Guild Wars 2

Stealth already has several inbuilt counter-plays and I feel that they are sufficient.

Channeled attacks (pinpoint the stealther as good as revealing them ever would)

AoE (Zones out the thief. Stop dropping AoEs somewhere else and start standing in them to burn away the stealth timer.)

PBAoE+Dodge (the counter button for all burst builds)

The way the thief is designed is to rely on a combination of stealth and mobility as their only survival options. Thieves only have any sort of defensive traits or buffs in relation to either stealth or mobility, one stability (on a channeled elite which they can not use while stealthed) and no access to defensive boons outside of stolen skills (which are highly situational)

Yeah, you fight a thief, and if it goes poorly a good thief can often escape the failed attack. This is by design as the thief doesn’t have the tools to stick it out in a prolonged fight.

That said, a basic “flash of reveal” would have the same overall effect as combo chaining or the combat log does already, and leave the way stealth counterplay workes largely unchanged. I support the basic idea of a “flash reveal” on hit simply because it would make stealth counterplay more intuitive for players who don’t understand how stealth works without actually changing how stealth works.

Glory is not awarded for holiday events because they in stead award holiday items. Glory is the tangible reward for sPvP, holiday items are the tangible reward for holiday PvP.

Makes sense to me.

Although the puzzle is much easier than the clock tower, it’s slightly harder than the world JPs. This is because the reward is also slightly better than the world JPs.

Its risk versus reward. You want an ascended ring? You need to be able to complete at least one R10 fractal run, or at most 20 of them. You want a pair of soulbound exotic boots? The Jp that contained them was up to that level of difficulty.

Luckily, arenanet made vast strides toward holiday event management. There are no unique rewards in the JP, and you don’t even need its achievement to complete the holiday title. The reward is worth the effort, and I’m with the folks that estimate that the vast majority of the community is capable of completing it at least once, and a very large portion capable of completing it once a day.

This isn’t an issue of “catering to the skilled elite” the game, by the statement of its developers, endeavors to have activities that appeal to all types of players. This doesn’t mean every type of player will be good at or enjoy everything in the game. It means there’s usually enough in the game that there should be something you find enjoyable.

Personally, I don’t enjoy sPvP. I’ve never liked arena PvP in MMOs it feels disjointed from the entire concept of a persistent world, and other types of games (shooters, MOBAs) tend to be much more enjoyable for me in a “limited match” format.

I don’t complain when sPvP gets updates, maps, and other things. That type of gameplay exists specifically for the types of people that enjoy it. Jumping puzzles exist specifically for people that enjoy jumping puzzles. If you don’t enjoy it, do one of the many other Wintersday activities!

Its much cheaper to go for small gifts if you’re buying them in bulk. All gifts have an equal chance to drop everything. The only difference between the present sizes is the level of the crafting materials and the type of common ugly clothing.

Also, gratz on the endless tonic. That’s actually much rarer than the bell!

I like how the language used is “discriminatory” as an appeal to our reactionary 21st century media-hype wired minds.

You know, in stead of making a post stating you personally find it challenging with your asura, you in stead state that you’re being victimized.

Then you end the post with a call to racial segregation of innocent non-asura.

That’s pretty smart.

Toast.6459:

- Tells me my point is stupid when he got a bell in less than a quarter of what seems to be the average amount. Ever heard the saying “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes”? Try it sometime.
- Where am I screaming bloody murder, slandering the development team, and yelling at people? In case you didn’t read my post entirely, which wouldn’t surprise me in the least, I complimented the addition of the bell, just not the method of obtaining it.
- This game stopped being fun for me when everything “unique” became based on RNG.
Quoting from my earlier post:
“What I do see something wrong with is that the solution to everything seems to be RNG. Want a legendary? RNG. Want a bell/one of the mini’s for the quaggan/a quaggan? RNG. Want an endless tonic? RNG. Need a ring from the Fractals daily chest to keep going? RNG.”

First, at what point did I specifically call out you, or direct anything at you. This is a discussion with multiple participants at this point. I remarked on reactionary sensationalism surrounding holiday items. For the record your original post was quite reasonable. The quoted post is not.

I don’t think your opinion is “stupid” I just happen to disagree with it. For the record I blew around 70 gold in gems in my hunt for karka minis, got nothing useful, and was fine with it. I knew the risk, I took a chance, i missed out, and there is still plenty of neat stuff in the game. I’ve walked in the same shoes as everyone else playing this game. Did I literally get “lucky” on such things for the first time? Yes. Am I assuming it’ll happen again soon? Probably not.

Do I have fun blowing my hard earned gold on stupid random chances? Yeah, I do. It gives me an incentive to go acquire more gold. I blow my time killing mobs for random loot drops. That’s also fun. In short, I understand and accept the risk that I’m taking before I take it, and that prevents me from being sore about it if it doesn’t work out. I’ve played games I felt were, for my personal tastes, too grindy or not rewarding enough on the RNG/loot scale. I’m personally okay with the ingame obtainable festival items thusfar.

You are neither explicitly wrong or stupid, and I never stated either.

You’re taking things a little personal here for no good reason, and I apologize if I gave the impression I was belittling or insulting you in any way.

