Guild Wars 2

The reason the rings are unique is that despite the same stats, one uses an offensive and one uses a defensive infusion.

We’ve been told that the majority of linear gear progression in fractal levels would be in terms of tiered fractal infusions rather than higher gear tiers, it’s only logical that this is a built-in measure early on to prevent people from stacking future heavily statted fractal-specific infusions. Think about stats like agony resistance, but that give you +stats or +procs or +HP on attack or something while in fractals. This is essentially the plan for fractal gear progression, as Ascended is the literal stat tier ceiling, and constant linear progression isn’t intended for non-fractal content.

Non-Fractal infusions will ikely have a very shallow stat bonus, or perhaps a unique set-based runelike bonus for general PvE use, while the name of the game in terms of fractal infusions is “bigger numbers to do higher levels” like agony resistance when you’re talking about fractal level progression as that gear upgrade PvE endgame content for the types of players it’s aimed at.

Other useful skills in this fight for parties that may not have the “required” ele or guardian.

Thief – Dagger Storm – The reflect and the bouncing nature of the daggers is pretty good at getting the attention of the adds and then reflecting their shots while the party tosses big burst and AoEs

Necromancer – Plague – Use darkness, paint elementals, collect life force. Curses necros are especially nice in this role as they also chill and weaken the elementals.

Our party uses these elites one after the other in any “mob rush” situations and it usually makes things pretty easy. I (the thief) generally go first as I’m specced for conditions/selfheal so I can tank most waves of anything when in a storm. Once my storm is up, our necro triggers plague and jumps in, with a large number of the mobs still on me, he keeps them blinded while I and the rest of the party finish them off.

Isslair.4908:

emikochan.8504:

If you REALLY want to group up a bunch of stunning mobs, bring some stability.

Well, for example engineers don’t have a reliable way to get stability. And they have a lot of AoE damage and thy need to kite mobs, so it tends to drag more mobs into fight.

Really, people who don’t understand that the game is not revolving around warrior\guardian are kinda frustrating. They ruin every thread with their “meh just faceroll pve is easy” posts.

Engineers have elixer S, which should be your go-to stunbreak for any PvE situation where you might be chained. It’s 3 secs of evasion on command plus a stunbreak. my engineer likes the rocket boots for the same pupose, as I put it in the same slot as roll for initiative on my thief, and the two skills have similar behavior so its very intuitive.

First stun>ElixerS>Watch remaining mobs waste stun.

Pretty much all classes have one or more reactive utility slot stunbreaks with stability, evade, or a build in reposition specifically to avoid getting chained. Here’s a quick list of the all-stars, but others exist that require a bit of setup, or need to be followed by a dodge. The listed skills are literally no-brainer avoid stunlock buttons which are effective versus any foe in the game.

The notable exception is Necromancer, who needs to enter stability-traited death shroud, or dodge following one of their stunbreaks. This is a bit unfair on the necro end of things as their only reliable panic button requires the use of the wurm, but considering the combos necros can pull on their existing stunbreaks giving them a one-button stunlock avoider may actually be unbalanced.

Thief
Roll for Initiative (Stunbreak and double distance backward dodge)
Shadowstep (Stunbreak+teleport, combos to another stunbreak+port)

Engineer
Elixir S (Stunbreak and 3s evade)
Rocket Boots (Stunbreak and backward leap)

Mesmer
Decoy (Stunbreak+Stealth+Clone)
Blink (Stunbreak+Teleport)
Mantra of Concentration (Stunbreak+2s stability+You can use it twice in a row)

Elementalist
Armor of Earth (Stunbreak+6s stability)
Lightning Flash (Stunbreak+Teleport)
Mist Form (Stunbreak+3s Invulnerability)

Ranger
Lightning Reflexes (Stunbreak+Back-leap)

Warrior
Balanced Stance (Stunbreak+8s Stability)

Guardian
Stand Your Ground (Stunbreak+5s Stability)

RoyHarmon.5398:

PopeUrban.2578:

Its just as likely they’re old enough that they sort of evolutionarily learned to flee from dragons, the same way a wildebeast flees from a lion.

But do wildebeest have many generations born into a world in which the lions are all sleeping for centuries (or more)? Seems to me that would inhibit development of that particular instinct.

Consider that Karka live for extremely extended periods of time. We don’t have any hard numbers on the Karka life cycles aside from that they live a “very long time” but it wouldn’t suprise me if the Ancient Karka was at least as old as humanity, and the vets/champions at least a few hundred years old.

Lokheit.7943:

A large writeup on P/P

The problem is that this completely destroys P/D

Every single overhaul proposal to P/P tends to forget that mainhand pistol is used in two specs, and that one of them is a condition spec, specifically reliant on stealth attacks.

Dagger mainhand has both viable power and condition builds on a single weapon based solely on utilizing either stealth or dual attacks. Why can’t we get there with pistol? Condition dagger builds are best served by heavy use of the dual attack, while power builds are best served by heavy use of the stealth/auto, while the other utilities are useful to either build type. Similarly, pistol should be in the exact opposite camp.

I like the idea of black powder being a “mini refuge” This allows versatility to condition builds, and adds utility all around. Could take offhand pistol or dagger for a ranged condition build, could benefit from stealth traits organically.

Headshot is fine where it is, any adjustment should be to base damage or initiative cost. Its one of the very few on-demand-any-time interrupts in the game, and is powerful enough in that mold.

Body shot needs an additional condition useful to either build type. Vuln is useful only to crit builds, and crit builds can’t use it due to the burst/dump playstyle crit-P/P revolves around. We’ll get to its P/P interactions in a sec, but for viability on condition based P/P or P/D how about just making it apply 3 seconds of weakness in addition to the vulnerability? This allows it to be used to defensively, which is where any kind of pistol build can benefit from it.

Unload, plain and simple, needs either a cheaper initiative cost, or an additional effect. How about “Returns 50% of its initiative if target is crippled, vulnerable, weakened, or blinded”? Wow, now you’ve got interesting things going on. You’ve got a solid reason to rotate in body shot. You’ve got a solid reason to use abilities other than unload. You’ve got 100% DPS uptime in group fights, and you have an unique hybrid control/damage spec that while less overall DPS than other ranged equivalents, excels at consistently debilitating the target while delivering that DPS to compensate for its lack of hard gap openers. You don’t need to worry about the base damage of vital shot, and it can keep its bleed utility in condition/stealth builds.

Asking for less frequent stealth potential, or mechanical changes to stealth itself is tantamount to asking for mesmer clones to be labeled “clone” and limiting the rate at which they are produced.

The two mechanics have the same end effect of using target obfuscation as defense while utilizing that obfuscation as a fulcrum for additional damage/effects.

The reason people complain about stealth is that mesmer clones don’t work nearly as well as they should because mesmers, by and large, don’t make a big enough effort to disguise their own actions while using them, or simply don’t attempt to use them as obfuscation at all.

Stealth isn’t unique to the thief, but the ability to actually use it as a primary method of engagement is. Without the potential for frequent stealths, which give the leverage to utilize stealth traits, thieves lose a very large part of their class, which is unrivalled mastry of stealth.

