Guild Wars 2

Game NEEDS more high SP cost items, especially sidegrade skills. This increases breadth and depth of progression without adding uneccessary vertical progression.

In addition, SP is the only thing that you’ll literally never feel pressed to grind for. It just happens all the time.

The sheer breadth of skills and figuring out good interactions was the core of GW1. We have a more strict system in GW2 which makes adding skills to spice up a bar a lot less risky and headache inducing than designing skills in the first game. More skills/traits at high costs is a good thing the same way that adding new rune sets and sigils is a good thing. It broadens options and creates build diversity via scacity while not being a completely unfun “this or that” locked tree system.

You guys woulds have been really mad at the end of the ancient karka fight.

Longest finisher ever.

I like to think that the clockwork need finishing because, hey, they’re busy little builders, and their ability to build often MORE dangerous things out of fallen comrades is fun.

I like the toxic sylvari because they’re obviously hopped up on spores.

I like the inclusion of transparent and easy to understand new enemy mechanics that don’t just fall apart when scaled up like aetherblades turning a whole field in to stun-hell. It adds some semblance of strategy to a fight aside from target order, which is something this game desperately needs.

So I run D/D “zergbunker” thief as such:

20/0/0/20/30

Now, The reason why is that the ~20s stealth makes improvisation actually useful, and lotus poison is a nice condition cover from the auto for basically free.

With 20 in acro I’m using assassin’s reward as backup for the composite overall healing from mug and signet of malice. It’s a fun build that’s a hybrid of evasion and self healing, requiring an active defense and a really aggressive playstyle not possible on other thief builds.

I think this merits saying as if the focus is build diversity, I run a pretty uncommon build, which is being kinda gutted of utilities in favor of (In my Opinion) bigger damage and healing numbers.

These changes are doing the following to my build:

Increasing overall healing, but only IF I drop either improvisation (and lotus poison) or lead attacks/sleight of hand.

THE problem is, these two traits are only really in the build in order to support one another. Is there any chance we can move/adjust improvisation (which is highly underused/undervalued, and thus should be a candidate for a buff in this patch) to allow it?

TBH it would make more sense as a master trait in trickery anyway, and richochet would make more sense in deadly arts.

How about swapping the position of ricochet and improvisation, moving a pistol DPS trait to the DPS line and a steal focused trait to the steal line? I’d be able to keep the utilities in place, but still have to give up 10 points in deadly, thus losing lotus poison and bountiful theft, which seems like a fair trade for fluid strikes and the ability to run hard to catch and assassin’s reward.

This would also benefit P/P and venomshare builds.

P/P would be able to run lighter on trickery and get more utility out of deadly arts, making the p/p without venom share overall a better spec due to the 5 extra optional points in critical trikes or a defensive line, which synergize much better with p/p. In addition they’d have an overall better base of optional initiative traits to fuel themselves, and P/P builds would just be overall tighter with less “chaff” trait points to get to the good stuff.

This would also have a potential slight benefit on venomshare builds, allowing them the option of running improv and the other venom traits for possible proc recharges.

What if they just added non-crappy 3-5 on 1h sword, have those empty handed skills be some acrobatic and multitarget flair appropriate to the cunning and agile duelist.

ipan.4356:

I play a 10/30/30/0/0 build with D/D and P/D.

Assassin’s gear and full set of Grove or Monk for the Healing Power.

I wanted to use Signet of Malice, so the idea was to nearly max out healing power, and heal through AoE DB’s most of the time – the heal I get from hitting a crowd with DB is only second to Dagger Storm – which I also use.

I used to put 10 pts. into Trickery, for extra initiative (in addition to being an Executioner, I also put pts. into flanking, x-tra init, and init on skill 1) – this was to facilitate more DB spam. I even tried init on stealth, but I didn’t use CnD as much so I switched that out.

Prob was, I wasn’t hitting hard enough, so I put those 10 trickery pts. into Power instead and saw some improvement.

Works real good in PVE, but I don’t consider the Thief a PvP class, unless you want to play the cookie cutter build, so I avoid it.

Does anyone have a good D/D Signet of Malice build?

TBH, D/D signet of malice runs better as a condition build, and build that spams deathblossom is a condition build, as the white damage from deathblossom ain’t great. I run a D/D malice build as a bleeder with 30 trickery which helps regen, synergises well with bleeds, and lets me opt out of critical strikes in order to get more out of acrobatics/deadly arts.

In additon, if you’re running a SoM build you want to be running mad king runes for the 6 slot effect. Those birds count as multiple attacks, turning daggerstorm in to godmode or basilisk venom in to a reliable heal+ranged stun.

So I run D/D “zergbunker” as such:

20/0/0/20/30

Now, The reason why is that the ~20s stealth makes improvisation actually useful, and lotus poison is a nice condition cover from the auto for basically free.

With 20 in acro I’m using assassin’s reward as backup for the composite overall healing from mug and signet of malice. It’s a fun build that’s a hybrid of evasion and self healing, requiring an active defense and a really aggressive playstyle not possible on other thief builds.

I think this merits saying as if the focus is build diversity, I run a pretty uncommon build, which is being kinda gutted of utilities in favor of (In my Opinion) bigger damage and healing numbers.

These changes are doing the following to my build:

Increasing overall healing, but only IF I drop either improvisation (and lotus poison) or lead attacks/sleight of hand.

THE problem is, these two traits are only really in the build in order to support one another. Is there any chance we can move/adjust improvisation (which is highly underused/undervalued, and thus should be a candidate for a buff in this patch) to allow it?

TBH it would make more sense as a master trait in trickery anyway, and richochet would make more sense in deadly arts.

How about swapping the position of ricochet and improvisation, moving a pistol DPS trait to the DPS line and a steal focused trait to the steal line? I’d be able to keep the utilities in place, but still have to give up 10 points in deadly, thus losing lotus poison and bountiful theft, which seems like a fair trade for fluid strikes and the ability to run hard to catch and assassin’s reward.

This would also benefit P/P and venomshare builds.