Edit: In retrospect I may have used this specific thread as an outlet to comment about an overarcing forum trend, which may have caused this impression. Sorry about that.

Thorgal.1287:

PopeUrban.2578:

… I mean what’s the difference? I wanted the bell. I cashed in for 250 small presents at a time until I got it. This took me about 2400 small presents plus various other presents from doing other wintersday stuff. When I had extra money I bought small presents because they were cheap and I wanted the bell.
…

you do realise I hate you now instead of ANet for only needing to click through ~2400 presents right?

I’ll admit to letting out a minor “F yeah” when it dropped. I honestly only half expected to get it and had a snowflake racket contingency plan all cooked up in my head.

As other posters in this thread have stated: Vote with your wallet.

I used to play a game that actually did have an exploitative cash shop, based completely on random number generation, that was required to actually play the game competitively in PvP.

“Random Boxes” in cash shops only exist because people like you buy them. I really enjoy GW2. I have purchased gems, and used those gems to get sure-fire things like bank pages, res orbs, bank access and merchant spawners, and was happy to do so. I paid what I felt was a reasonable amount of money for a little extra non-gamebreaking item which supports the development team.

What I have not done, and refuse to do, is gambled my real life money on the chance to get something. I don’t agree with the “mystery box” model in concept, and thus I choose not to support it. The more people that simply choose not to support it the less viable it becomes as a monetization strategy. if you don’t like losing money, its very simple: Don’t gamble your money.

If what you’re gambling on is important enough to you that you risk $60+ of your hard earned cash, then you obviously felt that the gamble-boxes were worth the asking price, else you wouldn’t have purchased them.

I wouldn’t go to the local shop and buy a “mystery box” that may have contents that i deem worth less than the asking price, and therefore I don’t make that buy ingame. It really is that simple. If you don’t like gambling, then stop gambling.

Rarity enforced by scarcity. Its kind of a basic axiom around which the concept of “rare item” revolves.

It doesn’t matter how its acquired. People with legendaries could have farmed, got lucky, or a combination of both, but the point is that the system specifically designs these (completely cosmetic) uber-rares to be challenging to acquire, but unneccessary to actually complete content.

It’s the same deal with dyes, or heck, anything difficult to acquire in the game

This includes the unbreakable bell.

Yes. It plays music. No. it’s not a “New gameplay feature” The world already contains two organs you can visit any time you like and play, for as long as you like, for free. As an added bonus you can actually use these organs to acquire chests with loot in them.

What I hear more often than not during these events is “THERE’S A SPECIAL THING I CAN ONLY GET FOR A LIMITED TIME AND I MIGHT NOT GET IT!” with the very occasional “That thing we actually played was kinda cool”

Look at it this way. You know what it takes to acquire a legendary. You know that you don’t NEED it for anything. People seem quite happy with either doing what it takes to acquire one, or just opting out of the system if the requirements don’t include something they want to/are able to do.

HOLIDAY items on the other hand… wow. Explain to me the difference. Explain to me why it is simply UNACCEPTABLE to some of you that you may have to put effort toward acquiring the gold to buy one of these off of the TP, or may find yourselves using ugly clothing for the only really worthwhile use it has: Gambling on presents.

I mean what’s the difference? I wanted the bell. I cashed in for 250 small presents at a time until I got it. This took me about 2400 small presents plus various other presents from doing other wintersday stuff. When I had extra money I bought small presents because they were cheap and I wanted the bell.

I was also fully prepared to not get it. Had wintersday come and gone and I had no bell, I wasn’t prepared to pay through the nose on the Tp for it. I would have simply not acquired it. The hunt for the bell gave me something specific to do for wintersday in addition to my other activites/normal play. I thought it was fun. Even my girlfriend got in the act, asking if she could run the mouse to open some stacks of presents because she was “feeling lucky”

What is it that makes you people take such an innocuous, fun little thing like a novelty item and turn it in to a reason to scream bloody murder, slander the development team, and start setting up camps of “THOSE EVIL 1%ers”

At what point did playing video games stop being fun for you, and more importantly, why did you keep playing them afterward?

What does this have to do with Wintersday?

Like any weapon or armor skin:

Yes.

There is nothing in the game that can damage things or be worn as armor that can’t be transmuted an unlimted number of times.

I think it’s pretty decent mechanically, but I’m utterly confused at why they decided to have it break groups.

Arenanet, I understand this logic for hot-join holiday PvP, you want to keep it random and prevent outperformers from steamrolling too much.

For PvE events or other minigames, just allow groups to join as groups. We like playing with other people, but we also really like playing with our friends.

Worked fine for me in an LA overflow. Sad to hear people are experiencing this.

For the record, the contents are:

200 cogs
3x unsafe wintersday gift
15-slot gift bag (inventory bag, looks like a wintersday present
wintersday backpack
a few personalized gifts (forget how many)

The Daily Lion, 79th Day of Colossus, Page four, Second article.

Today, the legendary militia force calling itself the Lionguard quelled rioting in the Lion’s Arch grand piazza as itinerant adventurers were accosted by a group of protestors led by Matilda Roe.

Matilda, mother of Alleged victim and whiny bookah Jane Roe has organized citizens of Divinity’s Reach and other major Tyrian cities in an effort to stop the distribution of so-called “toys” produced by Asuran Ambassador of Wintersday Cheer Tixx.