If you don’t play a stealth build? Good for you. However, if you’re a thief chances are you use at least one stealth ability no matter your build, and that you know exactly how the stealth attack for your chosen weapon works. In addition, you’ve probably granted more than your share of stealth to allies, and used stealth to escape, set up, or otherwise alter an encounter. The same can not be said of mesmers, or the hilarity that is Snow Leopard/insert class. For non-thieves stealth is an infrequent, inorganic, and heavily limited special ability avaliable only at the expense of something else. For thieves it’s a normal part of the playstyle for every conceivable build unless you’re deliberately trying to avoid it on principal.

By Arenanet’s own description, Thieves are “Masters of Stealth” not “Occasional users of Short Duration Stealth” and the special utility of stealth to thieves as a result of traits and the initiative system with weapon skills is not an oversight or accident. It is an intended part of the thief package.

In addition to the unwieldy range of the trait, the fact reamins that venoms, like traps, just don’t pack enough bang to justify what you’re losing to stack them.

If traits existed that lowered the venom cooldown by 50%, allowed traps to be castable twice, or other meaningful buffs that made taking multiples worth losing skills like shadow refuge, roll for initiative, or caltrops you’d surely see more people running a venom share spec, as well as see players running more venom and trap specs.

While it’s still an effective build, it’s unpopular because its effectiveness is far too narrow and specialized for the way combat actually works in GW2. You’ve got a build that only effectively supports clustered combatants that engage in a series of short fights with lengthy downtime between. This does happen, but the problem is that every other tool and spec avaliable to the thief also works equally as well in these situations while remaining viable in protracted combat, combat with allies at variant ranges, solo, etc.

Even though respeccing is cheap, nobody likes to constant dump silver in to the trainer and change armor.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Like I said, corpses cannot procreate.

So no.

False. There are several events in Orr that specifically have the player deal with procreating risen animals. The NPC chatter/text in these state this is specifically for the reason that allowing them to procreate results in more risen.

In fact, there’s an Asura specifically researching exactly how this is possible, as the whole concept is rather troubling.

Supported by ingame events, we know that at the very least risen Spiders and Drakes can and do procreate, and are only left to infer that other risen can as well.

Mursaat

Skillbar:

1- Spectral Agony
2- Spectral Agony
3- Spectral Agony
4- Spectral Agony
5- Spectral Agony With A Side Of Curses

6- Leave Combat With Adventurers For Five Seconds

7- Summon Jade Bow
8- Summon Jade Hammer
9- Deceive Semi-Important Plot NPC

0- Also Spectral Agony

(You had an option of “Shell Road in Predictable Pattern” as an Elite, but everyone knows that one’s gimp.)

On second thought… balance could be an issue.

The fight with Zhaitan? Kind of an anti-climax. The entire instance? Actually really well done.

The “fight two champions, on an airship, at the same time” bit. The “LOOK AT ALL THE GIANTS” creepy bit. The “Oh and FYI… Zhaitan just swappted your airship like a fly… but the cavalry just showed up in an even more kitten NEW AIRSHIP”

All of that was really, really, a great experience narratively and mechanically.

The Zhaitan cinematics and just his presence were great.

But then… the “fight” happened.

I understand pact megalasers are the best thing since sliced bread, but what we ended up with was an over-long sequence of shooting at a completely defenseless elder dragon while mopping up the occasional add. While it did let us appreciate the great modeling, it felt very lacking in communicating the sheer scale and menace of the thing.

I understand we can’t just kill these things with our handheld weapons, but hopefully the next one puts us in a much more terrifying position. The players should really be the ones pinned down and made helpless by unending heavy fire by a superior foe, lashing out with only as little token resistance as we can muster.

If we’re relying on pact super-weapons, fine, but let these beasts make us run, make us hide, pin us down, and beat on us until we finally have that one-in-a-million shot, and let us push the dang button!

In reality what happenned was that Uptopia was well in to production, and when it was scrapped a large number of assets had already been finished, including some armor, creature models, and environmental pieces.

The Asura took up this aesthetic (originally) simply because it would have been a poor use of resources to toss out perfectly good, finished, art assets, and because as a newer idea it was very easy to simply take that aesthetic flavor and apply it to these new squishy little geniuses from beneath the earth.

The asura are, essentially, a re-imagining of the humans native to the cut expansion. Remove the humans, removed the time travel theme, but kept the geometric architecture and big floaty machines.

GW2’s Asura, you’ll notice, kept only trace amounts of the original mesoamerican influences as their art direction, like all races was “logically modernized” The bits the team found important were the big machines and geometric themes. The Hylek got to be keepers of the mesoamerican mantle simply because as minor races were getting pinned down and “cultured” it probably looked a lot cooler against the backdrop of the jungles.

That said, fun easter egg. As to who actually built the EOTN?

Seers. The eye posesses the only known and working scrying pool pre-dating recorded history. We’ve been told we’ve seen Seer ruins but not been appraised of the significance. Also, it’s a place constructed for seeing the future (and possible other functions, like as a tomb for our GW1 characters and a fun party spot for ghosts) and… uhm… well they got the name from somewhere didn’t they?

Also, take a close look at the “casket” figure from the monument of valor. I’d say that thing looks a lot like a representation of a seer.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/b5/Hall_of_Monuments.jpg

http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/9/90/Ancient_Seer.jpg

But then, Seers are my answer to all unresolved lore questions… until proven otherwise.

The Priory has thusfar refused to vet my theories.

The more I think about it, the more I want the karka to actually be intelligent.

Its just as likely they’re old enough that they sort of evolutionarily learned to flee from dragons, the same way a wildebeast flees from a lion.

Still… I’d much rather they actually have a primitive sapience… say a grawl level of intelligence. The Grawl are laughable only because they’re impressionable and relatively manageable in terms of size and power. Now, take that level of intelligence, remove the desire to deify things and the basic tribal society… and turn it in to a giant crab society that hits like a truck and has a vested familial interest in every single member of the species.

That’s scary. That’s a race that would sign up with dragons in the mold of the Sons of Svanir just to punt we tiny things around for killing its momma.

Konrad.9587:

Yesterday I was doing a fractals run with pug party. The group didn’t do so well but we managed to complete the run. However there was a member of our party that for every single misfortune blamed the fact, that there are two thieves in the party and no guardians.
Thinking about it later and despite myself being one of the thieves, I came to a conclusion that indeed my profession may not be so great for fractals and doesn’t bring much in terms of party support and survivability.

tl;dr - If you were to choose the last member for your fractals party, would you take a thief or a guardian?

Depends.

If I’m picking the last member of a PUG, I’d take the thief. I assume, generally with accuracy, that people in PUGs are pretty good at lying down, and that no matter how bad a thief is the one skill every thief in PvE knows how to do efficiently is SR the guy on the floor. Taking the thief usually means a bad group full-wipes less, whereas taking the guardian means the bad group just wipes slower.