P/P would be able to run lighter on trickery and get more utility out of deadly arts, making the p/p without venom share overall a better spec due to the 5 extra optional points in critical trikes or a defensive line, which synergize much better with p/p. In addition they’d have an overall better base of optional initiative traits to fuel themselves, and P/P builds would just be overall tighter with less “chaff” trait points to get to the good stuff.

This would also have a potential slight benefit on venomshare builds, allowing them the option of running improv and the other venom traits for possible proc recharges.

Favorite: Flame and Frost
Not any given update, but the way the entire arc was handled. It began with a whisper, ended with a bang, showcased character development, and although introduced in phases the entire arc remained playable until it was concluded

Granted, the “whisper” portion of the update was overly long, but that was before the restructuring that gave us the current schedule, which I really do think is a perfect content pace.

In future arcs the “whisper” portion of an arc can be rolled in to the “bang” portion of the following arc… just like how the whisper of southsun was rolled in to the BANG for F&F.

Least Favorite: Queen’s Jubilee
I really DID enjoy the instance, and I really DID enjoy the gauntlet, However everything about this release felt rushed. We introduce a triumphant new achievement for humanity, only to have same achievement rendered null and void within mere minutes. Then we defeat scarlet in the same breath… only that defeat is utterly inconsequential because the thing we just saved is a temporary hole in the ground. "Here’s a place, save it, good job, Oh, the stuff you care about is somehow not saved. Also, we’re gonna let her keep the new steam robots. We accomplished nothing in this episode, we fought nothing of consequence, for no reason of consequence, and our efforts were ultimately futile. The hole itself was equal parts frustration and mindless faceroll that sat on such a difficulty rollercoaster that it was unpleasant to experience, and it’s lasting effect on the world was a series of events that seem to similarly begin and end with no apperant rhyme, reason, or consequence.
Scarlet’s first appearance was deliciously ominous, only to be followed by insane ranting and no clues to move the story forward.

A Treatise on the Scarlet Arc
Obfuscating scarlet’s motives, history, and previous maneuvers was and is a bad move. Her arc hasn’t moved forward since she showed up. Things just happen that she’s responsible for with no rhyme or reason. What was the point of the aether facility? We don’t know. What was the point of the molten alliance? We don’t know. What is the point of the Toxic alliance, or the zone invasions? We don’t know. Her actions have no context that is apparent to us, so it is extremely difficult to care about them.

The entire arc up to this point we have been treating symptoms without any effort whatsoever to attack the disease. No one has discovered any useful information about scarlet’s motives, master plan, or methods of operation. We just kill bad things because they are bad and dangerous and find out later they work for scarlet for some reason that we don’t understand.

This is not how The pact dealt with Zhaitan, and it isn’t even how the various races deal with foes in normal zone events. We don’t need the entire master plot from the jump, but we do need breadcrumbs to follow, and defeating general after general in scarlet’s myriad forces has provided none. Not because the opportunity wasn’t there, but because literally no one has thought to look for them, and we as players can’t make a proactive effort to do so

There can’t be much of a conclusion to the Scarlet arc because there hasn’t really been one. There has been no story progression regarding scarlet at all other than the fact that she exists and people work for her, which we knew as soon as she stepped out of the shadows.

Lore / Meaning:
The original mad king event was great. There was a ton of lore packed in to not too many text NPCs. I don’t see any reason there shouldn’t be similar “lore scavenger hunts” in each release. For people who don’t care, it’s an easy achievement by following Dulfy’s inevitable guide. For people trying to piece together the story, it would indicate and give some good foreshadowing as to the significance of events.

Less disposable characters:
I was really happy the adventure with Rox and Braham again, to see how their relationship had changed and how they’d grown a little as characters. Similarly, it’s been interesting to watch Ellen Kiel rise from simple inspector to captain (Though she’s kind of tiresome as a permanently invincible authority figure) but then you’ve got all of these one-offs like Mai Trin, the market, the leaders of the various alliances, etc. That are either suspiciously absent in order to just bow down to Scarlet, or show up from and are dealt with in the same breath. I would have been thrilled to see zero scarlet and in stead have Mai Trin, Horrik, Spur, whoever is ACTUALLY in charge of the molten alliance, whoever is ACTUALLY in charge of the Toxic alliance, etc, operating as autonamous entities. I feel like a lot of opportunities have been missed for storytelling under the sweeping excuse of “scarlet did it” and that so many of these minor villains are just more interesting characters with more relatable and believable motives. There is no rule that says that if you don’t add new characters and enemy factions every three patches that it will be a failure. You have a wide enough cast now that you could introduce zero new characters for the entirety of next year, and still have plenty of time to tell stories about them, the world, and our relationship with both.

No new enemy groups!
We have SO many enemy factions in the game that adding new armies every few updates seems wasteful. What are the sons of Svanir up to while we screw about with the aetherblades? How about those pesky centaurs? Nightmare court? We have a lot of great enemy factions with established lore that already own a big chunk of the map. You mean to tell me they’ve spent an entire year just sitting on their hands? Less time spent designing more groups means more time adding breath and depth to the existing ones, which is, in my opinion, a much more natural path for the living story. Operate on things we are already familiar with and it seems less like things get made up on the spot. If you DO invent an army, stick with it, and give it substance rather than just tossing it away or baking it in to a greater coalition of evil like the molten alliance, aetherblades, clockwork, the new toxic alliance, etc. Imagine if all of the updates to this point had been centered around the story of the molten alliance, and JUST the molten alliance or the aetherblades. They’d be much more belivable as an enemy faction because we would have had the time to get to know them. In stead we got the aether blades unceremoniously dumped on us with little explanation, and then suddenly Scarlet shows up and owns both groups for no apparent reason. Also, clockwork. All of a sudden clockwork because she apperantly doesn’t have enough minions. Then repeat a fourth time with the Toxic alliance. It’s too much too fast and it results in nobody giving a crap who these factions are or what motivates them.

The Toxic alliance ALONE would have been a pitch perfect faction for scarlet. She offers something neither has (engineering) and has logical connections with one and logical leverage with the other. They’re also thematically appropriate for her character design, and have a solid and belivable grounding in existing lore without the feeling of being made up on the spot and then mysteriously subjugated for no reason.

