Guild Wars 2

That explains the haircut, now doesn’t it?

As a boss in a giant golem.

Honestly, if you took completion “seriously” why didn’t you have all of the other achievements finished in the previous two months when they were initially released?

I’m not against a book/flashback system, but I am against any sort of flashback system that hands out those time limited rewards from when the event actually happenned, aesthetic or otherwise, because that changes the entire balance of the reward structure. Those items become permanently obtainable, and as such their rarity, drops chances, etc. have to be handled as such, essentially creating no advantage or meaningful souvenir for the people that were actually there in the moment.

It’s the difference between reading a book about D-Day, and having a purple heart for having been wounded in Battle at D-Day. If you just hand out the medals for reading the book or participating in a re-enactment then why have the medals at all? Their entire meaning and function becomes pointless.

The fact that rewards in GW2 are by and large cosmetic is exactly why I feel that these time limited reward structures work. by not having been there and obtaining them you’re not disadvantaged in a mechanical sense, you just don’t have the tour T-Shirt because you weren’t at the show. being able to rent a recording on DVD isn’t a bad idea, but it shouldn’t be an equivalent experience.

The reason they make the tickets redeemable with Evon Gnashblade is so that you have an infinite timeframe to turn them in. I’ve got an extra weapon ticket myself, and know a few people who still have wintersday tickets.

Basically, Evon’s entire existence (other than being lorewise the guy that runs the BLTC and sits on piles of currency and items so fast they would blind lesser mortals with their girth) is specifically as “the backup vendor” for all BLTC related limited time items like these tickets.

I hate to say it, but the point of the living story is that things happen on the world’s schedule rather than your own. Essentially there were two weeks to complete a single dungeon for the finale. That dungeon took most non-speedrun groups about 45 minutes to an hour.

Honestly, I feel like that was a perfect compromise between the content being short lived enough to really read as a thing that happenned in the world without being so short (like the ancient karka line) that it makes it night unachievable for a large number of players.

Sure, some people won’t ever see it, but it isn’t as if the living story ends here.

Would you rather come to the game brand new after a year and have some arbitrary backlog of content that theoretically “already happenned” that you’ll have a very difficult time finding people to play with, or would you rather keep the potential on a month to month basis for the world to be different in some small way?

Being there is for sure very gratifying, and having something, a title, a weapon, a piece of armor, something to show that you were part of it is great. Not having been there means that the world is a living thing that existed before you showed up. It has history that isn’t just a blurb of text but a real thing that happenned that people can tell you stories about. Just because you weren’t there for an event doesn’t mean you won’t be there for the next one, and the one after that. In the long run structuring the system like this is the shot in the arm themepark style MMOs really need, a constantly shifting epicenter of PvE content that keeps the game fresh.

The usual approach of just piling on more simply fractures the player base and makes it very difficult for new players to ever really get anything done. Nobody wants to do the “old” stuff with the new players and it ends up sitting around wasting space and frustrating people. In the instances people DO want to do it, they’re just rushing and spoiling the content for the new player. With these sorts of time limited things the adventure stays pretty fresh, and that’s a really nice feeling IMO. I want to do these living story things because they’re temporary and have permanent resolutions. In the grand scheme of things the illusion that my character’s actions mattered is much stronger and more satisfying, and that’s a big part of what PvE is about. The feeling that you really did accomplish something (and got some loot for it of course).

In addition, the level of rewards for temporary content can be leaps and bounds better than something that people can just move to farm status specifically because those rewards are of limited availability. The content is by its nature a bit more rewarding because the scale of those rewards don’t revolve around long term economic impact, and more importantly creat a stratus of rarity that rewards people over the long term for doing a thing and getting what may be a relatively common reward during the event that gradually appreciates in value over time.

What’s more fun? Being told that Zhaitan and the risen are a problem… and then not… despite nothing at all having changed outside one little instanced corner of the world, or having things actually happen and then seeing them actually be resolved once and for all?

For added punch, they could do the books system for people that didn’t make it and actually put you in the shoes of a random player of your race/class that did. Keep your stats/skill/weapons, but you’d take on the appearance of that random player about whom the book is theoretically written.

If you’ve got the achievements, then you’re yourself during the book, if you didn’t you’re someone else.

NOT being your own character was what made the BMP book missions really pop as historical content IMO, but it would be silly to “remember” something you actually didn’t do as yourself, or something you did as someone else.