If I’m picking the last member of a team in which i know the members? There’s where I’ll take the guardian. Even a bad guardian (and boy have I seen some bad ones!) has a multiplicative effect on group efficiency. When I know that every other member of the party can actually complete content without relying on an aegis-flavored crutch, then I know they’ll do it faster with the other 9000 boons that the random thief simply doesn’t have a way to apply. In addition, if I assume that all PUGs are bad (not true, but since we’re being hypothetical) and I then assume that this 5th guy is the worst player in the group… a bad guardian will at the very least waste less of my time on the floor than a bad thief.

In practice, however, I simply PUG anything and find myself entertained by the results. I’m not generally concerned with run efficiency, only completion, as I usually only do the daily, and often I find it more fun with bad players… because I get to show off and rescue them a lot.

On Blind and Thief Support

I’m going to get on board the “Stop screwing over blind” train. As I’ve remarked before, blind is essentially “Offensive Aegis”

The argument could be made that because blind is effective at the target side, then each blind effectively constitutes a group-wide block for N number of players. Thus, it’s an effectively stronger mitigating condition than Aegis is a mitigating boon, which would explain why its use is limited in boss encounters in PvE.

Except that virtually all supportive uses of Aegis are party-wide, or potentially party-wide.

Another argument could be that a combination of Aegis + Blind could trivialize such encounters, so something has to give. That’s all well and good, but not when you hose one method of mitigation in favor of the other. Necromancers and Theives both tend to be second class citizens in a lot of content specifically due to the limiting factors placed on blind, and to a lesser degree poison and weakness.

In addition, all condition-based builds are hampered by artificial stacking limitations that are over-restrictive even in a 5-person instance.

So, how could we keep the utility of Aegis while giving Blind some of its power in champion and boss fights, and more importantly how do we do it without allowing a full-power blind, when combined with aegis, to trivialize content?

The answer is actually quite simple. Track misses due to blind, and make those misses remove aegis. Functionally, this would leave aegis intact, as it would still only be consumed on any hit that the player failed to mitigate through evasion and movement. It also prevents a stack of Blind+Aegis from essentially giving the player two “free soaks” while still allowing blind to effect an offensive soak and aegis to effect a defensive soak. Blind is going to clear every time the target attacks anyway, and Aegis is going to clear any time the effected player is “hit” anyway.

Jacen AlThor.4630:

I’m seeing alot of people choosing either a condition damage build or critical damage build. Which one does more damage? Which build do you guys run?

Condition focused builds lend themselves to much higher innate survivability due to the way thief traits are arrayed, while crit builds are capable of better damage, but the survivability is not as good.

That’s not to say crit builds can’t survive, they can, but what they can’t do is “pick up tank” in an instance, or take quite as many hits and remain standing as your average condition build.

Basically, Crit is a much higher risk/reward setup with better damage but less overall party-based utility or combo synergy, while condition builds are much less “heroic” in terms of damage, but tend to fare better when things start to go south unexpectedly due to having better overall hard survival numbers, and ofter more traited bonuses to stealth and evasion.

Also note that condition builds for all classes are a bit hampered by the condition stacking rules, and although anet has stated they’re going to do something about condition stacking at some point, for the time being condition specs are usually hampered in the DPS department when similar builds run content together.

Groups tend to be ambivalent one way or another, as a well played thief of either persuasion tends to bring similar amounts of value to the table. Crits bring lots of pain while conditions tend to bring lots of cripples and blinds, and most PUGs appreciate a well played character of any class/flavor.

For people asking about the target limit on caltrops, it’s a bit of an odd duck.

Caltrops respects the 5 target AoE limit, however caltrops respects that limit per tick, and selects a random five targets per tick.

Considering the 20s duration of the skill, and the fact that most of its damage is dealt via bleeds, it effectively engages and damages a virtually unlimited number of enemies, hitting 5, then another 5 (or possibly some of the same five it just hit) then another and so on. While it will only do all of its damage to all targets if there are five or fewer, and those targets stay in the trops for the full 20 ticks, in real world scenarios your targets rarely take all the damage caltrops is capable of anyway, and in my experience having mained a P/D condition thief since release the target limit restrictions are not a hindrance to the overall damage output of caltrops.

This is similar to the way that Shadow Refuge stealth ticks work if you’re bubbling more than five people. You’ll nice that the stealth seems to last longer for some players than others, and this is again because the skill randomly selects up to five targets per tick, where as an instant skill like blinding powder will only ever affect five targets, but will deliver an uniform stealth duration.

50% move speed in stealth also helps for opponents who are a bit more kite-heavy than you can handle…

I usually wipe the floor with rangers shrug my problem class is the bloody GS mesmers and their channel-auto which just makes a joke of stealth.

5

wait…wait…wait…

5

wait…wait…wait…

5

wait…wait…wait…

5

Practice that pattern in your head.

now, replace 5 with whatever skill you use to deal with melee attackers.

when you take a C&D…

wait…wait…wait…

repulse/block/smash

This is how you effectively deal with a permastealth troll. If you’re getting killed by these people be sad, since the nerf C&D does absolutely pathetic damage if used as the only damage source.

I will say that having pretty much all trophies be simply vendor trash is a bit boring. I think, perhaps, we could do with some mystic forge recipies for some more armor skins that incorporate stacks of the grey trophy loot as an incentive to keep it around and perhaps give it a minor value as a trade commodity.

jportell.2197:

ATMAvatar.5749:

jportell.2197:

Which is saying the tornado is overly powerful because confusion just redirects damage that you would do to the target back onto you when you use the skill… its a defense mechanism as well as good for destroying overpowered zealots.

No.

He is saying confusion is bugged when it interacts with some skills, resulting in a large amount of incoming damage in a short period of time that most players would not expect from a condition.

Confusion is a powerful enough condition that it does not need to rely on buggy behavior. It should be fixed, and if that makes Mesmers too weak as a result, they should be propped-up in other ways. Class balance should not rely on buggy skills.

Confusion is a condition that deals damage each time a foe uses a skill. Confusion stacks in intensity. Characters suffering from confusion can be identified by twirling, purple tinted spiral over their heads. Additionally, the same effect will appear alongside damage dealt by confusion when using a skill.

That is the description from the Wiki which gets its info from the game designers… It is not bugged… Follow me on this progression if it is a confusion/shatter heavy mesmer they can easily throw down several stacks of confusion… And if I am not mistaken tornado is an elite skill that does immense amounts of damage… SO it would suffice to say that the MORE stacks of confusion an ele has on it when they activate tornado the MORE DAMAGE they would take from using the skill… Sounds like the game mechanic is working properly to me.

I think the issue is, basically, condition’s intent is to notify you that you’re confused, and allow you to counter-play it by not using skills while under its effects. The problem isn’t with confusion, but rather the mechanics of a few abilities that make them automatically cast pulses of “skill activations” at a rapid rate, which prevents the user from counter-playing the confusion effectively.