Enough with the Achievement grinds
Getting achievements, rewards, and titles for the content is great. Using the achievements as the primary motivator is not. Each LS patch I log in and go straight for the achievements list. This is before i even open the mail. This is poorly designed. Achievements should be a side effect of playing content, not the other way around. You’ve already added in the daily systems to make them feel less grindy, now lets complete that process by making them actually be less grindy. Lets offer variant rewards for variant pieces of content. Hand out one thing as an instance reward, one thing as a token turn in, and the rest of the achievements as logical steps in doing both of the above. For the meta reward? Lets get back to titles. They’re extremely development light (It’s a string and a UID in most cases I’ve worked with such things) and are unique without being so high impact that people feel overly forced to go after them.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

Daze<Stun
Crippled<Immobilised
Bleed< Torment
Poison<Toxin?

Decent theory actually.

Toxin: Reduces target’s heals by 33%, deals damage, stacks intensity

That would pretty much be poison 2.0

I wouldn’t scoff at seeing disease return, however with the lack of regen/degen modifiers in GW2 disease would have to fill some other niche than just damage. Maybe a condition that does nothing but spread, but each tick adds a stack of poison, cripple, or blind at random or something.

As a person that left P/D to run condi specced D/D I can say that one of the major reasons I left is that the whole set revolves around hitting CnD, and everyone knows that it revolves around hitting CnD.

This is less of an issue with more bursty builds, as target don’t usually have a lot of time to figure out what’s going on, but at this point in the game anyone who has spent any time in PvP of any sort automatically knows that as soon as they get hit with a sneak attack, they can stop worrying about damage and start dodging CnD until you either leave or get stuck autoattacking.

The other problem with P/D is that it can’t cover its bleeds with other conditions very well. At best you’ve got a reliable cripple from dodgetrops, but then you’re investing to to acrobatics for a weaponset that’s built around stealth.

Application is great, but even though you can theoretically apply bleeds in to infinity, your build is wrecked by missing a few CnDs, and even when it is working, any spec with passive condition removal is going to mitigate the majority of your condition damage, and your white damage isn’t all that great.

Contrast this with D/D, which syngergises really well with an acrobatics spec, comes with three reliable cover conditions (poison, weakness, and cripple) without using any utility slots, does better white damage, can spike down low HP targets with hearseeker spam, and can hit multiple targets and you start to see why the set is a bit unpopular in PvP. It takes too long to kill people, and its sustain can’t be used to hold points.

It is, as other people have noted, probably the best platform for venomshare specs due to the venoms creating the cover conditions it lacks, and the group dynamic making it much easier to land CnDs in the middle of a more chaotic fight. If I were going to run venomshare, I’d totally go back to P/D for it.

I use the synergy between mad king runes and basilisk venom to have a reliable active heal that doesn’t look like an active heal. This also turns basilisk venom in to a ranged stun without having to use a ranged attack, which is nice. It also generally autotargets to closest enemy with the birds, and that first hit is what stuns. I also like mad king runes because they help to round out damage, giving a solid boost to bleed duration, and a nice bump to white damage, making the build a bit more versatile in damage types.

I use Improvisation because it allows the build to thrive on its moment to moment gameplay, making it a bit more unpredictable and difficult for opponents to read my cooldowns and punish me for them. Also because of the nice passive boosts from having 20 in deadly arts.

For zergs and PvE I use caltrops rather than shadowstep and daggerstorm rather than basilisk venom. Because mobs are stupid, and zergs don’t/can’t pay attention, and in both cases this results in a lot of free HP for me to just go nuts and still have a free out by using (the newly fixed! yay!) RFI>shortbow>infiltrator’s arrowx2 to clear out of the fight.

In Spvp I use lyssa runes in stead of mad king runes, though the build is a bit less effective for the lack of the mad king synergy. Luckily, I don’t like sPvP much and mostly do WvW.

So, yeah, I typed many things, but this is just a single example of why taking skills and turning them in to wholly different skills is generally a bad idea. Rangers still complain about it for good reason. When you say “change this to this totally different thing” you’re going to be fundamentally altering someone’s build somewhere. When you completely gut the functionality of a skill you may very well be destroying a build in the process.

A good example of change is flanking strike. It was a skill that was functionally altered, but in a way that had it keep the role it already had, and made it easier to use. You could accomplish a similar thing by adding the evade back to the end of dancing dagger, and if necessary removing its autotargeting functionality and having it be ground targeted so that it could better function as an escape/positioning mechanism for power builds. This would make it a little harder to use for damage, but not so much that it would destroy the skill, and it would open up new options for bleed builds to also use it as an escape mechanism.

This is a very long post. If you don’t want to read it don’t ask for a TLDR. Just ignore it.

Arki:

I’m sorry you feel that my response was hostile or belittling. It was in very similar tone to your OP. It wasn’t my intent to be either, just and honest selection of my opinions on the subject.

I’ve long been a proponent/user of Signet of Malice based builds, basically ever since mad king runes were released (because MK runes are what make SoM actually useful) and I’ve always approached my thief as a holistic character built to sustain, contain, and stomp.

Both of these are contrary to the normal FOTM or a lot of people’s percieved roles for the thief, but in our group composition, where my thief is constantly attached at the hip to a condi necro and a couple of dps rangers my role as target containment guy works. I power through conditions with passive heals rather than cleanse them because they’re ammo for my necro. I use Deathblossom because it adds not only to my defense, but also supports my teammates via combo interactions while using it. I trait for 30 in to trickery because the support power is good, and because having daze on a 20 second steal is an amazing interrupt I can use without swapping weapons.

I feel that group composition is something people don’t spend a lot of time designing for in GW2, because you can get away without doing so. In our case we’ve organically altered builds for the past year for a specific synergy. When you’re using deathblossom in necro wells and are filling the “sustain and contain” role a lot of teams would use a guardian for, you start to see thief a little differently.