During the previous week, Tixx has enlisted the assistance of several drifters in order to repair as-yet unexplained problems aboard his airship, the Infinirarium. Today, Tixx arrived in Lion’s Arch in an attempt to pay these day laborers, who were met with unexpected picketing by Matilda’s camp.

Eventually frustrated by the protestors, the armed vagrant mob demanded passage in order to collect payment, and the situation quickly escalated until Lionguard soldiers intervened and separated the two parties.

If you’re having problems in groups, just solo it if you’ve got a decently geared 80. I’ve managed to solo all four days thusfar (just to prove that I could, to myself)

Granted its a lot slower and a bit more dangerous, but it not much harder than walking around in orr or southsun.

basically, the wintersday skins are wintersday themed, that halloween ones were halloween themed. Halloween’s “theme” is more frightening and bloody, so of course the halloween skins are going to be more attractive for everyday use.

I do know one large blonde male norn guardian who’s SUPER excited about the princess wand though. That’s going to be hilarious.

it is a fun weapon set, but, like the other two snowball sets, its ridiculously overpowered and only balanced against the other two.

You couldn’t actually make it work on a real weapon without completely gutting it, and the duration of the mobile stealth specifically is not a ranger-feel ability, just like the channeled rapid fire is not a thief-feel ability. The snipe is a very cool skill which with some damage reduction might look good as the #5 on a ranger rifle set if they ever decide to give rangers rifles though.

dulfy.1493:

Shafi.8952:

Does it say all of ventari’s teachings?

No it doesn’t talk. Just swing his toystaff

Fixed for ya. Ventari was a dude

I just picked up this achievement doing a solo run of the airship. You’ve got to be extremely thoroughm, but the only things that seem like they don’t break are the racial capital models and the occasional bridge over a lake. Everything else has to be utterly destroyed.

Trees, posts on the side of roads, buildings, tiny little tables, everything.

I spend about an hour hunting down those rogue trees.

Honestly, if you like, you know, asura stuff (being witty, unpredictable experiments, insults) then Asura is surely the right choice.

If you like human stuff (politics, social stratification, bucking the system) the human really is the right choice.

Think about it this way, Asura are a sort of zany PG action movie while Humans are more of a historical drama. Both can be enjoyable, albiet for different reasons, it just depends on what you feel like watching.

Torrad.1075:

I think the dynamic between charr and humans adds more to the game in its current form than it ever would have if they remained one-dimensional evil NPCs.

This is most definitely true. Despite how improbable the entire peace accord, or indeed many of the events crossing the last 250 years of tyrian history are, it’s not suprising that the Charr were chosen for a major playable race. GW2 is a spiritual successor to the original prophecies campaign just as much as EOTN was a conscious foreshadowing of many of its major events. What’s refreshing is that the Charr as they exist in GW2 aren’t simply neutered of the ferocity and malice with which they were presented, but rather that the writers have channeled that ferocity in to equal parts strength and weakness.

It would have been easy to make a peace treaty a footnote in history, and have the two races happily holdng hands on daisy street, musing about the horribleness of the past. The decision to place them politically as they are was the best one. It pays homage to the important plot arc of prophecies, places them in a position to actually be a cooperative playable race with humans, and gives the opportunity to tell stories about hope and forgiveness that resonate with those familiar with the franchise in a way that no new race really could. Nobody remembers primordius pushing up the Asura, or Jormag eating some elder spirits, or Ventari planting the tree that birthed the sylvari. These are events that, while important are relegated to short lines of dialogue and text in the memories of players.

I remember the sort of sadness walking around charr ascalon, or how much I really just plain dislike the Urban Battlefield Fractal. These are both emotions designed in to the game for someone who played the original. Stormcaller’s presence in the Black Citadel isn’t there for Charr players. It’s there for human ones, to remind them that they’re supposed to hate the Charr while the world tells them to forgive it. The tanks and memorial to the fallen are there for Charr players. Walking by that memorial as a human PC, and as a player of the original I just think “cute, like vietnam” but for someone freshly born to the franchise with all the flash and sunder of the Charr starting experience I’d imagine its a farily somber place. (This is, of course, speaking of players who care or pay attention to things like lore and story) This is no accident this is designed in to the system just as much as Meatoberfest and the Cattlepult are designed to give me something to actually like about them.

Players do however remember the ascalonian war and the searing as a living and breathing thing that many of them were a part of. Placing those same players in a situation to hear two children talk about their friendships and puzzle at why their parents hate one another so much becomes powerful because of that experienced event, working for peace becomes meaningful because of that experienced event. Playing a human in GW2 after playing one in the first game is an often somber experience simply because of that lived through history. Placing Charr where they are creates an attractive steampunk/warrior race in the hands of devil’s advocates and those new to the franchise, but the real service is to the long time players of the original. Every Charr player character is a reminder of just how important the game’s theme of unity against a greater foe is supposed to be.

I have a feeling, if I know guild wars, that humanity will eventually have its time in the spotlight, and that time may be littered with clumsy dialogue and a few plot holes, but it will certainly be memorable if only because the GW2 we have now is so determined to impress upon humans how far they have fallen.