For instance, in my MK birds example, each bird attack counts for the purposes of confusion as a “skill activation” which results in 20+ skill activations firing at once and again every second or so for 7-8 seconds. The problem with this isn’t that confusion punishes me for casting, but rather than I can not cancel these “casts”

A smart player will simply wait for the birds to start, then cast confusion, and I can’t stop the “skill activations”

Similarly, skills like tornado or plague have this problem to a lesser degree. The user can’t counter-play the confusion by not using skills, as the form uses a damage pulse that counts as a “skill activation” all by itself.

This is inconsistant, as not all channeled attacks count as multiple activations. Daggerstorm, for instance only counts as one cast, at the beginning of the skill, but not a cast for each dagger it fires. Similarly all pulsing ground targeted AoE skills count as a skill activation when cast, but not each time they deal damage.

Its a matter of consistency. Confusion needs to apply either per skill activation by the player, or per damage pulse and do so consistantly in all cases. Currently it applies mostly to the former and not to the latter, but its current effects are inconsistant.

It isn’t confusion that needs changed, but rather the skills that proc a “skill activation” without the user activating a skill. Fix those few outliers and the problem is solved without removing confusion from its intended role as a control mechanism for PvP and a source of solid damage for PvE.

Gummy.4278:

Xavori.3768:

You get blueprints out of that chest. Blueprints help you and hurt your enemy. Hence, it’s a valid tactic to deny you that chest.

You should actually be organizing attacks and defenses of the jumping puzzles. They’re a very valuable resource to anyone that can get through. This is especially true in EB as you can get high level blueprints out of that one with a bit of luck.

Ok I have a solution to that, If i can use badges to buy a non PvP instance, then I will not get PvP rewards from the chest.

I am not being ganked at the beginning….what is happening is, one group is set up on top of the dome with about 5 or 6 arrow carts and when you come into the room inside the dome, stealth or not, you can not do the jumps cause you will always be in combat…we organized a fight and cleared the bottom of the dome of the veteran’s and fought off the ones who where on the floor but could not get high enough in the dome to take out the arrows.

What did we do wrong?

Well, in normal situations where you have inacessible siege weaponry, you counter by bringing more siege weaponry. I’ll admit to never having tried it, but I imagine a few trebs elsewhere in the puzzle would make short work of the arrow cart crew.

Also, I agree that the puzzle should be moved to an instance or something. I’m tire od people complaining that it “wastes resources” when its one of the most enjoyable parts of the WvW maps for a lot of small group roamers.

My personal favorite death to confusion: Mad King Rune birds in a stack of enemies.

5+ stacks of confusion and its game over in less than a second. Even better is that the MK birds trigger after an elite cast, so you can’t cancel them once they’ve started.

I agree with the posters asking for just plain harder and better meta event bosses.

We can forgive the current world bosses to a point. I was sad when they nerfed the reactor elemental as that was a really fun and challenging fight, however it was also in a 1-15 zone. Thinking of cursed shore as “welcome to endgame content” also necessarily indicates that the current world bosses are okay being kinda lame as, honestly, they’re interim levelling content (with the exception of the claw)

Rather than raids, I’d like to see bigger and more difficult meta-chains and bosses for those chains in new zones. Think about an Orr without waypoints, where getting to and downing the boss really did take mass pushes on multiple fronts. Imagine the events were hard and rewarding, and imagine the bosses had complex mechanics.

Orr has a start on this idea, but the events are too small in scope, in in many cases the bosses are too easy for the sake of accessibility.

A “New Orr” with a really tough meta and fittingly tough rewards would be the kick in the pants the PvE endgame needs.

That’s where I’d like to see “raid” content exist in GW2. Something that you absolutely need large groups of players to cooperate to accomplish, but also something that exists in the dynamic world. Something that you round up the whole crew for, but not something limited to just your crew.

Just keep the defensive cap per player to address any PvP balance issues, and ensure current encounter balance with condition-dealing mobs remains unchanged. Ensure the non-damage effects of conditions don’t stack. Basically, have players, defending against conditions, act the way they work now. You couldn’t take more than one burn to a single target, poison, only 25 bleeds, etc.

After all, if you’re ganking with enough condition builds you’re going to quickly throw defensive condition removal utilities in to disarray in pvp, as the meta would undoubtedly switch to “condition burst” groups as a bunch more applicable DoTs is much more reliable when faced with an unchanged number of ways to remove them. It’d just be 100% ranged condition spam with a handful of power builds to finish targets because it’d be a much more reliable way to kill people in mass combat.

For PvE I don’t see any problem at all with allowing the damage component of conditions stack per player on enemies. The damage is already comparable to non-condition builds, so the overall effect of encounter difficulty would be unchanged while allowing parties to bring more than a handful of condition dealers, and allowing burn-centric builds to be useful when not alone in their role.

Honestly, just make it a checkbox for my character and leave the majority of NPCs their hats, as most of them don’t wear hats anyway. I’d like to keep my monocle in cutscenes. I look weird without it.

People don’t farm in this game to get an edge in combat. People farm to look awesome, or to get rich.

Also, its completely doable to level from 1-80 and complete all but the last step of your story with nothing but green gear from vendors. If you want “maximum efficiency” while leveling that’s a personal choice, but in order to actually complete the content in front of you it is, by design, not really necessary.

My first world completion/80 I literally just cruised around without a care in the world, upgrading when I happenned to find one, and I did just fine. I still do this while leveling newer characters. Once I’d completed all but the WvW maps… I had enough money to buy myself a full set of exotics, without farming for a single second.

Leveling IS all about exploration, and there’s a merchant every five feet specifically to prevent you from needing to interrupt your adventure for extended periods of time.

Past leveling it’s all about what you, as a player, find valuable. Some people want legendaries, or giant stacks of money, or specific dyes, or just to log in every month and explore new content. GW2, like the first game has no monthly fee specifically so you don’t feel obligated to play, and grindable things specifically to appeal to people that like that sort of thing.

No. Aggro meters and meterable aggro systems are responsible for the boring tank and spank combat found in games that they’re useful in. Heck, the original intention of taunt-based aggro systems was reactive, not proactive. Passive taunts were always meant to hold aggro, and active taunts were always meant to fix it when it broke.

What aggro meters did was essentially exploit foreknowledge of a mechanic that was intentionally hidden in order to make combat slightly more reactive and interesting in those trinity systems. It also made combat easier, and for this reason alone the concept caught on and eventually became a crutch, and then an accepted part of the gameplay that had to be designed around.

DPS meters i don’t see an issue with for people that want them, but to be completely honest I don’t think they’re a really useful tool in a game with so much intermittent and interrupted DPS. Two characters in GW2 could have equal theoretical DPS, but the guy highest on the chart could simply end up there because he managed to never draw aggro while the better player was outputting good damage while using positioning, evasion, and cooldowns to actively defend himself while doing so.

No. kitten No.

If you want a standard stealth-rogue, go play one of the other thousand games which include them. Want a little flavor? Play a ranger in Age of Conan. They’re ranged rogues.