In terms of damage, The condi burst on D/D versus P/D (both sets I’ve used extensively) is as easy and looking at it in terms of stacks/time. You talk about the cleanse, which is an everpresent concern for condi thief builds, but this is also why I feel like D/D has better damage output. Basically, P/D relies on stacking and maintaining bleeds long term, but the spacing of those applications is reliant on your ability to close, hit with CnD, and land bleeds. Stacking condition duration is the normally accepted way to build this, but the problem with the theory vesus the practice is that you’ll never get even half of your bleed duration on the large majority of targets in real PvP situations. In addition, owing simply to its use as a ranged weapon, the white damage component of your bread and butter sneak attack is remarkably reduced.

I look at condi thief damage in terms of the first two or three bleed ticks. Deathblossom has a more compressed set of bleed damage, and that compression leads targets to clearing sooner. In addition, the overall white damage of dagger auto, with a free poison, and deathblossom’s white damage tends to output more reliable real world damage numbers. Basically, you get more upfront burst from the white damage, and more overall bleed damage before it is cleansed due to two build in cover conditions (poison and weakness) that you get for free from the auto.

Finally, you have options when using deathblossom that you just don’t when using P/D. You can get respectable spike damage from heartseeker to help finish targets, you have a plethora of reactionary evades, and most importantly, your entire build doesn’t break when you miss a few CnDs.

You’re absolutely right, playing deathblossom like it’s a burst build doesn’t work as you’re stuck with one and only one condition, and you’ve asted all of your initiative on a stack of bleeds that anyone can cleanse quite easily.

My general attack chain looks like:
auto chain until target uses a CD
Dodge that CD, leaving the target with some dodgetrop bleeds
deathblossom back on to target

sometimes in stead wing them with a danging dagger to screw up their timing if they get clever.

When I know they don’t have any good cooldowns left to smash me out of my evade frames I’ll spam down some deathblossoms then immediately disengage with another dodge.

I’ll steal and use steals to break up combat, but I try to rid myself of stolen items ASAP and I use steal as an interrupt to give me a few free seconds for deathblossom.

I use shadow refuge for the combo effect, not the stealth, as fighting inside of it adds to my passive heals via whirl combos, and using it as a distanced emergency measure allows me to heal about half of my HP with dancing dagger.

I use both shadowstep and roll for initative to maintain mobility, and as a clutch initative reserve for emergencies.

Dude. That’s an extremely rude tone.

You were given free stuff from an achievement chest that adresses all areas of the game. In addition this is the first event where PvP was actually included in the meta. You’re phrasing your post like the game in contintually forcing PvP on you, while ignoring the fact that PvE has been forced on PvP players since release if they want any sort of event rewards.

Please try to take a moment and step in to someone else’s shoes and think about why there are some additional options. You still don’t have to PvP, but at least now you can in you want to for part of the meta. That’s all it is.

deepwinter.9015:

Yeah… I figured I’d find some kind of Ninja Gaiden kitten in a thread like this.

Scythes are flashy, using a farmers tool as a weapon of war. They’re big, clumsy weapons that do not fit in the style of a Tyrian assassin. While thieves are showy in their acrobatics, glamor belongs to the mesmers and necromancers (to whom a scythe is a staff – ’nuff said).

All thieves are not assassins. My thief hasn’t assassinated anything in like 7 months. He’s very loud and flashy, and uses stealth to res people or when he steals it.

That said, I’m all for every class having access to a unique spin on every weapon. I’d like to use scepters and staves as melee weapons, or grab a nice thin greatsword with some AoE stealth attack action. Warrior daggers with a lot of kicking/punching/headbutting attacks, Dual pistol mesmers, and shield necros to get back old school minion walls while we’re at it.

reworking death blossom to a completely new attack is silly. Despite the OP’s opinion that D/D condition is a “trash build” it’s actually perfectly viable when played cirrectly with the appropriate gear.

Deathblossom is a toolbox skill that has a single fatal flaw: it doesn’t evade for the full frame.

If you’re playing D/D in a straight up power build, deathblossom is the skill that lets you stick in a fight a little longer, by giving you extra evades… or it used to be before its evade was nerfed.

In a bleed/bunker/steal spec, Deathblossom does the same thing, only you’re playing full defense and getting the majority of your damage from the bleeds.

I actually quit P/D and moved to D/D evasion because I wanted to build a more brawly thief. P/D is a great set for 1v1, but in groupfights it’s pretty limited and really light on damage. The recent change to body shot helps it a lot, but honestly, it’s a build that does less damage than D/D, is more prone to condition cleansing, and falls apart in a zerg fight or point defense/capping scenario. On the upside you can use it to sleep through PvE, and it’s really good in !v! fights, or 1vX against people who aren’t very smart/haven’t played thieves.

Shoehorning thief weapons in to one or the other build type is silly. We’re the only class where the design of an entire rotation doesn’t apply due to initiative, ans as such the only class where it makes sense to have weapons that can be played with multiple build specs, sometimes ignoring or underusing a button (I don’t C&D much on my build, but I use every other attack pretty regularly)

It doesn’t need to be changed to something more direct because D/D already has a fantastic toolset for what it does in power/crit configurations, which is massive backstabs and big burst, and it has a role in those builds as an emergency evade.

What needs to be fixed is that secondary role. The evade on deathblossom was nerfed when condition removal was a lot less prolific/well understood, but when it worked it worked extremely well. Currently, deathblossom’s claim to fame is that it can proc up to 15 activations of signet of malice each hit, with an average heal of 140 that’s 2100 HP per use, while evading in a zerg fight, and that’s not counting any additional healing you might be picking up from assassin’s reward, caltrops ticks, shortbow poison field ticks… etc. That’s powerful, but situational, and it tends to fall apart in smaller scale PvP where humans are smart enough to hammer the last bit of the animation where the evade has worn off and you can’t cancel it. Fix that, and you’ve fixed deathblossom, for both condi and power builds.

It’s actually suprisingly un-horrible.

The few rangers I’ve fought that used it well saved it for stomping or popped it on thieves following a stun, or on thieves that sat a shadow refuge too far away before they could run in to it.

I think the opportunity cost on it seems pretty fair, given it’s extremely niche use (granted, it’s a niche use attached to an otherwise somewhat useful utility) but I do wonder what the overall point was aside from assuaging some QQ about stealth, as its actual effect in combat is largely negligible. This is far better than the heavy-handed 10s reveal everyone feared, and is generally about as effective and annoying as Last refuge, which, I mean, is fair.