Twitchz.6407:

Wow this truly sucks. So what is there to do now then? nothing again?
Why didn’t they keep it going until they had more content to dish out?

I feel like I’ve completely wasted my time now. Good job Anet.

The victory celebration will last for two days, then Secret of Southsun starts. The new content starts in two days. Living story content is temporary content. IDK what to tell ya.

For its cast time and initiative cost, honestly, we’ve been saying for a while that it should remove (but not steal) a random boon.

How about in stead of buffing things that already work well and are actually useful, we look at buffing things that still suck.

Like traps, venoms, p/p, Extreme lack of underwater skills, over-reliance on crit as a stat, Half of our traits being just plain horrible or in improper lines for their effects, no stat conversion traits, etc…

There’s a long list.

We need to leverage this framework for musical instruments. At least enough instruments for a band’s worth of synced play.

Try it with signet of malice and mad king runes. The cooldowns sync perfectly and make it a much better heal than your actual heals in any situation where you’re fighting 4+ targets.

Does it sorta suck for us? Yeah. However the static nature of fields/traps is going to do very little against the average roaming or mobile zerg thief.

This trap was obviously designed (along with the arrow cart ranks) to add a real and working counter to portal bombing, stealth bombing, and several other tactics that make it nearly impossible to build effective defensive fortifications in WvW.

I’ve been in Pang with at least fifteen arrow carts set up, all manned, and a good 20 players guarding the carts before. That kind of setup should be a nearly impregnable defense without building counter siege to first deal with the short range carts to breach the tunnels.

In stead what happenned is a few mesmer/thief combos kicked on the long stealth from around a corner and portal bombed in 40 people behind the line before the defenders could even do anything about it, completely invalidating what should have been a very tough defensive line.

Traps like these are vital to the health of WvW, as they create an effective means of denial and a real (but costly and non-spammable) counter to portal bombing. Wait and see what else shows up in our balance notes before crying too much doom on this one. I’m betting we see one or two mobility or core survival enhancements this patch as well.

Don’t sweat it. This one’s designed in such a way that you can’t really rush it or skip anything. The one skippable cutscene still happens in real time even if you skip it, so the only difference is that if you skip it you don’t get the cutscene camera angle and might make it down a ramp faster… and you’ll still have to wait for the npcs to show up.

Just join a group and enjoy yourself!

As I understand it, this is a one shot “gateway” story which bridges the gap between F&F and the next major arc.

Vulpis.8063:

We’ll get what appears to be soloable content in the beginning, only to be bait-and-switched with a dungeon at the end of the story with no alternatives, so that only a few will ever be able to actually complete it before it gets chucked into the waste bin.

Yeah, just like the select few that were able to complete Flame and Frost. Almost nobody has those Molten gauntlets anywhere!

Oh wait.

Tachenon.5270:

The karka will rampage and from among their rampaging ranks will arise the Magna Karka who will one-shot everybody everywhere, even if they are not participating in the Secret of Southsun content.

BEWARE!

Grawl hitch a ride, are told a continued “no” by the consortium, Discover the corpse of the ancient karka, worship it as a god, Southsun Grawl, riding karkas, become a serious threat to the settlers on the island…

Then we beat them up.

I hope so. Molten Weapons facility was (well, still is techincally) a BLAST.

Get it?

Blast?
Ahhh… never mind.

Dante.1508:

RuneCrimson.7380:

I have been told that all loot drops from Mobs are unique to our character I am confused I have talked it over with friends who play the game and such and then thought about it myself….How is it unique of when we get loot what comes out of it is another professions equipment. Thats not unique to us. Thats someone elses loot. I am not saying I wished to get something for my profession handed to me. But if its a chance of getting equipment why not get other loot like trophies and other such things then it would be unique to Our characters. A set of gloves given to a Necromancer when they belong to a Guardian is not unique to a Necro. Just confused is all.

Actually that’s not completely true, later in the game there are areas where things are not unique to the players and i have had to fight over things in certain areas, very few but they do exist, some in much later maps are not unique to players accounts..