Slic.2406:

Well. All these self heals are justified, when you consider the following 2 things:

1) Thieves have ZERO direct mitigation (block, protection, etc.)
2) In order to use any of this healing, thieves have to actually attack/cast skills

Eles/Engies have way more healing and mitigation. Guardians are a close 2nd but theyre more of a damage absorption and survive-by-cc-ing-attacker class.

What you should be pointing out is how effective the thief is at STAYING AWAY from damage.

Well obviously we’re very good at that, but the topic at hand here is thief self heals. of course self heals are more effective the less you have to use them, and the saving grace of a skill like signet of malice is that you can avoid more incoming damage long enough for it to actually have a beneficial effect via its high volume of small heals over an extended period

I don’t sPvP like ever. Just not my thing, I don’t like arena based PvP in MMOs, I play other games for that style of competition. Thus, I can’t comment much on the utility of sets in sPvP. I do however do a lot of WvW and PvE so I’ll share my experiences.

The utility of a P/D build tends to vastly outstrip the single target burst power of D/D in a WvW or PvE situation for three reasons:

1. Incoming damage – P/D is by design a high survivability build that deals damage via DoT attacks and maintains a naturally high initiative total. This means you nearly always have initiative left over to escape. In addition P/D requires very little melee time, which means a higher average distance between you and the enemy than D/D. In short, P/D, with the high turnaround on stealth and the low melee time tends to be a more survivable build, and when facing overwhelming odds as you often do in WvW and PvE this is key as it tends to ensure you’re not the one wasting damage potential by lying on the ground.

2. Skill Synergy – P/D, as a condition based damage build with multiple attacks tends to synergize much better with the thief’s best AoE abilities. In a D/D setup skills like caltrops, shortbow’s cluster bomb, and daggerstorm are useful, but in a P/D setup they’re twice as useful, pushing much higher amounts of DoT damage which is applied in a short time and continues to provide excellent DPS for several seconds while you are free to reposition, help res someone, or escape. In addition, a lot of the theif’s utility skills are naturally more effective when used with builds that increase condition damage and duration. Also, certain healing sources which aren’t worth using on a D/D build can become very potent with a P/D condition build. Signet of Malice, when used with the above mentioned AoE provides a lot more potential HP for the condition based and mostly ranged P/D setup than it does for the D/D direct damage one.

3. Pressure – Specifically in WvW, the raw damage output of a bleed build turns the thief’s shortbow from an easily ignorable source of occasional damage in to a high pressure source of bleeds. The resultant damage to a mass of enemies is very good, like a necromancer condition build, at making enemies blow condition removal skills or heals to cleanse the damage, which leaves those skills unavailable to deal with utility conditions and disables used by allied players of other classes that rely on landing roots, stuns, and other such abilities. In addition, the skill synergies described in point 2 further cement the condition thief’s roles as an excellent applicant of pressure. On multiple occasions I’ve been able to ensure the escape or repositioning of an entire allied force by applying caltrops or dancing daggers in a choke point, placing a large amount of cripples and high damage bleeds that slow down enemy forces, force them to bunch due to cripple, snf force them to blow heals, dodges, or condition removal to cleanse the high damage multiple stacks of bleeds. This puts them in a perfect setup to be simply destroyed by allied AoE or siege, and can at times turn around an even numbered fight. Thanks to the escape utilities built in to the thief profession I can often ensure this retreat and catch up with that force that I’m covering both alive and ready to assist with a counterattack or structure defense.

4. Conclusion – none of this is to imply that D/D is not good. On the contrary, it’s extremely good at quickly dealing with single targets and escaping, and doing so very efficiently. However it tends to have a lot of risk involved and a lot of downtime between assassinations. This is excellent in a scouting role, and is equally as excellent in small numbers and occasional combat like that you’ll have in a roving gank group, but for sheer team effectiveness against the large HP bars in high end PvE, or the large enemy numbers found in Mass WvW combat, condition based setups tend to be safer and do a lot more to help your team. Not to say that flat out assassinating isn’t a help to your team, it very much is! The conclusion is essentially that P/D condition based builds tend to help an overall fight better, whereas D/D direct damage tends to help more when dealing with a specific single target.

Kurow.6973:

Cause a thief, and ONLY a thief, has access to ALL of this at ALL times while dealing out those massive damage bursts from Backstab that people complain about…and thus makes them not “squishy”.

Did I understand this right?

This sub-forum is nothing but a bad player’s haven, where they can cluster up to complain about, just about anything (really doesn’t have to make sense logically).

I understand this is probably sarcasm, but just in case someone can’t read in to that and it causes another baseless panic…
Actually, the massive burst backstab builds have access to almost none of this, as you can’t run these heals effectively without traiting pretty heavily in to defensive trait lines as well as taking signet of malice, which is overall only extremely useful in the long term as healing in PvE or WvW zerg fights. Thief defensive builds have the same drawback as other class options in that if you want that kind of survivability you have to sacrifice the majority of your direct damage and rely on condition based DoTs for damage, effectively shutting off your ability to burst at all.