As the other posters have stated, the hands are a purely visual effect that happens near the green death vortex.

If you’re seeing them well above the fog, it probably means your connection is laggy, which could be a server hiccup or your internet connection, as the green fog doesn’t seem to sync clientside properly when there’s some lag.

Basically, your client thinks the fog is lower than it actually is because it’s not getting its position updated properly by your connection. There are no grab mechanics in the clock tower. It’s all you and the fog.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

PopeUrban.2578:

Vayne.8563:

Technically there as a timed regular jumping puzzle in the game but its’ timed in small segments and not that popular. If hundreds of people went to Specc’s lab, though, it would be a disaster.

Actually, there are two, Spekk’s lab and the geyser puzzle in Southsun cove.

Actually there are five.

Spekk’s Lab
Skipping Stones in Southsun Cove
Griffonrook Run (time bomb)
Winter Wonderland
The unfinished jumping puzzle in Caledon Forest

Winter wonderland isn’t currently ingame. I’ll admit the run didn’t come to mind due to a lack of moving/vanishing platforms but it is technically timed by the bomb. (Though the time given is extremely generous, and the real danger is the griffons.)

I wasn’t aware of any timed/unfinished JP in caledon forest. Is there some area with moving platforms or something? I only know of the normal four.

Vayne.8563:

Technically there as a timed regular jumping puzzle in the game but its’ timed in small segments and not that popular. If hundreds of people went to Specc’s lab, though, it would be a disaster.

Actually, there are two, Spekk’s lab and the geyser puzzle in Southsun cove.

Jabberwock.9014:

This bat gs is of legendary aesthetics. The only thing it is missing is footfalls… but the bat effects help in that regard.

Meanwhile look at daggers… there literally have been no good non-legendary, particle effect daggers since launch. The few that come close (super, fused, winter’s, zodiac) are still lackluster compared to gs counterparts.

Matter of taste, really.

I liked the fused skins specifically because they didn’t have massively overblown effects, but had a little somethin’ extra.

You could hand me a fused dagger, and an incinerator, and I’d pick the fused dagger simply because it’s effects aren’t overdone to the point of just plain ludicrous.

Also, you know, use the puddles to get the buff that actually makes you deal a ton more damage to him, and take a ton less.

Lunaire.5827:

I would love to have an area in-game like a giant library that contains these stories and a timeline of events that have occured in the Living Story so that we may view and read about what has happened in the past for the years going forward.

Thing is, these areas already exist in the form of the priory’s various offices, camps, and hadquarters… none of which are actually repositories of knowledge accessible by the player. My first character joined the vigil because I was a long time player of the first game, and i thought “hey, these guys should be the ones with all of that cool lore information”

Well they weren’t. I actually got less information about the world because I joined them.

Keep in mind that whispers characters get a whole WEALTH of extra ingame content in the form of secret agents all over tyria, while the other two orders are given access to nothing more than faction armor skins. Whispers should get to keep that cool expository information about current happennings, but for events of historical significance or theoretical/scientific ones, that information should logically be the domain of the priory.

This exposition, this raw data, should be avaliable to priory characters, and it could really be as easy and a mail that says “dear magister/explorer/etc, we’ve discovered some interesting infromation on X, you can find it at Y”

Non-priory characters could access the same information by way of a minor fetch quest, doing a small favor for whoever owns the information.
Get that in and you’re only left with coming up with special world features for vigil characters. Maybe an ability to get “field reports” from scouts or other vigil which can kick off special world events or something, I dunno.

This sort of thing is WHY dailies were changed to “just pick five from this list”

So that there is a selection of general and specific things. The Teq daily isn’t any more onerous than several of the WvW dailies. Who ever indicated that all dailies should be soloable? What’s important is that at least five are, so you can get your daily box. Group event completion comes to mind. Despite the fact that certain builds can solo certain group events, they aren’t now and weren’t ever designed to be done alone.

The people saying “do another one” are absolutely right. The ability to “do another one” is absolutely what justifies LS dailies, WvW dailies, activity dailies, and other such niche categories, and is exactly why they exist, and why the pool is now bigger than the requirement.

It sounds like the root of your issue is with the teq fight, not the daily. I think you’re pointing your feedback in the wrong direction.

Orpheal.8263:

PopeUrban.2578:

What made people think that they’d be able to re-earn a festival skin? It was plainly stated that come content would return but the reward items would be unique each year, just as it was in GW1.

Also, keep in mind that this persists until the 11th, meaning there’s one more major update drop between now and the end.

Ya and a truly hope for that update, that Anet sees their mistake in and adds the old conent by that update for the “limited time” after that patch ,that is left over then, until the holiday is completely over then again at the 11th next month.

TBH, part of what makes halloween and wintersday fun is that there are some things that can only ever be acquired once. Honestly, That’s what I like about the living story as a whole. Not so much the story but the concept of limited time rewards. Sure you’re going to miss things. Everyone is. That is exactly what makes the stuff you do get special. It has the same stats as stuff you can find all over, and certain things do come back each year which is a large boost in content from the first game. At some point the users on the boards just have to get used to the idea that sometimes you just can’t have all the things, and the ability to have all the things just adds to boring and stale characters all around the world rather than having some nice little “time capsules” that function as nice little souvenirs of the events you did attend.

Kalastraer.8264:

Zanshin.5379:

Yay, town clothes!

when i saw my friend in it it wasn’t town clothes…..

Yes. Yes it was. There were no armor rewards last year unless you count the backpiece or the mad king shoes from the JP. Those shoes had the same skin as all other named exotics.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Five minutes into the labyrinth and I had 13 porous bones and a few other meaningless items. Perma DR.

Five minutes in you… wait what?

What made people think that they’d be able to re-earn a festival skin? It was plainly stated that come content would return but the reward items would be unique each year, just as it was in GW1.

Also, keep in mind that this persists until the 11th, meaning there’s one more major update drop between now and the end.

Last year: OMG the labyrinth is so fun!