Uh, no. At the worst there’s competing for actually dealing some damage to mobs in the shelter/pen farming chain to get your loot drop, but other player’s can’t steal your loot from thing you kill in any portion of the game. Or, if you want to get really specific, trying to get on a res fbefore the guy gets up to get credit for your daily or something, but in all of these cases everyone who actually helped do a thing gets individual rewards for said thing. There isn’t anywhere in the game where someone can effectively steal rewards you earned, though some events don’t scale well so other players can inadvertantly prevent you from earning them.

RuneCrimson.7380:

The Word Unique thats where it comes from…its not unique if I am not getting something that applies to me so I think they used the wrong word is all…should have used different wording then unique cause the items are not unique their just dropped randomly like all the other MMO’s.

From Webster’s:

Definition of UNIQUE

• 1
  : being the only one : sole <his unique concern was his own comfort> <I can’t walk away with a unique copy. Suppose I lost it? — Kingsley Amis> <the unique factorization of a number into prime factors>

• 2
  a : being without a like or equal : unequaled <could stare at the flames, each one new, violent, unique — Robert Coover>
  b : distinctively characteristic : peculiar 1 <this is not a condition unique to California — Ronald Reagan>

• 3
  : unusual <a very unique ball-point pen> <we were fairly unique, the sixty of us, in that there wasn’t one good mixer in the bunch — J. D. Salinger>

Actually, I think it’s the right word persuant to common definitions 1 and 2. You’re the only one getting your loot, and it isn’t the same loot as everyone else looting it. I think you just don’t understand what that word means as well as you think you do.

“I totally didn’t bother to read the stats on the item. I’d like someone to make the game less likely to require me to pay attention”

You screwed up. Stop trying to blame the system for your own inability to pay attention. Sometimes things really are your fault.

Katai.6240:

I’m under the opinion that getting 100% map exploration should require you to explore 100% of the maps.

Same. It still doesn’t make sense to me that it doesn’t require all the POIs in dungeons and visiting all of the sPvP maps.

But, you know, video games

There are “Achievements” and there are Achievements

Mirta.5029:

so let me get this straight – I’m a bad person because I don’t care about numbers, I don’t care what level the people are that run with me, as long as they fit the dungeon level, I don’t care what gear they wear because I have run with people with different gear sets and I know that it’s not the gear that decides how useful you are, I don’t care what build or class they use. And guess what? Most dungeons do not go that much slower.
But I kitten you off, because I’m not in the percentage of the best players that are able to run naked, therefore I should wear beserkers and get angry that others don’t gear the way I want them to?

You’re pretty much a monster. Shameful. How dare you.

This sort of behavior is what killed the PvP zones in CoV/CoH

Eventually the fight clubs reached a critical mass so large (because they contained members from both factions) that the players actually trying to play the game couldn’t any more. It was understandable there. That game launched with no PvP, then arena’s came later, and then MUCH later came the more “open” PvP zones. There was an exodous from the arenas to the zones and due to the primarily PvE population of the game there wasn’t a stable enough arena population left for the people that liked it.

I reccommend leveraging the custom server and spectator systems for this type of stuff. Any number of people can watch, you can control exactly who is and isn’t allowed in the arena to keep fights as pure as possible, and you’ll never have to deal with someone screwing up your match because you’re holding it in a place not designed for it. if all of the people in that screen donated one gold you could likely have the gems for that custom match for quite some time.

Sadly, this sort of behavior can’t really be moderated as long as people care more about fightclubbing than actually using the map objectives.

I live on TC, a server pretty famous for fighting at all hours of the day, regardless of score and it seems to me if your match is “slow” and there are enough people to have 30 at some fight club… you have enough people to be building siege and fighting over towers.

Sovta.4719:

So another grind?

Yes and no.

What’s nice about certain MF recipies is that they can be acquired by doing all sorts of content. Obby shards are gained with karma, which you can get doing all sorts of stuff, same with ectos, and the gold for the wine. The gift is only gained from fractals, which makes it appropriate for the variant that adds agony resistance.

The concept of “grind” is in the eye of the beholder I guess. I view a grind as being forced in to one specific place doing one specific thing to gain the end result.

For instance, you MUST go to southsun and harvest plants, as well as kill specific mobs in other places to get the current infusion recipes. You must do specific dungeons to get the tokens for specific sets of runes and armor skins.