This can be effective in sPvP as point denial, in PvE due to the larger HP bars of bosses and mass mob groups, and WvW zerg fights due to the high number of potential targets. These are all also situations where the slower effective damage from DoTs is actually useful. You’re not getting heal based survivability on a burst build because you simply can’t run thief burst without giving up the toughness and vitality that let you survive enemy burst damage long enough to heal that damage. Burst builds have to rely on stealth and positioning to survive because they can’t get effective heals while maintaining burst potential.

Obsidian.1328:

@Chaosbroker

If that were true, the humans would have followed suit with technology. I mean, they were at war with those Charr that whole time, and for a long time before that in the guild wars while the Charr were idle. And the simple act of throwing off the shackles of an evil diety shouldn’t make a race 10 times smarter than they were. ANet needed a steampunk race to fill that niche in the lore and the Charr were it.

Except the humans, until basically now, already had a very powerful and readily available weapon in the form of divine magic. It’s the same reason those newfangled asura didn’t gravitate toward steam engines and tanks, they have a pan-useful technology of metamagical science that does an equivalent job.

Norn didn’t invent new technologies at all because, well, they’re Norn, they’re freakin’ huge and turn in to stuff an in their limited scope of the world as presented when they were invented. They’d never had a proper war (or city, or police force, or anything else resembling a planned society) until Jormag basically forced it on them for survival.

Thematically (though not perhaps always in terms of game play) the humans of that era, and moving forward, had no incentive to develop the technologies that the Charr did because they never vilified the magic they’d been using for hundreds of years. It was and still is a tool that works, and discovering that it may or may not be grounded in the human gods themselves doesn’t change the hundreds of years of study in that department. Also, as we’ve seen countless times, humans are more content to be “civilians” and live quiet agrarian lives in peasant jobs than any other race. This is actually the really unique thing about humans compared to their peers in GW2.

Charr society is inherantly militant. Even if you’re a farmer, you’re a farmer FOR THE WAR EFFORT! Human society is only necessarily militant. Human farmers are farmers because they like it, or because that’s what their family does. Humans only learn war when they need to, and the concept of heroism is more uniquely human than it does belong to any other race.

Humans are the only race wherin it’s not only normal, but expected to have a marked distinction between the military and civilian population because humans have a much different sense of concepts like duty and fealty. Thus, not every human spends a ton of time (like the Charr do) thinking of how their lives will impact whatever war they’re in, and this further stratifies their society in to political, military, and civilian camps. Thus, the military and civilian parts of that society are highly specialized, efficient, and most of all revered.

The Charr, as a race, are on average more proficient at war, and thus the design of machines that can be operated by the majority of the population made sense. Humans, on the other hand, are more individually proficient at specific disciplines, and so their specialists tend to stick with and refine whatever that specialty is. This can be seen in the legendary exploits of the Ebon vanguard, or multiple instances of human magic users (living, dead, or somewhere in between) throughout history.

This bothered me as far back as War in Kryta. When I realized that the Salma that replaced the original default krytan NPC was all of a sudden anglo-cized. It didn’t make a lot of sense. Native krytans always seemed to have a very south american look to them in the first game. The skin tone, those cool ponchos, even the hairstyles always reminded me of a sort of aztec commoner society.

Witness:

Original Salma (Krytan NPC)
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/f/f8/Krytan_f.jpg

WiK Salma (Remodel)
http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/0b/Salma.jpg

In addition to this, the entire visual aesthetic of krytan culture was never clearly defined. The original Shining blade, and later the WiK shining blade troops had a style of dress that was extremely different than that of the “common” krytan. I was always confused why the commoners always had all these cool paints/tattoos and neat semi-tribal garb and the “rebellion” seemed to have been kitted out in what appeared to be ascalonian clothing and gear, despite having been mostly isolated from ascalonian humans by virtue of the shiverpeaks until the searing happened.

I really would have liked to see Krytans stick closer to that aztec feel they sort of had in prophecies in stead of giving the aztec motif assets to the Asura (and inventing the asura and norn as an excuse to have more playable races) when Utopia was cancelled.

Centaurs. I mean they made those jerk Charr playable by retconning in a lot of lore, and Elonian centaurs (from Zhed’s tribe anyway) at least have a plausible grounding in sort-of-friendliness. I’ve always really liked the GW goat/horse/human hybrid aesthetic of tyrian centaurs, and the NPC ones currently in the game look great.

I’d like to put together a GW2 version of my “chainsaw” centaur barbarian from shadowbane one day. They’d need race specific pants and boots though, as the really couldn’t just tweak the existing models to fit that physiology, so it would be a lot of work. Alternately you could just give them a racial vendor that sells transmutes that work like the HoM ones to transmute all the mundane sets and just do the new art for the “shiny” sets like dungeons and exotics. It also rasies some interesting animation question. What’s the centaur animation for death blossom? I mean they couldn’t really pull off a full on midair spinflip, no matter how hilarious it would be to watch.

Sxalpha.5063:

…add some cool glow effects…

Sxalpha.5063:

…some glow effects…

Please. No. The 4 billion people running around in the flaming mess that is CoF armor is already bad enough. Every high tier armor does not need to shoot bloody fireworks. Especially not human cultural armor. That glowy nonsense is purely the domain of the asura and it should really stay that way for cultural pieces. The glowy bits actually look nice on the asura sets. “Glowing” is not a common human cultural theme.