A: Changing steal to cloak – You just took “steal” away from “thief” and completely eliminated one of the defining mechanics of the class, and one of the things that makes learning thief rewarding (how/when to properly use or hold stolen items)

B: No combat stealth – You’ve essentially turned all thief combat in to melee ranger combat without a pet. You’ve effectively destroyed another class defining mechanic of the thief (Mastry of Stealth as a defensive tool)

C: Your opinion. People that play thieves have a variety of playstyles. The idea that it would “make theives more enjoyable for everyone” is pure conjecture. Personally, I don’t enjoy fighting mesmers, ever. I don’t like fighting against their clone mechanic, I don’t like having to ferret out the real mesmer. I’m also not going to suggest clones be removed from the class because it is a core part of how they engage in combat.

Realize that, unlike more traditional rogue archetypes, Thieves actually have more build options than frontloading huge alpha strikes, and you’re talking about removing all but one build option. This is just plain silly.

Pinch.4273:

I glass cannon in 60+ Fractals. It works quite nicely. Full berserker gear + ruby orbs + fire/crit sigils, 15/30/0/25/0.

Pure insanity, I love it.

You must have a very well coordinated group. Ranged glass cannon (also popular for PvE in the elementalist variety) Is commonly only effective as your ability to stay at range however, and, as you said, this is far easier when you can rely on your group to effectively keep you out of the fire.

A regular group can make anything work as long as they know both their own and each other’s builds (proper use of combos is OP)

That said, this also operated under the assumption that things don’t go wrong, which is where your group and mine differ.

We don’t have 25 constant stacks of might, perma-vuln, or a single guardian. Aggro pings most commonly between my thief and our DPS warrior. In short, we expect everything to go wrong all the time. It does. It’s a kind of barely controlled chaos that we’ve adapted our builds around. There’s very littel planning and a lot of reacting. We win encounters consistantly, so we never felt the need to up the efficiency. At higher levels, sure, everyone knows the content, but a lot of people either don’t have a consistent party or simply don’t have as meticulously designed a party as yours.

I have no doubt that your setup works in your situation, but I think an objective ruling that tanky condition thieves are objectively “worse” than ranged GC is only situationally true. In your situation, it seems this is the best call. In mine, I can virtually guarantee my lack of ability to tank would get people killed.

Different strokes for different folks and all that.

Assassin’s reward>Pain response for P/D

Simply because Reward fires every time you burn initiative, heals instantly, and can’t be dispelled. You can actually burn initiative on thin air with it and still get healed, and you’ll be getting a 6 initiative heal with every C&D (around 430 on my particular build)

Also, Pain response has a 45 second cooldown, so it’s only really useful in short fights, and P/D is not about short fights.

Daecollo.9578:

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

If the enemy has 20 stacks, you only steal 1 stack, so its pointless to steal might.

Except for the part where the target doesn’t have 20 stacks of might any more. Or the part where you did it for basically free while using a steal you were going to use anyway.

Daecollo.9578:

Stealth is ignored by most NPCs, if you stealth they will just go right where you are stealthed and stare at you till it goes away.

Patently untrue. .5 seconds after stealth, every mob everywhere instantly retargets something else, or if there are no targets avaliable instantly leashes or stands still. The only time where a mob even pretends to know where you are after stealth is if you have mistakenly stealthed during an attack windup, in which case the mab will complete the windup and hit with the attack if you’re still in range before forgetting all about you.

Daecollo.9578:

Shadow Refuge is ok, but 1000 healing is worthless in dungeons, thats basicly one shout heal from a warrior and thats 1/10th of what one healing banner could do, and Rangers and most classes can give everyone regeneration, and protection.

Except that shadow refuge also grants reliable and long duration stealth, instantly, to anyone in trouble. SR alone can rez a downed player, even if that player is AFK and the party is in the middle of a fight. SR with groups is the only reliable way to mid-fight rez a dead player, as it stealths as many people as enter it. Drop it and add three rezzers while the fourth guy kites to prevent HP resets…. and that dead guy is up in seconds.

Also, SR is a darkness field, a field type only otherwise avaliable to necros. Dark fields combo in to life steals. Combine that steal with the field’s innate heal, and the stealth… and you just completely fixed any bad aggro while providing healing to the people that need to keep it.

Of course, like any combo fields, its only as good as your group is smart.

Daecollo.9578:

Thief is horrible in dungeons compared to other classes, even rangers.

*Better sustained AoE cripple than any class in the game
*Better sustained AoE blind than any class in the game
*Is only class than can safely rez anyone at any time
*Can tank infinite numbers of trash, due to tanking becoming more effective with more mobs.
*Can burn defiant on bosses like hot butter.
*Spammable blast finisher

The list goes on. I’m sorry you had the misfortune of partying with lolbackstab thieves attempting to PvE. Certain builds, on every class, simply don’t work right in the harder PvE bits of the game.

Blind matters? – Most bosses ignore it.

Try Meleeing a Fractal Boss for that awesome cripple.

Safely rez anyone at anytime? Hardly, I’d bring a ranger for that, Search And Rescue.
Tank Infinite Numbers of Trash, maybe, depends on the trash, but nobody cares about trash mobs, only bosses.

Warriors also have a spammable blast finisher, why do you need two of them? Dungeons usually have about 2-3 warriors already.

Since when did bosses ignore blind? They whiff 10% of attacks while blinded. 10% miss chance is useless…. unless you can ensure they’re always blind, and do it passively as part of your DPS chain.

Since when did I need to melee to cripple? Dancing dagger is ranged. Daggerstorm is ranged. Caltrops is a persistant AoE.

Search and rescue does not prevent the target from taking additional damage from mobs, does not prevent the pet from taking damage from mobs, and generally turns the downed player in to an AoE magnet, resulting in a dead player and pet. Also, it has zero other uses, and has a longer recharge than SR.

Is there some amalgamation of traits that allows a warrior to blast finisher on autoattacks I don’t know about? Once every ten seconds is not spammable. It’s not even enough to do two field effects on most combo fields. Compare that with standing inside a field and rapid firing (but not exploding) one cluster arrow per second. In effect, that’s blast finishing at autoattack rate 6-8 times before you’re out of initiative, depending on build, and then once every three seconds afterward if you just scrape the bottom of your pool as it recharges.

Daecollo.9578:

If the enemy has 20 stacks, you only steal 1 stack, so its pointless to steal might.

Except for the part where the target doesn’t have 20 stacks of might any more. Or the part where you also stole another boon. Or the part where you did it for basically free while using a steal you were going to use anyway.

Daecollo.9578:

Stealth is ignored by most NPCs, if you stealth they will just go right where you are stealthed and stare at you till it goes away.

Patently untrue. .5 seconds after stealth, every mob everywhere instantly retargets something else, or if there are no targets avaliable instantly leashes or stands still. The only time where a mob even pretends to know where you are after stealth is if you have mistakenly stealthed during an attack windup, in which case the mab will complete the windup and hit with the attack if you’re still in range before forgetting all about you.

Daecollo.9578:

Shadow Refuge is ok, but 1000 healing is worthless in dungeons, thats basicly one shout heal from a warrior and thats 1/10th of what one healing banner could do, and Rangers and most classes can give everyone regeneration, and protection.