If the idea is that you can build these adventuring stats over time, then the logical implementation is to make the overall gain reflect as wide an array of content as possible, and have the output match the type of content done. Players that do a lot of events would logically get more karma, thus they progress toward the karmic variant easier. Players that hunt/mf/worldboss for ectos are moving toward MF, players that play the TP or are otherwise very adept at gaining large sums of gold progress easier toward the gold find one.

This sort of an upgrade path is built around the idea that you can do all sorts of stuff and gradually work toward the upgrades over time, with the exception of the fractal based one which is appropriately placed in the “gearcheck” requirements/repetition of fractals.

(edit: Looks like you replied before I edited in those other variants. Oops XD)

What about an alternate non-fractal line of infusions?

Currently all blue infusions are +5 stat, and +5 agony resist. That’s awesome if you’re running fractals, but if you aren’t you went through a lot of crafting headaches for that one extra stat point over the laurel version.

What if there was an alternate line of infusions that had MF in stead of Agony resistance? Similary, other non-combat stats like gathering bonuses, karma bonuses, and other such things are nice targets for infusions since they’d be essentially an extra utility stat in the same manner as agony resistance.

This would also allow some non-essential vertical progression that isn’t combat effective, which would give people something to do with all that loot that has real character advancement value without creating a power imbalance that makes people feel like they NEED to grind it (and subsequently complain at length about said progression) as you could have higher rarity/difficulty acquisition infusions tack on additional adventuring stats like:

Adventurer’s Malign Infusion

Fine
+5 Condition Damage
+5% Magic Find

Masterwork
+5 Condition Damage
+5% Magic Find
+5% Karma

Rare
+5 Condition Damage
+5% Magic Find
+5% Karma
+5% Gold

Exotic
+5 Condition Damage
+10% Magic Find
+5% Karma
+5% Gold

Ascended Variants!

Adventurer’s Malign Fractal Infusion (Exotic + Gift of Ascension in the MF)
+5 Condition Damage
+10% Magic Find
+5% Karma
+5% Gold
+5 Agony Resistance

Adventurer’s Malign Karmic Infusion (Exotic + Stack of obsidian shards)
+5 Condition Damage
+10% Magic Find
+10% Karma
+5% Gold

Adventurer’s Malign Shiny Infusion (Exotic + a bunch of Wine)

+5 Condition Damage
+10% Magic Find
+5% Karma
+10% Gold

Adventurer’s Malign Lucky Infusion (Exotic + Stack of Ectos)
+5 Condition Damage
+15% Magic Find
+5% Karma
+5% Gold

Dasorine.1964:

(hmm should I take pistol whip or should I take “slashyshooty” which of these would work best)

• SlashyShooty
  The One In the Middle, SharpyThing/ The One That Makes Bullets
  Cut your opponent with a sharp thing, makin’ him slow and junk, then do that one where you get blurry and like kuh-bam a couple times on the no-look direction to hit multiple dudes. Sometimes it makes hearts over other dude’s heads when you use it.

You know, making unload a 100% combo finisher on every shot could very well be just the shot in the arm it needs. Or how about this: Unload functions as a 100% combo finisher on allied and enemy combo fields.

That’d be an interesting dynamic.

Consider that you’ve got access to multiple smoke fields and a pretty long dark field in SR (I use SR and dancing dagger as a panic heal sometimes, it works pretty well) not to mention stuff like thrown gunk, prot tree, etc. from steal plus whatever your allies are using and the poison field from shortbow (OMG, a reason to swap weapons for thieves) it could turn it in to a potentially powerful support set with some tweaks like condition traits for pistols.

Riot Alice?

Nah. Too race specific. Also, she can’t be evil. I like her too much.

Just a note:

The implemented this type of content in the open world with the lost shores update. It was saddled with Massive technical problems. How big is too big in terms of “instances” versus “open world”

Your open world zones are instances, when they fill up, they kick you over to an overflow instance.

You could easily scale up this type of content in to 30-player or 100 player linear “instances”

In fact, the only thing that separates dungeons from the cursed shore event chains is the party size. Mechanically the level of difficulty is similar, but the larger your zerg is the less of an individual impact you make. This is why arenanet decided on 5 person groups rather than 8, 10, 12, etc. The fewer the player count, the more important the players are to the outcome.

The Ancient Karka event was very cool. It was all handles with open world style events. However, the massive number of people took all semblence of individual heroism and sense of accomplishment right out the window.