You forgot that shadow refuge gives lifeleech as a dark combo field. That gives 5 shots of lifesteal, which stacks with the 5 heals from SoM when using pistol’s sneak attack with the 100% combo chance.

Even better, stacking lifesteal on top of dancing dagger (100% combo) spam. I use both of these methods in dungeons/fractals when I have an opportunity, and the group is trucking along well enough that I don’t need to save refuge to rez people.

Here’s a maths breakdown for dancing dagger with 1k healing power (using your math and the data on lifesteal from the wiki) which seems pretty accurate.

4x lifesteal
4x Assassin’s reward
4x Signet of malice

For each use, as long as it’s used from inside shadow refuge, and you have at least two targets to initiate the bounce. So, doing the math with 1000 healing power that’s:

Life stealing triggered by projectile finished combos heals for 202 health + 0.1 per Healing Power at level 80.

4x lifesteal (302*4 = 1208)
4x Assassin’s reward (104*4 = 416)
4x Signet of malice (150*4 = 600)

That’s a total of 2224 per dancing dagger used in the field. With a full bar that’s 2224*3 which is a 6672 heal. If you stay in the field the whole time for the heals from the refuge itself, that’s 6672+ 2675 = 9374.

That’s actually a better heal than what you’d get from the stealth traits, while also dealing damage and crippling, but you’d have to be willing to blow your entire supply of initiative to pull it off, and you’d need two targets. Even if you’re not using your entire bar, you’re still coming out only slightly less healed using one, and a much bigger heal using two.

Additionally, a lot of other thief attacks from stolen items, pistol and shortbow have a 20% combo chance. This makes them unreliable sources of lifeleech but they’re till technically heal effects.

The whirl finisher from dagger storm also gives leeching bolts, but they’re a lesser heal than projectile finishers and it’s patently impossible for me to count exactly how many bolts it generates to get a precise count, however it does supplement the already stellar healing from SoM+DS when used in large groups of enemies.

Also, pretty much all necro wells function as dark fields, so it would behoove you to dancing dagger, daggerstorm, or sneak attack through them when possible.

evilapprentice.6379:

PopeUrban.2578:

Straight crit chance is a boring trait, like straight damage buffs is boring. I hate traits that just do stuff you can do with gear. Sword is a set that’s all about the disables and rips, so how about something that synergizes with that? How about:

Martial Malice – You have a 15% chance to add one stack to any condition suffered by your target while wielding a sword. If your target has no conditions, remove a boon in stead. If your target has no conditions or boons, gain 2 initiative. Cooldown 5 seconds.

Drop the condition part (which is kind of a crapshoot – if you extend cripple, chill, immob, or even poison, it would be awesome. If you add a stack of/extend confusion, burning, or bleeding, it would suck). Boon strip (with init regen on no boons to strip) would actually be fairly useful.

I fail to see why adding confusion, burning, or bleeding would suck (aside from condition necros, but that’s just conditions in general.) The idea here is that the primary function of the trait is passive pressure and group utility via condition extension, but that its still useful without. Randomized simply to keep it from being straight up overpowered essentially as a 5s cooldown is really, quite short when you consider the effects.

Basically, if you’re looking at it in terms of PvE this is all around group synergy without going in to stack madness. What you’re getting is essentially a free built-in boon strip or init refund on your alpha, which is already really powerful by itself. The condition extension mechanic is a control mechanism to keep you from being able to spam that benefit too reliably, while still making it a useful trait that supports sword’s role in both solo and group play.

Here’s a better worded version:

Martial Malice – You have a 15% chance to add one stack (5 seconds) to any non-stun condition suffered by your target while wielding a sword. If your target has no conditions, remove a boon in stead. If your target has no conditions or boons, gain 2 initiative. Cooldown 5 seconds.

Alternately

Flourish – While wielding a sword, daze all nearby targets for 1 second when initiative reaches 2 or less. Cooldown 10 seconds.

Flourish was a neat skill in GW1 that was hard to use, but it definitely seems more thief than warrior in the current game, and this is basically how I would see it used by a thief. The original skill basically reset all of your weapon cooldowns when you used it, but this is thematically more like “You just did a bunch of cool stuff, your enemies gape in awe for a moment.” Inherantly balanced as an escapre/reposition mechanism due to the fact that it only activates when you’ve blown all your initiative.

Straight crit chance is a boring trait, like straight damage buffs is boring. I hate traits that just do stuff you can do with gear. Sword is a set that’s all about the disables and rips, so how about something that synergizes with that? How about:

Martial Malice – You have a 15% chance to add one stack to any condition suffered by your target while wielding a sword. If your target has no conditions, remove a boon in stead. If your target has no conditions or boons, gain 2 initiative. Cooldown 5 seconds.

I ran fractals with a melee engineer once. Dude was specced for the wrench kit, and it was pretty fun to watch him beat up on all the mobs with a wrench. I feel like all classes could use an extra weapon option or two.

Engineer – Hammer – supportive bar with low damage, but spammy knockbacks, cripples, and finishers (I also like the idea of bonus object damage!)

Elementalist – Greatsword – largely PbAoE and mobility skills. it always seemed silly to me eles can conjure a magical greatsword, but can’t use a mundane one.