Except that shadow refuge also grants reliable and long duration stealth, instantly, to anyone in trouble. SR alone can rez a downed player, even if that player is AFK and the party is in the middle of a fight. SR with groups is the only reliable way to mid-fight rez a dead player, as it stealths as many people as enter it. Drop it and add three rezzers while the fourth guy kites to prevent HP resets…. and that dead guy is up in seconds.

Also, SR is a darkness field, a field type only otherwise avaliable to necros. Dark fields combo in to life steals. Combine that steal with the field’s innate heal, and the stealth… and you just completely fixed any bad aggro while providing healing to the people that need to keep it.

Of course, like any combo fields, its only as good as your group is smart.

Daecollo.9578:

Thief is horrible in dungeons compared to other classes, even rangers.

*Better sustained AoE cripple than any class in the game
*Better sustained AoE blind than any class in the game
*Is only class than can safely rez anyone at any time
*Can tank infinite numbers of trash, due to tanking becoming more effective with more mobs.
*Can burn defiant on bosses like hot butter.
*Spammable blast finisher

The list goes on. I’m sorry you had the misfortune of partying with lolbackstab thieves attempting to PvE. Certain builds, on every class, simply don’t work right in the harder PvE bits of the game.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Elmuerto.9840:

Ambush is a blast with Thieves guild for small fights and I hear ya. They can however attack mobs as said so be careful where you pop them. SIGNET OF SHADOWS some day friends you’ll realise what a waste of a slot that is. Took a while but I kicked the habit too. Till then keep chasing you won’t catch me. Slots change but my general WvW is s/p and sb with Hide in Shadows, Shadowstep, Shadow refuge and Signet of Agility. Coupled with feline grace and expeditious dodger the removal of condition and refill on endurance through the Agility Signet is a nice escaping balance to its Precision boost for crits in attack. Seriously few people catch me and I’m always last man standing to res my group after we’ve been zerged. That’s an optional 2 nontarget shadowsteps and a target shadowstep to shadowstep around wvwvw with roughly 7 consecutive – 14 secs swiftness boost every 30 seconds and whatever in between. Very few catch me if I have to escape and that doubles as getting there first to any map point. Sorry got kind of off topic there when SOS was also mentioned.

Kind of off-topic, but I’ll go to the funny farm with ya. I’ve often thought about ditching Signet of Shadows. The only thing that keeps it on my bar is having an insta-blind as a panic button. If I were to replace it, my top choices would be Signet of Agility or Infiltrator’s Signet because both would fit with my build.

My question to you: Would you still feel mobile enough to drop SoS if you weren’t running a short bow?

Not a question directed at me obviously, but I’ll say that when I was not running a shortbow I wasn’t comfortable without it. Then I ditched it for caltrops after I finally broke down and just started backing a shortbow swap. Caltrops when used properly just had much more overall team utility with my bleed build.

Ambush I’ve only ever screwed with a bit. I like the idea of traps and venoms, and I’ve toyed around with them, but they’re just never worth giving up caltrops, roll for initiative, or shadow refuge in my build.

I’ll commonly switch from trops to the signet for running between fights (because keeping up with the pack otherwise requires me to waste endurance or initiative, and also because I’m lazy) , or to scorpion wire if I’m in a wall-fight to try and yank.

Rainu.6871:

@eXs: Mobs quite often goes for the player with the highest toughness (or armor, not certain) so that might be a reason why your warrior gets targeted more often.

I can second that this feels accurate. Our normal dungeon group consists of two thieves (one crit, one condition) a necro, a DPS warrior, and an ele.

Of the five of us, my tankbleed thief has around as much armor as our warrior, and higher toughness, and the mobs for the most part like to stick one wither myself or the warrior. Generally I pull because I’m a much better tank than the warrior due to my build, and when I stealth or withdraw the mobs usually have around a 70-80% chance to start snacking on the warrior, if they haven’t already been killed by the six billion aoes we’re tossing around.

Then I unstealth and a bunch of them come back to me. We’ve learned that playing aggro pingpong in this manner can often end encounters (even boss encounters in some cases) with very few hits ever even connecting with the party, NTM two thieves worth of shadow refuge allows the group to fix nearly any mistake made seconds after it happens.

Doggie.3184:

I have a lot of Mad King runes laying around and use a set on my warrior. I been wanting to make a set for my Thief but I can’t decide what armor set to use. :/

My Warrior uses Rampagers and the runes do a ton of damage but warrior can get away with it easier by easily having a lot of defense+crit damage. My Thief would be really squishy and could really only add Def with rings and etc or Crit DMG only and be glass cannon.

The setup that benefits from them is a tanky condition based setup, using d/d (blossom) SB (clusterbomb at melee) or P/D (C&D>snakattack) with caltrops and daggerstorm, a well as 20-30 points in both defensive lines. This leverages your gear (usually carrion or a carrion/apothecary combo) th rely on massive heals from the aoe or multi-hit synergy of these sets with the heal-per-attack from signet of malice. Basically, you soak up less damage than the warrior, but also heal more. I wouldn’t reccommend MK runes on glassier white or crit damage thief builds as there’s not enough toughness in them to benefit as much from the low power but high volume heals, and the +bleed and condition effects from the set don’t synergize well.

The +power on such builds is just a nice bonus, as those builds are commonly getting little to no power from gear/traits, but the real reason to take them is the extra bleed/condition duration and the heal from the synergy of birds/malice.

When I was running other sets I didn’t find it very useful, but it’s got superb synergy with P/D

1: You’re already running a condition build, so the trops are outputting something resembling respectable damage

2: You will often want to dodge directly after applying C&D at face-range, which ensures at least one tick hits, as your start point of dodge is directly on top of the target.

3: Dodging after C&D puts the enemy exactly where you want them, and the dodgetrops help keep them outside of melee range, but close enough to be shot in the favce seven times and then hit with a dagger again. The short cripple isn’t that useful for sustained retreat or as a gap closer, but for the in-and-out P/D fighting style its helps greatly with making sure you’re far enough to not take melee hits, but close enough to deliver one during the time between sneak attacks.

4: It’s an extra tick (or more) of Signet of Malice, and P/D loves more ways to shoehorn another SoM tick in to the sneak attack loop without spending extra time.

The developers stated those skills were only put on thief weapons so they’d have three skills in the tutorial like every other class, and that they’re not really intended for general use.

Basically, they’re there so you’re not stuck with two skills before you grab an offhand.

Doomdesire.9365:

I haven’t advanced past 40, but I did fotm 10 like a million times and never have trouble unless it’s group related.

I run P/D tank. The only advice I’d really say is that don’t go glass cannon. Do a 20K hp stealth healing build with conditions.

I also run P/D bleedtank in fractals with around 20k hp, and can vouch for the viability of this spec. Its super survivable, and made moreso by packing caltrops, dancing dagger, a shortbow, and the 20% tricks and aoe stealthblind traits.

For mass fights, just C&D+Steal to something in the middle of the pack, use the stealth to drop caltrops, then break stealth with dancing dagger when its up or swap to shortbow and spam clusterbombs.