I don’t see why people haven’t considered that accomplishments shouldn’t be preordained or handed out freely. The living story isn’t your story, and it’s going to resolve regardless of your input. There are still plenty of people destroying weapons facilities. Adding an “easy mode” in order for lesser able players cheapens the story as a whole. If you’re not up to the challenge of what is, thematically supposed to be a very dangerous place, then you really shouldn’t be there. Those that went, and wiped, and killed bosses, and took their lumps and armor repair and time were the ones that drove it forward in the end.

Just because there is content doesn’t mean you should be able to solo it. You’re not asking for the Orr temples to scale down to a single player, are you? With attitudes like some of you it’s no wonder you have problems in groups. Pugging in GW2 for temporary content has shown me some of the most laid back and helpful pug members it’s ever been my pleasure to play with. We have a great community. The fact is that the finale was narratively and mechanically a logical conclusion to what led up to it.

Every piece of content should not be a hardcore dungeon, or an easy solo instance, or a jumping puzzle, or whatever type of content is your personal favorite. If there’s a type of content you don’t like, don’t do it. Do you complain that you can’t see the SPvP maps without actually playing the game type? That’s content that you’re not getting because you made peace with the fact that you don’t like certain types of play, and thus you won’t play them.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the arc in its entirety (despite the pacing) and for that matter I though that finishing the personal story with the Arah story mode made sense. You may not agree with my opinion, but I have a lot of unpopular opinions and I don’t lambast the game for not bowing down to my every whim. If I had my way jumping challenges would be part of the basic navigation of every area of the game. That’s not something everyone agrees with but you don’t see me petitioning or chiding the devs for the game not being exactly as I would like it to be.

Honestly, can you not make just four friends to do this stuff with every once in a while, out of all of the people you know in life and all of the people on your server? I’ll speak from experience when I say that all group content is immensely more fun when done with people you know that understand your playstyle, pace, and skill level. We have people in our group that aren’t very good. We don’t care. They’re friends. Heck, it’s fun dealing with the extra challenge of making sure they don’t fall over every three seconds.

TLDR – How about chilling out, and realizing that there will be parts of the game that aren’t your favorite thing?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder if such epic bossfights would be possible outside of dungeons. Like: your zerg runs into the battle, the boss throws everyone but 5-8 players out of the arena (because he decides to fight 8 at a time, not more) and the other players outside have to support the players in the arena by doing events that interact with the battle. And then the boss switches to 8 other players. etc.

Some kind of anti-zerg mechanic without excluding the zerg completely – so that coordinated battles are still possible.

I like this, but how about the boss flings downed players out of the “arena” and pulls a new one in. You know, world’s biggest tag team match.

But yeah, we did it first time with the guild yesterday and had a blast the whole time. with two necros a warrior, a thief, and an ele. I think we wiped during the dungeon three times but by the time we got to the bosses we didn’t total wipe (though there were some tense kite/res moments)

and (no spoilers!)

The bit after the boss was icing on the cake. Great dungeon, wanted to re-play right after completion just because it was so much fun!

Tulisin.6945:

PopeUrban.2578:

Put a boon removal on body shot (not a steal, just a one boon cancel) Body shot is supposed to be a debuff attack.

This is a legitimately good idea for fixing a skill that has always been pretty terrible. Instead of removing the vulnerability or having it apply concurrently with boon removal, it’d be nice to see it apply 2 stacks to targets with zero boons.

Believe it or not, I actually posted a very similar idea a while ago, but that was before boon hate, unblockable necro skills, etc. I think boons are getting put under control enough and that the init cost for body shot seems about in line with a single boon removal, even if we have to lose the vuln (which isn’t resource effective in any pistol setup) It’d still be a resource ineffective attack with a long attack time, but the payoff would feel worth the init you could have spent on something else.

Tulisin.6945:

PopeUrban.2578:

The entire point of initiative is the ability to spam attacks.

I disagree, the ability to spam a single ability is a side effect of having initiative as a resource instead of cooldowns, but the “entire point” is the ability to effectively employ any tool you have for a given situation. This gives thieves adaptability. The problem is that since there will always be one tool that is optimal for any given situation, thieves can simply hammer on that one skill depending on what they need to do.

PopeUrban.2578:

D/P, D/D, P/P, and S/B already have perfectly usable and fluid dual attacks that would be clunky and broken if you added a timing flip.