Mesmer – Mainhand Pistol, Mainhand Torch – Torch would be a “channels” bar of persistant PBAoE effects, Mainhand pistol would be a conditional bar, with effects that conditionally combo with effects on a target. Essentially, this would be a way for mesmers to “shatter” conditions/boons with the 2+3 skills like some of the GW1 mesmer skills.

Thief – Rifle – Thief needs a 1200 range weapon. This would be a debuff heavy bar with long channeling attack times with bonus damage/effects if the thief does not move during the channel.

Guardian – Offhand Scepter – Reactive blocks. In stead of area buffs, Guardian would use an offhand scepter to block incoming attacks and turn them in to crowd control knockbacks and burns

Ranger – Mainhand dagger – Synergy bar, attacks confer healing/buffs to the pet.

Necromancer – Mainhand Mace – Minion bar. Autoattack is a chain that heals all minions on third strike, 2+3 create short lived minions, and create more powerful versions of those minions if striking the killing blow on a target.

Warrior – Honestly, I think the warrior has plenty of weapon options!

I don’t see the harm. It definitely gave me something to do whilst dead in the first game.

They were’nt random names in GW1, but I’d like to see more world bosses with actual names. Keep the vet/champ/legendary tags as those are very good at telling players roughly how hard a mob is, but just give them real names, so it’d look like “Champion Bonegnasher Spikefuzz” or whatever.

Also, a return of the named drops from all these bosses would be cool. Easily one of the most fun things about world bosses in GW1 after the sorrow’s furnace update was the green weapons with preset max stats and attachments. To prevent people from needing to farm a specific boss, you could just roll table exotic or rare weapons with a little flavor text about the boss, like karma weapons have.

I go 0/0/30/20/20 with carrion gear and mad king runes, using P/D(single targets/bosses) SB (multitarget/tanking) and signet of malice. It’s got stupid tankability, and the DPS from the bleeds is still good because of all the might stacking traits allowing you to effortlessly maintain 10+ stacks of might.

I run it with pizza or cookies for extra condition damage, and tuning crystals for even more condition damage from the synergy of the toughness/vit in the build.

The “ravens” (actually hawks) from mad king’s #6 bonus are pretty good damage and actually proc SoM, making daggerstorm basically trash kill godmode for stuff like the dredge bomb door, as you get the mass heals and all the bleed stacking DPS from DS, then the birds fire afterward handing you a substantial chunk of HP while you get out or swap to a shortbow to continue to AOE until you’re out of initiative.

For extra tanking and utiliy, caltrops procs SoM and bleeds and can work as a poor man’s second daggerstorm in some pulls/bosses, shadow refuge becomes a pretty stellar heal with the pistol by giving you 5x malice heals and 5x lifetaps if you don’t need to save it to res people, and the third utility is all up to you. I use roll for initiative because its sexy and getting stunned kills your ability to heal, and often completely kills you.

I think if blind’s mechanics were changed, aegis would have to get a similar change. Blind is basically just “offensive aegis” mechanically and works exactly as well as aegis does in every situation you would use it.

Personally I get a lot of use out of blind, but, like aegis, you have to time it right or be able to spam it to make it really effective. One stealth thief with the blinding trait can effectively mitigate more attacks for his group than a guardian if done properly, because he’s effectively applying a miss to every enemy blinded, which mitigates up to five attacks on a single target.

AoE aegis mitigates five attacks, but only if those five attacks hit five different targets. Often you’ll end up with one or two people who just plain don’t get attacked, wasting the aegis whereas five blinded enemies can target anyone and the mitigation is never wasted unless the enemies stop attacking, which pretty much never happens.

I’ve never had any problems with a P/D condition/malice build. Groups appreciate my face range aoe bleed stacks and tanking ability with the shortbow, and the utility of my caltrops and shadow refuge, and the fact that I tend to be ressing people while still dealing solid dps from all the bleeds because I very rarely hit the floor.

Its not the class that is the problem, it’s that you either don’t have a build that’s suitable for this kind of PvE, or you don’t play the build you have very well.

Initiative is the reason behind this design. Our bars have typically less hard hitting attacks than other classes, but more reliable/higher stacking utility. This is because the design of initiative is specifically to allow us to use the same damaging ability for massive damage, or choose to use that initiative defensively or supportively on our better weapon based utility.

The utility on many of the skills isn’t enough for the tradeoff to make it worth it in a lot of cases, but the design is pretty obvious when viewing the skill bars. If other classes had bars like you’rs they’d be simply unable to output decent damage at all due to cooldowns. Their decision making is more about when to use a skill for its damage OR utility, but waste the cooldown, wheras our decision is whether to use our global “cooldown” initiative mechanic for damage or utility.

Laika.8795:

Kerishan.8460:

“Using a stolen bundle item should no longer destroy a bundle being wielded in their hands.”

Can anyone explane this? I’m not english :P

If you’re holding an environmental weapon (like hammer/torch in fractals) and use what you steal, you won’t lose the environmental weapon you were holding anymore.

This. My guess is that the bug was a result of steal’s early design actually giving you a bundle/skill bar. They moved the stolen skills to just rest on the f1, but they never removed the special case “drop bundle so we can give you the stolen one” bit until now, when people noticed it.