This year: OMG the labyrinth is so lame and boring!

Nothing has changed aside from the addition of a few bosses and mob types. Why the shift?

magicweaver.2695:

Atlas.9704:

Every time we get a release there is a guide provided on the GW2 site.

Just for example, how about the fact it says the open world doors tick toward the shut the door achievement, but they actually don’t. All any of them do is lead to the M.K.R. Or the fact that you have to actually run in a zerg in the labyrinth to get this. That wasn’t in the guide.

ANet has a habit of not giving useful information but skirting around the needed information pretending to be helpful. People use dulfy and other sites because of this, and it should be a clue to ANet that there is something lacking to their information dissemination.

They do count. You’ve got to use doors that haven’t already been used. THat said, the doors are more plentiful at the labyrinth.

You don’t need to zerg in the labyrinth the finish doors. I finish them just fine solo if I hit a low pop overflow (or when I’m just avoiding the zerg) They only scale to ridiculous when there are a ridiculous nubmer of people around.

In short, Yes.

15 characters

Devourer Venom:
Add 5s cripple and 2 stacks of 5s bleed.

Ice Drake Venom:
Chill foes with the next three attacks. (1 second) and add freeze counters on each hit. These counters persist for ten seconds and can not be removed. If a target acquires three freeze counters, that target is frozen in a block of ice, stunning it for three seconds.

Skale Venom:
Apply Skale Venom to your attacks. (10 seconds vulnerability, 10 seconds torment)

Spider Venom:
Add a 1s immobilze in addition to poison. (Canyon spiders!)

———————————————
Elite Skill:
———————————————
Basilisk Venom:
Your next attack turns your foe to stone. (1.5 seconds stun, 1 second activation time) Make this instacast, OR return it’s old functionality (the only unbreakable stun in the game)

———————————————
Traits:
———————————————
Merge quick/residual venoms in to slot XII

Replace VII with:
Potent venoms – Gain 50 (100?) conditon damage for 15 seconds each time you use a venom.

KAon, your assesment of the value of targeting immunity is, in my opinion, completely off base.

So little of the damage in this game is applied via targeted means that simply being untargettable is a negligable defensive ability. You might have a leg to stand on the entering stealth chancelled channels or something, but it doesn’t.

I’m glad you think you’ve got a good idea here, but if you take a look at the feedback, you’ll find that many people have taken the time to point out the many things that are wrong with it. Chief among these is that without invisibility “stealth” is a complete misnomer. Using a mes clone and running straight at the target spamming auto would be a more reliable defense if your suggestion was implemented.

Kaon.7192:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kaizer.7135:

I want D/D to get more luvvvv, it’s still fun to play, but I REALLY wish I could change Crippling Dagger and Death Blossom -_-

D/D looks freakin’ BA

To what?

Deathblossom is an extremely effective groupfight condi spam and initiative-burning evade for when you don’t have any endurance (or want to save endurance) It’s also the only skill that makes D/D plausible as either a condi or crit build.

Dancing dagger is an extremely effective chasing tool, as well as a great self heal when used through darkness fields like your own shadow refuge or necro wells. It’s a 100% projective finicher that can proc combo effects up to 4 times per cast, making it extrmeley good as a lifesteal for heals (I actually use shadow refuge more as a combo field for this than for stealth!)

I think the biggest problem with Dancing Blossom is the fact that it’s not a full-frame evade like flanking strike or disabling shot. In the beginning and end of the animation you can still get hit (and will if you’re playing against decent players, or just enough lucky randoms). Shortening the animation time and making it evade for the entire animation would fix this up quite nicely I believe.

As for Dancing Dagger, yes it’s definitely one of the best projectile finishers in the game. But as you said the only decent projectile finisher combo field is dark, and there simply isn’t enough of those in the game to make projectile finishers genuinely useful. I find SR too important for team utility to use JUST for the combo field. As a chasing tool, the initiative cost is too high and cripple duration too low for it to be worthwhile compared to an Infiltrator Strike or Heartseeker.

I wholly agree with the assesment on deathblossom, but IIRC it used to be a full frame evade and was nerfed because it was essentially godmode while easily stacking lots of bleeds very quicky. This is similar to the reason heartseeker’s evade was removed, being able to chain evasions that also automatically seek to targets we a bit overpowered. Heartseeker is in a really great place now due to its speed, distance, and (pretty balanced since it was nerfed) conditional damage.

However, the fact that it can’t be cancelled does lead to some very predictable “lock in” counters that let the enemy just time a wide variety of cooldowns. Given the way condition removal works… maybe we could give deathblossom back its full evade but add some sort of penalty to it so it would feel more balanced. Maybe if the seeking component was removed? Drop part of the bleeds for a non damaging condition? Then again maybe just going your route and making it shorter and giving the evade back would do the trick, considering lots of classes have received changes/buffs since it was adjusted and thief’s overall damage output has been lessened.

As for dancing dagger, I see where you’re coming from. I use it to help snare in groupfights, but rarely when solo. Then again, when I’m solo I often used the shadow refuge combo with it… but that’s a bit niche for my build, which stacks on-hit and per-ability heals with the lifesteal, which doesn’t mean its an all-around useful skill. Maybe we should just give it back the damage it used to have, or just drop the initiative cost. If that’s too powerful, reducing the range a bit to facilitate it’s returned power would be acceptable.

Sanduskel.1850:

actually thieves CAN attack and remain stealthed. I’ve done it many times.

Permastealth trolling is an obvious exception to the rule, and something we’ve been saying should be addressed for a long time on these forums… yet somehow it still exists.

It’s fun though! Just like perplexity runes and Warrior WTFregen builds, enjoy it while it lasts because it’s broken and headed for nerf city.

Stealth’s only viable use as a defense is being invisible.

Before they fixed nametags, clones were a completely usedless defense for mesmers for the same reason. Clones are only useful defensively when they are working effectively, as in, they’re actually possibly mistaken for the real thing.