P/P’s dual skill may be fluid, but it is a pretty weak skill, more than any other skill it would benefit from making it less chainable and more of an active damage tool instead of a spammable mediocre DPS sustainer. If by S/B you meant S/P, it is another example of a skill that is fluid, but it isn’t particularly good. I think Pistol Whip’s weakness would be more appropriately solved by adding a 2-3 second burn to the initial shot though.

The ability to spam attacks. Not the necessity to do so. I’m not claiming all is hunky dory across all weapon sets, or that P/P (and P/D for that matter) Don’t have massive issues. They do. My point is that flip skills effectively lock out the option of chaining an attack, and while they’re a no brainer decision on a cooldown system, they actively create additional opportunity costs in the initiative system when its entire intent is to not have them. There are exceptions for balance or usability, but juggling flips shouldn’t be the norm when dealing with init. That’s all I’m saying.

bhagwad.4281:

PopeUrban.2578:

bhagwad.4281:

But the sad thing is that I’m missing out on a lot of other builds because they don’t counter the thief properly. And that’s kitten off. I don’t mind trying out the invulnerable issue. See above – some thieves feel even that’s not enough!

Okay, how about this. I’ll trade all of my “grants stealth” for all of your “creates clone”

Deal?

Build diversity!

Deal. But I get to keep my phantasms. You can have the clones.

Fooled again! Tricky mesmers!

Because weapons don’t calculate crits individually for the purpose of traits or sigils. Anything that happens “on crit” is triggered on every crit. only THEn are other conditions checked (like internal cooldowns, weapon type, etc.)

The entire point of initiative is the ability to spam attacks. Flanking strike’s update was a QoL more than anything, the skill was nearly unusable for its intended effect before. Now you can reliably flank and boon strip with it.

The only other dual attack I can think of that would benefit from chaining would be P/D. Currently it’s a melee range escape that you have to hit with (often meaning you have to actually get closer than you were to land it) This is an attack that, by its very nature, you already can’t spam, and is actually made harder to use by the one button= 2 hits behavior. Splitting it would make it fit better with the set as you could pop the setup, then C&D, then sneak attack, then shadowstep, in addition to blowing the shadowstep early if you whiff a C&D. If it was split to have the first attack set up, and the second attack back-step it would give a lot more utility and allow the set to play fluidly without relying on two attacks almost exclusively.

D/P, D/D, P/P, and S/B already have perfectly usable and fluid dual attacks that would be clunky and broken if you added a timing flip.

What if unload didn’t have a fixed initiative cost, and instead was a channel you hold down, eating one INI every two shots and gaining damage the longer you hold it down?

Put a boon removal on body shot (not a steal, just a one boon cancel) Body shot is supposed to be a debuff attack.

Make headshot instant and unblockable, but leave its initiative cost and nerf the damage a little. Headshot is first and foremost an interrupt, not a debuff.

Add a pistol trait that increases backpedal speed to 100% and grants + move speed while unloading.

You just fixed pistol.

The base damage change is supposed to come hand in hand with our newer survival and utility tools. It isn’t that our damage is too low. It’s that our base damage is too low which over-prioritizes crit as a stat in every non-condition build. You have to dump everything in to tons of it to deal decent damage, and that’s inconsistant with the majority of other class’ viable damage builds where a “balanced” build also pumps out decent damage.

The theory here is that nerfing our burst (and everybody’s burst for that matter) is an effort to slow down combat a bit. Without that OMGWTFBBQ burst, the base damage of several skills comes back up so that they’re more viable initiative uses along with their utility uses leading to a better ability to initiatiate, sustain, and actually win a prolonged fight.

The thing is, to make it all pan out a large portion of the critical strikes tree would need to be gutted because, let’s face it, increasing base damage so that you CAN use less to do the same damage… also means that if you keep all that crit you just burst faster.

Maybe some kind of tradeoff trait in a non-critical trait line would better handle it. something like “Your critical chance is halved. You deal 25% more damage” or something like that (albiet something more carefully balanced than the three seconds it took to think that up.)

Also keep in mind they’ve admitted we have a crapton of just plain bad traits, and we’re going to start seeing the warrior treatment of combo-traits and trait upgrades to further strengthen build diversity.

basically, the idea is that we should have the option of crit stacking straight damage builds, but that we should be able to build to contribute in other ways.