When the pack splits, or you’re in a bossfight keep on the P/D and hammer away with C&D/Sneak attack while dodging whatever big attacks/mechanics the fight throws at you.

I pack shadow refuge (because duh) and roll for initiative on my other slots. In harder fractals, a single landed stun can mean death, and RFI is a really nice package of stunbreak, big gap opener, and initiative refill.

I also pack mad king runes as each bird from the 6 rune effect counts as multiple attacks, which result in a massive additional heal after daggerstorm ends.

With this setup the only deaths I commonly ever worry about are certain hard hitting aoes (dredge stuff mostly) and disables I fail to dodge, provide a decent chunk of cc via cripple and blind application, have the amazing rez utility from shadow refuge, and hammer in constant high damage bleed dps, as well as combo-resultant perma-fire and poison with many groups to everything on the field with zero downtime.

As a P/D WvW thief the best counter people have used is simpy learning the C&D animation and timing dodges, and saving disables for when they can’t dodge.

This runs out my initiative pretty fast and forces me to withdraw, allowing the opponent plety of time to recharge cooldowns and ends up with me either choosing to get out of the fight, or committing to the encounter at substantial risk of death due to not having enough initiative to properly escape.

Clark Skinner.4902:

PopeUrban.2578:

The game as a whole is designed around the principal that you can get equivalent rewards for playing the parts of the game you like—

I’mma stop you right there.
The champ me and several others waypointed to to kill today, taking 10 minutes of our time rewarded a blue glove for me. Worth 59c. I can make more than that gathering in 10 minutes. Work and reward are not correlated in GW2.

They are. You had the same roll to get the same quality of loot finishing a dungeon or killing a larger number of easier monsters, one of which is more difficult and time consuming, one of which is simply more time consuming. The rewards, however, and equivalent. If you don’t like killing Champions you don’t have to do it to get the things champions drop. That’s an equivalent reward. That champion also had a higher base chance to drop high-value items gained from world PvE like exotics or precursors. You can’t make that 2+ gold in ten minutes of gathering. The difference is that gathering is a reliable baseline, and mob loot is a gamble.

The drop from a random table based on a simple size of one kill is not an accurate measure of the entire time/reward scale of that champion, however I will agree that for the most part champion and vet drop tables are a bit lackluster and should be buffed (again) to reflect their difficulty.

Tarn.1374:

Sir Morgan Malory.2069:

It takes 60 hours to get a char to level 80. Add another 20-30 hours to full exotics. I would think +85% for the people playing the game are leveled and geared up. Most people are going to use lower leveled ats in these instances to take advantage of the experienced gained.

No, once again this is simply not true. You’re making a huge assumption that all people play the game only to level characters and to ‘gear-up’.

Not all of them, but the vast majority of players, yes. Take one look around any town, any LA overflow. Simply look at the armor people have equipped, and look at their character levels. You’ll notice that the majority are wearing exotic skins, or a mix of exotics and transmuted lesser rarities for visual flair.

I’m not saying this is the only segment of the player population, but it is in fact the majority of the population simply based on observation. Go ahead and do a headcount in any heavily populated area.

I’m not really emotionally attached to either side of the discussion, I just kinda see it from a perspective of glory being a closed currency in the same manner that dungeon tokens are specific to their respective dungeons.

It wouldn’t really bother me if glory were rewarded for holiday events, but I feel like it’d be very similar to handing out, say, ascalonian tears for doing world events or something. From that angle I just thought I’d phrase logically why I’m fine with things the way they are.

The reasoning of glory not rewarding “skill” but time spent, I feel is accurate, but at the same time glory specifically rewards time spent in the sPvP format, xp rewards time spent in PvE, holiday items reward time spent in holiday events. While the holiday events thusfar have had an overlap in termps of PvE and holiday rewards, that overlap had been in the form of rewarding a “bonus” to PvE rathar than a “bonus” to holiday specific content.

In all of the above, a more “skilled” player accrues that currency faster than a player who doesn’t do very well. It is an indicator of progress, but not necessarily one of skill. if we’re really looking for equity it’s my personal opinion that it’d be much more equitable to add holiday drops directly to sPvP and leave the holiday PvP activites untouched.

Cerebelum.6087:

I am of the view that even if i knew where it was I would not bother to waste my time on it. If i want jumping puzzles I will go and waste money on Mario or some such. So go with the flow, if you don’t enjoy it don’t play that part of the game. Games these days seem to be targeted at completionists rather than funists, sod that % bar, forget the title, don’t get wound up by pixels on a screen, enjoy the parts of GW2 that are fun for you. A mate and I found some jumping puzzle in a grotto a while back. After I spotted the way past the insta-gib spikes I found a bit where after 3 or 4 goes i just could not get the launch spot right. So i went off mining ore for his crafter alt and he spent 2hours perfecting the puzzle, only to find an empty chest at the end…meanwhile I got a ton of ore….

This. So much this.

People who do jumping puzzles do them because they find them fun. The game as a whole is designed around the principal that you can get equivalent rewards for playing the parts of the game you like, and ignoring the parts you don’t (with the exception of ascended stat level items, which we’ve been told by developers are being worked in to the rest of the game so that fractals are not the only way to acquire them)

If you want every tick of every achievement in the game, realize that it is by design just as hard to pull off as getting one of every item in the game. The variety is there specifically to make your accomplishments unique to your wants and actions as a player. If you don’t like PvP, nobody is making you. If you don’t like jumping puzzles, no one is making you. If you don’t like PvE (!) no one is making you.

I remember the first few times our group did AC explorable and Kholer ripped us a new one. We knew there was a chest and a waypoint, but we also knew that with what we knew about the game and our levels/builds at the time that he nearly insta-wiped us five times.

So we went around, skipped the chest and waypoint, and didn’t look back. We had fun killing gravelings and got more chests with more loot in them.

If you can’t do the JP, or don’t like jumping there’s a wide variety of other holiday stuff to do. Not because you’re expected to complete it all. They lightened up the requirements for the holiday title specifically to indicate that you’re not expected or required to do everything, and that you’re free to pick the stuff you find fun.

I know a guy who hates bell choir, and another that hates PvP. They just plain didn’t do those and still had a lot of fun with wintersday.

I believe it is appropriate to have super-rare items tied to monthly events, both holiday and non-holiday, both core equipment and vanity.

One of the biggest draws of monthly events is that they mark specific points in time in the life of the game. One of the biggest draws of rare loot is that it’s special, unique, and not everyone has it. GW2, like its predecessor uses cosmetic and vanity items to fill the “Unique because not everyone has one” role, because making those items required to complete content results in less overall accessible content for everyone.

However.

The concept of individuality is very important in any MMO, and a large part of that is not just the color of your gear or the tweaks to your avatar, but the things you acquire along the way. What you own is part of the story of that character, and hard to get holiday loot is a double-whammy of “I was there” and “I got the thing”

You can bet your bottom dollar that the people that got a bell to drop this month are statistically extremely unlikely to get the uber-rare thing that drops next month. This is a good thing, as months down the line you’ve got a world fleshed out with characters with a plethora of interesting and unique trinkets rather than a sea of sameness.

