLY then you’ll probably do what it takes. Otherwise you really are speaking from a sense of entitlement. You want the shiny, but you think your special circumstances make you exempt from the rules everyone else had to put up with to acquire it.

You are not a special snowflake. You are not the only person on a low rank server to have wanted world completion. You are not the only person in GW2 who has played content that wasn’t their favorite just to get some reward they really wanted.

I think the use of incentives to get people to explore different parts of the game, and making that coveted legendary essentially require it is a solid one. It’s the same method by which players are encouraged to find all the enchanting little nooks and crannies of the PvE universe. If it ticks off a few people who think that there should be some unwritten rule that all content should exist in a predefined type-bubble so be it. I’d rather let go of someone with that disposition and keep the guy who just lets it go than the other way around.

Our guild communicates almost exclusively through ventrilo. Keep in mind that GW2 is a rather fast paced game, and the faster the pacing of play, the less likely people are to pull their fingers over and opt to type.

That said, I do love it when people opt to type, and on Tarnished Coast I have all sorts of interesting conversations with people everywhere in chat.

Jumper.9482:

Jesiah.2457:

snip

Page 3.

Although I’m not actively suggesting buffs specifically aimed at Condiblossom, it is a novelty build I would eventually like to see made playable in years to come, only after Thief has more than its current 1 (D/P Trick) build.
After all, excluding the BWEs, it was the first build I played that got me into Thief in the first place.

“Only after”

“novelty”

Despite the fact that you like to say that DB got you in to theives, you are treating a balance thread like a pre-tourney stat comparison. You don’t see them as real builds, and they should get attention after some more “real builds” are bumped up. That’s not a healthy way to look at balance.

Again, this isn’t build diversity. This is shortsighted meta-reactive balancing. Deathblossom bleed builds are no more or less novelty than D/P. Both have a single primary trick which the weaponset wasn’t designed around on purpose, but has been put to use by a creative player base. Both are supported by ancillary skills of varying utility.

The difference is that D/P actually has good traits and the way stats/cooldowns are handled in this game makes it mechanically better. If white damage were lower, or there weren’t quite as many condition removal skills you’d be singing a different tune. It isn’t a superior build by design, just by coincidence.

This is a larger issue than just thief builds, but across the game. There are a lot of “designed builds” and just as many “discovered builds” and it’s in anet’s best interest to work toward parity for all of the above in order to provide players of all classes with the best possible suite of options.

In practical discussion about what to run for the next match, terms like “novelty” and “tier” are appropriate. You’re working with the tools available for a specific goal.

When you’re talking about how to create parity so that the toolbox is bigger, these terms should be thrown out the window.

Honestly, I see the point you’re trying to make, but on the other hand I have very little sympathy for the practice of “selling runs”

It was a typical practice in GW1, and it’s a semi-typical practice in GW2, and I don’t blame the sellers for making an anet-sanctioned buck. Heck, I sold my share of desert runs back in the day whenever i was low on platinum.

However

The entire concept of “catching a run” denotes a far greater problem with both games, and only one of those has any liklihood of being addressed.

You are trivializing the player experience, and by virtue of allowing players to hop in to a dungeon at the last minute and claim dungeon rewards you are trivializing those rewards. This is a problem with the design of the content, and not with the players.

I believe dungeon selling does need to change. I believe it shouldn’t be practical or feasible. I believe people should have to earn their own achievements and skins. I believe that content should exist to engage and reward those players at a high enough skill level to regularly sell runs in such a way that there is no incentive to sell runs.

I believe that doing content for other people while they AFK is an indication that something in the design is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed. Until then, I refuse to blame either the sellers or buyers for taking the paths that they do.

You’r asking for the dungeons to be fixed so that only “legit runs” are possible. In my opinion, a “legit run” doesn’t include abusing the poorly designed dungeon mechanics to solo five person instances, and if and when dungeons are fixed they should be fixed to eliminate that possibility, they should require participants to be present for an entire run to claim tokens and achievements (but not gold, as you’ll still have droppers now and then) and should essentially be structured and played as it says on the door “a five person instance”

Until then, good luck with your business, but keep in mind that you operate in a borderline exploitative business in the first place. If dungeons are fixed, they aren’t going to be fixed with that business in mind.

Jumper.9482:

The D/D deathblossom spec was one of the first specs I played. It was one of my favorites. Caed played it for a bit as well.
If you remember back to early last year, switching amulets weapons and utilities was nerfed because I would switch midgame to solo the lord with Deathblossom on Foefire.