I like this idea, but it’s a tricky situation when considering crit, initiative, and a whole host of other things. I’d like to see stuff like viable stealth trapper builds, viable debuffer builds, viable CC/soft control builds, etc. Basically, think about the GW1 ranger’s PvP roles, There was a spike option, but it wasn’t used a lot because spike rangers couldn’t do much else when specced to spike. The did, however, excel at dot pressure, skirmishing, debuffing, and running. We have a ranger class in GW2, but in the meta the ranger isn’t the same animal, and its place in the meta is much more akin to the GW1 spiker ele (while our GW2 ele fills a nuker/zoner ele role, etc.)

Thieves should have the stealth burst option and it should be viable, and, as they said, should be the best burster in the game. However we should also have some other roles that we don’t totally suck at too.

bhagwad.4281:

But the sad thing is that I’m missing out on a lot of other builds because they don’t counter the thief properly. And that’s kitten off. I don’t mind trying out the invulnerable issue. See above – some thieves feel even that’s not enough!

Okay, how about this. I’ll trade all of my “grants stealth” for all of your “creates clone”

Deal?

Build diversity!

I like that people would rather be able to watch and do nothing than not watch and do something. Says a lot about player psychology. Until the first invuln traited thief goes perma on bunnies and resets every fight with nothing but shadowsteps a single attack and the /laugh emote. I’d rather fight a stealther TBH. I can kill them.

Interesting thought experiment, but fundamentally flawed logically. You’d have to invent an entirely new class if you were to design around short duration temporary invuln.

They’ve said that the entire F&F line will still be avaliable throughout next month, including the refugee bits from march and everthing from april. You’ve got all month to experience all of the F&F content from start to finish.

greyblue.4962:

Mesmers being the only solid option to slow down a big zerg is problematic because it makes WvW revolve around mesmers.

Elementalists are much, much better at this. It’s just that the meta hasn’t caught on yet. Static field has no target cap. If 3 elementalists chain it while dropping meteor shower, you can can wipe a zerg.

Oh for sure, but the thing there is that its a much easier counterplay on the individual level and doesn’t generally kill people quite as fast (you’ve got to hit the field, not mobile stunbreak, and stay in the shower long enough to go down), not only that, as a field effect you can “retreat forward” while mitigating it. Staff has always been solid in WvW when properly supported and really good in zerg fights. However, staff also doesn’t have the potential to kill in less than a second before you have a shot to mitigate it by cancelling a channel. There’s a much larger counterplay window against that type of tactic. Bringing down confusion creates a similar counterplay window. You’re still going to lose a massive amount of HP if a few mesmers coordinate as well as a few eles, but there aren’t any situations, Like ranger or mad King birds, fire and forget AoE effects, etc. Where the staff burst can leave you with zero ability to effectively react.

Katsumoto.9452:

Zipping around all over the place sounds like a S/D thief with initiative regen traits to me. With shadow step and blinding powder, combined with sword 2 you can be all over the place if done right, and cnd on mesmer illusions or the mesmer itself for the stealth.

Truth/ S/D evasion is also very strong for survival.

I use a similar build, but mine doesn’t rely on the on-heal effects, in stead of trying to maximize endurance, I supplement the endurance gain from daggers, vigor, and acrobatics with passive SoM heals. Basically this is a “composite” approach of passive healing, dodging, and weakness rather than throwing all my eggs in one basket. In addition, I keep 10 in shadow arts for bonus condition removal and I also pack a shortbow swap to help deal with certain CCs. In addition I’m usually covering my bleeds with three other conditions in my build (plus any bonuses from steal), which makes them a little tougher to get rid of.

I don’t really sPvP but it’s been doing pretty great in WvW and PvE, though I’m still building those omni infusions.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4YlYmiOXey5E95Eh3jvO2wqVgmdP46VrKA;TwAgyCuo0yolQLrWOtkatWYsw+j5HA

TactualRain.7109:

Just an update: started a thief alt using D/D and it’s hilarious fun no idea what I’m doing other than clicking buttons but it’s good times

Thanks again for the helpful replies.

If you want to look really fancy, try rolling an all acrobatics bleed D/D with no stealth utilities. The down side is that you have virtually zero passive defenses. The up side is you have nearly infinite evades, can still kill everything but condi necros pretty efficiently, and are as much or more “pinball” than the famed D/D ele. It’s tricky, you have to know the attack animations of pretty much everything, but the payoff is worth it when you see it in action.