Given the information we were given about the future of ascended gear, via the recent reddit AMA, I wouldn’t be suprised if high end items like the triforge simply got an ascended upgrade recipie via crafting.

I mean, for the triforge especially, it seems it would be silly not to just add more upgrade options as it is already a great example of how crafting a powerful item should always work.

I’m not sure about best but I have the most fun, PvP or PvE on my thief. Thieves have a lot of viable build options that I usually don’t get on my rogue classes in this game. If I’m looking at pure damage I’ll play the warrior as its core DPS builds tend to have actual options outside the once in a blue moon burst, but for condition damage, support, an survivability I just love the way thief builds for those purposes tend to feel a lot different than other classes in terms of continuous precision timing and reacting to the randomness of steal in stead of dropping a field every time the CD is up like the more standard supporty builds.

Give a man a ram, and he’ll deploy it on a road.

Teach a man to ram, and… well sometimes he’ll still deploy it on a road, but at least now he paid for the ram and not you.

Sir William PD.9615:

This kind of bums me out Spaceman. I was always picturing /map on TC with a bunch of “Hail!”, “What Ho!” and other such things. I like to picture after I’ve downed a player he says “I hath been mortally wounded!”

Uh. Well. Not in /map or /team anyway. I’ve seen local get a bit entertaining though. Most of the hardcore roleplayers don’t generally come to WvW, but there’s this kind of unspoken knowledge that we’re the RP server… so sometimes we fake it for teh lulz, but even then its kinda kitten.

Totally welcome any TC presence, but please please don’t get all commander-aggro.

One of the biggest strengths of TC’s WvW showing is that its extremely solo/small guild friendly. Its a sort of trial by fire for anyone who wants to start shouting orders in /team, and not every functioning commander on TC indeed has such a title. Successfully commanding on TC means learning first and foremost that you only lead on virtue of success, not a 100 gold commander title or having twenty guys with the same guild tag in the same place.

In truth, TC may very well be a very hard place to recruit new guild members, as a larger-than-average number of TC’s population lives in small 5-20 person guilds which are very tight knit. This is part of the reason why TC’s “mess of guild tags” is actually effective. Those smaller guilds tend to learn each other’s play very well, and this results in a pretty fun to watch ability for a big ol’ stack of TC to organically split in to pieces or spread out to cover a larger front more efficiently than some of the servers we find ourselves against.

If you’re successful, all these little solo and militia elements tend to fall in line with whatever you’re trying to do. If you’re annoying, bossy, rude, or just make a string of bad calls you’re going to lose the support of that militia just as fast. The mass of small groups the server is known for tend to fall in with people that have earned their respect, and earning that respect only happens when you’ve shown your battle plan provides results.

Kojiden.8405:

The halloween was pretty much a human event. This one is asura. I hope we get an event with Charr as the focal point.

We had one of those in ascalon several hundred years ago. It wasn’t very pleasant.

KyleQuest.4639:

Wildcode, thank you for pointing that out. I thought loot drops was just my luck.

Your probably a good person to ask. Does MF stack from all gear, including the under water gear? I’ve only been running +3% MF from an Ancient Karka Shell and +3% from an exotic Harpoon gun. Do they combine???

In my experience, it seems that underwater equipment only applies when its in use (under the water)

For instance, I run a set of six undead runes, but underwater I noticed I was missing some bleed damage. I put another undead rune on the mask and was recieving the full set benefit underwater again.

Considering MF stacks additively, then you’d be getting the MF benefit from both items, but you would only get the extra 3% MF from your harpoon gun when underwater, and with it in your hands.

Yeah, I remember being pretty bummed out that the shooting gallery and bar brawl weren’t ready to go on release. After hearing all the NPCs talk up these two activities all over Divinity’s reach I was really excited to try them.

There was this game called shadowbane, and one of the most hilarious specs to run for PvP was a group of greatsword backstabbers. In that particular game certain races got inherent weapon skills, and one race “nephilim” had an inherant greatsword line, so you could roll them as greatsword thieves.

I’ll agree that stealth characters with large 2h weapons seem kind of anti-thematic, but from my experiences in that game I will say that the results are often hilarious. We had another ambush spec with giant tanky werebear transforms that was similarly hilarious. Shame that bear transformations are kinda lackluster in GW2 or I’d do this again.

Tulisin.6945:

hahawinner.5273:

I honestly prefer D/P combo. This gives me the ability to basically blindlock the boss mob, even if I’m half way across the field. This makes it so a lot of attacks just miss.

Now I’ve never given it a rigorous test, and I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that blind being 10 % effective on bosses meant that only 10 % of their attacks would miss.

In my experience, the reduction seems to be on the overall duration of the blind, this is similar to the way dredge mobs which are “immune” to blind used to still be blinded, but cut the blind duration to a fraction of a second, wherin the blind can still be employed to make them whiff an attack, but its application has to be timed very close to the attack because it only possesses 10% of its normal duration.

I’ll be honest that I haven’t paid attention to it recently and it could use some further testing as things may (like the dredge) have changed.

Yes, they respawn daily. I have a few chests as suc that are part of my daily harvesting run (I like to MF the talismans)