With that being said, you must realize that converting 25% of the bleed to direct damage would only buff condition builds due to the heavy amount of condition cleanse in the game; or rather due to the extreme lack of condition diversity Thief brings. You’re almost never going to get the full duration off. At the very least, it would relatively increase the effectiveness of +bleed duration runes and sigils resulting in even more damage/options.
And I think 1 more initiative with the initiative changes is more than made up for the change of making it ignore aftercasts, enabling you to use it much more reliably as an evade, right? I mean otherwise it would be so overpowered you could dodge nearly everything. Oh, and with the proposed Trickster change, you would even get confusion and a use out of Dancing Dagger with this build to even further cover your bleeds. Overall I see this as much a buff to condition as to power D/D.

And about the utility aspect, the only amount of damage that I can see that would ever outweigh the amount of utility that D/P brings in comparison would be enough damage to 1-shot someone from full health. I don’t think anyone wants that, so I’m proposing bringing the utility of D/D up to less than half that (if even) of D/P with the benefit of slightly higher dps options, rather than having the worst of both worlds as is its current state.

You make good points, but I think the concept of adding more damage compression to deathblossom is still a bandaid on the overarcing problems with condition design on the thief as a whole.

Namely, we don’t have enough reliable cover conditions for our build.

Other things to consider:

I use dancing dagger’s lifesteal combo as a heal. Gaining chaser style interrupts wouldn’t strengthen my build, but cutting my initiative expenditure would fundamentally change the way I use both dancing dagger and shadow refuge.

What if, in stead, we left the already tight init expenditures alone for dancing dagger and deathblossom and in stead made some more build neutral changes.

I think the concept of allowing deathblossom to function as a cancel is a great one, but one of the weakest points of the skill is its aftercast lock-in that good players can easily exploit for free hits. I think leaving the skill offensively comparatively weak as it is now would be acceptable if it were returned its full length evade frame, and given the self-interrupt treatment you described.

It was initially removed because it was far too easy to exploit for chained evades, but let’s be real here: People know how to mitigate this, and other shifts in balancing and meta have turned this in to largely a non-issue in the current state of the game. I’d even be okay with increasing its init cost if it got that full evade frame back, or even if its animation was shortened to its current evasion.

As for dancing dagger, I think it’s decent as control, but its primary issue in most builds stems from its niche nature. It’s a great control skill against 2+ targets, and a sad skill against a single target. I think we need to normalize its effectiveness somehow, rather than turning it in to headshot 2.0

D/P is a unique flavor and should retain its hard control effects, it’s good at what it does. I look at the overall dagger offhand and */D skillsets and see something that put offhand dagger as an evasive rather than a control offhand, the problem is that it doesn’t do its job well enough. What if Dancing Dagger scaled its init cost based on the number of targets it actually hits? This would make it a much more reliable skill in all engagement types without fundamentally changing its melee-keepaway design, and make it better at what it’s already designed for: stacking cripples and bleeds to soft-control targets for setting up a CnD or buying time and keeping melee at range.

Giving it a stun isn’t the answer. That kind of aggressive ranged control is already present in D/P, and IMO That’s a perfect place for it. I don’t see a lot of value or diversity in giving D/D analogous tools and playstyle to D/P. In stead, I’d like to see weaponsets with variant playstyles, strengths, and weaknesses.

The proposed changes to dancing dagger and deathblossom further pigeonhole D/D in to a “burst or GTFO” weaponset.

This promotes glass cannoning with more utility than any bar with backstab on it should have access to like ever, and making it a boring bar to play due to extreme init costs across the board.

I play malice/evade/condition D/D. I am the poster child for build diversity, and over time anets changes have actually strengthened my build. It’s still weak. So Weak in fact that I have to turn off the malice portion and go with withdraw just to PvP in most cases. I use it because it’s fun to have lots of evades and bleed people. You’re effectively looking for ways to destroy my spec. This is not build diversity. This is enhancing one build at the cost of another.

A lot of the other stuff seems okay on the surface (trap buffs for example) But keep in mind any time you radically alter the functionality of a skill you are impacting someone’s build.

My personal opinion is that pvp damage scaling across the entire game, from all sources needs to be brought down by 50%. It scales far too high compared to toughness/vit. Fights are often over in less than ten seconds for some new players, and that, in my opinion, is far too fast a “speed limit” for the hardest pro ganking the newest newbie. It’s so fast in comparison with the PvE game of mitigating multiple small hits or dodging larger more telegraphed hits that it kills the entire system and makes people gravitate to stupid crap like zoo teams and full glass backstab builds.