Stealth is in a similar boat. Your proposed changes would result in ZERO backstabs happenning, and stealthed thieves getting focused and eliminated 100% of the time. Despite all of stealth’s useful traits, those traits would be null and void if you made this change for a single reason:

Thieves can not both attack and remain stealthed. Anyone can attack the thief while stealthed. All you’d be doing is making people hold off on hitting a cooldown while following the thief to exactly wherever stealth would end, then bursting him down all at once, the same way people deal with shield warriors. You wait for blocks to end, then you burst.

Kaizer.7135:

I want D/D to get more luvvvv, it’s still fun to play, but I REALLY wish I could change Crippling Dagger and Death Blossom -_-

D/D looks freakin’ BA

To what?

Deathblossom is an extremely effective groupfight condi spam and initiative-burning evade for when you don’t have any endurance (or want to save endurance) It’s also the only skill that makes D/D plausible as either a condi or crit build.

Dancing dagger is an extremely effective chasing tool, as well as a great self heal when used through darkness fields like your own shadow refuge or necro wells. It’s a 100% projective finicher that can proc combo effects up to 4 times per cast, making it extrmeley good as a lifesteal for heals (I actually use shadow refuge more as a combo field for this than for stealth!)

I went with the dire/rabid set. (Jade wind orb, etc.)

It gives you similar EHP as exotic carrion due to increased toughness, as well as more condition damage. You lose a little power, but make up for it with a little precison. You can then further tweak it with infusions. I went with all toughness infusions (omnis for the offensive slot pieces) but you could easily go with power infusions to reclaim quite a bit of the lost power.

Another buff to acrobatics survivability could be improving the healing or ratios on assassin’s reward. We could also look at giving acrobatics some kind of protection access, passive blind, or extra stability access.

How about adding extra activations to traps in a replacement corrosive traps, as well as making theif traps 3-5 second field effects when triggered, much like ranger traps. This would allow them to serve as mini deinal zones as well as effect multiple targets.

Lucky.9421:

PopeUrban.2578:

I honestly don’t understand why we still make that distinction. It’s a boolean flip at best, filling a few variables with asset names at worst.

Aside from the stats entry there is no real difference between the two.

Why not just sell it as an armor skin since people seem to want that? Looks enough like light armor, and light “armor” is just clothing for the most part anyway.

Because then it would need to be designed as 6 pieces, which would result in it looking completely different. Look at the picture, how would you chop that up in a way that makes sense? You can’t. It would start to look very similar to existing armor sets.

One thing they could do(theoretically), which was done in GW1, is to make a costume slot for you character that you could wear over your regular armor. This would mean programming new functionality and we know how rarely we get that. >__>

It need not be 6 visible pieces. There can be overlap and pieces that take multiple visual slots.

CoF medium armor is a good example, The coat actually occupies the coat and shoulder slots. The shoulders work as a standalone when used with other sets. The engine is specifically designed (as per a pretty enlightening blog post before release) to accomodate for overlap and piees taking multiple visual slots/overlapping existing pieces so that you don’t have to define arbitrary seam lines. and can tailor the slot occupancy of each piece of armor the better fit the geometry of the piece.

The costume slots option used in GW1 (as well as the festival hat maker dedicated “bank” were QoL features they added later specifically to combat how useless these items were/how much bank space they took up/how much of a pain it was to get festival hats for multiple characters) As a result they sold more costumes and people stopped complaining about festival hats taking up space. I don’t see why they went with the new system at all outside from the binary nature of switching to toys. Even then, you could use the same inventory panes and just have display checkboxes for the costume slots /shrug

Why are you adding it to obsidian sanctum in stead of just making it its own map? Last I checked Obsidian Sanctum was a jumping puzzle that sometimes people use parts of as an arena because there isn’t a WvW statted arena.

If it’s being added to the dropdown anyway then why not just make it its own map so people who want to use it don’t have to disturb people trying to do/prevent others from doing the JP?

Obviously crossbreeding this “gametype” with WvW proper was incompatible… why would you do the same thing again?

Why change shadow refuge? It’s currently a good balance between risk and payoff. It’s one of the few unique things thieves have to offer a team (the other being venomshare :P)

If anything I’d argue for buffing shadow refuge to pulse stealth on up to 20 targets rather than the limit of five, to watch the use limit on mesmer portals. This way you could get reliable stealth numbers on forces bigger than a single group.

Smokescreen as a circle would be a nice buff, but I’m not sure it’s needed. Smokescreen is already excellent as a line reflect which functions as a blind field, allowing allies to self-stealth through it or blind targets on the other side. Maybe tweak the recharge, but honestly I feel like smokescreen is pretty good.

Incurafy.6329:

A question for you, PopeUrban: wouldn’t you prefer if you were still able to use Improvisation for the double-utilities that you use with your build, but do so in a completely reliable way?

Assuming there was a way to get that functionality as semi regularly as I do now I wouldn’t complain too hard, but really, I feel like half the fun is not knowing which one is gonna recharge. That’s the fun part for me personally, like stealing from a mob and getting a few different chances, knowing what the thing I just stole does, and having to act on that in the moment. I find steal is a lot more fun in PvE than PvP for this reason (ever since they made PvP steals predictable) but I do completely understand the flip side of the argument.

Not that I’d hardline RANDOM IS FUN and force it down everyone’s throat mind you. I think there has to be a middle ground of reliability and random for certain things, like what we see happening over and over in engineer updates. Where you make the action of using it reliable in a sense that you might not know exactly what will happen, but that all your your random chances have a certain equality, so that in stead of awesome1, awesome2, awesome3, and screwed, you end up with a random chance of just awesome 1, 2, 3, and 4.

I suppose in this case simply saying “If you have used at least two utilities, this will recharge a utility, but you don’t know which one” serves that purpose. You’re always getting something of value, so you’re not ever just screwed, but you still have to adapt to that random recharge and play around it. In effect, you’re always getting a boost you wouldn’t have otherwise had, but you still get the fun of that seat of your patns randomness, like sweating to see if you crit that backstab when you’re at 10% HP and are out of init to disengage or something.

Stx.4857:

So we should break every efficient thief build because you enjoy your death blossom spam self heal build?

God no…

Healing power scaling is TERRIBLE. That extra 1500-3000 you get during a whole fight can be healed in one steal if you trait for Mug.