If you needed the bell to access a special dungeon, or experience content of any kind, then I’d agree that its rarity isn’t warranted. The thing is that you don’t, and that you had the same chance to “luck out” as anyone else.

For the hardcore completionists, you need to be aware that completing collections of things is extremely difficult in both the real world and in video games. Both are often worlds when don’t intend you to own one of everything, and often make you strive very hard or simply luck out to get the things you do.

If you don’t get the bell, and you want it that badly, you can still acquire it with a lot of effort, and you’ll do so because YOU wanted it, not because the game said you had to have it. GW2 is a game that in virtually all cases makes it very easy to get the things you need, but challenging to get the things you want, enough so that you are encouraged to decide for yourself exactly what it is that you want, and if you’re willing to do what it takes to get it. This is implicit in the design because if wants were as easy as needs there would be nothing to strive toward and nothing to get excited about in terms of the things you acquire. In short, a very boring game.

LordHogFred.3691:

This is exactly what I’m saying, it’s designed for level 80s. I’m almost 80 but my friends who got Guild Wars for Christmas aren’t even level 20. A system in place which downlevels people precisely to maximise the content available, a holiday event should not be an event that caters to level 80s. The Karka event for levels 80s is fine, it was a big epic world changing event. Wintersday however should not be.
It’s not as much a matter of it being difficult or easy it’s a matter of it being accessible. People that are new to the game come in to find all these fancy events happening, they are not used to their characters, the game or the skills available to them (some of them don’t even have access to all of their skills). I don’t doubt that people who are maxed out with best in slot gear can solo it easily, but newbies and casual players are not.

Yes, its going to be frustrating for new players. However, lets imagine we implemented your system, and made holiday “dungeon” and “event” style content level 2 appropriate and just downleveled everyone.

You’re now alienating the majority of the playerbase by creating content that is extremely easy and boring. You’re creating content that everyone can accomplish, but not that everyone will have fun with. The only players that would enjoy this content are players completely new to the game, just having walked out of the awesome tutorial bossfight, and spend their time fighting enemies that can be conquered by standing in one place spamming 1. Lowbie zone content is made easy specifically because the vast majority of lowbies aren’t familiar with the game yet.

Holiday content is made specifically to entertain the entire playerbase, and in order to create fun content for the entire playerbase you have to address the majority, and that majority is accounts with at least one geared 80, which they’re going to play for any content they’re not yet familiar with.

While the level 80 mechanics and mobs may be frustrating for the portions of the player base that just started the game, they’re what make that content fun for the majority of the player base. Changing that means creating boring holiday content.

Also, both holiday events thusfar have included multiple noncombat and “bundle PvP” activities that require no advanced knowledge, gear, or levels to get in to. These activities are as fresh to veterans as they are to brand new players, and in both instances have been more numbrous than the “dungeons” in order to provide a broad range of activites for players of all skill and experience levels (and tastes)

I think the major issue with glory rewards for holiday pvp is what Glory is used to purchase: Cosmetics that serve as an indicator of progress in the sPvP match format.

Holiday events reward holiday awards because the rewards are indicitive of what you’re doing: participating in a holiday event.

What you’re not doing is participating in the sPvP match format. It’s the same reason you don’t get glory for WvW. WvW is PvP, however WvW is not the sPvP format. Glory isn’t PvP currency, it’s sPvP currency.

While they share similar scoreboards and top player callouts (because why would you redesign those?) WvW and sPvP don’t operate on the same currency. Holiday events, being a separate gametype from the domination style rules of standard sPvP matches don’t award glory because glory is directly related to sPvP cosmetics. Allowing someone to amass a lot of glory during holiday events effectively removes glory as the sole currency for sPvP rewards, and allows people who’ve never stepped foot in to sPvP to amass large stacks of PvP skins without actually playing the gametype those items are specifically used to reward.

PvE has an overlap with holiday events, and sPvP has its own glory-related overlap with holiday events, however these two systems are separate. Holiday events are much more akin to WvW than sPvP in that they’re a PvP extension of PvE rather than the completely closed game that is sPvP.

Law of averages.

The vast majority of the player base is level 80, and has a decent set of exotics. Thus, it is preferable to design level 80 content.

This event was made very easy for the players it was designed for. The vast majority of characters at the appropriate level for the instance, and with the appropriate gear can actually complete the entire five man instance with two people. With a little creativity in skill/trait selection, aggro management, and a bit of practice, a pretty large portion of those players can complete is by themselves.

This is a level 80 instance that is no harder than level 80 world zones.

Asking for holiday content that downscales the vast majority of the player base trivializes both the content and the reward scaling. Upscaling has been implemented in this content as a special case, like WvW, to give you a fighting chance at completing it with a little help, but not to 100% equalize you with a “finished” character.

If you’re really having that much trouble finding people to help you complete Tixx, feel free to contact me ingame and I’ll make sure you get through it.

Breakouts aren’t the problem. Lack of incentive to defend is the problem.

You can

A>Upgrade and defend all your fortifications
B> let the enemy take the fort, retake it immedately, and rake in the rewards for a successful assault

Because the scoreboard only ticks based on who owns what at that moment rather than how long they’ve owned it, the incentive to defend is nonexistant, and the meta in stead revolves around blitz-capping right before the timer pops.

Add to this the fast that most supply camps are completely indefensible, and reward quick-capping and emptying better than defending and upgrading the yaks… and you quickly realize that the problem that plagues WvW isn’t a few easy to counter breakout events, but an overall lack of incentive to ever defend anything at all.

Scoring needs to be adjusted on a linear ramp, rewarding more points the longer a server is able to hold each point. Bonus points should be awarded for holding points in enemy borderlands. Defense rewards for individuals need to be adjusted to compete with attack rewards. Supply camps should not award score at all.

These changes would make borderlands much more important, and encourage standing defensive forces to defend their holdings as well as the camps that supply them rather than constantly backdoor enemy supply on the other side of the map.

Arah story mode has a pretty epic mount.

Seriously though, mounts just aren’t that useful. I’d be all for a return of something like the junundu worms. These were giant sandworms you needed to climb in to and ride around in to survive certain areas of toxic sulfur deserts that would kill you on foot. Basically, you did a quest chain to get this mount because you actually couldn’t just walk through those areas. It was a neat mechanic. Similarly, the siege devourers in EOTN were a neat mechanic. You beat them down, killed the pilot, and then got to maraud around in an uber-tank and blow stuff up.

If we’re going to see mounts, I prefer they be mountable war machines/weapons as they were in the first game, and as they are in WvW. If they just look pretty and move fast? That’s kind of pointless in both a game play and lore sense. The world is littered with fast travel points (which don’t work for pack dolyaks for some reason) and asura gates. It would be like riding a horse in manhattan. Why bother when you can walk everywhere or take a train that’s faster?

Not going to happen. Cultural armor was originally purchased with karma, and it was changed post-release to gold.

Arenanet decided at some point that Karma wasn’t the right move for cultural armor for some reason.