The fact that thief burst damage has been hit with the ugly stick repeatedly isn’t due to the damage output, but the time it takes to waste some poor sap in one rotation. You’re not going to get back potential sources of burst until that burst doesn’t aslo equate to “jumped a guy from stealth and killed him in ten seconds” because people will whine, and moan and make a fuss about it.

Yes, good players can duke it out for quite some time. I think my personal record was against a guardian in a fight that lasted probably five entire minutes. This is not the norm, and the problem becomes exacerbated in team fights, where it’s not only harder to actively mitigate all sources of incoming damage, but borderline impossible to apply damage effectively with conditions, barring epidemic, leaving an entire subset of builds out in the cold.

I really do believe the answer to overall balance, and a start on getting thieves back on the right track is to look at how compressed damage is in PvP as a whole, and dial it back a bit so that people might use some longer cooldowns or more esoteric skills because they live long enough for them to be useful.

The rules, as I have observed them:

If it was obtained for gems, it might come back at any time. I may also end up on the AH.

If it was obtained be completing content, It is highly unlikely it will return. If it is not “the one shiny” for a release, it will probably also end up on the AH.

If it is a wearable cosmetic, obtained by completing content, it is almost surely impossible that it will return, but may be tradable on the AH.

If it is a title, it will never return. At best you’ll be able to acquire a similar but not identical title later.

First place.

Second and third place do not get gold.

Hats.

I have enough backpacks.

I want more hats.

Shoes are also acceptable.

Provided they can be worn as hats.

Honestly, I really want to like scarlet. She’s a sort of enthralling classical madcap moustache twirling kind of Villain that’s entertaining to watch.

The problem is that she’s written as functionally insane, while simultaneously displaying such an impressive command of tactics and manipulation that it’s just utterly unbelievable.

Basically, she’s written against her own character. I really REALLY enjoyed her during the queen’s gauntlet, I liked the introduction, I liked the minions, I even forgave the “oh and humans have robots now just because we needed to give this chick minions” because I thought she was a fun villain and I wanted her to have interesting minions.

And then we started figuring out that she’d been subjugating every enemy faction in the game, against all reason, for no purpose we could discern, never got clues about, and honestly seemed completely unbelievable.

In short, Scarlet is just put in shoes that are way too big for her to fill, and arguably shoes that shouldn’t have been invented in the first place. I want to like Scarlet. I think she’d be a fantastic madcap foil as part of the grater pantheon of villainy if her power level was just toned down a notch.

As a character who supercedes every enemy faction in the game in terms of power I just can’t buy it. At best she’s on par with Faolan or (the late) Balefire in that I could envision her as having control of a regional enemy faction. Threat to the whole world? Nah. She’s far to schizoid for me to believe it.

I’ll be happy when shes out of the limelight, but I hope she sticks around after to make guest appearances in a more character-appropriate role in the future.

I feel that player housing, if implemented, needs to be attached to gameplay. The primary draw of player housing in most systems which incorporate it is that it is functionally useful. Either it’s a rest stop in a game without fast travel, a safe or expanded bank, a place to put player owned merchants, or a place to hole up from hostile creatures/players it always works best as a system when player houses are worth more than just places to hang trophies.

Good examples of where this could be useful from a player>guild scenario:

Use “open instancing” There isn’t enough floor space to simultaneously provide everyone with a plot of land and give them the room to actually have content. Age of Conan tried something interesting by making each housing instance house three groups of players. I think that’s a good start. Seed instanced map “neighborhoods” that work in a similar fashion to the home instance.

Allow players to combine and build plots for larger or combined structures in these neighborhoods, and allow players to move to new neighborhoods for little or no cost to avoid trolly neighbors, or just to get open plots to expand their guild halls. The idea is that these neighborhoods become social hubs, not places to compete over building space.

Allow guilds, individual players, or neighborhood collectives to set up limited industry there. Hire craftsmen that output randomly selected items of tier X, adventurer/scouts that bring back consumable “reports” that can give region-limited buffs, allow players to plant and maintain gardens or mines, and allow the neighborhood to opt in to potentially dangerous conflict with NPC factions to increase their industrial efficiency at the price of having to periodically defend their neighborhoos from insurgent forces of bandits, skritt, ogres, or whatever they managed to tick off.

Most of all, make these neighborhoods open and free to all. if I know someone’s ID, i should be able to visit their neighborhood, I should be able to randomly stroll through random neighborhoods, etc.

Decorating is great, but ultimately hollow and doesn’t add much to the game if these structures aren’t also functional places where you have a good reason to visit.