If they seperated prec from crit damage on the thief traitlines, then we would need a straight damage buff, because thats all thieves are good for in pve. Damage.

Uh, I didn’t say it WAS a good idea. in fact, I said the exact opposite thing:

PopeUrban.2578:

That said, moving trait attributes around is a bad idea. They’re fine where they are, and I rely on them to pick up my damage so I can run a life sigil and still deal good white damage to help my bleeds.

Also, I am traited in to mug. That’s part of my heal output. I do it every 20 seconds or so

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So back to the matter at hand. Through reading the posts i think it would be really useful for me to start a thread like ‘name one thing you would like to see improved in Guild Wars 2’ and then start riffing with you all on these subjects matters and try to make a more meaningful connection with you all that way by which we can define a process together for Collaborative Development?

I am also going to ask that we build out more time for team members to post and i will follow up with you all on that.

What do you think, does this sound like a good way to move forward?

Chris

You could also post in an existing thread, so that the moderators don’t become angry with you.

A solid line of communication is what’s really lacking, and if you’re all as jazzed to get us involved in the living world as we are to be involved in it then more frank discussions about various aspects of the game with users at large is the best place to start.

Discussions, not monolithic statements, ask questions, respond to them, present multiple choice options to gauge where your community is at. Things like that.

Thanks for taking the initiative. It may seem that there’s a lot of negativity on the forums, by do keep in mind that it comes from a place of passion. People wouldn’t argue in such a heated fashion if they didn’t genuinely enjoy some part of what they’re trying to get altered. Your players are passionate about this game, and you’re passionate about making it, now all that remains is getting everyone to be passionate about the same thing.

For the record I don’t think those stealth traits need a nerf when compared to what’s avaliable to other classes in their “good traits”

As for buffs, off the top of my head I’m thinking about increased radius for thrill of the crime, and slightly increased duration for uncatchable’s mini-caltrops.

Swapping shadow protector and last refuge would also be great. Shadow protector wouldn’t even shaft the thief by applying revealed at exactly the wrong time, and moving it to a minor would let us buff it up a little (reduce the ICD to 30 secs or so) so people with evasion builds might want to put 10 points in shadow and use it for its intent, as a reactive emergency stealth at low HP, wheras people with stealth focused builds (that it screws over) could skip it. It would be a good first step oward “combination defense builds” that don’t require massive reliance on either evasion or stealth, but can actually use a little of both and still survive.

Corrosive traps: Change vuln to weakness (since we lost the lotus poison weakness uptime), reduce trap recharge by 20%, and make traps instacast. And that STILL might not be enough to make traps attractive. Probably aslo wanna change the name to “trap happy” or something.

Residual/quick venoms: Merge these in to a single GM trait.

OIIIIIO.7825:

@op I disagree with the paring you suggest because it would have several down sides

a. Very few thieves want healing power because of it’s low scaling
b. This would further water down our damage
c. There are options for some classes to go hybrid offense and defense, but I can’t make a case for the thief being one of them. Generally speaking for a thief it’s bring the Damage or Go Home.

Thieves are fragile and they need to be able to get in execute and get out.

I run a signet of malice evasion based deathblossom build that is absolutely a hybrid of offense and defense. I run this in PvP and PvE to excellent effect. It’s a condition spec built to outlast (a bit like a condi necro) and gains its survivability from evade timing and flat out hitting the enemy as much as possible to keep signet of malice topped off.

I am routinely the last guy alive in both gametypes, and what I sacrifice in damage the build more than makes up for in survivability.

Healing power doesn’t stack well in a bubble, but when you’re getting 4 heals per attack to the tune of ~800 hp for every deathblossom and an additional ~300 for each additional target every few seconds it adds up fast. That extra 60hp per hit healed turns in to an extra 1500 or 3000 over the course of my average fight, and keeping topped off if what keeps this build alive. Finding the sweet spot between passive heals and evades you can just plain tank the majority of AoE damage, outheal damaging conditions (provided you cleanse poison and keep it off) and dodge large hits while keeping up 15-25 bleeds and perma poison with a hefty helping of crippled to help cover the bleeds.

That said, moving trait attributes around is a bad idea. They’re fine where they are, and I rely on them to pick up my damage so I can run a life sigil and still deal good white damage to help my bleeds.

True story: I used to play a game called Shadowbane, in which we did siege PvP as a career.

One of the most hilarious builds was the neph greatsword thief. This was a race with a racial greatsword proficiency which could also take the thief class. Thieves were of the old school rogue mode (permastealth) and were controlled by the STR attribute, which also made you character larger the more you put in to it. So this glass build put literally everything in the stealth, which made the character HUGE, and then used racial flight skills to escape a failed gank.

So, basically, what you ended up with was a nine foot tall winged demon-thing that popped out from thin air behind and backstabbed with a greatsword for OMGWTFBBQ damage.

It was hilarious and amazing (not as amazing as the stealth werebear though. Stealthbear was awesome)

My point here is, basically, backstabbing with a greatsword is an amazing thing. GW2 needs some stealth greatsword action with maybe an AoE stealth attack or something.

While we’re at it, all classes should be able to use all weapons in one way or another. I wanna use a scepter as throwing weapon, a staff as a melee beatstick, and a longbow as a personal jump pad

I just like the screenshot, with our student thief crouched over in action and Lux standing there with weapons away explaining as they stare down the warrior about how cool it is to steal from that guy.

I want to find random PvE guys and stand outside of aggro range now and tell them what cool things the mobs have in their pockets.

daros.3407:

OMNIBUS.2913:

daros.3407:

I want to have ascended back on every of my character so if not now eventualy i will have absolutely no use for them. So mini is still more usefull :-)

Well thats your choice that their not usable. Every back item thats been released someone has found it useful and wearing it :] . ii guess the same can be said for the new mask tho

But i am not the only one. But minis are unlike the backs usable for everyone no matter play style or something, that is why i think they are better fun reward :-)
And mask yea that is same as back items.

I also can’t have more than one mini visible at a time. I don’t see how that’s any different than a back skin aside from the part where it takes up a spot in my bag when I’m “displaying” it.