Entropy.4732:

I’m sure Anet has many noble intentions. The problem is that their intended results will not come to pass by nerfing confusion into the ground and rendering glam mesmers extinct in WvW. The reason is that we actually SLOW DOWN the zerg clashes considerably. Confusion was never a good killer, how it worked effectively was as a pause button that would make zergs back off a bit and decrease their rate of mindless button mashing. Massive zerg balls are the problem in WvW. Confusion was one of their only counters. A recent battle NSP had with SF lasted 3 hours at our keep because we were able to prevent them from dominating through sheer force of numbers. Not solely due to confusion, but without glam mesmers they would have taken our keep immediately. Is that what Anet wants? WvW teams to win not through skill but just force of numbers? Zerg wars are fast, ugly, laggy, and not a good model for new players. Confusion served to get zergs to back up, break off into smaller, roaming groups, etc. So if their intention was to slow down the game, they just went the opposite way.

That doesn’t change the fact that it’s extremely inconsistant. Mesmers being the only solid option to slow down a big zerg is problematic because it makes WvW revolve around mesmers. Confusion can still slow things down. You didn’t get your glam spec removed any more than portals got removed when they were capped at 20 players. It’s still a very powerful and useful spec in WvW, just like GC backstab is still a powerful bust damage spec, turtle guardians are still a very powerful support spec, etc.

The difference is that it’s not so good you need it to compete, and that there’s significantly more counterplay. Four or five glam mesmers are still going to slow down and break up that zerg. The difference is they’re not going to be able to rack up as many free kills on the first blast. I’ve been on the recieving end of that and it’s unlike any other AoE spike in the game. You’re in the middle of a channel, confusion bomb hits, and you’re dead well before you can cancel your own channel. Glam mesmers controlling a fight isn’t a problem. That’s what confusion is for. Glam mesmers ending fights before anyone can react is a problem, the same way the mug crit chain was a problem in 1v1. Again, GC backstab is still top tier bust damage, just as confusion is still top tier control. The difference is that it brings the time window for counterplay against the strategy to a point that’s reasonable. if four confusion mesmers can rake in more “reaction failure” kills in two seconds than four staff eles of four good hammer warriors, that’s a problem. All three specs revolve around AoE punishment. The counterplay for confusion is to stop attacking, the counterplay for AoEs is to move. That doesn’t change the fact that under similar conditions, the enemy should have a similar reaction window to avoid the spike and actually be controlled rather than just being dead.

Suprise, in stead we find Moto in drag.

Sorry Braham. Your princess is in another castle.

I’m still saving moto. he needs to finish that game I alpha funded.

Weindrasi.3805:

lordkrall.7241:

Leaf.3156:

I completely agree with Weindrasi. Rox just deviates WAY too much from the set standard. The “well she’s a younger charr” justification also completely fails given that we can see charr cubs (who are all incredibly cute in a charr sort of way) in-game, and none of them have this weird eye inflation affliction.

Inb4 all charr cubs are retconned to have huge eyes to justify Rox’ genetic disorder.

Might I suggest going out in the real world. You might be surprised by the fact that people are actually different, not everyone looks exactly the same nor do they have a set standard about how everyone should look. Why would Charr be any different?

Jemmi.6058:

Frig those of you complaining about her appearance sound utterly ridiculous.

Why should every Charr have the same appearance? Charr SHOULD have varying appearances, just like humans do. Sometimes these appearances may result in larger or smaller features than normal, they may result in appearing older or younger, uglier or prettier, cuter or fiercer, skinnier or fatter and so on.

Every Charr should not be fierce too, some could be cowards while others could be fierce warriors. Some could be gentle or calm etc.

This is a ridiculous statement. If there were a human version of Rox, she would look like this. If you can find me someone who was actually born with eyes that size, who is a healthy, ordinary individual, I’ll refute my point.
VARIETY is fine. Making characters look unnatural, like they don’t fit in the same universe… that is a problem.

That image is freakin’ terrifying.

Trust me here. If they add any larger player count instances to the game it will be the first bullet point in the description, not something you need to infer from a vague allusion to the word raid.

Also, they won’t call them raids. They’ll call them “Squad Dungeons” or something. You know, to be innovative.